Luck Preview

It was around 10 minutes into Luck, the latest big drama from HBO, that I started to do an involuntary impression of my Grandma. “What did he say?”, “Come again?” and “Maybe I should rewind that bit” were some of the less-sweary comments I yelled as the dialogue continued to elude me. After a few hours of worrying about earwax deposits and high end hearing loss in the over-40s, I was relieved to discover after some research that it wasn’t just me having trouble understanding 75% of the lines – many of the early reviewers had the same problem.

Clearly then, the approach to dialogue was a deliberate decision on the part of the creative team; an attempt at hyperrealist approach that would reflect the way that people speak in social situations. In recent times there have been some great dramas that brooked no compromise with regards to naturalistic dialogue (The Wire) or baroque stylised speech (Deadwood), and once the audience’s ear is attuned then the richness and complexity of the language really starts to pay off.

The problem with Luck is that while the audience can take and even enjoy being thrown into an unfamiliar milieu with complex dialogue, if the programme makers then add another layer (the highly technical jargon of the racetrack fraternity) then you might as well send each viewer earplugs and balaclavas to finish the job off completely. Comprehensibility aside, the opening episode was a simple enough set up: Chester Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman), a big cheese in the horse racing community, returns from prison to reclaim his fiefdom and presumably to exact some form of hideous revenge on this enemies.

Seemingly unconnected to Bernstein, Walter Smith (Nick Nolte) is a grizzled old horse wrangler who, aside from possessing a voice so husky that only whales can hear him, suspects he has found a horse that will make his fortune, while at the same stables trainer Turo Escalante (Jon Ortiz) cunningly uses another great horse to make some loot. Even the other characters find Escalante incomprehensible which is no mean accolade in this show.

As is the way with these kind of dramas, it’s obvious that the characters will gradually become linked as the plot unfolds, and will also surely cross paths with the gang of four “railbirds” who habituate the racetrack in the hope that they’ll finally get the big win. While the various characters mumble away, the camera lingers on what lies at the heart of their lives – the horses racing around the circuit.

As you’d expect from HBO, the series looks great, and every supporting actor is superb. But unlike The Wire which, despite its initial opacity, drew the viewer in with its intensity, unstarry realist acting, and low-key publicity, Luck groans under the weight of its associated names. The ad campaigns for the show are dominated by the names of director Michael Mann (too many films to mention) and writer/creator David Milch (NYPD Blue, Deadwood), while on the acting side, the promise of Hoffman, Nolte (and Michael Gambon to come) screams “prestige drama”.

Unfortunately, on the evidence of this first episode, it looks as if these notables, esepcially Milch, have been horribly indulged when they should have been kept behind after school with a stern “must try harder”. As an introductory episode (which admittedly aren’t easy to get right) it’s a shocker, with the writer seeming to work on the unwarranted assumption that because multiple characters are involved and that there will be a payoff later, there’s no need to make the episode itself entertaining or even interesting.

Part of this problem may be that because Milch (a successful horse owner and breeder) clearly finds horse racing fascinating, he takes it as a given that everyone else will too. Certainly he hasn’t included much in the way of drama to distract us from the quotidian business of the racetrack; the viewer is left to get what he/she can out of the sight of automated betting machines, stables, groundskeepers and groups of men sitting around looking glum.

Not that Milch is entirely to blame. Things can only get better for Dustin Hoffman, as in episode one he’s clearly the least frightening gangster since Fat Sam in Bugsy Malone. His character in Marathon Man was more intimidating than Chester Bernstein. Chester Tate from Soap was a darker character. Hoffman though wasn’t the only one struggling, as even the usually brilliant Nick Nolte slept through lines that were more snored than spoken. If Luck has anything going for it, then it’s a commitment to a certain style of realism, but this was fatally undermined by the sight of these Hollywood titans floundering so desperately. Only Jon Ortiz’s performance, despite its comic incomprehensibility, gave you the impression that a brilliant character would emerge in later episodes.

Luck may just be suffering from “difficult first episode” syndrome, and perhaps as the series progresses Milch’s talent for a heightened mix of the baroque and the mundane will dismiss my concerns over the self-indulgence of the subject matter. But he can’t stop Hoffman being miscast, nor will he easily remove the self-erected barriers to audience engagement. The HBO YouTube channel is currently full of short films explaining the betting lingo to the (I imagine) large proportion of the viewing public who don’t have a clue what’s going on. This is not a good sign. If it’s such a priority to explain things, then room should have been found to do that in the drama itself.

There are impressive things in Luck. Michael Mann films always look great and this is no exception. The horse racing scenes are particularly stunning, but even this aspect has been undermined by the continuing controversy over the treatment of the animals during the making of the series. Although this issue is still unresolved, it can’t help but add to the impression that the whole enterprise is an ill-starred vanity project. Luck has already been commissioned for a second series, although the critical response has been mixed and the ratings poor. Maybe Michael Gambon will save it, but he can’t do everything. Even he couldn’t save A Beast Must Die.

Luck starts on Saturday 18th Feburary at 9pm on Sky Atlantic

Nightingale’s Boys on DVD

One of the great pleasures of watching good quality British television drama of the 1970s is admiring just how effortless the writing so often appears to be. Plays leisurely wander in whatever direction the writer feels the characters are leading him: this was a world seemingly of creativity without rigid design. Script meetings in those days were free of terms like “story arcs” and “beats”, and yet with writers of the quality of Jack Rosenthal and Arthur Hopcraft doing the rounds, things seem time and again to fall into place in funny, sweet and fascinating patterns.

Nightingale’s Boys, a Granada serial from 1975, may not be the most ambitious or exciting drama to have come out of the era; indeed it’s easy to see why it’s not stayed in the memory as well as many of its contemporaries. But if what you are looking for is absorbing, restful and sympathetic storytelling, then this is as sweet as a kiss on a winter’s day.

The premise is schoolboy simple and, even if it’s never been done before, strangely familiar. Bill Nightingale, a fifty-nine year old schoolteacher of gentle socialist ideals and with an infectious love of literature, is catapulted back to a joyous moment of past triumph when he discovers the wonderkid new addition to his current sixth form is the son of one of his legendary “class of ’49”, a band of brothers who were everything teaching means to him. In an attempt to escape, or perhaps feed, his nostalgic melancholy, he stages a reunion.

Nightingale reminded me of an older version of Frank Windsor’s “Headmaster”, at the time the subject of an interesting and stroppy Play for Today: in that piece John Challen’s endlessly patient and paternal teacher comes to accept he is now a dinosaur when a school merger means him having to compete for his job with a younger, more aggressive and more corporate-thinking candidate. Whilst Windsor’s character was less prone to whimsy and more embroiled in the hard facts that were changing Britain’s education system, Nightingale’s demons are more abstract, as much a symptom of his age as the age he is now living in. He has been steadfastly launching ships out to sea all his working life, and though he might not feel he should have set sail himself, he suddenly wants to hear some traveller’s tales, and relive a time when he was a true Captain.

Derek Farr (a former schoolteacher himself) plays Nightingale with a cheerful melancholy and it’s the most likeable performance I’ve ever seen him give. Farr rarely played particularly interesting characters, so it’s lovely to see him get a chance to display some warmth and a trace of eccentricity here. Nightingale’s an unashamed sentimentalist compared to his colleagues: to them “old boys are good for just the odd half when you run into them.”

As Nightingale is getting old, his old class are all reaching middle-age. The first half of Arthur Hopcraft’s opening episode treats them all as satellites to their old mentor, as we are given brief and telling glimpses of their places in the world, some doing well on paper, some yearning for something more in their hearts. Only three actually turn up to the reunion, and after a rather awkward start in which they resist the freefall of nostalgia for the sake of their wives, once they have adjourned to another room, they are loving their escape from Seventies England.

From there we follow each of the pupils in individual plays, Nightingale making the odd cameo along the way. In the second episode, a troubled Anton Rogers stars as a recently divorced composer infantilized by his Jewish mother, the kind of woman who you can’t imagine ever having been a child herself and who will never let her son become an adult. This is followed by Jack Rosenthal’s ‘Big Sid’, in which one of Nightingale’s boys who has become a celebrated cricketer, revisits the school as the guest of honour on Speech Day. But unlike his contemporaries, this one subjects the gentle Nightingale to a softly spoken but vile verbal attack upon meeting him again, before responding to the Headmaster’s jovial flick through the old detention register with the news that his double detainment on 15th November 1949 was a miscarriage of justice. “That’s eighty minutes of my life you’re still owing me.”

These two plays don’t quite live up to the promise of the first, in part because their central characters aren’t as interesting or engaging as Nightingale himself. Beyond his melancholy there are many other aspects of his life one longs for more exploration of (his relationship with his surprisingly young and flighty though adoring girlfriend that has blossomed since his divorce being particularly intriguing).

But things definitely get compelling in the excellent ‘Flossie’, the only piece of drama the acclaimed Colin Spencer ever wrote for television, in which David Swift gives a calm and careful performance as a well-meaning and gentle family man whose wife’s neurosis, it becomes clear, is a manifestation of her secret awareness of his double life. His children, one of which is played by Vincent Hall a few years before becoming Grange Hill’s angel-faced psychopath Mickey Doyle, are prone to throwing their dinner at the television set and playing war games, his dying father is a bovine bigot, and even a night out with some of his old classmates leads to him feeling alienated and teased about a secret no one quite can, or will, put a name to. It’s a sober, warm-hearted exploration of homosexuality in mid-Seventies Middle England, refreshingly free of tortured apologies, and at the centre of it Swift maintains a calm dignity that, coupled with writing that only in the scenes with the father lose subtlety, makes this probably the most pleasing entry in the series.

‘Spivvy’, despite being an all-film piece set in a remote and ramshackle cottage in a pylon-strewn and gloomy wilderness, is the most claustrophobic and economical of the pieces. Bernard Gallagher, a household face but never a household name, has never failed to impress me on stage or screen be he playing genial constables, bolshy shop stewards or schizophrenic suburbanites, and here he is typically naturalistic and complex as the grammar school boy made good who has dragged his family to his newly acquired if dilapidated country retreat only to be faced with his idealistic teenage son telling him he wants to leave school early, an announcement that spirals into a ferocious slanging match with the son mercilessly spitting on his father’s entire life and achievements. To him his father is nothing but an elitist (a common criticism of the grammar school ethos), and their excellently written confrontation is made all the more affecting by being placed in a setting that is far from being the English countryside at its most idyllic.

‘A.J.’ takes us back to Nightingale again, who, when he discovers one of his pupils selling pornography, disciplines the boy, only to then have his judgement faulted by the Headmaster, who is being bullied by a parent to have the boy suspended. Nightingale fiercely defends his decision, not least because the child in question has a bright future and to interfere with his A-Level tuition could be damaging, but also because he is wounded that as the longest serving teacher his word seems to now count for so little. But help is at hand from an unlikely source when another of his Class of ’49 insists on helping. Nightingale is initially disappointed to discover that the bookish if reserved pupil has since had a career in the Army, but discovers that in fact he has become a true credit to his old teacher. Touchingly played by John Carson and by Farr, this sensitive piece brings together many of the series’ disparate themes in one simple, snug piece, a charming fifty minutes warmly written by Alexander Baron.

It leads us smoothly into the reflective final episode, which introduces us to the rest of Nightingale’s family. His principled but level-headed son (Alec Sabin) has just returned to England from working on famine relief projects, while his estranged wife, (Barbara Lott) is clearly still waiting for him to return to her, not so much out of love as out of tidiness. Angela Morant, later an excellent and grossly underused purveyor of menopausal malaise, is seen here in all the vigour of her youth, and makes a strong impression as Nightingale’s wise and understanding daughter. Despite good work on many single plays, this final episode is for me Arthur Hopcraft’s finest bit of dramatic writing, brimming with insights and ponderings on family and working life.

Today television scripts are honed and redrafted ad nauseum in the jittery desire to please every supposed criteria of a target audience. This on the other hand isn’t a conducted tour but a stroll in the woods, and even if it takes the occasional wrong turn, it’s a journey I got far more out of than if it had been planned to the last detail covering every point of interest briskly and efficiently. It isn’t perfect. And that’s what’s so right about it.

Nightingale’s Boys was released by Network on Monday 13th February

Dramarama Volume One on DVD

God, I used to hate Dramarama (1983-1989) when I was a kid. Even today, the sheer mention of it makes me slightly twitchy. I’m not exactly sure when and how I took against the programme, which was reaching its sixth and final series about a year before I became a teenager.

I do remember being irritated and puzzled by its inconsistencies of tone and subjects. As I recall, one week you’d get something about squeaky pre-pubescents getting spooked in a haunted house or trying to save some endangered frogs, the next you’d have some grim kitchen-sink piece about an eighteen-year-old on the dole going through an existential crisis. In other words, it was either embarrassingly puerile or uncomfortably grown-up.

But above all, I think I was put off by the show’s aura of earnestness and instruction. It was the sort of thing that a groovy English teacher would put on as a treat (either that, or bloody Kes). In fact, this new Network collection of contributions to the show made by Thames Television includes some of the made-for-schools programmes that were re-screened under the Dramarama umbrella.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQtFfWzCCFw

Of course, in retrospect, Dramarama seems ever more like an impressive and unrepeatable experiment in children’s TV. The ninety or so one-off mini-dramas produced over six seasons from 1983 to 1989 were not only mind-bogglingly eclectic, in the TV anthology tradition, but a generous apprenticeship for numerous actors, directors and writers (the publicity blurb for this first volume alone cites the involvement of Gary Oldman, Peter Capaldi and Michael Winterbottom).

Another quirk was that the division of production labour was split among the various ITV companies. In bringing together all of the productions (and co-productions) from Thames, this collection offers a kind of vertical rather than horizontal sampling of the entire programme. Whether or not this makes this set representative of the entire run is therefore a moot point. There are certainly a lot of chirpy cockneys here, for good or bad, and one of the incidental pleasures is spotting actors from EastEnders (kudos to my wife, by the way, for spotting a very young Max “cheesy wotsit” Branning, simply from the colour of his hair). I’m now curious to see whether, say, the Tyne Tees contributions have a distinctly provincial flavour.

From the evidence of this sampler at least, the show is as maddeningly uneven as I remember it. Out of the thirteen dramas collected here, around half have some merit as historical curiosities or as gems in their own right, but the remainder veer from the unremarkable to the unwatchable.

I’ll start with the gems. It’s no surprise that ‘Bodger, Bonzo and the Rest’, about residents of a children’s home, would later be expanded into a full series, given its well-drawn characters and sparky script. I couldn’t make much sense of Trevor Preston’s nightmarish ‘Mr Stabs’, which sees David Jason reprise a character from the similarly bonkers occult classic Ace of Wands. I think the plot concerns some sort of underworld power struggle between the serpentine Stabs and John “Boy From Space” Woodnutt, looked on by rent-a-dwarf David Rappaport and a hooded Patrick Malahide. Jason is made up like Klaus Nomi, and everyone delivers their nonsense with RSC seriousness. I loved it. Despite a premise that might have easily have served a public information film warning kiddiwinks of the dangers of weirdy beardies offering treats, ‘Mr Magus is Waiting to See You’ is also pretty creepy, and a minor classic of its type.

In complete contrast, ‘On Your Tod’ sees Gary Oldman bring actorly light and shade to the story of a bored young trustafarian seeing the error of his ways when a homeless punk gate-crashes one of his many parties. I also quite liked the slice-of-life ‘Frankie’s Hat’, in which a London girl visits her older, supposedly more grown-up sister, now living with her partner and a baby at the other end of the Thames in Oxford. Nothing much happens, but like the better work of social realist champions like Mike Leigh, it subtly sketches the contours of sibling relationships, family rifts and class tension. Fittingly, the Michael Winterbottom-directed ‘Rosie the Great’ -- shot on film with some evidence of a bigger budget -- happens to be the most visually and narratively accomplished of all the set, and is pitched somewhere between an Ealing comedy and one of the more strait-laced Comic Strip Presents… films.

And then there are those which are a real chore to get through. I was pretty tired when I watched ‘Pig Ignorance’, which appeared to involve a delinquent Dexter Fletcher (you know, Spike from Press Gang) bonding with a pig at the city farm where he is doing community service, and then shouting at everyone. There are three other mind-numbingly workmanlike episodes here about a junior reporter (‘Snoop’), a girl opening a café (‘Jessie’s Place’) and a bunch of undifferentiated children getting a fright when they camp out in their garden (‘The Horrible Story’) that are simply not bad enough to get kicks from.

And finally, there are those that are so excruciating you pray for them to end. Runner-up prize goes to ‘My Friend Julie’, a bleak sung-through musical about two girls who fall in love with the same boy. The credits indicate its origins in some sort of school production, and it shows. But worst of the lot is Ken Campbell’s truly awful ‘School for Clowns’, which is exactly what it says on the tin: four clowns in a gymnasium mucking about and cracking bad jokes. Given that this began as a school’s programme and was later imported into the Dramarama slot, I dread to think of a generation scarred for life by the image of Jonathan Pryce cowering and moaning under a piano.

It’s tempting but ultimately quite tricky to impose some sort of industrial or technological narrative onto the episodes here, in the absence of any other factors gluing these vastly differing episodes together. Yes, some of the later ones look slicker, but there were evidently some stinkers towards the end of the run too.

Taking them all together, it’s hard not to have respect, and a sense of nostalgia, for Dramarama and its expectation of an open-minded young audience. It’s difficult to judge the appeal of this particular collection for aficionados of cult or genre TV, given the variability in quality and the low proportion of fantasy-based episodes, which are the ones that most people seem to remember the most. Above all, it’s a valuable and unique sampler of ordinary kids TV from the decade as we actually experienced it: the good, the bad and the simply “meh”.

Dramarama Volume One was released by Network on Monday 13th February

Adam Smith Series One on DVD

We’ve probably all at some point imagined what our younger selves would make of 2012 if they could have looked into their future. My 10 year old self from 1978 would have excitedly spotted mobile phones, iPads, the massive number of television channels, while no doubt being puzzled at the mysterious sight of people carrying water bottles around rather than cans of Lilt and Tizer. But most of all, my young self would have cheered and whooped to see that the kind of Sundays we endured in 1978 had finally been abolished. It’s hard to convey the terrifying ennui of the Sabbath in the 1970s. For six days a week life was great – there was Tiswas, Computer Battleships, Target novelisations and children’s drama specifically designed to screw you up – then suddenly you’d be back to the weekly experiment of living life in the 1950s. Galton and Simpson’s fantastic Hancock’s Half Hour: Sunday Afternoon at Home from 1958 had lost none of its relevance.

Nothing epitomised the horror of Sunday better than what was served up on the box. The three channels of delight became dour and unfriendly for the day – aside from those blissful weeks when Emu’s Broadcasting Company was on – and the choice was frequently between six hours of John Player cricket on BBC2, and ancient films or regional football shows on BBC1 and ITV. Early evening offered no solace either, as both main channels had to meet the broadcasting authority regulations and provide around 75 minutes of religious programming known to all as the ‘God Slot’. BBC typically showed Songs of Praise amongst other things, while ITV had a variety of discussion programmes, church debates, and most famously of all Stars on Sunday, a nightmare of religiosity consisting of hymn requests and light entertainment presided over by the unctuous gargoyle Jess Yates. If you liked to hear Noele Gordon or Gracie Fields destroying hymns while Raymond Burr droned through Deuteronomy then this was the show for you, and hard though it is to imagine, this satanic combination captured the viewing public and delivered massive viewing figures until Jess Yates was caught like a ram in a thicket and disgraced.

What’s probably less well-known is that drama could also come within the definition of religious programming, and Adam Smith was a notable example. Usually transmitted at around 6.15pm it frequently preceded Stars on Sunday and achieved comparatively high ratings. The series was conceived by Granada’s Denis Foreman (whose father was a Church of Scotland minister) and it was a canny attempt to appeal to the God Slot’s captive audience with a quasi-soap opera which still fulfilled a religious remit. Building an early audience for the rest of the evening would also have appealed to ITV. In publicising the programme, Granada referred on more than one occasion to the BBC’s recently concluded Dr Finlay’s Casebook, and clearly in Adam Smith the company hoped to harness the audience that had loved the sedate adventures of Dr Finlay and the pleasing landscapes of Tannochbrae. But from the perspective of 2012, the idea of a drama specifically created to address religious matters sounds about as appealing as a dramatised Thought for the Day.

It’s fortunate then that despite dreadful Sundays and the God Slot, there were many other aspects of the 1970s that make our current television landscape look a bit peaky. One of these was that programmes were more often led by writers, and in some instances their interests took them well beyond the obvious brief for a series. In the case of the first series of Adam Smith, the main creative force was playwright Trevor Griffiths writing (because of an existing BBC contract) under the pseudonym of Ben Rae. Griffiths had just had great success with his theatre play Occupations which concerned the Italian revolutionary Gramsci and the factory occupations of the 1920s, and Adam Smith hardly looked an obvious fit for a left-wing atheist playwright. But it’s precisely that contradiction which, at its best, makes the series interesting, and some of Griffiths’ writing really pushes the boundaries of the early-evening slot.

Griffiths strongly believed in attempting to use popular forms as a vehicle for radical political ideas. This was known as ‘strategic penetration’, and he later went on to achieve great success with this technique in such works as the masterful Bill Brand and Play for Today: Country. Adam Smith though, was at the start of his television career and Griffiths lacked the influence to inject really radical subject matter into the finished work and his struggles with censorship from Granada eventually led him to quit the series. However, the scripts clearly reflect the methods typical of Griffiths’ later work, notably a dialectical approach which opposes the minister Adam Smith (Andrew Keir) and the rationalist Dr Calvi (Tom Conti – Jack Shepherd must have been busy that week) so that neither a religious or scientific engagement with the local community can offer a complete answer. Smith himself is conflicted – the series opens with the death of his wife and he struggles with religious doubts while actively attempting to strengthen his pastoral work. He also has two daughters, one of whom, Annie (Brigit Forsyth), is a student activist, and much of the drama comes from the tension between the differing stances of the main characters.

In this first series one of the dominant storylines is also, thanks to hindsight, the most uncomfortable. Adam attempts to arbitrate in a bitter separation between the Crichtons, a couple played by David Langton and Janet Munro. This was Munro’s last work before her early death brought on by alcoholism, and the fact her character is similarly afflicted makes these scenes rather harrowing to watch. Munro was not a great actress and in a technical sense doesn’t do justice to Griffiths’ writing but her fragility lends the narrative a disturbing edge.

This is certainly not to say that Adam Smith is lost classic. Griffiths provides all of the interesting moments, but plenty of dull and clunky patches as well. Writer Tom Gallacher’s contributions are particularly tedious, and thankfully a couple of his especially boring episodes featuring church politics were condensed into one (Episode Eight) presumably because Granada realised that there was only so much the audience could stand. The redundant and unaired concluding episode is featured as an extra – possibly the least exciting DVD extra since the mute film outtakes from Blake’s 7 Series Three.

It’s likely that many will find Adam Smith intolerably dull, and some of the acting performances are so lifeless that you find yourself praying for Brigit Forsyth to show up, as her appearances are engaging and also seem to liven up the rest of the cast. The show’s theatricality, including regular enormous pauses between lines that are more Amy Turtlesque than Pinteresque, also dates it considerably even by the standards of the time. It’s notable for instance, that when Adam Smith was repeated only six years later in 1978, it was already being described (by The Guardian) as “elderly”. Regardless of that, it was very popular at the time, and even though Griffiths walked off the series over the censorship of Adam’s radical sermon in the final episode, he had already mapped out a second, much longer series.

That series would see Adam relocated to South Africa, where he would be seen battling the authorities and exploring the moral issues surrounding apartheid. This more obvious political content drew some press attention at the time, indicating that even though Griffiths was no longer working on the series, his technique of strategic penetration had achieved some of his aims. Such overt political intent has rarely been present in recent Sunday early-evening viewing – although as I write Call the Midwife has covered incest, euthanasia and the contradictions of a Conservative-led welfare state – and Adam Smith demonstrates that in the 1970s intelligent drama involving problematic issues could appear in the most unlikely places. It almost makes up for those never-ending Sundays.

Adam Smith Series One was released by Network on Monday 6th February

The Cricklewood Greats Preview

You’d be forgiven at first for thinking that The Cricklewood Greats is what the team behind The Thick of It did on its holidays. Tony Roche, the co-writer on that series and writer of Armando Iannucci’s forthcoming HBO project Veep, handles the writing on the show alongside Peter Capaldi who also directs and stars. To add to the familiarity, one of the first characters we see, an obsessive fan of the legendary Cricklewood studios, is played by Thick of It stalwart Alex McQueen. In many ways this is quite refreshing, and reminiscent of a time when one-off little comedies would regularly crop up, often produced by a team familiar from something more high-profile.

Those of us with long memories (i.e. old) will remember seeing Rik Mayall and Ade Edmonson in the marvellous Kevin Turvey – The Man Behind the Green Door around the time of The Young Ones, and similarly a decade later, a contingent of the On the Hour/The Day Today team produced the fantastic Paul Calf’s Video Diary. Depending on the outcome, these type of unusual commissions could be seen as either a justified desire to let exciting artists follow their instincts, or a shameless way of keeping the talent sweet by supporting a vanity project which might just lead to a series. Regardless of the motives, in these days of 360 degree commissioning and schedules that are unforgiving towards all but continuing drama and serials, these type of one-offs have become rare.

The Cricklewood Greats most closely resembles Harry Enfield’s “mockumentary” from 1989, Norbert Smith: A Life. In that show, Harry Enfield presented a faux biography of an elderly actor and illustrated his life with parodies of historic film genres and styles. Here, Capaldi uses a fictional British film studio as the basis for a series of hugely affectionate pastiches of film institutions such as Hammer and Gainsborough, but also as a sharp parody of the type of largely uncritical BBC4 documentaries that have been ubiquitous over recent years.

The programme looks terrific, and most of the faked film clips are funny and convincing, from the very earliest Cricklewood productions such as ‘The Flying Pie’, right through to the long-running series of saucy comedy films from the ‘Thumbs Up’ team, via some breathtakingly convincing quota quickies starring a mashed-up version of Gracie Fields and Kitty McShane. Technically, it’s a triumph, and the show is worth watching just for the sheer wealth of detail in these lovingly designed sequences.

Not all of the writing is quite up to the same standard, but that’s not surprising because parodies of this type that work so well in sketch form (see The Day Today ‘Attitudes Night’), are much more difficult to sustain over 45 minutes. That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of belly laughs – the fictional film titles (‘Florrie and the Poacher’s Egg’) are wonderful, and there’s a great list of auditionees for the role of Olive in On the Buses – but the initial laughter at each new parody tends to die away into an admiring smile. Particularly worthy of that admiration are the performances of Lyndsey Marshal as chirpy Northern songstress Florrie Fontaine and Kelly Adams as tragic sex-kitten Jenny Driscoll – both are just perfect and absolutely believable as film stars of that type.

There’s so much to like in The Cricklewood Greats, and it’s such an unusual kind of programme to see nowadays, that it seems harsh to pick fault. It does have longeurs, and a sequence involving Terry Gilliam doesn’t really work, but there’s enough creativity on display to make it enjoyable even when it fails to draw the laughs. If you’ve spent your Sunday evening terrified by nuns, midwives and the trauma of child birth, then putting your feet up in front of The Cricklewood Greats is the ideal way to wind down.

The Cricklewood Greats is on Sunday 5th February at 9pm on BBC4

Doctor Who: Revisitations 3 on DVD

What do you give to the Doctor Who fan who has everything? A year or so ago Revisitations 2 offered an extreme answer to this question by re-releasing some middling stories that barely needed further restoration, alongside some average but hardly vital extras in a package that even fans may have thought twice about buying, before surrendering to a deep compulsion and shelling out for it anyway. Fortunately, although its successor Revisitations 3 is a curate’s egg, it contains more good than bad, and some parts are very good indeed.

It helps that all three stories included in this set, regardless of the current state of opinion about their respective merits, feature important elements in the mythology of Doctor Who. The Tomb of the Cybermen was (for a time) the legendary lost adventure featuring the finest moments of the series’ second-best monsters. As well as being the tenth anniversary story, and starting the tradition of multiple Doctor adventures, The Three Doctors introduced Time Lord history in the form (or non-form) of demented solar engineer Omega, and saw the Doctor released from exile. The Robots of Death may seem to be a self-contained murder mystery but it has led to a whole range of spin-off fiction set in Kaldor City. They all continue to be deeply influential stories, and so carry the justification for re-release much more naturally than, for example, Resurrection of the Daleks.

There are also practical reasons for the selection of stories. The original release of The Tomb of the Cybermen was too early in the run to benefit from VidFIRE; The Robots of Death was the second release and didn’t even have production notes; whereas The Three Doctors featured an authoring error at the end of episode two which resulted in a UNIT Guard doing a double-take as his HQ disappeared. In addition, none of them had accompanying ‘Making Of’ extras, and the commentaries left a little to be desired: for example, no human being has listened to more than five minutes of Philip Hinchcliffe and Chris Boucher on The Robots of Death without contemplating trying to move a wall with his/her face. On the whole then, the arguments for another pass at these stories are relatively strong.

Before I go on to describe the new features, it’s worth mentioning quickly what isn’t carried across from the original releases. Tombwatch, a 30 minute recording of the video launch of The Tomb of the Cybermen from 1992 has not made the transition, and nor has the PanoptiCon ’93 footage featuring Jon Pertwee, Katy Manning and Nicholas Courtney. There’s already been some gnashing of teeth about these rights-related omissions but if anybody is that bothered about them (or the absent and obsolete five minute feature Remastering for DVD) then just hold on to the originals. I don’t think forgoing the £2.49 you’d get for them on eBay should be that big a deal, unless the problem is that duplicate DVDs will cause a shelf display crisis but as I’m not a trained psychiatrist I can’t really comment on that.

Moving on to the main package, the richest selection of material accompanies The Tomb of the Cybermen. The story’s reputation has wavered over the years but both the ‘Making of’ documentary The Lost Giants and the new commentary take it as read that it’s an undisputed classic. That’s a reasonable stance to take as with some stories, like some footballers, form is temporary but class is permanent. Almost regardless of our current view of this story and its manifest problems, it remains a significant moment in the development of the series with the Cybermen fully established as the second best monsters, the striking images of the tombs, and a really graphic approach to horror and the big scary moments. In addition, the fact that it was once lost, indeed the most famous lost story of them all, adds to its significance in the wider history of the show.

Steve Broster’s The Lost Giants features pretty much all of the surviving cast and crew and theie contributions are very engaging. There’s perhaps not a lot of new information in here, but certainly plenty of extra evidence to support the idea that director Morris Barry was a bit of a pain in the arse. This and other aspects of the production are expanded on in the all-new commentary. The original featured only Frazer Hines and Deborah Watling, but here our cup runneth over: moderator Toby Hadoke is accompanied on this occasion by Victor Pemberton and Bernard Holley for episode one and then Frazer, Deborah and Shirley Cooklin for the rest of the story.

It’s a very jolly affair, and I was particularly impressed that when Deborah asked Hadoke where The Tomb of the Cybermen was rediscovered, he managed to say “Hong Kong”, a) without doing an impression of his questioner, and b) without laughing. Also interesting was the moment when Shirley Cooklin revealed that Pauline Collins once played her in the Screen Two play ‘Knockback‘ and seemed about to expand on this. The coversation was shifted along at that point, but I’d love to hear Cooklin talking about her life outside of Doctor Who as I suspect it would be more interesting than her approach to Kaftan’s death scene.

The other two supporting features are also of a high standard. In James Goss’s The Curse of the Cybermen’s Tomb, Sir Christopher Frayling and Dr Debbie Challis outline the cultural and historical roots of The Tomb of the Cybermen with particular reference to Sir Howard Carter’s uncovering of Tutankhamun’s tomb. The influences are quite convincingly teased out, and there’s a particularly good moment when Frayling recounts his personal memories of Kit Pedler. This welcome level of intelligence is maintained in Matthew Sweet and Thomas Guerrier’s Cybermen: Extended Edition. As its title indicates, this film was originally featured in a slightly shorter version on a previous DVD release, but as that was a repackaged set of David Tennant Cybermen adventures, I suspect there’ll be quite a few who missed out on it. If you did, or even if you didn’t, then you’re in for a treat. It’s always been one of the best Doctor Who extras, and as an in-depth roam through Cyber history it’s hard to imagine that it could be bettered.

Sweet, as ever, deftly takes us through the stories and the contexts within which they were created, while never forgetting to throw in some belly laughs – his canter through some of the Cybermen’s bizarre and convoluted plans is a real highlight. Cybermen is about two minutes longer than the original version, which is mainly to allow the Tennant Specials and Series Six to be covered, although there is some other re-editing, and (I think) the odd line missing. So you might need to keep your original of that as well. But frankly if, like me, you’re the kind of completist who’d already bought The Cybermen Collection, then you’ll be keeping it anyway.

It doesn’t end there. The Magic of VidFIRE showcases the wonderful technique which causes actors to look sweaty in black and white. Certainly the improvement in picture quality from the original release is stark, and justification for the re-release on its own. But my word the Sky Ray Ice Lolly extras run it a close second. Not only is the original television advert featured which includes a Patrick Troughton imposter menaced by Flesh Gordon Dildo Spaceships, but there’s a stack of PDF material as well. If the full set of collector cards and album weren’t enough, there’s promotional material, design roughs and even storyboards for the adverts. These daft little touches are part of what makes the range so special, and are the icing on an already nice cake.

Unfortunately, it all goes a bit awry with The Three Doctors. The “double-take” fault with the original release has been corrected, but I can’t see any obvious other improvement with the picture (which was fine anyway), and in fact (as others with keener eyes than me have already noticed) a moment with Jo and Tyler at the beginning of Episode 3 seems to have regained some CSO fringing issues on their faces which appeared to have been corrected in the original release. This is hardly a big deal, but the lack of a new commentary (although it didn’t need one) and compelling features make The Three Doctors very much the runt of the litter even allowing for new production notes by David Brunt.

Happy Birthday to Who is the obligatory ‘Making of’, in this case directed by Richard Higson. Perhaps it’s because the story is so well-documented that I found this film rather uninspiring. Toby Hadoke provides the voice-over and it ticks all the boxes, but some of the content (for instance, it’s revealed that Jon Pertwee “liked gadgets”) left me disappointed. Maybe I’ve been spoiled by the standard in the past, and I’m being unfair. But I’m certainly not being unfair about Was Doctor Who Rubbish?, a bemusing and irritating piece, in which fans of the show attempt to explain why Doctor Who was always great despite all those nasty people saying that it featured silly monsters, bad acting or wobbly sets. To say this comes across as overly defensive is an understatement, but it does serve to demonstrate the extreme self-flagellating tendencies of Doctor Who fans. What other programme would have a DVD range that includes a feature going into great detail about the reasons some people don’t like the show? It’s insane, especially at a time when Doctor Who couldn’t be more popular. At one point, a contributor says “We can look back on old Doctor Who and put these criticisms to bed about silly sets, costumes and bad acting” – well good luck with that. Another option would be to let people say what they like (who knows they might even have a valid point on occasion) and get on with enjoying the show yourself rather than trying to change the weather.

Girls Girls Girls – 1970s was a positive relief after all that nonsense and it features Caroline John, Katy Manning and Louise Jameson discussing their time on the show. There’s a striking moment when they debate whether they’d choose a great role over a great relationship, and they cover some interesting areas, but like the 1980s version of this show it could have perhaps done with a little more structure to guide the conversation and I’m not really sure why Peter Purves needed to be there at the beginning.

After the mixed bag of The Three Doctors, it was a relief to turn to The Robots of Death, a story I find so enjoyable that I almost missed my stop on the train the other day when watching Episode One. Both the main supporting feature The Sandmine Murders (by Steve Broster), and the newly recorded commentary make it clear that the cast and crew loved making the story, but no-one had a very high opinion of Chris Boucher’s script. Director Michael E Briant has been particularly vocal about this in the past, although he’s toned it down a bit here even though Boucher doesn’t feature other than on the dreaded original commentary. I’ve always found this a bit unfair, as Robert Holmes and Philip Hinchcliffe specifically asked for a country house style whodunnit in space, so blaming Boucher for cliches seems unreasonable. One wonders what Briant would have made of some of the Hammer Horror pastiches offered up in the previous seasons if he thought this script was old hat.

But there’s no argument that the elaborate costumes and robot designs are a key part of the story’s success so costume designer Elizabeth Waller rightly plays a major role in the documentary, and there’s also a great deal of interesting material about designer Ken Sharp and visits to Cornish Clay Mines. Tom Baker is good value as usual, particularly with his panegyrics to Pamela Salem’s beauty, and we also get the chance to enter the Manichean world of Brian Croucher where the safe actors go to the cafeteria and the dangerous ones go to the pub. He also comes up with the priceless quote “Tom Baker is a creative terrorist” which certainly made my day and will be on a t-shirt in the near future.

The new commentary features Tom Baker, Michael E Briant, Louise Jameson and Pamela Salem, and there are new production notes by the estimable Martin Wiggins, who incidentally also wrote the new ones for The Tomb of the Cybermen. As for the final accompanying feature Robophobia, I prefer to paraphrase Wittgenstein and simply say that whereof one doesn’t find funny, thereof one should be silent. As with The Three Doctors I could detect virtually no improvement in picture on the main feature, but that might well be my mundane equipment. Overall, while Revisitations 3 doesn’t hit the heights of the first Revisitations release, which had a very strong set of features, but it’s worth getting for the picture quality of The Tomb of the Cybermen and the plentiful extras, particularly those sumptuous Sky Ray PDFs.

Revisitations 3 is released on Monday 13th February in the UK.

Go to Blazes on DVD

Go to Blazes is that rare thing: a feel-good film about robbery and arson. The opening scene encapsulates this perfectly and makes you pine for the days when you could wander down Bond Street, stick a brick through a jeweller’s window, feel around for the best gear and still have time for a quick drive before getting your collar felt by Dave (star of Cockleshell Heroes) Lodge.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYVZ9hSN21k

Unfortunately the opening also demonstrates why the film, a perfectly amiable caper story, is never really effective. The trio of villains (Bernard (Dave King), Harry (Daniel Massey) and Alfie (Norman Rossington)) try and carry out a robbery but ultimately they don’t seem too bothered if they end up in prison or not. They are neither self-reflective about their life of crime, or show any fear of punishment. Even though the film is a light comedy, all the best British caper movies that Go to Blazes seeks to copy, such as The Lavender Hill Mob or The Ladykillers, have a dark edge. Characters are aware of the fact that their misdemeanors could lead them into serious trouble. Without that jeopardy, it’s hard to maintain an interest in the outcome of the robbery even when the protagonists are so likeable.

In this instance the scheme is uncomplicated -- the trio aim to acquire a fire engine as a getaway car on the premise that the police never interfere with an emergency vehicle, and they then plan to torch a building next to a bank therefore having the perfect cover to carry out a daring raid and become rich. As well as being a good wheeze this also allows the director Michael Truman to appeal to the petrol-heads in the audience who swoon over vintage vehicles -- in a way it’s probably the last gasp of the Genevieve effect. An early scene involves a fire engine showroom in which the camera lovingly lingers over the massed ranks of blood-red wagons in an almost indecent fashion. When the trio finally get a fire engine (a dilapidated museum piece from the heart of Wales) the inevitable happens and they get mistaken for real fireman with mildly amusing consequences.

Fortunately for the audience, our heroes realise they need to train as real firemen to make the caper look convincing and by a stroke of luck they find the perfect mentor in Withers, a bent fire-officer played by the impeccable Dennis Price. Also necessary for the plan is ingenious firestarter Arson Eddie (Robert Morley) and exotic Colette (Coral Brown) and Chantal (Maggie Smith) who run the dress salon next door to the bank. The introduction of these performers really lifts the film: Price gives a masterclass in sidelong looks and raised eyebrows, while Morley is just as you’d expect -- identical to every other performance he ever gave but somehow still enjoyable. This isn’t to downplay King, Massey or Rossington, who are all solid, but they seem to raise their game when the more eminent actors make an appearance.

Go to Blazes is affable enough, but it’s only the flood of cameo appearances that stops your attention drifting. I defy anyone not to laugh when Dudley Sutton (in his first film role) crops up with the worst Welsh accent since Steve Jones on The X Factor USA, but you don’t have time to dwell on Sutton because Arthur Lowe suddenly appears, followed rapidly by Derek Nimmo wallowing in a house flood under the jaundiced eye of the exceedingly good James Hayter. There are so many familiar face that it gets a little overwhelming, but who can resist a fleeting glimpse of John Le Mesurier or a snatch of Sue Lloyd? Many productions from the Associated British Picture Corporation shared a similar cast of supporting actors, but Go to Blazes has more light comedy actors than a Dundee cake has currants.

Although the film plays out predictably and raises no belly laughs, it’s hard to dislike Go to Blazes. It’s presented in glowing Technicolour, and for those (like me) who love watching these films for glimpses of London in the past will not be disappointed. At one point I’m pretty sure that the unfinished Hammersmith Flyover looms prominently in the background, and that’s almost as exciting as spotting Dudley Sutton. The bright colours help to create the illusion of a world that never really existed, where underneath it all everyone, including criminals, are solid citizens. But even this world has its dark side -- the music of John Addison. It’s incessant, relentlessly cheery, and would be a less messy alternative to waterboarding had it not already been restricted under the Geneva Convention. It shouldn’t come as a surprise though, as Addison is the man who towards the end of his (no doubt distinguished) career, composed the theme tune to Murder, She Wrote. And for that, there can be no forgiveness.

Technical Note -- My review copy had a problem with a slightly out-of-sync soundtrack in the second half of the film. I tried this on a number of players with the same result each time, but haven’t heard of other reviewers having the same problem, so I can’t be conclusive about this.

Go to Blazes is released by StudioCanal on Monday 30th January

Earth 1962. The world teetered on the brink. Political leaders were paralysed and reduced to watching nervously as events inexorably unfolded. What would happen next? Would David Bailey manage to persuade the Editor of Vogue to publish the snaps of Jean Shrimpton that he took with his Pentax, or would he be forced to reshoot with a medium format camera on a tripod? It could have gone either way, and the consequence of failure would surely have left us all inhabiting a very different world. All in all, the perfect scenario for a BBC4 drama production: no need to make up a story (it happened); no need to worry about script structure (there’s a chronology of events); and it involves just a handful of charismatic people (cuts down on actors). The only problem is that there’s very little drama, and certainly not enough to fill 90 minutes.

Joking aside, there’s little doubt that Bailey and Shrimpton’s Vogue photo shoot in New York was an important cultural moment, whether or not you regard it as the real birth of the Sixties. We’ll Take Manhattan recounts how Bailey (Aneurin Barnard) was sent out by Vogue to capture something that would appeal to a younger demographic, and how, in the teeth of major opposition from the magazine in the form of Lady Clare Rendlesham (Helen McCrory), he was allowed to use his near-unknown girlfriend Jean Shrimpton (Karen Gillan) as his muse and model. Bailey’s work in the shoot was radical, massively influential and is still vibrant today. It was also freighted with aspects of the social revolution then stirring, and the film explicitly embodies this in Bailey’s fierce working-class dislike of Lady Clare and all that she stood for. It’s not too much of a stretch to see the New York shoot as one of the many little crisis points emerging in society as popular culture as we understand it struggled into being.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRmP20XMBrs

All very interesting then. But is it dramatic? In the case of We’ll Take Manhattan this cultural crisis point amounts to David Bailey and Lady Clare Rendlesham sniping at each other repeatedly for over an hour while Shrimpton looks on with an increasingly glazed expression. It’s hard to blame her when the dialogue is like this: “The negative area produced by a medium format camera is several times the quality produced by that thing” -- as you can imagine Bailey is quick to defend his Pentax S3 but unless you’re a camera buff it’s hard to care. I’ve no doubt that this is exactly what the shoot was like, and I’m aware that Bailey’s radical technical choices were crucial to the final results, but while the story would make a good documentary, in the hands of writer/director John McKay it makes an unengaging and frankly boring drama.

The deficiencies in the script would be less damaging if the relationship between Bailey and Shrimpton worked onscreen. Unfortunately, there is little chemistry between the leads and the love story, which surely must have been vibrant, is virtually non-existent here. None of the performances are bad exactly, although Frances Barber as Diana Vreeland is indistinguishable from her role as Madame Kovarian in Doctor Who, but they struggle to overcome a lacklustre script. Aneurin Barnard is believable as Bailey (although at times his accent becomes so much like Ralph Brown I kept expecting him to offer Lady Clare a Camberwell Carrot) and Karen Gillan does her best with a thankless role, being particularly good in the early scenes showing Shrimpton’s family background. But the whole thing fails to take off, in stark contrast to the events portrayed.

We’ll Take Manhattan isn’t all bad. Some of the New York scenes are handsomely shot, and unlike some BBC4 dramas it looks as a reasonable budget was used well. None of this alters the fact that if (and it’s a big if) Bailey and Shrimpton’s New York adventure was worth dramatising then it needed a much more imaginative approach than is on display here. In one way it’s sad that cuts may mean the end of home-produced drama on BBC4, but when you look at the bulk of what was produced -- a ragbag of simple-minded biopics about light entertainers -- it’s hard to mourn too deeply.

We’ll Take Manhattan is on Thursday 26th January at 9pm on BBC4

Thanks to StudioCanal we’re pleased to offer you the chance to win a couple of less well-known works from the legendary Hammer Film studios.

We have one copy of each of The Brigand of Kandahar and The Scarlet Blade up for grabs. Both are directed by John Gilling and star the inimitable Oliver Reed and this is the first time either film has been released on DVD. All you have to is answer the following questions correctly and we’ll enter you into a draw.

The Brigand of Kandahar

The wonderful Glyn Houston had an older brother who was also an actor. What character did his brother play in a BBC series that was very closely linked to Doctor Who?

The Scarlet Blade

Which of the actors in this film turned up regularly as a chauffeur in a 1970s/80s BBC sitcom?

This competition is now closed. Congratulations to the winners Tim Symonds and Gareth Earls.

This review contains spoilers.

Only seven minutes into ‘Strangers in Space’, the first episode of The Sensorites, Carol (Ilona Rogers) solemnly announces that “The Sensorites had put us into a deep sleep that gives the appearance of death”. Well we’ve all been there Carol. Those nights in the 90s when a trip back from the pub heralded a midnight showing of the omnibus of The Sensorites on UK Gold shortly followed by a lapse into unconsciousness brought on by a fuzzy picture and the full numbing impact of Lorne Cossette’s performance. For years I viewed people who claimed to have seen the final episode with a mixture of awe and scepticism. The closest I came to seeing the story to completion was through the power of my nightmares.

It doesn’t help that for every good and interesting moment (and they do exist) in The Sensorites, the script offers many more instances of ineptitude and indeed seems perversely to draw attention to its own flaws. Ian seems to blame the production crew when he tells Lorne Cossette (a man who makes Jenny Laird look like Meryl Streep) that “They just made you hopeless”. Later during the penultimate episode ‘Kidnap’, when your body and mind have been taken almost beyond endurance, a Sensorite takes the words out of your mouth: “To see all the time is not a good thing”. Even the episode titles like ‘A Race Against Death’ and ‘A Desperate Venture’ appear to mock the dreadful plight of the committed (in every sense of the word) viewer.

Those aspects of the story that have been praised in the past are never far away from sabotage. The famously eerie cliffhanger at the end of ‘Strangers In Space’ is immediately undermined by the reenactment at the start of the following episode. In the former, the actor playing the Sensorite makes an effort, puts his alien hands on the monitor screen and is at least effectively spooky. In stark contrast, the actor in the second episode just stands outside the ship like a Kleeneze salesman. Similarly in an earlier scene, there’s an unusually nice directorial flourish by Mervyn Pinfield as he takes the camera out with the TARDIS crew so we see the spaceship through the open doors of the console room. Unfortunately, minutes later, we see the hands of a Sensorite burning out the lock of the TARDIS mere feet away from the cast who can smell something scorching but are incapable of looking round and spotting the interloper. If we’re being exceptionally generous, then we might surmise that the Sensorite is using his telepathy to stop the crew noticing him, but to me it’s just typical of the lazy directing and ramshackle plotting of this story that stands in stark contrast to the majority of the first season.

As a consolation, alongside the good things in these early episodes – Ian and Barbara’s prolonged silent stalking of a Sensorite particularly stands out – there are many diverting moments of unintentional humour. It’s hard not to laugh when Susan crouches over a trembling John and asks “He’s so tense Barbara. Can’t we help him?” but there’s no time to deploy the massage oil because everyone is worrying about how to pronounce molybdenum. William Hartnell manages to get get it right but only at the expense of the rest of his lines. Meanwhile the Sensorites bumble around the ship tripping over each other’s feet and reacting to darkness and loud noises in the same way that Les reacts to chives in Vic Reeves Big Night Out. So it’s a sad moment when we leave this crazy spaceship and probably the only people happy about the move to the Sense-Sphere were Jacqueline Hill and her travel agent.

The rest of the story concerns the murky world of Sensorite politics and the legacy of the lost Earth visitors. It seems clear that at some level writer Peter R Newman, profoundly affected by his wartime experience, is exploring ideas about xenophobia and how it affects all races, and it’s certainly true that the story is a very early example of a sympathetic look at an alien culture. But both the script and production are so clunky and childish that any subtleties of intention, assuming they existed in the first place, are lost. Very little makes obvious sense – why do the Sensorites have a disintegrator ray and a warrior class when they are peace-loving race? – and a saving grace like Ray Cusick’s Gaudi-inspired set design is shot so badly that you can barely see it.

And so three episodes trudge by with very little to enliven them. Peter Glaze schemes away as the Chief Administrator, swapping sashes and generally confusing everyone with his terrible plots. He intercepts the cure for Ian’s bout of poisoning, only for Susan to simply walk over and get the antidote herself minutes later. He tries to disintegrate the TARDIS crew only to end up with a bent firing key, and his attempt to blame the Doctor for the Second Elder’s murder has to be the most incompetent fit up job in the series history, taking a mere 95 seconds to fall to pieces. He is the Frank Spencer of devious xenophobes. None of this acts as enough of a diversion from the lack of action or compelling narrative, and of all the Doctor Who stories The Sensorites is surely one of the hardest to get through. The story doesn’t just sag in the middle – it prolapses.

Things do perk up towards the end with some imaginative work from second director Frank Cox and a great performance from John Bailey as the crazed commander of the surviving Earth crew members. The story remains as fragile as ever – it’s unclear where the Belladonna used to poison the Sensorites comes from and the Chief Administrator disappears offscreen in a dramatically unsatisfying way even if I was happy never to see him again – but (probably courtesy of script editor David Whitaker) there are a few memorable moments. Carole Ann Ford takes advantage of a beefed up role for Susan which is clearly paving the way for her departure. At one point the Doctor argues with her and turns on the Sensorites “We’ve never had an argument! And now you have caused one” and you get the impression that is much more of a concern to the Doctor than the plight of the crew and the Sensorite threat. His simmering worry about Susan, and her wistful comments and melancholic description of her home planet, are easily the strongest things about The Sensorites.

There are two other stars of this release. One is a member of the production crew who pops up quite regularly in the latter half of the story – as Sade once said “No need to ask, he’s a boom operator” – but the other is the restoration itself. Regardless of the story, the genuinely amazing thing about The Sensorites is how it has been brushed up. I’d only ever seen this story filtered through a haze of dodgy telerecording and booze and so to see and hear it in this clarity is an eye-opener, albeit a harsh and pitiless one.

Extras:

There is a real departure on this release, as instead of the usual ‘making of’ documentary, Chris Chapman (director/producer) and Toby Hadoke present Looking for Peter, a short film about the life and career of the enigmatic writer Peter R Newman. The piece takes the series Who Do You Think You Are? as its template and we follow Toby as he (aided by Richard Bignell) trawls through archives and records to see what can be unearthed about the elusive man. I’m not going to reveal what they discover because that would spoil what is a really terrific film. Not only does it satisfy the Who fan’s quest to know everything about the series, but it does so in an affectionate and extremely touching way. If there are a couple of slightly artificial moments, they derive more from the Who Do You Think You Are? format than anything else, and I have to say that Chris Chapman’s direction is even more outstanding than usual and Toby as presenter is as warm and personable as ever.

It’s easy to mock Who fandom and the seemingly endless analysis and research to which it subjects the programme, but this is an example that warms the heart by both shedding light on Peter R Newman, but also acting as a tribute to an unsung writer. If nothing else you should do your best to see Newman’s other completed work Yesterday’s Enemy. The original television play is now lost but the 1959 Hammer version directed by Val Guest and starring Stanley Baker and Leo McKern is well worth seeking out, and once you’ve seen that and Looking for Peter, I’m sure you’ll never quite experience The Sensorites in the same way again.

The other two extras: Vision On (directed by James Goss) and Secret Voices of the Sense-Sphere feature the affable Clive “Jigsaw” Doig who clearly has a great memory and guides us through the perils of vision mixing and the hazards of studio talkback in the early days of Doctor Who. Once again there’s an excellent set of production notes this time provided by Stephen James Walker. As with all the best examples of these notes, Walker manages to balance telling a coherent story of the production with the right amount of specific detail. I was particularly interested in the war of memos between Sydney Newman and Chief of Programmes Donald Baverstock as well as being absurdly excited by the occasional gem of trivia such as the fact that Carol Ann Ford appeared on Juke Box Jury three times.

Another great positive about this release is the commentary which features a heartening number of people who worked on the original production. Alongside regular commentary guests William Russell, Carole Ann Ford and Ray Cusick are Joe Greig (various Sensorites), Sonia Markham (make-up), Martyn Huntley (First Human), Giles Phibbs (Second Human) and director Frank Cox. With such a large number of contributors this ‘revolving door’ commentary occasionally suffers from a bit of hesitancy as each new entrant takes time to find their feet but as usual Toby Hadoke (the David Dimbleby of the commentary booth) ensures that each of the participants gets a fair crack of the whip. Frank Cox is particularly good value, and tells a charming anecdote which casts a new light on some of his directorial choices, but it’s lovely to hear from all of the contributors and John Kelly and the team are to be congratulated on this and the commentary range in general. I’m sure that in future years they will become an increasingly valuable resource for researchers.

There’s nothing in this release that changed my basic opinion of The Sensorites. It’s a poor story that edges out The Keys of Marinus as the worst of the season, and even this stunning restoration can’t alter that. But while it was once forgettable, it’s hard to see The Sensorites in the same light after you’ve heard the story of Peter R Newman. He may not have been a very good writer, and I suspect he only really had one story to tell, but he’s now so much more than just a name on a page and that’s the real achievement of this release.

The Sensorites is released on Monday 23rd January in the UK.