Dickens Sickens

What the FUCK is going on at the BBC?
This is the 200th birthday of England's greatest storyteller, so how does the state broadcasting corporation celebrate this anniversary? With a desecration of Great Expectations so unholy that South Park's own version was more faithful to the spirit of the original.

I suppose I should have been warned when they changed the ending of Bleak House to make it less creepy for people with no brains, but I had really been looking forward to seeing Gillian Anderson as Miss Havisham after her magnificent Lady Dedlock in the last adaptation.

Things started promisingly enough. Ray Winstone looks the part as Magwitch, but of course he can only play Ray Winstone so things started to go downhill as soon as he opened his mouth (sorry … "marf").

Mercifully, the art director made a good job of the bleak marshes but he may just as well have set the whole thing in a circus for all the good it did.
Okay, so cutting the book down to three hours is difficult and you're going to have to miss out on a lot of atmosphere and character development and even some minor characters. David Lean managed the task amazingly well.
But to entirely gut the book and replace the story with a completely different plot with vapid soap dialogue and a tragically unsympathetic leading man (apparently he models for Burberry and that's precisely how he acts) is a recipe for disaster.

And disaster is what we've got.
Who is credited as the writer?
Surely Charles Dickens?
No …
A TV soap writer who 'did' Holby City and East Enders.
For fuck's sake.
It shows. It REALLY fucking shows.

Picture the scriptwriting sessions:
"The art director has come up with a really pretty butterfly theme for the credits, so let's introduce a completely new character who collects butterflies, sticks them with needles and then dies."
"Yah! It'll be like … er … some kind of metaphor or something."
"And we'll get rid of most of Dickens' boring old characters and write something that'll appeal to twelve year old teen vampire fans. I mean who needs The Aged, or Biddy? Who needs the Pockets or Trabb's boy or Clara's father? They might have been tremendously important to the story but come on, guys, we're writing a soap here!"
"And don't forget to get Pip and Estella to strip off and stand in a pond and do lots of panting and stuff."
"Yah. Sex it up."
"And Joe's way too simple and dull; let's make him into a boorish thug."
"We want more totty so we'll introduce Clara early and have her swan around and say stupid things like "I knew it was you, Pip. You're such a good friend." like she's on Twitter or something."
"And we want a baddie, so we'll turn Drummle into a scenery chewing stock soap nasty like Phil Mitchell in East Enders."
"And don't forget to get Pip and Estella to strip off and stand in a pond and do lots of panting and stuff."
"I think we did that already."
And so it must have gone on …

I managed to watch the first episode without smashing my telly, but last night's abortion had me gaping in stunned disbelief at the sheer jaw-dropping audacity of the trash writing on display. Dickens must be spinning furiously in his grave. People who've not read his books will think HE wrote this drivel. This utter crap. This cheap, tawdry teen soap.

Gillian Anderson struggles manfully but is hobbled by dialogue so trite it beggars belief and a re-write of Miss Havisham's character that loses any shred of tragedy or pathos.
I couldn't watch.
I had to keep flicking away to a sub-titled Mongolian movie (true … and which was far, far superior).
Some masochistic urge kept me flicking back, however, but the final straw came when Ray Winstone emptied a sack of cash on the floor …

I know you guys are intelligent and you've all read and enjoyed Great Expectations and a lot of Dickens' other books, too. But a lot of people aren't that lucky. Some people might even think that this bilge is what Dickens really wrote.
If you know of anyone like that, please give them a copy of the book. Make them read it and tell them never, EVER to watch a BBC adaptation of any of Dickens' books.

And don't whatever you do, watch this worthless piece of shit yourself. The final episode is on tonight but my TV will be off; I really don't want to see the alien abduction, the scene where the dog rescues Tiny Tim from the well, to have to guess which one's the vampire and which the werewolf, or to watch the execrable East Enders "Nah! Pip! Don't! He's not WURF it!" vomit any longer.

Celebrate Dickens' birthday by re-reading his books. They're wonderful.

The BBC should hang its head in shame.

I Despair Sometimes. I Honestly Do

The Guardian informs me this lunchtime that the Americans are getting the opportunity to watch Forbrydelsen, probably the only piece of television ever made that approaches the enjoyment of a good book.
Tense, grim, dark, beautifully written, tightly plotted, perfectly cast and impeccably played, it is a slow-burning, low-action, emotionally searing twenty-hour stretch of devastating bleakness, confusion and long, long silences, chillingly photographed blackness, rain, more rain and the best bad Christmas sweater in history.
It is a hymn to the fucked-up pointlessness of existence.
It is painfully European.
It stars Sofie Gräbøl as Sarah Lund.
It's all in Danish with subtitles.
I hate television and yet I spent two hours at a time for ten consecutive weeks sitting in the dark on Saturday nights glued to BBC4, marvelling at the quality of the writing and acting and cinematography.
And at the lack of ad breaks.

Then I read a little more of the Guardian article only to find that the Americans have - brace yourself - "remade" it as a cop show set in Seattle.
Different actors, different plot, different killer and different ending.

What the fuck?

I am assured by my American friends that they are quite capable of reading subtitles, so the question remains: why?
Why this obsession with finding something good - in this case sensationally so - and then remaking it as an inferior product?
Because it's set in Denmark?
Surely not. I mean Sarah Palin might be frightened by the concept of Denmark; she may believe København is a continent containing Africa but I'm damned sure most of you can cope without screaming when a movie or a television programme is set outside the borders of the USA.

Why, why, why?
Please excuse me while I bang my head against my desk for a minute …

Ow …
I mean look what they did to Fawlty Towers! The Office! The Italian Job! Get Carter (AUGH)! The Ring, Vanilla Sky, Godzilla, Diabolique (for fuck's sake), Point Of No Return/Nikita, Solaris, Taxi … the list goes on drearily. They even renamed The Madness of George III "The Madness of King George" in case dumbfucks thought it was a a sequel.
Okay, so maybe they got it almost right with The Magnificent Seven, though it's still not a patch on The Seven Samurai, but the exception only proves the rule.

America makes really good original TV shows: witness M.A.S.H. Frazier, Buffy, The Simpsons, The Sopranos, but let them loose on something wonderful from across the pond and they fuck it up. Badly.
Listen up, US TV executives:
It ain't broke. Don't - whatever you do - try in your cack-handed way to fix it. LEAVE IT ALONE! Trust your fellow Americans to be in possession of sufficient brain cells to grasp the concept of the world outside your borders.

Here's a little piece of advice that I do hope any Colonials reading this will take. You will thank me for it, I'm sure.
Do not - under any circumstances - watch the US remake of Forbrydelsen ("The Killing"). It might be a good cop show but it is not Forbrydelsen any more than Forbrydelsen is a cop show based in Seattle. The original boxed set is available on DVD (yes, of course I have it). Buy it. Watch it. Marvel at it. Read the fucking subtitles.

Message ends.

Why I Am Like I Am

Many apologies to my lovely Blogville neighbours for not coming round to visit much these days but things at work are stupidly busy and I've just been getting home and going straight to bed.

I've also got no time to write anything, but I was talking to a friend in the Colonies a little while ago and discovered that the TV of our respective childhoods came from two completely different planets.

Mine revolved around "Watch With Mother" - featuring such awesomely freakish wonders as The Woodentops, Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men, Andy Pandy and Muffin The Mule.

So today, in lieu of a post, I have been wallowing in nostalgia for the vanished world of my childhood and staring - frankly open-mouthed with horror - at these clips of long-vanished shows I loved.

Creepy beyond all measure (especially Andy Pandy) these will raise a smile from mum and Phil - and probably Lynn, who will be twenty-eight on Monday and of course cannot remember this stuff, and hopefully they will explain a lot about me to my Colonial chums.

And of course, they save me from having to write a post.
First up comes the wonderful innocence of The Woodentops, then the sheer imbecility of Bill and Ben, followed by a whole episode of shudderingly scary Andy Pandy and a final clip of Muffin The Mule (an act legal here until a few years ago).

What the fuck was going on with kids' TV back then?
Scary, creepy puppets and plummy-voiced upper class women and awful, awful songs.
It's a wonder I'm not in therapy.

The freak show starts here.
Enjoy!

Tom Purdew Pt.6 - Television Trauma

À la recherche du …

A cautionary tale for young musicians.

It is sometime in the early eighties.
R__, a BBC TV producer who frequents our local pub and brays a lot, unexpectedly turns up at one of my gigs and afterwards sidles up to me to ask if I'd like to do the theme tune and incidental music for a new prime-time TV series he has commissioned.
It's a half-hour quiz show to go out at seven PM.
It is called "Commuter Quiz" and involves teams solving Times crossword clues (the irony of my leaving music to become a commuter and do crosswords on trains is not lost on me). Not the most exciting of prospects but there's money involved so yeah, right; like I'm gonna say "no" …

"Right on, man." says R__, as ever ten years behind in street talk.
Oh, I forgot to say: the man is a dick. He is so full of himself that he leaks out and leaves a trail of slime wherever he goes. You know the type: "big" in regional TV, sports car, young girlfriend, sad bastard; the sort of guy who will grow up to become Alan Partridge. A prize twat.

At the gig, however, I know him merely as a loud asshole name-dropper who happens to be a TV producer. I have yet to discover the "useless tit" side of him.

A week goes by and he tracks me down and informs me that the studio is booked and tells me the place, date and time. He is vague about what precisely I will be recording and with whom but I don't mind that; I love coming in to a band or studio cold and being thrown in at the deep end. It's more fun that way.

The appointed place at the appointed hour.
Seagull Studios in Lowestoft. I've recorded here before and know the engineer (who happens to be blind but a damned good engineer regardless of that), so we chat away over coffee and wait for the rest of the musicians and for R__ with the music.

After a little while, in walks Ian L__, an old friend who is a top banjo player. We do the huggy, greety thing and start to relax. At least with Ian there I know that we are likely to be playing something country or bluegrass tinged and so can get in to the right mindset. I've brought my Martin acoustic as well as a load of electric gear, so no problem there.

Aha … HERE is the problem … R__ …
In he walks, fashionably late (we have already set up and sorted levels and are jamming away happily).
Walking nervously behind him is a very, very young girl. This turns out to be B__, his friend's daughter whom R__ wants to get in to bed and who has not only never sung over headphones before but has never been in a studio or even sung into a microphone. Never mind the fact that she looks about twelve.

It is then that R__ informs us that:
(a) There are no other musicians booked. He knows we are both multi-instrumentalists and so can save some of his budget by getting us to play everything ourselves;
(b) B__ is not a kid he has brought along to watch, but will in fact be singing the theme tune, and;
(c) There is no music except a vague concept in R__'s tiny head.

What he has instead is a small scrap of paper on which he has written some of the most trite and embarrassing lyrics ever penned. Lyrics that squirm with shame before we can even finish reading them; lyrics that neither rhyme nor scan without suffering serious torture.

He then makes things worse by singing them.
R__ cannot sing or write music any more than he can write lyrics.
Ian and I wince at one another, then go into a huddle in the drum booth while R__ attempts to interfere with the unfortunate young girl in front of the blind engineer (this is all absolutely and cringe-inducingly true).
We make a terrible decision.
We can simply pack our gear and leave, but - being young and foolish - we decide "Hey, the money's good; let's just record the fucking thing and get the hell outta here."

So …

I set up the drums and Ian picks up my acoustic in the other room and we lay down a basic track.
R__ is ecstatic.
We take the minimum amount of time to overdub guitar, banjo, keyboards and a few little fills of twiddly lead guitar between the lines.
Then we grab more coffee while poor B__ is stood, shaking with nerves in the vocal booth.

She cannot sing.

B__ actually has quite a pleasant little voice sitting in the room with us, running through the lines and trying to force them to scan, but put her in the vocal booth and sheer terror takes over.

I say to R__ "Let us record an instrumental version while B__ gets used to singing to foldback", in case the show needs incidental music.
But the pervy twat is so desperate to finish up in the studio so he can have more time to pressure B__ into sex before he has to get her home to her parents that he vetos that and forces the money into our hands.
Ian and I pack our stuff and hit the road.
We cannot look.
That poor little girl. After the terror of the vocal booth she will have to face the unutterable horror of the predatory R__ on the drive home.

Naturally, Ian and I assume that the results of the night's "musical" debacle will be scrapped but we have been paid, so we are happy bunnies.

Yes, you know full well what happens …
R__ turns up a week later all full of smiles and congratulations.
Que?
The TV series is due on air in a few weeks time.
WHAT THE FUCK?
I mean, we didn't actually record anything remotely usable. There was no incidental music for a start.
Don't worry, says R__; all that has been sorted out, and he saunters off, smiling proudly.
Oh fuck.

So here we are, sitting in front of a TV with a bunch of people waiting to see just what R__ has managed to do. Has he come to his senses and hired another bunch of musos and let them record something worthwhile?
Has he fuck …

"Nationwide" with good old Sue Lawley fades into the credits and the BBC East logo comes up. The announcer introduces a new series and there's a piece of twiddly guitar that is definitely me.
And then.
Poor B__ must have died a million deaths that night … and every night afterward for the entire run.

Oh dear …
The engineer has done his best. He has artificially double tracked B__'s voice to beef it up and has cut short the wavering notes, filling the gaps with reverb to cover the faltering pitch …
Actually, our playing is fine and as long as you aren't fussy you may not notice the fact that this poor little girl has never used a proper mic before. I just pray that she hasn't made her nightmare complete by succumbing to R__'s odious advances.
And so, after an initial cringe, the show turns out to be quite watchable until …
… the scores come up between each round and all R__ has done is to put on the backing track to the theme tune with the vocals taken out.
No incidental music, just a boring backing track with little filigree lead guitar fills at the end of each glaringly empty line.
It would have taken me no more than ten minutes to put down some instrumental fills, but no; R__ just wanted us out of the studio so he could work on poor B__ …
I try to burrow my head through the solid floor in shame. This goes on for the whole series.

And to pile on the agony, the damned programme is brought back for another series …
And another …

Alas and alack, for verily the gods of shame and embarassment do crap in mine hat and do squish it down upon mine head.

Epilogue:
Shortly before the programme airs, B__ informs R__'s girlfriend of his behaviour and she leaves him, taking his sports car.
The girlfriend phones me and tells me that R__ has trousered at least ten times what we were paid as his budget for session musicians.
We tell him - somewhat forcefully - how we feel about this.
R__ leaves town.
I learn never to accept TV work except through my agent.
I learn to use aliases when recording for other people.
Thankfully, we notice that the credit for "Music" at the end of the show has R__'s name, not our own (phew).

True story.

Childhood Trauma And The Lemur

Old Knudsen's War on Lemur Terror seems likely to last as long as Dubya's War on Sanity. He's at it again this morning. I would seriously advise you not to click on the smiley face in his top picture though (except for Ame and Lynn, who may well enjoy it).

So I got to thinking what has caused the poor old bugger such lemur-related trauma.
A quick visit to my shrink and some regression therapy revealed the true cause; something so horrific that I had suppressed it for the past forty years.

Ladies and gentlemen; meet Johnny Morris (of TV's Animal Magic) and one of his pointy-toothed flying legions of attack lemurs.
Don't be fooled by the fact that he's currently laying dormant in an English cemetery; he only waits for the next passing of Halley's Comet, when he will rise up and his hordes of lemurs will cover the earth, slaughtering man, woman and child in a kind of cute and fluffy armageddon.

A couple of other slimy, lurking things were hidden in my subconscious and surfaced at the same regression session. They made me realise just why our generation of Brits has grown up in quite the peculiar way that we have.

The first is Crackerjack (CRACKERJACK!!) …
For those untutored in such horror, every time the dumpy black-and-white man uttered the dread word, every schoolchild in the country had to shout it out, otherwise he would come round at night and interfere with us.

"It's only this big, and if you're a good girl, I'll give you pencil afterwards."

This is the scary and exceedingly creepy face of childrens' presenter Peter Glaze, übermeister of Crackerjack (CRACKERJACK!!). The whole programme revolved around this dodgy-uncle type man and his sidekick forcing frightened children in school uniforms to carry out pointless and embarrassing tasks for his pleasure.
If a child was successful, they would be rewarded with a pencil (yes, a pencil); and if they failed, he would give them a cabbage (yes, a cabbage).
Why am I the way I am today? Because of this man and his ilk.

And then there was Jimmy Edwards …

What can one say about this man? Just look at those magnificent whiskers! Would you leave your small boy alone with him?
Thought not.
Somehow, the BBC was seduced into approving a TV series (a long-running and hugely successful TV series) about a dodgy old man caning young boys in school uniforms on the bottom.


I give you "Whacko!"
This was the programme that influenced the sexual development of the whole post-war "baby boomer" generation of Britain.
Please take this into account before judging anything that Old Knudsen or myself may write …
Talking lemurs, cabbages and caning …
Have mercy on us for we know not what we do.

Space, £19.99

Over at the inestimable Mister Knudsen's place, the talk yesterday was of NASA's proposal for a manned moonbase.
This of course sparked off memories of the hilariously wonderful 1970's TV romp "Space, 1999".
In a childishly overexcited frenzy of confused memories, I posted a comment about the sparkly wigged, mini-skirted girls, and how our government would try to stop the Moon People from coming down here and taking our jobs and our weemen.
When I later hit Google Image with "Space, 1999", I was disappointed to find not a single sparkly-wigged girl.
It was then that I remembered the awesome, low budget magnificence of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's "UFO" (Space, £19.99) …

"UFO" …
A "live action" spin off from the people who had made my sixties childhood so wonderful with Fireball XL-5 (gasp) …
Stingray (wowee) …
Thunderbirds (Yaaaaay) …
Captain Scarlet (Whoop) …
and Joe 90 ( … er … ) …

They abandoned the puppets, that fabulous "Superanimation" not seen again until Team America, World Police, but they did not abandon the puppet-like acting.
What they DID have, however, was Lt. Ellis …
Whaddya mean "Who"?
Look on the left. That girl in the purple sparkly wig.
By the time this came on TV, I was old enough to get wood.
Lt. Ellis gave millions of adolescent boys the opportunity to get sticky …



This was what adolescent girls got to fantasize about: their uncle in a string vest … Mmmmm.


And for the dads? … Hmm. Not quite the same nipple action (sorry, Robyn) as on the men's uniform. And saggy elbows, too …

And in charge of this farrago … Our gallant Commander Straker, played with admirable deadpan restraint by the lovely Ed Bishop.

Then there was gorgeous, sultry Aishea Brough, the only one to make it out of the series with her career intact.

Ahh … swoon … The unutterably beautiful if slightly tetchy-looking Lt. Ellis.
If only all the girls at school had looked like that. Purple wig, silver uniform, unfeasibly long eyelashes, moody pout (oh yeah, they did have that) … sigh …


So come on, NASA, get a base on the moon so we can have proper space weemen down here. Real, feminist-baiting weemen, who wear silver leotards with detachable sleeves and platform boots with perspex heels (apparently practical in zero gravity). And men can wear string vests and be considered attractive. And bring back Lt. Ellis.
What are you waiting for?