You won’t believe how many people have pointed out to me that the new BBC1 period drama Lark Rise to Candleford was dramatised by Bill Gallagher. (No relation.) You may believe more that every ten years or so, I get some documentation meant for him. This week it was a taxable benefits claim for some hospitality he’d given someone. If your name is Susan Hogg, let me assure you that BBC payroll is sorting it all out.

And, yes, he writes multi-part BBC1 dramas but I occasionally go to the photo shoot. Here’s the current cover of Radio Times magazine and, next to it, a shot from my iPhone from the day.

Two reasons to show you this. The first is just that I think it’s a great cover. How many other magazines would have spent an afternoon setting that up and shooting it with a period, antique camera? The image has been coloured by hand, too.

And the second is that I was there filming the filming, so to speak, for RadioTimes.com and the video of the Lark Rise shoot is now online. I need to tell you that I didn’t edit it; RT’s Matylda Dymek did a very good job on the footage and I can’t take credit, although I long to. I have a habit, I’ve found, of ignoring the fact that someone else is going to cut the film: I shoot what I would want to edit with, I don’t give her enough coverage to let her create much else. I’ll try to be better. And perhaps it’s not a great surprise, then, that the key moments in the video are precisely the ones I wanted, but they are good.

Can’t wait to see what she does with my Ashes to Ashes footage.

William

DEBBIE: That’s it?
MARTIN: Yeah.
DEBBIE: That’s ten years?
MARTIN: Yeah.
DEBBIE: I would hope for a great abduction story or something.
MARTIN: Well, I’ve had a few thrilling moments, here and there.
(Grosse Pointe Blank)

You’ve seen enough “What I Did in my 2007” blog entries, I wasn’t going to burden you with another. Except, I like how Jason has done his. No fuss, no messin’, just a list of the good and the bad. Not 100% sure I can remain concise, but.

So even if this solely for me to read in, oh, a year’s time, here’s my 2007. No clue what the order is, other than good followed by bad.

GOOD
“Time and the Conway Twitty Appreciation Society”: my first produced stage play. And all the attendant goodness, from the writing of it to the offer to work on a showcase, most definitely also the rehearsals. From my noggin’ to a professional company at the Birmingham Hippodrome.

Meeting Verity Lambert. Hard to see this as entirely, or solely, good, because it made her death seem all the more shocking. But she’s been one of the drama people I’ve most admired, despite my not being fussed that she did Doctor Who. And another good side: she liked my scriptwriting. Gave me some notes, precisely as perceptive as you’d expect, but genuinely liked the piece. The only thing that makes me happier is that in the same week she emailed me, a producer I had zero respect for, working on a TV show I think is a joke but a very good joke to get on your CV, also emailed me about the same script. She was rejecting me for several key reasons, every one of which was something Verity had singled out as being good.

I’ll try to be shorter. Cardiff. (You know who you are.)

UK DVD Review podcast reached its 100th episode. You can’t tell this when you listen, but it’s highly scripted – and that was one of the points of starting the project. I am, as I hoped, a better writer for having to write a ten-minute script every week. Just before Christmas, one listener set up a Facebook group about the show: last time I looked, it had over 20 members. Wonderful.

Facebook. It was the yawn of the afternoon sometime early in the year, but it became great: although I’d joined, looked around, got bored and left, an old colleague came looking for me over it a few months later. So suddenly I’m talking with people from my career before last and it’s tremendous; they’re all the people I would’ve liked to keep in touch with but didn’t. Almost all of them are. He most entirely definitely is, in case he’s wondering.

Blogger. Similarly, an old hospital radio colleague found me because of this blog. I like doing this, I like talking to you, it was a tremendous bonus to talk to this friend I’d often thought of. But you can’t believe the stories she’s got.

Joking Apart. Sat in on an audio commentary session for this, with the entire cast wondering who the scruffy man was, and later wrote the booklet that’ll be appearing in the series 2 DVD: find out more right here.

Filming for Radio Times. All these years of studying drama paid off: I can frame footage, I can film for sequences. Like any other filming, it’s a lot of hurry up and wait, but RT’s art staff is great and each time I’ve got strong shots from unusual and precarious angles. I’m happy. Learnt some smart Photoshop tips from people on the shoots, too.

Lots of things for Radio Times magazine and website: some I can’t talk about yet, but don’t mistake brevity for my not realising how lucky I am in this line.

RT’s On This Day television history piece crossed a milestone: I delivered my 150th week of copy during the summer. Long may it continue. I think I passed a milestone on the magazine’s TV Stats too, but there I’m just hoping I can continue to enjoy those yet not keep waking up in a cold sweat.

Working with Martin Jarvis and Rosalind Ayres on Radio 4 proposals. This is still in progress and in fact you’re hearing this before they do: I’ve completed a script we were developing and I’m not only pleased with it, but it’s made me write in ways that really stretched me. Currently the script is in a drawer while I try to step back from it, ready to rewrite, but whether I’ve actually pulled off what I think I have, the thing is that I think I have and that’s a pretty glorious feeling. We’ll see where it all goes, though.

Speaking of going, I got a new car. Well, not new. Well, I only got it because my last one was a write-off. But, still. It’s got a nice radio.

And speaking of going, I’d promised my mother for years that I’d take her to New York City and I finally did in early summer. Whether it makes any sense or not, just stepping out onto Manhattan’s sidewalks makes me bloom. And she said it was the greatest thing that had ever happened in her life. She did say that in the Fifth Avenue Apple Store, but I suspect she meant NYC. Doesn’t that beat everything?

Speaking of Apple, I got an iPhone. Everything good that you’ve heard about iPhones is true. If anything, everything good you’ve heard is a just pale outline of the truth. It’s been a life-changer and I honestly am not kidding.

Netvibes.com, Photoshop CS3, and Rogue Amoeba’s Radioshift (like a Sky+ for radio) haven’t changed my life but I rely on them, and increasingly enjoy relying on them, every day.

Veronica Mars was cancelled upsettingly early but I’ll keep it on the good side of the ledger because its final season was as strong as ever. Rafi, a listener to my podcast, said on air that he felt empty now the show was over: I envy him that line.

Dar Williams finally released a DVD. It wasn’t very good, but she’s so spectacularly talented that it’d have to be a DVD by someone else before I’d allow it onto the bad side.

And, if only because Dar didn’t release any album this year, the song of 2007 for me was Born to Hum by Erin McKeown. She recorded in 2003, I’ve just this second found out, but I only discovered it this year. Mind you, I’ve been listening to a lot more music this year than lately; a standout is Suzanne Vega’s Beauty and Crime album. You know how you get a tune stuck in your head? At times I have the entire album in there. Mary Chapin Carpenter’s The Calling was the soundtrack to my New York trip, though I don’t think my mother knows that.

BAD
My wife Angela was diagnosed with breast cancer. And that one sentence outweighs all the above, doesn’t it?

Prognosis is good, though, and she’s now in chemotherapy. And for all the bad, there has been good, too: we’ve shook with gallows-humour laughter at points. And people have been tremendous, most especially folks at Radio Times. Funny: people I’d have expected to be good, haven’t been so much yet others I wouldn’t have thought would even know have turned out to be exceptional.

A friend’s got prostrate cancer. I’m trying to be exceptional, yet also not be in the way.

Radio Times competitions. I never want to hear about these again, and that’s entirely my fault.

Cornwall. (You know who you are.)

That’s it, I think. Let me know about your 2007, would you?

Thanks,
William

And now for someone else who can write up a good DVD vote: Ian Smith.

William

To: wg@williamgallagher.com
From: Ian Smith

Oh this is tough!

Was very tempted to vote for Kubrick’s “2001” on HD-DVD (and also Blu-Ray) because the picture is absolutely stunning for a film that’s so long in the tooth. One doubts that even those who saw the film on its original theatrical release got to see something as stunning as this. “Reference quality” doesn’t even begin to cover how sumptuous this new transfer is.

And then there’s “Pan’s Labyrinth”. On DVD this is far better looking than it was at the NFT screening I saw with the director giving a Q&A, and the film is haunting and powerful. And yet, when I caught up with the director’s “The Devils Backbone” I found I slightly preferred that. So “The Guillermo Del Toro Collection” would definitely get the vote, released earlier this year, if not for the fact it included a truly dreadful transfer of “Cronos” and only included the single disc, not the double-disc version of “Pan’s Labyrinth”.

So I was all set to mention “Days of Glory” (on Blu-Ray disc in a stunning transfer), a moving film that was nominated in the same category as “Pan’s Labyrinth” for “Best Foreign Language Film” and a film which actually caused the law in France to be changed (how many films can say that? More info in my review here) and then I remembered “Heroes” on HD-DVD and realised it HAD to get my vote for shiny disc(set) of the year.

“Heroes” is so addictive I wasted two hard-won weekends back in England (I’d been away working in Ireland) watching it. Not since “24” or “Lost” in their first years has a series been so addictive, or delivered such consistently high quality throughout. At last – a “superhero” movie that comic book fans can be proud of and which their non-comic book friends can get equally addicted to. The twists were plentiful but thematically consistent and clearly planned from the start. OK so the ending was a bit of a “we may want to bring the lead villain back if things turn really bad in future seasons” cop-out, but how many shows with 23 episodes don’t have the occasional weak moment?

For TV to deliver 23 episodes of such high quality throughout, without recourse to “filler” episodes is unprecedented, even from the likes of the superb “Battlestar Galactica”. The cast of unknowns were brilliant, and with guest appearances from Christopher Eccleston and Malcolm McDowell for us Brits what’s not to like? Given that “Heroes” is flavour of the month at the moment (it’s taken the crown from “Lost” it would seem) it would have been easy for the shiny discs to be a flimsy cash-in affair. But no, the makers gave us the series in a beautifully packaged region-free HD-DVD set packed full of extras. More TV show DVD sets should be like this! A truly outstanding set that delivers on high definition promises, with brilliant writing, superb casting and week after week of cliff-hanger endings which make one grateful that one chose to watch the show on shiny disc instead of terrestrial TV. Warning: Only start watching this DVD set if you have 23 hours free in one go!

Ian

Just so you know, each year on the podcast UK DVD Review I do a poll whose format is a chart countdown but whose sole purpose is to get you ten great DVD recommendations. I ask for votes and it’s all tabulated away merrily in Excel, but I am fully blatant about how I’m more interested in passion for a DVD than I am for just weight of numbers. So each year I ask for a vote – and a reason why you’re voting for this or that particular title.

But for the 2007 poll, I got more tremendously considered reasons than ever before. I felt bad that I was going to reduce people’s fine work to a two-liner, so I said I’d stop hoarding these great emails. Over the next little while, I’m going to show you what people showed me: the best reasons for loving the best DVDs.

First up, Steve Fitzpatrick. I’d tell you what he voted for but his email was one that worked through his arguments nicely and I’m just going to shut up.

William

—

From: Steve Fitzpatrick
To: wg@williamgallagher.com

Worthy.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? Well, sadly in our household, not so much. If a film or programme is branded as worthy it means it is usually beautifully filmed and themes and ideas are fully explored in all their minutiae, characters developed extensively (preferably in flash-back or flash-forward) dialogue is crafted so carefully each word carries a thousand meanings. Usually when you get to the end you discover there has been no plot, and what you have watched has left you mystified and confused as to what has happened. The phrase pretentious billooks (got to be careful of the profanity check) never entered my head.

Steven Poliakoff is usually worthy – yes, I have just watched Capturing Mary – did it show?

That’s why with eager anticipation I sat down to watch Die Hard 4.0. and instantly put it to the top of my list of DVD’s this year. While it has no plot either it contains the necessary essentials to while away a winters evening. Chases, one liners, explosions, a bit of gun play, more one liners and even more explosions. What more do you need? It even has Bruce looking moody, bruised and torn. No character development, no plot, but at least at the end you know where you have been. I don’t think I’ll be giving away too much to tell you that the baddy gets it.

An unworthy, shallow, film then; and definitely my DVD of the year.

I haven’t had the chance to watch Oceans 13 yet but, fun caper it undoubtedly will be, it doesn’t have the Bruce factor.

Except.

In a chance conversation I remembered Pierrepoint, recently re released, about the career of Albert Pierrepoint Britain’s most “successful” hangman. This is a film I saw at the cinema, it had a limited release and needed extensive research to find where it was playing. It left a huge mark on me, I talked about it endlessly for weeks after and clamoured for its DVD release. It is rare for me to revisit a DVD more than a couple of times, but this was a film I would play to anyone given the merest excuse, and watched over and over. I can’t say “enjoyed” it, the subject matter doesn’t lend itself to enjoyment, but I was captivated by it. Each viewing giving a different nuance, a different feeling, about the subject matter and still left me tense and shocked by what I saw.

It is, however beautifully acted, and the characters well explored. Timothy Spall is exceptional in the lead role as the film follows Pierepoint’s career, from applying for the job of hangman to his resignation, after some 600 executions, in the late 1950’s.

It shows a man, dedicated to his work, and applying the job dignity and compassion to the prisoner sentenced to death, yet a man totally dedicated to being the best at his job.

It shows the effect the work had on him. Albert Pierrepoint kept his government job to himself, and no-one knew what he did, not even his wife until the newspapers revealed his identity as a “hero” following the executions of the Nazi hierarchy at Nuremburg to his vilification as the country increasingly turned against capital punishment.

The one thing this film doesn’t do is comment. It is neither pro nor anti capital punishment. It does not glorify or vilify. It presents just the facts (taken from Pierrepoint’s autobiography) and leaves the viewer to make up their own minds. It does however provoke debate, and I have seen people’s attitude to capital punishment both re-inforced or reversed after viewing.

The subject matter does not make for an enjoyable film. It is however compelling and thought provoking. In other words, worthy. And I mean that as the highest compliment.

I wholehearted commend this worthy film as my DVD of the year.

S

You know how things come along at once? I’d never seen a call sheet until last week and now I’ve had two. Last Monday I was filming behind the scenes at a Radio Times photo shoot for the new BBC1 period drama, Lark Rise to Candleford. Julia Sawalha, Dawn French and Olivia Hallinan were photographed in period costume – by a photographer in tails and with a truly Jules Verne-like wooden and brass camera.

Also a top-of-the-range modern digital tethered to a MacBook, but.

And it must’ve gone well because this Monday, I’ve just been booked on the RT shoot for Ashes to Ashes, the sequel to Life on Mars. Presumably I can’t tell you anything about the shoot but there is word that a car will be there.

Looking forward to this,
William

You voted, I counted, we talked: have a listen to this week’s UK DVD Review show, a half-hour special podcast counting down your top ten DVDs of 2007.

I promised on that edition that in exchange for my not taking ten of the thirty minutes to read out the prices, I’d do it here. So, ta-daa: here’s your countdown – and I’ve done it as a series of links to Amazon so you can just zoom through.

The whole point of the countdown was not to have a countdown; as fun as it was to see what made number 1, the whole list, the whole ten were ones you picked because you loved them so much, you couldn’t stop talking about them. And shortly I’ll be putting up some of your best emails about why you picked what you did; they’ll be guest blogs over the next few days.

Last, I’ve also appended my own top ten from the week before’s UK DVD Review.

Thanks for voting. The show will return on 6 January 2008. See you then.

William

Your Top Ten DVDs of 2007

1. Doctor Who: The Complete Third Season

2. Veronica Mars: Season 3 (US import)

3. The Bourne Ultimatum

4. Heroes

5. Stranger Than Fiction

6. The Prisoner

7. Pan’s Labyrinth

8. Pierrepoint

9. My So-Called Life (US import)

10. Mad About You (US import)

And now My Top Ten DVDs of 2007

I should explain that it’s a revised list, ever since listener Ian Smith told me about the DVD that really should come top for me.

0. Battlestar Galactica (HD season 1, US import)

1. Doctor Who: The Complete Third Season

2. Veronica Mars: Season 3 (US import)

3. The Bourne Ultimatum

4. Stranger Than Fiction

5. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

6. My So-Called Life (US import)

7. The Prestige

8. Casino Royale

9. Dar Williams: Live at the Bearsville Theatre (US import)– but buy Dar’s albums first

10. Alias Smith and Jones

I am supposed to be busy, but…

Couldn’t resist. I just recorded some dialogue here in my office, popped it over to the PowerBook in the living room and hit play on it from here.

True, I couldn’t hear the playback, but I heard the bump as my sister-in-law jumped through the roof.

Ah, technology.

William

I should’ve seen this coming, shouldn’t I?

I’ve got a Mac and a PowerBook; since the Leopard release of OS X I’ve been using a feature called Back to My Mac: I sit in the living room and, whenever I fancy, I can look at the screen of the Mac in my office. You’re thinking this is stupid and I can’t 100% disagree with you, but the PowerBook’s a writing machine that I’ve reluctantly stripped down to prevent me piddling about in Photoshop when I should be working. And the office Mac is the big bugger; if anything’s going to take some heavy lifting, I leave my Mac doing it.

And then check its screen from down here.

Only… I had to go do it in reverse, didn’t I? Very fine, very useful, but can you see where this is going? By accident and thickness, I used my PowerBook to show me the screen of my office Mac… which was showing me the screen of my PowerBook.

This is what happens.

This week’s UK DVD Review has nearly 100 clips in it: rather than then take an hour reading the prices out, let me give you the list of clips I used here. Shortly I’ll be adding links out from this to Amazon, so as to more formally fulfill my contractual needs to plug the prices.

If you don’t listen to the show regularly, have a look at it now.

And if you do listen, please also vote: email me at wg@williamgallagher.com before December 1, telling me your one pick of the year – and why you like it so.

Here’s that list, just a reminder of some of the DVDs we’ve seen this year.

Deep breath,
William

1. Doctor Who Blink
2. Ace of Wands
3. Zoo Gang
4. Camberwick Green
5. Life on Mars
6. Arrested Development
7. The Rockford Files
8. Mad About You
9. The Rockford Files
10. Wild Hogs

11. Die Hard 4
12. WKRP in Cincinatti
13. Alias Smith and Jones
14. Airwolf
15. M*A*S*H
16. Green Wing
17. Alias Smith and Jones
18. Torchwood
19. Mr Bean’s Holiday
20. Desperate Housewives

21. Jekyll
22. Little Miss Sunshine
23. Hoodwinked
24. Flushed Away
25. Veronica Mars
26. Atonement
26. Sandbaggers
28. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip
29. Children of Men
30. Northern Exposure

31. Father Ted Speed 3
32. In the Night Garden
33. Becoming Jane
34. Babylon 5 captain’s log
35. Cardiac Arrest
36. Follyfoot
37. Dirty Dancing
38. The Prisoner
39. Battlestar Galactica
40. For Your Consideration

41. Stranger Than Fiction
42. Notes on a Scandal
43. Ocean’s Thirteen
44. Doctor Who Arc of Infinity
45. Ugly Betty
46. The Holiday
47. Frasier
48. Night at the Museum
49. Nancy Drew open
50 Doctor Who Blink

51. Fracture
52. Last King
53. Columbo
54. Casino Royale
55. The Prestige
56. Friends and Crocodiles
57. Peep Show
58. My So-Called Life
59. Hot Fuzz
60. Music and Lyrics

61. Heroes
62 The Queen
63. World of Pub
64. This is England
65. Blades of Glory
66. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
67. Happy Feet
68. Rolling Stones
69. Shooter
70. Forbidden Planet

71. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
72. Zombie Diaries
73. 28 Weeks Later
74. Pursuit
75. Perfect Stranger
76. Arthur
77. Thank You for Smoking
78. The Libertine
79. Zodiac
80. Fantasic Four

81. Amazing Grace
82. Premonition
83. Inland Empire
84. Sunshine
85. Miss Potter
86. The Illusionist
87. Snakes on a Plane
88. World Trade Center
89. Perfume
90. Primeval

91. Serenity
92. Cheers
93. Because I Said So
94. Open Season
95. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
96. The Bourne Ultimatum

–