Vampire-Spotting

In which we suspect that some TV cameras might be taking the train

Written by Forest Pines; published at 5:48 pm on June 17th, 2010.
Filed under: Geekery, Media Addict.

Regular readers over the past couple of years might have noticed that I quite enjoy spotting the filming locations of the paranormal TV drama* Being Human, filmed in a variety of easily-recognisable Bristol locations: Totterdown, Bedminster, Clifton, St George, College Green, and so on. Not for much longer, though, we thought: although the first two series were Bristol-based, the third series is apparently being moved over to Cardiff. Whether it will be the recognisable Cardiff Cardiff of Torchwood, or the generic anycity of Doctor Who, remains to be seen; but this was all clearly set up when, at the end of Series Two, the protagonists were forced to flee the house on the corner of Henry St and Windsor Terrace for an anonymous rural hideout. No more Bristol locations for us to spot, we thought.

Over the past week, we’ve been doing a lot of driving about moving house; we now know every intimate corner of every sensible route from south Bristol to east Bristol, or at least it feels like we do. So we were slightly surprised to see that, about a week ago, some more of these pink signs have popped up. “BH LOC” and “BH BASE”, as before.

We spotted them on Albert Road, near the Black Castle. “BH BASE” points along Bath Road, towards the Paintworks and the ITV studios. “BH LOC”, though, is intriguing. It points down the very last turning off Albert Road before the Black Castle end. That entrance only goes to two places: a KFC branch, and St Philips Marsh railway depot.

If you watched the second series of Being Human, you might remember that there was, indeed, a rather brutal train-based scene in a First Great Western carriage.** So, expect the third series to include, at the very least, an extension of that scene, if not a spin-off plotline. Or, alternatively, those signs aren’t really anything to do with Being Human at all, and it’s just coincidence that they pop up around Bristol a few months before each series appears on the telly.*** My money’s on that train from Series Two being the root of part of the Series Three plot; but, I guess, we’ll just have to wait, watch and see.

* Well, it started off as a comedy, and got more serious as it went along

** I was impressed that the programme’s fidelity-to-location included shooting that scene in a genuine local train, rather than just finding any railway prepared to get a carriage soaked with fake blood. Of course, it was probably a convenient location too.

*** The third possibility, of course, is that someone in Series Three tries to cure vampires and werewolves of their respective curses by getting them to eat large amounts of fried chicken.

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Keyword noise: BBC, BBC3, Being Human, Bristol, comedy, drama, film, filming, First Great Western, ghost, ghost story, railway, St Philips Marsh, television, telly, Totterdown, train, tv, vampire, werewolf

Location, location, location

In which Ipswich is apparently a suburb of Bristol

Written by Forest Pines; published at 10:05 am on May 1st, 2010.
Filed under: Media Addict.

Regular readers – if there are any left – might recall that back in January I spotted some TV filming going on in our neighbourhood, that turned out to be for a drama about prostitutes, drugs, etc. that wasn’t set “specifically in Bristol.”

Well, indeed. Because it turned up on the telly last weekend, and it turned out to be Five Daughters: a drama-documentary about the Ipswich prostitute murders of 2006. Apparently, the film-makers thought that Bristol’s distinctive Victorian terraces look just like Ipswich’s (former) red-light district. Or that Bristol’s highly-distinctive market, on hilly Corn St, looks just like Ipswich city centre.

Now, I know telly is all about editing, and it’s not actually real. But, even so, we were slightly amused by moments such as: a car driving past the same restaurant (“Al’s Tikka Grill”, also known as the “Hungry Bite Cafe”, on Ashton Road”) three times on the same journey, twice shot from the same angle.* Or, the way that Ipswich seems to consist solely of Ashton Road, a handful of roads off Ashton Road,** and Corn St. The way that they had used a real BBC Bristol reporter for their mocked-up news footage; and the way that the programme cut from clips of real news footage showing the real Ipswich, to shots of supposedly the same location, filmed in Bedminster and looking entirely different. I know it’s a drama, and I know their budget might have been a bit stretched, but I would have thought the crew would have put slightly more effort into suspending people’s disbelief.

* Well, he could have driven round the block

** There was also the A-One Cafe, near the junction of Duckmoor Road and Luckwell Road, and very definitely the A-One Cafe, its name visible all over the place.

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Keyword noise: Ashton, Ashton Rd, BBC, BBC One, BBC1, Bedminster, Bristol, documentary, drama, Five Daughters, Ipswich, Suffolk, television, telly, tv

Lights And Action

In which we spot some filming going on, so talk about something completely different

Written by Forest Pines; published at 7:12 am on January 20th, 2010.
Filed under: Media Addict.

On my way home, last night and the night before, I noticed something going on along Ashton Road. Big floodlights, lighting up the whole street: some sort of night filming was going on.

Being intrigued, I went to the internet to try to find out what it might be. And then I checked my website stats, and found that people have been coming to this site, already, to try to find out what was being filmed. They can’t have got an answer, at least not from me. I haven’t been able to find a complete one, either, but I have found that it’s a drama about “the lives of young women who are involved with drugs and prostitution“, and it’s not specifically set in Bedminster, Ashton Gate, or in Bristol in general. Cheerful, then.

It reminded me, though, to say: you’d be able to tell, just by looking at my website stats, that the new series of Being Human has started now, with new extra dark edginess and even dirtier vampires than before. You can tell, because of the number of people who are asking The Interweb where it was filmed. To be honest, the establishing shots in the new series make it even more obvious than previously: most of them clearly show the street name. For new readers: the Being Human house is 1, Windsor Terrace, Totterdown, Bristol.* The pub, going by the exterior shots, appears to be along Henry St. K and I had a debate about the location of the car park in Episode 1: she said Trenchard St, I said Prince St; and the gay vampire’s house in Episode 2 was on Redcliffe Parade – as anyone who’s visited Bristol probably realised. Handily just round the corner from the hospital, in fact, should you have an urgent need to pretend to be dead.**

* Not in Cardiff, as one searcher seemed to think, presumably as the series was commissioned by BBC Cymru/Wales.

** In fact, I’m slightly puzzled now, why he didn’t pop up in the first series? After all, if you’re going through a major crisis and the self-proclaimed Vampire Leader is promising to destroy you, and you have a friend who has helped you in the past and is probably On Your Side … and he lives about 2 minutes walk from where you work, you think you’d probably pop round at least once. Of course, I know the real reason is that he hadn’t been invented at that point, but never mind.

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Keyword noise: Ashton, Ashton Gate, Ashton Road, BBC, BBC3, Bedminster, Being Human, Bristol, drama, film, filming, ghost, television, telly, Totterdown, tv, vampire, werewolf, Windsor Terrace

Signs I’m Getting Older

In which FP has lost interest in something

Written by Forest Pines; published at 11:25 am on April 16th, 2009.
Filed under: Media Addict.

Signs I’m Getting Older, number 3267. Not only do I not remember that there’s a Doctor Who special on, I’m not particularly bothered when we realise we’re missing it.* And not only do I forget it’s on, I forget when it’s repeated. And don’t bother to watch it online, either.

OK, I did at least look up the repeat times. But in a mildly disinterested way. And I don’t have any particular urge to watch it, especially not after seeing the trailers many times. I’ll probably be able to raise a bit more interest next year when the next proper series starts; but for now, I’m not too bothered. Maybe I am starting to get older.

* because K phoned someone only to get: “why are you phoning me right now? Doctor Who‘s on!

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Keyword noise: BBC, Doctor Who, drama, Russell T Davies, sci fi, science fiction, SF, Steven Moffat, television, telly, tv

Broadcast

In which we recommend some telly

Written by Forest Pines; published at 2:13 pm on March 31st, 2009.
Filed under: Media Addict, The Family.

Regular readers might remember that, back in the mists of time – well, December – I mentioned that we’d been watching The Wire on DVD. And that it was very good. None of the bogus and ridiculous “science” you get on CSI;* not much patronising or heartstring-tugging, no deus ex machina and no wrapping the plotlines up inside an hour; just lots of what was – to someone who doesn’t know anything about the real thing, like me – lots of realistic investigative work.

Well, we’ve finally finished watching Season One, just as it finally makes its way onto the BBC. And, to be honest, I’m glad we had the DVDs to watch it from. It took us six months to do, twice as long as it will take BBC2 to show it. It’s a complicated programme, and we ended up watching several episodes twice because we hadn’t been concentrating the first time. In the end, we had to make sure that we only tried to watch it when we were definitely wide awake, otherwise we’d end up missing half of what went on. If we’d tried watching an episode on late night TV every week, we’d have been baffled – we had enough trouble with Dexter season two, just finished on ITV1,** and as unlike The Wire as it is possible for a cop show to be.***

I did wonder, idly, about recommending The Wire to The Parents. They’ve always liked police procedurals, both on telly and in books, and long-form dramas, so, I thought, they’d probably love it.**** But then, I remembered, how much The Mother tuts at the slightest hint of a bad word. The Wire has realistic dialogue.***** It wouldn’t work out. Before they were ten minutes into the first episode, she’d have asked to turn it off.

If you’ve seen the mysterious trailers for The Wire on the BBC, and you’ve not heard of it, go and watch it. It really is good. Very good. As for us: we’ve had the Season 2 DVDs sitting on the bookshelf since Christmas. As soon as we’re properly awake, they’re going in the DVD player. Hurrah!

Update, April 2nd: BBC2 currently seem to be showing episodes of The Wire daily. Meaning that, for one thing, they will whip through the whole series in under three weeks; and for another, if you didn’t start watching on Monday then it’s already too late. Tonight is Episode 4, and the plot is already well under way.

* insert your favourite “CSI [somewhere]” joke here. I’ve mentioned CSI Bedminster myself before, and Half Man Half Biscuit have produced CSI:Ambleside.

** I’m still not used to the name “ITV1″. In my mind it’s still the old federated network – Yorkshire TV where I grew up.

*** Dexter, though, certainly had more tension. Even though we knew full well that there are at least three more series after the one ITV have just been showing, we were still on edge at practically every cliffhanger.

**** Unlike us, they have a DVD recorder, so it would still be compatible with their in-bed-by-10 lifestyle.

***** And at least one scene where every single word of dialogue is a swear word. Every word. A bit like the opening scene in Four Weddings And A Funeral, but set at a scene-of-crime.

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Keyword noise: BBC, BBC2, crime, crime drama, Dexter, drama, DVD, ITV, ITV1, police drama, police procedural, television, telly, The Parents, The Wire, tv

Afterlife

In which we consider how “Being Human” ended.

Written by Forest Pines; published at 11:53 am on March 15th, 2009.
Filed under: Media Addict.

Given the amount of space I’ve used to talk about Totterdown-set* BBC3 series Being Human on here, it’s about time I mentioned the series finale – it was a fortnight ago now, after all. Before the finale had been shown, we already knew that Series Two had been commissioned, which, I have to say, took away some of the suspense. It was possible that the writer would follow through the compulsary penultimate-episode cliffhanger by “killing off”** the main characters; but it wasn’t likely. It was also very likely that we’d lose some of the other characters; and, indeed, it happened.

The setup for the next series is already well in place, with at least three storylines there to take up, all fairly well-divorced from the series one plot. How much reference will be made to the first series, I don’t know. From a new-viewers point of view, three new-starting plot strands make sense; but from a writing point of view, it seems unrealistic. Given the end of the finale episode, I’d have thought that there shouldn’t be much of a gap in the series timeline between series; so how realistic will it be for the previous events to be barely mentioned?

Overall, the series was pretty damn entertaining, even though the finale itself wasn’t particularly exciting. This is the problem with the “compulsary cliffhanger” structure mentioned above: if the writer isn’t careful, the penultimate episode can end up much more action-filled and suspenseful than the final episode itself. Recent series of Doctor Who have tended to suffer from the same problem: the finale has trouble living up to the build-up in the previous episode. It left me thinking: “but why didn’t they just do that at the start?” To be honest, we were mostly watching it for the locations; and we’ll probably still watch the next series. Marks out of ten: ooh, I don’t know. Maybe a seven.

* for all those people searching: the shared house’s address is 1, Windsor Terrace; the hospital is Bristol General, by Bathurst Basin; and the undertakers are Up North, in Clifton.

** After all, they were all either dead or undead already.

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Keyword noise: BBC, BBC3, Being Human, Bristol, comedy, drama, ghost, ghost story, Redcliffe, television, telly, Totterdown, tv, vampire, werewolf

Haunting

In which we ponder some Being Human world-building issues

Written by Forest Pines; published at 3:25 pm on February 10th, 2009.
Filed under: Media Addict.

Some more notes on Being Human, which continues on the telly for the next few weeks.

There’s something about the show’s universe which has been bothering me slightly. That is: what happens when a ghost, who is invisible to the vanilla world, picks something up? Does it hover in midair? Does it vanish until the ghost drops it? Neither answer seems satisfactory, particularly when a ghost is moving things just out of a human character’s peripheral vision. It seems implausible* for people to see, for example, a casserole dish floating down the street; but what happens when Annie The Ghost then goes and opens the oven door?

Secondly: I’m presuming that we’re going to find out, later in the series, that there is another way to “kill” a ghost. Because, otherwise, everything would be rather unbalanced, and the vampires wouldn’t be quite so cocky. If a ghost can pick up a casserole, it can pick up a stake or a chainsaw. And I’m wondering if Pizza Guy from episode one is going to eventually be a major plot point, given that presumably he’s not human.

Location notes: the hotel in episode three was the Redcliff Hill branch of Hotel Mercure,** and the interiors looked to have been shot on location too. The “crime scene” in episode two, found by Annie chasing an ambulance, was in Warden Road, Bedminster, just off East St.

* Yes, using the word “implausible” when writing about something involving vampires and werewolves does seem slightly silly

** I know there probably isn’t a reason for this, but never mind. Why why why: Redcliff Hill and Redcliff St, but Redcliffe Way and Redcliffe Parade?

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Keyword noise: BBC, BBC3, Bedminster, Being Human, Bristol, comedy, drama, ghost, ghost story, Redcliff, Redcliff Hill, Redcliffe, television, telly, Totterdown, tv, vampire, Warden Rd, werewolf

Being Humane

In which we watched Being Human

Written by Forest Pines; published at 12:00 pm on January 27th, 2009.
Filed under: Media Addict.

After the post last week, I felt we really should watch Being Human, the new BBC3 series set largely in Totterdown. We were, I have to say, pleasantly surprised.

I’m not going to summarise the plot here, other than: it’s a fantasy version of the classic sitcom plot. Three oddball characters who are stuck with each other – a vampire and a werewolf who are trying to appear human, who have managed to rent a haunted house.* If it is a sitcom, though, it’s the sort I’d like to write myself: the sort without very many jokes in.**

Some things were a little overused – the heavy heartbeat when Mitchell The Vampire’s blood-lust attacks came on; and the post-production effect used to make skies look darker and more interesting. Some of the mechanics of the worldbuilding don’t quite make sense, either.*** But, overall, the series was remarkably subtle and realistic. For something involving almost-immortal beasts, of course. Moreover, unlike the trailer, the characters, not the backdrop, were its main focus. It might have obviously-recognisable locations – the Totterdown house, the General Hospital, St Nick’s Market**** – and it might have bit-part actors with local accents; but so far, it could have been set anywhere. It didn’t rely on the location for anything.

I can guess how the series is going to go from here. The real test, I suppose, comes with: just how well the minor characters are treated. Will Herrick, or Lauren, become just as full a character as Mitchell? What about Annie’s fiance?***** We’ll watch it, because we’ll be intrigued to find out. And, of course, just in case, we spot anyone we know lurking in the background of a shot.

* A former grocery store on the corner of Windsor Terrace. It has pub-type glass in the front window, but as far as I can find out it was never actually a pub.

** This is a good thing; and we’re lucky that Being Human was made by the BBC’s Cardiff drama section, and not by the people responsible for the awful laugh-tracked sitcoms that pass for entertainment on BBC3.

*** Actually, Vampire Civil Wars are an interesting argument to overcome the usual objection to vampires: if they’re immortal, and all their victims became vampires, then why didn’t we get to an I Am Legend-type situation about three weeks after they first evolved? Not being up on vampire-based literature, I don’t know if anyone else has ever covered it. They must have, at some point.

**** We did both shout out “Pie shop!” when George The Werewolf ran through the market and past the Pieminister stall

***** It confirms something I’ve thought for a long time, incidentally: ghost stories really can be the saddest stories in the world.

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Keyword noise: BBC, BBC3, Being Human, Bristol, comedy, drama, fantasy, ghost, ghost story, review, sitcom, television, telly, Totterdown, tv, vampire, werewolf, Windsor Terrace

Hardware

In which FP’s disbelief loses some of its suspension

Written by Forest Pines; published at 9:27 am on December 9th, 2008.
Filed under: Media Addict.

Just recently, we’ve been spending a lot of time sat indoors in front of the telly, watching season one of The Wire, which a friend was kind enough to buy us on DVD, saying: “it’s the sort of thing you’ll like”. And, indeed, it’s very good. I’m not normally a fan of police dramas; but The Wire is good enough to stand as a drama on its own without the “police procedural” aspect of the show.

One little tiny thing, though, made me think: bah. One little detail they slipped up on: right at the start, in the opening credits. It’s the curse of knowing too much about anything, being able to spot the detail mistakes in any sort of fiction. The Wire is so named because a lot of the police’s evidence comes from phone tapping;* the credits features closeups of surveillance equipment,** phone-tap gear, spectroscopic voice analysis screenshots, and so on. Including this gadget:

That thing at top right. It’s got lots of nice blinky LEDs – you can’t see on a still, obviously, but the lights move in a regular step. Problem is, I know, from work, exactly what that is. Lots of computer geeks will. It’s a cable tester – you can just about make out the words on it – for 4-pair cable, the sort used mostly for Ethernet.*** I keep one in my toolkit, with the cable crimps, because it’s invaluable to check if you’ve crimped a good joint. It’s also absolutely no use for tapping a public phone. Ah well. Just that one little mistake by a set dresser, and it disappointed me a little.

* Hopefully that isn’t giving too much away there.

** One thing that puzzled us: if it’s set in this decade, why do all the cops use 1970s-era Nikon cameras for surveillance, and not the equivalent digitals? Or, for that matter, why are they forced to write up reports on Smith-Coronas?

*** Or, to be fair, for some office phone systems. It’s also worth pointing out that although it’s used for Ethernet cable it doesn’t prove a cable is good for Ethernet – it’s easy to make a cable that will pass this (electrical) test but not work as a network cable.

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Keyword noise: credits, drama, Ethernet, gadgets, opening credits, police drama, police procedural, props, set design, television, telly, The Wire, tv

Interconnectedness

In which we consider the perils of an updated adaptation

Written by Forest Pines; published at 10:24 am on November 3rd, 2007.
Filed under: Media Addict.

When I was in my early teens, one of my favourite books – even though I didn’t really understand half of the plot at the time – was Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, by Douglas Adams. With a plot which was cobbled together from two separate Doctor Who stories, and which relies on the works of a poet I’ve never even read, it can be a little tricky to understand.* When I heard that it was going to be on Radio 4, I had to listen, purely to see if it was adaptable at all.

They haven’t done badly so far, to be honest, although the plot has been twisted round in various ways that, with one epiisode to go, don’t quite make sense yet. On the other hand, they haven’t quite pulled off updating the story to the present day – some parts would have been much better as a 1980s period piece.** And they did leave in half of my favourite joke.***

This isn’t meant to be a critique of the series, though, especially as it still has one episode to go. This is something I’ve spotted, which Radio 4 have been quiet about so far. Radio 4 are also going to dramatise the other Dirk Gently novel.

There’s a small clue on their website: it refers to DGHDA as the “first series”. Really, it’s a standalone book – the only characters apart from Dirk who pop up in the other book, The Long Dark Teatime Of The Soul, are Miss Pearce and Sgt Gilks. What makes it so obvious, though, is that quite apart from the plot-based changes, the producers of the current radio series have made other changes to DGHDA, adding references to tLDTotS to link the two books together. I’m also pretty sure they’re going to change tLDTotS to add in characters from the first book, too, to try and present them as a cohesive pair.

Whether this will work or not is another matter. Bookwise, The Long Dark Teatime Of The Soul is rather patchier and had more plot holes than Dirk Gently; although one of the things they both have in common is that small asides, or scenes which appear to be a quick joke, can turn out to be an important plot point later on.**** I’m enjoying the radio Dirk Gently so far, but I’m not completely convinced, and I don’t know why its adapters thought they had to do more to link the books together. Maybe I should write to them and ask.

* Particularly, you have to know that Coleridge’s Kubla Khan is, as far as poems go, pretty short. Wikipedia has a very thorough and spoiler-filled plot summary, which explains most of the trickier bits.

** How many people still use tape-based answering machines, instead of voicemail? How many people still refer to “car phones”? A story with a plot revolving around people leaving messages on answering machines, and stealing answering-machine tapes, doesn’t really make sense if you move it forward twenty years

*** “There’s no such word as herring in my dictionary!” Unfortunately, unless I wasn’t listening properly, they missed out the setup line which comes many scenes earlier.

**** At the start of Long Dark Teatime Of The Soul, Dirk had recently set up work as a fortune-teller, in drag, to get some cash in – but gave it up when everything he said, however outlandish, came true. It seems like a throwaway comic scene, at first – but in actual fact it contains important hints to what is going on later in the book.

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Keyword noise: adaptation, Dirk Gently, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, Dirk Maggs, Douglas Adams, drama, dramatisation, Harry Enfield, modernisation, radio, Radio 4, updating