Day 70. Like it was written on the wind from me to you (11/3/19)

(Soundtrack: Lou Reed's New York album, just finishing it off, 'Dime Store Mystery' trailing off into silence on what sounds like a viola, definitely not played by John Cale, though Moe Tucker is on drums. For those of you that don't see any relevance in that sentence, that's fine but you probably need to listen to better music. Listening to this because Uncut ran a feature on the album, seeing as January marked 30 years since its release.

I'm still in the first 6 months of my time with Revolver [later absorbed fully into HMV] and this album is a revelation. Lou was washed up. The Velvets were decades before [nearly fifteen years since they'd split forever, aeons], his solo success equally long gone. He had nothing left to say. Until he did. Late period success achieved by finding a subject and approach that he actually really cared about. The release was a revelation. One of those things that gains momentum through word of mouth and good reviews. A pleasure to sell people quality. It still sounds great. Sounds timeless.

And it's finished so now we're onto The Very Best Of Orange Juice. Falling and Laughing. Edwyn being precociously brilliant and wonderfully fey in order to reset the whole post punk scene. Again, if you don't see any relevance in that sentence...)

Let's talk TV, shall we? Since that's where I really feel like being at the moment. That's where I want The Comeback Special. That's the script I'm working on again today. Consider this blog a magic spell in making the show happen, consider this throwing my intention out to the world to deal with. Consider it a statement of intent.

We're in a golden age for TV. Another one. At the moment we're very specifically in a golden month for comedy and what can be done with it.

We're spoilt. The end of February, beginning of March has seen our various ways of watching TV gift us varying degrees of wonder.

Fleabag started up again last Monday. A BBC3 show from back in the day when BBC3 existed as a TV channel. Online now, we get the show on the player before it hits the airwaves, as were.

The first season was excellent. Phoebe Waller-Bridge brought through a character based on her one woman show and placed her in a family unit inhabited by the useless and the awful. I don't care what Olivia Coleman wins Oscars for, it can't be any better than the work she does here as her shallow stepmother. The show was about sex, tragedy and loneliness and worked brilliantly.

I didn't think it could be followed. My response to Killing Eve lay in the minority. I didn't like it. Thought we may have already seen the best of Waller-Bridge's work.

And then Monday night happened.

The first episode of season two raised the bar for the show. And for most TV. And it did so by sitting 6 people round a table to talk, letting them leave occasionally for a cigarette. It was a play on screen. It was obviously a play on screen. And felt nothing like it. It switched in seconds. It could move from sharp, cynical sarcasm to incredibly moving without you noticing. It could make you laugh at things you knew you probably shouldn't laugh at. And it set up the entire series to follow brilliantly.

It was/is perfect TV. And it made me realise that I could play with form in the way I want to play with form.

I struggle with the idea of one scene per minute. One page. Change. One page. Change. Keep moving. It all feels too short for me, I feel like I haven't set the scene up before I need to change it. It's a skill I'm doing my damnedest to acquire.

This, plus the fact that the first scene of the pilot episode of Friends is 17 pages long without changing setting once and that did okay, keeps me going. I know there are changes I need to make in things but I also know I'm on a right track here.  I know there's an audience for the script I'm writing.

Derry Girls makes me realise that as well. Again, season two started last week. And season two stepped up so far from season one. S1 was good, very good. The first episode of S2 was just so much more. The characters are embedded, the situation is set, the fact that we're moving into the beginning of the Irish peace process in the 90s opens up new areas to explore.

A sitcom about four teenage girls growing up during 'the troubles' might not have sounded an obvious formula for success. Funny what audiences take to, isn't it? Almost as though the only formula for success is being bloody funny while creating characters that the viewer can engage with. The greatest TV comes from the ideas that the viewer didn't know it wanted before it was given to them.

I was on CityTalk a few weeks ago and we touched briefly on TV. ITV's head of programming (or whatever his title is) had said that ITV wasn't a natural home for sitcoms and that sitcoms as a format no longer worked. That Coronation Street had all the humour that the channel needed.

The point I made then is the point I'll make again now. Make the right shows, people will watch them. Easy call.

Netflix are doing that. Making the right shows. And people are watching them.

It seems like everybody I know has binged through the entire season of Ricky Gervais' 'After Life' this weekend. With almost unanimous approval.

A comedy about grief and putting yourself back together. A show where every single character is delineated and garners some degree of sympathy within the first half hour, where everything that happens, happens because of the characters' natures and makes perfect sense, to the point that Ricky Gervais' character resorting to casual heroin use makes perfect sense and isn't used as any kind of judgement call. Whereas the death of another asks you to consult your moral compass given the actions that bring it about.

Much as I loved The Office and Extras, this may be Gervais' masterpiece. And it's allowed to be what it is because it's on a channel that can take risks.

We're in a good place. The diversity of programming created by the streaming services means there can be an audience for anything.

The possibilities are endless.

And, with that, I can start writing for the day.