Rev, BBC Two

Here's a review of tonight's opening episode of Rev that I wrote for Orange. I went into it with quite a bit of goodwill, but was disappointed by it. 

Doctor Who: The Big Bang (spoilers)

Phew! Here's a quick review I've knocked up for Orange. I'm going to sit down and watch it again now!

Screenwriting and editing (repost)

I know reposting is a bit lazy, but Sky Arts' repeat of The Cutting Edge (documentary on film editing) got me thinking about a post I published about a year ago. Here it is again!

Something I've been thinking about for a while is how looking at the work of film editors might offer a new perspective on writing.

When an editor sits down to piece together a cut, he or she has dozens – maybe hundreds – of hours of footage to choose from: a mass of material they have to shape into a coherent whole.

When we sit down to start writing, we face an even more intimidating range of possibilities. We've maybe got an idea of who our characters are and roughly where we want them to go, but we've then got an almost infinite range of possibilities for how we're going to organise and present our story.

Lennon Naked, BBC Four

Here's a review of last night's Lennon Naked, written by Robert Jones and starring Christopher Eccleston, that I wrote for Orange. Eccleston was as compelling as ever, but - as I say below - he was a bit too old to pull off the role totally convincingly. When he got out of his Rolls after the evening with Brigitte Bardot, he looked more like Frank Gallagher.

The Cutting Edge: Tonight on Sky Arts 1

Sky Arts are repeating this interesting documentary on film editing tonight (Thursday). I always think there are interesting parallels between the roles of writer and editor, so it's worth a look.

(After watching The Cutting Edge last year I knocked up a post about screenwriting and editing, so I'll repost that tomorrow.)

The Cutting Edge
Sky Arts 1, Thu 24 June, 11.15pm

Every editor has a story about what they did to save a film, enhance a sequence, or create a magical moment. This documentary examines the often overlooked art of film editing, featuring some of cinema's greatest storytellers. Directors of both Hollywood blockbusters and independent films, including George Lucas, Anthony Minghella, Quentin Tarantino and James Cameron, reveal the close collaboration they have with their editors and how they work magic by clarifying storylines, reshaping scenes and intensifying emotions. Discover the invaluable contribution editing has had to the art of cinema over its history and how what is created on the set is always reinvented and honed in the editing room.

Hitchcock's antiheroes (Strangers on a Train, Dial M for Murder)

Over the past few weeks we've seen Strangers on a Train (1951) and Dial M for Murder (1954) at the BFI. They were part of two separate seasons, but seeing them together raised an interesting issue: antiheroes – central characters who we should want to fail in their (usually criminal) objectives, but who at least a little bit of us wants to succeed.

The Writer in Modern TV (BFI panel discussion)

The other night we went to a panel discussion at the BFI with the rather portentious title of Second Coming or Looming Apocalypse? The Writer in Modern TV (part of the Second Coming: The Rebirth of TV Drama series.)

It was a stellar panel, including Tony Marchant, Jimmy McGovern (left), Nicola Shinder (Red Prod'n Co), Gub Neal (former head of drama at C4 and Granada) and Ben Stephenson (BBC Controller, Drama Commissioning), chaired by Mark Lawson.