2011

As is usual with the Reviews in the Trees, personal stuff is mostly left out, so losses, achievements and events amongst family and friends will not appear here.  Also, this quick-and-dirty retrospective cannot equal Charlie Brooker's  magisterial review of last year just shown on TV.

I began the year reading the excellent Bill Bryson book on Shakespeare. This is very good not least because he tries hard not to put in any speculation that isn’t rigorously supported by the historical record. Hence, also, a rarity.

Three other books I enjoyed were

• Graven with Diamonds by Nicola Shulman - about Sir Thomas Wyatt, his poetry, and mostly about his love lyrics. Although the core argument, that these had been neglected in the past, doesn’t really hold water, it was good to see a big bold book about Wyatt be favourably reviewed.
• The Idea of Justice by Amartya Sen. He is very good on democracy as a complex set of attitudes and processes, not just an opportunity every few years to vote for one’s leader(s).
• The Disappearing Spoon: and Other True Tales of Madness, Love and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements by Sam Kean.  I wasn't totally won over by how this book is organised, but the sories were good.

Three exhibitions were:

• The Steve Bell retrospective at the Cartoon Museum,
• The British Library exhibition of (mostly) British science fiction, “Out of this World.” and
• The Leonardo show at the National Gallery (which we just managed to get tickets for, and went to see on the last day of 2011).

And three shows:

• Ornette Coleman - playing live at the Royal Festical Hall
• Noises Off - at the Old Vic, and
• Ruddigore - at the Barbican

On TV, the usual suspects dominated (eg Outnumbered, Rev and Doctor Who), plus, perhaps strangely, Mark Cousins' The Story of Film, which became unmissable each Sunday evening.

We went to France to avoid the Royal Wedding, and then later to Paris and Berlin for hols.

As lots of commentators have said, there was an awful lot of news in 2011.  The Japanese Tsunami and Nuclear fires, the Arab Spring, the Libyan uprising and death of Gaddafi. Obama got Osama, Hackergate and the closing of the News of the World (well done, The Guardian!), Riots in English towns and cities (which we missed), Lansley (tosser!)'s pause and Cameron's non-veto.  The Euro problems. And Private Eye made it to 50 (years) while The Sky at Night made it to 700 (shows)..

Quite a few rich and/or famous people seem to have died in the year.   Elisabeth (Sarah-Jane Smith) Sladen died of cancer in April at the relatively young age of 65 (63 elsewhere). She was probably most people’s favourite companion, and one of the few actors to work with several Doctors.   Gerry Rafferty, Peter Yates, Vaclav Havel, Henry Cooper (the great smelly brute) and Steve Jobs (who showed through his life that you can make huge amounts of money even if you have a crappy product, if you get the marketing right and make it shiny-shiny).    

Gilbert Adair, Christopher Logue, Christa Wolf, John Barry, Dick King-Smith, Joanna Russ, Pete Postlethwaite, January: Susannah York (a few months after I was her in a play in the West End), Elizabeth Taylor, Sidney Lumet, Janet Brown, Gil Scott-Heron, Peter Falk, Ken Olsen (DEC), Brian Haw and Eddie Stobart.   N. F. Simpson, Ken Russell, Anne McCaffery, Stan Barstow, David Croft, Jimmy Saville, Basil D’Oliveira and Dulcie Gray.  Perhaps too many.

Oh, and I saw a lot of trees...

Well done!

Hmmm... The various miserablist comedies and other shows I've been praising in these scribblings seem to have done rather well at the Baftas the other night.  Let's see:-

Best Female Performance in a Comedy Role:  Jo Brand won for "Getting On"  Hurrah! a reasonably local win!  and Dawn French was nominated for "Roger and Val Have Just Got In" (no nomination for Alfred Molina in the Male equivalent, unfortunately - I raved over his performance).
(And we should also mention Katherine Parkinson's nomination for "The IT Crowd")

Male Performance in a Comedy Role: Well, it was won by Steve Coogan, bizarrely, but there were nominations for James Buckley from "The Inbetweeners" and Tom Hollander for "Rev"

Situation Comedy  was won by "Rev".  Hurrah!  Another local!

Lauren Socha won Best Supporting Actress for "Misfits"

"Being Human" and "Misfits" were nominated for Best Drama Series.

Oh, and the popular YouTube audience award went to "The Only Way is Essex" (sorry...).

But there were also several other nominations and awards that I thought were very well deserved, which I ought to mention:-

Leading Actor: Daniel Rigby for "Eric and Ernie" (that was very fine work. It was on over Christmas. Victoria Wood produced it and played Eric's mum.  I watched it twice).

Leading Actress:  Vicky McClure for "This Is England ’86"    (and Johnny Harris was nominated for the Supporting Actor role)

Lots of nominations for "Sherlock" and "Dr Who," of course - and Martin Freeman duly won Best Supporting Actor, while "Sherlock" won for Best Drama Series.

And both Lynda Baron and Jessie Wallace received nominations as Best Supporting Actress for "The Road to Coronation Street" -which was hugely excellent telly and deservedly won the Single Drama award.   I watched that twice as well.     "Eric and Ernie" was also nominated for that one.

So all in all, a pretty good year.  I've missed out lots of other productions I didn't much care for, but today I'd just like to celebrate the good stuff.  

Defined, for today at least, as the stuff I liked......

Back out East

The peculiar am-dram staging gives everything the atmosphere of a heavily airbrushed school play, with Mike Leigh's technique applied to shop dummies.
It's the oddest combination since John Lydon advertised butter.
Tonight, some very bronze women ponder their interest in some heavily caramelised men and the caramelised men punch each other's arms playfully as the bronze women look each other up and down.

(Guardian TV Guide)

Yes, The Only Was is Essex is indeed back on our tellies.

Nobody expects...

This is turning into the Spanish Inquisition sketch.  When I wrote about  Rev and all those other wonderful miserabilist/low-key shows, I thought I'd been fairly complete. 

Clearly not. 

In addition to The Great Outdoors I'd also missed Outnumbered - a fine episode of which was on last night and successfully included Hugh Denis's raptor impersonation(which I'd previously seen him do when warming up for The Now Show).

So what else did I miss?

The Great Outdoors

When I wrote in December to praise a certain group of new comedies and other shows, I somehow missed out The Great Outdoors.  There were only three episodes, and it was consigned to BBC4, but there was a certain wonder to it. I liked it a lot.  The cast includes:

- Ruth Jones (from Gavin and Stacey)
- Mark Heap (Alan Statham in Green Wing)
- Katherine Parkinson (from The IT Crowd) and
- Joe Tracini (from Coming of Age)

so it comes with a certain pedigree.

This minor gem has just started being repeated on BBC2, but now finds itself up against the might of Channel 4's attempt at the TW3 crown, Ten O'Clock Live - broadcast at the same time.  Which does seem a little unfair. 

Still, thank goodness for the i-Player.  Otherwise I'd have had to make a hard choice...

Nunhead Hollander

Blimey...
When I posted about Rev last month, I didn't know Tom Hollander was as local as this...

From Rev to Essex

Another Saturday, another inadvertently listened-to Home Truths. At least today’s was fronted up by the Reverend Richard Coles (ex Bronski Beat and the Communards - far better than Fi Glover – see my previous on that topic), and Tom Hollander was the studio guest. He played baddie Cutler Beckett in Pirates of the Caribbean, but more recently was the Rev in  Rev.

I didn’t see that much of Rev, but what I saw impressed me mightily – and I was please to hear from the radio that Rev Series 2 is on the way. But hearing him on the radio caused me to reflect on the amount of very high-quality TV we are getting at the moment.

I don’t mean the big headline-grabbing celeb stuff like X-Factor, Strictly and so forth. I mean the other stuff. The hard-to-properly-characterise stuff.

Misfits has had an awful lot of praise, as has the Inbetweeners, (not the Goodies’ song). But I would also point at Getting On, Roger and Val Have Just Got In, … and Rev. They all seem to feed from a strand of ‘realist’ ‘comedy’, like The Office and The Royle Family, but take it to a new level of both subtlety and rigour. Being Human may also fit in to the same group.

Of these, perhaps the one that was least well received was Roger and Val… - which I thought remarkably good, to be honest. It may have been that viewers wanted to see fat funny lady Dawn French being a fat funny lady rather than something more nuanced – however what made it so good for me was that Roger was played by Alfred Molina. (Kenneth Halliwell in Prick Up Your Ears and Doc Ock in Spiderman 2 – according to an uncited reference in Wikipedia he is the only character to have three Lego minifigs modelled after him). He can stand still and breath silently in a scene and still be the only person you want, intensely, to watch – you can see French visibly improve as she works with him. Marvellous stuff.

And yet, it may also be that my judgement is growing impaired with age.

It isn’t just that I have a sneaking and impossible-to-justify preference for Coming of Age over the Inbetweeners. No, that may be an aberration and somewhat alarming, but taste and enjoyment don't always have to coincide. Or Balamorey! As DK would put it.

This is far worse.

I’ve become hooked on The Only Way Is Essex (on ITV2. ITV2?!?).

Now this is simple and silly and people keep telling me that I’m letting my brain rot by watching it.

And yet, and yet.

Strange bronzed people in odd clothes, challenging and romancing each other in such odd language - so formal and stilted and banal, all at the same time. If only to defend my reputation I’ve resorted to telling people it has something in common with classical Greek drama – read in translation, at least.

And I almost believe it.  The behaviour and speeches conform to a code I don’t understand and have no access to. It is so bizarre and outlandish in performance that I end up helplessly diverted and horribly fascinated by the strange aliens on display.

Maybe I need help on this one...