February's shenanigans began with an early morning wake up on Sunday 2nd
for a 90 minute trip to the Vapnartak wargames show
held at the Knavesmire stand at York Racecourse. A decent show by any
measure, it occupies four floors of the stand, with most of the
traders occupying the ground, first and second levels, with demo,
participation and competition games mixed in here and there, plus more on the third level.
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| Taken before any of the public were let in. |
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| No action at all in this shot. |
As you can see from
these pictures, it’s quite well laid out and there is a decent
amount of space between stands, something that other shows in the
past have lacked, especially Partizan when it was held at Kelham
Hall. With a good amount of traders, there was pretty much something for
everyone, and I know I lingered far too long at Dave Lanchester’s
book stall for my own good, but that’s for another time. Of the demo
games I saw, two caught my eye.
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| Look at the size of that thing! |
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| Rather tasty looking too... |
The “Down on the
Adriatic Sea” game was a nice set up (Fiume 1920), topped by the
frankly ludicrous pre-dreadnought at one end of the table and some
really pretty looking forts. Then there was the Entebbe game, which,
for me, looked absolutely brilliant. Whilst there was no sign of
Elizabeth Taylor, I did feel that if I were at put a game like that
on, I would add three competing camera crews. Impish, I know, but
there was an indecent rush to dramatise the operation in the months
after and there is the opportunity to be a little bit silly here and
add a bit of humour for the players.
Attendance at the
show was good but, like all Sunday shows, just after 2pm, Thanos must
have clicked his fingers and pretty much all of the punters vanished,
leaving the traders to have a wander about amongst themselves. Some
things never change.
The venue remains
one of the better ones, airy and well lit. Show food will never win
awards but it must be said that York’s is at the better end of the
scale. That could not be said for the bar. Now a bar at a show is
always a welcome thing, but three 500ml bottles of a decent
Theakston’s Pale Ale tipped the wallet at £17.40! Ouch!
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| This was sipped very, very slowly... |
February saw
the release of Locke and Key on Netflix. An adaptation of Joe Hill
and Gabriel Rodriguez’s supernatural comic book series, this
follows the Locke family as they discover that the ancestral family house is
home to magical keys that can unlock doors (and people) in ways that
are both good and bad. All is not well, though, as there is an entity
after the keys for its own purposes. This one interested me from the
trailer as it promised a dark, horror filled supernatural tale that,
at 10 episodes, had enough room to breath but not sprawl about for
seemingly endless episodes. My good lady, not a horror fan at all,
viewed the trailer with some trepidation and warned that she’d give
it a go but reserved the right to drop out at any point. She needn’t
have worried.
You see, whilst
Locke and Key is a supernatural drama, the horror elements promised
in the trailer (and the source material which, I’ll admit, I am not
overly familiar with) just aren’t as prominent as advertised. Yes,
there are some mildly scary moments but it pulls its punches when it
comes to delivering genuine scares. The story is good and I can’t
fault the production values. The cast are, generally speaking, very
good, with just a couple of instances of scenery chewing that kind of
fit but also take a bit away from the beats of the story. Where the
show really falls down though is its reliance on familiar tropes –
the high school kids, whilst rightly focusing on the nerdier bunch
of friends, ticks pretty much every box when it comes to jocks and
“popular” girls. There are nods to modern day social media that
have been added cos, well, it’s 2020, but some dramatic character
beats are glossed over – the mother’s alcoholism being a prime
example. Then again, the show has an issue with alcohol as one
character polishes off a half of a bottle of whiskey and seems just
tickety boo when dealing with an attack on the family just an hour
later. I know the younger of us can handle booze better but that is
pushing the bounds of reality. Oh, and Keyhouse, the family home is a
lovely building but suffers from that familiar plot device – even
with the doors open, you can’t hear shouting downstairs when you’re upstairs. Come on, it’s not that big a
house! With enough story threads left open for a second season (still
unannounced at the time of posting), Locke and Key is a decent show
and worth a watch. It never feels like it is overstaying its welcome
and the premise has promise. Give it a go if this type of show
appeals.
My good lady and I
have also managed to catch up a little bit with a DVD boxset: Blakes
7. We watched the first series last year and came to the general
conclusion that whilst they accomplished miracles on the budget, it
had not aged well at all. Still, there are four series in total so we
said we’d get through them eventually. Series two is pretty much a
direct follow up to the first, with just a couple of cast changes:
Brian Croucher takes over as Commander Travis and we lose one of the
main group near the half way point of the series – no spoilers but
to be honest, it’s no great surprise given that the character was
left on the shelf most of the time, so in the words of a Newcastle
Upon Tyne resident, he had to gan… (Sorry, not sorry!).
Once again, the
budget (or lack thereof) is plain to see, but considering what they
managed to put on the screen, it’s not bad – think of how bad the
first couple of seasons of ST:TNG look now. True, the model work
varies from decent to just plain naff, and any backdrop work (Voices
from the Past, I’m looking at you) is quite laughable. More serious
issues arise from the acting which, outside of a couple of key
characters, is rather iffy and certainly not helped by the writers
wanting to prefix everything (and I mean everything) with the word
“space”. Cos, you know, it’s set in space. With forty years
hindsight, it seems to treat the audience with a degree of
condescension that the RP accent highlights as well. Bless him, even
Mr Croucher struggles to get his mouth around his lines whilst
refusing to lapse into his real accent. There is also the feeling that they were trying to fill the timeslot with what they had rather than produce a show with episode lengths that matched the budget - you'll see far too many lingering camera shots and scene setting model work that just seems to be there to fill in the time. It is easy to mock a show that occupied a tea time TV slot but I genuinely like Blakes 7. The premise, the story lines and the feel of the show are just
right, but it’s the execution of those that falls down – but as I
have said above, they accomplished miracles on the budget and for
obvious reasons, they couldn’t show too much violence or explore
the more serious themes to their fullest extent. The show does,
however, remain timeless for the ultimate double act of Kerr Avon
(the late, great Paul Darrow) and Vila Restal (Michael Keating). The
banter between these two is brilliant and you can’t help but think
that Alan Rickman watched these shows when preparing for the role of
Snape in the Harry Potter films.
An unexpected snow
day also gave us the chance to re-watch (for me, at least) Edge of
Darkness, re-released last year as a shiny Blu-Ray collection. No new
content as such but the presentation is faultless and at times you
forget you’re watching a thirty five year old TV show. For those
who haven’t seen it, EoD is a classic political thriller, as DI Ron
Craven (the never better Bob Peck) searches for the truth behind his
daughters murder, leading him into the secret world of nuclear
politics. I'll come back to this in a later post.
Reading wise, I
managed to finish a couple of history books that joined the charity
donation pile (I am trying to trim the library down a little bit at
the moment. When I started encroaching onto the fourth bookcase, I
realised I had a problem – and no, it’s not a shortage of
bookcases, sadly…). I also purchased and finished the paperback
edition of The Expanse series eighth book, Timat’s Wrath. Regular
readers will know I am a fan of both the book series and the
accompanying TV show (for which those of you who have Amazon Prime,
you can catch up with all four seasons now, whilst for everyone else, seasons 1 to 3 are available on DVD and Blu-ray).
Timat’s Wrath is the penultimate novel and you can tell straight
away that loose ends are being tidied up ready for the finale. Some
might feel aggrieved that familiar and favourite characters are
bumped off with almost casual ease but the sprawl of story hanging
after seven books means there has to be some culling and to be fair
to the authors, they do it rather well. It only took three days to
finish this one (the joys of public transport) and it left me wanting
more. The Expanse series is one of those rare multiple volume stories
that actually tells a tale, unlike say The Game Of Thrones books that
are simply too long, meandering and padded to be enjoyable, at least
for me. Of note with both series though and, it seems, most modern
sci-fant fiction, is the fixation on food – what people are
eating, the taste, texture etc, as if there is a writing school out
there that teaches would-be authors that to get readers to empathise
with the characters, keep telling them what they’ve had for dinner.
It’s really not necessary.
And so that's it, until next time.
