And here's Part Three of my research notes on Steven Moffat's 2007 drama Jekyll.

These are the last notes combined, rewritten and edited from two drafts of the material. This final part features many of the recognisable motifs that can be found in the Steven Moffat era of Doctor Who and it specifically looks at narrative structure and the use of memory and flashback in Jekyll. 

I suggest you put the kettle on again, make some tea and take your time. The first part is here and the second part is here. The first part looked at the relationship between the 'Jekyll' figure of Tom Jackman and his alter-ego Hyde and the second instalment looked at the female characters and how the series evoked the female Gothic within the parallel narratives featuring Tom's wife Claire and her duplicate Alice Cameron.

The notes were part of the research for a chapter I was writing on Moffat's Doctor Who but Jekyll is only used briefly in the finished piece. You'll be able to read my contribution to the forthcoming book The Eleventh Hour: A Critical Celebration of the Matt Smith and Steven Moffat Era, edited by Andrew O'Day, when it's published by I.B.Tauris next year. Many thanks to Andrew for supporting my idea to make the approximately 9,000 words on Jekyll available.

And here's Part Two of my research notes on Steven Moffat's 2007 drama Jekyll.

The following is a partly combined, rewritten and edited version of two drafts of the material. It does look at Jekyll in context with many of the recognisable motifs that can be found in the Steven Moffat era of Doctor Who and it also touches on many other themes and ideas that the six-part drama explored that were outside of the remit of my original chapter.

This is quite a long article so I've split it into three parts. I suggest you put the kettle on again, make some tea and take your time. The first part is here. Where the first part looked at the relationship between the 'Jekyll' figure of Tom Jackman and his alter-ego Hyde, this second instalment looks at the female characters and how the series evoked the female Gothic within the parallel narratives featuring Tom's wife Claire and her duplicate Alice Cameron.

Part Three in the next few days. Enjoy.

By way of an explanation, the material about Jekyll (BBC 2007) I'm presenting here started life as research for a chapter I'd been asked to contribute to the forthcoming book The Eleventh Hour: A Critical Celebration of the Matt Smith and Steven Moffat Era, edited by Andrew O'Day and to be published by I.B.Tauris next year.

Andrew had asked me to include Steven Moffat's 2007 series Jekyll in my examination of Moffat's very recognisable signature in Doctor Who and with one thing and another I amassed a close reading of Jekyll that amounted to about 8,000 words on its own. The only problem? Not enough room to include much of that in a chapter that was predominantly about Doctor Who. In fact, I could have written an entire chapter, possibly even a book, about Jekyll by the time I'd finished. With the chapter finished, it struck me recently that it seemed a shame not to share the Jekyll material with a wider audience.

The following is a partly combined, rewritten and edited version of two drafts of the material. It does look at Jekyll in context with many of the recognisable motifs that can be found in the Steven Moffat era of Doctor Who and it also touches on many other themes and ideas that the six-part drama explored that were outside of the remit of my original chapter. This is quite a long article so I'm going to split it into three parts. I suggest you put the kettle on, make some tea and take your time. Part One today and Parts Two and Three in the next few days. Enjoy.

Along with Robert Hamer, director Alexander Mackendrick established his own style and approach within Ealing and this month StudioCanal celebrate his centenary by screening a fully restored digital print of The Man in the White Suit as part of the BFI Southbank's Mackendrick retrospective. The film also gets its first Blu-Ray release.

Alexander Mackendrick brought his distinctive tone to five Ealing films, Whisky Galore! (1949), The Man in the White Suit (1951), Mandy (1952), The Maggie (1954) and The Ladykillers (1955). He arrived at Ealing in 1946 after the collapse of his Merlin Productions, set up with his cousin Roger MacDougall and which made films for the Ministry of Information.

Prior to this he had worked on Pathe newsreels, propaganda films for the British Army and had written scripts for animated propaganda shorts for Halas and Batchelor. By 1937 he had worked as an artist for the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency, scripted commercials and co-written the feature film Midnight Menace (1937). He even made stop motion animated commercials for Horlicks with the legendary George Pal. (1)

Andy Priestner, whose superb book on Secret Army sent many of us racing back to the DVDs to watch the series all over again, now turns his attention to BBC's Tenko (1981-85) in a lavish and comprehensive new book, Remembering Tenko, published by Classic TV Press this October.   

Admittedly, I've come to Tenko in the twilight of my years and have only recently started watching the series properly. My acquaintance with it until this point had occurred tangentially either through the careers of Louise Jameson or Stephanie Beacham or by dint of the edition of Drama Connections devoted to the series in 2005. I certainly knew about it and its reputation.

Tenko inevitably settled into my orbit since I'd recently been reacquainting myself with the likes of Colditz (1972-74), finally released on DVD in 2010, Enemy at the Door (1978-80) and Secret Army (1977-79) and because I remain genuinely interested in the British experience of World War II and the upheavals of the post-war period.

The re-release of Robert Hamer's It Always Rains on Sunday is very welcome indeed. StudioCanal and the BFI have lavished some attention on the film, remastering and repairing from two nitrate fine grain positives for its outing during the BFI's Ealing: Light and Dark retrospective and for its high-definition release on Blu-ray and DVD.

Most importantly, the re-release champions the work of director Hamer who left behind a small but very distinguished body of work after a career and life tragically marred by alcoholism. His career in cinema began in 1934, working as a cutting room assistant for Gaumont-British before joining Alexander Korda's London Films at Denham. He worked on a number of films for Erich Pommer, who had formed a production compnay with actor Charles Laughton, and edited Vessel of Wrath (1938) and Hitchcock's Jamaica Inn (1939).

He then joined the GPO Film Unit, working with Alberto Cavalcanti, and developed skills as a documentarian that would eventually be evidenced in his work as a director. After Calvalcanti moved to Ealing, he was recruited by him in 1940 to work as an editor on a number of war films and the George Formby picture Turned Out Nice Again (1941). The studio's boss, Michael Balcon, saw potential in Hamer and promoted him to associate producer and he oversaw the production of the Will Hay comedy My Learned Friend in 1943. As Gavin Collinson notes of the film, 'the humour, much of it revolving around a sequence of grisly murders, foreshadows the blackest of Ealing's postwar comedies' and its co-writer John Dighton would collaborate with Hamer on perhaps his best known film, the spiky, bleakly satirical classic Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949). (1)