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teenage
New viewers begin here: even if you know nothing of the previous five series of Waterloo Road, you could start to enjoy the drama set in a failing comprehensive in Greater Manchester with the opener to series six, as the writers have rather winningly taken the precaution of barely mentioning anything that went on in previous years - not even the teen suicide pact that ended series five. And, as with many a failing school, some of last term’s teachers have departed (also unmentioned), including those played by Denise Welch and Angela Griffin, but back comes former Waterloo Road pupil Janeece (Chelsee Healey), now up the duff and, defying our belief, she's the new school secretary.
Far be it from me to complain when the eternal geek is reborn as a man of action. But perhaps I'm not sufficiently a video game kinda guy - Okay, let's come clean, I've never played one - to get into Scott Pilgrim vs The World, the inoffensively if incessantly violent romcom in which an eerily youthful Michael Cera gets to go "Ka-pow!" an awful lot before he finally gets a girl that doesn't in any actual way seem a sensible match. There are chortles to be had, and Lord knows the (English) director Edgar Wright keeps enough visual balls going simultaneously to ensnare even the most ADD-afflicted viewer.
Comic Greg Davies has made us wait for his solo debut - he’s in his early forties, appeared at the Fringe as part of sketch group We Are Klang for a few years and more latterly has been starring in The Inbetweeners on Channel 4 as Mr Gilbert. Before that he was a drama teacher in a secondary school for 13 years. But boy, was it worth the wait.
Rob Rouse is one of those hugely likeable comedians guaranteed to make you laugh and so it proves with The Great Escape, prompted by his family’s recent move to the Peak District, an expertly crafted autobiographical narrative with lots of fresh observational comedy thrown in for good measure.
This quirky, compelling little Cutting Edge film never really worked out what it wanted us to think about what we were seeing, which in the end played to its advantage. Because it avoided the sorry fate – namely, shoehorning its participants into an ironic cul de sac then pointing at them and sniggering loudly - of TV programmes whose entire raison d’être begins and ends with the creation of a cynically arresting title, the results ended up being opaque, neatly observed and even rather moving.
Finding a cheerful Australian film these days is quite a challenge. Having discovered the particular affinity between Australia’s parched and expansive landscape and the genres of horror and misery memoir, the nation’s filmmakers have set about exploiting it with an enthusiasm that reliably finds a pile of corpses – physical or emotional – bloodily heaped by the time the closing credits roll. Beautiful Kate is no exception, but if you can brave its confronting gaze you’ll find one of this year’s most delicate and accomplished films staring back at you.
Where can or will television’s thirst for tabloid anthropology fetch up? In previous tribal exchanges, wives have been swapped, geeks have gone to babe school, thugs to boot camp, WAGs to townships, Papua New Guineans to the big smoke. Posh girls have lately been parachuted into Peckham. Is there no social grouping so polarised that some bright spark at BBC Three or Channel 4 won’t want to thrust them into an alien environment for our voyeuristic pleasure? Porn stars to hang with the Taliban? It could yet happen. Lib Dems to lie down with Tories? Oh, they already did that.
Dominic Savage’s new two-part film, part of BBC Two’s renewed commitment to intelligent and challenging drama (we shall see; fewer biopics please), comes billed as a look at modern teenage life, although it seemed more drawn to long silences - or the sound of the wind in the trees - and the seemingly desolate land and seascapes of the Lincolnshire coast. Your eyes kept being drawn to the edge of the screen, away from the young protagonists, Lindsey and Robert, which I suppose was meant to lend Dive a fatalistic edge, or a sense of universality.
We love Gareth Malone, don’t we? We are big fans of the Pied Piper of primetime. And so we should be. The youth of today seem impressively eager to down tools, put away childish things like knives and drugs and safe-cracking equipment, and follow this slightly weedy and totally uncool choirmaster out onto the concert platform. Our glorious new coalition should be using him to tackle crime. No sooner does he move into a tough working-class ‘hood wielding nothing more than a Michael Jackson songbook than the figures for shootings, muggings and moochings about on street corners drop through the floor. He’s got a bit of a steep ascent with his new task, mind.
It's not the bobbies on the beat that are getting younger, it's the bands. Bombay Bicycle Club formed while at school in north London's Crouch End and were already making a name for themselves when they left full-time education in 2008. Rock and roll domination is on the curriculum instead, thanks to the success of last year's debut album, I Had the Blues but I Shook Them Loose.
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Mad Men, Series 4, BBC Four
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Written on Thursday, 09 September 2010 01:33
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Janelle Monáe, KOKO
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Written on Thursday, 09 September 2010 01:33
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What I'm Reading: Conductor Peter Phillips
Next to choose some favourite books is conductor Peter Phillips, whose touring lifestyle can make "summer reading" something of a year-round phenomenon. When Phillips founded the vocal ensemble the Tallis Scholars in 1973 it was a hobby among university friends – a “haphazard” group, as the director himself describes it. Decades later, with more than 1,000 concerts and 50 disks…
Written on Thursday, 09 September 2010 00:20
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Raphael: Cartoons and Tapestries for the Sistine Chapel, Victoria & Albert Museum
To mark Pope Benedict’s controversial visit to Britain next week, the V&A have mounted an exhibition devoted to four of the 10 tapestries Raphael designed for the Sistine Chapel – the first time they’ve ever been seen in this country. Depicting the Acts of St Peter and St Paul, these bright, vivid works were made to hang on the lower…
Written on Thursday, 09 September 2010 00:00
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