Extrapolations (Apple TV)

Extrapolations. Thin characterisations, dubious moral – I’m not a fan of the “you’re either with us or against us” school of thought (when did activism become so totalitarian?) and a real damp squib of a final episode that made very little sense. For some reason our villain of the piece needlessly decides to provide all the evidence to furnish his downfall to two people who in all probability would one day want to help in his downfall.

I still liked it though. In part it benefited from the “law of expectations”. I expected it to be awful, and it wasn’t. Neither was it good, at least not “very” good, but it provided a few moments for thought. It just could have been better, it could have been so much better, exceptional even, but either the writers weren’t very good or in pushing the message they forgot about the story, and thus lost the message in the process.

The worst of Bath

I'm on to Persuasion, Jane Austen’s last novel though only the second I’ve read. Of them all, this story has always been my favourite, being more introspective and darker than the rest. I remember two adaptations; a recent ITV production with Sally Hawkins and an older BBC effort with Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds. It is - again - incredibly romantic; I can see why Austen has such a following. It’s bitingly funny too:

The worst of Bath was the number of plain women. He did not mean to say that there were no pretty women, but the number of plain was out of all proportion ... there certainly were a dreadful multitude of ugly women in Bath.

And sometimes, just biting:

He had, in fact, though his sisters were now doing all they could for him, by calling him ‘poor Richard,’ been nothing better than a thick-headed, unfeeling, unprofitable Dick Musgrove, who had never done anything to entitle himself to more than the abbreviation of his name, living or dead.

Ouch, she’s hardly sentimental! One mild complaint, more of a thought, and not of the book; Anne is described as plain yet Sally Hawkins is anything but. To digress a little, neither is Ruth Wilson in Jane Eyre, and Toby Stephens was a little too good looking for Rochester. They’re all supposed to be, if not plain, certainly not striking. It’s a familiar failure; with respect to physical attractiveness, the source is often ignored - has it always been this way? Have we so little faith in character, or is it that producers - perhaps rightly - have so little faith in us?

A truth universally re-imagined

Praise be, I have finally read Pride & Prejudice; at the third attempt, or possibly the second since I’m not sure picking up the book and never opening it counts. It wasn’t, in case you’re wondering, the graphic novel depicted - I just like the idea and since I’ve seen so many adaptations, perhaps one day this will be another? How could I have doubted Jane Austen having seen this story told so many times? There’s an old version with Laurence Olivier that takes huge liberties with the story, but it helps if you have a crush on Greer Garson. I vaguely remember a BBC series from the 1980’s before their more famous effort with Colin Firth. And there’s the Keira Knightley film of which I’m unsure, despite having seen it a few times. I suppose familiarity was a problem but it proved its worth, despite taking a while to settle on who was who; Firth as Darcy, Mary Boland as Mrs Bennet, Melville Cooper edged out by David Bamber for the role of Mr Collins, yet I could never settle on an Elizabeth; it was no matter, the book was the star. I knew it to be a clever, sharp humour, but never imagined romance could be portrayed so well.

Courtesy of my Kindle which, despite Amazon continually reminding me of a newer, cheaper version with a better form-factor, has proved the spark necessary to get me reading again. I love my Kindle. Pride & Prejudice is the twelfth book I’ve read this year, it’s not a lot I know; I am in awe of you book-a-week types, for me it’s a recovery from near extinction, so I’m happy. Of the dozen, I’d seen film or television adaptations of five. I’m not sure what that says, whether it’s a good or a bad thing, whether it’s a normal ratio, but since I’m planning to read Any Human Heart next, it’s not worried me too much. I bought it on Blu-ray but to be fair, I am going to read the book first... oh alright, second; I saw it on Channel 4 last December.

Inside Facebook

When Mark met Emily

Well it was the BBC, so it was less inside Facebook and more rehash Facebook. There was one amusing (to myself) moment where we were told, based on an expected $100 billion flotation, next year Mark Zuckerberg could be “worth” $17 billion; and I thought “only $17 billion?” - I genuinely thought it would be more. It started with a brief “what is Facebook” introduction, threw in a little bit of history but mostly involved Emily Maitlis asking penetrating questions such as “Where does Mark Zuckerberg sit?” It turns out he sits with everyone else; the poor guy can’t even afford his own office. It was a slight documentary, not quite infomercial, I was impressed with the size of other companies - some with hundreds of employees - living entirely within the “Facebook eco-system”, and there was some criticism.

The most difficult question was to one Facebook executive faced with the complaint that when Emily clicks “Like” on a brand, she may not want to be part of that brand’s advertising on a friend’s page. Hmmm... long pause... and a magnificent recovery waffle about the “nature of advertising”. I’d have gone with “then don’t click on ‘Like’” and risked the wrath of Emily. I’ll bet she's marvellous when she’s angry.

Backward

A kind of existential week; not entirely successful and culminating with the suspect use of “existential” - a dodgy definition formed as a teenager when required by my English teacher to read Sartre. He was always good for a laugh - the teacher that is - some vague notion that it wasn’t so much what you were doing - or even why - more that you were doing something. Thirty years later and with the knowledge that English wasn’t my strongest subject, it allows for last week; something was getting done, but it’s best not to concentrate on direction.

I spent an appalling amount of time working on an application I knew nothing about, tracking down an error, trying out various theories and somewhat bemused to find the developer of some of the underlying database procedures was yours truly. I switched to some unit testing, which I hadn’t forgotten, and in an act of solidarity managed to break that too. The COM+ elements weren’t working so I thought I’d check the application upon which they were based - to find it failing in a different way. A re-install required uninstalling first, uninstalling produced an error; and the windows installer and clean-up utility had been retired by Microsoft to be replaced by something with a much nicer interface that didn’t do the job. On finding the old utility, the install that followed failed with complaints about the registry. Something was getting done...

Genius and Madman was the sub-heading to a Bobby Fischer biography on the BBC. I confess I did feel sorry for Fischer; in particular at a press conference where, having been granted Icelandic citizenship, he was silent for a moment as if aware of what he’d become. I’m not sure what heading I could apply to the woman on the tram whose racist ranting was captured and duly posted to YouTube. On reflection, I wondered if genius was all that separated the two. Fischer came across as an unpleasant individual even before the descent that followed his victory in 1972. Was his anti-Semitism a symptom of his madness, or his madness a vent for his anti-Semitism? The documentary suggested the former, further reading suggests the latter.

When worlds collide

Combining M&S with X Factor contestants seems inherently dangerous; it could rip apart the fabric of Christmas. Pairing an up-market brand with something from the other side of the tracks; it ought to result in something more daring but it’s a terribly safe, by the numbers effort put together by the same kind of mindless drones who once chose Titanic as the BBC Christmas day family movie. Who let them out? I don’t know quite why the M&S Christmas advert should annoy me so much, since their usual television offering is so decidedly bland. Roll on the Iceland release - last year’s production may have been tacky but they had fun on their side - and thank goodness for the following:

Saw Anonymous n absolutely loved it. Love history.

I am completely blown away by this awesome comment. That’s “awesome” as in the opposite of awesome, possibly, since it occurs to me they may have been practising irony; indeed the more I think about it the more I think it must have been? But then… but then it’s from someone using txt-speak and who describes themselves as an ‘educator’ - as opposed to teacher - and you know what that means.

Loose ends

Another three-day break from everything, where I unexpectedly found myself looking after Little Miss R - I hadn't realised it was half term. This might have meant a curtailed film program were it not for the distraction of YouTube and iPlayer and every other high-end consumer of my broadband allowance. As it turns out, I find I don't watch nearly as much as I can, and my reading is equally abject. I am without purpose, wandering up and down the TV schedule unwilling to commit; I even gave up on Tilda Swinton, that’s how bad it got.

Today however, I kicked the malaise. Not through the last episode of Hidden, a conspiracy thriller from the BBC conjuring an old trick; appear more than you are through leaving key questions unresolved. My temporary redemption came through a drama altogether different, unsettling and at first unsatisfactory. The White Ribbon doesn’t provide a neat resolution either but there is, I realised on reflection, a strong message. Michael Haneke described it as a film about "the origin of every type of terrorism, be it of political or religious nature", but it’s not nearly as indulgent as that might sound. Violence corrupts; rarely has this been expressed so well.

Six thousand dollars? It's not even leather!

On second thoughts, £350 for a web browser? It doesn’t even have an optical drive! Out of curiosity I shall persist with the challenge of web-only use on my home machine, though since all this means is giving up Microsoft Office... well, I think I can manage that. I have greater challenges ahead. On Monday I have to correct the disaster that was Friday, where I managed to live my life backwards; now, nothing works. Nothing on my virtual desktop; my old fashioned right-in-front-of me desktop (though since I was working from home, I had remote access to that too) carries on regardless, whereas its replacement can’t even finish installing a service pack before rebooting.

Courtesy of BBC iPlayer, Saturday was better. Rubicon, which has occasionally threatened the fate of a shaggy dog story, defied my expectations and delivered the best episode yet. Will’s private investigation into his boss and the shady company Atlas McDowell, is dovetailing nicely into his team’s search for terrorist mastermind Kateb. It’s a throwback to those conspiracy films from the seventies, such as The Parallax View and Winter Kills; that sense of an individual’s hopeless stand against the tide, overwhelmed by events.

I could say the same for the best drama of the year, The Shadow Line; of which - save for an unnecessary salute at the end - I don’t think there was a duff moment in the whole series. What impressed with the final episode was how, even with the nature of the conspiracy revealed to Jonah Gabriel early on, I wasn’t sure how it would be resolved. I didn’t see it coming, though I really should have; the scene where Joseph Bede, played by Christopher Eccleston, leaves his house and stops momentarily when he sees his car waiting for him, was perfect. He knew.

Follow up some excellent television with some equally good films in Sin Hombre and There Will Be Blood, and the result is a quality weekend... albeit a bit grim. I’ll need a week or more of Pixar to restore the balance. And it would help if I could get my machine to work.

Dear John

I spend a lot of time deriding the viewing habits of the general public, which is a polite way of saying a lot of my friends have poor taste. Television, I used to think, is an excellent guide to the decline of civilisation, but I consoled myself with the thought that no matter how bad it got we would never sink as low as our American cousins. Blind Date, which ran for an astonishing 18 years, disabused me of that notion; who commits the greater crime - the country that creates an appalling television format or the country that copies it?

Later I decided it had always been crap, rather like discovering how bad your favourite childhood cartoon was, though it hasn’t stopped me from mocking those who watch reality programmes or the various soaps; excepting Coronation Street because... er... that’s the one I watch. There is great television available, if you look hard enough, but what greater pleasure can there be than finding quality where it is least expected? None more so than in John Stape, Corrie’s increasingly hapless serial killer:

You buried my son under a knicker factory.

…complains his soon to be latest victim. To which he replies:

It sounds worse than it is.

The love of human beings

Helen says to Jane “you think too much of the love of human beings” and though I understand the context in which this is said it stays in the mind of this non-believer (I still find it difficult to say atheist), I suspect until long after I finish. On the Wikipedia page for Jane Eyre are listed numerous adaptations; missing the one of which I am most familiar and noting another being released next year. I’ve seen several and though the religious element is there I’ve never felt it forced; maybe I’m making allowances for the time or my psyche provides a natural filter, or perhaps such elements as they are have been downplayed for more modern sensibilities.

It contrasted with a scene in William Boyd’s recent adaptation of his own novel, Any Human Heart, in which an irritating member of the clergy who after having been earlier rebuffed by a declaration of atheism is finally told to “fuck off”. That jarred a little; I thought it at first a rather clumsy and unnecessary scene, a sop to atheists, since I’ve never met a religious practitioner quite as inept. Yet Logan Mountstuart was the antithesis to that ghastly picture of a perfect human being; it is what makes his story so interesting - it is why we care. His reaction demonstrated not superiority but his ability to strike out, his flawed humanity. Jane describes it well in a ‘victory’ of her own:

Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy: its after-flavour, metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned.

Rev.

I may have written a few times that I’m not religious, and about my annoyance I should feel the need to state this before writing anything that touches on religion. I shouldn’t now but those practicing atheists annoy me every time I think about them, which of course is every time I write on the subject. Maybe I’ll go back to labelling myself agnostic (the world loves a label) so as to divorce myself from the Dawkins sect – in a non-judgemental way of course.

I wonder how many atheists watched Rev? OK, sorry, no more – I wonder how many avoided Rev due to its religious context? That’s a fair question since I almost missed it myself; having endured a lifetime exposure to some awful caricature I thought why put myself through any more? It’s probably the dog collar that invites such lazy writing, or maybe television is generally crap and I notice it more when a ‘person of the cloth’ is involved. That’s not to mention The Vicar of Dibley…

Rev on the other hand is brilliant, though I’m finding it hard to pinpoint exactly why I liked it so much. It’s full of the usual comedy ‘characters’ and normally that’s enough to have me reaching for the remote. There’s the successful wife who is the rock of the relationship, the heavy drinking homeless guy, the prudish reserve Reverend (what are they called?), the overly enthusiastic member of the congregation and the scary figure of authority in the Archdeacon. There’s an air of decay under which these people live their lives and I think it wins because it feels authentic. It’s a world going to seed yet full of warmth and kindness, people who actually care for each other. Oh, and it has real humour too. But I like how Tom Hollander put it in a recent interview:

...they’re just funny jokes, aren’t they? And they’re said with love.

Happy slapped by the database

I had a good day yesterday - I managed to get two, maybe even three things working! I could see a hazy distant light only for it to cloud over today; not even a chorizo sausage baguette could cheer me up. The change request database stopped working for no apparent reason and then after lunch started to behave itself - again for no apparent reason. It vexes me greatly. I am making progress but it is slow. I have a holiday soon. I am looking forward to it.

A fun holiday might stop mistakes such as letting my daughter watch the The IT crowd on replay. It was the best episode of the recent and occasionally misfiring series; Italian for Beginners. Roy has a new girlfriend and learns that her parents died in a tragic fire at a "Sea Parks" during a sea lion show. Unfortunately the line that made me laugh the loudest was Roy’s explanation when his girlfriend walks in whilst he’s checking out her story on the internet. Cue one of those awkward pauses whilst I grapple for an answer to my daughter's inevitable question.

Perfection

More tinkering with my blog on the weekend and for a short while I hit something approaching euphoria, helped along by a large slice of vanilla cheesecake, before later concluding that actually the header still looks a bit shit, I don’t really like the Georgia font and reaching the shocking conclusion that maybe a grey colour scheme isn’t terribly exciting; I am no nearer to layout nirvana. I really must get out more.

Instead I stayed in and watched Sherlock, a modern re-working of Sherlock Holmes. I’ve never warmed to the Baker Street detective but it was a terrific opener from Steven Moffat. It’ll be interesting to see whether the remaining two episodes maintain the standard but given that one is written by Mark Gatiss, who along with Moffat created this series for the BBC, I will be holding my breath and hoping for the best. Gatiss was unfortunately responsible for the duff episode in the recent and otherwise excellent series of Doctor Who, which coincidentally in a separate episode dredged up one of my least favourite quotes:

When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
-- Sherlock Holmes

Arthur Conan Doyle must have rather liked this quote as he seems to have used it or a variation thereof a number of times and, judging from how often it makes an appearance elsewhere, his fans are rather fond of it too. Holmes, I’ll assume but I could easily be wrong, makes his statement to illustrate a point rather than pronounce; it’s a shame therefore that his following have taken it so literally. In Doctor Who it is a child but it didn’t stop me from rolling my eyes and adding “or there’s something you haven’t thought of”. For such a statement excludes the possibility of error, that fallibility that makes us human and against which perfection is so boring.

Twenty over five

You can never have enough handbags

This was my explanation to Little Miss R as wife took us on a fourth lap of the John Lewis Tula circuit. That’s the price you pay for getting to do anything you want. We spent longer doing “a quick bit of shopping” than we did at the cinema and that can’t be right; especially since shopping is inherently dangerous for the sleeping partner. If you’re a coward like me you have a stock of non-committal answers to the never ending stream of questions on the subject of “what do you think”; as if I’m going to fall for that.

No, I needed to be back with my GPS - who’d have thought you could spend fifty pounds on something cheap and tacky that turns out to be so much more? Never mind that I knew the way home, I just like being ordered around and there was a whole library of cheap television waiting for me at home.

I have a BT Vision box. From this it can be surmised I'm either astute in my television viewing, I find Rupert Murdoch's continual and cynical undermining of the BBC repulsive or I'm too tight to cough up for Sky. One cool service with BT is the large number of programmes 'on demand'; programming you stream over the net. BT uses your phone line whilst Virgin Media have a similar service over cable. I'm in awe that it works so well.

Thus I've been able to watch 20 episodes of The Office in less than five days - isn't technology wonderful? One day I had a crush on Pam, the next, somewhat disturbingly it was Angela and no doubt it’ll soon be Dwight;I mean, who wouldn't? From this it can be surmised I'm either astute in my television viewing, I need to get out more or I'm too tight to cough up for the cinema.

I can see clearly now

Some time ago my old CRT television faded away and I ordered a new HD TV and Blu Ray player. I’d been waiting for an excuse, though my old friend rallied briefly before being switched off and dragged to the garage; where it will remain because it’s too heavy to carry any further. With my new boxes of delight I attempt to discern the difference between a standard and high definition picture; there is one, but it’s quite distracting looking for it. Now I’m in a no-mans land of indecision trying to decide between lovely cheap up-scaled DVDs and their “improved” Blu Ray counterpart.

It’s a perfect diversion from the real world which likewise seems undecided on what to do with me. That’s bollocks of course, though I do seem to be waiting for something; after which I will presumably move forward with my life. Meanwhile I put my head down and plough through the work ahead whilst wryly noting how much longer everything takes, longer than even I expected, when there are so few people around.

It’s proving a good opportunity to look at things that might otherwise have passed me by and I’m enjoying, if that’s the right word, the challenge; but it is very tiring. I miss bouncing ideas around, random Star Wars quotes, overhearing in-character discussions on the latest Xbox game, 5-a-side football, complaining to my boss, spoiler discussions on 24, arguing over whose turn it is to make the coffee. I miss my friends.

David McCallum and some giant man-dissolving snails

God I’m tired. It’s been a horrible week and, since I seem to use that phrase rather a lot, I’m thinking I should get those words engraved. You know where. I’ve overdosed on data scripts for the next rollout; I left my last script to run overnight and came back this morning to find it took nearly four hours to finish. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, a data script will take as long as it takes, but it’s enough to attract attention. I think I hold the company record for the longest ever running script, 38 hours to create 17+ million rows, designed to enable on-line queries to execute with greater speed. Is that ironic? I’m not sure, it might be. Did I mention I’m tired?

Last night I was on a case with David McCallum who unfortunately, and literally, came to a sticky end. We’re looking at a tunnel in a sand dune, only of course it couldn’t be a sand dune because how can you have a tunnel through the sand? David, with his forensic hat on, takes a look and decides to crawl right in. “I wouldn’t do that” I said, noticing this giant snail, only I was too late. Poor David, he never knew what happened. Only he did, because giant man-dissolving snails aren’t exactly the fastest killers around. I’m not exactly sure what happened next but at one point my arms fell off, I fell over and I couldn’t get up again because… well it’s not easy when you’ve got no arms.

What the hell was that about? Why did I have to dream about Ducky? Why couldn’t it be Ziva? She’s ‘fit’ (I may be middle-aged but I know the lingo) and I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t come to a sticky end… at least not from a giant man-eating snail. Though with my luck, she probably would.

If there’s no one to see it, has it really happened?

If a tree falls in the woods, and there's no one around to hear it, has it made a sound? If Channel 5 News has no pictures is it worth reporting? Judging from the few seconds afforded in one weekend report to the current crisis in Burma, the answer from a Channel 5 point of view would appear to be 'No'. In the same report they did thankfully manage several minutes on the China earthquake, they had endless pictures of collapsed buildings to perk their interest, but undermined their dubious credibility with a few minutes on a YouTube video posted by Pete Doherty and Amy Winehouse (talented people wasting their lives always draws in the red-top readership).

If only Daw Aung San Suu Kyi had been born with her feet the wrong way around, or had an unusual eating disorder, then Channel 5 might have shown more interest. Shoddy television news reporting only encourages, and in their minds justifies, the isolationist tendencies of Burma's military leaders. As it is we are once again reliant on decent newspaper coverage to inform us of what is happening; it's a shame none of us read any more.

Dr Who Christmas cash-in

Every year I watch the Dr Who Christmas special and every year I am left gob smacked at the fiendish misuse of the word 'special'. Terms such as 'cash-in' or 'rip-off' would have been more appropriate. The trouble is I know that Dr Who, despite occasional moments of brilliance, isn't really that good. I might have been tempted to blame David Tennant consistently gurning at the camera; but Christopher Eccleston did exactly the same thing in his turn as The Doctor and he's a brilliant actor. The problem lies in sloppy direction and some really inconsistent writing. The good stuff is good enough that you forgive the dross that is all too frequently meted out. However Christmas episodes of Dr Who are rather like the entire first series of Torchwood (I'm a software developer so I had to watch it all); they take the worst bits of Dr Who and put them into an extended episode cunningly timed for just after the evening meal.

Think about it; it's Christmas day and those people with a social life will by that time have consumed enough alcohol to view the whole thing through rose-tinted spectacles. Those with their critical faculties intact, and therefore without a social life, are going to watch it regardless. I suppose it's quite clever but just once I'd like a Christmas special that lives up to the name; an episode with original characters, without the usual clichéd dialog. This episode, just to rub it in, indulged in visual clichés that even Jerry Bruckheimer would have been ashamed of. At least next Christmas I know what to ask for from Santa.

Soap, cop, cook

I once heard Germaine Greer describe the Australian soap Neighbours as crypto-fascist - at least I think that was the description. At the time I dismissed it as another barking mad comment from one of those not-quite-in-touch-with-reality lefties that used to give me so much enjoyment. Subsequently I've realised there was some validity to this point which suggests the possibility that I'm an idiot. I'd like to think it takes a big man to admit he was wrong though it's more likely an indication that it's me who is not-quite-in-touch-with-reality – assuming I ever was?

Anyway, in the words of the song, it's my blog and I'll write rubbish if I want to. I've not watched Neighbours since I was a student (what is it about students and crap television?) but I do believe Ms Greer's comment could now be applied to the detective drama CSI:Miami. This is another in a long line of American cop shows with impossibly good looking (in a suspicious way) detectives and an almost religious regard for the possibilities of science; which as portrayed in the show is more fantasy than reality. I'd condemn the show outright were it not for the comic turn of David Caruso as Horatio Caine. Once you twig it's a comedy it's a lot of fun.

Though I've a new-found, albeit misplaced, enjoyment for said show it has already been supplanted by the all-new Nigella Lawson cookery program in which Nigella continues to be impossibly good looking (but in a good way), wears outfits wholly unsuitable for the kitchen (not that I'm complaining) whilst travelling to the supermarket by taxi (I particularly liked that bit). I know what you're thinking. The link from Neighbours to CSI:Miami was pretty tenuous but from CSI:Miami to Nigella Lawson it's frankly unbelievable. Is this just a flimsy excuse to plug (if you'll forgive the expression) Nigella?

Probably.

The crime of Rosemary & Thyme

There is a scene in Invasion of The Body Snatchers where a dog is run over in the street but the inhabitants of the town, now alien, show no emotion. Watching Rosemary & Thyme is a somewhat similar experience. Our heroines set off on a gardening assignment, witness some intrigue, someone dies, you don't care who, it's not important, it's really not important, puzzle is solved, everybody has tea... Agatha Christie looks like Ian Rankin in comparison.

There are many shows that follow this same formula but rarely have I seen any quite so banal. Judging from it's rating on IMDB it would appear to be quite popular, a score of eight out of ten is more than respectable. Looking more closely however you realise that this is the result of just over 100 votes, and thus about as reliable as those beauty advertisements that tell you 83% of women noticed an improvement. Perhaps it's dullness is what has enabled it to survive this long. The chloroforming effect of watching an episode ensures plenty of viewers for whom the advertisements really will be a wake up call.