an icepick through the keyhole

I got Series One of Steven Moffat's brilliant 1990s sitcom Joking Apart in the mail. The show only lasted two series, spread over a few years, and never got the audience it truly deserved, so it died. Critically acclaimed, wonderfully acted, hiliariously funny and poignant at the same time, the premise for the comedy is an unlikely one: Mark Taylor, a comedy writer, starts off the series with the single line: "My wife left me."

As Moffat puts it, it's a romantic comedy about a romance that has already died. The show weaves in and out of Mark and Becky's relationship in flashbacks over the course of the season, juxtapositioning it with the present day and Mark's trying to cope with the fact that his wife has left him for another man. Moffat based the sitcom on his own life at the time, and the bitterness does show and is sometimes painful to watch. However, he is equally as hard on himself, if not more, than the wife-substitute in Becky. The non-linear structure prefigures the type of comedy we see in his later Coupling, and Moffat's wit here is rougher but no less biting.

I first watched Joking Apart when I was studying for my law degree and it taught me everything I know about how to structure a farce. The line between comedy and tragedy is often said to be a fine one, but in farce you can see exactly how fine that line is: the fast pacing, the absurd situations and justifications, the snowballing predicaments that leads to even more and more absurdities. It's certainly not fun for the people, but it's funny from the outside nontheless. It's the monster snowball that starts from a single snowflake that explodes at the end which is the essence of it all.

Joking Apart was not available for years, but still very fondly remembered by its audience, until an enterprising fan got the license from the BBC to put together a DVD. He even got Moffat and the other stars to do commentaries and a short making-of feature, and it's all very professionally done. Look for it at replaydvd.co.uk, and hope that he releases Series Two as well. It's brilliant stuff. Go get it if you've never seen it, and if you've seen it before, here's your chance to see it again. I was watching it and I'm amazed at how much I still remember and has stuck with me over the years.

I've been singing the theme song all day.

( Save your cryin' for the day... )

Heyyyyyy youuuuu guyyyyys!
We're gonna turn it on
We're gonna bring you the power
We're gonna turn the darkest night to the brightest day
In a whole new way

We're gonna turn it on
We're gonna bring you the power
We're gonna tell you the truest words that you've ever heard
Anybody say

We're gonna turn it on
We're gonna bring you the power
It's coming down the line, strong as it can be, through the courtesy
Of the Electric Company
The Electric Company
The Electric Company!

This, one of my favourite cheesy lounge songs (and which, like many of these soundtracks, I know how to perform), was playing at a friend's wedding this weekend. The Michael Bublé version may be slicker, but I preferr the Drifters' original 1960 version precisely because of the intimate, cheesy lounge sound.

( Oh I know that the music's fine like a sparkling wine, go and have your fun... )

Nobody does the sarcastic love song better than the Beautiful South.

( So here's to an old-fashioned peck on the cheek... )

I don't normally like those "everybody dies" kind of country songs, but this one is an exception. One, it has Alison Krauss, and two, the first lines of the song and the first line of the chorus just make the whole damn thing worth it.

( She put him out, like the burning end of a midnight cigarette... )

If people were wondering what song they were playing in the last Doctor Who Confidential over the wonderful series one montage, this is it. If there was ever an "our song" for the Ninth Doctor and Rose...

( Here's to what can only be described as a fantastic year... )