Flip and Fill are one of those dance acts, with varying singers, who did a cover of a famous song in a dance mode – in their case I Wanna Dance With Somebody (other groups did Bryan Adams’ Heaven and Duran Duran’s Ordinary World). Shooting Star was their best track.
There are six television auteurs whose work I love. I have already talked about Russell T Davies; later there will probably be entries about David Simon, Joss Whedon, Steve Bochco and Jenji Kohan. This is about Steven Moffatt.
My sister, Frances, told me that I should watch Press Gang. It was a children’s show but it was being repeated on Sunday evenings. This was Moffatt’s first writing gig and is about a junior newspaper at a secondary school. It was Julia Sawalha’s big break and was also the debut of Gabrielle Anwar, who went on to major fame. Its starts slowly and some of the acting is a bit painful. It addresses a lot of painful issues like suicide, drug abuse and glue sniffing. It was funny and yet packed more dramatic punch than most adult shows of the time. It shows signs of Moffatt’s talent with connections between episodes seasons apart, as well as flashbacks and clever wordplay.
(Cast of Press Gang)
He wrote three episodes of the sadly overlooked Murder Most Horrid (with the interminable repeats of Only Fools and Horses and Last of the Summer Wine on UK Gold I do not see why this does not get a run out). Lack of repeats also applies to Joking Apart and Chalk, both autobiographical sitcoms, neither of which is seen much. I liked, Chalk, drawing on Moffatt’s days as a teacher but it was panned and consigned to history.
Joking Apart and Coupling were about his marriage breakdown and meeting his second wife (the Jack Davenport character is him). Coupling is one of the best sitcoms ever, using Moffatt’s tricks of telling a story from multiple viewpoints and time shifts to good effect. It is not a simple sitcom and requires thinking to watch it – I binged it in two days (and I hardly ever binge) to get through a miserable time one Christmas. It cheered me up a lot, but a four, series British sitcom, after all that labour is just 12 hours.
His next major project was an adaption of a classic horror story. He strayed further from the source material with Jekyll than with the later Dracula and was, in my opinion, more successful. Having James Nesbitt as the lead will always lead to a bit of a marmite response but I thought that he really nailed it.
His biggest body of work is his huge run on Doctor Who. He had written the short story Continuity Errors in the 90s – which is almost like a manifesto for his TV run and a lot of it is reused in A Christmas Carol, as the Doctor repeatedly changes the timeline to get what he needs in the present. He wrote one story a year in the Russel T Davies’ era – including Blink that barely features the Doctor and introduces The Weeping Angels and a two parter that features River Song for the first time from our point of view, where she dies. In a time travel show this is not a problem. He won three Hugo awards for his work in this period, covering four of the six episodes that he wrote.
His run covered Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi’s in the lead role and, for me, is the best run in the show’s history. There are so many great stories like The Time of Angels, The Pandorica Opens, The Big Bang, The impossible Astronaut, The Day of the Moon, The Name of the Doctor, The Day of the Doctor from the Smith era alone. He also wrote a regeneration story for Paul McGann and managed to get John Hurt in as an extra Doctor. My only disappointment was that the Time War just seemed like an ordinary war – a war fought by transtemporal powers would not just be shooting and explosions(Kate Orman describes it well in the novel Walking to Babylon and multiple writers in The Book of the War).
Capaldi’s era was less popular but still had an array of stories like Dark Water, Death In Heaven, The Magician’s Apprentice, The Witch’s Familiar and the acclaimed Heaven Sent (widely considered to be one of the best episodes of the show). He also recast the Master as a woman and explicitly showed a male Time Lord regenerating to a female body in Hell Bent, paving the way for Jodie Whitaker to be cast in the lead role and make my brother a very happy man.
At the same time as this he created the modern incarnation of Sherlock. It is hard to believe than when it started Benedict Cumberbatch was not a superstar. It was massively draining – the pilot was shot twice and each story looked like it was a feature film. It disrupted the production of Doctor Who but was a phenomenal ratings success. Critically acclaimed too – The Abominable Bride winning awards, though it was too esoteric for many (Mum I ‘m looking at you here).
Moffatt is inventive and creative. I’m looking forward to what he does next. If you haven’t seen all his work treat yourself and watch what you have missed. Even if you hate Doctor Who watch Blink and Heaven Sent.
Shooting Star
John Hawkins I do like the re-imagining of Sherlock by Moffatt and Gatiss and generally the work of both those writers. However, I’d have to say the connections between episodes seasons apart, flashbacks and clever wordplay are learned. They are strikingly similar to the ones used by John Sullivan (co-incidentally the writer of the mentioned OFAH) in almost all the work he did. Look past (the undoubtedly great) Horses and search out the cleverer Dear John, sadly lost along with it’s star too early to have become a loved classic en-masse. I would go so far as to say Moffatt’s use of these devices appears to be a homage to Sullivan.
As for the tune: this leads me to an exasperated moan at a bug bear of mine. We in the UK are “treated” to the best of UK music but that from the wider world almost always passes us by. Songs not in English are next-to unheard of in the charts here. Clubs tend to fare a little better but still not well. A great example and a pretty direct comparison is Russian dance / DJ duo Filatov & Karas. Whilst their version of Don’t Be So Shy was a smash hit (and I mean smash hit – look it up on Wiki if you don’t know how wide a smash it was) all over Europe and the rest of the world, I have never heard it played in the UK. Sad and probably a reflection of our rampant (especially European-pointing) xenophobia 😦 It is better than anything Flip and Fill (or DnA etc.) have done for UK audiences.
The Filatov & Karas Remix:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYhxaZXXwsg
By the original singer/songwriter Imany, sung raw:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgI0oExkl20Delete or hide this
YOUTUBE.COM♛♛♛ Imany – Don’t be so shy (Filatov & Karas Remix) ♛♛♛
Five Miles Out 