Good Girl, Bad Blood

Unusually for me, I came to this book via television, after watching A Good Girl's Guide to Murder on Netflix. A few days later I came across the next two volumes in Holly Jackson's bestselling series, Good Girl, Bad Blood and As Good As Dead, in a local street library. I left volume three there, but I took Good Girl, Bad Blood because I had seen on Reddit (yeah, yeah, I know) that people adored the books and some felt the TV version was disappointing.

Having now read volume two, I can understand the love for the book character of Pip Fitz-Amobi, though I think Emma Myers did an excellent job of portraying her. She is a dogged, feisty and intelligent sleuth, and if she's rash at times, it just makes the story better. It might stretch credulity that the same village that was the site of two murders five before is currently also home to a serial killer's accomplice, but hey, good girls can't go searching too far for mysteries to solve and it helps if the mystery comes to Pip. Ravi, Pip's boyfriend, and her best friend Cara, are excellent foils, and Pip's parents are remarkably understanding and sympathetic in the circumstances.

I admired Pip's very plausible wrestling with the aftermath of the previous crimes, including the justice system falling short, and her temptation to take matters into her own hands and become some kind of avenging angel. The formatting of the text is a lot of fun, with podcast interviews and text messages woven into the narrative. I can see exactly what the fuss is about, and though I'd half decided not to watch season 2 of the TV version, I just might take a peek after all.

Stories I Only Tell My Friends

I'm not usually a great reader of celebrity biographies, but when I saw this Rob Lowe autobiography on the sale trolley at the local library, I felt it was worth shelling out the two bucks. I'm a bit of a fan of Rob Lowe; the family are in the middle of a West Wing re-watch, in which he stars as Sam Seaborn, and I'm comfort-watching Parks and Rec, in which he's extremely funny as super-fit and positive Chris Traeger. Also my daughter made me watch Bad Influence, an eighties movie in which he plays a villain who uses a sex tape to bring down his hapless victim, and which unfortunately came out at the same time as Lowe himself was the focus of a sex tape scandal (which almost permanently ruined his career).

It's hard not to feel some sympathy for the young Lowe, who was in his early twenties when the sex tape scandal occurred, and who'd been making movies since he was fifteen, but without anyone to provide him any wisdom or guidance. Young men aren't known for their sage judgement, and Lowe shows compassion for his younger self and his over-indulgence in girls and alcohol. Interestingly, he describes himself as being a giant nerd at school, which is sweet, and he lost his head when he suddenly found himself a member of the coolest gang in town.

What saved him was meeting his grounded and sensible wife, Sheryl, and going to rehab. He's still married and sober till this day, which in itself is pretty impressive. I love the way he turned himself into a comedy star, from being a very pretty heartthrob and a serious dramatic actor. Stories I Only Tell My Friends is predictably packed with celebrity anecdotes: he was high school mates with Emilio and Charlie Sheen, he dated Melissa Gilbert and Princess Stephanie... But Rob Lowe is genuinely fun to hang out with, all by himself.
 

A Very Peculiar Practice: The New Frontier

I've just seen this book listed on Amazon for over $200! Suffice to say, I picked it up from Brotherhood Books for considerably less than that...

A Very Peculiar Practice was a BBC drama/comedy/satire that I was addicted to in the 1980s, principally because my darling Peter Davison starred in it, following his stints in All Creatures Great and Small and of course Dr Who. AVPP was written by Andrew Davies, who also adapted Pride and Prejudice as well as many other TV series (Middlemarch, War & Peace). I think AVPP was his only original series. It only lasted two seasons, and this is the novelisation of the second one.

It was a weird show, with eccentric characters and a touch of surrealism, like the unexplained presence of two nuns flapping mysteriously around the campus. Davison starred as thoroughly nice Dr Stephen Daker, working in the medical centre of Lowlands University, alongside truculent Bob Buzzard, gloomy Jock McCannon, and smoothly terrifying feminist Rose Marie. Some of their catchphrases still echo in my brain, forty years on -- the pissant swamp, as a woman, rude nasty girl. 

Alas, evil Vice-Chancellor Jack Daniels' plan to eviscerate the university and convert it to a weapons development facility, which used to seem like wild satire, is now closer to business as usual for higher education. And I'm not sure how I feel abut Davies' going all meta, with his character of Ron Rust, who wanders the campus writing a TV series about a university for the BBC...

A Very Peculiar Practice was a trip down memory lane. I still have illegal videotapes of the show somewhere -- but sadly, no machine to watch them on!
 

Exterminate! Regenerate! The Story of Doctor Who

Exterminate! Regenerate!, John Higgs' satisfyingly chunky book about Doctor Who was another birthday present for myself, and I cannot tell you how incredibly enjoyable it was to read. This is not about the character of the Doctor, or even about the history of the production, with behind-the-scenes anecdotes and secrets about filming from the supporting cast (though there is some of that content). Rather, this is a discussion and a history of the phenomenon of Doctor Who -- how it was and is created, what it means in broader culture, the multiple changes that have swung through each switch in actor and producer. Higgs comes to the conclusion that after sixty years, Doctor Who has now achieved a life of its own, irrespective of whether the show is even being made and who it's being made by.

Doctor Who was created as an educational family show in 1963 to fill a BBC scheduling gap. Almost all the staff who were approached to make it declined, not wanting to sully their reputations by working on something as grubby as science fiction, so the first director and producer were a young woman and an Indian man -- thus, as Higgs points out, the viewpoint of the outsider was baked into the very creation of the programme. A TV show like this differs from the creation of a character like Sherlock Holmes, the product of one writer's imagination; the Doctor was woven from many different contributions.

At different times, Doctor Who has been an Earth-bound action series; a scary, Gothic, horror show; a philosophical examination of eternity, identity and morality; a charming romp; a twisted, paradoxical story interweaving multiple timelines. The Doctor themself has appeared young and old, female and male, Black and white -- a curly-haired, long scarfed agent of chaos; a hot 'space boyfriend;' a warm, friendly blonde; a cranky old man (okay, that last one a couple of times) and even a borderline psychopath, stretching and transforming the character over and over without destroying their integrity. The adventures screened on television are just the tip of an iceberg of other stories, novelisations, audio narratives and fan fiction, and the concept of Doctor Who is now self-sustaining, with many involved in the current incarnation themselves life-long fans of the show.

Beautifully, Higgs quotes one companion who said that the Doctor has two hearts because one belongs to the character and one to the actor who plays them. I also loved his drawing a parallel between the all-powerful Time Lords and the bigwigs of the BBC, who themselves would put the Doctor 'on trial,' demand the impossible or confine him to Earth (for budgetary reasons). Exterminate! Regenerate! is an insightful, hilarious, absorbing and fascinating overview of a strange and wonderful phenomenon that has long outgrown the control of any of us paltry humans. Long live the Doctor!
 

Slow Horses

 

It's rare for me to read the book after watching the series, but in this case, I came across Slow Horses first on Apple TV and thought it was fantastic -- a dark, British spy thriller with a bunch of misfits headed by Gary Oldman, with Kristen Scott Thomas as the kind-of villain? Wow. But it's meant that I came to Mick Herron's book with a certain amount of foreknowledge and expectation.

Firstly, I have to say that the show is perfectly cast. I couldn't imagine anyone but Oldman as dishevelled, filthy Jackson Lamb, the apparently washed-up operative who still has tricks up his sleeve. The rest of the team are just as good. And the atmosphere of the books is beautifully captured -- grimy London streets, running around in the dark, the run down offices of Slough House itself, where the various 'slow horses' have been assigned to see out their days with tedious tasks, or, preferably, resign in sheer disgust. The characters are rich, the plot was satisfyingly twisty (in fact I think the script writers ratcheted up the tension a notch or two), there is enough gore to raise the stakes without being so cruel as to stop me reading (or watching), all leavened with a pinch of very British humour. Though I must say that the abduction of a nineteen year old aspiring stand-up comedian was a little close to the bone...!

There are about eight books in the series and I hope Apple adapts every single one of them and makes Mich Herron a rich man.

Is There Life Outside the Box?

Not long after I read Tabitha Carvan's delightful This is Not A Book About Benedict Cumberbatch, what should turn up on Brotherhood Books but this autobiography by my own first obsessive crush. I was introduced to Peter Davison as the charming, rakish vet Tristan Farnon in the 1970s version of All Creatures Great and Small, and when he went on to take over the role of the Doctor in my other obsession, Dr Who, my wildest dreams came true (okay, second wildest dreams -- the wildest would have been if the TARDIS had actually landed in my backyard).

Is There Life Outside the Box? thus refers both to the TARDIS phone box and also to television itself: Davison has worked primarily on British TV for his whole long career. He's currently probably most well known for being David Tennant's father-in-law (DT wrote the introduction). The subtitle, An Actor Despairs, is apparently a play on a famous acting manual, An Actor Prepares, a reference which was totally lost on me but was luckily explained early on.

Davison is an engaging companion, sharing some well worn acting anecdotes, some more surprising stories, and a some personal insights too. He experienced his own wilderness years in the 1990s, unnoticed by me, because I kept seeing repeats popping up. I have a particular soft spot for a brilliant but obscure comedy-drama series called A Very Peculiar Practice, set in a university medical centre and written by Andrew Davies, who went on to write about a million adaptations including Pride and Prejudice. One thing I learned about Peter Davison which was I'd had no idea about is that this apparently super-Anglo, blond and blue-eyed actor has a black father, born in the West Indies.

In high school, my best friend and I made a pact that when our respective crushes (hers was Paul Darrow from Blake's 7) grew old and grey and weren't famous anymore, we would go over to the UK and track them down and take care of them in their dotage. Alas, Peter Davison seems to be still quite hale and active and well-loved, and in little need of my assistance. I might give it another twenty years!

The Serpentine Cave Revisited

 Just a quick note to say that anyone interested in the artists of St Ives, especially Alfred Wallis (as discussed in my previous post on Jill Paton Walsh's The Serpentine Cave), should check out episode 2, season 1 of Tate Britain's Great British Walks, which sees host Gus Casely-Hayford and guest Miriam Margolyes visit the town and its landscapes, and discuss Wallis's art and his legacy. Available on ABC iView now!

How do you like that for synchronicity?

Enterprising Women: Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth

Perhaps not the best, but definitely one of the most interesting books I've read this year. I've been looking out for this for ages but I'd given up hope of ever finding it, it was so obscure -- an ethnographic study of fanfic writers from 1992 -- but miraculously, good old Brotherhood Books came through for me again! And wow, I'm so glad they did.

Camille Bacon-Smith spent eight years infiltrating the Star Trek fan fic community and Enterprising Women is the result of her study. (Apparently it was quite controversial on publication, as some of her informants felt they'd been misquoted or misunderstood.) It's quite an academic text, and in parts pretty dense with theory and analysis, not necessarily an easy read.

But there were so many fascinating aspects to this book, not least of which was the account of the daunting logistics of producing and distributing fan fiction and fan art before the internet came along, not to mention viewing 'source product' ie the original TV shows. Bacon-Smith spends many pages detailing the elaborate system of 'circles' and fanzines, with photocopied stories passing from hand to hand, and videotapes of videotapes copied in someone's lounge room and lent to friends -- stuff you can find now with the press of a key on YouTube, not to mention the millions of words of fanfic for every possible fandom, instantly accessible on your laptop screen.

Bacon-Smith's study deals principally with the Star Trek fandom, but also covered Blake's 7 and The Professionals, which was a pleasant surprise, as they were both shows I was obsessed with in the 1980s. And here I must confess my personal interest in this subject. I too was a fanfic writer, though I never heard the term and never shared my work with a living soul. In fact most of the time my narratives played out only inside my head and were only occasionally written down.

What interested me especially was the realisation that I had independently explored several common fanfic genres without knowing that they existed as a category: the Mary Sue story (featuring the idealised ingenue), the cross-universe story (mixing up Blake's 7 with Dr Who, or Dr Who with All Creatures Great and Small... ah, Tristan!), and the hurt-comfort story (which was so easy to act out when you were lying in bed at night before you fell asleep). Clearly there are specific psychological needs which are being met by these narratives, and while Bacon-Smith has her own theories, they didn't always completely convince me.

Anyway, there was lots of food for thought and memory here, and it's inspired me to think about maybe writing something about this important phase in my life, and what it meant to me.

Cosmos, Then and Now

I was flicking through the channels last night when the screen filled with wheeling stars. 'Evie!' I yelled. 'Space!'

Evie loves space. She ran in to join me on the couch and I soon realised that we were watching the 2014 series of Cosmos, hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson. The first episode had just begun, and Evie and I watched, entranced, as Tyson led us on a tour of our local galaxies, then the observable universe. Having explored the limits of space, he then conducted us on a nifty tour of time, that compressed the history of the cosmos to a single calendar year -- on this scale, the whole of human history takes place in the last few seconds of the last day of December. It really does blow your mind... Evie was transfixed.

During an ad break (they are useful sometimes) I told Evie that I'd been hooked on the first iteration of Cosmos, hosted by Carl Sagan, which was produced in 1980 when I was only a couple of years older than Evie is now. And I was just as thrilled and enchanted by that version of the show, even though the effects weren't nearly as spectacular. It's the big concepts that are the real source of the magic, not the special effects.

And when the show resumed after the break, Neil Tyson told a lovely story about meeting Carl Sagan in person, when he, Tyson, was a 17 year old kid from the Bronx who dreamed of becoming a scientist. Sagan made time to take him on a tour of his lab, signed a book for him, escorted him to the bus stop. It brought the show into a beautiful, human-scale circle.

Evie and I can't wait for part 2.

Friends Reading

We watch a lot of Friends at our house. I was a fan the first time around (I especially got into the Chandler/Monica secret affair storyline, because at the time I was having a secret affair with my future husband, and I am a little bit Monica and he is a little bit Chandler.)

But Alice is a massive fan, and we have watched it on a loop approximately 4,782 times (seasons 3 -10 anyway, Gem doesn't seem to have the rights to the first two seasons, which is okay, cos they were not that great). There are many episodes we can almost quote by heart.

But recently I noticed something odd. In seasons 3 and 4, the Friends do quite a bit of reading. You often see Rachel or Monica in the coffee shop with a book. Rachel read Joan Didion at the beach. There were books lying around the apartments. Chandler bought a first edition of The Velveteen Rabbit for Joey's girlfriend (what a declaration of love!) One of my favourite episodes is the one where Rachel persuades Joey to read Little Women, then terrifies him, in the middle of an argument, by revealing, 'Beth dies!' She then takes it back, so he'll keep reading. But towards the end of the episode, Joey comes in, clutching the book. 'Beth's really sick... Jo's there, but I don't think there's much she can do...' Rachel hugs him, and says, 'Do you want me to put the book in the freezer?' (That's where Joey keeps the things that really frighten him.) I love that episode, and the fact that Beth doesn't actually die until Good Wives is neither here not there...

But something happens after season 4. The reading stops. Now you see the cast flipping through fashion magazines. The books disappear. The only appearance of a book after season 4 is when Joey discovers an erotic novel in Rachel's bed. ('Is the vicar coming over?' he asks her, leering.
'Joey!' she says sternly. 'Where did you learn that word?')

Why did the Friends stop reading?

Doing My Block

Generally speaking, I find the lure of reality television relatively easy to resist. All those singing and dancing and cooking shows leave me frankly cold. I do have a soft spot for Wife Swap, but that's about it.

However I must confess I have been sucked in big time by The Block. And it's not just me; every night at seven o'Block (as Channel 9 jocularly calls it) our whole family clusters eagerly around the television for the next installment.

It all becomes much easier once you've picked a favourite couple to barrack for. We are definitely Team Dale and Sophie, won over by Sophie's quirky, creative flair and Dale's Oz-as, dry as toast wit. (Our favouritism was cemented when we learned that they had the excellent taste and good sense to purchase one of our dear friend Sandra Eterovic's pieces; it hasn't been on the show yet, but we won't miss it when it appears!) We love the way Dale matter-of-factly arranges flowers, and the way Sophie is resolutely hopeless with the power tools. We loved the suitcase drawers, the home-made glass jar chandelier, the way they aren't afraid to use wood instead of stainless steel.

We are also fond of nice guys Brad and Lara, and we shake our heads at the OTT follies of brothers Mike and Andrew (mirrored walls in the toilet? seriously?), and have watched with bemusement but no surprise as careful editing has transformed "Melbournites" Dan and Dani into super-competitive super-villains. (Why are Dan and Dani "Melbournites" -- described thusly no less than five times last night -- while Dale and Sophie, also from Melbourne, are apparently not? Is it because to the Sydney-based production staff, "Melbournite" is a term of abuse? Just wondering...)

There are only two weeks to go, Sandra's clock is still to come, and what on earth are we going to do at seven o'clock when it's all over??

Completely Sherlocked

Sherlock Holmes was my first literary crush (I'm not counting Captain Cook (who was, after all, real) and his disturbing attractive white breeches in my Ladybird book of the same name).

At first glance there's not a lot to recommend Mr Holmes as an object of desire. There's the casual drug use, the total lack of interest in women (or anyone, really), the constant smoking, the insufferable ego, the chronic untidiness - he must have been a pain in the neck as a housemate.

Ah, but the searing brilliance of his mind makes up for everything. And we all know that the cold, distant types merely present a challenge - because if they give even the slightest hint that they care, that hint is worth infinitely more than some soppy emotional type declaring their undying love and throwing roses at you. As Dr Watson says,

It was worth a wound; it was worth many wounds; to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask. The clear, hard eyes were dimmed for a moment, and the firm lips were shaking. For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain. All my years of humble but single-minded service culminated in that moment of revelation.

Swoon! I shudder to think of the effect that this must have had on my later romantic life. Indeed, my first real world sort-of relationship was with a boy who bore quite the resemblance to Holmes -- super-smart, but cold and distant. Which is why it was only a sort-of relationship. But ah, the arguments were fantastic.

In recent years I've enjoyed Laurie R. King's Mary Russell books, featuring Holmes as Mary's partner in crime-solving, and later, life. But fun as these books are, somehow I could never quite accept Sherlock as a married man, demonstrating ordinary marital passion. Also he is, you know, old. And Sherlock Holmes for me is like a Time Lord; he never ages.

But now I've been seduced by Sherlock Holmes all over again. Sherlock, the new adaptation by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, with Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes and Martin Freeman as Watson, is as genius as Sherlock himself. I've come to this much later than everyone else, I know, and I've only seen one episode so far, but that was enough for me to fall, and fall hard. Irresistible.

TV For People Who Don't Like TV

A friend of mine has suggested that I should blog about television shows for people who don't like watching television (like him). I think he was joking, but hey, I'm going to do it anyway.

These are the must-watch shows at our house at the moment:

Monday
Mythbusters (SBS1, 7.30)
Inscrutable Jamie and over-excitable Adam put "myths" to the test eg is it possible to find a needle in a haystack? Could a man survive a fall from a skyscraper using a sheet of plyboard as a parachute? Along the way, a surprising amount of science is imparted to an unsuspecting audience which has tuned in to enjoy the explosions, car crashes and general mayhem.

Tuesday
QI (ABC1, 9.30)
Stephen Fry hosts a panel show like no other, where the bizarre trivia invariably outshines the efforts of the guests to be hilarious. Guaranteed to teach you something fascinating you didn't already know.

Wednesday
Top Design (Gem, 8.30)
Contestants vie in weekly design challenges eg transform a caravan, build a rooftop garden. Alice and Evie both want to star in "Kids Top Design," which must surely be forthcoming. We specially love cute Rob the architect and clever Dee.
The Gruen Transfer (ABC1, 9.00)
Witty and enlightening dissection of the advertising industry, hosted by Wil Anderson.
Judith Lucy's Spiritual Journey (ABC1, 9.30)
I feel as if I know Judith Lucy because we once attended the same party. I love her. Her meandering search for meaning has been very personal, thoughtful, funny and sometimes cringe-making. I wish they'd give her an interview show. She takes self-deprecating to a whole new level of pain.

Thursday
Supersizers Go... (SBS1, 8.30)
Unpromising title, but this show is a gem. Food critic Giles Coren and comedian Sue Perkins undertake to eat the food and live the lifestyle of a particular historical period for a week, with medical checks before and after to see what effect it has on their health. A couple of weeks ago they reeled beneath a Restoration diet of meat and claret (no water, and no vegies - those Restoration types thought they were dirty and unhealthy). Not for the squeamish - they often consume things like boiled calf's heads, fish head pie or stuffed dormouse. This week: the seventies.

Saturday
Before The Game (Ch 10, 6.30)
Our favourite show about the footy, because it doesn't take the game too seriously and there's a chick on the panel. Almost free of the weighty blokes-only atmosphere that spoils most other football shows for the female fan. 

Sunday
Grand Designs (ABC1, 7.30)
Kevin McLeod hosts this long-running UK programme which follows the building of a house from design to completion. Usually the projects are ambitious - in past years, they've often been huge, glass-walled monstrosities, but lately the houses have tended to be clever and sustainable. Everything I know about architecture (not that much!) I've learned from this show.

The Doctor (And Another Doctor)

So it's a year since Stephen Moffat took over the reins as executive producer and chief writer at Doctor Who, and it's time to consider what kind of a fist he's making of the job. In my opinion: a pretty damn good one.


In the new version of Who, I've always loved Stephen Moffat's episodes the best. His writing is simply breath-taking, and he understands the possibilities of time travel for clever, puzzling, deeply satisfying stories in a way that I don't think Russell T. Davies was ever really interested in. It seemed to me that RTD was so caught up in the mythology of the Doctor's character (a near-immortal, deeply lonely, almost god-like figure, stalking the wastes of time and space with the fate of worlds weighing oh-so-heavily on his shoulders, etc etc) that he rather neglected the sheer fun you can have with a time machine, zooming back and forth to five minutes ago with a silly fez on your head and contradicting what you're just about to say, if only you hadn't already said it.

I was quite prepared to not warm to Matt Smith's Doctor (too young, not serious enough) but he's won me over. It's been a wrench to part from David Tennant's No. 10, who did seem to me the perfect embodiment of the Doctor, but I think I've come to terms with it now. And I must admit, at times, RTD's Doctors were so freighted with all that history, all that meaning, that it sometimes became a bit... a bit much. A bit pompous, a bit earnest, a little bit too much staring soulfully into the middle distance with flames in the background. The Eleventh Doctor, Stephen Moffat's Doctor, is playful and merry and clever, and most of the time, he's having fun.

Having said all that, I do have reservations. I don't like the new Daleks. The cartoonish, clunky, brightly-coloured versions just aren't scary to me; I prefer the rough, industrial, ruthless originals. I'm not sure about all this business about being married to River Song; the Doctor doesn't do "married."Moffat doesn't seem to have the same reverence for the Doctor's mythos as RTD; he chucks stuff around a smidge too carelessly, perhaps.

But I can go with it. We all have our own visions of the Doctor. I was around when John Nathan-Turner reinvented the Fifth Doctor as a youthful action hero; there were gasps of dismay from fandom, but we all survived. And the Doctor and his TARDIS keep on spinning, through eternity.