Christmas is a comin'

Every year without fail I always picture Christmas shopping as a joyous exercise, with cobbled streets, carol singers, chestnuts, and loveable street-urchins in equal measure. The reality is somewhat different: shuffling round an identi-kit shopping centre, sweating away in layers of wool while their heating blasts out at max usually accompanied by the musical stylings of Slade played at 100 decibels (do decibels even go up to 100? I've no idea, being completely inept at anything remotely technical to do with music, anyway this is beside the point). Now this year an ugly new trend has surfaced, while the shuffling and sweating remain unchanged there is a new breed of contemptable trash to slowly make your brain trickle out of your ear as you shop. For now almost every single store seems to believe that the way to make you part with your cash is to assault you with "songs that everybody loves" (TM H. Broadfoot 2003) as interpreted by Hollywood's favourite harridan. Not twigged yet? I speak of the Mama Mia soundtrack, featuring none other than Meryl "mummy what's wrong with that lady's face" Streep. The worst part? The fact that as you struggle to force your way to the till everyone around you is inanely mumbling the lyrics to Fernando with a dead look in their eyes to match the darkness of Streep's soul. Shudder.

In attept to dispel this blight that threatens to spoil the festive season I offer instead my Christmas playlist. Of course nothing beats a good traditional carol (with I Saw Three Ships and In The Bleak Midwinter vying for supremacy in my head) but I've here stuck to tracks by artists who would mostly be summed up as Alternative (no Jackson 5 or Aled Jones here) and tried to make sure that they all have a decent link to Christmas (although some are more tenuous than others) so without further rambling from me, I present to you Liger's Christmas Playlist 2008! -

1) Sufjan Stevans - Hey Guys! It's Christmas Time!
You have to applaud a man who has devoted a whole album to Christmas songs, he'll be popping up again in this list.
2) Eels - Everything's Gonna Be Cool This Christmas
Mr E rocks out, festive style.
3) The Go! Team - The Ice Storm
If snow was musical this is what it would sound like.
4) Bessie Smith - At The Christmas Ball
The Queen of Jazz's ode to Christmas piss-ups. Knowing her reputation I bet her Christmas parties were awesome. Prohibition-bisexual-sassy awesome. That's a very specific kind of awesome.
6) Low - Just Like Christmas
An absolutely lovely song from their Christmas E.P. (although the rest of the songs are a bit of a letdown).
7) The BBC National Orchestra of Wales - The Stowaway
The one concession to geekery on this list, this melancholy festive tune featured in last year's Doctor Who Christmas special. Thankfully the producers resisted the temptation to get Kylie to sing it.
8) No Doubt - Oi! To The World
Vandals cover, from the days before Gwen Stefani was an arsehole. What happened to you Gwen? You use to be cool.
7) Sufjan Stevans - Come On! Let's Boogie to the Elf Dance
How could a song with that title not feature?
8) Eels - Christmas Is Going To the Dogs
Becasuse in our house as dog is for Christmas (as it's the one time the Grandparents visit. Just to make clear they have a dog, they're not dogs themselves. But they are racists).
9) Joy Zipper - Christmas Song
Not particuarly festive sounding, but very cute.
10) British Sea Power - Victorian Ice
The most tenuosly linked song on this list, but ice is christmassy, isn't it? Also the Victorians are responsible for the modern version of Christmas, so there.
11) Sufjan Stevans - We Three Kings
It's that man again! One of my favourite carols arranged beatifully, when the recorders kick in it sends shivers up my spine. In a good way.

Companion Idol – part one

With all the rumour mongering and speculation surrounding the casting of the 11^th Doctor for the 2009 series of Doctor Who (my hopes are pinned on Chiwetel Ejifor or Richard Coyle) most commentators have overlooked the fact that when the show returns there will also be a new lady in the Doctor’s life. So to fill this void of comment, I give you Companion Idol in which the finest ladies in television will battle each other for the role using those big sticks off Gladiators (...or more accurately, in which I suggest a few possible candidates for the vacancy in the TARDIS).

Now predicting the next companion is a rather harder exercise than predicting the next Doctor as we don’t know what form the character will take. I think it’s pretty safe to assume that the character will be a) female b) British and c) attractive. Now it’s been observed (primarily by Scott Grey in his excellent 'Destrii pitch') that Doctor Who Companions usually fall into two main categories: ‘Girls Next Door’ or ‘Mrs Peels’. This first post will look at ‘Girls Next Door’, characters like Rose, Sarah Jane, Tegan etc, characters who are pretty and brave but who are grounded in ‘realism’ and serve as audience identification figures.

Michelle Ryan

As Seen In: Bionic Woman, Jekyll, Eastenders

Former Eastender Michelle Ryan was by far the best thing about the ill-fated Bionic Woman remake and is rumoured to have been close to getting the part of Martha Jones in Season Three (and frankly would've been better in the role than Freema Agyeman). She also has links with new showrunner Steven Moffat, having appeared in his series Jekyll. Unfortunately she may be tied up with that other BBC Saturday Teatime drama, Merlin, but hopefully it will be axed soon, being an utter pile of dirge.

Olivia Hallinan

As Seen In: Sugar Rush, Lark Rise to Candleford, Torchwood: Out of Time

Olivia Hallinan has starred in a number of poplar dramas, specifically Sugar Rush and Lark Rise to Candleford, but she’s still not exactly a household name. Doctor Who would be a great opportunity to break out of the ‘bonnets and corsets’ trap that many British actresses fall into. Incidentally Hallinan is no stranger to the Doctor Who universe having excelled in the Torchwood episode Out of Time.

Sheridan Smith

As Seen In: Jonathan Creek, Two Pints of Lager, Doctor Who (BBC7 Radio Series)

It’s high time there was a northerner in the TARDIS! Having featured in David Renwick’s Love Soup Sherridan Smith has been cast as the new assistant in Renwick’s Jonathan Creek. Although as Smith also plays Lucie Miller, companion to Paul McGann’s Doctor on BBC7 it’s unlikely that producers would choose to transplant that character (or a similar one) to the TV show as it would show a lack of originality.

This is what merchandise was invented for!

...and the winner of the award for 'most obvious merchandising opportunity of the decade' is Character Options for the cuddly Adipose! Now I've managed to avoid pissing away money on the endless flow of trash with a Doctor Who logo on it which has flooded the UK since 2005 (although I am sorely tempted by the classic series Robots of Death figures...) I feel I might fall at this hurdle. Look at him...isn't he adorable! If only I was six I could throw an "I WANT ONE" tantrum, as it is I'll have to settle for a whiney blog. If anyone reading this wants to make my Christmas...

Sweet Dreams...

Down the Rabbit Hole

First broadcast on BBC1 in 1966 (and released on DVD in 2003 by the British Film Institute) Jonathan Miller’s Alice in Wonderland is quite simply the best adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s masterpiece ever committed to film. Rather than offering an assortment of slightly embarrassed actors in unconvincing animal masks, Miller instead opts to depict the bestiary of creatures Alice meets in human form. Here the viewer has the fun of spotting familiar sixties faces from the panoply of superb actors involved including Peter Cook, Peter Sellers, Wilfrid ‘Steptoe’ Brambell, Michael Gough, and Leo McKern and Angelo Muscat from The Prisoner. By having the animals depicted as human Miller plays upon the interpretation of the book as a satire of the absurdities of Victorian society, with various characters decked out in military regalia and aristocratic finery.

The stand-out achievement of the film is its treatment of Alice herself. Alice is an incredibly difficult character to bring to the screen as so much of her personality depends on how the reader interprets her actions. Here Alice is an vacant oddly detached figure, rarely even looking at the bizarre characters she is engaging with. Anne-Marie Mallik excels at delivering Alice’s deadpan reactions to the insanity surrounding her, standing out as a voice of reason in a world of madness, yet also as one who is drifting, and never quite there, emphasising the dreamlike nature of Wonderland.

Miller obviously had a great understanding of the source material and weaves many aspects of Alice-mythology into the design of the film. Alice herself looks remarkably like the little girls who feature so prominently in Dodgson’s own (slightly unsettling) photography, as does the world of country gardens and bearded men she inhabits. Miller also adds the lovely touch of having Dodgson’s own, rarely seen, illustrations accompany the film’s end credits. So although the visuals are far removed from the familiar Tenniel illustrations they are deeply indebted to other less known, but just as important visual Alice motifs.

The programme benefits greatly from being shot entirely on film, rather than the disconcerting mish-mash of location film and studio-bound videotape familiar from many BBC productions of the period. Despite being made for television Miller’s Film is incredibly cinematic and the DVD benefits from a crystal clear print. The BFI have also dug out another interesting oddity from the archives to bolster their DVD release, an eight minute silent version of Alice in Wonderland from 1908. Although not in the greatest condition (which is entirely forgivable for footage nearly 100 years old) the film gives a fascinating insight into early cinema’s camera-trickery much of which, for example Alice’s shrinking and growing, still stands up today.

Also languishing in an archive somewhere is Dennis Potter’s 1965 Play for Today Alice which tells the life of Rev. Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll), and stars Doctor Who’s Deborah Watling as Alice Liddell. Given the enduring appeal of both Carroll and Potter it’s high time this film saw the light of day, either as a BFI DVD release or on BBC FOUR, c’mon…pretty please?

Welcome to Murdersville! You'll Never Leave!

As BBC FOUR’s re-run of the colour Emma Peel Avengers episodes draws to a close we come to Murdersville, an odd little episode which both epitomises the Steed/Peel era and is also paradoxically atypical. While scintillating chemistry, witty banter and cheeky innuendo familiar from the era abounds there is also something else in the mix that hints at the changes on the horizon for Avengerland. The episode starts off by giving us a rare glimpse into Mrs Peel’s past when a childhood friend, newly arrived in England after years abroad, invites her to his place in the country. Needless to say, sinister things are afoot in the seemingly picturesque village near said friend’s house and soon he is dead and Emma is left to face the entire deranged community single handed.

What makes this episode so unusual is the level of realism and violence the characters encounter which at times becomes genuinely sinister and upsetting. Take for example the scene in which the colonel’s assistant is attacked and killed by two villagers who take a sadistic delight in smashing the colonel’s belongings (which the assistant is meant to be looking after) before finishing off the jovial assistant. It’s a far cry from the usual comic-book shenanigans and diabolical masterminds we’re used to every week.

In some ways the episode pre-figures the Tara King season to come in which the ‘mastermind’ storylines and more fantastic elements of the Peel era were dropped in favour of a more realistic flavour. While this move was undoubtedly a major miss-step in the show’s format, Murdersville shows how such a move could have been successful. While the sense of danger is heightened and Mrs Peel seems in genuine danger for once, the show retains its’ clever sense of humour, brilliantly depicted in the scenes in which Steed arrives to rescue Mrs Peel from the dungeon in which she is held.

As such the episode feels like it bookends the Peel era, exemplifying the period’s style but also harking forward to Tara’s tenure. One can’t help but feel that with a few tweaks, the episode would have mad a perfect swansong for Emma Peel. Simply by swapping Emma’s ‘childhood friend’ for ‘missing husband’ and having him survive the episode we could have had a poignant and exiting final Peel episode. What we actually got was a complete train wreck, in the form of The Forget Me-Knot, but that’s another story entirely…