There are similarities with Davies, the man who revived Who and Turner, the man who both helped it and then relucantly let it die in his arms, while trying to escape it. Both are gay. There are differences. Davies is a creative mind, a writer more so than a producer, with a writer's background, not a financial budgetary one, like Turner, plus his role was born out of role for the programme.
 |
| Russell's got a new boyfriend! |
Both have the same sense of show. Both have been criticised for stunt castings, like a variety manager triyng to get big stars for his theatre. RTD did start his career, writing for those mammoths of children's televisual entertainment, Paul and Barry Patton Elliot, alias the Chuckle Brothers.
I think that's all I have to say, actually, for RTD could do a lot of bad, i.e. the cheap, tacky and ultra-cheesy Christmas Specials, like decorations on a tree with flame-throwing brass band robot Santas and spinning musical Chainsaw Christmas trees, alien threats, yes, but alien threats with novelty value, something both throat-vomitingly sickeningly sweetly terrifying and just plain horrific!
Christmas specials are only suited for comedies, and even then, it seems comedy is limp in Yuletide.
I could also rant on endlessly for the farty Chucklesque exploits of the posh greengangsters the Slitheen, like an alien version of Baby Face Finlayson, and the Fear Her story, a tale of a girl whose drawings came to life, clearly an imitation of a much better episode of US TV kids show Eerie Indiana, by Joe Dante, was limited by the end-of-season budget, so the big monster of the dad in the closet was now just a glowing drawing!
But that ain't written by Davies, so I'll instead go on about Christmas specials!
The Christmas Only Fools and Horses specials were never that Christmassy, for example. My favourite of them, the Jolly Boys Outing is clearly filmed and set in summer, in its tale of a trip to Margate, and the abysmal Thicker than Water (1992), although wintry was focused more on a bizarre tale of bottled water from drainage, and showed John Sullivan was running out of ideas.
Anyway, back to RTD, I've run out of things to say, just to say at least he revived Who...
I watched the first of the new ones, with Billie and Jude the Obscure running away from something, and thought it was terrible.
ReplyDeleteThen a while later I watched another one; and this time it was Catherine Tate and David Tennant in ancient Rome and it was even worse.
The worst of Colin Baker and Bonnie Langford was better than this.