Boston Kickout (1996)

"There's loads to do in Stevenage...if you like concrete"

"I fucking hate this town"

Stevenage. No offence to anyone who hails from there, but it really is a shithole. I can just about say this, as I used to go out with a girl from there and visited its grim concrete desolation row regularly. It's telling that the two most famous films made in Stevenage, Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush and this, chart the decline from optimism to pessimism of these government sponsored urban landscapes that were built upon the rural and undeveloped areas of our land in the postwar period to help accommodate the 'overspill' from deprived inner city areas. In the earlier film the mood is bright and breezy for our young freewheeling protagonists, but by the time we reach the 1990s of Boston Kickout, the youth on display are emphatically disillusioned. The film, from writer/director Paul Hills, is a semi-autobiographical tale about his own experiences growing up in the town.

Phil (John Simm) moved from London to Stevenage as a child with his father (Derek Martin) in the 1980s shortly after witnessing his mother's suicide. Now it is 1991 and Phil and his friends, Ted (Andrew Lincoln), Matt (Nathan Valente) and Steve (Richard Hanson), have just left school and are caught in that limbo period of the 'final' summer; waiting for the exam results that will shape their adult lives. Ted, effortlessly cool, is keen to break out of the stifling atmosphere of his hometown and promptly disappears in dramatic fashion on that first night of freedom - perhaps because he knows that if you stick around any longer you'll end up like Steve's older brother, Robert (a scene-stealing Marc Warren), a wild skinhead who revels in his small town legend; "I've been thrown out of every club in Stevenage!" he gleefully proclaims after the bouncers chuck him into the street for glassing someone. "There's only two!" Phil points out, but it does little to deflate his sense of achievement.

Caught between these two extremes is Phil and Simm's performance of understated charm serves as the perfect balance. Feeling somewhat lost without the routine of school and with his best mate Ted AWOL, Phil drifts through a dead-end summer job at a bakery whilst indulging in his pastime of photography, not really knowing what he wants to do with his life, or what he wants from it. The developments of his friends - Matt gets engaged and Steve's behaviour becomes increasingly strange - provides him with some surprising distractions, but he only gets something of his own when his Shona, his outgoing Irish cousin (Emer McCourt) visits, leading to romance. This too however, proves to be a momentary distraction and, when his father attempts suicide, Phil must ultimately make a decision to either accept his lot and become absorbed by his peers and the culture around him, or break out and seek to achieve his potential. 

Boson Kickout is a sadly overlooked film, perhaps because it was quickly lost in the wave of more successful and better remembered films such as Trainspotting and Human Traffic, which also starred Simm, an effective poster boy for the Britpop 90s, and featured some of the same production team, including a producer credit Emer McCourt. It's a shame, because I think overall Boston Kickout is a more contemplative and mature offering than the enjoyably cartoonish antics of Human Traffic, with themes that are perhaps less dated, and is certainly better than the Trainspotting wannabes that followed in its wake. It's easy to see why Simm, Lincoln and Warren went on to bigger and better things, but sadly Valente and Hanson did not, and their somewhat anonymous performances perhaps tell that tale. 

I'd recommend the film for anyone who grew up or came of age in the 1990s, it's choice soundtrack (Oasis, The Stone Roses, Primal Scream etc) and the fashions (I was amused to see that Ted dressed exactly like I did in the '90s and the early '00s - I had exactly the same leather jacket and a fondness for obscure T-shirts, and given that I have short dark, wavy/curly hair just like Lincoln's, it was quite an out-of-body experience!) will certainly bring back memories, and if you lived in a new town or a dead end town, you'll appreciate that sense of being young and alive but being held back and a little scared of taking the leap. It's not perfect, but it is a funny and touching coming-of-age drama that I had a good time with.

Oh and the title? It refers to the game that Phil et al played as kids, jumping over the fences of neighbouring homes and trashing their gardens.

Wordless Wednesday: Election Apathy

Rapid Reviews: Cutting Edge by John Harvey

I'd previously read just one novel by John Harvey and that was 2014's Darkness, Darkness - the final novel in the 13-book series featuring his hero Detective Inspector Charlie Resnick. That novel concerned a cold case mystery left unresolved from the days of the miners strike of 1984/'85. It was OK, a readable affair, but I felt I needed to have experienced Resnick before to have perhaps fully appreciated it. 

So I went back to 1991 and book 3 in the series, Cutting Edge which I recommend. 

A savage assault with a scalpel leaves Dr Tim Fletcher's body badly slashed in a deserted hospital walkway - the first victim in a series of brutal assaults on NHS staff in Nottingham. As panic grips the city, it's up to DI Resnick to find the killer. His chief suspect appears to be an over confident, sexually abusive medical student who had previously dated Fletcher's girlfriend - but is he and his team letting their dislike for the man clouding their judgement? Faced with a mass of clues that lead nowhere, Resnick is confronted by a face from his own past as he finds himself pushed to breaking point.

I really enjoyed this one and have come to like Resnick, the sandwich eating, multiple cat owning and jazz loving troubled 'tec. So much so that I went on to ioffer and bought a DVD of the BBC's sole attempts at adapting Harvey's novels (Lonely Hearts and Rough Treatment, books 1 and 2 in the series) starring Tom Wilkinson in the role and dating back to the early '90s.

Cutting Edge is an engrossing read full of lovely little details that play out on the periphery of the main crime; there's a handful of other investigations Resnick's team are currently looking into, and then there's their home lives too with one of his detective constable's struggling with a wife suffering from post natal depression, and Resnick himself finding himself putting up a drunken down and out acquaintance based on their mutual love for jazz. In tackling these various strands Harvey's style is quite fragmentary at times but it's never alienating or difficult in its approach. Without giving anything away, a turning point of the plot concerns a medical phenomena that is rarely spoken of and quite terrifying to consider!

But if reading Cutting Edge isn't appealing to you, you could always try listening to this enjoyable full-cast adaptation for Radio 4 dating back to 1996 and starring Tom Georgeson as Resnick, a young John Simm as Tim Fletcher and  Gillian Bevan who plays staff nurse Sarah Leonard and also provides the chanteuse torch song style vocals to the play's theme tune.

Last Night's Tele : Code of a Killer

Code of a Killer is the kind of ITV drama the channel can do in their sleep. It's just a shame therefore that they weren't more wide awake to do justice to the real life story the scientific breakthrough that would revolutionise police work the world over.

The drama tells the story of Dr Alec Jeffreys, the inventor of DNA profiling, meeting with DCS David Baker, a detective struggling to solve two linked murders in 1980s Leicestershire. Baker’s case has hit a brick wall: two teenage girls were raped and murdered in the same small town, three years apart, but the evidence, and suspects, are proving thin on the ground. As his tireless investigation comes to naught, we have the parallel storyline featuring Jeffreys equally tireless effort to make his theories on DNA stand up to scientific scrutiny.

As with a lot of these ITV crime dramas, there is an impeccable cast on display. John Simm, an actor I really like, plays Jeffreys, a bearded academic married to both Anna Madeley and his work, and not always in that order. I admire Simm's attempts to evade typecasting and broaden his range which has ostensibly occurred ever since he hung up his leather jacket in Life On Mars (a show which casts its shadow over the proceedings here with the recent history setting and Robert Glenister - brother of Phil aka Gene Hunt - playing a top brass copper) Since then he's portrayed the completely off his trolley incarnation of The Master in Doctor Who and a eyepatch wearing militiaman in The Devil's Whore, all a world away from his more traditional underplayed, contained screen persona. The role of Jeffreys affords him another change of pace as a bearded distracted and somewhat mannered scientist. Bit it doesn't always work to convince us and I think the reason for that is the script which offers him little to do except repeatedly explain the nature of the DNA code and genetic fingerprinting for the characters on the screen and the viewers at home. David Threlfall, whom Simm starred with back in the 90s in a rather lovely but largely forgotten sitcom entitled Men of the World, is on safer ground (familiar too given he played a copper in the recent, excellent BBC series What Remains) as DCS Baker, delivering a methodical and lugubrious character study which suggests a man who personally grieves for the victims he tries to get justice for.

Unlike a lot of these real life crime dramas that ITV make, Code of a Killer was NOT written by Jeff Pope, but by Michael Crompton instead who turns in a somewhat soggy, cliche ridden script that repeatedly hammers viewers over the head with the poor work/life ratio that Jeffreys has. In one wonderfully refreshing moment he pulls the rug from under our feet; Jeffreys receives a phone call from his wife, who we see sat at home in her coat, a suitcase by her side. "I'm leaving" she says...only for her to add "And you best be too" as it is revealed Jeffreys is simply late home for their family holiday and not, as we initially expected and suspected, about to lose his wife because of his obsessive research. Sadly this is the only time Crompton's script pulls this trick and it isn't long before we're back to the hoary old cliches which a dramatisation of a groundbreaking event in policing really does not deserve.

Despite the occasional flaw in the all too familiar script, Code of a Killer remains watchable thanks to the cast involved (along with Threlfall, Simm, Glenister and Madeley there's Inbetweeners star Lydia Rose Bewley, Lorcan Cranitch and Andrew Tiernan), the real circumstances it is depicting and some quality direction from James Strong, who maintains a sensitive touch, mindful of the victim's families, whilst still keeping a suspenseful pace for the sake of drama.  The period look of the 80s is also beautifully and authentically brought to the proceedings too.

Out On Blue Six : Placebo

I'm not usually much of a fan of anyone covering The Blessed Kate's songs - after all, you can't really improve on perfection can you? - but I must admit to liking what Placebo did to her hit Running Up That Hill in the early 00s

Their cover has been something of an earworm this past week as it is being used to trail ITV's new real life crime drama Code of a Killer which starts on Easter Monday and stars John Simm and David Threlfall (seen just the previous Monday in The Ark) in a dramatisation of Alec Jeffreys' discovery of DNA fingerprinting and its first use by DCS David Barker in catching a double murderer. Simm will play Jeffreys and Threlfall Barker and for viewers with a long memory its a reunion for the pair who last starred together in the sadly overlooked '90s BBC sitcom Men of the World by actor and writer Danny Peacock.

It'll also be fun to see Simm going back in time to be involved with the police again a'la the much missed Life on Mars - though this time it's Robert Glenister rather than his brother Phil, who gave us the brilliant creation Gene Hunt, among the cast list.

End Transmission

The Sands of Time

The Village returned to BBC1 last night for a second series, Peter Moffat's heartfelt and gritty ode to rural Derbyshire life in the early 20th century starring two of the very best actors working right now John Simm and Maxine Peake as the patriarch and matriarch of the Middletons, a struggling farming family beset by the age old problem of class ingrained penury. 

This second series in the epic decades traversing storyline transplants us some five years after the events of the first, in the 1920s. But who is this newcomer? This aquiline and imposing blonde figure, he of the rolling eyes, clipped delivery and sneering manner? 

Why it's only Julian Sands at his boo-hissable best as a cheating, bullying Tory peer and media baron called Lord Kilmartin. 

It's very rare to see Julian Sands in anything these days, so it's quite a surprise to see him here and in something so prominent and critically and commercially acclaimed as The Village.

Granted he's an acquired taste that's prone to ham, but I've always had a bit of a soft spot for him and his unusual acting style. He's certainly at home here and nowhere near as panto as one would expect, despite playing an evil bastardly toff whose credentials were never in doubt the moment he called a visiting fairground boxer known as 'Savage Africa' the N word (before fighting him in a fixed match that made him the winner and model of 'Heroic Britain') and branded young Bert Middleton - the hero of the saga - a cheat in an attempt to save his own wounded pride. He looks set to make the Middletons life a misery in this new series and its good to see a programme (immediately after Channel 4's wonderful The Mill) wear its socialist heart on its sleeve.

Out On Blue Six : Six60

Great tune to get the adrenalin pumping...

This track's getting a lot of hype at the moment thanks to its inclusion in the new ITV drama Prey starring the great John Simm, back in Manchester.

Great trailer, looks a bit like The Fugitive. It starts tomorrow and I can't wait. Alongside Simm there's also Craig Parkinson and, in dramatic roles, Rosie Cavaliero and Ade Edmondson.

End Transmission

RIP Antonia Bird

Very sad and surprising news today, the British film and television director Antonia Bird has passed away aged just 54. Bird, a devotee of Ken Loach and a socially aware film maker in her own right, carved a brilliant and striking career out for herself starting at the Royal Court, and into television as one of the original directors of BBC's Casualty and EastEnders. She moved into film, directing Jimmy McGovern's polemic Priest which would begin her long association with star and 4Way Films business partner Robert Carlyle (which she set up with him, Irvine Welsh and Mark Cousins). They would go on to work together in the gangster film with a political conscience Face (which I've previously blogged about) and the blackly comic horror Ravenous. She directed the Hollywood film Mad Love and several stand out, award winning one off TV dramas such as Safe, Care, Rehab and The Hamburg Cell. Most recently she directed the brilliant BBC series The Village which starred John Simm and Maxine Peake and was one of the finest dramas on TV this year.

She passed away peacefully in her sleep following a battle with a rare anaplastic thyroid cancer.

RIP.

Miranda (2002)

I didn't even know this film existed until last week, which is odd considering its cast and its filming location in Scarborough and the north coast of Yorkshire; places I love.

Basically, I was out in Warrington last week when I spied their old HMV had reopened as 'Head' a new store selling the same kind of things as HMV; DVD's, CD's, Vinyl and some books. This is great, as the only HMV near me nowadays is Liverpool. Slap bang in the middle of the store was a huge 3 for £10 display on Film 4 dvds and needless to say, I snapped a few up, including this one, Miranda.

The plot is described on Letterboxd, thus ~

A librarian begins a passionate affair with a mysterious woman who walks into his library. When she suddenly disappears he travels down to London to search for her only to discover she has three identities - dancer, dominatrix and con-woman. But which one is the real Miranda? 

Doesn't really gran the tone of the film does it? In fact it makes it sound like quite a sleazy sensuous crime movie. Ok, there's sex in the film of course, but it's fun. There's little fun displayed in the general blurb of the film, the DVD cover above (would it hurt to find images of the cast smiling?) or in this frankly appalling poster (which deletes John Simm's leading man status altogether!)

What Miranda actually is, is a quirky little romantic comedy thriller that benefits greatly from its cast. 

Christina Ricci is in the prime of her edgy doll featured sensuality as the titular Miranda, an enigma and sexual chameleon who captivates men for a series of deceptive reasons relating to industrial skullduggery, whilst John Simm - back when he seemed to be perpetually, Puckishly youthful - plays the innocent caught in the trap, an everyman slacker librarian who just may have a place in her heart. John Hurt essentially gives his Stephen Ward performance from Scandal another airing (albeit with a lighter touch) languidly creepy as Miranda's pimpish, hustling 'Svengali', whilst Kyle MacLachlan brings a touch of Lynchian dark humour and obsessive perversity to his threatening supporting role. 

The rest of the cast is rounded out by a series of TV faces all just a fraction before they become more familiar or a household name; Julian Rhind Tutt - hilarious as ever, playing Simm's best mate, and then there's Tamsin Greig, Cavan Clerkin and Joanne Froggatt. But essentially the film belongs to Ricci and Simm, a partnership which isn't as improbable as it initially sounds and is suitably played without too much natural chemistry; Simm always a step behind the woman of his dreams as he struggles to find the real Miranda.

It's a film that ticks by well enough but it may just be a little too cool for its own good, with its tonality and eclectic retro soundtrack. I can't help feel it's a film slightly out of step with the passing parade of the late 90s where it may have thrived in better just 3 years earlier - though that said, the similar 'fucked up romcom' A Life Less Ordinary never found its rightful audience at that time either.

Great opening credits in a faux video game style set the scene for the film's playfulness rather well. It's blocky imagery now being cutely retro.

Oh and "You've got the face of a child, but your eyes are old" may well be the best line of dialogue to sum up Ricci's cinematic appeal at that time.

Miranda is never going to be a film which I'll be screaming 'oh my God you have to see this!' over, but if it ever appears on Channel 4 or Film 4 late at night - or, you pick it up cheap on DVD as I did -  I'd recommend giving it a whirl. It's short enough at 90 minutes and doesn't outstay it's welcome. The DVD has a few minor bonus features includes interviews, a trailer and a featurette (which incorporates sound bites from the aforementioned interviews)

Wonderland (1999)

Wonderland. The Millennium Mike Leigh. 

Wonderland feels more like a work of art than an actual film a viewer can properly interact with and enjoy on a narrative level, which is amazing considering the breadth of acting talent involved; Gina McKee, Shirley Henderson, Molly Parker, Ian Hart, John Simm, Kika Markham, Jack Shepherd, Stuart Townsend and a young and extremely nubile, naked Sarah Jane Potts, to name but a few, all weaving disparate strands of modern London life together over the course of 108 minutes.

I'm quite a fan of Michael Winterbottom, and the fingerprints of his more reflective style (seen in projects like Everyday and The Trip rather than 24 Hour Party People or The Look Of Love) are all over this one, with a series of superb snapshots of London set to a beautiful score from Michael Nyman, an example of which you can see/hear below...

Beautiful to look at but ultimately like a lot of beautiful things, quite aloof and therefore a bit of a disappointment to me if I'm honest, Wonderland remains however a valuable time capsule, one that I can imagine will mature to a better appreciation in years to come.

Human Traffic : Remixed (2002)

I've seen Human Traffic before, shortly after its release (so, many moons ago) in fact, but this is actually my first watch of this 'remix'. This version is - I believe -  essentially producer Allan Niblo's cut of the film following a fall out during the film's making with his writer/director protege Justin Kerrigan.

Too long since the original watch to spot any differences I'm afraid.

But, man is this film ever a time capsule! I know people who lived like this. Shit, I kind of lived like this too and I have to tell you it's damn strange to see it now simply as an observer. 

The themes of alienation and having to deal with unemployment or just plain shit employment, living for the weekend when you're in your twenties are palpably real and well created with a suitably anarchic breaking the fourth wall style interposed between the kinetic bombast of images and tunes from the chemical and clubbing culture.

I love the scenes of the alternative national anthem, ranting over pints about shit boy bands, the piece to camera about pill paranoia, the scene where John Simm and Andrew Lincoln (This Life, Afterlife) say to one another what they really think, Nicola Reynolds (later to appear in Ideal) doorstep press conference about joining the two million unemployed and 'looking forward to getting into some hardcore Richard and Judy', Howard Marks' 'spliff politics' cameo, Danny Dyer and Coupling's Richard Coyle's 'Star Wars is a drug film' talk and the overall believability of the group on screen. It really is great casting.

Essentially this is how we used to live circa the end of the 20th Century/start of the 21st. Christ, when did we get so sodding old?!

PS Danny Dyer was an irritating soppy cunt even back then. But at least he was playing one here.

PPS beyond the 90s fashions, Lorraine Pilkington was gorgeous...and clearly talented too

Theme Time : Edmund Butt - Life On Mars

A show I utterly adore, and one I think is probably the best popular drama of the last ten years, is the time travel detective drama Life On Mars starring John Simm and Philip Glenister.

The theme tune to this (and to the follow up series Ashes To Ashes, which continued the story of DCI Gene Hunt, without a doubt one of the finest TV creations ever) was composed by Edmund Butt. I love how he took a very 70s sounding Get Carter like motif as befits the 1973 Manchester setting, and mixed it up with a more contemporary driving beat

Out On Blue Six : New Order

End Transmission