Category: {television}

Television

Under the weather

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“He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson.” Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes in The Final Problem (1984).

As well as chasing a deadline this week I’m now suffering badly from a cold, always a dismal combination if you can’t take time off. So this picture of the wonderful Jeremy Brett is all you get today. I started re-watching the 1980s Holmes TV adaptations a week or so ago and for the moment they provide an excellent means of taking the mind off clogged sinuses and sneezing fits. My earlier appraisal of the series is here.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• John Osborne’s Dorian Gray
• The World’s Greatest Detective
• “The game is afoot!”

Burroughs: The Movie

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The author at home in his Bunker.

When I was writing last August about Yony Leyser’s new Burroughs documentary William S Burroughs: A Man Within I mentioned Howard Brookner’s 1983 film, Burroughs, a 90-minute study of the writer’s life and work that as a film biography remains definitive. Brookner was fortunate to capture all the surviving Beats (including Ginsberg and Gysin) and also family members like Burroughs’ son, William Jr. (who died shortly after filming), and his brother, Mortimer. If you’re interested in Burroughs and have never seen Brookner’s film it’s essential viewing, so it’s good news that Ubuweb has turned up a blurry copy (which they’ve titled Burroughs The Movie) taken from the BBC’s Arena screening shown after the writer’s death in 1997. As I recall, the beginning is slightly re-edited to make it an obituary piece but the rest of the film is complete.

Update: Ubuweb no longer hosts the film now that a reissue has been announced. The links have been removed here as a result.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The William Burroughs archive

Return to Wonderland

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As the festive season shambles into view I’ve reworked my psychedelic interpretation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland from calendar to poster format for those who might prefer the latter. There are two poster sizes, the standard CafePress large and small, and the calendar is still on sale, of course. By coincidence, the dreadfully-named Syfy channel is currently running its own TV adaptation of the Lewis Carroll books. I haven’t seen Alice but the reviews I’ve read have been mixed. From the description I can’t imagine I’d enjoy it (Tim Burton’s film is the one I’m waiting for) but it shows once again how endlessly mutable the Alice stories have become.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Dalí in Wonderland
• Virtual Alice
• Psychedelic Wonderland: the 2010 calendar
• Charles Robinson’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
• Humpty Dumpty variations
• Alice in Wonderland by Jonathan Miller
• The Illustrators of Alice

The Watcher and Other Weird Stories by J. Sheridan Le Fanu

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Irish writer J. Sheridan Le Fanu (1814–1873) has long been a favourite of mine since I first discovered his weird tales in ghost story collections, still the place you’re most likely to find his work. His ghost stories are frequently superior to the more celebrated MR James (who edited a Le Fanu collection), they’re less formulaic and often quite inexplicable. Green Tea, from In a Glass Darkly (1872) chills for its atmosphere of apparently random and unjustified malevolence; it’s also alarming for the directness of its central idea which I won’t spoil if you haven’t read it. Anyone wanting to know why Le Fanu is still read today should start there.

Unlike MR James, Le Fanu has lacked for illustrators so I was surprised to find this edition of his work at the Internet Archive with illustrations by his son, Brinsley. The artwork isn’t of the highest quality, and it’s debatable whether tales as nebulous and evocative as ghost stories should be illustrated at all, but their singularity makes them worth a look. The Watcher and Other Weird Stories is a small collection which includes A Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter, a story memorably adapted for television by Leslie Megahey in 1979.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Chiaroscuro