I've just watched a BBC comedy drama pilot called The Accidental Farmer.
Cut To:
INT. BBC SCHEDULING DEPARTMENT - NIGHT
August 2010
It's late, it's hot. People want to go home but they can't. The fine young men and women whose job it is to schedule BBC 1 programmes have just one show left to find a home for.
Handsome Guy
What's it called?
Stunningly Attractive Woman
The accident with the farmer.
Cherubic Faced Guy
No, no. The Accidental Farmer.
HG
Another down on the farm with the pigs doc.
CFG
Comedy drama.
SAW
I hate comedy drama. It's so confusing. Is it comedy, is it drama?
CFG
(reading) Ashley Jensen plays a ball-breaking advertising executive who chucks it all in and buys a farm - with her cheating boyfriend's credit card. Hilarity ensues.
HG
Is this the same lovely Ashley Jensen who was warm and vulnerable and soft and cuddly in Extras?
SAW
What kind of hilarity?
HG
I don't see her as a ball-breaker. Who commissioned this?
CFG
It's kinda Cold Comfort Farm for the wi-fi generation.
SAW
It is more comedy than drama or more drama than comedy?
CFG
It's mostly cliches. Ad exec arrives in countryside wearing six inch heels, all the locals are yokels, she chases cows, falls backwards into mud but comes up smiling in the end. Oh and there's a running gag with a gate she can't open - until then end.
SAW
Sounds awful
CFG
Oh, it's much worse than that.
HG
She was good in Ugly Betty. Love Ugly Betty. I like Ashley Jensen.
CFG
The subplot concerns the local Doctor who wants to convert the old farm into a Hotel and Health Spa with the help of Nurse Gladys Emmanuel. He'll try anything to get Ashley Jensen out.
SAW
You've lost me. Did you actually watch this?
CFG
All the way through. Why do you think I was throwing up this morning.
SAW
Can we shelve it?
HG
I like Ashley Jensen. People like Ashley Jensen.
CFG
It's got a little pig in it. Follows her around like a cut hairless puppy.
SAW
Why didn't you say. Put it out three days before Christmas.
Wednesday 22 December 2010
Wednesday 15 December 2010
The Trip
They announced the nominees for the Golden Globes yesterday. I didn't spot a category for Best Tragicomedy of the year but here's my nomination -The Trip.The premise is wafer thin. Steve Coogan has been hired to write a series of restaurant reviews for The Observer. His American girlfriend, having booked the venues, has returned home. He needs someone at his side. He invites Rob Brydon. They talk - a lot, they eat - a lot, they sing songs in the car and they argue. No A, B and C plots, no big twist before the end, no fnar fnar just six joyus half hours.
It is a continuation of the characters we met in the Coogan/Brydon/Michael Winterbottom production: "Tristram Shandy, A Cock and Bull Story" and follows in the line of 'real' comedies like The Larry Sanders Show and Curb Your Enthusiasm. It is improvised, it is argumentative and it paints a fictional version of real people's lives.
The version of himself Coogan offers here is a lonely comic actor, desperate for American success but saddled with the albatross of Alan Patridge around his neck. Brydon is the Welsh king of impressions, happily married and more at ease with himself than his traveling companion. That they managed to spin six wonderful episodes from two men swapping angst and impressions over elaborate dinners is a tribute to their creativity and the direction of Michael Winterbottom.
Brydon: "You just need one film and that will propel you"
Coogan: "I've done 10",
Brydon: "You need the right film"
How close to the real people are the characters of Coogan and Brydon that we see here? Here Coogan is a middle aged man who worries about his saggy face, plays the field and is something of a control freak. He is cold, competitive, always wanting to match and better Brydon's impersonations and driven mad that Brydon can do a small 'man in a box' voice that he can't. His own version comes out sounding like Donald Duck.
And all the time the series drips with sadness. Coogan is remote from his son from his failed marriage. Remote because of the geographical distance between them but also because he can't connect. He wants to be a good father but he also wants to be in his American girlfriend's bed. He can't have both. He knows it.
The final scenes return the travelers to their respective homes. Brydon to the warm bosom of a loving family, Coogan to a cold glass and steel apartment that looks out over a not particularly inspiring view of the city. Brydon to his loving wife, Coogan to an empty flat with no-one to talk to apart from the ansaphone of his American agent.
Is there more to come? I sincerely hope so.
It is a continuation of the characters we met in the Coogan/Brydon/Michael Winterbottom production: "Tristram Shandy, A Cock and Bull Story" and follows in the line of 'real' comedies like The Larry Sanders Show and Curb Your Enthusiasm. It is improvised, it is argumentative and it paints a fictional version of real people's lives.
The version of himself Coogan offers here is a lonely comic actor, desperate for American success but saddled with the albatross of Alan Patridge around his neck. Brydon is the Welsh king of impressions, happily married and more at ease with himself than his traveling companion. That they managed to spin six wonderful episodes from two men swapping angst and impressions over elaborate dinners is a tribute to their creativity and the direction of Michael Winterbottom.
Brydon: "You just need one film and that will propel you"
Coogan: "I've done 10",
Brydon: "You need the right film"
How close to the real people are the characters of Coogan and Brydon that we see here? Here Coogan is a middle aged man who worries about his saggy face, plays the field and is something of a control freak. He is cold, competitive, always wanting to match and better Brydon's impersonations and driven mad that Brydon can do a small 'man in a box' voice that he can't. His own version comes out sounding like Donald Duck.
And all the time the series drips with sadness. Coogan is remote from his son from his failed marriage. Remote because of the geographical distance between them but also because he can't connect. He wants to be a good father but he also wants to be in his American girlfriend's bed. He can't have both. He knows it.
The final scenes return the travelers to their respective homes. Brydon to the warm bosom of a loving family, Coogan to a cold glass and steel apartment that looks out over a not particularly inspiring view of the city. Brydon to his loving wife, Coogan to an empty flat with no-one to talk to apart from the ansaphone of his American agent.
Is there more to come? I sincerely hope so.
Saturday 11 December 2010
John Lennon
This week we marked the anniversary of Lennon's shooting on a sidewalk in New York.
It's been my good and bad fortune to have met, interviewed, worked with and come up against a host of famous folk over the years. But I have never got close to a Beatle. The closest was being in a room in Los Angeles with a woman who was so obsessed with the Fab Four that she had spent her life amassing a huge collection of memorabilia. Every artifact she could lay her hands on/afford was laid out before us - we were making some films about obsessives - albums, concert bills, tickets, talcum powder that came in John, Paul, George and Ringo figurines with 'pop off' mop-top heads. There were scarves and key rings, everything imaginable and much more than I can remember now - including a small sealed plastic bag, the kind of thing you see on CSI. Nestling at the bottom was a cigarette butt. Something sucked by a Beatle.
She told me the story of how she's gotten into a Beatles press conference in the early 60's. As The Lads exited and the press sloped off she dived for the table and claimed her prize; a cigarette that had been smoked by Lennon and stubbed out in the ashtray. It was her most prized possession. The DNA of JWL.
This woman was no nut, she was an Associate Producer for one of the TV Networks and yet when it came to the four lads from Liverpool the purple mist descended and all logic went out the window. She had spent thousands of dollars amassing her trophies.
Though the closest I ever got to John Lennon was that cigarette butt my writing partner for much of the 80's and 90's got to meet the man and speak to him. He was a trainee film editor at the time and Lennon was visiting an Art College. As a guitar playing songwriter he made sure he was in the room. After John had made a pithy speech the assembled students were given the chance to ask questions. My partner was busy composing something brilliant to ask the great man as Lennon's gaze fell on him.
Eye contact. This was the moment. The chance to ask one of a million pertinent things that would unlock the secret of the Lennon and McCartney writing partnership.
The crowd turned to him, John's lips parted in apprehension of the brilliant words about to be spoken. The room crackled with the electricity of anticipation and tension.
And in that second my partner's brain turned to mush and out came the only words he could muster:
"I like your group".
I like your group. Not even "great band, man".
"I - like - your - group".
There was no-one there that day from Rolling Stone or The NME to take down that phrase, no-one from BBC radio to record the event. No-one to preserve the moment in aspic. But he knows and I know and now you know that Louis Robinson met - and spoke - to John Lennon.
Tuesday 7 December 2010
I Don't Like Cricket, I Love It
I've been busy with a new script for the past few weeks and really enjoying the joy/agony of creating new characters and a new world for them to play in. But I have spent the past few days sitting at the keyboard in the office bleary-eyed.
Bloody cricket.
England playing an Ashes series in Australia used to mean a dodgy Channel 9 highlights package fronted by Richie Benaud but not any more. Richie has hung up his ivory/beige/fawn/cream jackets and now the action is beamed live from OZ in the middle of the UK night. And there is no way I cannot watch - not all of it, the school run means I have to get some sleep otherwise my daughter wouldn't get to the bus - but as much as I can stay awake for.
The first Test ended in a thrilling draw and now the second Test has been won, brilliantly, by England. Thank god they wrapped it up quickly.
Watching in bed means I look at the Sky pictures but have my earphones plugged into the DAB radio. I've been a fan of Test Match Special, that most quintessentially English of all radio shows, since I was a kid and for me there is no comparison between the speech on TMS and the commentary on Sky. I like some fun with my cricket. Sky is far too po-faced and repetitive for my liking.
A few years back the wonderful Charles Collingwood, the long-time Archers actor and all-round good fellow and cricket nut invited me to Lords for the day. At the time I was producing a TV show on which he appeared. We enjoyed the cricket but the day was made extra special for me as Charles had arranged with TMS for us to visit the commentary box. This was before the space-age media center was constructed, in those days it was still atop the pavilion. Now entry to the Pavilion at Lords is reserved for a select few and Charles, being an MCC member is among their number. I was to be allowed in as his guest. However, on approaching the door we were stopped by an aging jobsworth and ceremonially grilled. Who are you, what do you want? Charles explained we were off to the TMS box and grudgingly the old chap agreed to let us past but as I stepped forward he put out a hand to stop me, looked Charles in the eye and said, "You won't let him run around will you". I was 38 at the time.
Cricket, I love it.
Bloody cricket.
England playing an Ashes series in Australia used to mean a dodgy Channel 9 highlights package fronted by Richie Benaud but not any more. Richie has hung up his ivory/beige/fawn/cream jackets and now the action is beamed live from OZ in the middle of the UK night. And there is no way I cannot watch - not all of it, the school run means I have to get some sleep otherwise my daughter wouldn't get to the bus - but as much as I can stay awake for.
The first Test ended in a thrilling draw and now the second Test has been won, brilliantly, by England. Thank god they wrapped it up quickly.
Watching in bed means I look at the Sky pictures but have my earphones plugged into the DAB radio. I've been a fan of Test Match Special, that most quintessentially English of all radio shows, since I was a kid and for me there is no comparison between the speech on TMS and the commentary on Sky. I like some fun with my cricket. Sky is far too po-faced and repetitive for my liking.
A few years back the wonderful Charles Collingwood, the long-time Archers actor and all-round good fellow and cricket nut invited me to Lords for the day. At the time I was producing a TV show on which he appeared. We enjoyed the cricket but the day was made extra special for me as Charles had arranged with TMS for us to visit the commentary box. This was before the space-age media center was constructed, in those days it was still atop the pavilion. Now entry to the Pavilion at Lords is reserved for a select few and Charles, being an MCC member is among their number. I was to be allowed in as his guest. However, on approaching the door we were stopped by an aging jobsworth and ceremonially grilled. Who are you, what do you want? Charles explained we were off to the TMS box and grudgingly the old chap agreed to let us past but as I stepped forward he put out a hand to stop me, looked Charles in the eye and said, "You won't let him run around will you". I was 38 at the time.
Cricket, I love it.
Thursday 2 December 2010
Whoops Baghdad
I'm heartened that audience sitcom in the UK has a torch bearer. Miranda starring Miranda Hart has put laughing out loud back on the agenda. Of course it's not to everyone's taste. Those people who think comedy should be about the cringeworthy and anal sex gags might struggle to find the fun. But for nearly 4 millions BBC 2 viewers Miranda's attempts to get through a day without falling over/into/off something whilst juggling a lie told to counteract a story that was meant to get her out of a situation her mother put her in is the perfect tonic.
In the past few years comedy has come to mean much darker fare.
Since The Office repositioned TV comedy, for many execs the great big ball of fun comedy has mostly been out of favour. The Office is a work of genius. A lot of what followed in its wake wasn't - and isn't. On my Christmas plate I like white meat and dark meat and I happen to believe there's room for all kinds of comedy on TV - but right now I'm happy to wave a flag for a few more shows of the laugh out loud variety.
Nothing wrong with the single camera, no audience, shoot it like a drama, don't have too many gags, let's keep it real school. I happen to love all that. Some of my favourite comedy moments can be found in The Sopranos and Six Feet Under. But those are dramas. Comedy moments that explode from dark fare are all the more satisfying in my book. But, I repeat, those shows are dramas.
The object of comedy is to make people laugh. If you go to a stand-up gig and the audience is nodding sagely at the witty observations of the comic he won't go very far. Comedy requires a reaction - or it aint comedy.
Miranda is not afraid to remind us that we are watching a comedy. She talks to camera, she offers looks to camera, the fourth wall doesn't exist. It is a terrific performance. But I heard someone praising her as the inventor of a new kind of TV comedy - here I have to shout very loudly FRANKIE HOWERD.
When I was growing up one of the great treats was to be allowed to stay up past nine o'clock to watch Up Pompeii. On this show the single entendre was alive and well and getting big laughs. But it wasn't just about the smutty and suggestive, it was about Frankie Howerd's connection with the audience, both in the studio and at home. In it he talked directly to camera and let us know at all times that this was a comedy confection, a play, nothing real; every element constructed for our amusement.
In 1973 Howerd starred in the follow up Whoops Baghdad (like to see somebody get that one past a commissioner in 2010). If Up Pompeii was television's answer to A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, its successor owed more to British Pantomime.
It was a feast of double entendres and essentially a reworking of 'Up Pompeii!', Whoops Baghdad focused on Ali Oopla (Howerd), servant to the Wazir of Baghdad.
In his day-to-day life, Ali dealt with such problems as the Wazir's naive daughter, numerous merchant traders, and many scantily-clad women with impressive cleavage. The thud you just heard was another commissioner falling off the perch.
It ran just six episodes and is little remembered. To view it now - it's available on DVD - is to step back in time, not to old Baghdad but to an age when television comedy did this kind if thing because they thought it would be a funny thing to do. Skip over to YouTube and check it out.
In an age of Middle Eastern tensions and the war on terror Baghdad would not be the place to set a comedy but there's much in this old series that reminds me of Miranda.
In grim times we could do with a bit more laugh out loud funny.
In the past few years comedy has come to mean much darker fare.
Since The Office repositioned TV comedy, for many execs the great big ball of fun comedy has mostly been out of favour. The Office is a work of genius. A lot of what followed in its wake wasn't - and isn't. On my Christmas plate I like white meat and dark meat and I happen to believe there's room for all kinds of comedy on TV - but right now I'm happy to wave a flag for a few more shows of the laugh out loud variety.
Nothing wrong with the single camera, no audience, shoot it like a drama, don't have too many gags, let's keep it real school. I happen to love all that. Some of my favourite comedy moments can be found in The Sopranos and Six Feet Under. But those are dramas. Comedy moments that explode from dark fare are all the more satisfying in my book. But, I repeat, those shows are dramas.
The object of comedy is to make people laugh. If you go to a stand-up gig and the audience is nodding sagely at the witty observations of the comic he won't go very far. Comedy requires a reaction - or it aint comedy.
Miranda is not afraid to remind us that we are watching a comedy. She talks to camera, she offers looks to camera, the fourth wall doesn't exist. It is a terrific performance. But I heard someone praising her as the inventor of a new kind of TV comedy - here I have to shout very loudly FRANKIE HOWERD.
When I was growing up one of the great treats was to be allowed to stay up past nine o'clock to watch Up Pompeii. On this show the single entendre was alive and well and getting big laughs. But it wasn't just about the smutty and suggestive, it was about Frankie Howerd's connection with the audience, both in the studio and at home. In it he talked directly to camera and let us know at all times that this was a comedy confection, a play, nothing real; every element constructed for our amusement.
In 1973 Howerd starred in the follow up Whoops Baghdad (like to see somebody get that one past a commissioner in 2010). If Up Pompeii was television's answer to A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, its successor owed more to British Pantomime.
It was a feast of double entendres and essentially a reworking of 'Up Pompeii!', Whoops Baghdad focused on Ali Oopla (Howerd), servant to the Wazir of Baghdad.
In his day-to-day life, Ali dealt with such problems as the Wazir's naive daughter, numerous merchant traders, and many scantily-clad women with impressive cleavage. The thud you just heard was another commissioner falling off the perch.
It ran just six episodes and is little remembered. To view it now - it's available on DVD - is to step back in time, not to old Baghdad but to an age when television comedy did this kind if thing because they thought it would be a funny thing to do. Skip over to YouTube and check it out.
In an age of Middle Eastern tensions and the war on terror Baghdad would not be the place to set a comedy but there's much in this old series that reminds me of Miranda.
In grim times we could do with a bit more laugh out loud funny.
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