Just in time for Halloween!

Dem bones, dem bones! This clip is from the surreal British TV musical/psychological drama/crime series, The Singing Detective. I watched it on PBS in 1988 and taped it, then sent the tapes to my girl friend with a note: Watch these, then send them back. I've never seen anything quite like it. I'm watching it again on DVD, a six-part drama that runs about an hour and six minutes per episode. Only the British could get away with such tomfoolery (unless they ran in a 2-hour time slot and the rest was ads? No, that would be here.)


It's hard to describe this series. It's about a man whose skin is literally rotting off his body, incarcerated in an open hospital ward where people complain about cold tea and die in front of his eyes. To take his mind off the insanity, he invents an elaborate crime story starring Phillip Marlowe, a character he created for a series of novels. Entwined with these surreal scenes (which are punctuated by musical numbers straight out of a fever dream) are heartbreaking boyhood memories of his mother's suicide by drowning.


Sounds like a million laughs, eh? But actually, yes, it is funny in places. When it gets too silly, which it does from time to time, Michael Gambon's superb performance pulls it back. You want to feel sorry for this man, except that he's thoroughly nasty and looks worse than Jabba the Hut.


Anyway, this macabre scene seemed appropriate for the season.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1896300693/qid%3D1064537730/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr_11_1/103-6792065-9634225

http://www.amazon.com/Mallory-Margaret-Gunning/dp/0888013116/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319992815&sr=1-1

You'd better go in disguise

Back when I had That Other Blog, in that other lifetime, I tried and tried to find this version of Teddy Bears' Picnic, an excerpt from the superb 1986 British miniseries The Singing Detective. (I've ordered a DVD copy and will probably be commenting on it later.)

But the thing is. . . I wasn't looking for this one at all, not this time. I was looking for the one I stumbled on when looking for this one before.  It was a chorus of what sounded like English people, old hippies with long grey hair and floral crowns and jerkins and that sort of thing (whatever a jerkin is). They sang it delightfully, buoyantly, but I didn't keep the link, or if I did, I'll be damned if I know where it is.

There's a movie version of The Singing Detective, but don't bother with it. The '86 series is pure surrealism. Its hero is a tortured writer of crime novels,  his skin rotting away from psoriatic arthritis (the same soul-rot afflicting my afflicted sister). It has almost been forgotten, but not by me. This little taste will give you. . . a little taste. Now 'scuse me while I hunt for that other one.