Billy Idol live @ Riverstage
(Brisbane, 31 January 2020)
Rocking out afront an 80s-reminiscent ever-changing neon cityscape backdrop, Billy Idol showed that he still has the voice, physique and strut of a man half his age (though perhaps not the stamina). Highlights included ‘Flesh for Fantasy’, ‘Rebel Yell’ and ‘Mony Mony’.
Doctor Who: Revelation of the Daleks
by Eric Saward (BBC, 2019)
At last, lagging thirty-five years behind the TV serial, former Doctor Who script editor Eric Saward has novelised Revelation of the Daleks. If only he’d spent some of that time learning to write! This is BBC-endorsed beige-wallpaper fan fiction without the heart.
Star Wars: Alphabet Squadron
by Alexander Freed (Century, 2019)
Inevitably fans will judge this against the Rogue Squadron books (now Star Wars Legends), and many will find it wanting. Rogue Squadron offered escapism, pure and simple. Alphabet Squadron is serious-minded and morose, and notably lacking in wisecracking adventure heroes. Both work.
Dr. First
by Adam Hargreaves (Puffin, 2017)
Doctor Who purists may not approve of this playful rewriting of the programme’s origin story. There’s no denying, however, that the characters are beautifully drawn – from Susan, to William Hartnell’s cantankerous purple and grey Doctor, to the jiving, sports mascot, continuity-defying Cybermen!
Jojo Rabbit
dir. Taika Waititi (2019)
Director Taika Waititi walks a fine line between flippancy and dark absurdism, concocting from the final days of Nazi Germany a tragicomic yet rather moving story of childhood innocence and fanatical indoctrination. Outrageously over-the-top but kept in check by some nuanced acting.
Duckula and the Ghost Train Mystery
by John Broadhead (Carnival, 1988)
Capturing the spirit of the Count Duckula cartoons was never going to be easy, and Broadhead seems determined to show it. With prose as bland as the sorely missed soul-funk theme song is zany, this book offers nothing beyond the cover art.
Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World
by Mark Kurlansky (Jonathan Cape, 1998)
Comprehensively researched, and written in an engaging style (though the start-of-chapter quotes and end-of-chapter recipes could easily have been omitted), Kurlansky’s history of trout fishing is of interest beyond the fate of the much-revered fish. International politics, economics and exploration feature heavily.
Yes Prime Minister: The Diaries of the Right Hon. James Hacker, Volume I
ed. Jonathan Lynn and Antony Jay (BBC, 1986)
A droll reworking (by the same writers) of the television series broadcast earlier that year. The machinations and absurdities of government are exposed with an equivalent cleverness but the humour is necessarily diminished, coming across in commonplace echoes of the original performances.
The Ladybird Book of The Hipster
by Jason Hazeley & Joel Morris (Penguin, 2015)
Hazeley and Morris appropriate the classic Ladybird children’s book format to make scathing jibes at today’s affectedly cliquey hipster culture. Ironically, their ridicule through mimicry results in a work no less unfathomable, suitable for hipster libraries. Perhaps that’s part of the joke.
The Tao of Pooh
by Benjamin Hoff; ill. Ernest H. Shepard (Dutton, 1982)
The notion of explaining Taoism (the Eastern philosophy) by way of Winnie-the-Pooh (the pleasingly simplistic bear) is one of those inspirations that work better as lightbulb moments than as book-length treatments. Hoff makes his point in the foreword; the rest is belaboured.