Reeve's Festive Round-Up (Part 2)

Like most of the grown-ups I know, I don't really watch telly any more (although, because of the unique way that the BBC is funded*, I'm still expected to pay for it). The last time I did venture to switch on actual television I glimpsed something called Hole in the Wall, in which celebrities have to hurl themselves through a celebrity-shaped hole in a moving foam wall to avoid being pushed in a pond. For a long time I assumed that I had simply been hallucinating , but I've since spoken to other witnesses: this is actually a real programme. That's why I mostly choose to make my own telly, thanks to the miracle of DVD boxed-sets.

Recent favourites include Joss Whedon's Dollhouse (certificate 15), a sci-fi/spy drama by the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the only vampire story I've ever enjoyed) and the cruelly cancelled, much lamented Firefly. The Dollhouse in question is a sinister, top-secret institution which maintains a bevy of brain-wiped young people who can be uploaded with tailored personalities and rented out to the super-rich for various shady purposes. The first couple of episodes are slick and watchable without being particularly interesting, but just when you think that Dollhouse is going to turn out variations on the same formula each week, it suddenly starts to twist and turn and subvert itself, and people start talking like Joss Whedon characters (some of them are played by familiar faces from his other shows, which helps; Eliza Dushku from Buffy, Alan Tudyk from Firefly and Angel's Amy Acker, who I've sometimes thought would make a passable Hester Shaw, and who turns up here sporting a Disfiguring Scar - spooky!). It's cool, playful and slightly deranged, and beneath its all-American styling and Hollywood gloss there beats a heart very like those which animated great, loopy, British TV shows of the '60s like The Avengers and The Prisoner.

The second series of Madmen (also certificate 15) was actually shown on BBC4 at the start of the year, so I suppose I shouldn't really grumble about the licence fee. But they put it on way past my bedtime, and it's not worth replacing my long-broken DVD recorder just to record one programme, so I had to wait for the boxed set as usual. Anyway, it's magnificent; as stylish and glacially cool as the first series, and with slightly more plot. Unlike British TV drama, where the characters are always telling us how they feel about things, the writers of Madmen and other HBO series are careful to treat the audience as adults; they show us people doing things, and leave it to us to work out why they've done them and how they feel about it.

The children's TV I've glimpsed lately has offered nothing to compare to the wayward brilliance of The Secret Show, but young surrealists might enjoy the CBBC show Ooglies, which seems to be based on Andre Breton's dictum about Surrealism being the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an ironing board, only with the addition of some goggly eyes and a lot of slapstick violence, which is a big improvement. I particularly like the blender helicopter with its crew of incompetent paramedic cherries.

*By theft.

Reeve's Festive Round-Up (Part 1)

There's nothing much to write about at this time of year, with all work grinding to a halt under the weight of accumulated mince pies and chocolate biscuits, so I thought I'd do what proper journalists in posh newspapers do and fill space with a round-up of the cultural high points of 2009.

BOOKS

If the world of children's books were a Christmas tree, Geraldine McCaughrean would be the angel on the top, and her latest, The Death Defying Pepper Roux, is also one of her best. Set in France round about 1910, this is a funny and touching story about a boy who has been told by his horrible family that he is going to die on his fourteenth birthday. When the dreadful day arrives he runs away in the hope of escaping his fate, and finds a series of new identities for himself, helped and hindered by an eccentric cast of supporting characters. Like so many of GM's heroes he is a kind of holy fool, whose innocence both gets him into trouble and helps him to get out of it again. And like so many of her books this one can be read once for the story, with its page-turning cliff-hangers and reversals of fortune, and then again to savour the sheer brilliance of her writing.

I wasn't averse to reading 'girl's books' when I was a boy, but for some reason I never got around to Frances Hodgson Burnet's The Little Princess. But that didn't stop me enjoying Hilary McKay's new sequel to it, Waiting for Tomorrow, which as funny and charming a book as you could hope to curl up with on a winter's afternoon. It's set in the same tiny Edwardian girl's boarding school as the original, and weaves its story out of the friendships and frustrations of the pupils and staff, and also of the irrepressible Alice, a servant straight out of Ealing comedy. With its pink cover and all-girl cast it's unlikely to be read by many boys, but that's their loss; it's brilliant.

The best adult book I've read this year was, bizarrely, published by David Fickling Books, a children's specialist. Margot Lanagan long ago proved herself to be a great writer with her weird and deeply unsettling short stories, collected in volumes like White Time and Black Juice. Tender Morsels is, I believe, her first novel, and it's an astonishing tour-de-force, plaiting elements of folklore and fairy-tale into a story which covers two generations and moves between two different imaginary worlds. The closest comparison I can think of would be with Angela Carter, but that would be slightly unfair to Ms Lanagan, who is a far better writer with a far more vivid imagination. But be warned: if the flopsy bunnies of the children's book world allowed age-ranges to printed on books, this one would carry an 18+. I'm 43+ and I still found some of Tender Morsels almost too grim and horrific to read.

Tommorrow: Telly!

A Right Pair of Weirdos

Here are two very early pictures from the world of Mortal Engines, done in '89 or '90, around the time I started work on the earliest version. The rather gamin Hester already has her scar, but it still looks like a bit of a fashion accessory; it got worse and worse in later drafts, and the steam-powered machine gun proved too cumbersome! I like her tattered coat-tails, though.. I wonder what the keys were meant to open?

The WOME was a lot more steampunky at that early stage, hence Shrike's iron topper! He ended up considerably more robot-like.

Fresh Ice and Old Art...

Sam had me hunting through my dwindling stocks of art supplies for Scraperboard before breakfast yesterday. I couldn't find any, but did turn up this old painting which I did in 1988 or '89 - so long ago that it feels like someone else's work now, and I quite like it. I also came across some pictures I did of very early versions of Shrike and Hester from about the same time. I'll post those here as soon as I can find a way to fit them in the scanner (I worked big in those days).

To the panto last night, and one of the best Merrymakers' shows I've seen. Jay Jacoby, this year's producer, seems to run a happy ship, and the enthusiasm of the cast shone through. Evie Bowden, the musical director, is simply brilliant, and there were some great comic performances too; I particularly liked Nick Coaker as the Beast (see below), and Vicky Hanson's turn as the Panto Inspector. We emerged from the hall to find that the world had been replaced by a replica of itself made out of glass, and we had to take the long way home through Asburton and Bovey Tracey to avoid the un-gritted lanes. Today we are trapped at home, the drive and lane impassable with ice. It's as festive as anything, with sunlight glimmering on the frosty fields and the tors looking as if they've been dusted with icing sugar. Still, we must hope it thaws soon, or it will mean cornflakes for Christmas Dinner...