October 2023

GAY ALIENS AND QUEER FOLK: How Russell T. Davies Changed TV (Emily Garside) | Book Review + Author Interview

October 27, 2023October 27, 2023 A J. Black

The name Russell T. Davies has never gone away in television circles but is about to go stratospheric, as his return to showrunning Doctor Who kickstarts perhaps the most exciting tenure for that series in almost twenty years – since, indeed, he revived the institution from non-existence.

Gay Aliens and Queer Folk is a celebration of the man, the worlds he creates and the impact he continues to have on LGBTQ storytelling. Davies is a big, bold character, coming of age as a writer in children’s television (penning such memorable series as Children’s Ward and the nightmare fuel that was Dark Season), before edging close to soap opera (raised as he was on the earthy working class drama of Coronation Street), before breaking out into mainstream awareness with Queer as Folk, a revolutionary show about gay men that bridges the 90s and 00s in the perfect manner.

Continue reading →

Podcasts

A Word (or Historical Footnote) about THE REST IS HISTORY (Live!)

October 24, 2023October 24, 2023 A J. Black

Do you listen to The Rest is History, with ‘top historians’ Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook?

I’m going to assume if you listen to podcasts, and if you follow my work then I reckon there’s a strong chance that you do, then you’ve at least heard of The Rest is History. It has over the last two to three years topped a great many of those infuriatingly vague podcast charts, on aggregators such as Apple Podcasts.

It is the vanguard of Goalhanger, a company partly owned by Gary Lineker, growing in podcast prominence with their ‘Rest Is…’ brand, including Lineker, Alan Shearer and Micah ‘Big Meeks’ Richards on The Rest is Football, and Rory Stewart & Alastair Campbell on The Rest is Politics. I love Football – the banter is great, and it’s helping to rediscover my love of the game. Politics I did enjoy but I’ve had to drop it given The News Agents and The Guardian Weekly is about as much depressing Westminster discourse I can reasonably take.

The special one, the Jose Mourinho if you will, of Goalhanger is still History, for me. Holland and Sandbrook have been comforting, charming and informative presences in my earholes pretty much since it all began. They’re now skirting a whopping 500 episodes, every single one of which over the years I can honestly say I’ve listened to. Theirs is the only podcast I properly patronage, counting myself as a ‘Wang’ (they have tiers for patrons, based on inside jokes), happily giving up six quid a month for early access and bonus episodes.

And yesterday, to top it all off, I at least got to see The Rest is History Live, in the closest city to where I now live – Bath.

Continue reading →

Essays, TV

My Kind of Town: DOCTORS and Birmingham on screen

October 22, 2023October 24, 2023 A J. Black

The announcement last week that Doctors, the long-running BBC daytime drama, was coming to an end after almost twenty five years was a sad moment for anyone interested in television (like me), and from the West Midlands (also like me).

Not that I was an avid watcher of Doctors. I have a job, for one thing. Unlike evening soaps such as Coronation Street or EastEnders, Doctors firmly ticks the daytime box for the elderly, stay at home families or potentially these days, remote workers. Apart from being a rare 21st century BBC staple, however, it also had always been filmed in the Midlands, and set there technically – not that the fictional town of Letherbridge ever really felt like a suburb of Birmingham.

Doctors started life in the old Pebble Mill studios in the south of the city, an absolute institution for anyone who grew up in and around Birmingham in the late 20th century, as I did. Midlands Today, the BBC’s news programme, was based there. It produced Top Gear, The Archers for radio, Gardener’s World, even Telly Addicts with Noel Edmonds (I loved Telly Addicts). Dramas too, such as Howard’s Way, which my Mom adored when I was a kid, and an immeasurable amount more since it was founded in 1971.

Continue reading →

Rankings, The X-Files, TV

Ranking THE X-FILES: Pt 2 (173-130)

October 17, 2023October 15, 2023 A J. Black

Right then. Cards on the table. The X-Files is, by a country mile, my favourite show of all time. Nothing will ever come close, for reasons of nostalgia more than anything else. It holds, therefore, a very special place in my heart.

Hence why when I see pieces like a recent long-form article by Rolling Stone, for the 30th anniversary of the show, ranking every episode, I am intrigued. And in this case, I was horrified. It was, to put it mildly, a load of old toot. So in my eternal wisdom (or maybe arrogance), I thought, “I can do better than that!”.

You be the judge. All lists are subjective. Mine no doubt will cause disagreements too. And if you don’t agree, that’s cool. But I think this is a better approximation of the great, good, average and just plain bad The X-Files offered over 11 seasons.

I’ll be spreading this over five pieces going from episode 217 down to 1, covering roughly 40–45 episodes a piece, with brief capsule reasons as to the ranking. Do let me know your thoughts, tweaks, changes and everything in between.

We continue with 173–130 where The X-Files begins to move from poor quality into a bit more worthwhile…

Continue reading →

YouTube

Watching the Top Earning YOUTUBERS in the World was an Experience

October 16, 2023October 31, 2023 A J. Black

Everyone is on YouTube these days but it remains, for me, a completely alien ecosystem. I do use it, primarily for listening to film scores – when they’ve been erased from or were never even uploaded to Spotify – watching football highlights or enjoying the odd BookTuber.

I did dabble in it earlier this year with an endeavour called Black’s Books, a vain attempt at BookTubing after seeing my friend Luke Winch have a go (his fantasy BookTube channel, Luke’s Book Nook, is great by the way – check it out), but I swiftly realised talking into camera on my own just wasn’t for me. I need the interaction that you get from podcasting with another human being.

There is no doubt, however, that YouTube is completely outstripping podcasting, broadcast television and even now traditional streaming services, and not just within the Gen Z demographic. People my age (early forties, since you ask) now use YouTube with increasing, nay alarming, regularity. You’re more likely to achieve financial success and broad reach as a YouTuber than a podcaster, and certainly as a print writer.

In other words, it is the future and I am always someone who wants to know what’s coming over the next hill. YouTube is very much already the hill itself, I’m just late to the party, so when I saw a Variety article recently about the 20 highest earning YouTubers for 2023, I couldn’t resist. This seemed like the perfect opportunity for some anthropological research into a world beyond my understanding.

As Hellraiser’s Pinhead might say:

And boy, did it ever!

Continue reading →

Rankings, The X-Files, TV

Ranking THE X-FILES: Pt 1 (217-186)

October 15, 2023 A J. Black

We start with 217–174 aka the nadir of The X-Files…

Continue reading →

Essays, Film, The Exorcist

The Quiet Horror of THE EXORCIST | Film Feature

October 10, 2023October 25, 2023 A J. Black

In advance of The Exorcist: Believer this week, the ‘legacyquel’ from David Gordon Green, I decided over the weekend to throw on William Friedkin’s The Exorcist for the first time in some years. This time, I got something new from it.

My history with The Exorcist isn’t necessarily legion (no pun intended, for all you William Peter Blatty fans). It wasn’t a film I grew up with, not to the degree of The Shining from Stanley Kubrick. I might first have become aware of it thanks to The Blair Witch Project in 1999, and how the Cannes reaction to that seminal found footage horror mirrored the legendary reports from showings of The Exorcist in 1973 where people threw up, fainted or stormed out in terror. Many comparisons, fairly or not, were drawn at the time.

It took me many more years to watch The Exorcist, for some reason, despite always being a sizeable fan of horror. Perhaps it was accessibility, or just simply the fact during the 2000s I engaged much less with cinema on a general basis. I had also little relationship with Friedkin or 1970s cinema at this point, both of which I have since worked to remedy. I’ve flirted with podcasting about 70s movies. I have a hankering to write about them more. But I wasn’t there. I wasn’t born until the 80s and I sometimes think that matters, in terms of perspective, not just nostalgia.

Continue reading →

Weekly Digest

Lost Federations, Boiling Points & Film Stories Magazine!

October 10, 2023October 24, 2023 A J. Black

If you check in on this site or even subscribe, I’m going to take a guess that you’re interested enough in me to know a bit of what else I’ve been up to over the past week.

This digest will just briefly clue you into other bits of writing, podcasts and anything else of interest.

Continue reading →

Books

1971: 100 Films From Cinema’s Greatest Year (ROBERT SELLERS) | Book Review + Author Interview

October 8, 2023October 9, 2023 A J. Black

We all no doubt have a year we consider the best in cinema history, at least those of us who study or heavily engage with the medium. Brian Raftery cites 1999 in his book, 1999: Best Movie Year Ever, making a compelling case. Me? I might plumb for 2006 or even 1976. The jury remains out.

Robert Sellers makes a compelling case for 1971 in his book 1971: 100 Films From Cinema’s Greatest Year. He frames the choice through a compendium of short write ups of the vaunted 100 films, plus smaller paragraphs on those that just missed the cut but also warrant deeper exploration and analysis. This gives the book an accessibility, a dip in and out nature, that is very appealing.

Sellers knows his onions in this area. He has been writing books covering decades from the 50s through to the 80s and beyond for decades now, many of them tremendous reads. His Hellraisers books, about entertaining and difficult actors in the U.K. and the U.S. are huge fun. The Battle for Bond is forensic in how it brings to life the complex history of Thunderball. More recently, Don’t Let the Bastards Grind You Down, all about the ‘British New Wave’, was a real joy to consume.

Continue reading “1971: 100 Films From Cinema’s Greatest Year (ROBERT SELLERS) | Book Review + Author Interview” →

Books, Doctor Who

PULL TO OPEN: The Inside Story of How the BBC Created and Launched Doctor Who (PAUL HAYES) | Book Review + Author Interview

October 3, 2023October 6, 2023 A J. Black

As we approach the dawn of a new era for Doctor Who, the most indefatigable science-fiction series in British television history, it is easy to forget the long and winding road it took to the precipice of the mega franchise it looks poised to become, with Russell T. Davies’ Bad Wolf now in bed with Disney. The sky looks the limit currently.

Yet it began as the quirkiest of quirky shows at the beginning of a 1960s BBC landscape that was vastly different from the one either we inhabit now, or Doctor Who existed within during heydays of the 1970s even and 2010s. Looking back at many of those original serials (given Who was produced in the now archaic children’s television format of 25 minute weekly episodes), for years filmed in black and white with a budget so low it these days wouldn’t probably even cover the catering, they could be from another universe entirely.

1963 was when William Hartnell first led an ensemble cast as the eccentric Doctor (later christened the First Doctor), an alien old man who travelled space and time in his TARDIS, permanently camouflaged as a blue police box, with his granddaughter Susan and following first serial ‘An Unearthly Child’, school teacher companions Ian & Barbara. Sixty years later, Doctor Who is iconic; as key to British television history as Coronation Street or Match of the Day. Despite many attempts over the years to end it, even before it officially began, it is indestructible.

Continue reading “PULL TO OPEN: The Inside Story of How the BBC Created and Launched Doctor Who (PAUL HAYES) | Book Review + Author Interview” →