My Best Thing on TV?

It came without much fanfare. An alternative history of the space race based on the premise that the USSR beats the USA to having the first man on the moon and therefore not ending the space race but escalating it into territory - a world history - that didn't happen but plausibly could have if these events had happened. 

The first series of For All Mankind had cameos from actors playing Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and John Shepherd, but it was really about the next generation of astronauts; the guys waiting in the wings as a result of the momentous setback that losing the moon caused. The heroes of the real Apollo missions become side-lined and move on; being written out of history as nearly men and ushering new heroes in to replace them in a time that was considerably more fraught and tense than it really was.

Series one was about Ed Baldwin - a Korean War vet - and his pal Gordon 'Gordo' Stevens, who replaced the old guard and made the moon their home. It was also about how women's rights and their liberation was fast forwarded beyond where it is today - in the real world. The next next generation of astronauts would be women; the next big wigs at NASA would also be women and old school Ed and Gordo were needed to help the transition.

The biggest dilemma with the first series was how to make it different enough to look different. How do you turn something as scientific and cold as space travel into a soap opera about the people at the heart of the project. Joining Ed was Karen - his wife - and their troubled son. With Gordo was his twin-engine flying ace and long suffering wife Tracy, a phenomenally gorgeous woman who was always second best to her husband's infidelity and then gets the chance to become an astronaut herself; creating all-new tensions and drama. There is Margo Madison, a women - who by association - gets elevated high in the ranks of NASA. A woman whose heart beats hot and cold depending on how she felt that particular day - a wallflower but a decent, honest woman. Then there's Ellen Wilson, a fantastic astronaut and commander who happens to be gay in a world that is less tolerant of gays than it really was, who marries a gay man to hide their secrets behind each other. They're joined by Molly Cobb and Dani Poole - a no-nonsense pilot and a black career air force pilot and they are all held together by Deke Slaytor - the controller and man responsible for trying to put the USA ahead of the USSR in the new race - to mine the moon, established a base and claim the hunk of rock as American. 

There was also a subplot about a Mexican illegal immigrant who was also a bit of a physics genius and is taken under Margo's wing. Any plot watchers would have told you that season two would obviously focus on this girl. However, one thing you can't second guess is where the writers are going; Aleida plays a big part in the second series, but she's nowhere near the focus (but that might be next season).

There were other secondary characters, all playing a vital role in building a cast of believable characters, living exciting lives and yet having to deal with also trying to be normal people. Tragedy dogs season one like a bad stain and the opening ten episodes are a lesson in loss, triumph, hope and frustration, taking in unexpected deaths, needed deceit and hopeless desperation. If this world - as 'our' world - had changed very little to how those of us old enough remember it and the escalation of technology through the new-improved space race isn't much more advanced than it really was, with some exceptions, you would almost think this 'world' was our world. That's probably why it works as a drama.

By the time season one concluded, I'd pretty much added it to my list of must-see TV. You cared about these characters even if some of them were hard to like. The first season ended with every major character suffering some form of loss that they carried into the second season. It was difficult to see how jumping the story 12 years to 1983 was going to work in terms of the characters we'd grown accustomed to and much of the first few episodes of the second series were awkward in their presumption that we would eventually piece all the missing fragments together. 

Aleida - the Mexican girl - being conspicuous by her absence until she makes a resounding return as a feisty young woman nothing like the delicate young lady we last saw, struggling to work out how to stay in the USA after everything she had was taken away.

The moon is now 'shared' by the US and the Soviets. There is a growing cold war between the superpowers and the Russians have been elevated above their standing by their successes over the Yanks. The Jamestown base where Ed, Gordo and Dani lived for months is now a proper camp with 30 astronauts there, mining for lithium and doing all number of experiments in the pursuit of helping the next big phase - the race to Mars. The Soviets' own base is never seen, but their presence and threat is always felt; with tensions on Earth rocketing out of President Reagan's control, a terrible incident on the moon sees one Russian die and another, badly wounded, asking for asylum. The space race suddenly becomes a space arms race.

Behind the threat of World War 3 is the planned Apollo-Soyez docking; the balance of this being the innocent but sexually-charged, yet odd relationship between the introverted and shy Margo and her Russian counterpart, Yuri, as they struggle to find common ground between two nations that loathe each other. We wrestle with one of the main cast's act of heroism that has now put her own career and life in jeopardy and we watch how the main cast get their own shit back together. One thing we learn from season two is do not discount any inconsequential event; don't think it is treading water to give under-focused cast members something to take up their time and earn their paycheques - this is as carefully plotted a series as a grandmaster chess tournament. Every scene has a resonance and a payback of its own; it is allegorical in such a deft way that it's only afterwards that you realise you've been sucked in by skilled writers who are making utterly mesmerising Science [fact] Fiction hidden in a soap opera. It probably wouldn't work any other way.

The ultimate pay off of season two is more tragedy; in fact far more than you'd expect. This series has the feel of how early The Walking Dead episodes were; knowing that no one is safe, that star names will die just as easily as the guys wearing the metaphoric red jerseys. Not that any of this show's 'stars' were really that; some of them had major parts to play in other shows, but generally the cast was a group of people best known for being supporting cast members, but are now probably on their way to an A or B list status. Season two ups the ante and makes you realise you're watching something truly special in a landscape of excellent TV shows.

You feel, at times, like you're watching a true historical recreation of a bygone era. The early 70s were done so well you felt you were there. The 80s - using doctored actual footage - also feels like the attention to detail is all important for you to believe in what you're watching. We're heading to the 90s next; another 12 year jump and the threat of having to get used to new characters because the main group will now be in their 60s and some will have died and some might need to be recast... 

There's a new planet to explore; probably a massive diversion from real events and a chance to take this world into places only historical fantasists can imagine. I expect China will make an entrance, but also other burgeoning economic countries, plus the desire of private business to enter this story; the writers have a largely blank slate to play with and can dip in and use pivotal actual events to progress the story. In this world John Lennon is still alive and is seen on TV screens as a key political activist. The next season of FAM might not have the fall of the Berlin wall or the Soviet Union. It might not have Bill Clinton as president or a Russian Federation. This series never had a Jimmy Carter presidency (it was Edward Kennedy's as Chappaquiddick didn't happen as a result of the Soviet moon race). The FAM world isn't that much different at the moment, but I expect it to swerve into unknown directions when it returns, but always keeping its people real enough to believe in them.

For All Mankind was one of the best things I watched on TV in 2020. It became the best thing I watched on TV in 2021.

Pop Culture is Dead to Me: The First Geek in Weeks

There's a lot to talk about. If nothing else, the pandemic seems to have flooded the world with new TV and film that is designed specifically with the geek in mind. It seems to me that the world of fantasy has had to step up to the plate and deliver, even if the results are patchy at best. So ...

Let's get the elephant or kaiju in the room out of the way first. Godzilla versus Kong is a children's film for all ages. I'm constantly fooled by these films; I think they're going to be fantastic and the spectacle is going to be so good I will walk around priapic all week, but they end up being warm bland wanks... I made the mistake of going into this film expecting there to be some woeful story woven between the unending battle scenes (like there had been in the previous Godzilla film); what there was was an hour and forty five minutes of televisual super-sugar. It was like someone gave LSD to an eight-year-old and told him to write an adventure story with two massive great beasties. That makes it sound good and on one level it is, but on so many other levels it's just infantile and a waste of some recognisable acting talent. It's proving to be very popular... I don't know if that says anything about how desperate people are for some normality in their lives that they've made this extremely well made piece of shit so popular.

***

Let's throw my two-cents worth in about the big question: why are DC films so shit? As this is kind of my area of expertise, I find it ironic that DC did comics for years until Marvel came along and showed them how to do comics differently and eventually usurped them as the leading comics publisher in the Western World. There have been DC superhero film adaptations for donkeys years, most of them of independent vision - much like their comics output of the 1950s and 60s - and standalone. Even when they linked their Batman films of the 80s and 90s, it had the law of diminishing returns writ large all over them. Marvel looked like they were going to go the same way, especially when the company was essentially split up and film rights sold to all and sundry, but its gradual climb into being part of the largest entertainment industry in the world is probably down to the fact that when films finally caught up with Marvel's characters, they took the bold move of making it a shared universe from the word go.

By the time DC and Warner Brothers decided to unify and reboot their new superhero cinematic foray, Marvel was already building a universe in an oddly believable world. Iron Man was a stroke of genius in many ways, because while the character has always been a bit 'meh' in the comics, on film, with RDJ in the role of Tony Stark, you suddenly had a fantasy film that appealed to the Bond/Bourne fans and was witty and clever enough to tempt people who wouldn't dream of watching a film like that into watching it. By the time the first Avengers film came out, Marvel's cinematic universe was a guaranteed success - it was a juggernaut that wasn't going to be stopped.

DC, historically, has struggled to be ahead of the game and even when they get there they've never seemed to know how to stay there. There have been periods in the history of comics where they suddenly have a surge of popularity at the exact time Marvel hits the buffers, but they've never been able to find the right Viagra to keep themselves up.

With films their MO was basic; reboot Superman or Batman every ten years or so with a very capable director du jour and because of increased budgets and better special effects they can appease the converted with Easter Eggs of some geeky kind. The problem was as some of the producers of Marvel's X-Men and Spider-Man had discovered, that old friend the Law of Diminishing Returns is never too far away from spoiling the party, which is why the Spider-Man reboots seemed to happen so fast and why Spider-Man films work better now they've taken a new approach to them. DC's problem was it felt like Batman and Superman had already been done to death; cinematically Batman works better and like in the comics Superman suffered from essentially being too powerful making it difficult to come up with a suitable, believable, adversary.

DC, it is said, have all the best ideas, but dither about until Marvel steals them and shows how it would have worked. There is both actual and anecdotal evidence throughout the second half of the 20th century to prove this and back in 2002, long before Kevin Feige was going to create the MCU, DC had plans for an extended shared cinematic universe, but that didn't really happen until after 2013's Superman reboot The Man of Steel (a bit like with Iron Man in many ways), it then, temporarily, became the 'property' of Zack Snyder and we were treated to a number of bombastic Bruckheimer-styled slugfests in a cinematic style that just feels slightly out of kink. However, there was a anomaly - 2011's Green Lantern, a film I quite liked but bombed big time, despite having Ryan Reynolds in the lead role. Marvel kind of absorbed the second (largely standalone) Hulk film by tagging an ending on that tied it into Iron Man, despite it not being very good and not really having any connection to the Hulk as he's seen in the current MCU. In fact, the Hulk's presence in the MCU has never been dealt with, it's like it happened in that film and let's say nothing more on the matter. DC could easily have done the same with Green Lantern; it was a missed opportunity.

Man of Steel was followed by Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), Suicide Squad (2016), Wonder Woman (2017), Justice League (2017), Aquaman (2018), Shazam! (2019), Birds of Prey (2020), and Wonder Woman 1984 (2020). However, you can take a few of them out as they might be part of the DCEU but their relevance - at the moment - is non-existent. The problem was none of the core films were particularly good. They were big, brash and full of mind-blowing special effects, but they are all largely soulless. Marvel invented 'family' in comics and they simply transferred that effect into the movies. Create a huge soap opera with fantastic interconnecting parts that can be read alone or as a group. DC created comic characters who did the same thing month after month after month. Clark Kent was a mild mannered journalist and Superman was a god; every month Lois Lane wondered about whether the two could be the same and every month the reset button was pressed. Not until the late 1980s did DC try and make their extended comics universe a family, by then just as they were getting the Marvel idea, their competitors had already moved on in areas DC had pondered but opted against.

I don't know if this is something ingrained into the DNA of DC, but it does feel like their film adaptations could easily just reboot again under a new 'top dog', whereas Marvel's current 20-odd film legacy will always have relevance even when film #120 comes out. 

That brings me to Justice League. DC's Avengers (more irony, the Avengers were always classed as Marvel's Justice League) was on the cards the moment Man of Steel wasn't a box office flop. If Marvel can do it, so can we, shouted DC 15 years after they first thought of it. Snyder's films to date hadn't exactly set the world on fire and when he had to quit directing Justice League two-thirds of the way through, it seemed his vision was also going to become just another unfinished subplot in the dull life of the DCEU. Joss Whedon came onboard, reshot scenes, re-edited it, changed bits and pieces and the film came out in 2017 to absolutely stunned silence. I've seen the film and I can't tell you anything about it at all; it's just dreadfully forgettable. 

It felt like that phase of the extended universe was over and subsequent DCEU films have all, by and large, been utter rubbish that feel like comics plucked from a bygone era in the way they interact with the world and each other. They all look nice, they all stink the house out as far as storytelling goes...

So, I knew nothing of Zack Snyder's Justice League until I started seeing adverts for it. I don't know the reasons behind it; it feels odd that DC would allow something like this to happen, but they did and whereas the Whedon cut has been erased from my memory, this version - at just about 4 hours - is epic. It's still soulless and devoid of any real empathy, but by the end of the film you're invested enough to give a shit, which is more than any of the other films managed. I also quite like Affleck as Bruce Wayne; I shouldn't, but his line of 'I'm rich', when asked by the Flash what his super powers were made me laugh out loud.

That said, I enjoyed ZSJL, even if it was 2 hours too long and is now effectively obsolete (especially Bruce's dreams of a dystopian future). It might be why subsequent films have been a) excrement and b) standalone. DC simply doesn't know how to play with the toys [read: ideas] that Marvel introduced them to.

ZSJL is utter rubbish but as escapism in lockdown it was better than watching Boris Johnson lie to the country.

***

Wandavision was great TV. Not enough of it, but good enough to fill a void. This is where DC fail, but Marvel has mastered the art of prick teasing. Whether Wandavision was any good is another question. It was bold and definitely unusual, but it ended up being quite an unpleasant thing that was without doubt one of the bravest things a fledgling TV company (which is what this arm of Disney is) to do.

If, like me, you realised almost before it started, that this was going to be a series about grief and escapism, then pat yourself on the back. It didn't matter what flesh was put on the bones, this was going to be about wrong footing everybody and doing something extremely clever and also... have I said brave yet? This is a brave move - on two levels: the first by making Wanda a villain, albeit through obvious mental health issues, but also by making her essentially the Phoenix - from X-Men mythos - means that whatever Marvel does with the X-Men, it might not be in any familiar way. For those who haven't got a clue what I mean, Jean Grey 'died' and was resurrected by the universal Phoenix force, unfortunately it turned her into a planet devouring monster and she had to be killed. It was highly controversial as a comic, was poorly done by Fox's X-Men and now the MCU appears to be setting Wanda up as one utterly mega-powerful entity, capable, possibly of breaking down the barriers of alternative universes and destroying worlds... It's almost like Kevin Fiege saw the abomination Fox made and now wants to do it the Marvel way.

Wandavision was essentially a bridging arc. It tied up some loose ends, did a handsome job of examining the effects of such accumulative grief on someone so powerful - especially in a world that no longer has a Cap, Iron Man or Black Widow (or Vision) she can go and seek solace with. She is alone, with no one and she's gone mad. What's not to love?

***

The Falcon & The Winter Soldier is four episodes in and was I getting the feeling it's going to end up setting up another film or TV series. At 45 minutes an episode you'd expect the first three to have moved the story along pretty quickly, but it took episode four to finally tell us what this series is really about. 

The main actors are great and they've been fleshed out to a degree that sometimes comics didn't bother with and the series feels like Wandavision in that it's dealing with issues that wouldn't work that well in films, specifically the relationship between heroes and the aftermath of the reverse of the 'blip' that wiped half the life of the universe out. 

It is also funny - funnier than Wandavision - and feels like an extension of the darker Captain America films and that also isn't a bad thing. In fact, I said to the wife, it feels like an extended Marvel film.

Oh and the new Captain America - played by Wyatt Russell (who appeared in JJ Abrams Overlord, in case you were wondering where you'd seen that ugly mug before) is an arsehole and proved it in the shocking ending of ep four.

***

Remember Fringe? What a great series that was and I don't think there's been anything that quite does 'odd' as well as it did. Well, Debris might be the exception to the rule. It is about fragments of a destroyed alien spacecraft crashing into the planet bringing quite unbelievable consequences when it does. It reminds me of Casualty at times; the start is always about what is going to happen, but instead of wondering who is going to be thrown into the thresher or fall down a drain, you wonder how the next fragment of spaceship is going to interact with the world and the people.

It's also quite clever in that it starts months after the first bits of debris hit the planet; so we're walking into a series that has been going on (in the minds of the creators) a lot longer than where we started to watch; therefore it allows us to move forwards without being bogged down by the 'set-up' and it also promises to explain the past but through the eyes of a bunch of people thrown together by fate, who no longer really trust each other.

6 episodes in and it's weird and distinctly creepy and Scroobius Pip is in it as a cockney 'villain' who can teleport using bits of alien metal. The strange thing is it's almost dealing with a similar theme to that of the MCU; whereas that is having to deal with the return of 3½ billion souls and where they belong in a world that was slowly forgetting about them; this is about something oddly similar, the argument that the debris is a gift from the universe and it belongs to all people and should not be controlled by the planet's most powerful governments.

***

I think it would be safe to say that the end of The Walking Dead cannot come soon enough. The tagged on extra six episodes of the most recent season were execrable - 6 x 45 minutes of some of the most boring excuses for an ongoing TV series as you could possibly imagine. Even the two episodes where you thought you might see some kind of progression ended up being handled in a very poor way; some could almost argue unnecessary additions to a dying series, with the Carol/Daryl second episode failing on almost every single front - if this is what to expect from the mooted series featuring these two main characters then I'll start watching Strictly.

Even Fear the Walking Dead seemed to have fallen into the 'we haven't got a clue what to do' camp, with the first 7 episodes of its 6th series not doing much at all to make you want to stay loyal, however on its return it showed how good this franchise can be with arguably the best episode of all the TWD series in years. It needs to keep this intensity up now it has learned to kill major characters off - pointlessly - again. Pointless deaths of major characters is what made it what it is today; 'no one is safe' was always the motto (apart from Rick Grimes) and that made it edgy. FTWD seems to have rediscovered 'edgy'.

***

I used to like cartoons, but as they became easier and cheaper to make they kind of lost that proper animation feel and anyone who watched anything by Hanna-Barbera in the 60s and 70s were always left wondering how Tom & Jerry could live in such a long house with really boring décor and the same picture hung every ten feet for several miles...

So, when I saw nothing but praise for Invincible - a comic series I vaguely recall being a bit of a fan of in the late 90s early 00s and created by Robert Kirkman, the guy behind The Walking Dead, I managed to persuade the wife to give it three episodes to see how it progressed.

I no longer 'get' cartoons. Everything kind of smacks of anime influences and they're so melodramatic. Invincible is no exception; it might have a host of well known people voicing it - Steven Yuen, JK Simmons, Sandra Oh, Zacchary Quinto, Seth Rogan, Clancy Brown, Mark Hamill, Mahershala Ali and John Hamm, to name but a few - but it's overwrought and kind of falls between two stools. It's too silly to be considered a proper adult cartoon and too violent to be considered a kids' one and frankly, after three 40 minute episodes I really didn't want to waste any of my time on it again... Shame. 

***

A quick return to Marvel: the new trailer for Loki dropped this week and it looks like its going to be huge fun and, I expect, this will be the main reason for the Multiverse of Madness due to appear in the next Dr Strange film. I really don't expect them to have a series with Loki and then kill him off at the end because he's a space-time anomaly (see Infinity War and then Endgame); it simply gives us him back to where he belongs and will obviously have massive repercussions throughout the MCU.

***

For All Mankind is still the best thing on TV at the moment. A fantastic mix of alternate history, soap opera with a side salad of Sci-Fi. It's by the guy who brought you Battlestar Galactica's reboot, but, seriously, don't let that put you off. It's ace.

***

Started really well and ended really disappointingly. That just about sums up my feelings about Resident Alien. The first five episodes were LOL-worthy and I did laugh out loud on a number of occasions. Alan Tudyk is great as Harry the alien who lands in Colorado, by mistake, kills then adopts the life and fizzog of a holidaying doctor and ends up being co-opted into the search for the killer of the resident town doctor. The problem with it started when it left behind it's small town charm and introduced a bigger picture; from that point it stopped being as funny and started to feel a bit... fake (a little like Harry).

The wife loved it, but I started to feel like it was a record that was good but after repeated plays starts to get on your nerves a little. There is enough 'intrigue' to make me want to watch the second season, now it's been renewed, but without spoiling anything for you, it seems very few people are really as they seem; too many of them are so one or two-dimensional that they either need fleshing out or killing off and a few of them are just annoying.

The comic was written by my friend Peter Hogan, so I hope his version didn't deteriorate as quickly as this TV show seemed to. Another real shame, but maybe renewal will renew the interest. Oh, and Asta has an unbelievably massive arse, it should be said, apropos of nowt. 

***

And in many ways all of the above are just the tip of an iceberg heading our way over the next 12 months. we're going to have new fantasy series, new Marvel films, new Sci-Fi and new weird shit that might end up being uncategorizable. There are new anthology series scheduled, including something called Them* which looked like it might be good, but I thought that about Lovecraft Country but that turned out to be a pile of dog shit (but, frankly, doesn't everything related to HP Lovecraft and the cult of Cthulhu?). Joss Whedon's back with a steampunk-looking series about a group of women with super powers in the late 19th century called The Nevers** and there are many more of which none of them have made me wish for time to fly by so I can see them...

* We watched the first episode of Them last night. It's overwrought and heavy handed with the racism, but there's also something a wee bit creepy about it and not just the neighbours; there's some other horror, far worse than bigoted racists and it seems to reside in the house now owned by the black people.

** We have the first episode of The Nevers to watch tonight.

***

And finally, the very last episode of my beloved Shameless was sad, tragic, disappointing, fulfilling, funny, hopeful, poignant and tipped its hat, bowed and honoured the source material with Frank's final monologue which was almost the same one as you used to hear at the start of every episode of the UK version. It was also the one thing it always aspired to be across nearly 12 years; it was real.

Shameless: US & Them

In January 2004, Channel 4 unveiled one of its most ambitious and controversial social commentary dramadies. Shameless - about life on the fictional Chatsworth Estate in Manchester - featured some absolute giants of British film, theatre and TV. The who's who included: David Threlfall, Anne-Marie Duff, James McAvoy, Maxine Peake, Dean Lennox-Kelly, Maggie O'Neill and Pauline McLynn (Go on, go on, go on)...

The first few series were quite unbelievable and, indeed, shameless. It portrayed the seedier side of council estate life faced with the adversity of dealing with the 'establishment', but it was also an extremely funny show, which bordered on comedy in large amounts, mainly to offset the bleak existence the Gallagher family faced. 

It had some drawbacks, as creator Paul Abbott explained in 2008, after half his cast had left to go onto bigger and arguably better things. Duff & McAvoy married and went off to become A listers, as did Peake; others became constants on British TV or just famous faces on the screen renowned for being in Shameless. By the end only Threlfall remained as the titular head of the family Frank Gallagher and by the end he had become some kind of embarrassing parody of himself; this pointless waster full of drink and drugs wandering aimlessly through life, always inebriated in some way or another. We had given up on the show long before it was cancelled. Not only had Frank become a parody, but the show had long lost its sense of family, friends and togetherness through adversary and I heard tales that the stories became even more far-fetched, the cast as far removed from the original series' as possible and it simply lost its way. Abbott claimed that losing so many talented actors meant he was constantly changing the story; that he didn't have the ability to tie actors into long contracts like they did in the USA (nor would he want to force them to stay if they had better opportunities), therefore he was constantly having to reinvent the show to suit whoever turned up every new series to work.

The UK version of Shameless finished in May 2013, almost 2½ years after Shameless (US) debuted. The similarities were obvious; it was about the Gallagher family and to a certain extent their friends and neighbours Kevin and Veronica and they lived in a run down area of Chicago (rather than Manchester) and the first series of the US version was a scene-for-scene remake of the first series of the UK version. The only real differences were changes to dialogue and locations.

The UK version's Frank Gallagher (Threlfall) was essentially a lovable arsehole with a penchant for booze, drugs and parties. He was irresponsible and a passenger in his own home, which was largely run by his eldest daughter Fiona (Duff). His wife had long disappeared and his assortment of kids ranged from Fiona in her 20s to Liam - the youngest (about 6 at the start). In between were Philip (Lip), Ian, Carl and Debbie. 

The US version's Frank Gallagher was as comical and as large as life as the UK version, but under the masterful guidance of William H. Macy (Fargo), the comedy was downplayed and the nastiness ramped up. US Frank was still a figure of ridicule and pity, but he was also a devious, uncaring, untrustworthy piece of shit, who, unlike his British counterpart, literally would have sold his own children for some drugs. Like the UK version, it was Fiona who acted as parent, sister and protector, Frank was too irresponsible to be trusted with anything.

Like the UK version, the characters had their basic traits: Lip was a borderline genius beset with drink and anger issues; Ian, a closeted gay, trying hard to keep his secret from those around him, unaware that most of then knew. Carl & Debbie were both young kids learning about the world of dole scrounging and living off the State and both were slightly sociopathic. Then there was Liam, the result of a genetic throwback in Monica Gallagher's ancestry and unlike the UK version was most definitely a black kid - the strange absurdity of having a black biological true sibling was enhanced by the fact that we were introduced to him as a baby in diapers and he still hadn't spoken a single word by the time series eight finished.

While the first season of the US version stayed true to Paul Abbott's original British series, season two on went in directions Abbott (and showrunner John Wells) could never have possibly achieved in the UK version, as all actors in the main roles were contracted for a minimum of seven seasons, if the series didn't get cancelled. Abbott said in an interview on US TV that he could finally tell some of the stories he'd been unable to tell because his UK actors all went on to bigger things leaving gaps to fill.

Unlike the UK version which seemed like a who's who of stars, only Macy was particularly well known. Joan Cusack played his love interest for the first few series, but she left and Emmy Rossum played Fiona - she was best known for a co-starring role in the indie film Beautiful Creatures and a failed music career (she also liked to get naked, an awful lot). Outside of these, all of the cast with the exception of Fiona's love interest - Justin Chatwin - were largely unknown actors or newcomers and he was only known for his role as Tom Cruise's son in the Spielberg remake of War of the Worlds. The anonymity of the cast helped make the series more ... visceral.

By the time the second season ended, if your were watching Shameless US you most definitely weren't watching a rehash of the UK version and by season four, the outrageous plots and breathtakingly jaw-dropping antics of the Gallaghers' meant you sometimes wondered how the show got onto US TV screens. Barely an episode went by without you hiding behind your fingers, or wincing or thinking, 'You have got to be fucking kidding me?'

It was quite brilliant. The real point was if you could think of something really shameless, then this TV show had already beaten you to it with balls on. Its brazen ability to tackle literally any subject, however taboo, and put a black comedy twist on it was genius. It was bold, bawdy, sexy, dirty, grubby, vile, nasty, violent, distasteful and... shameless, and within four years had firmly put the UK version in its place. Macy won awards as did Rossum and the rest of the family all had stories, arcs and lives that elevated them above just cast making up the numbers.

Lip - played by Jeremy Allen White - took the UK character's brilliance and ran with it. Looking like a young modern Robert Mitchum, White bestowed so much to his character that even now, 11 years down the road, I look at his character and think 'you're the reason I stuck with this show even when it got a bit patchy, because you are a quite brilliant actor and your portrayal of this oh-so tragic Gallagher brother is unsurpassed. If you haven't fallen in total love with the character by the end of season two you have no soul. Lip is the cleverest person in the show, he's also a hopeless alcoholic, romantic and desperate for a happy ending.

Ian - played by the now rising star Cameron Monaghan (the Joker in Gotham) - is a bipolar gay man who acts like a bruiser, is married to a psychopath and has done everything from join the army, served time, been the new Messiah and worked as a pole dancer in a gay club. He is a complex and emotional character and arguably the heart of the family; he's the one who actually looks like he cares, most of the time.

Debbie - played by Emma Kenney - was eight when she was cast and is cut from a similar character cloth to that of her late mother; she's selfish, self-determined, sexually-ambivalent, a single mother at 14 and absolutely barking mad and selfish to boot; she is both utterly dislikeable and lovable. You wouldn't let this girl have a child, yet Franny - her daughter - appears to be growing up far more normal than any of her aunts and uncles.

Carl - played by Ethan Cutkosky, the only known actor among the children for his work as a child actor - is an out-and-out psychopath who ends up finding his way into the police force after stints as an army cadet, burger flipper and Rastafarian drug dealer (he's not the black one).

Liam - played in the last three series by the brilliant Christian Isaiah - is in Lip's league as far as intelligence goes, but he's a black kid from an Irish-American family and faces all the shit that a black kid in Chicago would expect to face, especially now that he's 11. He is, in many ways, the next big tragedy in the series; he simply doesn't deserve to have been born into such a family of scumbags, but he's learned from the professionals and his relationship with Frank in latter seasons is almost sweet. I mean, Frank doesn't really like his kids - that's part of the ongoing story - but he has a soft spot for Liam and vice versa.

At the end of season 9, Emmy Rossum as Fiona finally left the show to pursue other things. As the actual head of the family, her journey from lovestruck woman in season one to hardened, angry, drunken coke-head in her final season ranks alongside Lip's decline as one of the most tragic journeys in the show. Some would call her a slapper; others would call her desperate for love because she would often give it out and seemingly receive little back. It was clear from about season 7 that they either had to do something radical with the character or write her out of the series. Rossum chose to leave and has largely been absent from screens since. As I write this there are just two episodes of the show left and my hope is she comes back for the final episode (like Fiona did in the final UK episode)...

Supporting characters Kev and Vee are probably the most consistently written people in the show; played admirably by Steve Howey and Shanola Hampton, this mix-race couple are both as sharp as knives and as stupid as clotted cream; they run the local bar and are really just part of the extended Gallagher family. I believe these two will get the real happy ending.

And that's the reason I'm writing this now rather than in two weeks when the final episode is shown. I expect that a show that has flirted with tragedy as often as it has with controversy is likely to end with a finality that will prevent at least one major character from being included in a resurrected series in 15 years time, should that ever happen. I also think some of the characters will get as close to a positive end as is possible, because no one wins the lottery in Shameless, no one gets the big breaks and everyone seems to go back to square one in this seemingly ongoing game of snakes and ladders... 

I've invested 11 years in this TV show, for at least seven of those years I proudly boasted it was my favourite TV show and I think the ending might be a bit too emotional for me to sit and write anything about it. 

What started as a mid-season filler show for six years, ended up as a prime time Showtime winner (and possibly the reason why things started to be toned down, once more people were watching). It has been full of births, deaths, marriages and people being left at the altar. It's had scams, miracles, unlikely affairs, unbelievable situations, murders, suicides and really reflected just what being poor in the USA really means for millions of people. As a social commentary it was never far from being slightly far-fetched... or was it? As a Brit watching from the other side of the Atlantic, living in the USA has never looked less appealing.

I can criticise the show; for starters it has always had a habit of leaving some plot lines dangling or ending stories without any real resolution, but isn't that life? You might get invested in a storyline only for it to be forgotten about or swept under the carpet or explained away in half a throwaway sentence. Carl's life seems to have been a constant source of unfinished storylines which I now think reflects the mad nature of his character and the fact that sometimes, in life, there are no outcomes, let alone satisfactory ones. Shameless (US) does this so well it sometimes feels like a social commentary documentary rather than the blackest of comedies. 

How Frank gets so much sex with gorgeous women is also a puzzle, but it's happened consistently since season one, so you take it for granted that he'll use his wily charms to get into bed with someone far too good for him at least once a season. But Frank now has dementia and a character you will struggle to have any empathy for is slowly becoming another tragedy in the vast unfolding tragedy that has been the Gallagher family for over a decade. I don't expect we'll see another show quite like it in our lifetimes and that's a good thing, because while this version is an imitation, it's one that does it better than the source material.

If you ever fancy watching 11 seasons of classic TV you should start and end here.

Retro Review (of sorts) The Stand 2021

This contains massive spoilers...

People who've known me a while will know that I went through a healthy/unhealthy obsession with Stephen King between the late 1970s and the early 2000s. That obsession was accentuated regarding a couple of books; Insomnia - which I've read about six times - and The Stand - which, in one form or another, I've seen/read coming up to a dozen. I read the original paperback, twice. When I replaced it with a new hardback I read it again. Then I read it again when King released an unabridged version in the 1990s and read it again when I realised that one of my favourite books of all time was being made into a TV series.

That 1994 adaptation was... lacking in a lot of things, but it did have a surprisingly adequate cast - Gary Sinise as Stu Redman was really good, as was Ray Walston as Glenn Bateman; Miguel Ferrer added a serious side to Flagg's #2 Lloyd Henreid and an excellent Laura San Giacomo was a bit of a revelation as Nadine Cross. Not so good were Jamey Sheridan as Randal Flagg - he bought a certain shit-eating C&W hillbilly vibe that was really lacking in sinister or creepy; Molly Ringwald didn't work as Fran Goldsmith,  Rob Lowe was wasted as Nick Andros and Matt (Max Headroom) Frewer was as menacing as the Trashcan Man as Sheridan was as Flagg. The thing about the 90s adaptation was it suffered from a lack of money to make the 'supernatural' scenes feel real. The cornfields and Mother Abigail was handled well, but as someone who pretty much knew whole chunks of dialogue from the book, I struggled to feel any huge affinity with the four-parter. I also don't think I've seen anything directed by Mick Garris that I've thought was worthy of him getting more work outside of flipping burgers. However, it was told in a linear fashion and you got to know the characters almost as well as you did in the book. You understood inside the first two 90-minute episodes, who was good, who was evil and why and what motivated them.

Since 1994, I've probably read The Stand three times more and also read some Marvel adaptation as well - unless I imagined that - so when I heard someone was doing a new 2021 TV adaptation my initial reaction was 'I hope they get the bits right the 94 version didn't do justice to' - literally, that was my biggest worry. I'm not going to say I was ecstatic about the new thing; there's always an element of trepidation whenever something wonderful in book form is adapted into another medium. The thing is without reading the book again and without watching a single episode of the new version, I started to have one of those hindsight moments of realisation - which might be obvious to some, but flew way over my head until recently...

The Stand is an apocalyptic horror novel that promotes misogyny, belittles the position of women in such a post-apocalyptic world and emphasises the importance of men in the future any post-apocalyptic world has. It's all about the weaknesses of women against the strength of men and even when the women are portrayed as strong or wilful it's to emphasise the importance of the men folk and their ultimate wisdom... It might as well be called The Misogyny. 

In the novel there are three major female characters: Fran Goldsmith - young, pregnant, impressionable and largely redundant. Nadine Cross - weird, troubled, torn between good and evil, a bit 'dirty' without being too 'sexy' but obviously an evil bitch with no redeeming features, until it's too late and Mother Abigail - 108 years old and essentially just a cypher for God - there to tell the 'good' side that sacrifices have to be made, but all the women have to stay in Boulder and make sure the bairns and dinners are looked after. The Stand is all about men who stay strong, because if they don't they're either at or a risk and women who are always tempted by the apple offer nothing but peril to those around them; really, I'm not making this shit up. 

The peripheral female characters are all either slightly hysterical (Larry's early post-apocalyptic partner) or conniving lesbian feminists (Dana Jurgens who gets the better of Flagg by preventing him from killing her with his own hands). In retrospect, the book (and the original TV adaptation) was all about women making soup and eventually changing nappies, while the men got on with the real work, except in Las Vegas where it was all about the women discovering they have double-jointed jaws and exposing as much flesh as they can to ensure they can show as much the next day without bits missing. In many ways, women come out of The Stand a little less than the only dog in it.

The more I think about the underlying misogyny and the depiction of women as either helpless or conniving, the more I question what I actually liked about the Stand, because it is the characters that drive it forward. Flagg - the antagonist - is in many ways just a totem for the devil and his counterpart, a weak and feeble old woman - Abigail Freemantle - aren't really what the book is about, they just supply a reason for all the characters to be in the same or different places at the same time. 

Don't get me wrong; men don't exactly come out of this in a good light, but they do appear to be far more important and provide the underlying narrative. If you follow the journeys of the key protagonists, all of them are blighted by arseholes with penises. Stu has to contend with military men and then childish men (Harold Lauder); Franny spends her first half of the book stuck with Harold and the second half being Stu's cuddle monkey/beached whale. Larry is surrounded by domineering and weak women until he meets a stronger woman who is just as batshit crazy as the ones who he seems to have follow him around. Then you have peripheral, but important characters, such as Glenn and Ray, who are essentially drawn as so anodyne they don't really have anything to say outside of generalised cliché or patriarchal wisdom. 

Oh and you have Nick Andros, who has only ever been the main character in the book and always been seen as much less in TV adaptations. Maybe that's because he's a deaf, dumb and almost blind boy (he lost an eye to an arsehole man) who might as well have been born with a vagina given the way his disabilities made him seem like he had one during his travels. Nick is by far and wide the best character in the book; that might be because he's essentially got to face most of the hurdles that all the non-male characters face. In many ways he's both the strongest and weakest character in the book. He also seems to clock what's going on considerably earlier than all the others, so in many ways his death comes as a complete shock, especially the first time you read the book, because literally up until the point where he's anatomically deconstructed, he's the main man and while you know what Harold and Nadine have planned, you kind of think it's going to be extras who will die and possibly one of the core characters who ultimately are there to make up the numbers. Oddly enough, in a book that is really only vaguely 'supernatural', Nick Andros really was the antithesis of anything 'supernatural' and dealt with everything in such a pragmatic way, so, in hindsight, he had to die.

The thing that makes The Stand such a compelling read, despite all of the dated and unsettling depictions of women, is that while it is extremely long, it never really gets bogged down; there are enough characters to ensure there's enough excitement until we get to the arse end of the story. 

That brings us nicely to the new 2021 adaptation. When I first heard about this I was a bit excited as it was going to be a multi-part series - nine one hour episodes is three hours longer than the 1994 version, so I expected a lot of back-fill; a lot of character development and a lot of time spent on characters who were maybe neglected in 1994. It seems I could not have been further from the truth...

The Stand works best as a linear story; what flashbacks there were in the book were all short and pointed to events happening in the present, so imagine my surprise when the series opens with Harold and Teddy loading dump trucks up with dead bodies (cordwood) in Boulder, Colorado before flipping back and forth between pre-Captain Trips; during the plague and the immediate aftermath of it. It almost felt as though the director was accepting that everyone watching it will understand who was good and who was bad, except for most of the opening four episodes we see almost nothing of Flagg nor his team of shitbags charged with turning Las Vegas into Sodom. In fact, the most unsettling thing about the opening two or three episodes was how it was being released during a pandemic and felt a bit prophetic.

The book is essentially in four parts - the beginning, the middle, the end, and the epilogue, which weighs in at nearly a 6th of the entire book. The start of the plague (or book) is not drawn out too much; we got snap shots of the world crumbling but it wasn't really until it fell that we realise it had fallen. The middle is where we're introduced to other characters, get to properly know our main protagonists (Stu, Larry and Fran; Harold and Nick) and finally meet our good and evil totems. The end is really quite short; events take a weird twist after Harold attempts to take out the town with explosives and what in time is actually as much as five months is condensed in a very short space of time and then there's the epilogue which overlaps the end somewhat and then stretches into the distance. The epilogue of The Stand is arguably the most important thing about the book.

The 2021 adaptation throws out the linear narrative of the book (and the first TV series) and opts for jumping back and forth through times and this is where it fails almost from the word go. The entire point of the linear story King tells is to show how certain characters align themselves to specific sides, or have internal struggles with themselves that adds to the reader's understanding of what drives the main characters; by jumbling up the time frame you almost immediately get a sense that Harold Lauder is dangerous; something he didn't really become until months after the plague. He was always a pain in the arse, but that was down to his immaturity and the fact he was an asshole in training. The same could be said about Larry Underwood, the rock star come would-be saviour of decent people. Larry's driving motif is that he's 'not a nice guy' and he's done some shitty things all through his life culminating in a series of tragic events that define his character - the first time you read it you're never quite sure what side of the line Larry's going to fall. You need to live that with Larry (and with Harold) but you get neither in the 2021 version; it's hinted at, but you meet both of them as how they end up rather than watching their journey to either the good or the dark side.

The 1994 version cast Laura San Giacomo as Nadine Cross - it seemed like a daft bit of casting at the time, but she pulled it off extremely well and she was Nadine; everything about her acting was how you imagine Nadine in the book. The 2021 version pretty much screws the pooch straight away; by casting Amber Heard you were immediately alienating a largish percentage of your target audience and Johnny Depp fans. Heard is a divisive actress and Depp fans hate her so much they managed to get The Stand rated less than a horrendous 4.0 on IMDB even before it came out. Heard is also far too attractive, sexy and utterly unbelievable as Nadine. Giacomo was also a very hot young thing when she played her, but you wouldn't have thought so. You could believe that San Giacomo's Ms Cross was a virgin, that she'd lived a really sheltered life and that she was saving herself for some odd figure from her dreams, the one who would return for her after the plague. Heard is actually just a mannequin and a quite wooden one at that. You do not believe she's saved herself for Flagg and where in the book and original TV version she was often seen as 'not 100% Team Freemantle' by many of the rest of the cast, in 2021 her strangeness isn't even looked at; in fact when events eventually play out the way they do with Harold, you almost get the idea that the survivors of Harold's ill-fated assassination attempt were slightly surprised that Nadine was part of it.

Another annoying thing about the 2021 version is it actually did look at some of the bits that were omitted from 1994, the problem was it also didn't include many of the key issues throughout the start and middle that defined the characters and actually made you care about them. By the time Nick is blown to pieces in the book, you are heavily invested in all the good guys, which is why his death is a real gut punch. You didn't see that coming; not Nick, he was the leader even if he couldn't speak or hear or even see properly. You didn't see it coming, which made the next 200 pages all the more intense. In fact, the first two times I read the book, I breezed through the next 200 pages so much that at times, on read #3, I was not remembering loads of it. I was focused on whether Stu was going to live, I wasn't bothered about Glenn, Ray and Larry walking into the valley of the shadow of death; their gooses were long cooked, it was whether Stu would survive to get back to Fran and her baby he was not the father of and whether that baby would survive Captain Trips.

In fact, by the time Nick's original co-traveller Tom Cullen - spelled M-O-O-N - finds Stu, you really don't give a shit about the other three or whatever happens to Las Vegas and Randall Flagg. Of the two best, most rounded characters in the book, one was dead and the other was dying; the rest was just bullshit. And oddly enough that was why The Stand worked so well, despite its misogynistic overtones. You knew how it would end but you were now so invested in the remaining characters it was more important to find out if they survive everything.

The '94 version featured former Max Headroom actor Matt Frewer as the very important character called The Trashcan Man. Frewer was crap in it, but really outside of Headroom, Frewer is crap in most things, but Trashie was there from the beginning; you got his full uninterrupted story and a total psychological profile of him. It was clear from the very beginning how valuable Trashcan Man would be for Flagg, but it was also quite clear the profoundly opposite effect he had on everyone else; he was also very much an Agent of Chaos and one neither good nor evil had much control over. The 2021 version has a much better Trashcan Man; utterly bonkers, totally fucked up and yet they didn't see fit to introduce possibly the fourth most important character in the book until we were in the home straight of the new version; episode 6 to be precise.

By episode 8 - the one I'm currently at and penultimate episode - it is clear that the 2021 version is outrageously of considerably poorer quality than the original. Despite more time, arguably better casting and an acknowledgement that women were an inferior species in the book and the first adaptation; it still manages to feel like an utterly soulless and unnecessary remake. 

In 2021's version Las Vegas is hedonism in extreme; it looks like anarchy but there is obviously some form of hierarchy stopping at Lloyd - who is now just a complete cock - and then Flagg. Lloyd Heinreid was played by Miguel Ferrer in the original; he was actually quite a clever crook who simply got in with the wrong guy - he knew this but he was high on loads of drugs so he didn't care. A man who could well have run his own crime syndicate if he'd been born somewhere other than Hicksville meant that Ferrer was a great choice. I can't be arsed to look at IMDB to see who plays him now, but dear God he's about as scary and conveys as much gravitas as a fucking wombat in a clown suit.

I expect the final episode will be Tom and Stu battling their way back to Boulder through the winter to be reunited with the Free Zone and resume life as not one of the leaders, but one of the people. The entire series is watchable like a car crash, but it's so facile and shallow you really couldn't give a shit about the characters and some of the liberties King's own son, Owen, has taken in adapting the original are almost sacrilegious. So much more time, so little effort. As lockdown filler it's on a par with cutting your genitals off with a spork. 

Hate is All You Need

Not content with infecting a huge swathe of the population of the planet, COVID19 has achieved something quite extraordinary as a result of the lockdown of most parts of society; it has taught people how to HATE with passion.

Brexit, Donald Trump and now Coronavirus have conspired to drive a wedge through society that basically amounts to an Us versus Them mentality; a You're Either With Us or Against Us world where compassion is a sign of weakness and believing in the truth is considered a form of mind control - even if believing in something completely bonkers probably puts people in the la-la-la-la woop woop woop category of madness (in the eyes of others).

I thought for many years that it was just the UK that was fucked - mainly because of Brexit, but then Trump came along and Bolsonaro and then Boris and his band of six form wankers just to remind us that it can never be as bad as you think it is. 

When the Donald said, during his Presidential campaign of 2016, that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it, that wasn't an idle boast, it was in many ways a clever strategy created by the team behind his charge to the White House. These people had been looking at social media over the previous few years and seen that hatred and abhorrent behaviour and vile opinions were on the increase and they decided that a Presidential candidate who actually said the things that some of the people wanted to say - in an open space - was a vote winner and as a result we now have a social media that is full of as much hatred and hostility as there is hope and kindness, more so in many ways because the latter is now considered 'leftie' and weak even if some of the people bandying the term around would never have considered themselves as 'right wing'.

If you care about people; if you care about the environment; if you oppose hatred you are left wing and yet being left wing is also a new term for social terrorism; it's always the left wingers that cause insurrection; it's always really them doing the violence and the hatred to frame the god-fearing right wing and make people people they're all horrible people. It has actually gotten so worse that people trying to stop the spread of hate are now branded as enemies of free speech. This is a world where a group of anti-fascists are considered worse than people who would execute unbelievers and have them hanging from telegraph poles to emphasise the point.

Essentially the humanity is fucked and I can't really see a way of fixing it. The end of civilisation as we have known it may well be starting its final descent. As a result, I also can't see how the divisions that exist now are ever going to be healed. Once upon a time, death was always a good way of building bridges between warring factions, but not any more; you would have thought a pandemic would have been a good, if slightly extreme way, to bring people back together. However, there appears to be nothing more than a barely noticeable nod of sympathy towards the people who have died during the pandemic, because the pandemic deniers all believe it is just some intricate controlling mechanism put into place by the same people they think are doing their best for the country...

WHAT? 

There is nothing more unsettling than seeing people accuse Boris Johnson of being at the forefront of a global conspiracy while simultaneously thinking he's the best thing since sliced bread. When you're faced with this kind of illogic you have to start admitting that whatever dwindling hope you might have had for humanity is dying faster than a covid-infected granny.

Lockdown fatigue is fuelling this fire of hatred. People are growing bored, fed up, disillusioned and desperate and as a result are beginning to turn on each other. Point out that Brexit isn't really going the way the Brexiteers wanted and instead of contrition you get blame thrown at everyone and everything apart from the people who caused it. It's remainers fault because they were so negative; if only they'd been more positive we'd be the world's largest everything by now... Or the people who aren't Americans who seem to think that Trump was the best president EVER because he said it how it was. Once I would have expected some of 'these' people to be shocked and appalled at the horrendous language and actions of the massive orange shit gibbon, now they celebrate pussy grabbing like it's something they've all done and women just like to moan about everything...

Misogyny is rife; sexism is on the rise and let's not talk about racism, mainly because one would have thought such a barbaric form of prejudice would have been long gone by the 21st century rather growing larger and more violent every day. Denial used to be a river in Egypt, now it's common place just about every where. Don't like something? Deny its existence/relevance/credence; dismiss it as left wing, as weak, as the reason for the breakdown of society or even worse make sure the rest of the world believe their lies by shouting them loud enough and often enough for them to sink in through osmosis.

In the last couple of weeks, as Trump shuffles away from the White House and cracks begin to show in the UK's Tory cabinet, you would have thought that objectivity would have found its foothold again, but instead of sanity we have the insanity of extreme subjectivity. I've banged on about Belief Politics for a few years now, but I don't think I've ever seen it so passionate than it currently is. Everything and everyone is now fair game; Brexit brought divisions between family, friends and neighbours and over the last 4½ years that division has turned to contempt, hatred and aggression. The art of discussion seems to be dying, replaced by passive aggressive statements designed to belittle and devalue another person's opinion.

There's never any proof offered up by these believers in bullshit; instead they use arguments like: I don't need to prove I'm right, you prove I'm wrong. Or the, in many ways worse, refusal to even acknowledge a question by simply going on the offensive in a different way. Make unfounded accusations; ridicule opinions and act stubborn and obtuse when challenged for facts. And then go on very carefully worded attacks so that social media algorithms fail to spot it until they've driven some decent person into calling them an idiot and have then banned for bullying or harassment. The right wing is a well oiled machine of competence and incompetence; they coalesce into a united front whenever they are threatened with having their lies and ridiculous beliefs questioned. The fuckwits have taken over the asylum without even needing to be in a majority.

In recent days, I've given up trying to get a covid-denying arsehole to at least think of other people and got mercilessly (and tactfully) attacked for being 'weak' 'leftie' 'cowardly', for being a 'sheep' a useless 'follower' for believing everything I read by people who believe everything they read... I've also seen my local community start to tear itself apart with an Us and Them mentality that I wouldn't have dreamt possible and would confound psychologists. I've seen young attack old; strong attack weak and people turn into 21st century versions of the Nazis we condemned so much but now have people who think they might have actually been onto something. And the saddest part of all of this, these hate filled, society destroying morons actually think of themselves as nice people, as good and honest and even as Christians despite being the absolute opposite of their beloved Jesus.

What is the point of ignoring it? I mean, there were literally millions of Germans, or Italians, or Russians who didn't agree with Hitler, Mussolini or Stalin, but fear prevented them from saying or doing anything until it was too late. You can't stand in the way of a tsunami of hate and then hope to stop it with wise or kind words or science and facts, not when people have BELIEF on their side. Not when people claim every rational thing is fake news and every irrational thing makes perfect sense - you cannot fight that kind of cognitive dissonance without maybe an extinction level event and then is the collateral damage worth it? 

It's all fucked and I don't know how it will stop.

Retro Review: Eccleston's Dr Who

On a whim, I decided to watch the return of Dr Who, which was 15 years ago now and likely to be distant in my memory, especially as I only ever watched these when they were first shown. I felt, with the new lockdown, that perhaps I should revisit the series from the start, with fresher eyes...

Here's my episode-by-episode breakdown:

Rose: With hindsight, not the most auspicious of debuts and in many ways the shadow of wobbly sets and dodgy FX is cast on this immediately. The Autons - living plastic creatures - were never the most terrifying or even plausible villains, so I'm not sure if this first episode was more in homage to the past than scene-setter for the future, especially if memory serves me correctly Jon Pertwee's first adventure was also against the Autons.

However, as an intro for the new Doctor and for companion, Rose Tyler, it's a perfect way to become acquainted. In many ways it's a dreadful episode full of poor slapstick, unrealistic actions and a genuine lack of suspense. Plus the first of many implausible 'escapes' for major characters with no explanation as to why or how. What it also does is hint at a much darker Doctor - a man who seems to be sailing a little too close to deranged. There is also a lot of death wrapped up in an almost CBBC towel and it continued a theme that [ahem] runs through the series - that of lots of running around.

The End of the World: The main problem with the second episode is the lack of logic employed throughout it - from the reasons behind the villain's actions to the ridiculous Super Mario level to simply be able to turn the space station off. It's full of what would be token digs at consumerism, capitalism and selfishness throughout the series and also introduces the Face of Boe. It's a mystery set 6 billion years in the future at the end of the Earth's life; it's a uninspired idea marred by '21st century' thinking. At this point, even with excellent enigmatic acting from Christopher Eccleston, you could have started to wonder if this comeback was going to be a one-off series.

The Unquiet Dead: There is much to like about this episode, despite the fact that it seems so contrived. It is genuinely creepy at times and has an unsettling ending. It's also the first real indication of the 'Bad Wolf', the recurring mystery motif throughout the rest of the series. What seems to be a strange ghost/zombie story, with no obvious links to Charles Dickens - who plays a large part in this without really doing a lot - ends up being an alien invasion story about a rift under Cardiff (with Gwen from Torchwood playing a different role). The things we learn from this episode include the fact this doctor doesn't seem to object to collateral damage; while there's a darkness that is hinted at which seems like it could be blacker than we could imagine.

Aliens of London & World War Three: By the time I got to this first two-parter, my patience was wearing a bit thin. The Slitheen are grotesque and grossly unappealing; there is something that is neither menacing or scary about them (outside of the slightly better than poor special effects) and the added farting is just another concession to the FACT that Dr Who is essentially a family show. Again normal logic seems to have been thrown out of the window in favour of a mix of slapstick and altering facts to suit the story. 

Aliens who want to do nothing more than reduce the planet to a heap of ashes for future sale deserve no mercy and get none. Yet again we see a Doctor more prepared to blow up the enemy than negotiate a peace deal; the problem by now is the frivolous Dr Who stories were getting in the way of his character development and the way Rose was being developed into a liability rather than an asset. 

Dalek: And then something happened...

Forget the cod am-dram acting by supporting characters in this (and all the previous episodes), you realise that this isn't about the incidental music, it's about the rhythm section. For what seemed like the 5th time in six episodes, Rose was responsible, indirectly, for the deaths of hundreds of people, while flirting and giving middle aged dads hard-ons, and the Doctor is angry, alone and slightly mad. It has some excellent acting in it and with this episode you start to wish that Eccleston could have been persuaded to do a second series, because he becomes The Doctor with this - full of bitterness, grief and wrath. 

The denouement is both weak and important. It ends up being just another 'episode' of nothing really changes, except we now know more of the back story that won't be really shared for a number of years. It is the stand out of the series.

The Long Game: After the darkness, comes the light... Or in real terms, more of the same frivolous something wants to control the Earth and the Doctor comes along and saves the day (or does he?). Set on board (another) space station channelling news 24/7 to the world below, all carefully chosen information designed to keep the population below in a constant state of fear. Again, the themes are about becoming something better while the past catches up with you. There is, obviously something wrong here, otherwise DW and Rose wouldn't be there.

At the time, this seemed like just another 'filler' episode and did nothing to forewarn us of the part this episode would play in the coming episodes. The title, in many ways, doesn't appear to have much to do with the events, except that maybe the title 'The Long Game' was signifying something else...

Father's Day: And back we go to something dark and nasty. Has Rose been planning something like this from the moment she met the Doctor? Was her intention to get him to take her back to the day her father died to save his life? It certainly seems that way as yet again Rose Tyler unleashes a deadly force on the planet that will result in everyone dying. It also walks that fine line between what the Doctor is allowed to interfere with and why some things he doesn't get involved with.

What this episode does highlight is why the Doctor taking human companions is often fraught with danger because humans inherently do the wrong thing. It also cements the relationship between Rose and the Doctor. If you took the two of them out of the context of the rest of the show, this is about a young woman infatuated with an older man, who in turn is infatuated with her. Not since the flirtatious days of Pertwee and Jo Grant (Katy Manning) has there been a dynamic between the Time Lord and his companion so charged with sexual tension and attraction. This is a love affair without the trappings of sex.

The Empty Child & The Doctor Dances: The second two-parter and the introduction of two vitally important things - Captain Jack Harkness and a level of seriousness that was lacking in all but a couple of the previous shows. Set during the blitz, it's a simple story of alien nanotechnology attempting to save a dead child but failing to recognise the species and causing humans to gradually be taken over by gene-rewriting technology condemning the race to a kind of zombie existence behind a humanised gas mask.

This in many ways is classic Who. A race to save the planet from a villain who is neither a foe or malicious entity. The underlying theme is honesty and not being true to oneself and like in Father's Day a sacrifice needs to be made, except this time round everyone lives. A happy ending, of sorts. 

Boomtown: This is what would be called a 'filler' in old Star Trek parlance; a wordy, almost talking heads episode that explains much and gives away little. The last surviving Slitheen is attempting to destroy the planet to help her get home, except she might not be, because it's difficult to tell what this Slitheen really wants. Mind games abound between the Doctor and his prisoner; between Rose and estranged boyfriend Mickey, while Jack ensconces himself into the team without a hitch. The dialogue is suddenly more zippy; there's a sense of purpose that was lacking and even though this specific segment does little to move the story on, it does have major issues in it that suddenly seems to tie all the previous 10 episodes together.

Bad Wolf & The Parting of the Ways: There's a real sense that the first 30 minutes of the first part of this final double header is just a bit self-indulgent. We return to Satellite 5, the headquarters of what was the news streaming satellite that is now a 24/7 games station, with 'games' that seem to provide little but death to the contestants. Featured 'reality' TV shows from 200,000 years earlier are still popular but now with a charnel twist. 100 years earlier the Doctor saved the planet from one threat to leave it wide open to another, far more serious, unknown threat. Something he has no idea about, but believes it to be connected to the recurring Bad Wolf motif that has been following him throughout time.

The Earth circa 200,100AD lives on a diet of rubbish in industrialised cities and all the time being secretly manipulated by the Doctor's sworn enemies The Daleks, who, apart from the one long survivor in an earlier episode, were believed to have been wiped out in the much hinted at Time War between Time Lords and their mates in metal boxes. When this is finally realised, the Doctor, Jack and Rose help the remaining people on Satellite 5 make a last stand against a half a million Daleks and their new fleet. 

Having promised Rose's mum that he would look after her daughter, the Doctor tricks Rose into returning home in the Tardis, with instruction to bury the box to allow it to die without him. However, we've recently learned the Tardis is a living being, considerably more powerful than anyone ever imagined and Rose uses this knowledge to override the Doctor's instruction and return to the space station to save him. The thing is to do this Rose has to look into the soul of the Tardis and in so doing she literally becomes it's human interface. The Daleks' are wiped from existence before the Doctor kisses Rose to steal the last of the Tardis energy from her to save her life. Rose was the instigator of Bad Wolf all the time; she is a paradox.

By saving her life, the Doctor triggers his own transformation and we say goodbye to Eccleston and hello to David Tennant - a real jolt to the system in many ways.

The Christmas Invasion: Is not strictly season 1 or 2, it's the bridging point and, in many ways, is more satisfying even if it's all a wee bit contrived. Earth is invaded while the Doctor recovers from his change; it's down to Rose, Mickey and Rose's mum to try and save the day, with the help of the PM - an old friend from the first Slitheen encounter. The Doctor recovers to save the day, yet again, but this time there are consequences and old friends are now no longer considered friendly.

One thing that does appear to be carried over is the sexual frisson between Rose and the Doctor and the growing raging jealousy that old beau Mickey seems to be harbouring.

Overall: I actually think the first series is one of the best; it treads a fine line between comedy and drama; it allowed a bit of camp humour the Doctor was always renowned for and it had a dark undertone that was used to its full effect. Ecclestone was the real shining light; an unorthodox DW, one we've never really seen before, one with more grey areas than you could imagine and definitely not the benign benefactor he becomes the longer the series goes on. This Doctor killed without any problems; with no conscience, little grief. He is portrayed as a lonely man, craving the attention of a young gorgeous girl and unaware of the genuine problems he causes wherever he goes. An ambiguous hero with as much darkness as light.

Billie Piper will have surprised many with her acting and range; she struggled to start with but as the series grew so did she. Her 'companion' has never been equalled - although one later came close (ruined by bad writing rather than anything else) and there was always the sense she wasn't so much picked to be a companion as maybe paradoxically manipulated it to ensure the events of the first series played out the way they did. If you read into the underlying story, you realise that it's actually cleverly written even if the episodes themselves all struggled to find that authentic Sci-Fi series vibe that US shows excel in.

It was incredibly ambitious without overstretching itself and compared to the current incarnation's adventures, it was brimming with ideas and genuine shocks. There are absolutely bang on parts in this; real lump in the throat, watching from behind your open fingers moments and as I said before managed to stay faithful while updating it to the 21st century. I don't think Russell T Davies probably got the recognition he deserved, especially as his replacements have all struggled to match the heights he managed.

As the years rolled by, the series became more frivolous, in many ways more complicated and there were very few standalone episodes that compared to some of the first series. I may venture through the Tennant and Smith years, because, as I stated, I've only ever watched the series once, I'm not a huge fan, I haven't watched shows I adore more than once. 

In comparison to today's incarnation, of which I have no real issues with other than poor scripts and crap companions, this is high quality stuff and we might need DW cancelled and rejigged in ten years time to appreciate what a unique character he is.

Apocalyptic: A Review of 2020

This is a true story

It was a chilly Tuesday, January 21st and the fire was roaring in the Craft Hotel. The pub was busier than expected on a midwinter night, but a lot of that might have been down to me. Two years earlier, in discussion with Sharon, the landlady, she had suggested she might shut on a Tuesday until the spring because of the lack of business. Tuesdays has for a few years been my night out - not exclusively, but it breaks the week up nicely and I only ever have up to 3 pints. I came up with this poster (below) and got my mate Patrick to print a couple off; it also featured on the Facebook and Twitter pages of various places and while Tuesdays were never like a busy night, for the next few months it was worthwhile staying open.

The weird thing is that Tuesdays are now always steady as a result, but this Tuesday, the hotel had three guests - an American lady and a young Chinese couple, who were actually on their honeymoon (Scotland at the end of January for a honeymoon?!?). Also in the pub was the landlady's estranged husband, Andy the local labourer and his mum Rose. Fearn was there, she'd just come off her shift, having been replaced by Louise, who pulled George and my pints. There were also two tables with familiar but not known people having meals and incomer Dave, from the North-east, who seems to only know you when he's trying to hawk a pint. And Sharon was in the kitchen with Zoe.

It was busy enough to make a comment about. However, the real conversation was this growing threat of a pandemic. It was now becoming more than a third story on the news and, of course, it started in China. The thing was, this was still January and while some people might have been panicking about the coming months, most of us were getting over last Christmas and looking forward to that happy new year we all strive for. So when the young Chinese lad - who was actually 35 but looked about 17 - asked Louise behind the bar what beer would she recommend, she turned to me and George for our expert advice.

"Try this." Says I, offering my pint to the young man. He did and ordered a pint. We got chatting, but he had no more info about what was going on than us and his English was weak. When they left for their room, Louise turned to me and said, "That was a hell o'a risk yus took. They're Chinese!" I made light of it and frankly while I did remain a bit worried over the coming week, it didn't really register that much until I sat down to write this review of the year. With hindsight, it was a pretty stupid thing to do even if it was with nothing but good intentions. That seems to be the best way to sum of 2020 as well in many ways...

Brown Liquid

In what has been a reasonable year for me, the first lockdown was good for me and the fine weather meant I entered the autumn in fine fettle. My one real scare was towards the end of the summer when literally overnight I started to feel generally unwell, bilious and like I'd been given a dose of IBS just to catch up with the years I've not suffered from it. There was something of a panic. Milk was cut out of my diet and replaced with oat milk - no change. I avoided wheat for three days, no change. We were narrowing down the list of culprits or I was suffering from something else...

The solution has been both one of the easiest things I've done and with terrible consequences. The next thing on my list to avoid was caffeine - I did, after all I drink about 20 mugs of strong coffee a day. Within 48 hours all the ill feelings had dispersed and only returned once, when, after a week of abstinence, I had a cup of coffee and suffered for the next four hours plus. Apart from the god-awful headaches during the first 9 or 10 days, the most difficult part of cutting caffeine out of your diet is what to replace it with. I like coffee, but proper diesel standard coffee. The stronger the better. I now drink about 6 alternative brown beverages a day now. I haven't had a cup of tea since 2001 and have never really fancied going back to it, especially now my sugar intake has halved, so I was faced with doing something I had NEVER done in my entire existence - and I can think of friends who would be horrified at what I'm about to tell you. I started on decaf (which is how I spell it but it has an erroneous F at the end on jars). Jesus on wheels, how do people seriously drink this? It doesn't smell like coffee. It doesn't taste like coffee. It isn't really coffee; you'd probably get as much out of drinking a spoonful of Original Bisto powder, with 1½ sugars and milk. 

Decaf is simply a piss take. It's an affront to the Trades Descriptions Act. Do you know what my wife thought it smelled of when one was thrust under her nose? Watered down warm milk. I can think of many things worse to drink, but it should be called Hot Brown Beverage and not coffee. Maybe 'cophey' would be more appropriate - this product aspires to be something it can't be and is thus just allowed to be a homophone. 

Procrastinate Now!

Seems to have been the motto inside my head, especially since the middle of October when winter started looming on the horizon. To be fair, I haven't been productive at all this year; it has given me license to be a lazy fucker, but my get up and go got up and went at the prospect of a restricted winter and the last couple of months have been something of a blur of time and stuff. I moan a lot again, more than I have for a few years, but I think that's because everybody you're fortunate enough to meet - safely - since March has had one thing or another to moan about. I try to keep mine to the things I'm personally bewildered about rather than any old prospective outrage. I try to rage against our press as much as I can, despite my knowledge of tilting at windmills and in many ways my procrastination from general life has allowed me to burn out my rage at my fellow human beings who either can't, won't or refuse to look at arguments from another perspective.

This largely deals with politics, but the intransigence of people's beliefs has now made the internet it's most nasty since its creation. It seems hate and opposition are the two driving forces behind it; almost like it's been steered into that direction by people with agendas we know not of... I'm addicted to it like most others, but I am growing tired of being asked for my information before I can operate around it like I once did, or worse, to pay for something I once had for free, because someone somewhere managed to think of a way to monetarise something that was initially intended to be one world wide free communications system. People with money don't like free things, especially when they can make money from them. Plus, the internet gives you an excuse to be bored and unproductive.

One of the sidebars of my procrastination has been I've taken up playing on-line golf, mainly because the only games I really enjoyed in the early years of computers were golf simulations. You can just about enjoy it without spending any money and it's replaced the fact that even though I have a golf course within easy walking distance of my front door, I'm unlikely to play a round again - what with my shoulder and back and my popeye arm - it would be a recipe for injury. The game's quite accurate in that if you want to really get good you have to spend shit loads of money on 'virtual' equipment (or in a more accurate term: the more money you spend the less unpredictable the game becomes). 

Home Improvements

Best part of the year has been a clutter thanks to the wife's insistence that she is a reincarnated builder. As a result, one of the rooms had its contents distributed throughout the house, while she and my mate George turned it from a brick outhouse with negligible insulation into a proper bona fide room. In fact, she did such a great job it's arguably the best room in the house now.

The garden still floods. We're torn between growing rice or declaring it Scotland's 30,001st loch. 

I re-felted the shed roof (with help from George). Actually, it was half of the shed roof, but... you know... something.

Music, ennit?

Kairon: IRSE's album Polysomn was rated as the 8th best album in Finland in 2020 (giving rise to the question - what were the top 7 Finnish albums like?). It would have been my favourite album of the year, had it not been for an album released two weeks before Christmas by a Scottish folk band...

Yes, you did indeed read that correctly. Mr Eclectic - man of world music's hidden secrets - has rediscovered folk music and so much so that I listen to it far more than is obviously healthy.

The Laggenberry Man by Beluga Lagoon is an ace album. Beluga Lagoon Films has been an excellent source of celluloid entertainment and Andrew O'Donnell (and his two associates Mark Taylor and Blaine Abercrombie) are extremely talented musicians, travel guides, film makers and really seem like thoroughly decent guys. The stand out track on the new album is 'Sunrise', but 'Sunset' is a close second.

It's Beginning to NOT Look a Lot Like Christmas...

I know a lot of people who 'do' Christmas, the majority of the rest just appreciate it for what it has become, either by taking advantage of the days off or simply to practice their descent into alcoholism, but it seems that in the year of COVID, the shine has gone off of it even before Boris decided to shut the country down again from Boxing Day.

One of the crazy beautiful things about living in Wigtown (the size of a village in the South of England) is how compact and all-encompassing it feels, especially at Christmas. This was our fourth one here and the least Christmassy I can remember it ever being; in fact, with the exception of one or two houses, this was about the most low-key festive period I've ever witnessed. 

Our living room is very festive, but the rest of the house? It could be June if it wasn't so cold.

I've had less contact with people this year than since the late 1990s and those I have interacted with have been singing the same disdainful, angry and frustrated song - it goes something like, 'Isn't 2020 a load of shit and why doesn't anything make sense any more?' I think I wished my first 'Happy Christmas' about a week ago and whenever the subject has been brought up, most people have been moaning about how shit it's going to be unable to share vast quantities of largesse with people they don't communicate with 363 days a year. 

After four and a half years...

Brexit finally appears to be happening. It appears we won't be better off and we've learned that going it alone in a global world makes about as much common sense as running for parliament on a Flat Earth ticket. Oh and let's not talk about sovereignty, eh? The sad thing about it is it's unlikely to trigger mass 'I never voted for this' statements from the great unwashed, therefore the sense of schadenfreude that all us Remoaners have been anticipating isn't likely to happen and for the next few years we'll not see an awful lot different for the vast majority and isolated cases will be dismissed as 'bad losers' first and foremost, even if their story is pertinent.

I expect we'll return to the EU in about 15 years and it will probably be in a deal as close as the one we had when we left. I also expect the EU will have changed considerably by then and will focus on the essentials required for countries to work together. It will spark a rise in UKIP styled movements, but most of the hardened Leavers will be dead or too old or frail to do much but rail against the school leaver charged with wiping their arses.

Obviously the future is one big uncertain blob at the moment, COVID has changed everything, whether we like it or not. Most people don't like change too much, they prefer their dull boring existences because nothing too bad ever happens and we'd like to keep it that way. I just hope that it makes people more thankful for what they have always had and who to blame when they haven't any more.

Snippets

* I successfully grew runner beans this year. After over 20 years of trying, I knocked it out of the park this year!

* However, flooding destroyed 75% of my potato crop; stunted my beetroot, rotted my tomatoes on the vine and the short growing season made our attempts at growing squashes a wee bit fruitless. It's been a fantastic summer for growing, but we started too late.

* I discovered an on-line spice company called Red Rickshaw (well, Jones did, but I've used them now, so...) and they have relieved me of one of my main worries about living in a remote part of Scotland where the words 'curry leaves' are greeted with bemusement.

* If it was possible for us lowly folk to be able to nominate people for some kind of special award (and I'm sure it is), then our friends George and Julie should be given peerages. Talk about pillars of society during this fucked-up year. They have shopped for the vulnerable, run errands, fixed domestic appliances or sorted out problems. They have stepped in to help when others let people down, Julie has worked tirelessly, despite being retired, and simply doesn't know how to say no. George has been up on roofs, inside chimneys, been up to ears in shit just to ensure that his friends and their neighbours have had it easier and cheaper than if they relied on our unreliable handymen. Whenever they've been able they've gone back down south to sort out family problems, all the while ensuring they keep well socially distanced because of their 'home' duties. They are also fantastic friends and we're lucky to live near them.

* Most people I know have lost someone this year, even if it was only by association and not necessarily because of the virus. The problem with this year has it has allowed people to disassociate themselves from people not close by. I knew when I moved here that there would be people who have been constants in my life who I'd never see again and without wishing to sound cold and callous, this year has made it easier to forget some people. For all of its plus points, Facebook, specifically, has allowed us to be distant with people we used to be central. Someone disappears off social media for a few weeks and before you know it they've pretty much disappeared from your immediate life - it's like without a Facebook presence you don't really exist. This happened to a friend of mine, who simply decided that he needed to return to the real world by not going into the virtual one and nearly six months down the line he's happier than he has been for a while and as he said, 'People like you care enough to drop me a line and fortunately I have plenty of friends who do that.' 

This year has brought back that old idea of 'community' and I'm sure that will be monetarised as soon as someone works out how. Wanna help your neighbour? £25. Having an afternoon chat and a cuppa? £5 per hour. Crazy I know, but you'd never have guessed in a million years that our government would have spaffed so much money on giving their mates contracts for materials they had no experience with, so anything is possible. As some people keep saying, 'We're going to end up paying for all of this, one way or another!'

* So on that happy and optimistic note, I really do hope 2021 brings a few things: people starting to believe experts again without thinking everyone has an agenda. Maybe a world where people with agendas stop thinking everyone else has one would be start - altruism does exist, honest. I'd like people to stay safe and remember, everyone everywhere is in the same state as us, economies will always rebuild themselves if there are people to create them. When the world returns to normal, people will still want the things that are no longer there, so they will create them. Yes, it's unfair to all of those people who will lose everything because of this, but shit happens - you've known it all your lives. It's a fact of life - one of the ones that is often neglected to be taught in schools.

Have a better 2021 than you can hope for!