BE KIND, REWIND 2

me-ac’s second random weekly round-up…

SUPPER CLUB

At the start of last week me-ac was manfully grappling with a marrow, all in the name of research of course. But a couple of days later that national treasure Nigel Slater was doing much the same as part of his new BBC series Simple Suppers. Now Slater has long been one of me-ac’s favourite cookery writers, not just for his recipes – which rarely fail – but also for his winning facility with language and pointedly purple prose. His Observer column has prompted many delicious evenings in, though it’s his beautifully simple advice on this chip butty that forever lodges in the mind (and occasionally the gullet after running the fast food gauntlet from pub to home):

“I love chip butties. But there are rules. The bread should be white and thick-sliced. The ‘plastic’ type is more suitable than real ‘baker’s bread’ because it absorbs the melting butter more readily. The chips should be fried in dripping, not oil, and sprinkled with salt and malt vinegar – yes, I said malt – vinegar. The sandwich should drip with butter. Good eaten when slightly drunk, and the perfect antidote to the char-grilled-with-balsamic-vinegar-and-shaved–Parmesan school of cookery. And so frightfully common.”

However, like Charlie Brooker after him, transferring his talents to TV hasn’t all been plain sailing, and it’s questionable whether Slater has managed to locate his small screen mojo yet. His last effort, A Taste Of My Life was hampered by its stingy production values – his guests (most memorably the stodge-loving Alan Bennett) sometimes recoiling at having to almost consume their own bodyweight within its narrow time zone. And with any cookery programme, it’s the tasting that’s the true money shot and measure of whether it stands or falls. Slater always looks slightly waspish and embarrassed when it comes to his close-up; no match for the full-on quasi-pornography (cue near-namesake Nigella) its true conquistadors bring to the table.

But we digress. In the first of his new series Nigel was keen to stress how cooking can be about “making it up as you go along” – we know this because he intoned that mantra every few minutes, to the point of murderous exasperation. And to prove how easy it was he took a stove and frying pan to cook up the fruits of some over-haired trustafarians’ allotment. So into a pan went slices of ripe marrow, pink fir apple potatoes, tomatoes and some herbs. Frankly, it looked a mess, the worst Slater recipe ever (and undeserving of that name), so bad that neither he nor his guests were able to mug it convincingly to the camera when the fatal money shot dawned.

DEAD CAN DANCE

Still with the idiot’s lantern, me-ac was also a little miffed that the new series of Waking The Dead started with such a stinker. Last night’s episode suggests that decline might not be as terminal as feared, but with Rebus leaving us curiously unmoved (despite being huge admirers of both Ken Stott – a born TV detective – and Ian Rankin), Taggart just too Scottish and the unlimited gore of Wire In The Blood a high profile victim of ITV’s recent belt-tightening, me-ac is prompted to ask if there are still any home-reared TV crime dramas worth the armchair investment?

And in our considered view, there are still at least three reasons to be cheerful here:

1. Trial & Retribution

Criminally underrated (cough!) and often derided for her sheer gaucheness, there’s still no doubt Lynda LaPlante writes great TV (though ignore the technological misstep that was Killer Net). Central to T&R is David Hayman as Mike Walker, a diminutive, scarred, possibly corrupt DCI; captivating for his violent temper, pronounced Napoleon complex and winning habit of flicking off his filter tips in his one-man crusade against the smoking ban. Victoria Smurfit (DCI Roison Connor) is a worthy foil, and seems to bag more screen time, but Walker is its bloodied, brooding heart.

2. Wallander

Kenneth Branagh almost seemed born to the titular role of Henning Mankell’s Swedish detective Kurt. It’s a step up from the Swede’s two domestic series (starring Rolf Lassgard and Krister Henrikkson), with Branagh managing the difficult trick of imbuing a sparsely written, highly circumspect character with some real emotional heft. Allied to perhaps the strongest production values and cinematography of the genre – me-ac would have happily paid to see all first three episodes on the big screen – Wallander is a class act in every respect.

3. Single-Handed

The makers of this recent small town rural Irish detective drama, a real beacon of light in ITV’s notoriously flaky Sunday schedule, might well have been taking notes from Wallander. With similarly luscious countryside and a luxurious feature-length slot it allowed viewers to get under the skin of its chief character Sergeant Jack Driscoll (Owen McDonnell), though the plot’s unusual reliance on Jack’s pre/current/post squeezes strains a little credulity. How many ravishing brunettes can one small town Garda reasonably squire?

As a small final coda, and much as we try to suppress it, a small but persistent voice in me-ac’s cavernous control cranium keeps urging us to mention The Gentle Touch. So for no good reason whatsoever the Jill Gascoine revival starts here!

GET SHORTY

me-ac is still chuffed as nuts that Speech Debelle scooped this year’s Mercury Prize, not least as it merely confirmed our first and immutable law of pop stardom: thou must be tiny. This first dawned some 20 years back, when various journalistic assignations with pop’s great and good all involved a lot of crouching and the fending off an irrational yet persistent urge to patronise on size alone. It reached its inevitable nadir during an involved exchange with some of rapper Ice Cube’s charges – let’s just say it’s hard to be truly scared of a trio of self-styled South Central gangstas when they only reach your knees.

POSTER POSERS

With the likes of Hitler, Stalin and Hussein now added to the fray, me-ac recently took a pictorial look at how Aids awareness posters have changed since the late ’80s, picking a few faves along the way. But there’s been some stinkers too, and here’s our worst offenders…

Despite the worthy intentions of this 1989 Australian poster, it’s undermined by that terrible name (Condoman?) and woeful graphics.

Simply don’t understand this Danish effort. Anyone?

Pick a condom, any condom. Wrong!

TANKED UP

One of many aftershocks from Andrea Arnold’s fine Fish Tank, was that it sent us scurrying back into the racks to dig out Nas’s classic debut LP Illmatic and, in particular, replay Life's A Bitch (pivotal to the film’s ending).  The Queensbridge rapper’s first collaboration with his dad Ola Dura (on cornet) and AZ, it’s a timely reminder of what a great and fully formed lyricist he was at such a tender age. Nas hasn’t always scaled those heights since but, Biggie and Hova aside, it’s a moot point who has.