Taking care of business

So, it’s the third week of the university term and things are ticking along nicely. I’m really grateful for the opportunity to teach in Warwick’s Film and Television Department so soon after submitting my PhD. In past years, I’ve taught modules on French and British national cinemas, and on Adaptation. This time round, I’m introducing first years to Film Theory. So far, we’ve tackled Bazin, Epstein and Mary Ann Doane. Next week: Eisenstein!

As well as this teaching, I’ve continued working as a web editor for the Wolfson Research Exchange, which has been taking up a lot of time. Our Research Match scheme has been a fantastic success (which has translated into lots of uploading of profiles by yours truly), and later in the year, I’ll be acting as an online tutor for the Library’s 23 Things for the Digital Professional course.

The best news I’ve had this week has been the offer from Warwick’s German Department to teach a film segment for their Culture and Politics in the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich module. I’m really thrilled to be renewing my acquaintance with this academic department, who were so welcoming and attentive when I was an undergraduate. The films I’m lecturing on are good’uns too – Metropolis, The Blue Angel and M!

While my PhD thesis on Hollywood marriage is out of my hands and in those of the examiners, the Thin Man films continue to be a part of my life. I’m very proud to have had an article on that loveable pooch Asta published in Mystery Reader’s Journal 27: 3. You can subscribe or buy the pdf here.

I also recently addressed the Institute of Advanced Study’s Drinking Studies Network on the subject of social drinking in the Thin Man cycle. Deborah Toner’s account of the symposium is here, in which she describes the content of my paper and the Q&A that followed.

My association with online publisher Silkworms Ink continues, and we on the editorial team are very excited about our new-look website. There will be all sorts of great content posted in the coming months. Sam Kinchin-Smith’s edited collection on Nick Cave will be published soon, in which I have an essay on Cave and hard-boiled literature. I’m really thrilled to be sharing space on the contents page with my dear friend Tom Steward on this one, too.

Last but not least, Roisin and I are counting down the days until the BFI’s 30th anniversary celebration of Cagney & Lacey. We’ve been rewatching episodes recently in preparation for a larger study of female detectives and I’ve been really struck by the achievement and importance of this programme. It’s a crime that there is no complete DVD release yet, but perhaps the interest generated by this event will give MGM a kick up the arse. Regardless, it’ll be an enormous thrill to be in the same room as Sharon Gless, Tyne Daly and executive producer Barney Rosenzweig. In the past few weeks, we’ve been in contact with Barney’s webteam and we hope to interview him sometime after the event. I’ll also be writing an event report for Screen.

Right, I think that’s everything! Expect updates sooner rather than later…

Tyneside telefantasy

Here’s a rather belated write-up of my visit to Newcastle for the Alien Nation conference. As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I’d been feeling quite nervous about presenting my thoughts on Doctor Who to an audience of experts. By Tuesday, as I got on my train, I was a bit more confident.

I was on a panel with Tom Steward, Claire Jenkins and Julian Chambliss, who had travelled over from Orlando, Florida (naturally, it rained all of the time he was here). My co-panellists were all great and I was reasonably happy with how my presentation went. Unfortunately, we’d been asked at short notice to reduce our papers to 15 minutes, and I had to skip over a lot of my carefully constructed prose! Luckily, two academics I respect greatly, David Butler and Andrew O’Day, spoke to me enthusiastically afterwards and asked me to send my paper to them. That was particularly encouraging and it was great to talk to them.

It was excellent too to meet a number of people who I’ve enjoyed chatting to on Twitter. John Williams, Ian Greaves, Frank Collins and Dave Rolinson were nice enough to invite me along to dinner with them on Wednesday night and I had fantastic time of talking over much-loved television programmes and toasting Frank Marker!

The next day, I decided to do some sight-seeing before I got on my train home. Newcastle is a very beautiful place, reminiscent of Edinburgh in some ways but without the sinister aspect of that city. As I walked around in the sunshine,I decided this was somewhere I needed to come back to for a holiday. Everyone I met was friendly and I especially fell in love with the quayside area. I even got time to stop at the Literary and Philosophical Library and I spent a happy hour in there reading Darwyn Cooke’s The Hunter. The Lit & Phil is a fantastic archive, with a specialist music library. I hope to do some resarch there in the not too distant future!

The politics of Pertwee

This week, I’m presenting a paper at the Alien Nation conference at Northumbria University. I’ve been alternately excited and nervous about this, but now that I’ve got my paper written and my Powerpoint presentation sorted out, I’m really looking forward to it! (you can read about my paper here)

The programme of speakers is great, and I’m looking forward to meeting some academics face-to-face who I’ve previously only chatted to on Twitter! If you’re interested in science-fiction and telefantasy, Cathode Ray Tube is live blogging the event.

My friend Paul very kindly did some screen captures for me yesterday, and I’m so pleased with them I thought I would reproduce a few here. Think of it as a trailer for my paper!

Inferno

The Curse of Peladon

The Green Death

Peter Davison in New Tricks

Every so often, Roisin and I will start making a list of people who should guest star in New Tricks. We’re cool like that. Patrick Stewart’s usually top of the list, followed by Rodney Bewes (I know, it’ll never happen) and Dennis Franz (I wish that would happen). Peter Davison usually gets mentioned at some point so we’re both very pleased to see that he’s guesting in tonight’s episode!

Apparently, Paul McGann’s in one of the later episodes in this season as well. I wonder if there’ll be any more Doctor Who connections?

Scott and Bailey review (part two)

Roisin Muldoon blogs at But it can’t be from Dolly Clackett!

Rachel Bailey (Suranne Jones), Gill Murray (Amelia Bullmore) and Janet Scott (Lesley Sharp)

More than its cases, Scott and Bailey is interested in its eponymous characters, their relationship with one another and their relationships with the people around them. As has become usual in police dramas, the idea that it’s difficult for ambitious and successful police to maintain successful relationships with people outside of the job is explored.

DI Janet Scott is a talented and meticulous detective, and she has a family at home who are important to her. Her marriage to the dependable but dull Adrian is failing, however. While this deterioration isn’t given a lot of space over the six episodes, the shorthand tells us what we need to know. Adrian is boring and unambitious, they no longer have anything to say to one another. Janet is being pursued by her colleague DI Andy Roper (played by Sharp’s real-life husband, Nicholas Gleaves) and, while this isn’t presented as ideal in any respects, it’s clear to see that they have more in common, have more sexual chemistry and a better rapport. This isn’t a sizzling office romance, however. Lesley Sharp plays Scott as fairly straight laced, and Andy comes across more as a lonely obsessive than an ardent lover and so I’d be really interested to see how this relationship might be developed in a second series.

Andy Roper (Nicholas Gleaves) and Janet Scott (Lesley Sharp)

Scott’s younger partner, DC Rachel Bailey, fares no better. The opening episode sees her being unceremoniously dumped by her long term boyfriend, Nick Savage. Rupert Graves plays this slimy, manipulative barrister really well so although the reveal that he has a wife and children stashed away in the country is shocking, it’s not unrealistic. Some of the criticisms around the show have suggested that it’s unlikely that a highly intelligent detective like Rachel could fail to see that her boyfriend of two years was leading a double life, but actually I think this is a really interesting piece of character development. Rachel is an intuitive detective and is able to see connections that others miss, such as her capture of the murderer of Susan Metcalfe in the second episode, and the connection she spots between the murder victims linked to Janet’s childhood friend Veronica. I think her inability or unwillingness to see Nick’s duplicity is an interesting way of exploring the popular narrative that a detective has difficulty maintaining personal relationships. When Rachel allows Nick back into her life after Janet’s stabbing towards the end of the series it’s unsurprising. Her confidence in herself is limited to her professional life.

Rachel Bailey (Suranne Jones) and Nick Savage (Rupert Graves)

When the series was being broadcast I griped a bit that it would be more interesting dramatically if Rachel behaved with more professionalism. She behaves illegally and immorally when she uses the Police National Computer to obtain Nick’s home address, and this breach of regulations compromises her professionally and personally. So does the information she passes to Nick Savage about Georgios Stelikos, which allows Stelikos to beat a rape charge, leading to his eventual (somewhat implausible) murder. With that said, I think I judged the show a bit too harshly on this matter because Rachel’s lapses in professionalism make the central relationship between her, Janet Scott and their DCI Gill Murray (Amelia Bullmore) richer and more interesting.

I can’t think of another detective drama that has a role like the one played by Amelia Bullmore in Scott and Bailey. The closest I can come to is DCI Innocent (Rebecca Front) in Lewis, but her character is usually more a disappointed mum than anything else. There is a real sense that this is a difficult character to write, and I think it took a few episodes for Gill Murray to become really interesting. Murray and Scott have been friends and colleagues for a long time, and there’s an element of trust and humour in their relationship. Gill gives Janet some space to work on the Veronica case, and when Scott comes back to work it’s Murray that tells her that she isn’t obliged to interview her attacker. Her relationship with Rachel Bailey is less well defined – she’s impressed by the younger detective’s talent and wants to give her opportunities but there isn’t the same rapport there. Rachel takes this personally, calling her ‘Godzilla’ behind her back, but Gill is neither disinterested nor uncaring, she’s just got a job to do.

Gill Murray (Amelia Bullmore)

The mentor that Rachel needs – and gets – is her partner Janet. Janet allows Rachel the space to make her own mistakes, such as PNC-ing Nick’s car to obtain his address, but she is direct and honest about the implications of these actions. When Rachel gets engaged to Nick, Janet tells her in no uncertain terms that she’s being played, pointing out that if they were married, Rachel could not be compelled to give evidence against Nick should the fact that he had a sexual relationship with a juror come to light. Janet is direct with Rachel in a way that many of us wish we could be direct with our friends when they’re pissing us off, but she does want to look after her colleague. She takes her in when Nick makes her homeless, and in the final episode she risks her own job in an attempt to persuade Gill not to report Rachel to the police standards board for using the PNC illegally.

The relationship between Janet and Rachel is consistently interesting, I think. It has neither the touchy-feely warmth nor the bitchy rivalry we’re used to seeing when female friendships are depicted onscreen. Their out of hours friendship is clear from the way that Rachel seeks advice on personal matters from Janet, but there’s a formality there that works in a really interesting way. Their friendship has been forged while working closely together in an emotionally demanding job where they’re responsible for one another’s safety on a daily basis, rather than from a common background or a shared outlook on life. While I struggled a bit with this to begin with, I’ve come to think that it’s actually quite a refreshing way to look at a relationship like this, and I’d be interested to see where this is taken if Scott and Bailey gets a second series.

I think Scott and Bailey is made more of win than of fail. There are some issues there, but considering that the first series was a short one I think it’s established a lot of really interesting ideas. I’m always pleased to see a primetime drama depicting professional women working in a professional way, and that’s something that is rarer than you might think. I’d like to see Scott and Bailey go on to a second series, I think it has the potential to become something really interesting. In the six episodes of series one, the wider Major Incidents Team was introduced but not really given the space to become an interesting character in its own right. The last episode ends on a note that suggests to me this could become a really good ensemble drama, as we see Janet, Rachel, Gill and Andy gathering in the pub after a traumatic day. I’d like to see where they go with that. It’s rare that a British drama grabs me (weaned as I have been on quality US imports), far less an ITV one, but I was genuinely interested by Scott and Bailey. I’d like to see some more of its form.

Scott and Bailey review (part one)

Roisin Muldoon blogs at But it can’t be from Dolly Clackett!

As you may have gathered from my previous guest blogs on New Tricks, I’m a bit of a sucker for police procedural drama. If there are women involved, even better.

Rachel Bailey (Suranne Jones) and Janet Scott (Lesley Sharp)

I’ve long been a fan of the wonderful Cagney and Lacey, and so I was excited and interested to see what ITV’s new drama Scott and Bailey would have to offer. It was being trailed as a British answer to Cagney and Lacey and I can sort of see why. The series ran for six episodes and while it was by no means impeccable I think it has many good points. Chief among them, in my opinion, is the fact that this is a primetime drama which was conceived by women and written by a woman, with the technical input of former DI Diane Taylor, who worked as part of Manchester Metropolitan Police’s Major Incident Team. It means that the show largely avoids the pitfalls and stereotypes that you usually get in cop shows about female detectives. But I’ll get to that later.

Suranne Jones conceived the idea alongside her friend and former Coronation Street co-star Sally Lindsay when they were chatting in the pub. Apparently they’re both fans of Cagney and Lacey, and although the finished show differs somewhat from their original treatment it’s easy to see the germ of that idea. Sally Wainwright was brought on board to write, and I think that a lot of the Northern humour comes from her – she’s previously written for both Coronation Street and Emmerdale, and most famously she wrote At Home With The Braithwaites.

One of Scott and Bailey’s charms is that while it’s not exactly funny, it’s very good at capturing the kinds of humour that people employ when they’re at work. This is a difficult concept for me to articulate, but a good example of it comes in the fourth episode, where porn star Vicky Birkinshaw is accused of murdering her husband. The man’s disappearance is brought to the MIT’s attention when his mistress becomes concerned as to his whereabouts and suggests his wife has a hand in it, as “she makes Myra Hindley look like a Blue Peter presenter.” I’m sure this line wasn’t intended to be one that could make you laugh out loud, but it did amuse me because it effortlessly combined the two worst things you could be if you’re in an ITV drama. For the rest of the episode the detectives refer to Vicky as Myra, which is a nice example of attention to detail in the dialogue.

Gestures towards naturalism

Given that, there are some frustrating things about the way the show’s dialogue has been written. I think Scott and Bailey tries hard to have naturalistic dialogue and rhythms of speech and it isn’t always successful. It stands out from other detective shows in the ways in which it approaches interviews and interrogations. The language used in these scenes is meticulous – this is especially apparent when Janet Scott (Lesley Sharp) is leading the interview. She speaks slowly and very clearly, methodically working up to each point. It takes a bit of getting used to, and I admire the desire for these scenes to be realistic and authentic, but it doesn’t always work, and leaves the show feeling a bit uneven.

Part of the reason for this inconsistency is the nature of the cases themselves. It feels a bit like Scott and Bailey has only a limited interest in the cases its detectives are policing. In addition, the realism of the dialogue doesn’t quite match up to the depiction of the crimes themselves. In six episodes, two of the crimes revolve around gruesome sexual attacks and mutilations. Another is the murder and dismemberment of Vicky Birkinshaw’s husband in a snuff movie, a case which is rendered even more distressing and unsavoury by the revelation that Birkinshaw sold her teenaged daughter to an older man as a sex slave. These are lurid cases and while I can’t deny that these sorts of things do happen, I find the emphasis on these types of stories sits uneasily with the more realistic, procedural aspects of the show. To my mind, this is a shame because the ways in which we see these crimes being worked on is really interesting, and the cases let the detection down a bit.

Read part two here!

 

 

New Tricks series 8

There was much jubilation in the Squeezegut Alley household when we realised that New Tricks was beginning another run this week. Oft-derided, subject to the laziest criticism, this programme has become the best and most reliable detective programme on British TV at the moment. We’ll be sure to blog about the series at greater length later on, but until then, here’s a link to Roisin’s review of Series 7.

Doctor Who Series 6 (part one)

Last year, Squeezegut Alley was proud to feature Tom Steward’s reviews of Doctor Who. Since then, Tom has set up his own excellent television blog, Watching TV with Americans. I’m so pleased that he’s decided to share his thoughts on Series 6 – but be warned, he doesn’t mince his words…

Last year, producer Steven Moffat, actor Matt Smith and supporting cast, and a team of writers rescued Doctor Who from the oblivion of self-aggrandizing emo-babble it had sunk into under the influence of Russell T Davies and David Tennant, the latter episodes of their tenures having merely been offerings at the altar of its criminally overrated star. Though there were obvious shortcomings in the 2010 series, notably Moffat’s own haphazard and at times nonsensical storytelling, the overwhelming power of Smith’s innovative, committed and faithful performance, some engrossing one-off stories (not least Toby Whithouse’s pitch-perfect Vampires of Venice) and the restoration of a compelling three-way dynamic in the TARDIS did enough to suggest that the show could reverse the polarity of its demise.

 

A year later and it seems the show is in crisis again, with Moffat now an enormous liability to its future credibility. An out-of-control story arc threatens to overshadow the alchemy of the finest cast of regulars the programme has had in decades. Moreover, the decision taken by the BBC (publicised as Moffat’s choice but possibly catalysed by budget cuts) to broadcast the 2011 series in two parts starting respectively in April and November, has ended up an albatross around Moffat’s neck.

 

This re-structuring of the season narrative was welcomed in many quarters, especially by those hungry to see Doctor Who episodes dispersed across the year as it was in its heyday in the 1960s and 70s. It tantalised viewers about the possibility of a mouth-watering cliffhanger between the first and second halves to rival Second Doctor Patrick Troughton tumbling through the time vortex with his future hanging in the balance at the end of The War Games.

 

But Moffat’s failure to deliver this cliffhanger and offer only a fairly underwhelming resolution to an increasingly tedious narrative mystery (the identity of overused shady sidekick River Song) has left even the most diehard fans of Moffat’s delay tactics cold. The majority of this initial seven episode run have been write-offs, none more so than Steve Thompson’s unmitigated dud The Curse of the Black Spot. It could just be that viewers are feeling frustration and boredom rather than the intended anticipation, with the four-month mid-season break looking more and more like the perfect excuse to abandon the show permanently.

 

It must be a real kick in the teeth for Smith and co-stars Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill, who have nailed the relationship between their characters so acutely, to be fobbed off with a litany of laughably portentous speeches and self-consciously wacky vignettes. I feel particularly sorry for Darvill who, having brought back a homosocial dimension to the interaction between the Doctor and his companions not seen this successfully seen the Second Doctor’s gentle sparring with highlander Jamie McCrimmon, is made to die onscreen every week, in a bizarre script editing oversight. Smith’s extraordinarily accomplished, restrained and mature realisation of the TV Timelord is continually sabotaged by writers’ insistence on making the Doctor either zany or shouty and forcing uncomfortable vaudeville and melodrama out of one of the most subtle and multi-faceted performances on television in recent years.

 

However, this indomitable cast regularly shined through the treacherously weak material. Smith continued his notable evolution into the most mysterious and manipulative Doctor since the horribly underrated Sylvester McCoy, adding refinement to his physical comedy (in a manner becoming of Troughton himself) and remarkable sagacity to his portrayal of a 900 year-old man (even more so when playing his 200 year-old senior). Gillan now seems utterly assured in the role of Amy Pond and adds real grit to the show’s various peril and pursuit sequences, salvaging some episodes with her breathless authenticity as a woman in unthinkable danger. Darvill’s lovable cowardly custard Rory, the Scoobyless ‘Shaggy’ in the Doctor’s Mystery Machine, has developed effortlessly into the moral and emotional centre of the programme, still a vulnerable man but one who tirelessly fights injustice with compassion.

 

But clearly the lessons of the last series have not been heeded. The one-off stories, unfairly regarded as ‘fillers’, were the undoubted strengths of the 2010 batch of episodes, challenging both writers and actors, whereas the ongoing storyline (or ‘arc’) episodes were far more inconsistent. Now the arc episodes fill in the gaps between the only proper stories left in the programme.

Alien Nation conference

Following on from yesterday’s post, here are some more details of the Alien Nation conference I’m speaking at in July. I’m really excited about it – the panels are interesting and varied, there’s a lot of academics attending that I’m excited to meet, and there’s a screening of Ghostwatch in the evening! I’ve heard that Newcastle is a lovely place too, so I’m looking forward to exploring it in my free time. I’ve reproduced my abstract below the poster, to give you an idea of what I’ll be discussing…

‘Having a conversation with Tse-Tung’: the politics of Pertwee

The Barry Letts-produced era of Doctor Who (1970-74) is commonly regarded as the most politically committed of the show’s history, using the Doctor’s exile on Earth to address contemporary social and environmental concerns. James Chapman has suggested that, in this period, ‘Doctor Who was at its most critical of British society’.

By looking at moments from Inferno, The Curse of Peladon and The Green Death, I ask how each serial articulates political thought, and with what success. I am particularly interested in the shifts that occur in the representation of regular characters (the Doctor, his companions, the UNIT family, the Master), and their relation to the recurring archetypes of this era (regional bumpkins, military personnel and civil servants). How do humour, allegory and stereotype contribute to the show’s political vocabulary? And, given the multi-story format of Doctor Who, how coherent a political statement can we expect from any given era of its history?

My paper proposes that the detail of textual moments in Doctor Who can illuminate, and complicate, political readings of the programme as a whole.

Sherlock Series 2 titles

Den of Geek is reporting that the new series titles for Sherlock are A Scandal in Belgravia (written by Steven Moffat), The Hounds of Baskerville (Mark Gatiss) and The Reichenbach Fall (oh dear, Stephen Thompson). We can expect to see them sometime in the autumn.

As you might recall, after a flurry of enthusiasm, I was left rather jaded by Sherlock. Teaching it this year to undergrads did nothing to endear the show further to me, but new episodes might. I am intrigued to know where the show goes next – how about you?