My artist collaborator and I met in London to have a preliminary discussion about legal matters that may be of relevance to an animation series we’re developing, with media lawyers Lee & Thompson.  The Lee part of the firm is named in the opening verse of Roxy Music’s Virginia Plain. Rock and roll.

That alone made it an auspicious day, but there was more.  While waiting for my colleague, a bearded and turban wearing Indian man singled me out in the throng around Bond Street and, showing me a black and white photo of his yogi, proceeded to tell me that the lines on my forehead indicate that I will be receiving three pieces of luck in the next couple of months, with the date August 22 of particular significance.

Now, I have no particular conviction that this swami is going to be correct, but given that I currently have a pilot script with three top tv producers, I’m certainly in the market for good news.  And yes, part of the soothsayer’s modus operandi was to confuse, but the whole business was so bizarre and intriguingly conducted, that I was more than happy to part with money for the experience — and in return for it I received what seems to be some kind of colourful seedpod.  Or maybe a magic bean.  Hmm.

Needless to say, I didn’t share this incident with our friend in the legal world.  Not the best gambit.  Instead, we talked about the show concept, showed him the character art and told him what kind of feel the series would have, and he seemed to get it.  No surprise, given his grasp of the animation industry, about which he is far more informed than either of us.

What’s interesting is what we can potentially expect from Lee & Thompson.  Increasingly, they’re acting to represent the talent they work with and be bridges to the realisation of projects.  It’s a role more typically seen in America, and calls for some degree of diplomacy since they don’t want to tread on the toes of agents and managers.  But for someone like myself with neither, it offers the possibility of having someone to act as an intermediary should any negotiations take place.  And I like the sound of that.

As far as the future is concerned, it was interesting to get the perspective of someone who’s been there and done that with other creative teams.  What we’re up against is the desire of any producers who like what we’ve come with to control it.  Lee & Thompson will be in our corner to strike the best possible deal, but reality is the concept will be more than 50% controlled by people we’ve never met.  In an ideal world, they’ll be people who have our concept’s best needs at heart, but that’s by no means guaranteed, and the history of entertainment is full of legal disputes around exactly such issues.

The nature of progress is incremental.  This particular project is only a few months old, and at this stage exists as some character notes and concepts, a sample script, and a web domain name.  That’s it.  But in the last few weeks we’ve met with a Soho company that specialises in post production who are willing to lend their arm to getting the concept showcased to the right people and would hopefully sort the animation out should things turn out the way we want.  And now we’ve got our very own legal representation.  Which is fine: as a non-smoker who’s given up drinking, I could do with an expensive hobby, and I reckon law fits the bill.

Want new insight into a creative project or other issue?  Come to the Constellations workshop in Nottingham, August 29.  Click for more details.

Interested in boosting your creativity with a very different take on how to construct a script?  I’ve been keeping my eyes and ears open for effective creativity enhancing methods, and having some experience of Constellations decided to host a day when a select group will get to go through this fascinating process together.

“I could see the whole story before me.”  Writer/director Huw Morgan, Imaging and Communications Tutor, De Montfort University, on a previous Constellations session with Risaria Langley.

I first experienced Constellations in use at a workshop exploring dreams.  Those present were invited to play a role in enacting dreams that had touched people, and even though we knew nothing about that person or their dreams, the results were astounding.  Somehow, the dynamics of what was going on for that person were laid out in the form of an interactive tableau that became a powerful learning experience not only for the dreamer, but the other participants and witnesses to what unfolded.

Intrigued, I wanted to find out more.  And discovered that writer/producer Risaria Langley — who I knew for her invaluable support at an earlier stage of my writing career when she worked at EM Media – was now conducting Constellations workshops since learning the structures behind them in Germany, where the methodology is more commonplace.

Risaria principally uses Constellations work to help writers work with the dynamics of their stories.  And it’s equally adept when helping people to explore situations at work, in their families, or in their dream lives: it’s fine to come to the day with anything that Risaria is happy to work with.  As well as influences from Gestalt psychology, Constellations is influenced by systemic thinking approaches and African tribal custom: an eclectic and powerful mix.

The workshop costs £75, and will take place in central Nottingham.  To secure your place, email me asap: adrian at youdothatvoodoo dot com.

It’s the little touches that make the difference in Asterios Polyp, the first graphic novel by Batman: Year One artist David Mazzucchelli.  On the surface things are pretty straightforward, the storytelling smooth and effective and as friendly as Charlie Brown to readers who haven’t spent their lives reading comics.  The subtleties are there though, and they do exactly what they should do: help convey character and mood effortlessly, as the story of architecture professor Asterios unfolds.

Much of the tale is concerned with the protagonist’s relationship with wife Hana, and there are simple and beautiful devices to communicate the state of play between them.  Reunited after divorce, their intimacy is quickly rekindled — something we know less from their verbal exchanges than the fact that the tails of their word balloons entwine.  But the balloons themselves are of different shapes and contain different fonts, which capture some of the speaker’s character.  None of this is rocket science, and this is hardly the first graphic fiction to indicate character through lettering, but the cumulative effect of Mazzucchelli’s choices is elegant and convincing.

But what of the story itself?  The nearest comparison I can make is to the films of Wes Anderson.  That is, the protagonist is a well-to-do academic who isn’t as smart as he fancies himself, who inhabits a world of eccentric characters.  Asterios is an architect in a purely conceptual sense: he has won competitions for his designs, but never had a building constructed from one of his plans.  He seems to see no problem with this situation, if only because his peers include similarly self-regarding underachievers.

In the latter category we have two contenders: pompous dramaturg Willy Ilium, who Hana serves as a kind of PA — the poor woman is forever overshadowed by male grotesques — and dishevelled composer Kalvin Kahoutek.  The three of them are immersed in debates about the nature of art, not forgetting to put one another down in clever ways: it’s like the relationship of psychiatrist Frasier with brother Niles.  I kind of enjoyed this stuff, but there’s a degree to which I can only tolerate fictional creations along such lines, and it’s not for much longer than I can stomach their real life counterparts.  Your mileage may vary.

Fortunately there are other characters to spend time with: odd couple mechanic Stiff Major and his pillowy wife, self-declared goddess Ursula, who Asterios lives with for a while, and the punk band who inhabit their orbit.  They ground the book a bit after the hifalutin’ stuff with the intellectuals, but Mazzucchelli is still just as interested in concepts and wordplay.

I’m hoping if Mazzucchelli does another graphic novel — and his talent is such that I’d be at the start of the queue — he’ll moderate some of his fixations and concentrate more on engaging narrative.  Maybe it’s just my desire to be immersed in bigger chunks of story, or frustration with his admittedly well-depicted characters, but I found the segmented style of the book — vignettes that capture incidents and emotions across the course of its protagonist’s life — a little unsatisfying.

Ultimately, the style of Asterios Polyp fascinates and convinces me more than its content.  Mazzucchelli is without doubt a hugely gifted cartoonist, but he has yet to convince as a storyteller.  That said, this graphic novel is definitely worth a read, as an example of a state of the art piece of graphic narrative.  Whether its creator goes on to do something more to my taste, or other people plunder the techniques he employs, Asterios Polyp is a beautifully designed landmark in the history of the graphic novel.

Medical dramas are predicated on the idea that talented and dedicated professionals will do whatever it takes to save the lives of those in their charge, even if it means they get hauled before panels of their peers to be accused of egotism and being a maverick.  Which is alright as far as it goes, but far from the whole story.

This I know from my experience at the weekend: I spent Saturday night at an A&E department accompanying someone who was suffering the consequences of being overdosed on their meds.  For three days, they’d been taking four times what they should have been, a daily dosage 100mg above the maximum dose of that medication.  In other words, there was quite a sense of urgency about the whole business as I rushed to hospital with him.

And then we were told to sit in the waiting room.  There were detailed instructions for washing your hands properly, which is apparently all that stands between you and pig flu.  And a few drink and snack dispensing machines, two of them broken.  So we waited.  And were asked to move into another waiting room, this one further within the hospital.  The staff ambled about and by their casual actions and demeanour did a good job of putting you at ease, though at the back of my mind I was thinking ‘Shouldn’t they have got the stomach pump out by now?’.

Getting On is a BBC4 comedy set in the kind of backwaters ward that they never show you in Casualty.  It’s written and performed by Jo Brand, Vicki Pepperdine and Joanna Scanlon, and it’s a beautifully observed portrait of the petty gossipy way that many institutions operate.  In the absence of something useful to do, people do stupid stuff instead: in this case two colleagues falling out over a hamper that each of them claims to have won in a raffle.  More seriously, at least on the surface, nurse Kim Wilde (Brand) has been accused of homophobia by a male matron.

The ensuing conflict resolution strategy meeting is a masterclass in nonsense, a heavyhanded way of dealing with an offhand remark Brand’s character made to a colleague.  Sure, she was insensitive — but he is oversensitive, a pompous vegan who declares he can’t be in the same room as a pork pie.  All that righteousness doesn’t stop him from getting oral sex from another of the female nurses, who is understandably confused about the recipient’s sexuality, wondering why he’s playing the ambiguously gay card (which may rightly be his) since she’s still half-hankering for the blowjob in the back of a taxi to blossom into a relationship.

It’s messy, it’s pathetic, and it accurately captures the way that off the cuff comments can become the basis of tortuous debate by people who really could be doing better things with their time.  It’s like Kafka with next to nothing at stake, and smallminded people prepared to defend that nothing to the hilt, so lost are they in the vacuity of institutional culture.  Pretty much the only heartfelt moment is when Jo Brand bursts out that she doesn’t give a shit about what happens to her, such is her loathing for the job.  It’s hard not to agree.

Given the premise of the show, it’s no surprise the patients barely get a look-in.  That’s entirely appropriate: the nurses are far too involved in numbingly tiresome interpersonal squabbles to have time to help any of their elderly charges in the recovery process.  The fact that this anti-drama is played out amid people dead and dying only adds to the sense that this very credible portrait of people within an unnecessarily large institution is as repulsive as it seems.  Which makes it all the more compelling to watch.  And if it causes you to question what you did at work today, so much the better.

What do you do that helps you come up with ideas?  For me, one of the most important parts of my creative process is swimming.  Oh, I can come up with concepts fine without, but when it comes to allowing fresh ideas to bubble up, and giving problems a chance to solve themselves, nothing beats an hour in the local swimming pool.

Noel Street Leisure Centre is a Victorian construct, with a pool longer than many modern facilities typically have, and changing rooms around it.  I love the place, as spare and archaic as it is, and have spent many a happy afternoon there that’s led to productive writing concepts emerging.

Just the other week I was there when there was a thunderstorm overhead, and that seems to sum the place up for me: a shelter from whatever’s happening in the outside world, or indeed the inner one.  Swimming for me doesn’t allow any opportunity for thought, since I’m involved in the whole body experience of being immersed in water and keeping myself afloat.  No room in my head then for dwelling on unexpectedly large utility bills or wondering why I haven’t been snapped up by Channel 4 to write a dream project.

Swimming is a way of connecting with the animal in me, that keeps me alive and sane and deserves to be rewarded for doing a good job on both fronts.  It’s good for keeping me balanced and energised, as is acupuncture.  I’ve done both in the last couple of days, and feel better than I have done for weeks.

A rationalist friend of mine likes to taunt me with articles proving the inefficacy of acupuncture, and that leads to a merry debate when I can be bothered, but bottom line is I value my experience over someone else’s chi-squared analysis.  Having needles inserted in strategic points, and incense lit on some of them, makes me feel amazing within minutes.

Besides, I can talk films and books with my acupuncturist: she’s a perceptive consumer of stories, and well worth listening to.  Not an experience I’d be likely to get in the ten minutes or so allocated to GP appointments, but the difference is more than that.  Healthcare in general is thought of as to do with maintaining a certain level of wellbeing.  I’m interested in optimising that state, which is a different thing: yes, I sometimes go for acupunture because of ailments — but also to make myself feel better than I already did.

That distinction applies to swimming too, and it’s a philosophy that feeds into the way I approach writing: I want to be in good mental and emotional shape to write whatever comes up, some of which is pretty dark.  I’ d rather not have to think myself into a grim place to write scripts that are concerned, as some of my work is, with dark subject matter.  That’s the goth fallacy, and I don’t buy it.

Another part of this story is my alleged bipolarity, a condition I’m labelled as having even if I refuse to acknowledge the accuracy of the taxonomy.  Having known what a scary place your own head can be, I’m keen to keep mine in good shape, and good mental hygiene is important to me.  At the moment the picture involves medication that’s evidently doing a fine job at keeping me stable without side effects other than weight gain, and in time I plan to come off that medication — but not in the next couple of years, when I have far too many plans to realise to potentially jeapordise things by rearranging my mental furniture.

In an ideal world, I’d be swimming more than I do.  And that’s an ideal world I’m working my way towards, with every phone call, email, meeting, and story idea.  This is the longest of long games, a marathon of uncertain duration, and I want to stay in good shape for it.

This week’s Dragons’ Den featured an unusual solicitation from a gasmask wearing nurse and some bloodied mental patients.  They were part of a team bidding to raise £200,000 for a live horror experience in central London, a consortium of people active in a scene I’m tangentially aware of through a somewhat exhibitionist friend with cybergoth tendencies.  He’d been involved in a smaller scale interactive horror experience that seemed to be about freaking out the straights to use sixties parlance: ooh, people with body piercings eating flames, kind of thing.

I didn’t realise that there was a larger version of the live horror experience that traffics in six figure sums of money, but it makes some kind of sense.  Horror as a genre seems to be doing pretty well overall, if you take into account not only the constant stream of horror films appearing at cinemas, but the number of computer games based on a horror premise, and the amount of bookshop space devoted to horror.  You could arguably include misery lit within its orbit, though I hope we’re some way off from paying for live experiences where people vie to be the runner’s up prize in a domino tournament for OAP swingers.  We have, after all, got Jeremy Kyle for such titillation, and it’s all the better for the screen it puts between us and its subjects.

The live horror experience the medical mutants on Dragons’ Den were pitching was a very particular sort of horror, familiar to people who’ve heard of emo and Silent Hill.  Which is another way of saying teenagers, or people whose teens featured those icons.  It’s all very Slipknot; people with randomly bloodied costumes and hints of BDSM gear.  And I can see how such an experience would be enjoyable and could indeed make commercial sense, given the number of horror fans looking to drop disposable income on having the bejesus scared out of them.

What’s interesting is the range of experiences at the moment being offered to the live event fan.  I’ve spoken to a couple of people who’ve been massively impressed by the walking dinosaurs of, err, Walking With Dinosaurs, coming to an arena near you soon.  The show is a technical triumph; basically a beauty parade of animatronic dinosaurs ambling around while an excitable Steve Irwin type provides some sort of commentary as they frolic, fight, and fart.  And why not?  No surer way can have been devised of introducing children to the world of live entertainment than a show populated by monstrous reptiles with matching merchandise.  Ker-ching.

And that’s just the start.  Down in London recently I saw posters for what promised to be yer actual chariot races.  Like what they had in Rome.  I salute the logistical ambition of someone creating a show based on real horses pulling real chariots with real riders round indoor arenas given contemporary health and safety legislation, something the Romans never had to contend with.  Has a risk assessment ever been done on those cool scythes that come out of the wheels to hack at opponents’ legs?  The horses that is: presumably this is not thoroughbred stallions they’ll be using in these shows, more the equine equivalent of an Aldi 3 for 2 offer.

Where chariot races are in the air, gladiator battles are not far behind.  And yes, there are some of those coming up.  Jousting is fairly well established in the British summer holiday calendar, but I’m looking forward to seeing men marinated in olive oil prod at each other with short swords, tridents, and nets in the interests of entertainment.  Maybe put a few ASBO offenders up on crucifixes at the entrance to set the mood.

If all of this stuff was seen as evidence of the decline of the Roman Empire, what does it say about our own culture that we’re embracing simulacra of what a previous civilization did to get its kicks?  Are we too wedded to reproducing what has gone before, branding it with the name of something known and trusted, to come up with something new?  Or have we indeed reached the end of history, and all we have to look forward to is variations on a theme, starting with Obama’s plan to put America back on the moon, and ending who knows where and when…

Amazing what happens when you let ideas gestate.

I’ve been working for a while with someone who’s written a non-fiction book that’s attracted quite a bit of attention from people claiming they can adapt it for film or television.  Some of these producers and directors have got quite a bit of credibility, too.  None of them, to date, have waved any money about, though some have alluded to its existence.  But for whatever reasons, the writer has decided he wants to develop scripts from his material with me.  Which is a process that mostly involves chat over morning coffees — we sit outside because my collaborator smokes.

Anyway, the book has got an abundance of material.  More than enough for a film and a tv series.  And we’ve got one of each in some sort of notional form.  For various reasons, now seems to be a good time to develop the feature side of things.  So I’ve been dipping into my memories of the book, rather than the book itself, since the name of the game is now creating fiction inspired by the real events the book is about.

Memory is a malleable process.  I was struggling to recall the specifics of how something worked in the book, since the actual physical book eludes me at present, and I thought ‘well, all I have to do is come up with something that’s at least as striking as what I can’t remember’.  A funny kind of request to one’s unconscious, but sure enough it worked out, and I’ve now got reams of ideas all fitting into one big story concept that I’ve got half written and will be returning to when I’ve done this blog.

I should be used to this by now.  Years back, I was part of a theatre in education outfit, and we devised a play about dyslexia.  ‘Devised’ means that I wrote some of it, that the actors improvised other scenes until we settled on their definitive forms, and that sometimes the actors asked me to create bespoke pieces for the play.  Which led to the memorable request ‘Adrian, can you write something in Shakespearean style verse about all the aspects of dyslexia that we haven’t covered in the rest of the play’.

Gulp.

Well, there’s a commission.

And the thing is, I responded to it, writing a poetic monologue several verses long that did all that I’d been asked to do, and a few other things for good measure.

There’s a case for writing what you know, sometimes.  But there’s a lot more you don’t know than that which you do.  So hurtling headlong into the unknown is guaranteed at the very least to be an interesting journey.  And you might just bag yourself a story while you’re there.

Only, you can’t go into the unknown without taking at least some of the known with you.  I wouldn’t have been able to do a bit of cod Shakespeare without exposure to actual cod, and indeed actual bard.  So going off in search of something that made use of that knowledge, it was like having a filter for what I came across that would present it in faux-Shakespearean form.

Similarly, in adapting the heart of this nonfiction book into a story or stories, I’ve got a lot to fall back on.  My knowledge not just of text, but of author, in this case.  And unlike the author, I have prior experience of adapting stories from existing sources, plus a lifetime’s viewing of films that started life as novels, short stories, comics, or newspaper articles.  All of which gives me confidence that I can take on this job and do it justice.  Which is maybe what the author spotted in me and made them realise I was someone to collaborate with, after meeting several people they wanted nothing to do with.

The Governor is back.  Jimmy McGovern that is.  The Street returns to our screens for a third series, and Jimmy has penned the first episode.  Which is event television, in my book.  And even if this opener faltered a little towards the end, it was still head and shoulders above much of what passes for television writing.

Bob Hoskins plays the manager of a rundown pub that’s nonetheless got plenty to offer to its community.  Karaoke, quiz nights, special deals for pensioners, and two football teams paid for by local bad boy Tom Miller.  It’s Miller’s son Calum getting caught smoking in the toilets that propels the story: Hoskins bans the lad, to be consistent with previous behaviour and because publicans face a £5000 fine for people smoking on their premises.  Only, banning the son of the local hardman is not any way to get on in life, you know?

Hoskins soon discovers the truth of that decision when Miller says he’s going to be at the boozer Sunday afternoon — and will be asking for a pint each for himself and his lad.  Meaning we’ve got the makings of a confrontation on our hands.  As you might expect with McGovern, there are layers to what’s going on: the publican’s son has managed to get to university, while the letters after the gangster’s son’s name spell ASBO.  That factors into the tension between the two in a big way, and makes the emotions of the story more credible.

We know that trouble is brewing through simple and inspired visual touches.  Miller and his men are doing some local roadworks, and the brutality and noise of the machines ripping up concrete and pounding pavements foreshadows the violence to come.  Hoskins is determined to give a good account of himself though, and tries to rally the troops against Miller.  At which point the complexities of the situation become more apparent.  It’s difficult to get the football team to oppose the man who pays for their transport.  And while it’s argued that pub soccer is all about keeping kids out of trouble, at the same time the pub itself plays a big part in misdemeanours and mayhem in the area by swilling beer down the necks of all who want some.

High noon arrives.  Well, half three actually, but there’s a touch of the western about all this so you get the idea.  And Miller and his son come in and ask to be served.  Hoskins says Miller’s son is still barred, and that inevitably leads to Hoskins being brutally set upon by the hard man.  It’s ugly to watch, and quite right too.  The publican is taken to hospital, but swears he’ll be behind the bar again that evening.  Which he is.

And this is where things get interesting.  Miller and his son come back to the pub, and this time they do get served — but Hoskins passes young Calum his drink with an umbrella and straws in it, saying that his father has brought him up like a tart and should therefore be treated like one.  Which prompts Miller and son to exit the pub, tail between legs, and Hoskins to clear the pub of his regulars, who’ve shown a distinct lack of willingness to stand up to the bully in their midst.

Now, Hoskins chucking people out of his bar, I bought.  That worked for me.  But I’m not convinced that criticising Miller’s parenting skills would have had the effect it did.  Nor that it would have caused Miller’s wife to leave him with their son.  I like that outcome, but feel it was unearned.  Which leaves me wondering what Hoskins could have done to have achieved that result by another means that would have worked better for me.  I’ll let you know how I get on with that.  Which might sound like temerity, me daring to wear Jimmy McGovern’s shoes, but I know it’ll niggle at me until I find a resolution that I believe more than the one I saw, in what was otherwise an exemplary display of tv writing.

At a time when Marvel are attempting to persuade their existing readers to part with even more money for intricately interconnected titles incomprehensible to those of us who haven’t read the last five years of their comics, DC come up with a genuinely bright idea.  Wednesday Comics is a weekly anthology consisting of single page installments of stories in a broadsheet-newspaper size collection, 15 stories in all.

It’s a fresh and bold attempt to do something different of potential appeal to anyone with a vague interest in the medium, and the publisher has smartly decided to put some major talent into the project, as well as some of its signature brands: Batman leads on the front page, and you’ll find Superman and Wonder Woman in there as well as a bunch of lesser known characters.

Yes, the sniffy might say that it’s far from an original concept: this is essentially a 21st century reinvention of the comics supplements that many newspapers ran in decades past.  But it’s still an exciting move in industry terms, and one I hope will pay off for DC.  Necessarily, the first issue covers some ground repeatedly, what with having to introduce characters to readers and fill in back stories to a greater or lesser degree, but as the title progresses through its twelve-week run, I’m sure the contents will become even more diverse than they are at present.

What’s fascinating is seeing how different creators play with the new space they’ve been given.  The Batman story, by 100 Bullets creators Azzarello and artist Risso, is fairly conventional in its use of the page, and nonetheless looks striking.  Next up, David Gibbons and artist Ryan Sook take us back to the days of Prince Valiant with their take on the Kirby hero Kamandi, with blocks of narrative text within the panels giving the page a very different kind of rhythm.

Paul Pope does a fine job on spacefarer Adam Strange, designing a symmetrical page that emphasises its depth, and has flying monkeys for added value.  The Flash probably uses its page most inventively, split into two stories, one on the hero himself, the other focusing on his wife, in a story that will see the two overlap in some interesting fashion somewhere along the line.  Stylistically, it makes the former look like a fairly standard — albeit impeccably illustrated — superhero strip, while Iris West looks more like a romance or true life tale.  Writer Karl Kerschl and artist Brendan Fletcher are to be congratulated for this fascinating choice.

Two of the best strips are saved for last: Demon and Catwoman get a page gorgeously drawn by Brian Stelfreeze with subdued and effective colours by Steve Wands.  The only shame is that it’s written and not drawn by Walt Simonson, whose energetic design-conscious art I’d have thought was perfect for pages this size: here’s hoping that happens in the future.  Last up, Kyle Baker’s Hawkman has probably the largest single panel in the whole comic, a striking image of a martial Hawkman surrounded by his avian allies.

With 15 stories, some are going to appeal more than others.  Ben Caldwell’s Wonder Woman looks fantastic, and gives us the busiest page with nearly 50 panels, but the writing doesn’t convince as yet.  And I suspect Neil Gaiman’s Metamorpho, though it looks poptastic with Mike Allred artwork, could be a touch too kitchsy to be truly engaging.

Still, those count as minor quibbles.  Overall, Wednesday Comics is one of the most enjoyable and fun comics I’ve seen for a while: no convoluted grimness here, just colourful and enjoyable storytelling by some of the finest creators in the business.  Here’s hoping its twelve week run is continued when the beancounters have got the results in on this first incarnation.  Editor Mike Chiarello can take a bow: this is quality stuff, well conceived and delivered in almost every respect.

So, after all the build-up over several episodes, things are reaching a climax.  The music matches the mood, and the camera closes in to catch a critical moment.  Something small and moist and alien sits on a plate, and Celebrity Masterchef host Greg Wallace raises it to his mouth.  Whatever happens next is a rarified experience, something transcendent that turns his face into an expression of bliss, language barely able to contain this sublime moment.  But words there are, and I will record them here: ‘Those boozy prunes’.

Out of context, the words have no more meaning than the Zen master who in his pointing urges his students to look at the moon and not his finger.  It’s clear that something powerful has happened here, and that’s what has glued millions to their seats to see who has won the competition.  How many of them stayed, as I did, for the conclusion of Torchwood?  It’s been building up all week, up to yesterday’s appalling revelation that icky aliens want 10% of the world’s children — and that Captain Jack failed in his first attempt to do something about that, and wasn’t looking in any state for round two.

Part of the power of the story has been its willingness to go to extremes, to think your actual unthinkable.  The business of politicians presented with the reality of dealing with the world’s junior population being tithed to extraterrestrials was chillingly plausible: the scenes in which strategies were discussed reminded me of the tv dramatisation of the notes made by Nazis on the logistics of the Jewish question.  What followed was perfectly credible, as the army were mobilised to round up kids from schools at the bottom of their league tables and ship them to holding areas for the delectation of aliens known as the 456.  (I still feel that the 456 looked less like beings from another world than guests on a Saturday morning kids’ show, kept in a tank full of noxious gases and splashed with unpleasant fluids.)

If Greg Wallace has an orgasm when contemplating those boozy prunes, then what would he have made of Captain Jack’s dilemma?  Just when it looked like things couldn’t get any worse, a germ of a solution appeared, involving feeding back a noise to the aliens that they’d used to off the aging mentalist who’d given them the slip back in 1965.  Said noise would be channeled through all the kids in the world, as per alien practice, but at the epicentre would be one particular kid: Captain Jack’s grandson.  And that kid would be sure to die.  And he did.

This was a version in miniature of the problem the government were presented with, and when push came to shove Captain Jack made the same choice as them.  He offed his grandson, whether because the death of one really is justified by saving millions — a reasonable enough stance — or, more chillingly, because as a military man and one for whom death doesn’t have the finality it does for the rest of us, it was the obvious thing to do.  And this is the tragedy of Captain Jack Harkness, doomed to live and die again and again and be faced with impossible choices and then live with the knowledge of what he’s done.

No wonder then, at programme’s end, that Jack chose to go hitching to the stars, travelling with spacefaring types to see if he could forget the death of his lover Ianto, and of his grandson, and all the other deaths that he’d seen and sometimes been involved in.  I’m hoping he’ll be back: Torchwood this time round was a head and shoulders above any previous iteration, and I’d love to see the gang assemble again to tackle whatever is lurking in Cardiff, or even further afield, in the future.