Posts Tagged Tony Green

Review: Beatles Anthology 2025

December 20, 2025 at 6:59 am · Filed under Disney+, Documentaries, Music ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Disney + TV series review.

A sculpture of four musicians resembling the Beatles, posed on a modern bench, each holding instruments, in a stylized setting with abstract designs in the background.
JULY 10, 2008 – BERLIN: the wax figures of the “Beatles” with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, John Lennon and George Harrison – official opening of the waxworks “Madame Tussauds Berlin”.

Introduction

The initial release of the Anthology albums and the eight-part television series shown on ITV were big events in 1995/6, even if the viewing figures for the latter steadily declined as the series progressed.

The showing of the final episode on New Year’s Eve when any Brit’ worthy of the name was down the pub or at a party was as inexplicable as the decision to release the new single Free as a Bird after most of us had already bought it on the Anthology One album, a decision that deprived them of their first number one single in a quarter of a century.

But the enterprise was still a big event, and one that, for a time, united both casual and hardcore fans. Before Anthology, the best television rendering of the Beatles journey we’d had was The Complete Beatles. That was good for its time, but here, finally were the three surviving  Beatles telling their story in their own words, together with archive footage and audio of John, as well as important contributions from significant others such as their Producer George Martin, and manager Brian Epstein, who sadly, like John, had to participate from beyond the grave, and former road manager and then Apple boss Neil Aspinall.

Through working on John demos donated by Yoko, and with a little help from Jeff Lynne and the, then, wonders of modern technology, the ‘boys’ provided us with new material in the form of the two singles, the aforementioned Free As A Bird and Real Love.

The third song they commenced work on, Now and Then, had to wait until 2023 to get its moment in the sun, and you can read my detailed review here The Last Beatles Song | Counter Culture

It was a project that had been long in the making. Aspinall had produced a rough ninety-minute first draft as far back as 1970, provisionally to be called The Long and Winding Road. Ringo’s comment at the time was that ‘It’s mostly us getting in and out of cars, and on and off planes.’

As they had only just broken up, and were wracked with business and personal differences, it was all way too soon, anyway.

But it was idea which would resurface periodically over the years. John even referred to it, still calling it The Long and Winding Road, though, in reality, neither he nor George was ever going to allow to be called after what was essentially a Paul solo composition, during his final round of interviews to publicise his and Yoko’s Double Fantasy album shortly before his tragic murder in December 1980.

Their interest in the project likely rose and fell in direct collation to the state of these differences.

George, conversely the ‘money Beatle’ as well as the ‘Spiritual Beatle,’ was finally driven to to commit to completing this unfinished business by financial concerns, following the collapse of his initially successful Handmade Films production company (Life of Brian, The Long Good Friday, Whitnall and I – not a bad resume), and some shoddy business management.

Conversely George, as well as being the ‘Spiritual Beatle’ was also the ‘Money Beatle’, just as he was, at various times, both the most and the least willing of the four to entertain the idea of a reunion.

On a personal level, my memory is of being drastically late for work through waiting for Chris Evans to play Free as a Bid, as he promised to do every five minutes or so on his Breakfast Show a day or two before its release. This was not quite the first ever radio play. That distinction had belonged to Anne Nightingale a few hours earlier, in the Radio Two ‘graveyard slot,’ but not even I was that dedicated. Or maybe I simply didn’t know that Annie would be playing it.

So, there I was, waiting for Chris to get on with it as the clock ticked ever closer to the start of my 10-8 shift.

In the end, I didn’t even bother to make up an excuse. My colleagues knew me well enough to forgive and forget.

First impressions? To be honest, I think I had an exaggerated idea of what could be done with a two-track mono tape recorded with the cassette player on top of the piano, even with a great producer like Jeff Lynne, and, presumably, the most cutting-edge technology then available to anyone, anywhere. Those ghostly John Lennon vocals took some getting used, though I came to love it, in time. The moment when George’s half-verse gives way to his cracker of a slide guitar solo is right up there as a truly great Beatles moment.

So, of course, I bought the CDs, and watched the series, and loved it, even if, as I’ve heard many fans comment, I thought the earlier episodes were better than the latter. This was largely, because, save for the ‘rooftop gig’ of January 1969, miming to Hey Jude and Revolution on the David Frost show a year earlier, and to All You Need Is Love at the worldwide One World TV broadcast a year before that, there is no live Beatles footage after the summer of ’66, and, it seemed, aside from that which became first Let It Be and then Get Back, a dearth of in-studio rehearsal and recording material.

The result of this, was a lot more talking heads in the latter episodes, and that can get wearing, even if the heads doing most of the talking are mostly the Beatles.

Still, the series was great, and when the DVD version finally came out, it came with a whole two and-a-half-hours’ worth of Extras material.

But we Beatles fans are never fully satisfied; and why should we be? So, as soon as Blu Rays became a thing, the clamour for a visual and audio upgrade began.

In addition, the release of the superb Super de Lux versions of the latter Beatles albums, Revolver to Let It Be, had shown that George Martin’s comment at the time of the original Anthology albums, to the effect that ‘That’s it, now. If we put anything else out it would have to be called ‘Scraping the Bottom of the Barrell’ because there’s nothing left in the can’, was plain wrong. Those albums had revealed that much better alternative takes of songs, or even previously unheard tracks, existed in the vaults of Abbey Road than were released on the original three-volume Anthology album.

Then, there was the little matter of Peter Jackson’s epic Get Back, which was released, again on Disney, in November 2022. The way that Jackson had taken Michael-Lyndsey-Hogg’s eighty minutes of grainy, narratively direction-less Let It Be, and made of it almost eight-hours of high-definition, sonically superb compelling drama (at least for us obsessives. Get Back is not really one for the normies) had raised the bar still higher by showing what could now be done.

My Get Back review can be read here A Month in the Life: Peter Jackson’s The Beatles Get Back reviewed | Counter Culture

So, here we are. We finally have our long-awaited Anthology upgrade. Maybe not on Blu Ray (another point I’ll return to shortly), but with Jackson again at the helm, with the sonic aspects handled by Giles Martin, whose work on those expanded album collections has been generally excellent (it must be in the genes), apart from the occasional misfire like his sacrilegious butchering of I Am the Walrus on the recent ‘Blue’ (1967-70) remix, there seemed very little that could go wrong.

So, did it?

 Positives

The short answer, is no. It’s pretty much positives all the way, for me.

Anthology 2025 is a vast improvement on the original visually. That had been made to be seen on the small cathode televisions of the time, and, watching recently the first four episodes from my DVD Box-set, it shows. The new version is very clearly made to be seen on the much bigger, digital HD screens now present in most of our homes.

Sonically, it’s also massively improved. I don’t possess a 5.1 surround system, but those who do, report that it sounds amazing.

There’s also a lot more John. Of course, he’s the only Beatle who didn’t live to take part in the project personally, but there are more audio and visual clips included than previously, so there’s more of a sense of him being involved. Obviously, a lot of care and attention has been taken in the selection of these clips, presumably at the urging of son Sean, who for the first time is listed among the producers of the series, alongside Paul, Ringo and George’s widow Olivia, rather than the now ailing ninety-three-year-old Yoko.

One disappointment among fans was when we learned, shortly before release, that we were getting an upgrade of the TV series rather than the extended DVD release.

But more is not always better, and I think that the series is much better paced than the old physical release version, where, based on my recent viewing of episodes 1-4, there was a lot of unnecessary repetition and padding. That makes it a better jumping-on point for those who are only now in the process of discovering the Beatles.

For someone like me, born in the same year as the release of Love Me Do, their first proper single, it’s hard to believe that such people exist, but they do.

And the series is still substantial enough to satisfy (more or less) us old obsessives.

It’s not a straight upgrade of what we saw on our TV screens either, and that’s another big positive.

As I’ve said, my own view of the 1995 series was that the earlier episodes were better than the latter, which was no doubt a contributory factor to those declining viewing figures. Now, my opinion has changed, with a definite preference for the latter episodes.

Leaving aside the new episode nine, which I’ll mention shortly, there is a lot more footage of Paul, George and Ringo being interviewed together while making the project than was previously the case, and that helps to fill out the latter episodes, and in a way that is interesting and enlightening.

As Ringo says at one point, ‘My Anthology would be different to Paul’s, Geoge and John’s would be different…’ I’m paraphrasing, but his basic point is that there can be no single ‘true’ story of the Beatles, and what was presented as their official history in 1995, and now, was always going to be the result of compromise between the main protagonists, which is one reason that the original took around four years to make, even once the decision to go ahead had been made.

We’ve long known that there were tensions present at those 1990s meet-ups and recording sessions, especially between Paul and George. But all three were at least self-aware enough, and accommodating enough to one another to acknowledge that there could be no single ‘correct’ version of the story, and this enabled them to move forward and get the job done as honestly as was possible.

Without watching the original 1995 series, the extended DVD cut, and the new version back-to-back, it’s impossible for me to be able to recount every change that has been made, though no doubt more than one super-fan will be painstakingly undertaking this task. But, from memory, definite changes include the appearance of John’s verse-demo for Yellow Submarine, a demo we didn’t know existed until the 2022 Revolver Super de Lux edition (previously, this had been thought to be primarily a Paul song), the replacement of Lindsey-Hogg’s Let It Be footage with clips from Jackson’s Get Back.

I also remember a Paul interview way back when he said that George’s modesty had led to the omission of a whole section on his own development as a songwriter. This is now present and correct, and the series is all the better for it.

On then to that new episode nine. What we all wanted was lots of footage of the ‘Threetless’ working on Free As A Bird, Real Love and Now and Then, interacting together in and out of the studio, discussing the making of the series itself, more of them jamming together acoustically inside George’s modest home, and passing around the ukulele while playing and reminiscing about India in his equally modest garden.

And we get all that. Not enough, of course, especially of the development of new material from John’s mono-cassette demos. But, actually more than I expected. None of this footage has ever been seen anywhere, not on the DVD Extras disc, nor even in the darkest depths of YouTube.

We do get a little more of the indoor acoustic jam, and Aint She Sweet, sung originally by John on the ‘B’ Side of My Bonnie, the record that originally bought their existence to the attention of Mr. Epstein, has been added to the outdoor uke’ session, as has Jimmy Reed’s Baby What Do You Want Me To Do?

Amongst the newly added interviews with the three of them together that have been included for the first time, they address the question of whether the series could have been made in, say, 1975, with a resolute ‘No’ from all three. Too many business problems and personal issues existed. As late as 1988, Paul refused to join George, Ringo and Yoko in being present to accept the band’s admission to the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame. John’s physical absence aside, the time was right in 1995.

The knowledge that George would die a mere six years after the completion of the series is a reminder of how important it is that they got together to do it when they did.

That their assertion that their issues were now behind them and they were now the best of friends, wasn’t strictly true, because the relationship between Paul and George remained complex, is unimportant when we know that both Paul and Ringo took the opportunity to say goodbye, separately, at George’s bedside shortly before his death in 2001, and at a property secretly owned by Paul, and made available to George so that he might spend his final weeks with his family away from possible press intrusion.

That John and George’s relationship soured after 1974, and that they never did quite resolve their differences, is also unimportant. The other three clearly loved and missed him, and, although we only get to see what they wanted us to see, those that remained were at least close enough to get the series made, and even to record together again.

There is something very special about seeing Paul and George harmonising together at the mic with the ghost of John singing lead in their headphones. As up and down as their personal relationship might have been over the years, their voices blended together as perfectly in their fifties as they had in their twenties.

And, in essence, through all the insanity they shared, the good and the bad, they remained those same kids who talked guitars and Elvis on the ‘86’ bus to school.

Ringo, of course, is always just Ringo, the perfect drummer for the Beatles, and often the glue that held three giant egos together.

‘I’ve loved hanging out with you guys, again’ he says in George’s garden, and you can tell he meant it. 

Each episode concludes, before the main credits roll, with the words ‘In Loving Memory of John and George.’ This was a nice touch. I’ve so far watched the whole series through once, and Episode Nine twice. It’s more than worthy of another monthly £5.99 subscription to Disney+.

Negatives

My biggest criticism concerns the Beatles ongoing relationship with Disney. How much more impactful could the series have been had it been free-to-air on mainstream TV, as it was in 1995?

This is made all the worse by Disney’s aversion to physical media releases. A fan-led campaign, orchestrated in large part by Peter Jckson himself, pushed them to make an exception for Get Back, though even then we got only a bare-bones repeat of the Disney stream, with no Extras, let alone the fourteen-hour cut Jackson insists he has ready to go (I believe Star Wars fans forced a similar concession for The Mandalorian). But I don’t think we’ll be so lucky with the Anthology. After all, we’ve had no physical release of the cleaned-up version of Let It Be, or of the Beatles ’64 and Eight Day’s a Week both recent(ish) additions to the growing Beatles-Disney canon.

There will always be a place in this world, contrary to what some believe, for real, physical items you can hold in your hands and put on your shelves, and when it comes to a phenomenon as culturally important as the Beatles, it should be seen as of the utmost importance that physical versions of all of their material, visual and audio, are permanently available and able to be revisited without having to maintain a lifelong subscription to Disney, Spotify or any other corporate conglomerate.

Some have commented that the AI techniques used to upgrade picture quality have at times led to the Beatles themselves taking on an air of visual unreality, overly pasty on the black and white, and almost cartoonish in some of the colour footage. This latter criticism was also made regarding Get Back. I don’t really see that myself. Maybe on the black and white footage, but what we lose in terms of ‘authenticity’ is more than offset by the increase in clarity. For instance, the famous Some Other Guy footage shot at the Cavern shortly after Ringo replaced Pete, has never looked better.

Incidentally, the latest Doctor Who Collection set, Series 13, Tom Baker’s second, looks bloody awful. I bought Series 12, and that looks great, but someone has got badly carried away with the ‘AI enhancements’ with this latest release.  Fortunately, Anthology has got it about right.

The Albums

This is primarily a review of the television series but, as in 1995, Anthology 2025 is a multi-media enterprise, with the original albums, 1-3, having been remastered, and a new Anthology 4 added, released on both vinyl, CD and available to stream. So, I suppose I should say a little about these too, though my listening experience has so far been limited to the tracks that interest me most.

Fortunately, Apple relented on their original decision not to make 4 available as a standalone release for those of us who are quite happy to stick with the original versions of 1-3, and not be compelled to fork out for an expensive boxset simply for an improvement in sound quality.

But even here, there is the valid criticisms that only 13 of the tracks on 4 have not already appeared on Super de Lux versions of the latter albums. I probably will buy the last volume on CD at some point, but even though I remain committed to physical media in all things, it’s not a priority. I’m quite happy to stream on Spotify for now.

From what I’ve heard, Giles Martin has done a decent job of improving the sound quality on 1-3, but I’m not a great fan of remastering or remixing outtakes, and I don’t expect, nor want material recorded on a 2-reel tape in Paul’s front room in 1960 to sound like it was recorded yesterday in a modern recording studio, even if that should become possible at some point in the future, which it certainly isn’t yet.

There’s a charm in LoFi, and it’d be a shame if technology was to advance so much that that was lost.

As for the ‘Threetle’ tracks Now and Then remains as it was in was when it was finally released two years ago, i.e. still great, the remixed Free as a Bird is good, though I still prefer the ghostly version I made myself late for work waiting to hear for the first time thirty-years ago, and Giles has made a complete pig’s ear of Real Love.

Personally, I think the material on 4 should have been scattered through the complete set rather than presented separately, as was done recently with the CD versions of the remastered and extended Red and Blue albums. That way, the chronological nature of the project would have been maintained.

I’ll offer Take One of In My Life as the standout ‘new’ track so far. I think I actually prefer the song without George Martin’s sped-up piano solo, which has always sounded out of place to me on the finished recording. Plus, Baby You’re A Rich Man, takes 11/12 (‘Bring some cokes in, Mal; and some cannabis resin’) and All You Need Is Love, take 1.

Still no sign of Carnival of Light, the one Beatles track that, unless you have been a part of the absolute inner-sanctum, you’ve never heard (ignore the many YouTube fakes). As much as I love Revolution 9 (the most widely owned piece of Avant-Garde art in history, as someone put it), I blow hot and cold on this. Paul had wanted it on Anthology 2, and perhaps made a case for it for the new Anthology 4, which would be the logical place for it to be. But those who have heard it, say that it’s nowhere near as good nor as beautifully structured as Rev’9. So, do we really need a fourteen-minute collage of random noises to be added to the canon? Probably not, but it’s bound to come out one day. Paul usually gets his way in the end, as with the belated completion of Now and Then. A four- or five-minute edited version, just to give us an idea, would have been a sensible compromise.

But take 20 of Revolution, the best take, the version that links Revolution 1 and Revolution 9 in a single song, should definitely have been there.

It’s a great collection, but the compilation ‘1’ (not to be confused with Anthology 1), or, even better, the remastered Red and Blue are better introductions to the band for new fans. And 13 unreleased tracks is not enough to satisfy the hardcore of fandom.

Plus, the fiftieth anniversaries of both Help and Rubber Soul have been allowed to come and go unmarked. That’s what we really want: Remastered versions of the canon albums, together with whatever outtakes remain worth hearing. But Apple rarely give us what we want nowadays. Sadly, the days when the Beatles left classic singles off albums so fans didn’t have to buy the same song twice, are long gone.

Conclusion

As I’ve already indicated, we true Beatles fans will always want more, and hopefully, as with Get Back, we will get a Bu Ray set which will enable us to watch Anthology whenever we want. Better still, unlike Get Back, we will get an extended version.

But, Disney aside, I’m happy with what we’ve been given, at least as far as the television series goes. It both looks and sounds great, the edit has been done tastefully, and to paraphrase Paul’s habitual response to those who criticise the length of the White Album, ‘It’s the bloody Beatles Anthology, so shut up!’

The Beatles Anthology series is currently streaming on Disney +.

Anthony C Green, December 2025

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Film Review: Nuremberg (2025)

December 1, 2025 at 6:19 pm · Filed under Film & DVD Reviews, History ·Tagged , , , , ,

Directed and Written by James Vanderbilt, based on the book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist by Jack El-Hai Starring Russell Crowe as Hermann Göring

Introduction

This is not the first film to take as its subject matter the trial of leading Nazi Party members after the end of the Second World War, and no doubt it won’t be the last. 1961’s excellent Judgment at Nuremberg is perhaps the best, although that dealt with the trial of second-string Nazis in 1947, rather than the remnants of the High Command in what we’ve come to know as “The Nuremberg Trials,” as with this latest movie.

The closest we’ve had to 2025’s Nuremberg is the two-part made-for-TV miniseries of the same name starring Alec Baldwin and Brian Cox, released in 2000. On first viewing, I’d say that the new film, despite being made for cinema with the bigger budget that implies, doesn’t quite live up to the earlier effort. That’s based on a quick revisiting of the similar ground covered twenty-five years ago, courtesy of a free showing via YouTube.

First viewings can be deceptive, but, speaking personally, I tend to enjoy films more on first viewing, especially when seen on the big screen. So I suspect my first impression—that this movie didn’t quite live up to my expectations, nor to the largely positive reviews it’s received so far—will stand.

In both movies, it’s the character of Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring that dominates. As Göring was the highest-ranking Nazi to survive to face trial (if we ignore the fact that Hitler stripped him of all official positions and honours in his Last Political Testament), that is only to be expected. The new movie concentrates heavily on the relationship between Göring and the American psychiatrist Douglas Kelley, played by Rami Malek, and is based on Jack El-Hai’s book on the same subject, with perhaps some influence from Kelley’s own account in his own book, 22 Cells at Nuremberg.

Positives

The movie was directed with admirable pace by Vanderbilt, such that I never felt the almost two-and-a-half-hour length dragged at any point.

As far as the acting was concerned, it’s a decent ensemble piece, with mostly good performances all round. In particular:

  • Andreas Pietschmann as Rudolf Hess: was Hess’ periodic amnesia a tactical affectation, or a genuine ailment? By the end of the film, we are still none the wiser, but that was also true of the Allies, with assessments varying according to which of the many psychiatrists examined him at any given time. At the time of Hess’ “suicide,” aged ninety-four in 1987, according to the excellent book The Loneliest Man in the World by the former director of Spandau prison Eugene Bird, that was still the case more than forty years later. Full credit to Pietschmann for capturing Hess’ enigmatic nature in what was a relatively minor but important role.
  • Géza Bodor as Albert Speer: Unlike Hess, who never disavowed his Nazi past, Speer dedicated a whole book (Inside the Third Reich) to expressing his remorse. How genuine this remorse was is as unclear as Hess’ amnesia, and Bodor does a good job of capturing this ambiguity.
  • Michael Shannon portrays American Chief Prosecutor Justice Robert H. Jackson with competence.
  • Richard E. Grant is worthy of note as Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, head of the British contingent.
  • Leo Woodall is very good as Sergeant Howie Triest, Kelley’s German interpreter.

But really, it is Russell Crowe whose star shines brightest as the arrogant, pompous, corrupt, though often superficially charming Göring. I assume that Crowe learnt German specifically for this part, in which case, as far as I’m able to tell as a non-German speaker, he did an excellent job. That he spoke English in the dock—which was clearly not the case in real life, although Göring could apparently speak English to a decent level—can be excused as a cinematic contrivance designed to make the film easier to follow.

Negatives

The weakest performance, and one that is important given how much of the film rests upon it, came from Rami Malek as Kelley—a performance that was too broad and lacking in subtlety for my taste.

Some parts of the movie, such as Kelley sneaking off to pass letters back and forth between Göring and his wife and daughter, seemed almost certainly an invention, though presumably they are also present in the original source material.

Having praised the pace of the direction, I do think we took far too long to get to the courtroom scenes, and what we did get was nowhere near enough. What was needed at this point was a “Gotcha!” moment where the prosecution turned the tables on Göring, using insights gleaned from Kelley’s many hours of discussion with the former Reichsmarschall. The script tried to provide this, but all we got—via the intervention of Maxwell-Fyfe—was a list of the positions Göring held in the Party and State between 1942 and 1944, based on Kelley’s assertion that Göring would never, even if his own neck literally depended on it, speak against the memory of his late Führer.

I don’t know how accurate this was to the court transcripts, but it seemed nowhere near enough in itself to prove Göring’s guilt, whether in regard to the fate of Europe’s Jews or to the planning of aggressive war in Europe. It was not enough to cause Göring to crumble in the dock, which, despite comments to the contrary, we didn’t really see anyway—merely a lessening of his up-to-that-point self-assured arrogance.

In addition, the courtroom scenes were overloaded with melodrama, with pained glances between the prosecution team when Göring made a good point, and euphoric looks when Jackson did likewise, as though they were partisans at a sporting occasion rather than participants in a historic and groundbreaking legal procedure.

How Göring procured, or managed to conceal for a year and a half—despite presumably numerous and thorough personal searches—the cyanide capsule that enabled him to cheat the hangman’s noose was not addressed, other than the suggestion that it was somehow linked to a sleight-of-hand magic trick learnt from Kelley, which seems unlikely. As we, almost seventy years later, still don’t know the answer to this question (though help from a sympathetic guard seems the favourite), it would have been better not to raise the issue at all.

The film should rightly have ended with Göring’s death, but instead we were treated to the sight of Julius Streicher, played rather cartoonishly by Dieter Riesle. Streicher sobs with fear in his cell before being coaxed to his fate by Triest. I found the scene extremely gratuitous, serving no purpose other than to show that these war criminals, whose decisions and actions led to the deaths of tens of millions, met their own deaths as snivelling cowards. This may or may not have been true in Streicher’s case, but it certainly wasn’t true of all those convicted.

I don’t know the details of how each of them met their end, but I do know that, to give one instance, ex-Foreign Minister Ribbentrop defiantly shouted “Deutschland über Alles” before the hood was placed on his head.

At any rate, I thought it a bad way to end the film, somewhat redeemed by an epilogue about what became of some of the central protagonists which, in the case of Kelley—and I won’t spoil it for those who, like me before this movie, don’t know his postwar fate—came as a genuine surprise.

Conclusion

I enjoyed the movie more than much of the above perhaps suggests. But I do think it inferior to the TV version from twenty-five years ago. There was far too much pure invention, or what at least smacked of pure invention, for my taste. Probably, no feature film could adequately recapture the real-life drama and real-world importance of the trials. In that case, the subject matter would be best served by a lengthy, multi-part, serious documentary.

Still, worth a watch.

Anthony C Green, November 2025

Poster credit: By Sony Pictures – IMDb, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81605084

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Shake It Up Baby! At the Epstein Theatre, Liverpool

October 13, 2025 at 3:26 pm · Filed under Theatre ·Tagged , , , , ,

Written by Ian Salmon

Directed by Stephen Fletcher

Starring Andrew Schofield

Reveiwed by Anthony C Green

Introduction

The reopening of the Epstein Theatre in September, following a two-year hiatus due to funding issues, is a cause for celebration. It’s a great little theatre, run by great people, and I hope its launch will prove to be a success.

The size of the audience on this night, with the theatre all but full, suggests it will be.

It was good to be back in one of my favourite places in Liverpool and, as a big Beatles buff, for my own return to be at the opening night and World Premier of a play based on the Beatles’ formative Hamburg period, 1960-62, was a bonus.

The play was written by Ian Salmon, who also wrote Girls Don’t Play Guitars, the story of Merseybeat all-girl group The Liverbirds. That was also promising, as I’d enjoyed that, as can be seen from my review from earlier this year Experience ‘Girls Don’t Play Guitars’ at Liverpool Royal Court | Counter Culture

As with his earlier work, the format of the play was of music performed live by local actor-musicians, interspersed with dramatised scenes, linked together by a narrative delivered by one of the central characters.

The decision to use former Beatles manager Allan Williams, played here by the excellent Ian Schofield, was a good one. Williams was an engaging local character who was never short of a witty line or anecdote or two, as can be seen in many YouTube interviews and clips.

He set the tone early, by introducing himself as ‘The man who will forever be known as The Man Who Gave Away the Beatles, which is my own fault, because that’s what I called my book’ (a very good book, which is sadly hard to find nowadays, unless you’re prepared to take out a bank loan).

Positives

That’s the first positive, excellent narration by Schofield in the voice of Williams, some fine dialogue, and the story of the period delivered more than adequately. At least, for non-Beatles buffs. Not quite so much for obsessives like me, who’ve read all the books and enjoy little more than picking up on inaccuracies. I’ll return to that later.

The music was also excellent. It can’t be east to find six young local lads who can not only act, but resemble the boys themselves (I’m counting Stuart Sutcliffe and Pete Best as Beatles here, because they were, in Stu’s case for a part of the period covered and in Pete’s for almost all of it) enough to at least get away with it, and who also have the musical and vocal chops to deliver excellent versions of the rock ‘n’ roll and standards covers that made up the vast majority of the band’s set at this time. But this was a task that the production team was able to deliver on.

The sparse set, a musical stage set up with suitably vintage instruments and microphones, with a small table and four chairs up centre, where non-musical scenes could be played out, worked well, as it had in Salmon’s earlier work.

Aside from Schofield, and bearing in mind that most of the cast took on multiple roles at different parts of the play, the standout performance, for me, came from Connor Simpkins as Sutcliffe.

Stu’, the talented painter and reluctant bassist who died of a brain haemorrhage aged only twenty-one in April 1962, has always fascinated me. I’ve visited his humble grave in Huyton, and even once started a Beatles Alternative History novel called Sutcliffe Remembers, based on the premise that he lived to a ripe old age, a project I hope to revisit.

It was through Stu’ that the two emotional high-points of the evening were delivered.

The first of these was when he serenaded new girlfriend, Astrid Kirchherr, with Love Me Tender.

Astrid was one of the three ‘Exis’ (short for Existentialists) along with Klaus Voorman and Jurgen Vollmer, who did so much to spread the Beatles’ appeal in Hamburg beyond that of drunken sailors and ‘women of the night’ towards a more art-school type crowd. It was Astrid who took the first iconic photographs of the Beatles, and eventually provided them with their iconic ‘Mop-Top’ hairstyle.

Love Me Tender was indeed the only Sutcliffe lead vocal (that we’re aware of) included in the band’s set. Sadly, no recording of this exists, despite his sister’s attempt to pass off a string-laden version that can still be found online as genuine. Her credibility was not exactly helped when, at the height of Britpop, she ‘discovered’ a cache of ‘lost’ Lennon-Sutcliffe lyrics which she attempted to sell to Noel Gallagher…

But the rendition here sounded much as I would have expected it to sound, and to see it sung as the two gazed lovingly into one another’s eyes, with the knowledge of the fate that awaited him, was genuinely touching.

Emotional punch number two was the moment, as the band returned once more to Hamburg, came when Astrid broke it to John (played by Michael Hawkins) that Stu’, arguably the first of three Lennon artistic soul mates, Stu, Paul and Yoko, was dead.

Arguably, dramatic power might have been added by seeing John’s reportedly hysterical reaction, which was so extreme that those present didn’t know whether he was laughing or crying, enacted on stage. But hearing Astrid’s words, a postscript from Williams and then a final song before the interval dedicated by John to his ‘best friend’ was powerful enough.

It was nice to see some rather neglected figures in early Beatles lore portrayed. This was especially true of Williams’ first wife, Chinese Beryl (‘Chinese’ because his second wife was also called Beryl – Allan seemed to have very niche requirements when it came to his spouses), because she did indeed play an important role in securing the Beatles work at this time, and was probably the level-headed sidekick that Scouse Del-Boy Williams required.

Beryl was well depicted by Jess Smith.

It would have been nice to see Mona Best, Pete’s mum, similarly portrayed, as she too was an important figure in this period. But so were a lot of people, and you can’t have everything.

Overall, both in terms of music and acting/dialogue, the play is a solid, enjoyable ensemble piece.

Negatives

I should preface this section by acknowledging that I’m not really the ideal audience for a show like this. If you’re a casual Beatles fan, and/or a fifties rock ‘n’ roll aficionado, then the likelihood is that you will leave the theatre happy and appreciative, and with substantially more knowledge about the Beatles in Hamburg than you did previously.

But we Beatles buffs are a pedantic bunch, and a lack of attention to detail can have a disproportionately negative effect on our enjoyment of any portrayal of the band.

I could cite numerous examples from the otherwise decent early Beatles movies Backbeat and Nowhere Boy, but I won’t, other than to say that they were good films which would have been better if they’d stuck to the facts as known at the time they were made.

For this play, local early Beatles historian David Bedford (not that one) acted as ‘Beatles historical advisor’, and, to his credit, out-and-out glaring errors were rare, though I’ll mention a couple that somehow slipped through shortly.

But my main problem with the play was that the story at the centre of the Hamburg period was lost, I suspect not through a lack of knowledge, but a lack of nerve, of a willingness to take chances.

The real story in a nutshell is that the Beatles were just one of many mediocre Liverpool bands who’d transitioned from skiffle to rock ‘n’ roll at the time of their first series of Hamburg engagements in August 1960. The anecdote that the leader of Derry and the Seniors, the first of the Merseybeat groups to make the trip, objected to the Beatles being sent out because they were ‘The worst band in Liverpool’ , and as such risked ruining the scene for everyone else, is well-worn, but almost certainly true.

But, through performing six to eight hours per night, night after night, for weeks on end, fuelled by booze and ‘Prellies’ (Preludin, a readily available amphetamine pill in Germany at the time), and the constant demands to ‘Mach Schau’ (Make Show) they got better and better, broadening their stage repertoire and their stage presence, progressing through the clubs, from the depressing Indra, to the slightly better Kaiserkeller to the Top Ten, to, in their final visit in December 1962, the prestigious Star Club with each visit and, as has been mentioned, also broadening their appeal beyond the usual rowdy Reeperbahn crowd.

In the play, however, the music was just as good at the beginning as it was at the end. Thus, hearing the famous remark by Derry out of Derry and the Seniors being made after a blistering performance of Johnny B Goode or whatever was incongruous.

I can certainly see the thinking behind this. Would a theatre audience want to sit through some raw, stumbling, sub-standard versions of songs before they reached an acceptable level?

Maybe some wouldn’t. But, for the story to work, I needed to see the improvement, the transition from the ‘worst’ to the best band in Liverpool, and I think it could have been done without testing the patience of the audience too much.

The sound of the band was augmented by a girl playing an electric keyboard. I don’t have a problem with this, but having her visible stage left, playing a very late-twentieth/early-twenty-first-century instrument was an error. Surely, the intent had to be to give the impression that we really were watching the formative Beatles in action? Her presence somewhat shattered the illusion, making the necessary suspension of disbelief impossible.

The decision to have the cast play multiple roles was also problematic at times. The same actor, Nick Sheedy, transforming himself from Pete Best to Ringo Starr was fine. A quick ruffle of the hair and a deepening of the voice, and job done.

And Andrew Cowpothwaite was fine as Lord Woodbine early on. But as a black Jurgen Vollmer, the third Exi? No, sorry.

The actor who played Klaus was also good in that initial role, but I wasn’t at all convinced by his later reappearance as George Martin.

When it comes to historical inaccuracies, I only spotted two.

The first of these concerned the first time that John, Paul, George and Ringo played together on record. This did indeed happen in Hamburg in 1960, two years before Ringo became a Beatle proper. It’s also true that a drunk Williams left his only copy of this record in the back of a Liverpool taxi. Neither this copy nor any of the other five acetates allegedly produced has ever resurfaced and would be worth a fortune today. The song in question was the old standard Summertime, though some also cite Fever and September Song as having also been recorded.

But they weren’t acting as the backing band for Rory Storm, the leader of Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, the band Ringo was a member of at this time. They were backing the bass player out of that band, Lu Waters, who Williams thought he could possibly promote as a solo crooner.

The other error concerned the famous last chance ‘audition’ they did for George Martin at EMI.

Old George trotted out this anecdote for so long that there’s little doubt that he really remembered it as an ‘audition.’

But Mark Lewisohn’s epic Tune In, volume one of his planned three-volume Beatles biography, 1700 pages, and only up to January 1963, proved beyond doubt, with primary documentation, that it wasn’t an audition at all. The Beatles had already been signed, on the strength of the publishing rights to John and Paul’s original material.

I suppose, such things don’t matter much in the scheme of things, and I get poetic licence and all that, but I don’t see much value in continuing to recycle old tales once they’ve been shown to be inaccurate. Even if only a tiny percentage of the audience is able to spot such things, the appreciation of that tiny percentage adds a depth to a work which is otherwise lacking.

 Conclusion

As far as I’m aware, all Beatles films, plays etc have concentrated on the early days, when they were mostly a covers band, because of the notorious difficulty in getting the necessary permission to feature original Beatles material. So, it was a nice surprise when, as an encore, we were treated to a medley of Beatlemania period hits, I Want To Hold Your Hand/From Me To You/Please, Please Me/I Saw Her Standing There.

I’m not sure how the producers swung this, but I’m glad they did. The Beatles in their first flush of British fame, was a good place to end, and the performance looked and sounded authentic, and had most of the audience on its feet.

I still wish we’d seen something of the process of how they got from Point A to Point B in a mere thirty months, but, as I’ve said, I suppose I’m not really the target audience.

A good night out.

The play concludes its run at the Epstein on 11th October, but will no doubt be appearing at a theatre near you soon.

Anthony C Green, October 2025

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Review: Hate Club By Lucy Brown

September 27, 2025 at 7:15 am · Filed under Books ·Tagged , , , , , ,

Book Review by Anthony C Green

(with a postscript on Unite the Kingdom and the Slaying of Charlie Kirk)

It’s probably not difficult to write a damning indictment of Mr. Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known to the world as Tommy Robinson. No doubt, it’s already been done in the book ‘Tommy’ by Nick Lowles of Hope Not Hate. I haven’t read it, and have no intention of doing so.  Because it’s by Nick Lowles of Hope Not Hate, and a book from that source on anyone to the Right of Keir Starmer is never going to be anything but a ‘damning indictment.’

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From the off, Lucy Brown makes it clear that her book is not a narrative of redemption by someone who was radicalised by the Far-Right, but was young and naïve and now realises the error of her ways and sees how much our society has been enriched by multiculturalism, and that Diversity truly is our Greatest strength.

It’s not that kind of book at all, and all the better for it.

Lucy’s failure to prostrate herself before the liberal establishment probably explains why Hate Club hasn’t received much media attention.

Although the Tommy who emerges through the pages of her book is one whose failings as a human being are many, she appears to feel no hatred towards him. Her sympathies, as far as I can tell, remain firmly with the Right.

Her failure to repent makes her testimony all the more powerful, despite the resultant lack of publicity and its likely negative impact on sales.

That it is also a well-written, humorous and entertaining read is a bonus.

She worked for Robinson in a variety of roles for a two-year period beginning in 2017: Her duties included the production of increasingly professionalised publicity videos, the management of his online content, the general management of his public appearances and public affairs, and often as a reluctant apologist and provider of excuses.

The book’s timeline begins and ends several years after Robinson first became a public figure of both hate and adoration through his leadership of the EDL, the English Defence League, a period of his life for which he often seems to feel a sense of nostalgia and a keenness to recreate.

But we first meet Lucy shortly before that, as a privately educated, young and attractive but troubled and searching young woman who was still embroiled in a middle-class leftist milieu embittered by the traumatic experience of the 2016 Brexit vote, delivered, in their eyes, by uneducated, unwashed ‘gammon.’

We follow the author as she attends radical feminist groups and Black Lives Matter meetings before BLM became all too well known following the death and subsequent elevation to sainthood of lifelong criminal and drug addict George Floyd.

It was at these meetings that she began to question some of the ‘truths’ that were self-evident to most of her friends and work colleagues: were all men really potential rapists? Should she really feel guilty simply because of her skin colour and the colonial sins of her ancestors? Wasn’t this hatred of all things white itself racist? Was there nothing to be proud of about being British? Was the Brexit vote necessarily a bad thing, and even if it was, shouldn’t the democratic wishes of the British people be respected? Was the Pakistani grooming/rape gang issue really exaggerated or non-existent and little more than a ‘racist dog-whistle’?

The next stage of her journey was the online rabbit hole of Right-Wing influencers, a journey that soon led her to first the periphery, and then the centre of Planet Tommy.

The contempt for the Left (or the version of the Left that existed in Lucy’s world. Other varieties are available) seems well-justified, with much of her ire aimed at Hope Not Hate, an organisation that comes across as much more Hate than Hope.

Lucy makes it clear that she had many good times during her period of working for Tommy. Humorous anecdotes are legion, but I’ll leave the reader to discover and enjoy these for themselves.

Her relationship with Robinson was complex: part employee, sometimes paid, often not, part friend, near one-night-stand drunken lover, another tale that needs to be heard in Lucy’s own words, and part caretaker.

Despite Lucy’s lack of malice, the ‘damning indictment’ thing is certainly there, up front and writ large.

True, there’s nothing we didn’t already know, or at least suspect. What Lucy does is provide detail, and it rings true in a way that a book by the likes of Nick Lowles never could, because she was there and she isn’t writing from a perspective of polarised ideological disdain.

The Tommy of Hate Club is allegedly:

  • A heavy-drinking cocaine addict who craves the limelight and will champion any cause that’s palatable to his fan base, if it helps him to maintain his position in the public eye.
  • A man who will claim responsibility for, or at least exaggerate his role in, exposing issues like the Pakistani rape gangs, which many others, both publicly and privately, played an important role in exposing.
  • Who has sought to involve himself in causes where it’s been made clear he is not welcome, for instance, in the fall-out to the brutal Lee Rigby murder.
  • He has indeed faced some of the state censorship and persecution that takes centre stage in his self-told Hero’s Journey. But at least some of his jail time and online cancellation have happened because of his own stupidity, because of his tendency to act without thinking, a trait common among users of cocaine and other stimulants.
  • Tommy lived/lives an extravagant, luxurious lifestyle, dripping in bling, replete with flash cars, numerous foreign holidays and a succession of houses far out of the reach of his overwhelmingly working-class followers.
  • Lucy does not outright state that this lifestyle was/is funded by the regular appeals for donations he seeks and receives from his supporters, and this may or may not be true. But what is clear from the pages of the book is that, at least during the period covered, no real accounting and auditing system existed for how these donations were used, and I suspect that this remains the case today.
  • Not only was his lifestyle at odds with his public ‘Man of the People’ persona, but so was his claim to be a dedicated family man. In reality, he was an inveterate womaniser who once used the excuse of a ‘sick daughter’ as a means of bailing on an important public engagement, when the truth was that he was driving to Newcastle for a sexual encounter with a woman he barely knew, and didn’t even find particularly attractive.

As with Coke and the opportunity of another moment in the glare of the public spotlight, the offer of sex was something Robinson had great difficulty in refusing.

Unsurprisingly, he is now separated from his wife.

  • He was also incapable of taking responsibility when decisions he had made went wrong, and was quite prepared to throw employees and friends under a bus rather than to do so.

In fact, that’s how Lucy’s involvement with Tommy came to an end, but that’s another story best heard in her own words.

I was going to draw my review to a conclusion here, but because of recent, fast-moving events, I’ve decided to bring matters up to date with an extended postscript.

…

Tommy is now more high-profile and more popular than ever before. He’s been accepted as a member of former Reform UK Deputy Leader Ben Habib’s new Advance UK party, having previously been given a wide berth by Farage’s, Reform, and I’m writing this a week on from his latest big London gathering, the Unite the Kingdom event in London, which included Habib and, by video link, Elon Musk among the speakers.

Musk’s appearance confirmed what’s obvious from anyone who follows such things on his social media platform ‘X’, that Tommy has reached almost the level of a free speech folk-hero among the American Right, most of whom, I think it’s safe to say, have little knowledge of his history.

The police estimated the numbers attending the London march and rally at 110,000. I’ve attended many big demonstrations in my time, and a good rule of thumb is that if you split the difference between the organiser’s claimed attendance and the police’s estimate, you get something approaching reality. From the various online sources I accessed, Unite the Kingdom appeared to be much bigger than the figure claimed by the police, even if Tommy’s figure of three million seemed a tad grandiose.

 I doubt that one million would be a wild over-estimation.

But where does Tommy go from here?

He’s already talking about the next major and similar event. But this type of demonstration/’Festival’ is of a similar character to those described in Lucy’s time as one of his chief organisers, the last of which included the incident that finally led her to walk.

He’d also mobilised decent, if considerably smaller and more yobbish numbers, in his time as leader of the EDL.

But people soon tire of marching around London with their flags, listening to a dozen or so speakers, and then going home. It’s the law of diminishing returns, and in the end, these events, in and of themselves, achieve little.

Arguably, the migrant hotel protests have had more real and likely lasting impact, precisely because they have been localised affairs. Those attending may chant Tommy’s name, but he has played no part in their organisation.

As mentioned earlier, Robinson lacks any ideology beyond his hatred of Islam. But, as valid as many of his concerns are, this isn’t enough to sustain or build a movement.  I’ve watched a few interviews with him recently, and he’s struggled noticeably if the tone has gone beyond allowing him to retell anecdotes of his own heroism and persecution, and his reiteration of the evils of Islam.

In one, he seemed to have adopted the position advocated by open Ethno-Nationalists such as Mark Collett of Patriotic Alternative, of re-establishing a 90- 95% White majority in Britain. But he was soon back to claiming the mantle of ‘diversity’ for himself, embracing all cultures (especially Sikhs, Tommy loves Sikhs), apart from Muslims.

He had no real answer when one interviewer pointed out that illegal immigration from non-Muslims, often from nominally Christian African countries, has now almost caught up with that from Islamic sources.

When it comes to legal immigration, the biggest growth area, via Starmer’s Indian trade deal, is going to be from Hindu Indians, with whom Tommy has professed to have no quarrel. They do, after all, have their own problems with Islam.

We’ve already had a big legal influx, including here in Liverpool, of Hong Kong Chinese, another group Tommy has been conciliatory about.

The point being that if you wished to achieve a white ‘super-majority’, your reach for deportations would need to extend far beyond the Muslim community (and not forgetting that Islam is a religion, not a race. Many of them are also white, as Malcolm X long ago realised. Some are even white British converts.)

We’ll see how matters unfold.  I doubt many of the issues with Tommy Lucy highlights are in the past, even if he is now claiming to be a Christian. Despite a definite swing to the Right nationally, I can’t see Robinson being much of an electoral asset to Habib.

Also, at the time of writing, we are in the aftermath of the public assassination of the thirty-one-year-old American conservative ‘influencer’ Charlie Kirk, about which much was made at the big London event, even though it’s doubtful many of those attending were even aware of Kirk, and those that were, only barely, before his public slaying. That includes Robinson.

 The official narrative is linking the alleged assassin, Tyler Robinson, to ‘Far Left’, Antifa extremism, with the added and helpful element of a ‘trans’ lover.

The murder is being used by the Trump administration as an opportunity for a clampdown on the Left, with the promise of the designation of Antifa as a terrorist organisation, though, as no centralised ‘Antifa’ organisation exists, this might prove more difficult to do than to promise.

We’re also likely to see attempts to criminalise opposition to Israel’s actions in Gaza and elsewhere. This is something we’ve already seen the beginnings of here, with Starmer’s outright proscription of one organisation, though, here too, intent is one thing, and implementation quite another.

I’ve been following developments in the Kirk investigation closely (some might say, obsessively. The only gun I’ve ever held is a 2.2 air rifle bought for me by my dad when I was fifteen. But I now know how long it takes to disassemble a ‘Mauser 98’) and believe there are a lot of issues with the mainstream narrative, as does his close friend and fellow American Christian conservative Candace Owens. But I’ll leave that aside and conclude with a personal anecdote that, in a very minor way, adds credence to the official narrative.

About a month ago, I attended a protest outside a migrant hotel here in Liverpool, partly because I believe the concerns of the protesters to be legitimate, and partly to see for myself how both the demonstrators and counter-demonstrators conducted themselves.

A protest the following week, in the city centre, erupted in violence, if fairly low-level violence, which, as far as I could tell from the coverage on YouTube, seemed to arise largely from the failure of the police to keep the two groups apart.

But the hotel protest I attended in person was well policed, with a solid line of mostly good-humoured officers separating demonstrators and counter-demonstrators, while still allowing passers-by and individuals like me who didn’t look like they were out to cause trouble to pass between the two groups, and to take photographs and video footage, both of which I did.

My observation, and I’m aware that appearances can be deceptive, was that those on what I will call the patriots side were largely good-natured, humorous, normal-seeming types. They were mostly middle-aged, but with a smattering of young people and children, and probably majority female.

On the other side, chanting ‘Nazi Scum Off Our Streets’ at the very un-Nazi looking people facing them, were 90% young ‘studenty’ types, with the usual array of ‘Refugees Welcome’ and, rather irrelevantly, ‘Trans Rights Now’ banners and placards.

I had two overriding thoughts about this. One was that I knew some of the counter-demonstrators, at least by sight, from the regular Sunday marches in support of the Palestinian cause. I found it depressing that the Palestinian flag, many of which were also plentiful amongst the ‘antifa’, is now seen, through a process of guilt by association, as synonymous with the people calling them Nazis.

This has led to a reaction that even goes to the extreme of flying a foreign flag, the flag of Israel, on supposedly patriotic demonstrations, presumably on the basis that my enemy’s enemy is my friend. There were none on this particular demonstration in Liverpool (perhaps due to Scouse exceptionalism?), though I spotted a few in the coverage of Saturday’s London event. I gather a Palestinian flag was even ripped up on stage, though at least one speaker, to his credit, condemned this.

Robinson’s own committed Zionism and his focus on Islam is partly to blame for this. In reality, not all Palestinians are Muslims, anyway, and Israel has ‘accidentally’ bombed churches in Gaza, and Israeli ‘Settlers’ have deliberately torched churches on the West Bank. For me, there is no contradiction in supporting the Palestinian people and supporting the anti-migrant protests. Unfortunately, I doubt many on either side would see it this way if I were to carry an English flag in one hand and the Palestinian flag in the other.

My other primary reflection was how far from the type of serious Marxist analysis I was once schooled in the Left, or at least the type of ‘Left’ that attends this type of counter-demonstration has descended.

In my youthful days in Militant, and not quite so youthful, and much shorter period in the Communist Party of Britain, we could distinguish between different strands of Right-Wing thought, between outright Nazis and Fascists, and for instance, Margaret Thatcher and Enoch Powell, the precursors of the likes of Nigel Farage, Rupert Lowe and Ben Habib today.

Or, for that matter, Tommy Robinson. Lucy Brown doesn’t directly address the question in Hate Club, but in all of her many criticisms of Robinson, nowhere does she give reason to believe that his primary motivation is racial hatred. To call him, as supposedly right-wing ‘Talk’ presenter Julie Hartley-Brewer recently did, a ‘White Supremacist’, is based on precisely zero evidence.

The failure to make distinctions between ideologies is dangerous, and it’s entirely possible, setting aside any problems with the official narrative, that an ideological co-thinker of the Liverpool counter-demonstrators across the pond, where guns are much more prevalent, and where President Trump has been called a ‘literal Nazi’ by even mainstream Democrats, and has himself been the subject of two assassination attempts, could believe that Christian conservative Charlie Kirk was a hateful fascist’ who deserved to die.

The online celebrations that took place almost as soon as the news that he’d been shot hit the internet confirm this hate-filled mindset.

This is not to say that even those who really are Fascists or Nazis should be randomly assassinated or attacked. But the tale of how we’ve moved incrementally from ‘No Platform for Fascists’, which I never supported, anyway, to ‘Punch a Nazi’, to where we are now, which can be summarised as ‘Kill all Nazis and anyone who disagrees with us on anything, be it immigration or trans rights, is a Nazi’, is a long and complex one, and I’ve digressed way too-long already.

 To conclude, Tommy Robinson is clearly a deeply flawed human being, and Hate Club does a superb job in capturing the essence of his failings at a particular moment in time, which, as I’ve said, I doubt has much changed. It’s an enjoyable read and, having watched Lucy on a recent podcast appearance, where she came across as likeable, genuine, and humble, I’d guess her personal memoir captures her own essence as much as and as well as she does that of Mr Yaxley-Lennon.

A Five Star recommendation.

Anthony C Green, September 2025

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Exploring Themes in 28 Years Later: Survival and Society

July 14, 2025 at 8:12 am · Filed under Film & DVD Reviews, horror ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

1,413 words, 7 minutes read time.

28 Years Later us the belated third instalment of a series that began with 28 Days Later in 2003 and continued with 28 Weeks Later in 2007. So, it’s been a long time coming, after long periods stuck in ‘production hell.’ But, in my opinion, it’s been well worth the wait, and easily surpasses both of its predecessors.

Whilst the reviews of professional critics of 28 Years have been largely positive, the online response of ‘ordinary’ cinema goers has been mixed. I’m guessing that the negativity has come largely from those who were expecting a run-of-the-mill Zombie story, perhaps along the lines of The Walking Dead or the films of George A Romero.

Movie poster for '28 Years Later' featuring a towering structure made of skulls, with a biohazard symbol in the background. The title and release date are prominently displayed.

And it isn’t that.

Technically, of course, it’s not a ‘zombie’ film at all, as the antagonists have been turned into bestial killer sub-humans through being infected by an unspecified, originally worldwide virus rather than being creatures of the undead, though that’s an unimportant detail. It still belongs firmly within the zombie genre. 

In spirit, it’s much closer to Days than the, in my opinion, much inferior Weeks,the latter of which was much closer to the kind of adventure ‘Zombie hunting’ movie that many seem to have been expecting this time around.

I suspect that this is in no small part due to the welcome return of Danny Boyle as the director, and Alex Garland as scriptwriter, both of whom were absent from the second film.

Both did a sterling job here, as did cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, and the Scottish punk-lo-fi hip-hop band Young Fathers who provided the music.

Set in Lindisfarne, though filmed in various northern British locations in a mere two months between May and July 2024, it utilised a complex array of iPhones filming from multiple angles in order to maximise Boyle’s editorial choices.

I’m no expert on the technicalities of movie making, but the technical choices made were obviously good ones, because the film is visually and sonically superb, as is Garland’s script, with excellent dialogue and the barest minimum of l exposition necessary to make the story intelligible to those with no prior knowledge of the 28 Universe.

The acting was also superb. I really can’t single out any of them for criticism, though the standout performances came from one fourteen-year-old in his first acting role, Alfie Williams as the twelve-year-old Spike, in his first acting role, and one veteran, Ralph Fiennes, as the enigmatic Doctor Kelson, showing his versatility after his recent, very different but equally excellent performance in Conclave.  

I’ll try to avoid spoilers, but the premise of the movie is that the virus that turned the ‘Infected’ into savage murderous beasts has been eliminated on the continent of Europe but not in the UK, causing the latter to be effectively quarantined from the outside world, with its isolation enforced by European border guards armed, unlike the surviving non-infected Brits with modern weaponry.

This isolation has led the UK to revert to something resembling a medieval traditional society.

It is through this reversion to an earlier time that the main themes of the movie reveal themselves.

These themes  include survivalism and self-sufficiency; the return of a form of natural and meritocratic hierarchy with people being assigned clearly defined specialist, and often gender-specific roles, like hunter, baker, seamstress etc; the clash between these old ways and the modern world, particularly when Spike meets the Norwegian border guard Eric (Edvin Ryding); the honouring of the dead through the character of Dr. Kelson and his ever-growing monument of skulls; the very different forms of love that exist in traditional societies between a mother and child and a father and child; the nurturing of new life amidst the apocalypse; and distrust of the world outside and of lone outsiders like Dr. Kelson.

But, at its heart, this is a good old-fashioned coming of age story, set in a society where young males once again have a clear route into manhood, in this case by crossing the causeway to the mainland to hunt the Infected with longbows, their main form weaponry, as Spike does with his father Jamie (Aaron Taylor).

 Later, he returns with his mother Isla (Jodie Comer). She is not infected, but is stricken with a physical and mentally debilitating illness, the nature of which we don’t learn until they meet the object of Spike’s quest, Doctor Kelson and the possibility of a cure for Isla.

The resolution of this quest gives us perhaps the film’s most moving and sequence.

Some have seen Britain’s isolation in the movie as perhaps a metaphor for Brexit, and that is there, I suppose, if you want it to be, whether for or against.

There is also, almost certainly the influence of the ‘covid period’ of recent, real-world’ memory in play.

But there are subtle, dream-like patriotic themes too: the fluttering of a lone flag of St George in the wind; the recitation of a section of Kipling’s poem Boots, remastered from a 1915 recording by an American actor, brief clips of the 1944 Laurance Oliver film version of Henry V, and an encounter with one of our most iconic monuments, The Angel of the North.

These sections worked very well for me, and helped lift the film well above the norm for the genre, though I can imagine some viewers might find them puzzling, or even pretentious.

By the standards of modern movies, the casting was refreshingly demographically accurate, with no concessions to the DEI culture which has been dominant throughout the entertainment industry in recent years.

There is action and gore, as is to be expected. A second outbreak of the virus has led some of the infected to evolve into what have become known as the Alpha’s, who are much larger and stronger than those seen in the earlier films, and with a higher level of intelligence, and others to devolve into reptilian-type creatures who seek prey and food through scurrying through the earth.

The battles between these two distinct branches of the infected and Spike, his father and others, was action enough for me, though perhaps not enough for those wishing to see a more traditional ‘Zombie’ movie.

There are criticisms to be made. Principally, would Britain really be left to its own devices by the outside world, with no attempt to rescue and evacuate those not yet infected? And, the film is set in 2031, precisely twenty-eight years after the first film was shot. This isn’t really a long time, in the scheme of things, and it’s reasonable to question whether society would have so rapidly reverted to an earlier time, to the point where modern technology has become not only unusable, but seems to have been largely forgotten.

 As an example, Spike has no idea of what a mobile phone is, until he meets Erik. True, in 2003, mobiles were nowhere near as omnipresent as they are now, and they had not yet become ‘Smart’. But they were common enough, and surely there’d be a few lying around which adults could use to explain to their children what their use had once been?

I prefer to see anomalies such as this as perhaps due to the isolated nature of the village upon which the film is principally centred. They certainly didn’t undermine my enjoyment of the film.

Some have also criticised the ending. But that is to miss the point that it isn’t an ending. The sequel, 28 Years Later: The Bone Monument was shot back-to-back with this film, and is due to be released in January 2026. So, in reality, the conclusion, which has its own little, intriguing surprise, is a ‘To Be Continued’ rather than a ‘The End.’

Boyle hasn’t directed this second film, which may or may not affect its quality. But it is written by Garland, and he has said he has already planned out a third film, making Years the first part of a new trilogy, rather than simply continuation of Days and Weeks.

This third film has yet to be green-lit, and whether it is depends on the success of the current film and its already completed sequel.

But 28 Years Later seems to be doing well at the Box Office so far, and I suspect this will also be true of Bone Palace.

I’m certainly looking forward to seeing it, and I’d be surprised and disappointed if the series was to end there.

Reviewed by Anthony C Green.

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Exploring Themes in Doctor Who: The Story and The Engine

May 19, 2025 at 3:01 pm · Filed under Doctor Who, TV Shows ·Tagged , , , , ,

Doctor Who: The Story and the Engine

Season 2, episode 5 reviewed

Overview

The episode was written by Inua Ellams, a Nigerian poet and playwright, after he was recommended to showrunner Russell T Davies by Ncuti Gatwa. Davies rejected Ellams’ first idea and suggested he instead base the episode around his Barbershop Chronicles play. This had been developed by the writer as a celebration of Nigerian barbershop culture, and had been based on real conversations Ellams had taped in barbershops. Davies had seen this play and liked it.

Promotional poster for Doctor Who featuring a male and female character standing on a colorful alien landscape with the Doctor Who logo.

Aside from one white woman who appeared very briefly, the story featured an all ‘people of colour’ cast, and has been described by RTD as a companion episode to episode 6 of the last season, Dot and Bubble, which, aside from Ncuti, featured an all-white cast.

‘Nigerian barbershop culture’ doesn’t immediately sound like a great premise for a Doctor Who story, but if you locate the barbershop simultaneously in Lagos, capital of Nigeria, and mounted on top of a giant spider travelling through the ‘Nexus’, have it powered by the stories of customers, and you throw in a few gods, both Nigerian and non-Nigerian, then I suppose it can be. At least, it can fit into Doctor Who in its present Science Fiction-lite, Fantasy-heavy incarnation.

It didn’t offend me politically on the scale of Lucky Day, though I do have political issues with it, as we shall see. If I were to sum up the episode in a few words, then ‘tedious,’ ‘pointless,’ ‘convoluted,’ ‘tell not ‘show,’ and ‘irrelevant’ to the main season arcs would be high on the list of words featured.

Positives

I don’t hate the idea of a story derived from oral storytelling traditions, of Africa or anywhere else, and this did have a recognisably different voice as far as script and performance go. This was a mildly refreshing, if somewhat stagy, change after the last two episodes. The Well had been co-written by Sharma Angel-Walfall. Lucky Day was ostensibly by Peter McTighe. But, in both cases, Davies was unmistakably present in both, almost as much as if he’d written them both alone. Here, the dialogue had a very different feel in places, and that made for a refreshing, if somewhat stagy, change.

It was again a reasonable performance by Gatwa, and the main supporting cast did well, with credit particularly due to Sule Rimi as Omo and Ariyon Bakare as The Barber.

Visually, it had some nice features. The Nigerian market looked authentic, before we settled down into another single location ‘bottle’ story within the barbershop. The giant spider looked good on the two occasions we saw it, especially the aerial shot of the barbershop mounted on top of it. I also liked the painterly-style animations that accompanied some of the stories, and the beating heart inside the brain, as well as the screaming head that appeared briefly, and rather mysteriously, beside it towards the end.

Negatives

Politically, there’s nothing wrong in itself with the idea of an almost totally non-white cast, but for a show that is so keen to combat homophobia to have an episode set in Nigeria with no indication at all of the difficulties gay people can find in that country seems hypocritical. In a scene with Belinda in the Tardis, we hear the Doctor declare that now he has found himself in a black body for the ‘first time’ (see below), there are places on Earth where he no longer feels welcome. Ncuti is a very camp, gay man who, wrongly, in my opinion, plays the Doctor in a way that closely reflects this. I wonder how welcome he would really feel in Nigeria, a country where overt displays of homosexuality can bring a sentence of fourteen years in prison, as well, almost certainly, oppression from within their own community. As a gay man himself, RTD will be well aware of this, as will the writer. It is perhaps not simply down to cost as to why the episode was filmed entirely in London, not Lagos.

On the issue of race, I very much regret how much attention is being given to the current skin colour of the Doctor. The character, remember, is a Time Lord, perhaps thousands of years old, who has travelled through the furthest reaches of the universe, at all points throughout its history. He’s fought aliens such as the Daleks, the Cyberman, and many others who are bent on the elimination of all difference between species. He’s a lone wolf well accustomed to being an outsider. To have him so focussed on his current form and to be so pre-occupied with how that form is received in certain parts of twenty first century Earth, diminishes the character, and is part of the wider problem mentioned in previous reviews, that of the Doctor now being written and played as if he was a mere human, specifically a black, gay, male human.

I’ll add that Ncuti Gatwa’s parents are from Rwanda and left that country because one tribe of black Rwandans was determined to genocide their tribe of black Rwandans. He grew up in Britain, has succeeded in becoming rich and famous, and is now in the fortunate position of being the lead actor in an iconic British show. I have no doubt he’s faced racism and homophobia in his life, but is he really a victim or a success story? Would he have done better to have remained in Africa, where he feels so ‘at home’ or in the ‘racist’ West?

Moving on to the episode itself, the only note I made during my second watch was ‘Full of stories we haven’t seen, featuring characters we don’t know.’ These stories were made all the weaker by the fact that they were largely told to us in pure exposition, without even the animations as illustration for the most part.

The worst of these stories featured a character called Abby who, if I’ve got this right, had been a friend, or a companion of the Fugitive Doctor (see below), who’d somehow lost her hand in marriage through in an il-judged bet by the Doctor, Ncuti’s Doctor or the Fugitive Doctor. As we’d never seen or heard of the girl before, it’s difficult to know why we should care.

As viewers, we were expected to take a lot on trust. For a start, we were expected to believe that the Doctor, at least since he manifested as a black man, and maybe previously as a black woman, or in general, had spent a lot of time hanging out in this Lagos barber shop, was known and loved by all, and was expecially close friends with Omo, thus setting up a later ‘I’ve been betrayed’ bout of Gatwa overacting. As I struggled to recall any mentions of Nigeria, Lagos, barber shops or Omo through the sixty-two-year history of the show, this was too much of an ask for me.

One of the main problems with the episode was that it took us even further down the road of Fantasy, this time inserting a mixture of African and Western pagan gods into the plot. I learnt that the Nigerian god of stories was called Anansi, and took the form of a woman’s face on a spider’s body, so that explained, sort of, the giant spider that was transporting the barbershop through the Nexus. But where did Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and dancing and theatre and stuff come into it? Did the Doctor’s comment that he’d got drunk with this god mean that the deities of the Greek Mythos now have temporal existence ‘in-universe’? What about the Roman Pantheon, or the Egyptian, or the Norse? And how do these fit with RTD’s own beloved Pantheon, with Lux and Maestro, with the Toymaker and his ‘legions’?

I’ve no idea, and I very much doubt I ever shall.

Aside from the choice of setting and the casting being one big virtue signal, there was inevitably yet more. 

For instance:

The Barber revealed that his original name for the Nexus had been The World Wide Web. It soon became clear that the only reason this was inserted was so that the Doctor could call him a ‘Troll on the World-Wide-Web,’ revisiting one of the central themes of Lucky Day.

This has been a problem throughout the series. The writing serves the message rather than the story. Another example was the story that the Doctor told once he took his turn in the hair-cut chair. He had thousands of years’ worth of stories to choose from. Would he decide to power the engine with a tale of one of the numerous occasions he has saved the Earth from alien invasion, or of his many battles with the Master? Perhaps he might plumb for one of his historical journeys and his meetings with iconic figures from the history of our planet, with Marco Polo maybe, or Shakespeare or Hitler?

No, instead told a simple story of one of Belinda’s heroic endeavours saving our NHS from collapse, this one about how she saved the life of the token white character by correctly diagnosing her, overruling the Southeast Asian doctor in the process. Usually, bumbling fools in need of rescue by a Strong Woman of Colour are reserved for straight white males, but we all know now that the people we used to call ‘Orientals’ are ‘White Adjacent’ and thus part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

For some reason, this story was revealed through a proper short film, rather than mere words or painterly animation. Whatever, it had no reason to be here other than to stress how hard our nurses, especially our Indian nurses, work.

The resolution of the thin plot was unsatisfactory and derivative. How many times has the bad guy been vanquished through the sheer awesomeness of the Doctor and his history? Quite a few, though it was the climax of the Eleventh Doctor story The Rings of Akhaten that sprang immediately to my mind.

The point was that the Doctor had so many stories that the Engine overheated and was destroyed. This was illustrated by the overused projection of the images of some of the iconic Doctor’s past.

Perhaps this was used simply to remind us Ncuti was the Doctor. As is the norm for this season, the Doctor’s clothes gave no clue, blending seamlessly as they did into the pseudo-Nigerian environment. If one had joined the episode once the opening scene in the Tardis was complete, with no prior knowledge of the era, there would have been little to identify this show with the show we had once known or, until they appeared to remind us, the fantastic actors who’d once inhabited the character.

As far as I noticed, we didn’t get Colin Baker’s Sixth or Sylvester McCoy’s Seventh but we did get a few seconds of Jo Martin’s Fugitive Doctor who we’d first met during the rightfully derided Chibnall/Whittaker Timeless Children story arc.

Unless Martin is to re-appear as the next Doctor proper in the season finale, this appearance was pointless in the context of the story. Indeed, in the latest after-show Unleashed look behind the scenes, RTD said that this appearance was simply an acknowledgement, appropriate to the setting of the story, that we had had a black Doctor previously in the canon of the show. He seemed unaware that this contradicted the canon of the individual episode, where we’d already heard the Doctor play the victim as regards finding himself in a black body ‘for the first time.’ Maybe Ellams slipped that bit in without Davies noticing?

Conclusion

As I said at the beginning, The Story and The Engine didn’t offend me as much as Lucky Day, but I’d rate it fourth out of five so far this season, not far ahead of the last episode. It was instantly forgettable, and it’s unlikely I’ll ever watch it again.

Next week, it’s the Interstellar Song Contest, a tie-in with the oh-too-real-life Eurovision Song Contest. It’s been written by Juno Dawson, best known for his cryptically named opus How to be Gay. As great as that sounds already, it should be made all the better by the promise of the ‘Who Is Mrs. Flood’ reveal.

I should also mention that we also saw a little black girl at one point. I took this to be the little girl who was the first incarnation of the Doctor as seen in The Timeless Children. But the credits at the end revealed that it to have been ‘Poppy’ from the space station in episode one of ‘season one’. It seems she’ll be re-appearing in the finale, so maybe, as well as an answer to the riddle of Mys. Flood, we’ll also be getting a clue as to why RTD should have decided to open a brand-new era with Space Babies.

Anthony C Green, May 2025

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Exploring ‘Exterminate! Regenerate!’: A Unique Doctor Who Analysis

May 19, 2025 at 2:31 pm · Filed under Books, Doctor Who ·Tagged , , ,

Book cover of 'Exterminate! Regenerate!' by John Higgs, featuring a colorful spiral background and a Dalek in the foreground.

557 words, 3 minutes read time.

I read Higgs’ The KLF Chaos Magic and the Band Who Burned a Million Pounds some years ago. It was a fascinating read that led me to a brief, and unsuccessful, flirtation with Chaos Magic. The book featured a very interesting chapter on Doctor Who, my all-time favourite television show, so I was delighted to discover that the writer had now written a whole book on the subject.

It didn’t disappoint, expanding on the main themes of the chapter in his earlier work, arguing, to simplify, that the show has enjoyed such longevity that it has taken on the form of a living entity, changing and adapting to new conditions, and evolving in such a way that it creates the conditions for its own survival.

That might sound weird and artsy-fartsy, and I suppose it is. It does, however, make sense, though it would be impossible to do the author’s thesis justice in a short review. All I can do is urge people to read it, be they fans of the show or those with a more general interest in British popular culture.

You’ll gather from this that this is no ordinary Doctor Who book, and I suppose I should qualify my recommendation by saying that if you’re looking for a mainstream history of the show, with detailed production notes on the now close to nine hundred episodes in nearly sixty-two years, then look elsewhere. This is essentially a work of cultural criticism, written from an unusual and esoteric point of view.

It does present its analysis in a conventional structure. That is, it begins with the pre-history of the show and takes us chapter by chapter, Doctor by Doctor, from Hartnell the First in 1963,  through McCoy the Seventh, the last Doctor of the classic era that ended in 1989, and onwards through the ‘Wilderness Years of the nineties, McGann’s movie Doctor and the modern incarnation from Eccleston the Ninth in 2005 right up to the present day with Gatwa the Fifteenth/the Disney Doctor. Higgs’ Left-field analysis flows beautifully from this familiar structure.

There are many sub-themes to enjoy here. But I’ll mention just one. That is, the idea that the relationship of the BBC to the franchise is analogous to that of the Time Lords to the Doctor within the show’s lore and canon. Again, this might sound a bit ‘out there’ for some, but it really does work.

I don’t agree with the author on everything. He’s more of a liberal than I am, and his progressive views sometimes collapse into a form of cultural relativism where, in this context, one Doctor is every bit as important as every other. That’s not really a criticism. Higgs has chosen his path, and it’s a valid one that I thank him for sharing with us in such a thought-provoking and entertaining manner. However, there should also be a place for value judgment when discussing art/pop culture. Readers may be interested in checking out my reviews of the current ‘season 2’ of Disney Who. There are plenty of value judgments to be found there.

That aside, I have no hesitation in recommending Exterminate! Regenerate! It’s a book that’s well worth reading, from an author who is rapidly establishing a place among my favourite non-fiction authors.

Anthony c Green, May 2025

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Doctor Who: Season Two, Episode One, Robot Revolution, Reviewed

April 19, 2025 at 5:49 pm · Filed under Doctor Who, TV Shows ·Tagged , , , , , ,

845 words, 4 minutes read time.

Initial Impressions

Well, knit me a skirt and call me Susan Foreman. The first episode of the new series of Doctor Who was… good.
At least on first viewing.

On second watch, my opinion dipped slightly—and I expect a third will lower it further. But it remains the most enjoyable episode since Ncuti Gatwa officially took over in the 2023 Christmas Special.

I’ve deliberately avoided other reviews, much like Bob and Terry dodging football results in Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?—so what follows is purely my take.

The State of the Show

The RTD2 Era So Far

Fandom has rarely been so united in criticism as it has with Russell T Davies’s (RTD’s) second stint as showrunner, starting in 2022. Once the hero who brought Who back in 2005, RTD returned to a franchise weakened by the Chibnall/Whittaker years, with high hopes buoyed by Disney’s reported $100M partnership.

Those hopes were misplaced.

His Children in Need short undermined Davros with ill-advised political revisionism. The 60th anniversary specials, despite the return of David Tennant and Catherine Tate, fizzled rather than soared. Ncuti Gatwa’s debut, in The Giggle, saw the first use of ‘bi-generation’—leaving Tennant’s Doctor bizarrely alive and semi-retired with a working TARDIS.

Season One: A Litany of Missteps

  • Opening Disaster: Space Babies—arguably the worst Who episode ever.
  • Immediate Follow-Up: The Devil’s Chord, offensive to Beatles and Doctor Who fans alike.
  • Lazy Writing: With six episodes penned by RTD himself, most felt like first drafts.
  • Rare Bright Spots: Only Boom (written by Steven Moffat) stood out as complete and coherent.
  • Musical Numbers: Overused gimmicks (The Goblin’s Song, There’s Always A Twist…) quickly wore thin.
  • Unconvincing Relationships: Ruby Sunday and the Doctor’s bond felt forced and underdeveloped.
  • Weak Finale: Empire of Death left major questions unanswered or resolved them with laughable twists.

Sutekh—once a terrifying god-like villain—was reduced to a cartoonish giant dog, ultimately defeated with a magic rope. It would be funny if it weren’t so depressing.

The Doctor and the Gatwa Problem

Gatwa’s Doctor still lacks a defining moment. He changes outfits constantly (so no iconic look), cries often (up to five times per episode), and seems more human than alien. His sexuality was foregrounded—fine in principle, but clumsily executed in Rogue, where he ditched Ruby for a romantic rendezvous with a near-stranger.

Worst of all, the Doctor rarely saves the day anymore. The “male saviour” trope appears to have been shelved—at the expense of the show’s storytelling.

Culture War Fallout

The show’s shift from story to message has not gone unnoticed. Political soapboxing—on gender, race, reparations—has replaced the sense of wonder. RTD and Gatwa’s response to criticism? Blame the fans—accusing them of bigotry rather than acknowledging creative decline.

Robot Revolution: A Ray of Hope?

What Worked

Surprisingly, a lot:

  • The Concept: A star named after a girlfriend leads to her being abducted by giant robots years later and crowned their queen. Classic Sci-Fi hook.
  • Aesthetic Style: Ray-gun robots, 1950s rocket ships, and space cityscapes—this looked like real Doctor Who.
  • Pacing and Visuals: It didn’t drag. The time fracture effects were trippy. Disney’s budget might finally have shown up.
  • Restraint from Gatwa: Fewer manic outbursts, just one single tear (still too many), and toned-down antics helped. Post-production may have removed the worst.
  • A Solid Companion Setup: Belinda Chandra has potential—feisty, capable, but not yet loveable.

But There Were Issues…

  • The Message: Toxic masculinity was this week’s villain. The metaphor was belaboured—Alan’s marriage proposal came with weird conditions (no tight clothes, no texting after 8 PM), and Belinda’s “Planet of the Incels!” line felt jarringly on-the-nose.
  • Shaky Character Beats: Belinda was indifferent to the death of a cat and quite rude to Alan. Not ideal for a new character intro.
  • Gloating Doctor: The Doctor’s smugness at Alan’s fate was disquieting. Classic Doctors showed compassion even toward enemies.
  • Convenient Tech: The robots’ inability to process every ninth word let the Doctor and Belinda speak in code—a clever but fragile plot device.

The Bigger Picture

Despite RTD’s promise of a darker Doctor, what we got was a confused one—part clown, part political commentator. Robot Revolution hints at a course correction, but it’s not yet the show many of us fell in love with.

Moffat’s fingerprints—nonlinear storytelling, callbacks to Boom, the wordplay—were everywhere. Even Belinda’s jab at “timey-wimey” felt like a meta-apology for narrative fatigue.

The big question remains: Is there a future for this version of Doctor Who?

Rumours swirl of Disney pulling out after The War Between The Land and the Sea. Gatwa’s departure seems imminent—potentially without a replacement announced, a first since Patrick Troughton’s exit.

Final Verdict

“Better than Space Babies” is a low bar, but Robot Revolution clears it with ease. In fact, it’s probably better than anything from last season. It feels like Doctor Who again—if only faintly.

Guarded optimism replaces despair. I’m even looking forward to Lux.

Low expectations, it turns out, can be a gift.

Anthony C Green, April 18, 2025.

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Better than the Beatles!

January 21, 2021 at 9:20 am · Filed under Fiction, Music ·Tagged ,

I began writing my latest novel Better than the Beatles! in early 2016, but its real beginnings were around the turn of the millennium when I purchased a book called Raw Vision, a large coffee table style tome that was essentially a compendium of articles and photographs from the magazine of the same name, a magazine that was, and is, dedicated to the subject of Outsider Art Welcome to Raw Vision Magazine | Raw Vision Magazine.

There is no fully accepted definition of Outsider Art, but the attempt by the man who first identified it as a distinct entity, the French artist and collector Jean Dubuffet, is perhaps as good as any:  

“We understand by this term works produced by persons unscathed by artistic culture, where mimicry plays little or no part... These artists derive everything from their own depths, and not from the conventions of classical or fashionable art.”

 Originally, Dubuffet used the term Art Brut to denote his newly patented genre. It was the English art critic and writer Roger Cardinal who renamed it as Outsider Art in his book of the same name: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Outsider-Art-RogerCardinal/dp/0289701686/

Through my reading of Raw Vision, of Cardinal and other sources, I discovered the collection of loners and misfits who made up the Outsider Art cannon, if there can ever really be such a thing, including such marginal luminaries as Adolf Wolfli, Henry Drager, Madge Gill, and Sabato Rodeo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outsider_art.

Although Outsider Art would become an enduring interest, it was my discovery that this primarily visual art had spawned the sonic off-shoot of Outsider Music that led me to immerse myself in a whole new world of creative exploration.

It was the American Disc Jockey and writer Irwin Chusid who adopted the phrase ‘Outsider Music’ and publicised it as a distinct genre in his book ‘Songs in the Key of Z’, which was followed by an accompanying two volumes of illustrative C. D’s.

I am not without my criticisms of Chusid. For me, it was a mistake to incorporate into his book and C.D. collection such artists as Syd Barrett, Scott Walker, and Captain Beefhart, artists whom, whilst occupying a space well beyond the musical mainstream, were too well known to be classed as true outsiders. He also included material that I regard as revealing a knowing ‘so bad it’s good’ attitude that I found rather patronising. For instance, a recording of an old man suffering from dementia singing fragments of songs hazily remembered from his youth may be either sad or sweet, but it is not particularly musically interesting, and is therefore not, in my opinion, Outsider Music.

Nevertheless, it is primarily Chusid whom I must thank for my discovery of the work of the likes of Jandek, the Shaggs, and Daniel Johnston, artists who have continued to fascinate and inspire me to the present day. The first and last named of this trio have had great, niche films made about them, both of which are well worth checking out https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jandek-Corwood-DVD-Byron-Coley/dp/B0006FGHDS/

Although a work of fiction, the movie ‘Frank’, written by Jon Ronson and based (loosely) on a combination of the stories of papier-mâché headed Mancunion outsider Frank Sidebottom and the bizarre story of the making of Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band’s weird classic Trout Mask Replica, also gives a great feel of the nature of Outsider Music  https://www.amazon.co.uk/Frank-DVD-Michael-Fassbender/dp/B00NIPIIQM/

It was however the story of The Shaggs which had the most impact upon me, and which was the catalyst for the writing of Better than the Beatles!

The Shaggs was the family name of the three sisters who initially made up the band, Dot and Betty on guitars and Helen on drums, with a fourth sister, Rachel later joining them on bass for live performances. The band were founded in 1968 in their hometown of Freemont, New Hampshire, and were set on their musical path by their father Austin Shaggs. He claimed to have done this in response to a premonition by his late mother, who had apparently correctly predicted the hair colour of the woman he would marry, and more interestingly, that the couple would have three daughters who would go on to attain musical stardom.

In response to this prediction, he took the then teenage girls out of school, bought them instruments, paid for singing lessons and encouraged them to write songs. In 1969, he paid privately for recording studio time, and for the pressing of 1000 copies of the resultant album, an album which was named Philosophy of the World after one of its best loved tracks on the album. Allegedly, the man responsible for pressing the album absconded with 900 of the 1000 copies of the album, and it’s been suggested that he, whether as a form of artistic criticism, through shame at his involvement in such a project, or for more prosaic reasons, simply dumped them. This left around 100 copies to be distributed, mostly locally and for free, by Pappa Austin.

The music of The Shaggs is perhaps best described as the sonic equivalent of a naïve-primitive painting. The ten songs on the album are conventional in structure, but are written and performed in a manner that suggests that they have been produced by ‘musicians’ who have only recently been introduced, and in a very quick and basic fashion at that, to the rudiments of melody, harmony and rhythm. In addition, the lyrics, about such topics as fidelity to one’s parents, self-acceptance, the joys of pet ownership and much else besides, have a charming, child-like quality that is a perfect accompaniment to the music.

Whilst recording their album, the producer of Philosophy of the World is said to have suggested that Austin allow his daughters more time to hone their musical and vocal skills before letting them loose in a recording studio. Austin’s response, which has gone on to become a part of Shaggs folk-lore, was to say that he wanted to catch them ‘whilst they are hot.’

Philosophy of the World would have disappeared without trace had a copy not somehow found its way into the hands of legendary muso Frank Zappa who played a couple of tracks, and professed his love for the album, whilst appearing as a guest on a radio show presented by a DJ by the name of Dr Demento in the early ‘70’s. From there, its reputation grew by word of mouth amongst lovers of left-field music, until it was eventually re-released by Rounder Records in 1980.

It should be noted here that it is Zappa who is often erroneously credited with ironically describing The Shaggs as ‘Better than the Beatles,’ the phrase that I used as the title of my novel. In fact, the phrase originally came from the headline for a Rolling Stone magazine review of the re-released album by iconic music journalist Lester Bangs.

The album was given a further boost in the 1990’s when Nirvana front-man Kurt Cobain placed it no. 5 in his list of his all-time favourite albums. This helped it to gain a CD release by RCA Victor in 1999. Its popularity/notoriety was also greatly aided by the growth of the Internet.

Initially, and until quite late on in the writing process, my novel was called triplets, which is also the name of the Shaggs-like band in the book, as well as of their sole recorded album. In addition, when I began writing the novel, I took the decision to transfer the action from small town America to the North West of England, and the time of the band’s slim recorded output from the late ‘60’s to the late ‘70’s. ‘Write what you know’ they say, and this approach also had the advantage of allowing me to work a potted history of British rock music into the narrative, from fifties rock ‘n’ roll, through Merseybeat, psychedelia, and onwards to punk/Mew Wave and the mostly localised Lo Fi ‘cassette culture’ which emerged from it MESSTHETICS: U.K. DIY/postpunk 1977-84, Hyped to Death (hyped2death.com).

Much of this was done through the character of the father Sam Curtis who, in the manner of many 1950’s British rock ‘n’ roll hopefuls, was gifted a new, larger than life name by representatives of noted show business impresario Larry Parnes, in this case Sam Singer (see real-life examples such as Billy Fury, Marty Wilde, Vince Eager, Duffy Power et al) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Parnes

 In the true story of the Shaggs, the father Austin Shagg was a key player. By all accounts, in particular by the accounts of his children, he appears to have been a driven, pushy and authoritarian figure in the manner of music biz dad’s such as Joe Jackson of the Jackson family and Murray Wilson of the Beach Boys’ Wilson clan. It’s probably no accident that the Shaggs disbanded as a band (despite some latter-day reunions once Philosophy of the World belatedly found its fan-base) in 1975, immediately following the death of their father. In my novel, Sam Curtis/Singer plays an equally key role in the story, although I did try to make him a touch more likeable and sympathetic than his real-world counterpart.

In my previous novel, Special, I drew on my twenty five years of experience as a social care worker in order to tell the story of a fictional woman with a learning disability. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Special-Anthony-C-Green/dp/1788033442/  In writing Better than the Beatles! I again decided to make use of this experience, by incorporating into the narrative the suggestion that the triplets have a form of high functioning autism. Although I have never seen it explicitly stated that this was also the case with the real-life Shagg sisters, my reading and observation of their public comments, their music and lyrics, and the testimony of those who worked with them suggest that this is not entirely out of the question.

Speaking of lyrics, as something of an ‘outsider’ singer/songwriter myself, although I’m not sure that one can be knowingly such, one of the most enjoyable aspects of writing the novel was my writing of excerpts of triplets songs in the naïve style of the Shaggs themselves. At one point I even considered writing these songs in full, and then seeking to find three suitable females to record them with, or perhaps one suitable female to sing each vocal in, to use a phrase that re-occurs throughout the novel, ‘near-unison’. In the end however, I decided that some things are best left to the imagination….

 I won’t give away any more of the plot. In my opinion Better than the Beatles! In my opinion, it is by far my best novel to date, a novel that I enjoyed writing very much, such that I felt a distinct sense of loss when I finally decided that it was finished. It’s a novel that I’m proud to have written, and I only hope it will find a readership. Hopefully, I won’t have to wait as long as the Shaggs for it to do so.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shaggs

Anthony C Green, January 2021  

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