Monday, March 03, 2008
Textual identity
WORD! Murder Most Famous, BBC Two, 1.30pm Labels: BBC Three, BBC Two, Mrs In-Betweeny, murder, Murder Most Famous, transsexuals, TV
BIRD! Mrs In-Betweeny, BBC Three, 9.00pm
'They' say that everyone has a book inside them, and celebrities are apparently no exception. BBC Two gives its daytime schedule a bit of a shake every day this week with Murder Most Famous, in which "queen of the psychological thriller" (thanks Wikipedia, and wherever you got it from!) Minette Walters tutors six celebrities in the art of writing a crime fiction novel. The celebs complete daily writing assignments, research the police procedures (paperwork) behind the investigations and meet with "real criminals and victims" (presumably, if we're talking about murder, they mean the victims' families) along the way, and Minette uses her expert knowledge of the methods of murder to quite literally (not literally!) "bump off" the most mediocre writer at the end of each show.
As a species, it's fair to say that celebrities know as much about the tormented psyche and complicated psychological states of a potential murderer as anyone, so it'll be interesting to see how this plays out. How many of them will create heroes with exactly the same personality traits, haunted by the memories of the same adolescent traumas, and of exactly the same physical type (or basically the same but two inches taller) as themselves? And how many of these heroes will have names just two vowels and a consonant away from their own? The hopeful-writer roster includes Sherrie 'Soap and chat' Hewson, Angela 'Soap and Postman Pat' Griffin, Matt 'Rogue Traders and leather' Allwright, Brendan 'Strictly Come Dancing' Cole, Diarmuid 'Gardens!' Gavin and Kelvin 'Twat, former Sun editor and no stranger to creating fiction' MacKenzie, with the most promising writer at the end of the week having the opportunity for their crime novel to be published by PanMacmillan as a 'Quick Read' (don't pull that face, they're busy people) for World Book Day. Authorly good!
Over on BBC Three (future! modern!) there's another one of those hour-long drama pilots that may or may not spawn a series - we simply DO NOT KNOW - with ridiculously talented TV goddess Amelia 'Coronation Street, Brass Eye, Big Train, Jam, I'm Alan Partridge and State of Play, amongst many others, and currently doing a very good job as Alex Drake's mother in Ashes to Ashes as well, thank you very much for asking' Bullmore starring as the uncle-turned-aunt-turned-saviour of the recently-orphaned Winslow children as they struggle to cope with the remnants of their embarrassing family in the aftermath of their parents' deaths.
The initial signs for Mrs In-Betweeny look promising, with other welcome and female names in the cast list including Rebekah 'Pulling' Staton, Adjoa 'Oooh, lots of things, but mainly Casualty and Doctor Who' Andoh and Lisa 'We still haven't forgotten she was in Grange Hill' Hammond. Most thrillingly of all, it's written by Caleb Ranson, creator of ITV's wonderful, hugely-underrated and ill-fated soaptacular gem Night and Day. Obviously by those standards this would appear to be pretty normal fare, but when you've had a lengthy spell working with ghosts, Geishas, time-stopping strangers and virginity fairies, sometimes gender realignment, cosmetically-enhanced grannies and death by falling frozen urine are as good as a rest.
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Monday, March 26, 2007
Trial stand by you
TESTIFY! Coronation Street, ITV1, 7.30 & 8.30pm Labels: Coronation Street, ITV1, murder, Soap, TV
Soap trials: they've been relatively scarce since Brookside finished, and they're either always boring (rape ones) or not necessarily always boring (murder/attempted murder ones). The nice thing about murder trials is that the victim isn't present to get all self-righteous or sit in the courthouse toilets crying, although a member of their family is usually on hand to make a big, angry, tedious fuss on their behalf. So Tracy Barlow deserves a big round of applause right from the start for choosing to murder Charlie Stubbs, a man who (so far) hasn't appeared to have any family whatsoever, leaving the stage open for the merry folk of Coronation Street to parade through the witness box, attacking reality and fact from all angles and generally lowering local property prices as they pursue various personal agendas or simply portray Tracy as a big old lying cow.
Slick Tracy's initial plan of making the entire community believe Charlie was battering her / ironing her arm has fallen by the wayside somewhat, with both Maria and Jason solemnly swearing that, occasional careless handling of Shelley's earrings aside, Charlie never laid a finger on women in That Way. Wednesday sees Claire take to the stand in support of her pretend friend after weeks of being brainwashed by the sound of Trick Tracy flinging plates at the party wall, but her mid-2006 post-natal mental dip (didn't that get sorted out efficiently!) leaves her evidence open to question. And Friday sees the testimony of everyone's favourite horny, evil and curiously-orange teenager, David Platt, but will his dick swing in Wick(ed) Tracy's favour after she failed to give him her fuck before the trial?
And then there's Deirdre. Poor, confused, devastated Deirdre, who only last night had her suspicions confirmed when Tracy owned up to the whole scheme and asked her mother to commit perjury for her. Of course, Deirdre's a woman who knows what it's like to be on the inside of a prison cell, and naturally she wants Tracy to avoid a similar fate, but can she lie in court, especially with a seething Ken glowering at the proceedings like a man who's just discovered that the stepdaughter he raised as his own and recently remortgaged his house for in order to fund the very expensive defense counsel she requested after committing an act of manslaughter which he's just discovered from his panic-stricken wife was actually (extremely) pre-meditated murder is a murdering bitch? Well, that's up to Deirdre, but whatever she decides to do she'll tackle it like a turkey staring down the blade of a carving knife. Much like the carving knife Charlie wasn't actually going to stab Tracy with, in fact.
Perhaps the greatest joy is the fact that this is the murder trial of a character who, lengthy absences and regenerations aside, has been part of Coronation Street since birth, and who gradually developed into one of the all-time great, completely horrific, self-absorbed soap monsters. Whichever way the trial goes she'll be leaving afterwards, but it's testament to the wonderful people behind the typewriters that after four years of Tracy Barlow (version Kate 4ord.0) tearing holes in the lives of her family and neighbours, they've come up with an exit storyline that outdoes all her previous exploits and dragged in half the cast to enjoy the fun.
Good luck, Tracy! We're rooting for you.
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Thursday, January 18, 2007
Horses' heads in pigses' sheds
SUSPECT! Emmerdale, ITV1, 7.00pm.
So! It’s Chas’s turn to be fingered for The Murder Of Tom King, and it’s not looking good. Earlier in the week the police dug the horse head statue that was stolen from Home Farm on the night of the murder out of the shit in the Dingles’ pigsty, and Eli was pulled in on a standard charge of Burglary By Dingle. But with the horse head-shaped bruises on Tom King’s corpse matching the statue, it looks like there’s more to the robbery than meets the eye – at least to dodgy police chief Vaughan, who’s been sniffing the hem of Venus Flytrap-faced Rosemary’s skirt since her brand new pocket-sized husband snuffed it on Christmas Day.
Chas’s fingerprints are all over the statue and, after Rosemary provoked a violent outburst (not unlike the violent outburst Chas directed at Tom King on his wedding day, in fact) from her in front of the lusty policeman on Tuesday, it looks like she’s well and truly in the pig shit. But don’t worry, Chas! There’s still a whole bunch of other suspects to go through yet, and maybe, just maybe, the statue will turn out to be one of a pair, and by then it’ll be someone else’s turn to get hauled in for interrogation. Hopefully someone quite pointless and dispensable. Like, say, Terry.
Rosemary is certainly the viewers’ choice of suspect over on ITV’s beautiful but fiddly and annoying Who Killed Tom King? interactive investigative internet experience, and our own suspicions about her were only reinforced by the sinister text message she sent us after we voted for her in the online murder poll. (Oh, Rosemary! You should know better than to put your name at the end of the message if you’re trying to intimidate us.) So far we’ve exchanged e-mails with Viv, argued with Shadrach, hacked into Jimmy’s computer, read Edna’s personal correspondence, rummaged through a whole bunch of offices and private residences and peeped through the keyhole in Jasmine’s bedroom door (hmmm). And apparently that was only four days’ work! Sod that. We’ll leave it for a few weeks until it’s Carl King’s turn to be Main Suspect and we might get the chance to look at him in the shower or something.
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