You should never go back

Image from Wikipedia

Generally speaking, I find the motto 'never go back once you've moved on' a helpful one. Although I've broken it pretty regularly, I usually find I shouldn't have attended that school reunion or whatever. However, it's a lesson that TV and filmmakers rarely consider, as I've been discovering with the new X-Files.

I was looking forward to the rebooted series after a 15 year break. The timing could not have been better. We got through the last DVD of the complete box set the same week the first episode arrived on a UK channel. And it's okay. But there's something rather upsetting about it.

It's not just that David Duchovny looks really worldworn and tired. Or that Gillian Anderson looks emaciated and zoned out compared to her far better recent UK TV appearances. It just seems far too much like 'more of the same.' I wanted to wait until episode 3 to give a verdict, as it was written by the man who wrote my favourite episode ever, the season 3 'Jose Chung's "From Outer Space"', which is hilarious and mind-bogglingly twisted. Admittedly episode 3 did have some fun moments, notably Scully telling Mulder, as he played with his smartphone, that he ought to stay away from the internet. And it had a very neat twist in the plot, which I won't reveal. But both the script and the acting was like seeing someone who once was on top of their game going through the motions.

For years, I hoped that they would make a new series of my favourite TV show ever, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But now I realise that it would be a mistake. The world moves on. So do stories and actors. I'll probably stick with X-Files for this season. But it's a bit like watching Bruce Forsyth in the latter years of Strictly. It's with as much a sense of sadness as pleasant familiarity.

Comments

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp...

Murder by Candlelight - Ed. Cecily Gayford ***

Nothing seems to suit Christmas reading better than either ghost stories or Christmas-set novels. For some this means a fluffy romance in the snow, but for those of us with darker preferences, it's hard to beat a good Christmas murder. An annual event for me over the last few years has been getting the excellent series of classic murderous Christmas short stories pulled together by Cecily Gayford, starting with the 2016 Murder under the Christmas Tree . This featured seasonal output from the likes of Margery Allingham, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ellis Peters and Dorothy L. Sayers, laced with a few more modern authors such as Ian Rankin and Val McDermid, in some shiny Christmassy twisty tales. I actually thought while purchasing this year's addition 'Surely she is going to run out of classic stories soon' - and sadly, to a degree, Gayford has. The first half of Murder by Candlelight is up to the usual standard with some good seasonal tales from the likes of Catherine Aird, Car...

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5. However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor...

Search This Blog