Dick Heads

Dick Heads: The Hobbit

23 August 2012 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

Richard Armitage as Thorin the Dwarf in The Hobbit

It’s been nearly a year since our last Dick Head, but since it’s Richard Armitage’s birthday today, what could be a more appropriate way to celebrate than this new picture of our Dick as Thorin the inappropriately tall Dwarf, in the forthcoming The Hobbit?

Feel free to compose poems and haikus as you see fit – extra bonus points if they’re about gold and you can sing them.

Got a picture of Richard Armitage’s head, preferably wearing a hat? Then leave a link to it below and if it’s judged suitable, it will appear in the “Dick Heads” gallery.

Classic TV

Nostalgia corner: Mulberry (1992)

23 August 2012 Rob Buckley 7 Comments

Mulberry

Sitcoms, as a whole, don’t do science-fiction. Fewer still do fantasy. You get the occasional one, such as Kröd Mändoon, but you’d be hard-pressed to come up with even 10 fantasy sitcoms once your initial flurry of 1950s/1960s sitcoms The Munsters, The Addams Family, Mr Ed and My Mother The Car was out the way, I reckon (challenge: extended).

1992’s Mulberry, created by UK sitcom stalwarts John Esmonde and Bob Larbey (The Good Life, Please Sir!, Ever Decreasing Circles), is one of these unicorn-tears rare few: a primetime fantasy sitcom. Intriguingly, for a whole series, it wasn’t even obviously a fantasy sitcom.

It starred Karl Howman (Jacko from Esmonde and Larbey’s womanising painter sitcom Brush Strokes) as the eponymous Mulberry, who appears at the country house of a crotchety spinster, Miss Farnaby (Geraldine McEwan of Marple), wanting to become her servant – a position which hasn’t yet been advertised. Over the course of the first series, it becomes clear that the mischievous Mulberry may not have Miss Farnaby’s best interests at heart: he’s in cahoots with a mysterious man in black (John Bennett of Saracen), who appears to want Miss Farnaby killed, even if Mulberry appears to be having second thoughts.

But all becomes clear by the end of the sixth episode: Mulberry has come to kill Miss Farnaby… because the mysterious man in black is Death, Mulberry is his son and Miss Farnaby is his test job for the ‘family business’. Here’s the title sequence and you can watch the whole thing after the jump.

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The Weekly Play

The Wednesday Play: Z for Zachariah (1984)

22 August 2012 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

Z for Zachariah

Apocalyptic tales were all the rage in the 80s, thanks to the ever-present fear of nuclear war. 1984, with its obvious connections to Orwell, spawned more than its fair share of these terror tales on TV alone. Most famous was Barry Hines/Mick James’s ‘documentary’ Threads about a nuclear war and its effects on Sheffield, but the BBC’s Play for Today slot also featured an adaptation of the novel Z For Zachariah.

Radio Times coverOriginally set in the mid-West but relocated to Wales for the play – drama budgets being what they were back then – Z for Zachariah sees a young woman, Ann Burden (Pippa Hinchley), survive a nuclear war by virtue of living in a small valley with a self-contained weather system. At first believing she’s the only survivor, her lonely existence is eventually ended when a scientist, John Loomis (Anthony Andrews), arrives. The rest of the play details the changing, deteriorating relationship between the two (no, no spoilers).

As you might imagine, it’s not a cheery affair and with only a TV drama budget to work on and with its relocation from the US, it’s not entirely convincing. But as was common with many of the tales of misery from the 80s, it’s powerful stuff. Unfortunately, it’s not available on DVD, but you can watch it below on YouTube, you lucky people. Enjoy!

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