Comic Cuts - 22 February 2019

I'm still plugging away writing company profiles for a franchise magazine, although the end is in sight. There have been a few obvious interruptions earlier this month (still no news of when my One Show appearance is going out), but I have a straight run at this hereon until I'm done... sometime in March probably. After that...?

I've slipped back into some of my old habits – starting early and working 7.30 to 11.30, taking a long break, and picking up again between 2.00 and 6.00. It gives my old eyes a decent break from the computer and means that I can doze off in front of the TV if I need to, which is often the case as I have a nasty habit of waking up at 5.00 in the morning and not being able to get back to sleep. This is probably down to a sedentary lifestyle and way too much coffee.

As mentioned last week, I'm trying to do a little more exercise where I can fit it in around the work and I've managed to lose a few pounds. I can already hear you asking: Am I beach body ready? Well, if you mean beaching myself on a sandbank like a whale sometimes does, then, yes, I'm beaching body ready. My abs remain a well-hidden secret lurking behind my tummy tyre.

Is there anyone who doesn't like Chris O'Dowd? I was a fan from episode 1 of The IT Crowd and we bought the DVDs of Moone Boy (it was on Sky, which we don't subscribe to), which was an utterly charming comedy about a 12-year-old boy and his invisible friend set in Ireland, which O'Dowd co-created and co-wrote... he also co-wrote a couple of novels, one of which I have. Then there is his recent legendary appearance on The Last Leg, completely out of his tree drunk and just having the best time.

Well, I've managed to catch up on another O'Dowd series. For US cable network Epix he's been starring in Get Shorty, a TV remake (or re-imagining) of the novel by Elmore Leonard and the movie starring John Travolta, Rene Russo, Danny DeVito and Gene Hackman, which came out in 1995. There was a sequel, Be Cool, ten years later, but that's best forgotten.

The TV series takes that same basic premise, of a mob enforcer (Miles Daly, played by O'Dowd) who wants to change the direction of his life to save his marriage and who believes he has found a way to escape his crime gang background when he arrives in Hollywood and ends up with a script for a costume drama. (I don't want to give everything away!)

With a particularly tough way of pitching ideas and an anything goes attitude to persuading people to do what he wants them to do, Miles negotiates his way through the film industry with his enforcer partner Louis (Sean Bridgers) pretending to be a screenwriter, and financially backed by a few millions of dollars from mob boss Amara De Escalones (Lidia Porto), who has been talked into using the movie as a way to launder her money.

The eccentricity and, in the case of O'Dowd, charm of the characters carries you through ten episodes of a story that is somehow easy watching despite the occasional violent beating, shooting, stabbing, drug taking, blackmailing and mass murder. It even has an ending – I'm not going to say whether it's happy or otherwise – rather than a cliffhanger. Yes, there's a season two, but I'm probably not going to get to it for a while, so a story with a beginning, a middle and an end is just what I wanted and what the show delivered.

The only downer was the percussion-only soundtrack. The relentless drumming of Birdman was an innovation that won awards, but I found it distracting and eventually off-putting. I feel the same about the soundtrack here. Please, no more.

After having had a bit of a break from bleak landscapes, we've been watching Shetland, which has an intriguing storyline about people trafficking, and we're recording but haven't yet started Trapped (Icelandic thriller) and Baptiste (the spin-off from The Missing), both of which are likely to be a bit nail-biting. We used to temper these tougher tales with the likes of a Poirot or even Midsummer Murders. The nearest we have to that nowadays is Death in Paradise, Vera and Endeavour now that Maigret has gone, and all three run in January/February.

It makes me wonder why nobody is picking up the slack with a remake of Albert Campion, Lord Peter Wimsey or Roderick Alleyn. Or what about a series of that contains a rotating cast of detectives from that Golden Age era. The British Library has been reprinting some thoroughly enjoyable detective yarns, from which a very good selection of detectives could be drawn. If some of the characters stand out, they can be spun off into their own series.

They should put me in charge of the tele...