Parade's End. The guns of the Great War drowned out by rustling CVs.

I don't know who this is but her face
came up when I googled Genoa Cake

I bought a piece of Genoa cake at a cafe in Guildford Railway station last month. Experiencing a traditional Northern Italian delicacy that had been processed through a nostalgia for  British transport infrastructure was, near as dammit, like watching the BBC's adaptation of Parade's End written by Tom Stoppard. Rich, odd, synthetic, not unpleasant and multi-layered; a hint of something from another era, processed and artificially preserved. The Genoa Cake fromGuildford Station reminded me of an era when British trains were nationalised, of sponge fingers, which are made in the same way as Genoa Cake, of visiting Genoa, of Dundee cake (another world cake option offered by British station cafes) and even (in a tumble of cake and railway memories) of visiting Dundee.

In turn, Parade's End reminded me distantly of avariciously reading Tom Stoppard in Margate Library as a teenager, of reading Parade's End in my 30s, of watching BBC costume dramas, of trying to avoid BBC dramas and of the many depictions of the first World War in print and film. All these references were constantly competing in a violently distracting way. And just as the cake was a combination of many loveable things strained through the many demands and limitations of a national rail network, Parade's End, for all its nourishing and distinguished components, feels like a mixture of everything I love, shat through the BBC.

You might have seen us in Tom's 'End'.  We were very good.

The pleasure of watching the beautifully considered storyline of Ford Madox Ford, who himself had served on the front line and lived through the breaking down of the old class order and the first light of the modern world, was dimmed by the cacophony of BBC departments vying for attention. Every shot of  Tietjens and Wannop wandering down a country lane was drowned out by the frenetic updating of CVs in the hedgerows. The hair department with its precisely researched wartime hair, the costume department with its weekends spent poring over wartime uniforms, the casting department straining to contain themselves until the camera cut so they could refer to 'Ben' being such inspired casting, so born for this role,  the title sequence with its arch triangular motif of mirrors. All were designed in competition with one another with an eye to the next job. The production was not for the reviewers, let alone the public. It was for the next job. For the 'Oh you did Parades' or 'Oh, you did 'End'. Or 'Oh you did Tom's thing.'  'I couldn't watch it myself, but you've got the job.'

The sheer Tom Stoppardliness of the dialogue was breathtaking. The plot, the era, the great war itself could have been designed for Tom to step up and do his thing. Blood has been shed so that this landmark production could be aired. Vistas of trenches and elegantly spaced denuded trees were lit by an arcing flare went straight on the showreels of D.O.P.s, flare designers and all others concerned, generating low, air conditioned coos of joy in the grading suites of Soho. Even the schedulers and the programme commissioners can dine out on these five slight episodes. The legendary triples are downed to stentorian proclamations as to the difficulty of condensing four novels into five portions. 

It is well directed, well acted, well designed, well written. But these things don't act alone.You don't watch The Godfather and squeal at how Maurice has done a marvelous job in aging-down that violin-case, because its production design renders the era subservient to to the characters. The dialogue in Treme or the BBC's own 1995 Pride and Prejudice is subservient to both the plot an characters. In Parade's End, the plot and characters serve the genius of the writer, creating a thin layer of stage buffoonery over them all. 'Oh Tom, you've contracted four chapters of the novel into a chambermaid scolding a pie-man. Marvelous!'

And he does, you know. But to use rare writing talent in this way is to miss somewhat the dramatic potential of the era. (Don't even start me on Downton Abbey.) Everything that's was once great about the BBC and that's perfect about Tom Stoppard, that's perfectly cast about Benedict Cumberbatch and that's brilliant about Betty in the wartime props department is right there on screen, yelling at you for approval. That's why there's no point dragging it out for more than five episodes. The abbreviation of the plot into scenes of intense brevity made the experience of watching it sometimes exhilarating, like Tom and Jerry. But everything that is stirring and soulful about the subject of the Great War, of the loss of a way of life, of the skylarks and the old pals, is buried under a deluge of flatulent BBC whizz-bangs. Five episodes are enough because this isn't a TV drama, it's a showreel, the real audience for which is not interested in anything but the credits at Parade's End's end.

Designers are ponytailed wankers right?

We get it.  You smoke.

Since legendary Godfather of stand up, Bill Hicks, said that anyone in marketing should kill themselves, "seriously, no joke, kill yourselves" it's been tough for us marketing/advertising/creative workers when we leave our offices to mix with ordinary people.

When we went to a comedy club, looking to unwind and steal jokes, we took it in good heart. We laughed along with the estate agents, Americans and racists in the crowd who were picked on for their assumed lack of scruples. Our entrance money was the same colour as everyone else's, explaining the racists' presence, so we smiled even while being collectively vilified. Like the craven opportunists we were portrayed to be, (accurately) (so that doesn't remotely qualify as a simile) we even laughed and looked round to see where these hapless marketing people, estate agents, Americans and racists might be sitting, thus covering our own embarrassment.
But one legacy of the London 2012 Olympic games and perhaps the most important, is to prove the true value of the creative wankers with their creme de menthe and stupid trousers.  True value as in making people happy.
And looking back, shortly after I watched Bill Hicks live at the Hackney Empire back in the 80s when he was alive - oh and by the way, how many Godfathers do you need, alternative  comedy? I have come across thousands of Godfathers mentioned casually by successful comedians and most seem to be little known names whose claim to the title of joint spiritual guide is based on being brave on stage, by not being funny enough.

But looking back from this post Olympic 2012 moment, when I can take lofty satisfaction in being part, at last, of a 'making people happy' industry, I don't understand why it's taken me so long to see the irony that it was Bill Hicks who went away from the show in which he instructed me to kill myself, and killed himself.  With cigarettes. Cigarettes which creative industry professionals like myself weren't allowed to advertise, so Bill Hicks can't even posthumously blame us for his early death. Although, to be fair to Bill Hicks, the supreme comedy craftsman of his era, he may have been attracted to the colourful pack designs.
For among the legions of la-di-da generators of tomtittery, none has been as publicly and as universally mocked as the design company Wolff Olins for its acidic London 2012 logos. The Daily Mail, the BBC, the man in the street, the woman in the headscarf and most painfully, like the very sheep they purport not to be, your stand up comedians, were united in their immense communal sneer.  'Why can't they just do it properly?'. Where are the Olympic rings, that's the famous things!' said the ordinary people.   'A child could do better!' said the Daily Mail, and readers sent in something better from their children to prove their point.  The BBC damned it with special smirks to camera, getting a retired design guru to mock it, then for balance got a risible oaf to defend it.
But the big game was not just to say that it looked fugly, but to let us all know what it looked like.  'It looks like a cat with two pelvises.' 'It looks like someone's been sick, but not in a toilet, somewhere funny, like a chessboard.' 'It looks like a bomb's gone off in a Chinese laundry', and before anyone could say, what the fuck are you talking about, we don't really have Chinese laundries any more and the London 2012 logo is far to clean in its lines and balanced as a composition to resemble the carnage and chaos that would follow such an event, they found themselves joining the laughter.
Yet the logo inspired much that was successful about the 2012 games, setting the tone and creating an energy, sure. But that would be just the bullshit part. Its fonts and colourways (ugh) made signage through one of the world's most confusing places, the London Underground system, outstandingly simple.  For millions. 

Something to do with Wolff Olins, 

The eye could immediately find its destination above the visual hubbub of a rail terminus, aided by the jerky type and silly colours. It also brought a kind of joy to the venues themselves.  The unmistakeable bright purple playing surfaces made every event feel like it was in some clean, virtual world, rather than the festering stink-hole that most venues, by virtue of their location and history, actually were. When you go through your volumes of Olympic games memorabilia, as you probably do periodically, London's will sing out among others. Take away the colour scheme, the creative energy of the London games and what will you will remember? The host nation doing well? That had nothing to do with Wolff Olins, but even the stand up comedians, even Bill Hicks, could not accuse a design company for not contributing enough to the training facilities of our Olympic hopefuls. So put aside the actual performances and the creative energy and you would have been left with what we all expected.  Expensive, elusive ticketing, empty seats, administrative cock ups, rampant, clumsy commercialism and two boy-faced men trying to out-appear the other in Olympic photographs.
So fuck off, stand up comedians, with your 'bits' and your 'callbacks', and the unexpected opening lines to your 'sets'.  You can run back to your Godfathers with your balloons between your legs.  

Sky Atlantic

I wonder if anyone with a senior role at the BBC had a moment of guilty self- realisation  on seeing the home of HBO spring into life last week. Sky Atlantic may be another cynical purchasing coup by the Murdoch empire, but like the Premiership, like movies, it has ended up owning the best of a genre.  Meanwhile the Big British Castle is busy fighting its imaginary battle with ITV.  From the astonishing leaps in broadcasting that it once made, it is now self parodic, to the point of parodying its own self parody.   (The One Ronnie?) Back when there was just 3 stations, of which 2 were BBC, I watched in awe Kenneth Clarke's 'Civilization'.  A medium  for triviality and light entertainment  pulled back a curtain to reveal long slow tracking shots of cathedral ceilings accompanied by Bach and Purcell.  Dr Who was created out of the imaginations of viewers as much as of its writers, so bad were the sets, but still in stark difference to the gurning ineptitude of American TV.  That standards have lowered at the BBC is too humdrum a fact to explore.  That US standards have risen so high is not so humdrum.

Let's take what we in the UK hold up as excellence in film-making skills.  Our soaps seem to be the high water mark of drama output, with a few freak tides where something of outstanding class breaks through.   That would be, presumably, the remake of Sherlock Holmes, the remake of Dr Who, the occasional Stephen Poliakoff play or breakout comedy.  Last year's BBC Bafta winners included Kenneth Brannagh in Wallander, Julie Waters playing Mo Mowlem and various awards for The Thick of It.

What do we learn from that estimable line-up by comparing it to a standard week's viewing on SkyAtlantic?  Of course there's Boardwalk Empire, Blue bloods, Curb your Enthusiasm, Mad Men, Entourage, Re-runs of Sopranos, 6 feet under,   new Specials - You don't know Jack, When the Levees broke.  And now the amazing Treme. 

I've watched a few hours of both lists and it amounts to nothing less than a 'how to create great TV' education, with the BBC so-called award winners presented as a risible 'How not to do it' section of the lesson, to warm up the audience before a serious and brilliant step by step guide from the HBO programmes.  Indeed, imagine the scene at a night class for aspirant writers in a college in Anaheim.   Tired from their exertions at the pizzeria or waving in a Mickey costume during the day, the students settle and focus on the projected screen as the tutor plays a montage of British TV writing.    'I love you Denise.  I can't stop finking about yer'.  Pause.  The chuckles die down.  The tutor says,  'OK.  what do we know about what's happening in this scene? Anybody?

'He loves Denise'.  Laughter all round.  'OK' says the tutor.   'And here's the biggie, how do we KNOW he loves her?'

'He fuckin' tells her. '  Big laugh.

How do we tell that Al Pacino's character loves his wife in 'You don't know Jack'.   He rolls the tape.
It's the moment Jack emerges briefly from his concentration on his plan to allow terminally ill people to end their lives with dignity and says to his wife thoughtfully 'Is that a new wig?  She acknowledges the compliment,  not by saying 'Hey I can't believe you noticed!' but by smiling touchingly and saying 'It's rum n raisin'.(A hair tint, I inferred.)

In every facet of that simple exchange there is craft at work, as there is in almost every exchange in every scene in every one of those above-listed US dramas. As a viewer we can project backwards the nature of the characters' marriage. It is long, it is loving, that he is gallant and caring, if obsessive, she has suffered, perhaps through illness, but that she is an optimist and loves her husband yet fears that he is becoming distant as he throws himself into his final cause, haunted by his own mortality. We learn about their peculiar modern American milieu in which wig tints are described in terms of ice cream flavours. All this from the words alone. The casting, lighting, framing, editing are telling their own stories. The tiny simper of pleasure the wife feels is lingered on, because it means everything. Not just that he she was once beautiful and always enjoys it being noticed, but still feels it when her husband notices. That gentle expression of love is the entire theme of the mercy killing drama.

A comparison by Prospect magazine between The Wire and a Uk equivalent last year found that the former had 17 concurrent plot lines to the UK drama's 4.

Considering Sky's motivation is to make an arse load of cash and the BBC is to lead the world
In TV excellence and costs us 4billion quid a year I actually don't mind the Tories laying into them.

The guy who wrote the Wire confirmed in the article that he could never have done it at the BBC.