Tag: screenwriting

Categories
science writing

Lab Rats – I so wanted it to be good

They finally set a sitcom in a research lab.

The idea is hardly original – I myself submitted a script for a lab sitcom (WHITECOATS) to the BBC and Channel 4 in 2004 only to have it a) rejected and b) ignored, respectively. A German TV producer got excited about it and pitched it to some German TV channel. I never heard from her again…

Well, if the brilliant Richard Herring gets his sitcom ideas rejected by the BBC then a total unknown writer who hasn’t even done the requisite ten years on the comedy circuit is NOT going to get taken seriously. I get that, I even agree. (And of course my script was the work of a screenwriting and comedy novice…)

I wrote WHITECOATS because I wanted to see a sitcom set in a lab. There wasn’t one, so I took a DIY attitude. Luckily for me it didn’t get taken up; I moved on to writing thrillers for children and wound up being paid what I’m guessing is more than a novice TV writer.

So LAB RATS – should have worked for me. I love Chris Addison in “The Thick of It”. He’s sweet and he’s a Manc, like me. I loved Geoffrey Perkins as Ford Prefect in the radio version of “The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy”. I watched both the clips released prior to the show’s airing and laughed out loud.

But I’m afraid I watched with dismay yesterday. I’m not going to tear it apart – too many TV reviewers are doing that. I AM going to keep watching, but from such a beginning I don’t see that it ever reach any decent height. Unless they rejig the formula radically as was done with “Men Behaving Badly”.

The best thing I can say is that it’s sort of Goodies humour, but the Goodies has dated too. And the other thing I can say is that some of their conversations, sad and geeky though they were, are not far from the stupid kinds of things I remember we did talk about when I worked in a lab. The two clips of LAB RATS that made me laugh are here.

Okay, I’ve criticised another writer. Now I’ll offer myself up for the same treatment. Here is a snifter of my pilot script for WHITECOATS – the four-scene sample I entered in the BBC New Talent contest. Obviously I didn’t get anywhere or else I would never have written The Joshua Files.

Categories
movies nostalgia raves writing

The Painted Veil – I cried!

I love Deborah Ross’s movie reviews in The Spectator. The poor woman mostly seems doomed to have to see films that disappoint, and when she says to stay away I usually do. Conversely, when she gives something a really big huzzah…hey, I’m there.

So I had to dash out to see “The Painted Veil”, which made our Deborah weep, apparently. I was one of the only people aged under 50 in the cinema, so I could tell right away that it was a Serious Proper Film for Grown-Ups and not like the usual eye-candy I usually go to see. (Art cinema, moi?)

Actually it wasn’t very arty at all, which explains the multiplex distribution. Instead it was a good-old-fashioned emotional drama told really well, with no fancy footwork. I loved the screenplay, which ticked all the boxes I can remember reading in Robert McKee’s ‘Story’ as well as a pretty strong Hero’s Journey for the Naomi Watts character, Kitty. I read somewhere that in the Extreme Love Story genre the lovers actually fall into the roles of Protagonist and Antagonist. I can’t remember seeing this technique better and more subtly executed than in this film. You can keep your histrionics and your ‘Frankly-my-dear-I-don’t-give-a-damn’s; what could be more touching than two people accepting each other’s minor failings as human beings, learning who they really are and falling deeply in love?

I thought I’d get away without crying…until they played that song À la claire fontaine. Nostalgia overwhelmed me; I remembered singing that song at school in French class.

I was warned once about the soppiness of middle-age by my father. He used to stream tears at sad movies and Italian opera. As a teenager I’d watch him, all crisply dry-eyed and make some cutting remark. “Wait until you’re in your forties,” he’d say, “and there’s nothing more beautiful than crying at Italian opera.”