The Force Awakens ...

Our old mattress was like sleeping on the surface of Mars.  In stark contrast, our new Sealy 5* experience with pocket springs is heaven although the memory foam topping hasn't quite remembered my bird-shaped curves yet.  Still, it's early days and even as I stretched out in the showroom, I knew it was 'the one'.  I let out a long yoga-type sigh as I lay staring at the ceiling and so did Alphonse as he handed over the credit card.  So why am I wide awake at 6.00 am with my force on full blast?  I'm shivering and my ankles are blue but my brain's on 'red hot' and bursting with ideas for a screenwriting course I start on the 2nd of February.  Normally, I prepare by drinking sherry and watching tele in bed although this is proving difficult.  I'm missing the old, noisy springs, the nightly 'comfy-spot-jiggle' and sleeping with my talons dangling over a floppy edge thus the necessary concentration for the task ahead has to be done in sub-zero temperatures.

On Epiphany, I trotted off to see The Winter's Tale filmed from a live performance at The Garrick Theatre in London.  Like most British school children, I've studied all of Shakespeare's greats and analysed them to death thus wringing out any enjoyment left for my future self.  Having drooled over Toby Stephens in Hamlet a few years ago, I decided I was finally Shakespeare'd out.  Joyfully, The Winter's Tale has changed all that.

I'll precis the story for you.  Leontes, Sir Kenneth Branagh, is the King of Sicilia.  Overcome with imagined jealousy, he goes bonkers in a heartbeat and by the end of Act I has banished his baby daughter to the farthest corner of the kingdom.  He is kept in check by Paulina, Dame Judi Dench, in this a torrid tale of abandonment and ruined friendship and seems only to live for his misery.  Sixteen years seems excessive in holding a grudge but I managed it once. Act II starts off in a very jolly way but the redemption of Leontes arrives when a column of white light reveals him with his back to the audience, completely alone on stage.  Sir Kenneth didn't need words to convey the ice in his heart.  He was being snowed on and it was breathtaking.  Later when Leontes sees the statue of the wife he believes to be dead and wants to kiss her lips, his only hope is Supersavers.  There wasn't a scrap of dry mascara in the house, and that was just the men.  And in the missing decades since the last Star Wars movie, how I wish the scriptwriters had taken a look at this glorious production, because in parts of The Force Awakens I thought they'd taken leave of their senses.

Tell me you've seen it.  Unless you live in an electricity-free facility hidden deep under Derbyshire, you've surely seen it?  And probably the previous six episodes? So, mid-movie, when Princess Leia and Han Solo clap eyes on each other after years apart, it's a real shock when he says this.
"You've changed your hair."  In my head their fiery relationship suggests his first words might be along these lines.
"What the flip happened to Ben, Leia??  I left him with you and his daft Uncle Luke and now he's wearing black, worshipping Vader's helmet and trying to dominate the Galaxy."  Not an uncommon reaction from any father whose son has recently joined the Goths.  And why, does their son look more like Professor Snape than the Skywalker/Solo gene mix might suggest?

When we're reintroduced to C3PO, he has a red arm to co-ordinate with his shiny gold body.  Worse, there's an awful dialogue line thrown in at random.
"Excuse the red arm, I must get it fixed sometime."  Pardon?
This is akin to having a new wing bolted onto your Ferrari and forgetting to have it resprayed.  Nuts! And now that R2D2 has felt the force again and recovered from a massive 16 year sulk, will it pitch in to help redeem Ben Solo from the darker-than-dark side?  I can't wait.  Although I'm concerned about the engineering prowess of the new, ultra-cute BB-8 droid.  Rotating on the gritty sands of Tattooine would surely shut down his momentum drive like a cheap set of castors on a shag pile carpet.

And there's that uncomfortable moment when the two worlds of Bond and Star Wars collide in the seven minutes it takes for the weapon of mass destruction to power up until someone presses the red button.  Lets also forget the tedious speech about the New Order.  To the poor kid brandishing a light sabre on the front row at Vue, Leicester, it must have felt like seven days in his Yoda hat. Of course I loved it but I wouldn't have taken the scriptwriter's job for £20m, although the chamber of my heart totally dedicated to science fiction is beating again with renewed vigour. I had to hide my Darth Vader advent calendar behind Amble's filing cabinet before Christmas.  The eyes followed everyone, everywhere and someone complained.  But it was the eyes and real tears shed by actor Shaun Evans which prompted me to chose Endeavour as my third project.

Yes it's set in the 1960s and the production designers have done a glorious job but I don't remember our homely decor being quite that vibrant.  It was much dingier somehow and there are still parts of the Nest that when you apply a wallpaper scraper too close to the plaster, you find evidence of a darker past.  All wallpapers were tinged brown in those days because everyone smoked and pipes were cool.  It's a big surprise that our lungs aren't cured like kippers.  The core of Endeavour was to get to the bottom of why Morse remained unmarried throughout his life.  Initially, I thought it was down to Colin Dexter's excellent characterisation of him but in these enlightened times, it seems every tale must have unrequited love in the mix. And young Morse was no exception in his struggle to express burning passion for his boss's daughter, Miss Thursday.  After a traumatic bank robbery goes awry, she runs off with her suitcase leaving Oxford forever and leaving no forwarding address.  But isn't Morse a detective?  Why didn't he 'detect' her whereabouts and write to her?  Better than being miserable for decades.

Some of the messages were too subtle for me unlike the scriptwriter's nod to my favourite author.  When Inspector Thursday gave a packet of cigarettes to his peroxide-coiffeured PC, he told her to keep the pack hidden in the pocket behind her notebook.  A tip from his old Guv'nor he said, with a nod and a wink, "Inspector Vimes of Cable Street".  Brilliantly shoehorned in I thought from the pages of 'Night Watch' by Sir Terry Pratchett.  Can we have more of those please, if only to keep me on my scriptwriter's toes whatever shade of blue they are.

Tip of the Beak:  Alongside David Bowie, Alan Rickman and now Sir Terry Wogan, there was another great loss to the world of entertainment last week, Glenn Frey.  He knew a thing or two about killer lines and is credited for adding "It's a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford slowing down to take a look at me" to Jackson Browne's smash hit song, Take It Easy.  It wouldn't have had the same resonance had it been about a flat in Bedford, England but it did secure fame and fortune for a little known band called The Eagles, as well as for the town of Winslow, Arizona.  No wonder they put up a statue to him.

Raven