Possibly the best thing I've ever seen on television

In a week of losses, both great and small, I offer a jewel of comfort-viewing. 

I didn't necessarily love everything Dame Maggie appeared in.  (I loathed Downton Abbey; sorry, but I did.)  However, she was usually one of the best things in any production.  

In the following, she is the only thing in the production.  Aside from the crew, the director, and the writing of Alan Bennett.  Other actors have played this role, and beautifully, but this is definitive.  As she was.

If you have the fifty minutes, treat yourself.

No one can do the Evil Eye like a Welsh person

Ran out of day again.

I'm cheating and leaving you with one of my very favourite clips from the panel show Would I Lie to You?, based on the party game where you tell a story and the players have to guess whether it's true or false.

The story-teller is chief BBC newsreader Huw Edwards (who I know from his wonderful limited series The Story of Wales).  This episode of WILTY is from ten years ago, but the Resident Fan Boy and I are re-enjoying it on the new television.

The empty seat

Cartoon by Morten Morland, a Norwegian cartoonist based in the UK

 This cartoon is being shared a lot; it appeared in today's Times. 

 I think it strikes a chord on many levels (which is actually what a chord is, isn't it?).

Those of us who watched the State Funeral today (and we couldn't resist) had an opportunity: to see beyond the pageantry, symbolism, and sentiment.

We feel a loss, but it's more than a seemingly omnipresent and immortal Queen.  It's a way of life, and a way of seeing things, which, however myopic, was something taken for granted.

Many of us looked over to a chair, and realised, probably not for the first time, that a flawed, maddening, but beloved person no longer was sitting there.  Perhaps we thought:  Oh s/he would have loved/hated this.

I was lucky today.  I escorted Demeter from her apartment to watch bits and pieces of the ceremonies.  We drank tea, of course. Afterwards, we discussed which members of the Royal Family we'd seen over the years.  (They come to Canada quite a bit.)

And I realised that my very British mother actually only lived in England for about a decade, if you include her first year of life, and home furloughs from Kenya.

Then I escorted her home, and went for a walk in the sunset.

It seemed appropriate.

Comedy as Möbius strip - for dinosaurs

In a year filled with disappointments and delays - not mention the more horrifying life-threatening stuff, reported daily - I got two generous dollops of wish-fulfillment this summer.  Both involve Phoebe Waller-Bridge

First, I notice, quite by accident (ain't that always the way?), that the "Hollywood Suite" set of channels are on free preview, as the specialty channels are, from time to time.  I was startled to see that an episode of the second season of Staged was playing.  I've seen bits and pieces of both seasons on the internet, and have been longing to see it for months.

Briefly, Staged stars David Tennant and Michael Sheen (there yer go) as themselves, Georgia Tennant and Anna Lundberg as their wives/partners (which they are), Simon Evans, the actor/director/writer (which he does), and Lucy Evans as Simon Evans' sister (which she is).  Except no one is playing their real selves, y'see, and some actors are playing fictional characters, and some really famous people are playing -- themselves.

In the first season, Tennant and Sheen, find themselves being hurtled into lockdown and their upcoming theatrical production of Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author is put on ice (probably for the best).  Their director (Evans, who did write and direct both seasons of Staged, no matter what you're told during the episodes) suggests rehearsing anyway, via Zoom.  We never actually see any rehearsing, but we do see a quite a bit of whining, back-stabbing, and sulking.  It makes for entertaining viewing, believe it or not, and captures the isolation and disjointedness of lockdown.  However, watching bits and pieces on YouTube doesn't prepare you for the truly remarkable mobius-strip quality of the transition from the first season to the second season.

The second season hauls us from the parallel universe of the first season, into an even stranger world where Sheen and Tennant are themselves playing another version of themselves, promoting the first season, and being blocked from starring in the American version of the same.  There is no American version, just as Whoopi Goldberg is not, in fact, an agent named Mary with a reputation for attacking people who cross her with Golden Globe statuettes. (And I hope and trust that Michael Palin isn't anywhere as malicious in real life. Ouch.)

Despite these clues, many Staged fans can be forgiven, I suppose, for having some difficulty separating fact from fiction, especially these days.

Anyway, Phoebe Waller-Bridge does appear during the second season, in what is arguably the funniest episode, but I won't spoil anything in case you get a chance to watch it.  (It involves her bladder. And Pavlov's dogs.)

Counter-clockwise: David Tennant, Michael Sheen, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Simon Evans, Cate Blanchett

I've been becoming a bit of a Phoebe Waller-Bridge fan anyway, so this episode clinched it, even though I had yet to see Fleabag, yet another two-season ground-breaking British comedy which I had also seen in bits and pieces on YouTube. Barely had I finished watching Staged, when Fleabag suddenly became available -- at the last remaining video-rental store in Victoria (because I'm a dinosaur, dammit).

Seeing Staged in context was a mind-bending delight; seeing Fleabag as an organic whole (is that tautology?) blew me out of the water.  Watching clips gives you an idea of the sly and wicked humour.  Watching the show in context blind-sides you with the underlying heartbreak underlying all of Fleabag's seemingly inexplicable shenanigans. 

We're never actually told the main character's name, although it was the Resident Fan Boy who pointed out that "Fleabag" could be a play on "Phoebe".  (It turns out that "Fleabag" is, indeed, Waller-Bridge's family nickname, although she's been forced to point out, frequently, that the characters do not resemble her own family.)  Three other characters are also never addressed by name:  Andrew Scott's notorious "Hot Priest" (who doesn't appear until the second series), Fleabag's father (Jim Paterson), and  "Godmother".  

As much as the arcs of both seasons entranced me, enchanted me, and sometimes devastated me, it is Olivia Colman as "Godmother", who actually had me wincing.  I've known women like "Godmother".  We probably all have.

Shudder. (I've never actually been slapped. Not literally. Really wanted to, though.)

Anyway, these two series are going on my Christmas wish list.  Because I collect DVDs.  Because I'm a dinosaur.  (And because streaming services and platforms giveth and taketh away.)

No rules

Actually, there are plenty of rules.  The structure's harder to see.  The past seven months remind me of the nine months the Resident Fan Boy languished between jobs, a few years before we became parents. 

I found my comfort then, as I do now, in a mixture of the new and the familiar.  

This is one of my favourite scenes from the 2001 British comedy/drama series Bob and Rose.  Written by Russell T Davies, it was a major reason I started watching Doctor Who -- aside from David Tennant, of course.  Davies based his story on something that actually happened to a couple of his friends:  a gay man who, to his astonishment, fell in love with a straight woman.

This is about halfway through the drama.  Bob and Rose, seeing no future in their relationship have broken up about twice, and we overhear their inner thoughts while watching the dancers in their respective favoured nightclubs in Manchester.

Aside from the wit and the acting, I'm very enamoured of the music, which seems to be a dreamy mixture of Pachelbel and Orff.

The devil's playground

This whole "stay-at-home" jive hasn't affected me as much as I thought.  I mean, most of my life is pretty homebody.  (The arrival of elder daughter, who has taken over the living room and, due to a sprained ankle plus her fear that she may be an a-symptomatic COVID-carrier, all of our sizeable couch, may be the deal-breaker.)

In England, pretty well anyone who isn't "essential service" has been under lockdown for about a month now.

One of the strangest - and most British - byproducts of the situation has been the transformation of the television game show Taskmaster into a nation-wide competition for quarantined British families.

The show, which has been on air since 2015, used to centre around five contestants being asked to do something bizarre. I vaguely remember "impress a mayor" being one such assignment.

I was unaware of the direction the show had taken with the arrival of the pandemic, until I stumbled across a YouTube video last week. In that case, the assignment (which had apparently been the second virus one) had been to transform the bathroom into "a great night out".

The following is Task #7, which I tripped over yesterday:


My knee-jerk reaction to watching these is "Golly, some people have way too much time on their hands!"

Then it occurred to me. That's the point.

A bit of escapism

We started watching a DVD of selections from Not Only But Also - Dudley Moore's and Peter Cook's sketch show from the mid-1960's - for the John Lennon guest shots. We stayed for the "Dud and Pete", the genesis of the "Leaping Sisters of St Beryl" (later to be featured in Bedazzled), the poetry (yes, really), and the jazz music.

Dudley Moore was an accomplished pianist with his own jazz trio, and this charming duet with singer Marian Montgomery is a diversion I sorely needed today.

Jazz singer Marian Montgomery was a few months older than Dudley Moore; they both died in 2002 - within a few months of each other.

Because sometimes, women just get fed up

There's a lot about the perils of social media being discussed these days, but there are a lot of pleasures too.

No, no, I don't mean those. Get your mind out of the gutter.

Because I "like" BBC Comedy on Facebook, I get plenty of clips from a spoof news show entitled The Mash Report, one of the many shows BBCCanada is withholding from us in order to show end-to-end episodes of Top Gear.

Here's a brief sample, but be warned, this particular clip is rife with f-bombs.

As far as I can tell, the show itself isn't particularly that profane, but I happen to like this bit, so you know what you can do.