Exactly 4 years ago, I wrote the first piece here. This is the 600th and final youdothatvoodoo blog. Nothing ever ends though, and in this case some of you will already be aware that I’ve started a new site, writebyyourside. It’ll still be me, and I’ll continue to write roughly the same mix as I’ve been presenting here. The difference? You’ll receive the pieces by signing up. And I’ll be changing the mix that I’ve established here. For one thing, I’ll be featuring occasional interviews with some of the writers, filmmakers and other creatives I’ve got to know, some of them since youdothatvoodoo started. And there’ll be a new focus on prose, which coincides with my renewed enthusiasm for short stories. One commission I really enjoyed a few months ago was for a short story, and I’m now reading more fiction again having spent a long time focusing on non-fiction other than in the form of comics.

Writebyyourside is also an exercise in adapting to the evolving situation for writers that the online world presents, and is itself still evolving as some fine-tuning takes place. I’ve bundled together nearly 200 pieces from youdothatvoodoo into two volumes, one on the craft of writing and the other with reviews written from a writer’s perspective. A third volume rounds the package out with previously unavailable scripts and treatments that are compiled with the intention of giving writers a practical idea what the industry expects. All of this has been done with the invaluable support of Edd Hillier, who is also responsible for the sound and music of the video at the new site.

Working with Edd is a good example of the way I approach the business of being a writer. For a start, it’s about recognising where your strengths are. And mine don’t include much in the way of computing skills. So, I reached out to Edd in the same way that I’ve approached producers and directors, with a view to making something happen. This comes under the heading of what many call networking, and which is second nature to those who flourish in the creative sector. It’s also, interestingly, a strategy that helps increase the quality of the work produced by all those within a network. The number and quality of ideas rises as people join forces, and that’s true whether you’re looking to make a feature film or do something online.

‘Something’ is the interesting word there, since it’s in the nature of what a lot of interesting people are doing online these days that there are no strict definitions and boundaries for what’s being brought to life. I was sent an email the other day by someone I’ve worked with in the gaming world, looking for beta testers and funding for a gaming experience that integrates a number of geographically-focused social media programmes into a realtime vampire-hunting game where people try and turn the tables on their supposed undead overlords. There’s something very interesting going on there, with participants using the same sort of suspension of disbelief that would typically be employed passively in front of a cinema screen to participate in a shared fiction.

I can only suggest that more of this will be happening in the future, as immersive media and gameplay and new uses of technology allow us to cast our imagination into the world. That’s part of the journey I’ve been on for a couple of years with artist Andy Tudor as we continue to develop a multi-platform concept including animation, games, and theme park attractions for a concept that we’re collaborating on, and which we’ve attracted the attention of a highly successful international entrepreneur with.

All of which is to say that writing is alive and kicking, and that there’s no shortage of opportunities for writers. In my case, I’m realising that I’ve got the makings of a businessman too, and it’s something I’d urge any writers reading to consider. The world is at a very interesting point right now. Rather than rely on dinosaur institutions which haven’t got your best interests at heart – whether they’re publishers, broadcasters, or studios – why not embrace the potential presented by the digital scene? As a warm blooded mammal with a brain, you’re more agile and adaptive than the lumbering beasts that have dominated the media landscape. It’s not so much about taking them on as doing your own thing, and enjoying the rewards.

Thanks to everyone who’s read, got in touch, and enjoyed. Here’s to a great 2012.

A woman discovers her husband is missing, presumed dead, just before Christmas. And sets about ensuring that her children – his children – have the best festive season ever. It’s a situation that could play out all kinds of ways. Broadly speaking, approaching it in fiction, there are two camps. In the first, you’d emphasise the alleged reality of the situation, and concentrate on the grim emotional aftermath of the loss of a father. In the second, you instead sidestep the issue and keep it in the background by putting something else front and centre.

The first route is what a lot of people believe to be the responsible one. It lends itself to the sort of stories that newspaper reviewers get excited about, perhaps because commenting on other peoples’ stories is an inherently frivolous way of making a living and that by imbuing it with apparent moral seriousness it can seem to be a job worthy of the name. The second route takes us into the realm of the imagination, which serious types find deeply suspect when it’s employed to its full. We should be reading worthy novels by emotionally constipated puritans and nod to ourselves how right they are about the short and painful lives we lead. Yes, keep our heads bowed, and don’t look up. Up to the skies, where you might just see reindeer flying, and a TARDIS whizzing past.

The scenario with the putative widow and the fabulous Christmas is this year’s Dr Who festive special. And what a treat it was. Bringing together elements of Narnia and eco-fable, it once again brought home that the power of love wins over everything. Even, in this case, the possibility of death. The lost airman returned, but his flight home was won and won truly through the faith and love of his wife and children, who lived their lives to the full in his absence and discovered that he was at the other end of their adventure on another planet. Had they done what most grown-ups recommend you do, and get all serious and tearful and wear black, they’d have been so involved in that indulgence they wouldn’t have allowed themselves to enjoy the possibilities that imagination presents.

Fiction allows us to explore the possible through presenting the impossible. Sure, you’re unlikely to ever explore another planet in the course of your grieving…but approaching your future as an astronaut is going to make life rather different than wearing sackcloth and ashes. The Doctor is special because he’s not bound by conventions of time and place that happen to have emerged through historical accident and got taken seriously by people who prefer things that way because doing what the others do saves them having to exercise free will.

After my brother died, my mother went to a grief counsellor who could have stepped straight out of an Anne Rice book. All in black apart from a single red rose affixed to her, she insisted that my mother talk to her about the details of Nigel’s death. She didn’t know some of the particulars then, and doesn’t now. Therapeutic orthodoxy has it that you have to confront the truth. At any rate, that version of the truth that’s sanctioned by bleak conformity. Mum had the sense to back away from the vampire, and choose to live her own way. Not that it was an easy choice, but it was the right one for her. Twenty years on, people say she’s looking and acting years younger than her age…she used her imagination to find a way forward that was preferable to the one that was offered by someone who wanted her to stay in the darkness.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

You may be aware that this site is folding pretty soon; with the next entry in fact. Fear not, it will live on. New site writebyyourside gives you the chance to buy a downloadable anthology of the best of the pieces here, along with previously unavailable material selected to support writers. And there’ll continue to be articles and reviews as here, with an expanded remit including interviews and a focus on prose. See you there!

The idea of Hugh Laurie playing a wiseass American doctor held zero appeal when I first heard of House. And when some smart people whose opinions I have time for started to sing the show’s praises…I continued to ignore what I was hearing, this time because of a petulant refusal to check out what some clued-up friends were recommending. Besides, I’d half-watched some episodes when they’d popped up on tv, and hadn’t been pulled into what was happening.

You’ll have realised that this stubborn unwillingness to enjoy something because others like it is exactly the kind of wilful against-the-grain behaviour that makes Gregory House such an interesting character. We’ve all got a bit of a refusenik about us somewhere in our character, and House has finessed that awkwardness into a way of life. It helps that he’s a brilliant thinker, teasing out the truth from situations that others are baffled by. And when those others are themselves a bunch of smart medics, who we as viewers are inclined to think are brighter than we, at least in the context of their professional skills, then it’s clear that this House guy is quite something.

That alone is quite an achievement. Often when writers seek to demonstrate the brilliance of their protagonists, they do so by surrounding them with numpty-heads. Not House. The character’s thought processes are front and centre of a thoroughly engaging drama that’s focused firmly on the many layers of an idiosyncratic healer who is by no means healthy himself. Quite the opposite; House is a wounded healer, and completes the shaman archetype by having undergone the experience of death and rebirth.

Wow. Big stuff for a primetime tv show. And yes, it really is big stuff. I’m only as far as the third season at this point, and I’ve rarely if ever seen such a nuanced and three dimensional portrait of a thoroughly human character. So, he’s an irascible genius. And we know sooner or later he’s going to reveal softer elements…don’t we? Only, they’re an awful long time coming, and bound brilliantly with the structure of the series. House isn’t going to display his soft centre, if he has such a thing, without a struggle. And one episode captures that beautifully when he goes on a road trip with a patient he’s woken from a coma, and whose heart he wants to transplant into his dying son. That’s a powerful enough concept already: the patient knows he will slip back into a sleep from which he will never awake. And he’s a powerful man, not used to being under the thumb of others, so he regains his sense of power by forcing House to answer intimate questions about his past…the only circumstance in which House would do such a thing, and with real dramatic urgency attached because of the son’s life being at stake. Masterful stuff.

House episodes typically follow the same structure, in which a patient with a mysterious condition is first misdiagnosed before House and his team determine the correct prognosis. It works just fine, when the stories are as well crafted as they are. And makes the episodes that don’t fit that template all the more compelling. It’s a fascinating accomplishment, and one only possible in series drama: 20 regularly structured episodes and then a couple that go off-piste. Which they certainly do – those particular stories are breathtaking in the ways they deftly deal with matters of identity, ethics, and truth.

Personally I find those more idiosyncratic episodes more powerful than Christopher Nolan’s use of mentally stimulating material in his work – I get the sense with him first that he’s more interested in concepts than character, and second that he is referencing the brilliance of others rather than demonstrating brilliance himself. To reach for and surpass what Nolan is praised for in the form of a popular tv drama is a huge accomplishment, and brings to mind Michael Moorcock’s assessment of the work of science fiction novelist Philip K Dick, who had many of the same concerns as the House team: “Dick quietly produced serious fiction in a popular form and there can be no greater praise”.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

You may be aware that this site is folding pretty soon. Fear not, it will live on. New site writebyyourside gives you the chance to buy a downloadable anthology of the best of the pieces here, along with previously unavailable material selected to support writers. And there’ll continue to be articles and reviews as here, with an expanded remit including interviews and a focus on prose. See you there!

I went to my first party of the festive season last night. I have reached an age where there’s an equal number of children and adults at such gatherings. And that was interesting in all kinds of ways, not least when the matter of taking young children to see films came up. One couple were sensitive about their young son’s reaction to depictions of evil and moments of tragedy in stories. Not because they wanted to shield him from them. Their concern was about how to introduce him to the emotions that stories can provoke in a way that he could cope with. They wanted him to be affected, but not overwhelmed.

A lovely memory came out of the conversation, as the subject of a panto came up. Don’t know which panto it was, but bad magic was involved to do wrong to one of the good guys. At which point one of the kids had hysterics, and ran out of the auditorium…only to come across a fully-costumed Good Witch who – rapidly realising what had happened – stepped in with a promise to put matters right. Cue satisfied child, who was now happy to return with accompanying parent to the production.

All of this was discussed as children did their best to watch Merlin in a room where adults supped mulled wine and socialised. Noisily, at least as far as the kids were concerned. Didn’t they know important television was happening, and we were talking over it? No wonder kids think adults are hypocrites: grown-ups insist on smaller people being quiet when the news or soaps are on, but parents are happy to talk over key moments in their childrens’ favourite shows.

Meeting in the middle wasn’t going to happen. The kids were rightly absorbed in Merlin, which seemed to be a well put together show with high production values and a reasonable script. The main issue for some of the adults was a female character, who according to one of the party guests looked like a contemporary urban youngster wearing a Wonderbra. The kids were having none of it: she was a smuggler, run afoul of the powers that be, and caught up in a fight where Arthur Pendragon and Merlin failed to save her life.

And I remember my own childhood, and my demand that whatever we were doing on a Saturday, we got home in time for the latest episode of Dr Who. Much of the time we made it, and I don’t suppose I thanked my parents for their decency in honouring that request. But sure as hell I’d castigate them if we missed any of the episode.

Stories matter. They’re how we explain the world to ourselves, and ourselves to the world. Is it any wonder kids get upset when adults talk over their favourite programmes? Or that parents feel likewise when children interrupt theirs? And it’s this that I’m conscious of as I set about developing stories for what, if I’m lucky, will be a major part of what I do with my life in the next decade. A story that wouldn’t exist without all the other stories that I’ve read, seen, and been told one way or another. A story that has been brought to life with an artistic collaborator whose character designs have brought to life characters who in some cases were not quite known to me before I saw them in drawn form.

Well, we shall see. I was lucky enough earlier in the year to secure seed money from an investor to develop that story into a form that makes sense in business ways. And he was attracted by that work to request a costed strategy for bringing the project to market. Which is what I and my collaborator Andy Tudor are waiting for news about as this year comes to a close. Wish us luck, and you’ll be among the first to hear the good news if and when it comes. And that might be soon, or could be weeks away. It doesn’t matter, in truth. What does matter is the journey, and the knowledge that we as children would be proud that the adults we’ve become are engaged in it on their behalf.

When I was a kid, I sometimes got confused when we went to visit my one grandmother because she’d tell stories that went on and on. I couldn’t distinguish between when she was talking about the latest goings-on among her friends and neighbours, and what she was relating about her favourite tv soaps. The whole became an ongoing stream of low-grade incidents populated by characters who didn’t stand out for me, all the stuff of narrative but none of the pull that it presumably had for her. She was relating stories, sure enough, but had no real sense of how to engage an audience, or at least this younger listener: I had no way of distinguishing between what was happening at the (Crossroads) motel and how her sister Dot was doing.

If she’d been a writer, you’d have said my gran had problems clearly establishing flashbacks and dream sequences from the main narrative she was relating. That’s something where there’s a clear distinction in, say, Billy Liar. Although young Billy is himself prone to fantasy, we the audience have no problem understanding when he’s fantasising and when life is more prosaic. Get this stuff muddled and the audience gets muddled too.

Somewhere along the line, Lost lost me. After a bravura opening, and some strong episodes in the first series, the piling on of weirdness on weirdness got too much. Having an air of mystery is one thing – the show’s writers being unable to explain the inexplicable is quite another. As timeslips and monsters and conspiracies accreted, my attention wavered. Lose the internal logic of a show to that extent, and it’s hard to care about the outcome. Same applies to hotly touted comic series Green Wake – when you’ve got not only an ambiguous setting but mysterious characters within it, it’s hard to form an emotional relationship with the story. When anything can happen at any moment, does anything matter?

I’ve mentioned my soft spot for amiable stoners Harold and Kumar before, liking these gently subversive and humane guys and enjoying the capers they get caught up in. They’re at it again with a new festive themed story, A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas, in the course of which they run afoul of a vicious Russian mob boss, turn into Claymation through the effect of hallucinogens, perform in a musical being staged at a cathedral, and shoot Santa in the face. Oh, and there’s a baby that develops a taste for Class A substances, a walk-on appearance by Jesus Christ, and a robot that makes waffles.

For all that craziness, there’s a solid core to the story, which however bizarre the circumstances never strays from two men reigniting their friendship under the threat of dire consequences if a Christmas tree isn’t found to substitute for one that the duo accidentally set in flames early on. That resolute focus on emotions and character held my attention in this, the third outing for the hapless duo. It helps that there’s some great humour and real visual inventiveness – but to get over my general distaste for drug stories the team putting Harold and Kumar together are clearly doing something right.

The ability to engage an audience with the plight of characters they care about is fundamental to your ability to tell a good story. Get that right, and anything else is possible. I’ve never experienced vast wealth, but found it easy to empathise with Howard Hughes in Scorsese’s The Aviator (contrast with the poor little rich girl in Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere). Never been pursued by supernatural forces, but have been at the edge of my seat in stories as varied as Blair Witch Project and The Omen. As humans, we’re equipped with the ability to empathise with one another. And can even identify with animal (Bambi, Lassie) and otherwise non-human protagonists (Wall-E, RoboCop) with ease. So please, when you’re writing a story, make it easy for us to do that. Get it right, and everything else will be fine.

Oh, what a fussy creature I am. DC go to the trouble of launching a specialist crime imprint, part of their successful Vertigo brand, and I get all sniffy about what they’re putting out. And with good reason, to be fair. The big name launch title was a risible Hellblazer story that wouldn’t have got through the net if it didn’t have Ian Rankin’s bankable name on the cover. And though I haven’t bought all of those that have followed, I found a couple trying so hard to be movie pitches that they didn’t fully spread their wings as comics – Christos Gage’s creepy trepanning tale Area 10 was at least superior to Andy Diggle’s formulaic The Rat Catcher.

I’ve not been able to finish Brian Azzarello’s contender…I wanted to give him another go after finding 100 Bullets impenetrable, but haven’t got past the first 20 pages of Filthy Rich, finding it laborious. Even Pete Milligan, normally a favourite of mine, didn’t quite deliver the goods with The Bronx Kill, getting in his own way with the ‘cleverness’ of its protagonist being a writer. So, it’s good to report that – though Vertigo Crime is no more – at least one title gets a double thumbs up from me.

Fogtown is written by Andersen Gabrych and drawn by Brad Rader. The latter’s style doesn’t have the sheen that fans of superhero comics tend to like, but I found his occasionally naive approach supported the very human heart of a story that uses genre tropes to reach somewhere deeper, and has something to say as it does. It’s 1953, and our hero is a hardboiled PI, Frank Grissel, the only difference between him and his clients that he sometimes gets a day rate and expenses for the shit he deals with. A missing person case leads not just to an investigation of sleaze and corruption, but to Grissel confronting the truth about himself, which he does his best to avoid through drinking and self-loathing.

On the surface, Fogtown is a standard-issue crime yarn, and it works well in that regard. What elevates it is the way it weaves issues around sexuality and identity into the whole, not in a bolted-on way but so that they are fundamental to the plot. In my perception, that’s the strongest way to introduce issues into a story – make them part of the fabric of what’s going on, so as the story unfolds the audience empathises with what’s going on for the characters. Elsewhere in comics, Jason Aaron does this brilliantly with Scalped, involving me with issues of Native American politics and culture and the way they’re caught up with the politics of casinos and reservations far more than a documentary would have.

I don’t insist my entertainment comes with a side order of liberal politics. Far from it – I like to be challenged and stretched by at least some of what I read, see, listen to. The beauty of Fogtown is that at no point does it feel like modern attitudes are being imposed on characters existing nearly six decades ago. It feels every bit like a pulp novel of the time, only one that someone like William Burroughs had a hand in crafting. And in telling a story about the past, it’s also telling one about now – for all the progress there’s been regarding homosexuality in society, coming to terms with sexual identity can still be a tortuous experience for some, and no amount of rainbow banners will stop that being the case.

DC are to be congratulated for taking a risk with these black and white crime yarns. As with their science fiction imprint Helix, the results of the experiment have been mixed. Transmetropolitan was the one that people remember from Helix, but I’m contrary and prefer to remember the excellent work Walt Simonson did in his collaboration with Michael Moorcock there. And just as people will most likely speak of headline titles like Ian Rankin’s, the Vertigo Crime book I will remember most fondly is Fogtown.

Malcolm Gladwell is the man to thank if you’ve ever heard the expression ‘tipping point’. In the book of that title, he put into a comprehensible form a bunch of academic work about how some concepts have a way of catching on. One that’s definitely caught on is books of that nature, which provide an overview of some or other theory that can be summed up in a pithy title. Hence people talking on the radio about how politicians and marketeers are embracing ‘nudge theory’, creative types hoping that they can benefit from ‘the long tail’, and so on.

Given that such books have established a firm footing in the industry (and my collection), it’s no surprise that film is joining in. First up, you could argue, was The Social Network, which masterfully related the story behind Facebook. And now we have Moneyball, which has to be the first baseball film that’s actually about statistics. Although, to be fair, it’s more concerned with what it takes to create change in a culture that’s been happy with the way things are for quite a while, and sees no reason to shake things up.

The trick with films of this nature is to root them in personal stories, so that audiences can relate to what’s happening – which can be quite abstract. Here, we have a winning double act. Peter is overweight, a Yale economics graduate who doesn’t look like he belongs in the world of baseball, where he’s found his first job. He’s got something though – an ability to understand player performance that’s all about cold hard statistics, and hence not subject to the vagaries of favoritism. Only, as a fat geek he’s in no position to put his ideas to the test. For that he needs a champion, who comes in the form of Brad Pitt as Billy Beane. A charismatic former baseball player, Billy has the swagger and confidence needed to put Peter’s concepts into practice, and create a worldbeating streak of 20 consecutive wins for the cash-strapped Oakland team he manages.

Naturally, he has to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds, as exemplified by a shaven-headed Philip Seymour Hoffman, who once again demonstrates his genius for creating a character who would be easy to hate, and inhabits them with a fundamental humanity that makes such ready dismissal diffiicult. There’s an equivalent power to the scenes between Billy and his 12 year old daughter, which in other hands could have been saccharine, but are saved from movie of the week status by excellent writing (from a team including Aaron Sorkin, who scripted The Social Network) and performances.

You could look at the story as confirmation that the stats-led approach is a failure, since Billy’s ultimate victory rests as much as his ability to connect with the team as him following Peter’s plans. And wouldn’t you know it, Peter loosens up too, in a fashion that could be mapped if you insist on being pedantic about it. Well, you can go to some other website for that thrill, and not just because this is a text-friendly operation.

It’ll be interesting to see if the relative success of Moneyball will inspire filmmakers to bring other conceptually-led material to the screen, and take greater risks than this film has. Sure, it’s a solid piece of entertainment, but I can’t help feel that a more adventurous take on the source material could have led to…and then I recall the recent Soderbergh virus movie Contagion, which just didn’t resonate with me.

At a time when old paradigms are failing us, cinema could play an interesting role in communicating some new ones. And not just in documentary form. Moneyball is a good film that uses old-fashioned methods to get us to like it. Is that enough? Well, according to who? Maybe what we need here is something akin to Slacker, a smart low budget film that introduced many to the concept of Generation X, and heralded the career of Richard Linklater in the process.

Go the cinema, and it’s not often you’re presented with something you haven’t seen before. I’d seen a trailer for Take Shelter, and it intrigued me enough to want to see the film, promising a man caught up in – real or imagined – intimations of apocalypse. So far, so good. It looked good, had received acclaim, and I kind of thought I knew what sort of ride I was in for.

And I couldn’t be happier about being wrong. Sure, the film does indeed revolve around a man with apocalyptic visions, stunningly realised ones I may add: this is worth catching at the cinema purely for the overpowering skyscapes, where mournful clouds threaten to unleash hell on earth for…what exactly? Well, things being what they are, do we need anything specific? Or is the sense that – for the way we’ve treated the planet, each other, and allowed ourselves to use economics as a way of doing so as if it has nothing to do with us – a hard rain’s gonna fall, and that maybe what’s on the horizon is an inevitable consequence..?

Only, while all of that might be there in the background, it’s what’s in the foreground that surprises. Writer/director Jeff Nicholls makes the decision to have his protagonist be a working class guy – brilliantly portrayed by Michael Shannon – who is a decent man, a husband and father who in providing the best life he can for his family says all the things he can’t express verbally. He and his wife and mute daughter get by in a loving supportive fashion, until Curtis (the dad) starts to experience deeply troubling dreams that leave an impact on him into the day.

Part of the film’s unexpected brilliance is the decision to root Curtis’s visions in the context of his mother’s paranoid schizophrenia. In his solid dependable way, Curtis picks up a book on mental illness from the library and concludes that he is beginning to have some of his mother’s symptoms. And it looks like the film is going to be one in which this decent, honorable, and inarticulate man struggles with his inchoate fears of becoming what he saw happen to his mother.

Certainly, as Curtis becomes obsessed with the abandoned storm shelter in his garden, wanting to renovate it to protect his family, it seems that he may well be experiencing some kind of mental health issue, the task and its object being a metaphor for whatever demons he’s dealing with. And to complete the renovation, he borrows equipment from work – resulting in him losing his job just at the time when his medical insurance could secure an operation to restore his daughter’s hearing.

None of this goes down well with his wife and the local community. Is Curtis collapsing, and the shelter a way of protecting himself from purely internal issues? It’s certainly looking that way, and the film sticks with that logic. A more Hollywood version of the story would have a flashier take, but Nicholls sticks to his guns, though there is a cost: certainly the teenagers in the cinema were getting weary by this point, wanting more of the apparent genre content of the trailer and less of this drama stuff.

Looked at another way, Curtis is a Noah figure, and when he and the family are protected by the shelter there’s some validation for that viewpoint. Or maybe Curtis was just lucky? The scene with them down in the shelter, and Curtis unwilling to open up the doors after the storm has subsided, is masterfully resolved. And then? Well, let’s just say that what seems to be the climactic scene is not. On the advice of a psychiastrist, the family take a seaside holiday to rest and recuperate, and the real scale and theme of this brilliantly realised and understated story becomes apparent.

Subtext is where people say one thing, and it means something different to what they’re saying on the surface. People do this a lot. When your aunt asks you at a family gathering if you’re dating, it can mean a whole bunch of stuff other than the words she uses. We get used to subtext through growing up and seeing what happens in our family environment when people like your aunt ask questions that mean more than they say. And when the people who are being talked to respond in a way that isn’t how you’d expect people to react purely on the basis of the words used. Like, if that aunt were to ask your dad whether he’d called the guy at the fish restaurant yet, and your dad flares up and throws a shoe at her, it’s maybe because she was referring to the fish guy as a means of reminding dad that he’s out of work at the moment and should be doing something about getting a job, such as washing dishes at the fish place because – ceramics degree notwithstanding – really that’s the kind of work he should aspire to. Subtext is funny, but not in a ha ha kind of way.

You’ll come across subtext all over the place. Except in this article so far. That’s because I’m experimenting with the writing style of Akiva Goldsman as demonstrated in the Joel Schumacher film A Time To Kill. Possibly because it’s based on a John Grisham book and his stories don’t have subtext. It’s very interesting watching a story where everyone says exactly what they mean. This runs counter to a whole bunch of advice about writing dialogue that you can find in books on screenwriting. But what do those guys know, huh? If they were any good, then they’d be doing what Joel Schumacher does and making films.

When you watch A Time To Kill you realise some of what it is to be autistic. I don’t mean that in a mean way. Just that autistic people are supposed to find it difficult to understand subtext. Well, this is a film they could enjoy because everything means exactly what it says. It would be great if everyday life was like that, wouldn’t it? That way, you could tell your boss “The thing is, I think you are a meanie. Everyone says so. Everyone except Stacey, who you slept with at that sales conference and got promoted when she came back.” As it is, you probably say something different. Maybe “You want me to do the spreadsheet? What is it, are Stacey’s nails still drying?” Which is clever, because it suggests without stating it directly that Stacey does not do much work, owing to her relationship with the boss, and spends more time getting her nails done than anything else, those nails maybe being one of the things that attracted the boss to her.

It would be great if there was no subtext. People would get what we meant, and we would understand them. A wife would not be able to tell a husband that the reason she is upset is he did not pick up that she is disappointed with him about leaving it to late to book the Spanish villa, even though she told him it was OK, which disappointment has caused her to be furious with herself, that he has failed to notice, which is why she looks down at him and does not do that thing he likes any more. That kind of subtext takes a Nobel standard psychic gymnast to work out.

Having a courtroom drama without subtext is especially impressive. Usually there’s lot of stuff that’s hard to follow if you get a phone call during the movie. Like if someone hums a tune they know the other person hates to make them mad in front of the judge. That would definitely be subtext.

In conclusion, I can say that Akiva Goldsman is a visionary for the way he creates scripts that do without an outmoded tool. And that life would be a bunch easier if we could live in a John Grisham novel, as long as we weren’t bad guys.

There’s something you hear about sitcoms that you don’t tend to encounter so much regarding other genres. The claim is that such and such a setting is tired, or at any rate that it’s been done so well by a particular show that there’s no point anyone else having a go. Hence, who needs a family comedy after…whatever your preferred one is, from Malcom In The Middle to The Simpsons. Why hope for lightning to strike again regarding workplace sitcoms after Reginald Perrin/Scrubs/The Office? And what are you doing even thinking of attempting a student comedy after The Young Ones? For some reason the same thinking doesn’t seem to apply to cop shows or medical drama. Believe me, I often wish it did.

Well, good as The Young Ones was, that was twenty years ago. And just as writers Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong did a brilliant twist on the formula of antagonistic friends living in the same place with Peep Show, so too have they demonstrated that the student comedy is alive and well in the form of Fresh Meat. They created the series, though other writers were involved with its first eight episodes. I’m sure Bain and Armstrong kept a close eye on every story, and would be interested to find out how much the directors had in shaping the material. Certainly on the basis of the ones I noticed were directed by Annie Griffin, there’s a sense of continuity with her other work – well-observed and beautifully performed comedies such as The Book Group, the curious and overlooked New Town, and the film Festival.

The final episode ran a couple of hours back, and demonstrated just how well thought-through Fresh Meat is, expertly setting up character arcs for all the members of the ensemble cast and bringing them home with skill and compassion for the finale. What works so well is that each of the characters is simultaneously repellent and appealing – human, in other words – and each of them has aspects that we can recognise and identify with. It’s a mature approach, and one I’d like to see more of.

There are six primary characters, each expertly drawn and with facets, though like all of us they have aspects they exhibit more. First mention has to go to resident toff, none-too-bright public school boy JP, who for all his Tory Boy cringeworthiness turns out to be as vulnerable as anyone else beneath his bluster, exploited by his supposed pals but connecting with his housemates through his dad’s death. The situation brings out the best qualities in some of the gang, and none more so than in geeky Howard, who takes humiliation on himself to protect someone who’s truly vulnerable. That sounds worryingly noble, so if I tell you it involves a video of Olympic standard masturbation you’ll breathe a sigh and realise this is comedy we’re dealing with.

The biggest mystery is Vod, who came across hard (if naive) at the start of the series and still hasn’t shown a softer side by the end. She’s a tough nut, and the dynamic between her and Oregon is interesting. The latter is in reality a very posh young lady, whose biggest trauma is the death of her horse, and who revels in having an affair with her tutor. Oregon would love to be as street as Vod, and seeks to support her when Vod is threatened with expulsion from university.

That leaves Josie and Kingsley, perhaps the most normal members of the crew. They’re recognisable, and more interesting for being less extreme than their housemates. Kingsley was a virgin when he became a student, Josie – fancying herself as a sophisticated seductress – offered to relieve him of his burden. Only, a flamboyant girl from Kingsley’s drama course (he transferred from geology, and heads back to that safe haven) beats her to it, and the two have been to-ing and fro-ing in awkward style ever since.

As you’ll gather, I’m hooked, and can’t wait for a second series. Kingsley was seen leaving the house after Josie jumped into bed with PJ after the party following his dad’s funeral. An oversight on her part, and bad timing on his. Let’s hope they patch things up, while allowing room for further exquisitely funny moments in the future.