Blog posts by year and monthAugust 2007
Posts (10)
Edinburgh: Week Three
It's all over. I'm writing this in Manchester Piccadilly, after seeing Potted Potter start its week's run in the Lowry last night. Already the Fringe seems as if it was months ago. The last few days went by in a hazy fatigue, teetering on the edge of futility. There would be no more reviews, aud...
Hard-earned wisdom.
Tony Jordan came and gave a talk recently about creating a TV show. Here, thanks to our transcrib-o-matic linguistymachine, are his thoughts on creating Holby Blue, Hustle, and Life on Mars.
Things at Silver Street trundle on
Things at Silver Street trundle on...perhaps trundle is the wrong word...before I know it I'm working on the next set of story outlines with the team...it doesn't seem that long since we last did it... but as with continuing drama everything's always on the go. It's a hectic week, ideas have been thrown about, some taken on others not and before you know it the wall is ablaze with multicoloured post it notes ready to be typed up. The word frantic springs to mind. I'd finished my scripts by this point, had to make a few minor changes ...all of which had to be done in a space of a few hours. Suddenley was looking forward to the next few days in Edinburgh watching other peoples work. (How great is the city and the festival?!) So now have a day of recording to sit in which I'm excited about ...one of the self contained storylines that I'd made up for an episode turned out well - I can see there being some laughs!
Edinburgh: Week Two
The Edinburgh Fringe continues apace: the pace in question being that of an emphysemic snail. Lots of performers are talking about having 'hit the wall': the combination of fatigue, drink and low-level viral infection have taken their toll. But there's nothing to be done other than necking vitamin C, quaffing Lemsip, strapping a costume to your wheezing chest and bloody getting on stage and doing it, darling. In the middle of the week, I saw two shows within a fourteen-hour period which seemed to encapsulate the polarity of Fringe experience. The first was Seriously. Pet Shop Boys. Reinterpreted. Billed as musical theatre, this is a sort of revue show that takes bits of various PSB numbers and sticks them together with the intention of forming dramatic scenes � closer to Closer Than Ever than, say, Mamma Mia. However, there's often little apparent logic to the juxtaposition of material, and the fragmentary approach to the original lyrical structure often robs it of any real meaning: chucking a verse of I Want A Dog into the middle of To Speak Is A Sin adds nothing to either piece. However, the cast stride nobly forward into this void of meaningfulness, imbuing every phrase with great, wet, steaming gobbets of meaning. All of the wit, irony, subtlety and charm of the original songs is bulldozed by the smug, precious, overblown delivery. The Pet Shop Boys are sometimes accused that all their songs sound the same: this show, which commits every vacuous cliché of musical theatre, seems intent on proving that myth. I'd have been more willing to forgive the almost wilful misunderstanding of the band's work, had they not had such extensive professional experience, but their impressive CVs and high production values instead led me to ask what the Pet Shop Boys had done to deserve this. At the other end of the budgetary scale, The Lost Tapes Of Tom Bell is a charming, funny discussion of childhood and adulthood being presented as part of Peter Buckley Hill's Free Fringe. Tickets are by (emphatically non-compulsory) donation, and the show takes place in the grotty, windowless back room of a pub on the Canongate. Audience participation has never been less threatening, as Tom gets one punter to toast crumpets, and lets another do some painting. To describe the humour as 'gentle' doesn't do justice to how funny it is, but this is a genuinely feel-good show with more than enough humanity and wit to make up for the lack of it the previous day.
How To Be Funny
Thing is, you can be funny electronically these days. It's a lot cheaper. Rob Manuel - your ginger overlord - has written a big long page all about being funny on the internets. It's got lots of good advice if you're thinking of making your own funny rather than just writing it and hoping tha...
Plays at Lunchtime
Four up-and-coming playwrights supported in part by the ±«Óãtv writersroom are having their plays performed in Newcastle and Hexham during the lunch hour. Find out more about how to get a bit of culture with your scran on the New Writing North website.
Edinburgh: Week One
It's the end of the first week of the Edinburgh Fringe. It's been overcast, with sunny intervals and rain in places. I'm writing this in a drizzly Pitlochry, having sneaked away from the capital for a couple of days to get on with some writing for a deadline at the end of the month. Last night w...
Chase Me
We've just put a script from the second series of Kay-Mellor-produced drama The Chase in the script archive. This is episode 8, transmitted on the 29th July and written by Pat Smart. So, hot off the tellybox then. Several episodes of The Chase, including this one, were directed by Sue Tully, ...
Silver Street
Hi I'm Aisha....and I'm currently working on atttachment on ±«Óãtv Asian Networks radio drama series called Silver Street. I've ben here for some weeks and have sat in a day of recording, worked with the lovely researcher and had a laugh with the production team discussing story possibles ....and h...
Middle-aged White Men
That's who write British films, according to the latest research conducted by the UK Film Council They took a random sample of 40 films certified as British in 2004 and 2005 and theatrically released in the UK, and talked to the 63 credited screenwriters to find out a bit about who they were....