Chimpomatic

Psychoville

(creator: Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton)

BBC Two

New darkcom from two of the writers from The League Of Gentlemen, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith. Where LOG was essentially a collection of oddballs sketches framed around the loose idea of a locals-only village, Psychoville is aiming to be a more coherent story. The frame is a blackmail plot, with a mysterious stranger sending the characters the same note: "I know what you did". Last summer? The summer before last? 

There's a similar love of the grotesque here: characters range from a mother and son who share a trainspotting love of serial killers to Mr Jelly ("Keeps Kids Quiet") - a clown who can barely contain his rage; a midwife with an unhealthy attachment to a demonstration baby (played by Dawn French); a blind collector who's hunting toys on eBay; a psychic dwarf and a mean panto Snow White.

It's a bit like being trapped in an English seaside town with all the shops shut, where people are tweaking out from behind their curtains: you know something interesting and possibly disturbing is going on, but you mind not want to hang out with them while you find out what it is. Some of the serial killer stuff's a bit on the gleeful side, like schoolboys sniggering at how much they can get away with, and the mum and son Sowerbutts team are pretty gross, while other bits like Siamese twins the Crabtree hovering over eBay sisters tap into a pretty unique take on modern life, and the sight of Mr Jelly punching out Mr Punch is very funny. 

If you're a League fan, you'll enjoy visiting Psychoville; if it left you a little mystified then no doubt you'll be in the same zone here. Fans will enjoy the added online element, which allows you to access bonus stuff every week on the Psychoville site if you pay attention to all the clues littered throughout each episode. It's this attention to detail and love of the genre that makes it a success, and it's encouraging to see a show that doesn't feel like it's come through the focus-grouped world of sitcom development. The mystery element should keep you coming back too, no matter how daft the set up feels at first.

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10th Jun 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

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Pulling

Final special

BBC Three

Back for one final hour of drunken romance, jaw-dropping hangovers and scenes of people being superglued to the floor, Pulling is easily one of the best sitcoms we've had in years. It's hard to understand what more they had to do to get another full series commissioned - the characters are hilarious, the situations just the right/wrong side of believable and the one-liners savage. Tanya Franks, Rebekah Staton and co-writer Sharon Horgan all put in excellent performances, with Paul Kaye giving one of the best characters of his career as Karen's disastrous on/off/on/off/drunk/wasted/off/off boyfriend Billy.

Of course, now that BBC Three has morphed from the channel that gave us Nighty Night, Monkey Dust and even the early Little Britain into the home of quality entertainment like Coming Of Age or Horne & Corden, maybe it's better that it's been allowed to die a dignified death and head off into the near-perfect sitcom retirement home (Fawlty Towers was only 12 minutes long blah blah). But it's easy to imagine that Pulling could have become the female Peep Show and ran for a lot longer than just two series and this one hour special. At least it gets to wrap things up enough, and lets us wallow in the wince-worthy antics of Donna, Louise and the mighty Karen once more. 

Donna's dating a braying posho whose idea of a good time is to cover his sheets with cash; Louise is back from a trip round the world with a new loved-up hippy she can't stand, and Karen's somehow settled down with a guy who thinks women should be in the kitchen making him pies. 

It's a total testament to the madness of the modern TV world that this hasn't gone any further, but hey, at least they had the grace to let them back for one last round.

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9th May 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

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Revolutionary Road

(dir. Sam Mendes)

BBC Films

After ten year's of marriage, Frank Wheeler is stuck in a job he despises, while his wife April hates her role as a suburban housewife on Revolutionary Road. Together they try and get back to their dream of leaving it all behind and living a different life in France, but as their plans are put into motion they begin to question what they really want from life.

It's always tough to make an impartial analysis of a the adaption of a favourite book, and this is no exception. Many elements of the story have been dropped or re-jigged, and an awkward run through some exposition makes for a clumsy start to the film. Once the pace settles down however, the film stays relatively true to the mood and atmosphere of the original.

Both the story and the atmosphere of the film have much in common with TV's Mad Men and highlights of the film show the suit-and-tie nature of working in New York in the 50's. There's perhaps not enough of these moments to build a large-scale image of the times and the film ends up being on a smaller scale, which is almost stage like. While the casting of DiCaprio and Winselt brings and instant back-story to the young lovers, it also causes a few problems. Winslet's American accent is sometimes shaky, momentarily snapping you out of the film and while DiCaprio is cast unconvincingly young as the 20-something Frank, he also doesn't quite fit the 30-something version of the same character.

None the less, the strong, thought-provoking themes of the book are evoked well. While it may not be a flawless classic worthy of a handful of Oscars, the film has much to offer and comes well recommended.

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18th Feb 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

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Doctor Who - The Next Doctor

(dir. Andy Goddard)

BBC One

In what's become a staple of UK Christmas schedules, David Tennant's back for another festive one-off. This time, the Tardis has fetched up in suitably festive realm of Victorian London, where amongst all the dirty-faced urchins and Dickensian snow, he quickly runs into a brave chap called... The Doctor - complete with his own assistant, Tardis and sonic screwdriver. He's also taking on a batch of Cybermen who are hanging out with villainous Miss Hartigan (Dervla Kirwan in a fetching scarlet number) and plotting to bring about the rise of the Cyber King...

Much better than last year's Titanic w Kylie special, there's enough plot and energy from Tennant to get you over the mince pie sentimentality, and occasional lapses into self-congratulation that the new Who sometimes falls into. It's much more of a decent kids show than the multi-generational sci-fi it gets given credit for - which is fine in my book, but always a bit confusing to see it so over-praised all the time. Still, it's good to see the BBC putting some of the licence fee into producing decent family viewing - having seen the first episode of ITV1's new teatime monster show Demons, it's so easy to get this stuff wildly wrong, and you'd have to be in a pretty full-on humbug mode to diss this year's Who present too much... Won't go into any more details, except to say i also quite enjoyed the fluffy Cyberhounds.

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21st Dec 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

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Best Of 2008

chimp71

another decent year of pop culture for me, feels like there's been lots of good stuff to get into this year...

TV

The Wire (FX) - season five bowed out in great form. Still the greatest.

Mad Men (BBC4) - convincing, slowburn drama, with fascinating take on early 60s life.

Breaking Bad (FX) Engrossing suburban drug-dealing tension.

Battlestar Galactica (Sky1) - trippy, political, enigmantic, moving sci-fi with some great space battles thrown in for good measure. Don't want it to end, but I do want to find out where they're going with it.

30 Rock (Five) - made even better by Tina Fey getting rid of Sarah Palin. 

Summer Heights High (BBC3) - don't want to be rude, but seriously, did you miss this? That's so random.

Criminal Justice (BBC1) - five nights of proper drama.

Film

Waltz With Bashir - brilliantly thoughtful animation, covering memory, loss and the intensity of war.

Man On Wire - beautifully simple doc about a tightrope walk between the Twin Towers. High tension line, indeed.

Gomorrah - brutal Italian mob chaos. 

In Search Of A Midnight Kiss - lo-fi indie romance

also enjoyed: The Dark Knight, Iron Man, In Bruges, No Country For Old Men

Albums

TV On The Radio - Dear Science an album that sounds like it could only have been made in 2008.

Black Mountain - In The Future retro maybe, but totally heavy and pretty essential

Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes great debut.

Bon Iver - For Emma - as was this.

Santogold - Santogold (and Top Ranking, the Diplo-Dub) - and this!

also enjoyed: Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend, Grace Jones - Hurricane, Catfish Haven - Devastator

Gigs

Black Mountain - The Scala (great just after breakfast at Glastonbury too)

Jay-Z - Glastonbury a proper big moment. His cover of Wonderwall was deft, subtle and hilarious all at the same time.

Grace Jones - Royal Festival Hall disco from another dimension. Total legend.

Justice - Somerset House huge, gut-shaking digital rock, great to see in a classic setting.

Bjork - Hammersmith Apollo - still one of the best live acts around.

Also enjoyed: Matthew Herbert Big Band - Royal Festival Hall, Radiohead - Victoria Park

#Music
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18th Dec 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

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Wallace And Gromit: A Matter Of Loaf And Death

(dir. Nick Park)

BBC1

Wallace and Gromit return in a "classic who-doughnut mystery" just in time for Christmas. If you're a fan of the Aardman pun-filled charm, there's plenty to enjoy in this half-hour outing, in which we find our cheese and tea-loving heroes running a bakery (Top Bun) with all their usual Heath Robinson-style robotic chaos. 

Things are all going fine until Wallace falls for the charms of Piella Bakewell, a former star of the Bake-O-Lite bread commercials and her poodle Fluffles. Will she bring too much of her womanly touch to the mill? Will Fluffles send Gromit running to the doghouse? And why isn't Wallace more worried about the "cereal killer" who's been attacking all the local bakers in the area?

Full of lots of daft touches, visual gags and Hitchcockian nods, it's another success from Aardman - proper family entertainment that doesn't dumb down for kids or spend too much time being overly sly for grownups. Just wish it didn't take so long for them to knock these films out. Coronation Street's Sally Lindsay joins Peter Sallis on voice duties.

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4th Dec 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

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Wallander

Sidetracked

BBC1

"Ystad - the Texas of Sweden..."

Kenneth Branagh stars in the first of three feature-length versions of Henning Mankell's best-selling detective novels. If (like us) you're not familiar with the series, then you're in something of a minority - well in the rest of Europe anyhow, where they've sold around 25 million copies. There's even a Wallander Tour in the real town of Ystad.

Initially it's a pretty unusual set-up. We're in Sweden, but everyone's speaking English. They don't even bother with anything like that bit at the start of The Hunt For Red October where they're talking in Russian for about a minute before zooming in and then letting Sean Connery go back to Scottish for the rest of the film. 

Then, until someone pulls out a mobile, you could be forgiven for thinking it was set in the 1950s - there's a kind of otherworldly, timeless quality to the country setting - it looks like a modern European country, but because Sweden's been so stylish for so long, it's hard to place when it actually is. Even the police station looks like a *Wallpaper shoot. 

But after the first ten minutes or so, you get used to the environment, and don't really notice until you're introduced to another Lars or Nyberg etc. The occasional nods to recent Swedish history - immigration, permissiveness, politics etc - add another dimension to an intelligent, well-paced story. No Ikea or meatballs though. 

The first in the trilogy running on BBC1 over three Sunday nights (and then out on DVD after), Sidetracked, introduces Kurt Wallander - divorced, living alone, trying to get on with his dad and daughter - no quirky character traits like Monk or Life here - just the stuff of life, played out realistically. That's not to suggest that it's boring, or soapy - far from it - just that it's played in the realm of the real as much as possible, which is what makes it work so well (even when it's a gruesome case involving scalping, three dead men in apparently unrelated cases, and a young woman who sets herself on fire).

For all the cliches about Branagh being the ultimate luvvie you kind of forget sometimes what got him that reputation in the first place: he is a really great actor. With Wallander he seems to have finally found the perfect character to fit his style.

It's a film that's moving, exciting, dark and occasionally heartbreaking - and for once we're presented with a policeman who's not jaded by the sight of another dead body, but rather takes it totally to heart, finding it almost impossible to understand how a human could kill another human. 

Branagh is joined by David Warner as his dad (great casting, and nice to see the Tron/Company Of Wolves star given such a meaty role); Sarah Smart as his assistant (she was the hanger-on woman in the excellent Five Days last year) and there's a small role for Skins generation one star Nicholas Hoult in the first episode.

As a sidenote, Wallander was shot using the new Red digital cameras - and it looks great, like digital has finally evolved to find its own aesthetic, in the same way that 35mm or Super8 have their own distinct looks.

Sidetracked is followed by Firewall and One Step Behind if you're familiar with the series - if they're as good as the first, this is a series that should run and run (as long as they can get Branagh back to TV after Thor). 

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21st Nov 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

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