Hope you’ve had a great weekend. Time now for TVWriter™’s latest look at our most popular blog posts and resource pages during the week ending yesterday. They are, in order:
Big thanks to everybody for helping us have another terrific week at TVWriter™. Don’t forget to click above and read what you missed and re-read what you loved!
Are you a fan of LaLaLand? This TVWriter™ minion isn’t. But I do love the great old Hollywood musicals that have disappeared from view. This video by the ever-delightful and wise Lindsay Ellis, tells us what happened…and why:
Russell T Davies, AKA RTD, is one of this TVWriter™’s writing heroes. Without him, we wouldn’t have had the “New Who” to love for the past 14 years.
He’s no unsung hero by any means, but as far as I’m concerned his song hasn’t been played loudly enough. This interview is mostly about his upcoming BBC series Years and Years, starring Hugh Grant, but what we enjoyed most was the chance to visit a brilliant writer who honestly feels that:
“Caring for my husband is the greatest work I’ll ever do”
by Ginny Dougary
Russell T Davies arrives slightly breathless and immediately friendly. He is tall (6ft 6in), dressed in a plaid shirt, jeans and hiking boots with a rucksack slung over one shoulder. In a single bound, he enfolds me in the warmest of hugs and pours himself a cup of tea.
It’s intended to be set in a dystopian future but feels anxiously all too recognisably like today. Did he feel that he could write quickly enough about the future to be ahead of the material he was creating?
“The world is now so mad that it’s faster than my imagination,” he says. “I mean, at no point could I have imagined Donald Trump standing in a gold room full of hamburgers. It’s impossible to predict.”
With the exception of Thompson, who plays populist celebrity-turned-politician Vivienne Rook – think Katie Hopkins meets Nigel Farage – the others are members of the Lyons family who live in Manchester. It’s an epic drama, with a shocking finale in the first episode, but at its centre lie the ties and tensions of family life.
As Davies says, it’s quite tricky to describe, “which is almost a worry when you’re pitching and selling to people because I like a one-line pitch”. I say it’s Peter Watkins’s 1965 The War Game meets Davies’s own Queer as Folk meets Doctor Who… “meets Cold Feet,” he adds. “The nice Manchester happy people. I love Cold Feet. Please bring back Cold Feet. PLEASE! This year was SO brilliant. Do I write a letter? Do I join that bandwagon?”
The futuristic elements in episode one of Years and Years are tweaks of what exists now. Mobile phones are not triangular or circular or crazily different, but you can just tap one to another and contacts are miraculously transferred. The family talks regularly to one another in a big simultaneous conversation, walking around the house – not trapped by a screen on their mobile phone – “It’s a conference call, in a sense, but an updated one….”
We’ve talked about Morgan’s Organs, a comedy comic book series (“like Pixar’s Inside Out but for grown-ups) before here on TVWriter™. (HERE and HERE) Now the “‘sitcomic’ adventures of Morgan and the crazy organauts living inside his body” are returning with a new twist.
Here’s the skinny, from creator-writer Daniel Brodie (no relation to our Beloved Leader Larry Brody, although we hear that he’s a big fan):
n 2016, we introduced Kickstarter and the world to Book 1 of our quirky concept, and in 2017, we returned with Book 2. Thanks to the love and support of our incredible fans, we’re able to return for Book 3 of Morgan’s Organs. The great thing about this series is each story is standalone – you can read it in any order and still enjoy the heck out of it!
In Book 1 (click to preview), we witnessed Morgan’s two “heads” of the body clash for control of Morgan’s decision-making, all while Morgan battled the pressure to end a dry spell.
In Book 2 (click to preview), we cringed as Morgan dealt with the pains of swallowing something he shouldn’t, and the consequences it would have for the organauts as it moved through his digestive system.
This time, we’re bringing you a story riddled with alcohol, phallic artwork and a secret Morgan wish he never knew. And what I am most excited about is that we’re using an unconventional narrative style for this book with a structure similar to that of Christopher Nolan’s hit movie, Memento.
More, including Book 3 preview pages, at KICKSTARTER
Pixar’s Inside Out but for grown-ups) before here on TVWriter™. (