West Riding

Any criticisms of wishy-washy British television drama were silenced with last night’s transmission of 1974, Channel 4’s astonishing adaptation of the first book in David Peace’s Red Riding Quartet. The real shame was that the drama began with an audience of 3.4 million, falling to 2 million by the time the credits rolled, thereby proving what fucking idiots the general populace is, especially the 4 million who watched the repeat of New Tricks instead. Cocks!

Next week the drama moves forward to 1980, adding Paddy Considine and Maxine Peake to the cast, and is set against the backdrop of the Yorkshire Ripper murders. I can’t wait. In the meantime I’m heading south (and west) where hopefully “they’ve got sunshine.” Tomorrow is my mother’s *cough* birthday – she isn’t happy about the number, which is divisible by ten – so they’ve hired a restaurant for the evening which will be packed full of relatives and close family friends, many of which I haven’t seen for a long, long while.

So, that’ll be me away for a while. In the meantime try not to waste time and money going to see Watchmen on its opening weekend. It may have the silly little fanboys staining themselves in trembling anticipations, but you only have to catch the odd trailer to figure out that, like the useless Sin City before it, the slavish reverence to the source material means it’s obviously going to be a piece of shit and not worth drinking the Kool Aid for.

When I get back, posts may tail off for a while. The past few months I’ve been trying to figure out what the fuck I’m still doing in London. The way things have turned out I hardly go anywhere and rarely see anyone, so what’s the point? There’s only one project currently keeping me here, which has been getting sidetracked because the person I’m supposed to be working on it with has been difficult to track down, although at times the delays are probably as much my fault as it is hers.

Leaving this distraction behind, I want to sit her down, get all the necessary face-to-face time sorted after which I can plough on with the work. Once that’s done I’ll have to see what’s next.