alanconnor.com/log

Series 54 begins 9pm, Fri 6 October.

I have been enjoying working on Channel 4’s Alternative Election Night:

Jeremy Paxman, David Mitchell and Richard Osman present an all-night feast of comedy and comment in Channel 4’s very different take on election night

• 9pm, 8 June 2017, Channel 4

Series 53 begins 9pm, Fri 21 April.

I am proud to have performed the minor role of “crossword consultant” for this excellent episode of Inside No 9, The Riddle of the Sphinx:

I’m further proud to have filled the role of some kind of muse:

• BBC Two, 10pm, 28 Feb 2017
• Two Girls, One on Each Knee
• Steve Pemberton set the episode’s crossword as ‘Sphinx’, which is also the Guardian’s cryptic on the day of broadcast
• Interview with Sphinx at the Guardian crossword blog
• More Inside No 9

I am a proud member of Team 2016 Wipe, which is broadcast after Christmas.

Update 14 May 2017: Bafta winner, Comedy & Comedy Entertainment Programme

• 9pm, 29 December 2016, BBC Two
• More Wipes

Series 52 begins 9pm, Fri 7 October.

Kevin Bishop is Nigel Farage, in a programme imagining his life after resigning. Blurb:

“On the 23rd June, Britain voted to leave the European Union,” added the BBC. “Then, on the 4th July, Nigel Farage, the man who had made it all possible, resigned saying he wanted his life back. But what sort of life has he gone back to, and how does a man forever in the spotlight fill his days now he has nothing to do?”

(more…)

Update: Luddites can see The Rack Pack on terrestrial TV during the World Snooker Championships c2130, 30 April at 10pm, 16 July, BBC2.

The first drama feature film for iPlayer is out on Sunday [ trailer | playlist ]. It’s about Alex Higgins and these men:

Detailing the complex relationship between Steve Davis and Alex Higgins, and the part played in it by Hearn, the sport’s ringmaster, the film is by turns hilarious and tear-jerking. Its re-creation of an era of quite magnificent sleaze is so precise you can almost feel your shoes sticking to the snooker hall carpets as you watch — Jim White, Telegraph

Delightful… What this is not is a cartoonish romp through snooker’s glory days. For the most part it is very moving. But despite all this, Shaun Pye, Mark Chappell and Alan Connor’s film is still a wonderful nostalgia fest for all us 1980s kids, hearing names you haven’t heard uttered for 30 years — Ben Dowell, Radio Times

Shifts beautifully between laugh-out-loud moments and characters pressing the self-destruct button — Alyson Rudd, Front Row, Radio 4

For 90 minutes of pure nostalgia, this takes some beating — Hector Nunns, Times

…hilariously recounts the tension between the pair.
Hearn has seen the film and says it is ‘absolutely fantastic‘. He goes on: ‘It captures exactly the spirit of that time, the conflict between Davis and Higgins and the birth of modern-day commercial snooker. I had to rub my eyes sometimes; it was as though I was watching the real thing. It’s sensational.
‘The film is brutally honest.’ — Tom Parry, Boudicca Fox-Leonard, Mirror

Snooker is famed as the perfect TV sport, but it never looks as good as this — Andrew Collins, Guardian

Snooker fans will have tuned in to the final of this year’s Masters on BBC Two, but over on iPlayer a more thrilling portrayal of the sport was playing out — Rachel Ward, Telegraph

…the only puzzle about The Rack Pack is why the corporation [is] uncertain how to categorise what is simply superb drama — Martin Hoyle, Financial Times

• A film by Brian Welsh
• Luke Treadaway, Will Merrick, Kevin Bishop, Nichola Burley, James Bailey
• Created and written by Shaun Pye, Mark Chappell, Alan Connor
• Producer Barney Reisz
• Executive Producer Peter Holmes
• Executive Producers Shane Allen, Victoria Jaye, Gregor Sharp

• BBC iPlayer, 9pm, 17 January 2016
• BBC2, 10pm, 16 July 2016

I am a proud member of Team 2015 Wipe, which is broadcast tomorrow.

• 9pm, 30 December 2015, BBC Two

Tomorrow night, Live From Television Centre, a four-play theatrical collaboration with Battersea Arts Centre, is on BBC4.

I am proud to have made a contribution to the last part, Jess Thom‘s Broadcast from Biscuit Land, which also features Jess Mabel Jones and, fleetingly, me.

• 9pm, Sunday 15 November 2015, BBC Four
• Battersea Arts Centre blog post | BBC press release

I am a proud member of Team Election Wipe, the fruits of whose labours will be broadcast shortly before the polls open.

• 9pm, 6 May 2015, BBC Two

I have been writing for Channel 4’s Alternative Election Night.

• 9pm, 7 May 2015, Channel 4

I am a proud member of Team 2014 Wipe, the fruit of whose toil will be on BBC Two on 30 December:

Update 29 Jan 2015: The new series of Weekly Wipe begins tonight:

• More episodes

I am a proud member of Team 2013 Wipe, the fruit of whose toil will be on BBC Two tonight:

Update 6 Jan: And the second series of Weekly Wipe begins on Thu 9 Jan on BBC Two.

• More episodes

Series two of A Young Doctor’s Notebook begins this week.

• 2100, Thursday 21 Nov, Sky Arts

I am a proud member of Team Weekly Wipe, which starts on BBC Two on Thursday evening at 22h00.

Update 01-02-2013: Here’s the programme, while it lasts:

• More episodes

Good news for those who don’t own a squarial: A Young Doctor’s Notebook is available today on DVD from BBC Worldwide and Big Talk.

• A Young Doctor’s Notebook: From the operating table to the screen

I am a proud member of Team 2012 Wipe, the fruit of whose toil will be on BBC Two tonight:

Update 02-01-2013: Here’s the programme, while it lasts:

• More episodes

A piece for the Guardian about A Young Doctor’s Notebook: how we adapted the short stories for the screen and why Daniel Radcliffe and Jon Hamm are playing the same nameless doctor:

Our focus was the emotional core of the hospital tales: the hardening of the junior medic. In Bulgakov’s book, in interior monologue, the young doctor wonders how a more experienced practitioner might react, wishing he had the composure of his future self. But as the story Morphine warns us, that older self may not be wiser; he might, in fact, be a junkie. We wanted to incorporate that story: on screen, the older doctor (Hamm) is right there for the younger (Radcliffe) to talk to; but he turns out to be a damaged man: nostalgic, regretful, not above the occasional pratfall.

An extra treat in the past week has been seeing Hugh Aplin’s and Michael Glenny’s translations now sporting AS SEEN ON TV labels

Mark Chappell in the office where we wrote AYDN

In the design department

Shaun Pye relaxing on set

Models for the hospital set

‘The cultured miller’ asks YD for a diagnosis

• A Young Doctor’s Notebook, 9pm, Thursdays from 6 December; Sky Arts
• Daniel Radcliffe and Jon Hamm discuss the series
• Trailer
• NTV news package

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