Television Viewing

I have now viewed the complete second series of "The Man In The High Castle." I shan't give away the ending. It is superb. The whole of this series, as well as the first, has kept me wanting to watch the next episode. It's very convincing and in some instances, chilling. I can't wait for the third season, which is currently in the works.

I have wanted to see the new BBC1 serial based on Len Deighton's novel "S-S:G.B." which is similar to "Man In The High Castle" which imagines a world in which the Nazis won World War II, but in this series it shows Britain instead of the U.S.A. under the heel of the Nazi's. I'm afraid it's nowhere near as good and I gave up after no more than 20 minutes. It's just unwatchable. It's too gloomy and predictable. The dialogue is really hammy. I can't believe the BBC, which is generally so good at doing drama, particularly adaptations of novels, could allow this standard of quality to slip through the net.  How on earth anyone can write such cliched dialogue is beyond me. It's just not worth the time and effort to watch so I'll leave off writing this and find something else to watch. They've used a great deal of C.G.I. to create a world which has been changed by the German invasion and it just doesn't convince. 

Working on 'Hale and Pace'

In the early 1990s I managed to sign up with an agency in London run by Ray Knight. I had heard that he was taking on new people to go on his books and I wrote to him. Long before email, you had to actually put pen to paper and I enclosed headshots, because if you're going to do walk-on work in television they always need to have recent photographs to go on their books. Nowadays they would be uploaded onto a website. His office was somewhere in north London, and I visited for an interview and I was accepted. As a result I got no end of work, and was doing jobs on such programmes as 'House of Cards' (the original B.B.C. production with Ian Richardson.) and did several days on that, some at the B.B.C. Elstree studios and various locations in and around London. This is described in far more detail in an earlier blog post on here.

Over one weekend I had jobs on two shows for London Weekend Television (LWT). On the Saturday I did work on 'Hale and Pace'. I was to go to a location somewhere in the East End of London. I can't say I remember where it was exactly. Some sketches were filmed in and around the area, but the interiors were done in what looked like a disused office block and they made various rooms within the building to be such places as a dentist's surgery and a sitting room.  I have never ever seen any of the shows when they were originally transmitted back in the early '90's, but having done some research on the internet, particularly I.M.D.B and YouTube, I have at last managed to track the episodes I was in. Hale and Pace had  several continuing characters, particularly Bobby and Billy, who were sort of kids television characters, the sort of characters you'd have in such shows as 'Play School' or 'Play Away' with the two boys dressed in bright coloured bib and braces. In this sketch I was in they were supposed to be policemen and I am a mugger! I must say it's odd seeing it now, some 25 years later! It's all in series 3 of the Hale and Pace show, which was originally broadcast on a Sunday at 10 p.m. and some of the material is what you would call adult, although probably considered somewhat tame by today's standards. I was a man living in a box, a sort of tramp or something. To this day I have no idea what that sketch was about. I hope I manage to find it in one of the episodes on YouTube. Another I was supposed to be a patient in a dentist's surgery and one of the boys sat on my legs on the dentist's chair. I'm not sure whether it was Hale or Pace and I can't remember what else happened in that sketch. They were done in such quick succession, there was very little time in between set-ups and they didn't do a lot of takes. I do remember that one of the production crew, a cameraman or lighting assistant, I'm not sure which, took a liking for the pins I wore on the hat I was wearing. I used to collect pin badges, the sort which are metal enamel with a separate pin which you put inside your clothes and the pin sticks through the fabric and the other main part pins to it. Well, he was determined he was going to have them all, but I insisted they weren't for sale or even barter. Strange what you remember and it wasn't clear whether he was being serious or merely trying to annoy me. Some people are difficult to decipher.

On the Sunday I went back into central London.  I was working on location at Smithfield Market and St Bart's Hospital on an episode of 'Poirot,' the episode which was done for the centenary of the publication of the first Poirot story by Agatha Christie,' The Mysterious Affair at Style's.' It was an extremely hot day I seem to remember, but we were dressed in extremely thick and heavy Edwardian suits and there was no way you could keep cool on the set. It was so warm the tarmac on the road we were working on began to melt in the heat. It was the opening sequence, done with the titles. They used a crane to do a wide shot. As it was a Sunday it meant they could close the streets to traffic. We were supposed to be the walking wounded, back from 'The Front' in France. Some people had plaster casts on their legs and were wheeled in wheel chairs, others had their arms in bandages and I think I had my head bandaged. We were walking in through the entrance to St Bart's Hospital. They did no end of takes, and we had to go back to original positions several times for fresh takes. There was a particularly bossy unit manager (or production assistant or assistant director, I'm not sure which he was.) who kept hasstleing us to get it right. On another set-up they had traffic in the street, all vintage vehicles, cars, busses and bicycles. I was supposed to be on a bicycle, but at the last minute I was taken out from the scene. Perhaps because I was going to be used as walking wounded as it would be odd to have me in two places more or less at once, one minute on a bicycle and able-bodied and the next as a wounded soldier. I don't in all honesty think it would have mattered because you are usually in the background in a scene, although  there is always somebody who will point such things out. 

Working on "Shadow of The Noose"

Having been with the Lee-Evans Casting Agency for quite a while during the early 1990s I got quite a lot of work from them, mostly in and around Birmingham. After the "Golden Oldie Picture Show" I did work on a B.B.C. television drama series called "Shadow of The Noose" which was centered on the work of the famous Victorian criminal barrister Edward Marshall Hall who was known as "The Great Defender." When I was originally booked to do this I was supposed to be a policeman, and had to go for a costume fitting at Pebble Mill studios several weeks before the filming days, but when I eventually arrived to start filming I was told that they didn't have a policeman's uniform that would fit me, so I was re-cast as Junior Counsel. They had built the set for this series, a replica of the Number One court at the Old Bailey inside the auditorium of a theatre in Stoke-On-Trent.  I was going to be quite an important part of the action, not merely in the background. I was introduced to the principal actors, one being Jonathan Hyde, who played Marshall Hall. During the action I had to inter-act with him and several of the other characters. I wore a wig, one of those traditional barrister-type, made of horse hair and really quite uncomfortable. The bench I had to sit on was particularly narrow and had a padded seat. I had to sit very straight otherwise the wig would fall off! In the completed show, when it was eventually aired, I had quite a lot of very prominent camera 'shots' so was not merely a 'walk-on' although I didn't speak any lines I had to 'act' as if I was speaking, although you couldn't hear what I was saying. The agency sent me a cutting from one of the colour supplements, I think it was from the 'Sunday Telegraph' or 'The Sunday Times Magazine' which had run an article about the real Marshall Hall. There was a large colour photograph taken on the set of the B.B.C. drama series and in one corner of this photograph was myself! I only wish I had kept this cutting as it was a really good shot. It is actually quite annoying that I have no photographs of any of the walk-on or extra television work I did. This is before digital cameras or mobile phones with cameras in them, as it is so much easier to take photographs and up-load them onto Facebook and other websites on the internet.

Worsening Weather and Traumatised Dogs

Apparently we're in for some really bad weather. We're supposed to get the tail-end of a hurricane, which is currently crossing the Atlantic from America.  Called Hurricane Gonzalo. Where do they get these names from? Why are they sometimes women's names but then men's names? Is there anything in the fact that they are either male or female names?  A fortnight's-worth of rain is expected to fall within the space of eight hours, while gusts of wind of up to 80 m.p.h. (128 k.p.m.) are expected to be recorded in parts of northern Scotland. So, can the B.B.C. please not send their television reporters to cover these weather conditions, particularly not to the edge of some harbour, with waves lashing and boats being tossed by the waves? Similarly, when there were floods a years or two ago, they had to rush a television crew together with reporter, to some far-distant village which was cut off by rising water, several feet of it filling some street and then putting their reporter in the midst of it all in Wellington boots, wind cheater, oilskins, or whatever, just so the person had stand and chat to camera. It's laughable when they are telling people to keep away from such places and then put their own reporters in danger, together with crew. Do they expect to be rescued when there is a real problem, putting the lives of the rescue service at risk? No sense really.

As I write this the wind is increasing. It is actually quite sunny and bright here in Milton Keynes as I can see out of our lounge window into our garden, but the wind is most definitely getting stronger and the leaves are falling from the trees. 

It's also that time of the year which both our dogs dislike. It's around Hallow'en and Guy Fawkes Night (November 5th) when we get all those fireworks let off and so scaring the dogs. Poppy in particular, but Alfie doesn't like it when there is an unexpected explosion which sets him off barking. We'll be glad when it's over and done with for another year. I think it's fine when Guy Fawkes Night is over and done with over a few nights, but it's made worse when some idiot decides to set of fireworks randomly which causes the problems. I don't imagine it's just our dogs which get upset. Poppy goes and hides under the nearest piece of furniture whilst Alfie barks. It won't just be dogs. I would think cats would be traumatised by the noise as well as any other pets people would have.

Trip to London for recording of "Palladium" TV show

As I've already mentioned in an earlier post, we'd got free tickets for a recording of "Sunday Night At The Palladium." We weren't due to pick up the tickets from the theatre until 4.30 so we really didn't need to be in London too early, but knowing our propensity to get to places far too early, we caught a train at around 10.00 a.m. We decided to drive to the station and park. Being a Sunday, it seemed the easier option. When we last went into London, around a month ago (see earlier blog post.) we went in by  bus, and then found, on returning to Milton Keynes, that the busses back towards Eaglestone were somewhat erratic and we'd have to wait far too long, so we got a taxi. When we got to the carpark near the station we were shocked at how much it was going to park all day, around £8, and looked around and managed to park further into the city centre. You pay up until 6 p.m, which is during the week, but it seems Sunday parking is no longer free. We then had to walk a fair distance to the station. We'd  booked tickets on-line, which means we had to go to the machine at Milton Keynes Central station to get them printed out. Not too difficult. You get a password which you get when you register on-line and use the Debit or Credit card you made the payment with and the machine produces the tickets, printed out and they appear out of the machine. No real problem.

The train we eventual caught was virtually empty, which means we were able to sit down for the entire journey. Unlike the previous trip into London, when we had to stand for the entire journey. On arrival in London we went straight down to Oxford Circus Underground station which is only a two-minute walk from the Palladium. We just needed to know where we had to go later, even tough we had hours to fill before we could actually collect the tickets. As with any of these free tickets for television shows, you don't actually have the tickets until you turn up, as I think so many people order them and don't show up, so they have to over-extimate how many will be needed and you have to get to the studio in good time in order to get in for the recording. We decided to go off and find something to fill in the time. We went into Liberty's, which is within a stone's throw of the Palladium. Carol has never been in this iconic store before and we were really amazed by how amazing most of their products on sale are, particularly the Christmas store at the top of the building. Seemed to be far too early for Christmas, as it's only the beginning of September, but the range of items to decorate your home was incredible. If you've never visited this store, I can recommend it highly.

We went to a McDonald's and had a burger each. Not being a complete fan of Mcdonald's, I have to say it was passable, and it did mean we could use the toilets. The place was absolutely heaving, as their restaurants are generally in the centre of London. Just great to be able to sit down for a brief time before going off somewhere else.

As I say, we didn't have much idea where to go to fill in the time, but eventually decided to go to Regent's Park and laze in the sun there for a couple of hours. Totally amazed how beautiful it was, with long walks lined with flowers and the paths dotted with fountains. For an early-September afternoon it was amazingly warm and pleasant. Only a single stop on the Underground. Also amazed how busy the traffic was for a Sunday.  By now it was past 3 o'clock and we got back on the Underground and went back to Oxford Circus. We walked down towards Langham Place,  where Broadcasting House is located. We went into a Starbucks and had a couple of their cold frappe drinks and then went towards the iconic B.B.C. headquarters. I was interested in seeing how they'd redeveloped Broadcasting House and we looked into the windows of the studio where the television programme "The One Show" is made. If you ever see this early evening show you will know that you can see members of the public passing by the windows, which is exactly what we did and were surprised at how small it was. I think the cameras and lenses seem to make things look wider and a good deal bigger which was the case here. We then looked in another window and saw a mock-up of a news studio and some people being taken on a tour of the place and two you men were doing their own news bulletin complete with weather forecast, using auto cues and all the additional equipment.

By now time was moving on. It was near enough time to head back to The Palladium and queue up to get inside and, hopefully, take our seats in the Stalls. Just as well we did queue when we did and get our tickets, because when we walked past the queue stretched round the block and into the next street! We decided walk on as we didn't actually need to be back until gone 6 o'clock when we were supposed to be allowed in. The doors were opened at 6 and there was a huge crush to get in. As we were in the Stalls we had to go in through another door from the rest of the audience. But when we got inside the theatre we couldn't get into the auditorium and had to wait in the rooms leading into the main body of the theatre. For whatever reason we were never told. It was extremely crowded, a great crush of people, moving forward very slowly. It was getting very hot and sticky so we found somewhere to sit and wait until the Stalls doors were opened up. We fortunately didn't have to wait long. By now we were both feeling very exhausted, which was a pity as we had been looking forward to this for quite some time.

On arriving in the Stalls and finding our seats in row '0' we then found that there were already people sitting there. We carefully checked that we had the numbers and rows correct. Yes, clearly printed on our tickets. But the people were adamant that was where they were sitting. We had to go and check with a member of the theatre staff and he came down to the seats and looked at the people who were sitting in our seats and discovered that their tickets were for row 'Q'. I suppose it was quite easy to see that a 'Q' was very like an 'O' on the tickets. So the problem was resolved and they went to sit in the correct row and seats.

We had to sit and wait for a considerable length of time before the recording started. You  have to remember when you go to a television recording as a member of the audience that it's not like live theatre where it's all run straight through, apart from intervals, scene changes and so on.  They do tend to stop and stet the recording, due to technical issues or someone forgetting lines etc etc. There was a warm-up comedian (I don't know his name. He wasn't familiar from television or elsewhere. A warm-up man is there to get the audience in the mood, to make sure everyone is enjoying themselves. The the host for the evening came on, Stephen Mangan. The opening of the show was done, then they did a second version, which had a slight variation. Then the recording stopped. When it began again the first act came on. Bryan Adams, who is one of Carol's favourite musicians. A surprise. And the evening went on like that, stopping and starting. When edited it will appear to be 'live.' The other acts were a music act called Little Mix, which I've never heard of, Alan Davies, Alfie Boe and two novelty acts, a 'towel' act, called Les Beaux Freres which I won't describe on here, but I'm surprised as it was quite 'adult.' I have a feeling that this won't make the edit, as there are too many people 'out there' who are only too willing to complain at the least provocation. Then a somewhat naff 'magic' or illusion act. The 'game' element is called 'Top Of The Bill.' I do recall the original gameshow element which was in the original 'Palladium' shows when it was hosted by Bruce Forsyte, but to be quite honest this part of the show was a bit lame, but never mind. Bryan Adams came on for the final number and there was another disappointment when they didn't have the famous finale with all the cast members going round on the famous Palladium revolve. A really iconic part of the original show. Never mind. It's just great that there's going to be proper variety back on television as opposed to talent and reality shows.

The recording ended at around 9.30. We managed to get out of the theatre in the crush and walk the short way to Oxford Circus Underground station. It was only two stops on the train to Euston and we managed to get a train from platform 8 fairly rapidly without having to wait. By now we were both flagging and almost fell asleep on the journey home. The train was very slow and stopped at virtually every station on the line and we got into Milton Keynes Central at around 11.45. We're now looking forward to next Sunday and watching the complete show all over again on I.T.V.