The Book Tower

He didn’t want to look into its face. He’d expected the eyes to be closed, but they were open. Staring up at him. The sockets beneath were black. Impulsively he tapped on the glass.

Random internet searches on The League of Gentlemen will return unsurprising descriptions of the television series; bizarre, macabre, mad, surreal, eccentric, weird and demented are some of them, although my favourite is probably the single word brilliant. Yes, I was a big fan, although a decade on I’d almost forgotten about them. So discovering the writing talent of Jeremy Dyson (the fourth, non-performing, member of the team) was an unexpected joy.

Dyson’s writing will appeal to any admirer of The League of Gentlemen, although he’s moved on from comedy to deliver The Cranes That Build the Cranes, a collection of nine short stories that have a sinister flavour to them. It follows Never Trust a Rabbit, an earlier collection, although in comparison Cranes is a much more accomplished and impressive book. Dyson has moved, and I hope is still moving, into the league of truly great writing.

Most impressive are The Coué, quoted above, and Michael, two modern horror stories that deserve to become classics of the genre, forever reprinted in terrifying anthologies. Other stories reveal Dyson’s weird and inventive imagination; Yani’s Day defies description in its fresh originality. His writing has sometimes been described to Dahl’s adult stories. There are similarities, but don’t expect neatly executed tales with a twist. Quite often Dyson leaves a lingering doubt, where you are left checking the shadows behind you. Highly recommended.

So impressed with this, I sought out his 2006 novel What Happens Now. It’s a well written book that reminds at times of Jonathan Coe, and after dragging slightly at the halfway mark emerged as a truly great piece. Dyson ties up his deliberately loose threads and themes with great skill; this is a thought provoking book about action and inaction, and the consequences of trying to right terrible wrongs when it’s far too late. It delivers a terrible irony in its closing pages, and I found it a powerful meditation on, as you might expect, the bizarre and the weird aspects of life. But all done brilliantly.

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With Walkabout and The Railway Children being enduring features of the television schedules, it’s odd that a far superior film starring the young Jenny Agutter is now totally forgotten. Made in 1969, I Start Counting was directed by David Greene and is a lost classic of British cinema. It’s one of the best depictions of that era I’ve seen on film; old buildings demolished for the New Town, quaint vehicles, short skirts and ugly shopping centres. It’s like a dose of late 60s Ken Loach but with the added spice of one of the more progressive Hammer films of the early 70s.

I Start Counting is taken from a novel by Audrey Erskine-Lindop, which I suspect may be now even more obscure than the film. Agutter plays Wynne, an adopted 15 year old girl who is infatuated with her much older step brother David (Bryan Marshall). Sharing a cramped flat with the rest of the family, Wynne’s predicament is partly a claustrophobic study of sexual awakening. Added to this, she begins to suspect David as having some involvement in a local murder. She even covers for him, finding his blood stained clothes and burning them. What makes I Start Counting unusual, and especially for its period, is that the thriller aspect is kept very much as a back story; the film is confident to move at a slow although very involving pace, concentrating on Wynne’s journey into adulthood with her more precocious best friend Corinne (Clare Sutcliffe). Greene is also a skilled enough director to weave some subtle red herrings into the plot. You never really know where this film is leading you.

Undoubtedly some viewers will find this film dated, although for me this works in its favour by making it a superior period piece from 60s British movies. The observations made about the new replacing the old aren’t too overblown, and there is some scepticism surrounding the so called New Towns of the time; Wynne escapes her tower block life and finds solace by revisiting the now derelict former family home. Her trips into the countryside seem brief and eagerly snatched, but the natural environment appears dangerous to all else concerned. In one scene Wynne is feared missing, her trips to the old house seen as a foreshadowing of doom. There are other curious and subtle observations throughout; Corinne, fatally disadvantaged by her brash and outgoing nature, and the unusual ending which suggests that Wynne’s wishes may have come true.

I Start Counting has a very good, although mostly low profile, cast. Apart from Agutter, probably the most recognisable face is Simon Ward, who is impressive in the small yet pivotal role as a seedy bus conductor. Also look out for Michael Feast, contemporary of Bruce Robinson, playing a character with a very close resemblance to Danny in Withnail and I. Apart from this eccentricity, the performances are very naturalistic and convincing. Marshall and Sutcliffe are both excellent but Agutter is simply a revelation here. Nowhere else will you see her so wide eyed and impressionable. Cinema has committed a crime by not doing more with her.

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My plan to review every single episode of Doctor Who Season Five was dashed early by my disappointment with the second story The Beast Below. Rather than deliver a moany post about how the much anticipated Moffat has appeared to take up the reins of the worst of Russell T. Davies’ traits (the constant time loop of the human race, or specifically the English, on a spaceship again and again in the distant future), I’m moving swiftly on to episode 3, Victory of the Daleks.

Since their very first “return” when they invaded the London of the future in 1964 the Daleks have graced several Radio Times covers. Menacing The Doctor in black and white or colour, hiding behind The Ogrons or being ordered about by an increasingly tetchy Davros, they’ve remained more or less the same. Dav … I mean Terry Nation’s original blueprint had the stamp of genius. We know them, and we know what they’re after. Their means and the setting change slightly. And if it ain’t broke … well, we’ll come to that.

The latest Dalek return was penned by Mark Gatiss, a writer I’m particularly fond of since his League of Gentlemen days and more recently the wonderful Crooked House. Gatiss was responsible for Season One’s The Unquiet Dead which featured Simon Callow as Charles Dickens and The Idiot’s Lantern from Season Two. In Season Three he took an acting role in The Lazarus Experiment. Victory of the Daleks marks a promotion for him in being handed control of the Daleks or, as referred to in this episode, Bracewell’s Ironsides.

For me, Victory of the Daleks was where the jury returned to deliver its verdict on the new Doctor Who. Any good, m’lud? Well, the episode was noisy and bombastic, in particular with the excrutiating background music that accompanies every scene. There are no quiet moments in Season Five, and it is particularly irritating that the softly spoken Matt Smith is often drowned out. The 40s setting was novel, but perhaps not novel enough as memories of the superior The Empty Child , which introduced Captain Jack in his iconic Word War Two coat, are still fresh in the mind. Ian McNeice made an interesting, although unconvincing, Winston Churchill. Bill Paterson provided better support as Dr Bracewell.

As for continuing Dalek folklore, Gatiss dealt well with the increasingly awkward business of resurrecting our favourite nasties, who just won’t stay away. On a graph of Dalek resurrections, Victory of the Daleks was on par with the Davros episodes of 2008 but far below the Ninth Doctor’s encounters with them in 2005 and the 2006 Dalek vs Cybermen story that ended Season Three with Doomsday. Victory of the Daleks was very much Dalek lite, bringing them back to pave the way for future encounters. Although I must say the dashing of the just when you thought all the Daleks were gone comfort zone is becoming a bit of a cliché.

Worryingly however, the rather charming British Army Issue Daleks, garbed in khaki drills, were exterminated by their successors; a parade of brightly coloured and deeper voiced Daleks. It appears that Nation’s blueprint has been tinkered with, and this design option reminded of the Peter Cushing films of the mid 60s, where multi-coloured and almost gaudy Daleks were thought necessary to escape the monochrome studio-bound original episodes and offer bright and startling full colour Dalek-Orama. Or did I make that up…

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