Last night was the final episode in the series of Miranda. Probably my favourite one after Hotel - and some real emotion too. Felt like a really good one to end on. But it doesn't end there. We have been asked to do a second series. Such fun.
In the meantime, if you really can't wait for a DVD to be released, why not pick up the CD of the Radio 2 series? It's here.
Tuesday, 15 December 2009
Tuesday, 8 December 2009
Where Do Comedians Go When They Die?
I'm currently writing a new series of Another Case of Milton Jones with the eponymous Milton Jones. Yesterday in a meeting with him and David Tyler, the producer, I laughed until I cried, which is a rather nice way to earn a living, I thought. Now I've just got to write a shed load of jokes. I love writing with Milton - not only is a thoroughly decent human being, he was a brilliant comedy brain. For my money, he is the finest joke-writer in Britain today. (Why he is not regularly on our TV screens is baffling to me.) But trying to keep up with Milton joke for joke is a real stretch for me - and I regularly fail, but it is a tremendous comedy 'work-out'.
Anyway, Milton has written a book about life as a comedian - a fictionalise account of the trials of being a jobbing comedian. And he got it published and everything. And it looks great. I hope to read a copy very soon - but for now, have a look here for a review on Chortle and here to buy it on Amazon.
Anyway, Milton has written a book about life as a comedian - a fictionalise account of the trials of being a jobbing comedian. And he got it published and everything. And it looks great. I hope to read a copy very soon - but for now, have a look here for a review on Chortle and here to buy it on Amazon.
Monday, 16 November 2009
Unlucky for Some
You can listen to the latest episode of Hut 33 here. It's called Unlucky for Some, and it was a very enjoyable script to write, albeit a very pressured one. The Big Machine episode took ages - and so the time I had to spend on Unlucky for Some (which I wrote last) was very short. It was an idea that I'd had for the show very very early on when considering storylines for Series 3. I considered lots of alternatives, including Mrs B telling Archie that he was going to be lucky in love, and Archie so determined to prove her wrong that he throws away a really good chance with a really lovely girl. I liked that storyline because Archie was paying the penalty for his own dogma and stubbornness - which is what you want on a sitcom. The characters have to be their own worst enemies, and sow the seeds of their own downfall. I rejected that storyline in the end, however, partly because it isn't very funny, and also because it did not bring him into conflict with Charles, which is very much the comic engine of the show.
The other reasons I was attracted to this plot was because of current discussions around science, religion and faith. Many are stridently opposed to religion because it appears to them at least to be irrational. Professor Dawkins and friends are furious that people still regard religion as important or worthwhile when, to them, there is simply no need for it. In fact, it is menace to society, they say. It seemed to me that Archie would espouse this view, since he is a Marxist and the Russian sympathiser. Stalin ran an atheistic regime (demonstrating that you don't have to be religious to destroying millions of lives, single-handedly killing more people than every crusade and the Spanish Inquisition combined).
(I hasten to add I don't agree with Archie in this. Christianity, at least, is not based on an irrational 'leap of faith' as many think. My understanding is that God comes to earth as a man and gives proof of himself, rising from the dead, so that no 'leap' is needed. But this is not the place to discuss theology.)
Charles however is religiously motivated, being a Roman Catholic, although his faith sometimes has the appearance of superstition. But maybe I would say that because I am a Protestant. The important thing, however, is that Charles' faith is believable and real. Gordon, the middle-man, would be an Anglican - in the worst sense of the word - trying to agree with everyone and be all things to all men. And Mrs B would naturally be superstitious and full of old wives tales.
And thus, Unlucky for Some was born. One of the advantages of writing the final episode of a third series is that you know who the characters are and how they would respond in any given situation. Take the subject of superstition and you immediately have attitudes from the characters forming in your mind. The trick of writing is to hear those characters talking to each other and trying and keep up with the voices in your head...
The other reasons I was attracted to this plot was because of current discussions around science, religion and faith. Many are stridently opposed to religion because it appears to them at least to be irrational. Professor Dawkins and friends are furious that people still regard religion as important or worthwhile when, to them, there is simply no need for it. In fact, it is menace to society, they say. It seemed to me that Archie would espouse this view, since he is a Marxist and the Russian sympathiser. Stalin ran an atheistic regime (demonstrating that you don't have to be religious to destroying millions of lives, single-handedly killing more people than every crusade and the Spanish Inquisition combined).
(I hasten to add I don't agree with Archie in this. Christianity, at least, is not based on an irrational 'leap of faith' as many think. My understanding is that God comes to earth as a man and gives proof of himself, rising from the dead, so that no 'leap' is needed. But this is not the place to discuss theology.)
Charles however is religiously motivated, being a Roman Catholic, although his faith sometimes has the appearance of superstition. But maybe I would say that because I am a Protestant. The important thing, however, is that Charles' faith is believable and real. Gordon, the middle-man, would be an Anglican - in the worst sense of the word - trying to agree with everyone and be all things to all men. And Mrs B would naturally be superstitious and full of old wives tales.
And thus, Unlucky for Some was born. One of the advantages of writing the final episode of a third series is that you know who the characters are and how they would respond in any given situation. Take the subject of superstition and you immediately have attitudes from the characters forming in your mind. The trick of writing is to hear those characters talking to each other and trying and keep up with the voices in your head...
Monday, 2 November 2009
JRR Tolkein
I should have spotted this before but this is rather juicy. I suppose it makes complete sense. Tolkein was an expert linguist and philologist, so an obvious candidate for codebreaking. Gives me an idea for a show...
Wednesday, 21 October 2009
The Big Machine
Episode 2 of Series 3 is now on iPlayer here if you want to have a listen.
The episode is about machinery and early computers so, as you can imagine, there are lots of jokes about computers and IT. Lots and lots has been written on this subject and I have waded through much technical data in the last few years as I've written this show and the novel Crossword Ends in Violence (5) (available here). I read a book about Colossus by Paul Gannon, large parts of which I had to skim since they were extremely technical. I didn't much enjoy the book, but I was very glad that someone had bothered to write it. But it did teach me about the astonishing technical achievements achieved under such pressure.
Turing naturally gets much retrospective credit in all of this - and rightly so. His brain was a very rare thing indeed. He vastly improved the Bombe, building on the achievements of the largely forgotten Pole, Marian Rejewski who first cracked Enigma in 1932 (thanks in part to some splendid espionage by a Frenchman). But often overlooked is Max Newman and Tommy Flowers who were largely responsible for the amazing Colossus.
The machine invented by Gordon, and streamline by Archie, in this episode is an arbitrary one, designed to automate the process of trying to drag a crib through the text and spot links (since the Enigma machine never encoded a letter as itself) - it's getting boringly technical now, isn't it? This is what I'm up against, you see, writing an audience comedy show set at Bletchley Park.
I had a lot of fun writing it although, for some reason, this took the longest to write by far, going through several drafts. One of the problems stemmed from the dilemma the characters find themselves towards the end of the show. I don't want to spoil the plot, so I won't (I hope). But the machine that is created obviously has ramifications - but to suggest that our heroes would do something as malicious and self-serving as sabotage it is unthinkable. Still, our characters are feckless and petty, so nothing is beyond them. Naturally, they are nothing like the hardworking folk who laboured away at Bletchley for real - it's just a sitcom, remember... (In the same way, the German occupation of France did not resemble the goings-on of Allo Allo). Hope you enjoy this one.
The episode is about machinery and early computers so, as you can imagine, there are lots of jokes about computers and IT. Lots and lots has been written on this subject and I have waded through much technical data in the last few years as I've written this show and the novel Crossword Ends in Violence (5) (available here). I read a book about Colossus by Paul Gannon, large parts of which I had to skim since they were extremely technical. I didn't much enjoy the book, but I was very glad that someone had bothered to write it. But it did teach me about the astonishing technical achievements achieved under such pressure.
Turing naturally gets much retrospective credit in all of this - and rightly so. His brain was a very rare thing indeed. He vastly improved the Bombe, building on the achievements of the largely forgotten Pole, Marian Rejewski who first cracked Enigma in 1932 (thanks in part to some splendid espionage by a Frenchman). But often overlooked is Max Newman and Tommy Flowers who were largely responsible for the amazing Colossus.
The machine invented by Gordon, and streamline by Archie, in this episode is an arbitrary one, designed to automate the process of trying to drag a crib through the text and spot links (since the Enigma machine never encoded a letter as itself) - it's getting boringly technical now, isn't it? This is what I'm up against, you see, writing an audience comedy show set at Bletchley Park.
I had a lot of fun writing it although, for some reason, this took the longest to write by far, going through several drafts. One of the problems stemmed from the dilemma the characters find themselves towards the end of the show. I don't want to spoil the plot, so I won't (I hope). But the machine that is created obviously has ramifications - but to suggest that our heroes would do something as malicious and self-serving as sabotage it is unthinkable. Still, our characters are feckless and petty, so nothing is beyond them. Naturally, they are nothing like the hardworking folk who laboured away at Bletchley for real - it's just a sitcom, remember... (In the same way, the German occupation of France did not resemble the goings-on of Allo Allo). Hope you enjoy this one.
Thursday, 15 October 2009
Episode 1 - Know Thine Enemy on iPlayer
For the next week, you can listen to Episode 1 of Series 3 of Hut 33 on iPlayer - here. This episode is actually about codebreaking, which sounds obvious given the premise of the sitcom, but it much harder to do that you might think. I've had one or two people quite indignant that, as a sitcom, we don't concentrate on the codebreaking anywhere near enough. Of course, sitcoms are about characters and people, not ideas. Hut 33 is not about the war - well, it is. It's about class war. It's about the clash of world-views between Archie, the common man, whose time is coming, and Charles, the posh don, whose time is passing. Gordon is stuck in between as the peace-maker. And the war is what pushes this unlikely trio together, as was the case in the war. It is often given as the reason for Churchill's astonishing defeat after the war; Britain, for the first time, really saw how the other half lived, and they didn't like it. Anyway, hope you enjoy the episode.
Thursday, 8 October 2009
Know Thyne Enemy
For some reason, this episode is called Know Thyne Enemy. I don't know where the 'y' in 'Thyne' came from, but there it is. Anyway, this is episode 1 in the new series of Hut 33 - details of which can be found here.
This episode is an attempt to actually do a story about codebreaking - which is about as hard to do as it sounds. Stories about codebreaking that are comprehensible are quite hard. To do them on the radio makes them even harder. To make them funny on the radio, well, that's a bit of a tall order. But that is, after all, the premise of the show, so it's my own fault. You can be the judge of how successful I've been with this episode. Have a listen anytime from 11.30am on Wednesday 14th October.
This episode is an attempt to actually do a story about codebreaking - which is about as hard to do as it sounds. Stories about codebreaking that are comprehensible are quite hard. To do them on the radio makes them even harder. To make them funny on the radio, well, that's a bit of a tall order. But that is, after all, the premise of the show, so it's my own fault. You can be the judge of how successful I've been with this episode. Have a listen anytime from 11.30am on Wednesday 14th October.
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