Television Heaven roundup

It's been quiet here of late, but I have been a busy person elsewhere, including writing up a bunch of stuff for Television Heaven.

Having discovered the truly remarkable Severance just before the second season began, thereby rather deftly missing the three-year hiatus by being slow off the mark, I've given both seasons a spoiler-lite review.

Twenty years after it aired, and with a new, fifteenth series just round the corner, I've written an in-depth, episode-by-episode review of Series One of Doctor Who, starring Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper.

We've also got some classic Doctor Who with the bizarre Sylvester McCoy serial Paradise Towers, Chris Boucher's three Tom Baker stories The Face of Evil, The Robots of Death and Image of the Fendahl, and the Jon Pertwee classic Doctor Who and the Silurians.

I've gone even more retro with my old favourite Mike & Angelo, that CITV classic that might just have been inspired by Doctor Who (well, let's be honest, it was.) Both incarnations of Angelo get their moment in this overview.

All three of Sky One's adaptations of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels now have reviews, including the Christmas-themed Hogfather, the first adventure The Colour of Magic, and the superb Going Postal.

And, of course, there's more to come.

Forty years of the Discworld

Years ending in a three really are among the busiest for notable anniversaries of my favourite series, with November being the busiest month. 23rd November 2023 is Doctor Who's 60th anniversary, and the very next day it's the Discworld's 40th! Unfortunately, busy life got in the way so I am posting this on the 26th rather than the 24th, but what's a day or two among cosmic turtles?

The Colour of Magic was published on 24th November 1983, the first novel in the late, great Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, which would eventually run to forty-one books, not including the various tie-ins, short stories, Science of Discworld books, expansive map books and assorted ephemera.

Sadly, Pratchett made an appointment with Death in 2015, after just about finishing the final book, The Shepherd's Crown. He made it known that he didn't truly consider it finished, but he was no longer able to continue editing, and the book was published posthumously a few months after his death. It hardly seems like it can be over eight years since we lost him, but it is somehow true.

The Discworld books have brought me so much joy over the years. They weren't the first of Pratchett's books I read, but there's a reason he so rarely strayed beyond that funny little world once he'd created it. Simply, it's a perfect setting to explore the absurdity and beauty of human life. The Colour of Magic was a pretty straightforward sword-and-sorcery parody, but as the series went on, Pratchett used the Discworld, and particularly its first city, Ankh-Morpork, to take the real world to account. His books were, very soon, works of literary genius, yet they never for one moment stopped being a silly fantasy parody. There was always a touch of cynicism to the books, but by end, they'd become angrier, as Pratchett stopped pulling his punches - but they never stopped being hilarious.

There follows my tenuous top ten Discworld books, which could very well look different if you asked me again next week. It's not a reading order, but it is, perhaps, a good way to start. Or, if you're already a fan and have been reading them for years, a good thing to argue with.

10) Mort (1987)

The fourth novel, and the first one to really reach the Discworld's full potential. Death, one of my favourite characters in fiction, a looming, cowled skeleton who comes to claim your soul at the moment after your last moment, is also a rather lovely gent. Often he'd rather be doing anything other than his job. After some fun cameos in the first three books (he'd actually appear in all but two of the novels), Mort is the first to focus on Death and his rather lonely existence. 

His bewildered young apprentice, Mort, is a sweet and sympathetic character, even as he beaks reality itself trying to do what he thinks is the right thing. The book also gives us a proper introduction to Death's adoptive daughter, Ysabel, a rather sinister figure in her first brief appearance in Magic but a more loveable one here. Then there's Albert, Death's servant, master of frying and secretly... well, secretly.

9) A Hat Full of Sky (2004)

In the latter years of the series, the stream of novels that focused on the witches branched into a sub-series of Young Adult books starring up-and-coming witch Tiffany Aching. This is her second appearance, aged eleven, and is a sequel to her first book The Wee Free Men and the short story "The Sea and Little Fishes" from the fantasy collection Legends. 

In spite of being ostensibly for younger readers, the Tiffany books are among the most intelligent and questioning of Prachett's books (indeed, his kids' books have never talked down to their audience and there's little between them and his adult-aimed works). Tiffany has to deal with learning how to be a witch from much, much older witches who all know best and disagree vehemently with each other, as well as being the Big Wee Hag of the Nac Mac Feegle, Pratchett's race of little people who are both a parody of woad-covered Celtic tribesmen and the Smurfs. 

All the Tiffany books are wonderful, but this one stands out for me. In all her storeis the young witch stands as one of the Disc's defenders against powerful entities from beyond, in this case facing the quite terrifying Hiver.

                                                        8) Feet of Clay (1996)

Not the first Discworld book I read (that was Guards! Guards!) but the first I bought, brand new, when it was published. Both are stories of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, the rag-tag but increasingly effective police force headed by Sam Vimes. Ankh-Morpork is the melting pot to melt all melting pots, with all manner of people from every background imaginable, many of them not even remotely human. 

Feet of Clay deals with the lives of the downtrodden, the necessity of resistence, and the perils of dehumanisation. Of course, it's easy to dehumanise someone when they're not even human, and yet we on the Earth manage to do it to our fellow Homo sapiens with depressing frequency. Drawing on Jewish folklore, Feet of Clay is the first book to focus on the Disc's literally silent underclass, the golems, and discusses what might happen if they finally decided they deserved a voice. All of this wrapped up in two murder mysteries, and it introduces one of series' most beloved characters, Cheery Littlebottom, who will start a revolution in dwarfish gender politics.

7) Witches Abroad (1991)

The third novel of the witches, centring on the first among equals, the great Granny Weatherwax. Equal Rites, the third Discworld novel, had introduced Granny, and Wyrd Sisters had given her a coven. The lascivious Nanny Ogg and the wet-behind-the-ears Magrat Garlick joined Granny, the three standing as the mother, the maiden and... the other one. 

Witches Abroad took them on a tour of Genua, a nation reminiscent of New Orleans, with a bit of Southern Europe and a bit of the Caribbean thrown in. When Magrat unexpectedly inherits the role of fairy godmother and must seek out her new ward Emberella, Granny is forced to confont the mystical machinations of her estranged sister Lilith. It's a wonderful send-up of fairytale tropes, while poking fun at parochial attitudes as the Lancre Three find themselves face-to-face with all manner of foreign nonsense and some of the most dreadful jokes in the series. "Get me an alligator sandwich - and don't take too long about it!"

6) Hogfather (1996)

Pratchett does Christmas by taking it back to its dirty pagan roots. The Discworld version of Christmas if Hogswatch, a midwinter festival personified by the Hogfather, a powerful and vital entity who thrives on the belief of the Disc's children. When the Auditors of Reality decide enough is enough and humanity really need to be sorted out, they go for their very soul and employ an assassin to take out the Hogfather. Fortunately, Death is on hand to step in and take the reigns, quite literally. 

Human belief and our need to tell stories is central to the Discworld's philosophy, and it's never more present than here. The Hogfather is a grubbier but obvious reflection of Father Christmas or Santa Claus, and likewise has evolved through the centuries as culture has reshaped him. It goes deeper than that, as Death's granddaughter Susan (it's complicated), a governess who beats up bogeymen to help her wards sleep, faces a threat to the very nature of childhood imagination. A perfect Christmas tipple, and a thought-provoker when you're beginning to wonder which of the various minor deities you're going to encourage your child to believe in. You won't think of the Tooth Fairy in the same way again.

5) Going Postal (2004)

A wonderful, Victorian-style novel (it has chapters and everything) which introduces the fabulously named Moist von Lipwig, another late addition to the Discworld's all-time great characters. An unrepentant conman, Moist given one last chance to evade the hangman's noose when the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork appoints him head of the city's ailing Post Office. This may not sound like a recipe for a gripping novel, but it truly is, as Moist faces the brutal opposition of Reacher Gilt, owner of the Clacks network (the Disc's sempahore-based long-distance messaging service). Gilt will stop at nothing to maintain his monopoly over communications, and so unravels a web of conspiracy and murder.

Moist's continual twisting out of trouble as he gradually comes to care about something bigger than himself is a joy to read, as the man proves he can talk his way out of or into almost anything. Going Postal also continues the golems' story, as Moist is assisted by the unstoppable Mr Pump, and falls for the head of the Golem Trust, the formidable Adora Belle Dearheart (aka "Spike"), the one person who can see through everything he tries. Moist's story continues in Making Money and Raising Steam, but sadly it never reached what I am sure was its ultimate endpoint with Moist becoming Patrician himself

4) Small Gods (1992)

Set some considerable time before the other books (although exactly when is a point of some debate), Small Gods follows Brutha, a simple novice of the Omnian Church. A brutal theocracy, Omnia adheres strictly to the worship of the great god Om. You might think that a monotheistic religion wouldn't do too well on a world that is objectively home to thousands of gods, but there we are - as long as he has enough believers, Om will remain the great and powerful one god of them all. Unfortunately, when he chooses to manifest for the final time, he discovers that Brutha is the only one left who actually believes in him. As a result of this, he manifests as a small, grumpy, one-eyed tortoise.

A savage satire on organised religion, Small Gods takes on the close-mindedness and hypocrisy of "true believers," the brutality of Christian history and the difference between religion and faith without mercy. Yet, in true Discworld style, it remains whimsical, witty and very funny. This should be required reading at any faith school.

3) Snuff (2011)

One of the last books in the series, and one of the best, Snuff is another one that focuses on Sam Vimes of the Watch. By this stage he has moved up several stations in life, and is now Duke of Ankh, much to his chargrin. Holidaying in the countryside with his wife, Lady Sybil Ramkin, and their poo-obsessed son Sam, Vimes stumbles upon one of the few truly brutal crimes to appear in the series, as a young girl is found to have been murdered. That girl is, however, a goblin, the last of the uncivilised fantasy races of the Discworld, underground dwellers generally considered vermin by "civilised" society.

While Snuff is a little less accessible than most of the books, being that it builds on a number of elements from earlier stories, Pratchett's deftness means that it's easy to catch up on the complexities of latter-day Discworld lore and politics. As with Feet of Clay, Snuff deals with the dehumanisation of other cultures, with the ever-present reality that even in the most progressive societies there are alsways some who are treated as the lowest of the low. By this point, the Watch itself includes dwarfs, trolls, vampires, a werewolf, a gnome and a golem, and even - gasp! - foreigners. Goblins, however, are just animals, right? But when had anyone ever tried talking to them to find out?

While there's some unflinching stuff in here, there's also some of the series' most wholesome material. The meeting between Young Sam and the goblin girl Tears of the Mushroom is particularly sweet.

2) Reaper Man (1991)

The second Death-centric book, and the last to focus on him alone without involving Susan. This is a tale of two halves, in some editions even presenting them in different typefaces. One thread deals with Death's unceremonious sacking, leading him to take up a new life as a farmhand for the wonderfully straightforward Miss Flitworth. The other deals with the consequences of the temporary lack of a psychopomp, as spare life force builds up, causing peculiar supernatural events, such as the unexpected un-death of elderly wizard Windle Poons. (Pratchett truly had a way with names; unlike Death, who take an age to come up with the moniker Bill Door.)

It's a slim book, in spite of the two storylines, but it's quite perfectly contained and rather moving. Death's story is the better of the two, as he learns a little more of what it means to be human, with his very respectful friendship with Miss Flitworth being a highlight. The other section, the Ankh-Morpork part, introduces various supernatural characters, some of whom, such as zombie rights activist Reg Show and small-medium-at-large Mrs Cake, reappear in later books. It also brings in the current Faculty of Unseen University, who have to deal with the side effects of the excess life force, and an alien invasion of Ankh-Morpork, in the form of snow globes. Believe it or not, it does eventually make sense.

Reaper Man is an easy read that, in spite of its silliness, will stick with you a long time after you finish it.

1) Night Watch (2002)

Absolute perfection. While the City Watch books include some of the very best of the series, Night Watch stands above them all, as Sam Vimes is thrown back thirty years into Ankh-Morpork history, in the days building up to the Glorious Revolution. Immediately arrested by his own younger, greener self, Vimes is forced to step into the shoes of his own mentor after he is murdered by Carcer, the truly vile character who is also swept back in time.

Much of the fun of this novel comes from seeing the younger versions of familiar characters, such as Havelock Vetinari, destined to become Patrician but currently an unpopular boy at the Assassins' Guild School; the boy - or boy-like individual - known as Nobby Nobbs, one day to become the least law-abiding watchman ever; and a still livign Reg Shoe, already a staunch campaigner for, well, anything going. Nonetheless, it's still a riveting story for a newcomer to the series, a gripping thriller that reminds us that power - be it that of the politician or policeman - comes with both responsibility and tempation. It also reminds us that history is going on around us all the time, and that we might just have to stand our ground when faced with the darker realities of that.

It's a harder, less comedic book, but all the stronger for it, and when the laughs come, they're truly earnt.

Casting Call: The Watch

There's been some very interesting news released regarding The Watch, the BBC and Narrativia's upcoming series based on Terry Pratchett's City Watch books (or rather, those Discworld books and plot strands that featured the Watch, since there was never a clear distinction between different sequences in the books).

The previous casting announcement, including the most important of them all, Vimes himself, was exciting, and in some cases surprising. Richard Dormer is a pretty inarguably good choice for Vimes. I don't know Adam Hugill, but he certainly looks like a Carrot. Marama Corlett is another new one to me, but she has a look about her that says Angua to me. Then things are little more unexpected. Already people are complaining about Lara Rossi, a mixed race actress, being cast as Lady Sybil. Now, she's certainly not how I pictured Sybil, more highly bread than a hilltop bakery, but more than anything, she seems too young and attractive (of course, if there are elements of Night Watch in the mix here, there may also be an older version of the character). But a non-white Sybil? Well, really, why not? Cue everyone with a keyboard and a jammed caps lock pointing out that there weren't black aristocrats, and OK, there were very few rich people in Britain who weren't white and probably no one who was landed, but this isn't Britain. It's a fantastic city on a flat planet which happens to share some similarities with London. You know what else they didn't have in pre-WWI London? Trolls.

Racism isn't generally a thing in the Discworld books, at least not in Ankh-Morpork, since everyone's far more interested in speciesism. Sam Adewunmi as Carcer is no problem - Carcer could just about be any race and it wouldn't really make a difference as long as he was enough of a bastard. More interesting to me is the choice of Jo Eaton-Kent as Cheery Littlebottom, famously the first openly female dwarf. Although if all dwarfs look male to humans, I guess it makes sense to have a male actor in the role.

The new announcement has some even more intriguing choices, though. It's very clear that Narrativia aren't going to be going for a strict adaptation of the books, since several characters have been gender shifted. I suspect that the stories are going to be reworked quite heavily to make the series. There are also quite a few non-white faces in the cast (well, not that many - four out of twelve in the cast list so far). Hakeem Kae-Kazim as Keel, Vimes's mentor, is an interesting choice. In the books, Vimes had at least a passing resemblance to him, so to have them as different races changes things quite considerably. Anna Chancellor as Vetinari is a huge change, and I'd never have considered changing the Patrician to a woman (the title alone is distinctly masculine) but I can actually really imagine Chancellor playing the role.

Then we have the brilliant Ruth Madeley, star of Years and Years, as Throat, a character based on Cut-Me-Own-Throat-Dibbler. Let's be clear: this is a disabled woman playing a character previously described as an able-bodied man. It's unexpected to say the least. We have James Fleet playing Archchancellor Ridcully, which is so perfectly acceptable to be obvious, while Bianca Simone Manie is playing a character called Wonse - not apparently the same character as Lupine Wonse - who is described as a "wizard hopeful in waiting." And female wizards are, traditionally, very rare indeed. Then there's Ingrid "Osgood" Oliver as Dr. Cruces, head of the Assassin's Guild, which is another unexpected bit of casting.

Some people are pretty angry about this, others just baffled, and to be fair, some of these casting decisions are totally different to what I'd envisioned reading the books. But then, why even bother making the series if it's just going to look exactly how everyone imagined it when they read it? Reinterpretation is the most interesting thing about a work like this. And to those who are saying this cast isn't realistic, two things: this is not the real world we're talking about, it's a world on the back of a giant turtle; and you what? This looks more like the real world than I ever expected it to.

No More, With Footnotes

I've been trying to write this for days. It's astonishing how upset one can feel upon hearing of the death of someone quite removed from them. I never met Terry Pratchett. I wish I had. I could have made it to a signing or a convention without much difficulty, and met him, however briefly, but I never did. I did, however, read his books, and through someone's books may we know them, if only partly and fleetingly.

I've been reading Pratchett since I was around ten years old.* The library at my primary school** - where I would often spend breaktimes under the pretense of helping the staff, but in actuality just allowed us bookish types somewhere to read and chat in the warm - had a selection of his books for younger readers. There was Only You Can Save Mankind***, and its sequel, Johnny and the Dead (Johnny and the Bomb followed a little later). And there was the Truckers trilogy, now called The Bromeliad, the story of the tiny human-like Nomes and their high-speed life unseen by humanity. I'm fairly certain Truckers is the first of his books I read. Perhaps a little challenging for me at the time but I persevered. It was the juxtaposition of the fantastic and the mundane, of this race of little people living in the confines of a supermarket, with their alien box the Thing, it absolutely fascinated me. Not long after I moved onwards to secondary school, where the library was bigger, had computers in which was quite exciting, and had a solid selection of Discworld books.**** The first one I picked up was Guards! Guards! I was hooked.

It's become fashionable, in some quarters, to knock Pratchett's earlier works, but there's so much joy and charm and inventiveness that I find it hard to understand why. The first Discworld novels are simpler affairs than the later masterpieces, fairly straightforward parodies of the sword-and-sorcery high fantasy, but they're shot through with such ingenious humour, and such brazen punnery, that they swept me away. They also have the Luggage, a most ingenious creation, and perhaps my favourite character after the ubiquitous and utterly wonderful Death*****. The man with the scythe appears in very nearly every novel in the Discworld series, but it was his first starring role in Mort that I feel marked Pratchett's first truly great novel. His works gradually became more complex, with the Disc becoming somewhere he could take a step back from reality and comment on its absurdity. Guards! Guards! was the first of the Watch books, which began the gradual journey of Sam Vimes from Captain of the Night Watch of Ankh-Morpork to eventually the powerful position of Duke of Ankh, all against his better judgment. It's a turning point for the series and it's easy to see why it grabbed me so strongly and wouldn't let me go. Pratchett had addressed the lives of the "little people" before, but this was all about them. The guards, the henchmen, the lowly servants, who populate fantasy worlds but so rarely get their time in the limelight while the knights and kings and wizards are steering the course of history. Plus, it had dragons. I do love dragons******.

Vimes is one of Pratchett's avatars. You can tell them quite easily. While Pratchett's prose is saturated with his distinctive voice (perhaps why televisual adaptations of his works never quite seem to work as well as they should; that voice is absent, or at best, muffled), certain characters seem to speak for him. Rincewind, the cowardly "wizzard," was his earliest voice of reason, but in time Granny Weatherwax the witch, Sam Vimes, Tiffany Aching and Death himself all came to embody his unique worldview. Cynical, by god yes, but hopeful for this sad and delusional species called human. Somehow, though, it's when reading Vimes that I felt I was hearing his voice most clearly. For all the strength of the Discworld books being their human (or human-like) characters, Pratchett was never short of big ideas. Favourites are often those with a high concept at their heart, through which the poor, long-suffering characters must navigate. Small Gods, with its surgical deconstruction of Christianity, when God turns up to his one remaining true believer, as a one-eyed tortoise. Reaper Man, in which Death retires, with drastic consequences, and has to take his responsibilities back by force. Night Watch, with its exploration of destiny and free will, and Thief of Time, with its mind-bending time-twisting.

Not all the books were classics, but most of them were, and not many authors can say that. Not only the Discworld, though, oh no, there was much more. I may be in the minority, but I adore his two very early science fiction novels, Strata and The Dark Side of the Sun. So much invention, such wonderful alien creations, and such a skill for making us seem so mighty and so tiny simultaneously. The Carpet People, his first ever book, co-written by his teenaged and adult selves, which left me stepping very carefully for weeks. Nation, very possibly the best thing he ever wrote. A children's book, supposedly, but only in that its characters are young and you should give it to your children to read, because it will help them grow up to be wiser, kinder, more human souls. Not forgetting his collaborations: the Science of Discworld series with highly regarded scientists Stewart and Cohen, the Long Earth series with the great science fictioneer Stephen Baxter, and Good Omens, the apocalyptic collaboration of Pratchett with the other greatest modern British fantasy author, Neil Gaiman. Even Larry Niven's Rainbow Mars*******, with its many multiple Marses, was originally spearheaded by Pratchett.

Gaiman famously described Pratchett as not jolly, but angry, and this was more and more apparent in his later work. There is a seething anger coming through in his gentle prose, an absolute despair in humanity's failures and crimes. It's clear we disappointed him. Yet that golden, joyful, silly humour was still there, even as his Alzheimer's slowly took his skill from him. The Embuggerance, as he called it, slowly picking away at his great mind. What a terrible thing to have to live through, and to die from. Pratchett was a very passionate campaigner for the right to die, although in the end, his death was natural. If there is one good thing that has come of this appalling illness having struck him, it is the vast sums of his own fortune that he put into Alzheimer's research. Sufferers in the future may well have him to thank, in some small way, for their improved quality, and indeed quantity, of life.

Now he's gone. We'll never get a chance to read what was to become of Moist von Lipwig in the never finished Raising Taxes.******** There is one final Discworld book to come, that Pratchett finished before he died; The Shepherd's Crown, featuring young witch Tiffany Aching. There are still going to be adaptations of his books, and his daughter, Rhianna, is expected to take over the series, but it's unclear whether she'll be writing any more books or simply inheriting the intellectual rights. I'm actually pleased that I'm so far behind with my reading; I've four Pratchett books waiting, so for a little while at least, he lives on for me. And then I can just go back to the beginning.

Terry Pratchett was born on the 28th of April 1948. He liked astronomy, orang utans, and cats. He wrote fifty-seven novels and had an extinct turtle named after him. He died on the 12th of March 2015.

* That's 1994, fact fans.
** St. Wilfred's RC Primary. Headmaster Mr. Jones made sure we were well motivated. "Jesus always said, 'Try hard at swimming.'"
*** Which instilled in me a lifelong fear that I might actually be killing tiny pixellated people when playing computer games.
**** It's also where I first discovered The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy.
***** I used to flick through every book before reading it, looking for the TELLTALE CAPITAL LETTERS to make sure he was in it.
****** "Its eyes were the size of very large eyes."
******* Which had echoes in my very first professional publication, now I think about it, although that was really PPH's idea.
******** He was clearly going to become Patrician, wasn't he? Whether Vetinari liked it or not.