|
Post by raggedbone on Sept 13, 2008 16:34:28 GMT
Arrrrrrrrrgh!! I've fallen desperately behind this week so to keep up with the reviews, I'm posting this now (it's already a day late!) while my review for 'T.Bag's Christmas Turkey' may not be up till tomorrow!! Oh well, the best laid plans of mice and men, and all that!! Just to remind you all, I'm picking out random episodes of T.Bag and reviewing them -- and anyone else who feels like it can add a review themselves -- all opinions are welcome -- indeed the more the merrier!! Anyway so this week, the randomiser has chosen No 85, so less of a contrast than last time, but still ... this fortnight's episode is ... TAKE OFF WITH T.BAG, EPISODE 1: 'MANY HAPPY RETURNS' [/b][/center] As usual, there will be a copy of this episode on my photobucket account for the next four weeks, so plenty of time to get a review in. You can find the episode (in 4 parts) here: (EDIT: The captures have now been removed from photobucket. If anyone would like the episode re-uploaded (for a limited time), PM me and I'll see what I can do ) I've also decided to change the poll slightly, for very selfish reasons!! I've been having trouble marking the episodes out of five, so I'm going to change it to ten -- much more choice!! If anyone has any objections to this, let me know. All being well (and with me hopefully back up to date), the next episode will be posted in just under two weeks time on Friday September 26th. (ETA: Forgotten this bit! If you'd like to post a review for the previous episode, T.Bag's Christmas Turkey, you can find the page here and links to the relevant captures (which will be up for another two weeks) by following this link: tbag.proboards24.com/index.cgi?board=epreviews&action=display&thread=293)All the best and happy reviewing ;-). RB
|
|
|
Post by Jamie on Sept 25, 2008 19:57:46 GMT
The randomiser picking these episodes is certainly very random, to get another opening episode of a series was something I was not expecting for a while yet.
I've watched through this episode and my review is below, if anyone else wants to join in and review the episode please feel free, the more reviews the better! Anyway on to my review...
Take Off With T. Bag 'Episode One: Many Happy Returns' - My Review
I must admit that this episode has a very special place in my heart, this is because the episode first aired on my birthday (I was the tender age of 11) and to think I shared my birthday with T-Bag was something truly special, I know her birthday lasted ten weeks worth of episodes but the series started on my birthday. I vividly remember watching the episode back in 1992 and was transfixed from the outset at the very unusual setting.
The series starts, much like Sunstones of Montezuma, straight into the story and without the necessity of the curiosity shop and Thomas being kidnapped. This enables the story to start immediately, the episode seems to be a while before the plot unfolds and is the better for it. T-Shirt and Granny Bag crash land into the story, literally, and T-Bag throws out Granny Bag for being a bad influence on T-Shirt. The extra time gives more time for the T-Bag, T-Shirt and Granny Bag relationship sparkle with some very witty dialogue, one of my favourite line is of T-Bag speaking to Granny Bag after they crash land at Chateau Bag, ‘I am deeply non-plused, my plus has seldom been nonner’.
T-Shirt soon abandons T-Bag and leaves her to stay with Granny Bag. T-Bag determined to get her own back and with T-Shirt off to fetch the missing ball (after Granny Bag throws it into the distance), and one of the funniest scenes begins. T-Bag, in disguise, gives Granny Bag a cuckoo clock saying she won it in a competition, T-Bag describes the clock as ‘Here it is you’re very own top of the range, authentic, hand craft, genuine Swiss cuckoo clock made in Taiwan’, this cracks me up every time she says it. T-Bag leaves and and goes back to Chateau Bag, there she watches with a pair of binoculars what is about to unfold (or explode). Before T-Shirt arrives back with the ball Granny’s house blows up and T-Shirt and Granny Bag are forced to go to stay at Chateau Bag. T-Bag invites them in gleefully (something Georgina does especially well) telling them to make themselves at home, at which point Granny brings in Doggy Bag.
Special mention at this point must go to Doggy Bag, and Georgina’s hatred of him. Having a puppet character is certainly a brave move (especially as puppets were featured last in Wonders In Letterland and T-Bag Strikes Again) but cleverly we only ever see Doggy Bag’s paw (and leg) and this causes some funny scenes throughout the episode but my favourite is when T-Bag makes him welcome at Chateau Bag and he grabs he leg and she shouts ‘get him off’.
Now the episode, almost un-expectantly, turns direction as the big day that T-Bag has mentioned so much of as arrived. T-Bag walks in and wakes Granny up (in her Daffy Duck Jim-Jams), T-Shirt walks in, headphones on, and T-Bag sets up a charm offensive waiting for her presents and cards. T-Bag spells it out for them that it is her Birthday – ‘It’s my B.. I.. R..’. Much to T-Bag’s disappointment T-Shirt and Granny Bag appear to have forgotten. It is very believable that they have forgotten T-Bag’s 1000th Birthday (I was only 11 at the time). Then the door bell rings and T-Bag, all excited, answers it but it turns out to be Tow-Ling Shirt, T-Shirt’s cousin, who has ran away and wants to stay with T-Shirt. Then when T-Bag goes to throw Tow-Ling out Granny Bag finds a golden envelope has arrived. On watching the episode again you can see the clever foreshadowing of events as Granny Bag subtly nods her head at T-Shirt, revealing that the golden envelope was not a birthday greeting but it is for a different purpose.
With the introduction of Tow-Ling a new dynamic is made giving T-Bag a younger foil to both shout at and boss around much like the earlier series of Tallulah Bag and T-Shirt, this reinvigorates the role of T-Bag and also maintains the charismatic relationship between T-Bag and T-Shirt bringing the best of the earlier and latter series together. Bea Julakasiun, who plays Tow-Ling, was a great find and plays the part of subservient T-Caddy well. Having a third character that is not a girl on a quest also makes the episodes of this series play much tighter as more scenes can have them all together, squabbling between themselves and this episode starts that with T-Bag’s quip about sending him back to Dr Barnardos.
Notice T-Shirt’s shirt with the ‘Shirty Something’ logo on it, this shows that alongside John Hasler as T-Shirt, the programme as grown up with him and is now something that the programme always deserved to be. The essence of the show is the same and is as humorous as ever but the design of it alongside the new director of Neville Green makes the show seem more real but even more magical.
T-Bag is disappointed when the card turns out to be a set of meaningless numbers but Tow-Ling points out they are time-space co-ordinates (going all Star Trek on us) and off T-Bag goes with T-Shirt and Tow-Ling to find the greatest gift of all in their flying saucer.
Special mention must go to the Flying Saucer which is far more sci-fi in feeling than the Susntones of Montezuma brightly yellow coloured interior. The Saucer is spacious and looks quite hi-tech (for the early nineties at least) and is an excellent central focus for the ongoing episodes in replace of the T-Room in previous series.
With Granny Bag, alongside Doggy Bag, left to look at Chateau Bag T-Bag sets out on the journey. Inside the saucer T-Bag begins to imagine what her greatest gift could be hoping it may be the Pearls of Wisdom or the Rings of Olympus, nicely echoing past series and giving a nod to the past giving those of us who watched the episodes throughout our child are rewarded with our own personal in-jokes that newcomers would not have understood.
The saucer sets off and the ending of the episode sees Granny waving the travellers off wondering if we’ll ever see them again!
There was one annoyance with this episode at the time of first viewing in 1992 and was not down to the episode itself. During the scene when T-Bag is spelling out what day it is Children’s ITV lost transmission of the programme and a few minutes later (it seemed like ages at the time) the episode continued missing a moment of the episode so I never understood what Granny Bag were going to say about ‘B..I..R.. and subsequently talking about cheese). Thankfully many years later I’ve had the chance to watch the missing sequence which was a joy to watch to fill in the blanks, the line about Birmingham was well worth waiting for – ‘Why do I want to go to Birmingham for?’
To sum up this episode is a very welcome treat and dramatic diversion from the already established storyline of previous series. In my opinion this episode (and series) is one of the greatest gifts of all.
|
|
|
Post by raggedbone on Sept 30, 2008 19:13:55 GMT
Better late than never again! Oh dear - as predicted this one has proved the hardest one yet due to the negative feelings I have about this series - also the word-count is longer than any before as I got carried away having a rant about the series as a whole. I had the pleaure of meeting Lee Pressman and Grant Cathro at the weekend, so it's also a bit of a downer ... but oh well, here goes!
TAKE OFF WITH T.BAG, EPISODE 1: ‘MANY HAPPY RETURNS’
Tired of T.Bag’s outrageous behaviour, T.Shirt quits Chateau Bag and takes sanctuary with Granny Bag. Deprived of a decent cup of tea, T.Bag plots to lure her tea-caddy home by gifting to her Grandmother a cuckoo clock … loaded with dynamite! Sure enough, following the explosion, T.Shirt (with Granny and Doggy Bag in tow) soon returns and T.Bag is delighted: tomorrow is her one-thousandth birthday. However, when morning comes, she is under-whelmed to discover both her house-guests have forgotten about her big day. Even worse, the morning post fails to bring her a single card or present; just a spindly boy called Tow-Ling (T.Shirt’s cousin) and a mysterious golden envelope, containing a nonsensical string of numbers and letters. Tow-Ling identifies the strange code as time/space co-ordinates and suggests that if they follow their path, it could lead T.Bag to ‘the greatest gift of all’ …
There’s an old (and rather overused) saying which warns of unnecessary tinkering: ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. For me this is what is essentially wrong with this final series of T.Bag. For all its merits (and there are many), there are a few fundamental constants of the series dispensed with here, which leave the show’s swansong somewhat lacking. While viewers had grown accustomed to big changes over the proceeding three years, Take off with T.Bag sadly feels like a change too far.
At the root of this is the series’ central quest which had for so long been at the core of the show’s structure. It’s understandable that after eighty-four episodes, Lee Pressman and Grant Cathro might want to shake things up a little; after all, in spite of the measures taken to vary the set-up, T.Bag had basically utilised the same plot for the last eight years. While the treasure hunt had always been (to paraphrase the writers) a hook to lead into the action, the birthday surprise quest, although still adhering to that rule, feels somewhat too incidental. Following the series’ set-up in this episode, we have a typically madcap run of T.Bag and T.Shirt’s misadventures across various historical eras and story genres, with their new quest being little referred to throughout, save for the obligatory discovery of further golden envelopes at the end of each instalment. What this final quest lacks is the urgency, excitement and thrill that had previously steered the show through its ten episodes and this affects this particular series in so many ways.
The loss of the treasure-hunting girl is perhaps the most immediate and stark alteration. For a show that lasted just twenty-minutes per episode, one of its strengths was the amount packed into that time resulting in often very quick-fire scripts. In a typical episode, there would be three (sometimes four) different plot strands running at the same time: T.Bag and T.Shirt in the T.Room, the girl on the quest, and the self-contained characters and their situations in each instalment. For their original novel, The Amazing Adventures of T.Bag, around which this series is loosely based, the writers chose a much simpler quest story involving just T.Bag and T.Shirt, realising that the various strands of the television series would not translate well to prose. It’s for this very reason that Take off with T.Bag for me is a little disappointing: there just doesn’t seem as much there as there was before.
In order to keep the three-characters-on-a-quest dynamic, we are introduced to Tow-Ling (boom-boom!) Shirt, T.Shirt’s cousin; who accompanies our two anti-heroes on their quest having fled the fabled Tea-Making Academy. Unfortunately, even for a child actor, Bea Julakasiun isn’t terribly good in the role and only adds to what is missing. While a third regular character helps to break up the episodes, recognising the T.Bag/T.Shirt pairing is usually too good to break up, Tow-Ling is often left to his own devices and a lot of the time seems surplus to requirements. It seems there are now too many members on ‘Team T.Bag’, which leads me to the biggest problem of all …
T.Bag is a baddie … is a baddie … IS A BADDIE!! Its part of the show’s quintessential appeal: we’re cheering on the wickedly funny antagonist against her earnest foe and enjoying the disastrous unravelling of her grandiose schemes as the series progresses. With no girl around (and no enemy for the character to rail against), T.Bag is thrust into the role of the series’ protagonist and, although she’s often as deliciously nasty as ever (see in this episode her demented glee as she plots to blow up Granny Bag’s cottage), this shift in the series set-up just does not sit right.
Other smaller changes (piffling niggles really), from a new Designer and Director, also jar. While it’s great to see T.Bag’s flying cup-and-saucer return, the loss of the traditional T.Room set is slightly disconcerting. Very much a typical TV spaceship with its gun-metal grey décor, computer banks and flashing lights, the new layout is nicely designed and built, but it lacks that cosy familiarity the old set evoked. Similarly T.Bag and T.Shirt’s use of magic, like the quest, seems very noticeably incidental in this series; when it is used, the sound effects used in every previous series have been replaced. Also completely absent is T.Bag’s magic saucer. As I’ve said before, T.Bag thrives on the familiar and although there had been many changes across the Hale era which if not completely welcome, weren’t too distracting, some of those implemented in this series just feel too different.
As with T.Bag and the Sunstones of Montezuma, we have another new theme tune. It’s not a bad piece of music, but (as with its predecessor) it lacks that certain something which made the original, ‘Summer with Marty’, so appropriate to the series (even though it would appear to have been a library track).
… but now I’ve wittered on for nearly a thousand words about the series as a whole without getting down to the specifics of the episode …
I’ve always felt that opening and closing episodes of the various T.Bag series had to be special; they were the big ‘events’ book-ending a ten-episode run. My main bugbear with Episode 1 of Take off with T.Bag is that it feels like business-as-usual. That’s not to say it’s a bad episode: it’s packed with enjoyable moments, funny lines, reliably fractious T.Bag and T.Shirt business, and the welcome return of Denise Coffey as Granny Bag. The episode builds nicely to the revelation that everyone has forgotten T.Bag’s birthday and the launch of the quest; but compared with previous series openers and perhaps as the result of a less involved quest, it lacks that something ‘special’.
An element which really appeals to me is the use of a series convention, T.Shirt leaving T.Bag, and subverting it by placing it at the start of the series rather than the end. It leads to the aforementioned destruction of Granny Bag’s home at the hands of her spiteful relative and Georgina Hale’s delightful turn as the Swiss clockmaker (‘No mistake, you stupid old biddy’). Hale in particular (although she seems to be suffering from a cold) is on top form in this episode, displaying typical selfish T.Bag traits as her birthday approaches. The T.Bag/T.Shirt relationship between her and John and Hasler is now very well honed, both in the performances and the writing, and their exchange at the beginning of the episode is great: ‘I’m fed up playing second banana to a fruitcake’.
Denise Coffey is as reliably potty as ever: ‘Are you canvassing for the Monster-Raving Loony Party? Well you’ve got my vote, sunshine!’ We’re also treated to an appearance of Granny Bag’s pet, Doggy Bag (another steal from the book), a typically oddball T.Bag creation. It’s also nice that there seems to be more emphasis on tea-making in this series than there have been in previous years, with Tow-Ling’s tales of the Tea-Making Academy and T.Bag’s dire efforts to brew herself a cuppa (always a delight to watch).
As mentioned, there are new production personnel on-board. Alex Clarke, if anything, outdoes Ian Russel in the previous series with his set designs. The scale and detail of Granny Bag’s cottage and its mountainside surroundings is astounding compared to how small and cramped the sets were a few years before. Chateau Bag is very appropriate for T.Bag: a mixture of elegant, vulgar and tacky furnishings.
For the first time, costumes are provided by someone other than Raymond Childe. T.Shirt and Granny’s costumes are relatively unchanged from their previous appearances, while T.Bag wears a new red Russian-esque creation from designer, Jo Allman. It’s not a bad costume, but it’s never seemed as distinctive as Childe’s earlier outfits. Tow-Ling’s baseball cap and casual dress are nicely reminiscent of John Hasler’s costumes in earlier years of the programme.
New director Neville Green shares a similar flair as predecessor, Glyn Edwards, presenting us with visually interesting camera-work which lends itself to the story-telling. Similarly his use of stock music is much more varied and original than Leon Thau’s. He also seems to have a propensity for video trickery, e.g., the unfolding shot from T.Bag’s binoculars as Granny Bag’s cottage explodes. Green’s strong points appear to be comedy moments (like Edwards, with the more slapstick bent of the Hale era) and special effects; in Episode 1 he presents us with the animation of Granny and T.Shirt on a hand-glider, and the first flight of the flying saucer.
This is a difficult one to mark out of ten and I’d have to go for somewhere between a five and a seven. I can’t give it a five, because it is a better than average episode; at the same time, I don’t want to give it a seven because it takes the series too far away from what it originally was. So that’s a reluctant six from me … a good episode, but weighed down by all the changes.
|
|
|
Post by raggedbone on Sept 30, 2008 19:36:18 GMT
Hello Jamie, Ha ha -- I had a feeling we'd disagree about this one. Actually the review is far more about the series as a whole than the episode -- I'd decided when these started that my comments on whole series would be reserved for the first episodes. One of those quirks of the randomiser is that we get two first episodes so soon! Never fear - my next one will be much kinder - Episode 4 of this series is a good 'un ... and it'll hopefully be a lot easier when I'm not having a rant! Having seen copies of this episode which were recorded in other regions on its only transmission in this country, I was annoyed to discover that the screening in my area (Anglia) cut back much later than others after the fault - it returned roughly at the point where T.Bag rushes to the door to find Tow-Ling. Well that's two differences of opinion - any more out there? RB
|
|