Class: The Lost

"I would quite like to kiss you now."

Here we go then: the season finale. Hope it's not the last ever episode. I came to Class with middling expectations but have been pleasantly surprised by just how good it is. And the season (series?) ends on a high.

The gang are all dysfunctional with each other after the last episodes' argy-bargy, and this is naturally the time that Corakinus decides to come back and get revenge on April on all her mates. And then there's the tension about what the newly freed Quill will do when she wakes up. Oh, and she appears to be pregnant. And Quill young eat their mothers. Lovely.

Things get very serious when Tanya's mother is shockingly killed, followed by Ram's dad; these events will have consequences. And the pressure keeps growing on Charlie to use the Cabinet. Cue much arguing. It's all well written, though, and catharsis brings the gang together a bit. But good old April saves the day. Phew. But not all is well; it's too late and Charlie has used the Cabinet of Souls.

Dorothea has therefore failed. And we see through that mysterious door to where the school governors dwell. In an entertaining scene they do that super villain thing of killing Dorothea for failure. And the big boss is revealed to be played by Cyril Nri in a moment that leaves you wanting more. This was a brilliant bit of kids' telly.

Cucumber: Episode 6

"You've taken a wrong turn, but you can turn back."

I hate to simply echo what's being said all over the Internet, but this is one of the finest pieces of television in recent years. It's extraordinary.

We're shown from the framing device at the start that this episode will be different; this time it is Lance, not Henry, in the supermarket. And Russell T Davies gives the game away from the start with a caption: "Lance Edward Armstrong, 1966-2015".

Davies, in a recent interview with the Radio Times, has likened the structure of this episode to Lance's life flashing before his eyes in those last few seconds after the golf club connects. More than half the episode takes place before the start of the series, including Lance's getting together with Henry and the early part of their relationship, from his perspective. But the heart of these early scenes are in Lance's early scenes, his discovery of his sexuality, the difficult coming out and the slow acceptance, Christmas by Christmas, of his father. There is tragedy, too, with the childhood loss of Lance's mother and the loss of a partner to AIDS. All of this rounds Kance as a character and, of course, gets us to emphasise with him so that his death will hurt more. You're a right bastard of a genius, RTD. This episode feels like a punch in the face to a Eurythmics soundtrack.

It's a huge relief that Henry gets to see Lance before he dies, and to finally tell him that he loves him. Lance doesn't take the proffered olive branch, though, and coldly rebuffs him. Instead he goes off on one final, terrible night out.

Daniel gives out warning signs at every moment, as he always has. His behaviour in Canal Street is extremely disturbing yet, as Lance explains to the strange, unreal ghost of Hazel from Queer as Folk, he's handsome enough to be worth it.

These scenes with Hazel, written as a kind of fairy godmother, are the emotional heart of the episode. The fact that she is a ghost adds a note of unreality; RTD has  postulated that, if the whole episode is Lance's life flashing before his eyes, this could be a bit his subconscious has changed. But it's nicely ambiguous, and a nice choice. And dramatically, of course, it's the point of no return.

The final, fateful scenes are in real time, and are masterfully scripted and acted, with Daniel finally acting fully on his suppressed desires, but then lashing out in a fury of denial and gay panic, snuffing out this sweet man whom we have come to know and love. It is sudden, devastating and crafted to hit hard.

And then we have a masterful visual sequence from director Alice Troughton, and tears, and no more Lance. And this is going to leave a huge hole in the world.

Cucumber: Episode 5

"We built cages to keep ourselves civilised."

This is the first thing I've blogged with a little person sitting there sleeping in a bouncer next to us as she watched it. So, technically, the first programme my baby daughter watched was Cucumber. Appropriate or what? Anyway, this is still the best thing on telly right now.

We are alerted to the fact that things are entering a new phase by the difference in the framing device at the start: Henry's monologue takes place not in the civilised, safe, artificial environment of the supermarket, but in the wild and dangerous environment of the primeval forest. 

Henry's life has lost its moorings since that fateful night out; he has lost his relationship, his job, his money and his place in society, and has found himself making some questionable decisions as a result. This is the episode where the consequences of those decisions come home to roost.

Cleo is an extraordinary creation of a character, nuanced and real in a way that fictional characters rarely are. Her reaction to what Henry has been doing on YouTube is perfection in terms both in terms of script and performance. And this is a devastating revelation of the damage done by casually misogynist pornography, done just for fun, on the sexuality of adolescent girls. It's an extraordinary scene.

Elsewhere, Cliff is great as usual, and Henry's relationship with new boyfriend Leigh is quickly unravelling. Not only is Leigh alarmingly right wing, he also wants (gasp!) sex. Henry, being Henry, doesn't so much dump him but takes the easy way out by standing him up, choosing instead to get pissed with Freddie. He still has absolutely no chance with the young Adonis, of course, but the two of them have struck up a moving little friendship of sorts. But Freddie's parents have a few home truths for him, home truth for which he has no real answer. Structurally, this is clearly the episode where we are being invited to examine Henry's recent actions in the light of something big is about to happen. And I'm not just saying that because I've already seen the masterpiece that is Episide Six.

Lance is continuing to pursue the disturbingly laddish Daniel, whose denial about his sexuality is suffused with menace and the simmering threat of violence. Lance's chat in the office with Veronica, who thinks Daniel is weird, is a great big sign that things are going to go very badly wrong.

We end with a conversation between Hebry and Lance, a conversation which Henry badly mishandled. They part on bad terms, and things look ominous...

Cucumber: Episode 4

"You're actually patting my vagina..."

Wow. What a masterful piece of television. Such a triumph of structure and characterisation from Russell T Davies and such an extraordinary revelation of a performance from Vincent Franklin. Where to begin?

The episode is framed around a number of dates, all of them different, leading to sex, or not, and using these things to examine the human condition. Some are quite straightforward: Lance doesn't end up having sex, firstly because he's with a bottom and secondly because he's with a rather I likeable, laddish closet dweller. Freddie is pursued by a girl with a fetish for men who sleep with other men, something not uncommon. And Dean, being Dean, has a very kinky time, thereby wrecking someone else's relationship.

Most movingly, though, this is about Cleo and, of course, Henry. Cleo is tentatively trying to explore sex with an old friend for the first time since having her vagina reconstructed. She gets a moving monologue about how the births of two children have made her vagina fall apart, and how for years the medical profession has not cared; there's a quietly and rightly angry point here about how little society cares about women's sexual pleasure. Henry, meanwhile, has a nice date with a top but pulls all sorts of tricks to avoid sex. Finally, following a chance meeting with Leigh (AJ from EastEnders) in a fast food place in the small hours, he finally gets to confess his neuroses about sex; it's implied here that his fear of sex is bound up, him being the age he is, with the fear of AIDS which must have so affected his youth. There's a real gap here between Henry's generation and the young people with whom he lives. Rather sweetly, though, it looks as though he's got himself a new boyfriend.

This is an extraordinary episode which really pays off the groundwork leading up to this. I hope the four remaining episodes can somehow match this.

Cucumber: Episode 3

"You're a prostitute!"

"Yes. How much money do you make?"

Three episodes in, and the clever little tropes and writerly tricks are coming more and more into focus. There's the repeated use of Henry perving at blokes in the supermarket as a framing device, for one. And there's the way Freddie gets written here; up until now, and even early in this episode, he's this beautiful, arrogant, unattainable Wildean aesthete without any of the money, but we get the truth here; he was abused regularly as a schoolboy by his teacher, Gregory, now a father of two. There are scenes dancing around blackmail, and at the centre is a pop art style wall decoration relating this abuse as an erotic comic strip so that, literally as well as metaphorically, the past of abuse hangs over the narrative.

It is Henry who urges Freddie to expose Gregory, disgusted at the abuse of a schoolboy the age of his fifteen year old nephew. Yet Henry is directing this very same nephew in pornographic "vlogs" in a clear parallel. It's complicated.

Elsewhere, Lance continues in his chase of semi-closeted gay homophobe Daniel, an interesting character, and the swimming pool scene is superbly written. Lance is an interesting character: in control when it comes to Henry but definitely not in the driving seat when it comes to Daniel.

I still think he and Henry will get back together. But there's a long way to go...

Cucumber: Episode 2

"Uncle Lance says you never take it up the bum!"

This episode is perhaps a little shorter on the flashes of brilliance than the last one, but it is again a joy to experience Russell T Davies' writing again. The theme of the week is clear, and stated at the start with the "Henry test" of looking at your partner's last twenty texts- what are the boundaries of faithfulness? At what point does lust for another person, or flirting, make you unfaithful to your partner? Are Henry and Lance still together? This is awkwardly ambiguous. Yet for the younger crowd of Dean and Freddie such ambiguity is happily accepted.

There is a gap between Henry's young hosts in terms of both age and social class- but perhaps we should not separate the two, in our age of austerity which is aimed at the young. It isHenry's  generation which has the property and the good jobs. Perhaps this explains Freddue's more-or-less open contempt.

Oh, and I was wrong about Danny, Lance's friend with the casual homophobia; he's clearly gay and repressed, and Lance clearly likes him.

This episode is just as funny as the last one, and most of the best humour revolves around Henry's sister Cleo,who is fantastic and behaves like a real person. Her reactions to Henry's plight are nuanced and not as one would expect from a character in a drama.

RTD is brilliant at how he shows characterisation- the dialogue, the use of modern social media in TV drama and, of course, people not communicating properly with each other- the main theme of this series. It's all very Marshall McLuhan; the medium is the message.

Cucumber: Episode 1

"It's not my fault they went and invented it."

I'm conscious that the only Russell T Davies scripts I've ever blogged have been Doctor Who. So I should say, for the sake of balance, that I've seen (and enjoyed) Casanova and The Second Coming and, indeed, Dark Season. I haven't, however, seen Queer as Folk which, I suspects, puts me at a slight disadvantage in that I cannot discuss Cucumber in relation to it.

Meh. Anyway, this is RTD's much-heralded "More Gay Men" project, a return to a style of drama grounded in relationships and human miscommunication rather than the science fiction he's written in the recent past. And it is, of course, brilliant. I'd forgotten how much I love his style; the lightness of touch as a means to approach heavy themes, and his signature brilliant dialogue. RTD once explained to Charlie Brooker that his characters, like real people, never quite listen to what the other person is saying; dialogue should not get "ping pong". He practises what he preaches to brilliant effect here as Sunil gets a distracted Henry to let him copy that fateful essay.

But let's step back a bit. Henry is 46, comically grumpy and in a more or less sexless relationship with Lance. He represents the older generation of gay men, who have had to struggle with AIDS and a more overt homophobia, and to whom recent advances like equal marriage are somewhat bewildering. In contrast we have the much younger Dean, who has things much easier in terms of both social attitudes and easy sex.

This is the story, more or less, of how Henry's life fall apart so in the space of twenty-four hours. It looks as though he's lost his relationship and his career, in both cases through an awkward failure to communicate clearly. This basic plot plays out with plenty of wit and hilarity to distract us, as always, from the pessimism about the human condition that always lies beneath RTD's work. 

Vincent Franklin deserves praise for making the prickly and waspish Henry likeable enough to work as a protagonist yet believable for us to despair at his attitudes. Perhaps his attitude has been shaped by his life, though; he's clearly not comfortable with the idea that he can now get married, he's only half joking in his ambivalence to other gay men, and he's never gone all out and had full penetrative sex. He still has one foot in the more repressive era of his youth, days of Section 28 and homophobic tabloids.

And yet we also get funny scenes like the neighbour politely asking him not to wank  where her children can see, and the man with yellow spunk. And yet both of these turn out to be tinged with tragedy.

I'm looking forward to next week. I don't pretend to be any more plugged into gay culture than the next Guardian reading heterosexual liberal, but I'm enjoying this as a drama that is both fun and has something to say. I've missed RTD.

Julius Caesar (Gregory Doran, 2012)

"How many ages hence / Shall this our lofty scene be acted over / In states unborn and accents yet unknown?"

There's a lot of Shakespeare on BBC4 at the moment, and it's all piling up, unwatched, rebuking me. I did a degree in English, many years ago, and yet it's possible that I haven't read or seen any Shakespeare since. I've only read around twelve of the forty-and-counting plays, which is sort of pathetic. My degree certificate is staring sternly at me as I write this: something must be done, and so it shall.

So here's the first of many of these reviews. Generally they'll be looking at the BBC4 productions, which are essentially filmed versions of recent stage productions but with some concessions to the medium of television, although that won't always be so, as in the case of the forthcoming history plays. There'll also be films and whatnot.

This particular production is very topical indeed, being that it's currently running in Stratford upon Avon. There's a contemporary African aesthetic, with everything about the play's look and directorial style strongly suggesting the slow slide from liberty to authoritarianism, driven by one charismatic figure, that seems to be happening in places like Uganda and Ethiopia. There's also, of course, a hint of the Arab Spring. The cast is led by the outstanding Patterson Joseph as Brutus, a slightly subdued Cyril Nri as Cassius and Ray Fearon as Mark Antony.

Lots of people don't like the idea of Shakespeare in modern or non-contemporary dress. I do. For one thing, certain plays (including this one) are very common, and it's nice to have a little variation in the visuals. For another, the anachronisms are already there. These are Romans who hear clocks chiming and allude often, and eloquently, to the effects of the four humours. Realism has its place, but to be shackled to it would be dull indeed. And the setting serves to emphasise certain of the plays themes, and remind us of their universalism. There's nothing exclusively Roman about the power relationships we see here. The only unfortunate side to modern dress is that it renders awkward those features of Shakespeare that reflect the style or technical limitations of the time, with battles always taking place out of shot and wives dying off-screen

It's hard to judge the full effect of the setting, though; it's devised for the stage and, although the crowd scenes (including Mark Antony's speech) are essentially just a camera pointed at the stage, the rest of the play was filmed on location, hence the plotting between Cassius, Brutus and Casca takes place in a urinal, complete with mimed peeing(!), while the "ambitious" Caesar is killed, symbolically, on a broken escalator. I'm almost tempted to go hunting for symbolism in the peeing, too…

The only version I'd previously seen was the 1953 film version, in which the most prominent and foregrounded performers were Marlon Brando as Mark Antony and John Gielgud as Cassius. So I was a little surprised, at first, to see the superb Patterson Joseph cast as a surprisingly wily Brutus, whereas Cassius might have been a more natural part for him. But I came to appreciate this more intelligent Brutus, calculating but never cynical. Nri's Cassius, meanwhile, was far more fallible, and less Machiavellian, than I'd expected. Fearon's performance was strong, but there were too similarities to Brando's iconic portrayal to fully escape from its shadow.

I love this play, and there are always new things to be seen. I love Shakespeare's cynical yet true depictions of the fickleness and murderousness of the mob, who are easy prey to demagoguery and mistake Cinna the poet for Cinna the conspirator as easily as they mistake paediatricians for paedophiles. There's a universal human truth right there. And Mark Antony's speeches, cynical and practical deployments of rhetoric though they are, are things of such beauty.

It would be wrong, I think, to judge the production too much by its camerawork, as it has only one foot in the televisual medium, at best. But the scene in which Antony and Octavian (a Laurent Kabila-like Ivanno Jeremiah) casually discuss their proscriptions is nicely punctuated by short, sharp cuts to hooded figures being shot in the back of the head, which I found very powerful.

Perhaps the production is let down slightly by the sometimes overly restrained performance of Cyril Nri, but the use of the African setting works well, and Patterson Joseph is outstanding.

The Sarah Jane Adventures: Sky

Part One

“If I start asking my Mum questions about how to look after a baby then she’s going to totally freak.”

I never seem to pick up much enthusiasm for starting a new series of The Sarah Jane Adventures, and this time is no exception. I’m always very much aware that this is very much a kids’ show, I’m a 34-year-old man, and I’m only reviewing this series because of my completist urge to review all of televised Doctor Who. I’m conscious that I don’t find much to say about it, which isn’t surprising: it’s for kids, and not necessarily always brimming with subtext. And yet, I usually end up enjoying it, and this time is no exception.

It’s certainly… different to see Elisabeth Sladen in new episodes so soon after her sad demise. But it’s also exhilarating to see the brand-new pre-titles sequence, and to hear Sladen’s voice delivering that wonderful monologue. It’s becoming very noticeable that the actors playing Clyde and Rani are getting older, but it’s good to see the gang again.

And this time we get a new addition, although obviously not for long; a baby whom Sarah Jane names Sky is mysteriously abandoned on her doorstep, and we get lots of fun scenes with Clyde showing how great he is with babies. Aaah. It’s also great to see some comedy with Haresh and the lovely Gita. I know I’m supposed to like the regulars more, but I think they’re my favourite characters…!

We get a lot of scenes in a nuclear power station; it’s almost as though this is a 1970s Doctor Who story. We get a few scenes with the wonderful Floella Benjamin as Professor Rivers again, including a great scene in which she plays with some lipstick and pretends she’s Sarah Jane. Plus there’s a great villain in the mysterious “Miss Myers”.

And then, as a cliffhanger we discover that Sky is suddenly much older. And a bomb.

Part Two

“And Clyde thought he had it tough with Luke!”

Er, excuse me, but surely if Sky is twelve years old then she isn’t actually a teenager? And surely there will be narrative difficulties with her being five years younger than Rani and Clyde, and therefore in a different school year? Still, it’s probably a good idea to have regular who’s closer to the age of the target audience, and also sensible of Phil Ford to give her a background which is more or less the same as Luke’s.

Still, it’s rather eyebrow-raising to have our new regular be, essentially, a suicide bomber. And I’m really, really not sure about that scene of Sarah Jane breaking into an area full of electricity pylons in a children’s programme!

Still, we get a nice ending, even if Sky surviving and being “defused” is awfully convenient. But then, in a genuine surprise, we see the shopkeeper and his parrot from Lost in Time. Are we going to find out who they are, or what they want…?

The Sarah Jane Adventures: Lost in Time

Part One

“They’re dead clever where I come from.”

No messing about with this opening teaser: we’re straight into the story and no mistake. It’s a shop, full of bric-a-brac, including (it’s implied) the very arrow with which King Harold was shot. There’s a mysterious shopkeeper, played brilliantly by Cyril Nri. This chap has real charisma, is enigmatic without being annoying (not always an easy combination), and has a parrot called “The Captain”. It takes him just a few sentences to explain this story’s plot, and it’s a quest narrative. Our three heroes are to individually go back into time to find some McGuffins because, like, bad stuff will happen if they don’t.

So, as part of this history lesson for the kids, Clyde is in 1941, hiding behind a beach as Nazis come ashore. Sarah Jane is in 1889, helping a girl called Emily investigate a ghost. And Rani is with Lady Jane Grey. Ouch. Lady Jane is a pretty bloody tragic figure and what happened to her is really quite upsetting. I can’t help thinking of that painting by Paul Delaroche (all right, I googled him), showing a terrified and blindfolded sixteen-year-old girl being escorted to the nearby block to be beheaded. That’s horrible.

Emily, meanwhile, has lost her mother, and being a late Victorian she turns to Spiritualism for comfort. This “ghost” seems to be another tribute to The Stone Tape, except that these are recorded voices not from the past, but from the future. Meanwhile, Clyde and his ‘40s mate George are captured by suitably evil Nazis, and they have a secret weapon: Thor’s hammer, which for some reason has radar-scrambling properties. Meanwhile, Jane’s mate Lady Matilda seems to be plotting something…



Part Two

“This is so unfair…”

On paper this is a decent script from Rupert Laight, but there seems to be something missing. There isn’t really any overarching theme between the three historical romps, I suppose. Still, this is an entertaining bit of fluff, although perhaps they should have gone for something other than the Lady Jane Grey stuff in a kids’ programme. Perhaps I’m getting a bit soft with my relatively advancing years (I’m only 34, mind!), but the idea of a sixteen-year-old girl knowing that she soon faces execution is quite profoundly upsetting.

The full horror is hinted at early on; Rani may have saved Jane from being murdered by Matilda (oh, and the knife is the MacGuffin), but in doing so she’s condemned her friend to an imminent and much more unpleasant fate. This is done in a relatively soft way for the kid viewers, but I still think they should have steered well clear of this. Am I overreacting? I was quite upset by this!

Fortunately, Clyde’s boys’ own adventure with Nazis and Sarah Jane’s ghost story (even though it involves children dying in a house fire) are a bit of a break from the Jane story. The best thing about both of these, of course, is Clyde’s magnificent and inspiring speech to George. Shame he has to lose his phone.

Clyde and Rani get their McGuffin back from the past without much trouble, but Sarah Jane doesn’t do as well. Fortunately, we get a resolution straight out of Back to the Future II (and Blink), as Emily’s granddaughter gives Sarah the key, using the newspaper clipping handed to Emily earlier on. The shopkeeper and his parrot disappear, enigmatic as ever, while both Rani and Clyde read up on what happened to their friends from the past.

I can’t put my finger on much that’s wrong with this one, but it didn’t quite do it for me. I admit, it’s mostly because I find the thought of a sixteen-year-old child facing being beheaded profoundly upsetting, but there was something a bit by-the-numbers about this story.