As I child I could never understand the appeal of panto. New Year’s Day seemed to be the time for families to go out together and experience ‘the arts’. Some might see the Nutcracker ballet at the Royal Opera House, others may hit up the West End or a classical music venue. Failing all that, you can get your culture fix by watching the New Year’s Day Concert from Vienna on the Beeb.  Why, then, did my mother and father insist on taking me to the Wycombe Swan to see a bunch of washed up soap actors and reality TV ‘stars’ poorly re-enacting a fairy tale?

Of course I went along with it. It was something I was meant to enjoy. In fact it was something that everyone else did seem to enjoy. Year upon year these farcical productions were happening in local theatres all over the country, and year upon year people would spend money on these things. Six-year-old me was bemused: from my theatre seat I would gaze around this room of seemingly reasonable people who had assembled to watch a fat, balding ex- Emmerdale star in drag express his emotions through the medium of a cheesy 90s hit. It was no aria.

Although panto wasn’t exactly my cup of Earl Grey, I could at least see why other (probably more normal) children enjoyed it. The fairy tales were familiar, the humour was slapstick and obvious, and, if you were lucky, Buttons might throw some sweets at your face. But what perplexed me most were the adults. Whereas the majority of children were too shy to respond to the cry of “Oh no he isn’t!”, the adults always replied with an enthusiastic chorus of “Oh yes he is!” What on earth compelled them to partake of this farce with such fervour?

But now, at the grand old age of twenty, I have begun to see the light. As in the pantomime classic Peter Pan, this in-your-face, ridiculous tradition allows adults to feel like kids who never grew up. For all its absurdity, panto allows escapism from the toils and troubles of everyday life. It’s the perfect antidote to those inevitable January Blues, fed by a dwindling bank balance, expanded waistline, and the awareness that no matter how enthusiastically you resolve not to drink/smoke/swear, within a week you’ll be off your face with a fag hanging out of your mouth and shouting expletives at the dog.

Whether you love panto, or just see it as an annual excuse to dust off Christopher Biggins and put him in a gaudy dress, the charm of this festive tradition cannot be denied. It’s mad, it’s camp, it’s often a bit tacky; but at the end of the day, it’s all just a bit of fun. And, in the Wycombe Swan’s production of Snow White this year, it has brought Ann Widdecombe to the stage. That is nothing short of a Christmas miracle. 

★★☆☆☆
Two Stars

My usual barometer for choosing programmes, the ‘if it’s got a Spooks actor in it then it’ll probably be quite good’ method, was thrown out of kilter by the first episode of Ripper Street.

Opening with the aftermath of a brutal murder and leading Matthew Macfadyen and his band of gritty policemen chums to a violent pornography den, it lacks any real character and relies too heavily on its shocking contents.

Everything is really grimy, but in quite a nice, shiny way. Almost as if it’s been made for television. This is forgivable in, say, Doctor Who, where the period and setting are just vehicles serving a larger concept. But in this world of late-Victorian London, setting is everything. It’s the place that conceives the action; the dark and treacherous streets breed the crime that terrorises their denizens.

It’s in the name, for goodness sake: Ripper Street. And yet the programme’s setting lacks real atmosphere, real fear. It’s all a bit too carefully placed. This has a huge knock-on effect upon the character of the piece as a whole. It’s quite difficult to really care about the crimes, because, at least before the explicitness gets going, so little is at stake. We aren’t afraid of Jack the Ripper, because it’s so patently obvious that he’s got nothing to do with the crime. And no amount of worried looks and mentions of the dark past will convince us.

Ripper Street struggles throughout against association with Sherlock Holmes. There’s not a great deal of room for detective dramas set in a late Victorian London underworld, and this attempt lacks any of the charm and character of Conan Doyle’s work and its adaptations. The writers have gone for gritty and serious, and have sacrificed soul and feeling. It’s all just a bit dull and flat; Macfadyen is fine as the slightly bland lynchpin, but he needs more dynamic characters around him. There’s none of the necessary flair here.

This first episode sets a gruesome and explicit standard, taking the exploitation of women and the first violent pornographic films as its subject matter. But these shock tactics don’t resonate or chill as much as they should because the production values never let us quite feel the humans being hurt behind them.

It might mature across its eight-episode run, and with any luck a good cross-episode plotline will develop to give it the sense of intrigue it really needs. But unless Jack comes back sharpish, it’ll just stay horribly flat.

★★★★☆
Four Stars

Espionage works best as a period piece.  It’s a fact that the Bond franchise has been struggling against for several decades, having shed the post-war context that made the atmosphere of the original Fleming novels so compelling. And it’s telling that Bond had to escape to the timeless vistas of the Scottish highlands to get back onto comfortable cinematic territory.

William Boyd’s screenplay adaptation of his own book, Restless, is a gorgeous and compelling three-hour thriller, which leads us through a tense tale of wartime subterfuge. Boyd knows how to capture the claustrophobic intrigue of the wartime spy-thriller. And it’s Boyd who has been commissioned by the Fleming estate to write the next instalment in the Bond novel series. As Charlotte Rampling’s 1970s incarnation of Restless’s heroine Eva Delectorskaya tells us, ‘Never assume anything is a coincidence.’

Delectorskaya is a British agent, whose involvement in the secret service sees her embroiled in a team attempting to bring the all-important US forces into the war. All (almost inevitably) is not as it seems, as a double-agent is at work.

Our first meeting with Eva is, however, a generation later, as her daughter discovers her secret past. Said daughter, Ruth Gilmartin, is played by Michelle Dockery of Downton-fame, and has cast away her corsetry for willowy 70s chic and ill-advised period eye makeup. Little else has changed.

The first instalment seems a little anxious to get going, rapidly flitting between the two periods and trying to get the bothersome matter of exposition out of the way. Once it settles down in the incredibly capable hands of its gorgeous leads, Hayley Atwell and Rufus Sewell, all is indeed well, as the piece becomes atmospheric and engrossing. An early highlight is Eva’s visit to spy-school, in which she prepares for wartime espionage with a practical blend of ‘spot the difference’ and memorisation of US states. Enough to equip oneself against the Nazi war-machine, at any rate.

The second instalment is a real treat; utterly captivating and exciting throughout, as the link between past and present begins to unravel. Each period is beautifully shot and stylised, with one of the best-dressed casts on television. Sewell really knows how to carry off a tan fedora.

Some of the more snotty televisionadoes might turn up their noses at the slightly uneven way in which Boyd’s screenplay moves between periods and seems a little self-consciously adapted at both beginning and end. But this is more than made up for by the sheer stylishness of the piece, the quality of the acting, and, most crucially, its emotional integrity. The success of this adaptation is in its preservation of human feeling in a depiction of a world of espionage that is all too often repressed and cold.

Taking a central cultural fixture of your childhood and giving it a makeover has multiple risks attendant, but none more utterly distressing than the prospect of disappointing diehards by tarnishing, or tragically even kamikaze-ing, the shimmering, standalone glory of the original. The creators of The Snowman and the Snowdog, the centrepiece of Channel 4’s Christmas programming, knew its forebear loomed heavy; thankfully, at least Raymond Briggs, the notoriously irate The Snowman creator, had given it the nod to proceed.

The new film involves the additional canine character, but apart from a back-story, the plot follows the 1982 original almost identically. A new boy moves into the old boy’s home, bringing with him a sickly old pooch who soon croaks. Distraught kid then finds a hidden box left by Original Boy containing a photo and all the paraphernalia used to make the snowman, complete with the original dried-out satsuma nose. Snow falls; boy builds snowman. In a tribute, he also decides to build a snow dog (which receives for a nose the old dried-out satsuma). Then snow-beings come alive, play in house, learn hot and cold hazards, fly to North Pole, de der de der de der.

Various authoritative reviews of the 23-minute re-rendering have basically decided unanimously: warm and fuzzy sequel of children’s classic, alas sh*te and unnecessary. As much as I was loath to admit it, I cringed with them some of the way. But on repeat viewing, the general verdict seems harsher than it deserves, and needs rehabilitating a little bit.

If Snowdog is seen, and held up in comparison, as a direct sequel to The Snowman, it falls down any day of the week. It’s not intended to be either: the last time The Snowman creators consciously tried to emulate the original’s success was in 1998, with the much lesser known The Bear. Its minor status testifies to that approach. Snowdog has to be seen as an update; a remake that doesn’t pretend it’s trying to outdo the original story. Hence, the distancing devices. There’s an updated setting (the area surrounding the house has been massively urbanised), new protagonist, and new snowy character.

The new film is based around the ‘Snowdog’. The snowman matters less, because in a way, the snowman’s story doesn’t need revisiting. In the climactic skiing sequence, the snowman crashes out, but that doesn’t trouble us – the final dash between penguin versus Boy and Snowdog shows us where the bonding’s at. Like the Snowman in the 1982 film, the cute frozen pet is the object of greatest emotional investment in this one; the Snowman’s presence simply assures the magic and is a recognisable link to its older cinematic relative. He’s not irrelevant though: the unusually happy resolution is brought back to a sober reflection of loss by his melting, again. Most reassuringly, nothing of merit in the new film intrudes upon the specialness of the 1982 Boy-Snowman association.

About that defining song – yes, it’s not the boy treble tones of Peter Auty; yes, it’s a tad Coldplay. But ‘Light the Night’, written by Andy Burrows, Razorlight’s ex-drummer, was conscious precisely of not trying to be the original: the new setting is “more urban, so the music reflects that”. Despite the initial dismay of my own fresh ears, I found myself being strangely persuaded on third and fourth listening that I could catch myself crooning the tune in a soppy winter moment.

So no, it’s not a good ‘sequel’ – because nothing could be. Yes, there is every possibility it’s “unnecessary”. But it’s a different creature for different times, related but separate, and really, it’s not for us to decide if it deserves to stand. The Snowman and the Snowdog is a product of the 2010s, not the 1980s, and the generational boundary kicks in when it comes to deeming if it soars into either perennial affection or a slot on Dave beside the Wombles’ Christmas single.

The University of Oxford has recently collaborated with the University of Minnesota to launch a scientific project to photograph and classify animals in the Serengeti national reserve.

‘Snapshot Serengeti’ is part of the Zooniverse project and offers users the opportunity to experience an ‘online safari’ using pictures of animals taken throughout the 5700 sq. miles park. Zooniverse is led by Oxford University and Adler Planetarium and allows people to interact with scientific projects online.

Zooniverse projects encourage people to get involved as online volunteers. Scientists involved in the Serengeti project are hoping that users will help to classify animals in the photographs to help identify the different animals found in the park.

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Christopher Lintott, the director of Zooniverse, is a researcher at Oxford University and leads Citizen Science projects. He explained how he got involved in the project, telling Cherwell, “We played this game before in 2007 when we took millions of pictures of galaxies and put the images online. We realised that people were willing to give up their spare time to help researchers and we were then contacted by other researches of different projects. For Snapshot Serengeti, we teamed up with biologists largely from the US, and combined our software expertise with their data. Some of the images are amazing.”

The project has been very successful with 3.7 million animals classified and 70, 000 people visiting the site so far. The pictures are taken with a camera trap, which are remotely triggered cameras that allow photographs to be taken of shy or aggressive animals, which might be too dangerous or difficult to photograph in person.

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Chris Lintott continued, “There are only 230 cameras to cover the whole area. One member of the team from the University of Minnesota, Ali Swanson, checks them every few days to ensure that grass doesn’t obstruct the view of the cameras. Now that so many people have got involved and there’s been so much enthusiasm for the project, we can justify using more cameras as we have the manpower from the public to continue classifying the data.”

Students of Oxford University were receptive to the project – Rebecca Hannon of Balliol College commented, “This is a really interesting and different idea. Getting the public interested in online projects has worked well in lots of other areas of science too.”

Other current Zooniverse projects include classifying galaxies according to shapes using the Hubble telescope, and modelling the earth’s climates.