Tom Salinsky

Sound card and Blu-ray drive arrived today and I whipped off the back of the Media Centre PC and quickly installed both. Windows 7 recognised the sound card straight away but had it outputting two channel stereo until I downloaded and installed a Windows 7 Creative driver, whereupon it all worked beautifully.

The supplied Cyberlink PowerDVD software for playing Blu-rays baulked at my having mapped the Windows video folder to my network attached storage device, but this was worked-around by using a new Windows user with administrative powers but no mapped folders which I created for the purpose. Media Centre recognised old-fashioned DVDs placed in the new drive with no problem at all, but trying to play new-fangled Blu-rays rudely dumped me out of the Media Centre environment and into the Cyberlink software. This to be fair was what I expected, but I hadn’t expected that the Cyberlink software would then insist on downloading an update which took the best part of an hour to laboriously suck down at the feeble rate of 35Kb/s. God knows what was happening with Cyberlink’s servers.

When this was finally done, and installed, and after just a touch more screwing around, the system sprang into life and the Blu-ray copy of Inglourious Basterds which I mistakenly put on my Amazon wish list and got given for Christmas was happily playing, and looking very sharp and clear even on my 26” TV. Win! The copy of Speed which I picked up on Blu-ray also looked and sounded great with lots of atmospheric sound effects during the elevator sequence reverberating around the room as all six of my little speakers worked their socks off to provide me with sonic enjoyment.

Next question – will upgrading to Cyberlink PowerDVD v10 provide better integration with Media Centre? This meant downloading the trial version (which probably meant overwriting the free version 8 I’d finally got working, but anyway…) and again this meant making use of my new user account. 15 minutes later… Big win! Integration with Windows 7 Media Centre is pretty much seamless. This is going to cost me another fifty quid but it’s going to be worth it. *opens wallet*. At least there’s 20% off at the moment because of Labor Day or something.

Tomorrow it’s Sky+HD day, when we shall face the interesting challenge of how to connect up a digibox which favours HDMI to a TV with no HDMI sockets, and only one DVI socket which is already in use. I fear we shall be falling back on to SCART. How 1997! Then we shall also see if sound from the said digibox can be made to travel into the SPDIF in on my new sound card and then out to my 5.1 speakers, thus effectively using the PC as an amp when watching TV and harmonising (hah!) all of my audio needs.

For about five years now, my audio visual entertainment has revolved around Windows Media Centre. This week, I’m doing a major upgrade to pretty much everything, and what’s a blog for if not to document this kind of thing in fairly tedious detail?

The process has already been slightly screwed up however. The impetus to improve my broadcast TV and DVD picture quality was motivated by the decision to get a new TV set, and this, which we got for £399 in the bank holiday sale, was due to be delivered by Currys yesterday. Currys being Currys it seems they simply forgot. It’s now not coming until next Wednesday. Meanwhile more components are arriving in the next few days, none of which are going to live up to the hype on the old TV. Anyway.

So, before all of these new bits-and-pieces get installed, I thought I’d write about what I’ve got at the moment and where I’m starting from. But before I do any of that, let me just review what I’m trying to achieve.

So, here’s what I want to happen at this end of my living room.

• Watching broadcast TV
• Recording broadcast TV and watching those recordings
• Watching DVDs
• Watching downloaded movies and TV shows (all legal, of course)
• Access to my music collection and photos

Now, a cheap PC hooked up to a flat screen TV and running Windows Media Centre software (which is free with Windows 7 Home Premium or better) means I can do all of these things very easily, and has two other advantages to boot. One is that I can hook up a very cheap-and-cheerful set of PC speakers to said computer and get 5.1 surround sound for a fraction of the usual cost and without having to screw around with complicated AV receivers. The other is I can do everything with one remote control, because everything goes through the Media Centre software.

So, here’s my setup. I have a computer which I’ve build myself out of various bits-and-pieces and which gets upgraded as needed. About three months ago, it got a new motherboard and processor because like a clumsy idiot I managed to bust the old (very old) processor while trying to change the fan for a quieter model. Last week, it got a new graphics card because the on-board graphics were struggling with HD content.

This gets a wired connection to my router, which in turn gets a wired connection to a 1Tb Network Attached Storage Device – a big hard drive which holds all my (perfectly legal) downloaded movies and TV shows, my music, my pictures and so on. A good-old-fashioned VGA cable goes into the DVI connection on the back of my 26” TV and bingo, I can check off the bottom two items on my list. Sound, as mentioned, is provided by these PC speakers and since there’s a DVD drive in the PC, and the Media Centre Software handles DVDs just fine, that’s the third element too.

Here’s where it gets a little complicated.

From my point of view, if you want to watch broadcast TV in the United Kingdom, you really want Sky. Virgin and BT’s offerings have improved in recent years but Sky is still the daddy. If you want to watch the Oscars live, for example, Sky is the only game in town.

Now, if I were content with digital terrestrial TV, my system would work great. I would put a TV tuner into my PC (an internal card or a USB dongle, either works) and this would receive the digital signals through the air, and feed them into my computer for display on the TV. And since the signal is being received digitally into the PC, the Windows Media Centre software can record shows for me, having downloaded a suitable EPG (Electronic Programme Guide), not to mention pausing and rewinding live TV and all those other things that seemed like magic when we first read about Tivo in the United States.

Sky doesn’t make it quite so simple.

Even though Sky broadcasts have been digital for years, the problem is that Sky regards the decryption of its broadcasts as very much its own concern. The little card you shove in the front of your Sky box authorises it to decrypt only the channels you’ve paid for and how it does this is Sky’s business and nobody else’s. So, the only way¹ to insert Sky TV broadcasts into the Windows Media Centre environment is as follows. Sky box receives pristine digital signal from dish and decodes it. Sky box outputs audio and video signal via old-fashioned analogue SCART lead. This gets converted to composite video and stereo audio (three RCA or “phono” plugs) and is then fed into the analogue TV tuner in the PC. This takes the analogue signal and redigitises it so that Media Centre can work with it.

The picture doesn’t look quite as bad as you’re maybe imagining. But HD it ain’t.

Changing channels on the Sky box is fun too. Remember, the Sky remote plays no part in this set up. One simple remote control is a big feature of my audio-visual life and using the Sky remote would be hopeless for timed recordings. What’s the Media Centre PC going to do? Pick up the Sky remote and change the channel to BBC1 two minutes before Doctor Who starts? Well, almost.

What actually happens is that when a channel-change is required (either by me pressing a button or because a timed recording is nearing), the Media Centre machine has to send a duplicate of the required infra-red pulses down a wire, to a little “button” which I’ve stuck to the IR receiver of the Sky box. Of course, there’s no feedback from the Sky box to the computer after one of these events, so if – as occasionally happens – the Sky box fails to correctly interpret one of the pulses, the Media Centre computer has no way of knowing and so just records whatever is coming down the SCART lead.

Clearly this is less than perfect. But, you may be saying, Tom, you complete fucking idiot,² you may be saying, don’t you realise that Sky has their own solution to recording live TV!? It’s called Sky+. Yes, I’m well aware of this. But you know what Sky+ would mean don’t you? Two remotes. Probably three remotes since I’d also need to switch the TV between the Sky+ box (live and recorded TV shows) and the Media Centre PC (everything else). So I’ve strongly resisted the urge to go the Sky+ route for some time.

But while I can get away with this double-conversion of TV pictures on a 26” TV, they aren’t going to cut it on the new 42” beauty, and furthermore, I am increasingly discomfited at not being able to receive the HD broadcasts trumpeted on every station. Then there’s Blu-ray…

So here’s the plan…

1. Have new TV delivered and nailed to the wall.
2. Add Blu-ray DVD drive to PC and hope that I can find the necessary software to make it all work properly – Microsoft have been slow to provide proper support for Blu-ray, Xboxes excepted.
3. While I’m about it, upgrade the onboard audio which has never worked properly on this new motherboard.
4. Have Sky+ HD installed and regrettably bypass the Media Centre for watching and recording broadcast TV.

This will leave two problems unsolved. One is audio. I want to avoid having to blow £200 or more on a “proper” home theatre audio system, giving me yet another box and yet another remote control to worry about. But if I simply run separate HDMI cables from the Sky box and the PC to the television, I’ll get stereo sound out of the TV speakers when I’m watching TV, but 5.1 sound out of the Media Centre when watching (legally) downloaded movies or DVDs. It would be better to have 5.1 sound for everything.

The second problem is the profusion of remotes. I’ll probably need three – TV, Sky and Media Centre. It may be that the Sky remote can be used to control the TV, or it may be that a universal remote will be required, in which case I think I favour something like this which is fairly inexpensive, can be configured through the computer (nice) and doesn’t need its own docking station to stay powered up.

As mentioned however, Currys sudden attack of amnesia regarding my order means that things are not going to work out exactly like that, so here’s the new revised plan.

1. Upgrade Media Centre with Blu-ray and decent audio. Listlessly watch Blu-ray discs on old telly’s 1280×768 display.
2. Have Sky+ HD installed and try to figure out how to connect it to a TV with no HDMI socket.
3. After Sky engineer has gone, have new TV installed and nailed to the wall and have to connect up Sky box myself.

All of this, and no doubt more will be lovingly documented right here, starting tomorrow with the PC upgrade. See you then.

Part three is here

SERIES 7

NOTE: The last full series to date

7.1 Detectives On The Edge Of A Nervous Breakdown 22 Apr 1993, BBC2 Thu 9pm (35 mins)
Written by Keith Allen & Peter Richardson. Directed by Keith Allen & Peter Richardson
Featuring Allen, Richardson
Plus: Gary Beadle, Jim Broadbent, Jim Carter, Phil Cornwell, Sara Crowe, Jimmy Fagg, Richard Vernon
When the Gourmet Detective is killed in a seventies-style slaying, nineties detective Spanker must work with not only mid-seventies Bullshitters Bonehead and Foyle, but also Shouting George from the Weeney and early seventies dandy Jason Bentley of Department Z.
A sort of winking, leering, Life on Mars from the early nineties, the parody of long-forgotten Jimmy Nail vehicle Spender is piss-weak, and Cornwell is as poor as ever, but the presence of Jim Broadbent, brilliantly taking-off John Thaw, elevates the antics of Bonehead and Foyle and the extra targets for satire adds much-needed variety, compared to the original Bullshitters outing. However, in his distracting second role, Richardson promises much but delivers very little as Jason King/Bentley. Oh for Nigel Planer or Rik Mayall in this part. It’s tempting, but probably over-generous to see the incongruous song-and-dance routines as spoofing Dennis Potter, but it’s more likely that Jimmy Nail’s pop career was what Allen and Richardson had in mind, assuming it was anything more than pure indulgence.

7.2 Space Virgins From Planet Sex 29 Apr 1993, BBC2 Thu 9pm (35 mins)
Written by Peter Richardson & Pete Richens. Directed by Keith Allen & Peter Richardson
Featuring: Allen, Coltrane, Edmondson, French, Richardson, Saunders
Plus: Gary Beadle, Phil Cornwell, Doon Mackichan, Miranda Richardson, Sara Stockbridge
When a gang of alien women come to Earth in search of sperm, it’s down to secret agent James Blonde to foil their plans.
Absolutely ghastly. Despite the welcome presence of more than two-or-three of the key performers for the first time in ages, this is possibly the Comic Strip nadir. Undergraduate James Bond spoof mixed with pre-adolescent misogynistic sci-fi sex fantasy with yet more of Allen and Richardson’s by-now tiresome obsession with nineties new-man-ism. Significantly less fun than either the Bond films or the Roger Corman schlock it’s spoofing and featuring some of the dodgiest Welsh accents you’ll ever hear. The impoverished production values and awful music don’t help either. Avoid.

7.3 Queen Of The Wild Frontier 6 May 1993, BBC2 Thu 9pm (35 mins)
Written by Peter Richardson & Pete Richens. Directed by Peter Richardson
Featuring: Richardson, Sayle
Plus: Julie T Wallace, Josie Lawrence, Jack Docherty, Gary Beadle, Lynsey Baxter
Two escaped criminals are given shelter by a couple of farming sisters, starved of male company.
Julie T Wallace is pleasingly bonkers in the lead role, but Josie Lawrence finds nothing to do as her foil. It probably doesn’t help that the parts were almost certainly written with French and Saunders in mind. Jack Docherty fits in nicely in a part which might have gone to Edmondson or Allen ten years earlier, leaving Richardson and Sayle in bit-parts. Overall, this is solid, but rather unremarkable. The wild boys of British comedy are now reduced to telling only vaguely quirky bucolic love stories. Fine while it’s on, but hardly the point. Looks nice though.

7.4 Gregory – Diary Of A Nut Case 13 May 1993, BBC2 Thu 9pm (40 mins)
Written by Peter Richardson & Pete Richens. Directed by Peter Richardson
Featuring Allen, Edmondson, Planer, Richardson
Plus: Doon Mackichan, Hugh Quarshie, Sara Stockbridge, Simon McBurney, Phil Cornwell, Steve O’Donnell, Kate Robbins
Would-be serial killer Gregory Dawson documents his feeble exploits as a video diary. We also see clips from the movie which inspired him.
The Silence of the Lambs spoof is clumsy and obvious – and ironically, easily bettered by the French and Saunders take-off the same year (directed by Bob Spiers who helmed many of the early Comic Strip movies). The best joke is Keith Allen’s heavy Welsh accent as the Lecter-alike Genghis, but even this is spoiled by another pointless song-and-dance routine. The video diary segments are far better, with an excellent central performance from Edmondson – who shot to fame as violently anarchistic punk Vyvyan and yet is so often at his most effective in Comic Strip films as anxious losers. The social satire is, again, fairly toothless, but the actual “Diary of a Nutcase” story is very effective.
NOTE: This would be the last Richardson/Richens script until the 1998 revival.

7.5 Demonella 20 May 1993, BBC2 Thu 9pm (30 mins)
Written by Paul Bartel & Barry Dennen. Directed by Paul Bartel
Featuring: Allen, Coltrane, Edmondson, Planer, Richardson, Saunders
Plus: Miriam Margolyes, Sue Holland, Miranda Richardson, Paul Bartel
A struggling music producer is offered a guaranteed hit record by a slinky Satan, and all she wants in return is his mother’s recipe for chicken soup.
This, the only Comic Strip film not written or directed by any of the core team, sees Paul Bartel from the turkey turkey in the director’s chair. As film-maker he has no sense of time, place or pacing and as writer he and co-author Barry Dennen seem determined to lower the dramatic stakes at every turn, but they have no good jokes to put in the place of dramatic tension, nothing original to say and nothing new to add to the already vastly overfamiliar Faust story.

7.6 Jealousy 27 May 1993, BBC2 Thu 9pm (30 mins)
Written by Robbie Coltrane & Morag Fullarton. Directed by Robbie Coltrane
Featuring: Allen, Coltrane, Planer, Richardson, Saunders
Plus: Peter Capaldi, Steven O’Donnell, Miranda Richardson, Kathy Burke, Gary Beadle
A jealous husband will go to any lengths to discover what his wife is really up to.
Another neophyte writing and directing effort and many of the same flaws as Demonella. A laboriously clichéd plot which can’t find a focus, rarely approaches any sense of credibility or normality and which functions largely by contrivance and coincidence. Even the usually excellent Peter Capaldi is reduced to furious mugging at the end. A soggy end to a maddeningly uneven but often brilliant run.

NOTE: In 1998, the team reunited for a one-off special. This was followed by two more over the next seven years.

S.1 Four Men In A Car 12 Apr 1998, C4 Sun 9.30pm (30 mins)
Written by Peter Richardson and Pete Richens. Directed by Peter Richardson
Featuring: Edmondson, French, Mayall, Planer, Richardson, Saunders
Four obnoxious salesman make a complete hash of a trip to Swindon for a conference.
A bracing return to form after a five year break. The plot is simple and clear, the characters are great and the jokes keep coming, although Richardson and Richens appeared to have borrowed a little of Bottom’s appetite for bodily fluids and horrific injury. Richardson himself, in a disastrous wig, is given the least to do, but Mayall, Edmondson and Planer seize their parts with tremendous vigour. French and Saunders seem stuck in at the end rather at random, and they only just get away with the “magic fairy” ending, but this is better by far than anything since Red Nose of Courage.

S.2 Four Men In A Plane 4 Jan 2000, C4 Tue 9pm (35 mins)
Written by Peter Richardson and Pete Richens. Directed by Peter Richardson
Featuring: Edmondson, Mayall, Planer, Richardson
Plus: Sean Hughes
The same four odious salesman fly to Africa and then charter a plane for a feasibility conference.
A slight stumble after the excellence of the previous film, but many of the same strengths are present – a simple plot, strong characters (although Richardson has entirely revised his and is in an even worse wig), and an arresting situation. Architects of their own destruction, if you can bear the company of these horrible men, you will enjoy watching them suffer. It’s a complete boys’ game though, female characters exist only to be slavered over by the men. Remember when the Comic Strip was standing up against sexist comedians?

S.3 Sex, Actually 2005, 28 Dec 2005, C4 9pm (45 mins)
Written by Peter Richardson and Pete Richens. Directed by Peter Richardson
Featuring: Mayall, Planer, Richardson
Plus: Robert Bathurst, Phil Cornwell, Rebecca Front, Tamer Hassan, Doon Mackichan, Sheridan Smith, Steve O’Donnell
In a typical suburban house, a meet-the-new-neighbours party threatens to reveal dark secrets.
Boring and confusing entry in the series. A quite unnecessary addition and with a completely nonsensical final reel. Mayall is in good form and Robert Bathurst is also a nice edition, but little things like story, jokes and motivation seem to have eluded Richardson this time around.

Part two is here.

SERIES 5

NOTE: The move to the BBC also sees Richardson and Richens back in complete control, with Richardson firmly in the director’s chair also.

With many of the regular team developing their own careers, the ensemble cast is widened to include Gary Beadle, Sara Crowe, Doon Mackichan, Tim McInnerny, Phil Cornwell and Steve O’Donnell, and the series is now prestigious enough to attract guest stars such as Miranda Richardson, Kate Bush and even Antony Sher.

5.1 South Atlantic Raiders – Part 1 1 Feb 1990, BBC2 Thu 9pm (30 mins)
5.2 South Atlantic Raiders – Part 2: Argie Bargie! 8 Feb 1990, BBC2 Thu 9pm (35 mins)
Written by Peter Richardson & Pete Richens. Directed by Peter Richardson
Featuring Coltrane, Edmondson, French, Planer, Richardson, Saunders
With: Kathy Burke, Lenny Henry, Ron Tarr, Lemmy
A love affair over the radio requires a bank robbery, a prison break, a plane hijack, and an invasion of the Falkland Islands before “Happily Ever After”.
Utterly typical of Richardson and Richens with all their faults and all their failings. On the one hand the story is original, arresting, makes sense and features strong characters and situations most of the time. There are some dreadful lapses however (the redundant and clichéd prison sequence) and the mix of drama and comedy is sometimes uneasy. With the comedy elements pushing the story toward absurdity, it is hard to take the drama as seriously as it seems to want. The series as a whole feels re-energised and refocused however.
NOTE: One of Richardson’s least favourites, and he cut around 5 minutes for the DVD release, to the ire of some fans.

5.3 GLC: The Carnage Continues 15 Feb 1990, BBC2 Thu 9pm (30 mins)
Written by Peter Richardson & Pete Richens. Directed by Peter Richardson
Featuring Allen, Coltrane, Edmondson, French, Mayall, Planer, Richardson, Saunders
Plus: Leslie Philips, Gary Beadle, Ron Tarr
In Hollywood’s version, GLC leader Ken Livingstone (Charles Bronson) needs all the help he can get to defeat the evil Ice Maiden (Bridget Nielson).
Abbreviated re-run of “The Strike” with redundant premiere sequence to set it up but no other behind-the-scenes story. Some bright gags and a compact running time help keep the sense of gnawing familiarity at bay. Coltrane is marvelous, as ever.

5.4 Oxford 22 Feb 1990, BBC2 Thu 9pm (30 mins)
Written by Peter Richardson & Pete Richens. Directed by Peter Richardson
Featuring Edmondson, French, Planer, Richardson, Saunders
Plus: Lenny Henry, Ronald Allen, Leslie Philips, Graham Crowden
An paranoid American comedy movie star and a ball-busting American student cross paths at Oxford University.
Odd splicing-together of ideas which never really gels. Often looks great, but the dearth of jokes is a huge problem and Henry is awful.

5.5 Spaghetti Hoops 1 Mar 1990, BBC2 Thu 9pm (30 mins)
Written by Peter Richardson & Pete Richens. Directed by Peter Richardson
Featuring: Allen, French, Planer, Richardson, Saunders, Sayle
Plus: Tim McInnerny, Steve O’Donnell, Nosher Powell
In Italy, a crooked banker embezzles millions and then attempts to escape, pursued by two amateur hitmen in the pay of the Freemasons.
Cleverly combines atmospheric black-and-white photography with cheeky gags about the lack of foreign location filming. Planer and Sayle in particular are in fine form, but the nervous hitman stuff and the Freemason jokes fall flat and feel second-hand. The near total disregard for basic cause-and-effect plotting doesn’t help either.

5.6 Les Dogs 8 Mar 1990, BBC2 Thu 9pm (30 mins)
Written by Peter Richardson & Pete Richens. Directed by Peter Richardson
Featuring: Allen, Edmonson, Peacock, Richardson, Sayle
Plus: Gary Beadle, Kate Bush(!), Tim McInnerny, Steve O’Donnell, Miranda Richardson, Julie T Wallace
In an England run by an eco-dictator who bans cars and television, a wedding degenerates into all-out war, although many attendees seemingly take this all in their stride, including the gatecrasher seducing the bride through a series of fantasy sequences.
Disjointed and willfully nonsensical even by Comic Strip standards, this thoroughly bizarre entry does kind of work, if you’re in the mood for it. Richardson’s cool tone, as both director and de facto protagonist, anchors the piece, allows the character sketches to work in their own right, and skillfully balances the reality of the carnage with the seen-it-all-before reactions from most of the characters. Look! It’s Kate Bush.

F.3 The Pope Must Die Feature Film 1991 (88 min)
Written by Peter Richardson & Pete Richens. Directed by Peter Richardson
Featuring: Coltrane, Edmondson, Richardson
Plus: Alex Rocco, Annette Crosbie, William Hootkins, Paul Bartel
NOTE: Again, really only a Comic Strip Film if you accept the premise that everything Peter Richardson directs is a Comic Strip Film. As he directs little else (except Stella Street) and always casts from the same pool of people, it’s not an entirely untenable premise, but the film evaded the Channel 4 DVD box set in any event and I haven’t seen it either.

SERIES 6

The sixth “series” was, again, a number of one-off specials broadcast during 1992.

6.1 Red Nose Of Courage 9 Apr 1992, BBC2 Thu 10.30pm (50 mins)
Written by Peter Richardson & Pete Richens. Directed by Peter Richardson
Featuring: Allen, Coltrane, Edmondson, French, Mayall, Planer, Richardson, Saunders, Sayle
Plus: Phil Cornwell, Mark Caven, Sue Lloyd Allen, Doon Mackichan, Nosher Powell
With echoes of The Shop Around The Corner, opposition leader Glenys Kinnock has no idea that the shy Coco The Clown with whom she is striking up a passionate affair is actually Prime Minister John Major.
While any number of hack newspaper cartoonists made limp fun of the fact that new Prime Minister John Major had supposedly run away from the circus to become an accountant, it took The Comic Strip to portray him as leading an insane double-life of politician by day and clown by night, and to create a genuinely tender love story into the bargain. Edmondson and French as Major and Kinnock are outstanding, and only Major’s preachily climactic speech and a slightly uneasy Sayle spoil this excellent entry which for once easily sustains its length. Also, something has happened to the budget or the film stock as this looks far glossier, more expensive and more cinematic than any of the preceding films.
NOTES: Second of only two appearances in the BBC episodes by Rik Mayall, who was busy on ITV’s The New Statesman for much of this period. Transmitted on the night of the general election at which John Major was unexpectedly returned to power. This entry runs 50 minutes. No later Comic Strip film was longer. The days of hour-plus entries are thankfully behind us.

6.2 The Crying Game 5 May 1992, BBC2 Tue 10pm (35 mins)
Written by Keith Allen & Peter Richardson. Directed by Keith Allen & Peter Richardson
Featuring: Allen, Planer, Richardson
Plus: Gary Beadle, Phil Cornwell, Chris Hargreaves, Simon McBurney, Paul Moriarty, Antony Sher, Sara Stockbridge
Footballer Roy Brush is signed to a major London club and is quickly drawn into a whirlwind of lucrative promotions, personal appearances and tabloid coverage. However, his personal life hides a secret which may be his undoing.
The satire is toothless, the themes well-worn even in 1992, and it still manages to be overlong at 35 mins. On the upside, Allen’s central performance is uncharacteristically vulnerable and all the better for it, and Antony Sher’s dementedly pop-eyed tabloid editor is a bit of a treat but overall this is a very slender entry. The juxtaposition of the supposedly moving inspirational speech from the club manager with Phil Cornwell mugging away as TV pundit “Jimmy Twizzle” behind an enormous plastic chin tells you everything you need to know about how clumsy and misguided this is.

6.3 Wild Turkey 24 Dec 1992, BBC2 Thu 10pm (30 mins)
Written by Peter Richardson & Pete Richens. Directed by Peter Richardson
Featuring: Richardson, Saunders
Plus: Ruby Wax, Paul Bartel, Phil Cornwell, Mike McShane, Gary Beadle
An all-American cop brings home to his wife the last Christmas turkey he can find, which turns out not to be quite dead yet, and determined not to be cooked and eaten. It takes Sue and Jim hostage and demands Bernard Matthews (the British turkey magnate) be brought to him.
The only Comic Strip Christmas Special brings us more toothlessly clumsy satire, saying nothing that Douglas Adams hadn’t said in one-sixth the time, a dozen years earlier, in his dish-of-the-day sequence at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Many of the Comic Strip films suffer from an uneasy relationship between the narrative and the comedy. Some play the story straight and stick jokes on top, seemingly at random (Private Enterprise). Some manage to elevate the otherwise slight comedy with bravura staging and playing (A Fistful of Travellers Cheques). A precious few blend the comedy and the drama perfectly and maintain the balance throughout (Red Nose of Courage). Plenty simply don’t have enough jokes to keep the interest (The Yob). In this rare case, the glossy presentation and melodramatic acting just serves to kill what few jokes there are. And how is it that Phil Cornwell – an impressionist – can’t sustain an American accent?

3D is back in our cinemas and it’s big business. Cinemas can charge more for 3D movies, 3D movies earn more revenue and – along with monster screens – are another key differentiator for cinema, in this frighteningly modern age of Blu-ray, iTunes and Bittorrent (whatever that is).

Of course, 3D is nothing new, and I don’t want to use this space to reproduce Wikipedia entries about its history, nor whine about it being used badly or inappropriately, nor even do I want to assess its place as another colour for moving picture artists to add to their palette. I want to talk about something more fundamental – what is it?

The briefest of history lessons, just to explain why 3D is suddenly back in our cinemas, and to add a little context. 3D in this sense essentially means delivering two subtly different images to each eye. This can be done in various ways, with the most popular in the twentieth century being the red/blue anaglyph method. This sends a red-tinted image to one eye and a blue-tinted image to the other eye thanks to cardboard glasses. The method is cheap to implement but entails obvious compromise of colour within the images. LCD shutter glasses which blocked all light reaching each eye alternately were briefly experimented with but you can’t give out expensive items of electronic equipment free with breakfast cereal and they need both power and careful synchronisation with the projected image. Neither is ideal, which is why 3D was so niche for so long.

The reason for the current swathe of 3D movie is that two new technologies have caught up with an existing one. The glasses you get given at your local Vue or Odeon today are polarised, which effectively means that half the light enters one eye and the other half enters the other eye. No colour distortion, but a dimmer image, and you can’t just blast twice the light through 35mm film to make up for the shortfall, since twice the light means twice the heat and you’ll melt the celluloid. However, the advent of digital (filmless) projectors combined with hugely reflective metal screens means that polarisation can be deployed without the images being reduced to a murky gloom. Reflective screens + polarised glasses + digital projection systems = $$$ it seems.

And more is to come – 3D TV is on its way, with several lenticular (you know, like those corrugated postcards which seemed to move if you tilted them) systems which send a different image to each eye, provided you sit in just the right position and keep your head still.

But what exactly is the benefit of all of this?

Well, it isn’t 3D except in the very trivial sense that the images you are watching now have an apparent third dimension of depth to add to their existing dimensions of height and width. No, it’s stereoscopy or stereo imagery which is no more like actually being there than a stereo recording is actually like being at a concert.

Let’s start by considering how our brains interpret the three-dimensionality of the world at the moment. Information about how near or far things are comes from three sources.

• Perspective. Things which are further away are smaller in our field of vision (Dougal) and parallel lines which recede from us appear to converge.
• Parallax. Things which are nearer to us appear to cross our field of vision more quickly, whereas things which are further away cross our field of vision more slowly. This works even with stationary objects if you move your head. Try it now and notice that your monitor or laptop screen moves through your field of vision much more than the wall behind it.
• Stereoscopy or stereopsis. The left eye sees a different version of the image than the right eye. The brain automatically combines both images into a single version of reality, giving each element of the image a “depth value”.

Of these three, perspective is present in any photograph of the world, and is obviously a part of any movie, 3D or not. The second, parallax, in the first sense is equally present in any live-action movie and, was a key reason for Walt Disney to create his multiplane camera in the 1930s. However, in the second sense, it is absent from all movies, 3D or not. You can’t move your head and see a different image as you could if you were witnessing the events live. The 3D stereoscopy is an illusion, one which is shattered if you try and interact with the image in even the most trivial way. We are not Luke Skywalker, able to walk around the projection of Princess Leia and see her from whatever angle we please. At least with your “RealD” glasses you can move your head without the image actually falling apart, unlike those lenticular TVs I mentioned earlier (disclaimer: this technology will obviously improve over time and I haven’t sat in front of one myself yet, so I know not whereof I speak – but that’s the prerogative of a blogger, is it not?).

Undoubtedly, 3D stereoscopy can enhance some movies. It can also ruin others (for some insights into what’s going right and wrong see this fascinating series of article by David Bayon on the PCPro blog). But it would please me if there were more realistic descriptions readily available for what is going on. Traditional “2D” cinema creates an illusion of depth through perspective and parallax. People with good vision in only one eye don’t live in flatland and if you close one eye, your ability to – for example – catch a ball will only be very slightly impaired. Stereoscopic movies enhance the depth illusion but do not complete it, and very odd effects can be created when an object which appears to be jutting out towards the viewer, then moves off the edge of the screen.

Stereoscopic movies are probably here to stay and the technology now exists to retrofit stereo into movies shot with a single camera, so we’ll be seeing more of them, not less. But they aren’t now, nor will they ever be as three dimensional as the room you’re sitting in right now. For that, you’ll have to go to theatre.

Part one is here.

SERIES 3

NOTE: “Series 3” is in fact three specials shown over a three year period, which also saw the production of two feature films. The new title sequence with a drawing of a village rather than a map makes its debut.

3.1 The Bullshitters: Roll out the Gunbarrel 3 Nov 1984, C4 Sat 11:00pm (50 mins)
Written by Peter Richardson & Keith Allen. Directed by Stephen Frears
Featuring Allen, Coltrane, Richardson
Plus: Alan Pellay, Fiona Hendley, Al Matthews, Malcolm Hardee, Elvis Costello
In a world where TV detectives solve real cases, Bonehead and Foyle reunite to solve a kidnapping armed only with tight Y-fronts and a sack of 10ps for the phone.
Bracingly original mix of drama school satire and TV spoof, with plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, but suffering from too many winks at camera (especially the ending). The names “Bonehead” and “Foyle” are dreary, sub-Mad Magazine placeholders and are typical of the occasional laziness which mars this entry.
NOTE: No “Comic Strip Presents” title sequence as Allen wanted to distance the film from the others in the sequence, but has all the hallmarks of one and led to a sequel (“Detectives on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown”) which is unarguably a “Comic Strip” film. It is included on the C4 DVD box set.

F.1 The Supergrass 1985 Feature film. (103 mins)
Written by Peter Richardson & Pete Richens. Directed by Peter Richardson
Featuring Allen, Coltrane, French, Peacock, Planer, Richardson, Saunders, Sayle
Plus: Michael Elphick, Ronald Allen
Desperate to impress his girlfriend, Dennis boasts to his girlfriend that he is involved in a major drugs-smuggling operation. Before long, he has agreed to turn Queen’s evidence and finds himself in a hotel room with a beautiful police officer and her ex-boyfriend.
The story sustains itself admirably and the characters are well-drawn, but only Alexei Sayle’s motorcycle cop is really funny enough. Coltrane’s walk along the pier is staggering though and there are other pleasures along the way, such as the uniformly strong performances, with Saunders and Richardson in particular happily inside their comfort zones (which they aren’t always).

3.2 Consuela, or, The New Mrs Saunders 1 Jan 1986, C4 Wed 11pm (45 mins)
Written by Dawn French & Jennifer Saunders. Directed by Stephen Frears
Featuring Edmondson, French, Mayall, Richardson, Saunders,
Parody of “Rebecca” with Edmondson as the upper-class twit who prefers dogs to his new wife and French as the creepily ever-present Maid.
French’s preternatural ability to inhabit every aspect of Saunders’ life works beautifully, but it is often too close to the source to be really funny – an error which would be endlessly repeated in French and Saunders’ TV shows.

3.3 Private Enterprise 2 Jan 1986, C4 Thu 11pm (40 mins)
Written by Adrian Edmondson. Directed by Adrian Edmondson
Featuring Allen, Edmondson, French, Mayall, Planer, Richardson
Plus: Chris Langham, Roger Sloman, Malcolm Hardee, Simon Brint, Rowland Rivron
A delivery man on parole steals a demo tape from a recording studio and makes the band a huge success without them knowing.
After the hilarious highs of “Eddie Monsoon” and “Bad News”, Edmondson’s next stint as writer (and for the first time, director) is a bit flat with no real sense of jeopardy, especially in the last five minutes.

F.2 Eat The Rich 1987 Feature film (83 mins)
Written by Peter Richardson & Pete Richens. Directed by Peter Richardson
Featuring Nosher Powell, Alan Pellay, Ronald Allen
Plus appearances by Planer, Coltrane, Saunders, French, Miranda Richardson, Paul McCartney, Bill Wyman, Jools Holland
Not available on DVD, so I’m relying on my memory of watching it when it first came out, which is of a horrible muddle involving an androgynous waiter, Nosher Powell as the Home Secretary and a Solyent Green ending which was traded-on extensively in the publicity material and yet I fear is meant to be a shocking surprise.
NOTE: No “Comic Strip Presents” title sequence and its status is less clear, especially as it was not included in the DVD box set.

SERIES 4

NOTE: Richardson and Richens take a back seat but the one film they contribute is the jewel in the crown. As other would-be writers step up to the plate, and as the budget balloons, a regrettable tendency to self-indulgence begins to engulf the series. None of the Series 4 films come in at under an hour and most struggle to sustain their length.

4.1 The Strike 20 Feb 1988, C4 Sat 10.50pm (75 mins)
Written by Peter Richardson & Pete Richens. Directed by Peter Richardson & Pete Richens
Featuring Allen, Coltrane, Edmondson, French, Mayall, Peacock, Planer, Richardson, Saunders, Sayle
Plus: Ronald Allen
An earnest script-writer is horrified to see what Hollywood does to his screenplay depicting the miners’ strike.
The Comic Strip’s finest hour (and a quarter), the cross-cutting from finished movie to behind the scenes sustains brilliantly (far better than GLC), the cast all play multiple roles to perfection (Sayle again is stunning) and it’s genuinely funny all the way through. A triumph and well deserving of its acclaim and Montreux win.
NOTE: This episode won the Golden Rose and Press Award at the Montreux Festival

4.2 More Bad News 27 Feb 1988, C4 Sat 10.50pm (60 mins)
Written by Adrian Edmondson. Directed by Adrian Edmondson
Featuring Edmondson, French, Mayall, Planer, Richardson, Saunders
The worst heavy metal band in the world reunites at the behest of a documentary crew.
Limp rehash of Bad News redeemed by the insane Donnington sequence.

4.3 Mr Jolly Lives Next Door 5 Mar 1988, C4 Sat 10.50pm (60 mins)
Written by Adrian Edmondson and Rik Mayall & Roland Rivron. Directed by Stephen Frears
Featuring Edmondson, French, Mayall, Richardson, Saunders
Plus: Peter Cook, Nicholas Parsons, Thomas Wheatley
A pair of repellent male escorts, in a crazed pursuit of money to buy alcohol, intercept an instruction addressed to their neighbour to “take out Nicholas Parsons”. Not realising that this implies a hit, they take the place of a pair of competition winners who have won a night out with the family entertainer.
Lunatic precursor to “Bottom” which features all of their usual touchstones: light entertainment figureheads, lethal dipsomania and extraordinary violence. Stephen Frears keeps the pace up, Cook is hilarious – as is Parsons as himself – and the gags keep coming. If you have ever liked Mayall and Edmondson, you’ll adore Mr Jolly, but it won’t make any new converts.

4.4 The Yob 12 Mar 1988, C4 Sat 10.50pm (65 mins)
Written by Keith Allen & Daniel Peacock. Directed by Ian Emes
Featuring Allen, Edmondson, Richardson
Plus Gary Olsen, Malcolm Hardee
During an experiment, a yob switches brains with a pretentious pop video director.
Slick and glossy and boasting some good performances, but the one joke doesn’t sustain and it moves at a snail’s pace. It seems to be a pure expression of Allen’s hatred for both ends of the social spectrum and is consequently thoroughly off-putting as well as being very self indulgent and largely witless.

4.5 Didn’t You Kill My Brother? 19 Mar 1988, C4 Sat 10.50pm (65 mins)
Written by Alexei Sayle and Pauline Melville & David Stafford. Directed by Bob Spiers
Featuring Richardson, Sayle
Plus: Beryl Reid, Pauline Melville, Graham Crowden, Benjamin Zephaniah, Dexter Fletcher, Mmoloki Chrystie, Mark Wing-Davey
One of a pair of identical twins is released from prison, to find his gangland brother and mother waiting for him.
More self-indulgence, with Sayle constructing a pretty ropey framework for his own stand-up routines, and playing two roles himself – both fairly poorly. After his superb performance in “Strike”, this is a huge disappointment. Only Graham Crowden’s barking mad judge emerges unscathed.

4.6 Funseekers 26 Mar 1988, C4 Sat 10.50pm (60 mins)
Written by Doug Lucie & Nigel Planer. Directed by Baz Taylor
Featuring Allen, Planer, Richardson
Plus: Cathy Burke
A loser’s misadventures on an 18-30 holiday for which he is too old.
The southbound slide of the series continues with this utterly uninteresting entry, which again I couldn’t make it to the end of. Irretrievably boring after 10 minutes, I gave up after 30, fed-up of watching thinly-drawn characters annoy each other in unpleasant surroundings. What the hell is the Comic Strip doing aping “Duty Free”? Dire.

I have a history of being a very picky eater. As a child, I subsisted for years on a diet of frozen French bread pizzas, sweetcorn, Birds Eye potato waffles and edam cheese. It’s a miracle I didn’t keel over from malnutrition. In adult life, I’ve attempted to conquer most of my, what food writer Jeffrey Steingarten acutely identifies as, food phobias. The big areas of difficulty remain fish, especially shellfish; milk and cream, especially in a sweet context; and eggs.

I have learned to tolerate hard-boiled eggs in something like a Cobb salad, for example, and a few years ago made the exciting discovery that fried eggs in particular are quite nice with bacon. (Really, it sounds peculiar, but you should really try it). Scrambled eggs remain utterly beyond the pale, combining as they do an unpleasantly eggy flavour with a revoltingly sloppy and slobbery texture. I have a similar aversion to porridge – and don’t get me started on custard. My wife tells me that (with a little help from St Delia) I make the best scrambled eggs in the world. I can’t say for certain – I’ve never sampled them.

On the thing which has in the past frustrated me as the chief cook in our household is my inability to stomach omelettes. Omelettes combine fast convenience with their ability to incorporate whatever you happen to have in the fridge. Like risotto, once you have mastered the basic recipe, you can fling in almost whatever you fancy. Unlike risotto, an omelette is ready in 5-10 minutes and requires very little in the way of constant stirring. Inspired by a satisfactorily overcooked and delectably rubbery omelette I ate on a plane (really!) I recently tried a gutsy Gordon Ramsay version which involved frying up bacon and tomatoes, then pouring the eggs into the same pan and adding cheese (I think parmesan) and other good things. But after half a portion, I had to surrender as the relentlessly slobbery egginess overpowered me.

The fearsomely forensic Felicity Cloake tackled the Spanish omelette in her “perfect” Guardian column this week, and her article made me think that this might be the way forward. A dinner primarily consisting of potatoes, with some bright salty flavours to cut through the relatively small amount of egg, which would a) serve merely as a cement to glue the thing together, and b) be heavily caramalised and for the most part cooked through to rubbery toothsomeness.

Luckily for you, I documented the process. I’m adding chorizo and feta to Felicity’s basic recipe, as well as taking some short cuts. This is still around 40 minutes to an hour from fridge-opening to plating up – considerably less than a French omelette – but it’s fairly relaxed, leisurely cooking for the most part. Take your time and have fun.

Onions and potatoes: I cut up a Spanish (of course) onion and gently fried it in olive oil until it was mostly transparent. While the onion cooked, I sliced up around 300g of charlotte potatoes as thin as I reasonably could (I didn’t bother to peel them, although Felicity says I should have). They went into the pan for another 10-15 minutes until they were basically cooked through, but before the onion went from brown to burnt.

Eggs: six of them, briefly beaten up with a fork and generously seasoned with salt and pepper. The onions and the potatoes join the eggs in their jug for some happy mingling while I turn my attention to the

Chorizo: I sliced up half a 225g “ring” of chorizo and briefly fried it in the same pan while I prepared the

Feta cheese and herbs. I’ve got a 200g pack here, cut into cubes, a generous pile of chopped flatleaf parsley and just a little fresh thyme.

Combine: once the chorizo is cooked, everything goes in with eggs to ensure an even distribution of ingredients.

Second pan: These then go into a smaller pan (about 25cm across) because we want a compact thick Spanish omelette, not a wide flat French one. Again, there’s a slick of olive oil in here, but we don’t want to cook the egg mixture too fast. Slide a pallet knife around the edges and when it feels like the bottom is cooked through, turn it out on to a plate and then slide it back in to the pan to cook the other side. (Some people put the whole pan in the oven or under the grill at this point instead of turning the omelette over.)

Stuck and falling apart. What you hope, if you take the turn-out-on-to-a-plate method, is that a beautifully golden-brown omelette will plop neatly out of the pan ready to be slid back in, runny-side down for a further gentle cooking. What actually happened in my case, due to the age of my pan, or lack of care, or who knows what, is that bits of the omelette stuck to the bottom of pan and had to be hacked free with a slotted spoon. This significantly impaired the aesthetic of the dish, but the taste didn’t appear to suffer.

Serve. When the other side is finally done, turn the whole thing out and cut slices to serve. The quantities given serve four as a modest main course.

The results were almost exactly as I had hoped. The omelette was very satisfyingly potatoey and the sharpness of the feta and the salty richness of the chorizo combined with the iron parsley to cut through what little eggy cement there was in a very lively way. The result was comforting, filling, fresh and none too difficult to prepare. It was also delicious cold the next day.

The only questions which remain are – what else is good to put in a Spanish omelette (red pepper, broccoli, parmesan, taleggio, gruyere, bacon – any other ideas) and is there any really difference between Spanish omelette and the Italian frittata except geographically?

UPDATED TO ADD: Tonight’s version included bacon, purple sprouting broccoli and pecorino cheese and was quite delectable. I also learned the trick of turning it out of the pan neatly.

First of all, I want to introduce you to this blog, which admirably sums up in its every post, my feelings about language, grammar and pedantry – to whit, it take only a modest level of education to criticise other people for supposed infringements such as split infinitives, dangling participles or what have you, but none of this has anything to do with understanding how language works, which is a more complicated undertaking. If you prefer not to split infinitives, then that is primarily a reflection of your taste, and says little or nothing about how English grammar actually works or is used by its speakers.

So, while it may be entertaining to read (and certainly to write) about grammatical “pet peeves”, this caveat should be borne clearly in mind by writer and reader alike. X may very well drive you crazy, but if X is fairly common among native English speakers (from any country) then that says far more about you than it does about them or about X.

All that having been said, let’s start with a very common English stumbling block. For some reason, English speakers who have no problem at all selecting “I” or “me” when talking only about themselves reach for the wrong pronoun when talking in the plural. Should you care about getting this right (and, as mentioned, there’s no particular reason why you should) the rule is very easy to apply. We don’t even have to approach the baby slopes of grammar terminology. I can give you the rule without even talking about “subject” and “object” (which is the reason for the distinction).

Try these five sentences. Which is right?

• Me and Jo are going swimming later, do you want to come?
• It’s not your problem, just let Chris and I handle it.
• Sam and I will go first, followed by you and then the rest.
• We’ve talked about it and both me and Pat feel we should contribute.
• Just give it to either me or Sandy on your way past.

Ready for the answer? Here it comes…

The third and fifth are correct. The others are all wrong. How do you know? Just remove the other person.

• Me is going swimming later, do you want to come?
• It’s not your problem, just let I handle it.
• I will go first, followed by you and then the rest.
• We’ve talked about it and me feels we should contribute.
• Just give it to me on your way past.

So, the point is that anyone who cares can easily get this right if they want, but if you don’t care, then it should only affect that small percentage of people who both know and get cross about it. It makes me mildly annoyed when, in dramas, a character who would be quite likely to both know and care is given lines by a writer who either doesn’t know or doesn’t care and so gets it wrong, but I’ve learned to live with it.

What I find more interesting is some of the psychology which these facts about language and the presence of these rules brings along for the ride. Because people remember having had “me and X” corrected to “X and I”, the latter seems to have a more prestigious status in some people’s minds, so I suspect that some people who say “X and I” when “me and X” would have been correct are overcorrecting. They wanted to say “me and X”, they knew that sounded right, but they corrected it to “X and I” at the last minute. In some cases, the anxiety about whether to say “I” or “me” is so profound that people substitute “myself” instead, which is almost guaranteed to be wrong (once again, “wrong” in this one very narrow, prescriptive sense). For some people (especially in HR) this becomes a linguistic tic which can quickly become irritating. “Would you just sign the letter yourself, and then send it back to myself so that Jo and myself can review it and then myself will get back to yourself before yourself goes away on Thursday.” Please find the time to punch yourself in the face, while you’re at it, noticing as you do that because “punch yourself” is reflexive (the puncher is both subject and object, doer and done-to) that “yourself” is appropriate here. You may also use “myself” for emphasis as in “I can punch you in the face myself if you prefer,” but it is not a substitute for any and all personal pronouns.

I think there’s something else even deeper going on here. I think that a kind of neurotic politeness forces people away from both “I” and “me” pronouns; a need to avoid putting oneself in the line of fire, or the spotlight. “Myself” is somehow weaker than “me” and creates a barrier between my audience and the anxious core of my being. Here’s another example of a similar habit.

Here’s some English verb conjugating for you. English prefers to pile on extra words rather than fuck about with a lot of complicated verb endings to address things like case, tense, voice and so on, so these verb conjugations are pretty easy. Let’s take the verb “jump” and the present simple tense.

First person singular: I jump
First person plural: We jump
Second person singular or plural: You jump
Third person singular: He/she/it jumps
Third person plural: They jump

What’s missing from this list? English has an extra pronoun, sometimes omitted, and certainly with a rather archaic feel. Not “ye” or “thou”, both of which are certainly outside modern English. Not the American “y’all” which allows for a useful distinction between second person singular and second person plural, a distinction not found in standard English. No, it is the generic third person “one”, which today belongs primarily in the mouths of lazy comedians substituting it for any and all pronouns when impersonating members of the royal family. So what do we do, when we want to talk about “people in general” rather than any one person or group of people in particular? We co-opt the already over-stretched second person pronoun “you”.

And fair enough. “What should one do when one encounters another person with grammatical habits one takes a personal dislike to?” sounds unbearably pompous, stuffy and hifalutin. How much more relaxed, informal, natural and appropriate to use “you” instead. But what I’ve noticed is that the word “you” often gets substituted for “I” or “me” instead. Take film reviews as an example. Here’s a random example from the Total Film review of Inception.

At no point do you feel anything is here for effect, or that one constituent part doesn’t interact seamlessly with those around it.

Whose feelings are being described here? Not mine, I don’t know this reviewer, I’ve never met Neil Smith. He’s in fact describing his own response, but imagines that his opinions are generally shared or – more likely – is on some level anxious about owning this opinion, so the third person generic “you” is pressed into service. Here’s another example – sticking with “Inception”.

The denouement is a rather unsatisfying moment which leaves you wondering whether [POTENTIAL SPOILER REDACTED].

It might or might not leave me wondering. All we know for the moment is that it left you wondering, Jason Korsner. Other examples are easy to find. It’s particularly noticeable when the interviewee is trying to make an experience which very few people have sound relatable and universal. Here’s an interview with Sheryl Crow which I found from 1999.

You hear about male singers picking girls out of the audience and taking them backstage – but what would I do with a guy when I got him? I’ve got to get on the tour bus and drive all night. I think those days only really existed when you were flying around and you could stay and party until four in the morning and then get into your private jet and fly to the next place. God, if only it was that way now!

Oddly, Sheryl, I don’t share that experience.

Having noticed this, I found it hard to avoid. I’m now in the habit of mentally substituting “I” when I hear this awkward “you” and, yes, it does sound a little more direct, but it also sounds a bit more honest and revealing, which is usually the point of giving an interview or writing a review. I may have spoiled interviews and reviews for you forever, but I’m afraid from now on you’ll have to put up with it. And if you’re pissed off with myself, then that’s something you and me are just going to have to deal with. But you know what that’s like, right?

The Comic Strip is the name given to one of the first “alternative” comedy clubs in the eighties, a group of actor-writer-comedians who emerged from that club, and the comedy films that they made first for Channel 4 and later for BBC2.

The Comic Strip presents is indelibly linked with Channel 4, despite their late defection to the BBC (and cinema movies). Firstly because BBC2 had The Young Ones with much of the same cast, and most famously because their first film “Five Go Mad In Dorset” was shown on Channel 4’s opening night. In fact, Comic Strip leading light Peter Richardson was initially in the frame to play Mike in The Young Ones, but legend has it, he called Paul Jackson a cunt and so was replaced.

The project was astonishingly ambitious. No format. No regular characters. A new, half-hour movie (later longer) each week, in a new genre, with a new cast (although there was a core group), most of whom also wrote, and some of whom directed, especially later on. What follows is an episode guide, in the Halliwell style, with cast lists, key credits, a brief synopsis and a critical appraisal. There is also some debate about what is and is not a Comic Strip film. A box set released a few years ago fails to be definitive, so I’ve aimed to be comprehensive.

Core performers were Peter Richardson, Rik Mayall, Adrian Edmondson, Nigel Planer, Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Robbie Coltrane, Keith Allen and Daniel Peacock. Alexei Sayle initially refused to participate feeling that this would be disloyal to The Young Ones, but he has a cameo in the movie The Supergrass and appears fairly regularly from The Strike onwards. Behind the camera, Peter Richardson almost always writes with Pete Richens.

Wildly unpredictable, the best Comic Strip films are some of the best that British comedy has ever offered. The worst are ghastly, self-indulgent rubbish. This guide lovingly charts all of those (often sickeningly vertiginous) ups-and-downs.

SERIES 1

Original title sequence with map and flashing “you are here” sign. Established TV comedy directors behind the camera. FGMID was the pilot and another five episodes were commissioned by Channel 4 when it was clear that The Young Ones was going to be a hit. Of these, one (“An Evening With Eddie Monsoon”) was pulled by Channel 4 and later resurfaced in the second series as “Eddie Monsoon – A Life”.

1.1 Five Go Mad in Dorset. 2 Nov 1982, C4 Tue 10.15pm (30 mins)
Written by Richardson and Richens. Directed by Bob Spiers.
Featuring Coltrane, Edmondson, French, Peacock, Richardson, Saunders
Plus: Ronald Allen, Nosher Powell, Ron Tarr
The famous five have a wizard time, getting foreigners, Jews and queers arrested, overhearing secret plans and consuming lashings of ginger beer.
The first and just possibly the best. The comic idea is instantly understandable, the performances are first rate, there’s just enough plot to sustain the length and the laughs keep coming. Edmondson’s feeble pleas for holiday without adventure magically combine pathos with absurdity and the punchline is superb.

1.2 War 3 Jan 1983, C4 Mon 9pm (30 mins)
Written by Richardson and Richens. Directed by Bob Spiers
Featuring Coltrane, Edmondson, French, Mayall, Peacock, Planer, Richardson, Saunders
In 1985, a young couple try to escape war-torn England.
Sporadically amusing piece which swaps narrative drive for a series of sketches, some great (the tunnel), some not so great (the Mexican cowboys). All the cast play multiple roles (except Peacock and French in the leads) and the rapid pace at least ensures that none of the sketches outstays its welcome. But it doesn’t make a lot of sense and exposes one of Richardson and Richens’ key flaw as writers: trusting that the absurdity (often obscurity) of the central idea will carry the story through. Here it does – just about.

1.3 The Beat Generation 17 Jan 1983, C4 Mon 9pm (30 mins)
Written by Peter Richardson & Pete Richens. Directed by Bob Spiers
Featuring Allen, Edmondson, French, Mayall, Peacock, Planer, Richardson, Saunders
In 1960s England, a young man desperate to impress allows – in fact encourages – a motley gang of poets and would-be anarchists to wreck his parents’ house in the name of “freedom”.
Very typical entry with excellent character sketches from all the regulars. Keeps the pace of “War” but by returning to the same characters instead of bouncing off to new ones, it creates a stronger illusion of coherence. The illusion is ultimately shattered, when it ends having found nowhere to go. Terrific sense of atmosphere and style, however, helped by impressive black and white photography and good use of music.

1.4 Bad News Tour 24 Jan 1983, C4 Mon 9pm (30 mins)
Written by Adrian Edmondson. Directed by Sandy Johnson
Featuring Edmondson, French, Mayall, Planer, Richardson, Saunders
A clueless fifth rate heavy metal band go on tour.
Hysterical entry, predating “Spinal Tap”, which sometimes breaks the reality for the sake of a good joke (Planer’s insistence on retakes) but when the jokes are this good, it barely matters.

1.5 Summer School 31 Jan 1983, C4 Mon 9pm (30 mins)
Written by Dawn French. Directed by Sandy Johnson
Featuring Coltrane, Edmondson, French, Mayall, Planer, Richardson, Saunders
Plus Lois Baxter, Gerard Ryder, Rupert Frazer, Martin Potter, Elaine Ashley
Summer school students learn to fend for themselves in a recreation of an iron age village.
First two thirds operate on a sit-com level, then it takes a more typical darker turn and the ending takes the typical subdued, unresolved route. It suffers from a dearth of good jokes (although Coltrane is good value, as ever) but does at least have the virtue of making sense all the way through.

SERIES 2

2.1. Five Go Mad On Mescalin 2 Nov 1983, C4 Wed 10pm (40 mins)
Written by Peter Richardson & Pete Richens. Directed by Bob Spiers
Featuring Coltrane, Edmondson, French, Peacock, Richardson, Saunders
Plus Ronald Allen, Harry Towb, Kerry Shale
The Famous Five have further adventures.
Unsubtle retread of the seminal first film with many of the same jokes. The difference in approach is admirably summed up by the two titles. The first plays it straight, trusting the audience to appreciate the irony. The second makes a crassly obvious joke which we could have done without. Another niggle is the shift in characterisation between the two episodes (no more latent homosexuality from Edmondson, instead he’s seduced by a woman). There are, nonetheless, pleasures along the way, notably Kerry Shale’s turn as a revolting American brat.

2.2. Dirty Movie 7 Jan 1984, C4 Sat 10.25pm (40 mins)
Written by Adrian Edmondson & Rik Mayall. Directed by Sandy Johnson
Featuring Coltrane, Edmonson, French, Mayall, Planer, Richardson, Saunders
A cinema owner plots to watch a dirty movie in his own cinema, and must avoid the attentions of his wife, the postman, and a pair of inept policemen.
Prototypical “Bottom” adventures with some excellent slapstick, a typically libidinous Mayall and a real feeling for pace which other Comic Strip films sometimes lack. Edmondson’s first encounter with the man without the letterbox approaches Laurel and Hardy for agonisingly creeping chaos.

2.3. Susie 14 Jan 1984, C4 Sat 10.30pm (40 mins)
Written by Peter Richardson & Pete Richens. Directed by Bob Spiers
Featuring Coltrane, Edmondson, French, Planer, Richardson, Saunders
Plus: Alan Pellay
A lascivious schoolteacher screws her way through the Comic Strip men.
Rather dull entry which suffers from a need to give everyone a bit to do. The result is that I scarcely care who lives and who dies. It could be spoofing something, but I’ve no idea what.

2.4. Fistful Of Travellers Cheques 21 Jan 1984, C4 Sat 10.30pm (45 mins)
Written by Peter Richardson and Pete Richens & Rik Mayall. Directed by Bob Spiers
Featuring Allen, Coltrane, Edmondson, French, Mayall, Peacock, Planer, Richardson, Saunders
Plus: Christopher Malcolm
A pair of British tourists with dreams of spaghetti westerns act out their fantasies while on holiday in Mexico.
A central joke that is both immediately grasped and which sustains, aided by great performances. Not only that, but the ending is fantastic!

2.5 Gino – Full Story And Pics 28 Jan 1984, C4 Sat 10.30pm (40 mins)
Written by Peter Richardson & Pete Richens. Directed by Bob Spiers
Featuring Allen, Coltrane, Edmondson, French, Mayall, Peacock, Richardson, Saunders
Plus: Arnold Brown, Alan Pellay.
A petty criminal on the run from the police finds that his flight, accompanied by a young typist, gets him deeper and deeper into trouble as he becomes a media cause celebre.
Thoroughly entertaining romp which neatly solves the problem of giving each of the resident cast a bit to do by having the two central characters encounter each in turn. Thoroughly entertaining and blessedly coherent.

2.6. Eddie Monsoon – A Life? 4 Feb 1984, C4 Sat 10.30pm (35 mins)
Written by Adrian Edmondson. Directed by Sandy Johnson
Featuring Edmondson, French, Richardson, Saunders
Plus: Tony Bilbow
Alcoholic, drug-addled TV presenter Monsoon stumbles through an interview with a TV reporter while in a rehab clinic which takes “kill or cure” painfully literally.
Salvaged from a group-written script proposed for Series One, this is another triumph, with some marvellous gags (French’s bone-snapping nurse) and (rather atypically!) a wonderful performance from Richardson as Monsoon’s agent in permanent denial.

2.7. Slags 11 Feb 1984, C4 Sat 10.35pm (40 mins)
Written by Jennifer Saunders. Directed by Sandy Johnson
Featuring Edmondson, French, Planer, Richardson, Saunders
Plus: Mark Arden, Lee Cornes, Steve Frost, Anthony Head, Emma Thompson
In a futuristic wasteland, gang leaders Passion and Little Sister, recently released from prison, try to reclaim their turf.
Boring, incomprehensible nonsense which I skipped over after the first five minutes. If I can bear it, I’ll watch it to the end and see if it gets any better.

Part two will follow shortly…

Here follows a personal list of favourite, significant or just thoroughly entertaining movies, one for each year from 1930 to 2010. I reiterate, this is a personal list, so it is unashamedly Anglo-American for the most part, but I’ve also tried to keep an eye on cinema as a developing art form and include movies which cast longer shadows at the expense of quirkier choices whose appeal to me might be harder to fathom (for example, my absolute favourite movie of 1986 is Little Shop of Horrors but I couldn’t leave out Withnail & I). I’ve also tried to include as many different genres as I can – musicals, comedies, thrillers, police procedurals, westerns and space operas – you’ll find them all here. Finally, when faced with really tough choices, I’ve picked movies which are most typical of their era, which seemed appropriate under the one-film-per-year constraint.

Lists like these tend to generate outraged debate. Good! Let me know what gems I have omitted. If you can be bothered – compile your own list, and fill it full of Kurosawa, Bunel, Bergman, Truffaut and show me up of the Anglo-centric philistine I no doubt am.

1930 Feet First
1931 City Lights
1932 The Music Box
1933 Duck Soup
1934 It Happened One Night
1935 The 39 Steps
1936 The Great Zeigfeld
1937 Snow White and the Seven Dwarves
1938 The Lady Vanishes
1939 The Wizard of Oz
1940 The Philadelphia Story
1941 Citizen Kane
1942 Road to Morocco
1943 Casablanca
1944 Double Indemnity
1945 Brief Encounter
1946 It’s a Wonderful Life
1947 The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
1948 Rope
1949 The Third Man
1950 Sunset Boulevard
1951 The Lavender Hill Mob
1952 Singin’ In The Rain
1953 Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
1954 On The Waterfront
1955 The Ladykillers
1956 Forbidden Planet
1957 12 Angry Men
1958 Vertigo
1959 Some Like it Hot
1960 Spartacus
1961 Breakfast at Tiffany’s
1962 Dr No
1963 8½
1964 Carry on Cleo
1965 The Sound of Music
1966 The Fortune Cookie
1967 The Graduate
1968 2001: A Space Odyssey
1969 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
1970 MASH
1971 Dirty Harry
1972 The Godfather
1973 The Exorcist
1974 The Godfather Part II
1975 Jaws
1976 The Pink Panther Strikes Again
1977 Annie Hall
1978 Grease
1979 Alien
1980 The Blues Brothers
1981 Raiders of the Lost Ark
1982 Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
1983 Trading Places
1984 Gremlins
1985 Back to the Future
1986 Withnail and I
1987 The Untouchables
1988 Die Hard
1989 The Little Mermaid
1990 Goodfellas
1991 The Silence of the Lambs
1992 Unforgiven
1993 Jurassic Park
1994 Pulp Fiction
1995 Sense and Sensibility
1996 Shine
1997 LA Confidential
1998 Saving Private Ryan
1999 The Matrix
2000 Billy Elliot
2001 Amélie
2002 Chicago
2003 Finding Nemo
2004 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
2005 The 40 Year Old Virgin
2006 Little Miss Sunshine
2007 Michael Clayton
2008 The Dark Knight
2009 The Hangover
2010 …. to early to say. I hear Inception is good…