Disjointed Ramblings About BBC 7... and Let the Right One In

Apologies in advance, this post is likely to be somewhat bitty for a number of reasons. Firstly, it's snowing outside which means that I'll simply have to mention it (in a kind of 'ooh isn't that nice' way rather than the prepsoterous sensationalised '60,000 people to die' kind of way). Secondly, I'm supposed to be going out to collect voxpops for a radio station and I might be cut down in my prime to become some poorly-paid hack/Shackleton. Thirdly, I managed the grand total of 4 and a half hour's sleep last night, so this could well make no sense at all. Right that's all the disclaimers out of the way, so let's get on with it.

The first issue I'd like to discuss is BBC 7. I know what you're thinking- that's not an issue, that's a radio station and well, you'd be right. The issue is probably the undervaluation of this station which provides insomniacs like me with some rather excellent distractions while we're trying and inevitably failing to get to sleep. I guess it could be termed a Specialist station, but then that makes it sound like some weird radio porn (a bit like the 'specialist music' section in smaller branches of HMV- I just want to look at some blues or folk records, don't make me feel like a pervert in the process). BBC 7 features an extensive library of classic and contemporary comedy, drama and documentaries, but the section that I rely most heavily on is the Crime and Thrillers from 1 o'clock onwards, currently featuring the excellent Sherlock Holmes recordings made by Carleton Hobbs and Norman Shelley. It's a rather excellent way of assimilating curios from the sea of classic fiction into your consciousness too- until a couple of weeks ago they had been playing all 30 episodes of Russell Thorndike's Doctor Syn series', narrated by the surprisingly versatile Rufus Sewell.

Then there's the 15 minute drama at 2 o'clock, which since Monday of last week has been H. E. Bates' Love For Lydia, a semi-autobiographical tale set in the roaring twenties, following a journalist named Richardson as he falls for an heiress and proceeds to claim his as one of the most depressing lives ever (when in reality it's the other characters who have a right to feel hard done by). Drawled in Tim Pigott-Smith's rich baritone, we follow the young journo as he is enchanted and summarily rejected by the titular Lydia, whose other suitors proceed to die in increasingly depressing (but also accidentally mildly comic) circumstances. The first fell drunkenly off a bridge while Lydia and Richardson were busy arguing and then last night Tom was found dead with a bullet wound, a policeman claiming that he accidentally shot himself while attempting to traverse a stile ('one of the dangers of carrying a gun at night' !!). Now, I'm largely unfamiliar with the source text, but we have run out of male characters apart from the family's driver Blackie (whose father died) of whom Lydia is a 'business partner', so I can only imagine that he will perhaps drive a car containing all the remaining characters (including Nancy, the only character I have any sympathy for really) off a bridge while shooting himself.

The feature that perpetually torments me is the children's programmes that begin somewhere around five o'clock and feature singing, excitable annoyances (and that's just the presenters...) and an alarming propensity to rasp loudly "Wake Up!" in a curious, terrifying whisper that causes me to sit bolt upright every time, expecting to see the children from M. R. James' Lost Hearts or perhaps Eli from Let The Right One In sitting at the end of my bed. Actually that leads me on to another quick rant. As I mentioned in my post about Highlander, there is a Hollywood remake of Let the Right One In slated for later this year with Cloverfield's Matt Reeves at the helm. As if that wasn't bad enough, the English version will be known as Let Me In (you know you're in trouble when you have to dumb down a five word title for the American market). Director of the original, Tomas Alfredson, was suitably skeptical about what will likely be another trashy horror that somewhat misses the point of the original, quoted as saying 'remakes should be made of movies that aren't very good, it gives you the chance to fix whatever has gone wrong.' Now there's certainly nothing wrong with Alfredson's marvellous adaptation, featuring stellar performances and brilliant cinematography and it was even Mark Kermode's film of the year last year- so why remake it? Well, Reeves offered the defence that he 'has nothing but respect for the film' and even author of the original novel, John Ajvide Lindquist, said he was excited that it would be following the plot of his novel rather than Alfredson's film and that the end result could be quite different. Simon Oakes of Hammer Pictures (yep, that Hammer Pictures) claimed that it would be very close to the original (shooting down Lindquist's dreams in a fiction-y fireball) but made 'very accessible to a wider audience'. So that's any hope well and truly flushed down the Hollywood remake toilet then...