Oh, and... Six more shows that made 2020 better

So I started a list of TV shows that I liked in 2020, and wrote about them here. 

I was going to include loads, but only got to seven, because I'm very lazy. But I'm happy to inform you that I've mustered up the energy to complete the list, and here it is. Six more TV shows that made me happy in this, the stupidest of years. 

I Hate Suzie

This is about Billie Piper, and she basically plays Billie Piper, if Billie Piper was 

a) lots less together than in real life and 

b) beset by a constant stream of impossible disasters

Her character - Suzie - is an actress who used to be a pop star when she was a teenager, and then went on to be in a popular sci-fi TV show. So there's the 'very similar' bit. But then her life is thrown into turmoil when someone leaks some sex pictures of her onto the internet. 

Each half hour episode is like accompanying Suzie as she tumbles down a hill and tries to work out which way is up. We experience all her emotions in vivid HD and surround sound, from despair to anger to hilarity to remorse. It is frequently hilarious, as Suzie's layers are peeled away and she reveals incredible, vulnerable humanity and soul. 

There is a whole episode about masturbation, during which your mum and dad will definitely walk in, even if they live miles away or died years ago. 

The Mandalorian

It's not really an original observation to say that this show is great, but I don't care. The Mandalorian kicks ass, and absolutely nails Star Wars in a way that recent films haven't always managed. 

My favourite thing about it is the commitment to action and incident. Each episode is *about* something, and the narrative charges towards that "something" with great determination and glee.

"Kill the big monster". "Rescue the guy". "Get to the place". Each episode is powered by a simple concept like this, and everything that happens unfolds naturally from the core premise.

There's something very appealing about this, especially in an age where Quality TV likes to take its sweet time wandering towards any kind of narrative conclusion. Yes, I like a slow burn plot arc as much as anyone. But between the opening of an episode and its closing credits, something should happen. And ideally that something will involve people shooting lasers at each other.

Best of all is the concept art that plays under the credits each week. Big, bold images that capture the visual power of each instalment. Though I strongly suspect that the actual concept art was just frenzied crayon scribblings of Stormtroopers being blown up by minor characters from the Star Wars universe, which used up all the red crayon and made John Favreau's mum come up to see what all the noise was about.

Normal People

They would never do crayon drawings of this show. Well, they'd only need to do one, anyway - a picture of two people sitting in a room, staring into space with their mouths resolutely closed, in case they accidentally shared any information with each other. 

This is a show about two people falling in love. We follow them over a number of years, and your likely response to their romance will be to shout a combination of the following phrases at the screen:

i)  Oh, you're both so adorable and sweet and realistic!

ii) For the love of God, both of you, would you ever communicate even the most basic information about your feelings?

iii) Oh, yet another incredibly explicit sex scene. And, oh, hello mum, who has just walked in and is wondering why I am watching porn. I'm not! It's art! And why are you here when you live 200 miles away?

iv) I am very moved by the way your love is expressed in subtle and beautiful moments of tenderness.

v) Good grief, will you please talk to each other, rather than living in constant pain because you completely invented the other person's point of view in your head and now you're cross?

Anyway. It's very good, the acting is great and it has a brilliant soundtrack. 

The Queen's Gambit

Chess is very exciting already, so imagine how much more exciting it is when it forms the backbone of a thrilling, beautifully shot drama? That's right - so exciting you might die of joy. 

This show is a thing of absolute wonder (even if you don't really give a toss about chess). The central performance of Queen Gambit herself is astonishing, and would captivate even if she was playing a woman who was really into collecting and cataloguing carpet samples. 

This is one of those shows that just purrs like a finely tuned engine, running smoothly along with such confidence and brilliance that you think, "Man, other TV series are just dicking about. What's their problem? This looks easy!"

I assume it was not easy. It is genius. 

This Country

I did not want to watch This Country for ages, and I think that speaks badly of my own character. I think I looked at the people in it and went, "Ugh - they look like the kind of common, irritating stupid people who I have no real time for. I don't want to see them while I'm enjoying myself with my massive TV. I would like to see spaceships and robots, please!"

Well, it turns out that I was wrong by quite a significant margin. And indeed it is exactly my prissy attitude that this show is directly aimed at. This is an amazingly sweet, funny and often moving show and it sneaks in some proper social commentary while it's there. 

One of the great things fiction can do is to increase empathy for those not like you. This Country does exactly that with the young, white underclass of small town communities. And, like all good comedy, it does it by reminding us that we're all idiots, really. Yes, these people can be selfish and impetuous and unwilling to change, and that's hilarious. But they're also human and fragile and ultimately very, very loveable. And if I think I'm not stupid in exactly the same ways, I'm kidding myself.

It's also the most I've laughed all year.

What We Do In The Shadows

I don't have any startling insights into this show, except to say that it's fantastically funny and constantly inventive. Series one was great and did a good job of hitting the beats of the (excellent) film which spawned it. Series two develops further and strikes out on its own a bit more, playing with the characters and ideas in a way which shows real confidence in the premise, the actors and the scripts. 

Maybe this is the most I've laughed, actually? I don't know. I laugh a lot. Perhaps I'm having a breakdown? That would make sense of a lot of things.

So that's it. 13 excellent TV shows which I've really enjoyed. Honourable mentions also go to:

Better Call Saul - consistently good, to the point where it feels redundant to mention it

Feel Good - something I've only recently started, because lovely Charlotte Richie from Ghosts is in it

Home - which I probably should have included, as it's both hilarious and extremely relevant

The Boys - excitingly violent TV that charges in its own direction with great joy. 

There you go. A reminder that part one of this list can be found here. 

Seven TV shows that made 2020 better.

Afternoon. Nice facial expression!

Like everyone else I have spent most of 2020 gazing at screens and shouting "Please entertain me - all the humans I know are hiding in their houses and won't let me in."

Screens have, obligingly, done their best to make me happy. They can't laugh at my jokes, stroke my face or bring me tea, which is what I mostly want, but they can bring me some reasonable diversions in the form of film, TV programmes and computer games. 

Here are seven of the best TV shows I've seen this year. No, they are not all from 2020. No, there is no real logic to their inclusion. And no, seven is not a sensible number for a list. 

But they are all great, and if you don't know them, you should check them out. 

Bojack Horseman

I avoided this show for a while, because who has time for another animated series about anthropomorphised animals manifesting the joys and terrors of human failure?

This year, due to all the lockdown, I got into the habit of going for an early morning walk and then having breakfast with an episode of Bojack. It soon got its hooks into me, and I joined all the other people who think that it's magnificent. 

Incredibly sharp and funny, desperately true and sad, full of both joyous silliness and profound insight. The line that stays with me is this: "When you meet someone new, you see them through rose tinted glasses. Which means you tend to miss all the red flags."

Cheers

I got a big box set of Cheers DVDs for my birthday. I wondered if it would hold up, nearly 40 years later. I wondered how much of my joy in it came from the associations: Friday nights, no more school for a few days, watching it with the family and allowed to stay up late. 

To my delight and relief, it turns out that it's still brilliant. The characters are utterly believable and relatable. The dialogue crackles with invention and wit. Few sitcoms since have come close to its success, both in terms of gag rate and of genuine human warmth.

Time has not been unkind to the show. Attitudes to gender and sexuality are of their time, but there's a clear will to be progressive within the limitations of the culture. Gay people are strange and unsettling to these characters, but not unwelcome and never the target of cheap laughs. 

In some ways Cheers is the product of a better time. There is an underlying assumption that the audience is intelligent enough to pick up on nuance, and educated enough to understand cultural references. Characters are conflicted and flawed and don't dissolve down to catchphrases and quirks (Friends, Big Bang Theory - I'm looking at you). 

Best of all, it really did take me back to those Friday nights. It's a different family on the sofa now, eating our sausages and chips and rejoicing in the weekend. But there's the same glow of pleasure as the Cheers logo glints in the light, and we visit the place where everybody knows your name. 

The End of the F***ing World. 

Despite the asterisks (which appear to be part of the official title), this is a challenging title for a show, and - as I've discovered - a hard sell when recommending it. But I do recommend it, without reservation.

This is the story of two teenagers who go on the run for no massively good reason, like a very low key British Bonnie and Clyde. They might be in love, though being teenagers it's hard even for them to be sure. They get into a variety of scrapes.

Tonally, we're in 'very black comedy' territory. There's a lot of deadpan humour and the whole thing is very slightly outlandish. But then there is murder, and assault, and all manner of pain. And the brilliance of this show is that it takes these things absolutely seriously without ever abandoning its energy and sense of droll humour. 

The two leads are outstanding. As in "Peep Show" we are privy to their internal monologues and a lot of the joy comes from the dissonance between outwardly stated intentions and private thoughts. Their relationship is beautiful and fumbling and stupid and composed entirely of dark, dark romance. 

Staged

Michael Sheen and David Tennant chat to each other over Zoom during lockdown. They are playing themselves, more or less, and they are both delightful and engaging company for these bite sized little episodes. 

If you've seen the Trip, it's a bit like that but loads cheaper, and rather more loveable. Each instalment is like a little hug. It made me smile throughout.

Gangs of London

This show is not like a hug. Unless the person hugging you is doing it with the intention of crushing you to death. This is, without a doubt, one of the most violent things I have ever seen on screen. 

It is also tremendously exciting. Basically it does exactly what the title suggests. There are many gangs. In London. They exist in an uneasy peace until the Big Gang Leader Guy - played by Chief O'Brien from Deep Space Nine - gets assassinated. That's not a spoiler - that's the premise. 

Then everyone goes mental and starts attacking each other, like if Game of Thrones was set now and everyone was 20% more horrible to each other. The violence is breath-taking, so don't watch it if that's not your thing. But if you enjoy thrilling action, this is edge of the seat stuff, audacious in its ambition and nerve.

Ghosts

You have already seen Ghosts. I know this because, when I discovered it and recommended it to people, they all said, "Yes, we've seen it. We recommended it to you. Why do you never listen to anything anyone ever says?"

Ghosts looks like a kids TV show but isn't - not quite.  A couple inherit a big old house. Alison - played by the luminous Charlotte Richie - has a near death experience and as a result she can now see ghosts! And it turns out the house is full of them. 

Various ghosts live in the house - all having died at different points in the history of the house. They form a kind of dysfunctional family unit, and now Alison is more or less mum. It's fairly basic sitcom business - each week there's an issue with a visitor, or one of the ghosts has a crisis, and it gets sorted out. 

As the episodes progress, there emerges an unexpected warmth and wonder from these fairly standard interactions. We start to learn about the pasts of the characters, and often there's a great deal of sadness underlying the black comedy of their lives and deaths. It's very silly and broad in places, but I've been moved to tears more than once by the brilliance of the writing and the performances of the cast.

Hunters

Another series which has more going on under the surface than is at first apparent. 

Basically, it's the 1970s and a Jewish kid gets involved with a group of Nazi hunters. It turns out that a whole bunch of Nazis escaped arrest after the war, and reinvented themselves as good American citizens. Well, the Hunters have no time for that kind of nonsense, so they seek them out and exact justice, with a strong emphasis on 'poetic'.

It's quite brash and in your face, and kind of hyper-real. Tarantino is a clear influence. And for a while it seems like it might just be an exercise in day-glo wish fulfilment. But then it starts to do all sorts of clever and interesting things which took me by surprise and elevated it substantially beyond my initial impressions. 

There's a strong intent to educate going on. Like last year's excellent "Watchmen", this is a show which wants to tap modern day America on the shoulder and say, "Please remember - your culture is built heavily on foundations of racism and self interest". 

There's also some powerful, tender character work. One episode in particular holds a scene on two characters for an astonishing ten minutes to discuss grief, vengeance and forgiveness. It's one of the most riveting things I've seen all year and it deserves your time, even if it does look daft as a brush.

That's all for now. I have another six, and you can find them here, if you're so inclined. 

Stay warm and safe, for you are great. 

Rob's Amazing Film Collection - Part Five: The Beyond to The Blues Brothers

For some reason I'm putting my film collection online and talking about it. Even though

a) There's literally no reason why anyone should care

b) A lot of these films I've either not seen in ages or - worse - never seen ever, despite owning for years

c) A film collection is a constantly shifting thing. There's already stuff in "A" that wasn't there when I started this. 

d) I'm so lazy, there's no way I'll get to Z before I die. 

But here we are anyway. 

The Beyond

This is a super weird Italian horror film from the early 80s. That's my absolute favourite period for horror, and this film exemplifies exactly why. 

It's batshit crazy, with a plot that makes zero sense, but it's so visually compelling and furiously inventive that you simply don't care. The imagery has this kind of austere bleakness: part art film, part documentary. The early 80s didn't seem to care where 'horror' fit in with the other genres. It just played by itself, doing its own macabre things. 

As a result, it ends up having a sense of both absolute silliness and pervasive dread. Amazing. 

The Bicycle Thieves

Well I hope you enjoyed all the things I had to say about that last film, because we're about to go through a phase of "I literally can't remember anything". 

I watched this so that I could show it to some film students and say, "How would you like to study Italian neo-realism, everyone?" Their answer was silent, but definitive. They would not like to watch any more films like this, thank you, and god damn me for even considering it. 

I was secretly quite glad. I didn't really enjoy myself watching this, and had my students liked it, I would have had to buy loads more films like it, with their total lack of spaceships or zombies, and they would sit on my shelves to this day, silently judging me. 

The films, not the students. 

No, I haven't watched it since. Why do I keep it? Because.. I don't know. It's art or something?

Big Night

Haven't watched it. Bought it because it was cheap. It looks good, and I'm sure I'd love it.

I pick it up occasionally, and think, "Yeah - I should watch this. I bet it would be fun."

But then I don't. Why don't I? Have I been subjected to some kind of hypnosis? It's the only possible explanation. 

The Big Sleep

Film Noir is, I'm afraid, always going to be a historical period for me, more than a genre. It's films are documents of time, not things to be enjoyed in their own right. 

I envy those who do enjoy them, and I can see why they are attractive. But I've never been able to emotionally engage with them. It's like jazz. I'd like to be one of those people who love it. But it looks like a lot of work to get to the point where it starts being fun. 

Last time I tried to watch this I genuinely fell asleep. I feel sleepy thinking about it. It's the word 'sleep'. It's an excellent word, which really carries the essence of its meaning. Don't call films "Sleep" if you want me to stay awake during them. 

Big Fish

I haven't watched this for a while. I seem to remember it being a perfectly enjoyable and visually pleasing piece of work. Is it Tim Burton? I'm going to go and check. You stay there. Don't do anything weird in front of Ewan. 

It is Tim Burton. I had a feeling it was, but then another part of my brain kept saying, "How can it be? It's good."

He used to be good, didn't he, Tim Burton? Before he filled his veins with sticky, sweet CGI and became obsessed with putting Johnny Depp in an increasingly bizarre series of hats. 

Billy Elliot

You'll be relieved and delighted to find that I've watched this quite recently. And I can report that I found it "good".

Looking back now, it seems like part of a mini genre, that sprang up around the mid to late 90s. Full Monty, Brassed Off, that kind of thing. Working class, socially active cinema that managed the neat trick of having some mainstream quirk without selling out its ideals.

The 'miners on strike' edge of it seems more sad than angry, and I found more relevance this time in the sexual politics of the thing. For the most part, the challenging of gender roles is done really well, and with some subtlety. It did stick out a bit that they gave him a camp, gay best friend, to point out how not camp and gay Billy was. But otherwise, pretty nuanced, and full of heart. 

The Birds

It's been a while since I saw The Birds. I think every time I consider watching it, I just go, "Well, why watch that, when I could watch Psycho?" And so I watch Psycho. 

I know. You can watch more than one thing. And I promise I'll get onto it.  I can't remember most of the plot. Surely there's more to it than people going, "Oooh, that's quite a number of birds, isn't it? More than usual. Gosh, what a lot of birds!" and then being eaten. 

Doesn't it end with them just driving off, slowly, so that the birds don't see them? That's the sort of ending you write when you've run out of time to finish your homework.

The Birth of a Nation

I've never made it all the way through this film. But it's not like all those others I've not seen, where I was just too lazy, or tired, or got distracted by computer games. No. This film offers many compelling reasons to leave it unfinished, namely:

i) It is nearly 3 hours long. No film is meant to be that long. 90 minutes is ideal, and I'll allow 2 hours before I start looking at my non existent watch, and coughing loudly.

ii) It is in black and white, and silent. Which means I get distracted and start doing my own dialogue. This entertains me, but does tend to mean I lose track of what's actually going on. 

iii) It is super racist. It was made in olden times, when you could just be openly racist in films and everyone had to say, "Well, this seems fine." It is not fine. 

Black Dynamite

I like the fact that this film lives next to The Birth of a Nation on the shelf. It's like a sitcom about a really racist DVD who finds that a black couple have moved in next door. 

This is a film bought for me by my friend Andy, who is constantly trying to get me to look at new and interesting things, and stop just watching Total Recall again. I resisted for ages, until he became furious and demanded I watch it with him.

He was right and it's very good and funny. 

Black Hawk Down

To my recollection, this is just a film about a helicopter crashing, and then everyone getting shot at for about two hours. I don't think anything else happens. It might be based on a true story, but that's not really an excuse for just hitting me with noise and editing for ages. 

I think it might be trying to create sensation, rather than develop plot. You know, making me feel what it was like. Well, yes, if that's the case, well done. I did feel trapped and sad and assaulted. But I don't think my suffering really compared to that of any actual soldier, and I was mostly bored. 

Chris Nolan's Dunkirk tried a similar thing. I cunningly did not buy it, having learned my lesson here.

The Black Hole

Now we're talking!

The Black Hole is very odd. It is, in almost every sense, a kids Disney space film, with cute robots and exciting space battles. That's why I went to see it in 1980 and I very much imagine it came into being entirely as a way to grab the attention of Star Wars obsessed child geeks like myself. 

However. While it is all of the above, it is also, somehow, a trippy, existential journey into the screaming void of madness. It's like Event Horizon for kids, or Heart of Darkness with lasers. A madman commands a ghostly space hulk, manned by living corpses! A man is torn apart by spinning knives! They get sucked into hell, possibly!

It's amazing, and a bit rubbish, and beautiful. I had all the toys, and loved making them fight, but I was also drawn to the sheer darkness of a film where the heroes struggle against the terrible pull of the universe itself, and fail. 

BlackKKlansman

This is a super great film and I was very much in love with it when I saw it. Did it win the Oscar? I bet it didn't. It's too good. I've not seen much Spike Lee, and that's something I need to rectify. 

I very much liked how brazen the politics were. At first you think, "Oh, this is a clever, de-contextualised way of discussing the issues of race that have come to the fore under the Trump administration". Then the film says, "I am talking about Trump! Donald Trump. He is racist! I mostly mean him! Trumpy Trumpy Racisty Trump!"

I feel very woke for liking it, obviously, but am also consumed with fear that I have accidentally transposed the photo for this with the one for Black Dynamite, and that I am secretly racist.

Black Panther

A film I've watched very recently, as part of a full Marvel watch-through. Yes, that's what I do when I should be watching Big Night and educating myself in Film Noir and Italian Neo-Realism. I watch superheroes hitting each other. 

Well I've no defence, really. I like 'em. And this most recent viewing of Black Panther came, as chance would have it, on the day that Chadwick Boseman - the eponymous King Cat himself - passed away. This had the unavoidable effect of making the whole thing much more poignant. 

It's hard to know if things like this should be disassociated from a film or not. A film should stand on its own, really. Black Panther was already in an impossible place in that regard, of course, bearing as it did the weight of  First Black Superhero Movie (even if it wasn't, really). It is a really good film, but it will never be just a film. Certainly not now its young and beloved star died so young. 

We're kidding ourselves, of course, if we think any film can be divorced from its context. And I'm impressed with Black Panther for grasping the horns so comprehensively, and going "I am about race and the historical context of identity! Deal with it!" I just feel like I'll never quite *see* this film.  

Black Sheep

This film is not, to my knowledge, about race at all. Unless there's some subtext I've forgotten about. It's about zombie sheep.

I can't remember if it's any good. I've seen it once, quite some time ago, and I seem to remember liking it. But then I get very giddy about zombies, so am not necessarily the best judge of quality in this regard. 

Black Swan

One of those films that I will watch only very occasionally, but very much appreciate every time I get down to it. It's a very peculiar tasting film. Bitter, and with flavours that don't seem to go together. Like if someone put garlic on a Curly Wurly. 

This is a very powerful and scary piece of work, that makes great use of the medium to play games with your brain. It's quite a trick to make you unsure what you just saw, but still invested in the outcomes. 

It's about ballet, but otherwise good. 

Blade Runner

When I first saw Blade Runner I did not like it. 

Same for the second, third and fourth times. Did. Not. Like. But, somehow, I knew I was wrong. That's weird, isn't it? Most of the time when I dislike a film I'm in no doubt about who is to blame. It's the stupid useless film's fault for being boring or too long or suggesting there's going to be nudity and then not having any.

But even at 14 or thereabouts, I sensed that Blade Runner was good, and I was dumb. 

In my defence, it was widely advertised as "That guy who plays Han Solo and Indiana Jones chases robots in flying cars!" Which doesn't really prepare a young man for the ponderous arty concoction of owls eyes, enhanced photos and a villain who is defeated when he decides to give up, sit down and ramble on about the Shoulder of Orion. 

It's a film that grows in stature every time I see it, and I love it very much. Well done young me for persevering.

Blade Runner 2049

A film that breaks many rules. It's really long, but it earns its length. It's a belated sequel to an outright classic, but it manages to build on the original without cheapening what made it work. It stars Jared Leto but it isn't a horrible stupid test of your patience and will to live.

I'm a big fan of this film for many reasons. The colours. The humour. Ryan Gosling's adorable little jump when he's surprised. What I like best, though, it the way it skilfully subverts audience expectations and deconstructs the kind of hero myths that we take for granted, but probably shouldn't.

The Blues Brothers

Finally, for this little run, is another film I used to watch a lot as a child. 

We must have recorded this off the TV, onto the family Betamax. I watched it endlessly. It's one of those films that's not-very-good-really, for lots of reasons, but also perfect, for exactly the same reasons. I get the feeling it's not very beloved these days, probably due to endless annoying people quoting the lines, and also middle aged men dressing up and doing bad covers of the songs. 

Plus it's not really a film, but an exercise in showing off famous people in little set pieces. I still don't quite get the genre of "Look, it's people from Saturday Night Live - are you not entertained?" It seems a bit self satisfied. 

As a kid, though, none of that mattered. I didn't know who these comedians were. I didn't really know that the musicians were famous, either, or that I was meant to be impressed just by them being there. And I certainly didn't care about structure. It was just a cool film about lots of funny things happening to some guys. 

Wouldn't it be nice just to see a film, and enjoy it without context?

Well, that's it. Thanks for sticking with me through this nonsense. See you next time, if you can stand more. 

Previously: (Babel - Be Kind Rewind)

Next: Blue Velvet to Bowling for Columbine

Time is Relative - The Android Invasion

Good evening and welcome to another ramshackle account of the adventures of TV's Doctor Who. Oh sure, other people can give you accurate information about the episodes, or offer informed commentary on the themes. 

But can they do it with such a thrilling disregard for what actually happened in the story?

I doubt it. 

This week, Doctor Who lands on Earth and so of course he goes straight to the pub. His face wears a look of grim determination, as if he's already mapped out the next four days worth of drinking, and has clear targets for what will constitute an acceptable hangover. 

The pub is mysteriously deserted. Which suits Doctor Who fine, but is kind of weird. It's the 70s, after all, and drinking during the day is not so much frowned upon as actively encouraged. 

Eventually a bar guy turns up, and so Doctor Who instantly starts being weird at him and playing with his things. The man does not really react with any surprise, which means either 

a) this is not really Earth, but a fake version without any of the nuances of the real thing, or

b) this man has met Doctor Who before.

Quite soon, Sarah Jane trips and falls down a hill, and her face comes off. It turns out she's a robot or something. Albeit one that comes to bits quite easily. 

I don't think she's always been a robot, in all the previous stories. I think this is just a pretend version, that turned up recently. Otherwise, it's a marvel her face hasn't come off a number of times already. She does do a lot of falling off things. 

Also, Doctor Who would be furious to find out that he had a super killer robot with him all the time, and she never said anything. All that running away, when he could have just been shouting, "Murder Davros, Sarah! Crush his ugly green skull with your metal hands!"

Sarah-Robot soon gets on with the business of trying to kill Doctor Who. She doesn't seem to mind that her face is still off, and that she looks both nightmarish and faintly ridiculous at the same time. 

You'd think that if you programmed a robot to impersonate someone, so closely as to fool their very best friends, that you'd give it some fairly clear instructions. Like, "Try to speak with the same mannerisms," and, "Don't mention anything about our plot to destroy the humans," and, "If your face falls off, make sure to put it back on."

Doctor Who is starting to think that he's not really on Earth. There is no beer in the pub, and everyone is being really boring and not reacting to any of his hilarious attempts to confuse them. Plus there's the thing with Sarah's face coming off.

He's very keen to get back to normal Earth, where he can start being wilfully eccentric and get a proper reaction out of people. Oh, and warn them about the invasion of killer robot duplicates. Probably. If he gets time. 

This is the King Alien, who is in charge of all the robots. He's a Kraal, and his main thing is building robots and doing invasions. His face wears the familiar expression of someone who has had his afternoon ruined by the madcap antics of Doctor Who. 

He's hanging out with his little human mate, who he clearly despises. Human Guy is pathetically desperate to impress King Alien, and has gone to such desperate lengths as accidentally betraying Earth, helping out with the invasion and trying to look cool by wearing an eyepatch. 

Having said all that, they do appear to be holding hands, so maybe it's just one of those bitchy relationships that works despite itself. 

Real-Sarah has been captured and is hanging out with the aliens. Except look - it's Harry! We thought he'd left. 

Well, it turns out it's not Harry. It's a bad Robot doing a disguise. Sarah can tell right away, even without Harry's face coming off. He's scowling. you see. Real Harry would never scowl. 

I think, even if he was about to murder you, real Harry would look, at worst, slightly apologetic, as if he was about to ask you to give back that five pounds you borrowed. 

King Alien captures Doctor Who as well, and ties him to a big stone thing in the middle of town. He's off to invade Real Earth now, you see, so he's going to blow up the pretend one. Which seems short sighted. Guaranteed the minute he destroys it, he'll think of something that it would be really handy for. 

This would have been a good argument for Doctor Who to make. "Don't blow everything up - you might need it later." But no. He just does his usual thing of taunting the villain and being really rude about his personal appearance. 

Have you ever stopped to think, Doctor Who, that maybe if you weren't so petulant and borderline racist all the time, and stopped calling everyone ugly whenever you disagreed with them, then maybe they'd stop tying you to bombs? 

Doctor Who escapes, of course, and ends up having to hang out with Eyepatch Guy. This does not appear to fill him with joy. 

I think they're on the way to Real-Earth. Eyepatch guy talks excitedly for the whole journey about how ace it's going to be, and how everyone's going to really get on with his Alien mates, and what does Doctor Who think people will make of his cool new image, with the eyepatch and everything?

Doctor Who has clearly developed an instant hatred for this man, and expresses it by telling him that his Alien mates are evil, and he's betrayed Earth, and everyone who dies is his fault, and his eyepatch is the only thing he could imagine that would make his already stupid face look stupider.

Doctor Who eventually gets to Earth and starts to give some thought to stopping the invasion. There is a lot of exciting running around, featuring these Space Suit Robots, who shoot people with their fingers!

Doctor Who looks quite disbelieving here, and with good reason. Sure, the Robots might have super cool finger-guns. Or, perhaps more plausibly, they might have forgotten to bring their guns, and be trying to style it out. 

There's more zany fun later, as Doctor Who meets a Robot version of himself. He's not bothered, obviously, and is clearly focusing less on the prospect of imminent death than on the excellent possibilities this will afford for skiving work.

The existence of a Robot Doctor Who does raise the question - what were the aliens hoping to achieve with this? Let's say the Robot version successfully takes the place of the real one. What then? No-one ever listens to him anyway, and he's always getting arrested and called a spy and nearly killed. 

I give it three days before Robot Doctor Who comes back to the office, crying and saying he doesn't want to do it anymore and can he just be a photocopier or something please?

The story ends with victory for Doctor Who, or possibly his Robot duplicate. One of them goes off into space, with Sarah. 

Or possibly her Robot duplicate.

Time is Relative - The Pyramids of Mars

 

Well if it isn't you, with all your hair and face and loveliness. Welcome, once more, to my half remembered ramble through the history of Doctor Who. This week, the Pyramids! Of Maaaaaars!

This story finds Doctor Who peering out from under his hat to see if anyone has noticed how unusual he's being. 

People are not paying enough attention to him, so he's putting a lot of effort into being extra weird and alien. Apparently the massive scarf and nonsensical hat aren't enough to signal "Look out, here comes someone with one heck of a personality." So he's thrown "moody sulking" into the mix. 

The story, when finally Doctor Who deigns to glance its way, is very exciting. This guy, in the super excellent fez, lives in a house full of Egypt stuff and and maybe is Egyptian himself, even though they all live in England for some reason.

I like how casual he is about it all. If I get a new poster on the wall I basically spend all day hopping up and down waiting for someone to comment on it. But this guy is all "Yeah, I've got a massive sarcophagus in my lounge. It's no biggie."

It all kicks off big time when - hurray! - some giant evil Egyptian Mummies burst out of the woods and start murdering everyone.

These are a truly excellent design and look very much like they mean business. I think even a Cyberman would do a gasp if he saw these two lumbering out of the dark. He'd think, "I know I don't have any emotions, but I also know that Cybermen aren't meant to wee in their suits, and I've definitely done that."

The Mummies are chasing this guy. He was just wandering around near the house, and now he's having to run away before he gets hit to death by the Mummies. 

I don't know why they're so keen to kill him. Maybe they're just angry, because they've woken up confused, like wasps. "Why are we in England? Why am I covered in bandages? What's going on?"

The guy has fooled the mummies, by the cunning plan of standing next to a tree. This has totally foxed the Mummies, and they are absolutely at a loss what to do next. 

I think the guy is meant to be a poacher. I've never come across these characters except 

a) being murdered by aliens in Doctor Who and 

b) selling eels to Withnail and I. 

As I understand it, they are some kind of wood dwelling vagabond. This one has quite snappy dress sense, though, I think, for someone who lives in a ditch.

Soon the Mummies catch the poacher guy, and squash him to death between their angular bosoms. 

It will later transpire that the Mummes are really robots. I can only assume, then, that these strange, protruding chest things are specifically designed for slicing off people's heads. Otherwise... I mean, what's the thinking? Who designs a big killer evil Mummy thing, and then gives it a giant triangular chest? 

Or are they... are they meant to look sexy? Is that why the poacher looks so distraught? He's thinking, "I hope they kill me before anyone sees us and thinks we're friends."

Doctor Who and Sarah eventually turn up and start to dick about with all the Egypt things. They haven't even bothered to find out what's going on, they just think "Oh look, someone's doing something - let's fiddle with it and break things and move stuff and put it somewhere else."

What if it's a nice thing, Doctor Who? What if it's a surprise birthday party and you've ruined it? What if the poacher guy was a heroin smuggler, and the Mummies are just two really unorthodox cops who don't play by the rules?

Meanwhile, these two guys are having an argument. They are brothers, so this isn't too unusual. This isn't like that argument I had with my brother, though, which ended with me pulling off Boba Fett's head and laughing while he cried. No. 

This one basically goes:

Pathetic Moustache Brother: "Why are you being so weird and murdery since you got back from that Mysterious Tomb in Egypt?"

Cadaverous Clearly Evil Brother: "Why do you prattle so, puny human? I mean... nothing's wrong, I've just been driving all day.  How's mum?"

He murders him, obviously.

Meanwhile, in space, this guy is watching everything and going, "Yeah!" He's the main bad guy, and he's called Sutekh. He lives on this chair, and he's been stuck there for ages because, years ago, he was a massively evil space-jerk and all his friends ganged up on him and stuck him to a chair forever. 

All the stuff with the Mummies and Egypt is his idea. He wants to get off the chair, and so he keeps shouting things like, "Do my bidding!" and "Make evil happen!" and "Kill more poachers!"

Apparently this will help.

The Mummies build a big space rocket. At least that's what they tell everyone. It doesn't really resemble a rocket at all, does it? This would explain why they are all standing in such defensive 'hard man' stances, as if daring anyone to say, "Why have you built a big vinyl tent in the garden? Are you having a pretend festival?"

I think it's meant to go to Mars, and set Sutekh free, or something. If it destroys... something... then he... gets out of the chair. I'll be honest, I've never really paid much attention to what's happening. It's all too exciting and scary for me to properly settle.

Evil Cadaverous Brother turns out to have the rather mundane job of bossing the Mummies about. You can tell that he's a bit deflated by this. He was clearly expecting bigger things from his job as Villainous Ghoul than 'supervise the efficient loading of a rubbish looking rocket, on schedule and without damaging the original wood flooring of the house."

He's a good villain, but he needs some underlings that he can yell sarcastic insults at. The Mummies have excellent upper body strength, but they don't really listen, so it's impossible to make them sad.

Kaboom! Shoot!

I don't know what Doctor Who has been up to in this story, but it's clearly not much. For all the difference Doctor Who has made, this might as well be called "The Amazing Sutekh Show - episode five, Everyone Nice Gets Horribly Killed".

Sarah has clearly had enough, and has found herself a massive gun. It was only a matter of time, really, before she tired of Doctor Who's idiosyncratic approach to evil. "Ooh, let's talk to it. Let's wave jelly babies in its face. Let's try to see the good in it until it dies of shame! Let's press a button and hope it makes the story end for no reason."

Towards the end of the story, everyone goes to Mars. Here we see Evil Cadaverous Brother poking furiously at one of the many puzzles that you apparently have to do if you want to see Sutekh. 

He is definitely not having a fun time. It was good earlier, when he was strutting around being the embodiment of evil and murdering his brother, and watching the Mummies charge excitedly after people. Now literally everyone he could conceivably kill is already dead, and here he is, frustrated by this nonsense.

What's next? A huge sudoku? Evil Candy Crush? 

The final test for Doctor Who and Sarah is when they meet these fancy Bling Mummies and have to play stupid logic games with them. It's one of those "If I'm telling the truth, but my mate says I'm lying, but then I say I'm not..." things, where you've got to use clever thinking or Sarah Jane will suffocate in her big tube.

Sarah looks very concerned, and with good reason. She's realised that Doctor Who has, right this very second, run out of enthusiasm for this story. If she's lucky, he'll tell the fancy Mummies the answer to their stupid quiz before her lungs explode, but then there'll be no getting anything useful out of him for the rest of the day, and they might as well just go home. 

As I recall, that's pretty much what happens. Sutekh does escape, and vows to destroy all living matter in the universe etc. But Doctor Who defeats him by getting out a device no-one has ever seen before and pressing some buttons.

It's a poor ending to an otherwise delightful story. Ah well. You can't have everything. 

See you next time, for more, similar nonsense.