Today's proper Today's Joanna Page is Russell T Davies's Mine All Mine. Stick around Who-ers and Torchwood-ers, this might be about a girl but there's something in it for you as well.

Just kidding. I am awful, aren't I?

Now Russell T Davies has been mentioned rather a lot on this blog and it's not always been positive - which is a little unfair. So I thought I'd first take a moment to give some well deserved praise and thanks to the great RTD.

• Thank you RTD for enlivening children's TV in the 80s and early 90s with shows such as Dark Season and Century Falls.
• Thank you RTD for writing for Touching Evil. While I didn't like the UK version of the show much, the US version, which used your scripts, remains one of my favourite shows of all time.
• Thank you RTD for rescuing us from stultifying conformity by increasing the range and number of gay characters on television, whether in shows you contributed to such as The Grand, or shows you created such as Bob & Rose, Torchwood and, of course, Queer as Folk. The effect can be seen as far afield as Footballers' Wives and Caerdydd
• Thank you RTD for casting David Tennant
• Thank you RTD for bringing back Doctor Who and revolutionising Saturday night television

Most of all though, thank you RTD for your “stealth Welsh” initiative.

The Welsh on television pre-RTD
It's hard to remember what television was like before Russell T Davies. For years, Welsh actors and characters either didn't get a look in or were there for comedy value. Back in the 70s, it was Pobol Y Cwm on BBC1, just before kids television started and that was about it. No, Ivor the Engine doesn't count.

Come the 80s, S4C started up and took Pobol Y Cwm with it. That left mainstream TV with Ruth Madoc in Hi-De-Hi, and the hysterical John Sparkes as Siadwell in Naked Video and in Absolutely. Catherine Zeta Jones's turn in The Darling Buds of May before her move to Hollywood helped up the Welsh profile a bit, but she never played any roles with her own accent - something that's been true for the vast majority of Welsh actors and actresses since. As for shows set and filmed in Wales, they were pretty few and far between - can you think of any?

Then along came Russell T Davies (joined by Julie Gardner later on) with his “stealth Welsh” initiative - his plan to “normalise” the Welsh accent as a feature of British TV shows, get Welsh people represented on-screen and to create a viable TV industry in Wales.

And he's doing it, too. There's Torchwood and Doctor Who filmed in Wales, with Welsh actors and Welsh characters; Gavin & Stacey does likewise, coming in those programmes' “Cool Cymru” wake. They're all some of the most popular programmes on their respective networks (BBC2, BBC1, BBC3).

There's a long way to go still and the scaling back of DW and Torchwood from 13 episodes plus specials to four and five episodes next year respectively, coupled with the impending end of Gavin & Stacey altogether, suggest it could all fall apart again. A certain Joanna Page, for example, has even remarked that's she's been to auditions, asked to do the role in her own accent, and been told "It's fine for you to have any regional accent apart from Welsh". But look how much he's achieved.

No wonder Cardiff is thinking of erecting a statue of the man.

But the first real strike in his “stealth Welsh” plan wasn't with the BBC - it was for ITV. Set in his home town of Swansea, Mine All Mine was a comedy drama starring Griff Rhys Jones as Max Vivaldi, a man who claimed to own the whole city, and a mostly Welsh cast able to use their own accents for once.

Now I really wanted to like this. Just about every possible checkbox was ticked for my liking it: Russell T Davies - check; Swansea - check; Joanna Page - check; Siwan Morris from Caerdydd - check; Griff Rhys Jones - check; Ruth Madoc - check; lots of Welsh people - check; etc.

Yet, even though rewatching it I liked it more than when I watched it the first time, it still wasn't what you could describe as “great”, unfortunately.

Continue reading "Today's Joanna Page: Mine All Mine"

Read other posts about: Gavin and Stacey, Torchwood

This one was supposed to be easy. This was supposed to be brief: I said so, last time. You see – and there are going to be a lot of naval puns during this one, so brace yourself – Making Waves pretty much sunk without a trace.

After years in development hell and after being rescheduled four times, this ITV flagship drama emerged onto our screens in the summer of 2004, opposite Supernanny. Sort of Soldier, Soldier but featuring the Royal Navy (hence its nickname Sailor, Sailor), it depicted the arrival of a new captain – played by ex-EastEnders psycho, Scottish actor Alex Ferns – on board the fictional frigate HMS Suffolk, and his attempts to make it sea-ready, all to the backdrop of the relationships of the crew and various exciting naval events, such as piracy, illegal immigrants, smuggling and explosions.

With £5 million in budget and the might of legendary producer Ted Childs (Lewis, Inspector Morse, Soldier Soldier, Sharpe, Kavanagh QC) behind it, there were high expectations in some quarters, but after just three episodes, falling ratings meant it was cancelled. Despite there already being three more episodes in the can, ITV never repeated it or showed the remaining episodes.

There was a DVD of the show, but only ever 2,500 or so were pressed and they were mainly sold to the Navy. You can't get it from Amazon; you can't find it on eBay. And here's the only publicity still of our Joanna Page, who played new rating, Operating Mechanic Rosie Bowen, that appears to have survived online. 

So I thought this was going to be brief, since I couldn't really say much about it. As I said, easy.

But then I found out that someone had uploaded the whole series to YouTube, so meticulous journo that I am, I had to watch the whole thing – you can, too, if you hang around to the end of this entry.

And I have to say, despite a shaky start, it was actually really enjoyable (although typically, mainly during the cancelled episodes), has possibly one of the most exciting, hardware-based episodes of anything ever made for British TV – and more importantly for Today's Joanna Page, has her only outing so far as 'action heroine'.

In fact, I'm quite cross – angry even – that it was cancelled.

Continue reading "Today's Joanna Page: Making Waves"

Read other posts about: Gavin and Stacey, The Sandbaggers

WTF! Not just one but four Horatio Caines in a crime lab doing girly science stuff! What can be going on? He hasn't stepped foot in a lab full of chemicals in seven seasons - and CSI: Miami has only been on for six. How can this be? Well, it was continuity week this week and as well as bringing back a whole load of old plot threads and guest characters, they've clearly decided to remind us all that David Caruso can face other inanimate objects square on - and that Horatio's supposed to have a degree in chemistry or something normally only fit for liberal nerds, not real conservative American heroes.

Actually quite an interesting episode this week I thought, not just for that cartload of continuity, but for having the most obviously deconstructable feminist/anti-feminist sub-text featuring ex-Showgirls star Elizabeth Berkley.

Continue reading "CSI: Miami - Horatio meets his match"

Read other posts about: CSI

At first sight, this looks like a meme. And it is. Sort of. But it's also about something that's been concerning me of late: the youth of today. Ah, I must be getting old if I'm getting concerned about the youth of today – and using the phrase "the youth of today". It's a short step to the Daily Telegraph from here.

What's your favourite TV decade? In other words, which decade produced the television you love the most? Maybe it was the 60s with its escapism and gritty social realism, all rolled into one. Maybe it was the bleak 70s, or the action-packed 80s? It might even be the 90s, when US television really got into quality products for the first time.

But the second part of the question is slightly different: how did you get to see that TV?

I'm gambling that, to a certain extent, most people's favourite TV decade – if they have a favourite decade – will be the time in which they were growing up. If they were young in the 80s, they probably fondly remember 80s TV. And so on.

But there will be a few who will cite an earlier time, and probably a few who will say that the current programmes on TV are the best we've ever had. I'm very fond of 1960s and 1970s, even though I was either too young to have seen very much of it or I hadn't even been born yet – and there's a whole load of 1950s TV that's very good, too.

I grew up in the 80s when there were just four TV channels available to most people. Back then, network programmers had no problem with sticking old programmes and movies on at primetime. Channel 4 stuck The Addams Family, Car 54 Where Are You?, The Munsters, and The Abbott and Costello Show on at 5pm on weekdays, and The Avengers on at night. BBC2 was quite happy to repeat The Invaders, the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies, the Falcon and the Saint movies, and more at 6pm of an evening. ITV littered its daytime schedules with The Sandbaggers and Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) and stuck The Baron, The Champions and Thunderbirds on at the weekends. And BBC1 would trawl out Bonanza on a Sunday afternoon. That's how I got introduced to the TV classics of the past – as well as a few old bits of rubbish.

Nowadays, you can get all of this on DVD, of course, and with multi-channel TV, there are networks more or less dedicated to old faves: ITV4 is a haven for all those ITC shows (R&H (Deceased), Space: 1999, The Champions and The Prisoner are all on right now); there's the Bonanza Channel (or used to be at least) for anyone wanting to catch Lorne Greene before he boarded the original Battlestar Galactica; and BBC4 will occasionally dredge something up from the archives for a brief season (Steptoe and Son, recently, or Doctor Who, starting on the 5th April).

But not the terrestrial channels. More to the point, you have to go looking for this stuff: it's not right there in front of you when you turn on the TV. Which is all well and good, but how – and this is my big point – are the youth of today going to ever see any of their TV heritage and become interested in it? How will they ever experience the thrills of The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone or The Night Gallery? How will they know the joy of Mrs Peel and Steed's interplay, Carter and Regan's bad driving, or the simple happiness of life in Camberwick Green and Trumpton?

Obviously, learning French, reading classics of literature, and getting a fair understanding of physics, chemistry and biology so they can laugh at homeopaths, particularly French homeopaths, are far more important than tele. But whole lot of effort, expertise, creativity and passion went into creating these old shows, some of which are infinitely superior to their modern successors. Who wouldn't want the original Invaders over its remake, for example? Or, indeed, Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) - shame on you Vic and Bob. Some of the shows are historical documents in their own rights and are referenced in books and films of the time; some even changed society altogether. And I think it would be a shame to forget that heritage, just as it would be a shame to forget the literature of the 1960s, say.

Is it going to take parents forcing DVDs on their kids or locking every channel except the nostalgia channels to teach them TV history – not that that's a particularly good way to enthuse kids about anything? Now that MOMI's gone we no longer have the equivalent of New York's Paley Center so that's not an option. Worse still, are the youth of today just never going to be able to relate to old TV, any more than most people can relate to classics of Victorian literature? Should we just let ephemeral old TV disappear into the ether and live in the now?

What do you think?

Read other posts about: Battlestar Galactica, ITC shows, The Prisoner, The Sandbaggers

I started "Movies You Should Buy" (now called "Movies You Should Own" because I belatedly realise it rhymes with Alex Cox's old BBC2 film strand, Moviedrome) with The Satan Bug. Lovely "killer virus" movie that – probably the first. 

But there was a bigger and better "killer virus" film to come, one that marked the end of many of the trends The Satan Bug seemed to start – or at least coincide with.

The title of this movie, which you should definitely own, is now used by virus researchers whenever they want to put a name to their worst nightmare: a virus that they can't cure but is utterly contagious and can kill anything in a frighteningly short space of time. 

It's The Andromeda Strain and it's probably the best, clever-stupid "killer virus" movie ever made.

Here's the title sequence, complete with scary arse theme tune.

Continue reading "Movies you should own: The Andromeda Strain"

Read other posts about: 24

Feast your eyes on that. Hey? Hey?

Sorry about the poor picture quality - I had to scan it off the back of a DVD given away free with The Sunday Times a couple of weeks ago. It's a publicity shot for The Big Experiment, a reality documentary on the Discovery Channel:

A flagship six-part series that takes a class of teenagers from East London and explodes their misconceptions about science. With the help of three of the country’s most passionate experts, the group of 13 year-olds will be fast-tracked through their GCSE science. No ordinary Science lesson, the series sees them undertake anything from leaping off a 40-foot scaffold, suspended only by helium balloons, to climbing into a phone box to be struck by lightening.

The Big Experiment speaks to them in their own language, challenges them to take risks with science and brings the curriculum off the textbook and into the real world.

But will these kids make it though their GCSE and find science has the power to inspire lives?

Yes, apparently, if you stick cameras on kids an under-resourced East London school (always East London, isn't it? Never bloody Glasgow or Manchester, is it?), take them on trips and expose them to explosions and more, all financed with roughly the budget for the entire school year, they'll be more interested in science than they were before. Wow. What an experiment.

Anyway, my interest here is the three hosts. Now, much as I hate to make personal comments, particularly about people's appearances, I can't help but note that, to put it leniently, the woman (Dr Laura Grant) is a good deal more attractive than the two men.

There are two ways to look at this, initially, with typical knee-jerky liberalness:

1. This is a disgrace. Science is above looks, it's only about truth. More importantly, now that the chains of patriarchy are being sloughed off, we shouldn't go back to the old double standards of a woman having to look good to be paid attention to, while men can look how they like and they'll still be respected.
2. This is a good thing. More women are needed in science. By demonstrating that women can do science and still be attractive, more girls are likely to take up science.

Nevertheless, there is something that kneejerk liberalism will not automatically pick up on.

Continue reading "The Big Experiment: What's the message?"