A musician I know wrote a song that she was told could be a hit, because she’d touched on a universal experience that hadn’t been written about often. Her song was all about waiting for a letter from a lover, this back in the days when postal communication meant receiving something handwritten from someone special, maybe involving all kinds of in-joke cartoons and extra stuff like mixtapes and sweets and plastic toys.

Horrible Bosses ticks just that same box of universality. I don’t know if the script was commissioned by someone who had the realisation that vile employers would make for a widely appealing movie, or if it was a conclusion reached independently by the writers (Michael Markowitz, John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein). Whichever, you’ve got to admit it’s a genius commercial move. Finding a universally shared experience like that always indicates potential for a story. The question then is about the quality of its execution.

The writers took a sensible route here. Having hit on a theme that everyone can identify with, they approach it in a manner that suits a mass audience. Right now, that means fitting in with the fairly extreme style of humour that’s formed a winning formula for moves like Hangover and Bridesmaids.

I’m discussing the film from an industry viewpoint because it’s a good example of what happens when commerce and not art leads the process. Often, that leads to dismal spectacle with no trace of humanity — witness the career of Michael Bay. I mean that with no disrespect: there’s a certain kind of experience you get from a Bay spectacular, and if that’s what you’re in a mood for he delivers it reliably.

The fact that Kevin Spacey appears in the film tells you that Horrible Bosses aims higher than the lowest common denominator. He is one of two almost-credible vile employers, a tyrant whose egomania and paranoia combine to blight the lives of others, and ultimately leads to his own downfall. Another is the son of a company founder, who intends to squander the business’s money on coke and hookers, and his portrayal is strong too. The letdown is the third candidate, a nymphomaniac dentist who is sexually harassing her assistant. The concept might just work, but in execution it speaks of a pitifully immature approach to sexuality which borders on the misogynistic.

Our three stalwarts band together and realise that only death will stop their employers in their tracks. But how do three white middle class guys go about committing murder? By going to the wrong side of the tracks of course, and meeting up in a bar populated by black people, where they encounter one Motherfucker Jones. It’s a dumb move, but as M.F. Jones himself points out, they deserve what they get for assuming a black guy will know how to eliminate their enemies just on the basis of his skin colour.

Fortunately, if only because of the exuberance of the performances — the actors are clearly enjoying themselves — the film delivers laughs on a consistent basis. Much of what’s to relish is visual. The coke-snootin’ boss lives amid an astonishing collection of martial arts artefacts, and a multi-cultural array of sacred statues chosen for how cool they look rather than any unifying spiritual framework. No surprise that they encounter a coke stash that Scarface would be proud of, and are affected by it when they knock it over and try and put it back in using a vacuum cleaner and a colander.

The exuberance it’s delivered with makes for any shortcomings in other respects. Forget sophisticated entertainment and instead enjoy some real belly laughs from the trio as they embark on their vengeful plans only for everything to fall apart. You can kind of see it coming, but that really doesn’t matter. There are other nights to go to the cinema for thoughtful empathic filmmaking. Go and see Horrible Bosses because you’d like to see what happens when some people with career histories like your own decide to take action against their employers. Enjoy.

These are interesting times. It’s looking like the multi-platform entertainment concept for children that I’ve devised with artist Andy Tudor has a seriously credible and business-savvy backer, who is putting money into what we’re doing to allow us to develop our ideas further in collaboration with people who have expertise that we admire. That’s majorly exciting stuff, and I was buzzing when we concluded our meeting at the St Pancras branch of Carluccio’s.

Still in the station, I wandered around prior to getting my train back and came across a book I’ve been aching to read: Grant Morrison’s Supergods: Our World In The Age Of The Superhero. It was at full price, but it was a signed copy, and I couldn’t conceive of a better treat to celebrate the start of a new phase of things. And who if not Grant Morrison is going to be a good guide to what happens when reality dissolves and something bigger and grander appears in its place?

The book is a delight. Grant, it turns out, is a fine non-fiction writer as well as being perhaps my favourite comics writer. He’s without a doubt my favourite comics character, and the book is in part a chronicle of the way he invented and reinvented himself. There’s Grant the working class lad whose parents’ politics and reading matter shape the young Scot’s development. He was creating comics alongside friends to share with them at an early age, so by the time he approached the industry for work he’d already got quite a bit of experience.

His capabilities recognised by DC back when Vertigo was starting, Grant and the other Britpack writers cultivated by editor Karen Berger were encouraged to present themselves as hip young things, and made the most of the opportunity. Those were extraordinary times, which gave rise to Pete Milligan’s Shade, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, and Grant’s calculated reinvention of Animal Man, the audacity of which led to continued work in America.

The book covers all that, along with tales of Grant’s adventures in magic, psychedelics, and uncategorisable experiences. Some will dismiss those aspects of what he discusses, but having experienced parallel adventures myself I can only applaud him for being so honest about what he’s been through and what he believes it means. Besides, there’s no doubting that Grant walks his talk: a huckster wouldn’t have the energy for the concepts Grant spins casually, and which form a central thread to his work and life. To pick up on a joke in the book about an exquisitely painful fan encounter, he’s the surreal deal.

Besides, look at what Grant’s approach leads to. Encountering someone dressed as Superman at a point when he was puzzling how to reinvent the character, Grant engaged him in conversation as if he was the icon he purported to be. He was impressed by how relaxed this big fit guy was. That registered: why wouldn’t Superman go round in a casual fashion, when there’s pretty much nothing on the planet that can harm him? That conversation was one of the threads that came together to form All Star Superman, the collaboration with Frank Quitely that’s unquestionably the finest the hero from Krypton has been written, and drawn.

As well as Grant’s own story, you also get his generous and perceptive account of the work of heaps of other creators working in the field of superhero comics. It’s clear that Grant loves what he does, and has a unique and fascinating vision of the field that’s coloured by a quiet radical optimism about not just the artform, but about humankind as a species.

One ways that smart writers differentiate themselves long term is being able to come up with new facets to the way they think about their stories, or indeed the medium. Not something you’re likely to see from Jimmy McGovern, who puts ten or more angry hours of writing a day into tv drama about how the British working class have been betrayed. There’s a place for that, sure. But given a choice of role model, I’d rather opt for someone less guilt-ridden and liver-damaging. Which is one of the many reasons to look to Joss Whedon as the career to emulate.

Now, you could say that Joss Whedon is to teenage girls what Jimmy McGovern is to angsty Catholics. But I know whose characters have more fun, and which would be more enjoyable to write. In Buffy, Whedon created a template for stories that ran several seasons on tv and created a subgenre in the process. And having done so, and made a fortune in the process, decided that he’d like to continue the concept in comics. Not that there’s any serious money to be made there — but Whedon likes the medium.

And this is where the smart thinking can be seen. Whedon stayed with the concept of the Slayer, a teenage girl who can kick vampire butt, and did something new with it. He took the story into the future, and made his new heroine someone who had no idea of her destiny. Smarter still, he made the reason for that part of the story itself: his heroine Melaka Fray had a twin brother. She’d grown up fast and tough, he’d been tormented by knowledge of Slayer ancestry. And drawing on what he knew, became the Big Bad of the eight issue series.

All of which demonstrates some nimble thinking on Whedon’s part. The kind of thinking that can extend a franchise into all kinds of directions. It seems obvious to the reader, because it fits in well with what’s come before. But developing a concept where the core elements are so distinctive and having room for variance that adds to character and story potential shows real smarts. Which is why I’m writing about Whedon, and Whedon’s not writing about me.

Another writer wtih intelligence about his medium is Warren Ellis. Part of his talent comes from his study of comics as a form. He knows how a page works, understands the implications of different lettering styles, how to turn black and white printing to his advantage when he’s working for a publisher who can’t afford colour. With new project SVK he’s gone a stage further still, coming up with a way of using what could have been a gimmick that is utterly congruent with the story he has developed.

The gimmick? Invisible ink. Some parts of the comic are printed in an ink that can’t be seen unless it’s exposed to ultraviolet light. Which is where the second twist comes in. SVK comes bundled with a cute uv torch branded in line with the world described in the comic. It’s a nod to the very British tradition of giving away novelty toys with comics: 2000AD had a space spinner and who knows what other sorts of plastic tat in its early days.

The real coup of SVK is that all the gimmickry exists in the service of a solid near-future tale of corporate espionage. Which is very much Warren’s thing: he’s good at that stuff. For me though, the best moment was one of pure emotion, when a character realises that his girlfriend really does love him. It’s a reveal that happens when he gets to read her thoughts which, you guessed it, were invisible until exposed to UV. And going for that emotive payoff rather than something tricksy is a powerful reminder of Ellis’s ability to go above and beyond where most other writers would reach.

I’m pretty sure that Paul McCartney’s first piece of music wasn’t Blackbird, or that Pablo Picasso didn’t just wake up with a fully formed Guernica waiting to be executed one day. No, these masterpieces were the result of a considered process by their makers, the culmination of years of application at skills of craft. Such aptitude is necessary so that, when an idea comes along, a creator can express it in whatever form best suits it. King Crimson founder Robert Fripp says of practicing guitar that it’s by mastering the instrument that he’s capable of expressing whatever music wants to be heard. It’s his idiosyncratic sound that marks out Fripp’s work, and while there are times when his technical prowess is undeniable, some of his best work has simplicity at its core — the essence of virtuosity is not to dazzle all the time, but to be able to express yourself in whatever way is appropriate.

Why then, do some screenwriters set out with the idea that their first piece will be their masterwork? More than a couple of times now, I’ve seen questions on writing forums from writers determined to write film trilogies as they contain the very best ideas that they’ve had. Well, one question to ask is how many ideas they have at all. If you’re set on a writing career, you need a lot more than one story’s worth of concepts, even if they’re spread over three films. You need to be able to come up with stories on a consistent basis. You need to work with bringing them to audiences as part of a team of industry professionals, some of whom will give short shrift to the notion that a trilogy is somehow sacred. Both of which point to a need for a certain kind of unlearning: you’ve got to have the humility to be a graceful team player at times, as well as the ego to push yourself on regardless of whatever others say. Particularly at the outset, when you’re developing craft and voice, it might serve you well to listen to those who’ve trodden the same path, to see if they’ve got anything worth sharing.

Besides, what’s so special about a trilogy? Are you really certain that your idea is so special that audiences need to sit on their asses for six hours to get it? Is it perhaps plausible that the central concept could be explored on a smaller scale first, perhaps in a tight 90 minute script? I’d be wary of letting a novice writer loose on a trio of screenplays before I was sure they’ve got some of the basics down properly. Conflict, pace, characterisation, genre, visual storytelling. Show me you can do those well in a single script, and I’ll concede you can take on a three-parter.

Whether the industry actually wants such a thing is another matter entirely. At the very least, make your first part self-contained, so that the performance of that movie at the box office can be used as a barometer for the likelihood of an audience for more along similar lines. One of the problems with Green Lantern was its overconfidence in the mythological aspects of the story, the assumption that audiences would click with all the tiresome outer space history lesson that the film commenced with, and which succeeded in propelling me out of the cinema.

By all means go away and write your trilogy. But first, show me something that works in its own right on a more intimate scale. Do me a Die Hard riff set in a fruit canning factory. Nothing more adventurous than that. Treat it as a technical exercise the same way that painters learn colour by doing paintings that focus on just that. If you can show me a solid and entertaining single location thriller that has me wanting to know what happens next, I’ll be willing to read all three parts of your epic. But not until then.

OK, so you’ve written your script. It’s been locked down, and not a word now shall be changed from the sacred text that you’ve created. The director will go on to interpret your words faithfully, and your intent will at all times be clear as actors imbue your characters with life, cameras capture every nuance of the scenes that you detailed, and music is used from time to time to heighten your artfully created mood.

Only, it’s not like that. The carefully chosen words you selected to convey precisely the meaning you had in mind — implying one thing on the surface but with another meaning in the subtext — are in practice mutable for all kinds of reasons. Like, you might be faced with actors who are faithful to their interpretation of the character and not your version of them. Which could be sincere, and let’s hope that if so the performer will bring things out that you’d not conceived of as they use your text as template rather than following it precisely. Equally, it could be you’ve got an actor whose fidelity to the script is approximate, for reasons including but not limited to conviction in their own choice of words, issues with learning the script, and hangovers.

The classic example of an actor creating their own part from what the writer has written is Benicio del Toro’s portrayal of Fenster in Usual Suspects. Noting that the character didn’t really have much of significance to say in the film, del Toro chose to portray Fenster as someone whose relationship with the English language was itself suspect. His eccentric enunciation makes him a stand-out character: you can hear what he’s saying when it actually matters, but much of the time he might as well be quoting Dr Seuss. Whatever he does, it’s cool, and the role helped get del Toro recognised.

It may be the case — brace yourself — that the director has a better conception of how to get a scene across than you do yourself. I knew someone who’d directed quite a bit of tv, and was working on a historical drama with a female lead. There was a scene where the character is overwhelmed by the calamities in her life, and the director hit on a way of getting that across visually. She would shoot the star from a distance, her tiny silhouette against the backdrop an indication of how overwhelmed she felt at that moment.

The director made a smart choice there. But she hadn’t banked on the actress, who basically had a hissy fit. Having read the script version of the scene, where she gets to be all sorry for herself and emote to her heart’s content, she was set on doing just that. Leading to a confrontation with the director that’s always a tricky one to resolve. Bear in mind that a starring actor has a camera pointed at them a lot. That’s what defines them as a star. Which means that they’ve got the greatest leverage in the situation if they want to play awkward, as this actress did.

The trick then, is to allow your actor to think they’ve got what they want. So the director dutifully shot the scene with the actress railing against whatever, and having a fine old time doing so — a three tissue scene if ever there was one. And later, when the actress retired for the day, drained from dredging up the darkest parts of her soul etc, the director sneaked out and got the shot she wanted…a silhouette can be pretty much anyone after all, and that’s what happened on screen, the vulnerable form of the character etched into a brooding sky to the strains of a melancholy violin piece. All of which would have been an interesting and hopefully welcome surprise to the writer by the time they got to see it on tv.

Well, that was interesting. I spent yesterday at Leeds University at an event about childrens’ tv drama. It felt like a campus comedy, academics meeting people active in the world they were studying. But, to be fair, the intent was to make the day helpful for those of us eager to write scripts for younger audiences. And to some extent it succeeded. What it couldn’t do was change the realities of the situation…

After an effusive talk by an academic who has been studying the methods BBC Scotland use to come up with programming for kids — much talk of the effort they put into being creative and empathising with children — there was a dose of reality in the form of the input of a senior CBBC exec. At which point things started to seem alarmingly similar to an event, perhaps also in Leeds, when the BBC’s continuing drama boss John Yorke held court about the five-act structure that he cherishes so much.

See, I have no problem with people using five acts to construct their drama. It’s a perfectly valid way of doing things. What I do have a problem with is someone who doesn’t actually write telling me how I need to go about creating scripts for the channel that he commissions for. Back in the day, creators like Dennis Potter, Ken Campbell, and Alan Plater created inventive popular drama for the BBC and did so without having execs hovering over their shoulder to see if they were doing it ‘properly’.

Unfortunately that’s exactly what happens these days. And it’s just as true with CBBC. While castigating American tv for creating formulaic shows whose producers do PowerPoint displays with graphic diamonds depicting the way the stories hold together, the CBBC exec was happy to show us a PowerPoint display with some far more inventive circles outlining how he liked his shows.

The sticking point for me was the insistence that writers send in scripts with a child protagonist, since 6-12 year olds can empathise with their peers and blah blah blah. Hmm. So much for the long tradition of children enjoying stories about adults, which arguably form part of the way they learn from role models. So much too for the long tradition of shows like Lone Ranger and Flash Gordon which kids have enjoyed for generations and feature grown-ups doing their heroic thing. And never mind superhero comics, beloved of young readers and featuring older characters getting into scrapes they surmount through prowess and right action.

What’s really dumb here is that the BBC’s biggest show, Doctor Who, is beloved of children worldwide. And he doesn’t have a kid sidekick in the TARDIS for young ‘uns to identify with what’s happening more easily. No need for one. And if the argument is that Dr Who is different because it’s produced by BBC Wales and not CBBC, then so much for a distinction that seems arbitrary and profoundly unhelpful.

Sure, there’s some good drama for children being produced under the current regime. There absolutely is room for shows with child protagonists like Tracy Beaker. Not denying that for a moment. But it seems ridiculous to assess the scripts offered to CBBC primarily according to whether the protagonist is 12 or less. No chance of CBBC having its own Indiana Jones then, or Luke Skywalker. And female friends suggest there’s a real lack of inspirational adult female characters for girls in their own experience, and that of their daughters. Girls look up to teenagers and pop stars, but other than Captain Caveman’s sidekicks the Teen Angels one friend couldn’t think of female characters she was into when she was young.

The way our minds work, it’s easy to identify with characters of any age and culture. So why the emphasis on protagonists the same age as the kids watching them? Children don’t go to football matches expecting to see their peers, or pop concerts to witness kids they could be in class with. Imposing that standard on tv drama for children is a real limitation, for audiences and creators alike.

1957. Miles Davis, already a signature force in the world of jazz for his invention of a cool style that’s a remove from the bebop that came before it, issues a compilation of some of the tracks he’s created in the last few years with his nine-piece band; itself an innovation. That collection is called Birth of the Cool.

It’s no accident that the comic Static, one of the titles launched as part of the Milestone imprint developed by Dwayne McDuffie and others for DC Comics in 1993, is collected under the name Rebirth of the Cool. Like the music of Miles Davis, it can be appreciated by all, and has the imprint of a distinctively black American sensibility. And that pisses some people off. Assuming McDuffie was imposing an agenda on a medium characterised by a profoundly conservative mainstream, a lot of potential readers never bothered to pick up Static or other Milestone titles, which presented a world that was not only ethnically diverse, but where race and culture shaped characters and story.

All of which would be irrelevant if the comics were as crappy as the majority of those on the market. Static is the first Milestone collection I’ve read, and it’s very good indeed. Its protagonist is a 15 year old black kid, who with his wit and scientific aptitude it’s hard not to see as a stand-in for McDuffie himself. Whatever. The quality of the writing — some issues were co-scripted with Robert L. Washington III –soon makes you forget that, and immerses you in the world of young Virgil Hawkins.

You could see Static, because of his age and the dilemmas he faces, as a more modern take on the Peter Parker/Spider-Man riff. In the same way that Miles Davis could cover a jazz standard and make it his own, Static is a distinct character in his own right. There are some classic tales in the early years of Spider-Man, but there’s something very straight and very white about them. McDuffie was a fan of Frank Zappa, who was colour blind when it came to hiring musicians. Zappa used the expression “putting the eyebrows on” to describe the process of going from the basic tune as written, to the one that’s performed in a particular concert, a response to the energy of the evening, the mood of the players, and sometimes what was in the news. You can look at Static as McDuffie “putting the eyebrows on” the template that Stan Lee and Steve Ditko had created with Spider-Man.

The dialogue has sass, the plot has pace, and the structures are solid: this is quality comics writing by someone who knew exactly what he was doing. Like Miles learned jazz ballads and put his own twist on them, McDuffie plays with familiar tropes like girlfriends, school rivalries, and the interaction of heroes and villains, and brings them to life with wit and style. The fact that he’s working with an artist of the calibre of John Paul Leon means that the stories look as good as they read, and for some of the same reasons: these are comics, but not like you’ve seen them before.

Socially conscious without being worthy, emotionally credible and with characters it’s easy to empathise with, Static is a stand-out series that’s well worth picking up a collection of. It also led to a highly successful animated series, Static Shock, that reached a bigger audience than the comics ever would. In the process it established McDuffie as perhaps the most significant black creator working in comics, someone whose writing skills were supported by the business acumen needed to get Milestone off the ground where he could showcase work that he believed in, for — among others — a multi-cultural audience that had rarely seen itself in the pages of the comics they read, and certainly not with the insight and prowess that Dwayne and his collaborators brought to the table.

Nottingham’s Broadway Cinema hosted an event organised by BAFTA the other evening, with two of Getting On’s three creators going into the story of how they created the series and brought it to the screen. The most well known of the triumverate is Jo Brand, but in her absence we instead got to know Vicki Pepperdine and Joanna Scanlan, who like Jo are also actors in the show, a darkly credible look at life and death on a moribund NHS ward.

The origins of the series are in the fact that the three women live close by to one another in London. Some will see this as evidence of the primacy of the capital in the nation’s media, but it’s equally possible to view it as indicative of the need to make the most of the people in your network. At any rate, the show is the result of the trio’s particular skillset and chemistry. It’s also a beautiful demonstration that the BBC can and does let work emerge that doesn’t fit into its general methodology of commissioning shows and supervising them closely.

The core of the threesome seems to be Joanna Scanlan, who worked as a drama lecturer and tv scriptwriter before finding her feet as a performer with Getting On. It’s Joanna’s experience of writing that ensures the story receives the attention it’s due, and which is apparent in the tightly plotted episodes, typically setting character issues alongside a central patient-related narrative. The other women are involved in this process too, but what came across is that Joanna is the guardian of the story, and is scrupulous about the need to edit out good gags and moments if they don’t adhere to that core.

Drawing on drama workshopping skills to come up with their characters, influenced by considerable research with members of hospital staff teams, it was a surprise to all involved when Jo Brand — asked as part of her hotseating what her character was called — blurted out that she was Kim Wilde. As it happens, Jo knows the singer of the same name, and perhaps in the confusion of the improvisation leapt at the first name that came into her mind. At any rate, the coincidence of the name becomes part of the character’s charm, and is a good example of using what comes up in the moment to inform the process.

Though a lot of thought goes into coming up with the stories, the BBC seemed to think that there was a lot more improvisation going on. The creators were happy to let them believe that since it kept them free from the attentions of script editors and others with a tendency to impose changes whether or not they’re needed in an attempt to put their stamp on the corporation’s output.

Still, the trio needed allies to take the project forward, and when they got the go-ahead to do a filmed pilot were able to call on the services of Peter Capaldi, who Joanna had known for years, and worked with in The Thick Of It. Less known as a director, Capaldi’s input is critical to the show’s look and feel. Compared to the gloss of the BBC’s flagship medical dramas, Getting On has a washed-out and faded look appropriate to the institution it’s set in. He was also able to bring in visual touches influenced by Dogme filmmaking. That said, part of the reality of the show’s distinctive look is a function of what happens when you shoot a 30 minute programme with two cameras for 2.5 days.

It’s interesting that Getting On, like The Office before it, has developed such a distinctive identity. And there are systemic reasons for that: both shows came from what amounts to the BBC’s R&D department. To me, that points to the importance of nurturing creators and concepts through that fairly organic route rather than the more regulated processes that too often result in identikit programme making.

I don’t intentionally listen to The Archers for the same reason that I don’t intentionally poke myself in the eye with a pencil. It just happens sometimes. I catch random bits of Radio 4 while I’m in the kitchen, and that sometimes happens with the latest update from the folk of Ambridge. The one encounter that I relish even less is when I catch some of Gardener’s Question Time. So you can imagine my delight when, as I chop a courgette to go into dinner, I cotton onto the fact that one of the current storylines in The Archers is the possibility of Gardener’s Question Time being broadcast from Ambridge. Be still, my aching sides.

This sort of thing doesn’t happen by accident. It occurs when self-important people with oversized salaries sit around a table thinking they’re creative when they use phrases like ‘leveraging brand potentiality’. Something similar happened in Masterchef last week when the contestants had to cook for the cast of Merlin. And guess what? All of the shows mentioned so far are made by the BBC. They’re spending the money that you and I give them to celebrate their own output, in what could charitably be described as hyperreal but is perhaps more accurately termed opportunist crap. The idea presumably being that fans of a rural soap may be into a gardening show, and that if you like food, you’ll love wizards.

Annoying though this is, it is as nothing compared to the self-referential nature of superhero comics. You’ve heard of The Hulk, yeah? And probably Captain America. They’re two of Marvel’s big iconic characters, with plenty of merchandising dollars wrapped up in putting their images out there in the world. They’ve been around a long time, and when Marvel was gaining in popularity in the sixties they had the bright idea of putting some of their well known heroes in the same comic. Good idea: give readers the chance to follow the adventures of existing heroes, and introduce them to new ones who could potentially get comics of their own if readers responded to them. That was the idea behind The Avengers, which went on to be a team comic of variable quality under its many creative teams, some issues of which I have fond memories of.

That was then, this is now. The convoluted pseudo-history that’s created by decades of Marvel comics supposedly happening over just a few years — essentially to avoid the dynamic young heroes being older than the readers’ parents — is crumbling under the weight of attempts to rationalise its obvious paradoxes. The solution? Create a whole new universe for Marvel characters to have adventures in. And sure enough, that involves the creation of a new set of Avengers, only this time round they’re called The Ultimates. Same principle though: put together the big hitters with some second division characters, see if any of them take off with fans.

Only, once The Ultimates have been going for a while and engaging with the rest of the Ultimate Universe, it too starts to collapse under the weight of its own nonsense. Oh, and there’s an Avengers film on the way, so Marvel want as much product with that name on as they can fit on the shelves. Which is what leads us to — and you might want to take a breath before you read this next bit — a series called Ultimate Avengers Vs New Ultimates. Because obviously, the Avengers are so cool that they need to be split into two teams, each of them an alternate world spin-off of the tried-and-tested Avengers brand.

If your head isn’t spinning enough, I urge you to check out what’s happened to the Avengers that avenge stuff in the original Marvel Universe, as opposed to the one where the Ultimates hang out. And there, Marvel have opted for what’s called brand extension. You know how you can get a lite version of some beers? Well, Avengers now come in several flavours too: New, Secret, Mighty and Dark. There might have been something like Avengers: The Initiative in there as well, but you know what? I’m past caring. Next time I want to see costumed poseurs upsetting one another, I’m watching Dancing On Ice.

East is East was a charming film, the story of a Pakistani man — George Khan — and his Yorkshire wife and the challenges they endure bringing their children up. While undeniably warm in tone, it’s certainly not rose-tinted: no view of 70s Britain from an immigrant perspective possibly could be. And while the story is very much rooted in sociologically interesting material, it never feels like a treatise.

All the more shame then, that the film’s sequel West is West is such a disappointment. I went in expecting a similarly interesting look at life from an angle I’m unfamiliar with, and eager to see what could be done with a tale of a Pakistani man returning home with his wayward son, but came away feeling that the film is in practice a series of missed opportunities.

On paper, letting writer Ayub Khan-Din continue the story with another one drawn from his own family’s experience is a great idea. But films are created on celluloid, not paper, and a certain amount of responsibility for the failings of the finished product lie at the door of director Andy DeEmmony. Where Damien O’Donnell, director of East is East, has a reasonable feel for visual storytelling and pace, West is West frequently suffers from poorly directed scenes that fail to realise their emotional potential.

Time and again, scenes are raced through just to get the story beat nailed down without lingering to explore character. It’s a real shame, expecially when the raw material has so much potential. A husband with two wives, two sets of children, on two continents, returns to his home country after thirty years. A son who has never known his father’s land gets immersed in its culture and discovers more about himself.

It’s possible that there’s just too much going on in the story. The son gets his very own guru in the form of a flute-playing homily-spouting old man with a beatific smile — no prizes for guessing that they develop a better relationship than the son has with his own father. Oh, and the son also manages to hook his brother up with a bride in a subplot that comes across as too glib to convince — she’s a Yorkshire lass looking for a husband, far too convenient a match for him in terms of them being of similar background and outlook. For good measure, George’s other wife comes over from Yorkshire to confront him over emptying their bank account to build a new home for his extended family in Pakistan, and gets to meet his original bride.

If it were handled with any finesse I’d have no problem with any of the above, all of which makes for rich material. Sadly, the script is all too often heavyhanded and simplistic, never more so than in the scenes between George’s son and his guru. Reader, I winced.

Prune the story back, and nurture it for longer, and I’m sure a good film could have emerged from all of this. Instead, I suspect that the impetus was there to make a sequel to a film that’s fondly remembered, and those involved — including BBC Films and the UK Film Council — either didn’t recognise the problems, or were committed to making the film come hell or high water.

It wouldn’t be the first time such a thing has happened. When I met Tim Bevan years ago, he mentioned that Working Title were keen to do a thriller about a translator. Well, they got one, in the form of the thoroughly forgettable The Interpreter, a waste of my time, and the talents of star Nicole Kidman and director Sydney Pollack. See also Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood, which started off with a brilliant script and was watered down bit by bit until no trace was left of the revisionist concept that had captured the attention of those who read it. Sadly for us all, West is West is another one on the pile of projects that seemed like a good idea, and suffered death by development.