Friday 20 December 2013

Jocky's Top 25 TV Shows of 2013

25. The Big Reunion - ITV2
24. Arne Dahl - BBC Four
23. Burton and Taylor - BBC Four
22. Run - Channel 4
21. Imagine: David Bowie - Cracked Actor - BBC Four
20. The Sound of Cinema: The Music that Made the Movies - BBC Four
19. Utopia - Channel 4
18. Dancing on the Edge - BBC One
17. The Americans - ITV1
16. Borgen - BBC Four
15. The Day of The Doctor - BBC One
14. Clare Balding's Secret of a Suffragette - Channel 4
13. Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic - BBC Four
12. It's Kevin - BBC Two
11. David Bowie - Five Years - BBC Two
10. Das Auto: The Germans, Their Cars and Us - BBC Four
9. An Adventure in Space and Time - BBC Two
8. Stephen Fry's Out There - BBC One
7. Top of the Lake - BBC One
6. Toast of London - Channel 4
5. Storyville: Pussy Riot - A Punk Prayer - BBC Four
4. Storyville: From the Land to the Sea Beyond - BBC Four
3. Mad Men - Sky Atlantic
2. The Fall - BBC One
1. Hillsborough: How they Buried the Truth - BBC One

Thursday 19 December 2013

Jocky's Top 25 Albums of 2013

25. Days are Gone - Haim
24. Shaking the Habitual - The Knife
23. Comedown Machine - The Strokes
22. Push the Sky Away - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
21. Bankrupt! - Phoenix
20. Praxis Makes Perfect - Neon Neon
19. mbv - My Bloody Valentine
18. Sticky Wickets - The Duckworth Lewis Method
17. The Electric Lady - Janelle Monáe
16. Arc - Everything Everything
15. Light Up Gold - Parquet Courts
14. Holy Fire - Foals
13. Amok - Atoms for Peace
12. Reflektor - Arcade Fire
11. AM - Arctic Monkeys
10. ...Like Clockwork - Queens of the Stone Age
9. Right Thoughts,  Right Words, Right Action - Franz Ferdinand
8. Silence Yourself - Savages
7. Machineries of Joy - British Sea Power
6. Electric - Pet Shop Boys
5. Rewind the Film - Manic Street Preachers
4. Bloodsports - Suede
3. Modern Vampires of the City - Vampire Weekend
2. Random Access Memories - Daft Punk
1. The Next Day - David Bowie

Thursday 5 December 2013

Bigger on the Inside — What to make of 50 years of Who?

The BBC celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of the first airing of Doctor Who are now being confined to our collective memory but what did this global televisual event really symbolise for Planet Earth…?

Like me, you’re probably suffering from an acute case of Whovian fatigue, so ubiquitous was the raft of programming dedicated to the science fiction phenomenon as it approached its half century. It left one feeling somewhat over exposed. Much of the fanfare, it has to be said, took the form of self-referential, superlative waff, but to dismiss the nostalgiafest as wholly vacuous would also be extremely unkind.

For any television programme to have existed so long in today’s fast moving and fickle world of entertainment is an achievement worthy of note. One only trumped on UK television by Blue Peter, The Sooty Show and ITV’s soap opera Coronation Street.

Although here’s where you could argue the BBC is being somewhat disingenuous. All those shows have run continuously since their inception but the BBC’s opinion of Doctor Who hasn’t always been so affectionate. The Corporation cancelled the show in 1989 and, with the exception of one aborted attempted to resurrect the series in 1996, Doctor Who was de facto defunct for 15 years between 1990 and 2004. Only now, due to the unexpected global audience the show has garnered since its 2005 rebirth, are the BBC confident enough to go ‘all in’ on the ‘Who ha’!

Even from a critical standing it all seems a bit much, bearing in mind the show's second coming has only occasionally spun the considerable chaff of a full seven series into the rarest of TV gold. 

However, just as I was tiring of all things TARDIS, along came Mark Gatiss’s ode to the First Doctor, a dramatisation of the show’s origin story. As I settled in to 'An Adventure In Space And Time', a practically perfect love letter to Doctor Who, I began to feel all my cynicism ebb away.

For here was the essence of what makes Doctor Who special. David Bradley’s excellent embodiment of William Hartnell, the insecure, ageing ‘character actor’ whose ill health eventually led to the regeneration conceit, was truly something to behold. To see the despair in his realisation that his time as the Doctor is coming to an end is both heartbreaking and portentous, symbolising at it does, the fear we all feel at the transience of our limited time on Earth, that our existence is but a mere, insignificant footnote in the history of humanity.

Imagine you were the only actor to have played the role, how gut wrenching it would be to consider it continuing in your absence. As Hartnell meets his successor in the form of Reece Sheersmith’s Patrick Troughton, it becomes clear the game is finally up – “Why does everything have to change?” he bleats, but, of course, it must; the only permanence in our lives being impermanence.

Yet what he couldn't realise at the time was how the foundation he laid would still be bearing the weight of the whole Doctor Who canon some 50 years in the future.

Many viewers of the anniversary episode, screened simultaneously worldwide, would have registered a similar feeling to Hartnell’s melancholy. For those younger than me, it would have been at the appearance of David Tennant’s Doctor, for those older, the cameo from Tom Baker.

But, then, perhaps the passing of an everlasting torch from one (re)generation to the next is our only salvation from the spectre of our inevitable mortality; whether it be the ideals, beliefs and knowledge that a parent passes to a child or the skills and experience a mentor passes to a trainee?

After all, if even the Lord of all time and space can’t free himself from that one great certainty, then perhaps we humans shouldn't feel so aggrieved we are also denied an eternity.

Doctor Who is to be cherished for so much – its morality, its faith in science, its wonderful escapism – but perhaps it is the sense of belonging that each generation’s Doctor gives to their audience that makes the show a true diamond in the rough? It has delivered a different meaning to different sets of fans the world over, each imprinting on their version of the Doctor their own, distinct, self-image.