Life’s Too Short: Warwick Davis is the Next Big Thing

“My wife used to work here, but she’s currently going through a divorce situation… With me… so I’ll be needing a new secretary.”

It’s probably fair to say that Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant have produced groundbreaking comedy; whether or not you like their particular brand of funny, you can’t deny they’ve changed things. The Office resonated, and the effects are still being felt with numerous copycats popping up like mushrooms, the horrible Horn and Cordon show is just one example, and the American adaptation has been running for eight seasons, as US sitcoms rarely settle for just two.
Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant on the other hand, know when to move on, Extras was a hugely refreshing sitcom that looked at the lives of TV and film extras, with Ricky Gervais in the lead role of Andy Millman, a decidedly different character to The Office’s David Brent.

Andy Millman felt like a real person, and while he had all the usual self-absorbed insecurities and egotism (a common theme in Gervais’ work) he was also the hero you could identify with. Extras is perhaps best known for its cameos, a long list of famous celebrities playing grotesque caricatures of themselves. Indeed, the cameos provided most of the comedy in the series, particularly when such prodigious actors like Ian McKellen and Patrick Stuart delivered their dialogue with such stoic and earnest diligence.

Gorilla Film Magazine’s particular favourite Gervais/Merchant comedy is An Idiot Abroad, which isn’t actually a sitcom, but a travel documentary featuring the phenomenon Karl Pilkington, star of the wonderful Ricky Gervais podcasts. In this series, Pilkington must visit the seven wonders of the world, while Gervais and Merchant think up new ways to make the trip as painful and humiliating as possible, everything that Pilkington says and does is genuine, and mind-blowingly hilarious.

The latest sitcom from Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant is Life’s Too Short, and in many ways it’s a combination of everything they’ve done before; it’s a faux documentary like The Office, the plot is centered around the world of celebrities, like Extras, and Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant take back seat roles, sitting at a desk like mocking lords, just like An Idiot Abroad.

The star of Life’s Too Short is Warwick Davis, who plays a twisted, egotistical version of himself, he allows a documentary crew to film him 24/7 in the hopes that it will give him the exposure he needs to boost his profile. The premise is that Warwick Davis is actually a lot less successful than he would have us believe, in fact his career is going downhill, his wife is divorcing him and he has a massive tax bill to pay. Think I’m Alan Partridge, but with a dwarf, and you’re on the right lines.

Life’s too Short is certainly not as warm as Gervais and Merchant’s other comedies, Warwick Davis’ character isn’t exactly likable, although he is charming and incredibly funny. Of course, it’s difficult to judge after just one episode, and The Office and Extras both needed a little time to grow on you, so perhaps Life’s Too Short will soften up in later episodes. One thing is for certain; the show is incredibly funny, predominately because of Warwick Davis’ performance, although as usual the celebrity cameo will get the most laughs. But in Davis, Gervais and Merchant have struck comedy gold, his charisma and charm only make the comedy that much more painful when he inevitably fails.

He is quite a villainous character as well, spouting out ignorant nonsense, making general misogynistic and homophobic remarks and comparing himself to Martin Luther King. Warwick Davis is an egotistical, backstabbing little schemer, he even runs a talent agency, supposedly hiring out other dwarfs, but keeping the best roles for himself. There’s been some so called ‘controversy’ over the assumption that Life’s Too Short mocks dwarfism, but that’s such a non-issue it’s barely worth talking about. Warwick Davis pokes fun at himself, and other people’s perception of him, and a big part of that is the fact that he’s three foot six.

Life’s Too Short could easily be just a continuation of Extras, but Warwick Davis, who actually contributed a lot of the content for the show, brings something new to the table. He’s a fantastic screen presence, bringing a real depth to his comic performance that seemed to come out of nowhere.  Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s writing is as brilliant as ever, but it’s Warwick Davis’ performance that elevates the show from being more of the same, into something outstanding.

You can watch Life’s too Short now on BBC iplayer by clicking on this link. 

Doctor Who Season Six’s Conclusion Leaves Some Intriguing Possibilities

Season six of everybody’s favourite time traveling humanoid Doctor has come to an end, and the conclusion to Steven Moffat’s timey wimey adventure was refreshingly easy to understand. If you’ve been able to follow the sometimes head scratching journey of Matt Smith’s Doctor, his young companion and step mother, her centurion husband and the Doctor’s future wife and eventual killer, then The Wedding of River Song would have been a fairly straight forward viewing. For the uninitiated, however, it probably made about as much sense as a talking ham sandwich.

It’s nice to know that everything has been neatly tied up, all the annoying questions have been answered and any remaining are too far away and general to be concerned with at present. Most intriguingly of all, Doctor Who has managed to kind of reboot itself, without having to kill anybody off, by putting the Doctor back in the shadows and making the universe believe he’s dead. Hopefully this means that the grander, often less interesting  epic space adventures will be taking a back seat, and we’ll get to see more of Matt Smith going incognito.

While Doctor Who is clearly a beloved stable of the BBC, and jolly good fun for all the family, it does suffer from an excessive kookiness and noticeably B-grade plots, characters and sets. The show is at it’s best when not indulging in delusions of grandeur, and actually Matt Smith’s Doctor does a really good job of side stepping David Tennant’s messiah complex, while still injecting the character with enough darkness to keep things interesting.

The great thing about Doctor Who is that the protagonist manages to carry that darkness without becoming a generic anti-hero, instead his flaws are a lot more interesting; he’s needy, he puts others in danger simply because he hates the thought of being alone, and worst of all he knows what he’s doing, but he just can’t help himself. That kind of depth makes the Doctor a much more interesting protagonist than simply being a white knight or an avenging angel.

Matt Smith pulls all this off remarkably well and adds a kind of dorky, weirdo persona that makes him instantly likeable to children, he is indeed a time travelling clown, albeit one that is quite probably insane. The Doctor was, of course, always a little unhinged, so perhaps Smith’s biggest contribution to the character is making him so flippant, a lot less melancholy than Tennant and seemingly able to convey the oldness of the character (which may be attributed to his strangely shaped head, indeed he already looks like an alien).

So, at the end of season six almost everybody believes the Doctor is dead, which, to be fair, he really should be. And yet, as we’ve come to realise, the Doctor lies, and he also really doesn’t want to die, even if the prophecy (or whatever it is) insists that he must, for the salvation of the universe. The Doctor being forgotten, slinking back into the shadows, and becoming that mysterious old fart he was in the original, long ago, series is certainly an intriguing idea. Hopefully this means Doctor Who will drop it’s attempts at making an epic space opera and focus on what it does best: scaring the shit out of children.

Doctor Who is currently available to watch on BBC iplayer.

The Hour: A Stylish British drama about 1950s Journalism

The following post is written by Matthew Smith, you can check out more of his articles on his blog by clicking on this link. 

With a style that’s a cross between The Saboteur and LA Noire, and a plot based around a situation that’s always high-pressure, the BBC’s new drama The Hour got even better in its second episode last night. With every aspect of 1950s London painstakingly recreated, it’s certainly the series to watch – whether you’re a journalist or not. Here’s a taste of what you’re missing if you’re yet to take a tour of the set of the BBC’s pioneering news programme.

Visually, the show has a mysterious style with great use of colour. The drab greys of the newsroom are augmented with the odd red item – a technique that is beautifully balanced. Every tiny detail of the set was fine-tuned to replicated the 1950s perfectly; in their preview two weeks ago, ShortList magazine revealed how the ends were cut off of cigarettes to match the shorter ones of the time, and every piece of paper on each reporter’s desk features a story that they really would have been covering in 1956.

But the programme’s real merit is its insight into the world of journalism. In the second episode, Egypt took control of the Suez Canal, and the team convinced an Egyptian politician to appear on The Hour. Enter the pressures of journalism. The producer wants to conduct a live interview to hear his side of the argument, while her BBC superiors want to cancel the interview to maintain the line of the British government. It’s a perfect example of a difficult choice in journalism: please the bosses, or push the boundaries of the industry?

Personal struggles are also well represented. Main character Freddie Lyon is a reporter who feels that he should be the front man of the programme. Meanwhile, the face of The Hour, Hector Madden, is struggling to hold his own in front of the cameras (thanks in no small part to Freddie, who deliberately hands him the wrong interview questions). Eventually, Freddie decides to help Hector before the Egypt interview. “How do you know exactly the right questions to ask?” asks Hector. “Because I’m not afraid of the answers,” Freddie replies. It’s inspiring stuff for aspiring journalists, with real weight behind the script.

The two plot lines came together brilliantly in the finale interview, in which Hector’s newfound talent for interviewing leads the Egyptian politician to declare ‘the end of the British Empire’. It’s an insightful programme, showing the kind of work that led to modern-day programmes like Panorama and Newsnight. Throw in a mysterious, espionage-laden story line, and it’s a compelling TV drama that’s not to be missed.

Episode three of The Hour airs on BBC 2 next Tuesday at 9pm. You can catch up with the series on iplayer.

Matt Smith is a journalist, writer, and filmmaker currently studying at Brunel University, West London. He presents The Niche, a cultural radio programme on Radio Brunel, is the student newspaper’s Technology Correspondent, and blogs about the media, politics, entertainment and sport.

The Eddie Izzard Story

At 25 years old Eddie Izzard is feeling morose, by the same age Orson Welles had made Citizen Kane, whereas Izzard was still an unknown. You have to be a certain kind of person to feel upset that you haven’t already made one of the greatest films of all time, but that’s ambition for you. And if anyone were going to surreptitiously take over the world, it would be Eddie.

Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story is an hour and forty minutes, a little longer than the average movie, and charts the entire life of the action-transvestite comedian. Using archive footage and talking heads with people who knew him growing up, the flashy, spirited documentary is packed full of interesting things. Eddie Izzard himself is our guide, and attempts to explain how he became such a star, as well as exploring his past, and some painful memories regarding his mother, who sadly died of Cancer when he was just a boy.

Eddie Izzard’s rise to success was by no means easy, and the footage of his early stand-up and street performance is proof of how far he’s come. We see a totally different comedian, when Izzard was still young and inexperienced, lacking his trademark surrealist personality. Young Izzard is, frankly, a bit of a dork (albeit a lovable one) but it would be a very real turning point when he eventually reinvented himself as a rock star. If there’s one thing that seems to define Izzard, and is recognizable as a constant throughout his life, it’s his doggedness, he just won’t give up, and suffers all the uncertainty and embarrassment without letting it stop him for a moment. If nothing else, you really feel how much he deserved his eventual success, just from his passion and the amount of work he put in.

The great thing about this documentary is how dense it is, there’s plenty to absorb, and Eddie Izzard doesn’t shy away from being totally honest. He is a man who craves attention, and although he’s very close to his father, he desperately needs to fill the gaping hole his mother left when she died. This seems to be the predominant driving force for his work, the love and attention of hundreds and thousands of adoring fans, which almost, but not quite, distracts him long enough to forget he’ll never again experience the love of his mother.

Another huge contributing factor to his success is that Izzard is constantly on ‘go’, never stopping long enough to relax or reflect. Almost as a visual metaphor for this constant energy, Izzard ran seven weeks of back-to-back marathons across the UK for Sport Relief, with only about five weeks of training. He is a man who seems incapable of stopping, and has immersed himself in film and television, as well as huge stand up shows. Although as an actor Izzard is fairly average, as opposed to being a star as a comedian, he pointed out that when he started performing comedy he was only average, and besides he’s wanted to be an actor since he was a child.

I watched Believe: the Eddie Izzard story (which originally came out in 2009) on BBC iplayer, check it out by clicking on this link. When they take it down, it’ll probably be available to watch on YouTube or something, or you could just buy the DVD.

Eddie Izzard will next be seen playing Long John Silver in Sky1′s TV film Treasure Island, check out the pictures below and see what you think. Personally I think he’s well cast (although can anyone really match Tim Curry’s performance?) and the look of the character is certainly something different to what might have been expected. Different is good though, different seems to define Eddie Izzard.

Filming for Treasure Island takes place in Ireland and Puerto Rico for broadcast in 2012.