My Unenviable Envy of Mark Gatiss's The Unquenchable Thirst of Dracula (BBC Radio 4, 2017)

 My Unenviable Envy of Mark Gatiss's The Unquenchable Thirst of Dracula (BBC Radio 4, 2017)

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Imagine you’re Mark Gatiss. On Monday, you’re writing and directing an adaptation of a classic M R James ghost story for BBC4. On Tuesday, you’re writing a Dr Who story for telly, or as a book, or for radio, or all three at once. On Wednesday morning you’re acting in an Agatha Christie thing, and in the evening you’re writing and presenting a documentary about James Bond films, before writing and starring in your own sci-fi radio comedy. On Thursday morning you’re writing an episode of Sherlock, which, come noon, you’re acting in (as Mycroft Holmes), and by nightfall you’re narrating Conan Doyle stories for Audible, before directing a version of Quatermass just before you go to bed. Friday, you’re on stage as one quarter of The League of Gentlemen. And on Saturday, you’re adapting and directing a lost Hammer Dracula screenplay for BBC Radio 4, before writing a Marvel Studios blockbuster movie set in 1976 in which Dr Who, Sherlock Holmes Professor Van Helsing, Professor Challenger, Professor Quatermass and Baron Frankenstein and bounce on space hoppers as they battle the ghost of Count Dracula, the Hound of the Baskervilles, The Daleks, Professor Moriarty, The Mekon, and Ernst Stavro Blofeld. In Royston Vasey. Which is now on Dartmoor, which has been relocated to Transylvania. Which is now in outer space. And because you’re Mark Gatiss, you get to be in the movie, as any character you like, or indeed, as every character. Dear God, please let me wake up tomorrow to find I am Mark Gatiss! And lest you suspect that I might perhaps be just a teensy bit jealous of the remarkable Mr G, let me reassure you, dear reader, that you’re absolutely bang on the money. I am jealous of Mark Gatiss. Who wouldn’t be? I like to imagine that even Mark Gatiss is jealous of Mark Gatiss, in much the same way that Spinal Tap’s bassist Derek ‘Lukewarm Water’ Smalls concurs with lead vocalist David ‘Fire’ St Hubbins that, without their guitarist Nigel ‘Ice’ Tufnell, Tap are free to move in any artistic direction they please, and that other bands will envy them: “I envy us,” proclaims Derek, wisely, and also bafflingly.

The Unquenchable Thirst of Dracula is Mark Gatiss’s audio adaptation of an unmade Hammer horror film from the 70’s, when the studio was in decline. With a weary Christopher Lee having finally walked from the franchise, it’s possible to read the screenplay by stalwart producer Anthony Hinds as either Hammer’s riposte to their absent star for bailing, or as an appeal to the actor to come back, in a kind of ‘this one will actually be really good, honest’ attempt at persuasion, for the Count is very much centre stage here, given much to do and say - more than in any of the Hammer Draculas except Scars of Dracula (1970). It’s intriguing to wonder who Hammer might have cast if Lee had remained steadfast in his refusal to ever again play the Bitey One. Presumably they would not have gone with John Forbes-Robertson again, unless everyone at the studio was ingesting way too many bad drugs. Whomever they would have picked, he would almost certainly have been better than Lewis McCleod, the actor playing Dracula in this version. McCleod, who once played Paul McCartney in a series of TV sketches, was the voice of Postman Pat (beloved under-tens kid’s BBC TV stop-motion animation from the early 80’s onward), and so I couldn’t help but listen to this otherwise splendid audio drama picturing the amiable ginger postie as speaking all of Dracula’s lines, which conjured up some fantastically weird imagery, particularly during the obligatory sexy bits. And Mcleod’s Dracula laugh is rubbish. But the rest of the cast is excellent, and the Indian setting, following the Far East in Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, adds much to the story, though this being Hammer, and this being the 1970s, obviously the focus is on a Kali death cult. I’m sure Dr Who fan Gatiss got a kick at directing a character named Rani, but since Gatiss, as we’ve established, makes a living from indulging his inner fanboy, that’s part and parcel of the territory. There’s a fair bit of bad audio descriptive narration (by the splendid Michael Sheen), with lines like “Penny has to stifle a scream as a rat scurries across her foot,” and “As Prem turns from the coffin, the vampire’s eyes open,” and the whole thing is wrought with ornate Gatiss dialogue and has at least six endings, but I liked it well enough. A decent Monday morning’s work from Mr G, before he’s had his coffee and breakfast and his busy day really begins, because he’s off now to write, direct, and star in a Postman Pat vs Godzilla movie.

COUNTING DRACULAS - Binge-Watching the Vampire King by Vince Stadon

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The Lennon/McCartney Pendulum

 Paul is Fab.

                For a while back there (70s and 80s), he wasn’t thought of as especially Fab. He was the uncool one, the irksome one, the one who always seemed to be emotionally guarded and relentlessly on message. He was Macca, thumbs aloft, head in a cheery side bob, campaigning to change the writing credits on the Beatles records to put his name first. Compared to John Lennon – quirky, spiky, difficult, interesting, cool, murdered, sainted – Macca was low-grade fab, the least of the Beatles, including Ringo (sorry, Ringo). It was a sad affair: McCartney hadn’t changed, not really. It’s just that the world had changed its opinion of him for the worse. I must be one of the only people in the world who unironically loved – yes loved -the Rupert Bear song he did. I still rate it as one of his best.

                But then, happily, sometime in the dying days of the millennium and ever since, he got fully Fab again, as we all wised up and realised how great he is. Without hyperbole, he really is a musical genius. On Get Back, we got to witness him pulling that peerless title song out of thin air, to the delight of everyone in the room and the astonishment of everyone in the world. And he did it whilst sporting the best beard in rock history and scoffing jam on toast. He’s once more releasing acclaimed albums and touring with a great show. He headlined Glastonbury. He is loved, he is Fab.

                And that’s how it should be. Paul McCartney is one of history’s most important cultural icons: he is the man who co-wrote or fully wrote some of the greatest songs ever recorded. He is not, however, the best Beatle. He will remain forever in the shadow of John Lennon. And that, too, is how it should be. Because whereas in the 70s and 80s the Lennon-McCartney pendulum was weighted unfairly too far towards Lennon, the pendulum has now swung the other way, and is now weighted too far towards McCartney. All sorts of revisionism is taking place in Beatles scholarship and fandom, with Paul being routinely championed and Lennon (and Harrison and Starr) if not exactly denigrated then certainly downplayed. I heard a podcast the other day in which the hosts argued sincerely that from the very start the Beatles had co-leadership from Lennon and McCartney, which is an absurd claim for a band that Lennon created and which at one point was named Johnny and the Moondogs; it’s a claim which can only be put forward with the aim to flatter McCartney and downplay Lennon. The discussion after Get Back was very favourable to McCartney (rightly so) but did seem to me at least to gloss over the fact that he was occasionally so irksome one of his bandmates walked out and (kinda/maybe) quit the band. And this is a year on from another of his bandmates being so irked by him that he walked out and (kinda/maybe) quit the band. And a year on from when the horn player brought into play on For No One (one of Paul’s most achingly beautiful songs) was so irked/exasperated by McCartney that, according to George Martin, “he nearly exploded!” In the Hamburg Days, Stuart Sutcliffe barely tolerated him, and Astrid said that “In order, I liked Stu, John, George, Pete (Best) and Paul.” George Harrison clearly had major issues with Paul, and only grudgingly agreed to team-up with him and Ringo for the ‘Threatles’ Anthology project because he was in a deep financial hole. It is widely accepted that McCartney is single-minded, belligerent, and often tactless.  McCartney has his faults.

On the other hand, unlike John, Paul was never cruel or petty, nor did he bear grudges like the notoriously curmudgeonly George Harrison. Irksome McCartney was often right on a lot of the big calls (regarding Alen Klein, for example), had a much better business sense than his bandmates and was the one who was at the last the most invested in and appreciative of The Beatles. The Beatles were teens/early tweens when they formed, and they grew apart as they matured into complex individuals with vastly different outlooks and interests, and narcotics regimes; the spaced-out Lennon clearly ceded control of the band, at least nominally, around Magical Mystery Tour, as his interests expanded all over the place and coalesced into the sexual magnetism and intellectual artistry of Yoko Ono, and it’s a miracle that McCartney kept them together for so long after their manager died and things started falling apart. Anyone should get a free pass for that alone. McCartney should have been knighted for it.

                I’ll always favour John Lennon because he was my first love and I think he has a cultural heft even greater than McCartney’s. I’m less irritated by John, even though he was undoubtedly a major league asshole on occasion, than I am by Paul, perhaps because I sense an artistic and personal authenticity with Lennon that I don’t get from McCartney. But I was always rather saddened by the anti-Paul mood that persisted for so long, and I felt (and feel) that John was uncomfortably hero worshipped, with his many flaws whitewashed. They named an airport after him, and that’s quite right. But the Lennon/McCartney pendulum needs balance, so Paul should get one too. A smaller one. Because Paul is Fab. He’s just not as Fab as John.