“Yo – when’s the TV show on? I can’t find it in my schedule” writes our good friend Nerdlinger.
The first of our three part series is scheduled to go to air in June, but because in the ever-shifting scheduling at Your ABC our televisual debut we may get bumped for an expanded gardening show, or more likely, a new British whodunit cop show. Apparently the ABC have just bought a new crime investigation series called De Montfort set during the reign of Henry III [1216-1272] [when England tried and failed to regain Aquitaine from France and when the King filled the English church with absentee Italian appointees and the civil offices with French bureaucrats]. Starring Simon Callow as Simon De Montfort, a chief opponent of Henry III and who, while trying to undermine the king’s autocratic rule and introduce the first stages of representative democracy in the form of a parliament [from the French parler, to talk], investigates a series of murders which, over the course of the series, leads to the eventual overthrow of the King! Certainly something to look forward to there.
Who dun it, my lord?
“What’s this TV show you lot keep mentioning actually about? Will it be a game show?” asks Betty Blau.
We have been working on our penultimate scripts over the last few weeks but the actual ideas have been developed over the last year. The process of “development” means coming up with a concept that would not only be appealing to the art audiences of the national broadcaster, but also make “good tele” – which is to say, shows that are visually interesting, provide opportunities for engaging interviews with experts and perhaps have a bit of archival footage for texture. The shows are also meant to be essay style tours through a certain subject rather than another one of those tedious “artists in the studio” docos or maybe Betty Churcher carrying on the great tradition begun by Kenneth Clarke where you stand in front of a painting so the audience can’t actually see it… We had a number of bad ideas [discussed here] but our best idea – and the one that we’re now in the process of turning into a TV series – are about different personal versions of synaesthesia.
Someone asked ages ago if the writers behind this blog were dyslexic and while for us “real estate agent” means someone working undercover as agent of reality [Agents of The Reality State – the ‘lost’ Philip K Dick novel…] our writers collectively experience something akin to synaesthesia, not quite the full blown sounds-as-colours-colours-as-flavours-flavours-as-shapes effect, but we’re definitely on the bus. Taking this idea one step further – and after an exhaustive series of meetings at which many ABC brand muffins, biscuits and cups of tea were consumed – we came up with a three episode proposal. To give you a taster, here’s the outline of episode one:
Episode #1: Getting’ Metaphysical On Yo Ass – In which we explore the metaphysics of smoking, the metaphysical hip-hop duo Le Jardin, the garden sculptures featured in the 1956 film Forbidden Planet and the creatures that live there [conjured up by a vast underground computer, as if from smoke] and conclude with a visit with Australian avant garde filmmaker Albie Thoms and his 60s classic Bolero [an echo of Michael Snow’s classic Wavelength] while making free form associations with the bass relief sculptures at Ryde Civic Center and masterpieces of the pre-fusion era, namely Bap-tizm by
The Art Ensemble of Chicago and Miles Davis’s Complete Jack Johnson Sessions.
