Monday, May 08, 2023

Joe Orton and SF

To go with Orton's Doctor Who links, I found another genre connection lurking in the Diary where I'd previously failed to spot it.

On July 18th 1967 he does a photoshoot for Queen magazine - a group of celebrity 'goodies' to be contrasted with another group of baddies. With him amongst the goodies is Lucy 'Survivors' Fleming.

She was also in the Avengers ep Invasion of the Earthmen. We know Orton and Halliwell were watching The Avengers in 1966, because Kenneth Williams mentions it. Sadly though, Invasion of the Earthmen didn't complete production till after Orton was dead.

Saturday, December 26, 2020

Little Women/Good Wives

I've just learnt that Good Wives is a purely British way of referring to vol 2 of Little Women. I wonder though what accounts for the textual differences between GW and vol 2 of the two-volume version?

So for example, in the opening scene of the one-volume Little Women, Jo examines the heels of her boots in a gentlemanly manner while urging her sisters to spend their money as they wish, whereas in the two-volume version, it's the heels of her shoes.

Thursday, December 17, 2020

Susie Brann's Harpoon voice

Listening to the 1962 Carleton Hobbs adaptation of Thor Bridge, I find one Beryl Calder playing Grace Dunbar, with a voice that's uncannily similar to the posh 30s one Susie Brann deploys in The Harpoon. I wonder if that's where the latter modelled it from?

Monday, August 31, 2020

Miss Blennerhassett

Miss Blennerhassett in the Penrith tearoom in Withnail & I. I'm wondering if her unusual name was suggested by a nine days' wonder in 1933, the libel case Blennerhassett v Novelty Sales Services Ltd and another. I came across it in an interesting book about libel cases - Hatred, Ridicule or Contempt, by Joseph Dean (1953) - and this blog has saved me the trouble of typing it all out for you. There's a picture of the advert complained of, too.

Sunday, May 03, 2020

Survivors: You drink what they drink

The official pre- and post-apocalypse healthy drinking programme:

  • whisky (2 - you leave the second glass undrunk while you lie in bed for 5 days)
  • bottle of tonic water (don't look in the mirror)
  • champagne (warm)
  • Black & White whisky (straight out of the bottle)
  • Black & White whisky (straight out of the bottle - while you have your broken legs fixed)
  • vodka and tonic with ice
  • Glenfiddich (straight out of the bottle)
  • Elderflower wine ('last summer...')
  • Hey clarse brandy (for aristocrat use only)
  • Brandy or maybe a liqueur - can't tell, Charmian has her hand over the label
  • Glenfiddich
  • Some 70s beer which I would have recognised back in the day
  • Glenfiddich (out of the bottle)
  • 'Scottish' whisky (in paper cups - have another)
  • Aristocrat-grade brandy again
  • Champagne (Moet - out of a bucket of water which I suppose might cool it a little bit, but probly not enough :anne:)
  • 'Grape' wine (you'll be amused by its presumption) - about half a bottle I think, possibly more, there's a demijohn full of it as well
  • More grape wine, just 1 glass this time it looks like
  • Wine again - probably the grape wine from before (toast: 'Civilisation' 'All of us')
  • Not just brandy but cognac, Rémy Martin ('for a special occasion, for a bigger world, better days')
  • Brandy or maybe a liqueur ('FINE' on the label)
  • Cheap-looking pre-plague branded red wine, giving me a headache just looking at the label
  • More of the above
  • What looks like Charles' 'grape' wine again (sipped while you stand urbanely in front of a fireplace, like you probably used to pre-plague)
  • The same again I think (at least one glass each, and then 'is there any more wine, Pet?' 'Is there?')
  • Another glass of 'grape' wine (just casually in the kitchen as if it's no big deal; you've got engineering to think about)
  • More glasses of 'grape' wine out of a pottery jug in the white house ?Friday evening, while drunkenly singing the rude versions of hymns
  • Old reliable grape wine, in the white house kitchen
  • Grape wine out of a bottle while staggering through the woods with hymn books
  • Communion wine (off-screen)
  • Fascist home-made wine with lunch (a white wine for a change - and a whole bottle for you and partner)
  • Gale beer (in rather small glasses)
  • Bathtub gin (out of a jam jar)
  • Beer, elderflower wine and bathtub gin (toast: 'The future' - the gin btw by mistake for wine, getting you so drunk you have to stop playing the guitar and be propositioned by Pet)
  • Medicinal spirits furnished by Pet (Bell's whisky I think, can't be sure though)
  • What looks like home-made red wine
  • Something that Hubert nicked that tastes like gin
  • Sherry, judging by the glasses and the refill - have another
  • Wine for those that like it, but mostly beer, at least 5 pints, and another offered (in a proper pub as if the plague never happened. Toast: Iechyd da!)
  • Whisky (a dram before lunch)
  • Red wine (I presume with dinner, because lunch was fish)
  • Red wine (by candlelight, which is at last a choice again)
  • Monday, April 13, 2020

    Survivors closing remarks

    At the end of series 1 I was in two minds about whether to carry on watching because I didn't think the show would be much good without Abby. But Charles stepped into the gap - he was equally interesting because he had more flaws and inner conflicts. I actually began fancying him in series 3, up till then only Greg had held my attention in that way.

    Jenny develops quite well. I do like the ways she's become hardened without ceasing to be herself. In 1.3 she can't bring herself to use the gun outside the supermarket, during series 2 John reports that 'Jenny fell over' when she fired a gun, but by series 3 she's unhesitatingly opening fire at Col Clifford's men and telling Charles 'shoot it in the eyes' when they find the trapped pig.

    Put it this way, if I'd wandered up to one of the settlements and joined them, I'd take care not to let Jenny see that I found Greg attractive. I don't want to get shot in the eyes.

    Series 2 was good, I liked the Whitecross ensemble but they didn't make enough of Ruth, and it trailed off a bit towards the end before reviving with Over The Hills and then the astonishing appearance of the balloon.

    Series 3 I found very disappointing and badly connected. There were one or two good episodes in there, and the conclusion was - adequate. I have been much worse pleased with the final episodes of things.

    What did impress me was that they managed to keep me with them even though the theme had changed. In series 1 it was mainly about the breakdown, the aftermath, scavenging and foraging. And when I got to the end of series 1 I said that that was what interested me and I'd been less engaged by the self-sufficiency theme which is beginning to emerge.

    But I did get engaged by that theme in series 2. By the time we got to the end I wanted to stay with Whitecross and see them make it succeed. And I didn't really want to buy into the emerging theme about reconnecting communities and restarting technological civilisation and preventing malign forces from seizing control of it.

    Yet again though they managed to engage me - though with less success this time, series 3 was much less cohesive than the other two, some of the episodes had very little connection to the main arc at all.

    I only started watching this because I was trying to deal with the start of the coronavirus crisis. I'm glad I did, it's been a transformative experience which has helped me to face up to my fears. Thank you, survivors.

    Survivors - 3.12 Power

    The survivors reach Scotland, and we learn some startling things about what's been happening north of the border. The death ratio is only 90% (500 times lower than in England) so the Scots now outnumber the English 15:1.

    Basically Charles and Macallister, the 'laird', argue back and forth about who owns the hydroelectric power, and about whether this is really the time for nationalism, while evil Sam from ep 3.9 tries to sabotage the whole project. Alec is disheartened by the nationalist quarrelling, but Jenny argues that, while bare survival was endurable when it was the only option, it won't be if they know they needn't be living that way. 'Let there be light,' says Alec as he pulls the big switch.

    The closing scene shows Macallister and his chatelaine turning off their dining room lights and sitting down to dine by candlelight. I suppose the moral is that their experiences have taught them that, while they've got electricity again, they needn't be dependent on it. But of course it's all right for them. They live in a stately home with people bringing them, as Macallister says, salmon and whisky and oatcakes. I bet they haven't spent the last 3 years living in cars and looting supermarkets and struggling to raise crops and making soap out of mutton fat and dying from flu. If that's how I'd spent the last 3 years, I think I'd keep the lights on while I ate.

    The writer has a lot of fun with the Scotland/England scenario. Charles accuses Macallister of planning to hold the English to ransom, and he replies 'How could you afford a ransom?'. Later Macallister says he'll consider Charles as his Secretary of State for England.

    Jenny gets to dress up nicely again, and wash her hair, disconcerting Hubert with her new appearance.

    Macallister exposits that the Scottish islands weren't affected by the plague at all. Though of course the idea of plague-free pockets of civilisation was raised and dismissed in ep 1.5 - the premise then was that if any of the survivors visited such a pocket, they'd give everyone there the plague. But we're a long way from Terry Nation's ideas now.

    Jenny inexplicably chooses not to come and live in Scotland. What's the matter with her? After my remarks about the previous episode, it's oddly fitting that Survivors ends by holding up Scotland as the promised land.