The Graham Norton Show: Late Night Done Right

Late night talk shows are a dependable distraction. Every weeknight you are guaranteed a plethora of opening monologue jokes of varying quality, celebrity interviews that are either carefully rehearsed or completely extemporaneous if you're on the Late Late Show, and some late-night antics that range from the absurd to the sublime. However, if you find yourself bored on a Saturday night with no reliable entertainment in sight, fear not. BBC America has you covered, with The Graham Norton Show airing every Saturday at 11 pm. And this show might be the best dose of late night you get all week.

The opening monologues are mercifully short and the meat of the show rests in the celebrity interviews. And that's where the joy of the Graham Norton Show comes in. Graham doesn't dutifully interview his guests in single file and send them back to their handlers. Instead, every guest is called out at once to sit on the long couch and spend a raucous hour talking about their work, their lives, and the bizarre world of fame. All while Norton brings up hilarious things he has found on the Internet, crazy fans lurking in his audience, and a general sense of mockery that is highly refreshing from the fawning adoration that most celebrities are subjected to on late night. The celebrities themselves are usually very relaxed and eager to join in the fray and ridicule each other - this may have something to do with the fact that they are plentifully supplied with alcohol instead of a tame mug of water, and as the glasses get emptier, the jokes get funnier.

Another advantage of this being a weekly show instead of a nightly one, is that the featured guests aren't your typical range of super famous A-lister to completely obscure stand-up comic. A few weeks ago, the show featured Jon Hamm, Charlize Theron, and Steve Coogan all together, whereas most late night shows wouldn't dream of having Theron and Hamm on the same night (Coogan is very successful in the UK, but I suppose for American audiences he might as well fall into the category of obscure comedian). Having all this talent in one setting allows for ridiculous exchanges and the chance to see a lot of very famous people completely let their hair down. Oftentimes it can also just be fun to see the American actors struggling to keep up with their British counterparts who are much more used to a loose talk show format and willing to say anything without worrying about their image.

Finally, we come to Stories From the Red Chair, the segment that faithfully concludes every episode of The Graham Norton Show. In this segment, an audience member sits down on a red chair and is tasked with telling a story to Graham and his guests. If the story isn't interesting, Graham has a lever he can pull to tip the chair over and get rid of the audience member. That's the theory. In practice, that chair gets tipped over for a wide variety of reasons, ranging from if the person just sounds too posh, to a celebrity just wanting to pull the lever and experience the joy of tipping over a fellow human being. This is a show that fully embraces the great British traditions of never taking yourself too seriously and mercilessly mocking everything in sight. So this Saturday, find BBC America on your cable listings and add Graham Norton to the ever-expanding list of late night hosts who can always be depended on for a good time.

Brave: Not Just Another Princess Movie

Thinking about princess movies, you quickly realize that most of these heroines grow up cursed, motherless, orphaned, or generally miserable. It's no wonder they have so little spirit by the time they reach adulthood that they need a charming prince or some cheery dwarves to rescue them. But Princess Merida, the heroine of Brave, is in no need of rescue. She's just trying to do what women have been trying to do for millenia - change her fate.

Merida's parents are perfectly charming Scottish royalty and she has a lovely childhood. However, the trouble begins when her mother, Queen Elinor, decides it's time to follow tradition and call over eligible suitors from the three main clans to get Merida married. However, Merida has a mind of her own, and she is far more interested in riding her horse and shooting arrows than settling down with a prince. After a riotous argument with her mother, Merida runs off and comes up with a plan to alter her destiny. And the story proceeds along those lines, with several surprising elements and twists, all heading to the ultimate goal of mending the relationship between Merida and her mother and acknowledging that a woman's role in the world does not need to be dictated by tradition.

There seem to be two schools of thought with regard to Brave - some think Merida is a fantastic role model for young girls as well as offering a great insight into how mothers and daughters ought to communicate. Others are just infuriated that Pixar's first movie featuring a female protagonist is yet another princess movie. But these naysayers need to realize that this is a Pixar heroine - just because she is a princess, it doesn't mean she's a throwback to Disney princesses of yore. This is an independent, spirited girl who has flaws and virtues and is just fighting for her right to live on her own terms. The movie makes it clear that Merida is incredibly stifled by being a princess, so really the moral of the story is that all girls, no matter what kind of family they're born into, have to struggle with the universal problem of dealing with familial and societal expectations and trying to live a life of their own choosing.

What about the movie itself? It isn't the best Pixar movie ever made (for me that honor belongs to Up), but it is a perfectly delightful and entertaining bit of film-making. The landscapes and animation are drop-dead gorgeous and the voice acting is spectacular, with Kelly Macdonald and Emma Thompson bringing Merida and Elinor completely alive and making you root for them at every turn. The story is inventive and Pixar have marketed this movie cleverly, giving away nothing of the main story so that I had no idea what was going to happen next. And of course, "La Luna," the short film that precedes the movie, is brimming with Pixar heart and charm.

Brave is an important step in bringing outspoken, self-sufficient, and just plain likable female characters into mainstream Hollywood. Hopefully the success of Brave will result in more multi-dimensional, entertaining heroines who embark on their own adventures and reach their goals. Then girls can have a variety of role models to choose from and learn that they can aspire to a lot of things, not just finding a prince.

Green Wing: Screwball Hospital Antics

Green Wing premiered on Channel 4 in 2004 and lasted for only 2 series (17 episodes and a special). But like all British series with a short run, it is pure comedy gold. Set in the fictional East Hampton Hospital Trust, it will introduce you to some of the most bizarre characters you have ever seen on TV, while still giving you funny, engaging storylines and truly sympathetic characters to root for.

I've been meaning to revisit this show for a while because it stars Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig who I now see all the time on billboards to promote the upcoming second season of Episodes. It's bizarre to watch Green Wing and see how young they look, but they are also far more dysfunctional in a way that you can't get on most American comedies. Mangan plays the part of obnoxious, chauvinistic, Swiss anesthetist Dr. Guy Secretan, while Greig is Dr. Caroline Todd, a surgeon who has just started at the hospital and is awkward, bumbling, and just desperate to make a good impression. Julian Rhind-Tutt (most recently seen on the BBC series The Hour) plays the sarcastic and delightful Dr. "Mac" Macartney, and is the third party in a series-long love triangle as Caroline tries to figure out which of these two doctors she is meant to be with.

Those three characters are the "normal" ones. The other doctors and administrators who make up this hospital are just certifiably insane, none more so than staff liaison officer Sue White (played with manic glee by Michelle Gomez) whose antics can range from sitting in her office in a squirrel suit, to parading a camel around the hospital. Yes, a real-life camel. The entire series is like a Beckett exercise in absurdist humor, and has the feel of a sketch comedy show. However, the growing emphasis on the Caroline-Guy-Mac storyline and the various tangential stories involving other characters keep the show moving at a nice pace and give you something to be thoroughly invested in.

Green Wing is a show that you can polish off over a weekend and then mourn that there are so few episodes. And yet, you can revisit it time and time again and find new jokes and situations that make you laugh out loud or shake your head in bewilderment. The show allowed for a lot of improvisation and one of the joys of a repeat viewing is trying to pick out where the actors are breaking (or "corpsing" as our British brethren would say) and desperately fighting to not laugh and ruin the take. That sense of fun and merriment is palpable in every episode and is the essence of every great comedy. If the people making the show are having a good time and laughing out loud, you can be certain the audience will follow suit.

The show is available on Hulu if you're in the US, and Channel 4 On Demand for UK viewers. If you live elsewhere, get creative, but watch it. You simply cannot be disappointed. 

The Thick Of It: Furiously Funny Political Machinations

Over the past few months, BBC America has been airing Series 3 of The Thick of It, a political satire that started airing on the BBC in 2005. Even though I hadn't seen the previous series, I had no difficulty diving right into this maelstrom of British politics and government buffoonery, all set to the most colorful language to ever assail your ears.

The show revolves around the fictional Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship (DoSAC) and the hapless politicians and flunkies trying to get things done without causing a media firestorm. Created by the brilliant Armando Iannucci, it's meant to be an updated version of the fantastic 80s sitcom Yes Minister, but with far more profanity. And the character responsible for most of that profanity is Malcolm Tucker (played with insane aplomb by Peter Capaldi), the government's Director of Communications, i.e. the much-feared spin doctor. His sole mission is life is to descend upon DoSAC like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse  and let loose a tirade of scatological rantings and ravings. The people subjected to these tirades almost express a reluctant admiration for his fiercely inventive language, but they're too busy trying to avoid getting fired. He concurrently tries to manipulate the media, treating the press to treacly smiles that are almost more chilling than when he's yelling at people with veins bursting out of his head. His machinations are largely effective, albeit exhausting and resulting in a perpetually hoarse voice.

In Series 3, Rebecca Front plays Nicola Murray, the new MP who is unceremoniously shuttled in to take control of DoSAC. From Day One, she has to deal with Malcolm's abuse and a staff of hyper incompetent staffers who make you wonder how British government manages to get anything done at all. If this all sounds a bit familiar, it might be because you just got done watching the first season of Veep, the HBO series that features similar incompetence, except this time in the Office of the Vice President of the United States. Veep was also created by Armando Iannucci and is essentially the American version of The Thick of It, so you will find very similar characters, although no one quite so volatile and psychotic as Malcolm Tucker.

Iannucci and his team of writers make every episode explode with elaborate set-ups and relentless laughs and The Thick of It is a must-see show for anyone seeking truly excellent political satire. If you don't want to commit to a series, you can also watch the 2009 movie In the Loop (nominated for a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar) which is based on the series but with only a few of the central characters (including Malcolm Tucker) and more of a transatlantic sensibility. So check out this comedy goldmine and enjoy the discovery that politicians are just as absurd across the Atlantic as they are over here.

What A Way To Go! The Simple Life Has Never Been So Glamorous

A decade ago, I wandered on to some obscure movie channel and started watching a delightfully silly movie about a woman who is convinced she is a witch because she has been widowed four times. It was witty and colorful, but although I remembered the movie for years after, I had one problem. I didn't know what the movie was called. This was before I became better acquainted with the classic film stars of yesteryear, so I didn't know the names of any of the actors either. I gradually forgot about the movie until the day I started reading Dick Van Dyke's autobiography. And as he detailed his movie career, he mentioned a movie he did with Shirley MacLaine, where she plays a woman who yearns for the simple life but seems to inadvertently turn her husbands into successful men who die in the pursuit of their impossible ambitions. The title of that film? What A Way To Go!

Thrilled to discover the name of this long sought-after movie, I recorded it last week and sat down to watch it. And it is just as ridiculous and marvelous as I remember. Released in 1964, it is the quintessential 60's movie, bursting with Technicolor that will burn your eyeballs and lavish sets and costumes that only a woman of Shirley MacLaine's caliber could successfully pull off. MacLaine plays Louisa May Foster, a woman who yearns to be married to some poor man with no ambition so they can live a blissful life with the only rule being, "Simplify, simplify, simplify!" The movie opens on the funeral of her fourth husband and then her attempts to give away $200 million to the IRS, a move which leads to her being sent to a psychiatrist to explain why she would do such a crazy thing. The rest of the movie proceeds with various flashbacks as Louisa narrates the tale of how she met her four husbands and how they all started out wanting the simple life but then reached impossible success after marrying her.

It's a typically wild and improbable story but executed with such panache and commitment that it's hard to not adore every minute. MacLaine steals every scene, and the actors playing the men in her life are the creme de la creme of old Hollywood, including Dick van Dyke, Gene Kelly, Paul Newman, Dean Martin, and Robert Mitchum. As Louisa describes each relationship, she also likens it to a different kind of movie, thereby parodying Hollywood stereotypes from silent films to splashy musicals to French New Wave cinema.  And the movie's costume designer was the amazing Edith Head, who puts MacLaine in the most outrageous costumes you will ever see.

What A Way To Go! is a star-studded crazed delight and anyone with an interest in classic cinema and 60's extravaganza will derive oodles of pleasure from this movie. It's funny, charming, gorgeous, and most importantly, wildly entertaining. And that's what the movies are all about.

Little Women: An Inexpressible Comfort

The Little Women series by Louisa May Alcott is one of those childhood favorites that never grow old. Attitudes and vocabulary may have changed since the nineteenth century setting, but the characters are as familiar as your current friends and family and the stories continue to be funny, touching, and heartwarming. I recently decided to re-read the books and upon discovering my friend had never seen the 1994 movie, I re-watched it with her over the weekend.

The movie is quite a masterful bit of work, spanning the first two books of the series in two and a half hours and giving each character his or her due. Winona Ryder is perfect as the irrepressible Jo March who longs to make a career for herself and not get pinned down by societal pressures. Christian Bale is delightful as Theodore Laurence, the lonely rich boy who craves the company of the lively March girls next door. In his more angsty moments, my friend did point out some remarkable foreshadowing of the Batman angst to come. But otherwise he is swoon-worthy as ever, playing big brother to the girls and gradually hoping for a relationship laced with more romance.

Speaking of romance, I was struck anew with just how scandalous the movie was in comparison to the books. As liberal as Alcott's views on women and relationships were for her time, she would have been rather appalled. Like I mentioned in my Great Expectations post, modern adaptations tend to liberally sprinkle in kisses and hand-holding, which are tame today but would have caused a riot in the Victorian era. I have never minded this much, but somehow it seems terribly out of place in Little Women. The whole point of the books is that these romances develop very gradually. The rather perplexing twists that occur in some of the characters' love lives seem abrupt and senseless in the movie, whereas the books devote chapters to ensure that the transition from one love to another occurs seamlessly. There's a great deal of letter-writing that takes place in the novel, and somehow it is easier to imagine falling in love over a carefully written letter than a sudden kiss at the opera.

Considering how many remakes we are subjected to these days, I think it's about time we got another Little Women adaptation. The last BBC one is from 1970 so they could certainly bring us another miniseries that takes its time over the lush story. Most people focus on the love stories, but Little Women is a wonderfully engaging and comforting piece of literature even without the romantic intrigue. The four sisters have their joys and mishaps, their laughs and sorrows, but ultimately their stories never feel too old-fashioned or stuffy. Jo's concerns about gaining equality with men can resonate with women even today, while Meg's little disasters as a housewife and the wonderful Marmee's advice should be required reading for any couple. While North & South gave me a strong, independent heroine in Victorian England, Little Women continues to charm me with a series of American women whose varying ambitions and dreams don't feel so different from the women I know today.  

Great Expectations: Dickens Distilled

Despite my love for Victorian literature, I have always found Dickens to be somewhat difficult. Which is quite a generalization, considering the only Dickens novel I've read is Oliver Twist. I have attempted to read others but gave up and headed for an Austen novel instead. So when a friend insisted I watch the BBC adaptation of Great Expectations that aired over Christmas, I decided that it was high time I tried to read the novel. It was as I expected - massive amounts of Dickensian coincidences with characters seeming to be related in all sorts of improbable ways and a rather prosy mishmash of plot courtesy of the serial format. There were certainly wryly funny lines that made me laugh on occasion, but otherwise it's a largely bleak and rambling tale of Victorian England.

The great thing about the BBC miniseries is that it distills this 59-chapter behemoth into a serviceable 3-hour miniseries. This would seem like an impossible task but quite a few of those chapters (and characters) are complete tangents with no importance to the central plot, so you can appreciate screenwriter Sarah Phelps' judicious trimming of any Dickensian excesses. The novel is a first-person narrative that lets you hear Pip's side of the story and allows him to acknowledge his poor choices. But in this miniseries you just watch him treat his former friends like dirt and it's hard to feel any sympathy for him when his "great expectations" come crashing down. The first two hours of the miniseries were largely faithful to the novel, but the third part seemed to veer a little off course in an attempt to neatly tie together all those ridiculous coincidences and give Pip some kind of resolution.

The highlight of this adaptation (aside from the wonderful production value you would expect from the BBC) is Gillian Anderson's portrayal of the vengeful and deranged Miss Havisham. Largely acknowledged as one of the great characters of Victorian literature, this portrayal invokes both horror and pity once she realizes that exacting her revenge has only served to bring her further unhappiness. Anderson completely looks the part and it's amazing how creepy a baby voice can be. It was also nice to see David Suchet playing the inscrutable lawyer, Jaggers, since this is the only non-Poirot role I've seen him in.

The love story between Pip and Estella is unduly beefed up in this adaptation, with lots of added scenes and rather un-Victorian behavior. This is only to be expected - ever since Colin Firth jumped into that lake in the 1995 Pride & Prejudice, you can't have a modern Victorian adaptation without some ridiculous scene that would have grievously offended Queen Victoria's sense of propriety. However, the screenwriter probably felt she had to inject something romantic into this otherwise bleak tale.

Overall, this is yet another quality adaptation from the BBC with an unforgettable take on Miss Havisham. If you're not keen on Victorian literature, you could probably just watch this miniseries and save yourself the time required to read the novel. However, it is interesting to note the points at which the novel and miniseries diverge, as it can tell you a lot about how a modern audience wants a story to be told. I'm not sure I agree with all the choices the screenwriter made, but I certainly think the miniseries captures the essence of Great Expectations and is a wonderful way to kick off the 2012 Dickens Bicentennial.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: A Podcast For Anyone

There are many reason to be thankful when Friday rolls around, but one of my chief reasons is that it is the day a new episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour is released. Hosted by Linda Holmes, who writes the fantastic pop culture blog Monkey See over at NPR, the show is a merry forty minutes of pop culture analysis, debates, and regrettable television pop quizzes.

Aside from Holmes, the show features Stephen Thompson from NPR Music, arts editor Trey Graham, and Glen Weldon who "writes about books and comic books." If one of these regular participants is missing, the show will deploy producer Mike Katzif or pull in some other delightful NPR person to liven up the proceedings. Apparently NPR is just filled to the brim with people who love movies, television, books, or music and can't wait to offer up witty insights into the ever-expanding world of pop culture.

The show has a relentlessly cheery vibe and if you've had a bad day, all you need is to listen in on an episode and laugh. It is an incredibly informative show, with each member bringing their particular area of expertise to the table and providing an in-depth look at a variety of topics ranging from comic book heroes to Shakespeare to music featured in television and the wonders of German art song (OK, that last one may not have been taken so seriously). But this isn't some reverential podcast that aims to provide an elevated pop culture dissertation every week. Each episode is extremely funny, lively, and devolves into silliness quite rapidly. Truly excellent television is discussed alongside the truly terrible, and sometimes they might not all agree as to which category a show belongs to. Stephen Thompson might have to sit out a discussion of some book as he famously does not read, and occasionally everyone might mock Trey Graham for his high-brow tastes (see: German art song). But at the heart of this show is a group of friends who are just having a lovely chat about stuff that they enjoy and they have graciously allowed the rest of the world to listen in.

One of the nice things about PCHH is that every episode ends with "What's Making You Happy This Week," where they go around the table and offer up some pop culture tidbit or life event that brought them joy that week. It might be a YouTube video, a great episode of television, making some pottery, or a win for the Green Bay Packers, but this segment serves as a reminder to savor simple pleasures. So this Friday, head on over to the NPR Monkey See blog and listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour. It will probably become the thing that's making you happy this week.