And here we are again, two years later and another Doctor Who Prom. Much has changed since that last extravaganza and the series itself has undergone something of a transformation under the auspices of Head Writer & Executive Steven Moffat. We have a new Doctor too, in the beguiling form of Matt Smith. But some things haven't changed and one of them is the music composed for the series by Murray Gold. Proms 10  and 11 at the Royal Albert Hall provide us with an opportunity to reacquaint ourselves with some of Gold's most successful pieces composed for the Russell T Davies era of the show and to get to know a whole new set of themes for the first series overseen by Moffat.

What I like about these Proms is that we get a chance to hear concert versions of the music composed for the series unshackled from the extremely busy sound mix that smothers many of the episodes we see on television. You can listen to the latest themes without all manner of sound effects, including explosions and weapons fire, and dialogue obscuring some of the best music being composed for a British television series today. The music is also presented within the world of Doctor Who as live too, with all manner of monsters prowling round the Hall and plenty of interactivity including clips of the series and special appearances. Hopefully, the children attending these Proms will be inspired by Gold's music for the show but also will come away also having had a taster of some of the more accessible classical pieces within the programme.


This year's Proms get off to a gorgeous start with 'The Mad Man With A Box', an ethereal piece, almost mystical in quality, that, with its beautiful solo vocal from Yamit Mamo, manages to capture some of the magic of the man that we all know of as the Doctor. Onto the stage comes one of the hosts for our show, Karen Gillan, resplendent in a gold and black gown, who then introduces us to the pizazz of 'An Untimely Arrival' which covers the pre-titles to The Eleventh Doctor as the TARDIS crash lands in Amy's garden. Full of energy and vigour, Gold uses it as a bridging motif between the RTD era and the new adventures of a new Doctor. Familiar but also preparing the way into the new series without frightening the horses too much. It complements the John Adams piece, Short Ride In A Fast Machine quite wonderfully, itself full of syncopation and looping, repetitive rhythms and, for these Proms, it is certainly one of Adams more accessible and audience friendly pieces.


One of my highlights of these Proms is Gold's new theme for the Doctor, 'I Am The Doctor'. It's an epic signature tune for one of the most mercurial of the Doctor's incarnations and sets out to remind us that although the Doctor has changed, he is still very much the hero. The melody sticks in the mind and is instantly addictive and it's been used throughout the series but most significantly in The Pandorica Opens as he gives his speech to the amassed ships of his deadliest enemies above Stonehenge. A superb composition, a Gold standard if you like, and musically one of Series Five's greatest achievements. As this played, the Hall was invaded by all manner of alien foes - Saturnynians, Silurians, Cybermen and Judoon - and children everywhere, even those of us who are 48 years old and still refuse to grow up, were left grinning with delight.



Two classical pieces follow with the BBC National Orchestra Of Wales under the brilliant conductorship of Grant Llewellyn. If the Adams piece was a bit of a warm up, then Llewellyn gets the Orchestra and the London Philharmonic Choir to really give it some welly here. William Walton's Overture 'Portsmouth Point', a crafty nod to Murray Gold's home town, is a jaunty, perky work, full of gorgeous melody and rhythm. The mood undergoes a startling change with the second piece. An all time favourite, Holst's 'Mars', from The Planets gets a stunning rendition here and much kudos must go to the Choir and the percussion section of the Orchestra for really getting their teeth into this. Another highlight of the two Proms, it's brilliantly performed and Llewellyn conducts like a man possessed. The boiling, doom laden aggression and pounding military crescendos sent tingles down my spine. Now, if they could have shown a few clips of Quatermass whilst this was playing then I'd have been an extremely happy telefantasy fan boy.


Back to Who with 'Battle In The Skies' from Victory Of The Daleks. Amusingly, Gold's homage to the scores of Ron Goodwin (633 Squadron and Where Eagles Dare) and Eric Coates (The Dam Busters) is heard as an ARP warden yells across the Hall, 'Put that light out!' as one of Bracewell's 'Ironside' Daleks rises from the floor of the Hall and asks everyone if they want a cup of tea...and a biscuit (courtesy of Nick Briggs). The poor old Ironside is then bluntly interrupted by the white Dalek Supreme, arriving on stage in a blaze of light and dry ice. It sends the Ironside Dalek packing and then orders conductor Ben Foster to play the music of the Daleks or else! Foster teases the Dalek and on the matinee performance threatens it with his baton only to be told not to interfere with its sucker. The Supreme (aided and abetted by Barnaby Edwards) patrols the stage as Foster whips the Orchestra Of Wales into a stirring accompaniment to the episode's dogfight sequences.



After a swift ice cream in the interval, it is back to the second half of the programme. Grant Llewellyn returns and once again he wrings as much drama as he can from the Choir and the Orchestra with 'O Fortuna' from Carl Orff's Carmina burana. A medieval eruption of choral power, this iconic piece is stirring and epic, summoning up the very essence of raw nature, of life and death. And Old Spice. Yes, I'm old enough to remember those ads.

Karen begins to introduce one of her favourite themes, Amy, but suddenly receives a very special message. In the spirit of Music Of The Spheres back in 2008, where David Tennant's Doctor attempted to stop a Graske from disrupting the Prom, Matt Smith pops up on the video screens around the Hall, greeting the audience from some very odd angles, even upside down at one point, in fine panto tradition. It's a lovely, witty piece, "Sir, careful with that wig. And you sir. And you. And actually most of the violin section. Oh, and ladies mind those skirts. And selected gentlemen."


He's got to fix an overloading fold-back quasar do-dah, thingumy that will turn into a "wibbly wobbly explody wody thing". And he tries to defuse it with an electric tooth brush! But here he goes one better than Tennant. He disappears off the screen and emerges, for real, in the centre of the Hall, looking for someone to help him defuse this bomb. Smith's comic timing and physicality is much to the fore and when he actually does turn up in the Royal Albert Hall for real, interacting with children from the audience, he's in his element and ad-libbing away like a good 'un. Children clearly adore him (he captivated Ellis and Ben in these performances) and he completely confirms that of all the things about Series Five, he is quite simply the series greatest asset right now. Judging by the way he handled all the gobbledegook of the script he's also fast becoming the Stanley Unwin of all of the Doctors! "ITV's been blown off the air!" he naughtily concludes after deactivating the bomb.


We return to the music from the series with 'Amy' and this time Arthur Darvill comes on stage to introduce the music. This is again one of Gold's major triumphs and definitely a high point in the Proms. Yamit Mamo returns for solo vocal duties and with nods to Danny Elfman, Gold offers a heartbreakingly lovely tune for the new companion in the series, deftly capturing the frailties and weaknesses of the woman as well as her sense of wonder and bravery. Quite stunning. It's back to more monsters with a suite of themes, 'Liz, Lizards, Vampires And Vincent', covering the music to accompany the battle between Liz 10 and the Smilers on Starship UK; the return of the Silurians (with Ben Foster surrounded by three of them as he tries to conduct); the marauding vampire Sisters Of The Water and the tragic life of Vincent Van Gogh. Of these, the standouts are certainly the motifs and themes for Vampires Of Venice and Vincent And The Doctor.

The vampires get a memorably unearthly melody to accompany their sojourns into Venice and into the Hall itself as a group of the Sisters way lay a member of the audience during the matinee performance, dancing around him, much to his bemusement. The magnificent music that featured during Vincent's journey into the future and his visit to the gallery to hear how his work had affected millions of lives is presented here. Full of joy and sadness, it remains a very special, emotionally powerful theme.  The medley concludes with the nerve jangling incidentals, using a lilting piano riff, pounding chords and choir, that accompany the Weeping Angels and one of them pops in for a quick visit, scaring the bejesus out of most of the kids in the audience.



Karen and Arthur return to introduce Wagner's 'The Ride Of The Valkyries' and Grant Llewellyn gives the Orchestra Of Wales yet another energetic work out with the swirling strings and strident brass of this stirring classic. It again truly shows what a class act this Orchestra is. Karen then introduces, to several whoops from the audience, 'This Is Gallifrey', as featured in Series Three, and 'Vale decem' from The End Of Time. 'This Is Gallifrey' is here used to wonderful effect as, in the evening performance at least, the video screens show all the regenerations of each Doctor.

All the Doctors get their fair share of applause and this slightly distracts from what is one of Gold's finest pieces for the series. Naturally, the greatest response is reserved for Tennant and Smith. On the matinee, either through a technical fault or by decision, the roll call of Doctors wasn't shown and 'This Is Gallifrey' was allowed to soar, full of loss and pride for an ancient society. 'Vale decem' is an amazing choral work with counter-tenor Mark Chambers beautiful voice at the centre of a moving, elegiac piece that sees the regeneration of the Tenth into the Eleventh. Both pieces are guaranteed not to leave a dry eye in the house. Superb.


Matt then arrives on stage to describe Gold's response to Moffat's two part series finale, a specially arranged work, 'The Pandorica Suite'. To be honest, it's not my favourite of Gold's recent work as it tends to resort to emotionally colouring the scenes it covers, particularly the comedy time travel bits, rather than develop big, memorable themes. There's little to remember or to hum here as it rather is incidental music and only until he gets to the conclusion of the suite with a thrilling reinterpretation, signposted with some great brass sections, of 'I Am The Doctor' does it come alive with crashing percussion and insistent woodwind.


Smith, Gillan and Darvill come back to introduce 'The Song Of Freedom', from Series Four and all three are clearly having the time of their lives, equally sending each other up and overwhelmed by a packed Hall. Personally, 'The Song Of Freedom' is not one of my favourites but Mark Chambers voice is again extraordinary and Foster gets a tremendous performance from the London Phiharmonic Choir and the Orchestra for this anthemic theme. Murray Gold guests on keyboards during this and the arrangement of the 'Doctor Who Theme' and I'm still not particularly fond of his latest arrangement of the series theme, especially those very non-Ron Grainer opening orchestral tags and brass sections. That said, fortunately enough of Grainer's original composition and Delia Derbyshire's realisation remains and it's lovely to hear the old theme in such a setting driven by especially powerful bass and percussion. Both Proms rightly received a standing ovation and it is still pretty amazing to think that the little series we all love has been transformed into an unstoppable multi-media attraction. To paraphrase the Ninth Doctor, 'Fantastic!'

Proms 10 & 11: The Doctor Who Prom - Saturday 24 July / Sunday 25 July 2010, Royal Albert Hall

Listen again on BBCiplayer

Oft described as a stablemate to The Avengers, The Corridor People is anything but a carbon copy of that illustrious series. True, the opening two episodes of the intentionally short four episode run do repeat many of the idioms and tropes of both The Avengers and James Bond and generally reflect the popularity of the spy-fi genre of the mid to late 1960s. But beyond the superficial similarities, Eddie Boyd's series takes off in all manner of different and subversive tangents and embraces satire, film-noir, and a bravura self-consciousness that often has the characters breaking the 'fourth wall' between them and the audience watching.


 
Its link to The Avengers is fairly obvious too when you consider that lead actor Elizabeth Shepherd was the original choice for Emma Peel back in 1965 and left the series after certain disagreements with the producers about the character. She only filmed one and half episodes before she was replaced by Diana Rigg. Beyond that, whilst the series may have emulated the outlandish plots and humour of The Avengers, The Corridor People went its own way and the studio bound production, obviously produced on a very small budget, couldn't and, perhaps, didn't want to match its inspiration. Consequently, you get a series of four episodes that are very much driven by the eccentric characters, the surreal wit and the visual inventiveness of director David Boisseau who seemed to excel in his use of the minimal sets, expressionistic lighting and the basic electronic editing tools available to him at the time.

Commenting in TV Times the week of transmission for the first episode of The Corridor People, Victim As Birdwatcher, Shepherd said, "If a role doesn't extend my skills, then it's no use to me." The Eddie Boyd scripts also obviously impressed her, "I don't think I have ever read such an excellent script. So many scripts fall down on dialogue but I loved this one." Producer Richard Everitt recalled making the series in Granada Television: The First Generation. "Eddie Boyd and I worked on The Corridor People together. He was a brilliant writer but very reluctant to actually put words to paper. I had to resort to locking him in my attic at home with promises to feed him every ten pages. Although the series reached 16 in the ratings it received the following notice from Nancy Banks-Smith in The Guardian: 'The Corridor People is as contemporary as a space shot. A send-up, a take-off. A spoof on sex, crime, death. Beautifully produced, way out and with it...and I hate it.'"

In The Corridor People, Shepherd plays millionaire Persian villainess Syrie Van Epp and she's joined in the series, best described as a mix of police drama, spy-fi fantasy and Expressionist film-noir satire, by John Sharp, who plays Kronk, the head of Department K at the Ministry of Defence; American actor, dancer and choreographer Gary Cockerell as private eye Phil Scrotty and Kronk's side-kicks Inspector Hound and Sergeant Blood, played respectively by Alan Curtis and William Maxwell. Eddie Boyd, the writer, had already created The Odd Man series for Granada in 1962 which was then spun off into two other series, It's Dark Outside and Mr. Rose in 1964 and 1967. Linking all three series was the character of Mr. Rose played by William Mervyn. He also contributed a number of episodes to the early runs of Z Cars and later went on to write The View From Daniel Pike for the BBC in 1970, contributed episodes to Crown Court, The XYY Man, Strangers and wrote a children's series for BBC called Huntingtower.

Opening with Victim As Bird Watcher,  the series at first emulates the bizarre plotting of The Avengers - the kidnapping of a bird fancier, Vaughan, who controls shares in a cosmetics firm. Syrie seduces Vaughan (a typically twitchy turn from TV stalwart Tim Barrett) and he foolishly refuses to give in and give her the share. Why does Syrie want the share? Maybe it has something to do with the knock-out gas side effects of the perfume that the company has inadvertently developed. So, on the surface it's a story of a 'diabolical mastermind' versus Department K. Shepherd puts in a rather feline performance, channeling Eartha Kitt in the delivery of her lines. She's full on, aided by an array of very eccentric costume changes that portray her as a white clad and virginal to black suited femme fatale to Persian peacock, and perhaps it's now evident here that she wasn't quite gentle enough to be Emma Peel. Overall, the performances are a mix of fast line delivery with the overtly theatrical. Only John Sharp manages to keep a reasonable reign on the kitsch but often even he chews up the scenery. Some of the lines are priceless and inject a good deal of sharp humour into the series - "I'm sorry to have kept you waiting," she says to the imprisoned Vaughan, "but I had some small matters to attend to in Beirut." Later, after being subjected to enforced diabetic comas, he says to her, "You're a very beautiful woman," to which she replies, "I know."

Whilst Syrie charms Vaughan out of his shares and threatens to kill a precious bird specimen 'the Greater Crested Train Robber (her black shooting outfit of deerstalker and adjustable sunglasses is one of many iconic images the series creates), we're also introduced to Phil Scrotty, a private enquiry agent who clearly has a fixation on the pulp anti-heroes of film-noir. Hence, the huge picture of Humphrey Bogart ("the founder of the firm") that dominates the back wall of the office set he sits in. There's also a running gag here where his early warning system consists of strategically placed dustbins outside the office to flag up the arrival of visitors. "You don't put up much of a front, do you?" observes a client of his rather spartan arrangements. "I can't, the place is listed as an ancient monument," he drawls in reply.  Scrotty is also something of an anti-hero too, appearing like a version of Sam Spade mixed with Frank Sinatra and, as the episode progresses, he's willing to play both sides against each other for the highest stakes.

"Codeword Bogart" is mooted and Scrotty warns Kronk that Vaughan's father is searching for his missing son. One of the loveliest characters is Miss Dunner, Kronk's secretary-cum-hit woman, who clearly dislikes the comic duo of Hound and Blood (all raincoat and trilby and not much else) and happily hurls insults in their direction ("the lumpen proletariat" and "Cossacks!"). Listen out for Sergeant Blood's Yiddish exclamation at the mention of rare birds. Apparently, it translates as "Don't hit me with a teapot!". The Department K set, like much of the production design in the series, is sparse, economic and modernist. The cell where Syrie keeps Vaughan is a direct pastiche of Ken Adam's angular designs and use of Expressionist shadows that were so striking in the Bond films.

Director Boisseau uses the medium and his minimal budget to his advantage. There's a fade to black after the scene in Department K and then a letterbox image of diabetic Vaughan's sweating face appears (Syrie has cut off his supply of insulin) as he drifts in and out of diabetic coma. Cropped images of cell bars, Syrie in profile and then a swirling vision of Syrie and her henchman Weedy (ironic in that he's clearly the opposite when we see him floor Scrotty in the scene following this) fill the screen. 'Weedy! Weedy! Weedy!" is all you can hear on the soundtrack apart from Vaughan's laboured breathing as she orders him to inject Vaughan. Odd and surreal.

The screen is cropped so that we see only the lower half of the image as the injection is administered and then Boisseau uses a wipe to shut off the rest of the image and the sound. This is a visual experimentation that The Avengers only rarely attempted and is a graphic style that probably owes more to the way Saul Bass and Maurice Binder approached the construction of titles and sequences for Hitchcock and the Bond movies. Vaughan threatens Syrie that if he dies, everything he owns goes to the state including the shares and therefore she needs him alive to gain control of the cosmetics company. "You're not such a fool as you look," she purrs. "The greatest weapon of the English upper classes," he retorts.

Windsor Davies pops up as a shares broker, Sullivan, who assists Kronk in his investigations. There's a witty scene where he turns up with a model at Department K and as they chat about the Vaughan situation Candy throws a number of poses and shapes in the background. Boisseau, visual stylist that he is, shoots through Candy's poses at the two men. It's here the sub-plot about the perfume is revealed too when Sullivan reports that when Candy used the perfume "it turned her into an imbecile". After Candy pops to the loo, Kronk asks, "How would one tell, old boy, if Candy had been turned into an imbecile?" as writer Boyd hurls a pot shot at models working in the fashion industry of the time. Oh, and look out for a similar barb at French film actresses with "shaggy armpits". It's this acerbic humour that goes just that little bit over the line that typically The Avengers wouldn't attempt. It's often a delicious bitchiness rather than subtle, sophisticated wit.

Vaughan's father persuades him that the best thing he could do is to use his shares, work with Syrie and keep the cosmetics firm's export drive buoyant and, more importantly, British! There's an eyebrow raising view of Empire reclaimed through British perfume exports to Africa with Vaughan's father observing, "The blacks are demanding the gracious life! I find it exciting to think that though they may have left the Empire, they will still smell British!" Boyd immediately mocks British white reactionary attitudes at a time when Britain had a diminishing role in the Commonwealth and Wilson had been battling with Ian Smith over similar attitudes in Rhodesia. The final act of Victim As Bird Watcher clearly suggests that Syrie has bedded the repressed younger Vaughan and he's now happy to give her the shares. However, she's already plotting to off Vaughan.

Miss Dunner also gets a "spell of special duty" - something she's clearly delighted about and off she pops in her twin set and pearls to carry it out. However, her special duty has already been anticipated. Both Weedy and Scrotty turn out to be more than they seem too in a nicely judged, fairly complex plot as the various factions battle it out to get control of the share and seize the deadly perfume. The briefing towards the end of the episode, given by Kronk to what appear to be his superiors in Department K as Vaughan is hauled over the coals, is also fairly arresting. They all seem to represent a roll call of the 'best of British' - lords, admirals, majors and what look like Bulldog Drummond, Sherlock Holmes and Lord Peter Wimsey. As the meeting ends and Vaughan asks Miss Dunner why he's been left with her, "Well, you see I'm the specialist". She levels a gun, the camera tilts 90 degrees and Boisseau uses a wipe to cut to Syrie.

The opening episode hits the ground running and establishes the signature style of the series. It's also bitingly funny, arch and ironic and makes the most of its limited budget and studio based production.

The second episode, Victim As Whitebait, picks up from the opener. Scrotty has survived the 'specialist' duties of Dunner and is on the run. He's sleeping with the widow of an (allegedly) deceased husband, Whitebait. Except he isn't. Dead, that is. Mad scientist Robag, a supremely twisted performance from that master of scenery chewing Aubrey Morris, has perfected a technique to raise the dead. Syrie, believing Scrotty is dead, wants him brought back from the grave because he has precious intelligence about an accountant who could call time on a £3 million deal. Alcoholic Robag spends a fair bit of his time chasing a dwarf, Nonesuch (William Trigger), who teases him with a bottle of spirits, around one of the series more elaborate sets depicting a disused theatre littered with strange carnival heads. Boisseau again chucks in a couple of weird, tilting angles just to ensure that the word 'bonkers' is on the tip of your tongue.

The episode opens with Shepherd decorously slumped across a tombstone, fending off the advances of Nonesuch whilst a henchman, Bo, stalks towards camera whilst assessing the scene/audience with a viewfinder. Two fellas dig up a grave in a cloud of dry ice in front of her. Utterly contrived, utterly theatrical, Boisseau is clearly having fun and indicates such by winking at the audience. He doesn't have enough budget to show the opening of Scrotty's coffin either and merely adds sound effects to the picture. "Empty," concludes Bo, the man with the viewfinder.

This is pretty much a story focusing on Scrotty too. Cockerell's physicality is much in evidence and again the parallels with Bond are made with a topless Cockerell bearing more than a passing resemblance to the equally chiseled and hirsute Sean Connery. Scrotty is revealed to be a tougher anti-hero than we presumed from Victim As Bird Watcher. Here, he swaggers about and takes great delight in conning both Syrie and Department K. When Whitebait is found to be alive, due to Robag's process, he ensures the man is killed so he can continue his affair with the widow, Abigail.

Dunner is perplexed when, after bugging Syrie's conversation with a client Jolyon Defarge, it is revealed that Scrotty is alive. Blood and Hound are sent out on the trail and Dunner proffers her resignation only for Kronk to tear it up and enquire, "Miss Dunner, have you ever shot a midget?" That he's sent her out on a suicide mission is later underlined when a large crate containing her body is delivered to him. He pops the flower from his buttonhole into the crate and raises his hat, "Poor Miss Dunner."

Again, it's a twisted story that takes a bit of following and Boisseau injects plenty of visual playfulness. When Syrie and Scrotty finally meet to talk about the accountant Samson Whitby who will be able to shop Defarge, they don the huge carnival heads in the theatre and deliberately turn and gaze into the camera. When Syrie goes to bump off Whitby she does so dressed as a maid and trundling a pram. In the pram, which is belching with smoke, is Nonesuch smoking a cigar. And Bo keeps popping up with his viewfinder as a sublimation of the director Boisseau's vision perhaps? However, Scrotty has set Whitebait up as Samson Whitby and Syrie kills a man who's already been dead once. The real Samson?...well, that would be telling.

Victim As Red and Victim As Black aren't as accomplished visually but the scripts are sharp and witty. Red starts with a Mr. Lemming paying Scrotty a visit to ask him to keep searching for his brother even though it would seem to no avail. Scrotty turns to camera and addresses the audience, "He's a nut. A real nut." The brother, Col. Hugo Lemming, is alive and well. The character provides us with another accomplished performance, this time from the excellent John Woodnutt, of a man who is suffering from amnesia...or is he? After his minder dies, he knocks out his landlady and escapes, hiding in the back of Syrie's Rolls. Lemming is a former missile man who allegedly defected to the Russians and Kronk sends out Blood and Hound to find him. Syrie is intrigued by the man in the back of her car. "You drive very well, " he observes. "I do everything very well," she smolders in response. The landlady recovers "He done me proper. With one of them karate chops like on the telly," she tells the wife of Kempsford, the man holding Hugo Lemming.

"Col. Hugo Lemming!" announces Scrotty to a bemused Kronk. "By hell Scrotty, I sometimes wonder if you haven't got a pipeline into this bloody office." Scrotty tells Kronk about Lemming's brother and hands him the script that the brother left on his desk. They all seem to have the same reaction to it - "Well, well, well" directly into the camera. The "well, well, well" is the key to a £2 million robbery, naturally, and the manuscript is the clue to Lemming's activity behind the Iron Curtain, the robbery and a connection to Kempsford. We also get to see Syrie's apartment - again one of the more stylish sets for the series - and she announces that she'll subsidise a treatment for Lemming's amnesia but at a price. "The potency of cheap music," is the key to unlocking Lemming's mind she thinks. There's a classic line whilst the two of them have a dance and converse about the origin of the plays of Shakespeare. "I once knew a man who believed the plays had been written by a coloured hermaphrodite from Wigan," reveals Lemming. One of Syrie's records triggers Lemming's memory when he hears Mrs. Kempsford, a former singer who turns out to be Hugo's wife of three years.

Eventually, Kronk and Syrie agree to deal over Lemming's activities as a traitor. "Bad faith breeds bad faith," claims Syrie when Lemming asks why she gave him up. She's already worked out that Lemming didn't lose his memory at all and has used everyone...or has he? Red is a fairly wordy script and the story is driven more by the characters than by Boisseau's visual flourishes. Plenty of word play, literary and cultural allusions and a complex plot laced with wit, the episode veers away from its lighthearted origins and becomes a much darker tale of double agents, Communism and the Cold War.

Victim As Black completes the series with more surrealism, 1960s cultural allusions and a tentative exploration of racism. Helena, the Queen Mother of Morphenia is visiting Syrie. She regularly comes to Britain to do a spot of shoplifting and we discover that her son, Ferdinand has fallen in love with the Cinderella-like Pearl, a black girl he met at a party (an early role for Nina Baden-Semper) and only left a shoe behind after running off. Helena hires Scrotty to find her but the Morphenian government reject the idea of Ferdinand wishing to marry a black woman.

Kronk and Department K know of Helena well and he orders a circular to go out to all department stores to warn them that ("Lulu's Back In Town!" wittily interjects Blood) she's in the country. Meanwhile as Scrotty is being "persuaded" to accompany the Brothers Grimm, a pair of blonde thugs, they are interupted by a rather camp black man, Theobald Abu (played rather marvellously by Calvin Lockhart). He's an example of the series playing rather fast and loose with stereotypes but his entrance is quite witty, "Your dustbins attacked me!" and to which Scotty replies, "James Baldwin said the same thing." "James Baldwin was here!", Abu responds breathlessly, crossing himself. Helena later confuses Abu for Scrotty when the private eye has been carted off by the Grimms and asks Abu to find Ferdinand and Pearl. Helena's racism is rather blunt, especially when she leaves the office and exclaims, "Syrie never mentioned that your were a dark gentleman. How clever of her. I mean, that should make finding the girl easier for you." Ouch.

Pearl is a cinema usher and Boyd makes use of internal monologue here to reveal her feelings about being black and looking for the right man. "Maybe I should do the pools again, " she ponders. We also see that Ferdinand has employed the Grimms to bring Scrotty to him and to find Pearl for him. He hands him Pearl's lost shoe. "You want me to bring it back, filled with girl?" asks Scrotty. Ferdinand also notes that the girl is 'coloured' but reveals, "I don't like the word coloured...I have...er...liberal tendencies." Boyd's script reminds us that a bitter struggle was still being waged in America for recognition of civil rights for the black population and that Black Power, as a major movement in resistance to white hegemony using a "by-any-means necessary" approach to stopping inequality, was also emerging. Scrotty is amused that Ferdinand seeks marriage to the girl. Later, Pearl puts on her make up and directly addresses the camera and Boyd again flags up these issues, "Though I'm black, am I not comely," she says. "But why 'though' ?" she queries. She then talks to us about semantics and words having prejudices and how words can be reclaimed or given new, powerful meanings. The form is not something you'll find on ITV at 9.00pm these days and the material was fairly ambitious for its day too.

Abu is also willing to pay Scrotty not to find Pearl and to convince those looking for her that Pearl is dead. Abu is also being monitored by Department K but Kronk is having a lot of trouble getting his various sub-departments to unearth anything. He decides to use a Prophecy Approximation device (a machine that makes some wonderfully amusing noises when it does appear and then very camply attempts to disentangle the "delicious problem" involving Abu, Scrotty and Morphenia - "the mere mention of the place makes one cower like a wild thing") to get to the bottom of it all. Scrotty is beaten up by two black thugs and ends up in hospital for the rest of the story, a "victim of racial prejudice" he claims and Syrie meets with Abu who pays her for the photograph of Pearl but she also pays her maid (an early role for Pauline Collins) to follow him. The maid asks for a further payment - "one for Mary Quant" - making her intentions clear, I think. It is also revealed that the maid knows who and where Pearl is and Scrotty sends her to Ferdinand.

After Department K does a 'deal' with Syrie about Pearl and Ferdinand as the consequences of their relationship become clear with the Prophecy Approximation machine exclaiming "keep Morphenia white!", the episode curiously ends with all the major characters turning to camera and performing a small monologue - Scrotty rambles through his delirium; Syrie natters on about patterns, hatred and prejudice; Abu has a rant about mixed marriages; Ferdinand accepts government handouts and a nuclear deterent for Morphenia whilst munching on a choc-ice (bit of heavy handed symbolism there) and the Queen of Morphenia is joyful that she'll be able to do her shoplifting in her own country. As Pearl reads out her own horoscope and the titles run a gun is leveled at her head. Fascinating and puzzling in equal measure.

Definitely of its time, The Corridor People is mad, eccentric, inventive and pretty unique. These four episodes are to treasure as an example of quintessential late 1960s British television drama where experimentation with the form was cool. This ends up as a melding of spy-fi fantasy, with the exoticism of Modesty Blaise meeting the comedy of menace in Harold Pinter perhaps, tons of literary in-jokes (there's a bit of piss-taking of fellow writer Alun Owen in one of the episodes) and the darker elements of hard boiled film noir with passing visual references to the likes of Godard's À Bout De Souffle (Scrotty's Bogart obsession). An acquired taste but highly recommended.

The Corridor People - The Complete Series (Network DVD 7953330 - Region 2 - Released 19th July 2010 - Cert 12) Only currently available as a 'web exclusive' from the Network site.

Another treat from Odeon Entertainment again this month with the release of Freddie Francis' black comedy Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny & Girly. Made entirely on location in 1969, this marks a real change from Francis' usual Hammer and Amicus directing assignments. Based on the play Happy Families (which should give you a clue as to the subject matter) by Maisie Mosco, the film is a witty and dark satire and has been described as one of the great lost films of British horror cinema. I would certainly debate the latter claim because the film, whilst excessively Gothic in nature and with a touch of the Grand Guignol, is rather reticent when it comes to out and out horror. It's definitely an interesting curio and deserves to be rescued from obscurity but The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, that other cinematic treatise on the dysfunctional nuclear family, it ain't. Instead we get a mixture of the Addams family and The Old Dark House combined with some of the feverishness of Powell's Peeping Tom and some sequences that clearly influenced The Shining and Fatal Attraction.


The film describes a rule governed, if peculiar, household where Mumsy and Nanny look after the two children Sonny and Girly. It is a fatherless family and the film is more or less an examination of what happens to the nuclear family when there is no father figure, no mature male to impose particular values upon it. The sanctity of the family as a morally valuable unit is shown in contrast to the sexual freewheeling of the late 1960s and much of the film shows how one man, with enough intelligence and power, can attempt to unravel the matriarchal status quo.

Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly live in a crumbling Gothic pile and their family life has been reduced to what they refer to as 'The Game'. All have regressed to a child-like state within the Victorian conformity of their roles. Sonny and Girly may be 20 odd years old but they dress in school uniforms and abide by the rules of the house, their conversation at the level of the average nine year old. They sleep in a nursery filled with toys and dolls and in crib-like cots. Mumsy, the matriarch (played with delicious relish by Ursula Howells), watches over all and keeps an eye on her 'darling loves' with help from Nanny (a superb Pat Heywood). The two women sleep in the same room, with Nanny hilariously perched in a cot at the end of Mumsy's bed, both furiously engaged in a knitting contest. The balance of power between Mumsy and Nanny is already precarious with both women thinking they know best how to bring up Sonny and Girly and how best to interpret the rules. They are a set of archetypes that will only be disrupted when 'The Game' brings a 'new friend' to the house, a father figure that will create uncertainty, insecurity, and doubt. 'If you don't have rules, where are you?' states Mumsy imperiously, commenting no doubt on all that free love and individualism that the late 1960s ushered in. She's about to find out what happens when someone uses the rules against you.


There is a brooding sexualisation applied to all the characters within the film, imbuing the two 'children' with an erotic power which must have something to do with dressing adults up in school uniforms and infantilising them. Whilst Howard Trevor does his utmost to get this across as Sonny he never quite offers us the real sense of subversion that Vanessa Howard brings to her role as Girly. There is also a suggestion that the relationship is more than just brother and sister. The two children regularly leave the Gothic mansion in search of 'friends'. They usually bring back a man to the house who then has to undergo a rites of passage to ensure that he will conform to the rules and play nicely. The film opens with them bringing back a drunken tramp, whom they call 'soldier'. Nanny dishes up jelly and blancmange and they play games, much to the confusion of the poor man. However, when he clearly doesn't follow the rules and directs his desire to Mumsy and asks her to 'tuck him up' in bed, a game of Oranges And Lemons ('here comes the chopper to chop off your head') soon puts a stop to that.


When we discover that there are other men trapped in the house, we also see Sonny taking great pleasure, certainly a sexual gratification, in hunting down any man who tries to escape. When one of them makes a desperate attempt to scale the wall on the overgrown estate, Sonny shoots him with a bow and arrow and then films his death throes, playing back the images later to a delighted Mumsy and Nanny. When Sonny and Girly return with 'New Friend' (the always excellent Michael Bryant), after meeting him and his girlfriend coming out of party, they proceed to bump her off by pushing her off the top of a slide. Pinning the 'accident' on him, he feels obliged to stay and they use the death of his girlfriend as a lever to keep him in the house and make him abide by the bizarre prescriptions of Mumsy and Nanny. If he is obedient then he will live but if he is naughty then he'll be 'sent to the angels'. 'New friend' quickly realises that as a man he can use his sexuality and his desire for Girly to shatter the matriarchal power of the household. He sets out to seduce Girly and Mumsy. This leads to violent jealousy from Nanny and Sonny that results in Girly spectacularly murdering Sonny in one of the best scenes in the film.


Crushing him with a huge dressing table mirror she asks him  - 'Do you know Tony Chestnut? Toe - knee - chest - NUT!' as each blow coincides with each word. 'Do you like four penny ones?' she screams, 'Well here's a four penny one!' as she hurls the mirror at him. Nanny's desires for 'New Friend' convince her to try and murder Mumsy but when Girly discovers that Nanny has also been playing with 'New Friend' out comes the axe and the body in woodpile. Look out for the scene where Mumsy reveals what's been cooking on the stove since Girly took the axe to Nanny.  The cycle of violence, jealousy and mistrust doesn't quite give 'New Friend' all the power he thinks he has and the film ends on an uneasy note as all three protagonists, Mumsy (now reduced to being The Nanny), Girly (now the The Mumsy) and 'New Friend' conspire to bump each other off in another cycle of power games. 'So much for all the rules,' cries a distraught Mumsy at the end of the film.


It's a very funny film but it doesn't quite get to the deeper psychological elements of the characters. They are archetypes that aren't really imbued with anything of substance. It's clear the film is a treatise on power and sex, a thinly veiled commentary on the Victorian concept of family structure struggling to exist amidst great social upheaval, and the desire and need for a father figure, who remains constantly in flux or absent throughout the film until 'New Friend' attempts to take that role for himself. As a critique of the lessening moral and sexual standards of the late 1960s it also doesn't quite fulfill its potential because its upholding of the family is based on unhealthy repression. The whole crux of the film rests on desire. Mumsy, Nanny and Girly are required to desire 'New Friend' to make the cycle of petty jealousy and violence work. Michael Bryant, wonderful as he is, doesn't possess the glamour or the sexual power that the role requires.

Whether intentional or not he just comes across slightly too old and not attractive enough and because of that the seduction scenes really don't have the appeal they should. When 'New Friend' seduces Girly there is a rather unsavoury quality to what is actually a very powerful scene about loss of innocence. It doesn't quite work. The highlight of the film is certainly Vanessa Howard's role as Girly. She manages to oscillate between childish innocence, violence and anger with great aplomb and subtlety and it is an extremely confident performance of a psychopathic young woman trapped in a complex mesh of contradictory social and sexual mores by a doting mother who refuses to allow her to grow up into a well adjusted woman. Maladjusted, more like.


A bizarre, archly funny film that examines quintessentially British behaviour and mores and where the art of knitting, yes, knitting, is a core symbol of the balance of power. Francis' visual style is somewhat muted here but there are some striking moments where his visual sensitivity and composition pays off. An unusual British film, with a great sense of claustrophobia and unease, it's atypical for the period and Francis' at his riskiest.

The anamorphic HD transfer is grainy and damaged in places and I assume no restoration has been applied beyond the digital remastering. Colour is quite vibrant and the picture is sharp and with good contrast. The mono soundtrack is a little distorted in some places but dialogue is clear and crisp even though the pack claims it is a 'restored' soundtrack. The extras comprise of various trailers for the film, a TV spot, the alternate US title sequence (where it was called Girly) and a short gallery of stills, lobby cards and a press book. It's good to finally see it on DVD after a period when it was considered lost.

Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny & Girly - Digitally Remastered Special Edition (Odeon Entertainment DVD ODNF170 - Region 2 - Released 12th July 2010 - Cert 15)

With the new series of Doctor Who now over it's back to BBC Books and their Doctor Who novels to keep us entertained until we get to see this year's Christmas Special. For the latest three books the character of Rory has now joined the printed adventures of Doctor and Amy.

Sadly, Gary Russell's The Glamour Chase just doesn't match his last novel for the range, the rather fantastic Beautiful Chaos. It has a lot going for it, undoubtedly, but the sum of its parts left me feeling somewhat unsatisfied. He's clearly aiming to use the plot about shape changing aliens, the Weave, to unpick the aftermath of the First World War and explore the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder on those men that survived it. It's sympathetically achieved but for me it doesn't quite fall into line with the rest of the story.

The alien Weave can grow themselves and their ship, literally knitting themselves into existence, and are being hunted down by their enemies the Tahnn. Their ship crash lands in pre-historic England and it is some thousands of years later that the final battle between the Weave and the Tahnn is initiated when archaeologist Enola Porter unearths the ship. In the intervening centuries the Weave have inculcated themselves into post-First World War England and the majority of the story takes place in 1936. The Doctor, Amy and Rory discover that the village they arrive in is not quite what it seems, particularly the identities of its inhabitants.

Russell - pardon the pun - weaves an interesting tale where you don't quite know who is who and even the Weave are not quite what they seem. For me it's an uneven book but packed with some terrific ideas and he does capture the Doctor, Amy and Rory very well. He perhaps slightly over-exaggerates his version of the Eleventh Doctor and it becomes irritating but I do like the way he gets Amy and Rory firmly involved in the various sub-plots. Rory is seen to be a very caring man, obviously with his background as a nurse, and his concern for the shell-shocked Oliver Marks is written with great sensitivity. I'm not going to discuss the denouement any further because the fun of the book is working out just exactly whose side certain characters are on.

If you want a good tale, well told with sympathetic characters then I'd heartily recommend Una McCormack's The King's Dragon. This is a very welcome change of scenery with the Doctor, Amy and Rory journeying to the city-state of Geath, the setting for a high fantasy reading of the Doctor Who format. This is a tale of dragons, magic metal, young kings, wise women and the power of storytelling. Fortunately, we're not talking about a door-stopping David Eddings sized book here and McCormack's prose is crisp and efficient and the book is laced with humour.

The Doctor discovers that Geath is in thrall to the Enamour, a golden metal that can heighten desires and bend the mind. It has turned the inhabitants into selfish, belligerent capitalists where once there existed a peaceful republic. But the Enamour's source is a golden dragon and the dragon is hot property and two forces arrive on Geath to claim it as their own. The Doctor, Amy and Rory are left to decide whether the Enamour and the dragon belong to the scary, dark Regulator or the shining Herald, ancient races still waging a long drawn out war. They call upon the help of a con-man storyteller, a young impressionable king and an old wise woman to work out who the Enamour belongs to and how to rid Geath of its influence.

It's a rollickingly good tale and a breezy read and it's just about edges out Nuclear Time as the most satisfying of the three books in this set. The characters are well defined and I think Amy and Rory are sympathetically re-created. In fact, the Amy in this book is less defensive than her television counterpart and she's actually more likeable for it. I think everyone must like writing for Rory because each of the books gets him spot on and again he's a thoroughly endearing character here. McCormack's version of the Doctor is likewise a little less frenetic than his television counterpart but all the requisite eccentricities are intact. Her supporting characters are attractive too, including the somewhat roguish Teller who sees the error of his ways using his tall stories to boost the young king's popularity rating and the wise woman Hilthe, cautious but willing to give everyone a fair hearing, whose diplomatic skills Rory sees as the solution to their dilemma. There is a lovely thread of political satire in the book too and a witty exploration of monarchy versus republic and a few broadsides at a society obsessed with mass consumption and greed.

The Glamour Chase - Gary Russell (Published 8th July 2010 - Publisher BBC Books/Ebury - ISBN: 978184607988 7)
Nuclear Time - Oli Smith (Published 8th July 2010 - Publisher BBC Books/Ebury - ISBN: 978184607989 4)
The King's Dragon - Una McCormack (Published 8th July 2010 - Publisher BBC Books/Ebury - ISBN: 978184607990 0)