015 Speculative Fiction – Old
By far the largest category of this quarter . . .
I’m really glad that they rebroadcast the first series of Pilgrim upon its 10-year anniversary. I caught a bit of various series over the
years but found them difficult to get into.
Admittedly, the first episode of the series left me less than
enthralled. Nevertheless, by this, the
second episode, I was starting to warm to the great possibilities offered by a
long-lived, un-aging protagonist trying to right the wrongs of the supernatural
world invading the normal one. Pilgrim
(Paul Hilton), as the intro helpfully tells us each week, was William Palmer, who
was “apparently” cursed by the King of the Elves/Fairies in the 1180s for
denying the existence of the Grey Folk.
He’s been living a liminal existence since then, naturally having taken
on lots of identities since. Although
haunted and haggard, he seems more at ease with his fate than other immortal
characters we’ve encountered in fiction before.
Anyway, he does yearn for death, and throughout the first series he is
trying to find Joseph of Arimathea who can hopefully help him die. These are mostly adventure-of-the-week type
stories, with little to link them, as Pilgrim moves around interacting with
various legends of the British Isles. In
the first episode, he was trying to retrieve a dragon egg that Puck stole. That didn’t go so well, really. In the second episode, he does a bit
better. He rescued Noreen (Trisha Kelly)
from being attacked in the supermarket as a witch. Her son disappeared seven years before, but
no one will talk about it. He was “a bad
sort,” according to his friend Darren (Robert Lonsdale) and boss, gravedigger
Abel Jags (Malcolm Tierney). But Josh
didn’t actually disappear: he’s been
covered in hawthorns in a coma in his mother’s house all this time (!). With
Pilgrim’s help, Darren, his wife Tina (Jill Cardo), who was Josh’s fiancée, go
under the hill where they discover him in thrall to elemental tree spirit Mr
Mulverhay (Paul Rider). It’s an
interesting story and acted with the kind of urgency that helps make real its
fantastic premise. Pilgrim is
written by Sebastian Baczkiewicz, and Then
Fancies Flee Away was directed by Jessica Dromgoole.
The final episode of the first series of Pilgrim, “No Foes Shall Stay His Might”
continued, of course, to star Paul Hilton as Pilgrim and was written by
Sebastian Baczkiewicz. In it, Mr
Haddonfield (Adrian Lucas) is banker who comes from a long line of land-owning,
power-hungry men. He has headed the
Lupercalia, who sound a bit like the Death-Eaters of Harry Potter, except their amusement is seeking out supernatural
what’s-its. Haddonfield is aiming for a
hat trick, having captured Freya (Alex Tregear), a young werewolf, and
hopefully to bag El Vagabondo de Diablo, Pilgrim himself. When he finds out his cover is blown, Pilgrim
wants to flee and take on a new identity.
However, he is charged by the mysterious river spirit Mr McAdam (Dudley Sutton)
and the witch Doris (Susan Engel) to help free Freya and Haddonfield’s imprisoned
daemon, Mirabella (Janice Acquah), who has been kept in glass in a cabinet
since the 1600s. It’s all pretty
spectacular, actually, and suffers little from having no visuals. Freya and Doris, we soon find out, are to
become recurring characters.
The finale of the second series of Pilgrim, “Hope Springs,” had a similar level of spectacular. Throughout the second series, we found out
that Doris was Pilgrim’s grown daughter (half-Avalonian spirit, it’s implied),
and Freya (a recast Rachel Spence) was chafing at both Doris’ and Pilgrim’s
authority. After an interesting wander
in “The Lady in the Lake,” “Hope Springs” brings us back the
tensions established in the very first episode of Pilgrim. Doris has also been
recast and is played by Judy Parfitt. The
wonderfully-voiced Anna Wing played ancient Hilda, the lady guardian of Hope
Springs, who to the outside world is a doddering old resident of an old
people’s home. There’s a complicated
subplot to do with a bracelet, in which young hoodlum Dexter (Lloyd Thomas) is
embroiled. I don’t know whether to smile
or be appalled that Hilda’s particular manifestation of power is to make grown
men pee in their pants (I guess it makes sense if she’s the lady of the
spring). What is it all in aid of? Well, Pilgrim’s sometimes-friend,
sometimes-foe Puck (Jamie Foreman) has decided he is in love with Doris. Dramatic and well-made, the second series of Pilgrim was from 2010. This episode was directed by Jessica
Dromgoole and also starred Sean Baker, Leah Brotherhead, and Agnes Bateman (as
the narrator).
An absolutely stunning standalone, I See the Moon by Alex Ferguson, directed by Melanie Harris, stayed
in my thoughts for days after I heard it.
Originally from 1999, the drama kept you guessing throughout whether
poor Richard (Cliff Howells), the narrator and protagonist, was just
drink-addled and bitter from a life that hadn’t turned out the way he planned,
or if he really saw a ghost in a house in the 1960s. It was beautifully written, beautifully
acted, and offered an interesting reflection on British history of the second
half of the twentieth century. I thought
the repetition of “I See the Moon” (the song) was a little too frequent, but
otherwise I thought the drama was entirely effective. Its message is
essentially conservative, something of which all ghost stories have been
accused, yet it doesn’t feel too out of place. Richard, employed by a planning
office, attends a conference in the 1960s with his friend, Douglas (Martin Reeve)
at an eminent professor’s house. The
order of the day, of course, is to tear down elitist aristocratic estates and
replace them with accessible housing for all.
Richard gets on his host, Professor Taylor’s, nerves, and further
offends his starchy wife (Mary Cunningham) by insisting that there is a child
in the house who is wandering. Mute,
sad, and pleading, the child Richard saw cannot be found. But he gave her his watch, and he is
convinced he saw her. This section only
works because of the strong performance and the light touch of the writing,
which makes what could be an awkward or creepy situation have real pathos. The girl haunts Richard for the rest of his
life. Douglas’ star rises and Richard’s
falls, as he reacts more and more strongly against the tearing down of
historical buildings and replacing them with ugly council housing. His wife, Allison (Kathryn Hunt), eventually
leaves him. He gets work as a contractor
in the 1980s, at which point his trauma comes rushing back as a child’s body is
discovered buried in between the walls of a structure. Prevented from reporting this as part of the laissez-faire, nothing-stops-for-money
attitude of the times, Richard buries the child’s remains himself. His company tumbles headlong into 1980s
deregulated greed, which lands Douglas in hospital and Richard in jail for
bribery (while his corrupt boss gets an OBE).
Richard returns to the Professor’s house when he gets out of jail and
meets the kindly Mrs Ford (Anne Reid, richly characterizing this part), who
shows him a tiny room where a child once lived . . . I don’t want to spoil the
extraordinary ending, but it’s fitting.
Haunted Hospital by
Trevor Hoyle was more uneven, in my opinion, but still worth highlighting. I totally get the struggles this writer must
have gone through: how to integrate a great historical story with a parallel
contemporary story. All of that said,
there was a great deal of scope for creepiness here, with Julia (Jo-Anne
Knowles) returning to Rochdale to see her friend Sam (Elianne Byrnes), who
works in Rochdale Hospital. Apparently,
there is a haunted floor, haunted by a crying baby no one can see and a ragged
old man with a dog on a string. However,
the drama quickly moves beyond the scare factor to a more uneven story of Julia
trying to decide whether to keep the baby she has conceived with Yorkshire
Steve (Michael Begley) or to focus on her career. Meanwhile, there is the parallel story in the
hospital records of Lizzie (also played by Knowles), an unwed young mother who
is treated horribly by the workhouse staff, including porter Mr Cragge (James
Quinn) and compassionless Dr Pinch (Mark Chatteron). Her neighbor Daniel (also played by Begley)
breaks into the workhouse hospital in order to see her, and his defiance of
social convention is inspiring, especially as it comes naturally to his
independent, northern character (in the face of southern characters like the
workhouse governor, Josiah Ogden). The
saddest part of the story, as Steve himself notes, is that there were women in
the Rochdale Workhouse/Hospital still living there in the 1970s, having been
unwed mothers who had lived their whole lives in the facility. It was directed by Liz Leonard.
The House on Spook
Corner, originally from 1987, was
a doozy. This “docu-drama,” part found
footage decades before the term was in use, was absorbing but also quite
confusing, mainly because it was not very clear when we were in the “past” and
when we were in the “present.” The past
was the documentary The House on Spook
Corner, which had been made ten years previously on a BBC local radio-like
station as the most infamous episode in a long-running series on paranormal
investigation. The reason the drama was
so confusing is that the documentary within the drama was so convincing, made
similarly to the way these kinds of documentaries are always made. In the documentary, produced by new producer
Justin (John Abineri), presented by Ellis (Michael Drew) and with contributions
from David Morris (Frank Windsor), an ordinary if racist East End household was
rocked by seeming poltergeist activity centering on pre-teen Garry Griggs
(Nicholas Csergo). Garry would be
possessed by “Peter,” who spoke guttural patois and insulted women, and
household objects would be destroyed.
Mrs Griggs (Jo Anderson) utterly accepted the strange phenomenon.
Professor and Christine Vecchi (Geoff Serle and Kim Hicks), a father and
daughter debunker team, were brought in to investigate. While the machinations of ambitious yet
unscrupulous Justin seemed to suggest that the phenomenon was real, expert
David Morris and the Vecchis both were about the debunk the phenomenon. Professor Vecchi died of a heart attack
during the making the programme. Ten
years later, Morris is determined to revisit the story, As I said, multi-layered and interesting, but
somewhat difficult to process. It was written by Bob Couttie and directed by
Alec Reid.
I was absolutely spoiled throughout October, November, and
December with excellent speculative fiction.
Yet another series worth detailing is Mind’s Eye from Northern Ireland, directed by leading light Eoin O’Callaghan,
originally from 2006. I was blown away
by these fascinating, well-acted and well-written dramas which pitted a father
and daughter psychologist team, Lorcan Molloy (Dermot Crowley) and his
daughter, Aoife (Cathy Belton) against phenomenon that was unclassifiable: was it all psychological, to be explained
away by rational means, as Aoife inevitably had it, or were there more things
on heaven and Earth, as Lorcan was beginning to wonder? Set in the Republic of Ireland, they
presented a fascinating window on a culture often ignored by mainstream Radio 4
dramas (because, surely, RTÉ has a monopoly on such stories). Lorcan’s familiar refrain, which opened each
episode, suggested to me, at least on my first listen, that as a rational
scientist, he was at war within himself over extra-sensory perception powers
that were going to fully manifest by the end of the series. This never overtly happened, but I wouldn’t
be surprised if it was all going to come out in the next series (if there ever
was a second series). The Molloys’
nemesis is the intriguing Fergus Rainer (Richard Orr), a former Guard (it took
me several episodes to understand this referred to the police) who decided,
after an unsuccessful session with Lorcan, to believe in the
spiritual/supernatural explanations for phenomena. Rainer dogs their every step, but as this is
as realistic as you can possibly make such stories, they can’t really do
anything about him (other than trying to prevent vulnerable people from talking
to him, as he makes his living as a hack for a local rag). And in some cases, Lorcan is beginning to
realize that Rainer may have a point.
The other recurring character is Brian Walsh (Mark Lambert), a Northern
Irish surgeon whose pursuit of Aoife is on an extremely slow burn. Nevertheless, I quite liked that burgeoning
relationship. In the first story, “Virtuoso,” which in hindsight was a
little too short, the Molloys meet Brian through his patient, Maggie Renshaw (Margaret
D’Arcy), an elderly woman who fears her hands are being possessed by someone
else. Her miraculous recovery from arthritis does suggest something bizarre is
going on.
The second episode in the series, “Faith,” sidestepped gracefully, I thought, both questions of faith
and religious disagreement even as ex-seminary student Jake Lewis (Sean
Campion) claimed he had his own guardian angel, a doppelganger who saved him
and others from unpredictable violence.
In this episode, we were also introduced to DCI Talbot (John Hewitt),
who appears later in the series, and Father Tom (Niall Cusack) who confirms to
Lorcan that Jake was taking communion in his church at the same time witnesses
claimed he was helping people out of a hospital where a fire was taking
place. According to Lorcan, “Whispers” was the case in which he
thought Fergus Rainer might just be right.
Lorcan and Aoife try to help David McAlease (Sean Campion) whose teenage
son Eamonn (Eamonn Owens) seems to be suffering from a haunting, which their
arch-nemesis Fergus Rainer identifies as a poltergeist although it sounds a lot
like a banshee talking to Eamonn in Irish.
Eamonn is certainly psychologically troubled, having been unable to come
to terms with his mother’s death due to his father’s emotional
constipation. Aoife is convinced that
Eamonn is not possessed, just in need of therapy, but the solace Eamonn
receives is when he calls up a late-night radio talk show hosted by
Rainer. An excellent use of the audio
medium in this story.
“The Prophet” was
quite a sad and bleak story that once again put Lorcan in opposition to his
daughter, even as Aoife and Brian’s relationship seemed to blossom, albeit in a
shaky fashion. In an arresting opening,
Paul Strong’s (Gerard Murphy) landlord comes to demand rent from him, only to
find him trying to hang himself. Strong,
it seems, notoriously murdered a man while robbing a small country post office,
even after the man handed all the money over.
Racked with remorse, Strong was visited in prison by his mother’s fetch
as she died, and from then on he became a model prisoner. Given early release for good behavior, he is
distrusted by Aoife once she finally meets him as a dangerously pathological
villain who will easily kill again.
Lorcan feels differently about Strong, noting Strong’s seemingly genuine
repentance and transformation, even when it puts him at personal risk. The
final episode of Mind’s Eye, “Lodgers,” was by far the most chilling,
in which Lorcan and Aoife went to visit family friend Maeve (Stella McCusker)
after allegations from her son, Daniel (Miche Doherty), that Maeve was losing
her grip on reality. It transpired that
Maeve had been running a guest house for many years, one which always had
negative connotations for Daniel (indeed, though he was in denial about it, he
had seen the invisible guests staying at the house ever since he was a
child). Developed (and mostly scripted)
by Gemma McMullan and Gerry Casey, I found Mind’s
Eye to be addictive listening.
I had a hunch I was going to enjoy The Doppelganger by noted writer JCW Brook, starring Nigel Anthony
at the height of his (creepy) powers and with music by Paddy Kingsland (it was 1977, after all). While I didn’t find the ending entirely
comprehensible, while listening in the middle I was hanging on every word,
waiting to see what would happen and how it would all resolve. Anthony starred as ordinary Adam Oxton whose
relationship with his wife Jane (Emily Richard) has been fraught for as long as
they can remember. They are on a
make-or-break trip to try to salvage their marriage when Adam has a weird
experience, seeming to see his dead mother at a train station. He had a troubled relationship with her, as
well, and his older brother, who was convinced in the existence of
doppelgangers, in the old German sense of the sinister Other. While in Oxford, Adam and Jane meet Beth (Elizabeth
Lindsay) and Sarah (Penelope Lee). Beth
is a young woman who is developmentally abnormal, having been electrically
shocked when working as backstage crew in a theatre. If that seems far-fetched to you, you’re
about to be validated. Nevertheless, Beth
shares an uncanny resemblance to a younger Jane. Adam is strangely drawn to Beth, going into a
weird sort of trance state when they are left alone, in which Beth discards her
developmentally abnormal personality for one of great intensity and
purpose. She seems to be trying to
intervene between Adam and a mysterious and evil Woman and Man (who I imagined
in my mind’s eye looking like the evil spirits in “Kinda”) on another plane of existence. Things get really strange when Ralph Steadman
(Geoffrey Collins), Sarah’s husband who has been in Canada, turns up and says
he has orchestrated the whole meeting on the advice of Adam’s brother. Directed by Ian Cotterell, it’s a trippy
experience.
Stretching the definition of speculative fiction to
something altogether lighter, The
Wainwrights by Tom Wainwright from 2013 is a rare blatant parody (Desert Island Desserts and At Home with the Snails being the only
examples I can think of). However, there
was a definite whiff of Conundrum (a
Doctor Who New Adventures novel of
which I’m sure Tom Wainwright was unaware) in the breaking of the fourth wall
(of which Wainwright was aware,
citing Pirandello, etc.). Indeed, the
radio station writer, who ended up being the mastermind behind the whole plot,
sounded a lot like I expected the character in Conundrum to sound. In any
case, I’m getting ahead of myself. Tom
Wainwright lives an idyllic life in Middle England in a village where everyone
is named Wainwright and no one can remember much beyond last week. Their radios are permanently tuned to Radio
Rural, but one day the discontented Tom tunes into another radio station and
hears a radio serial not only about his life, but taking moments that later are
heard in the drama. At first he accuses
his wife and his friend Jack of recording him constantly, but eventually he goes
in search of answers, leading him out of fictional land and to the very radio
station that created him, unbeknownst to him.
I thought it was clever and, mercifully, not too clever for its own
good.
