almost witty

Over the weekend, a new TWO-MINUTE-LONG epic advert - of the kind they just don’t really make any more - has attempted to summarise the key events of British history over the last 122 years, all in order to sell some bread.

The interesting bit to me - aside from the token shoving in of an ethnic minority couple for a flash second - is that the 1984 Miner’s Strike and the Millennium celebrations are accorded almost as much “screen-time” as World War 1 & 2. (More details on the making of the advert via the MediaGuardian)

I’m not a car person - I drive an elderly Daewoo Matiz with all the power of a lawnmower - and yet, Top Gear is one of the reasons why I value paying my BBC licence fee. (The other reasons being Dragons’ Den, Doctor Who, Newsnight - oh, and it’s illegal and immoral for me not to!)

So the news that the Top Gear team are going on tour around the world sounds really good, especially since the first performance is round the corner in October. Does this mean, though, there’ll be less new Top Gear on our screens? There’s only so many repeats on Dave that I can watch … actually, that’s a lie. I happily leave multiple repeats of Top Gear on as nice background noise all the time!

Anyone else excited at the prospect of Top Gear Live?

An email flew across UK new media types today, exhorting people to take part in a flashmob to celebrate 20 years of acid house. Or as most people would term it, acccieeeeeeeeeeeedddddddd - courtesy of D-Mob’s We Call It Acieed, which was probably the closest mainstream charts got to it.

But to hear people twittering and muttering about it, apparently everyone was simply getting on down t’acid house in the second summer of lurve (1988). Except unsurprisingly, I was trapped in my parents’ bedroom probably not doing much except watching TV and imagining that simply every cool kid was getting on down t’Acid House in the big cities. And they probably were.

Personally, out of D-Mob’s ouevre, I preferred D-Mob & Cathy Dennis - C’mon get my love. And to think she went on to write some of Kylie’s greatest hits. Ahhh, the 1980s…

As long-time readers of this blog may know, I (along with lots of pop-culture-obsessed UK’ers) am a huge fan of Spaced. For those not in the know, it’s almost a British piss-take on Seinfeld, albeit obsessed with pop culture instead of the people around them. (In so many ways, Seinfeld would have worked better if it was British! I mean, what other nation is such an expert when it comes to examining the innards of human society, and the bizarre rituals and expectations that grow up around them?)

Anyway, skip to the end and while Simon Pegg & Edgar Wright (director) went off to do many funny things (and Pegg is the new Scotty for Star Trek), Jessica Stevenson’s career seemed to take an interesting turn.

She could have continued to mill her geek comedienne persona into all sorts of interesting things - but after a BBC-helmed comedic misfire, she seemed to turn her back on all things comedy, getting married, having three children and, of course, falling in love with David Tennant in Doctor Who: Human Nature.

Fortunately, to commemorate the American release of Spaced: The Complete Series on DVD (Americans! buy it now! It’s got commentaries and praise from the likes of Kevin Smith, Quentin Tarantino & Matt Stone!), the triumvirate have hit the publicity trail, complete with this video interview with Empire at Comic-Con. and I’m pleased to report that Jessica is as funny, geeky and - damn it, rude - as ever.

About a decade ago, I had my first experience of Hamlet, via Kenneth Branagh’s full-length sumptious cinematic adaptation in glorious 70mm. I remember at the time, thinking the following:

- blimey, 70mm is gorgeous
- I can’t follow everything that’s going on, but I can follow enough to get by
- how many phrases from the English language were plucked from this ?!
- If Ophelia isn’t the archetypal Doctor Who companion, I don’t know who is…
- Kate Winslet. She’d make a great companion (she wasn’t the all-conquering Titantic heroine she is now)

Fast-forward to this weekend, and we three (times two, making six) ended up voyaging from various corners of the UK (and one eBayer from Bermuda) to the twee country town of Stratford-upon-Avon to see a RSC production of Hamlet, with David Tennant and Patrick Stewart leading the cast.

After all the hassles of buying the tickets and getting there, getting into the play was one huge anti-climax. It was a relatively small venue in a quiet part of Stratford’s riverside, and we just showed the usher our tickets and entered a stunningly stark place, with mirrors acting as a theatre backdrop. No props, no set dressing, it was a real courtyard, with the actors entering and exiting the stage through corridors amongst the audience, and I loved the idea.

Unfortuanately, as the play progressed, they brought in a prop here, a set dressing there, until by the end the small space was festooned with props and things, which somewhat spoilt it. The ananachronism of it all - helicopters, guns, notepads, condoms - didn’t help either. Why use a gun to shoot someone when at the end you end up with a fencing fight?

I’m not too sure what I was expecting - probably epic acting histronics, but I didn’t really get the whole experience. It’s a production I think I admired more than I liked or loved - I certainly didn’t come out of it gabbling or loving it. One of my party left after thirty minutes, saying it was the worst production she’d seen. The rest of my party seemed to love it, although one of them was more star-struck than anything else.

Not being a Shakespearian acolyte, it was to be fair a little hard for me to seperate the actors from the production. For the Tennant fans, there was a fair amount of TimeLord/Tennant-esque dashing around the stage like an epileptic gazelle. Oh, and he wore alternatively a tuxedo, and then a student-esque T-shirt. He’s certainly a very very skinny fellow - I need his thyroids. He strangely lacked stage presence - there was one speech where I totally lost interest and had no idea what he was talking about, and he pretty much mumbled his way through To Be or Not To Be (oh baby can’t you see, we’re gonna make it to the toooooppppp) For the Stewart fans, despite looking a lot like Professor X, he seemed far more convincing and Shakespearian actorly than Tennant. Of course, afterwards there was a mad rush for autographs, although I elected to have a pint instead until other members of my party came back.

Since I haven’t been to the theatre in eons, I also forgot that theatre tends to bring out the maudlin and confused in me, mostly because there’s no filter between me and the actors, like you have in cinema and television. Then again, I love stand-up comedy, where there’s no filter at all. I’m still trying to process that particular thought, but then again: “For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”