Thursday, March 06, 2003 Thursday, March 06, 2003

The last episode of Rob Brydon and Hugo Blick's Marion and Geoff was just on telly tonight. I'm guessing that a lot of people missed the first series, what with BBC2's innovative scheduling techniques and the whole The Office thing (another casualty of which, although not to anything like the same extent as M&G, was the excellent Phoenix Nights).

The premise, for those who missed it: Keith Barratt is a taxi dravi who's stuck in an unhappy marriage with Marion. Everyone knows that it's not working apart from Keith, who goes through his life completely oblivious to the fact that his wife only feels contempt for him and is having an affair with her boss, Geoff. In Keith's eyes, everything is going fine. His kids are happy, Marion loves him and Geoff is an exceptional boss and a good friend.

Series 2 gives us Keith post-separation. After an 'unfortunate incident' (effectively the result of his complete emotional collapse after Marion left him), he only gets to see his kids on rare occasions at a motorway service station, accompanied by a social worker (there's a wonderful bit where he forgets to give them the water pistols he'd brought as presents and chases Geoff's car up the motorway in an attempt to rectify his mistake, beeping the horn and waving his hands as paintings that his kids made for him years ago - and Marion has only just deigned to give him - fly out of his open window).

This is comedy that's - thankfully - a million miles away from The Office. There's little discomfort when watching it - instead, you feel real pity for Keith as he's a thoroughly decent guy. Dull, but decent. The episodes are filmed as talking heads monologues, Keith always speaking directly to camera whilst sat in the driver's seat of his car (the only point of view that the audience is presented with, with Keith being the only character we ever see). We never get to see any of the action, either - events are related to us after they've happened. It's unashamedly gentle stuff which shows us a relentlessly optimistic man carrying on regardless as his world collapses around him, yet it never becomes trite, maudlin or overly depressing. It's also the finest piece of character acting seen on TV for ages.

Rob Brydon, one half of the writing team and the guy who plays Keith, stated recently that he's a fan of David Nobbs' The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, probably the most underated gem of UK comedy ever. You can see (and feel) the influence.

Anyone else watch this? Opinions on the way it was wrapped up tonight (I'm going to avoid spoilers just in case, but I thought the way they played with the audience's expectations - we know Keith well enough to know that he's going to make the wrong choice, and that annoys us and lets us feel cheated until the very last scene plays out behind the credits - was astonishingly well done)?

I'm mighty peeved - as you can probably tell - that The Office, an inferior series, got all the plaudits that should have gone to Blick and Brydon for this and also probably contributed to it getting far smaller viewing figures than it deserved.


E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 02:21


I know, I know - cribbing stuff you've written elsewhere and sticking it up as a post is so cheap. So sue me.

E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 02:21


Tuesday, March 04, 2003 Tuesday, March 04, 2003

This damn game has eaten my brain.


E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 02:21


Saturday, March 01, 2003 Saturday, March 01, 2003
Playing in my head at this minute is The Monkees' recording of Carole King's As We Go Along. It's a lovely song, but one that completely fries my head. The mix of 5/4 and 3/4 time signatures is nothing short of astonishing, but causes all kinds of problems. I can strum out the ryhthm on a guitar with little difficulty, but actually singing the thing is an entirely different matter. The real trouble is with the first couple of verses, before the chorus comes in - in contrast to the other verses (where he starts each refrain on the fourth beat), Dolenz' vocals come in on the very first beat of each bar. Lennon's She Said, She Said often gets props for its messing with time sigs in the pop song structure, but, for me, As We Go Along surpasses it, both in terms of daring and effectiveness.

E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 14:57


Losing the fight against mediocrity for the last few years.

Fire a volley

A HISTORY OF FUTILE CONFILCTS
08/01/2002 - 09/01/2002
09/01/2002 - 10/01/2002
10/01/2002 - 11/01/2002
11/01/2002 - 12/01/2002
12/01/2002 - 01/01/2003
01/01/2003 - 02/01/2003
02/01/2003 - 03/01/2003
03/01/2003 - 04/01/2003
04/01/2003 - 05/01/2003
05/01/2003 - 06/01/2003
06/01/2003 - 07/01/2003
07/01/2003 - 08/01/2003
08/01/2003 - 09/01/2003
09/01/2003 - 10/01/2003
10/01/2003 - 11/01/2003
11/01/2003 - 12/01/2003
12/01/2003 - 01/01/2004
01/01/2004 - 02/01/2004
02/01/2004 - 03/01/2004
03/01/2004 - 04/01/2004
04/01/2004 - 05/01/2004
05/01/2004 - 06/01/2004
06/01/2004 - 07/01/2004
07/01/2004 - 08/01/2004
08/01/2004 - 09/01/2004
09/01/2004 - 10/01/2004
10/01/2004 - 11/01/2004
11/01/2004 - 12/01/2004
02/01/2005 - 03/01/2005
03/01/2005 - 04/01/2005
05/01/2005 - 06/01/2005
07/01/2005 - 08/01/2005
09/01/2005 - 10/01/2005
10/01/2005 - 11/01/2005
11/01/2005 - 12/01/2005
12/01/2005 - 01/01/2006
01/01/2006 - 02/01/2006
02/01/2006 - 03/01/2006
03/01/2006 - 04/01/2006
04/01/2006 - 05/01/2006
05/01/2006 - 06/01/2006
06/01/2006 - 07/01/2006
08/01/2007 - 09/01/2007
09/01/2007 - 10/01/2007
 
BATTLE-HARDENED COMRADES
Paleface
Flowers
Flyboy
June
Mordant C@rnival
Haus
Rizla
Rotational
Jack Fear
Stoatie
Fridgemagnet
Moriarty
Barbeblogs
 
THE PROMISED LANDS
Hardcore Gaming 101
Lost Levels
Insert Credit
Barbelith
Junker HQ
SHMUPS
The Castlevania Dungeon
SF Kosmo
The PC Engine Software Bible
Arcade History Database
Serebii.net

 

 
This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours? Weblog Commenting and Trackback by HaloScan.com