alanconnor.com/log

A Young Doctor’s Notebook for Sky Arts

alanconnor — Sat, 19 May 2012 14:30:36 +0000

I am working on an adaptation of Mikhaíl Bulgakov’s Записки юного врача for Big Talk and Point West Picures, as A Young Doctor’s Notebook. It is part of Playhouse Presents….

The writers are Mark Chappell, me and Shaun Pye and the medium is comedy-drama. It’s set in 1917; while some press has inferred that the background is the first world war or the Russian revolution, the setting is in fact snow. Lots of snow.

More details in the Guardian…

Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe and Mad Men’s Jon Hamm [will] play the same doctor at different stages of his life in the four-part series, A Young Doctor’s Notebook, by Russian writer and playwright Mikhail Bulgakov.

Hamm will play the older man, who has a series of ‘bleakly comic’ exchanges with his younger self, played by Radcliffe.

…and I am sad that Variety’s piece includes no puns or jargon.

Fallen Tree on Flickr

10 O’Clock Live for Channel 4

alanconnor — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 08:18:35 +0000

I am back at 10 O’Clock Live. When it isn’t live, you can again watch clips, like this one people like [NB: the final "...unless you count all those times they had a go at witches" is unforgivably omitted and archivists should note that what sounds like "Tory boys" is in fact "toy boys"]:

Screenwipe Review of the Year 2011 for BBC Four

alanconnor — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 21:31:00 +0000

I am a proud member of Team Screenwipe 2011, the fruit of whose toil will soon be on BBC Four:

More episodes

The London Olympic Zone

alanconnor — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 10:49:22 +0000

I popped over to Pudding Mill Lane at the weekend to see the preparations for 2012. Here are some snaps, as a cheesy iMovie export:

Louis Armstrong’s What A Wonderful World for the BBC

alanconnor — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 15:46:26 +0000

A piece about Louis Armstrong’s What A Wonderful World for the BBC.

It’s also irrepressibly public-spirited, people shaking hands on the street are, apparently, ‘saying I love you’ – illustrated in the Attenborough video, oddly, by two hippopotamuses fighting each other in the Okavango river.

And this is not the first time What A Wonderful World’s generosity of spirit has been juxtaposed with less-than-cheerful imagery.

No room, sadly, for Armstrong’s 1957 refusal to join a goodwill visit to the Soviet Union, saying: “The way they are treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell.”

Smashed Hits on perhaps-unlikely politics: Down Under; Two Little Boys
Bright blessed day photograph taken in Richmond Park; dark sacred night in Almondsbury - both in voguish Pano format

Black Mirror: The National Anthem

alanconnor — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 18:03:10 +0000

I made a thinkribution to The National Anthem, the first story in the Charlie-Brooker-yielded Channel 4 drama collection Black Mirror, but (a) barely perceptibly and so (b) you should watch it — with a caveat about adult themes.

date/tx/channel: Sun 04 Dec/2100/C4