"These foolish games are tearing me apart." -- Jewel Kilcher, 'Foolish Games'

Music She's tried pop, now Jewel is going to get more than a little bit country:

"Singer/songwriter Jewel has a new label and a new genre to boot. The artist has signed a multi-album deal with newly launched Nashville-based independent Valory Music Company and will pursue success on the country charts."

Country is not my favourite genre, and indeed on her last album, Goodbye Alice in Wonderland, there were a couple of tracks which were bit too far in that direction for my taste, particularly the whiney 1,000 Miles Away which seemed to go ... on ... forever ... but obviously I've liked the singer's other work enough that I'll doggedly make the crossover with her and see what happens. After all, I was one of three people in the world who loved 0304.

"Shewin t'way to sum still grander place." -- Treddlehoyle, 'A Peep at t'Manchister Art Treasures Exhebishan'

Museums Art Odyssey: Day Two and on Tuesday I visited Manchester Art Gallery for their latest temporary exhibition, Art Treasures in Manchester: 150 years on. In 1857, the city paid host to a massive festival of the plastic arts, the biggest ever held in the UK, in a specially constructed building in Old Trafford.

There were over sixteen thousand exhibits, nearly a million and a half visitors including Queens and princes and consolidated and was a zeitgeisty moment in which visitors could see all what the art world looked like at the time. Then, bizarrely, it was quietly forgotten, with smaller displays at Crystal Palace becoming part of school curriculums at the expense of an event that was arguably far more important.

The exhibition opens with some history and a burst of civic pride as a range of statistics about the city is blasted at the visitor. Life expectancy in the city in 1857 was just 26 years, the lowest of anywhere in the country and the annual death rate was at thirty-one in every thousand. In the poorest areas, a hundred or more people shared what amounted to a toilet in those days, a hole in the ground. Families of up to twelve people gathered in a single room and only thirty-two percent of five to fourteen year olds where at school.

And yet, and yet, money was found and time was taken to produce this art exhibition which would be visited by the poor and rich alike as factories closed for the day and schools too – despite the context and the contents the aim was to make this folly accessible to all. Patron’s traveled from throughout the country and I would suspect that the show’s influence created ripples across the art world as artists had the opportunity to suddenly see a range of different movements together.

Then it’s straight into the main display, a selection of the original work, hung in one space for the first time in a hundred and fifty years. The exhibition space has been turned into a miniaturized version of that shed, the wallpaper recreating the patterns on the walls back then, a line drawing of the original filling one of the walls to try and offer some idea of the scale of the original show. The last time I visited the gallery was for the Kylie exhibition and it’s always surprising to see this space transform around the material on show.

Also replicated is the original exhibition’s biggest innovation – presenting the art in chronological order so that visitors could see the development of art and its techniques from the earliest medieval works through to the then present day. Before that time, as with a recent experiment at the Tate, the work was displayed thematically by subject – but the historical format caught on which is why most galleries follow that process to this day. Actually, I think both are valid but the thematic approach only really works in large collections where the visitor is able to contrast different visions of the nativity, for example.

About ten years ago, The Royal Academy was given over for some months to Art Treasures of England, which temporarily pilfered the very best of the UK’s regional collections placing them into its barn like space, producing a massive version of one of those small galleries; for those few months London had its own extra ‘traditional’ art gallery whose quality dwarfed the Tate and the National. I had hoped that in some smaller way, this exhibition would be the reverse, ‘classic’ works from the southern galleries brought up north once more.

For the most part it delivers; in the opening section there’s Gerard David’s Adoration of the Kings, Annibale Carracci's The Dead Christ Mourned and of course Michaelangelo’s The Madonna and Child with Saint John and Angels (or The Manchester Madonna as it was nicknamed during the Old Trafford show) from the National Gallery and looking further into the space reveals from the Tate, Landseer’s dopey dog painting Dignity and Impudence and Arthur Hughes’ sublime April Love (which was running first in the favourite painting poll being taken at the exit to the exhibition). The Queen’s private art collection is also represented – an epic canvas, The Death of General Wolfe by Benjamin West and a startling panoramic photograph of the Alps taken in the 1800s hundreds which is as good an illustration of what’s been lost through global warming as anything shown during Al Gore’s slideshow-cum-film An Inconvenient Truth.

But regional galleries are also necessarily in there and it’s a brilliant illustration of what I’ve discovered through my visits to local regional galleries – that for all the attention the nationals get in the press, local galleries also have some unsung work in their collections. Indeed, in places, if the information labels didn’t necessarily list the origin of the work it would be difficult to tell which of the work was from London. In some cases you wonder if an image would be quite as iconic if it was hidden away in a regional gallery. Certainly the medieval paintings from the Walker in Liverpool are as good as anything brought from the National (although to be fair their star works weren’t in the original Manchester exhibition).

There’s just something so wonderfully odd about seeing the world famous self portrait of Esteban Murillo from the National Gallery (the one in which he sits in a hoop and there’s not enough room for him to have legs) next to a fairly humble still life of flowers and fruit by Jan van Os from Warrington Art Galleries. The sympathetic image of Marie Antoinette and family awaiting their fate in EM Ward's The Royal Family of France in the Prison of the Temple is a marvel from the Harris Museum in Preston but the most surprising moment for me was seeing their Lytham Sandhills by Ansdell which I'd last walked past in Oldham. The exhibition world is a small world and I love seeing paintings I’ve seen before in new settings – it’s like greeting an old friend.

Another surprise was discovering that at Old Trafford, visitors did not see the work in a space that was silent but for their own chatter and footfalls. Charles Halle commanded an orchestra that would play two free concerts a day and the music would echo throughout the gallery, a mixture of light music and more challenging works. Listening posts here offer some idea of what might have been on offer. Amongst Manchester folk songs, you can hear a Trumpet Voluntary by Jermiah Clarke (which is often attributed to Purcell – it’s the one which you always here at the close of Royal Weddings) and a delicate piano piece, Strauss’s Pensez a moi. The legacy of the exhibition can also be seen here, since the popularity of these concerts would lead to the setting up of the Halle Orchestra which is still going strong in Manchester today.

If I left the exhibition slightly disappointed its because given the statistics provided throughout as to the scale of the original endeavour that only a fraction could be brought back together here. Of the 16,000 original exhibits, but a thousand are here and a large percentage of those are in the decorative arts. In addition, with the exceptions of the surroundings, little attempt has been made to recreate the way the paintings were hung back then, up and down the wall. Although the new vogue, painting then information lbael then painting then information label all parallel to our eye line does allow us to appreciate the work better it would have been fun to have given some idea of what the space would have felt like back then – the illustrations in the catalogue are startling as the work is crushed in together. Perhaps there were safety and insurance concerns, which is understandable (you can see art displayed somewhat in this way in the entrance hall to Birmingham Art Gallery).

But as an exhibition about an exhibition this is a startling, amusing and exciting display, constantly surprising and yes, a treasure.

"Both statements are accurate. They're also pretty meaningless, possibly misleading." -- Eric Haas, Alternet

Words Eric Haas of AlterNet investigates how companies are changing their Wikipedia entries to provide a more positive impression of themselves: "White washing is where someone replaces negative or neutral adjectives -- words or phrases -- with more positive synonyms. Here's an example of the conundrum that white washing creates for the idea that one can achieve truth through neutrality derived from facts. In May 2005, someone at a Wal-Mart IP address changed a sentence in the Wal-Mart entry about employee wages."

"No further action necessary." - ASA

Advertising During my rambling analysis of an Advertising Standards Council adjudication on Saturday, I noted that some of their decision was based on assumptions and hearsay when it came to working out who was watching television during the broadcast and whether it really would effect viewers.

Just to add an extra level of inconsistency, in this adjudication of a complaint during a broadcast of the trailer for the film Captivity on the same channel they have taken the time to look at the demographic figures and discovered that viewers watching would not necessarily be effected by the content and the complaint was not upheld.

I'm wondering now if each adjudication was written by a different staff member and some are more thorough than others or if it all depends on their personal perspective on the issue at hand.

"We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution." -- Bill Hicks

Comedy Glen Fisher at 3AM reviews an oddity -- a tribute act to a dead comedian: "The show, as a whole, was entertaining enough; a mix of straight out impersonations – a kind of Bill Hicks best-of, with goat-boy included - and speculative interpretation of how Hicks might have satirised the social and political failings of the modern day. Some of the more UK-centric jokes jarred with the authenticity of the impersonation (would Bill really have taken so much time pointing out how bland Coldplay are?) and lines about MySpace and Facebook just seemed below the threshold of his scorn."

Warriors of Kudlak (Part Two)

TV Appearances can be deceptive. One of my favourite television series is Gilmore Girls whose premise is that a teen mother has grown up and now has a teenage daughter who's become her best friend and they have to deal with dating and life in a small town in America. It sounds dreadful, the stuff of television movies with Jane Seymour which climax in a rush to a hospital for whatever reason. Except it’s written with all the wit of The West Wing and the screwball comedies of the 1940s (particularly the rapid fire dialogue), acted superbly and has an indie sensibility which constantly raises it about the premise – the scenes at the prep school the daughter attends are like seeing Alexander Payne’s film Election in slow motion.

Similarly, if you’d said that …

The Sarah Jane Adventures: Warriors of Kudlak: Part Two

… the second half of a story which features laser tag, pantomime villains and the alien child discovering girls would turn out to be one of the best bits of Doctor Who related storytelling ever, I really, really wouldn’t believe you and suspect you were trying to trick me somehow – perhaps there would be lights involved and a prodding stick with a large stuffed pointing rubber glove on the end of the kind they use of Facebook to give you a poke.

This could have been the same kind of runaround that we found in both of the previous stories and superficially it did mirror those climaxes in that it featured some kind of an assault on the villain’s lair in order to save whomever’s been captured this week. Except on this occasion there was an extra emotional kick because it was the kids first experience of what Sarah’s life was like amongst the stars and her apparent first trip off world in twenty years and being reminded once again of the old days. Both also had that vital look of awe which is often lost in the pace of drama these days, each moment first with the toy soldiers and then with the former companion and her mini-companion taking the time to underline that they’re in space, the convincing shot of Earth being its best digital rendering yet.

But then it becomes apparent that the whole story doesn’t just reference Iraq through Lance’s father’s death during a tour of duty there – the whole story is about the war. On the one hand, there’s Kudlak kept in a perpetual state of war by his digital commander engendering a sense of fear in an opponent whose in not position to really fight back (the standard Doctor Who two dimensional alien adversary who turns out to be really a two dimensional alien adversary who’s surely Koquillion from the 60s story The Rescue for the new age). On another the pulling of the kids to the space ship so that they can be transported to the theatre of war (which is revealed to not really exist either) on the basis that they’re good at playing the game version when it’s clearly different and could lead to the combatants treating the real thing as though they’re playing Medal Of Honor.

There’s also such a confidence to the production. Every great series as a moment when it becomes apparent that the programme makers have realised what they can accomplish and are entirely comfortable with what they’re doing. In old Doctor Who that was The Daleks (or The Mutants or whatever) and in new Doctor Who, that was Dalek I think and for SJA, it’s this episode. The performances are top notch-- even if one or two of the guests are a touch over the top – all of the regulars have become utterly comfortable with one another as though this is the twenty episode they’ve worked together let alone the sixth. Clyde and Luke and Sarah and Maria were excellent double acts, the former in particular graduating from the Geordi/Data analogy to Bones/Spock as the human making fun of the alien throughout but still showing loyalty and friendship when it came to the crunch.

It had an epic quality too. This may have been a disused gasworks doubling for the interior of an alien spaceship again (which is rapidly becoming nu-Who’s quarry cliché) but it created a scale which I suspect isn’t often seen in shows in that slot on a Monday night. I’ve said it before but this show has a filmic quality which in some places mirrors or supersedes the mother series. Look at those gorgeous lateral tracking shots during the scenes amongst the crates where the kids all discovered one another and the use of a version of deep focus so that we could see action in both the fore and backgrounds of shots. Listening to the dvd commentaries for the classic 70s stories, the production teams from the time often note how much better the show would have looked if they’d been allowed to do the whole thing using single cameras and here is a show which is superficially similar in terms of its storytelling doing that and proving them right.

The series is currently averaging a million viewers in its current timeslot, which is apparently massive in comparison to what’s usually shown there. But that still means there are masses are people who enjoy the main series but are missing out on this even though in places its just as entertaining as that and in others even more so. Perhaps they’ve looked at that timeslot and decided that it is just for kids in which case they’re like the people I’ve spoken to who haven’t seen Gilmore Girls because they’ve seen the rather cheesing dvd box art or heard about the hokey premise. Perhaps they’ll catch up on dvd or if the BBC decide to give it a Sunday night repeat. For now though, it’s their loss. For now, the rest of us have a weekly half hour treat which is fun, exciting and makes you think and is amazingly y’know for kids.

Next Week: A brim full of Asher.

"Gonna take more than a shot to get this poison out of me." -- Bon Jovi, 'Bad Medicine'

Film Michael Moore’s documentary Sicko enjoys a far simpler structure to his earlier Fahrenheit 9/11 but is no less polemical. In expressing his disappointment at the health care system in the US which is based on a for profit insurance model, he simply contrasts situations in which the sick have died or become close to mortality because they’ve been refused vital cure with the health care systems in Canada, France, Cuba and the UK where treatment is ‘social-based’ and the primary concern is making the patient well. He’s pondering why a nation which convinces itself that it’s the best in the world would apparently treat its citizens with such contempt.

Despite being a film which has been made very specifically for a US audience – at times Moore uses pronouns which could only be intended for his fellow countrymen – it travels well because its essentially revealing to the rest of the world a range of issues which have been obscured to us because the country's foreign policy is more likely to be reported. There where gasps in the screening I attended when a man revealed that he had to choose which finger to have sewn back on and that volunteers workers at ground zero who’d become ill weren’t being treated as those who were on the government payroll. That people who thought they were insured where suddenly being denied the service they’d paid for because of a box they’d forgotten to tick on an application form.

The film has been criticised over here because of the rather rosy image it provides of the NHS as Moore underlines that people don’t have to pay at Hammersmith Hospital to get their broken limbs fixed or have a baby delivered. There’s nothing about waiting lists, or the postcode lottery, or trying to get an appointment to see a GP, about targets, the closing and consolidation of A&E departments and the strain that junior doctors are under. Tony Benn is a welcome inclusion to provide some history (and we get to see his front room, a shrine to the Labour movement) and he talks about how there would be a revolution if the government tried to privatize the NHS, a version of which seems to already be happening with businesses becoming involved in the building of hospitals.

But Moore rightly doesn’t want to muddy his argument by providing ammunition for people on his home turf who’d oppose his views; he’s simplifying the material so that the documentary doesn’t get bogged down with information (which is something similar works such as The Corporation certainly do) and he’s very specific about highlighting just those items which help his argument which is what a polemic is all about. In fact, the UK government should love Moore for this since it demonstrates that despite all of those things, at present the NHS is better than anything going on in the US – except they won’t because they’ve been fact finding about the system in the States for the past couple of years and wouldn’t want us to see what they’re contemplating.

In fact, if anything some of the non-US sections were enough for us to look on the likes of France and Canada and even Cuba with envious eyes, our gaelic cousins in particular, who much have five weeks holiday a year by law and can have up to ten and very generous health care provision to the point of providing a state-employed nanny who’ll do your laundry. If there’s a criticism to be made though, in that case Moore only looks at relatively well off ex-pats and natives of Paris, never venturing to the inner-cities and other parts of France where it is very different. He does though provide footage of protests in France, a place where that kind of thing is encouraged as a contrast to the some other places where it’s considered terrorism.

"The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue." -- Dorothy Parker

Life As a kind of hint, I've only just this half hour got in from Manchester so my report on Art Odyssey: Day Two will have to wait until I can get the critical gland into gear. It was very odd strolling about the city this close to Christmas with many of the lights up but not lit and the markets not yet in town, as though the buildings themselves are waiting for something to happen. I will be going back closer to the time I think just because it would be wrong not to. Then, ironically during a screening of Michael Moore's Sicko (review soon too) and as I was chewing my third stick of gum in about ten years, one of my fillings fell out. The same tooth as last year. Ironically, because it's the one thing we don't get free in the UK.

When skies are blue, you're beguiling, and when they're grey, you're still smiling' -- Gracie Fields, 'Sally'

Museums Having booked my birthday on Wednesday this week as a holiday from work, I’ve decided to turn these three days into a mini-holiday and more specifically an art odyssey. So today, I decided to travel out to Rochdale Art Gallery to carry on my tour of the art museums listed in Edward Morris’s book Public Art Collections in North-West England. The gallery opened at the turn of the last century and was paid for after a penny was added to local tax (based on an amendment to a bill for the acquisition of a local tram service).

Designed by Jesse Horsfield, it was originally an extension to the local library, although that’s now housed in a local shopping centre and the gallery and a museum fill the whole building, which has recently been renamed Touchstones, three gallery spaces on the top floor and the local history collection on the ground. The collection has been gathered from a range of bequests and gifts, from the likes of local manufacturers (Rochdale was a mill town) and includes work by Edward Stott, J.W. Waterhouse, Augustus John, Arthur Hacker and Giovanni di Paolo.

All of which I read in Edward’s book and was suitably excited by the time I reached the gallery which is situated on The Esplanades, about a mile away from the railway station and nearly opposite the Town Hall (more on which later). After making myself more comfortable (if you see what I mean) I returned to the reception desk to check that the permanent collection was on display, fearing a repeat of what happened at Stalybridge. I’d checked the website beforehand and everything seemed hunky-dory.

The attendant suddenly looked very apologetic and began to explain. They usually have the permanent collection on display, but they’re undergoing building work at the moment which means they’ve had to close the room which usually displays the permanent collection, and it just happened to coincide with their annual people’s exhibition so that’s what’s on display instead. This was turning into a repeat of what happened in Stalybridge.

‘Oh’ I said. Actually what I said something like ‘Ooooooah!’ but that looks silly when you try and put it on screen. I also did a silly skip on the spot too.
‘Sorry.’ He said, genuinely apologetically.
‘Oh well.’ I continued.

Just because, I brought out Edward’s book which I carry with me on these trips and showed him the entry on the gallery which he was very excited about seeing. I told him I was visiting for the day from Liverpool and well, did what I usually do in these situations which is talk, feeling like I needed to do something having traveled all of the way to the gallery even if it was to talk about what I’d missed. Then a very unusual thing happened.

He suggested that perhaps I could visit the gallery’s store room and see the paintings down there instead and began to check a staff sheet to see if there was anyone down there who could let us in. He said that they’d often make arrangements by appointment for people to see individual works and that since I’d traveled so far it seemed a shame if I wouldn’t be able to see anything. Inevitably there wasn’t anyone in but that didn’t stop him.

A woman walked through who looked like she could be one of the gallery’s curators and he asked if it would be ok to take me down. She asked some questions, I told her the story, talked about the book again I think, and after she reminded me it was a working space, I noted that I’d worked at The Walker Art Gallery which seemed to reassure her. All the while, I’m saying that I didn’t want to put anyone out and if I couldn’t it was fine, really.

After an initial accidental tour around the staff rooms I eventually waited in the People's Art 2007 whilst a key and supervision possibly was found and then it was down into the store. This is actually the third store I’ve visited. At Tate Liverpool it’s more of way-station, somewhere for the works to go after transit and before they appear in the white cube spaces. The Walker’s store (at least when I was there) was massive; and you could also see that the very best of the work was on the walls.

On this occasion I really felt like was being taken to somewhere special. I felt like I was in some kind of picture montage in a Stephen Poliakoff production, going on a journey through history. As I stepped carefully about the space, racks were pulled out for me to have a look at, a collage of images one on top of the other, really extraordinary and surprising paintings from artists I’d never heard of but each with their own brilliant quirks.

Three paintings of cardinals in various states of relaxation, one with his feet up smoking a cigar, his red cowl flowing about his shoulders. An Elizabethan woman, the colour of her face faded from history to match the lace of her shirt. An artist sitting defeated before a canvas, his painting materials thrown on a bed, a concerned friend standing in his doorway perhaps. A table filled with fruit and aluminium cups rendered vividly in pointillism.

I couldn't help but talk some more. I enthused, a lot, each new work leading to another gasp from the place where I was standing. There most reputed work is ‘A Special Pleader’ by Charles Burton Barber which has appeared on biscuit tins and greetings cards and depicts a little girl hiding in a corner and what must be her pet collie, in other words children and animals the two things I don’t usually love in paintings but this is stunning, the fur on the dogs back and the little girl’s face, brimming with fear.

Suitably humbled I thanked everyone and thanked them again. Then I visited the tourist information and museum shop and was surprised again. I asked the clerk what the local attractions where and she described the lake and the local museum to the co-operative movement (sadly closed today) and the town hall. She said it was a shame that I hadn’t visited on a Friday because they had tours and then said that if I was visiting she’d phone ahead and see if I could be shown the great hall at least which is something they could do for people who’d traveled such a long way.

I was going to visit the Town Hall anyway to see the portrait of Gracie Fields which is in the entrance hall. Gracie was born over a fish & chip shop in the town and would go on to have career in music hall and films and entertain the troops during World War Two. She’s best known for singing ‘Sally’ in the film Sally in Our Alley and not to see something connected with her would be like a tourist visiting Liverpool and ignoring the contribution Gerry Marsden made to the city (amongst a few others).

The portrait has Fields sitting in a pose not unlike Whistler’s mother. She looks still, calm and reflective. It does however look just slightly out of place in the Hall’s interior which looks for all the world like a medieval church and in fact like The John Rylands library in Manchester. It was created WH Crossland, who also built the Royal Holloway College in London and it does have that kind of feel, all cloisters and carvings and academia.

After paying my respects to Gracie I went to the reception and mentioned the phone call. The receptionist found an attendant who took me up the main hall and once again I was gasping. This massive space looks like the inspiration for the great hall at Hogwarts in the Harry Potter films that is also a comparison which cheapens what this is. Stone walls give way to wooden carvings as you look into the sky, the walls painted white with gold patterning, the ceiling guarded by giant wooden angels, their wings almost filling the space above.

If that wasn’t impressive enough on one wall is a pipe organ and on the other a giant mural depicting the signing of the Magna Carta at what looks like an altar increasing the church feeling. It looks like its been influenced by The Last Supper, which Leonardo painted to continue into two dimensions the space of the Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. The historical theme is continued in the stained glass, reputed to be the best in Europe which shows the succession of English monarchs and lord protectors from 1066 onwards – which would be a wonderful way of teaching kids about the history of their country.

So all in all it’s been a really surprising day and what I loved was that after being greeted with shrugs at so many other of these galleries when I’ve asked about the collections I was greeted in Rochdale by staff who just seemed so pleased that someone would take the trouble to travel to see what they had to offer, saw that I really cared and did their best to make it accessible. I’ve promised to return to the gallery when the building work is complete, hopefully on a Friday so that I can take the Town Hall’s tour. It seemed like the very least I could do.

"The road to knowledge begins with the turn of the page." -- Anonymous

Humour I'm sure you've seen this already, but just in case -- it's a medieval helpdesk query -- which is so unnervingly accurate, they even get the nervous introductions at the beginning just right [via].

"We told the advertiser not to repeat the ad.” -- ASA

Advertising Of the many hundreds of news feeds I follow one of the most entertaining and illuminating is the one for the Advertising Standards Authority, the organisation that helps to regulate the approaches that can and can't be used by companies to sell their wares. Personally I think there should be an option for you to complain if you think the advert is simply substandard but they’d probably never get any work done then.

Complaints usually fall into two categories. Either someone has contacted them because they believe that the information in an advert is inaccurate or misleading – which is good because it means that a company can’t make outrageous claims about their product or with increasing regularity on the basis of morality which isn’t necessarily such a good thing because it leads to things like censorship.

What the ASA’s feed shows is that there’s a whole story behind every advert that has been pulled or re-edited. And that even the most depressingly obvious commercial can lead to a mini-version of the Lady Chatterley trial which considers the power of advertising and how thirty seconds of shouting about a product can contribute to the ills of society, leading to the breakdown of our morality. A typical example of a morality complaint is this one from a concerned citizen about a television commercial for the compilation cd, Clubland 11.

What’s annoying about this one is that the complaints themselves are rather perplexing, overlook potentially more dangerous issues and perhaps most seriously you have to wonder that with everything that’s happening in the world, why someone would decide to complain about an advert on a music channel for a compilation cd. Here’s the synopsis of the ad as it appears as the ASA’s website:

“showed images of night clubs and beach scenes interspersed with young holiday makers talking directly to camera in the Clubland camper van. The voice-over stated "Clubland 11 is finally here, 42 massive new tracks ... so what are your Clubland confessions?" A young woman said "Morning, woke up, did not have a clue what his name was." A young man said "Snogged her last night " and pointed at the young woman sitting next to him. His friend countered "I snogged her last night." A young man said "I've been here for six weeks and I've been with 39 girls and she's the 40th." A young woman said "We actually flash to get free drinks, no problem, nothing".

Seems that times have moved on since the animated pig from the Now That's What I Call Music 4 advert. Having not seen this advert or at least being unable to remember the advert I'm simply going to reserve my comments for what's in that synopsis and the adjudication. But just remember this whole discussion is about an commercial for some regurgitated dance music.

This advert attracted two quoted complaints (the first from a viewer the second from the ASA itself perhaps after it was highlighted to them). The first issue then:

”A viewer complained that the ad was potentially harmful because it could encourage promiscuity among young people.”

I do have a feeling I’ve seen this advert, but like most television advertising it passed me by. I matured in the 1990s, and in their book alt.culture, Steven Daly and Nathaniel Wise identify it as trait of those of us from that generation – it takes much subtler forms of persuasion to get us to randomly put our hand in our pockets (like a box full of the product next to a shop till with is why I’ve munched down a Wispa a week since it re-launched).

What’s more than a little curious is that this complainant has not only paid attention to the advert enough to read the content in a way which would make some media studies students envious, it has been evaluated against their own moral code and decided they didn’t like it enough to put finger to keyboard or pen to paper.

The problem is I’m not sure anyone watching – particular the ‘young people’ will consider the words of the actors in this advert for a cd and then think ‘I know – I’m going to go out and have sex more and with a greater variety of people!’ It doesn’t sound like something ‘young people’ these days need much in the way of encouragement to do.

The old argument considers if you show violence or promiscuous sex are you reflecting or perpetuating it? My answer has always been contextual or encapsulated in the word ‘depends’. And on this occasion, you have to believe that promiscuity amongst young people will happen anyway whether this advert exists or not and considering what it is it’s hardly going to be

In addition the complaint doesn’t extrapolate as to why ‘promiscuity among young people’ is a bad thing it just flatly implies that it is. It lacks a social conscience and doesn’t mention the other things the advert is doing which is skirting around the issue of safe sex and everything that was being taught about sexually transmitted diseases during and after the AIDS epidemic began. That’s something which is worth complaining about.

Except that why would you need to? It’s an advert for a music cd -- and how many of the viewers in the target demographic of which I'm in the upper reaches will like be paying that much attention? Won't it just pass most of us by? In addition, aren't a percentage of the promos on the same channel doing much the same thing and in even less ambiguous terms?

Understand, I’m not defending the advert, it sounds dreadful, fulfilling all of the clichés of that kind of advertising, portraying its target demographic stereotypically with a leaden script. When I had more time on my hands I used to always do the surveys carried out by those women in the street with the clipboards and every now and then I’d be asked to evaluate adverts and more often than not they seemed to be showing what the ad firm thought that real people where like as looked down at them from their high office window in the city.

Now the second issue levelled by the ASA itself:

”The ASA challenged whether the ad encouraged immoderate drinking and linked alcohol with sexual activity and success.”

Again, reflection, perpetuation and context. This complaint is slightly more complex because actually what it seems to be doing is holding the advert up to the same standards as a drinks commercial, which it isn’t – its for a compilation music cd. Should it be held to the same standard? Perhaps it should, but what’s equally curious is that in fact the encouragement to immoderate drinking is implied not explicit.

Despite the night club scenes, arguably you would need to know the vital context and have already had experiences in that area in order to understand the meaning of what is being said. There’s no doubting that excessive drinking is an issue in society, but like the first complaint, is it possible that this advert for a cd on its own has the power to perpetuate it and would encourage people to do more of it. I’m not sure that it would since they would need to know what the advert is about in order for that to happen which means they’d be doing it already.

The response. Universal, the company publishing the cd isn’t using the advert anymore anyway and will only be using an approved ad in the future for the Clubland albums and so it’s the broadcaster, Hits TV which is being brought to account. Predictably their first defence is that “they did not believe the ad contained anti-social or dangerous behaviour and merely portrayed a light-hearted vision of the holiday experience of their 16- to 34-year-old audience”. Actually, it probably portrays a rather sunny version of that experience judging by the stories that are constantly being filtered back from resorts.

Sadly, Hits TV then neuter their case by suggesting that suggestion that the context of the "we actually flash to get free drinks" quip isn’t what it clearly is – that the ‘drinks’ might not be alcoholic and that we’re not sure what was flashed – which makes them look like they know they’ve done wrong and they’re just skirting around the issue. And this is why its entertaining – there’s always a moment as you read through like a good courtroom drama when someone makes a strategic mistake and you can see what the outcome is going to be. It actually looks like they’re capitulating which is a shame because I think they would have had quite a strong case.

Both complaints were upheld. The first was for reasons that had nothing to do with the advert and indeed the complaint itself. The advert was broadcast during the day when kids could be watching. The word ‘likely’ is used. What’s odd about that is that the ASA don’t actually know that kids will be watching, they’re just assuming they must be.

Except you can actually find out if children are watching if the channel is getting enough viewers to warrant a mention on the BARB or ratings figures which now include a breakdown of proportions of viewers in each demographic. Marry the times the advert was broadcast with the ratings for the group you’re worried about and you’d know for sure whether these impressionable youngsters are watching.

If they were, well fine. But I would still refer to my previous comments that this advert isn’t going to be telling some ‘young people’ anything which they don’t already know. Which is sad but true. There is something to be said for the advert adding to the death of childhood but that’s perhaps a separate argument to what’s being considered here.

The second, the ASA’s own is upheld too and for the reasons I expected. The ASA say: “We considered that the phrase "We actually flash to get free drinks, no problem ... " would be understood by viewers to refer to alcoholic drinks, and encouraged immoderate drinking.” In other words, the viewers who know what the phrase means, the drinkers, would be encouraged to drink, which they probably do already.

There’s no denying that there are things to complain about in the advert but the problem is that the way the complaint is handled and the assessment is made it's as though this single spot has the potential to turn young minds throughout the country to more sex and drink which in a lot of ways elevates it and suggests it has an even greater potential than it actual has considering what it is, what it’s for and when it is being broadcast.

Actually what you should find alarming is that it’s encouraging young women to flash in public as a way of getting free alcohol which might be an age old tradition but is certainly a grey area from a feminists perspective and could potentially be rather dangerous if drunken men are involved which they presumably are. This could be the ‘sexual activity’ suggested in the adjudication, but again it all seems like a bit vague to me.

Except would an advert for a music cd really have the power to do that?

Really?

“Action – We told the advertiser not to repeat the ad.”

And I bet they did too.

Review 2007: A Call For Entries

Before regular readers (and contributors) run to their calenders wondering where three weeks went to, I know I’m starting early this year. But if the lights can already be up in city centres and shops can already be selling their Christmas wares, I think it’s just about ok to be writing about this just under a week before Halloween, especially since posting usually starts on the first of December and that is only five weeks away. Plus, this isn’t about Christmas, but rounding out our year with a collective sigh.

It’s the fifth anniversary of these reviews and each year they’ve become more ambitious and interesting. Last year, over thirty of you were kind enough to send in questions which I was happy to answer. The most popular answer or article was the one about Torchwood, which was linked all over the place, and the Keira Knightley question was second, presumably because she's been a bit busy this year.

2007 is hopefully going to be somewhat similar to what we did in 2005. Then I invited people to describe a moment when they succeeded in doing something they've always wanted to do that year, which led some amazing writing on topics as diverse as getting a book published, karoke, visiting Ireland and New York, being invisible and having a baby. Keeping the overall subject seems to work so with that in mind, here is the title for Review 2007.

Review 2007: Home.

I’m asking people to write about what they thought was the most significant thing to that happened in the place where they live this year. This could be something that’s effected an entire city or town or village or just your street and it might be something whose effect only you seem to have noticed or everyone you know was talking about and even the rest of the world. The important thing is that you give it a local slant and how it felt to someone who actually lives there making the rest of us understand what it was like.

Here’s how I decided upon the idea: this year was Liverpool’s 800th birthday and next year the city has been chosen to be the European Capital of Culture. My original idea was to have commemorated that by asking people to write about my home town and what they thought of it as an outsider and from within, but then it occurred to me that Liverpool isn’t at the centre of the known universe and that asking everyone to write about that was just a bit too … what’s the word?

Wherever we’re living and working is the centre of our own universe and that we are actually looking out at that universe through the windows and screens that are there but the look isn’t often returned. I realised it would be far more interesting to offer people the chance to make the world look at the place where they live and what happened to it this year, hopefully producing a review of the tear which is both global and local, that stretches, for example, from El Paso to Baltimore to Freiburg to Brighton and back to Liverpool.

If this does sound like something you’d like to be involved in, please email me at feelinglistless@btopenworld.com at least to say that you'd like to write something and then try and get your submission in by the end of November if you can. There will be a prize for any that are shown (or at the very least a link back to your own website if you have one). Don’t worry if you think the place where you live has already ‘gone’. Five people who’ve actually found somewhere to live in London aren’t going to look at the place in exactly the same way are they?

"I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts." -- Orson Welles

TV Time to admit something, although it may not necessarily be a bad thing depending upon your point of view. Here is a list of all the television I'm watching currently, week in and out (those marked with an asterisk are finishing this week):

The Sarah Jane Adventures (Mondays, BBC One)
Screenwipe (Tuesdays, BBC Four) *
Heroes (Wednesdays, BBC Two)
Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip (Thursdays, More4)
The Peter Serafinowicz Show (Thursdays, BBC Two)
Have I Got News For You (Fridays, BBC One)
The Culture Show (Saturdays, BBC Two)
The West Wing (Sundays, More4)

And um, that's it. I am also recording Robin Hood (Saturday et al, BBC One), Michael Palin's New Europe (Sunday, BBC One) and Diary of a London Call Girl (Thursdays, ITV2) to watch in the future, but that's it. Of course there's the news in the morning and at tea time, and the odd themed season on BBC Four or documentary here and there, but in terms of make-a-date programming that's the sum total of my viewing pleasure which seems awfully low in comparison to what I'm assuming other people are spending time with.

Which should explain why I haven't been writing much for Off The Telly lately. I know there's a lot worth seeing. Flight of the Concordes is probably a missed treat and I somehow totally forgot about the second series of Not Going Out. I've heard good things about Californication. But somewhere along the line, a couple of years ago, I simply stopped being able to just sit and watch television no matter what's on and spending much of the late summer listening to The Proms drew me even further away.

I've also got into the habit of simply putting the 'must-see' series on the LoveFilm list and waiting for them to turn up through the letter box so that I can gorge on them three or four episodes at a time, even uk programmes like Spooks. I'm part of the demographic which has turned away from television, not as a medium but as a process. I'm just watching a lot of films on dvd, reading, listening to music, and doing this. I'm working too. But the point is that I'm televisually disaffected and the only reason I can think of is that it's because there's too much of the stuff. In supplying too many choices, television has turned me off, because I can never decide what to watch.

Partly it's to do with my own approach to life. I don't like choice. I like to be surprised. My mp3 player is almost permanently on random. With Lovefilm you just watch whatever they send you from your list and my list currently stands at seven hundred odd. And if I can't be surprised I'll stick to one thing. Given the many hundreds of flavoured beverage on offer in Starbucks I tend to just drink black coffee. I'm sure people must notice that all I ever seem to wear is a white t-shirt and jeans. It's a surpise, the same thing, or nothing at all. The best restaurants are the ones that have a specials board. I don't suspect that everyone who's turned away from television has these oh so very special eccentricities.

I think probably the only thing which would get me to return to watching more television would be a channel which didn't actually have a proper schedule and were you'd never know exactly what was going to be on. There might be themed zones and types of programmes at different parts of the day and you could tune in and be surprised by whatever was being presented to you. Since they'd need to have something to print in the Radio Times, Surprise TV's evening programme list would look like this:

6:00 Old drama
7:00 A documentary
7:30 Comedy
8:00 Another documentary
9:00 New drama
10:00 Film
12:00(ish) Music
1:00 Repeat of something from earlier in the night
2:00 One of the dramas again too

Oddly enough, that does look not unlike the schedule for BBC Four, but even that has some serials. This wouldn't even have those. It might repeat episodes of things and in the right order, but there could be weeks in between. Long running storylines aren't going to work on this channel, but one off and stand-alone dramas would be perfect. The documentaries would be about anything. And the point is that it wouldn't be appointment tv on purpose. But the schedulers would just make sure that whatever was on would be damn good so when the viewer pitched up at nine o'clock, for example, they'd be sure to find an amazing film.

Of course this anarchic approach to scheduling would never work -- and I can't imagine what the business model would look like since there would have to be some commercials and how do you sell time on a channel which doesn't release its programme list? It's barmy but I still think it would work. But then, I once had the barnstormer of an idea of a radio station that tossed out genre concerns and simply played great music throughout the day no matter where in the world it was from and when. Which in todays money would mean Cornel Pewewardy & The Alliance West Singers next to Oasis next to Beethoven next to Bob Seger next to Nikka Costa next to The Specials. Essentially my mp3 player on random again but with a presenter. Which would never work.

“We place no reliance on virgin or pidgeon. Our method is science, our aim is religion.” -- Aleister Crowley

Environment I've spent the day in Chester beginning the preliminary round of my Christmas shopping which as you know can take many days and many hours of thought. I did manage to buy a few things, although as the years pass it is becoming more and more difficult to find the right thing and more importantly something which will actually be seen out after December 25th.

As I was passing through the Virgin Megastore nostalgically buying a copy of Betty Blue (Version very, very intégrale) the sales clerk asked me if I wanted a bag -- up until this point they've automatically put the goods into one. I nodded the affirmative and he put it into a brown recyclable paper bag (as opposed to the landfill friendly plastic). It's a small step towards helping the environment, but as I was walking out of the shop I considered why I needed a bag in the first place.

The dvd is already wrapped in plastic. I had my backpack with me which would have been a perfectly safe place to put it. Also, I visited a couple of charity shops on my way around town today also and bought a couple of cds and on both occasions the clerks were automatically going to put them in bags and I said 'I don't need a bag' which means I've been using a bizarre double standard that says 'New = bag' 'Second hand = doesn't deserve a bag'. Next time then, when I'm in a Virgin, I'll be letting my purchase go natural. So to speak.

And just while I'm here. It's always the quite, slightly sonorous, sycophantic ones, isn't it?

Warriors of Kudlak (Part One)

TV In point of fact I was probably a bit too critical of laser tag in my late review last night but one. I do remember enjoying it quite a lot whilst I was at university even though I wasn’t very good at it and largely a sitting duck. There were a couple of staff members who just seemed to play the game all day. Personally, I’d be quiet if that were my job. Oh and there was that time when I met a girl at the Laser Quest in Edinburgh. Our eyes met over the laser sighting and we killed each other many, many times. And laughed. Then killed each other some more. And then her boyfriend arrived and he killed me too. It was like a mini-version of the love triangle at the heart of Starship Troopers and I was Dina Meyer. Except clearly not. She has bigger biceps.

The Sarah Jane Adventures: Warriors of Kudlak: Part One

In fact the appearance of laser tag in this was generally accurate, although in my experience the participants were at least six years older and clearly lifers, becoming experts at these fictional war games at a time when there wasn’t anything in the real world to keep them occupied (how times change). I can empathize with Luke, who before going into battle didn’t see the attraction but soon found himself blasting away. There is an adrenaline rush that kicks in, although in some arenas it’s possible to select a spot high up and pick your opponents off which isn’t as fun as it sounds. You want to be running and jumping as happened in the episode; assassinations aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, even if, as in the film Grosse Pointe Blank, there’s an American version of Minnie Driver somewhere along the line trying to change your ways. But I have to agree with Neil – is anyone playing this stuff any more?

Despite my reservations after seeing the trailer this was another wonderfully enjoyable half hour. Time and again in The Sarah Jane Adventures you can see how horribly wrong everything could be, yet time and again it consistently surprises and delights. The story isn’t a completely new one of course – recruiting humans for an alien war was the backbone of The Last Starfighter (‘Greetings Starfighter … you have been recruited by the star league to defend the frontier … etc’) and also to an extent the Eighth Doctor BBC7 play Human Resources. What lifted this was the portrayal of the management of the project, Mr. Grantham, doing the Kudlak’s dirty work who in turn is also answering to a manager and the ineffectiveness of what they’re doing – the inability to find decent recruits is trickling up and down the hierarchy making everyone cross. Plus, could the phrase, ‘I want more children! Give me more children!’ be any more disturbing? (Yes, actually. According to The Guardian at the weekend, Jonathan King has a new album out).

After his initial appearance, Clyde might have become an intensely annoying smart arse of a character. Instead he’s generally warm and empathic, his conversations with Luke about what it is to be a tweenage human often a highlight. A lot of this has to do with cast and in fact now that Kelsey’s been rubbed from history (at least until series four when she returns as a villain) all of the young leads are quite charming in that way that the cast of the Harry Potter films are – and also with an unexpected range ... comedy … tragedy … comedy … tragedy … comedy … tragedy … You genuinely felt for Luke when he realised his one moment of feeling accepted by his peers led to pain for someone else – not really understanding why, in the main, kids tend to find cruelty strangely reassuring.

Similarly where other recent kids shows (admittedly from the US) have a tendency to go for the empty spectacle, there are some truly magical moments here of the sort which I remember from the classics of the Eighties. As Sarah Jane and Maria led the cloudbusting machine which looked as if to have been borrowed from the Kate Bush video with Donald Sutherland up the hill and switched it on and let the gold lights fill the sky, I wondered if younger viewers would have had the same thrill I did on seeing Hurne the Hunter in The Box of Delights (which is high praise indeed). Then golden beans fell from the sky!

And instead of simply being a way of getting someone from a to b, it motivated the story and showed that Sarah-Jane has become much more than a journalist over the years. There’s a useful feminist thread running through the series – in the past there would have been a cut to Maria’s Dad scratching his head over what this contraption could possibly be; now Sarah-Jane had to science bit covered. This was a great episode for her overall, seen to be genuinely investigating for herself and significantly fighting her way out of tricky situations herself.

There’s also a pleasing injection of whimsy of the kind that Douglas Adams would probably approve of – and genuinely funny. Sarah Jane and Maria turning up at the counter of the Combat 3000 looking to speak to the manager could have been dull as dishwater, a perfunctory bit of arguing. Writer Phil Gladwin offered in its place the business with the incongruous sales clerk having to do the introductory monologue for every customer and Sarah-Jane using youth patter and being told not to by Maria. The look of Dentian disappointment on Clyde’s face when he realised that Luke had beaten him on his first attempt and then trying to clunk-headedly show off to the villain of the peace. Oh and the concurrent irritation that Mr. Smith isn’t quite as good as he could be (which I’m sure is a background plot to be resolved in the final story – I think he’s holding back vital information).

If I wanted to be clearly unfair and look for flaws, it would be the over convenience that Clyde and Luke just happened to be visiting the Combat 3000 just as Sarah-Jane and Maria realised that it’s at the epicentre of their investigation. Mr. Grantham's office looked rather dark and drab and grey which was either a clever piece of design or some costs had been cut there to make way for the cloudbusting. I’m also a bit confused about the time frame – how long after the previous story was this set, and when? Shouldn’t these kids be at school, doing homework or what have you? Also, and perhaps this’ll be answered next time, why exactly is Grantham working for them? The money? The power? The girls? The machismo? Oddly enough, I didn’t have a problem with that arcade machine in the chippy – coin-ops in chippys are rarely newer than twenty years old – assuming they’re working at all.

Next week: I just know that something good is going to happen.

"It's times like this I wish I still had my scarf."

[spoiler] Well that's rather confirmed that then.

"When angry, count four; when very angry, swear." -- Mark Twain

Language I've never considered myself as being a great swearer. I can be profain, but there are just certain words which sound wrong coming from my lips -- my accent isn't strong enough in one direction probably, which means that sometimes when I do [expletive deleted] I do it in a put on accent, often Yorkshire or Mancunian (my scouse accent is too bizarre even though I'm from here).

Last night, when I came in from work, absolutely banjexed, I could smell dinner being made. My Dad asked me to make the mint sauce. So I duly went into the kitchen, put a few spoonfuls of the Colman's concentrated into a bowl, added too much vinegar so slowly mixed in some sugar to flatten it out a bit. It was a work of art worthy for the dinner table. Even though we were having roast chicken. He was joking and in fact I'd actually been looking at the chicken on the side whilst I was make the usual tasty accompaniment to lamb.

That was a fairly swear worthy moment. And I did. A bit.

The work place is different though and in fact, I've thoroughly cultivated the use of the word 'Twunk' for momentary mental lapses there. But some researchers in East Anglia have found that actually, real swearing at work can be a useful therapy:

"...In many cases, taboo language serves the needs of people for developing and maintaining solidarity, and as a mechanism to cope with stress. Allowing an official 'no swearing' policy to be informally ignored in some contexts may be a sensible outcome," the researchers say."

I've chosen to link that article because it reveals something I didn't know -- that in Jamaica swearing or as they call them 'bad words' are illegal. Far be it from me to pass judgment on the laws of another society, but how do you regulate a percentage of people's self expression? But then again, I've seen enough of those late night fly-on-the-wall shows which follow the police during kicking out time on a Friday night in a town centre to know that even over here if you swear at a police officer who's been on shift for twelve hours you'll be spending the night in a cell. It's not big or clever, especially after eight pints.

Eye of the Gorgon (Part Two)

TV All told this hasn’t been a good week for television. There was the ITV phone scandal, the fallout from which was fairly delicious for those of us who remember the channel wars a couple of years ago when Doctor Who was head-to-head with Ant & Dec in the ratings – their executive producer credits were apparently ‘vanity positions’ which must have caused the two of them to blow the cherryade through their noses when they heard Michael Grade say it on the Today programme (assuming they weren’t listening to the commercial alternative). Oh and obviously seeing Grade being harangued even if none of it happened on his watch. Some of us never forget.

Over on the BBC of course there was the announcement of job losses and the making of less programmes as a way of plugging the gap in the license fees. It was inevitable that a statement would be made to explain that Doctor Who would not being one of the shows to be axed and indeed whenever I heard one of these pronouncements I almost expected them to be made by Jim Bowen in his Bullseye voice: “Right, you’ve got Spooks, Casualty, Eastenders, costume dramas and Doctor Who … they’re safe….” Some of the grumbling from viewers and commentators surrounded the admittance that there would be an increase in repeats, but specifically what they calling ‘rolling’ repeats or another chance to see programmes again during their broadcast run.

And hooray for that. In the bad old days, even with video recorders, if you forgot something was being broadcast or the video was confused and recorded the other side, you were stuffed. I have a tape somewhere which has ten minutes of some television movie about a boating disaster were the first half of Dimensions in Time is supposed to be – and that’s never going to be repeated. Which, after finally seeing it online about ten years later is not such a bad thing. Now we have rolling repeats and there are very few shows that you can actually miss even without access the magic Sky+ box or Tivo. It’s because of rolling repeats that a week later than planned I can quite comfortably say:

The Sarah Jane Adventures: Eye of the Gorgon: Episode Two

A mirror. I love that. One of my favourite ideas in all of Greek mythology is that Medusa could be destroyed by her own reflection – it’s an unsubtle reminder that the one talent that we have, the one thing that we’re really good at is probably a curse and could eventually destroy us if we take it too far. It’s redolent of rock stars living fast and dying young and writers whose first novel is a work of genius and they spend the rest of their lives trying to recapture the magic. It’s also been seen before in Doctor Who – Dalek Sec for example, but I think this is the first time that it’s appeared in its most literal form.

And it’s important that Bea was the one to pass on the advice to the youngster and not Maria working it out for herself. It’s the show passing on a salient lesson (without being too preachy) to younger viewers – that pensioners, even those suffering from a debilitating mental illness, are not worthless and do have one or two things they can teach you, even if it is how to beat an alien gorgon who wants to take over the world. For all the running around and being captured this time, the core of this episode was those scenes between Phyllida and Yasmin and it’s pretty heartening to see that the production team, despite the shorter running time, are still giving some room for their cast to just act, that character is just as central to the show as plot (which I know runs rather contrary to what I said last week about the soapier elements but the difference here is that they were working in service of the narrative).

I can only echo what I’ve written previously about all of these actors and their characters. There is another valuable moment though when Sarah-Jane suggests at the climax that she’s found a Doctor substitute in these kids; that’s not too far from the truth. On each occasion so far, it is the children who in the end have saved the day which is to be expected in a kids show, but it does rather put Sarah-Jane in the position of still being rescued by someone and the writers do have to be careful not to make her appear too weak. Now and then you do feel as though she’s being held back, or not making the deductions you might have expected her to in the past – knowing the Medusa myth, why didn’t she work out what would hold back her adversary?

To an extent it feels like the same approach to the hero as cropped up in the opening series of the new Doctor Who when everyone but the timelord in the end seemed to beat the bad person and it would be gratifying if once or twice Sarah was the one to save the kids or the world. I’m guessing that on this occasion that mirror had occurred to her but not having one to hand and being held in bondage by the nuns she couldn’t do anything about it so hoped that Maria would have put two and two together and for us to see the thought process would have spoiled the ending.

You could also argue that we were also seeing a repeat of some of the elements of nu-Who – threat of bodily possession, the religious imagery and the nuns being at the top of the list. I’m glad they didn’t decided to let Sarah Jane be possessed – that would have been a horrific step too far as 42 & Human Nature demonstrated. My conclusion on this is that that kids like repetition – see Teletubbies ('Again! Again!'). They like to see variations of a formula rather than something totally new. Like the Blink-style statues, they could potentially pick up on the similarities and the fear will be carried over, at least a bit subconsciously. And wasn’t that an amazing shot, of the garden filled with statues of people in a range of positions of shock and awe, presumably as the gorgon’s gaze fell upon them? As Damon said in his review of the first episode earlier in the week, this is a great looking series and should not be overlooked when people write about dropping standards of children’s television. The talent is there if you give people the money and the space to do wonders.

I suppose the only real disappointment is that didn’t make more of Cardiff Castle (which is actually more of a mansion now); there are many more painted rooms just like that library which could have been worked into a more elaborate story about the power of myths – and indeed the history that Luke explained about how the convent was created evoked the original story of the mansion. But as the mirror demonstrates, the production are trying to keep things as simple as possible and perhaps they didn’t want to waste some of those other locations if the story didn’t really demand it. Plus that stone room was suitably gloomy and perfect for the kind of ritual being performed by those nuns. It’s ironic that The Daemons was shown on BBC Four tonight not long after this CBBC repeat, since the ritual being performed by the sister was certainly reminiscent of the Master’s chanting in that story.

But I suppose the greatest complement I can give the show is that even if you going in one end in a fairly grumpy mood (which I did) you’ll come out the other end smiling. It has enough moments of charm and calm and excitement and humour which the best of Doctor Who and children’s television should have, spooky when it needs to be and also incredibly literate and layered – when Bea offers “What are they teaching you youngsters at school these days” it confirms that it’s playing to two audiences, both kids and the adults who are watching it with them (which would please Tom). A character like Maria’s mother might be horrendously irritating if you’re not in the right mood but I think we’ve all known the type and actually it’s probably the type that might be horrendously irritating if you’re not in the right mood. I just hope we’re not seeing Donna-lite and that we’ve got thirteen episodes of something similar coming up.

Next week (well tomorrow night): It’s the laser tag story which looks utterly pants, probably because unless you were a pint-sized Andy McNabb, laser tag was pants when you were a kid.

“Television is more interesting than people. If it were not we should have people standing in the corner of our room.” -- Alan Coren

Obituary Alan Coren was another of those unique voices which always seemed to be speaking somewhere on television, radio and in print to the extent that it didn't ever occur to you that he would at some point not be there any more. The News Quiz won't ever be the same again.

"When you see the films of certain young directors, you get the impression that film history begins for them around 1980. " -- Jacques Rivette

Film I think this got rather less coverage than it deserves. The UK Government are donating £25 million to the UK Film Council to help preserve films being held in archives throughout the country, although mostly at the BFI. This is amazing news, since by a strange co-incidence it's almost the amount quoted during this BBC Four discussion from the summer as to how much funding would be required to save the archives -- or at least keep it in a state of grace. Many of the oldest films are on nitrate film stock which has a very limited shelf life (because when they were created it wasn't thought they would have a shelf life) and even newer material degrades. Now there's a chance it won't be lost -- which means we'll still have this window into the past in the future.