TV22

 Even if 2022 hadn't been the first year in a while without lengthy bouts of furlough, I still wouldn't have been able to watch all the great telly available this year. For starters, I don't have access to all streaming services, while several shows I know I'd like are still waiting, unwatched, on my Freeview box at the time of writing, which is where the likes of The English and the second series of The Outsiders, The Great and Gentleman Jack, for example, are patiently biding their time.

 

Other tried-and-tested favourites did force their way into my spare time, however. INSIDE NO.9 remains, for my money, the best anthology series of all time. Now on its seventh series, and with a tally of 43 original stories, it's inevitable that some episodes will work better than others, but each of this latest clutch continued Shearsmith and Pemberton's unique knack of mixing uneasy comedy, sinister atmosphere and a sense of a screw being slowly tightened. The primary school-set Mr King had shades of The Wicker Man, A Random Act Of Kindness was a rare foray into sort-of sci-fi, and Kid/Nap (with the show's two creators taking a backseat in acting terms) once again proved that the duo can still enthral when supernatural/horror aspects are eschewed in favour of crime. The highlight, though, was series closer Wise Owl, with 70s-style public information films gradually revealing a heartbreaking story of a life ruined.

 

In comedy, TASKMASTER remained a balm for troubled times, both of this year's series throwing up all manner of unpredictable hijinks. STARSTRUCK returned for another lovely series tracking the on-off relationship between creator Rose Matafeo's Jessie and Nikesh Patel's movie star Tom. DERRY GIRLS bowed out with an emotional final series that fully justified its status as one of the most-loved shows of the past half-decade. In terms of traditional sitcoms, GHOSTS is surely now established as the best of its kind on UK telly, and its fourth series continued to mine absolute gold from both premise and cast; an episode which featured the departure of one of the main characters proved unexpectedly moving, despite a running joke about oral sex. We also caught up with both seasons of Armando Ianucci's AVENUE 5, with another great ensemble cast (led by Hugh Laurie) aboard a space cruise gone horribly wrong. With Ianucci's classic trope of people in authority being really shit at their jobs, it managed to be incredibly stressful, like a galactic Lord Of The Flies, but with various adult incompetents, dimbulbs and arseholes rather than kids. Oh, and with more jokes.

Some comedies, of course, are barely comedies at all. Dylan Moran's STUCK was unflinching in its portrayal of a midlife relationship that isn't really working anymore, its depressing tone undermining any laughs despite the winning presence of Morgana Robinson. I HATE YOU, on the other hand, was barely a comedy because it was a pissweak effort of shit student humour unworthy of the talents of creator Robert Popper (Look Around You, Friday Night Dinner) or stars Tanya Reynolds (Sex Education) and Melissa Saint.

 

A better example of genre-crossing comedy came from AM I BEING UNREASONABLE?, which saw Daisy May Cooper (also the best thing in Tim Key's THE WITCHFINDER this year) breaking out from any typecasting in a show that was a little like Motherland reimagined as a psychological thriller. Top marks also to CHEATERS, which saw Susan Wokoma and Joshua McGuire have a one-night stand in Finland, before returning home to find that they live across the street from each other - with their respective partners. The show's formatting - eighteen episodes of ten minutes apiece - ensured that the story moved at a gripping pace, while finding room to explore sexual behaviours (not just the titular infidelity, but also bisexuality and voyeurism) without making any of its four leads unlikable or villainous. While I try and avoid spoilers in these things, it may not be a surprise that things do not entirely end well - though this is a series I would very much like to see more of. As is Australian teen parenting show BUMP, which did everything you'd want from a second series - moving the story on while expanding more on the lives of its characters. More focus on its adult cast provided welcome developments, with Paula Garcia's Rosa in particular moving from two-dimensional nightmare to a fully-rounded (and increasingly sympathetic) character. On the flip side, the teenage cast got some Skins-style party scenes in, and even comparatively minor characters like Madison got their turn in the spotlight. A third series has been commissioned, and I can't wait.

Tipping from drama-leaning comedy to blackly humorous drama, we find SCREW, a prison-set series starring Jamie-Lee O'Donnell (excelling in a very different role to her Michelle in Derry Girls) and Nina Sosanya. Its acidic wit and taboo-smashing subject matter felt like a close relation to Paul Abbott's peerless No Offence, while its claustrophobic set-up ensured that tension simmered throughout. Going from a locked-down location to wide open spaces (and swapping hemispheres to boot), THE TOURIST took another Northern Irish star (Jamie Dornan) and plonked him in the middle of the Australian outback. Quite literally - his intially-unnamed character is found in a car wreck in the middle of nowhere, waking up in hospital with no memory of who he is or how he got there. As his past is slowly revealed, we find ourselves in a tangled story of crime, double-crossing and lost love where no-one is quite what they appear - apart from Danielle Macdonald, whose break-out performance as rookie cop Helen Chambers is the heart and soul of the show.

 

As we're on to crime, let's head way back up north to SHETLAND. Now on its seventh series, this excellent drama is possibly somewhat taken for granted, not the subject of online hype or social media's equivalent of watercooler chatter, but I suspect watched by more viewers than the majority of programmes discussed above. Like Unforgotten, this is a show more concerned with gradual revelations through old-fashioned detective work than with violence or car chases; like the Nordic Noir it feels as close to spiritually as it is geographically, it likes to take its time and develop its characters. This time, we get eco-terrorism, dodgy ex-coppers, graphic novels and secret identities, all wrapped up in a story as enthralling as ever, as well as the show's most nailbiting cliffhanger to boot. It was well-known in advance that this would be Douglas Henshall's last run as DI Jimmy Perez; but how would he leave? And would other beloved characters make it through in one piece?

 

I seem to be getting into giving directions, so let's swoop down to Liverpool and THE RESPONDER. I suspect much of the attention paid to this admirably downbeat police drama centred on the accuracy or otherwise of Martin Freeman's scouse accent as lead character Chris Carson, but it would be a shame if this distracted from his performance as a man barely managing to stay atop a moral abyss (and to be honest, the accent sounded fine to me, not jarring with the genuinely Liverpudlian tones of Ian Hart's old mate/antagonist Carl Sweeney). With much of the action taking place a) at night and b) with Carson behind the wheel, there were shades of Taxi Driver, although the amount of aerial shots of city roads did occasionally make it feel like we were watching Traffic Cops or something.

 

Sorry, but I'm getting into this now: if Chris was to get into his cop car and hit the M62, it would take him about two and a half hours to get to Sherwood Forest, where he might find himself in one of the year's most remarkable dramas. SHERWOOD - to which you might have guessed I was referring - was, on the face of it, a murder mystery, but was really about the longterm rifts left behind in communities (and families) by the 80s miners' strikes and the way they were policed. The cast list must be one of the most stacked with renowned telly thesps to be assembled in years - David Morrissey, Lesley Manville, Alun Armstrong and Adeel Akhtar are amongst the topline cast, but pretty much every new character that appears onscreen will be someone you recognise. Concerned neighbour that finds a body? Oh look, it's Charles Dale out of Casualty and The Lakes! The story that's told, however, is so involving that you soon stop noticing the starry actors and/or checking IMDB to confirm that suspicious taxi driver guy was in Line Of Duty, etc. Weirdly, in its reckoning with a recent-ish past that never really went away, it rather reminded me of Hugo Blick's Black Earth Rising, albeit with the focus on Nottinghamshire rather than Rwanda. Or maybe that was just because both series featured a shady character putting a gun in their mouth rather than facing the consequences of their actions. You'll have noticed that I'm not using a Top 10 format, but Sherwood would have come in third place if I had.

Another great new crime drama took us back up to Scotland, this time in the company of KAREN PIRIE. Frankly, it probably would have had me at the use of Arab Strap's The Turning Of Our Bones as its theme - an appropriate title, given that the story centred on the reopening of a murder case from 1995 with, wouldn't you know it, repercussions on the present day. Lauren Lyle gives a good account of herself as the titular detective, and while there's a reasonable chance you'll be onto the culprit before their eventual reveal, this is a show which could yet have the staying power of a Shetland.

 

A show which I hadn't expected to return was THE CAPTURE, but its second series provided a welcome sequel to its 2019 debut. That first instalment centred on the concept of  'correction' - the tampering of CCTV footage being used covertly by security services to create false evidence. This time round, the stakes were higher and the tech even more terrifying, as shown in an opening sequence where apparently invisible assassins strike. Holliday Grainger is once again an engaging protagonist, while the brilliant Paapa Essiedu joins the cast as a politician whose life and career are upended by realtime deepfake sabotage. The twists, tension and action levels all suggest that this could continue as a Line Of Duty-style stalwart, with each season having a central guest star. Oh, and there was the slightly meta circumstance of the BBC studios being one of the show's significant settings, including a delicious dig at The One Show from Indira Varma's fictional Newsnight host Khadija Khan. Grainger was also back in STRIKE; I'd steered clear of the novel for perhaps obvious reasons, but this remains a quality detective series, even if Tom Burke's titular private eye was in slightly morose sad-sack mode this time round. 

The vast majority of shows I've mentioned so far have been British made and/or set, as will be more to come, and in a year where the BBC and Channel 4 have been explicitly under threat from whichever shower of cultural annihilators have been in the cabinet that week I really do feel the need to defend public broadcasting; yes, the streamers and commercial stations can come up trumps, but several of the shows listed above wouldn't have been made - or at least not to the same quality - anywhere else.

 

Anyway, there is space in my viewing for epic sci-fi/fantasy blockbusters too, and after belatedly getting Netflix and catching up on its first three instalments, I think this year's STRANGER THINGS was the first one I've devoured on its original broadcast. Of everything I've covered, this is probably the one where my opinions are basically redundant, given the high volume of discussion around, and clear cultural significance of, a show which can get 2022's teenagers worshipping 80s metalheads, listening to Kate Bush and rolling twenty-sided dice. I'll cop to some initial doubts about elements of this fourth series, but everything I was concerned about turned out to be a bonus. For example, part of the terror of the Demigorgons was their very unhuman nature - no words, no explanation, just remorseless killing - whereas Vecna's humanoid form and verbosity intially lent towards a campness that felt out of place. Of course, as we learnt more about events that took place before Season One (which I'll not discuss for fear of spoilers), it all made sense. And I was concerned that the splintering of the core cast into three, and then four, locations meant that some of the team dynamic might be lost, but in fact it allowed the action to take place on an even more epic scale than before. Eddie Munson playing Master Of Puppets in The Upside Down? OK, that was ridiculous, but if it sends a few thousand 21st Century kids down an 80s thrash rabbit hole? That's not so bad. My least favourite characters (Mike, Will) were mostly sidelined, Hopper got to be a whole 'nother level of badass, Murray was an unlikely action hero, and Sadie Sink probably gave the best performance of the whole damn cast as Max. The last couple of episodes were preposterously long, but dammit if I'm not still fully signed up for whatever comes next.

 

The other hugely-dissected sci-fi franchise of the year (in TV terms, at least) was the venerable DOCTOR WHO. The end of the Jodie Whittaker/Chris Chibnall period came in the form of three specials. New Year's Day's Eve Of The Daleks was a clever timeloop story set in a Manchester storage facility, and featured the excellent Aisling Bea as a guest. Easter Sunday's Legend Of The Sea Devils was a throwaway tale of piracy and classic monsters in the early 1800s China seas. October's The Power Of The Doctor was the big-ticket finale, though, assembling the Biggest Bads (including Sacha Dhawan as a brilliantly unhinged Master, trying to do for a certain Boney M song what Max Mayfield did for Running Up That Hill) and a swathe of returning companions ranging from the very recent (Vinder from 2021's Flux) to the, well, record-breakingly old. This era of Who hasn't been without its controversies, some of which were almost certainly deliberate baiting of anti-woke bores, but this was an admirable farewell that cemented Whittaker's place in the pantheon. And given that her creative collaboration with Chibnall started with Broadchurch, it was good to see that show's Nige make a cameo role in the opening sequence, while the regeneration sequence took place atop Durdle Door, just a few miles down the Jurassic Coast from the fictional town's real-life West Bay setting. Maybe there was some other Broadchurch connection in that final scene, but I can't think what. Or Who...

 

Regardless, two former Doctors starred in smart original dramas in 2022. Steven Moffat's INSIDE MAN featured David Tennant, alongside Stanley Tucci, Dolly Wells, Lydia West and Lyndsey Marshal in a tricksy morality tale. It's hard to discuss without spoilers, but the central hook is how far a decent man might go to protect his family. Meanwhile, Tucci's character is a sort of Death Row Sherlock, a wife-killer who is somehow allowed to take on cases from his prison cell. Including one concerning a missing woman in England... When given the right material, Dolly Wells will absolutely shred everyone else on screen, and even in this company that general rule applies here. A post-credits sequence could line up a second series, or offer just one last twist.

 

Meanwhile, Peter Capaldi's absolutely terrifying face was being absolutely terrifying on THE DEVIL'S HOUR, which somewhat resembled a series-long Inside No.9 story, with some time-bending parallel universe shit going on and Jessica Raine holding the threads somehow. Nikesh Patel plays a vaguely eccentric detective (it will only spoil things mildly if you choose to imagine this role as something he's playing as Tom from Starstruck; the idea that this is a show-within-a-show is probably easier to grasp than some of the actual concepts it tackles), with Alex Ferns as his vaguely cliched shambling sidekick (I dare say he's done plenty of other stuff, but if you haven't seen Ferns since his role as Trevor in Eastenders, it will take you more than a, er, little mo to recognise him).

 

Time to mention a couple of shows that didn't quite fit into any themed paragraphs. The second series of THE TERROR (subtitled INFAMY this time round) dealt with the shameful internment of Japanese-Americans post-Pearl Harbour, but mixed in old country superstitions to create an involving (and often very violent) blend of social history and J-horror. 

 

Past injustices have been getting a solid going-over on UK telly in recent years, and rightly so. Following Small Axe's investigation of the Black-British experience and It's A Sin's revisiting of the joys and horror of the 80s gay scene, THEN BARBARA MET ALAN told a similar story centred on the radical fight for disabled people's rights in the early 90s. I suspect this is the first mainstream British drama with a largely disabled cast, led by a brilliant Ruth Madeley as real-life activist Barbara Lisicki. There's a punk rock spirit to her group's actions, and as well as being a (hugely overdue) acknowledgement of an under-the-radar protest movement, it's also a moving story of love and loss. Madeley breaks the fourth wall regularly, but the most surreally affecting moment comes when she boards a bus populated by the rest of the cast (including characters who didn't survive) and meets the real Lisicki.

Before I get to my absolute favourite two shows of the year, time to indulge in my most unexpected treat. I don't usually go in for celeb travelogue bullshit, but MARTIN COMPSTON'S SCOTTISH FLING was pure joy. This show found wee DI Arnott and his real accent driving around his native land with Phil MacHugh (a Gaelic TV presenter who would surely have deserved equal billing if he had any south-of-the-border recognition). They make a slightly unlikely pair, but the laddish Compston and more sensitive MacHugh give every impression of being real life pals, and for all the people they meet and activities in which they partake - and there's everything from freestyling on an Aberdeen hip hop record to celebrating Beltane in Edinburgh with an ex-member of Test Dept, with hearty singing along to a bunch of classic Scottish tunes inbetween, plus plenty of sport for the uber-competitive Compston - where this show excels is in its rather moving portrait of modern male friendship. (Incidentally, this is also the subject of the Compston-starring Mayflies, which I've yet to watch - but if it's as moving as the novel from which it's been adapted, it'll be absolutely killer.)

 

And so on to my two (very different) favourites... THE SANDMAN might just be the best-realised comic book adaptation ever to hit the small screen (unless you're the sort of bore who gets unreasonably incensed by gender- or race-swapped characters). Neil Gaiman's original series was one of the most strikingly unique comic books of its time, right up there with the work of Alan Moore or Grant Morrison, and this adaptation captured its essence through excellent casting, cinematography and storytelling. Gaiman has said of his original idea, "I can’t do superheroes, but I could do god comics." And while central character Morpheus/Dream could be mistaken for the former, his existence as the latter makes for a much more complex concept than anything else in what we have to consider is a fairly superhero-saturated time. In keeping with the comic, this is a show not unafraid to take risks - and I'm not just talking about Jenna Coleman's turn as Johanna (not John) Constantine. Witness 24/7, a mostly Morpheus-free episode which finds John Dee holed up in a diner, with disastrous consequences for its staff and customers, or the surprise eleventh episode, featuring two standalone stories, one of which is animated. Perhaps the best episode, meanwhile, is The Sound Of Her Wings, featuring Morpheus's sister Death and the immortal Hob Gadling. Hob's tale is essentially unrelated to the ongoing storylines, but this is a series where time is taken and patience rewarded.

 

Finally, we have to talk about THIS IS GOING TO HURT. Another literary adaptation, though this time a fictionalised version of Adam Kay's best-selling memoir about his time as a junior obstetrics and gynaecology dcotor in the NHS, TIGTH pulls no punches in its depiction of the struggle of an under-resourced, under-supported NHS and the effect its working conditions have on those within it. Kay is unafraid to make the character based on himself (and played tremendously by Ben Whishaw) largely unsympathetic: arrogant, cavalier and selfish, taking potshots at those around him, including colleague Shruti and long-suffering partner Greg. The real-life Kay even gets to make a cameo as a cyclist who calls Whishaw's Kay a twat. But we also see the strain that has created this version of Kay: the long hours, the hospital heirarchy and its hypocritical superiors, parental pressures, guilt at medical mistakes... This isn't NHS bashing, far from it - in fact, the sixth episode, where Kay agrees to do a shift at a private hospital, is excoriating about the way the NHS has to pick up the pieces when the parasitic private sector can't manage. Meanwhile, the real hero of the piece is not Kay but (the fictional) Shruti. Kay addresses the viewer directly throughout proceedings, but the most devastating breaking of the fourth wall comes with six words from another character. I'm genuinely tearful just thinking about it, honestly.

The really scary thing is that book and series are set in the 2000s, and things are surely only hurting more a decade and a half later. Those who would underfund the NHS - the same people who would defund the BBC and Channel 4 - are only glimpsed in the series, but they are surely its unseen villains. Support striking healthcare workers - their fight is our fight too.

Sons Of The Stage Part 5: Gorse

A while after The Gilamonsters played Catch in London in 2006, it became clear that we'd run out of road. We'd been living in different towns for a few years already, and now we'd stopped bothering to book practices. No animosity - we're all still buddies and would even get back together to play a set for my 40th, which will be getting a mention in due course. Everyone else was doing other, very different bands - Jimmy was blowing minds in Teeth Of The Sea, Chris was pushing the boundaries of doom in Moss and Steeny was playing some lovely country/folk-inspired stuff in Polly & The Billets Doux, alongside original Gilas drummer Ben. Lacking the same drive to create as the others, I kind of figured I was done with bands. And then, sometime early in 2008, I got a MySpace message from one of the guitarists out of Hey Colossus. Little did I know that this would be the start of a more productive band than any in which I'd previously been involved.

I'm still not entirely clear how James found me - I guess we had mutual friends, and my old, now long-defunct MySpace page had a typically long list of bands I was into which included some of James's favourites, like Bluetip and Spirit Caravan. Presumably, somewhere on there it must have mentioned that I played bass. James was still in HC at this point - I first met him in the flesh when they played at The Freebutt, almost certainly with Trencher - but had started another band called Tyre with at least one bloke out of Cove. Damn, there were a lot of band names in that sentence. About to move from Tonbridge to Worthing, he was looking to continue Tyre with a new, Sussex-based line-up, which is where I came in. As did, er, a drummer living in Oxford.

James had met Charlie when the latter's cheekily-named band Mothertrucker played in Europe with Hey Colossus. Charlie was living and working in Oxfordshire (I've got it in my head he had a job at a power plant, which I can only imagine was similar to Homer Simpson's) and was already commuting back to his West Midlands homeland for Mothertrucker practices once a week. Why not ask him to do the same, but in the other direction, to play drums for the now-renamed Gorse? That's sustainable, right?

Incidentally, Gorse was chosen as a name, I think, because it didn't have any particular connotations. Perhaps there's something vaguely stoner rock about naming your band after a shrub, but it certainly didn't immediately pigeonhole us as a band. There was no conscious link to Sussex-born author Patrick Hamilton's partly Brighton-set Gorse novels either, though he is a favourite of mine. And, as far as I'm aware, we were unwittingly the third band to use this monicker: a Scottish band of that name had existed in the late 90s, supporting Goober Patrol at an STE gig at Southampton Joiners, while V/VM's label had released an album by some identically-named Cornish oddballs in 2002, including deathless classic I Like A Pasty, Do You?*

Looking back, things got going pretty quickly considering the obvious geographical hindrances. James already had some songs written, like Tarantella and King Of Tyre, and by the summer we had enough material to record an album and play some shows. James had mentioned the likes of Harvey Milk, YOB and whichever band Wino was doing at the time as touchstones for our sound; what ended up coming out was a mixture of doom, sludge, psychedelia and AmRep-style noise rock. The album was called Slumber Of Artemis (named after the cover, which featured a shot from Cornwall's Lost Gardens of Heligan), and was in fact comprised of rehearsal room recordings, somehow mastered into something resembling coherence by Jon out of Part Chimp and released on underground UK label Calculon. Despite a swathe of good reviews from hip metal websites (and, in the printed world, Kerrang!), at the time of writing there are still very cheap copies available to buy here: https://calculonrecords.bandcamp.com/album/slumber-of-artemis

I'm listening to it right now for the first time in ages and am honestly chuffed by how well it still stands up - definitely a little more stonery than later work but with a decent amount of scuzz and oddness.

 

Anyway, before that came out, we unleashed our sound ("like a shit-stained, oily rag," according to Podge from Calculon - meant as a compliment, natch) to the general public, initially testing our wares out on Hampshire audiences. Our live debut was at the Nell Gwynne in Portsmouth on an August Sunday. My chums in the Demons came down, as this was one of their locals, and my old Soton buddies Wayne and Kev were also in attendance, meaning we had a few people onside already. The pub laid on some food for the bands, which the Demons (as regulars) tucked into; despite us actually being on the bill, I seem to recall the owners eyeing us suspiciously when we went to help ourselves; perhaps they could tell I used to live in the hated Home of Ocean Sailing down the road. We played first and seemed to go down pretty well, especially considering the other two bands were of a more scene-friendly hardcore stripe, with fashionable haircuts and everything. These were locals Lucky One Dies First and, from Southampton, Our Time Down Here, two of whom would go on to something approaching proper stardom a few years down the line in goth punkers Creeper.

Speaking of Southampton, we headed down there on the Sunday of the Bank Holiday weekend at the end of August. Anna and I made up an advance party by arriving the night before to return to the Dorchester with Sarah, Tom, Paul and Carrie, some of whom we crashed over with. It was brilliant to be back at The Hobbit for the gig, and to be playing for the STE again (or, technically, Almost The STE, as this was one of the occasional all-dayers Rich continued to put on after the retirement of the "official" STE). I would have bet that we were on first, but looking at the line-up I don't recall seeing the first few bands, so maybe we were put on midway up the bill owing to travel considerations? I remember playing a punk show years earlier at The Hobbit with The Gilamonsters (as a trio, without an unavailable Steeny) and feeling like absolute cock rock idiots in comparison to thrashcore champs Parade Of Enemies, but the slightly noisier edge of Gorse ("fucking ugly sounding," according to Podge from Calculon - meant as a compliment, natch) meant we were less out of place and, once again, I felt we did a decent job despite my playing one song in entirely the wrong tuning. Jamie Festo was complimentary afterwards, and as he wasn't the sort of bloke to sugarcoat his opinions, I was well chuffed. We certainly had a fair few friends in attendance (as well as some of the aforementioned chums from the night before, (the other) Kev, Emma and Les all made it down), which was lovely, and we got to see a bunch of other decent bands (though my attentions were divided between the music on offer and catching up with old friends). Screwed Up Flyer were the 2008 incarnation of the longterm musical alliance of Tony Suspect and Mike Fox, playing zero-bullshit hardcore as always. I remember them playing a song with the timeless hook "DIY! Or Die, or die, or die!" and a friend turning to me and complaining, "They're so dogmatic, aren't they?" Southampton thrash attackers Whole In The Head (featuring, amongst others, the aforementioned Festo) did their always-energising thrash attack, while Bristol's Tractor were somewhat kindred spirits of ours with a slow'n'low alt-sludge attack; fittingly, we'd play with Kunal from Tractor's other band Art Of Burning Water years later. Threat Manifesto were a more melodic band from Wales - the flyer (which we weren't on, presumably as a late addition) compares them to Husker Du and Assfactor 4, which sounds about right. Bringing things to an end were, er, Beginning Of The End, whose thunderous crustpunk was simultaneously right up my street and a rather punishing conclusion to festivities.

Either before or after these Soton shenanigans - I can't find the date - was our first Brighton show, supporting Headquarters and Dethscalator at the Freebutt. This was certainly a Tatty Seaside Town show, though I've been unable to uncover much info about it and rather fear that we didn't bring enough people down for promoter Colin's liking as he would never book us again; Headquarters were good though, and now that I think about it I reckon they had also been on the bill when I'd first met James at that Trencher/Hey Colossus show. And Dethscalator were probably the closest the UK had at that point to The Jesus Lizard, no mean feat itself - despite its unfathomable title, I'd recommend their 2013 release Racial Golf Course No Bitches.

The next hometown show was as support to Enablers at the Prince Albert in early September, making it four gigs in as many weeks - a schedule we certainly wouldn't end up continuing. I'd seen this San Franciscan band a while back at the Engine Room, but the Albert proved a much better place to lose oneself in their Slint-esque sound. Also on the bill, which was put together by Buz of Punker Bunker fame, were Monsters Build Mean Robots, a post-rock outfit with origins in Chichester. They'd first come to my attention when then-member Alice contacted me about reviewing them, having been sent my way by her brother, Ghost Of A Thousand frontman Tom. I'd subsequently work with Alice for a bit - and she was also chums with my friends Lisa and Hayley - but, as it turned out she'd actually left MBMR shortly before this show. My friend and workmate Ryan turned up to the venue and met us sat outside. I told him Alice wasn't gonna be playing anymore and he wandered off. Cheers mate! (In fairness, he would see us on many later occasions).

In terms of our performance, this Enablers show was the best of the four we'd played so far - but it was the last for a little while, as James's daughter appeared on the scene and the new dad understandably had other priorities. In the meantime, Slumber Of Artemis was released, and as well as the various reviews mentioned earlier, we scored a short piece in Terrorizer thanks to Jimmy (and even did a little photo session in James's garden!). In the interview, James coined the term "rainy psychedelia" to describe our sound, and I mentioned an ambition to have a real ale named after us, having sampled one called Angel Witch at a beer festival. This never happened, although funnily enough our interviewer is now a member of yer actual Angel Witch.

As far as I can tell, our next outing was in April 2009, when we got to play London for the first time at the Doom To The Tomb all-dayer at legendary Stockwell boozer The Grosvenor. I think our inclusion on this bill shows that we'd been somewhat accepted by the underground doom scene - our name would crop up every now and then when other bands were asked about their new recommendations and so forth, which was lovely. Emmanuelle, who'd been a friend of Anna since uni, and my old school friend Ben both came down for the gig, and I have to admit I spent more time chatting to these guys in the beer garden than watching other bands, though I do remember enjoying Trippy Wicked and Flatlands. Everyone else gradually left throughout the evening, but I stuck around to see Pombagira - however, despite being a big fan of mainman Pete's old band Scalplock, I found this new duo a little underwhelming, or at least unsuitable listening after a heavy bout of day drinking, and ended up staggering back to the tube before they were done.

Ten days later, and thanks again to Buz we played what was a fantastically varied bill, topped off by the biggest band we'd ever support. Local (and very good) thrash metal revivalists Crypsis opened this Engine Room show before we did our thing. Playing after us was excellent American troubadour William Elliott Whitmore, whose acoustic country/blues sound was a marked change from what had preceded it. And headlining were Baroness, at this point with one full-length to their name and absolutely brilliant, though still perhaps a few years off being one of the most critically-acclaimed metal bands of their day.

Sometime around this point, we played a show at The Hare & Hounds/Hydrant. Not only can I not remember which name the Preston Circus boozer was going by at this point, but I'm not sure who else was on the bill - I feel like we played it with local doom buddies Funeral Hag, and also with my friend Tim from Kill Kenada's then-new band (one of many called Clowns?), but surely that would have been two different shows?

Through 2009, we were working on, and recording, a bunch of new songs which would end up as our second album, Bovine Soul. The first of these, and the one which we would get to play live the most, was The Sweet Smell Of Decay, an attempt to incorporate some Godflesh-style industrial influences into our sound. Here's us doing it, I think at the Hare & Hounds show I just mentioned.

Unfortunately, but understandably, Charlie broke the news that he'd be leaving the band, the commute from Didcot for practice finally breaking him. His swan song found us opening another great bill at the Engine Room, with American bands Earthless and Pontiak. My abiding memory of our set is my bass going badly out of tune during closer King Of Tyre... oh well, at least the other bands were decent! Charlie has gone on to be inredibly prolific with various projects since then, both in bands and solo; here's a link to some of the latter: https://charliebutler1.bandcamp.com/

Anyone who's been in this position will know that a new drummer tends to be the hardest position to fill in your band. It's also crucial to find the right one, as a sticksperson who doesn't get where you're coming from can leave your songs sounding all wrong. The guy we auditioned who had apparently played live as a session drummer for the Happy Mondays clearly didn't understand our music, for example.

Chancing my arm somewhat, I asked Ash, who'd played drums for Charlottefield and various others and was certainly one of the best drummers in town. He politely declined but mentioned that his partner Bryony, who'd recently taken up the drums, might be interested; unfortunately, when she heard our tunes she thought they might be a bit too much for her (though this might also have been a polite excuse!).

We were still getting gig offers, though, so James and I decided, for the moment, to carry on with a drum machine, entering what underground rock cognoscenti refer to as our Pet Shop Boys period. Playing to pre-programmed drums didn't suit all of our material, but given the afore-mentioned industrial influences that were creeping in, we figured it was a way to carry on the band while we continued to search for an actual live drummer. 

In The Gilamonsters, I'd been used to Jimmy and Steeny throwing ridiculous rock shapes at the drop of a hat. In Gorse, James and Charlie were tied to a mic stand and drumkit respectively, so I'd tried to make myself move as much as possible onstage, just to make our live show a tad more visual. Playing as a two-piece just made me want to do this more, as well as hollering (without mic) some lines during King Of Tyre, and occasionally dropping some passable banter between songs.

We only played a couple of shows as a duo. One was at The Hobgoblin, alongside fellow Brightonians Jovian, a great doom quartet who'd sort-of grown out of the now-defunct End The Agony, and Londoners Toad (In The Tree) and At A Crawl; the other was another relatively high-profile support slot at The Engine Room, opening up for the mighty Oxbow. Really leaning in to that industrial vibe, I think this might have been the show where James got a projector to show scenes from Japanese body horror classic Tetsuo: The Iron Man against us as we played. (This might also have been a good tactic for distracting the audience from the lack of people onstage).

As it turned out, Ash from Charlottefield ended coming up trumps after all. He pointed us in the direction of Jennie, who'd been playing for From Beneath It Devours, and was up for joining Gorse. Where Charlie had been a straightforward powerhouse on the drums, Jennie had a subtler feel, somewhat informed by jazz and psychedelia, and the music we would go on to make with her would take on a more progressive bent. It was certainly an advantage having all three members based in Sussex, and Jennie's serious-minded attitude to proceedings gave myself and James a kick up the arse.

Jennie joined early in 2010, and we played our first show in March - although I've been unable to figure out where or who with. We did, however, return to The Hobgoblin, with help once again from Buz, to put on a show with local grungers Orchid Trip and Gerda Blank, from New Zealand of all places. The latter were a duo playing garage rock, and featured Stu, who'd played with James many years before in turn-of-the-millennium UK emo types Yeast. James and I would cross paths with Stu again, although not in Gorse.

 

Shortly after this, we headed back up to London to play the Loud Howls weekender at The Gaff on Holloway Road. It was fun to do another show in the capital, and I remember digging Astrohenge and Berserkovitz, who played before us. Fellow Brightonians Dopefight and Hampshire sluggers Witchsorrow were also top notch. Somebody outside the venue referred to our sound as "indie sludge", which probably wasn't intended as a compliment but kinda summed up the way we could fall between stools; put us on with indie or punk bands and we'd sound very metal indeed, but on an all-doom bill we'd often be the subtlest combo in the house.

In May, we played a punk rock show at The Cowley with excellent Finnish band Unkind, who were stylistically somewhere between Neurosis and Tragedy, and at some point were signed to top metal label Relapse; I can't find the flyer so can't be sure who else played, though it might have been Dutch hardcore types Gascoigne. Less than a week later, we were back at it at The Albert on something of a local doom showcase with Dopefight and Funeral Hag; this was probably the point at which we felt most part of a scene, and Brighton felt like fertile ground for doom bands at this point in its often metal-resistant history.

Coming out after Charlie had left, Bovine Soul ended up being the least-promoted release in our history; I can't find it online to link here, and aside from The Sweet Smell Of Decay few of its tunes hung around in our set for long. In June, not long after my wedding and honeymoon, I Made This, the label who'd put it out, arranged a very belated launch gig for the album. It was a bit of a rum do, as we now had a new line-up and were writing fresh material quite different to that record. We tried to get some bigger bands to play; at one point, Hey Colossus were attached but ended up pulling out, ditto local doom/noise types Sloath, and in the end it was just us and a solo support slot from Oli Irongiant, then of Jovian and later of a slew of siginificant bands like Sea Bastard, Dead Witches and Grave Lines, playing to a relatively sparse crowd upstairs at The Hydrant. I do remember my friend Violet telling me it was cool to see me playing bass wearing my wedding ring.

Around a month later, we were back at The Cowley, playing what might have been the first gig from local d-beat supergroup Blod Drunk, alongside thrashing German punk headliners Family Man. For me, at least, it feels like these DIY punk shows were somewhat the natural habitat of our band. Certainly moreso than in August, when we opened up for local tech-metal types Lithurgy (clearly, not to be confused with NYC art-metal types Liturgy). The show was at the Latest Music Bar, at this point more commonly used for folksy acoustic entertainment. While we played, the landlady came down from the ground-floor bar, stormed onstage and turned my amp all the way down because the bass was apparently too loud. We tried to negotiate, but she maintained that the whole gig would be pulled if I turned it back up. Aware that there were three other bands still to play, the rest of the set was played with totally inaudible bass, while I took my anger out on throwing myself and my bass around the place - it didn't really matter if I was hitting any of the right notes, after all... Dopefight and Arteriosus managed to play without any further interruption, but one or both went so far over their set times that Lithurgy ended up with about ten minutes to play. I couldn't help feeling sorry for them, as this was their warm-up show for an appearance at cult metal festival Bloodstock.

We played the Cowley again in October, when my friend Ben, who would go on to put out our next album, asked us to play a show alongside the bands Stick In A Pot and The Causeway Occupation. I think this might have been the time we had to put the PA together ourselves. More psychedelic experiences were to be had a week later, when we opened for The Notorious Hi-Fi Killers and Black Bombain at The Hope & Ruin. And then, in November, we headed to Hastings for the first and only time to play a show with the Chicago band Cave. In another example of the kind of mishaps we seemed to invite at this point, we had to halt our set temporarily as James had parked his car in front of the pub's chef, and the latter had finished his shift and needed to get out...

So, that was 2010, and frankly I'm worn out just contemplating the number of gigs we played that year. We spent much of 2011 working on what would become Old Certainties - our third record, though the first one James considers an album as opposed to an EP. There were a couple of shows in the early part of the year, at The Green Door Store and The Hope & Ruin, the latter again put on by Ben. We made it back to London in June to play in Deptford at the invitation of Bloody Kev out of... well, out of bloody loads of bands. It was a decent bill, with Glaswegian hardcore band Clocked Out and Swedish sludgers Pyramido; our friend Blue came up with us and Jimmy showed up too, so it was a fun summer evening in SE8. And in September we were back at The Cowley, playing with Anacondas, a great power trio featuring the Hunter brothers out of Johnny Truant, who we'd become mates with when practicing in adjacent rooms at Brighton Electric. 

 https://gorse2.bandcamp.com/album/old-certainties

 

Old Certainties finally came out in October, and while the finished CDs didn't arrive in time for the album launch show that Ben put on for us at The Hope & Ruin, the show itself was one of the best that we played. We were proud of Old Certainties as a piece of work, and it felt like a real DIY effort with help from our friends in terms of putting it out, taking the back cover photo, giving us a place to record (the studio which Jennie's housemate Matt had built in their basement, and which became our base for the rest of the band's existence), etc. I think this was probably the strongest set of tunes we released, too; storming opener Stallions At The Cross, heads-down groover Ramifications and doom epic The Custom Of The Sea were particular highlights, and as a whole I think we managed to retain the noise and weirdness of our earlier incarnation while incorporating a more prog approach and even - if I may be so bold - the occasional moment of subtlety. Pleasingly, we'd end up getting a bunch of decent reviews again, including another KKKK from Kerrang!. At the launch show, we decided to play the album in full, with phone footage of the view from the window of a train journey from London to Brighton projected behind us. There was a decent turnout, and it felt like we'd really achieved something. Metal Ben said he could tell when we were getting near the end of the set/album as he recognised Preston Park Station appear on the screen!

 

A couple of weeks later, we got to play one of the Metal nights that Oli Irongiant was putting on at The Green Door Store every Monday. It might not surprise you to learn that these were called Metal Mondays. Oli really was a hugely important component of the Brighton metal scene at this point, putting on shows, supporting local bands and being an all-round good egg. I think the line-up for this one was us, ace noise rockers Broker and Bear, along with Oli and Pat spinning classick metal wax, and I also remember giving a shout out to Oli's then-new band Sea Bastard, who were playing the following week.

Oli would put on our next gig too, in February 2012 with Eagleburner and Crypsis at the Albert. Once again, though, this year ended up being more about working on new material rather than playing shows. We did what must have been another Metal Monday at the Green Door Store with Stone Circle in June, returned to The Hope with Broker in September, and played Worthing in November alongside Kraken Mare and a band called Sea Weed (clearly, not to be confused with US post-hardcore types Seaweed). I had it in my head this was at the Vintner's Parrot, but maybe we'd played there with Kraken Mare at some point before? The flyer says it was at Bar42, and if so it would have been our first time in the excellent seaside venue, which at the time of writing has sadly just closed its doors for the last time.

We kicked off 2013 by playing with Art Of Burning Water and DKH at the Albert halfway through January. DKH were good lads from Worthing playing hardcore-inflected sludge, while AOBW were scene stalwarts at this point, having been active since the start of the century; we'd already played with Kunal, also the impressario behind the ace Super-Fi label, when he played Southampton with his other band Tractor.

Looking at our woeful lack of gigs through the rest of 2013, this retrospectively feels like the start of the slow fade-out of the band, though we did release what would be our final full-length, Twisting Nature, in May. I know I'm biased, but it was another great album, albeit with a more sombre tone and the prog and post-metal elements dialled up even further. Also, Jennie (whose talents were considerably varied) was responsible for some lovely handmade CD sleeves. No album release show this time, just a low-key show at The Druids just down the road from my flat, with (I think) MIGHT and Grasshopper. We also made it all the way to the rock'n'roll mecca of Redhill in September to play a metal show in a small room off a large but fairly empty pool hall. It was an odd evening, but our friends Guy, Ben and (I think) Adam made it over to see us. Annoyingly, having spent all year trying and failing to get support slots with bigger bands, we managed to secure a show with with American psych-doomsters Jex Thoth in November, only to have to cancel due to James having an op, and our discovery that part of the wall and ceiling in our flat was falling down. 

https://gorse2.bandcamp.com/album/twisting-nature 

 

King Goat were the other local support (who did actually play the show), and we played with them and Anacondas in February 2014 at Sticky Mike's. The rest of 2014 was mainly about playing the Green Door Store. First there was an opening spot there in July for my friend Tommy's band The Rocket Dolls. This lot did a pretty accurate recreation of that point in the 90s when the hair metal bands, sensing imminent extinction, started adding a little grunge and classic rock to their sound. Also on the bill were Graces Collide and Core of iO, playing melodic hard rock and metal-ish prog respectively; I guess we were kind of the odd ones out, but I think we still went down OK. Then in October, we played at a great all-dayer in aid of ace marine conservation group Sea Shepherd. This was part of an ambitious event dubbed Warrior Weekend and put together by Magnum Opus Tattoo shop. Following a comedy night (yeah, well done, no, we didn't play that one) and a funk/soul event, the Sunday featured a great bunch of bands, punctuated by a talk about the work done by Sea Shepherd courtesy of local boy and Architects frontman Sam Carter. I think I only got there in time for that, meaning I missed sets by Dooman Empire (one of Jennie's other bands, with the similarly-busy Oli and his bestie Phil Kyle, also founder of Magnum Opus) and ex-Placebo type Steve Forrest, amongst others. The rest of the line-up was all gold, though: Crypsis, Milton keynes crust metal types Crossburner, Anacondas and Oli's then-most recent band War Wolf all played (and slayed). We didn't do too badly ourselves, and some fantastic photos were taken by Kan Lailey, including one which, nearly nine years on, remains my Facebook profile picture.

 

As mentioned way back in the first paragraph, I had one of those round number birthdays in November, and had long harboured a desire to get the old band back together to mark the occasion - the old band in this instance being The Gilamonsters. After getting Jimmy, Steeny and Chris on board, I booked The Green Door Store and we had practices in London and Winchester. I thought it would be cool for my newer friends to see my old band - and for my older friends to see my new one, so I decided to pull a double shift and have Gorse open the show. Inbetween were old muckers You're Smiling Now... But We'll All Turn Into Demons, who as well as being great mates who'd played at the last Gilas gig were a band I considered to be one of the best in the country, an opinion I've seen no reason to revise since. 

I was totally chuffed with the turnout and had a splendid night. Not entirely unpredictably, it was hard to socialise fully with everyone as I had two sets to play (and I wanted to watch the Demons), so I still feel the need to apologise to anyone who felt slighted by my lack of attention - and to thank everyone who bought me shots. And Tom, who helpfully pointed out when, perhaps as a result of these shots, I hadn't noticed that my guitar lead had been pulled out. It was great to revisit the Gilas' best material, plus our cover of Prowler by Iron Maiden, for the first time in eight years. Terrifyingly, it's now been another eight years since that night. As it stands, that remains the final Gilamonsters performance, and there wouldn't be many more from Gorse, either...

That said, the very next month we did get to play at Drill, a multi-venue festival spread across brighton for four days in December and curated by seminal post-punkers Wire. Technically, therefore, we were on the same bill as the likes of Swans, Savages and These New Puritans... although we were first on at one of the smallest venues on the Thursday, and our inclusion was a result of my friend Mel (one of those who'd bought me a shot at my birthday gig, incidentally) working for promoters One Inch Badge rather than at the personal behest of Wire. As we were into the late night opening time of year at work, I played this set on an extended "lunch" break, which was certainly a novelty. Theoretically, we had passes to go to the rest of the fest, but (again) due to work, all me and James made it to was Swans; we did then try and get to see The Wedding Present, but underestimated how long it would take to walk from The Old Market to The Haunt and only caught the last five minutes. In the second such coincidence in this chapter, my friend Mel is now a member of The Wedding Present.

We continued to work on and record new songs as 2014 turned into 2015, and our next live engagement wasn't until April, when we played for the first and only time in Chichester at a weird bar called La Havana, which appeared to be essentially a tunnel. It being Chichester on a Sunday, the turnout wasn't great, and the resulting acoustics made everything super-loud and horrible - although maybe that was just us and our new friends Burning House, a noisy shoegaze band from Hampshire. The bar owner had an argument with the promoter (James's brother), who then scarpered before the end. Not, it would be fair to say, our best gig - although it was cool to meet the Burning House lads, one of whom knew Steeny from Winchester, and who we'd be seeing again before too long. 

https://gorse2.bandcamp.com/ 

 

The last Gorse music was unleashed to the world in August, in the shape of our Vulcanised EP. It was perhaps a sign that, where before we could be quite prolific, this time we'd only concocted four new tunes in a couple of years (though the total running time wasn't far short of half an hour). My favourite of the four was probably lengthy closer Tower Of Angels, wchih in a way reminded me of King Of Tyre from way back on Slumber Of Artemis. We played our next show the following month, at The Hope & Ruin on a night put on by a couple of dudes who wanted to promote rock bands with female members. Despite mixed feelings about the tokenistic element of this endeavour, we decided to go for it and ended up playing with Vodun, a London band playing what could loosely be described as Afrodoom. Their drummer, Zel, had been in blazing punk band Pettybone, who'd been favourites of mine for a while, and singer Chantal had been a member of outsider groups like Chrome Hoof and Do Me Bad Things. She had a great voice - Lisa Kekaula and Skin came to mind as comparisons - but despite the band clearly being talented, and even doing something slightly different to the norm, I couldn't quite get into them. The evening ended on a sour note when the promoters claimed not to have money to pay us even a taxi fare, when they had clearly had enough money to get shitfaced through the evening. Promoting rock bands with female members, just not getting them and their drumkit home afterwards.

By this point, with gig offers drying up and inspiration dwindling, we fell out of the habit of rehearsing and the writing appeared to be on the wall. Jennie was, as ever, doing plenty of other music, and James and his partner Marianne had started a metalgaze band with our friend Bill called Black Shoals. 

 https://blackshoals.bandcamp.com/

We did resume activity to play a show in June 2016 at Bar52 in Worthing with Pasacagoula and Burning House, and it was a good time. Pascagoula featured ex-members of a bunch of great bands including Trencher, Charlottefield, The Plague Sermon, etc and played brilliant, lurching noise rock. They're still going now, as are Burning House; James and I would cross paths with the latter's drummer Ash again, although not in Gorse.

So it turned out that would be the last time we played a show. We never had a conversation about splitting up, we just  - and this may sound familiar - stopped bothering to book practices. By this point, Anna and I lived a street away from James and Marianne, so we'd still see each other (and feed each others' cats when the others went on holiday). Jennie I'd see less of, but occasionally we'd bump into each other at shows. Her band CV has continued to grow, with current outlets Sobek (also featuring Stu from Anacondas) and Gaffa Bandana both highly recommended. 

 https://www.facebook.com/So3ek

https://humanworth.bandcamp.com/album/fraught-in-waves 

https://dormansland.bandcamp.com/album/dormansland

Black Shoals ended up ceasing activities, but James did a solo release under the name Dormansland - which would ultimately morph into our next band together. Guess you'll be reading about that in another eight years or so...

I'm very proud of what we achieved with Gorse: five releases of varying lengths, all featuring music that I loved and enjoyed having played a part in. Loads of gigs, playing with a bunch of great bands, whether that was internationally renowned types like Baroness, Oxbow and Enablers or pretty much every decent local metal band of the era. And we did it all ourselves, or with help from friends and the DIY scene. It's a shame we never did an actual tour, as I would have liked to have gone further afield, or even gone back to some of the places we only played once. But for eight years, I was in a band that probably came closest to achieving what I wanted from the whole shebang, and if our victories were small, I'd like to think that our creative successes were considerable.

* I Like A Pasty, Do You? by (another) Gorse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0A5zbUlk9I

Thanks to all the bands we played with, and everyone who put us on or put out one of our albums, lent us gear, came to our shows, took photos of us, bought a CD, did the door at one of our gigs, wrote a review, said nice things about us or played us on a radio show. Special thanks to Ben Wait, who probably did at least half of these things.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer Part 4: We're Family

 

The fifth season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer has a ruddy good go at jumping the shark not once, but twice, in its opening episode. Buffy Vs Dracula - for that is its name - sounds like a joke somebody made in a writers' room that got out of hand. What's next? Scooby Doo turning up?

In reality, this is a fun opener, free of the getting-over-the-events-of-last-season angst that is a more typical starting point for each year of the show. The Dracula mythos is referenced in a fun way, with Xander effectively becoming Renfield and Giles waylaid by sexy female vamps. While clearly powerful and charismatic, Dracula's mystique is somewhat undercut by Spike ("Poncy bugger owes me eleven pounds"), and although a decision was clearly made that Buffy couldn't be allowed to kill Dracula, she manages to emerge victorious as the "poncy bugger" slips away as mist.

 

In some ways, though, the whole Drac thing is almost a distraction, softening up the viewer for the episode's closing reveal as Buffy finds a young girl going through her things. There's a moment - perhaps two beats - where she's visibly confused about what's going on. And then Joyce pipes up from outside the room, asking Buffy to take "her sister" to the movies with her. And both girls turn to the door and, as one, complain "Mom!"

 

So, on the face of it, the show's creators have now introduced a never-before-mentioned sister - surely the most annoying way any show can introduce a character, by simply pretending that they'd been there all along. But, of course, this is Buffy. From the next episode, there are hints that new sister Dawn isn't all she seems, though it isn't imediately clear whether or not there's something malevolent about her. She is bloody annoying, though. With the bulk of the core characters presumably now approaching their twenties, there's something slightly retrogressive about focusing once more on a young teen, and I'm not sure Dawn is written all that sympathetically, whiny neediness often her primary setting.

It's a little while before we get to anything resembling an answer to Dawn's identity, but there are small developments for the other key cast members as we go along: Giles takes over the Magic Box shop, finally providing a base as a replacement location for the long-destroyed school library; Xander and Anya move in together at the end of entertaining double Xander episode The Replacement; Anya discovers capitalism from a board game; Joyce and Riley have health issues; Spike has a sexy dream about Buffy.

Any long-running show, certainly one which opts to tell a different story with each season, faces a problem in terms of escalation. If each new season doesn't present a knottier problem, a greater challenge or a more powerful threat, it can seem like the series is running out of steam. It's part of the reason why soap operas often seem to lose touch with the reality they're supposed to reflect, infesting neighbourhoods with ever-increasing numbers of old-school gangsters or serial killers, subjecting suburban streets or rural communities to a catalogue of explosions, fires or vehicular disasters - when, at heart, these shows are at their strongest when focusing more on well-drawn characters, humour and situations which feel real and relatable.

If we look at the villains Buffy has faced in the last two seasons (after it was decided that, contrary to the show's name, they'd run out of road if Buffy was always fighting vampires), it's clear that The Mayor and Faith worked because they were well-written, distinctive characters, and that Maggie Walsh and Adam didn't, and weren't. Adam represented an escalation in power, his composite nature providing a real challenge, but the strange mixture of single-mindedness and philosophical curiosity made for a rather flat Big Bad. And as for that costume...

From the first time that Buffy runs into Glory (also known as Glorificus or, simply, The Beast) it's clear that she is way more powerful than anything we've encountered before. When an episode finishes with head Watcher Quentin Travers revealing that she is, in fact, a god, it's a truly chilling moment. 

 

Crucially, though, she's also a compelling character: her confrontations with Buffy are full of the kind of back-and-forth banter that would have been impossible with dry old stick Adam, and she's clearly insane, vain, and easily distracted. All of these things could be seen as weaknesses that make her at least slightly beatable, though her main Achilles heel is that she spends most of her time trapped in the body of Ben, a buff medic who is, coincidentally, looking after Joyce in hospital. This situation is part of an impressively detailed mythos that is gradually revealed, involving rival hell gods, monks, comedy minions and medieval knights. Oh, and a mystical energy key which has been disguised as a human and sent to Buffy for protection, lest Glory find it and use it to, I dunno, break down the walls between dimensions and unleash Hell on earth, or something. Somebody was having a lot of fun with this. 

It's a bit late to warn about SPOILERS, but I suspect that even if you've never seen this series, you've probably just worked out where Dawn came from.

So, we've got a suitably cataclysmic threat quite unlike anything Buffy has faced before, but this season also excels in its more character-driven moments. An early-ish example is the episode Family, where Tara's dad, brother and cousin turn up. It turns out that the womenfolk in the Maclay family are apparently all half-demon, and that this side is due to emerge from her imminent 20th birthday (this, it turns out, is absolute bullshit designed to maintain patriarchal dominance). This is set against a backdrop of Tara feeling somewhat excluded from the rest of the Scooby Gang, Willow aside, and with Buffy, Xander and Giles struggling to think what to get her for her birthday, as they don't really know her that well. But it all leads to a stand-off in the Magic Box, where Buffy and Dawn (and, quickly, everyone except Spike) refuse to let the Maclays take Tara. The power in this scene doesn't come from our knowledge that, far from being the "little girl" that Mr Maclay sees, Buffy could overpower him in an instant; it's her declaration, pertaining to Tara but really everyone on their side: "We're family."

Yep. Another tingle moment.

 

But actual Summers family business soon takes precedence. Buffy, Joyce and Dawn herself have to come to terms with the revelations about the latter's identity; thanks to the warping of reality and its existential retcon, they all still feel like sisters, daughters, a mother, but must deal both with the knowledge that it isn't real, and that Dawn is in huge danger of discovery by Glory, who has yet to learn the truth. On top of all this, Joyce is suffering with a brain tumour, although she has successful surgery. Hell, she's even dating again soon, for the first time since back in Season 2, when she hooked up with a mysogynistic robot with anger management issues.

And then comes the most powerful episode of the whole damn show, and certainly one of the best in the whole of TV history.

It actually starts with the end of the preceding episode, when Buffy returns home. We see, before she does, that Joyce is lying on the couch. But only when Buffy approaches, do we see along with her the strangeness of the way her mother is lying, the lifeless stare of her eyes. As Buffy says "Mom?... Mom?... Mommy?", partway between question and prayer, the heartbreaking truth dawns on both her and us. 

 

Early in The Body, there are four or five minutes, including a lengthy one-shot sequence, focused exclusively on Buffy's immediate reaction. As she calls 911 and tries to resuscitate her mother, Sarah Michelle Gellar does a fantastic job of stripping away all of Buffy's superheroic qualities to reveal a frightened young woman struggling to come to terms with one of the most traumatic experiences that could happen to anyone. She's not The Slayer at this point, but a shellshocked Buffy Summers, and this isn't a situation that her powers can put right. 

As an aside, it was absolutely the right decision to have Joyce's death be revealed as natural. With Glory having made specific threats against Buffy's loved ones, it would have been the easiest thing in the world to have her murder Joyce, but this episode would be much less powerful if it was intended just to show how evil Glory was. As a study of the death of a loved one, The Body would be diminished by a Buffy vs Glory face-off. Crucially, you can't seek revenge against an aneurysm.

While Gellar's performance is absolutely central, the reactions of those around her do much to enhance the emotional gut-punch of this episode. Willow's grief being channelled into stressing about what to wear to the hospital (and Tara comforting her), or Xander blaming the doctors who'd previously treated Joyce and punching a wall: these relatable reactions radiate believability from both actors and writers. And while Anya's reaction is, in part, based on her thousand-year old ex-vengeance demon not understanding how humans work thing, it still works as an expression of the disbelief that actual people feel in real life: " I don't understand how this all happens. How we go through this. I knew her, and then she's— there's just a body, and I don't understand why she just can't get back in it and not be dead... anymore! It's stupid! It's mortal and stupid! And... and Xander's crying and not talking, and... and I was having fruit punch, and I thought, well, Joyce will never have any more fruit punch, ever, and she'll never have eggs, or yawn, or brush her hair, not ever, and no one will explain to me why!"

No, you're crying. 

The emotional detail of The Body works in juxtaposition with a feel that's different to other episodes; there's a stillness and calm about it, complete with an almost eerie absence of incidental music and focus on ambient sound. While an understanding of the characters might be essential to feel the absolute rawness of this episode, I certainly feel that someone who'd never seen Buffy The Vampire Slayer could watch it and appreciate how special these 44 minutes are. Although they might be baffled by the slightly shoehorned-in vampire-in-the-morgue sequence.

Aside from this masterpiece, the rest of the season's final stretch accelerates towards its endpoint, while also foreshadowing or setting up future events. Even the episode immediately prior to The Body, the seemingly throwaway I Was Made To Love You, introduces the odious Warren Mears and concludes with Spike commissioning a Buffy robot from him (it doesn't pay to think too closely about its original purpose, though - in yet another example of Buffy's doppelganger obsession, it will play an important part in the season's conclusion). Spike does at least go on to redeem himself (for now) by refusing to reveal The Key's identity to Glory under torture.

In terms of the old foreshadowing: Dawn and Spike (evidently never having read the story The Monkey's Paw) try to resurrect Joyce with magic, while later Tara is driven insane by Glory, prompting Willow to go full Dark Magic and seek revenge, in a scene which reveals how powerful a witch she has become. The seeds of the sixth season are pretty much laid right there.

 

 When a brain-damaged Tara unwittingly reveals Dawn's identity to Glory, the Scooby Gang end up fleeing Sunnydale in a mobile home, apparently ignorant that whenever they leave town the shit hits the fan. Sure enough, before too long they've been attacked by those medieval knights, Giles has been impaled by a spear and there's a siege at an abandoned gas station. Who to contact to save Giles's life? What about that buff medic, Ben?

Whoops.

So, obviously Glory reasserts control of their shared meatshell and scarpers with Dawn, leading to a pretty cataclysmic finale as the Scoobs take on Glory and her minions to prevent Dawn being sacrificed and her blood being used to ritually bring about Sunnydale's latest apocalypse. The fight scene is decent, as the gang use the Buffybot, a magical orb, a troll's hammer (don't ask) and, er, a wrecking ball to subdue their enemy. With a dazed Ben once again in the house, Buffy spares his life - only for Giles, unbeknownst to the others, to suffocate him in order to permanently remove the threat of Glory's return, fulfilling an earlier statement by Mad Tara that he was "a killer". 

That's not it, though. Dawn's still at the top of a tower (that apparently nobody in Sunnydale noticed being built) and demonic minor character Doc is still planning on going ahead with the ritual. Some shallow cuts are all that's required to open the inter-dimensional portal, and apparently the only way to close it is... look, it all gets a bit blurry in theory here, but Dawn can sacrifice herself to close it, but as they're sort-of sisters, Buffy's blood is apparently near enough, so the latter hurls herself into some CGI and averts the crisis. By, er, dying. 

 

The season ends with Buffy's gravestone, complete with epitaph 'She Saved The World. A Lot.'

 

Next time: they probably should have left it there.