Second Home

Before I had the cold (which is not entirely over, but is much better now) I had a few things I was going to put into a post. They are now extremely random, mostly belated, and not equal, so apologies for a motley post, but I did want to note:


1. beccadg is having a lot of health issues and has a GoFundMe.


2. I saw two posts about Small Prophets, one talking about the influence of all the stopmotion children's animation in it, and another person saying that whatever you'd call the exact inverse of English folk horror, that's what Mackenzie Crook's work is. All of which smashed together in my head to make me go: OMG, he made Bagpuss for adults! (I mean, it's not, but also it is. And Bagpuss is also some sort of exact inverse of 70s folk horror, too. Artisanal children's TV in terms of being literally crafted by hand and its simple but beautiful storytelling structure.)


3. Before I got too ill to do such radical things as watch TV on my PC again, I managed to actually watch ep1 of Miami Medical (with Jeremy Northam and Lana Parrilla), and discovered that when you watch a full ep instead of just Lana clips, what's up with Jeremy Northam's accent is much clearer, in that it was never meant to be a US accent, just that his character had been working in Maryland for 10 years and the "I'm from Maryland, as you can tell by the accent" was actually ironic. Someone calls him "Mr Tea and Biscuits" in the next scene. (Most of the eps are there. Hopefully I shall be able to watch them sometime and all will become clearer than the random Lana snippets.)


4. sovay pointed me to uploaded episodes of The Expert on YouTube, including 2 from 1971 that I had managed to miss featured... James Maxwell! \o/ I was even too ill to manage watching this on my tablet for ages, too.

In true JM form he was very nervy and awkward and also unfortunately too gentle and unmanly to survive a small push in the 1970s. Alas. He is such a delicate 6"3 baritone flower, lol. He fell over in the beginning of part 2 and next thing I knew they were doing an autopsy on him and now I'm too worried about where this is going to watch the rest (yet). (The channel also seems to have a lot of rare stuff - this is a never released on DVD or repeated item, so they must have a collection of their own, presumably.)


5. Bookending this, Michael Keating, better known to me as Vila from Blake's 7 died when I was too numbed from the cold to really comment on it - and then yesterday, the news broke about Anthony Head, too, and I was very sad to hear both & both by all accounts, lovely people too. Michael had apparently had dementia for some years and after B7 worked mainly in theatre, and also got very into rambling, but he didn't need to do more TV to leave an impact: Vila was iconic, someone he made a very likeable and relatable figure in the midst of all the rebels vs. Federation struggles. I'm watching Sesskasays react to B7 for the first time and, in these early stages, Vila is her favourite. Mine too. I love all the characters, and adored Jacqeline as Servalan, but Vila is my favourite. He's the 'small man' archetype out of a fantasy story, living in a snarky fascist space universe. How could he not be?

I was late to the party with Buffy (although I remember watching the Gold Blend ads as a child!) but as a newbie librarian, I borrowed the VHS tapes from our library, and Giles was of course immediately my favourite, and then Anthony Head was always marvellous in everything. I hadn't dreamed we weren't going to get a few more years yet of unexpected bonus ASH in random TV or radio. He was in DW (audio and visual), Jonathan Creek's pilot, Cabin Pressure, but 3 things other than Giles I'll remember him for, particularly:- his first TV appearance in Enemy at the Door, where he played the Martels' son Clive, trapped on the island after a misguided raid by the British army goes wrong; an outstanding performance in s1 of Spooks, where he played Tom Quinn's mentor, jaded and screwed up, in a tragic crash-and-burn guest turn (N.B. warning for all the things, this is Spooks); and at the other end of the scale, being absolutely marvellous and hilarious every episode of 5 series of Bleak Expectations as the villainous Mr Gently Benevolent, whether exercising his trademark evil laugh, reincarnated as a pigeon, reformed, unreformed, or cheeseboarding Pip (with a break for tea and biscuits). It got me through a rough summer in 2013. Washing up badly is not the same as washing up evilly.