Peter Capaldi is Doctor Who

Peter Capaldi is Doctor Who

5 years ago yesterday (4th August) Peter Capaldi was announced as Doctor Who live on BBC One.
I must admit to a small wobble just before he was annouced as I was convinced that Ben Daniels was about to be named as the new Doctor and I can't say I was thrilled at the prospect.

But having seen him since in 'Star Wars: Rogue One' I think he would have been a good choice.
Going back to the annoucement, though, I was very pleased when Peter' s name was called and he stepped on to the stage doing his best William Hartnell impression, clasping his lapels for all he was worth. And it was definitely a nice bonus when his eyebrows popped up in 'The Day Of The Doctor'.
When his debut came in 'Deep Breath' I really liked his version of the Doctor, feeling quite sorry for him when it seems that Clara preferred his last incarnation.

I loved him in 'Robot Of Sherwood', bickering with Robin Hood and being generally grumpy.
But I must admit to having a bit of a wobble in the middle of the series around the time of 'Kill The Moon' as he is very unlikeable in this story and I wasn't sure I liked this version of the Doctor. But by the end of 'Flatline' he had won me back over with his speech to the Boneless.

DOCTOR: The man that stops the monsters. I'm sending you back to your own dimension. Who knows? Some of you may even survive the trip. And, if you do, remember this. You are not welcome here. This plane is protected. I am the Doctor.

(He turns, and Clara throws him the sonic screwdriver.)

DOCTOR: And I name you The Boneless.

At that point Peter for me was the Doctor, the champion of the weak and oppressed.

I also loved the bits with the mini-TARDIS and the 'Addams Family' / Thing tribute when the Doctor propels it along with his hand and his little victory dance which almost costs him his life.

And then came along 'In The Forest Of The Night' and I absolutely loved it! I love the feel of the story and the bit when the Doctor panics at the though of Maebh is going to be killed is brillantly done.

I should say that I loved 'Mummy On The Orient Express' too, but was still doubting the Doctor a little at this point. But I can see on repeated viewings that he is doing his best to make up to Clara for putting her through an awkward situation in 'Kill The Moon'.

When Peter's second series started and the Doctor appeared in the tank with his guitar and his sonic sunglasses on, I really enjoyed it.  And the fact that the character had mellowed a lot. In fact, the bigger Peter's hair is the more relaxed the Doctor seems to be.

And his outstanding performance in 'Heaven Sent' is a tour de force and one that really he should have won an award for.

He has great comic timing in 'The Husbands of River Song', which is a great screwball comedy which Rock Hudson and Doris Day wouldn't be out of place in and sees a fitting end to River Song's story.
In his last series his relationship with Bill and Nardole is wonderful and made me wish that his time wasn't coming to an end and that we could have had another year of fun with this lovely trio.

And this series contains some truly excellent episodes climaxing in the superb 'World Enough And Time' and 'The Doctor Falls' with the return of the Mondasian Cybermen.

I know a lot of people don't really like 'Twice Upon a Time' due to the attitude of rhe First Doctor, but I believe that his character and face are different as he is mid regeneration and is affected more than he is letting on. I'm really fond of this story and feel it is a fitting end to the 12th Doctor and Peter's time.

Of course, I wish that Peter had stayed on for longer, but I look forward to the start of Jodie's series and to meeting the 13th Doctor.

Vive la Doctor!

(By Lisa Parker)

Early August video round-up

Early August video round-up

The most exciting news tonight is the launch of 'The Extonmoss Experiment', a new podcast strarring our old friend Simon Exton as one of the hosts, with Episode One taking a look at 'The Quatermass Experiment'. We're very pleased to give this a little bit of publicity, as Simon really knows his stuff, and his wide-ranging video collection introduced me to all sorts of series in the early 90s. Once this is properly released, we'll give further details, but as I write it's only a few hours away, which is most exciting!

But in the meantime, we've said how we need to tie up things across our various platforms, so here's this week's round-up of our various videos.

We've been quietly pleased with the response to the YouTube versions of the 'Round The Archives' podcast and will be bringing them up to date, with the aim of uploading one of them per day. We're now up to Episode Eleven, which covers 'The Adventure Game', 'Children Of The Stones', 'Redcap' and our tribute to John Noakes, with help from Richard Marson, for which we are very grateful.

Episode Eleven Of 'Round The Archives' may be heard here, with a snazzy 'Dad's Army'-style logo courtesy of that nice Martin Holmes.

As a supplement to yesterday's blog post about 'Michael Bentine's Potty Time', we watched a few more episodes today, and can now present a video on the subject that can be seen here...

'The Diary Of A Nobody' was also recently covered in the blog and a video version (in which I do one of my dreaded Voices) can be seen here...

Finally, a copy of Robert Gillespie's book 'Are You going To Do That Little Jump?' arrived this morning, which turned out to be signed, much to our surprise. You can see us talking about his work on 'Keep It In The Family' in the video here...

So, no-one could accuse us of resting on our laurels, or even our hardies, wherever they may be found...

But with a bit of spare time on our hands, a certain Episode 25 is starting to draw our attention... It's our Silver Jubilee, which means we should hold a street party or something. But you'll have to bring your own sausage rolls, we're not made of money!

(By Andrew Trowbridge)

Michael Bentine's Potty Time

 Michael Bentine's Potty Time

First things first...

The plural of Potty is not Potties (as used on Wikipedia) but Pottys. It says this on the camera scripts and end credits and we like to get these details right if possible.

Network's recent sale of many Thames Television titles saw us finally cave in and snap up 'Michael Bentine's Potty Time'. It had always been on our Possible Purchases list, but the deal they were offering was too good to pass up.

The Complete First Series set also includes some of 'The Bumblies', Michael's 1954 show in which he adopts a real Mad Scientist look and interacts with the sinister-looking Bumblies who sleep on the ceiling, which only increases my anxiety about them.

The first episode, 'Treasure Island', hit the airwaves on 12th November 1973 and the 'TV Times' piece claimed that there were 200 Pottys, but I'm not intending to sit down and make a tally as we watch the episodes.

The scheduling leads to an episode being shown on Christmas Eve, so what better subject to educate the kids than the way the modern world has impacted upon 'Father Christmas'.

Clarence and his clapperboard opens the procedings as usual, then a pair of Pottys turn up, both claiming to be Father Christmas. Apparently there are so many kids these days, that multiple Santas are needed to cope with the workload.

Every Father Christmas is a member of the FCI, which stands for Father Christmas Intelligence Bureau. Although none of them seems intelligent enough to notice that the acronym for that should be FCIB...

We travel to the secret headquarters at the North Pole, taking a moment to admire the Northern Lights, a nice little nod to Michael Bentine's passion for science. His contributions to 'The Sky At Night' certainly make interesting viewing!

Everything is very modern, with messages coming in from all over the world, requiring the use of a computer, which is operated by gnomes Happy and Merry Christmas.

Happy referes to Michael as 'Giant', which is how the Pottys regard him generally. Though it is not clear why the Pottys come in two different sizes, unless they are distinct sub-species?

At the switchboard, Merry receives some orders for presents, allowing Michael (who does all the voices) to present us with a bewildering array of accents, some of which are even recognisable.

Which is still a better hit-rate than mine, I suppose...

The computer, which has some dangerous-looking exposed wiring on the front, dispenses some presents to Michael's delight.

The episode finds time to deal with the issue of kids possibly seeing their parents delivering the presents at night, but the bigger Father Christmas assures us that this means they are very special undercover deputies, working on behalf of the real Santas.

The sleigh arrives, pulled by Rudolph the Reindog who is now getting on for 2000 years old. Oddly, he does seem to be quite closely related to certain of the toy dogs who feature in 'Are You Being Served? : A Change Is As Good As A Rest'.

Rudolph's sleigh is only used on special occasions and deliveries are now achieved via a fleet of Supersonic Sleighs. We briefly see Number 14 coming in to land, in a sort of cut-price 'Thunderbirds' scene.

Michael says that this has opened his eyes, having never suspected that this is the way things are now done, but the Father Christmases claim it never seems to suprise the kids.

There's an outbreak of singing with a version of 'Jingle Bells' and in saying our goodbyes, Michael gets slightly confused as to which puppet is Happy and which one is Merry, but never mind.

He also briefly becomes possessed by the spirit of Leonard Sachs from 'The Good Old Days' as he invites everyone to sing along at come with a cry of "but chiefly your good selves!".  When saying his final goodbyes, he even has to shout to make himself heard over the various Potty voices, but he's only got himself to blame for that.

And all too soon, it's time to roll the end credits (not that they actually roll) and play a blast of the jaunty theme tune!

Production is cheap and cheerful, of course, with Producer / Director Leon Thau later to work on such fare as 'The Tomorrow People' and 'Whodunnit?'

The Pottys are operated by the Barry Smith Theatre Of Puppets, who also had a hand in fuelling my nightmares about the dreaded Humphrey Cushion from 'Hickory House', but let's not hold that against them.

They've a lot on their plate to do technically, and there's only one moment where the larger Father Christmas gets over-excited, spinning around and lifting up to give us a saucy glimpse of the pole stuck up his arse.

I never saw much of this show as a kid, but dipping into it today I really rather enjoyed myself, so in the end we made the right decision.

There's certainly enough to talk about here to do a full 'Round The Archives' article at some point. But let's watch a few more in the meantime...

(By Andrew Trowbridge)

'The Diary Of A Nobody'

'The Diary Of A Nobody'

Why should I not write a blog? I have often seen blogs by people I have never heard of and I fail to see, because I do not happen to me a Somebody, why mine should not be interesting...

First appearing in 'Punch', then later published as a book, 'The Diary Of A Nobody' by George and Weedon Grossmith is one of my favourite things from the 19th century and I've got it in paperback, hardback, audiobook (read by Martin Jarvis) and the DVD release of the 4-part BBC Four version starring Hugh Bonneville.

Our hero is Mr Charles Pooter, who is a decent, if rather pompous, chap who loves his wife Carrie and worries about his son Lupin. Incidentally, Lupin Pooter shares his name with 'Victorian Dad' from the strips in 'Viz' comic, which made me grin when I finally noticed the reference. Pooter works as a clerk to Mr Perkupp and takes his job very seriously, perhaps too much so.

There was a Ken Russell / John McGrath version on BBC Two in 1964, which I've seen, that shows all the characters, along with Mr Pooter's friends Cummings and Gowing. But the BBC Four version is simply Mr Pooter talking to the audience at home and Hugh Bonneville nails the character perfectly.

The trivia of his life is thoroughly entertaining as his visitors come off worse when the encounter the dreaded bootscraper or Mr Pooter becomes obsessed with covering everything in red enamel paint. This ends badly when he has a hot bath in the newly-red bathtub...

He goes on holiday to Broadstairs, wearing an outlandish straw helmet, never once acknowledging that he looks ridiculous. He likes a tot of whisky, but does not see why he should pay over the odds for it.

Pooter's pomposity is not a million miles away from Captain Mainwaring - indeed, there is a reading by Arthur Lowe that I'm listening to as I write this. He's a very familiar figure and effortlessly crosses the divide of all those years.

The BBC version screenplay is by Andrew Davies, but all he's had do is cut it down to fit the timeslot. It really does read as though it's much more modern than you might expect and Pooter's speech has a rhythm to it that for me frankly elevates it above much of the work of even Dickens.

It's probably one of those things you have to discover for yourself and the DVD is a very good place to start. We even once tweeted Hugh Bonneville about how much we loved it and he was kind enough to reply in character, which shows that he is rightly proud of his association with Mr Pooter.

There have been many fictional diaries over the years, but 'The Diary Of A Nobody' is by far my favourite. Its use of language is both precise and poetic with the intelligent humour never failing to cheer me up.

A little bit of Victorian magic.

'The Diary Of A Nobody' is available from BBC DVD - numbered BBCDVD2932.

(By Andrew Trowbridge)

Keep It In The Family

Keep It In The Family

We've been rationing 'Quatermass And The Pit' to one episode per night, as it's so good we don't want to use it all up at once. With each instalment lasting just over half an hour, we can have our usual cup of tea afterwards and still have time to slot in something short and undemanding if we feel like it.

Which is why we finally opened the 5-disc DVD set of 'Keep It In The Family', which is available from Network.

I'm not sure what it says about a series when the thing you remember most about it is a glove puppet lion with flyaway hair, but this show is over 38 years old now and not one that I used to watch particularly religiously.

Lisa says she was surprised how much the opening titles had stuck in her memory, with each of the four lead characters (Dudley and Muriel, plus their daughters Jacqui and Susan) in a window of their house.

The title of the series refers to the plot of the first episode in which the ground floor flat becomes vacant and the daughters decide to rent it themselves.

Dudley is a rather odd sort of chap, who illustrates a carton 'Barney - The Bionic Bulldog' when he can get around to it. He is no good at deadlines and seems to spend most of the two episodes we've so far seen finding excuses not to do any drawing.

The lion, by the way, is found up in the attic in the second episode along with some relics of Dudley's days in a skiffle group, including the obligatory washboard.

Looking at the back of the DVD, there are some decent guest actors, including Roy Kinnear and Burt Kwouk. Even the first episode has Neil McCarthy put in an appearance.

Our four leads are Robert Gillespie, Pauline Yates, Stacey Dorning and Jenny Quayle, who regenerates into Sabina Franklyn in the third season. Glyn Houston is Dudley's boss, Duncan, and has some familiar business getting wet thanks to a hosepipe when he turns up in episode two.

It runs for a grand total of 31 episodes over five seasons, with the first episode launching on Monday 7th January 1980, a day after 'Worzel Gummidge' encountered Barbara Windsor's Saucy Nancy.

It was never going to be the sort of show that would set the world alight, but coming from the reliable pen of 'George & Mildred's Brian Cooke, it's amiable enough stuff with a cup of post-'Quatermass' tea.

They can put that quote on the DVD packaging, if they want...

(By Andrew Trowbridge)