The prosperous town of Lud-in-the-Mist is situated at the confluence of the rivers Dapple and Dawl on the edge of Faerie. The staid little town, proud of it's rational, traditional and mercantile nature and fearful of the influence of it's neighbour, is beset by an influx of 'Faerie Fruit' and it's up the the mayor, Nathaniel Chanticleer, to investigate, an investiation that is to profoundly change the town.
This BBC Radio version of Hope Mirrlees' fabulous novel was adapted by Joy Wilkinson (who, for television, has provided scripts for 'Doctor Who', 'The Watch' & 'Lockwood & Co') and is narrated by Olivia Poulet with an appearence by Mirrlees superfan Neil Gaiman whose own 'Stardust' owes an obvious debt to Mirrlees' creation. It's a bold attempt at adapting the novel but not an entirely successful one. It's too short and much has been omitted that both colours the world and drives the plot so it's missing some of the magic of the novel but it's an interesting attempt. I love the original novel so this would have needed to have been perfect to convince me but it's an enjoyable enough attempt.
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Established at the same time as the nascent punk movement in the UK, 2000AD tapped into the same anti-authoritan zeitgeist. It was big, bold, bloody, beautiful and bonkers and for the best part of five decades this weekly anthology comic (and it's various spin offs) has been providing us with work from some of the worlds top comic creators. The role call of contributors is mind blowing, Alan Moore, Kevin O'Neill, John Wagner, Pat Mills, Alan Grant, Brian Bolland, Bryan Talbot, Simon Bisley, Garth Ennis, Neil Gaiman, Dan Abnett, Grant Morrison, Mike McMahon, Dave Gibbons and so many more. All of these guys - and it was almost exclusively guys, women creators have always been horrendously under-represented in comics generally and 2000AD in particular - would go on to define how comics looked and what they said from the late 20th century on.
Between them they gave life to hordes of classic characters, future teen Halo Jones, dystopian cop Judge Dredd, alien freedom fighter Nemesis, mutant bounty hunter Strontium Dog, Celtic warrior Slaine, genetic soldier Rogue Trooper, alien teenage delinquents DR & Quinch, pop culture superhero Zenith, the list goes on.
It also provided us with the single greatest panel in comics...
two Dredd films of varying quality (we heartily recommend the Karl Urban one) and an upcoming Rogue Trooper one.
Over the years I've been an occasional reader of the weekly comic but am an avid reader of the graphic novels. Many of the classic 2000AD stories have been collected together in phone book (anyone remember phone books?) sized collections and the publisher - Rebellion - continues to issue nicely produced collections of more recent stories.
This documentary was released in 2014 and features contributions from many of those mentioned above, some of whom are sadly no longer with us, as well as fans such as Geoff Barrow, Alex Garland, Scott Ian and Karl Urban, and is a fascinating and informative watch that tells much of the creation of a great British cultural institution.
(In the interest of clarity, a version of this post has appeared here before celebrating the 40th anniversary of the comic, but I wanted to update it to include this excellent documentary.)
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Published 8 years after it's predecessor, 'The Dark is Rising', returned Susan Cooper to her Arthurian world but relocated the action from Cornwall to the Thames Valley.
The story of Will Stanton, last of 'The Old Ones', is another episodic quest as the newly minted magician comes into his power by locating lost artifacts. What elevates this beyond that first book however is Cooper's commitment to developing a coherent, mythic storyworld that is interwoven with icons of folkloric Britain, something she would continue to elaborate on across the rest of the series.
This excellent adaptation was made for Radio 4 in 1997 and unfortunately was the last one they made which was a real shame as it's from the next book, 'Greenwitch', that entwines the characters from the first two books that the series truly shines but don't let that stop you listening as this is fabulous.
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Susan Cooper published 'Over Sea and Under Stone', the first in what would become known as 'The Dark is Rising Sequence' through Jonathan Cape in 1965. It's the story of the Drew children, Simon, Jane and Barney, visiting with their great uncle Merriman Lyon in the (fictional) Conish town of Trewissick where, following their discovery of an old map, they become involved in a hunt for the Holy Grail.
I first read Cooper's series as an adult and shorn of the wonder of a child I've long been of the opinion that this first book is definitely the weakest of the five, far too firmly entrenched in the Enid Blyton tradition of children's books whereas the others increasingly embrace a more complex Alan Garner-esque mythic storyworld and are all the better for it. This adaptation made for Radio 4 and broadcast in 1995 is the first time I've revisited it since and I enjoyed it far more in this format. An entirely sympathetic dramatisation with a strong cast it works well in this format with the tension kept at a peak as the three kids race around the village.
Unfortunately only the first two books of the sequence were dramatised (I'll return to the second soon) which is a real shame as the others - particularly books 3, 4 & 5 - really are quite wonderful and I'd have loved to hear what they would have done with them.
Algernon Blackwood's 'Ancient Sorceries' was first published in 'John Silence' the 1908 collection of five stories featuring Blackwood's titular occult detective. The story revolves around the tale of meek and mousey Arthur Vezin who after impetuously disembarking from a train somewhere in France finds himself curiously disinclined to leave the sleepy little village of surreptitiously watchful people. With Silence sidelined for the majority of the story we get is a fabulous, slowly unfolding story of a man entangled in history.
This adaptation was made for the BBC in 2005 and is, for the most part, beautifully read by Philip Madoc although his French accent has a distinct whiff of 'Allo 'Allo about it.
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Although published in 1952 it was the Hitchcock movie adaptation eleven years later that thrust Daphne du Maurier's short story of a world held hostage by angry avians, 'The Birds', firmly into the wider public consciousness and gave every sighting of a flock a degree of menace.
Unlike the movie du Maurier's original story revolves around the family of a disabled farm labourer, recently returned from the war, and struggling to find work in Cornwall and this adaptation by Melissa Murray for Radio 4 , featuring Neil Dudgeon ('Midsomer Murders') and Nicola Walker ('The Last Train'), keeps that premise whilst making some judicious changes to the narrative, both narrowing it's focus and widening it's scope, but retaining the essential character of the original in a bleakly claustrophobic story.
If
you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us
continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the
blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain
Affiliate links are provided for your convenience and to help mitigate running costs.
