Another One Bites the Dust

So, last time I blogged I was saying how I'd fallen in love with Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Well, I finished the last episode earlier this week.

Of course I cried.

The final five episodes tell one big story. I'm wondering at what point in production they knew it wouldn't get re-commissioned as it all dovetails towards a perfect ending. I kept trying to second-guess the endings to various storylines and didn't get any of them right, really.

I just hope this doesn't mean Aaron Sorkin will have any trouble getting a new show off the ground. In the meantime, that's me working my way through his back catalogue. This is, after all, the man whose adaptation of his own play made me watch - and enjoy - a film with Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson in leading roles. That's either good writing or witchcraft, and until I've worked out which, I'm on his side.

So, which TV show to binge on next? Well... in the short term, I'll be speed-watching 'Cracker' and 'Prime Suspect' as research for another 'talking head' thing I'm being interviewed for next week. Wonderfully grim Granadavision and two of the best police procedural shows ever. I prefer Prime Suspect, but only just. The show loses points for the two dire series that followed immediately after Lynda La Plante bailed, but makes up for them by concluding with two that were just as good as the first three.

For Fox' Sake!

I'm so behind with writing. It's been a busy few weeks and I'm not going to explain why on a public blog, except to say things are good. And considering I started to write this as a kind of therapy, that's a strong positive.

Went on a course with work that also helped put my head in a better place than real therapy managed to - all about negotiating skills. It's supposed to help get the best results possible in business, but really it was about trying to spot yourself being a cynical prick all the time - and it really helped me with a lot of my cynicism.

Not all of it, mind. I still don't trust the Daily Mail to tell the truth, especially after it tried (and failed) to stoke up more anti-BBC feeling by presenting the events of a radio show as a national scandal. 'Another day in the gutter for the BBC', the headline cries, as the paper describes how the shy, rarely-seen John Barrowman exposed himself to a pair of excitable DJs on live... er, radio.

Although the programme was on Radio 1, pictures were also relayed to online listeners via a webcam, the paper alleges.

Except, the pictures weren't relayed to a the webcam - the webcam was already covered up by the responsible producer.

But 'BBC Producer behaves responsibly in wake of Ross / Brand' affair' isn't the right kind of headline for a reactionary, knee-jerk, scapegoating rag like the Mail.


Still, Barrowman apologised anyway and no-one really cares. Meanwhile, the Mail's fake horror at someone using the euphemism 'fruit and nuts' was accompanied by zoom-ins of women's cleavage, stories condemning women for being too slutty, not slutty enough, too hairy or for just having womanly hips. Swear to God the day it first broke, the Barrowman story was alongside a zoom-in on Mel B's crotch. I split my rice krispies all over the place in horror!

But then, I only saw that link because someone sent it to me. It's not like I'd look at the Hate Mail for any other reason, because its job in society is to make us feel scared and insecure. All the better circumstances for advertisers and big business to keep us in our place and ensure we're vulnerably enough to believe their lies and buy their products, which we don't need.

If you wish to complain about the inaccuracies in the Mail's 'news' story, you can do so by filling out their feedback form or e-mailing direct to: feedback@dailymail.co.uk

Along similar lines, a recent front-page news item on Yahoo presented the horrific story of a woman who was attacked by a fox. But in these days where technologists believe they have no need for editorial people, because they can 'automate' news feeds and advertising based on keywords, this is the way their sensitive news story was presented:



Perhaps significantly, there's no immediately visible area on the Yahoo site for complaints.

Staying in - the New Going Out

The other week, I received an invitation to join Bebo from a friend who I lost touch with more years ago than I want to remember. So I signed up to Bebo - and discovered I was already a member. How could I forget this?

Quite easily, it seems, because I signed up for pretty much everything a few years back, when I still worked in what they now call 'social media'.

There was a time when I stopped going out much, I was writing books and realising the advance was never big enough for me to enjoy the process, but I think I enjoyed the martyrdom associated with being tied to my computer. I justified it by saying that I was still socialising - just online. Only a couple of real friends came out of this, but I had fun with lots of casual acquaintances, chatting away, flirting, occasionally getting drunk and making inappropriate comments that I'd later try to talk my way around (lesson to self: when drunk, there's no such thing as 'subtle').

Tonight, I'm supposed to be meeting up with an internet friend to celebrate his birthday; I'm not going. I realised that what I really need is a weekend indoors. If my presence is missed, that says more about the other invitees to be fair, who know this guy in the real world. And that's no disrespect intended, but it's just a fact that we don't actually know each other. Not really. And I'm fine with that.

This has absolutely nothing to do with finally watching Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and becoming a fan after the first 45 minute episode. I adore this show. It's got that fast-paced, snappy dialogue and conversations in corridors that kept The West Wing so dynamic and compelling, but it swaps the politics for something I understand - television. It's so disappointing that it only ran for one series, but at least I'll know it's a finite thing, as opposed to most American TV shows, which tend to drag on, jump the shark, then pull it back for a final year.

I've also got hooked on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which I hear has just been given a reprieve with a full-length second season. Praise the Lord!

Sounds Like Brian

In the olden days, when TV was powered by steam and people crowded round a walnut cabinet to listen to obscure radio dramas about nightmares, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop used to create these amazing soundscapes. Electronic humming, musical stabs and other trickery that hammered home how other-worldly the production was trying to be. One of the kings of this kind of music was Brian Hodgson. You can hear the sort of thing he did for Doctor Who in this clip on YouTube from 'The Wheel in Space':



Now, according to BBC News, scientists have found a way of capturing the sounds of the universe - 'music' generated by the stars. And wouldn't you just know it, Brian Hodgson was right.

Dad's Army and Me

I've been working on a little collection of archive treats to mark the 40th anniversary of Dad's Army, and it seems to have been leapt upon by the press.

The Telegraph did a nice piece about the background to the series last week, and I was interviewed on BBC Radio Kent and BBC Southern Counties on Wednesday. The Today programme did a two-minute piece too, and there was a news item on BBC News online too. All in all, the press rather eclipsed the main events on BBC1 and BBC2 this weekend, unfortunately. But I'm just glad to see the show being championed once a again.

Vanity Searches

I'm struggling to get going today. It seems the more work I have, the harder it is to start it.

So, instead, I googled myself. What a tw*t.

First up is an interview I did for the Off the Telly website.

A (frankly bloody glowing) review of my Scorsese book from the Scorsesefilms website, and another from Kamera.co.uk.

Nice to see myself in The Times, back from when I worked on h2g2, plugging our then-new mobile service.

... and speaking of which, here's an interview I did to coincide with the launch of the Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie. You need RealPlayer to hear it though. The interview was part of OnPoint, a news magazine broadcast by WBUR-Boston and National Public Radio USA. I didn't actually know it'd go out nationally until after I finished the interview. Gulp!

I was once the official BBC expert on Spooks, answering viewers' questions during series 2. Despite my extensive knowledge of the show at that time, most of the questions were about how to get a job in the Security Service - to which I was tempted to say 'Learn how to spell.'

A real blast from the past, this one - a site that lists some of the games I was credited on when I worked for PlayStation.

Nev Fountain's blog provides a handy reference to the Aardman-style model I made for a Dead Ringers sketch.

And blimey! There's a review of the DVD of Pyramids of Marson this site (unfortunately can't direct-link to it) that even has a pic of me (which I've stolen for the top of this blog).

Yesterday, a young colleague told me she'd used one of my books for an essay she wrote at university.

Random, eh?

Annoyingly, something has changed in Blogger that doesn't let me paste text into a blog. Instead, it appears at the bottom of the page. This has taken a bleedin' age to do.

Lunch, anyone?

Wimbledon Crescent

I walked into the living room on Monday night to find my flatmate watching the men's game - some French man was beating the guy from Napoleon Dynamite, when suddenly Dynamite started winning.

I know tennis is the one sport my flatmate tends to enjoy, and as it had gone into extra time, and the on-screen announcement hinted that this was a big thing, I sat down and watched.

So, firstly, the counting goes 15, then 30, then 40, then if they've both got to 40 there's deuce, then an advantage and then they have to get a second advantage - in which case they win the game - or it goes back down to 40.

Then there are certain parts of the grass that the ball can go into, and some parts it can't. It's allowed to hit the net, but only if it bounces back off and heads into a particular bit of the court...
After discovering that 'Henman Hill' is now called 'Murray Mound', I turned to my flatmate and asked if this was like the sports equivalent of 'Mornington Crescent'. Or Calvinball.

And after all of that, he told me it wasn't the men's finals as I'd thought, but a qualifier for the quarter finals.

What a load of crap.