A few words for Colin Baker

There are times when I get mad.

Hurtful comments make me sad.

Without thought the venom flies

Nasty stuff that once said, lies

Out there waiting. Nasty stuff.

Really isn’t good enough.

Always hurts the people who

Never did a thing to you.

Colin Baker’s Doctor Six

Victim of some nasty tricks

Gets more than his share of hurt

Idiots, dispensing dirt

So, to counterpoint this hate

Here’s some reasons why he’s great.

“Engines of Eternity”. “We’ll be hermits, you and me.”

Azmael, Mestor, Hugo Lang;

Lots of garish music – clang!

Twin Dilemma’s rough, it’s true.

“Not the greatest Doctor Who”

This is true, but look at him.

He’s just getting settled in.

Cybermen in ’85.

London’s sewers are alive

Cyberleader’s put on weight

Stuck since 1968

Sitting, nowt to do but think

Waiting for a Peri (Pink)

And her friend the gaudy chap

To appear – he’ll close the trap.

Season 22 is here

On we go, they next appear

Down on Varos where we see

Tied up topless Connery

Martin Jarvis, Peri (Blue)

Goodness, I love Doctor Who.

Violence and Acid Baths

Sil, his nasty gurgly laughs

Lurking in a clever show

Warning how the seed can grow

If it’s left alone, unchecked;

Television quickly wrecked.

Varos sorted out, we’re off

North East England, Mines – a Toff

Scarecrow Master, secrets deep

Miners not allowed to sleep

Gorgeous music; Anthony,

Gary Cady – now a tree

Kate O’Mara, Stevenson;

Rocket, and a dreadful pun.

Master walloped in the balls

Must be off – Pat Troughton calls.

Sontaran and Servalan

Spain – a pretty evil plan

Using nasty chef Shockeye

Symbiotic Nuclei

Stolen – James McCrimmon, eaten?

Not so fast, they’ve all been beaten

By the Doctors Two and Six

Lovely, sparky, funny mix

Troughton, Baker, old and new.

Goodness, I love Doctor Who.

Uh-oh. Here’s a citadel.

Karfel. Things aren’t going well.

Avon thinks he’s Richard Third

Shouting dialogue absurd.

HG Wells and bad Morlox

Aliens who look just like socks

Starting wars because of grain

Timelash lacking in the main

What the hell, it’s not the best

This one is enough to test

Patience of the staunchest fan

Though the plot is sometimes trying

Look at Six! He’s really flying.

Meanwhile, Davros finds himself

With a plan which requires wealth.

Turning humans into food

New conditioned Dalek brood

William Gaunt will surely block it

With a peek in Bostock’s Pocket.

Now it’s time to take a rest

Slipback’s on, it’s not the best.

Not to worry, soon be back

Wait a minute – there’s a lack.

Fourteen now, not twenty six

Oh my. Now we’re in a fix.

Now it’s season 23.

Who’s on trial – the BBC

Now it seems, are losing faith

“Pantomime! An awful wraith

Of the joy that’s gone before.

Drop this rubbish, give us more

Programmes like it was before

Back in 1974.”

That’s the cry from angry fans

Thinking that our shrill demands

Suddenly will make it right

What a truly awful sight

As our harsh resentment grows

Missing what’s beneath our nose

Baker, Bryant, Jayston, all

Do their damndest – standing tall

Working hard, always great

Though the programmes in a state

Fandom cease this stupid tizz

We’re just lucky that it is

There for us to watch at all.

Part thirteen will surely fall

Into all our best of lists

Finest of all plotline twists.

He’s the Doctor? Surely not!

What a great, surprising plot.

Then before we know, he’s gone.

Though he wants to carry on

Meddling from the upper floor

Shows poor Colin out the door.

Always giving of his best

Really, we were truly blessed.

He deserved so much and got

Nasty, sneering, tommyrot

Ill-considered, vile abuse

Has our fandom’s head come loose?

Flashing forward thirteen years

Now we find before our ears

Six is back on audio

Brand new stories

Now he’ll show

Just what he can really do.

Goodness, this is brand new Who!

And it’s great. Now Doctor Six

Really shows off all his tricks.

Evelyn Smythe. Her heart so big.

Daleks. Lalla. Here’s the Brig!

Shearman gives us Jubilee

Pirate story sung with glee.

Axos. Jamie. Zoe. Yum!

Talking pigs and Peri’s Mum.

Finally he’s got a chance

Watch this Doctor really dance.

In conclusion, Mr B…

These few words from you to me

Are the best that I can do.

You’re a superb Doctor Who.

Thanks, Colin. Keep on doing what you do. I’ll keep listening. Because you’re brilliant.

Review – Deadly Dangerous Tomorrow

I’ve waited years for this. Doomwatch (or Doom Watch, or Watch Doom, if the titles are to be believed) has been a quiet obsession of mine for a very long time. The saga of Spencer Quist, John Ridge, Toby Wren et al has held an iron grip on my imagination in a way that very few series have ever done. I’ve long held it to be one of the BBC’s shining high points. At least, what I’ve been able to see of it. Much of it has gone the way of so many BBC programmes – almost half of series 1 is missing and only two episodes of series 3 (plus the unbroadcast final episode, surprisingly) remain.

Frustratingly one of the episodes that fascinated me most – the series 3 opener, “Fire and Brimstone” – is one of those missing. One of the show’s central characters goes bonkers, and holds the world to ransom with a vial of Anthrax? On a BBC budget? Really? I always wondered how they’d manage it. Recently, the essential doomwatch.org blog (you are heartily recommended to pay a visit – it’s a wonderful site that really does the series credit) printed a detailed synopsis and analysis of the episode which shone considerably more light on things.

Now comes Deadly Dangerous Tomorrow, merely the first of two Doomwatch books produced by Miwk Publishing this year (there’s a detailed series history coming soon, which promises to be fascinating),  It reproduces six original scripts, all for episodes now missing: “Spectre at the Feast” from season 1, and five from series 3 – “High Mountain”, “Say Knife Fat Man”, “Deadly Dangerous Tomorrow”, “Flood” and… “Fire and Brimstone”. At long last I can find out what really happened.

So I’ve finally read it. After all these years wondering just how Ridge does go doolally, and how he holds the world to ransom… was it worth it?

Yes and no. It’s been a long time since I was so glued to a book, so absorbed that I actually can’t leave the damn thing alone. It’s not necessarily for the right reasons, though. It’s hard to judge the finished product by the script alone – who knows what magic John Paul, Simon Oates, John Barron et al (even a very young Jonathan Pryce as “Policeman”) could have achieved? Perhaps Terence Dudley pulled off the directing job of his life, pulling several environmentally dangerous rabbits out of a genetically modified hat. He’d have needed to. Not to put too fine a point on it, this script is terrible.

It’s fascinating – and slightly unnerving – to witness a series you love going suddenly and spectacularly off the rails. We know from later on in the season that Ridge goes bonkers because of a chemical reaction in a can of paint that’s set off when he’s doing a spot of welding in his garage, but that’s merely the start of it. There’s a character called John Ridge in this but it’s nothing to do with the one we’ve watched becomng increasingly marginalised in the previous two series. Quist is utterly ineffectual, flapping helplessly until Anne Tarrant tells him to shut up and calm down. Commander Stafford is introduced –  basically a thug with a security clearance. Geoff Hardcastle – a walking leather jacket with a cigarette attached who was a series 2 regular – is quietly forgotten about. The Minister turns up and suddenly becomes the star of the show, acquiring a Christian name change along the way. There aren’t any menaces for Doomwatch to warn against. It’s a police procedural, plain and simple. Davis and Pedler were utterly, astonishingly right after all.

At one point two bystanders watch a raid on a local school where one of the vials of Anthrax is supposed to end up. One turns to the other and says, “looks like Doctor Who if you ask me”. Well, yes. But only if you’re watching a really, really bad one.

Ridge walks straight into Porton Down and says, “if I was to hold the world to ransom, what virus would be the best to use?” A friendly scientist tells him, then leaves the room. Ridge nicks his vials of Anthrax then buggers off to the nearest post office, mailing one each to several major cities around the world. If his manifesto isn’t published in major international newspapers immediately, millions will die.

Ridge and Stafford suddenly start tearing verbal lumps out of each other in a scene that’s reminiscent of nothing so much as “Callan”, with Ridge suddenly playing Callan to Stafford’s Toby Meres. There was a hugely sensitive political case. They both loved the same girl. She died. Ridge never forgave Stafford. Later on, Stafford threatens Ridge – start co-operating sharpish or he’ll “be thrown to the perverts – the ones who really enjoy it”.

Meanwhile Anne Tarrant offers her considered (and highly picturesque) diagnosis – ‘This is classic paranoia with, as yet, no personality disorganisation. But it wouldn’t take much to push it to the schizophrenic pole. If that happens and there’s withdrawal… you might as well put a thumb screw on a turnip.’ What???!!!

Things reach a ludicrous pitch when Ridge refuses to believe that the newspaper he’s been given in prison hasn’t been faked and is let out to go to the newsagent of his choice. Nearly 200 newsagents within a mile of the prison have agreed to stock the fake papers, on the off chance that Ridge wanders in (how many? That’s more newsagents than houses!). The plan works for a time. At least, until Ridge loses his copy of The Times and bribes someone inside to nick the Governor’s undoctored copy. Good grief.

Barbara Mason (suddenly revealed to have the final vial of Anthrax – the others are all recovered off-camera and between scenes) is involved in a tedious race-against-time which ends in a comedy scene in a chemist’s yard as a policeman is confronted with a gigantic pile of disused cannisters, and raises his eyes to heaven in a moment which must surely have been accompanied by a “wah-wah-waaaaaaah” musical sting from Max Harris. Ridge suddenly seems to abandon all hope and tries to commit suicide. That he does it by gnawing through his own radial artery is shocking, horrible and staggeringly out of character. If this is the best they could come up with in order to try and keep Simon Oates on board, no wonder he tendered his resignation sharpish.

The episode ends with The Minister making dark threats to restructure Doomwatch and Ridge fading away to nothing in a hospital bed while muttering “goodbye… goodbye… goodbye…”. In a way, it’s a fitting epitaph for the original concept of the series as this script renders it utterly unrecognisable. The two surviving broadcast episodes from series 3 are quiet, mundane little things which seem to take place entirely in offices and chintzy living rooms. Presumably after this there was nowhere left for them to go. With Quist present-but-absent-in-spirit and no Ridge to goad him into action, the series obviously begins to drift and we end up with the department investigating that well known environmental threat of television naughtiness at series end in the unbroadcast “Sex and Violence”.

I’ve still got several more scripts to go in this fascinating book. It comes utterly recommended, not just because it offers the only way to experience six full episodes of Doomwatch which no longer exist. It’s also essential because suddenly I can see exactly why Pedler and Davis were so aggravated with Terence Dudley. Series one and two may have painted the villains-of-the-week in broad-brush strokes, but at least there was a something resembling a unified direction. Fake rats velcroed to Robert Powell’s legs notwithstanding, Doomwatch in series one (and to a lesser extent, series two) could be downright frightening. I actually laughed out loud in disbelief several times while reading “Fire and Brimstone”.

If you have an interest in television history you owe it to yourself to grab this. If you love Doomwatch, you owe it to yourself to see exactly what went wrong after years of hearsay and dark mutterings. If the other scripts are anything like “Fire and Brimstone” I’d say that Doomwatch went farther off the rails – faster – than any other series I’ve ever known. Even Survivors (Dudley putting himself in precisely the same situation as he did here – you’d think he’d have learned) doesn’t fall apart quite so badly in series 3. At least there everyone just about behaves like they did in previous seasons and there’s a vague echo of the original series concept. Here… no. Nothing. Personality clashes and behind the scenes machinations have rarely manifested themselves so baldly as they do in one single television script. Buy this essential book and see for yourself.

Deadly Dangerous Tomorrow is edited by Michael Seely and is available now from Miwk Publishing.

Carrie

I’ve just read that Caroline John has passed away. Another beloved member of the Doctor Who family gone. I’ll miss her. I’ll miss her very much.

Caroline John was only in Doctor Who for a single season. She didn’t even get a leaving scene. Just four stories, over forty years ago.Yet, all these years later I’m sitting here writing words of love and affection for a woman I met a handful of times. I’ll tell you why. She was wonderful.

On paper Liz Shaw isn’t much of a character. A snooty, Cambridge educated scientist who gets whisked away and dumped on a recently exiled Third Doctor. Two highly educated people, neither of whom want to be where they are, both considerably more book-smart than anyone else around them. So many times Liz is used to help whisk up something in a test-tube, to attend to dying alien astronauts, to pull a huge lever or take readings from a dial labelled “megga volts” (sic). There’s not much there for a talented young actress to get a handle on.

Caroline managed, somehow, to invest Liz with real warmth and generosity of spirit. Liz is never afraid to fight her corner. I was always fond of her last scene with the Brigadier in “Inferno” – “I don’t like your tone, Miss Shaw!” “I don’t much like yours, either”. When she’s fooled by the Doctor into nicking the Tardis key in “Spearhead From Space” her sense of hurt and betrayal radiates off her in waves. This in a character barely two episodes old, with little back story to play with. It’s all Carrie, and it’s to her credit. I don’t know how she does it, but she does.

In “Doctor Who and the Silurians” she’s relegated to a surrogate Doctor role in the last episode, flurrying and scurrying about in the lab for the details of that plague virus cure. We never doubt that she’s going to do it, because Liz is solid, competent, efficient and utterly trustworthy. Liz gets kidnapped to look after the Alien Astronauts in “The Ambassadors of Death”, but she’s more than a match for Regan and his crackpot plans. In a story notable for its many contradictions, not least the terminal confusion of the plotline, Liz is – again – rock solid. You need a viewer identification figure in Doctor Who and we may not all be scientists or hyper-intelligent but we like to think that we’d always – hopefully – do the right thing. That was Liz.

Inferno – alternative Liz embodies The Path Not Taken, pitching up in the parallel universe as a hard-nosed brunette with a gun rather than a warm-hearted scientist. Yet at the end of the world, Liz comes through and you feel a real sense of grief as she, Petra and Greg watch the lava roll inexorably towards them. Again, all Carrie. Working through a variety of ridiculous wigs and ridiculous costumes her fundamental high-class shines through. She was marvellous. Never a bad performance, never a word out of place. She knew what she was doing.

I barely met her more than a handful of times at various Doctor Who conventions over the years. She brightened any room she was in. She seemed to approach her time on Who slightly quizzically – in a lengthy and distinguished career, it’s easy to be surprised when we all choose to focus on barely a year’s work so long ago. The reason we do is – amongst others –  because she was there at the time when we needed her most. Who was in serious cancellation danger that year. It needed a decent team to pull things together, to bring the viewers in, to keep them watching. In Jon, Nick and Carrie we got just what we needed. They ensured that Doctor Who survived and kept going. The aforementioned family – wonderfully – is expanding, with new people being added as every new season airs. Fans meet, make friends, create, argue and debate together and that’s because we’re all brought together by this remarkable thing called Doctor Who. Without Carrie, Nick, Jon, Barry, Terrance, Derrick et al, we’d not be here. Or at least, it’s unlikely we’d all have met in quite the way we did. That’s hugely important to me and I can’t ever thank them enough.

I can – at the very least – say thanks to Carrie here, and quietly mourn her passing. I hope she knew how much she meant to us fans. I think she did. We’ll miss her, and we’ll go on missing her as long as there’s an insane, mad, ridiculous television show called Doctor Who to dissect and discuss in all its delirious, wonderful forms. You were part of it, Carrie. You were there. In my heart, you always will be. Thank you.

JN-T

JN-T. If you are a Doctor Who fan those initials will stir some sort of reaction in you.  You might take a moment to admire his ability to bring a programme which by all accounts had a minuscule budget to the screen year after year, on schedule and on target. You might smile affectionately, remembering his remarkable knack for publicity. You might sigh at what appear to be some of his loonier policy decisions. You might spit shards of teeth out in all directions in cold fury at what you perceive to be his contribution to “the slow death of my favourite programme”. If you ever met him at a convention you’ll remember not only his always entertaining panel appearances but his presence in the bar, holding court. You always knew when JN-T was around. You couldn’t ignore him. You’ll certainly have some sort of opinion on the man. You couldn’t be ambivalent about JN-T.

After years of work on Doctor Who in one capacity or another John Nathan-Turner took over as producer for the 18th series, aired in late 1980. Season 17 had just broadcast in the UK. While massively, hugely popular with the general public at the time I think it’s safe to say that behind the scenes Doctor Who was beset with difficulties. Tom Baker’s gigantic personality and unquestionable devotion to what he saw as the best way to make the series has given rise to countless stories of production hell. Scripts were falling through, budgets were being slashed, entire productions cancelled. It can’t have been easy to steer the ship and a worn out Graham Williams finally passed things over to production unit manager John Nathan-Turner. Presumably with a massive sigh of relief.

While initially supervised by former producer Barry Letts (there on a sort of executive watching brief to make sure the new chap knew what he was doing), JN-T soon made his mark. When Doctor Who returned with “The Leisure Hive” at the end of August 1980 it was barely recognisable. Brand new titles, the first since Tom’s first series. A new arrangement of the theme. Incidental music provided in-house by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop instead of long-serving maestro Dudley Simpson. A slightly more sombre Tom Baker. Slightly.

There’s a long-standing misconception that Doctor Who’s 18th season is an almost humourless affair, reacting virulently against a perceived surfeit of silliness in the previous series. How anyone can say that about a series that begins with a hyper-intelligent robot chasing a beach-ball into the water on Brighton Beach and exploding, takes in a megalomaniac Cactus, a moss-covered statue that becomes the most powerful entity in the universe and ends with the Doctor attempting to flush out his hated enemy by erm, landing in the Thames and opening the Tardis doors, I’ll never know.

Nonetheless, it was substantially different to what we had before. Change was in the air, and change was what JN-T was good at. He had to cope with it often enough. Within a year Tom was off and the new Producer got the chance to really make his mark. He got it wonderfully, perfectly right. Peter Davison is one of the very few people – ever – to have appeared in Doctor Who and never given a bad performance. His Doctor was so different to his overwhelming predecessor that I sometimes think he’s not given the credit he deserves, and sometimes slips down the cracks a bit. As “the one between The Two Bakers” the Fifth Doctor was everything that I wanted my Doctor to be. He still is.

There’s a tendency amongst us old fogey-type fans to talk about Doctor Who as being best when you first really, really got into it. I’d been a fan since I was seven years old or so, when Tom was in full swing. I became a Fan with capital letters during Davison’s first season and I still look at season 19 with a much less jaundiced eye than I possibly should. Rose-tinted spectacles may be donned but nothing in Doctor Who can take me back to more innocent times faster than a season 19 story. The Doctor, spinning back to the first creation (no doubt overtaking The Garm and friends on his way) before being plopped out into the middle of a mental construct that makes no geographical sense. Giant frogs with delusions of godhood. Buddhism, colonialism and madness filtered through an economical studio-bound 100 minute science fiction series with a result so perfect, so right that it almost makes me cry watching it. A robot designed by bunch of criminal lizards with a hugely developed sense of aesthetics, meaning that even the most functional of devices must look beautiful. Fifteen minutes of air time given over to the central cast just… mucking about, playing cricket, eating sandwiches and dancing. The return of an implacable foe and the remarkable surprise that came at the end. Time travelling Concordes. Good god. Doctor Who is – at all times –  loopy, magnificently ambitious, tremendously silly and above all always trying to things it can never afford to. It has always been a series where ambition triumphs over common sense and that’s never more obvious than in season 19. When it gets it wrong, at least it’s still trying to do something different. I can even find something good to say about “Time Flight”. Yes I can – the British Airways crew (most of them, anyway) are fantastic, endlessly watchable.  Yes, they are.

Davison presided over the years when my fandom was forged. My love for Doctor Who was to be severely tested over the years – primarily by some of the stuff that John Nathan-Turner would come up with. Never once have I stopped watching. That’s down to the great work done all those years ago, when magic swirled around the walls of Television Centre.

When Peter left after three years JN-T cast Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor and things seemed to fall apart. All of a sudden the unassailably secure seemed vulnerable. Before too long everything went horribly downhill. The public seemed to drift away. The series lost support on a management level. Everyone on the production team appeared to be… worn out, really. Almost bored, despite a main cast that was working flat out to give us their very best. Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant scrape greatness in their time on Doctor Who so often  that it takes my breath away. Just watch them. In so many mediocre adventures, they’re just great, aren’t they? Oh, my favourite Doctor Who story is “Revelation of the Daleks”, which sits squarely in the middle of all this. They were still getting it right. Sometimes.

Something had to give and the unthinkable happened. Doctor Who was “rested” for eighteen months. Seems like a handful of heartbeats to me now given how long it took for it to reappear after 1989, but back then… well, we were children then in our fandom and like children we reacted by throwing a gigantic hissy fit and hurling our toys out of the pram. I think we hit quite a few people on the way who perhaps never quite forgave us. We certainly placed an awful lot of the blame on JN-T. Scapegoated time and again for things which may not necessarily have been his fault.

Before too long it was crisis time again. A 23rd season riven with difficulties ending in an irrevocable split between producer and script-editor, the unthinkable happening *again* (a Doctor being fired at management level), and yet another leading man to find. JN-T cast Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor and somehow managed to keep things going long past a point where all support had so obviously evaporated. Desperate to leave but endlessly “persuaded to stay” (and knowing what we know now, how pained those seemingly glib words seem), he hired Andrew Cartmel and the two of them took off in a direction which impacts Doctor Who right through into the revival. Russell T Davies was obviously taking notes. It’s not that great a leap between Ace and Rose as some fans might like to think.

Eventually though, even JN-T couldn’t keep it going and Doctor Who slipped away. Lost, unloved and with a reputation that suggested it had been made entirely by idiots with delusions of adequacy – god, I hated those years passionately. How many times did I have to waste my energy defending something which I knew was wonderful to people who didn’t care and thought it was all about people shouting at each other while surrounded by wobbly sets and day-glo monsters? Actually – sometimes it was. Sometimes though, it wasn’t. Sometimes, when JN-T was in charge, it was both. In the same story. That was one of the many odd things about the man.

If the DVD features which come with his Doctor Who stories teach us anything it’s that JN-T’s time as producer was… volatile. There are occasions when he seemed to take leave of his senses completely. Some of his decisions make no sense whatsoever. The Sixth Doctor’s ridiculous coat and even more ridiculous personality, obviously. Time and again he nods through things that couldn’t possibly be achieved then and which you’d have difficulty doing now. You can’t produce an electricity spitting sea monster on the same budget as “Angels”. You just can’t. “The Caves of Androzani” doesn’t *need* that ridiculous Magma monster plonked in the middle of all that beautiful harsh and gritty race-against-death stuff. “The Twin Dilemma” – well, JN-T was rumoured to have said “that’s the one that I’ll be remembered for”. He was certainly right about that, but not (presumably) for the reasons he might want to be.

Thing was… he cast Peter, Colin and Sylvester. During the time Doctor Who was off the air (and continuing to this day) all three have grown and developed their Doctors through their work with Big Finish. New audio plays featuring all three turn up on a monthly basis, enriching and developing that big old universe of stories that Doctor Who does so well. Colin in particular has deepened and refined his portrayal to the point where he’s bloody near definitive, certainly on a par with any of the other Doctors. You couldn’t say that to judge by what the poor guy had to work with on tv. The work he’s doing now… if he’d been given the chance on television the way he has with the audio work he’d probably still be there now. He’s that good, and JN-T cast him.

The documentaries really only began to come into their own and get really in depth after JN-T passed away. A lot of people have told their stories without JN-T’s side necessarily being equally represented. That’s unfortunate but inevitable. Archive interview footage can only do so much. Without the man here to react to new revelations, new tales, things can seem a bit skewed against him. Certainly I find myself wondering from time to time if Doctor Who didn’t get made despite him rather than because of him, but that only usually lasts as long as it takes for me to return Time and The Rani back to the shelves.

Coming from the background that he did – a production, rather than a creative side – JN-T’s strengths seemed (to this viewer) to lie in more practical areas. He knew how to get the show made, and he was a great facilitator. He gave new talent a chance. The number of now-famous people who pop up in JN-T’s Who in very early roles is constantly surprising. Many production staff who really got going during his time have enriched our television landscape immeasurably ever since. No JN-T, no Rona Munro. No Stephen Gallagher. No Graeme Harper. Imagine that. All of these people would doubtless have surfaced eventually and made their impact but it was JN-T who gave them a chance.

Many of the people working on Doctor Who now grew up during his time as producer. They know how television works because JN-T, the arch publicist, told them so. He sparked their interest and many have gone on record as as saying they got their first steps in the business because Doctor Who got them fascinated with television in general. A lot of that’s down to JN-T and that’s a pretty good legacy.

John Nathan-Turner died on the 1st May, 2002. Good grief. That’s ten years since Doctor Who’s longest serving, arguably most controversial producer passed away. Ten years since the final photo-op with someone from the show being pointed at by JN-T, ensuring that he couldn’t get cropped out of the resulting picture. He didn’t live to see the return of the programme he loved through the best and worst of times, never saw it triumphantly return to where it belongs at the heartland of the BBC schedules. I think he’d have loved it. I think he’d have been proud. I think he’d probably have cried at how fantastic it all looks now (although they’re doing now exactly what he did then – making the money stretch and putting it on screen where we can all see it).

Sometimes, he was the best of producers. He was – occasionally – the strangest of producers. Without him constantly battling away in the darkness we probably wouldn’t be here now. I’m grateful to him. Thanks, John.

An Anniversary Request

Given that we now know that Karen Gillan will be leaving Doctor Who soon, it occurs to me that if we’re going to follow tradition our hero will soon need a new companion. Since we’re coming up to Anniversary time it seems more important than usual that whoever they cast should be up to snuff. Strong. Reliable. Virtuous. Capable of great feats.

Anniversaries are a time to look back, to reflect on our triumphs, learn from our mistakes and stride forward fully informed into a new and shining future. Why not someone who has had dealings with The Doctor before?

I know of someone. Someone who will never let the side down. Someone possessed of a loyalty which will never waver. Someone whose only wish will be to have a gigantic dog basket in the console room to call his own.

Garm… your time has come. Make it happen, Mr Moffat. I know you’ll do us proud.

Review – Steptoe and Son :The Desperate Hours

Two television legends were born in the first week of January 1962. Those watching on BBC1 would have seen the first episode of the anti-Dixon of Dock Green as Z Cars began a remarkable seventeen year run. Barlow, Watt, Lynch, Fancy and all the rest first flickered into life that week. The police didn’t like it, the public adored it.

Three days later an unassuming episode of Comedy Playhouse aired, introducing us to the father-and-son totters from Oil Drum Lane, Shepherd’s Bush. It was inevitable that a series would follow. It did, and Steptoe and Son leapt into the affection of the nation right from the start. It never left.

Working from scripts by the peerless Galton and Simpson were Wilfred Brambell as the elderly, devious, scheming, ferret-like father Albert. Actors’ Actor Harry H Corbett – the man who other actors would deliberately make time to watch if a new play was on according to Galton and Simpson – took on the part of the younger Steptoe. Forever aspiring to grandeur, given to pomposity and desperate to get away from the smothering clutches of a father who wouldn’t let him leave, Harold was a gift to Corbett and he grabbed it.

However much he might have grew to hate the part in later years, objecting to the way he became typecast, it is impossible to imagine anyone other than Corbett playing the part. Ditto Brambell as Albert. A tiny, dapper little man of impeccable dress off-set he’d disappear into the dressing room and reappear with false teeth and raggedy clothes, transformed into the half-man half-ferret that the nation grew to adore.

Many years after both the actors passed away Ray Galton and John Antrobus produced a stage show which brought the saga to a close. Murder at Oil-Drum Lane featured two uncanny impersonations by Jake Nightingale and Harry Dickman. To be fair, they couldn’t do anything else. It’s hard to think of two performances which are more tightly locked into the British Psyche than Corbett and Brambell.

Said show made a tour of “the provinces” after a triumphant West End run. Your correspondent recalls one rainy Tuesday night in Glasgow when a packed house gasped as one as a spectral Albert walked through the wall of the stage set and through the wall on the other side. Pepper’s Ghost has never been more spectacularly evoked.

Steptoe’s always been a favourite. I was brought up on it (along with Hancock, Dad’s Army, Only Fools and Horses and a plethora of other giants – which might explain my occasional rather hard-line verdict on some of the more recent sitcoms bashed out by the BBC). Even more than Hancock’s Half Hour, this is Galton and Simpson at their absolute best. The quality level is so astonishingly high – I can’t actually think of a substandard episode. There might be the odd repetition of a plot-line, and neither of the film adaptations quite carry it off but in terms of the original series it’s as good as British comedy gets. It may have become slightly broader as it went on, but that’s not really a criticism. It works as a way to keep the series fresh for both the writers and the actors, and if it means that some of that beautiful melancholy gets jettisoned in favour of watching Colin Gordon getting magnificently pissed, that’s a small price to pay.

So many wonderful moments. Harold desperately trying to push the cart in the very first episode. The ludicrous plumbing antics in Those Magnificent Men and Their Heating Machines. Albert’s birthday descending into unimaginable embarrassment in 65 Today. Harold’s furious defence of Albert in Oh What A Beautiful Mourning. The loony moment in The Siege of Steptoe Street where to prove his old man’s mad to some debt collectors, Harold yanks Albert into the yard, plonks a tricornered hat on the old man and makes him sing “Le Marsellaise”. The perfectly plotted (and riotously funny) Divided We Stand. Two’s Company, with Harold bringing an older woman home on a date only to discover that Albert has a dark secret.  The remarkable ending to Seance in a Wet Rag and Bone Yard where Harold’s deceased Mum puts in an unexpected appearance. Best of all, the aching, desperate sadness underpinning the whole series – two men bound together by circumstance, both loaded with hatred  but yet, unable to let go because deep down, they really do love each other. Dammit, it’s wonderful.

You’d think that the fiftieth anniversary of two the BBC’s most beloved series would be something that might be marked in some way. A commemorative evening of programmes, perhaps. A nice write-up in the Radio Times. Sadly, there seems to be nothing. Z-Cars hasn’t even been mentioned. Steptoe and Son managed to sneak in through a particularly oblique back door, though. Saturday the 7^th of January saw an evening of repeats on BBC2 celebrating the remarkable career of John Howard Davies.

Think of a much beloved British sitcom and it’s likely that John Howard Davies had a hand in it somewhere. The Goodies, Python, Fawlty Towers, The Good Life… you’ll find his name attached to some of the finest comedy material you could hope for. He passed away in August 2011 and it was with a certain amount of surprise that I stumbled across this little evening of repeats. An episode of The Good Life was first, with the legendary Fawlty Towers episode Gourmet Night later on before finishing with a repeat of the Comedy Connections documentary on Python. Sandwiched in among that lot Steptoe was represented by the Davies-directed episode The Desperate Hours.

This particular show has always been a favourite. I loved it as merely one of a succession of cracking episodes from a cracking series. Hailing from the penultimate series of Steptoe – ten years after the first – it shows no sign of weariness or boredom. If there is any, it’s folded into the reactions of the characters themselves to their situations, which is surely the way to do it. Having watched it again on Saturday night I suspect it may just have become my single favourite half-hour of sitcom.

The truly great episodes of any sitcom can usually be boiled down into a pithy summary which renders them instantly memorable. Hancock reads a thriller, only to discover the last page is missing. Del is horrified when Rodney brings home a new girlfriend – and it’s a policewoman. Godfrey is branded a coward and shunned by his fellow platoon members, until his real past is revealed. You know the sort of thing. The Desperate Hours can be summed up – and indeed was, by The Guinness Book of Cult TV –  as two prisoners (Leonard Rossiter and JG Devlin) escape from the Scrubs only to find themselves breaking into the one house in London that has less going for it than they do.

That is what happens, yes. As with all the greatest sitcom though, there’s a lot more going on. You can read it as a delicate little polemic on poverty. By introducing two new characters who follow a different path but are nonetheless virtually in identical situations to the two regulars it really hammers home the horror (sorry), the hopelessness of endlessly co-dependent relationships. It also shows how loving those relationships can be, even if those involved would never admit it.

It showcases Corbett and Rossiter – two of the finest actors of their generation –  working in perfect unison and driving each other’s performances to greater and greater heights. Not to be outdone, Brambell and Devlin (who would go on to cult approval as the wrinkled retainer in Sir Henry at Rawlinson End) team up to take on the two boys, each having some wonderful lines that really stick in the memory. Steptoe and Scrotum. There’s a show that could have flown. Let us not forget either, that the very title and plot reference the 1955 Bogart-starring, William Wyler-directed movie where several convicts break into and terrorise an innocent household.

It starts as it means to go on with the Steptoes in desperate straits. It’s the dead of winter.  There’s no money, only one tiny heater, and the meter keeps running out. Harold’s mucking about with the radio and intercepts the go-to-guy in 70s comedy if you want a newsreader announcement, Corbett Woodall. Two dangerous criminals are on the loose having hopped it from the scrubs (500 meters down the road, apparently). Tommy Vance then announces a record by Harold MacMillan and His Guitar Five, which proves too much for either Steptoe.

After a show-stopping sequence in which Harold goes a tiny bit demented with the cold and gets a little too wrapped up in his impersonation of a plantation owner in the days of the British Raj, the meter runs out. The door goes. Albert goes to answer it and Harold attempts to stuff the meter with Pfennigs. The camera closes in on Harold’s mutterings in the dark. He finally finds something to fit the meter, the lights go on and turning round he finds his Dad at the mercy of two dangerous, hardened criminals from the scrubs.

Although not really similar this scene reminds me of the killer-at-the-window sequence from Only Fools and Horses – Friday the 14th. Just for a moment, everything darkens slightly, and the familiar characters seem ready to be drawn into something altogether different and menacing. Admittedly the reveal in OFAH is accompanied by a fantastic reaction – someone in the studio audience actually screams – whereas here it’s played out in virtual silence. Just for a moment, you think that Rossiter is actually going to brain Brambell with that iron bar.

Johnny (the younger) and Frank (the elder) are clearly desperate, needing all the help they can get to continue their breakaway (things didn’t start well, with Frank catching his trousers on the barbed wire at the prison walls and Johnny going back to disentangle him).

Most of the best Steptoe episodes jump moods several times over half an hour. Right from the pilot episode, you’ll find one-liners snuggling up next to moments where Corbett and Brambell really play on the heartstrings. There’s a lot of both here, plus some remarkable high-strung, edge-of-hysteria playing from Rossiter (a stock in trade, and there was never anyone better). Before too long our characters have paired off, with Harold and Johnny bemoaning the uselessness of their older partners, Albert and Frank pouring scorn on the younger two for their lack of gratitude and respect for the old.

It really is remarkable the way the script flips between the two – you find yourself rooting for Frank and Johnny in a way you never quite expected when they first appeared. Recognising someone who seems to be in the same pickle as he is, Harold cosies up to Johnny. Within seconds he’s bumming cigarettes off him, desperately trying to stop him eating the goldfish (“he’s magnified, he’s really only this size” – tiny little gesture with thumb and forefinger) and firing off shots at Albert and Frank like there’s no tomorrow. One of the highlights comes when Harold suggests that if Johnny had turned up a few weeks earlier when fortunes were better, might have got on better. Rossiter responds with a scathing “awfully sorry, just couldn’t get away”. Rossiter is at his absolute best here. If you ever wanted to explain to someone just why he’s so beloved, this episode is the perfect primer as it shows him really stretching his range. The man had few equals. One of those few is right alongside him here, and they egg each other on towards greatness.

Meanwhile, Frank’s taken greatly to Albert’s meal of this morning’s cold porridge – the more lumps in it the better – and the two old men form a gentle bond. In a remarkable moment Albert – finally driven too far by more uncaring remarks than he can stand – roars furiously at Johnny before realising he’s facing a convict with an iron bar. Brambell goes from boiling anger to cowardly diffidence in seconds. Usually underrated (mostly by me, I’m afraid – what a fool I can be) next to the pyrotechnics that his younger partner indulges in, Brambell… well, he’s superb.

He also gets a moment that puts a chill right down my back. When he’s at his most defensive, Albert snaps at the younger men, “just you wait until you’re our age”. The tragedy is, neither of them will reach that age. Both Rossiter and Corbett died horribly young. Brambell and Devlin outlasted them by a considerable margin and that moment… well, it hurts. Just think what they could have been doing by now. We were robbed. Comedy was robbed. Drama was robbed. Worst of all, they were robbed. Both had so much to give. Both cut short. Awful.

By the last moments both pairings actually seem to have become friends. Johnny softens up, giving Harold his fags, not to mention a shilling for the meter. Recognising he’ll never be able to cut Frank loose (memorably illustrated by the old man’s desperate pleas not to be left behind, in a way that actually becomes quite upsetting), he gathers the old man up and prepares to go, hoping to be back at the scrubs in time for supper. Both Albert and Frank share one last moment, allowing a little bit of  love for their respective boys to show through. At which point, the meter goes again. Harold cadges one last shilling from Johnny.

When the lights go up they’re gone, leaving Harold with the last word – “Ah, well. Better go and lock the cage up for the night.” Four men, two prisons, within 500 yards of each other. None of them will ever escape each other, and by now Harold’s pretty much given up trying. It’s a low-key way to end the episode, but it works. It ties things up, leaves the Steptoes exactly where we found them (although Harold’s richer, by one packet of smokes) and leaves us in no doubt that underneath the bluster, they really are locked together. Forever.

There really aren’t enough superlatives to describe how great this episode is. I fear I may already have used most of them. It’s just… well, just look at that script. Galton and Simpson, writing out of their skin, as they did most weeks, delivering it to the two actors most perfectly suited to realise it. Two great guest stars. It’s crammed with jokes, but it’s not afraid to belt you one in the uncomfortables when it needs to.

Davies realises it perfectly – broad shots when necessary, as in the opening scenes. Camera tight in on faces or in two shots as and when, but roaming about freely, following whoever it needs to in order to make that script really work. Lovely subtle touches – it was only on this last viewing that I realised that there’s rain pouring down outside the back window of the Steptoe living room. Must have been hell to make it work in a studio, but it really does add to the atmosphere. It’s almost subliminal – you sort of take it in, and it makes you realise how foul it actually must be outside. Interested observers will surely be delighted to spot that the life-size stuffed black bear standing in the corner of the living room appears to be playing a trumpet this week.

The whole thing appears to be done in one, maybe two takes. I’m sure it wasn’t, but it flows so smoothly that it feels like a one-act play, delivered straight through. You’ll rarely see a script more perfectly realised. Unless you’re watching something directed by Bob Speirs. Or Ian McNaughton. Or Duncan Wood. Or David Croft. God, we were so lucky to have them. How many hours of great television did they leave us with?

So far as I’m concerned, this is as good as British television gets. It may be merely enough to call it a fine example of sitcom. It is, but it is also so much more. The repeat on Saturday may have been a tribute to John Howard Davies. It also serves as a tribute to a group of creators who gave us the best they had, every week. The best, working with the best, delivering the best. I’ll always be grateful.

Review – The Strange World of Gurney Slade

I am a walking television show. I can’t get away from ’em

You know what one of the best things is about having an unhealthy interest in archive television? There’s always something new to discover.  Even after all this time, things surface and – if they’re lucky – get dusted down and rediscovered by a whole new generation. A very special case-in-point is about to hit the DVD shelves.

Back in 1960, a six part series aired across the ITV networks. On the 22nd October  viewers were introduced to The Strange World of Gurney Slade. I think it’s safe to say that some were confused, others aggravated. For the first episode, it got a plum spot, just behind “77 Sunset Strip” in most regions…

all very nice. A good lead-in from Police Surgeon and Kay Starr there.

By the time the last episode aired six weeks later, it found itself in an altogether less glamourous position.

Now buried at the very back end of the evening’s schedules, with only the Epilogue following. A sad fate for a bright and shiny new series.

No more were ever made.  Star Anthony Newley went on to bigger things. Sid Green and Dick Hills – who wrote it (in close collaboration with the star, one suspects) went off to other work, ending up writing for Morecambe and Wise on their breakthrough ATV series. The show disappeared, never again to be seen by mortal eyes.

Well, not quite. Anneke Wills makes mention of the series briefly in the first volume of her autobiography. The first episode was aired during the TV Heaven series of archive repeats in the early nineties. Those of us who saw it then were bewildered, bamboozled and charmed in equal measure. I know I was. I hoped it might eventually resurface, and here it is. Not only rescued and dusted down, but looking magnificent on newly struck 35mm prints. I was bewildered, bamboozled and charmed all over again. I fell in love with this unassuming, quiet little six-part series. I suspect you will too.

  I must confess that I know very little about Anthony Newley, outside of what Anneke Wills mentions in her autobiography. I really only know the name when it crops up in comparison with David Bowie’s early recordings. He does indeed sound like The Dame, or thereabouts. If you want to know more about Newley, I can do no better than to point you in the direction of Cathode Ray Tube, who has written a very fine piece on Newley and how Gurney Slade fits in with the rest of his career.I came to this completely fresh, and Newley… well, he’s wonderful. Looking very like the young Peter Sellers sometime around “Down Among The Z Men” and resplendent for the entire six episodes in raincoat and dark trousers, he’s spellbinding. It’s difficult to take in the rest of what’s going on, because your eyes get drawn to him. He’s front and centre for almost every shot in the series, and he carries it superbly.

The first episode sets things up with economy. We see him as part of an awful suburban family. He sits in the corner not responding to anything else that’s going on. He’s addressed by the mother of the family, and is obviously expected to say something. He doesn’t, leading to mass whispering and prompts from the rest. Instead he gets up, walks out of the house, on the way establishing a beautiful little bit of business where he mimes along with Max Harris’s theme tune in a distracted manner – something he’ll do throughout the series. He’s off –  through the TV studio that houses this set and out into the street. He’s free from starring in someone else’s show, and is ready to star in his own. For the next six episodes, we are – literally – privy to his every thought. “Half an hour to save the world”, he muses about the perils of having your own tv show. “I’ll need at least forty minutes.”

We’re broken in relatively gently – Gurney sits on a park bench, having a conversation with himself. He ponders what the passersby are saying, has a chat with a dog (“What d’you think of Rin-Tin-Tin?” “Do me a favour….”). He invents a nonsense language and carries out an entire conversation in it with the next person he sees.

He goes to chuck a rock into the river and is stopped by the rock sternly telling him not to. He tries to nick a newspaper – which instantly holds him to account in the headlines. Eventually he falls into a reverie regarding the pretty little thing who is advertising Klean-O Vacuum Cleaners. Una Stubbs (for it is she) steps out of the poster, and they wander off into an extended silent film sequence in which all normal restrictions are lifted. You can pick the flowers. You can walk on the grass.

Soon enough, the reverie ends, leaving Gurney talking to himself and holding a vacuum cleaner. The girl’s gone, but the cleaner’s still there. How real was all this anyway? That’s just the first episode. Phew.

Episode two starts wonderfully, with a lengthy tracking shot. Newley is tiny in the distance, but begins to come closer and closer. Eventually when he fills the frame, he fires over his shoulder – “took you long enough to get here…” and we’re off again. This week, we’re treated to Gurney’s thoughts on love, marriage and the courtship ritual. He wants the girl of his dreams and suddenly there she is. He stops to talk to a young woman (Anneke Wills, here trading under the name of Annika). Once again, we’re privy to her thoughts. She’s mulling over the same things as he is, but from the female perspective. It’s fairly obvious that both sides are terrified by the whole ritual of finding a partner.

Before too long, we’re off again as Gurney meets a youngish family walking towards him. He stops for a chat with Frank (Edwin Richfield), persuading him that he may just have married the wrong woman. Frank wanders off to find the right woman, leaving an aggravated wife and kids. The wife decides she’s not having any of this, and goes off to find her own soulmate. Gurney is left with the children. We next find them on a rubbish dump, trying to construct the perfect mother out of bits of mannequin, before we finish off the episode back at the airfield with Gurney leading the camera in a gentleman’s excuse-me.

Episode three and Gurney’s still in the country. He’s pondering the work-ethic at length this week – or more precisely, just what an ant does and how much it can carry. Doesn’t he ever get tired of wandering around with the equivalent weight of a grand piano on his mandibles? Answers aren’t forthcoming, so it’s off on an extended ramble around a farmyard, where he encounters the rustic equivalent of the dog from the first episode, not to mention Hugh Paddick as a “wood-fairy”. I kid you not. Presumably Paddick would have been a big name at this point from his performances on “Beyond Our Ken”. Certainly some of his dialogue could have been ripped from that show’s “Charles and Rodney” sketches.

In the background of all this, it seems a classic love-triangle plot is being acted out, with husband, wife and lover all engaging in grand melodrama. Gurney of course, walks through all of this, blissfully unaware – even when a dastardly murder plot is concocted. He’s far too busy talking to a remarkably flirty cow (Fennella Fielding in full on cat’s-purr mode). It would appear that to the animals on the farm we’re the livestock and they’re the ones in charge. And who are we to argue?

A brief conversation with Napoleon (John Bennett) and we’re almost done for another week (“Je Suis Alright Jack”). While the farmer meets a messy demise off camera, Gurney decides that humanity is too much like hard work. Much better to join an ant colony…

Before we know it, we’re into episode four and if you thought things were odd before – you ain’t seen nothing yet. We find Gurney in court, awaiting prosecution. The charge – making a deliberately unfunny television programme. He’s going to be judged by… well, Lady Eleanor of famous myth – “the one who never laughs”. There’s a classic Newgate’s Knocker-type Axeman waiting for the final decision, and the court prosecutor – a hawk-like Douglas Wilmer) is champing at the bit.

The evidence is damning – a full three-to-four minute sequence of Gurney on a bus pondering on the counter-sunk screw. I find myself wondering if this had perhaps been made to show in the series itself, but was jettisoned in favour of something else, to be usefully recycled when the idea for this episode came around.

Gurney’s defendant Archie is no help. A faded music-hall comedian (the loud check patterned suit recalling Max Miller in his prime), most of his “evidence” is rejected for being “unsuitable”. Since Archie’s defence is nothing but a stream of very old jokes, perhaps the prosecutor is right.

Delightfully  the typical suburban family called to the witness stand is Frank and his brood from episode two. Although Frank quite liked it  his missus doesn’t, stating that such things are “bad for the children”. Such rubbish “shouldn’t be allowed on television”, proving that the more things change…

The jury’s no help either, being composed entirely of identical little chaps in flat-hat and muffler. I’m not going to give away what happens, but needless to say Queen Eleanor finally gets to laugh at something, while we stampede onwards into episode five.

Gurney is now in charge of a bunch of loveable little children, most of whom are hanging on his every word. The exception is one little lad who’s more interested in playing along with the series theme tune in exactly the way we’ve seen Newley do it over the last couple of weeks.

Seated in what appears to be the ruins of a greek amphitheatre, Gurney’s spinning yarns about the Magic Tinker who comes to grant a child’s every wish, and the wonderful world of “Gurneyland” which you can visit if you only dream hard enough. We are interrupted by a partying couple (Albert and Veronica, played by Bernie Winters and Coral Fairweather). Albert doesn’t fancy Veronica, at least not at first. But when Gurney wishes her to be more attractive simply by imagining it, Albert suddenly becomes interested. Sadly, she’s more unattainable than ever, seeing Albert simply as the typical lounge lizard, out for whatever girl he can get.

One small child professes himself to be bored, and when asked why he didn’t stop at home claims “There’s nothing on. Just some bloke telling a bunch of kids a story”. By this point if you’re thinking “The Prisoner!” you’re doing no more than I did. The unreliable central narrator is taken to massive lengths in that show’s “The Girl Who Was Death”, and large tracts of episodes four and six play out like “Once Upon A Time” and “Fall Out”. I’d be willing to bet that at least one person on the production team for The Prisoner saw this at some point. I’m not claiming for one minute that Patrick McGoohan nicked any of this – just that the idea may have percolated unconsciously in someone’s head.

Speaking of unconsciousness, the kids have all decided to visit Gurneyland (after a visit from Charles Lloyd Pack as the Magic Tinker made flesh). Everyone disappears – even Albert and Veronica – to take residence in Gurney’s head. Yes, Gurney’s brain has squatters. Things are getting a bit crowded in there – Gurney takes advice from himself. Or at least, one half of himself.

Got to love those devil-horns. He’s particularly devilish too, tempting Gurney with visions of filthy French Films and bars of low-repute. Following a brief interlude where Newley appears singing, he decides that his darker side is probably right (“I always thought I sung much better than that”). What’s needed to evict his unwelcome visitors (some of the children have now invited their mums and dads) is a bit of French filth. It should do the trick – it’ll put him out of his mind again and ought to restore normality to the inside of his head. By this point presumably any casual viewers loitering near the exits would have fled, which is a shame as episode six is a humdinger.

We find Gurney back in a television studio. Perched on a stool in the middle of a deserted set he’s being shown off to a bunch of money men by the studio boss. Apparently he’s a new model of performer, and unreliable. Has “a tendency to produce jokes that nobody understands”. Gurney knows that his time is up. He’s got 25 minutes to go before HE comes to pick him up. He finds himself accosted by most of the speaking-part characters from the series, most of whom are decidedly perturbed by the fact that not only are they for the chop in 25 minutes, but that Gurney hasn’t bothered to imagine them with more than surface characteristics. The girl from episode two doesn’t know how old she is. Albert has a glass in hand constantly, because that’s what passes for character in Gurney’s head. Frank and family don’t have a home to go to – Gurney never bothered to imagine what their home life might be like.

The prosecutor demands to know what is going to happen to them all – Gurney doesn’t have an answer. The director in the gallery decides that it’s party time. With the Tinker doing his routine, the wood-fairy (alarmingly regenerated from Hugh Paddick  into Graham Stark) is unimpressed.

Before this promising rumble can develop any further the party is interrupted by the man from the “characters bureau”, who’s come to reassign everyone. The Prosecutor’s off to Boyd QC. Annike’s off to a mucky French film (presumably, of the type that Gurney was obsessed by the week before). There’s a role in Emergency Ward Ten waiting for Frank’s missus. I wonder if it was one of the episodes that starred Paul Darrow as a handsome young intern?

Now that everyone’s been reassigned, the director has one last thing to do… and “cue… Anthony Newley”. Creator meets character, and… well, you’ll have to see for yourself, won’t you?

And that’s it. Six weeks of metaphysical wanderings and wonderings, and Gurney retreats back into the ether from whence he came. I’m so pleased that fifty years later, we’re all getting a chance to see him again. Pretty much everyone I know who’s seen it recently has been blown away by it – I am too. It’s a wonderful series – the way it folds around and back on itself becoming a self-reflexive comment on the nature of series television makes it more or less unique. It even carries it through to the series trailers, kindly provided by Network along with several lovely photo galleries.

If you decide to take a punt on this, I can guarantee you won’t be disappointed. It looks pristine, it sounds even better, and it’s got two talking dogs in it. How can you refuse? Just buy it. Your life will become better as a result.

Now, about those counter-sunk screws…

The Strange World of Gurney Slade is available from Monday 15th August.

“This is a very poor cross-examination, I must say”

Who is the greatest TV interviewer of all time?

Actually, let’s bring it down a little. Doubtless there are some greats from the USA, Johnny Carson for a start. Held a place at the heart of the American consciousness for generations. Jack Paar, maybe? Out of the current crop, perhaps Keith Olbermann for his self righteous anger, and total fearlessness – or Jon Stewart for his relentless skewering of people too stupid to spot that he’s working in character and there’s actually a piercing brain behind that façade? Unfortunately, I’m not qualified to judge since I haven’t seen enough of them.

So. The greatest British TV interviewer.

Lots of possibles of course. Paxman? He’s certainly a great interviewer. His interview with George Galloway would be worth seeing again. And his demolition of Michael “Threaten to overrule” Howard is a great TV moment.

But the greatest? I don’t think so. There’s too much of a “showman” element there, almost like he’s destroying peoples’ arguments for fun. Wonderful as he is, there’s someone out there who – on his day – could take on the best (or worst) and win.

No, to illustrate my first choice, we have to look at a moment where an interviewer was so astonished by the bare-faced cheek of his subject that it threatened to boil over. For real.

Emil Savundra is now pretty much forgotten by the world. In the 1960s he was VERY well-known – notoriously so –  as a swindler. He formed an insurance company, raked in the money from the public because the premiums were so low. By the time the claims started coming in he had quit the company, with a rather large sum of money in his back pocket. This rather large sum was of course the money that was expected to pay the claimants. He claimed that he had no moral or legal obligation to the people who had lost out as he was no longer involved with the company.

Fast forward to an episode of The Frost Programme. This was an odd concoction – one third variety, one third silly jokes, and one third incisive interview with topical figures. David Frost makes a comment about Savundra in an episode. Savundra promptly phones the production office to complain. While he’s on the phone David Frost tells the person taking the call to ask him to appear the next week. Rather amazingly, Savundra agrees.

And so the scene is set for one of the greatest moments in television I have ever seen.

Frost is masterful here. He lays out the facts for the viewers and audience. He shares a mild joke or two with Savundra, putting him at ease. For more or less the first seven minutes, absolutely nothing happens, except Frost delivering what we need to know in a controlled monotone, interspersed with shots of Savundra looking smug. And then, by degrees, Frost starts to heat things up.

I’m of the opinion that Savundra had no idea what he was letting himself in for. He obviously thinks  that he can win this argument easily, and it’s his arrogance that destroys him. By labelling the audience “peasants” (“I came here to match swords with the best swordsman in England”) he gives Frost the motive to go to town on him. That’s pretty much the first moment that Frost shows his teeth – “I’m afraid these people are not peasants, they’re the ones who gave you your money”, he mutters, without looking up from his notes. He gets a round of applause for that one.

Savundra begins to realise that this is not going to go his way. He makes a few feeble jokes, labelling the Sunday Times as “The Sunday Swines”, in reference to the fact that they had been harbouring dark suspicions about him before Frost ever got at him. Frost swats that aside like it was a fly, at all times his eyes flicking between Savundra and the audience. Reading Savundra, reading the audience, gauging the moment to pull his masterstroke. There’s some banter about Savundra’s suspected and oh-so-very-convenient heart attack which got him out of a court appearance not long before that, and a very pointed comment about legal action. Frost parries with a rather marvellous “that’s the thing that worries me about you. It’s all fun to you, isn’t it?” So rarely do you see someone being so personal in a one-to-one interview.

You can see the rage building in Frost. And you can see how wonderful an interviewer he can be. He channels that rage, and uses it to his advantage. When the moment comes, he takes Savundra from the interview area and leads him over to a harshly lit spot right in front of the audience. Which just happens to be full of people whose money he’s trousered. Savundra perches on a stool, desperately uncomfortable, with a look in his face that says “how the hell do I get out of this?”

And here’s the thing – Frost lets the people do the work for him. They tell their stories (one woman in particular is heartbreaking, her voice trembling on the verge of losing composure as she recounts the tale of losing her husband, nearly dying herself and getting a bounced check when what she needed was the support to pick herself up and carry on). Frost listens. Savundra continues to deny all responsibility, legally or morally, and gets into a swamp of argument regarding the fact that it’s all the fault of someone he hired to run the company.

Bang. That’s the moment Frost’s been waiting for – he brings up ultimate responsibility. “How can you not been aware of the actions of an employee of your company? You have either got to be stupid, or dishonest. Which is it?” Savundra tries exactly the same tactic that Michael Howard would twenty years later, but Frost’s having none of it. He’s right into his victim’s face, repeating “Which? Which? Which?” There’s a look of cold fury about Frost. Hatred, even. At one point he lets Savundra off the leash for about a minute and just stands there, staring as if he’s looking at something he’s scraped off his shoe. I swear if given the chance, he’d flatten him. He’s that close to losing control. Somewhere around here, there’s a cut to the audience, including a delighted looking Eric Idle – as part of the writing team, he was around anyway. He’s watching one of the monitors with a look on his face that says he knows what he’s watching is one-in-a-million.

Savundra loses control, his voice raising higher and higher as he ticks off a list of points which he thinks absolve him of all guilt. And in a masterful moment, we see that Frost isn’t actually giving him his full attention. Or at least he is, but he’s not letting Savundra see that. What he’s actually doing is watching his floor manager, who’s telling him how long there is to the end of the show. He gives an almost imperceptible acknowledgment, then it’s in for the kill.

Somehow, Frost manoeuvres the conversation round again. He leads Savundra up to a point where he claims absolutely no moral responsibility to anyone, then turns to the camera.

“Well, ladies and gentlemen – it’s not really the way to end the series, but it’s the end of the series. Thank you and goodnight.”

He then stalks off camera right, leaving Savundra high and dry, gaping in mid sentence. There’s a single, very British cry of “Well done, Frostie!” from the audience, taken up by several others, and a swell of applause over the end credits. Applause? They should have carried him through the streets.

Twenty three minutes is all it takes to get a total bastard from a point of utter complacency to admitting pretty much everything. Savundra remains unrepentant, but he’s been damned by his own words. It took Frost considerably longer to get Tricky Dicky to the same point, and after that, he became a sort of cuddly establishment teddy bear. Remember him this way.

It’s alright. I’ve had a good life. I’m nearly twelve.

Spoilers. Obviously. If you’ve not seen this week’s Doctor Who, don’t say you weren’t warned….

Whoof. And whoof, again. Here we are at the halfway mark of this season’s Doctor Who, and my head feels as if it’s come unglued. A Good Man Goes To War (BBC1, Sat) was an epic and a half. Even the continuity announcer was bigging it up before the damn thing had even started.

It’s funny, but usually at this point we’re looking at the season so far and wondering how the next six weeks are going to develop. Because of the change in broadcast schedule this year this feels more like a finale. Difficult to know where the hell we’re going to go from here.

Following two weeks worth of scurrying around corridors and closed sets, this week Doctor Who opened right up and played it like Star Wars. Huge hangars. Spaceships everywhere. People scurrying hither and yon. And erm, a Roman Centurion, walking into the middle of a Cyberman lair. Not Cybusmen, you’ll note, but Cybermen. I’m quietly pleased about that, for reasons which escape me.

I can’t help but think that Arthur Darvill won himself a whole legion (sorry) of fans with his remarkable first appearance this week. Delivering a message from The Doctor, and a question from himself, it was merely the start of a relentless series of quick-cut scenes, introducing friends old and new.

Steven Moffat did this to us last year with The Pandorica Opens, with that opening sequence of returnees from previous episodes. He was at it again here and I can honestly say he’s the only one who could get away with it. The whole idea of Captain Avery and his crew showing up again, not to mention “Broadsword and Danny Boy” was so gleefully gratuitous – the only thing to do was to just sit back, go with it and cheer. A lot. I can’t help but think the only reason why the Spitfires in Space were back at all was because The Mill hadn’t deleted the animation cycle from their doubtlessly epic-sized hard-drives. I didn’t mind though.Why quibble when you’re having this much fun?

Whether deliberate or not, large chunks of this week’s episode played out like a tribute to the old Eighties Marvel Comics DW strips. As The Doctor started to gather his army together I couldn’t help but be put in mind of certain strips in particular – the Kane/Abel/Frobisher/Peri team-up from the Sixth Doctor’s run for a start.

It was lovely to see Doctor Who doing what it does best – suggesting a whole universe of adventures we’ve yet to see, or may never actually witness. Given that Moffat’s showrunner on “Sherlock”, it’s obvious he’s a fan of the old “tale which the world is not yet ready to hear” routine. With the introduction of a whole slew of characters we’ve never seen before – all with their own histories –  we were a mere step away from finally hearing of the Politician, the Lighthouse Keeper and the Trained Cormorant. Things like this enrich Doctor Who so much, the implication that outside of the bounds of the series stories are going on all over the place which we’re occasionally able to dip into.

Just how did Strax end up being an unwilling Sontaran nurse? Just what do you have to do to dishonour an entire Clone Hive to that extent? Just how long have Madame Vastra and Jenny been lurking in Victorian London, solving the unsolvable? What sort of a hold did The Doctor have over Dorium that enabled him to call in that favour so easily? It’s fun to speculate.

Rather fantastically, we even got the rudest joke to sneak onto primetime Doctor Who since the “Master’s Beard” routine in Time Crash. I didn’t pick it up until the second screening today, but just watch the scene where Madame Vastra flicks out her incredibly long tongue to disarm the guard. And then just look at the expression on Jenny’s face. Saucy isn’t the word.

So pleased to see Neve MacIntosh this week. I had problems with her character(s) in the Silurian Two-Parter last year, but that was entirely down to the nonsense she was forced to spout. This time out she was superb – every inch the Victorian Adventuress, and a fine, fine foil for The Doctor. The scene where she forces him to actually work things out from first principles until he realises just when Amy and Rory’s baby might have been conceived was so wonderfully played, helped by Simon Fisher-Becker’s “come on… take your time… you’re getting there” reactions in the background. It’s a nice touch, that our hero can be so worldly wise about so many things, but so… well, squeamish about others.

Little beautiful moments abounded in amongst all the thunder and flash. The Doctor’s cot. The fact that he speaks Baby (and Melody seems to disapprove of the bow-tie as well, much to his mild annoyance). Amy’s diabolical rudeness to Lorna softening into the realisation that here in the middle of the enemy lair is someone who wants nothing more than to do a simple, gentle kindness for her.

Strax being quite prepared to deliver his gallons of lactic fluid if called for, while the Doctor apologises to Melody for everyone getting it wrong. River suddenly realising that if it’s Demon’s Run, she can’t get involved immediately and painfully, sorrowfully refusing Rory’s request. Even the look on little Toby’s face as the lift opens to reveal Captain Avery in what must be the shortest cameo in Doctor Who history.

While all this madness is going on The Eleventh Doctor takes a leaf out of his Ninth self’s book, walking straight into the enemy lair to rescue his best mate. The fact that he does it, and then cocks it up spectacularly is almost by the by. It’s like Steven Moffat took a look at David Tennant’s first season, with all of it’s “you’re having tremendous fun, but you’ll pay the price for it in the end”, and went “yep. That’s all very well. But how about if we take that idea, tweak it slightly, and do *this* instead?”

When Madame Kovarian revealed that she’d hoodwinked the Doctor twice – by the same method – I actually shouted out loud with the realisation of what was about to happen. When it did happen, and little Melody Pond disintegrated into a pile of Flesh, I shouted again. Don’t you love it when tv shows do that? When you think you’re on top of things, and then you realise you’re not? Well, I wasn’t, anyway. Frances Barber’s deliciously old-school performance was just what was needed. JN-T would have killed to cast her as The Rani, if Kate O Mara hadn’t got there first.

Then before we knew it we were into the home strait. The reveal we’ve been waiting for since “Forest of the Dead” (and doesn’t that seem like a lifetime ago)? Did it disappoint? No, I don’t think so. I’d more or less dismissed the idea that River was The Doctor’s Mother (I’m still thinking Claire Bloom might have had something to with that, and besides which that would have thrown up all sorts of horrible Star Wars retcon problems a la Luke and Leia). I’d be lying if I said the thought of River and the Child from the first episodes this year being connected hadn’t crossed my mind, but somehow the dots just failed to connect for me.

And yet, as with last year, the reveal was there. Hiding in plain sight all along thanks to a thrown away line from Idris in “The Doctor’s Wife”. We watched all seven episodes back to back this afternoon and that moment suddenly leapt out at us. I just assumed it was a prediction that River would be back at some point soon. Never did I expect it to actually be the key to the whole secret.

The revelation though – has just added more layers of intrigue. If River and The Doctor are destined to be romantically involved, does that make Rory and Amy the The Doctor’s parents-in-law? Is The Doctor going to go off and rescue little Melody, then deposit her offscreen in the fifty first century so she can grow up to become River in the appropriate timeline? Given that Rory is at least 800 years older than The Doctor, shouldn’t his son-in-law be showing him a bit more respect?

And just where is The Doctor going to end up? Are we in for a full episode without Rory and Amy shortly? Given that The Doctor’s skipped off to save Melody, leaving Amy, River and Rory to deal with a world of emotional fallout, where do we go from here? Can Madame Vastra and Jenny have their own series, please? While we’re at it, just whose skeletal hand is that hanging on to the dying sonic screwdriver?

Some of these questions may or may not be answered in a few month’s time, when we follow up the post-credits invitation, so kindly laid out by the BBC. “Let’s Kill Hitler”, indeed. Like I said at the top, “Whoof”. As soon as we’ve all got our breaths back again, let’s do it all again. Don’t mind if I do.

You know, I’m starting to get a sense of how impressive it is to hang out with me

Well, I was right. Much to my astonishment, I was right. I said in last week’s review of Doctor Who that there was something not quite right with Mrs Amelia Pond, something slightly off. Turns out that for once I was right on the money. The final five minutes of The Almost People (Sat, BBC1) were dizzying, turning everything we thought we knew about this season completely topsy-turvy. Before we got there though, a certain amount of unfinished business from last week remained to be cleared up. Did part two of Matthew Graham’s story build on the promise of the first week? I’ll say it did.

I was having a chat with a couple of mates last week, and one of them expressed the opinion that Doctor Who is no longer kid-friendly – that it’s more for adults than it is for children now. I sort of agree with that, except I think that Steven Moffat and friends are now pitching directly at the same audience that Hinchcliffe and Holmes were – the (for want of a better word) “intelligent” thirteen year olds and up. Nowt wrong with that, and there were definitely moments this week that might well have been upsetting for the younger viewer.

Jennifer-Ganger noshing down on Buzzer, the pile of discarded ganger prototypes, the hall of accusing eyes (“always the last to go”) – all striking imagery, all strong stuff  and all the sort of thing which will haunt the memory for years to come (well, with the exception of Jennifer and Buzzer, which brought back unfortunate flashes of The Lazarus Experiment) . This week was heavy on the atmosphere (Director Julian Simpson taking full advantage of the beautiful monastery location and filling the darkened corridors full of mist which diffused the light beauftifully). I know that the series has taken a serious hit in the budget this last couple of years, but you wouldn’t know it to watch this. Doctor Who has never looked better than it does now. The odd dodgy bit of CGI aside (and we didn’t *need* those ganger-monsters, the episode was working perfectly well without them), this is a show that looks lush, classy and is obviously made with love and care. Quite right too.

All of the atmospheric direction in the world means nothing if there isn’t something interesting going on to keep you watching, and this week we had all sorts. The most obviously showy aspect was of course, the Matt Smith double-act. Ganger-Doctor certainly made the most of his first appearance – spouting lines from his predecessors like there was no tomorrow (and indeed, speaking in Tom Baker’s voice, which was unexpected and rather heart-warming). As he adapted to suddenly becoming the Last of the Time Lords he sprang into high gear, becoming (if such a thing were possible) – even more hyperactive than the Eleventh Doctor normally is. Finishing each other’s sentences, interrupting each other, interrupting themselves – it was impossible to take your eyes off them (I especially liked the continuation of the ongoing attempt to find a catch-phrase that would stick. This week the candidate was “Yowza”, which obviously didn’t take on. If only his previous incarnation had shown the same rigour – we’d have been spared the pain of “Allon-Sy” and “Ho-yes”).

What was fascinating this week was the sudden reappearance of the old, manipulative Doctor. The Second Doctor had his moments, maneuvering The Daleks into their final destruction then quietly directing events on Telos to his own ends. The Seventh was obviously the player of Twister on a Thousand Mats. The devious, planning Doctor’s been in remission for a few incarnations now, but here we had the Doctors swapping around in order to test Amy. The scene in which Amy was grabbed by the throat with The Doctor gasping “Why? Why? Why?” into her face was gripping in so many ways – to be fair, if someone had done that to me I’d have been a bit careful around them afterwards, but it was so sudden, so shocking. If the Flesh is identical in every aspect to the original, does this mean that The Elveneth Doctor carries these darker tendencies as well? It would appear so, given how the episode panned out.

As with last week, the Saturday evening audience were presented with some strong meat to chew on – ethical questions of what it means to be human, how we behave to others and how we present ourselves. Doctor Who’s always drawn on other influences, and it was obvious that Jennifer-Ganger owes a huge debt to Mary Shelley, with the rampaging ego-monster of Frankenstein not only turning on the Creator, but demanding the right to exist themselves. For a while it even looked like she’d snared herself a mate – something which the original Frankenstein demanded but never quite managed. Thankfully for Rory, the veil was drawn from his eyes just in time. Poor old Rory – a good man manipulated to the advantage of others. His scene when he looks through the window at the others, mouthing “I’m sorry”, repeatedly – you can tell that just for that moment he hates himself for having been taken in so easily.

I could really have done without the anvil-clanging big message of the week – as with the first episode, I’d sort of worked out that there were monsters on both sides without them actually using the line “Who are the real monsters here?” Just for a moment I was expecting Lee and Herring to wander in –

“But Who is the real monster, Stu? Is it me, who exploits the Flesh for his own corrupted ends, with no thought of how they may be feeling? Or is it the businessman… in his suit and tie?”

“Erm, it’s actually the first one I think, Rich…”

What was fascinating about ths week was the way that the older the Gangers got, the more they seemed to exhibit the good side of humanity. Ganger-Cleves turned out to be a thoroughly good egg in the end, as did Jimmy. Once “real” Jimmy gets a chestful of acid, it’s up to Ganger-Jimmy to take over and become the father he felt that he already was. By all appearances he’s well and truly up to the job. Cleaves (in either incarnation) comported herself with dignity and grace, a million miles away from the twitchy, nervous maniac of last week. The revelation of the brain-clot which was carried by both versions was a nice twist – if you take on the characteristics of a human, you take on all their frailties and weeknesses as well and it’s to Raquel Cassidy’s credit that she managed to dial back her performance to the point where by the end of the episode I was rooting for them both to survive.

This being modern Doctor Who of course, we’re big on heroic sacrifice and the episode came to a conclusion with not one, not two, but three characters biting the big one to save everyone else. In at least one character’s case I’m absolutely certain we haven’t seen the last of ’em. But is it far too easy to assume that was Ganger-Doctor we saw being gunned down at the start of the season? The way the plotting this year’s gone, I’m not at all sure.

And then… that last scene. After two entire episodes hammering home the fundamental similarities between the Flesh and real humans (even going as far as dropping two of the cast off at Weyland-Yutani sorry, Morpeth-Jetsan to argue that very point), suddenly we have an unsympathetic Doctor, totally willing to kill Ganger-Amy on the spot. Not only that, but the revelation rocks Rory’s world to the foundations as well, and he actively sides with the Doctor – stepping away and leaving Ganger-Amy to face her death completely alone. The moment she said she was really scared, my heart went out to her, and it was shocking to see the coldness in the normally warm and lively Eleventh Doctor’s eyes. It might have made more sense, surely, to keep Ganger-Amy around? As a direct link to the real Amy (as evidenced by her continuing Frances Barber visions, it was obvious that Amy’s actual experiences kept on bleeding through into the consciousness of Ganger-Amy), she might have provided vital assistance in finding the “real” version. But no – there’s the Doctor, gunning down someone for whose very right to exist he’d been fighting for two full episodes. Didn’t ring true. I still don’t think we’re done with this particular plot. Given how we’re only six episodes in there’s lots of time to explore this further. I just hope they do, because I don’t want to think of The Doctor as someone who pays lip-service to noble ideals without carrying them through. That said, this is a man who pressed the button which destroyed his entire race, so who knows what he’s capable of?

So… were does that leave us? Pregnant Amy “ready to pop” (now there’s a line I never thought I’d hear in Doctor Who). The Doctor, on the warpath. Rory, no doubt furious and desperate to find his wife (and bear in mind that wherever she is, he says he knows). Where is Amy? Is this something to do with The Silence, or does it hark back to something from last year (I’m hearing fan theories tonight that a rewatch of The Big Bang might shed some light)? Given that next week sees the return of The Arch Plotter himself, The Grand Moff… who can say?

We’ve got a “game-changing cliffhanger” to come, so I don’t expect everything to be answered. I just know that the title of next week’s episode – “A Good Man Goes To War” – carries infinite promise. I suspect we’re off into areas that Doctor Who has never explored before. Everything I thought I knew about this series has been upended several times already this year, and I’m completely wrong-footed. Good. Long may they continue to confound my expectations.