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I finally had a chance to catch up with ‘Endeavour’ after missing it on TV. I imagine it’s been a puzzle for TV executives looking to wring more mileage from the Morse brand; ‘Well, the ‘Lewis’ spinoff bombed’, you hear them say, ‘what about a prequel?’ So this precursor to ‘Morse’ saw unlikeable ginger pipe-cleaner [...] My old friend Kim Newman, whose own excellent Sherlock Holmes book series far exceeds the quality of the current TV reinvention, has pointed out that TV doesn’t need to purchase new ideas so long as they can get away with stealing work from writers, in the same way that TV reality shows don’t need actors [...] Well, after the excellent Clerkenwell Films worked long and hard to develop Bryant & May as a TV series, creating a script for the pilot and getting the wonderful Derek Jacobi and Michael Gambon to sign to the show, ITV, Sky and the BBC all turned it down, citing the trend against original programming at [...] Obviously, old titles get re-used (particularly if they have words like ‘die’ or ‘kill’ in them) but it seems over the years people have used titles I’ve created with alarming regularity. Here are some of them: Disturbia – I’ve just delivered the sequel to ‘Paperboy’ and hope my lovely publisher will like it enough to take it on. At the start of the book I set up the seventies period and mention a few differences between old British TV shows and new ones. This was a bit of a cheat as I haven’t [...] Here’s a terrific read from Mark Pilkington’s Strange Attractor Press – there’s something about the books Mark chooses to publish; they manage to be esoteric and immensely readable. ‘Welcome To Mars’ by Ken Hollings is a timeline that marries America’s postwar conformist social development with its often irrational obsessions about the future, taking in UFOs, [...] I first met George Baker because I was doing a TV commercial about Santa Claus. I had this silly idea that a top people’s Santa would have handmade red suits and would not come down a dirty old chimney but arrive in a Rolls Royce, so I had a very expensive suit handmade for him [...] English newspapers have a habit of producing rather good TV critics. Clive James, Victor Lewis-Smith and Charlie Brooker have all managed to produce regular columns that balance the odd insight with cruel hilarity, so I was pleased to read Heidi Stephens’ Guardian blog on the bottom-feeding entrants to the Big Brother house, the thing that [...] Where do you get your ideas from? Lady Penelope, the Thunderbirds agent with the whispery voice and vulgar accessories, is being flogged off by Bonhams the auctioneers. She’s expected to fetch a few bob, being an icon and all. Tragically, Working Title ballsed up the film version, having had years to get the thing right, but to some of us she will [...] |
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