Missing Out - Not Watching The Wire, Watching A Film Day and The Inevitable Mortality of Authors and Readers

At Christmas I was kindly given the complete box set of The Wire which I am slowly working through and enjoying. The Wire is a television programme that many cite as being the best thing ever on television beating even such gems as The Sopranos and Breaking Bad, but despite it's huge critical success I had never actually watched it. The Wire is a drama based in Baltimore about crime that featured the police, journalists, lawyers, criminals and more. Each season took on a different aspect, some being from mainly the perspective of police or journalists, even looking at schools and how they impacted on crime, the important thing being that it was examining crime and the causes of crime. It is odd that such a programme passed me by as it is exactly the sort of thing I would like (including the pretentious kudos of watching an imported high quality drama hailed as the best thing ever that most people haven't watched) and it was even picked out on Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe and higher nerd praise does not exist. Actually as Spooky Reading Girl pointed out Charlie Brooker didn't just mention it on Screenwipe, when we bumped into him in Edinburgh he told us specifically to watch it.

The best tv show ever?

I was perhaps too young when The Wire started and many people say it is hard to get into with complex dialogue that took no prisoners. There is also definitely a state of mind people enter where they actively resist something that is being watched by everyone else. A lot of people got so annoyed about people asking them if they had watched Breaking Bad, they swore never to watch it. For a long time I did not believe television was capable of making something that was genuinely brilliant. This was a huge hole in my pop culture knowledge and something that I was going to have to address. I held film in high regard and saw television as very much the inferior medium, where even the good stuff was drowned in an ocean of gameshows and reality television. Eventually I changed my opinion and it wasn't just the relatively recent prestige television but realising just how good something like Buffy The Vampire Slayer was. 

Spooky Reading Girl for a long time had a similar problem but with films. When we started going out and we talked about our favourite films, tv shows etc. I felt that she hadn't seen a lot of classic films. Importantly, this doesn't necessarily mean good films, but films that most people have watched, films that are perhaps cultural touchstones. I think everyone  has some gaps in their knowledge, to this day I have not seen Raging Bull despite being a huge Marin Scorese fan. Some of the films that SRG hadn't seen included Rocky (and to this day we argue when SRG refers to The Rocky Horror Picture Show simply as "Rocky", that name is already taken by another very famous film), Back to the Future, any James Bond film, any of the Star Wars films and eventually she became tired of the exasperated cries of "How have you never seen Back to the Future!" and for a year watched a film a day, crossing off many of these films. Spooky Reading Girl found it a very interesting experience and watched, and loved, many films that she wouldn't have normally watched. It also got her, and by extension me, into listening to Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo's film radio show.

Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode do the best film
show in all of radio, tv and podcast land - hello to Jason Isaacs

There have been many other things that I got into late, or in the wrong order. I loved The Foo Fighters before I even knew about Nirvana. I didn't buy any LCD Soundsystem albums until after they had broken up. Being born in 1983 I missed the 1960s, the decade I consider to be the best in music history so what chance did I have? There will be numerous bands lost in the mists of time that I would love and will remain forever hidden. I only watched Firefly when it was being repeated for the fiftieth time on the Sci-Fi channel and that is one of my all time favourites.

Usually when people talk about things they have missed or haven't got round to watching yet are cultural behemoths, Star Wars, Bond films, The Simpsons, things that even if you don't like them you should still watch them as they will help you understand culture better (I have heard this argument used for both Shakespeare and the Bible). Some things though are missed because they were never that successful or always just maintained a cult following. Garth Marenghi's Dark Place is one of the funniest programmes ever on television and there is a grand total of six episodes, just the one series on Channel 4, but to merely mention the name Thornton Reed is enough to reduce some people to laughter. Arrested Development, perhaps the best sitcom in the history of American television struggled for three seasons to find an audience but was eventually cancelled (Netflix did give the show a reprieve). Films like Vertigo or television shows like Twin Peaks are going to be glaring omissions but with really cult things you might never even be aware of what you're missing out on.

Arrested Development - Arguably the best sitcom that hardly anyone has seen

Marcus Brigstock hosted a very interesting radio, and later television, show called I've Never Seen Star Wars on which the guests would check through a list of things that most people have done, with having seen Star Wars being used as the classic example. The show would then pick some of these things to - the guest would watch Scarface, or eat sushi, or listen to The Archers. Most of the time the guest would not really enjoy whatever new thing they had done, as after all, people will probably know whether they will like something like The Archers but occassionally they would really enjoy the experience and it is certainly true that that has happened to me, where my conception of what something was like was completely inaccurate. When Harry Met Sally is a good example as I had expected a very boring, very straight forward romantic comedy (the second worse genre of film after musicals) but was in fact something very different and far more interesting and funny than I had anticipated.

I have heard some people say they won't start reading a series of books until the series has been completed, so they know it has been finished (poor George R. R, Martin, creator of the Games of Thrones series of books has to endure constant speculation about his own health). There is a similar thing with tv shows with people not wanting to invest time in a show that gets cancelled after one season. This is all well and good but what about if it's not the cancellation of a show or death of an author that is worrying, what if it's your own mortality? Dying is a pretty bad thing to happen but knowing that almost certainly I will die in the middle of a book is incredibly frustrating. I will die in the middle of excellent tv programmes or eagerly awaiting a sequel or I've bought tickets to see a comedian but will never make it. This would all be okay if I believed in an afterlife but as an unapologetic atheist I know I will miss out.

The Game Of Thrones series of books -
 more correctly known as A Song Of Ice and Fire

But does it really matter? Even if I accept that my own mortality and the vastness of culture available means it is impossible to see, read and listen to everything worthwhile...is that such a bad thing? It might not be objectively bad but it seems an awful shame to miss out on the good stuff especially when so much bad stuff is inflicted on me without even asking for it. I am rather proud of the cultural island I have managed to construct where I can keep most of the bad stuff out but even so I have heard songs by Justin Bieber, I have seen clips of Mrs Brown's Boys and even suffered the mindnumbing banality of The One Show and there is something wrong with a world where I haven't found the time to watch Raging Bull but have seen Batman And Robin.

Repetition Is The Death of Magic: Covers, Remakes and Reboots

Major spoilers for Mad Max: Fury Road and minor spoilers for Battlestar Galactica

Ryans Adams is a very talented singer-songwriter from America. Bryan Adams is a very successful singer-songwriter who Canada has apologised for on several occasions. I am a big fan of Ryan Adams. On many occasions when I have expressed my admiration for his music someone has said how much they like Summer of 69 as well and that is very annoying. I hold a particular dislike of Bryan Adams who I put in arguably the worst category of musician: "someone who should know better" which is reserved for those people who do have talent but have used it very poorly, As you can imagine Ryan Adams hates this situation even more and has been known to throw people out of gigs if they shout out requests for Bryan Adams songs.

For years Ryan Adams has played with the dangerous flame of covering relatively recent songs, for example he covered Wonderwall by Oasis and so good was his interpretation that Noel Gallagher said it's better than the original. Even more recently Ryan Adams has covered Taylor Swift's album 1989 in entirety. I cannot stress enough that Ryan Adams isn't doing this in an ironic way and as far as I can tell he is a big fan of the album. My sarcasm and cynicism has become such a problem that I can't always convey sincerity convincingly but Ryan Adams genuinely meant this as a tribute to Swift. Covering a whole album certainly puts an artist on dangerous ground it reminds me of what John Cusack's character Rob in High Fidelity said about making a mix tape, you're using someone else's words to express yourself.

I am not a fan of Taylor Swift and I have become very isolated from what is popular and from what most people watch and listen to. That's not bragging - it's just a consequence of the way pop culture works now and anyone could do it. With the death of appointment television and the rise of Netflix et al I have very easily managed to avoid watching television in the manner it was originally broadcast so very few adverts, no reality television, just stuff I really want to watch. With music it's even worse as for years the only two radio stations I listen to are 6 Music and Radio 4 (Radio 5 Live does get an honourable mention for Kermode And Mayo's Film Review as I listen to the podcast version of that show) and I don't watch MTV so I am in something of an echo chamber of musical taste. just getting back more of what I like.

In terms of real pop music the only people I know about are Beyonce, Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift and I don't care for any of their music and I am dimly aware that Beyonce and Lady Gaga aren't exactly new acts. I had heard the song Shake It Off but it was only at a recent wedding that someone pointed out that it was Taylor Swift (and the fact that it took my attendance at a wedding to hear pop music says a lot about my cultural isolation). I do think the lyrics to that song are terrible and practically gibberish and seemed to be about explaining to children how verbs work "haters gonna hate, players gonna play" and the B-side might just be her reciting "I before E except after C". Now as much as I don't like Taylor Swift's music I really like the Ryan Adams version of it. Why is this? Well, Adams' covers are done in a different style, they're slower, more mournful, it is far sadder in tone and far less pop but the inescapable truth is that, Shake It Off aside, there must be more to Taylor Swift's music than I had first appreciated.

 I think when talking of covers it is important to mention Me First and The Gimme Gimmes who are a covers band and play pop songs in very interesting ways. They sometimes veer too close to just being comedy but when they get it right they make a great song. This is their version of Nothing Compares To You

In cinema and television covers are remakes or reboots. Hollywood is very keen on these as they have been running low on ideas for decades. Not to say they don't have new good ideas, or that they aren't good scripts being written, but remakes are just so much easier and every so often rumour of a new remake will be reported like the first stages of a hurricane. Normally I'm suspicious of remakes or reboots but there have been two recent examples that are great - Mad Max:Fury Road and Battlestar Galactica.

The original Battlestar Galactica existed purely because some television executive saw how much money Star Wars was making and wanted to make a television rip-off of it. It was not a good programme. I hadn't expected much of the remake until I one of the best ad campaigns for a television show ever. Sky ran a series of adverts that started with a quote about BSG and it was things like "the most intelligent drama on television" and "the only show talking about the war on terror" and then it would say "Battlestar Galactica". And this was all true, BSG was doing episodes essentially about the War on Terror. It's not an original observation but good science fiction is a way to talk about what's going on now - Twilight Zone episodes about paranoia of alien invasion were discussing communist witch-hunts and Battlestar Galactica had a clash of religious/cultures, suicide bombings, occupation of foreign lands and trying to impose order, the moral arguments for and against torture.

Something it had in common with the Mad Max reboot was the presence of strong female characters, the acknowledged best fighter pilot was Kara "Starbuck" Thrace, the President was Laura Roslin who would stare down admirals and killer robots. And so we get to Mad Max: Fury Road and what may be the best reboot ever. The original Mad Max trilogy is an odd collection of films and each could essentially stand alone and the same goes for MM:FR.

In this new film Max isn't even the central character instead it is Charlize Theron playing Furiosa (I'm a big fan of Charlize Theron especially her guest appearance in Arrested Development). The film is essentially a long chase - Furiosa drove the "war-rig" for the insane warlord Immortan Joe but it turned out on this drive Immortan's slave-wives had begged Furiousa to help them escape. When Immorten Joe realised this he goes off in pursuit. It's telling that Max isn't even mentioned in that plot summary and a good editor could probably completely cut him out. Max just happened to be present and he helped Furiosa and the other women. There is a lot of feminism in Mad Max, the wives show bravery and self-determination in risking their lives to try and escape and, to put it simply, Furiousa is a bad-ass. She's also a bad-ass with just one arm who probably would have beaten Max in a fist fight if it wasn't for outside interference. In one scene Max is trying to use their sniper rifle and kept missing so he gives the rifle to Furiosa and she rested in one his shoulder and made the shot. That is a lot of it right there, Max is there to offer support to Furiosa. So thorough was George Miller in wanting to portray women who had been the victim of such terrible abuse  accurately the author of The Vagina Monologues Eve Ensler was hired as a consultant.

It would be a mistake to think the film is "just" a feminist action film (which would be great already) whichever way you look at it it's spectacular. The special effects are amazing and aside from a storm are largely practical effects driven rather than computer generated. When a car flipped over it  had really flipped over. This does matter as a single car crash in MM:FR has more impact than two hours of Michael Bay's weightless Transformers smashing into each other. The script is cut to the bone but still full of great lines. It makes you care about the characters and you want them to escape. It is a brilliant film.

 So far I think it's the film of the year and Theron should win Best Actress at the Oscars but I don't think that will happen. A quick word on George Miller is the director for all four Mad Max films, Miller is seventy years old and has just made a film so thrilling that I'm not sure a seventy year old should watch, let alone direct. In between the last Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome and MM:FR Miller has worked on Babe and Babe: Pig In The City as well as the dancing penguin movies Happy Feet. To put it mildly he has had an odd career.

Podcast Recommendation

As it has been mentioned I will recommend the Kermode and Mayo's Film Review on Radio 5 Live. It is a cliche to say about any BBC show that "it is worth the licence fee alone" but I will say however much it costs to run Radio 5 Live so they can report on sport and whatever else it is they do is worth it as it also produces this show. At first I did not care for Mark Kermode. I had seen him doing bits on the Culture Show, Newsnight Review and introducing films on channel 4 and I had him marked down as an intellectual snob and a bit pretentious. Normally, that wouldn't be a problem as I am an intellectual snob and a bit pretentious but I also knew he had given a Kermode award to High School Musical. Cognitive dissonance is a psychological term for the stress caused by holding two contradictory opinions and that was how I felt about Kermode - was he a cultural snob or did he like cultural trash like High School Musical. How could he genuinely like something as weird and brilliant as Pan's Labrinyth and vacuous as High School Musical? And I assumed he was being disingenuous. After being badgered by lots of people to listen to his actual show I found out that, in fact, he does like both. The show is worth listening to just for Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo's conversations and in-jokes but Kermode is an articulate and intelligent critic who really loves films. He is one of the very few critics who is as interesting and entertaining when praising a film as he is damning one. That said, here he is talking about the Sex and the City film (he doesn't like it):

Hello to Jason Isaacs.