If someone acts and sounds like Superman, then he probably is, and two out of three ain’t bad.
Tyler Hoechlin is at least 300 times better looking than I could ever hope to be. But, to me at least, he just didn’t quite personify the Superman look - he’s an alternative to the symmetrical, strong jawed features we’re used to. And I still can’t get used to those weird cape brackets on the shoulders.
But he wore it well.
In every other aspect, however, this was the best Superman we’ve had in many many years, with a warmth, charisma and humility which has been especially missing of late. The easy authority and sheer likeability of his performance reminded me most of George Reeves. Even without the costume and superpowers, you’d be drawn to this figure and inspired by him.
It sounds simple when put like this - and makes you wonder why so many have struggled with the concept recently. Let people be afraid of Batman, but you should want to BE Superman.
And despite achieving all of this, Hoechlin still managed to deliver a portrayal which didn’t eclipse his cousin in her own show. Bravo sir, and I hope you come back, one day.
Which brings me to the Supergirl series itself. I don’t want to be unkind - as a friend pointed out, this is a family show - but now that Superman has retuned to Metropolis I doubt I’ll be tuning in again.
Perhaps the gritty Netflix Marvel series have just spoilt me for anything less than believable, flawed characters, rather than pretty people delivering Saturday morning cartoon dialogue.
But ultimately, I’m happy that there’s a bright and breezy Kryptonian bearing that shield and fighting for truth and justice, and glad that her viewing figures don’t need me.
Just super - you wait for years, and then two come along at the same time...
We watched the last ever episode of Penny Dreadful this week - a wholly unique series which falls perfectly into this series of posts about 'monster mash-ups'. Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster and his intended Bride, a Wolf Man or two, Dorian Gray, Doctor Jekyll and various witches and demons all collided over the three years which this series lasted.
Not all of these people are quite human. Hardly any, actually...
But none of these figures were mere archetypes, they were all as complex and nuanced as any of the programme’s human characters. To say this was The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen done right is to pay disservice to both works - Penny Dreadful was like nothing else on television, stately in it’s pacing, utterly unpredictable and sometimes infuriating in it’s determination to avoid convention.
Oh how I gnashed my teeth in frustration when they introduced the very great David Warner as Van Helsing, no less, only to kill him off in the following episode!
Ethan's real last name is Talbot and he has an affinity with wolves.
Nope, nothing sinister here...
But above all, this was one of the most beautifully shot period drama TV I’ve ever seen - absolutely suited to a huge cinema screen - particularly the wild west vistas of this last season. Pause any frame from any moment of this series and you could frame it to hang it on your wall.
Victorian factories on the Thames - it's like being there
Eva Green’s Vanessa Ives was arguably the central character, initially drawn into events through there friendship with a certain Mina Murray. Mina doesn’t survive her encounter with a particular Transylvanian Count in this story, but her father Sir Malcolm (played impeccably by a grizzled but formidable Timothy Dalton) does. He becomes Vanessa’s protector and they gather an extraordinary league about them, all with their own secrets and dark pasts.
Dark events always centre on Vanessa - she's a spook magnet
To try and précis the dark and spiralling twists the series took is a fool’s errand, but moments stand out above the others. The first appearance of the Frankenstein creature and Greys portrait are unforgettable but for me Billie Piper’s Lily has the most startling scene. In the process of leaving her cringing creator Victor Frankenstein after terrorising him into submission, she suddenly turns and retrieves a bouquet of flowers he had naively offered. Her arm darts out like a striking snake, attention utterly focussed on this one action as if he no longer even exists, and then she’s gone. Something about this explosion of animalistic intensity in a harmless, even endearing, act is very unsettling.
Billie Piper as Lily Frankenstein - she's nobody's Bride.
It hasn’t been a flawless ride. Season two took a swerve from the Dracula story to involve us in what seemed to be a very long encounter with a coven of demonic sorceresses. It had it’s moments, but seemed to lose momentum and meander a little, concluding unsatisfactorily in one of those hallucinatory ‘confronting your own guilty past’ sequences.
(A 4:43 effects reel for Penny Dreadful season 3 - well worth a look.)
This final year was an absolute return to form. Every character given more depth, and some welcome new ones added, particularly Victorian adventuress Catriona Hartdegen, played by Perdita Weeks with an unusual delivery which makes it appear as if she’s being dubbed.
A lengthy interlude in the United States provides a fascinating Western adventure with added werewolves and Brian Cox, before returning to London, and Vanessa, both now in the sway of Dracula. The silent, fog-shrouded city, abandoned by the living and haunted by rats and ragged clusters on the undead, has all the elements for a worthy sequel to Bram Stoker’s novel.
The final showdown...
But now Penny Dreadful is gone, the usual masterpiece title sequence replaced with the simple caption ‘The End’. Victorian London will never seem so sumptuous, or foreboding, again - and these familiar characters may not be re-interpreted so memorably for a very long time.
Batman v Superman begins next week, but the most interesting character may not even be in the title.
Brilliant artwork by Doug Chiang showing live-action depictions
of Wonder Woman, forty years apart: Lynda Carter (left) and Gal Gadot.
I have to admit I’m going a little cold on the thought of DC's upcoming big screen spectacular. I love Henry Cavill’s Superman, (although this wasn’t the film I wanted to see him in next), and Batman is well, glowery and gravelly-voiced, and I don’t doubt Affleck could turn out to be the definitive portrayal.
But the bright spot for me is finally seeing a live action depiction of the third member of DC comic's trinity.
Gal Gadot, soon to be seen as the first big screen Wonder Woman
As usual, I don’t have any comic book fan credentials to speak of - to me and possibly most other people, Wonder Woman is still Lynda Carter.
The former Miss World USA starred in two closely related but separately produced series between 1976 and ’78 (the single, WWII-set Wonder Woman season for ABC followed by the contemporary New Adventures of Wonder Woman for CBS).
Given that superheroes on television were still equated with the campy ‘60s Batman series, and that the mid-seventies were hardly noted for progressive media representations of women, I recall that the Amazing Amazon actually fared pretty well on the tube.
Yes, she had a figure which impacted our developing libidos like a crashing invisible plane, but Carter also managed to depict a strong, sensitive, inspiring and intelligent character who still served as a role model for young women for generations afterwards; long before (the obviously derivative) warrior princess Xena. Her sincere portrayal also gave a comic-book character 'verisimilitude' before Christopher Reeve ever took to the air.
All hail to the Princess, baby
So in a week’s time Gal Gadot (and we wish her all the luck in the world) will become the second actor ever to play Wonder Woman in a live-action production?
Actually, she will be the fifth.
Join me in the result of a long journey down an internet rabbit-hole which convinced me that the more you think you know, the less you actually do...
The first actress to play Wonder Woman in person was another Linda - Linda Harrison (Charlton Heston’s love-interest ‘Nova’ in the first two Planet of the Apes films).
Linda Harrison as the first live-action Wonder Woman
Admittedly, it was only in a 5-minute pitch for a television movie pilot by Batman producer William Dozier, and the concept deviated wildly from the established history of the character, resulting in something truly dreadful - exactly the kind of sleazy campiness which the '70s series managed to avoid. It will come as no surprise to anyone that this wasn’t picked up.
In the intersts of completism, here are 5 minutes of your life you’ll never get back again - but if I were you I really, really wouldn’t bother: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilIodk5wQ6c
The first time Wonder Woman was successfully broadcast on the small screen, she was blonde:
Now, that's incredible - Cathy Lee Crosby as Wonder Woman (?)
Then-tennis star Cathy Lee Crosby (later to find fame on the That’s Incredible series) donned a costume completely unlike anything the character ever wore in the comics, to combat the mighty Ricardo Montalban in a 1974 ABC TV movie. No I’m not making it up - here's an image to prove it.
As obscure as this production has now become, it still generated enough interest to eventually lead to the Lynda Carter adventures which we all remember so fondly.
And perhaps because the memory of Ms Carter is held in so much affection, it took another thirty-two years for the character to (almost) reappear on television.
In the interim years nominating an actress to play the Amazing Amazon was a popular pass-time for fans. Sandra Bullock was always cited in the ‘90s, to be followed by almost every dark-haired actress in existence, from Jennifer Connolly, to Kate Beckinsale, to Megan Fox (remember her?)
However, another Megan really was a contender. Mad Max Director George Miller cast Australian actress Megan Gale as Wonder Woman in his 2008 Justice League film, but as this was aborted before filming began due to a writer’s strike, including her here would be dubious. Except, apparently-genuine shots of Ms Gale in costume came to light recently, so here she is what we very nearly could have had...
Megan Gale was cast as the first big screen Wonder Woman in 1998
Perhaps the next closest to a live-action realisation of the character was Cobie Smulders. Joss Whedon wrote two Wonder Woman film scripts with her in mind, before eventually casting the actress in The Avengers and his Agents of Shield television series, when the project collapsed. Smulders did, however, voice Wonder Woman in The Lego Movie (2014) making her the first big screen incarnation after all!
Cobie Smulders, (looking quite a lot like Lynda Carter here),
voiced Wonder woman in The Lego Movie
And speaking of Agents of Shield, not only has it featured an actress playing one of Marvel’s closest approximations to Wonder Woman (and therefore another fan candidate): Jaimie Alexander as the Thor film's Lady Sif, but someone who actually did play her.
Not a wondrous Amazon, but a marvel-lous Valkyrie (sort of).
Jaimie Alexander as Asgard's Lady Sif
In 2010, Shield's statuesque Adrianne Palicki became the first to finally play Wonder Woman in over three decades - in a TV Movie pilot which unfortunately was never even screened.
Adrianne Palicki was not well-served by the script of the aborted 2010 TV movie
She certainly looked the part, (the only actress invited to test for the role), but once again, the concept of the character was unnecessarily reshaped.
At least we weren’t given the by-now cliched ‘origin story’ approach, but instead a jaded, cynical and even sometimes cruel character who has lived in the ‘World of Men’ for some time, and become some kind of corporate brand and media celebrity.
My feeling is that with a far better script, (even either of Lynda Carter’s TV pilots), Palicki could still be Diana Prince now.
But instead we are finally getting Wonder Woman on the big screen: first guest-starring in an unsightly scuffle between two testosterone-over-dosed Capes who ought to know better, followed by her own feature film. Early footage can be seen here:
Wonder Woman fights the Nazis, just like old times
There’s been a little bit of thin-shaming (TM) after news of Gadot’s casting, (regardless of the fact that the actress is also a former Israeli army combat instructor who put on 17kg of muscle for this role), but she certainly looks the business from what we’ve seen in the trailers.
Despite the character's history of handing the titular male heroes their own bottoms in occasional clashes, I for one hope that we will see some of the gentleness and feminine wisdom in Batman v Superman, which Carter brought to the role all those years ago.
If Wonder Woman has to act like just another posturing male to succeed in the 'World of Men', then I think the character will lose much of her wonder.
And in the upcoming film, would a ‘power pirouette’ be out of the question?
More wonderful artwork, this time by Phil Jimenez, evoking the spirit of Lynda Carter's Wonder Woman.
A science fiction writer, inventor and undersea explorer investigated myths in his own television series, and unfortunately became the target of a particularly unpleasant one, himself, many years later.
Arthur C Clarke 1917 - 2008
In the '70s it was Leonard Nimoy who brought the world’s mysteries into our living room via his acclaimed In Search Of series.
His successor in the early ‘80s was a bald, bespectacled West-Countryman. He didn’t have Nimoy’s star power or charisma, but to my friends and I he was a star of a completely different magnitude - Arthur C Clarke wrote one of the greatest films ever made: 2001: A Space Odyssey. As I discovered his other novels he fast became one of my heroes.
The men behind 2001, writer Arthur C Clarke, and director Stanley Kubrick.
He pioneered groundbreaking work on the early warning radar system during World War II and later the concept of geostationary satellites; predicting their potential for global communication. He commentated live on the Apollo 11 moon landing, served as a patron for charities combating polio and preserving gorillas, was an avid diver who discovered a sunken temple off the Sri Lankan coast and wrote 80 novels.
The day before my birthday I decided to treat myself to a book and spotted the television ‘companion book’ to the series I’m alluding to: Arthur C Clarke’s Mysterious World, in a second-hand bookshop. It’s one of those books I always meant to get, a lot of people I knew owned it, but somehow I never got around to it. Picking the book up from a pile not yet shelved, I’d just noted its perfect condition when the shop-owner asserted: “Five dollars”.
Happy birthday to me…
But before we return to his wonderful television series Arthur C Clarke’s Mysterious World, lets address a little bit of ugliness first. Already having been appointed a CBE, Clarke’s knighthood for services to literature was announced in the 1998 New Year’s honours list. However, when the Sunday Mirror accused him of paedophelia, he requested the investiture be delayed until his name was cleared. After an investigation the accusation was found to be completely baseless (and possibly part of a Sri Lankan conspiracy to discredit Clarke and embarrass Britain on the occasion of a royal visit by Prince Charles). Clarke received his Knighthood in 2000 and five years later, the highest civil honour Sri Lanka could bestow: the Sri Lankabhimanya.
Unfortunately, that kind of defamation can still cause irreparable damage, and I know I’m not the only person to have been more aware of the accusation than his exoneration.
Clarke scuba diving in Sri Lanka
Moving on…
The book I parted with a princely sum for was published in 1980 to correspond with the screening of the Mysterious World series, and is redolent with the graphic design of that time, heavy egyptian serifed headlines and neatly drawn key lines around the many photographs.
It’s also delightful, more or less following the format of series with separate chapters on everything from lake monsters to UFOs to the Tunguska explosion. The book is actually written by Simon Welfare and John Fairley, but each chapter is closed with a comment from Clarke, where he gives his personal interpretation of the particular mystery.
Each time the impression that Clarke believes mysteries are important because they are so far unquantifiable, is apparent. Do any of us really want to see Nessie or a sasquatch caught, scientifically labelled and corralled? Surely this would only diminish our sense of wonder about the world (to say nothing of the harm it would do to these new species)?
It is also fascinating to read about the the science of the day being applied to less glamorous phenomena like ball lightning and the moving rocks in Death Valley, and to see how little we’ve advanced in thirty five years to come any closer to a definitive explanation.
A scene from last year's television adaptation of Clarke's novel Childhood's End.
Clarke ends his remarks in a playful fashion: “Mysteries are fun. Even if they are only nature’s practical jokes, they add to our enjoyment of the marvellous universe around us… If we can find the answers to as many as ten percent, I should be very pleased - and surprised. And even if we got the answers to one hundred per cent, there are plenty more where they came from…”
When Arthur C Clarke’s death was announced in March 2008, I just happened to be listening to the radio at the time. The National programme played this excerpt from 2001 as a tribute...
The two least emotional characters in cinema history, Dave Bowman and HAL 9000, break your heart
Breaking Bad meets The Matrix, meets Doctor Who (casting-wise, at least), in Daredevil’s neighbourhood - how could that ever not be the best thing ever?
Well, it very nearly is. Whereas this was the year where Marvel films really started to let their formula show - neither Ant Man or ‘Ages of Dull-tron’ will be on my top ten list for 2015 - the smaller screen was where the house of Spidey triumphed. Even Agents of Shield appeared to settle down a little and try to weave it’s multitude of wildly thrashing plot threads into a coherent storyline (take note Avengers).
But the real revelation was Daredevil; shaking off the spectre of a badly received early 2000’s film adaptation to deliver a powerhouse action-drama series which just happened to feature a superhero, who doesn’t even get his costume until the final episode.
So that was already enough to make me confident that Marvel owned the tube (I’m enjoying Supergirl but still haven’t bothered with Arrow or Flash - sorry DC), and then along came Jessica Jones.
"Judge me by my size, would you?"
I had no idea who this character was, beyond the fact that she and two other third tier Marvel titles were eventually going to combine with Daredevil to form a (Quote): “Gritty street-level Avengers-style team”.
A quick look at Wikipedia didn’t do much to fill me with confidence, either - a post-traumatic stress-disordered former superheroine, shaken so badly by an encounter with a mind controlling villain that she’s hung up her costume and is essentially living the life of a victim, sounded frankly awful.
However, so much shared DNA with the sublime Daredevil series couldn’t be all bad, and the fact that there was such a strong behind the camera representation of women producing, writing and directing assured me that this wasn’t going to be a story sensationalising female vulnerability.
Any lingering doubts were blown away as soon as lead Krysten Ritter appears on screen. Previously seen in Breaking Bad as another feisty character, she is a real piece of work here. Exuding attitude (and screen presence) at toxic levels, Jessica Jones is self-admittedly rude to everyone, hard-drinking, hard-talking (the F-bomb in a Marvel series!), and when the situation calls for it, hard-fighting too. Ritter’s uncompromising performance makes her largely unexplained powers the least-interesting part of her characterisation - she’s quite formidable enough without them.
Luke Cage: No 'fro under that helmet, sadly.
With New York being what it is in the Marvel universe she soon becomes involved with another ‘special’ person, although neither suspect the other’s abilities initially. I was aware of ‘Luke Cage: Power Man’ when I read the occasional Marvel comic in the mid 70s. Back then he sported a wicked ‘fro, which has since been updated to the standard issue shaven head, (and a certain Nicolas Coppola borrowed the character’s surname when he became an actor). He’s a man of few words, and unfortunately he and Jones have a tangled and tragic past history which will severely test their relationship.
Luke Cage is destined for his own series next, and Mike Colter’s charismatic performance certainly justifies it. But this is Jessica Jones’ show, and for now he is something of an anomaly, because almost every other character is a powerfully-portrayed woman.
Hey, Carrie-Anne. The first, and latest, modern breed of
science fiction superheroine combine forces. Sort of...
Carrie-Anne Moss, who spearheaded the new kick-ass breed of female genre characters at the end of the 90s in the Matrix, is equally impressive as attorney Jeri Hogarth. Her wife, girlfriend, client and Jessica’s adopted sister Trish all round out the roster of formidable women, with a late tie-in appearance from Daredevil’s Rosario Dawson providing the icing on the cake.
Our villain, Kilgrave, is David Tennant getting his teeth into the role of a lifetime. Like Fisk in Daredevil, this is a character so bereft of any moral code that he emerges through our usual expectations of a villain to become someone we find ourselves alternately hating and then sympathising with. His own potent super-ability makes him supremely dangerous and the purposes he puts it towards with his female victims (Jones included) leads the programme into very dark waters.
You may have faced down the daleks in the past,
but you really should consider running this time....
The fact that Jones initially leaves a trail of extremely bloody destruction in her wake, failing again and again to save those she’s promised to protect, compounds this. Friends and even Jessica herself will lose faith in her ability to win through, but this is a rough ride worth hanging on for.
This isn’t a programme for your usual comic reader. If you want a bloodless, asexual superheroine series watch CBS’s Supergirl (I’m a fan. none-the-less), but if you can take something with considerably more bite and emotional resonance, take a walk through the Netflix Hell’s Kitchen, instead. This story of a damaged and guilt-stricken character eventually finding redemption and her own potential for good makes the caustic Ms Jones possibly the most relatable and human superhero ever put on screen.
I need to address something, but it’s not a Christmas card
A rough night in 'Space Glasgow'
This year’s series of Doctor Who has been “the best ever” (TM). At least, I’m told it’s been “amazing” (TM), Capaldi has “knocked it out of the park” (TM), the two-parters format has been “a triumph” (TM).
As I say, I read and hear this , but, with the exception of Mr Capaldi, I just haven’t felt it.
This is the first post about this year’s series which I’ve written, I still haven’t seen at least one episode, and I only finally saw the finale a few days ago; weeks after it screened. Even when I did get the rare opportunity to watch an episode as broadcast, I happily let my Dad watch the soccer on another channel without a single word said.
Peter Capaldi himself has just had a well-deserved holiday in New Zealand - during which time he must have gamely posed for photographs with every fan within these shores. Did I see him speak in Auckland, try to find him, follow his progress, feel envy at everyone else’s ‘Cap snaps’?
To quote the man himself in Local Hero: “Nyet, ni nada..."
Call myself a fan? Well, that’s just it… I don’t think I have been this year. Of Capaldi? Always. Of current Doctor Who? Well, not really, no.
It might have been the first episode which did it - may we never have to suffer so colossally self-indulgent a scene as that one again (those of you who’ve seen it and somehow convinced yourselves you like that sequence know what I’m talking about).
When I was 13 I tried to write an (appalling) Doctor Who film script. In it, the Doctor picks up an electric guitar, idly strums it, considers tuning it, and puts it down again. A throw-away scene demonstrating the visual dichotomy between an outwardly mature British Gent, and an Alien cutting across social convention with a curiosity and adeptness for almost everything. It was a few seconds, tops, just a brief opener.
I doubt it would make anyone walk out, as my wife, hardened viewer,( if not quite ‘enjoyer’), of the programme for the last decade, did during episode one of series 9. And she’s not coming back.
Of course it makes me a bit sad, but I really couldn’t blame her either.
As it turned out, the ‘return of Davros’ story was fine, Michelle Gomez was as terrific as ever, the opening scenes on Skaro were lovely.
It was fine.
The following story was also fine, maybe slightly less so. The next one a little bit less fine, the one after that I can’t really remember much of. I hear it had brocading in it and I’m sure it was fine too.
For various reasons I had to miss the first part of the Zygon story. I gathered all I needed from the recap at the start of the second part, and really enjoyed this one. I saw only half the story and it was my favourite so far! Hmmm… what does that say about the two-parters?
Most agree the next one wasn’t fine, except for the Doctor Who Magazine reviewer who tries to be as clever as Steven Moffat in his reviews, and sometimes succeeds.
Clara dies in the next one and I really did sit up and pay attention. Because, although this series has been fine, Jenna Coleman has been bloody amazing this year and I’m really going to miss her. I realise this right at the end. Sigh, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. It also had a flying TARDIS scene and I’m a sucker for those.
The next one was also very self indulgent. But Fans are still singing it’s praises so I’m obviously wrong. And that’s fine.
Like the Zygon story. I loved half of the series finale, but this time it was the first half. The Gallifrey stuff was wonderful - I never realised a Western in Who could work so well! (and the Ennio Morricone-style take on ‘The Doctor’s theme’ - sublime!) Right up until the stolen retro-TARDIS I’m having fun, and then it becomes a talk fest until they finally stop talking. I don’t think I’m an idiot (not ALL the time). I don’t need explosions and monsters in every scene. I like a bit of talk.
A … bit… of talk.
But it was fine. Apparently the story is very pro-feminist and that is more than fine. It is also exquisitely directed by Rachel Talalay and has a character played brilliantly by both a man AND a very beautiful black woman.
The renegade returns to bring Law and Order to his hometown...
We have the best Doctor in a very, very long time and have just said goodbye to an equally good companion.
However, this might also just be me, but I think the programme itself needs an overhaul, or even a rest.
Or maybe I need the rest. Because I’m tired of stories which disappear up their own bottoms like some smirking Ouroboros, bringing deceased characters back to life every other week and steadfastly refusing to tell a story with a beginning, middle and end in the usual order.
Instead of entertained, I am more often tricked, huckstered, disorientated and maybe made to feel a little less bright than I did at the start. Instead of being educated by what I’m watching, I’m more often baffled.
I’m tired of ‘clever’, I’m not that clever. I just want a story anyone can follow, which makes ‘sense’ within the generally accepted parameters of the word. A tale which satisfies the viewer whether they be seven or seventy, and leaves us believing we’ve just spent 45 minutes well.
The current programme makers might argue Doctor Who has to be more than that now. If that’s true I’d have to conclude that I have a new understanding of the programme’s title. It’s ‘Doctor Who’(?) because sometimes I don’t recognise it any more.
But this isn’t new. And it’s not the first time I’ve walked away for a little while, either, (sorry, Colin Baker).
However, I re-watched an episode last weekend, and despite it being rudely cut short by a dog attack, (it’s OK, we got there in time and the chickens are all fine), I really enjoyed it. So perhaps that’s the answer.
It’s the season of peace and goodwill so, although it will be of absolutely no consequence to anyone but myself, I’m going to give Doctor Who: Series 9 another chance. (And if it doesn’t work, there’s always 50 years of better stories to revisit).
Charting a course for the past might be the best direction for the next series to head?
Synthesised chemical elements like Rutherfordium can only be brought into being under very particular circumstances, and then only last for a fleeting period of time.
In 1979 ITV achieved this alchemy with what was supposed to be a science fiction show to rival the BBC’s ubiquitous Doctor Who, made by their production arm ATV, and aimed at children. But that certainly wasn’t what they got. Author PJ Hammond was inspired to write a supernatural science fiction series after spending a night in a haunted castle and instead came up with one of the darkest, creepiest and most enigmatic shows ever to appear on television.
The still inexplicable twin casting triumph of Joanna Lumley and David McCallum, who apparently signed on immediately, was touched on last time, and by the time ITV realised what they had been given by Hammond, the programme was already something of a hit.
The first ‘assignment’ dealing with two youngsters whose parents have been taken by a nursery rhyme comes closest to betraying Sapphire and Steel’s origins as a children’s programme, but the second story pulls no punches. Set on an abandoned railway platform it is relentlessly oppressive in atmosphere and the resolution of the crisis is only achieved at a terrible cost.
In stark contrast, once again the appearance of a Sapphire and Steel annual in 1979 indicated the original intention of the programme as a kids TV vehicle, as did a continuing comic strip in ITV’s youth magazine 'Look in'.
Nobody could claim to fully understand the programme, as was the intention, but they tuned in in their millions in Britain. The famous ITV ten-week strike of 1979 actually worked in the programme’s favour, as the second serial was repeated in full when the channel returned to air, greatly reinforcing the programme’s viewership. The return of our favourite ‘elements who actually weren’t’ was guaranteed. Also as discussed before, the availability of it’s stars made exactly when a little uncertain and in fact it was a full 18 months before Sapphire and Steel returned.
Silver Fox - Elements don't scrimp on hair care products
The third adventure isn’t fondly remembered but does at least introduce ‘specialist’ Silver; played in dandified fashion by David Collings who shakes up the existing dynamic between our leads. His flirtatious rapport with Sapphire appears to provoke jealousy in her usual partner. Steel hardly needs to be made any more grumpy, and perhaps the notable scene where he appears to snap lift cables with his bare hands and tie them in knots is his way of ‘working off steam’. It’s the following story, dealing with a ‘faceless man’ who can inhabit any photograph ever taken which seems to be the most remembered and chilling.
This is the story I re-watched recently with friends, and despite its obvious staginess and budgetary limitations, we agreed that it’s really only the incidental music which dates this unnerving tale. Xylophone solos and a crew member’s cough on the soundtrack are more than made up for by expert use of lighting (the sepia children would doubtless be an expensive CGI effect these days, but perfectly realised here), the charisma of our leads and the sheer freaky uneasiness provoked by the tale. PJ Hammond seems to know exactly how to write for the show’s minuscule budget: everything shown on screen feels like the tip of the story’s iceberg, the unseen but greater mass of what is implied, but unseen, is what really scares us.
From what I’ve heard Hammond's skill was sorely missed when Sapphire and Steel returned the following year for its fifth assignment. I say heard because I somehow missed this sub-Agatha Christie drawing room mystery written by Doctor Who scribes Don Houghton and Anthony Read - or perhaps the programme’s erratic scheduling finally defeated TVNZ and it was never shown here.
Hammond was exhausted and needed a break, but was apparently appalled when he saw what had been done to his creation in other writer’s hands.
Director Shaun O'Riorden (left) and PJ Hammond
He rallied and gave us what was to become one of the greatest conclusions of any programme - except, Assignment 6 was never intended to be a finale. I certainly saw this one, as with most memorable TV fantasy in my childhood with my Mum, and I remember us both gasping with genuine surprise when the true nature of our heroes’ adversaries was revealed.
In the real world Sapphire and Steel had also come up against an implacable enemy, and when Central television took over ATV a slew of programmes were cancelled - this undervalued gem among them.
Hammond apparently wanted to shop his creation around to other channels in the hope of continuing. But when hoping to enlist his stars Lumley and McCallum they begged off, feeling they’d done all they could with the roles and convincing him that the show couldn’t have ended on a better, if downbeat, high.
Sapphire and Steel were unassigned but remained a cult classic through nostalgic recollections, a partial repeat on British satellite channel Bravo, and VHS and DVD releases.
Twenty years later, Big Finish Productions released three ‘seasons’ of Sapphire and Steel audio dramas, starring the mighty David Warner as Steel (McCallum was living full-time in Hollywood at this time) and Susannah Harker (Lumley didn’t want to reprise her role).
I haven’t had the pleasure of hearing these but they were apparently very popular and well-received. Big Finish no longer have the license and don’t sell them anymore, but I live in hope of tracking down some second hand-recordings one day.
Different elements: David Warner and Susannah Harker voice Sapphire and Steel
in original audio adventures from Big Finish.
Earlier this year it Wellington-based Luther creator Neil Cross announced that he was in talks with a British Production company to revive Sapphire and Steel. Exciting news, but to me part of the series charm was that the original series was ephemeral, only able to exist in our reality for a short time. A brief but bright flare of brilliance in the early 1980s when Time broke through and we had to depend on two sharply dressed strangers who refused to explain themselves, and left us knowing as little about them as we did when they first appeared.
I doubt something so determinedly cryptic could be made now, when mainstream audiences appear to need everything spelt out before moving quickly on to action and effects scenes.
But I’m very happy to be proven wrong.
(I'm heavily indebted to the excellent Horror Etc podcast for unearthing a great deal of this information)
“One wore a grey suit, the other wore a blue dress, and that’s as much as we knew about them.” David McCallum
It’s also said that David McCallum and Joanna Lumley had the same hair in Sapphire and Steel, just at (slightly) different lengths. That’s a very cheap shot, it’s too easy to poke fun at the fashions of a programme which premiered over 35 years ago.
It’s also a programme which has never seen a repeat on terrestrial television and steadfastly refused to explain itself even when it was on air. It remains as enigmatic as its lead characters, and although every episode is available on DVD there is very little in the way of background (or foreground) analysis beyond other people’s recollections.
I’m not going to parrot them, I’m going to bore you with my own.
The programme was made sporadically between 1979 and 1982 (apparently because of the limited availability of its high profile lead actors) and my recollection is that it’s NZ screening followed my friends and I through our college years. We loved it, of course-it was right up our street, mysterious, scary, thought-provoking. Although for some people it just seemed to be provoking. I distinctly remember my Dad giving up part way through an episode with a frustrated “What’s it about!?” I read recently that even Joanna Lumley had a spectacular sweary fit over the industrial-grade crypticness of the lines she was given to say.
I think its sheer opacity appealed to us. We quickly cottoned-on that there weren’t going to be any easy answers (or answers at all) and certainly no expensive effects (even in 1979 that magnificent title sequence was considered ‘ropey’). With Sapphire and Steel you had to set off into the night with your mind wide open; go dark or go home. The grade was rated ‘uneasy’.
But we weren’t alone, we had an Invisible Man and a new Avenger with us. They weren’t the warmest of guides, in fact Steel was generally abrasive and rude to everyone, but we all fancied the timeless Joanna Lumley and Sapphire was undoubtedly better with people. Although you always got the impression that our heroes considered having to deal with the humans cluttering the places they were sent to was the most difficult and irksome part of their ‘assignments’.
So that brings us to the nature of our two leads. Everything we’re ever told about them is in that title sequence, which is voiced with such stern authority and accompanied by such an imposing horn section that we miss the fact that it’s only compelling gibberish. Who is ‘assigning them’? Where do they come from? How do they arrive where they need to be? What’s with that blurry ‘head wear’ in the background of the opening titles? Why are half the ‘medium atomic weights’ listed not actually elements? How did this programme even get made?*
I think I must have a very literal (or unimaginative) mind because just as I never questioned that Pi really did spend all that time in a raft with a tiger, I never doubted that cold, hard McCallum was Steel and beautiful, cool Lumley was Sapphire. That is to say they weren’t code-names or designations, our stars were literally playing the physical embodiment of those substances, anthropomorphised and brought to life. It might be childishly simplistic, but makes as much sense as any other explanation (and the characters do state that they’re not human).
So, that’s our protagonists. We’re told that their enemy is Time. Rather than treating it as a medium to travel through as every other programme on TV did, here time was a force, and apparently a malevolent one which needed to be contained. Time could break through into the present if there was an anachronism present, a trigger as steel called it. Ancient Nursery Rhymes, old photographs… my parents bright orange ’70’s formica kitchen bench would have had Sapphire and steel working overtime. The creatures which roamed the corridor of time looking for ways to break through were embodied in different (and usually inexpensive) ways: a faceless man, ghostly roundhead soldiers, Joanna Lumley opening her eyes to reveal a living darkness, pitch-black contact lenses providing one of the programme’s nastiest shocks…
Dealing with these threats was equally ephemeral – no car chases, explosions or fist fights here — the effective stagey-ness of the programme was complimented by the cerebral ways Sapphire and Steel would eventually resolve the crisis and restore the status quo. I’ve always responded well to that in the figures I make my heroes, although here their victories always seemed only partial or temporary — fitting I suppose when your enemy is Time.
When the end came it was an inside job, the titular duo deceived and trapped by powerful, but notoriously unstable, transient elements. I joked that being trapped forever with Joanna Lumley couldn’t be too bad but the reality was that the very final scene, Sapphire and Steel gazing hopelessly from the window of a service station cafe as they receded into a starry eternity, was a gut punch ending which no-one who saw it ever forgot.
Well, it's a good thing we've got that chess set to pass the time...
Allegedly there were plans to release them the following season, but in an equally inexplicable move the very popular programme was dropped amid television corporate takeovers. It seems fitting that a series which began so mysteriously left us in exactly the same way.
For me the biggest enigma remains our stars. Even in 1979 I could recognise that Lumley and McCallum had cache and usually appeared in very expensive transatlantic productions. (McCallum could even still be considered a movie star). I could also see that Sapphire and Steel’s budget wouldn’t cover the coffee bill on their usual gigs. The programme was scheduled around their availability and surely spent all its money on them. But to me it seems akin to Brando doing a soap opera in his prime (or Robert de Niro doing Rocky and Bullwinkle. Oh, hang on…) How on earth did the programme makers pull off such an incredible casting coup with almost non-existent resources?
But what ever it took, it was well worth it - Lumley and McCallum completely and utterly carried Sapphire and Steel - convincing, compelling and colossally cool.
Friends and I weren’t cool at all, but loved the programme so much we gave each other our own element designations. I was a redhead, and a bit bendy, so quite naturally became ‘Copper’. Another chose ‘Carborundum’ due to a perceived abrasiveness and a third friend with legendary powers of flatulence was christened ‘Sulphur’. Difficult to imagine what kind of mission such a lacklustre team might be despatched to, although I believe we might just about have held our own against the notorious belligerent flying swansdown pillows in Assignment 3.
*I can’t help myself. I’ve recently re-watched some of the programme and done some research, so I’ll be following up soon with a more factual, behind-the-scenes post which might answer some of these questions. Possibly.
