An Open Letter to Hull City Council about Arts Funding and their Proposed Budget

Dear Hull City Council,

Please consider this an open letter in response to the Revenue Proposed Budget 2011-12 you are currently considering.

There are huge savings to be made, in many areas, and I would encourage the Council to extend and enhance links with the local Voluntary and Community Sector. Helping newer organisations to 'be better placed to bid for new services' could be especially helpful in the coming years, particularly if Hull is to be a city that retains and attracts young professionals (the key demographic group for a 'thriving city centre economy' – as mentioned in your proposed Priority C). It is these groups and these people that are the partners most able to bring the 'best and most cost effective ways to improve the lives of the people of Hull' (Hull City Council's vision over the next three years).

On the subject of Priority C ('Making Hull a place where people are proud to live and work'), mainly on the point about making Hull a place to visit, I do feel that the proposed budget neglects provision for the arts and culture of Hull. As someone who has lived in Hull and Cambridge, I'd like to draw your attention to the attitude taken by Cambridge City Council toward their arts provision. I admit there are significant differences between the two cities, but some statements in the proposed Cambridge budget carry weight for Hull too. For example: 'The arts provide experiences that bring people together and inspire them. Without them Cambridge would be a less desirable place to live, work and visit.' [my emphasis] – the proposal goes on to state that 'The arts provide a platform to celebrate and showcase our local cultural diversity and create a sense of excitement and pride in our city'. If Hull City Council wants to instil a sense of pride in Hull – making people 'proud to live and work' here – then they cannot overlook the contribution made by the arts in Hull.

But, as Cambridge City Council has recognised, the arts offer more than civic pride; they provide experiences too, experiences that bind communities together (the Freedom and Vista Festivals comes to mind) and that inspire people and help them to reach their potential. This is especially true with children and young people – those saddled with the debts passed on in this spending review, and I would urge the Council to hold young people's interests very much at heart when implementing cuts to their inheritance. The Council rightly identifies 'Giving children and young people the best start, and everyone the opportunity to achieve their potential' as Priority B of their proposed budget.

The Council is no doubt already aware of various pieces of research demonstrating the benefit of children having an active engagement in culture and their surroundings. They must also be aware of the DCMS Taking Part survey which found that 'in inner city areas those who participated in culture were 10% more likely to be satisfied with where they live' – linking culture with civic pride again.

The Council has been already been involved with projects that have helped children's cultural engagement from an early age, and it is achievements like that – and other signs of Hull's regeneration – that are likely to suffer from cuts. Equally, they are precisely the achievements that should be safeguarded and built upon. A city's children are its future, and without the young people the city has no future. If Hull is to be an aspiring city, a city worthy of pride, its youth has to be stimulated, involved and engaged in the arts and in culture and in sport and in education. These are the things worth building on, for the sake of our youth and for their future (which is, after all, our future).

I don't see this letter as a call for greater investment in Hull's culture, nor as a cry for ring-fencing of cultural spending; maybe it's a point in a larger debate about arts funding and public service cuts in general. What I'm really asking is that the Council strengthens its bonds with charities, the Voluntary and Communities Sector, cultural organisations, the education sector and local artists. Ask us what we can do and how we want to help (I admit to a vested interest here...). Encourage and support the newer organisations, work with the established ones, help them to help each other. Deliver on the budget's commitment to 'support areas of the community who wish to develop services and activities'. In these difficult economic times, it is only by working together that we can hope to secure a decent future for this city and for the young people in it.

Thank you for reading,

Richard T. Watson,

Artistic Director, Merge Arts Festival

twitter.com/merge_arts_fest

artisticdirector@mergearts.org.uk

The arts inspire us and lead us to a deeper engagement with each other and the world we live in. They are not the icing on the cake of a community; they are one of the critical ingredients that binds it together.
Rod Cantrill, Executive Councillor for Arts & Recreation, Cambridge City Council

Why Burlesque isn't just stripping for posh people

Thought dead for the last half century or so, burlesque as an artform has been undergoing a revival in recent years. That's probably most noticeable in 2010's Cher and Christina Aguilera film, Burlesque, though that's only the most recent outbreak of burlesque into mainstream culture.

I realise I'm a bit late on this, but it's been a thought bubbling away for a while. I blame these Guardian articles: http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2010/dec/13/burlesque-stripping-posh-empowering and http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2010/dec/13/burlesque-dita-von-teese-christina-aguilera

Burlesque has caused controversy – most recently in Cambridge – mainly on the grounds that women taking their clothes off for money from dirty old men is distasteful and a regressive step for the feminist movement. That's no doubt true; attaching commercial value to displays of a woman's body is a clear case of objectifying women. There's a feeling that burlesque bars are simply upmarket strip joints, exploiting young women in much the same way as a brothel would.

But to accuse burlesque performances of committing this act is to miss the point of burlesque, in both its earlier and its modern form. As various opponents and insiders have pointed out, early burlesque was satirical, a light relief that used things like cross-dressing as a way of bursting the pomposity of the ruling classes. In its more modern form, burlesque can be easily confused with striptease, but there are significant differences. It's also a misinformed approach to associate all burlesque with nudity; burlesque embraces a variety of artforms, and provocative dance is only one of those.

The satire element may not be so prominent in modern burlesque, but the idea of treating the performance as an art form certainly is. For a start, the amateur nature of many burlesque performers contrasts them with the strippers that Laura Barnett reckons are getting money furtively stuffed into their garters. But, deep down, burlesque is a different activity to stripping – even the acts that involve some clothes coming off. The two activities have different objectives and different approaches, even different audiences.

A striptrease in a strip joint is a commercial venture, where the stripper is earning money (not necessarily for herself), in exchange for stripping. The point is to make her male audience want to sleep with her, and pay more money to gain visual material for their own imaginings. The striptease offers the male audience member the hope that he could sleep with the stripper – or at least get a good idea of what it would look like (and in some cases, paying enough means that his dream comes true). The stripper has to offer everything up before the audience gets bored, give them what they want and get to the point. It falls apart if the audience doesn't believe she'd go all the way.

The art of a burlesque erotic dance lies in the restraint and the control, the titillation and

knowing when enough is enough.

Amateur performers aim to entertain, rather than arouse.

Their mixed-gender audience doesn't need to be attracted to the performer, and that's where the empowerment can come in; performers needn't be svelte paragons of beauty (however you define beauty). More importantly, the burlesque erotic dance is about giving the audience a little bit of what they want – in a light-hearted way, without the earnestness of the striptease – gradually. The performer plays with the audience, working them up, and then judges the right moment to withdraw leaving them wanting more without feeling that they've missed out. Unlike stripping, a burlesque performance doesn't need the audience's gratification.

The two performances have superficial similarities, but the underlying intentions and outcomes are different; it's a bit like the difference between having sex and making love.

Images courtesy of No Saints and Anna Fox, The Ringside

Others @ The Junction, Cambridge

Jemma invites you to be part of her project over the next six months. She's interested in you because, basically, you're not like her. She's looking for someone other than her, someone different to her, someone 'other'. Don't ask how she knows you're different; she just assumes you are. Thus begins Others, presented by The Paper Birds at The Junction, Cambridge.

Although, it's not actually you she's asking: that's just a letter Jemma (one of The Paper Birds) has written to other women asking them to share stories for Others. The three women featured are an Iranian artist, a prisoner in a British jail and a celebrity (Heather Mills, who seems not to have replied to her letter). That's one for each of the three women who form The Paper Birds and present their work at The Junction in a simple style, speaking directly to their audience, voices sometimes overlapping, contradicting or supporting each other. Meanwhile, music is occasionally provided by a meek male figure who hangs forlornly about the edge of the stage, speaking only to tell us his name (Jonathan).

There's a certain forced attempt at audience interaction as The Paper Birds wait for their front of house clearance. Others becomes a long interruption of their conversation with the audience, the show is what happens while they try and do other things, seemingly distracted by offstage sounds. The Paper Birds tease at the fourth wall in the opening of their show, but never actually do anything with it (not until a suddenly startling moment later on, when their Iranian correspondent blames the West for her troubles, which is all the more powerful for being so sudden).

The Paper Birds' dramatisation of the Iranian artist's story punctures our Western generalisations about Iran and the Middle East. It makes our Western perceptions seem ludicrous and questions our ability to ever really understand the 'other', not just in this case but in all cases. That's the heart of Others: perception and understanding of people who are different, people who are 'other'. The difficulty in understanding is also conveyed far more subtly by undermining Western generalisations than by having Shani Erez (another of The Paper Birds) repeatedly insist that English speakers don't understand people from the Middle East.

The project to find 'others' also leads to a northern UK prison and a woman serving a life sentence for manslaughter. Despite repeated claims of 'It's not about us [The Paper Birds]', this woman's life is seen through the curiosity (read: barely-disguised voyeurism) of those same Paper Birds. Again, the character is purely 'other' and the focus of narrative slant is on the audience/narrators' perception of that 'other'.

Nowhere is this more clear than with the case of the third 'other': Heather Mills. Her entire life appears to have become a media circus, with everyone's perception of her filtered through a hostile press. In Others, she isn't even allowed to answer questions herself (possibly because she hasn't given The Paper Birds any answers). Instead The Paper Birds answer questions for her, increasingly diverging from the facts about Mills' life and into personal speculation. Such is our treatment of celebrities (and often non-celebrities).

Mills and The Paper Birds seem to be part of a group of women (ie. all women) who've suffered at the hands of men. In fact, men come out of Others pretty badly. At best, they heartlessly break up with devoted and devastated women, leaving emotional wreaks behind. At worst, they're serial abusers who father multiple children without a second thought. Could this be the real 'other'? Violent masculinity that that somehow ensnares devoted affection?

Maybe that's what The Paper Birds are somehow really trying to understand, as much as the 'other' women they claim to seek. Or maybe I think that because, as a man, all of these women are my 'other'; that's the kind of thinking sparked off by Others. The Paper Birds do genuinely question perceptions of the 'other' and handle their material in a thought-provoking manner. But it might be interesting to see who Jonathan would find as his 'other'.

Thanks to The Junction, Cambridge's website and jeckman for the images.

Single Father [Episode Four] on BBC One

When the BBC continuity announcer described an emotional climax for David Tennant's single father, she wasn't lying.

Not to say that the previous three episodes of the BBC's Single Father had been less than emotional, but this final one rather went for it. Fair enough, if you've got David Tennant onboard, you'd want to use him, right? Helped on by various chemical imbalances, pregnancies, alcohol and that interfering sister Anna (Neve McIntosh), the series rolled on to its relatively cheerful ending last night.

The competition between Matt (Warren Brown) and Dave (David Tennant) may have fizzled out disappointingly, but the competition between Dave and Stuart (Rupert Graves) is racked up a few notches for this concluding episode. As relationships go, that's probably where Single Father suddenly really hits the mark; a fiercely polite tug-of-love between two fathers. It just needs them to be the same age to have an extra kick; is Graves too grey-haired to have been at college with Rita (the underused Laura Fraser)?

On the relationship front, the final episode ties up one of the niggling worries in my mind over Single Father. There's a small moment in which we can finally get some idea about why on earth Mark Heap's Robin married Anna – look at that cheeky little grin, that puckering up that serves as both apology and forgiveness. Heap may have only had brief moments through Single Father, but they've often been the best bits; finely observed and neatly judged, Heap is highly watchable and a tad underused.

It's just a shame that, as ever, Single Father seems to have neglected plausible storyline in favour of hitting its audience where it hurts. If Heap and Fraser are underused, Dave's eldest daughter, Tanya (Sophie Kennedy Clark), is probably overused in this episode – especially in the almost entirely unnecessary (and fairly implausible) event with Brown's Matt. Sure, it leads her into a violent outburst that lets the proverbial cat out of the bag in a loud manner, which needed to happen. But there are no doubt easier (read: more plausible) ways of doing so, without resorting to plot devices that smack of Jacobean tragedy. That incident aside, Brown is finally allowed to shine in this final episode, which is good, and gives a glimpse of what he can do given chance.

So those Single Father plot threads are fairly neatly wound up (don't ask what Matt decides to do with himself after not finding and confronting Dave). Lucy's happily chosen a father (for now) while even Dave and Anna are managing to get along. Which just leaves us with the main plot – you know, Sarah (Suranne Jones) and Dave? Alas, that's where it falls apart a bit. Never mind the chunk of plot missing during which Dave decided to go ahead with the paternity test she suggested last week – what's going on with the bump she has herself? Are we expected to believe that she was as manipulative as Rita in not telling Dave that she was going to get herself pregnant (and that he fell for it again!), decided to leave Dave afterwards, and then was persuaded to change her mind once again simply because Dave looked imploring and told her he reckoned it could work? Forgive me for sounding incredulous. I mean, sure, women look for good father material in their partners, but two consecutive women wanting Dave's children despite needing persuading that a relationship with him is a good idea? No wonder he's ended up as a single father.

To be honest, if you're watching Single Father for support in a similar situation, you're probably better checking out the links on the show's page on the BBC website.

Image curtesy of the BBC.

This episode of Single Father may still be available to view via BBC iPlayer here.

Single Father [Episode Three] on BBC One

Given the choice, would you have David Tennant or Warren Brown? Or Rupert Graves, for that matter?

The BBC's newest David Tennant-drama, Single Father, has become a tug-of-love between those three men, albeit with varying prizes. Stuart (Graves) wants to look after Lucy, so does Dave (Tennant). Dave wants Sarah (Suranne Jones), so does Matt (Brown). The competition with Stuart may exist primarily in Dave's head, but the competition with Matt is very real. It's real because Dave's making Sarah doing the same sort of thing she did when she went to see Stuart without telling Dave. Oh, and they're actually having an affair.

Single father Dave's increasingly getting left behind in the middle of whirlwind of changes, which seems to be leaving him with just the one child. Still, she's easier to handle than the five he had at the start of Single Father. Hey, legally, only Tanya is his as things stand.

Somehow Dave's relationship with Sarah has been kept under wraps – despite Evie's witnessing them in the act – even as other relationships fall apart. At the same time, the layers of Rita's (Laura Fraser) family are being peeled away; turns out her mum's not really her mum after all. More dirty washing for public consumption?

So all that remains to be seen is how Dave and Sarah work their new relationship out, how long it'll be before Lucy moves in with the creepy, French-speaking Quinlan girls and whether or not Matt is going to go on the warpath over Sarah. Oh, and someone ought to find out where Mark Heap's Robin has gone with that dog...

On the plus side, my question about how photographer Dave has been earning money has finally been answered – ie. he isn't. It's probably about time the complete lack of work plus supporting a large family caught up with him.

Image courtesy of the BBC

Single Father may still be available to view via BBC iPlayer here.

Why the Smart Car fortwo TV ad makes me want to never buy a Smart Car

This is not how advertising is supposed to work. The TV advert for Smart Car's fortwo is not supposed to make me want to avoid Smart Cars at all costs.

Adverts (commercials, whatever you chose to call them) are supposed to make me want to spend money on the product in question. This one really doesn't. The message I'm getting: the new fortwo is incredibly destructive.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjOvwG2SA9o

The Smart Car fortwo is driven around an impossibly empty city at night, and leaves carnage in its wake. Somehow, through its admittedly cool music player, the fortwo manipulates power lines and makes office lights turn on and off. Not eco-friendly.

While making a vending machine spew out cans (in effect stealing from the manufacturer), the fortwo also wreaks havoc with the traffic lights...good job there's only this one guy on the roads, eh?

It's also lucky that this is happening at night, because in the day this car would be a death trap.

At the same time as switching office lights on and off, the passing fortwo also switches computers on and off. I hope they're set to autosave pretty frequently, because random power fluctuations could become frequent if this ad campaign takes off.

It disrupts everything - including a bloke in the bath, which is just rude, frankly - and causes untold damage. Somehow, the fortwo also manages to set off a load of fire extinguishers. Would someone like to explain that one?

Then, the best bit by far - or worse bit if you happen to be, er, human...which accounts for most of Smart Car's target market - the windows. Every piece of glass anywhere near the fortwo shatters, and you might notice the fine spray of glass (or fine spray of death, as I like to call it) that suddenly descends to ground level. Ground level, in case car designers weren't aware, is where pedestrians walk. Apparently, it's okay to cover this in glass shards, which is what will happen every time someone drives past in a fortwo. Oh good.

Don't worry though folks, it's okay. When he locks the fortwo, everything gets fixed. It's a miracle. Everything is put back exactly how it was.

It's basically a deluxe, suped-up version of the Nissan Juke (watch especially for the electric robots), seen below:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSOgGhZL9t4

The difference here is that the Nissan Juke doesn't absolutely destroy everything (what's with the washing machines?). It seems to make electricity work in its immediate vicinity, which might be useful, but that's about it. Oh, and it exposes a diamond thief. While the effects are destructive when it parks, they are at least localised - it's only that sign that goes crazy, and we're talking a small-scale fireworks display rather than an entire commercial sector needing to be put back together.

Still, not sure I fancy driving a Nissan Juke either.

But the Smart Car fortwo advert raises all sorts of questions in my mind. For a start, when they construct these catastrophic killing-machines, how do the factories cope? At some point during construction, the fortwo's killer instinct must kick in. Why don't the factories get smashed to bits? How many Smart Car staff die every month when the factory gets ripped to shreds and then needs putting back together? Does the line manager give a slightly cute, slightly guilty blue-eyed glance at the bodies, and coyly lock the car, magically replacing the factory walls...but not his staff?

Worse, if several people buy these destruct-o-cars, what happens if two of them meet? I don't just mean in a crash, I mean passing in the same city? Not even the same street; let's face it, the fortwo in the advert does untold damage in streets it's not even in (unlike the relatively sober Nissan Juke). If a fortwo meets another fortwo coming the other way, what happens? Does the universe implode? Do we get a new Big Bang? Think how much money and time CERN could have saved if they just crashed two fortwos into each other, rather than building a Large Hadron Collider.

Actually, let's not let this happen. Everyone must avoid the Smart Car fortwo - this may be the secret message coming from their marketing campaign. Someone in Smart Car marketing knows how potentially destructive the fortwo is, and wants us to know so that we don't buy it. Someone high up at Smart Car is planning to destroy the universe. Don't let them.

This advert, on the other hand...yes, yes and yes again. Simple, effective - it makes me want to buy the product, and no one gets hurt.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQzc2hRAjcc

With thanks to Keira Walker.

The Taking of Prince Harry on Channel Four

Who has been more irresponsible here – Channel 4 or Prince Harry? Channel 4 fakeumentary The Taking of Prince Harry has been controversial long before broadcast, with Channel 4 accused of placing Prince Harry in danger as well as jeopardising the way hostage situations are handled by the British government and secret services. But, as the narrative of this makes implicit, the Prince himself places British servicemen and women in (increased) danger by his presence in Afghanistan. His grandmother may appreciate him serving his country, but how much should Prince Harry be allowed to risk?

The Taking of Prince Harry poses the hypothetical – though not entirely implausible – question: what would happen if Prince Harry were to be captured while on active service in Afghanistan? It then unfolds the sensitive and potentially disastrous situation of a British royal held by Afghan terrorists. The idea isn't implausible, as the documentary footage comprising most of the beginning of The Taking of Prince Harry explains. The son of the Prince of Wales and third in line to the British throne has been on active service in Afghanistan before now, amid a media blackout. What seems less plausible is the very noble way this smallscreen Prince Harry reacts, forever asking about his fellow pilot and telling Scotland Yard not to treat him differently.

It's television that falls between the two stools of gripping drama and fascinating documentary. But the drama is never allowed to run at full pace and the documentary pales away next to the possibility of a Prince (even if he is only a spare and not the heir) as a hostage. The stories of foreign film-makers and journalists are drafted in alongside scenes of Prince Harry at Taliban gunpoint. But the drama eventually manages to get the upper hand, with the talking heads sounding like experts talking about the actual event in hindsight – defending the actions of those involved (in the West, obviously, not the Taliban).

What makes The Taking of Prince Harry controversial is also partly its strength. It's a drama-cum-documentary produced with advice from members of MI6, the CIA and people like that. These are people who know what they're talking about in terms of the authorities and how they react. Does that mean that the Taliban could be watching The Taking of Prince Harry to pick up tips? Or maybe someone from Al-Quaeda might be watching in Europe, hoping to lean how the West handles hostage situations? Or do they already know how it works? Fifteen hostage-takings a day in Afghanistan makes you wonder...

Just try to overlook the laughable Photoshopping done to make it look like the Prince Harry actor (Sebastian Reid) was at a football match with the real Prince's girlfriend. Can you even get internet in the Taliban hideouts near the Pakistan border?

Image courtesy of Channel 4.

Single Father [Episode 2] on BBC One

Now – two weeks in – Single Father is getting a bit seedy and distasteful. David Tennant is still valiantly plugging away at being a single father for the BBC, but the family seems to be splintering around him and suddenly the whole thing has become a digging-up of dead Rita's past life.

Thank goodness the grief-fest of the first episode is over, and we can get on with examining the situation writer Mick Ford was originally interested in: a single father raising several children. Dave is doing a better job than last week, with the help of various other family members (including Tanya's mother, his ex-wife). He does less well at fighting off Rita's sister, Anna (Neve McIntosh) who seems both childless and determined to take her sister's children for herself. Her brother-in-law (Mark Heap) can only watch and apologise as she goes off on another rant about Dave not being up to fatherhood. In fairness to Heap, he's got the disgruntled look of a man not quite able to interrupt down perfectly, and at other times brightens up scenes wonderfully (see him and Tennant discuss a possible father of Rita's daughter...lovely).

Except we can't really get through the heavy-handed emotion into Ford's proposed situation. Single Father still insists on giving misleading flashbacks, that aren't really flashbacks at all because some details have changed – it happened last week when Rita died and Dave said different things depending on which occasion you were watching it. Again this week, the flashbacks don't quite match the events (that kiss, say) as seen first time around. As for the sentimental soundtrack occasionally layered over shots of David Tennant brooding...

But worse is the way that Single Father insists on doing Rita's dirty washing in public. Alright, we get that Dave wasn't her first lover (by a long way), but does it need rubbing in so much? The (remarkably easy) search for Lucy's real father also obscures the story and makes it seem more about a search for a natural father than about Tennant's Dave raising his brood. It's a search that diverts Dave (and us as an audience) away from problems like his son's smashed ankle (surely a cause for concern?), his youngest daughter's illness (Evie), and the way that his eldest (Tanya) has suddenly become far less reliable as a babysitter/employee. These are the issues that tie in with that original single father idea.

Also tying in with that idea is Dave's growing relationship with Rita's friend and Evie's schoolteacher, Sarah (Suranne Jones). That got a lot steamier recently, and I suspect Evie's lessons are going to get more interesting soon...”Miss, are you my new mommy?”

Single Father may still be available via BBC iPlayer here.

Picture courtesy of the BBC.

Single Father [Episode 1] on BBC One

Single Father, Sunday night's much-publicised return to the UK small screen for David Tennant, certainly packs an emotional punch. But then what could we expect from a four-part series about a man whose wife is suddenly killed within the first four minutes?

It may be useful to introduce the family of the single father (Dave, played by David Tennant, who is a photographer) so that, without the distraction of trying to work out who they are, you can get on with appreciating the difficulties Dave has – and maybe cry along with him. Dave's married to Rita (Laura Fraser), with three children: Paul (11), Ewan (9) and Evie (5). Then there's Lucy, fifteen, Rita's daughter (not Dave's), and Tanya, eighteen, Dave's daughter (not Rita's). Got that? Then there's his sister-in-law Anna (Neve McIntosh), hurrying in to mark territory after her sister's death, followed by Rita's family (Mark Heap and Isla Blair). Right, now that's out of the way, we can get on with appreciating David Tennant's moving masterclass in grief.

That said, you'll have to overlook the juddering narrative as well. Single Father starts admirably in the midst of things (like I say, Fraser's Rita gets killed pretty sharpish) with a beautifully-pitched and attractively-shot first three and a half minutes. Then we go back a day, which is all well and good; Single Father manages to avoid making the whole thing seem like a situation that's too good to be true and will soon end – the accident's a shock to everyone. But then, for some reason, the BBC seems to think that, just fifteen minutes later, we'll have forgotten what happened and need to see it again (with ever-so-slightly different dialogue). The tense inevitability of the first time round has gone, replaced with a tedious certainty that Rita is not long for this happy life. Which rather spoils the fine work put in by Tennant and Fraser (with Suranne Jones and Warren Brown) up to that point.

As if that weren't enough, the next ten weeks are skipped out altogether. While I appreciate we don't need to see the immediate few hours in detail, I can't help thinking the interesting bits of the premise (a single father, remember?) occur in those first few days/weeks. If, as writer Mick Ford claims, the focus is on a man dealing with the kids once their mother is dead, then surely this is when it's at the most raw? Surely this is the time for Dave's struggles with getting the right lunchboxes and getting swimming trunks washed in time? Two and a half months later – call me a sadist if you like – just isn't as interesting.

But you can't take away from Tennant the fact that he knows where to hit his audience emotionally. It's worth watching out as well for Mark Heap's quietly assured turn as the brother-in-law.

Single Father may still be available to watch via BBC iPlayer here.
Picture courtesy of the BBC.

The Song of Lunch on BBC Two

When Christopher Reid, writer of The Song of Lunch recently dramatised by the BBC, was teaching at my University he always came across as an advocate of the idea that poetry had to be read aloud to be fully appreciated. The BBC's staging of his long poem The Song of Lunch does great service in defence of this idea (but don't be put off reading it aloud yourself – like radio, the pictures may be better and/or more personal that way). Interestingly, it was Reid's successor at the University of Hull, Martin Goodman, who suggested The Song of Lunch be dramatised in the first place.

While the thought of putting a long poem about a lunch onto the small screen may not sound thrilling, this reading by Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson (talk about casting big guns) brings the work to life in a way you just wouldn't get if you read The Song of Lunch to yourself in your head. It comes as no surprise that Reid took James Joyce's Ulysses as an inspiration for The Song of Lunch, as that's another long piece of writing that gains immensely from being read aloud. The original poem The Song of Lunch has been praised for its cinematic quality, a quality which is plain even without watching Rickman acting out the words being intoned by his own voiceover.

What we have in The Song of Lunch is a slightly mournful reminiscing about past love, the fading of youthful promise and the remorseless march of time. Alan Rickman is beautifully cast as a failed writer stuck in a job editing other people's (in his opinion, worthless) prose. The lunch is question is with his old flame, Emma Thompson, now happily married (to a successful author, the agony!) with children yet still curiously affectionate toward a man she chastises for being overly fond of her. They're having lunch to catch up after fifteen (or so) years, and this is where the combination of small screen dramatisation and poetry really comes into its own. Aching moments are slowed down to allow for the poetic interior monologue of Rickman's thoughts and narration to pour out and colour the scene, filling in the blanks pulsing with heart-saddened meaning.

But The Song of Lunch is about more than just the lunch, and more than Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson. Okay, so it's a bit of an obvious metaphor that Reid goes for, but the restaurant itself encapsulates the overriding theme at work here. Remembered by Rickman's character as a niche and proudly Italian restaurant fifteen years ago, Zanzotti's is under new management...new waiters, new tablecloths, new menu (content and printing material), less satisfying wine (but, boy, does Rickman get through the stuff) and less impressive food. He's as disappointed by that as he is with his life since he last saw Thompson's character. Yet she is pleasantly surprised at the 'improvement', as she calls it. For her, none of Rickman's (gloriously expressed) contempt of white tablecloths – another case of Reid taking a leaf from Joyce and examining the minutiae of the mundane – and far less of the wine used as a coping mechanism. Thompson is assured and comfortable (both actress and character), humouring her old lover but reminding him of the boundaries; unlike him, she has moved on, thanks in part to that remorseless march of time thing.

Most impressive about the BBC's The Song of Lunch is the way in which dedicated acting brings to dramatic life a poem already vividly cinematic in quality. Although the final message does seem to be that, when meeting an old flame, drinking too much wine is unwise...you might end up sleeping it off on the roof.

The Song of Lunch may still be available via BBC iPlayer here.

Photos courtesy of the BBC and Digimist (weekends mostly).