ITV ran the first episode of Dexter the other night, and having heard lots of good things I decided to watch it. And it was…pretty good, if that’s a description that’s appropriate to a series whose protagonist is a serial killer who bumps off other serial killers as a public service.

It’s all done with a twist of humour: Dexter narrates the story and explains his sociopathic tendencies with a predictably pop psychological angle. Dexter’s cop father deduced his son’s nature at an early age when he killed the family dog because its barking was upsetting his mum. Dad wasn’t convinced: there were enough bones in the hole where the dog was buried to account for half the pets in the neighbourhood.

Now, I have no problem with black humour. A dark treacly current of it runs through many of my favourite films, from The Manchurian Candidate through the brilliant and overlooked Guy X. But what makes those stories work for me is that they treat their subjects with unflinching respect. And that’s where Dexter falls down, at least on the basis of what I’ve seen. It was – and I intentionally use a vile word here – ‘hip’ in its attitude to death, and hip rhymes with flip, and that’s why it just didn’t gel for me. Compare with the approach Six Feet Under takes: death is central to the series, and is treated with the respect it deserves, even if the manner of individual deaths is a cause for short-term amusement.

Will I watch Dexter again? Yes, but with diminished expectations. This is lightweight television with serious pretensions that has a disturbing undercurrent in letting viewers witness Dexter despatching serial killers in his own special way: that kind of vicarious thrill is as close as I’m likely to get to being a Republican, and I didn’t like it.

This week’s Torchwood also stepped into hallowed ground, with a rather confusing episode in which one of our heroes somehow became Death. Only since this is nominally a science fiction show (and not a sex comedy, you may be surprised to hear), there was some tenuous link between Death as seen on a Tarot card near you, all skeletal like, and a low rent deity worshipped by Weevils, which regular viewers will know as the aliens so prevalent in Cardiff that there’s a tick-box in the local census to record yourself as one.

The failure to blend mythic Death with an alien entity beloved of reptilian aliens really came across when Death was doing its level best to kill off more than a dozen people in a hospital. If the Daily Mail is to be believed, the NHS can do that with ease on a regular basis, what with MRSA and foreign nurses, but for some reason Death – suffering from performance anxiety perhaps – just wasn’t up to the task, even with a little child suffering from leukaemia in its bony hands. Anyway, despite some promising moments, my general feeling is that Torchwood still isn’t Fit For Purpose, and that’s even after a barnstorming opening to the second series.

For all that, Torchwood had some more convincing dark humour than Dexter around mortality. The story’s protagonist being unable to get it up for a woman who’d got her hand down his pants was an interesting insight into the problems of the undead brought about by lack of bloodflow. And some of what happened was visually impressive, with Captain Jack and colleague atop a multi storey car park surrounded by supine Weevils being a stand-out image. Dexter countered with some interesting blood spatter visuals, and a nicely art-directed scene in which red threads marked out the angles and distances of blood coming from its human source, but even that was all very much in the footsteps of CSI rather than being innovative.

I’ve got no issue with death being a subject of drama, on television or in other forms, for any age. I do have a problem with it being glossed over and trivialised, as in the way that death is treated in computer games and crasser action films. And if it’s to be treated with humour, let’s aim high and go for the level of William Burroughs, whose cancerous croak is playing behind me at the moment in a delicious collaboration with Material; ‘Words of Advice for Young People’:

“Some of you may encounter the Devil’s bargain if you get that far. Any old soul is worth saving, at least to a priest. But not every soul is worth buying. So you can take the offer as a compliment.”

Advertisers can be sneaky bastards. There’s a commercial for Asda at the moment that positions WalMart’s British wing as being a place for shoppers to save money, and specifically cheaper than Morrisons. Some pseudo-facts are marshalled in support of this thesis, but the really interesting bit is the music used. It’s a boppy update on the classic Dad’s Army theme. And with only minor prompting, you’ll remember the words to that song: ‘Who do you think you are kidding Mr Hitler?’. With moving arrows echoing the title sequence of the sitcom, one set for Asda and the other for Morrisons, there is no doubt at all that the viewer is meant to be left with the impression that Morrisons are the Hitler in this version of events. Nice.

Despicable as that example is (but what were you expecting from Asda?), it points to the power of what happens when image and sound are fused. In fact, things go even further than that: the way the brain is wired, there’s a 40% overlap between the neurology that processes sound, and that which deals with feelings. Hence the ability of particular pieces of music to make you feel a certain way: songs that are special to you and a lover, tunes that take you back to certain holidays, and so on.

Filmmakers have been exploiting these connections for a long time now. Sometimes it’s music that does the job, either original scores or appropriations of existing themes. Scorsese and Tarantino have a genius for using popular music in their films, and there are plenty who try to emulate their easy way with marrying image to songs. And it’s good when people get it right: Donnie Darko’s version of Mad World is amazingly well suited to the film, and part of the power of There Will Be Blood is Jonny Greenwood’s majestic orchestral score.

More interesting to me is the use of sound in film. Much has been made of No Country For Old Men’s absence of music, which is true enough, but overlooks the importance of sound within the story. The tension created by Javier Bardem’s use of a simple device that beeps when it nears the case of money liberated by Josh Brolin is palpable. Who needs orchestration when you’ve got a machine that goes ping?

Natural sound is key to creating atmosphere in horror films and thrillers in particular. Creaking floorboards, footsteps in leaves, wind in trees: much of the effect of the excellent French thriller Ils came through well-judged sound design. And bear in mind that what’s heard isn’t necessarily as straightforward as it appears…one interview I read described how subtle audio touches were added to increase the impact of key scenes, culminating in the mixing of a gunshot into the sound of a slammed door to reinforce the notion of finality and closure reached at that point in the story.

Filmmaking is a kind of alchemy, in which constituent parts become more than they appear through the way they’re combined with other elements, figure and ground shifting throughout the progress of the narrative. Sound is a critical part of that mix, and easily overlooked when writers and directors think of it in purely naturalistic ways. And if Asda can play powerful tricks with audio in a 40 second commercial, think of what you can do with 90 minutes to play with, and a purpose more worthwhile than rubbishing a rival supermarket.

Looking out into my garden, past the wild patch where a fox spends some of its time, and beyond the back of my own property, I can see into a neighbour’s garden. For the past month, it’s been home to a variable number of tall white domestic appliances, standing cryptic together like Fridgehenge.

A few hours ago, in the night, there was a small earthquake, clocking in at 5.2 on the Richter scale. It went on for a minute or more, woke me up, and several of the neighbours gathered in the street to talk about what happened. I didn’t bother; listening told me everything I wanted to know at that point.

So now I’m wondering, and unable to see because it’s dark at the moment (4.54 am). Is Fridgehenge still standing? Or did the earthquake topple the white goods onto the ground? And will I get to see their owner put them back upright, or will they be left there?

People often ask where writers get their ideas, and conversely my experience is that ideas are everywhere: what are they doing to block them out? At the moment, the raw ingredients I’ve outlined would work well in an episode of Clocking Off, the Paul Abbott-initiated series that sneakily brought back the single play to primetime television. Or as a storyline in Coronation Street, Norris bemused and anxious about the presence of a monolith made of consumer goods, Janice coordinating with some of the other women working at Underworld to see if they can steal themselves some fridges, and so on.

And if I let my thinking drift to the actual Stonehenge, which I’m researching for a television project, one of the things I recall from my own experience is the sheer wonder and nonsense of two groups of wannabe mystics. One group was planting crystals around the Stonehenge site to waken the ancient site’s earth energies, part of a long term project that would lead to the establishment of a new Avalon, a reawakened Arthur in charge. The other group went around digging for these crystals, since they interfered with delicate ley energies, and plucked them from the ground. I’m not sure what they did with them, but wouldn’t be surprised if they ended up getting recycled to the sort of hippy/goth tat shops that sell such magical stones in the first place.

That example is only notable for its relative eccentricity, but really the clash of beliefs it presents is not much different to the kind of conflict you’ll find driving stories set in a more mainstream world. Put people together, and the one thing that’ll emerge before long is politics in some form. Who gets to make the tea, use the car, get better rates of pay, or the right to vote. All eminently suitable material for writing, depending on your proclivities. Some people spend their careers detailing the ins and outs and ups and downs of the micro social worlds they’re familiar with.

Me, I like the fact that I deal with a whole bunch of people in a wide variety of contexts, and experience patterns that transcend content. The participants can be aspiring politicians, drugs workers, homeless people, single mothers, artists, business coaches, pagans, astronauts, whoever: our similarities are always bigger than our differences, and presenting social worlds new to the reader or viewer only emphasises that the human game doesn’t much change just because the individuals wear different masks.

Steve Whitaker is dead, and none of you know who I’m talking about.  Which is a shame.  Steve was an immensely talented artist, and a genuinely lovely man.  I came across him at the London Cartoon Centre in the late 1980s, his lanky frame and mop of hair a good example of the theory that comic artists tend to look as if they’ve drawn themselves. 

Steve was clearly very intelligent, at least in the Stephen Fry sense of that word: someone who has drunk widely from every source that culture has to offer, from knowledge of Greek myth to obscure jazz musicians.  And in other senses his intelligence was limited: a harsh way to put things, but I don’t know how else to account for his inability to translate his undeniable gifts into a reliable way of supporting himself.  But I’m very much a pragmatist, or at any rate have something of an entrepreneurial streak, and Steve danced to the beat of more elfin drums, like those you can imagine his beautifully depicted characters playing.  Steve’s characters came complete with a sense of art history being paraded in front of you effortlessly, a touch of Art Deco here, of classical painters I don’t even know the names of there, and it’s that evident quality that made his work both distinctive and ill-suited to the demands of a market that primarily traffics in cheesecake illustration.

Just 52 when he died unexpectedly the other day, Steve’s death is the second from the world of the Cartoon Centre.  The other was cartoonist and musician Andy Roberts, who died maybe a couple of years ago.  Andy was someone else who looked like one of his own drawings, and opened my eyes to words, pictures and sounds that made my life that bit richer.  Andy was the punk to Steve’s beatnik, and it was a pleasure to spend time in the company of either – and even better when both were in full swing, swapping stories and dreaming out loud. 

I was less sure of myself at this point, and a bit embarrassed about my tastes in comparison to theirs, but they both had time for me.  And that led to me editing and publishing an anthology comic, Discordia, one review of which captured what I and the Cartoon Centre were about when it said words to the effect that the comic was proof of the Centre succeeding in a way that nobody could have anticipated.  Looking back, that remark makes a lot of sense to me: Discordia was a comic that favoured narrative over style, and had no special regard for genre, and that describes the evolution of my writing subsequent to the Cartoon Centre pretty well.

Discordia was named after the Roman Goddess of Chaos, known to the Greeks as Eris, and Steve and Andy’s deaths are further confirmation that death is part of her beat as much as anything else.  She continues to crop up for me in one form or another, and I’ll end this piece with something that started in one place – about NLP trainer Michael Breen and performance poet Murray Lachlan Young’s excellent Captivating Communication course, created using the methods we learned that weekend – and becomes something like a prayer.  At any rate, the kind of prayer that even Andy and Steve would be happy to be said in their names.

DIVINING WITH M&M

We flirted with muses and courted attention
Abandoned excuses and even intention
Found ways of speaking that aided retention
All in pursuit of verbal invention

Make an impact — learn to rupture
Liven up the surface structure
Alpha-bet your life it’s fun
Making meanings of the pun
That punctures, from above
Why punctu-hate when you can punctu-love?

Abandon the planned and
Glad-hand the random
Conscious, unconscious, steering in tandem

The day-to-deity here is Eris
Goddess of Chaos, succulent mistress
Benevolent minx, Hex in the City
Whoop-de-doo wyrdplay, pearls from the gritty

Drama is all about change, the word itself stemming from the Greek ‘to move’.  And if you ask what it is that moves, then in most stories, you’re looking at the protagonist.  Which is fine.  We want to see interesting people develop in interesting ways.  And that’s where the problem comes in.

One of the things I’m really glad about is that I didn’t do an English degree.  Apart from the sheer volume of texts that it requires students to consume, it also indoctrinates people at a vulnerable stage of their development into swallowing an essentially Freudian worldview.  And that’s just wrong.  The Freudian paradigm has been pretty convincingly overturned by any number of other perspectives, but English graduates tend to have it installed in them, so they scan texts sniffing for hints of incest, patricide, and all that other good stuff a Viennese guy called Sigmund more than a century ago turned his thoughts to when he sniffed cocaine. 

Quite seriously, I have seen that approach transform people into angst-ridden neurotics who believe that life has a narrative and that they are a character in it, seeking their ‘real’ identity.  Even worse if they combine that Freudian stance with a dose of French critical theory about the death of the author and similar nonsense: the ideas are moderately entertaining for a while, but three years prolonged exposure to them messes people up.

And one consequence of all this is that much popular drama, made as it is by people who have studied English, or maybe Media Studies etc, has an essentially Freudian undercurrent.  Even when you think you’d be on safe ground, watching Star Trek: The Post-Kirk Years, the stories are all too often cheesy tales of father and son bonding, even if the father and son in question have weird lumps on their head signifying that they’re extraterrestrials.  And I just don’t buy the Freudian worldview.  Or so I tell myself.  And then find that I am often attracted to tales of families tormenting one another, because in families you can write stories with bigger emotions than you’ll find most places, and bigger emotions make compelling drama.

Recently, I’ve spent time with a good friend who’s changed significantly since I last had any dealings with them.  And in talking about that, and other people who’ve done something similar, it became clear that for some people, change can be the result of looking at yourself, seeing what does and doesn’t work, and stripping down the stuff that creates problems.  Which really can do the business.  Only, that process of internal change is not very cinematic. 

Some bright spark once commented that it was impossible to film sex or prayer in a way that conveys the sense of communion both can involve.  And it’s the same where the subtle alchemy of personal transformation is concerned.  Not that it stops writers and directors trying.  The usual route is visual metaphor; a haircut following a break-up, or a seagull in a landlocked garden connecting the heroine to her past in a coastal village.  You know the kind of thing.  And that can work…to an extent.  I’ll even buy visual metaphor as an expression of synchronicity, having experienced some spooky examples of it myself.  But even then, what is seen is a reflection of something internal, what happens when the inside and outside become one.

Anyway.  All this is interesting me at the moment having seen someone change, and in developing a very visual metaphor with mythic undercurrents for a protagonist’s journey of transformation in a thriller I’m embarking on. 

I had a meeting the other day with The Garnett Foundation, a fascinating bunch who use drama in training on issues such as diversity and leadership for the public and private sectors. Their approach is first to show a scripted play, and then to workshop it using a method called forum theatre. I’ve seen their work on several occasions, and somewhere down the line they’ll be touring a piece I’ve developed for them on creativity and innovation.

Quentin Tarantino is quite the cutie (geddit?). He made a big splash with Reservoir Dogs, then built on that success in fine style with Pulp Fiction. And what lesson did Hollywood learn from Tarantino’s success? Did they decide to look for talented filmmakers and let them loose on low budget projects, in the fashion that Quentin had invented himself? Or did they decide that Tarantino’s success was the result of his approach to the thriller, and unleash a slew of dialogue-heavy poop culture referring movies with a crime thang going on, regardless of their quality? Hmm. If you think I’ve weighted the argument there, go back and look at Two Days in the Valley, or any of the other achingly hip thrillers produced in Tarantino’s wake that haven’t weathered the years well.

Why choose this word, when that one is almost the same?  Writing is concerned in a big way with nuance, the subtlest of distinctions, and the choice of one word or another can say a lot about the character who says it, if it’s used in dialogue, or precise details of the scene. 

Here’s the opening sentence of my pilot episode script for The Sharp End:

“Lean and muscled LEON CARR (30) gets out of his car and prowls across to a squalid house in a low-income neighbourhood.” 

What is it about Leon that means he prowls, rather than just walking over the road?  It’s connected to the fact that he’s lean and muscular: his physicality is a big defining factor, while many of the other characters in the same script are described by reference to their clothes than their body type; Dawn Catchpole, for instance, is “all neon and noir”, and Savita Dhatri is “dressed for a party”. 

The objective is to capture something of the essence of the character in as few words as possible.   Same with scene-setting.  Check out the differences between these essentially similar descriptions:

BARRY lies face down on the floor.  He’s in his 20s, dressed in leisurewear.  His mobile phone is beyond his outstretched hand, and rings with an Oasis tune.  His eyes flicker as he hears it, and he stretches for the phone, his movements pained.  Congealed blood circles his baseball cap.

He gets to his knees, and answers the phone.  He looks around as he does.

BARRY

Hello?  Dunno mate.  Looks like I’m in a warehouse.

And now, this take on the same action:

High ceiling, and blank walls.  A big still space, that suddenly echoes with a classic rock tune ringing incessantly from a mobile phone.  A man’s hand twitches on the floor, and reaches for the phone.  BARRY is in his 20s, dressed in tracksuit bottoms, a sweatshirt and trainers.  He looks like he’s been badly beaten up.  The phone continues to ring.  With an effort, he manages to reach it, and sits up as he does.

BARRY

Hello?

(Looking around.)

Don’t know, mate.  Haven’t got a clue.

The choice of words, and sequence of information, presents two very different ways of filming what amounts to the same scene.  The first has Barry as its focus, while in the second the camera takes in the warehouse interior before settling on its occupant.  Odds are, the second would be shot with a hand the first indication of Barry’s presence, while in the first he’s seen lying down from the beginning.  And so on: what other differences in how the two versions of the scene would be shot are implicit in the way they’re written?

Pretty much every book on screenwriting will tell you not to indicate camera moves and so on, since these are the remit of the director and not the writer.  But effective use of language within the script can help you to direct the director, by creating pictures in their head that they can then realise with the aid of cast and crew.

What’s the difference between television and film?  There’s no easy answer to that question, and its slipperiness is clear when the £30 million invested in screenplays by British television writers in the 1990s that resulted in precisely no films being made is recalled.  Clearly then, there are substantive differences between the two media. 

It’s an issue I’m conscious of because I’m developing two treatments at this point, and will be shortly polishing a third prior to pitching it.  Let’s look at that third one: it’s a drama serial called The Sharp End set in a world that I’ve researched heavily and hasn’t been written about in any depth before.  I’ve scripted a pilot episode, and I believe it’s ideal for fans of edgy post-watershed television.  And it’s not just me who thinks that: one production company have seen the script and are keen to hear more from me, and writer/script developer Philip Palmer of Afan Films has this to say about it: 

I believe this is a very original and fresh arena for a tough, cutting-edge drama series.  And you bring to the project terrific authority and insight, and a bold narrative approach.

This is not cosy drama; it deals with dark themes and characters on the edge.  And I believe that its toughness and truth may help give the project its edge and USP in today’s tough marketplace.

Let’s hope so.  But what is it that makes The Sharp End work for television?  I’ve even had an approach from a producer who wanted to option a big screen version, but I didn’t share his conviction, and I’m glad I stuck to my guns.  The Sharp End is an opportunity to explore a social phenomenon that affects many of us, but which few of us really have an understanding of.  And I know that world well enough to realise that it contains many stories, none of which are cut and dried: the truths of this social issue defy easy categorisation.  That breadth and depth and societal aspect all point to this being a story that will work best on television’s broad canvas, enabling complex stories to unfold at a pace that’s right for them.  Nothing startling in that realisation: it’s the same impulse that led to the creation of The Wire, The Sopranos, Party Animals and Queer As Folk.

All very well, but what about the other projects I’m developing?  Well, one is clearly a feature film in my mind, and attains that status because it concerns one defining incident in the lives of a small group of characters, all of whose lives will be irrevocably changed by what happens.  The stakes couldn’t be higher, and I’m not sure there’ll be anything else to say about those characters once an audience has spent ninety minutes in their company.  Plus, it inhabits a genre that doesn’t have much in the way of televisual precedents: the thriller works best as a self-contained story, jeapordy being difficult to sustain on a weekly basis, despite whatever fans of 24 will tell you.

As for the other story, I knew straight away that it had to be for television.  It concerns a historic episode that I believe to be of real significance to recent British history and that few people are aware of in the mainstream.  And a key anniversary for that event happens in two years time, which if all goes well gives me enough of a lead to get in there now and hopefully find a production company who share my passion for this tale and have the resources and contacts to bring it to screen.  Hey, it might not work – but I’ve already found a potential ally in a production company who specialise in controversial television drama; exactly the kind of partners I’d need for a project like this.

The other key distinction between cinema and television is that cinema is typically committed to visual storytelling, whereas television, nice as it can look, is too often a matter of talking heads against a genre-appropriate backdrop.  And I’m looking forward to flexing my visual storytelling muscles in a big way on the thriller, which I think I’ve got a unique visual thematic and storytelling approach for.  At any rate, it’s nice to think so.

Rewind to 1995. I’m in Brighton, staying in a squat where some friends are living. There’s a lot of dope being smoked, and I was known to partoke myself at this point. And we’re in a big room, the one where most of what passes for activity in the house seems to happen. Most of those present are chilled types, so the intrusion of a boisterous alpha male trying to score coke is notable. Wayne, the guy in question, makes quite an impression on the dopy throng, but not the one he probably had in mind. When he leaves, failing to acquire cocaine, a leather-trousered Jim Morrison wannabe mutters in his wake, ‘Man, that cat: he wasn’t for real’, and pretty much everyone in the room nods sagely at his pronouncement.

Not that the actual Jim Morrison was any more convincing, come to think. I mention this having been to see There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson’s spellbinding new offering, featuring Daniel Day-Lewis as a badass oil tycoon who has an ongoing difference of opinion with a local revivalist preacher. And it’s D.D-Lewis’s holy roller number when he’s baptised that brings to mind Jim Morrison. Specifically, the bit on that Doors live album when he’s going into meltdown mode about how ‘You cannot petition the Lord with prayer’. Yes, it’s ludicrous – and electrifying. Histrionic – and compelling. All the more so when you’re 17, which is when The Doors are any kind of feasible.

Anyway, there’s a bit of Jim Morrison at times in DD’s performance: I found it captivating and appropriate, given the epic scale of the emotions as found in the script. Others may find it over the top. Either way, it’s P.T. Anderson (same initials as Barnum, see?) who you should address enquiries too: he wrote as well as directed the film. Besides, how else could you perform the scenes that Lewis was acting? Yes, there are a range of choices available, but some are more suitable than others. Just A Gigolo has been covered by plenty of people, and I love both the angular and idiosyncratic take that Thelonious Monk has on it, and the sheer glorious bombast of Dave Lee Roth’s performance. Lewis’s take on oilman Daniel Plainview is the filmic equivalent of Dave Lee Roth in full chaps-wearing flight, no irony to be had.

So, go see this film as soon as you can – you’ll want to see it again while it’s still running. Second time round, take a notebook with you: there’s enough detail on prospecting for oil to serve as a foundation course, a minutiea of information elegantly integrated into the opening 20 minutes or so that’ll have Esso quaking in their boots by the time everyone’s dug wells in their gardens and local parks. And if you’re sniffy about material wealth but keen on spiritual and community status, pay attention to Paul Dano’s performance as the faith healing minister of the Church of the Third Revelation; there’s a guy who knows how to work an audience.

Where this film ranks alongside Anderson’s others I’m unsure; he’s one of my favourite directors, and Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love rank highly among my top films. It’s got the emotional intensity of both of those, plus visual and musical excellence too, the latter courtesy of Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, whose orchestrations are powerful and entirely appropriate to what’s on screen (mind you, there’s some Arvo Part and Brahms in there too, so Jonny can’t take all the credit). What’s new here is the sheer breadth and depth of the story, which functions both as a history of the industry that fuels America and created the wealth of many of its elite, and an emotionally overpowering tale of a man who in achieving his material dreams loses sight of everything that truly matters. Towering stuff, and There Will Be Blood gets my very highest recommendation.