The sitcom of the 90s was very definitely Friends. So it comes as something of a surprise for Adam Chase, one of the show's producers, to be slumming it on BBC3 with Clone, a sci-fi sitcom about a mad government scientist who tries to create a super-soldier and ends up producing someone a bit 'special' instead.
Greater creative freedom and the chance to work out the kinks before pitching it to the US networks is the alleged excuse, and that's fair enough. If some of the best writers of the US TV scene want to use British TV to experiment with ideas, I say let them.
The only proviso for that is that they'd better produce something funny. And Clone? Well, it's very…
Do you know what my wife said when she saw this had arrived through the post? "Oh, lush."
I'm not saying she is Joanna Page or Stacey, just that sometimes the similarities get a little spooky.
Anyway: Gavin & Stacey, bit of a sleeper hit during its first series on BBC3, won surprising amounts of awards, then suddenly went through the roof during series two, which went on to win even more awards.
Now series two is going to be repeated on BBC1 (starting this Friday) just in time for a Christmas special, also to be aired on BBC1, and for this DVD release.
It's a lovely little sitcom about a girl from Wales and a boy from SE England who meet, fall in love and get married (rings some bells. Hmm). But as the tag line almost says, it's not just the two of them and the story is as much about their best friends and family as it is about them.
You know, for an awful 20 minutes or so, I thought this was going to be bad. Not Bonekickers bad, simply daft. Because it's very, very easy when you're dealing with demons, exorcisms and faith to put one foot wrong and mess the whole thing up.
Certainly, Apparitions starts off by putting that foot right into its mouth, revisiting 1997 and the death of Mother Theresa.
The 70s was a great time for TV. Whether it was drama, comedy, documentary or stupid escapist tatt, the 70s turned up some of the best television ever made - although sometimes ambition exceeded either the budget or the technology.
Even kids TV was great, particularly if it was science-fiction or fantasy. Not only was it well made, it was intelligent. Whether you watched the Beeb and caught Doctor Who, The Changes or The Moon Stallion, for example, or watched ITV and tuned in for Timeslip, Ace of Wands or Children of the Stones*, you could pretty much be guaranteed something interesting that made you think.
The reasons for the high quality of kids' sci-fi TV are clear. Not only were there people with an ethos of creating decent programming for kids at both networks, a competitive duopoly that encouraged innovation and a captive audience with little else to do but watch tele, thus avoiding lowest common denominator worries, there was access to really good, high grade hallucinogenic drugs.
Whether it was magic mushrooms, LSD or even peyote, TV writers were knocking back quite extravagant amounts of not quite illegal substances, giving them a new view on reality, writing and the creative process.
Sky is perhaps the most obvious example of a kids' show written by people on drugs**. Created by Bob Baker and Dave Martin in 1975, it was a curious seven-part serial about an alien that comes to Earth.
So far, so simple, no?
What differentiates it from other similar fare is that it's clearly off its face. Sky is a time traveller with incredible powers from another dimension. Or maybe another universe. Except he might be a god. Just like Jesus and any other religious figure in fact, since they were all time-travellers too.
He's arrived here before the correct time - we're still "before the chaos" - and needs to get to the future where he can show the surviving people of the Earth the right way to live in harmony with the Earth. Trouble is, the Earth of today senses that's he's alien and tries to repel him, just like an immune system repelling a bacterium. While he searches for 'the Juganet' - the way to the future - Sky is attacked by trees and plantlife, before eventually the Earth creates something in human form - 'Ambrose Goodchild' - to destroy Sky.
It's never been repeated, it's never been released on VHS or DVD, but you can watch it some of it on YouTube. It's a Lost Gem. Here's the title sequence followed by a clip to get you in the mood. You might need to be taking something though.
This should probably be called The Other The Other Boleyn Girl, given there's a multi-million dollar effort with Eric Bana, Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman out on DVD right now, too. Also based on Philippa Gregory's book of the same, this is a study of Mary Boleyn, Anne Boleyn's elder sister and fellow mistress of Henry VIII. Made for the BBC in 2003 and starring Natasha McElhone, Jodhi May, Jared Harris and Steven Mackintosh, it's cheaply made yet more powerful and more innovative that its highly turgid American cousin.
It's quite a traumatic tale, with happy newlywed Mary finding that the king's interested in her and that both her husband and her father want her to take up with the King to advance their standing in court. Reluctant at first, not least because she regards adultery as a terrible sin, Mary eventually falls in love with Henry and as history recounts, it all goes pear-shaped after that.
The adaption is relatively faithful to the book, although it does skip over big chunks of the narrative - unlike Hollywood, however, the BBC adaptation does at least make clear where there have been jumps of a year or so, something that made the big screen version less than coherent at times.
You couldn't describe it as historically authentic, though, because despite its best efforts, Gregory's book isn't to be trusted on all its details - rather than being a pious so-and-so as Gregory suggests, most of the records hint that Mary was a bit of a goer - and McElhone is obviously too old to play the teenage Mary. I won't go into the incest stuff either, although Gregory usually does, more or less in every book she writes. Hmmm.
The oddest part of this adaption is that it's shot on grainy video almost as a reality TV show (complete with partially improvised script), with Mary and Anne both offering video diary-like pieces to camera at various parts of the narrative. This more radical approach does involve you, but it also distances, since its fast cuts and shaky-cam mean you spend more time being fascinated by Philippa Lowthorpe's direction than having a chance to get involved with the characters.
McElhone's as good as always; May seems far less devious than other Anne Boleyns you might have seen (on The Tudors for example); Jared Harris, who plays Henry, turns in pretty much the same performance he did in To The Ends of the Earth, which is good in its way but doesn't seem particularly Henry-ish (again, age seems to be a factor); and Steven Mackintosh is okay in a difficult role: the gay, incestuous (as written by Gregory, anyway) brother George Boleyn.
If it's a toss-up between the big-screen version and this one, get this one, if only because it's better and considerably cheaper. But probably only worth getting if you're a big history buff.
Here's the first few minutes to give you an idea of what's it's like:
Incidentally, Philip Glenister's in it as William Stafford, Mary's second husband. Someone's stuck all his appearances in it together and uploaded the result to YouTube. Enjoy!
In the US: Thursdays, 9.30/8.30c, NBC In the UK: Five, from January (probably)
Wake up, NBC! Wake up!
I don't know if you've noticed this, but Tina Fey has been something of a hot property of late. Thanks to her scary impersonation of Sarah Palin (here with Will Ferrell as George Bush), people all over the world are waking up to the fact that despite having been on and written for a recent season of SNL, she is in fact a comedy genius.
Not NBC though, because they've waited until the end of October to bring to our screens the latest season of 30 Rock. Set behind the scenes of a fictitious NBC sketch show, it features Tina Fey as the show's bewildered liberal producer and Alec Baldwin as the interfering conservative executive in charge of Fey's show, east coast programming and microwave ovens. And it's easily the best comedy on television at the moment (yes, better than The Office, etc)
Well done, NBC. Would you like to look at your ratings? Scary, aren't they? Want to start thinking a bit more in future, maybe, about how you could capitalise on events rather than simply staring at them blankly?
Of course, there may have been doubts about the show's funniness. Would season three be as funny as previous seasons?
Tue 18 Nov: Does it count in the CSI: Miami drinking game if David Caruso and Emily Procter are apparently in the same scene together, but they never speak to each other and you never see both their faces at the same time?
Sat 15 Nov: The Ascent of Money "sponsored by Cayman Islands". Huh. What's going on there then?
Sun 02 Nov: Do you think it's deliberate that Sam's mom in the US version of Life on Mars is called Rose Tyler?
![The Other Boleyn Girl [2003]](http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0012X6RG0.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_SX175_.jpg)
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