Giselle (27/05/11, The Grand, Leeds)

We had never seen a 'proper' ballet before, so we picked Giselle. Previously we'd seen a ballet/dance version of Dracula at the West Yorkshire Playhouse that didn't blow me away, and a modern dance interpretation of The Picture of Dorian Gray in Edinburgh, which was intriguing and hot. Giselle conforms more to what I think a ballet is. The closest I've come to such previously would be watching the excellent Black Swan, and the musical Billy Elliott.

Coming off a week of a head cold and sat in an over-warm theatre (the ice cream seller told me that the heat's turned up for the benefit of the dancers) meant that I found my lids drooping on occasion during the first act and so I may not have been in the best condition for judging what I saw. However, I have determined that I don't think ballet is for me. It feels like ballet is a world that you really have to know, that isn't accessible to people like me who dip in with no background knowledge. If I hadn't read the act synopses in the programme beforehand I would not have been able to follow all that was going on, particularly in the second act. 

I think I need my drama and plot articulating, either through lines of dialogue or song lyrics, as I find it hard to interpret the mime of ballet. Oh it all looked very pretty and the dancing appeared excellent (though I have no frame of reference to say otherwise) but it all felt a bit like showing off. I thought well fair enough you can dance beautifully, but so what, what does that do to further to story? My emotions weren't stirred as I was either trying to figure out who was who and what they were doing or I was ignorant of what I was supposed to be feeling. The live music, for which the Grand takes out the first 3 rows of stalls and employs a much larger orchestra than normal, was brilliant, and I enjoyed the second act's dancing if not the story. The tale of Giselle - she falls for a nobleman dressed as a peasant (why he's dressed like this is unknown) who is betrothed to another, when she finds out she dies of a broken heart, and then rises from the grave to dance with him, for some reason - is tragic when written down but becomes fairly inconsequential when spun out into over-long dances. I will stick to the drama of Black Swan in future I think.

Maggie: Her Fatal Legacy (John Sergeant, 2005)

Being born in 1984 I spent my youngest years growing up in Margaret Thatcher's Britain, but being so young I knew little of this. As I've grown older most of the stuff I hear about Thatcher is overwhelmingly negative - particularly in Gay Times and Attitude which hold her to account for Section 28. Outside of the gay sphere, the Falklands, miners and the poll tax are some of Thatcher's less well remembered legacies. I've been intrigued about what kept her in power from 1979 to 1990 if she was so terrible, and so when browsing in a bookshop one day I came across John Sergeant's book, Maggie. A fan of Sergeant's wit from his stints on Have I Got News For You, I decided to give the book a go, and having just whizzed through it on a week off work full of cold, I've come out quite a bit wiser about Thatcher's fall from grace and her political legacy, if not much more the wiser about her decade long appeal to voters. 

Sergeant writes with the same gentle humour and intelligence as he demonstrates on TV (Strictly Come Dancing notwithstanding), and he conveys some very dry and boring seeming political concepts in an understandable and interesting manner - his descriptions of the Exchange Rate Mechanism and the internal workings of Conservative party leadership elections could have been snore-fests in lesser hands, but his experience of broadcast news journalism and ability to explain political processes in 30 second sound bites comes in hand. His access to members of then current and previous government ministers, including John Major and Tony Blair, and his presence at many of the events he discusses means that he speaks with authority. 

The book discusses the last few years of Thatcher's 'reign' and how she was ousted by her own party, and then how she managed to play a part, however unwittingly, in the downfall of the Conservative party and Major's subsequent government, leading to an appalling result for them at the 1997 election. This 'fatal legecy' Sergeant argues continued within the party in opposition as pro-European and Euro-sceptic factions fell out, causing disunity and distrust by the British public. It is clear that Sergeant holds Thatcher in high regard in terms of the impact and power she held and the influence she continued to have on politics long after she ceased to be PM, but this is no sycophantic treatise, rather it's a skillful, balanced look at how Thatcher and the myth of Maggie came to influence the political landscape of the 1990's and 2000's. A fascinating read that has helped with my political understanding immeasurably. 

The Cleveland Show: Season 2 (2010-11)

I found the second season of The Cleveland Show to be funnier and more enjoyable that the first, mostly I think because there was a lack of scatological humour and many more injokes and generally oddness. It's the sort of series you watch and laugh all the way through and then forget what it was about a short while later (maybe that's just me). 

This season's most memorable bit that had me laughing and singing it for days later was Cleveland's belligerent father singing 'Your face looks like a butt-crack' to his son, to the tune of We Like To Party. It's not big, it's not clever, but it sure as hell tickled me. So funny was it that rather than talk more about the series, I'll just post this video:

ER: Season 1 (1994-95)

I first sat down to watch the extended pilot episode of ER and a couple of others back when I was at uni. I liked it but for some reason I didn't go back - I watched a lot of CSI and West Wing instead. It's taken me more than a couple of months to watch all of the first season, not because I didn't enjoy it, more for time constraints. The pedigree of Michael Crichton and John Wells (who went on to The West Wing) and the presence of George Clooney made me want to revisit the show, and I also wanted to watch something that wasn't science fiction, crime or very modern. 

As the series went on I found ER to be utterly enthralling, and the primary reason is the investment the series and thus I made in the characters. The pulse-pounding, heart-stopping pace of the medical drama was pretty gripping too, with bravura camera work that made you really feel the tension of the life and death drama of an emergency room. Casualty eat your heart out. Noah Wyle's med student John Carter is the viewer's window into this world, and it was good to see him grow and develop his medical knowledge over the series, while grumpy Dr Benton (Eriq La Salle) mellowed, partly as the result of his mother's decline and death. Mark (Anthony Edwards) had marital troubles, and Susan (Sherry Stringfield) had to deal with her irritating leech of a sister. George Clooney's Dr Ross mostly got to be swoonsome and screwed up relationships because of it, and mooned over betrothed Nurse Hathaway (Julianna Margulies) who spent the pilot episode half dead after a suicide attempt.

In lesser hands these storylines could have been trite, but they were skillfully woven into the drama of ER and influenced the doctors' and nurses' professional lives to varying degrees. The many guest stars (including Donna Moss!) had interesting ailments and were occasionally heartbreaking, sometimes hilarious. All of these aspects - the cast, the writing, the direction - all added up to a top notch season of television. At some point I hope to catch up on the next 14 seasons, but that may have to wait a while.

Dirk Gently (2010) & The Suspicions of Mr Whicher (2011)

Two TV adaptations of popular books, both very different source material and different results. I was drawn to Dirk Gently (which now serves as a pilot episode as a series has since been commissioned) as it is based on a Douglas Adams book (that I haven't read) and starred Stephen Mangan and Darren Boyd - and it turned out Doreen 'Mrs Warboys' Mantle and Helen 'Emily off Friends' Baxendale where in it too. So a cracking cast and pedigree, it's reassuring that the end result was such fun and left me wanting more. 

It's a rather whimsical tale of Dirk, a holisitic detective - which basically means he tries to find connections in seemingly unconnected events, and he doesn't believe anything that happens is unconnected to the current mystery, which in this case involved a missing cat... and then took in time travel and a missing millionaire. The story was typically Adams-based left-field stuff that required suspension of disbelief and surrender to the sheer joy of it all. Mangan appeared perfectly cast in the role, he's quickly becoming an actor who draws me to programmes, as he paints over a white board to use again, or hypnotises his friend MacDuff into investing in his agency. The whole confection and the resolution of the mystery was so wonderfully surreal I can't wait to see the series. 

The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, based on a recent bestseller (again, that I haven't read) about the fictionalised account of a true story, was a completely different entity. A one off tale set in the mid 1800s, it tells of Mr Whicher, a detective sent from London to a sleepy country village to investigate the murder of a young child in a country house. Paddy Considine played the titular Mr Whicher with a good dose of suspicion but otherwise didn't leave a great impression, though I feel this was the fault of the script not the actor. It was an interesting story, and Mr Whicher fairly quickly alights on the deceased's step-sister as the killer and proceeds to try and prove how and why she did it. There are no twists and turns or unmaskings of the real suspect - it's made clear she did it, with assistance from her brother who gets away with it - and so that makes a change, although I'm not sure for the better. I was expecting a twist or something particularly dramatic but the whole thing was rather quiet. I liked the film but I found it a bit too straight-forward, although there was interest to be had in seeing the methods of a nineteenth century detective and the legal system.

The Cauldron (Colin Forbes, 1997)

For the second time this year I've abandoned a book after getting 100 pages in. While Taltos was uninvolving and lacking in incident, Coline Forbes' The Cauldron was fairly action packed and had a story that almost made me keep going. What made me give up was the barely believable characters and the appallingly over-written dialogue and action. It was like reading something that has been badly mistranslated from a different language. Plot developments were signposted several times in advance, to the shock of the characters - who were supposed to be a crack squad of spies but were puzzled as to why lead agent Paula Grey could find a female washed up in California and then an identical woman 2 weeks later dies in the sea in Cornwall. 100 pages it takes before they realise they've got twins on their hands! And this is a crack team!

I just couldn't take the wooden dialogue, poorly thought out characters and general bad writing anymore and gave up - this was all distracting me from the plot, which was actually quite intriguing. I'm surprised by the blurb about the author that says he earns his living solely from writing and this is his twenty-third novel, in 1997. I dread to think how many he's churned out since then. I will not be seeking out Colin Forbes in future. 

Frankenstein's Wedding (2011)

Filmed at Leeds' Kirkstall Abbey on 19th March, the night I was at Calendar Girls, and broadcast live on BBC3, Frankenstein's Wedding was a curious beast. I know several friends from different 'groups' who went along to be part of the audience on the night, and I would've gone too if I could, but having just got round to watching it now I'm sure I made the right choice. 

A bit of a Frankenstein's monster itself, the show (was it a film at 90 mins? a theatrical play? a TV programme?) roughly updated Mary Shelley's original story to a modern setting and has events take place at Victor Frankenstein's wedding to Elizabeth at Kirkstall Abbey - the audience are playing 'wedding guests' and Reggie Yates introduces the whole thing to begin with and then disappears. So it's not like the characters know they are being filmed. The ceremony takes place in the Abbey itself and then the reception is on a massive stage, where there is a band and throughout the show there are musical numbers, like I Gotta Feeling and stuff by Athlete, sung as part of the wedding entertainment, or not... as Victor sang something while murdering the female monster he'd created in his lab in a room just off the Abbey...

The cast included 'im off the Fast Show, 'er off Eastenders, 'im off Emmerdale, 'er off As If, and 'im off At Home With the Braithwaites, and they were all very good. Any fluffs were down to technical work, wobbly cameramen and the like. I think it all would have worked better if the audience hadn't been there, and the performance had been live and filmed around the Abbey, but with a more theatrical feel. Fewer pantomime elements perhaps. As far as I could tell the massive throng of audience watched most of the action on screens anyway, as only about 20 minutes were staged directly on the stage in front of them, so watching on TV was probably the best way to see it. This was an interesting experiment then, but one that didn't really add up to the sum of its (body) parts.

Death of the Megabeasts (2009)

A random documentary that Radio Times highlighted on More4 some time ago, Death of the Megabeasts felt like Walking With Dinosaurs cross-bred with CSI. Featuring CGI recreations of the megafauna that roamed Australia many thousands of years ago intercut with a technology/archaeology driven mystery to find out why these creatures died out, the documentary made for interesting yet flashy viewing. 

Making a change from dinosaurs, the megafauna included an array of exotic giant lions and kangaroo type critters, and the Australian focus was interesting in the different perspectives it provided. After suggesting various theories and then disproving them, it was ultimately decided that man was to blame for much of the extinction process, in his manipulation of the climate, hunting of the animals for meat, and burning of the grasses that the herbivores fed on. Ending with an environmental message about how our treatment of the planet could impact on the animals living now, the programme generated intriguing questions and shed light on a part of world history I'd hitherto not even considered. 

United (2011)

From Dr Who being gay in Nazi Germany to Dr Who being Welsh at Manchester United... I have to say that David Tennant's presence in the TV movie United is one of the things that drew me to it, as the subject matter, football, doesn't interest me in the slightest. However, there's barely any football to be seen as the drama concentrates on telling the true story of the people involved in and who survived the Munich air disaster in 1958 that killed 23 people, including 8 members of Manchester United's famous team. 

The opening half hour introduces many of the big names, particularly young Bobby Charlton (Jack O'Connell) who gets his first chance to play for the club, and sets up the emotional impact following the crash as you learn how close the players were. Not being a football fan I only recognised Charlton's name, plus Matt Busby, the club's owner, played with gruff likability by Dougray Scott, so I watched with no prior knowledge of who lived or died. The air disaster itself came as a surprise to me, I didn't realise that the plane crashed/exploded after a 3rd failed take off on the Munich runway, and not as a 'traditional' plane crash might occur dropping out of the sky. Thinking about it, that would make for fewer survivors (there were 21). 

Tennant played coach Jimmy Murphy, who wasn't on the plane and who had to deal with the ourpourings of grief from the survivors, family members and the whole country afterwards. Tennant and O'Connell stand out in a cast of faultless performances as the emotional heart of the drama, really converying the utter loss, incomprehension and finally the team spirit that inspired Murphy to pull another team of players together to play remaining cup matches in honour of their fallen team mates. It's an emotionally draining watch, but with flashes of hope and rememberance, which reflects well on the British team spirit of pulling together in a crisis. 

Julia Bradbury's Iceland Walk (2011)

A couple of weeks ago BBC4 had 'Iceland Week', which consisted over a number of documentaries, films and a sitcom about or made in that wonderful frozen country in the north. The first one we watched was Julia Bradbury's Iceland Walk, which does exactly what it says in the title. I don't know who Julia Bradbury is (I think she's on Countryfile) and on the evidence here I wouldn't make a point of watching her in anything else. 

The best parts of the programme were the gorgeous shots of the barren, verdant or icy Icelandic landscape, coupled with interesting narration about the country and it's geographic features. Julia's work took her around and up the country around the famous volcano that erupted last year and grounded all of Europe's 'planes. Guided by a knowledgable Icelander, Julia walked through Moon-like terrain, waded barefoot through freezing streams and trudged across ashen no-man's-lands between huts that provided overnight shelter. Julia's commentary during the walks consisted mostly of exclaiming about how amazing everything was and looked and didn't venture much beyond bland platitudes or pronouncements. I think if I was walking with her I'd leave her behind somewhere. Other than that, it was a good introduction to Iceland, and for those like me who've been there, a reminder of how great it is and how much I want to go back.

Mary and Max (2009)

Australian stop-motion animation Mary and Max is a real gem of a movie, it's one of those that you feel secretly pleased that not many people have seen it, but then bad because it's the sort of experience you would want everyone to have. It's based on the true story of young Mary in Australia, who writes at random to a man named Max in New York and the friendship that builds from their correspondence over the years. 

Max has asperger's syndrome and has some quite bizarre yet endearing habits, while Mary is picked on at school and misunderstood by her parents. Both are rather tragic figures, but writer-director Adam Elliot never makes you feel pity for either of them, rather through a frequently hilariously offbeat narration from Barry Humphries (and great voice work by Philip Seymour Hoffman, Toni Collette, Eric Bana and Bethany Whitmore) and an almost grotesque style of animation, real emotion and life is breathed into the characters. You feel their pain when a loved one dies, or when Mary or Max fails to connect with the people around them. 

Mary and Max is at times laugh out loud funny, at other points it encourages a lump in the throat, yet I ultimately took great encouragement and optimism away from the sad-yet-uplifting final scene. Yet again, animation proves to be a medium every bit as capable as being moving and heartfelt as any live action movie. 

'Tis Pity She's a Whore (18/05/11, WYP)

'Tis Pity She's a Whore has an unfortunate distinction in being one of the lesser works I've seen at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. I've been spoilt by productions there over the past months and years, so it's inevitable there would be a mistep at some point. Written by John Ford around the 1600s and the time of Shakespeare, Whore shares many plot similarities with the Bard's Romeo and Juliet, Othello and Measure for Measure, but without his wit.

The drama sees Giovanni in love with his sister Annabella, while she is wooed by a number of young men. She's gets pregnant by her brother and when this is discovered she's forced to marry Soranzo. Meanwhile, Soranzo's discarded ex Hippolita vows revenge on him by plotting with his Iago-like manservant Vasques. There's also a comedy character called Bergetto who rides a moped across the stage (it's set in 1960's Venice) and is much funnier than any of the rest of the action. Inevitably things don't end well, with even Bergetto knifed to death, and the final scene has Giovanni cutting out his sister's heart, their father having a heart attack and the 'hero's bloody demise.

As ever with Elizabethan drama it took me a while to get into the rhythms of the language and figure out what was going on. The play was fairly easy to follow though, and the familiar storyline (not star-crossed lovers, but related ones) and characters (including a Friar and a nurse, Putana) meant that there were few surprises. Moments of broad humour sat uneasily alongside incest, revenge and murder, while all of the Friar's wordy scenes could have been cut entirely. I found my mind wandering during some of the scenes, including the climactic bedroom scene in which, for a reason I missed, Giovanni decides to kill his love/sister.

The cast were all very good, particularly Michael Matus in the dual role of Bergetto and the pompous Cardinal, although this production felt less inspired than previous Shakespeares with pedestrian sets and occasionally some actors felt like they were rushing their dialogue. The stand out moment wasn't even in the original script - Hippolita (Sally Dexter) belted out the Burt Bacharach/Hal David classic 'Anyone Who Had a Heart' before exposing her plan for revenge - I wanted to applaud after the performance, it was riveting! I think therein lies the problem with Whore, the source material wasn't amazing. Still, this was a good show, it was terrible - it certainly wasn't the execrable RSC version of The Tempest I witnessed at The Grand a few years ago.

Back From the Dead (Chris Petit, 1999)

Another from the piles of thrillers I've got clogging up the shelves, Back From the Dead is an odd tale. An aging rocker, McMahon, is receiving letters from Leah, a girl who supposedly died 15 years earlier in uncertain circumstances, so he asks cop-moonlighting-as-security Youselli to get to the bottom of it. So far so Harlan Coben, but the book takes a number of strange turns and ultimately doesn't provide a satisfying resolution. I never did work out who the girl was who wrote the letters. 

Youselli is an interesting lead, he takes advantage of a grieving widow, sleeps with his older psychiatrist information, Edith, and ends up obsessed with the author of the letters - going so far as to commit manslaughter in his pursuit of her. None of the other characters come out of the tale too well either, with Edith's relationship breaking down with her daughter, and her abuse of a rehabilitated child murderer. Having said this, Back From the Dead's grey characters were interesting and made me want to read on. I just lost track of the mystery along the way and felt a bit cheated by the odd ending. Another one for the charity shop then!

The Penguin Book of International Gay Writing (1995, Ed. Mark Mitchell)

I picked up this dry-looking tome in a charity shop in Driffield of all places a number of years ago and finally got around to opening the cover and diving in. 47 extracts and short stories, spanning centuries of gay writing, authors of the pieces include Jean Cocteau, Roland Barthes, Sigmund Freud, Plato, Marquis de Sade, Thomas Mann and many others from around the world, most of whom I wasn't familiar with. 

Some of the pieces are raunchy and sex-filled, others languid and romantic, some are stuffy and self-important, and a slog to get through however short, and others were confusing for their inclusion - a handful of pieces didn't seem to be about gay issues or people at all! Maybe they were written by gay people - it would have been helpful for each story to have more of an introduction than 3 or 4 lines that didn't always tell you the nationality of the writer or when the piece was written. 

Of the 47 pieces not many stick in my mind, although the best and most memorable was the longest, more of a novella the complete story Death in Venice by Thomas Mann, about an older gentleman who goes to Venice for a holiday of sorts and becomes besotted by a teenage boy - nothing happens between them, but Mann's descriptions of beauty and obsession were a dream to read. Prikli by Michel Tournier also made an impression - a short story about a boy who clearly has some issues with his gender and ends the piece by castrating himself with a penknife. Lovely. It turned out to be a bit of a scholarly tome, less enjoyable than a regular book of gay shorts would have been, but it was interesting to see how homosexuality was depicted in different cultures and at different times, even if all each vignette gave was a snapshot.

Christopher and His Kind (2011)

'Dr Who does Cabaret' would have been an appropriate title for this Christopher Isherwood biopic, starring Matt Smith, if only because the two's outfits are so similar, this being set in the 1930's. That's where the similarities end though - you don't get many gays in Dr Who... oh well, at least since Russell T. Davies stepped down from the helm and Scottish agenda kicked in. You certainly don't see Smith enjoying vocal sex with handsome German men every Saturday night. 

I only know of Isherwood through the odd article in the gay press and, of course, Cabaret the movie and the musical, based on his book Goodbye to Berlin. This drama covers the period Isherwood spent in Berlin and his experiences with the gay underworld, rising Nazism and yearnings of the heart. Oh and young Jean Ross (Imogen Poots), the real-life Sally Bowles. I enjoyed the drama (and the comedy) of a new perspective on the run up to war, from the perspective of a foreigner, and a gay one at that - there are so many different stories that can be told about such a horrendous part of world history, it's fascinating in a gloomy sort of way. 

Peopled with beautiful boys it's no wonder Isherwood enjoyed his time in Berlin, particularly when the lovely Douglas Booth played his model-handsome paramour. His experience with a brother who bought into the Nazi agenda brought a chilling edge to the light-hearted goings-on. Matt Smith is a joy to watch in the role, and he's a believable character, not camping it up, playing the right level of frivolity. Lindsay Duncan as his mother is also a highlight, but then I seem to find she's wonderful in everything (and was a 1-episode companion to the 10th Doctor, while Toby Jones, also here, played a malevolent entity for the 11th). This was a really interesting and enjoyable piece of gay history/film.

Rock & Chips: The Frog and the Pussycat (2011)

Concluding the Only Fools & Horses prequel trilogy that began with the good 90 minute original and continued with the so-so Five Gold Rings, the latest installment, The Frog and the Pussycat is once again a special too far. When Del and Rodney got millions for their fob watch John Sullivan should have put his pen down and left well alone. Sadly his recent death means that The Frog... will now be the last word on the Only Fools story, and it's not a fitting testament to what went before. 

There were flashes of charm and humour, particularly from Mel Smith's policeman character, and the casting of young Del Boy and mother Joan (James Buckley and Kellie Bright) was spot on, it's just a shame there was no real storyline to do either justice. Del got engaged, again, and tried to do some social climbing only to be leapt on by his fiancé's mother. Joan continued her affair with Freddie 'the frog' Robdal, played by Nicholas Lyndhurst, and planned to run off with him once Del was settled down. Unfortunately Del's randy potential in-law put paid to their plan, and then the programme ended. With no real resolution. 

One of the problems with Rock & Chips has been that it has tried to explain too much. The mystique of Del and Rodney's mum in Only Fools, always quoted from her death bed, was dispelled when she was given a face, a voice and a life. The decision to have Rodney exposed as Del's half brother in the last Only Fools special didn't feel right, and extending that across Rock & Chips continued this uneasy plot device, somehow sullying the relationship built up with the character of Rodney over the years. Watching the three Rock & Chips episodes has been an odd experience, apart from the intriguing, better balanced first feature length special, they felt unnecessary and continued a joke well past the point of caring.

Glory Daze (2010-11)

Glory Daze is one of those US shows that runs for a single season and is cut down in its prime, but unlike Firefly or Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip it will hardly be remember as a classic, cult or otherwise. I watched all 10 episodes on E4 and while I enjoyed the show, it never really kicked up a gear into something I'd revisit or could call anything other than ok. I'd already made the decision to see the season out but not bother with any further seasons before I read that it had been cancelled. 

Glory Daze is by no means terrible, it's just that the premise suggested it could be so much more than another comedy-drama about a frat house. Its USP is that it is set at a university in 1986, so cue bad fashion, a great soundtrack, no cell phones or internet and plenty of jokes at the expense of the future to come. Unfortunately the characters were all a bit too cookie-cutter and the set ups - mostly involving frat parties - so 'been there, done that' and with no 80's twist that I'm not surprised it was cancelled. The young cast of unknowns were a perky bunch, sometimes liable to be a bit too campy and over dramatic, yet on the whole likable and fun. 

This did not happen often enough.

The best parts of Glory Daze involved Tim Meadows' Professor Aloysius Haines, who got all the best lines and was funnier than everyone around him, I'm so glad he was a regular cast member. The other stars were the cameos from John Michael Higgins, Kevin Nealon (from Weeds), Barry Bostwick, Reginald VelJohnson, Ken Lerner, Michael McKean, and Fred Willard who popped up as faculty members, fathers of the main cast and just random characters to steal scenes. Glory Daze was a fun, light, fluffy concoction that kept me amused and entertained but will always be less than great.

The Big C: Season 1 (2010)

A comedy-drama about cancer may not seem to be a great premise for a show, but when it stars Laura Linney and is made by Showtime I had to check it out. Linney is one of those under-appreciated actors who should be an A-list star in recognition of the excellent work she does, often in smaller roles both on TV and in film - she was wonderful as the wife of John Adams in the HBO mini-series, as the protagonist in the adaptation of Tales of the City, and as the wife of Kinsey in the movie. It's fantastic that she gets to star in her own series then, which can showcase her talents for comedy, drama and anything else a script demands of her. 

In The Big C, Linney plays Cathy, a teacher, wife and mother who's considered a little boring by her husband Paul (Oliver Platt), son Adam (Gabriel Basso) and wild-dwelling econut brother Sean (John Benjamin Hickey). And then she's diagnosed with terminal cancer and is determined not to fade away, throws Paul out so she can live for herself and Adam and makes friends with crotchedy neighbour Marlene (Phyllis Somerville). As the series goes on Cathy has an affair with Idris Elba, flirts with her oncologist Reid Scott, crosses paths with her old college roommate Cynthia Nixon, and tries to soften student Gabourey Sidibe, all the while keeping her cancer secret from all but Marlene. 

The show carefully balances the pathos of a finite life with comic moments, and Cathy's new zest for life and her new found ability to let her hair down while she still has it (ok, she doesn't have chemo, so cheap cancer joke there) are uplifting and the show becomes not about impending death but about living life. It could be a twee, cloying 'message' but the writing is better than that, and Linney portrays Cathy as such a wonderful person, you want her to live and thrive, yet knowing that it is the cancer that has spurred her on to become such a carefree character. And The Big C is full of surprises - the biggest will be how the show can continue since it's lead character has a terminal illness - and in the penultimate episode of the series a regular character is killed off so quickly and ruthlessly you barely have time to register. It's the freshness and novelty of the series, along with a superb cast, that makes The Big C a show I will be eager to return to next season.

Nurse Jackie: Season 2 (2010)

Season 1 of Nurse Jackie ended with Edie Falco's drug-addict protagonist attempting an overdose as everything got on top of her. At no point during season 2 was this even mentioned, so are we to assume it was a fantasy, much like the beach-walk that ends this season? Who knows! Jackie's off the wall and so full of awkwardness that it doesn't matter so much that the ending of the last season was inexplicable, this season was such a good ride.

As the season wore on, Jackie became more devious and created bigger lies as she hid from her husband, kids, best friend Dr. O'Hara, sometime lover/stalker Eddie and everybody else the fact she needs to snort or ingest painkillers to get through the day. There was a danger that Jackie might become an unlikable character, but each episode proved that she's an excellent nurse, always willing to go the extra mile for patients, even if it goes against hospital policy or conventional wisdom. However, there's only so much balancing of morality and immorality that a person can take, so it was almost cathartic for the viewer when Jackie's lies got uncovered in the final episodes. Even though I love the character, I wanted her to get found out, maybe because then she could be helped?

Jackie's world is full of oddball characters, Coop is vain and thinks too highly of himself, Zoey is just plain weird and hilarious with it, Dr. O'Hara has a sharp tongue but a warm heart, while Gloria Akalitus continues to delight in every scene in which she appears. If it wasn't for the extended cast of crazies Nurse Jackie the character and Nurse Jackie the show could be a fairly depressing prospect considering the descent into drug addiction, so it's testament to excellent writing that everything adds up to a coherent and likable whole. 

The Incredible Adam Spark (Alan Bissett, 2005)

After my failed attempt at getting through Taltos by Anne Rice I was in the mood for something lighter and, drawn by the comic-book style artwork of the front cover, I picked up The Incredible Adam Spark. Written in the first person by the titular Adam Spark, or Sparky, an 18 year old Scottish boy with an undefined 'condition' (I presume he has Down's Syndrome, judging by the harsh taunts of 'mongol' he receives, and the fact he is visibly 'different'), it takes a little adjustment to get into Bissett's style. Fullstops provide virtually the only punctuation, there are no commas or capital letters within the sentences to separate out Adam's thoughts, and the whole is written in Scottish dialect which means I had to read it in my head in a Scottish accent. This proved easier than it might sound! 

The effect of the language means that it really does feel like Adam Spark is the author of this work, it's an incredibly authentic voice. Adam's childlike view of the world - he begins the book excited about being dressed as He-Man for a carnival, and it is only later in the chapter you learn he's actually 18 and wonder what his story is - is endearing at times, at others it is heartbreaking. He's not a stupid boy by any means, and his talents at word association lead to some laugh out loud moments, but he is not adept at human relationships. His mother and father have died - or 'gone to Oz' as Adam articulates it - and he is left with his left-wing, lesbian sister to look after him, and her patience is wearing thin as she's met a woman and wants to live her own life. 

Adam refuses or is unable to deal with the trauma of his parents' deaths and his sister's relationship - the fact it is with another woman adds another level of difficulty for him. At times he turns violent, beating up his rival for his sister's affections, and he becomes part of the local gang of youths in order to feel accepted and not be picked on by them. It's distressing to see this misguided innocent led astray by his 'mates', but then the book examines the notion that maybe Adam isn't so misguided, he's intelligent, he just doesn't deal with problems. 

There is so much to recommend about The Incredible Adam Spark - the wonderfully complex protagonist, the social commentary on the war in 'arack', the relationship between Adam and sister Judy and her burgeoning lesbianism, the rich Scottish vernacular... I zipped through this book in a matter of days and enjoyed every single page, and there aren't many books that I can say that about. 

Thor (2011)

For my birthday on Wednesday Andrew took me out for lunch and tea, and inbetween we saw Thor - just a few years earlier we saw Iron Man in London on my birthday, so it was nice to follow the Marvel-movie tradition! And just as I was blown away with how good Iron Man proved to be, Thor is up there with the best comic book adaptations yet.

It felt so much different than other Marvel or even DC movies, pitched at just the right level between funny and dramatic, Kenneth Branagh's steady hand kept things from getting ridiculous - and with the subject matter, costumes and themes it was an ever-present danger that it could have all gone a bit Flash Gordon. Instead I was rivetted to the Shakespearean themes, of Thor (a buff and surprisingly funny Chris Hemsworth) and his rivallry with brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston), who had more layers than I expected, and both have complex relationships with dad Odin, a marvel-lous Anthony Hopkins.

I thought that the movie would start in Thor's far off home-land of Asgard and then transfer to present day USA for the rest of the running time, but both locations co-existed throughout, and the drama in Asgard was countered with a lighter touch in smalltown USA, where Natalie Portman, Stellan Skarsgård and Kat Dennings played the scientists who find Thor in the middle of the desert, after Odin has banished him from Asgard. There are some hilarious fish-out-of-water-moments, especially when Thor's friends turn up to find him. A few knowing references to other Marvel heroes and another cracking Stan Lee cameo, plus a post-credits Samuel L. Jackson headfuck were the cherries on top of a refreshing, dramatic and joyful addition to the comic book hero canon.

Brothers & Sisters: Season 4 (2009-10)

Looking back at my blog it was only September when we finished watching Season 3 of Brothers & Sisters, and now we've finished Season 4, which was shown in a similar fashion, daily on Channel 4. Unfortunately, we watched Season 4 with spoilers in mind - forgetting which season we'd seen, I recorded the first two episodes of Season 5 on More4 earlier in the year, and watching them we were very confused and assumed time had moved on a year or two (Desperate Housewives did it, jumping forward 5 years!) but thought it odd that the car crash everyone kept mentioning hadn't been seen, and we couldn't remember Luc being in it before, but maybe we'd forgotten him. A quick look on Wikipedia showed me the error we'd made, and so we stopped watching Season 5 and luckily Season 4 started shortly thereafter. 

This season felt stronger than those that had gone before, the storylines seemed more long-reaching and arced over several episodes, and the drama was heightened. Season 4 sees Kitty diagnosed with cancer, getting it into remission and then running for husband Robert's senate seat. Kevin and Scotty try for a baby with a surrogate, while Kevin learns a shocking secret that his mother has been hiding from his youth in an episode oozing drama and featuring lots of Sally Field crying. Justin began med school, was failing, then wanted to drop out and go to Haiti, all the while contending with wedding-to-Rebecca based drama - since Kitty collapsed at their beach wedding, they end up just finishing off that storyline in a registry office. Sarah goes to France, meets hunky Luc (Gilles Marini) and also has a bit of a fling with Jay Karnes from The Shield, before sorting out Luc's green card... and then driving family business Ojai into the ground. Nora has a fling with a doctor who turns out to be swindling her out of her savings, and she's generally there for everyone else. Tommy surprisingly pops back now and then to glower and argue with people, and Saul floats around in the background, eventually discovering in the final episode that at 70, he has HIV. 

Holly Harper, her with. The. Strange. Del. Ivery. Of. Dia. Logue. gets to make friends with Nora and there's a particularly funny episode with them playing detective to find out the key mystery of the season, what is Narrow Lake? It's an intriguing mystery, one that comes and goes but is finally solved in the season finale. Oh I almost forgot the other starring character, William's bastard son Ryan, who is around for some evil deeds at the beginning of the season, then donates the bone marrow that saves Kitty and is never heard from or mentioned again, except the actors name appears on screen every episode. Odd. 

Holly and Nora walked in on Rebecca and Justin on their honeymoon...

The finale - where I knew partly what was going to happen after seeing the opening of Season 5 - still struck an emotional chord with me, I was shocked and, to be honest, a bit choked up when the crash occurred. It was really well done, with all the main characters in their cars driving off from another successful family meal (where Robert had a funny turn with his heart), and the scenes showing each carload happily driving along and then resting on Rebecca and Justin at the back of the convoy... as they come across a scene of carnage, a lorry jack-knifed across the road, with various Walkers stumbling around, with me willing the camera around to find out who's injured and who's ok - Holly's trapped! Scotty's ok! Saul won't let anyone touch his bloodied head - he has HIV! Robert's crushed! It was an emotional rollercoaster I'll tell you that! They cheated by making you think Robert was going to have a heart attack earlier, only for him to be a casualty in car crash (it's a narrative trick the writers pulled off earlier in the season too, in the first episode it looked like Rebecca and Justin were going to crash their car, only for them to swerve and avoid death - in the very next scene Kitty is told she has cancer; then it looks like it was Tommy who, years ago, killed or crippled a friend in car crash, only for it to be revealed that actually, Kevin was the one who pushed his friend and paralysed him). None of these diversions felt fake, and they made the dramatic impact of the real events more affecting. 

I can't wait for Channel 4 to put Season 5 on a daily schedule, I want more Brothers and Sisters!!

Cows In Action: World War Moo (Steve Cole, 2008)

Last Christmas Andrew got me this book, on account of our fondness for cows... It's a kid's book, but it's still better than Taltos! The book features Professor McMoo, Bo Vine and her brother Pat, a trio of cows from the future who are sent back in time to prevent evil atrocities by the FBI (that's the Fed-up Bull Institute), which keeps sending Ter-moo-naters back to significant points in history to cause havoc. This story is, of course, set in World War Moo, I mean Two, and the FBI have a dastardly plan to build a Butterbot for both the Nazis and the British so that each side wipes each other out, leaving the way clear for bulls to rule the world!

I enjoyed the continuous stream of cow and bull punnery and references - to stop people being confused about cows walking among them they wear rings in their noses that camouflage them as human, and they time-travel in a shed. The story's as daft and plot-holey as you'd expect from a kid's book, and it's a bit bizarre to have Winston Churchill and Nazis running around, but I suppose it presents a good way for parents to introduce the idea to their children? A moovellous book. 

The Crimson Petal and the White (2011)

The presence of Gillian Anderson drew me to The Crimson Petal and the White, because she simply does not do enough TV or movies, so I've got to find her where I can. She was last scene in the fantastic literary adaptation of Any Human Heart in a small role as Wallis Simpson. Anderson had a similar sized role here, appearing in just 2 episodes as brothel madam Mrs Castaway, mother of our heroine, Sugar. Mrs Castaway is a grotesque, sly, devious character, who was responsible for introducing her daughter to prostitution in a Victorian London backstreet, and she's just one of a whole host of superb performances in a show packed with them, from Mark Gatiss' nervous priest and Shirley Henderson's crusading prostitute-reformer, to Richard E. Grant's fairly sinister doctor who does something so unspeakable to Agnes Rackham that it sends her round the bend. 

Romola Garai is the undoubted star, as fearless Sugar, who begins the story as a prostitute with an edge - she's writing a book to get back at all of the men who have used and abused her - and then she comes across the slightly gormless yet strangely charming William Rackham, played by Chris O'Dowd (who I didn't expect much from, only knowing him from The IT Crowd, which I've never 'got' - he turned out to be a very fine dramatic actor), who becomes enamoured with her - especially when he only has a frigid, disturbed Agnes waiting for him at home. Amanda Hale puts in a mesmerising performance as Agnes, loopy but with lucid moments, she plays both equally well, and it's only a shame that the story's needs mean she isn't present in part 4. 

Garai's Sugar is a wonderfully complicated character, first against all men, then gradually falling for William. She becomes Agnes' guardian angel, there's no animosity from her to her master's wife, even when Sugar is moved into the family home to be governess to little-mentioned-previously daughter Sophie (a beguiling Isla Watt). The story rarely developed in ways I expected, and was directed in a really effective manner, that felt by turns disorientating, hallucinagenic or frantic. Odd camera angles, soft focuses and 'moody' lighting gave Crimson Petal a distinctive look that added to and didn't distract from the drama of Sugar and William's stories. An unflinching depiction of Victorian London, the scenes around the brothels looked horribly grimy, full of people half-dead, crippled with disease or baring their breasts for work - there are no coy Pretty Woman versions of prostitution here, the sex is rough, nudity rife, and Sugar at one point applies balm to her nethers to prevent pregnancy. Garai deserves praise for taking on and nailing such a frank portrayal of a wounded woman forced into a life she excels at. If Gillian Anderson continues to make these excellent choices of role I'll be assured of some top quality viewing in future.

The Year 1000 (Robert Lacey & Danny Danziger, 1999)

Subtitled: 'What life was like at the turn of the first millennium', The Year 1000 is a readable romp through the calendar from January to December, charting the life and times of people 1000 years ago. The authors draw on a wide range of sources and cover things like farming, the position of women, religion, royalty, wars, medicine, food... barely a subject left untouched, and at 200 pages it's not over-full with facts and information, but I found there was just enough to keep me turning the pages and interested in the subjects. 

I've never really considered what life must have been like for people before the Battle of Hastings in 1066, when most English history seems to begin. Lacey and Danziger explain who was in charge before that time, and what led up and from the famous battle, but they also step away from the bigger picture events to focus on the generalities of daily life, like the good diets people had, the relative lack of diseases from later years when populations crowded into cities, the roots of festivals both religious/Christian and pagan that still exist in some form today... It's a fascinating trip, written with good humour and a journalistic readability. 

Taltos (Anne Rice, 1994)

This will be brief! It's not often I admit defeat and put a book down unfinished, but with Taltos, one that has been sat on my shelf for years, I decided enough was enough. Unknown to me when I purchased it, Taltos is the third in the Mayfair Witches trilogy (which you don't known unless you read the author's blurb). When I learned this I figured, hey, it'll have to be a self-contained story anyway so as not alienate the reader who hasn't read books one and two, right? Maybe it does, but to me it felt too much like I'd started reading a story halfway through, about characters I was supposed to care about but didn't know well enough to do so. 

There was something about a woman who was supposedly a witch - nothing anyone did showed any witchlike abilities - waking from a catatonic state, another character killed 'off screen', and a giant-type character who's a millionaire business man in America, but who's really a centuries old creature called a Taltos. Not that I found out in 150 pages the significance of this. I found the writing very dry and the events uninvolving, and it felt like there was a hell of a lot of expositionary dialogue trotted out to explain what happened in the first two books. So I decided life's too short to read books I'm not into to, and I gave up. I'll stick with Anne's son Christopher Rice in future, whose books are excellent. 

Source Code (2011)

Our first cinema trip in a couple of months, mainly because there's not been anything that has really drawn me to part with £6+ (half the price of a Blu-ray, or a DVD sale price!) until Source Code, the main draw to which was Jake Gyllenhaal and a 4 star Empire review. Like Groundhog Day, or more accurately like The X-Files episode 'Monday' in which Mulder and Scully live through the same bank/seige explosion scenario until Mulder figures out how to prevent it, Source Code sees Gyllenhaal's Colter Stevens re-living an 8 minute train ride, up to the point a terrorist bomb blows it sky high. 

It's a deceptively simple scenario, rendered much more complicated by the puzzle that Colter must solve - it's a whodunnit - along with the mystery of what's going on back in the 'real world' where he's in some sort of pod being beamed back into the train. Or is he. It's a time twisting mind-fuck that doesn't have the visceral thrills of Unstoppable, but rather it has more depth and is equally as gripping. The casting certainly helps with what could be a repetitive movie, given the nature of the storyline, Gyllenhaal is as likable and believable as a hero as ever, while Vera Farmiga does great work with a computer/desk based role as one of the people putting Colter through the Source Code. 

After leaving the cinema there was much to dissect, particularly about the time travel paradox style ending, that's often a problem in movies with similar themes. I think it'll be worth a second viewing to try to work out how it might resolve, or to spot the plot holes!

It's my 27th Birthday!

And in my dreams, this was what I unwrapped this morning:

Or I would have been happy with Swedish gay footballer Anton Hysén: