Dennis Potter's Lipstick on Your Collar (1993)

Lipstick on Your Collar (1993)

Dir. Renny Rye | 6 episodes, approx 60 mins each.

You've maybe already guessed by the cover art (pictured right) that Lipstick is set in the 1950s, which means music plays an important role.

Potter has a peculiar knack for making existing music and lyrics fit his narrative in unusual ways. He plays with them, opens them up and in doing so changes the intent in an often playfully ironic way. It's so successful that in the future when I hear many of the tracks used in the production I'll be smiling while thinking of the scenes they're attached to.

Of all the Potter TV Plays/Miniseries I've reviewed so far, Lipstick is my favourite for a number of reasons, the first of which is mentioned above.

There's also the top-class characterisation to consider, and the way some of the principals drift into their own fantasy realm when life bores or distresses them. In a few of the author's other works the fiction spills over into the reality, but here the reality becomes a part of the fiction; boring old farts who would rather be dead than caught dancing in their underwear are launched into spotlights to spin and twirl their stuffy stuff in an often ridiculous but hilarious manner.

The Ballad of Halo Jones (2013)

The Ballad of Halo Jones (2013)

Author: Alan Moore | Illustrator: Ian Gibson | Page Count: 208

"I go out and buy a gun, second-hand. I tell myself it’s for self-defence, but that’s not true. It’s because I’m bored. […] I take the gun and go sit by the window."

Halo Jones is an average eighteen-year-old. She likes clothes, shopping and parties. Halo likes to live. The problem is that living in the year 4949 isn't easy, especially in the Hoop, a cramped and dangerous ghetto created to house the unemployed. People of the Hoop have never even seen a tree.

Halo wants to escape, to see the outside. Quite often when someone experiences those kinds of feelings it’s themselves they’re trying to escape from, but that’s just not possible, is it?

The Ballad is split over three Books separated by time and degrees of depth and poignancy. Without having an insight into Moore’s mind I can only guess at the pitch he gave to the comic’s publishers, and his reasoning for structuring the three parts like he did. Whatever it was, I'm glad they fell for it.

The Misanthrope (2007)

The Misanthrope (2007)

Dir. Ted Skjellum

Ted Skjellum is best known as Nocturno Culto, vocalist and lead guitarist of the band Darkthrone. His first release as a filmmaker is something that's part video diary and part documentary. It shows via imagery, without narration, just what it is about the architecture and environment of Norway that was instrumental in creating an atmosphere for Black Metal to emerge and subsequently thrive in.

It's honest, hypnotic, insightful and occasionally inspired. At heart it captures the cold, ancient aspect of the beauty of nature that is, for me at least, what the music is really all about.

You should know within the first few minutes if it's something you can engage with or if it'll leave you as cold as a Norwegian graveyard.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (2008-09)

The Sarah Connor Chronicles: Season 1 (2008)

9 episodes, approx 44 minutes each.

I'm not a Terminator fanatic. I enjoyed the first film, thought the second was okay, and turned off the third halfway through the first time I tried to watch it. I did eventually make it to the end of T3 (on a second pained attempt), but I didn't bother with the fourth film at all. So it's fair to say that I wasn't expecting much from The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

It takes place after events in Terminator 2 (1991), so it's essential to have watched it. It also follows a similar template: the machines are hunting the teenage John Connor, so a modified one is sent back from the future to protect him. The biggest difference is in the perspective. In the films the protagonists were mostly on the run. In the series they're no longer running. They're taking the fight to Skynet. That new dynamic makes it a million times more interesting to me than the films ever were.

Judge Anderson: The PSI Files: Volume 04 (2014)

Judge Anderson: The PSI Files: Volume 04 (2014)

Author: Alan Grant  |  Illustrators: Steve Sampson / Arthur Ranson  |  Page Count: 304

'Fear is for scaredy cats. I say it to myself ten times. But I sleep with the light on.'

Anything goes (usually illegally) in Mega-City One, but esoteric concerns have always been better suited to Judge Anderson's corner than that of the typical street judges. There's a lot of that kind of thing in Volume 4 and she's at the centre of it.

The first part finishes Steve Sampson's excellent run on art duties. He returns the reins to series regular Arthur Ranson for a multi-part epic that manages to be set present day (for the Meg) and simultaneously be tied into an event that happened prior Necropolis. It could've been a mess but it isn't, it works and it references a lot of history while doing so. It's also bloody and gruesome in places.

Dennis Potter's Visitors (1987)

Dennis Potter's Visitors (1987)

Dir. Piers Haggard

One of only two standalone TV Plays written by Potter for the BBC's Screen Two programme (see NOTE at bottom of page for additional info on Screen Two). Visitors was an adaptation by Potter of his own stage play, titled Sufficient Carbohydrate. There are reportedly a number of changes, such as the setting having been moved from an island of Greece to a place in Italy.

The story revolves around two couples, one of which has a son in his late teens. The couples are Jack and Elizabeth Barker (John Standing, Nicola Pagett) from Britain, and Eddie and Lucy Vosper (Michael Brandon, Glynis Barber) from the United States. It's the US couple who have a son, Clayton Vosper (Robert McNaughton). Eddie is Clayton's father, Lucy is his stepmother.

3D Dot Game Heroes (2009)

3D Dot Game Heroes (2009)

Genre: Action / Adventure / RPG  |  Players: One  |  Developer: Silicon Studio

If I say the words: sword, shield, life meter (red), magic meter (green), bomb bag, bottles, boomerang, magic boots, maze-like puzzles, side quests and fairy companion then there's a high probability that you're going to think of The Legend of Zelda, right? I would too, but now you can add 3D Dot to the list. It has a stupid title, I know, and it would be natural to assume before playing it that the blatant theft makes it deserving of derision, but the opposite is true, it deserves much praise. It takes the classic, honed to perfection, 8-bit LoZ 2D aesthetic and translates it into a homage-filled 3D adventure for PlayStation 3 owners.

I don't mean the LoZ: Ocarina of Time (1998) kind of 3D. It keeps the angled, overhead perspective of an older LoZ title and instead of turning pixels into regular polygons it lovingly builds everything from blocks, keeping it old-school even while it utilises modern tech, imbuing everything with an almost tilt-shift photography vibe (for the technically minded, it uses voxels).