It must have been a very daunting task to transfer Stephen Sondheim's Tony Award winning smash of 1979 into the lean, mean cinematic vehicle currently on release. Sondheim's musicals have had a rough ride in the past with rather uninspiring versions of 'A Little Night Music' and 'A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum' suggesting that the composer's often notoriously complex works did not transfer particularly well to the screen.

Evidently, he hasn't been precious about this adaptation by director Tim Burton and writer/producer John Logan. He's allowed the makers to cut the running time down from its original three hours, to chop out whole songs, verses of other songs and remove the Greek chorus that bookended the various acts of the original stage version. That the film does not actually suffer from this stripping down of the material is testament to his own belief that the film should not be a carbon copy of the stage version and of his trust in Burton and Logan to be faithful to the material.

Sondheim's later works - 'A Little Night Music', 'Follies' 'Company' and then 'Sweeney' - make the move away from the traditional structure of musicals where the action of the plot tends to stand still whilst the songs are sung and they embrace the use of songs as narrative in itself. 'Sweeney' is one of the finest examples of this, where the entire narrative is sung. Fortunately, this is also the approach the film takes too and it probably felt like an enormous risk to just simply open the film with the characters singing and then to just keep going! How younger audiences would react to this was probably the greatest concern for the production team.

They needn't have worried. Firstly, the orchestrations by Jonathan Tunick of the original Sondheim score both respect and beautifully augment the original and give the film a wonderful soundscape using motifs and recaps to drive the narrative and songs and, secondly, both Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham-Carter manage the songs in a very unexpected but competent way. There are moments in Depp's delivery where he clearly doesn't have the range but these are fleeting moments in a truly mesmerising performance where he thoroughly explores and portrays Todd's pathology. And both he and Bonham-Carter have realised that for the cinematic treatment of this operatic material to succeed there is a great need to pull it all right back and make it very intimate rather than simply bellowing it out in theatrical mode. The film wouldn't work that way. Bonham-Carter sort of sing-whispers her way through the libretto and it really works. It's almost like she's gossiping to the audience about the gory goings on. She also gets a big slice, if you pardon the pun, of the gallows humour in the film. It's hilarious when, after Sweeney's dark reverie throughout 'Epiphany', which takes him on a bitter journey into the recesses of his psyche, she snaps him into reality with '...that's all very well, but what are we gonna do about 'im ?' referring to the corpse of Pirelli languishing in its trunk.

I did squirm initially at Depp's cod Cockey, Bowiesque singing but that feeling completely dissipates as you're drawn into the film. He's pretty good at merging the sung dialogue together with his take on the character as an actor. Other performances of note are certainly Timothy Spall's very camp Beadle Bamford, a grotesque played with supreme relish, and the equally arch and thrillingly perverse Alan Rickman as Judge Turpin. Both performances are very fruity, ripe and perfectly in keeping with the Grand Guignol setting. And the tense, edge of your seat duet 'Pretty Women' between Depp and Rickman is one of many fine highlights in the film. Sacha Baron Cohen, as Pirelli, Todd's tonsorial rival, adds another tongue in cheek, low comedy moment too and he shows a fine aptitude for this work which in itself is a revelation. The duet, 'Not While I'm Around' between Bonham-Carter and Ed Sanders as Toby, is gloriously moving and beautifully performed but again is undercut by the morbid humour of Mrs. Lovett then flinging Toby into the bake house with its dismembered corpses and raging ovens despite the previous emotional overtures between the two characters.

It is a gory film but it has a heightened, almost slapstick, quality to the blood letting. It becomes ever more ridiculous but that's exactly as it should be. You know you shouldn't relish it but you can't help yourself. It's grim and gruesome and funny all at the same time. But that doesn't diminish the theme of the dehumanising effect of violence at all. And its dark take on the mass consumer society that constantly eats itself is still intact and perhaps even more relevant than it was in 1979. In the end, the main question is 'do you sympathise with Todd?' and his acts of vengeance. I would say that to an extent you do and you must in order to make any sense of the shocking events, after all his wife and child are taken from him and he's wrongly imprisoned for 15 years, but the moral coda is that in whatever you do to take your vengeance be careful not to destroy your soul. And to pollute the minds of those around you. In this dog eat dog world, the ultimate, thrilling expression of it is when Todd throws Mrs. Lovett into the bake house oven. It makes you gasp.

Visually, it looks sumptuous. Not pretty but gritty, grey and with enough atmosphere to feel the dirt and blood beneath your fingernails. Cinemaphotographer Dariusz Wolski bleaches most of the colour out of the frame but then startlingly highlights and picks out various costumes - Pirelli's electric blue outfit, Turpin's golden britches - and the fountains of blood amidst the smudgy chiaroscuro of his endeavours. The sequence for 'By The Sea' sees the screen burst into vivid colour momentarily as we explore Mrs. Lovett's impossible dreams. Burton's direction isn't overtly flashy here but there are some great swooping camera movements and amazing tracking shots that embellish his unflinching gaze at the throat slitting violence and certainly remove any feeling you are watching the original stage performance. He seizes the Grand Guignol of the story and places it very firmly in the centre of the screen.

It's a satisfyingly thrilling experience, full of grisly gallows humour, the bleakness of English Gothic melodramas, stunning music and lyrics from Sondheim, and once you accept the sung narrative and the broader performances, a rollickingly good, bloodthirsty story.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street (Cert 18 - Released 25th January 2008 - Directed by Tim Burton)

BBC2/BBCHD - 30th January 2008 - 9.00pm

"I'm going to save the world in pyjamas - how daft is that?"

Ah, you see, when 'Torchwood' actually doesn't try too hard it can produce gems like this. Out goes the schoolboy gratuitous gore and innuendo and in goes sensitive, naturalistic performances, character driven storytelling and genuinely creepy atmosphere.

The danger is that the 'romance with a person from the past' is all starting to repeat itself thematically in both 'Torchwood' and 'Doctor Who'. This suffers from too much of a similarity to last year's 'TW' episode 'Out Of Time' and 'Captain Jack Harkness' and the hospital/1918 settings of 'The Empty Child' and 'Human Nature'. However, writer Helen Raynor overcomes this with a real focus on Tommy and Toshiko's developing romance. Raynor is obviously more suited to these intimate stories that don't rely on loads of effects, monsters and grandiose settings. But the other problem is that she clearly didn't know how to end this story and, whilst up to a point it is poignant and gripping, the denoument is hurried, poorly explained and undermines the drive of the narrative to that point. Owen's 'eureka' solution, to use a psychic projection fuelled by drugs to enable Tosh to convince Tommy to use the manipulator to close the rift, did not convince me and seemed a solution concocted to avoid the problems caused by sending Tosh or Jack back into the past.

And yet, this kind of development is exactly what 'Torchwood' needs right now. Sending Jack or Tosh back into the past would have bent the format out of shape rather nicely. The series relies on narratives and character arcs being resolved too tidily in 45 minutes of screen time. The series doesn't allow bigger narratives to play out and it doesn't properly measure the effects on the team of working for 'Torchwood'. There are hints here - the humanising of Owen and the tragic early deaths of previous Torchwood employees for example - but will we see the effects of this on Tosh in the next episode, or the next six episodes? We need less of the re-set button and more freedom to allow characters to reflect the devastating events they go through. They should all be basket cases by now and I want to see some of that.

Otherwise, it's pitched perfectly and played with enormous tenderness by Naoko Mori and Anthony Lewis. Naoko is given a real chance to shine here and she holds the episode together. The trajectory of the character is rather a given here but her performance is compelling and engages despite the knowledge that you know how sadly this will end. Anthony Lewis was equally good as an innocent caught up in both the machinations of the First World War and Torchwood. A captivating character with a real sense of bewilderment at what has happened to him. A doomed romance summed up by the exchange between Gwen and Jack:

'He's a soldier from 1918'
'Nobody's perfect'

That exchange gives you a sense that Jack actually knows that this is doomed but that Toshiko needs this experience. It's a bit arrogant of him but this 'need' is also reflected in that sudden eruption of passion between him and Ianto later in the episode. Human/non-human desire needs to be fulfilled and Jack seems sensitive to his team's collective drives whilst also admitting to himself that he too needs company of a kind. It also taps into the 'sacrifice of innocence' theme of the series and this episode's particular examination of the nature of heroism and cowardice.

Director Andy Goddard very effectively creates a sense of doomladen atmosphere, the sequences in the hospital were very moody with their flashing lights, rumbling and tearing sound effects. The way he created this atmosphere, through physical effects rather than computer generated ones, echoes the way 'Sapphire And Steel' also managed to sustain a sense of terror on a small budget. A more adult 'Sapphire And Steel' is the way I want the series to go and this was certainly a step in the right direction for me. Ben Foster's sympathetic score, very romantic in places, also helped to develop the 'star-crossed lovers' theme of the episode. Foster's music is coming along very nicely indeed.

This is a great episode, let down by a clumsy, amateurish resolution, but propelled by two electrifying, central performances. Refreshingly, it doesn't rely on the grubby sensationalism that afflicts much of Torchwood's attempts to be adult (compare the sensitively handled bedroom scenes between Tommy and Toshiko with the awful 'fuck fest' between Owen and Diane in 'Out Of Time'). What is clear is that with Naoko Mori, the series has got an actor capable of doing so much more than reading technobabble off screens and potentially much more it can do with Ianto and Jack, Owen and Gwen if only they're given the room to stretch. Ianto certainly needs an episode to himself to defuse the accusation that he's simply there as gay eye candy.

The best episode so far this series. Next week looks like a return to 'tabloid' Torchwood but the overdue return of Gwen's fiancee Rhys is of interest.

Allegedly, David Bowie has put a veto on any authorised biography and so it's left to authors of varying calibres to try and piece together the man's life and career thus far. There have been good books, namely Carr and Murray's now long out of print 'Bowie: An Illustrated Record' from 1981 and Nicholas Pegg's exhaustive 'The Complete David Bowie' which had a revision as recently as 2004, I believe. But there have also been some tomes that are simply interested in tittle tattle about Bowie's familial antecedents and don't have an interest in his work at all.

Fortunately, David Buckley's 'Strange Fascination' is perhaps one of the former on the subject. It splits Bowie's career into particular periods and closely examines the making and producing of all the albums and the concert tours. Buckley wisely places such details about the albums into an overall context so that we do get an understanding of the myriad influences that feed into the work, how this affects Bowie's private life and lifestyle and vice versa and which leads to a glimpse into what finally emerges as a painfully shy and private man, often dealing with his own neuroses very publicly whilst using the various incarnations of 'David Bowie' to create a distancing artifice that confirms that we know very little about the real David Jones.

He also adds in some tantalising mentions of additional unreleased tracks and filmed performances that Bowie is keeping in his archive. I for one would love to see the much lauded film of the 'Diamond Dogs' tour.

If you're looking for background into the now notorious 'I'm bisexual' announcements of 1972's Melody Maker interview, the marriage of convenience with Angie, the cocaine blitzed years in Los Angeles, the scandal of the Nazi salute at Victoria Station...well, they are all here. But they aren't treated as anything other than part of Bowie's own hang-ups and foibles. He does have a fascination with gay culture simply because he's always considered himself an outsider, he did dally rather naively with Nazi symbolism (and Buckley states that nothing was ever proved about the salute) and the Los Angeles years, though perhaps the most harrowing time in his career, also produced two incredible albums: 'Young Americans' and 'Station To Station'. The dirty laundry isn't hung out to dry here exactly. Let's just say that Buckley just contextualises it all without drowning in sensationalism. He reads Bowie as a man with an ego that survives through putting up a number of defences and here he looks between the cracks to see if we can 'get a glimpse of the faker'.

The most interesting sections are the early 1970s, particularly the Ziggy Stardust period, and the Los Angeles years, but for me the decade of 1983 to 1993 is at last a more thorough examination of Bowie, now very rich, but bankrupt creatively. There's a sense that his attempts to 'normalise' the Bowie artifice simply lead into a performer caught up in a mid-life 'sense of doubt' and a struggle to connect to his muse. The whole 'Tin Machine' episode sums that up and even Buckley sees that as a failure of sorts from which Bowie learned an awful lot of lessons. That it lead on into the recent renaissance of his career at least shows that it kicked him into the right direction.

There are gaps. There isn't really an in depth discussion of 'Scary Monsters' in 1980 which is odd considering it is always cited as one of his best albums. Buckley skates around it as if his research hasn't perhaps turned up enough detail. However, that's a minor fault in a book that's full of anecdotal evidence from his producers and band members. Lots of interviews with the likes of Ken Scott, Tony Visconti, Mick Rock, Mike Garson, Carlos Alomar, Earl Slick and Reeves Gabrels make this a treasure trove of information. Many of them refreshingly tell it as it was and provide a picture of both the fraught nature and the professionalism of working with Bowie.

If you want a bang-up-to-the-minute assessment of, arguably, a major cultural figure, then this book is for you. Its elegant prose will keep you turning the pages, its lack of sycophancy making it a very absorbing document indeed. It was revised as of 2005 and this edition was reprinted last year. One of the very best books on the subject.

Strange Fascination - David Bowie: The Definitive Story (Virgin Books (Revised 2005) Reprinted 2007 ISBN-10: 0753510022)

BBC2/BBCHD - 23rd January 2008 - 9.00pm

"And I thought the end of the world couldn't get any worse"

Just as I'm thinking that the production team have acknowledged the faults from its first series last year, they then go and release this into the wild!

Actually, for about the first 20 minutes or so this is a thoroughly gripping, tense piece of drama. Team Torchwood's 'torture' of suspected alien Beth is disturbing and uneasy and throws some not so terribly flattering light onto the various members of the group, especially Jack. It's not a very subtle analogy for terrorism and Guantanamo Bay and it all feels horribly 'Rumsfeld' in its 'torture first and ask questions' later policy but at least a piece of adult drama was threatening to manifest itself. But, in that first half, the ensemble playing and, particularly, the very strong performance from Nikki Amuka-Bird as Beth begin to raise the game for the series' quest to be taken seriously. The morality and amorality of torture in a time of war should have been the entire raison d'etre of the episode and the premise of whether this poor woman was human or alien and what it means to be human to both victim and interrogators should have been enough to sustain this for 45 minutes. It would have been far more effective if Beth had actually turned out to be human after all as this would then have had implications for Team Torchwood's rather flippant use of their Inquisition like methods. That would have made for a compelling adult drama. That Jack particularly comes across as a sadist and once again has a 'jolly Jack' compassion bypass is troubling and that's potentially far more interesting than the unintentionally funny scenes of abandoned prams being pranged by cars later on. Beth's struggle to remain human just didn't stand a chance as he rather blantantly upped his testosterone level to prove he is 'da man' without little interruption from the rest of his team.

But what do the writer and producer do? Half way through, Beth's arm turns into a set of dodgy prosthetics, she escapes from deep freeze, wakes up a load of Terminator wannabes and plunges the whole episode into a frenzied bloodbath that teeters from slaughter to laughter and not necessarily in a good way. A tender hospital reunion with her partner turns from good drama into something resembling a schlocky 80s video nasty.It returns to the scene of the crime of Series One - a pulp, gore filled piece of nonsense suitable for 14 year olds. And by the conclusion it mimics a typical 'Spooks' scenario of escaping from big explosions just in the nick of time. Yes, it looks spectacular and thrilling in places but it is equally empty and ridiculous when the lead Terminator alien starts camply hissing threats at the team and tries to set off nuclear weapons hidden in Cardiff.

In the middle of this struggle between political drama and pulp horror there are some funny lines and in particular Ianto is fast becoming deadpan funnyman of the week. Even Owen was rather controlled in this for a change. But Gwen, a character who I thought would really have put up an argument against the torturing of Beth and who I always assumed was the 'human' face of Torchwood, more or less just simpered rather ineffectively in the sidelines and didn't put her moral indignation into top gear.

A very strange episode where I was hoping that the writer James Moran would more forcefully and closely discuss the morality of the interrogation of Beth on the grounds that evidence extracted by torture is often seen as unreliable and that the use of torture corrupts institutions which tolerate it. 'Sleeper' put forward a proposition but the second act of the episode drowned any 'for or against' conclusions in a pulp bloodbath and lots of explosions and it hardly attempted to understand just how corrupt Team Torchwood seemed to have become here.

'Sleeper' should have been arguing on one hand that the need for information outweighs the moral and ethical arguments against torture but also on the other hand that this argument is refuted by recent experience in Iraq where coercive, rapport-based interrogation that recognises respect and dignity, is the basis by which you develop intelligence rapidly and increase the validity of that intelligence. In the end, you must ask yourself did Beth's torture save enough lives or would an interrogation that recognised her human dignity have provided a better conclusion than Jack's dumb shooting gallery.

What also annoys me is that this was competently and pacily directed, drew out some excellent performances, was scored very brilliantly with thumping bass and drums and a killer string section but then just favoured a glossy, below par Terminator rip off and runaround, and where some of the bombing scenes were very near the knuckle, over a genuinely interesting discussion about what constitutes being human and the incrimination of potentially innocent people. Oh, well. Perhaps 'CSI: Cardiff' will impress me with next week's episode as I came to the conclusion that this took a step backwards last night after the promising start of a week ago.

The Hand of Fear
Season 14 - October 1976

‘Till we meet again, Sarah…’

Sarah’s possessed by a hand. It pops into the local power station to undergo a rebirth and before you know it a Kastrian egomaniac is on the rampage.

The departure of Sarah is the shadow that falls over this story. Everything else, perhaps perfunctorily, is leading up to that final scene and as a result it’s often been regarded as one of the weaker Hinchcliffe stories over the years. It's reputation seemingly rests on that last scene between the Doctor and Sarah. From today's perspective, given that Sladen is no longer with us then it gains an additional sheen of respect simply through our fondness for the actress. What we have here is actually pretty entertaining and it only falls to pieces in the fourth episode for reasons I shall go into later. But up until then you’ve got a neat tale of alien possession and nuclear terrorism where director Lennie Mayne really gets an opportunity to shine. He pulls the stops out with interesting angles, good visual composition (lots of close ups in studio and smashing wide shots on location), even dissolves! (yes, that rare phenomenon) and some pacy editing. He’s really thought about what to do here and makes it very engaging and interesting visually.

The story itself is a partly enjoyable mish-mash of the possession theme, nascent sexual politics (does Sarah become the ultimate feminist alien?), and some very bad nuclear science (let’s all crouch behind this land rover whilst the power plant is bombed to bits a mile or so away) and walkabouts on the unconvincing studio sets representing the surface, domes and core of the planet Kastria.

If you look at the idea of possession in the story, you’re dealing with symbols of masculinity (Eldrad’s hand and Eldrad Mark 2) and femininity (Sarah and Eldrad Mark 1). This is as much about the ‘battle of the sexes’ as it is about deposed kings and the masculine ego. The opposites briefly merge when Eldrad possesses Sarah and Eldrad ‘s first regeneration is imprinted from Sarah. It’s about the uniting of conscious and unconscious – without, let’s say, Sarah’s female intuition and guile, Eldrad would probably never have convinced the Doctor to return to Kastria and of course, she/he cleverly conceals the reason for this return. The second regeneration of Eldrad is a symbolically deposed King and is the conscious male ego fully in command. Kings, however, lose their emotional base (Kastria and castration aren't that far apart phonetically) and it could be argued that if Eldrad had remained in possession of Sarah, she/he may have realised that Rokon had anticipated every move which then led to genocide. Instead, he throws his toys out of the pram and trips over the Doctor’s scarf. Look before you leap, Eldrad.

The hand is a visible symbol of the possession theme. It is grasping and unsparing. It’s also representative of Eldrad’s state of mind when trying to depose Rokon and take over Kastria. He is, quite literally, a disintegrating and disintegrated personality. His is so egotistical, so fascistic in his ideals, he literally implodes – absorbs the energy of the reactor and the missiles, survives the obliteration module – and on observing the reality of his situation we see in him this dysfunction, leading to madness, schizophrenia and the ‘Napoleon’ syndrome.

Performances are very good, particularly Lis when she’s all coy and girly in her possessed state going around zapping security guards and demanding, "Eldrad must live!". Tom is super in his exchanges with Lis, but also there’s a real chemistry between him and Judith Paris and Glyn Houston. Paris is rather stunning in this, adding a very alien quality to her performance and using her amazing eyes and cheekbones to good effect. She does a great line in using her feminine wiles to con the Doctor into going back to Kastria. Houston’s stand out scene is the now legendary ‘phone home’ bit from the nuclear power station and it really injects some humanity into the plot which is sometimes rare in ‘classic’ Who. It’s nice to have time to get that moment in there.

In terms of production, visual effects are also very good again. The miniatures for windswept Kastria are moody and effective but the standout has to be, for its time, one of the best ever crawling hand effects to grace the screen. The Tupperware box sequences are just right and are still very effective today. The CSO crawling hand bits are looking a bit rough now but there are far worse examples of CSO in the series so this stands out as a better example of the process. The location filming adds a further dimension to the story, especially the scale and atmosphere of the interior of the power station and the quarry that is, for once, standing in for a real quarry. Mayne is obviously in his element here and it shows. Studio sets are perhaps a slight letdown - the power station is fine - but especially the Kastrian underworld.

It all comes a cropper though in the final episode. It’s let down by those unconvincing sets for the Kastrian scenes which is a shame as the design for Eldrad (particularly the Paris version) is actually good. It’s all a bit too polystyrene and sprayed plastic mouldings.

It’s understandable why Russell T. Davies was concerned about depicting alien worlds for the new series when the standard was so variable in the old. Classic Who could get away with it if the conviction was there in the script and performances – see Brain Of Morbius – but the final episode is hamstrung by the ‘Brian Blessed Of The Month’ performance from Stephen Thorne. He’s just doing his Azal/Omega thing all over again and his version of Eldrad lacks any of the beautiful subtlety of Paris’ performance. The best bit is when Rokon pulls the rug out from under him, declaring ‘Hail Eldrad, King Of Nothing!’ There’s an ego boost for your friendly neighbourhood despotic silicon lifeform.

And that last scene, where Sarah ends up in Hillview Road, er...Aberdeen, I suspect is etched on every thirty and forty-something’s memory. It’s such a bittersweet moment and is played very well by the two leads. Certainly, it holds its reputation as one of the best companion departures in the series. And it was unfinished business brought majestically to a conclusion of sorts in 2005's ‘School Reunion’.

Special features
Commentary
That commentary features Tom Baker, Elisabeth Sladen, Bob Baker, Judith Paris, Stephen Thorne and producer Philip Hinchcliffe. The commentary is good and Tom is very much on form here. It’s a breezy affair and very entertaining with warm banter between Tom and Lis. Tom’s pithy retort to Lis’ comments about HRT in episode two is priceless.
Changing Time: Living and Leaving Doctor Who (50:28)
An in-depth examination of Sarah's travels with the Doctor and the conclusion of her journey. However, as much as it is a good exploration of The Hand of Fear, it is also fond look back at Lis Sladen's casting and how she made the transition between her two leading men, Pertwee and Baker. Plenty of talking heads in the form of Hinchcliffe, Tom Baker, Sladen, Bob Baker, Barry Letts, Terrance Dicks and guest star Glyn Houston amongst others. It's a lovely summing up of the Tom and Lis partnership and you do get the feeling that they very much enjoyed each other’s company whilst making the series.
Continuity announcements (1:25)
A promo from the end of The Masque of Mandragora plus continuity from the The Hand of Fear, including plugs for the Blackpool and Longleat exhibitions. My favourite aspect of these is that we get BBC1's schedule announcements for other programmes, including The Generation Game.
Multi-Coloured Swap Shop (10:56)
Tom and Lis on the 2 October 1976 edition of the show. A rare clip this only survives from an off-air video copy which has been restored for this DVD.
Photo gallery
PDF material
1977 Doctor Who Annual and programme listings from Radio Times
Easter Egg
Lis Sladen being interviewed by Dilys Morgan about her departure from the series on a January 1976 edition of Nationwide. 

Picture quality and sound are as ever top notch from those ‘labour of love’ boys at the RT. We are spoilt rotten when you think about it.

THE HAND OF FEAR BBC DVD (BBCDVD1833 Cert PG)

It's library music time again! Finally got my hot little hands on the first of a new set of commercial releases from the famed De Wolfe music library. De Wolfe, along with KPM and Bruton, are one of the mainstays of British library music. De Wolfe's music, with a library of over 80,000 tracks, has been used in thousands of productions including Monty Python, Emmanuelle, Dawn of the Dead, Brokeback Mountain, American Gangster and Doctor Who. Famous theme tunes include Van de Valk and Roobarb and Custard.

For their first commercial compilation release, Bite Harder, (a sequel to the Bite Hard sampler issued nearly a decade ago) Joel Martin and Warren De Wolfe have selected a stunning group of tracks for De Wolfe that runs the gamut of heavy psychedelic funk wig-outs to bizarre prog rock synth atmospherics. It's a vivid, bold collection, many of which I've never heard before but also containing a number of familiar old favourites such as Nick Ingman's 'Down Home' and Keith Papworth's 'Hair Raiser'. Other tracks have featured on other compilations such as 'Sound Book' and 'Music De Wolfe Volume 1' so they may be more familiar to other listeners.

Peter Reno's 'Street Girl' starts us off. Taken from the 'More Electric Banana' album, I believe one of three recorded for De Wolfe by The Electric Banana, this is actually 60s psychedelic rockers The Pretty Things incognito. It's a furious bit of psych-funk-rock from 1968. This is followed by the frothy, flutey 'Gloaming', from '72, that weaves and spirals its infectious flute line into your brain. The title cut 'Who's Gonna Buy?' from The Lemondips album keeps up the funky pace with a great scratchy, jazzy, bluesy guitar. Quintessential listening follows with four absolute class acts as far as library tracks are concerned - Nick Ingman's 'Down Home' from his legendary 'The Big Beat' album, Barry Stoller's 'Funky Spider', Alan Parker's 'Crater' and the return of Reno with 'Silver Thrust'. Great slabs of poppy funk, with fat brassy stabs (the brass on 'Down Home' and 'Funky Spider' is utterly fantastic), wah wah guitars, stomping piano lines, organ riffs and spiralling flutes to the fore. Like the music of 'The Sweeney' or 'Bullitt'? This is for you.

Simon Haseley's 'Precinct' takes us into the middle of the collection. It's a track from the equally legendary 'Hogan, The Hawk and Dirty John Crown' album of '72. It throws a killer set of strings into the mix of tom-toms, pounding bass, flute and percussion and is perhaps the ultimate in the crime-funk of the period with its little inflections of 'Shaft' like brass and flute. The barrage of drums, tom-toms, heavy bass and percussion of 'Hair Raiser' follows from Keith Papworth. The wah-wah guitars skate acrobatically along the surface of this thunderous track with its mid-break of tumbling drums.

For me, Reg Tilsley's 'Warlock' is one of the stand out tracks. As it's from the 'Tisley Orchestral' album then you sort of know what you're in for. Fantastic strings, big, bold brass and drums and an escalating melody line supplemented by flute and guitars. A scrumptious piano and brass riff is just the icing on the cake. And it builds and builds by adding further string sections, drums, brass and guitar. It is gangster funk par excellence and reminiscent of Francis Monkman's title music for 'The Long Good Friday'.

Off for a quick walk down a beach in the Caribbean with Johnny Hawksworth's steel drum sweetner 'Sandy Beach' and then into Jack Trombey's 'Underlay No. 3', all tom toms and piano and then some pizzicato harp doodlings. Lovely, cool jazzy piano on that counterpointing the harps. Haseley's back for 'Hammerhead' which is a storming piece of brass and string magnificence with harp stabs, cool flute, guitar licks and a beautiful melody line that blooms into a great drum, brass and string freak-out. Immensely impressive. It's very Bondian too so if you like your John Barry then you will love this. From the 'Great Day' album of '72. What a good year.

For the final half dozen tracks, we enter a whole different world. Simon Park's 'Motives 1' will please all you Dario Argento fans as this sounds like a Goblin track off either 'Suspiria' or 'Tenebrae'. Lullaby atonal electronics over a driving rock pulse that gathers into a swirling crescendo. Not suitable for those of a nervous disposition. Equally freakish is the electro stylings of 'Flashpoint' with its giddy electronics and handclap percussion over bass riffs. Its sleazy and unearthly. If musique concrete is your thang then you'll be pleased to hear the brass and electronic tones of Pierre Arvay on 'Skyway' and for a change of pace you've also got Reno's 'Renegade' from the notorious 'Afro Rock' album (not the KPM one, I hasten to add), great response and call brass figures and a twangy guitar line feature heavily with a great sax break.

The closers are Simon Park's 'Ooze' and John Saunders 'Myriad' which take us into a spacey feel. 'Ooze' is slow and smooth, cool jazz with a rolling organ and synth line. Very atmospheric. Saunders track is the least conventional of the collection and sounds like Tangerine Dream but then goes all down and dirty with a rocky guitar and drum combo interspersed with buzzy electronics. Divine.

This is an essential compilation.

SOUND BOOTH reviews of KPM library albums here: AFRO ROCK

Bite Harder - The Music De Wolfe Sampler Vol. 2 (De Wolfe DWCR 001 - Released 29th October 2007)

"Don't you think it's strange you know, the way it all works out? / Brace yourself for storms and summer droughts" - 'Canvey Island' - British Sea Power

An idiosyncratic band, British Sea Power reach their third album with much of their foibles intact but often threaten to skate off the edge of a cliff here and plunge headfirst into the sea of stadium rock. Don't do it boys!

However, there are some very strong tracks on the album and even though they've worked with three different producers on these they've managed to marshall the essential and eccentric chaos that is BSP into a pretty good shape overall. It's most definitely a technicolour, Panavision production that almost contradicts the fussy, introspective subject matter. It's debatable whether their intentions do get lost in the scope of the production and how 'radio-friendly' they intended this to be.

The opening 'All In It' with its anthemic chanting doesn't prepare you for the next few tracks. 'Lights Out For Darker Skies', 'No Lucifer' with their cathedral like sonics, choral and guitar treatments, metaphysical (and literal with 'No Lucifer's' Big Daddy tribute) wrestling are respectively epic, aptly windswept and fine surging pop. It's the stadium friendly 'Waving Flags' that has me slightly worried that BSP might get their bearings in a muddle. It's a great song, ripe for audience participation and has a pertinent message about immigration but it eschews a good deal of the bonkers chaos of the first album.

Their strangeness does remain intact on the second half of the album and in particular 'Canvey Island' with its doomladen flood warnings and disease ridden swans is a stand out track, but it does all rather become standard jangly guitar indie rock on 'No Need To Cry' and 'Open The Door'. The superb atmospherics of the near instrumental 'The Great Skua' and the apologia for the complexities of particle theory on the quirkily brilliant 'Atom' compensate for these but I still can't fathom the reprise of 'We Close Our Eyes' which is a lame coda of sound effects and the chant from the opener 'All In It'. It's feels too much of a token gesture in order to finish the album off.

It's a good album but not a great one. Their are reminders of The Flaming Lips, The Smiths, New Order and some of the epic, whirling production work of Brian Eno and it's an incredibly festival friendly set of songs but I'd have preferred a bit more experimentation. And if they do come across as the British equivalent of Arcade Fire then that's because in the first place they were exploring the same sonic territory before the Fire wholly claimed it and secondly they've then got their ex-drummer co-producing this album. The comparisons are inevitable.

If they keep their chaotic nerve and their British peccadilloes intact then I will keep listening. And keep producing album sleeves and liner notes of this quality as this attention to detail and the obvious labour of love that went into contents for this album are generally fast becoming a dying art.

British Sea Power - 'Do You Like Rock Music?' (Rough Trade RTRADCD300 - Released 14th January 2007)

BBC2/BBCHD - 16th January 2007 - 9.00pm

'Bloody Torchwood!' Never a truer word was said. She had it right that little old lady at the pedestrian crossing.

I felt there were some problems with Series 1 last year. It suffered from having an unlikeable 'team' of characters, a grumpy Captain Jack and a propensity for adolescent fumblings with sex and gore. It often felt as if the series was being made for 14 year old boys to watch in their bedrooms and not for the so called adult audience it claimed it was aimed at.

So I have some expectations for the return of the series. And on the whole this was an entertaining, if slightly unspectacular, opening episode. The impression I got was an often attempted, none too subtle, remount of the format with several 'stating the bleeding obvious' bits of exposition where various antagonists and protagonists pause and fill in the back story for any new viewer who has been living under a stone the last eighteen months. Hence, the blowfish alien with its ' you're the scientist, you're the doctor...' and Gwen in the back of the cab and her 'he's our boss and we don't know anything about him' lines. I can understand the need to try and do this for those BBC2 viewers new to this game but it's often done with all the charisma of an autocue. There are much better, understated scenes later in the episode which do a far better job, especially the scene in the Hub with Jack and Gwen and the office scene with Ianto and Jack.

However, the emergence of Captain John from the rift did add a healthy dose of humour to the proceedings. James Marsters steals the entire episode from Jack's 'dolly birds' with his cheek bones, double entendres and merry quips, unfortunately making them all look like the bunch of bumbling kids that Series 1 tried so hard to prevent. Seeming like he stepped out of Adam And The Ants' 'Stand & Deliver' video, Marsters sociopath provides a great foil for Barrowman and the cat and mouse game they both play ensures the episode is entertaining. There isn't much plot to speak of beyond a 'Hustle' type con that reminds us of Jack's original raison d'etre when he was introduced back in 2005 and Jack's indestructiblity is the final trump card in a game which sees John take out all of the Torchwood staff without as much as lifting a well plucked eyebrow or manicured fingernail.

It may be undemanding as a first episode and the attempt to explain the backstory maybe too painfully self-aware but it does at least signal an attempt to make the cast of characters work as a group you could actually get to like. Some of that self-awareness is clearly acknowledging some of the pitfalls the series fell into last year and some good steps are taken here to show the group working together, even if in the end they're still rubbish at it. The production team are at least saying to us that they know Torchwood are a bit crap at their jobs and we're going to run with that. This faliblity is a pleasant change from the sturm und drang of Series 1 where the angst was simply getting in the way of any actual good drama. The lovely bit where Jack observes them all pulling together shows this very well and helps towards establishing some plausibility into their crazy lives and jobs. Eve Myles now successfully pitches Gwen as the leader, pulling the ragged bunch together and even challenging Jack's authority a bit here. And it's good to see Gareth David-Lloyd doing much more than fetching pizza and coffee and getting involved in the team investigations. I did like the scene where Jack asks him out on a date and thought David-Lloyd played that rather well with a mix of outward nonchalance and inner screaming from the rooftops happiness. Burn Gorman gives us a more adjusted Owen and even though it was again very obvious where they were planning to take his and Tosh's relationship it was still a very welcome change from the snarling anti-socialism of Series 1. They may still be a daft old bunch but at least now it looks like we might actually get to like them which is, apart from Marsters show stealing turn, the major development here.

The visual motifs - dark streets, aerial shots, rooftop scenes - are still intact and Murray Gold puts in a sublimely understated score. It looks quite stunning in HD and there's a nice sense of fluid camera moves and pacy direction from Ashley Way. I have high hopes for the rest of the series judging by some of the pleasant changes here. This opener is no great shakes, admittedly, but it is entertaining, funny and is at least unlike anything else on television. Now, with that out of the way can we please get back to being dark, scary and funny again?

I very rarely walk out of films. I always feel that you should give the director the benefit of the doubt and see the work in its entirety. However, I only saw half of this adaptation of the Philip Pullman book and pretty much had the sense that this was a lost cause for me. I was enthralled by the 'His Dark Materials' trilogy. They were a lively, refreshing and exciting set of books with a central character, Lyra, that provided the necessary identification in the midst of a story that as Pullman says 'is about killing God'.

The film looks wonderful. The parallel world Oxford and the journey to Norway were beautifully designed and presented. The visual effects again were excellent, the main characters' 'daemons' (souls in animal form) and the polar bears all stunningly realised, the airships and landscapes equally brilliant. It's got a great cast and a charismatic young actress playing the lead.

But it lacks any cinematic imagination. It's a dull plod through a very fractured version of the original story and I felt that anyone not aware of the books might find it puzzling and baffling as there is not enough in the way of logical building blocks to make you relate to the story or the characters. The concept of the daemons is barely sketched in and their precious importance to their owners isn't explained at all. Several characters in the book (Farder Coram, Serafina Pekkla and Lord Asriel) are reduced to cyphers and barely make an impression on the story. And that's a shame because the director ends up wasting a great collection of British thesps and new talent like Eva Green. To me it feels as if the director is simply trying to get from one plot point to another to survive the experience and has forgotten to imbue any of it with a spark of life.

Looking back at the troubled history of the production, to me it is clear that Chris Weitz was not the right director for this. He'd already abandoned the production only to replace his replacement and he had allegedly feared that he wasn't up to the job. Weitz bravely tries to marshall all the elements here and does retain some of the anti-religion theme of the book but with the best will in the world his efforts lack clarity and scenes just seem to tumble one after another without any real dramatic climaxes. The narrative doesn't peak at all where it should. The plot is crushed into a short running time that would imply a briskly edited high stakes adventure but it comes over with the opposite effect with scenes dragged out in a single monotone and no one character given the breathing space to affect the story. Words leave the mouths of the actors and you are literally moved on to the next scene without any consideration.

Apparently, the ending is also disappointing in that it drops the original tragic close of the book and opts out of the story at an earlier juncture to provide a 'happy' ending. Glad I wasn't around to witness that as it would have added further fuel to the fire. I'm baffled as to how a spirited, often controversial, fantasy was reduced to this very pale, barely animated, cinematic doppleganger.

A real disappointment.


The Golden Compass (Cert PG - Released 5th December 2007. Directed by Chris Weitz)

Gridlock
Originally transmitted 14th April 2007

Faith, hope and charity are now major themes in the new series and Russell T. Davies puts further emphasis on them in his latest, and for the moment, best script for the series. Has Russell suddenly got that old time religion? 'The Old Rugged Cross' and 'Abide With Me' heard in the same episode! No, he's not changed his mind but is merely showing how faith works as a concept without recourse to singling out any particular deity or belief system in which to place your trust. The only trust and faith you need is the one Martha clearly shows us, the faith in the Doctor, and a notion that even under the greatest pressures all creeds and colours can have trust and faith in each other as thinking, breathing beings. Davies' use of hymns is not just a symbolic representation of this but it's also a clever critique of how organised religion often provides an opiate for the masses, a pacifying salve for an unquestioning society.

'Gridlock' comes over as 'The Pilgrim's Progress' gene-spliced with the venerable '2000AD' comic. It's a giddy vortex of comic strip images, very cinematic in their scope, and a claustrophobic dystopian tone poem with nods to 'The Fifth Element' and 'Blade Runner' as well as the classic series 'The Macra Terror'. It also reinforces Davies' obsession with vertical narrative. We travel from the Macra (devils in Hell?) infested depths, through layers of trapped cars (souls) and ultimately into 'heaven' when the sky splits open. The episode is very Dante-esque in approach, with everyone trapped in a bizarre, smog filled Purgatory and requiring either the Doctor or the Face Of Boe to lead them through the various circles of Hell, including the Over City, into a climactic light-filled redemption. How 'religious' is this episode!? I don't think it's making any comments about any particular religion as such, just using archetypes and imagery to illustrate various points about the redeeming power of trust and faith. In fact, the book-ending of the story with those quiet moments about Gallifrey are perhaps indicative of Davies' attempt to say that even though the old time religion of the Time Lords, once itself a choked gridlock of elitist attitudes, has gone it's the Doctor's clear love for his home world that ensures that something remains of the balancing force of that supposedly dead race.

It may be full of bonkers ideas, but Doctor Who has never been about getting the science and the realism 'right'. World building in the series should never be to the detriment of the drama and it would be churlish to criticise the vagaries of the concepts here. It is simply the idea of different kinds of beings living in this way that we need to refer to rather than the exact domestic arrangements or the technobabble that allows them to fly their cars. It's all part and parcel of the visual metaphors that the story uses. I loved the way the story switched from one couple to another, giving us different views into each of their private little worlds. Certainly seeing the naturists, the bizarre black cat and its accompanying virgin brides, the city gent et al are both hilarious and surreal moments in a dark, sinister story where drugs wipe out an entire city population and the survivors have to run the gauntlet of giant crabs. The inclusion of the Macra was a lovely nod to the past and they were simply there as another flavour to the story and to have expected the story to focus on them would have been naive. This is a Russell T script, after all.

The death of Boe, like the death of King Arthur, is a significant step towards a greater narrative we have yet to see play out. The literal death of the 'god-head' here does signify that Davies is more interested in the collective power of people rather than their subservience to a God. The flip side of that is that of course without Boe none of those trapped in the circles of Hell would have survived. Another instance of self-sacrifice for the greater good in the series that seems to follow in the wake of God-like figures and I'm sure we'll see more of this as the series plays out this year.

Beyond the deeper questions that the script throws at us is the outstanding performance from David Tennant. He lies to Martha about Gallifrey and by the episode's conclusion understands that he can't get away with it and must be open to her about his status as the last of his race. He and Boe are both ancient, lonely creatures and both realise that they must be true to their nature without jeopardising the lives of others. Tennant's final scene with Martha in the alleyway should be seen as the single example of why this actor is right for the role. It brims with sadness, lost hope and is played as a confessional between them both. And he finally lets Martha in.

Agyeman continues to excel, with Martha's exuberant obstinacy, honesty, and no nonsense intelligence shining through here and allowing her to put a singular stamp on the role. Ardal O'Hanlon as Brannigan and Anna Hope as Novice Hame were great supporting characters and praise should go to the stunning make ups by Neill Gorton.

Finally, The Mill should also be congratulated for their work on the episode, turning the gridlock, the city and the Macra into spectacular images that continue to make this series such a thrilling experience. You really did get a sense that all departments were pushing to make this an episode to remember.

Overall, it's a fitting conclusion to the New Earth trilogy started in 'End Of The World' containing some very interesting views about organised religion, the class system and population control. A bold script from Davies for a third series that doesn't even want to rest a little on its laurels.

"Sober life is a prison / Shit faced it is a blessing. / Sober nobody wants you / Shit faced they're all undressing ... / Sober you're old and ugly / Shit faced who needs a mirror."

Too Drunk To Dream - The Magnetic Fields

For their eighth album, Stephin Merritt takes his luscious melodies and satirical lyrics, arguably the things The Magnetic Fields have won most plaudits for, and deliberately, in fact, willfully, drowns them in a squealing cacophony of fuzzy guitars and grating feedback. Think Jesus And Mary Chain's landmark Psycho Candy meeting Rogers And Hammerstein in a pub with the Associates.

I can't decide if the retro 1985 stylings are entirely fitting but they are unlike much of anything you'll have heard recently. Beneath it all are some incredibly good songs and when the lyrics of the lonely, the drunk and the sexually maladjusted bang up against the white noise something chemical does happen in most examples on the album. It's often incredibly striking.

The instrumental 'Three Way', a mad scramble of guitars punctuated by the odd mantra-like chant of the song title reminds me of the swirling giddiness of the Associates 'The Affectionate Punch'. And despite the murkiness, fuzz and booming drums, the melodies are still there, crisp and memorable. Merritt shares vocal duties pretty much equally with Shirley Simms and they provide a light and dark contrast, at least vocally. 'California Girls' is the suicide note of a woman completely fed up with the so called ideal of womanhood but sung disconcertingly in such sweet tones that it makes you do a double take.

'Mr. Mistletoe' is a weird sort of anti-Christmas carol whilst 'Please Stop Dancing' is an exhilarating plea for isolation and with 'California Girls' is one of the best tracks on the album, using the fuzzy guitars to great effect. 'Too Drunk To Dream' is a typically Merritt take on an alcoholic dependent relationship that can't seem to end and is full of razor sharp wit and observation. It's a searing piece of work.

'Drive On, Driver' is a country ballad like no other, harking back to some of their earlier work but wrapped in garagey guitar squealing. But the melodies always linger.

The last three songs are again, excellent, and tell tales of loss and regret. 'I'll Dream Alone' is a Broadway show tune shot through with Velvet Underground discordancy. 'The Nun's Litany' is the jewel in this particular crown. A nun dreams of becoming a Playboy bunny or a porn star now that Mummy has died. Fantastic narrative lyrics sung so beautifully by Simms and dressed in spiky feedback. My other favourite is the quietly disturbing tale of gay necrophilia 'Zombie Boy' which conjures up some odd mix of late 50s B movie horror and gay porn that suits the anti-Beach Boys melody and chorus. Gloriously decadent.

Well...really...the answer is in the album title for heaven's sake. Distortion. Yeah, like life's a great big distortion and we're all distorted by drink, sex, loneliness, death and loss. And then you get the literal distortion of the music. Simple really.

It's full of Merritt's trademark deadpan ditties, sounds like some kind of sonic transmission from outer space but still has room to make you understand the heartfelt content. It doesn't all come off successfully in the clash between the music and Merritt's usual preoccupations. But it still has at least nine good songs out of the thirteen and will win them as many new fans as they lose a number of the old if recent reaction is anything to go by.

Distortion - The Magnetic Fields (Nonesuch 7559799654 Released 14th January)

Back in July 2004, I had the great pleasure of listening to a number of critical papers delivered at Manchester University's one day event 'Time And Relative Dissertations In Space: Critical Perspectives on Doctor Who'. Many of those have now been collected by organiser and editor Dr.David Butler into this volume from Manchester University Press.

Academic perspectives on 'Doctor Who' have been sporadic, with Manuel Alvarado and John Tulloch's 'The Unfolding Text' in 1983 the first major attempt to contextualise and analyse the programme. Over the years, papers, essays and books by Henry Jenkins, John Tulloch, Jonathon Bignell, Lawrence Miles, Tat Wood and James Chapman have continued to delve into how the programme is produced and received and its cultural relevance and significance. This latest book is another milestone on that road and collects a wide range of papers that look at various aspects of the original series but, perhaps more importantly, also discuss non-televised 'Doctor Who' in the form of the Big Finish audio CDs and Virgin Publishing's New Adventures fiction and that oft debated subject: the Doctor Who 'canon' in an amusing analysis by Lance Parkin.

Both Big Finish and Virgin produced Doctor Who in what are now regarded as 'the wilderness years' , when the original series ceased production in 1989 and the period up to the 2005 revival was only punctuated, on television at least, by the Fox/Universal/BBC television movie. Discussing the forms of non-televised Doctor Who has long been overdue and the book contains two very rewarding papers on both subjects. It is to be hoped that this will inspire further examination of other cultural production such as cinema films, comic strips, fan fiction. Of the two, the paper on Big Finish's output, by Matt Hills, is the more interesting as it argues that even their audio output could be considered 'televisual' by extension, in their use of episode structure, cliffhangers and peripheral materials such as faux Radio Times listings. I found this interesting as I would probably class myself as a non-fan of the Big Finish audios simply down to the fact that I'm quite resistant to untelevised forms of Doctor Who. It may have changed my mind about the 'canonicity' of the audios.

In Dale Smith's essay on Virgin's New Adventures, whilst I have no issue with the amount of praise lavished on Paul Cornell's cornerstone novel Timewyrm, the discussion is limited, probably by space available. As a first chapter to perhaps a much larger piece of work this is fine but I was left wanting. A broader discussion of the range of books is needed, not just a focus on a singular author, and even better a contextualisation of the range's influence on the new series, which it clearly has, and a better indication of how these texts are received by fans and non-fans alike. This is a good start, though.

Andy Murray's 'The talons of Robert Holmes' is an affectionate nod to one of the original series best writers and whilst it does get to the essential core of Holmes' contribution to the series it also suggests a complete book on Holmes' work is now sorely needed, particularly looking at his contribution to television drama as a whole. Dave Rolinson's 'Who Done It' is also a fascinating look at authorship in the John Nathan-Turner era of the series and how writers, directors and script-editors impact upon the creation of specific stories. It is by no means a definitive account of the era and authorship is a major problem in the later years of the era, particularly where the roles of producer and script-editor are in contention, that Rolinson does not delve into significantly here. The dichotomy between Nathan-Turner as an 'entertainment' producer and Saward as a 'serious' dramatist had a major influence on the decline of the series and requires further investigation.

The two essays on sound design and music are the highlights of the book as these are areas in which very little dissection has been done. The work of Brian Hodgson, Delia Derbyshire, Dick Mills, Dudley Simpson et al again requires further appraisal and Kevin Donnelly and Louis Niebur should be applauded for taking a serious look at the unearthly sound of Doctor Who.

Where it gets complex, at least for a non-academic like myself and potentially for other ley readers, is in the Alec Charles' essay 'The ideology of anachronism' and in Tat Wood's 'Empire of the senses'. Charles argument is that however 'liberal' we believe a text like Doctor Who is, there is still a whiff of the post-colonial, the imperialist, about the series and that this forms part of its own ideology. 'It's tragically, British' he concludes. Wood's is a complex analysis of the 'spectacle' of the series and it dizzyingly examines the narrative of the series in relation to the viewer and to the fictional individuals within it. It is about the very act of looking, reacting to 'worlds' in our living rooms. I'm still trying to get my head round that one.

There are many other subjects the book presents; from the series use of 'history' and mythic identity, its relationship to the child viewer, and to the role of 'evil' humans in various Dalek stories. All fascinating to dip into. The collection is bookended by an introduction by Butler (his opening paper on audiences is great too) and an afterword by writer Paul Magrs. Magrs is capable of articulating the strange and bizarre pull of the series, why we become so bound up in its unique form of hyper-nostalgia. His conclusion is that the ongoing narrative of Doctor Who should never have any kind of conclusion and that non-professional and professional writers and fans of his and future generations should actively muck about in the sandpit. It's a very personal end note, heartfelt and will, I'm sure, chime with fans, like myself, who do remember those specific Saturday tea-times in the 1960s and 1970s as very formative experiences in the process of never growing up.

Manchester University Press
University Of Manchester - Centre For Screen Studies

Time And Relative Dissertations In Space - Edited by David Butler (Manchester University Press ISBN 978-0719076824)

The Shakespeare Code
Originally transmitted 7th April 2007

I knew we were in for a treat. That Gareth Roberts! It's a marvellous tongue in cheek love letter to Elizabethan England shot through with a meditation on female sexuality, fairy tales and the power of words. Fairly unique for 7.00pm on a Saturday night.

From the opening gags on recycling, the 'water cooler moment' and global warming (one Roberts even dares to pick back up on right towards the end just to see if we're paying attention) through to the spit and cough Queen Elizabeth epilogue homage from 'Shakespeare In Love', the script is packed with one-liners, sight gags and physical comedy (the gurning witches - thanks Amanda and Linda - and the 'we're going the wrong way' bit).

David and Freema are really beginning to work very well here. Tennant in particular is fast becoming a riveting leading man, commanding the majority of the scenes he's in. The standout scenes must be the Doctor's bedroom tete a tete with Martha, the interrogation of Peter Streete (a lovely, twitchy performance from Matt King) and the joust with Lilith (the spectrally beautiful Christina Cole) where he uses Rose's name to give him the strength to fight back.

Freema is a revelation in her scenes with Tennant in the bedroom. For me, this is now the benchmark for the character of Martha and her feelings towards the Doctor. The crushing disappointment when he finds her lacking compared to Rose is sublimely played. He's so very cruel in that moment and it's written all over Freema's face. A lovely scene and one that I assume will now give the audience a better perception of the Martha/Doctor dynamic as the series progresses. And she's constantly seen asking the right kind of questions and thinking about the situation she finds herself in which is consistent character development.

Dean Lennox Kelly puts in a sparky performance and with the help of Roberts well researched and witty script manages to subvert our expectations of the Bard. The whole perception of him is a delicious conceit - the greatest English writer is nothing more than a clever Bernard Manning. He even starts channelling that erstwhile comedian's penchant for race relations in trying to chat up Martha.

References pile upon references - from the lines of his plays being dropped into conversations and showing him up for the magpie writer he might have been, to the cultural nods to Back To The Future (explaining temporal paradoxes), Harry Potter (magic isn't just for children) to the more obscure shot across the bows of academia during the 'flirting' scene. '57 academics just punched the air' indeed! The visual references echo everything from 'Shakespeare In Love' to the 'The Wizard Of Oz'.

It's a dizzying brew with assured direction from Charles Palmer. It may not be as flashy as Euros Lyn's work on 'Tooth And Claw' but it is still dynamic and colourful. The matte work and CGI by The Mill add a richness of tone to the proceedings and the work done to populate the Globe theatre was quite magnificent. The production team were pushing out the stops on this and it does show. It's a very handsome looking episode.

Woven through all of this fantastic wordsmithery is an interesting look at female sexuality, particularly in relation to its opposing/complimentary male counterpart. The three witches could clearly be seen as the the 'maiden, mother, whore' symbolic trinity using their wiles to re-fertilise a womb (male utterances to reactivate the crystal and open the portal).

This blind force of nature wedded to techno-magic is set in opposition to two men who lack or have lost an element of their feminine nature. Shakespeare is suffering from the death of a child, a symbolic loss of feminine/masculine creation and the Doctor has lost Rose, a woman he clearly loved and an essential part of his humanisation over the last two series. Both men must convert this destructive female power in order to retain their own humanity and creativity. It's again odd that Queen Liz marches in at the end and claims the Doctor as her sworn enemy - what is it with the Doctor and female monarchy?

There's also a thread running through this, often reflecting this battle of the sexes as it were, to do with the fine line between madness and genius. Shakespeare was nearly driven mad by the loss of his child but overcomes this through the act of writing, the Doctor can tip too far into darkness without the balancing aspect of Rose, Donna or, one would hope, Martha. And an architect is driven mad by witches demanding he builds a theatre to their specific dimensions. It's a fine line indeed.

The power of words and their meaning and double meanings, names as weapons and emblems of salvation are also symbolic of making the unconscious conscious and brought under rational control - hence the banishing of the Carrionite and the 'spell' to close the portal are interventions in dampening rampant female power. And let's not forget the power of names wherein Lilith is known symbolically as the primitive feminine principle, one that was rejected and repressed. She's often personified as the enemy of family life and children.

All this is subtly shadowing the riot of activity in the story and gives meaning to what might appear to be on the surface as a bit of jolly period flippancy and provides the driving force of the story. Clever man, Roberts!

Smashing. You can have a laugh, check off the cliches and still find enough substance to think about.