The eighth TV show: #129 The Prisoner
Now I had seen this before, six or so years ago, out of curiousity about the series, and enjoyed it a lot. As one of those cultural touchstone series, it also felt like something that, if you were serious about tv, you had to have seen.
Peter hadn't yet, but wanted to for a while, and this was a good point to show it to him, and to give myself a chance to rewatch it.
It was good, for the most part. The series has some weird and dud episodes - the western episode, for example, didn't hold up, and felt like it was a late addition to the schedule to make up the episodes needed for the season. If this had gone beyond the seventeen episodes broadcast it would have made for a worse series.
Now, though, the show gave us a bunch of higher concept episodes than what is usual for the era and genre, with the village setting, the titular prisoner and two staff members of the village (one of them mute throughout the series). It focuses on a range of related topics, often surrounding individualism, the good of the group, anarcy and semi-psychological explorations. It's often interesting and off putting, as you can't really know what you get each week.
The ending of the show is perfect. A straight up resolution can't work, so Patrick McGoohan - the definite visionary behind the work - goes for insane, an allegorical tale that doesn't quite resolve things, and leaves you wondering. A show that I'm happy to have seen again.
The thirteenth comic: #277 Iznogoud: The Caliph's Vacation
Puntastic is how I described the series to Peter when I picked this, although I must admit I had forgotten how many there were in here (with regular fourth wall breaking to point out how bad some of them were.
The concept is simple: our antihero wants to be caliph instead of the caliph. He does so through all sorts of convoluted plans which (as you'd expect) always end up going wrong somewhere.
Created by Goscinny and Tabary, the former one of the creators of Asterix, it has a similar sense of humour, but with more subversive storylines. Focusing on an anithero makes that clear, with usccess often a small step away - or as often staying far off - but with just enough bad luck that you want to keep rooting for him to see where else he goes wrong.
I loved this comic as a kid, often renting volumes from the library (there were more Dutch translations). I didn't adore it as much this time as I did them, but it's still good enough that I'm glad I had a chance to read this.
Double bill today
The eleventh comic: #626 Space Dog
Space Dog looks quite distinctive: bold, flat colours, angular and sharp. The strong aesthetic creates its own world that fits the story. It starts off quite standard, in a sense, for these stories - unhappy dog on the farm tries city life, escapes there, has adventure, and the very final bit even has it return there to find the simpler life.
The middle bit is what sets it apart. The trip to space even feels standard, but the dog gaining intelligence (all of this communicated through symbols and images) through alien interference is... odd, and it makes for an interesting twist towards a more immpactful story that has merit on more than its looks.
A delightful story.
The twelth comic: #902 The Arrival
Another wordless story, there is more of a reason here. The story of an immigrant (mostly for economic reasons, it seems, although there is a hint of more going on in the background that might subvert that), everything is strange, and the graphic novel is built around that. He can't communicate, so he uses drawings and pictographs instead. Because of the higher level of technology, the architecture is strange (a mixture of futuristic looks and steampunk elements thath reminded me of the game Machinarium. The pets look weird and you feel as much a stranger in this world as our unnamed main character is.
Life is hard, though not impossible, and he soon finds a job and succeeds - relatively speaking - enough for a happy end and a chance of integration.
It feels like the recent refugee crisis made this more applicable and still made it something I could connect with far more. Again an interesting story.
The seventh TV show: #317 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
H2G2 (as the title is often abbreviated) has so many incarnations, most of them widely beloved. The book will come up at some point in the future, as will the video game on Pong & Beyond proper, while I'm fairly sure the radio show would be listed if it could be. The movie... well, we'll ignore that. You can tell Douglas Adams' voice from anyone else's.
Adapted mostly from the radio play, as well as parts of the novels, the TV show remains very wordy (the book's narrator voice maintaining a strong presence). The writing is excellent, as witty as ever and simply fun.
What the TV show really adds to the saga, though, are the visuals. The show was made for a relatively cheap amount, with dodgy effects in places, but on the whole, the show gets away with a lot (in a similar way to how future show Doctor Who - the classic version - did at the time). It's effective in the many different ways it uses what it has - the Heart of Gold bridge feels clearly different (and fancier) than the Vogon's ship insides, something that comes across as well in the exteriors. A lot of these are perfectly polished, sleek ships, but instead the messes that fit the universe.
The visuals for the book, which look like primitive computer graphics (special at the time, hand drawn to seem like the old systems they had then) add to this. It feels just simple enough that it adds to the atmosphere and allows for enough in jokes without being overwhelming.
The weirdness of these visuals make the world seem stranger and it generally fits in with all the other stories.
There are good performances in there as well. Simon Jones is Arthur Dent (the part was written for him for the radio play) and the radio play cast that carry over understand their roles and play them well (aside from the occasional line of dialogue that sounds off spoken on TV, but would play better in a book or on the radio - standing around too long doesn't seem as natural). David Dixon is perfect as Ford, even if he needs part of the first episode to get it right and Sandra Dickinson mostly feels like she should have gotten more material with how good she is. Marvin's voice is perfect (again, a carry over) and his design looks great - a clunky robot that fits the remainder of the design, performed as a sad thing that somehow looks perky during the one Guide section that acts for it.
H2G2 is a great story. It's a shame the film just wasn't right and put people off, as this TV adaptation is superior and is rightfully its own great thing (while setting the stage of the likes of Red Dwarf in the future)
The seventh book: #7 Tirant lo Blanc
So I'm not quite sure I completely got this book. It's partially meant to be a satire, which came through but didn't hit as well as it would have, as I have not read as many of the work that are its inspiration (and none are really on the list either). It's a light book about a knight who becomes emperor of Constantinople (an early alternate history novel), and his adventures to get there. It hits all the known tropes - unknown knight appearing, difficult romances with intrigue and so on.
It read easily for that reason, easy enough to read and follow along with entertaining stories in there. It's not quite as funny as it should be, but it's as amusing as anything. While it doesn't quite work as a satire, it works as a lighter knight story anyway, probably more entertaining than heavy romances.
Worth my time and I hope there'll be more along like this. Don Quixote for one - a book Tirant lo Blanc inspired, and with a similar setup. It should be good fun.
The sixth book: #6 The Golden Ass
When ordered by writing date, this book should be listed before anything else I've read so far, but as this is ordered by published date, it comes in later.
The Golden Ass, or the Metamorphoses of Apuleius, tells the story about a man who gets turned into a donkey. He gets better at the end (in a somewhat inconsistent final chapter that becomes more of a religious text, teaching of the greatness of these cults. Before that it's quite an amusing tale, showing the follies of human while also showing up the main character, his selfishness and foibles.
While an interesting story, what felt just as fascinating were the details of Roman life. You hear about a lot of these things in textbooks, but in this novel they are put far more into a real life context, having a normal life punctuated by these oddities, from slaves to how leaders act. The many references to gods - Hercules a favourite, is quite insightful as well, especially where they reference deities that you don't normally think of as a major Roman one.
The sixth TV show: #226 Saturday Night Live
I've been trying to keep up with Saturday Night Live before, and trying to go through its backlog, so this was mostly extra good fun. I tried to pick out some episodes from different eras of the show to see how things changes, what happened in the different eras and how good it stays.
Is it worth than it ever was? Not really. There are up and down seasons, but it desn't feel like it's some consistent downwards trend. The original cast was incredibly strong, and the supposedly worst episode was dreadful. but for the most part episodes stay funny and it's always worth trying for that show that really hits it home.
In a sense, it's the cast rotation that keeps it fresh. When they stay too long, patterns become ingrained and characters become stale. Seeing a new cast member come in may mean they disappear soon, not making an impact, but others stay and bring in their own new ideas. In the time we've watched actively, people like Taran Killam, Kate McKinnon and TIm Robinson have delighted us, but just watching the sample episodes have shown us so much more - just seeing Julia Louis-Dreyfus almost get started is already interesting.