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Another Very Important Article Examining the Contents of Victor Meldrew’s Kitchen Cabinets

Published 28th December 2021

TV Comedy

To write one article about One Foot in the Grave recording dates which hinges on the items in the Meldrews’ kitchen cabinets may be regarded as a misfortune. To write two looks like carelessness.

Oh well, here we go again.

Let’s take a look at “The Broken Reflection” (TX: 16/2/92). That’s the one where Victor’s brother Alfred shows up, and David Renwick decides to break our goddamn hearts… again. Alfred Meldrew is played brilliantly by Richard Pearson, and in Richard Webber’s excellent book The Complete One Foot in the Grave, the following rather alarming anecdote about the recording is told:

“For eagle-eyed viewers, the sudden appearance of a small bandage on one of Pearson’s fingers in the scene where he was opening a parcel on the Meldrews’ kitchen table was the result of an earlier accident. During the recording, Pearson used a knife to open the package. ‘It was too sharp, which was a little naughty because all knives are supposed to be blunt on set,’ admits Susan Belbin. Pearson sliced his finger and the extent of the bleeding left the director no alternative but to stop the recording. ‘I had to get him to hospital, so we left the rest of his scenes that night because he needed stitches.’ He returned the following week and completed his scenes, hence the bandage. ‘He was so good about it and I felt sorry for him. It was a bad cut.'”

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The Life and Times of Derek Pangloss

Published 26th December 2021

TV Comedy

Right, you can take your Alfred Hitchcock and Stan Lee cameos, and stick them right up your arse. We only do the important ones around here. So did you know that David Renwick appeared in One Foot in the Grave not once, not twice, but a total of seven times?

Let’s take a look. You may know one or two of these. You might even know all the ones listed on IMDB. But I believe that two of them are previously entirely unpublished. Including our very first example.

Series 2, Episode 4: Who Will Buy?

TX: 25th October 1990

Renwick’s first cameo in the series is an odd one. Indeed, you can barely hear him at all. The production paperwork confirms that the TV playing Poirot at the beginning of the show isn’t an actual clip from Poirot, but is… Angus Deayton and David Renwick.

This is a double in-joke, as at the time this episode aired, Renwick was a writer on Poirot, credited on four adaptations: “The Lost Mine” (TX: 21/1/90), “The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim” (TX: 4/2/90), “Wasps’ Nest” (27/1/91), and “The Tragedy at Marsdon Manor” (3/2/91). And once you know that, “Who Will Buy?” becomes even more intertextual than usual for One Foot in the Grave.

Starting off gently… until you’re suddenly watching a scene between Owen Brennan and Janine Duvitski with the actual Poirot theme playing in the background.

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A Brief Investigation into Recording Dates for So Haunt Me

Published 19th December 2021

TV Comedy

As we come to the end of the year, it’s a time for reflection, and pondering exactly what you have achieved with your life. It’s a shame, then, that this is exactly the moment that I find myself digging through the paperwork for 90s BBC1 sitcom So Haunt Me. It wasn’t intentional. It just happened.

Still, as I was idly flicking my way through, something caught my eye. Series 1 of the show was broadcast between February and March of 1992. The location material was shot between 12th – 16th January of that year. And when were the studio dates for each episode?

Episode RX TX
1.1 1/2/92 23/2/92
1.2 8/2/92 1/3/92
1.3 15/2/92 8/3/92
1.4 22/2/92 15/3/92
1.5 29/2/92 22/3/92
1.6 7/3/92 29/3/92

Although the series only started transmitting at the tail end of February 1992, every last shred of material in the series was shot that same year. Even the location stuff. Moreover, studio sessions for the series only started three weeks before transmission of the first episode. When the first episode was broadcast, they still had the last two episodes of the series left to shoot.

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“This Saturday Night on ITV!”

Published 10th December 2021

TV Comedy

VICTOR: You know what I’m like with weddings. It was bad enough at your nephew’s last year when that organ exploded.
MARGARET: Don’t remind me.
VICTOR: Then there was the father of the bride coming down with that unfortunate fungal infection. Your mother turned round and thought it was the Phantom of the Opera. Thought we’d never going to get her to stop screaming. God, that bloody video cameraman they hired. Got us to pose under a tree, and a bird’s nest fell on my head. Stood there like Jesus of Nazareth. Egg yolk dribbling down my nose.

Sometimes, making a TV show will pose a very particular production problem, which will take some creative thinking to solve.

Take the ending of the One Foot in the Grave episode “Monday Morning Will Be Fine”, broadcast on the 2nd February 1992. The brilliant payoff to the above discussion between Victor and Margaret is that we think it’s Renwick writing one of those gags which happen off-screen, and it’s funny because it’s merely reported. He then brings back the gag as the climax of the episode, entirely unexpectedly. My expectations were confounded and from thence the humour arose.

And the way he brings the gag back is through a trail for You’ve Been Framed!, which Margaret just happens to see in the TV shop as she’s ordering their new telly.

The question, then: how can a TV show broadcast on the BBC fake a section of ITV output, while using the bare minimum of material from ITV itself?

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On Not Writing.

Published 2nd December 2021

Internet

Let me quote excerpts of somebody’s blog to you. I’m not going to link to it, for reasons which will very quickly become obvious.

Its very first post is on the 20th May 2012, “Redesign notes and switching to Octopress”:

“When I set out to redesign this site and start blogging, I knew I wanted it to be a static HTML generated weblog (also commonly known as “baked”). Coming from WordPress, this publishing workflow is a dream.

Content, which is just static HTML, is created in Markdown in a text editor, saved into version control (Git) and pushed to GitHub to deploy. This means no database (MySQL) — a potential security nightmare and single point of failure, no page caching (goodbye WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache), no FTP and super fast page loads – all good things.

I evaluated some great systems including Octopress, Middleman, Nesta CMS and I’m keeping a close eye on Calypso (built on Node.js and MongoDB), but in the end I opted for Octopress as it fitted my needs. I’m still ironing out a few kinks with Octopress, but overall I’m very pleased with how its worked out.”

Their next post is on the following day, the 21st May 2012. It’s called “My 2012 front-end web development workflow”:

“So far 2012 has been a big year for me in progressing my front-end web development skills, tools and process. I’ve also been busy learning new languages and frameworks and getting up to speed on the latest advancements.”

Excellent work.

Their next post is over three years later, on the 25th October 2015. This one is called “Site Design Refresh and Blog Reboot”:

“A lot’s happened since my last blog post three years ago in May 2012, which partly explains the lack of updates.1

[…]

Process has been another factor towards my lack of writing. I love using static site generators like Jekyll and Middleman for prototyping, but as blogging platforms they don’t work for me. There’s too many steps between writing and publishing – opening a terminal, running rake commands to generate a post, editing markdown files, committing to git, and running rake build/deploy tasks. This gets in the way when all you want to do is write, and creates friction when trying to create posts on mobile devices whilst travelling (although there’s tools like Prose.io).

I’ve been tempted to reduce my site to a single page calling card and move my writing to Medium, but that goes against the Indie Web principle of POSSE (Publish on your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere). With a personal website you retain control and ownership of your content. But there’s no denying that Medium has raised the bar in terms of the writing experience on the web. I’m currently in the process of rebuilding the back-end of this site in Ruby on Rails, and I’m planning to use Made by Many’s excellent Sir Trevor content editor (see the demo) for a great writing experience. This will inspire me to write more.”

The post then concludes:

“I’m excited about my own little space on the internet for the first time in years and have lots of blog post ideas that I can’t wait to share.

Next time I won’t leave it three years…”

This is the last post on their blog, at the time of writing. Over six years ago.

And in that one post, there is a triple-whammy of all my favourite things. An excuse for not writing. An announcement of a new blog design.2 And a promise of loads of posts to come, which never happen. Most people only manage two of those things in any given blog entry, so that’s quite an impressive achievement.

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  1. The writer here then goes into exactly what they have done for the last three years, which is, in fact, genuinely more exciting than anything I have done in my entire life. ↩

  2. Backend, but it counts. ↩

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“Tell Me More About These Buttons: Are Some Illuminated?”

Published 28th November 2021

TV Comedy

HOLLY: Emergency. Emergency. There’s an emergency going on.
LISTER: What is it, Hol?
HOLLY: There’s an emergency, Dave. The navicomp’s overheating, and I need your help in the drive room.
RIMMER: Oooh-ooh-ooh!
LISTER: Come in number 169, your time is up. OK, what was I wearing?
RIMMER: Ahhh… that jacket, and that red T-shirt.

Lister pulls out his hat and places it back on his head, then yanks a hefty length of piping off the wall.

LISTER: You said yourself, I can’t stop it. Let’s get it over with.
RIMMER: (Pointing at the pipe) Ah, Lister, what’s that for?
LISTER: I’m going out like I came in – screaming and kicking.
RIMMER: You can’t whack Death on the head!
LISTER: If he comes near me I’m gonna rip his nipples off.

Poor old David Lister. “Future Echoes” (RX: 17-18/10/87) is a particularly unpleasant business for him. But as he plugs in the drive computer into the navicomp and faces down Death – with or without nipples – he can at least be sure that he’s starting off a chain of events which makes a sad old Red Dwarf fan very happy.

Let’s back up a bit. Last time we looked at the wonderful word of Red Dwarf props and sets, we managed to trace a couple of EXCITING PANELS from Series 1 in 1987, right through to Series VII in 1996. Frankly, this was a bit too exciting, and I had to have a lie down for a bit.

But when I recovered, I was left sweaty and dissatisfied. To trace part of a set through nearly the entirety of the BBC years, but missing out Series VIII, was absolutely infuriating. Surely there must be something which made the trip through the whole eight series?

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“What about Other Optical Effects like Split-Screen, Slow Motion, Quantel?”

Published 27th November 2021

TV Comedy

The other day, I was browsing some paperwork for the Red Dwarf episode “White Hole” (TX: 7/3/91) , as you do. And something interesting caught my eye.

“This programme was recorded on Composite Betacam SP videotape.
Original tape numbers: 83 – 101 (with tape no: 90 being the master insert audience tape). Tape No: 124 + 126 additional graphics tapes.
Tape no: CV37898 (Mirage FX tape).”

Mirage FX tape? What’s that?

I know that some of you are already screaming at me. I have to admit, I am far from an expert on this kind of thing. I do, however, know enough to throw a few search terms into Google. I think we can trust Wikipedia with the basics, at least.

“The Quantel Mirage, or DVM8000/1 “Digital Video Manipulator”, was a digital real-time video effects processor introduced by Quantel in 1982. It was capable of warping a live video stream by texture mapping it onto an arbitrary three-dimensional shape, around which the viewer could freely rotate or zoom in real-time. It could also interpolate, or morph, between two different shapes. It was considered the first real-time 3D video effects processor.”

I also know that sometimes, the best way to get a grip on the capabilities of things like this is to search for demonstration videos on YouTube. In 2021, we’re in a far better situation than we were even a decade ago with this stuff: so much reference material has been uploaded by some extremely helpful people.

I was not disappointed.

And at 1:38 into that video… oh, that’s the bit they used in “White Hole”. Does that explosion effect remind you of anything?

Yes, when Holly is going through the intelligence compression procedure:

Or to be more specific:

Explosion effect in Mirage demonstration video
Same explosion effect in Red Dwarf, White Hole, for Holly's IQ transformation


At this point, my mind was blown in much the same way as Holly’s. But there’s more. How about this segment from Tomorrow’s World (TX: 30/12/82)1, for instance?

What happens at 2:49? Well, see if you can guess. Clearly, exploding the image was a signature effect of the Mirage.

And that’s what I really love about this. In 1990, when “White Hole” was made, the Quantel Mirage was already eight years old. The year before, when Series III was made, Red Dwarf had already made use of Harry, a later, more advanced bit of kit from Quantel. If it’s overstating things to say that the Mirage was old by this point, it most definitely wasn’t new, groundbreaking kit.

Red Dwarf makes the effect look great, though. Far better than either the example in the demonstration video, or in Tomorrow’s World. And it’s better because the effect works perfectly to tell the story. Holly is being dismantled to her very essence in order to increase her IQ; her visage being blown to smithereens and then put back together is a brilliant way to portray this.

A standard Quantel effect, turned into story. That’s some of yer actual, real television magic.

UPDATE (14/12/21): Some days, silly things I write lead to the most wonderful revelations. Here’s a remarkable piece of information on this effect, from the creator themselves:

I think I just need Dirty Feed to be a big list of bullet points stating topics I’m interested in, and then people who are actually clever can fill in the rest.

  1. The YouTube upload itself only said “1982”, so I thought I’d research the full date for you. Don’t ask me why the video is cropped to widescreen either, despite being uploaded by the BBC. I haven’t a clue. ↩

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Sorry, I Was Looking at the Wrong Panel

Published 25th November 2021

TV Comedy

It’s odd, the stuff you just make up in your head about a TV programme, without any actual evidence. Even a programme you’re supposed to know plenty about.

Take Series III of Red Dwarf. Out goes Paul Montague as Production Designer, and in comes Mel Bibby. The look of the show changes almost completely, the grey submarine aesthetic replaced by cream, Alien-inspired sets. At first glance, the show could barely look much different.

Series 2 bunkroom

Series 2 bunkroom

Series III bunkroom

Series III bunkroom

And so, over the years, your mind runs away with itself. You imagine Mel Bibby getting a massive skip, chucking every single last shred of the old sets into it, and starting from scratch. After all, not only do the sets look entirely different, but it’s on record that the show’s new producers – a certain Rob Grant and Doug Naylor – hated the old sets.

Nobody’s ever actually said that no part of the old sets remained in the new look. But clearly they didn’t, right? The new regime would want nothing to do with them.

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Fish!

Published 22nd November 2021

TV Comedy

Series IV of Red Dwarf in 1991 saw many interesting developments. For a start, the show moved down south from BBC Manchester to Shepperton. For another, Grant Naylor Productions took control of the show. There’s a whole wealth of important things to write about.

So I want to talk about some fish.

You know the ones I mean. These ones, brand new for Series IV, on monitors around the ship:

Kryten and Lister with the fish in the background
Lister with the fish in the background


Our question today: where did this footage come from? Surely it wasn’t shot specifically for Red Dwarf?

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The Thick Red Line, Part Three

Published 20th November 2021

TV Comedy

And so we reach the third and final part of this series of articles looking at the extended VHS/DVD versions of The Thin Blue Line.1 To recap: Part One looked at the first three episodes. Part Two looked at the next three episodes. There’s just one more episode to go. Why does it get its own article?

The answer becomes clear when we look at the sheer amount of footage in the extended version compared to the broadcast. There’s fully 10 minutes of extra material here. This, then, is the tale of how you can edit down a 40 minute sitcom episode to a 30 minute sitcom episode for broadcast, and still have it make sense. More or less, anyway.

As ever, deleted material in the broadcast version is rendered [like this].

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  1. In answer to a question I was asked about these pieces: only Series 2 got these extended edits. None were released for Series 1. ↩

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