Coming off the back of last week's slow progress, I've added another dozen or so pages of layouts to the debut issue of BAM! bringing the total so far up to 79 pages. As I still have a couple of fairly extensive articles that I want to include, I may have to do a bit of juggling with the contents and shift one of the longer articles over to issue two. The good news, of course, is that issue two is filling up quite nicely and shouldn't take me quite so long to do... I already have some nice pieces lined up.
I've had quite a varied week of work. I usually consider Saturday my day off, although I will spend some time here at the computer, usually catching up with emails that I haven't answered during the week. I had an enquiry about an author I'd not heard of, but, after a bit of head scratching, figured out that I'd briefly mentioned this author in passing four years ago in a note accompanying a cover gallery of books by Brett Halliday. The writer, David Mazroff, turned out to have been what contemporary newspapers described as "a hoodlum", possibly involved with the Purple Gang of bootleggers and hijackers.
So I spent Saturday afternoon writing up what I'd found, and have since had the good fortune to be contacted by family members, who have filled in a couple of blanks. I've still no idea why he claimed to have written so many Brett Halliday stories -- he didn't -- but I do wonder what else he wrote and whether he wrote under other pseudonyms.
I posted some more bits 'n' bobs on eBay on Sunday, cracked on with layouts on Monday and Tuesday, spent a chunk of Wednesday scanning and sorting out some old scans, and Thursday... well, that's now. I've had a bit of a tidy-up because I was finding it difficult to move around the office and turned up some old correspondence, photocopies and a couple of old newspapers. These have been tucked away in a corner since late last year, with books and comics gradually being piled on top. Sifting through the pages, I came across an old interview with Frank Richards, some correspondence by Bill Lofts with various people (including a rather curt response from D. C. Thomson to a request to use images, possibly for his Men Behind Boys Fiction book cover), and a response from a sub-editor on Girls' Crystal responding to an enquiry from Derek Adley for information.
Sometimes I'm amazed at what turns up in my own office! Maybe I should be thinking of making BAM! issue three a miscellany and just scan all the loose paper piled up in various corners.
Normally I'd warn about spoilers, but at last I've found a show that I can review without worrying. You know the plot already...
With all the stress and suffering that the world is going through, I'm sure I'm not the only one who has noticed there has been a bit of a surge in what you might think of as gentler programming from TV companies. Of course, it started before the pandemic took hold with the arrival of popular shows like Bake Off, The Great Sewing Bee, etc., reaching its peak in The Repair Shop that has been on an endless loop since it debuted in March 2017 on BBC2. Even drama has settled into a more relaxing pace: Death in Paradise doesn't involve car chases, The Durrell's is a family drama minus the histrionics, and the latest show along the same lines is a remake of All Creatures Great and Small.
I remember reading and enjoying the James Herriot novels back in the early 1970s and going to see the movie in 1975, although I'd forgotten until I just looked it up now that Anthony Hopkins played Siegfried Farnon in the first movie, replaced in the 1976 sequel (All Creatures Great and Small) by Colin Blakely. John Alderton (from Please, Sir!) replaced Simon Ward as Herriot in the latter movie, so there was already a tradition of multiple actors taking on roles in adaptations. Herriot's wife, Helen, was famously played by Carol Drinkwater and by Lynda Bellingham in the TV series.
Of course, Christopher Timothy, Robert Hardy and Peter Davison are a hard act to follow, but I think the new trio of Nicholas Ralph, Samuel West and Callum Woodhouse (a Durrels alumnus) have made the series their own. The first episode was the most popular show ever broadcast on Channel 5 and was immediately renewed for a second season.
The show is just the right mixture of stunning landscapes (explored in swooping drone shots), cute animals, excellent acting from both the human and creature cast, expectations met (I was nervously anticipating the arrival of Diana Rigg and Tricki Woo), romance, humour and drama without tension (this certainly isn't Line of Duty)... all perfectly tied together with a score that's reminiscent of the BBC TV version but isn't quite the same. I'm looking forward to the Christmas Special, although if it's show after I've had to stuff a chicken, I'm not sure I'll be able to take feeling around the back end of cow seriously on Christmas Day.
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