Mercury Music Prize 2010

I love the Mercury Music Prize. It tends to make me simultaneously angry and happy at the same time - usually angry because I disagree with a lot of it and happy because I usually uncover some hidden gem that I would never have heard of otherwise.

This year, dare I say it, has been a really good list I think and I think its wide open. A lot has been said of The XX - from myself included because I was calling them a shoe-in for this prize ever since last summer - but I can't see them winning it simply because of them being the bookies favourites. It's typical of the Mercury to pass over albums just because they're the favourites - the most glaring recent one was Bat For Lashes losing out to the Klaxons who I'm still not sure can quite believe that they won.

Anyway to this years list. While I would've liked to have seen Noah and the Whale's The First Days Of Spring as opposed to Mumford and Sons, I don't think I would really change much about the list. It has a certain integrity to it and I don't think that there's any really stupid albums included.

Me being a betting man and all that, I've had a few small wagers on the event. My biggest bet was £10 on Laura Marling to win for her album I Speak Because I Can and I've had a couple of little £2 sniffers on Wild Beasts and Villagers.

Why Marling then? Well, as anyone who knows me will testify, I think that she is perhaps the most talented songwriter around in the world at the moment. I've been a big fan since I first saw her perform New Romantic aged 16 and her development in the ensuing four years has been fantastic. Her recent album is as good a folk album as I've heard for a long time and contains all that is great about her style and songwriting. And at 8-1 she's a hell of a bet.

I actually think that the album that's most deserving of victory is Wild Beasts, which is why I've put a couple of quid on them too. It seems like a classic mercury album too - completely different and of its own creation, there are very few bands around that sound even close to Wild Beasts. Furthermore, the album is excellent and is very much a grower in that you will still be listening to it many months after the first. It's inventive and melodic and would be a fine winner.

My other bet is on Villagers but to qualify this, I don't think that they'll (or he, as its the work of mainly one man) win. However, the album is a genuinely interesting listen and if the judges fancy going for something really left field then it stands a chance. I also think that although the performances on the night are not supposed to be a factor, there's a very real chance that Conor O'Brien could blow everyone out of the water with his amazing live show. At 12-1 he's an outsider but an interesting choice and I like the record.

Of the other challengers - and I've only heard 8 of the 12 albums - I like Mumford and Sons without really loving it, I think that if they win it will be purely on the back of wanting to award the prize to someone commercial successful after the Speech Debelle Debacle last year. There is a number of excellent songs and a number of songs that aren't quite as good. The nomination is enough.

It's great to see Paul Weller commended for what seems to be a very furtive period for the great man. That said, I kinda preferred his previous effort 22 dreams from last year more than Wake Up The Nation but still, I'm not going to argue with his nomination. That said, he has virtually no chance of winning.

Corinne Bailey-Rae's The Sea is a touching record and another worthy contender although it lacks a little consistency at times. The same can be said of I Am Kloot's Sky At Night which has some absolutely unbelievably good songs but doesn't quite nail it all the way through.

I haven't heard the token jazz album, the Dizzee Rascal album (not my cup of tea), the Foals record or the Biffy Clyro effort (although I'd quite like to hear that one) so I can't judge in full but for my money the winner should come from either The XX, Wild Beasts or Laura Marling.

And for everything I've written over the course of this article, I think that The XX would be deserving of the prize. It's a fantastic record - sparse and melodic and beautiful, but at the same time has had a little too much commercial exposure (how many adverts/sporting montages has it been used on now? It's the new One Day Like This).

So Wild Beasts for me. Or Laura. Yes, Laura - get in there and net me my £80 dear.

Oscars 2010: The Results

Another year, another Oscars ceremony.

The Hurt Locker won six awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, trouncing Avatar which failed to a win any of the major gongs. Acting prizes went to the expected recipients and Precious won a writing award. Generally speaking, positive results across the board.

Staying up to watch the coverage on Sky was another interesting experience. Considering they probably pay a bit of money for the rights it seems strange that their studio guests were quite as irrelevant. Don't get me wrong, I quite like Ronni Ancona and David Baddiel but I'm not sure how exactly they were booked.

Anyway, to my central point: all four members of the studio team guessed every single one of the awards on a piece of paper before the ceremony began and the top score was 16 correct answers out of 24. Similarly, on the Guardian Unlimited podcast two critics that I admire immensely - Xan Brooks and Jason Solomons - managed the same score. This ultimately isn't important, but for the fact that I did the same exercise and got 17 correct (although admittedly the difference may have been a flukey guess on Best Short Documentary). This means either the awards are incredibly predictable or I am a genius and I'm fairly sure what the answer to that is.

The betting mentioned in previous blog posts wasn't quite as fruitful. I comfortably made my money back and although I wasted £8 of my £24 profit on my two outsider bets still ended with a £16 return on the evening. It added a little spice to proceedings, if nothing else.

The ceremony was actually not too bad; I thought that Steve Martin was exceptionally funny and made me laugh out loud on a number of occasions (Meryl Streep's Nazi memorabilia in particular). What unfortunately let the event down was the fact that the awards were so obviously nailed in, there wasn't really any tension except for the final and critical Best Picture decision going to The Hurt Locker.

That said, I can't pretend that I didn't whoop for joy when Tom Hanks read that result out. I had been certain - despite betting on Bigelow's masterpiece - that Avatar was going to win and it came as a real surprise that it lost out.

And finally, it was nice to see that the Academy managed to make their traditional balls-up with the Foreign Language film. Given that A Prophet and The White Ribbon were both films at a supremely high level, it rather tickles me how they can never quite get it right. I almost think that its a wilful attempt to be subversive in an award category that none of the voters actually care about. The White Ribbon? Boo sucks to you Haneke. A Prophet? Boo sucks again. Lets reward some film that nobody's seen, it'll be a right laugh.

Either way, there wasn't many wrong decisions on the night and I'll take a Hurt Locker victory any day of the week. Roll on next year.

Oscars 2010: The Betting

Depending on how you look at it, betting on the Oscars is not an especially fruitful pursuit. The odds you generally get are hardly worth the flutter, especially if we have a procession of Award season winners floating through.

Because of the fact that nearly all the categories can be predicted without a great deal of ease, it means that you've got to put a few quid on to make any real return. Despite all this, I ultimately like to bet on who I think will win to try and spice up my evenings entertainment and this year thought I would publish who I've gone for and why. I put on £40 worth of bets (and got a free £20 bet courtesy of Paddy Power) and this is where my money lies:

Ms Bullock was obviously the free bet, chosen to try and bring in some cash. I've chosen to back The Hurt Locker for Best Picture and Best Director (and a double for both to happen) - and this is purely as an anti-Avatar bet. Bigelow is highly likely to take away Director although I still have the strong feeling that Avatar will nick the main prize.

Jeff Bridges is another no-brainer and he'll win me next to nothing but its virtually money in the bank so there's not so much risk. That leaves my wildcard bets: if either works then it will bring in some excellent returns, although that is probably unlikely.

Inglourious Basterds would be a fantastic winner for the Academy, purely on the basis that it would be a massive shock and a popular result, given that Tarantino is a hero to many. The reason why I've bet on it is not as much a subversive piece of anarchy, but because a view expressed by many is that the new voting system could benefit Inglourious (prinicipally this view was championed by Harvey Weinstein so it isn't entirely ridiculous). At the relatively long odds of 12-1, it was worth a gamble.

Carey Mulligan is my other special bet. I don't think she'll win, but Best Actress is a seriously poor field this year and if Sandra Bullock can be considered a strong favourite then there must be issues. Mulligan's performance is exceptional and more importantly, she seems to be very popular in Hollywood so it's a good outside bet.

Anyway, the dead cert bets should result in me making a small profit guaranteed. Lets all hope Inglourious makes me some real money...

Oscars 2010: Why Less Isn't Always More

So, it's Oscars night and in a matter of hours there will have been several bouts of tears, a load of undeserving awards (don't worry, I'm saving my Avatar rant until after it wins) and lots of expensive dresses waltzing up the red carpet.

This year sees a change of voting with the Best Picture award, with an increase in nominees up from 5 to 10. This means that there is room for films like A Serious Man and District 9 in the short-list and comes on the back of a number of issues from previous ceremonies.

Ultimately, this decision was based upon the performance of two movies last year: The Dark Knight and Wall-E. Both were good enough to be nominated for Best Picture but neither did; although they both picked up awards (Animated Feature for Wall-E and a posthumous acting gong for Heath Ledger). These were big, popular films that made the Academy seem out of touch with the general public who were increasingly switching off from the ceremony. What was billed as the Greatest Show on Earth was being serious questioned by the American public.

So this year, to accommodate such films the list was increased to ten. It was hailed as a good idea at the time, the chance to reward a foreign film perhaps or a film like Star Trek which was both successful and also an excellent production. Unfortunately these ideas haven't been followed through.

The biggest miss of the Academy was by ignoring any foreign films. Both A Prophet and The White Ribbon are better than any film of the Best Picture longlist but are left shunted out in their own Foreign Language category. When you take into account that Let The Right One In didn't even get nominated, it raises big question marks over the selection criteria.

So instead, we get District 9 and Up being nominated - two films that deserve such rewards and probably wouldn't have infiltrated the 5 film shortlist. You can probably add the Coen Brothers' excellent A Serious Man into that category too and I have no real complaints. My issues relate to two key points:

1) Most of the extra films nominated have absolutely zero chance of winning. It is ironic that in the year of widening the margins that there is the normal two horse race going on (with Avatar and the Hurt Locker)

2) By looking at the Best Director category, you can pretty much work out who would've been nominated if there was only 5 pictures in the category (i.e. those five films: Avatar, The Hurt Locker, Precious, Inglourious Basterds and Up In The Air). I can't help but feel that this devalues the whole process.

Finally - and this perhaps isn't the most important point for Hollywood - it allows a lot of substandard films into the list. An Education is a good film and I really enjoyed it but I struggle to feel that it is at the standard of an Oscar nomination. You can literally triple that sentiment for The Blind Side. Even films like Up and District 9 - despite my comments above - fall into that category.

For Hollywood, this is a side point. If it increases revenue to the film industry and gets a few more ticket sales for a few more films, then all the better. If it adds a little spice to an ailing ceremony and adds a few more million onto the TV figures then that's perhaps more important. Even if it actually adds no extra excitement at all.

BAFTAs Bang On

Every year I tend to tune into the BAFTA awards and usually do so in the knowledge that I’ll likely come away from it thinking that the whole ceremony was full of spectacular misjudgements. Last night, for the first time in years, I felt quite proud to be British.

This was mainly to do with the fact that BAFTA almost completely ignored Avatar, aside from two minor technical awards. Instead, they chose to honour the superb The Hurt Locker with Best Film and Best Director for Kathryn Bigelow.

What has always annoyed me about previous ceremonies is the way that the show fawns over Hollywood in a really embarrassing way and then promptly awards a lesser British film with the important awards (see: The Queen and Atonement in particular). There was always a massive lack of balance, which helped to create a really peculiar series of contradictions, almost that they were acknowledging that they needed Hollywood's star appeal, but were going to ignore it in the end anyway. It's little wonder that not many of the big names turned up on Sunday night.

In fairness, they still did those annoying things, but this time they achieved the balance that they so desperately needed. In giving both lead actor prizes to Brits through Colin Firth and Carey Mulligan they secured a certain level of British victory and by gifting any B list Hollywood actor a chance to present an award (I’m thinking mainly of Matt Dillon and Uma Thurman to be honest, but there’s plenty to choose from) they managed to keep a degree of Hollywood swooning. The difference this year was that both actors completely deserved their awards but have been largely ignored during awards season because of the classic Oscar philosophy of rewarding actors who’s “time has come”.

While giving the awards to Firth and Mulligan as opposed to Jeff Bridges and Sandra Bullock like the Oscars will do in a few weeks time was purely a patriotic move by BAFTA voters keen to ensure that the British film industry had something to take home, it was ultimately the right move and ensured that at least one major awards ceremony had recognised the great work that the two Brits had committed to celluloid.

It all added to the balance of the evening; BAFTA rewarded virtually all of the top films in some way or another through either acting wins (A Single Man, An Education, Precious, Inglorious Basterds) or through writing and directing (Up In The Air and Hurt Locker). The latter film winning the main prize was a fantastic kick in the shins for Avatar director James Cameron, something that most industry people seem reluctant to do for fear of derailing his billion dollar machine. Well, in actual fact, the Hurt Locker is a far greater artistic achievement and that cancels out virtually any argument you can make for Avatar.

What does this all mean for the Oscars then? The answer to this is most likely to be nothing at all – Avatar will still win a number of important Academy Awards because of the sheer amount that Hollywood has invested in that film to get returning dollars through the multiplexes. A vote against Avatar is almost a vote against the highly lucrative 3D market, something which is practically saving the industry globally at the minute.

So, in real terms, the BAFTAs gave the British industry a huge lift, managed to reward virtually every major work that needed rewarding and ignored Avatar in favour of the far superior Hurt Locker. With the exception of Jonathan Ross as host (laughs were not a-plenty from the Americans), it was a great night for film and a reward for the art of film-making.

Albums of the Decade

At the turn of the decade, I found myself reading a ridiculous number of lists. There are lists for the next big artist or band, lists for albums of the year, lists for the worst. In the main part, most of these lists mean absolutely nothing; robbing the contents of context and empathy.

The one list that did prick my interest were the Albums of the Decade ones that proliferated on the internet in the last week of the year. What stood out for me was how many genuinely startling albums in this time; albums that sounded like nothing before them and which ultimately was copied by derirative bands over the following years until the fad wore off.

Over the last couple of weeks, I've thought about this more and more and evenutally set about making a list of 10 albums from the 2000s that I felt were completely fresh and life-changing. Putting them in any kind of order seemed to be an impossible task (and would make me highly hypocritical after the first paragraph of this blog) so here are the ten records in alphabetical order:

Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
Damien Rice – O
Eminem - The Marshall Mathers LP
Libertines - Up The Bracket
Lily Allen - Alright, Still
PJ Harvey - Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea
Radiohead - Kid A
The Streets - Original Pirate Material
The Strokes - Is This It?
The White Stripes - White Blood Cells

I would split these down into a few different categories:

Category 1: Startling original
Eminem, The White Stripes, Radiohead, The Streets

Category 2: Perfectly crafted genre pieces
Damien Rice, PJ Harvey, Arctic Monkeys

Category 3: Totally Of Their Moment
Lily Allen, The Strokes, Libertines

I don't think that it would be harsh to say that there are some average moments that don't necessarily work perfectly on the Category 1 records, but this is always forgiven when the effect is so startling. Eminem's Marshall Mathers LP is a great example; whether it be some of the more drug based songs or the skits that plague all of his releases, I challenge anyone not to listen to Kim or The Way I Am and not be amazed at his sheer achievement.

The three examples for Category 2 are perhaps what I would consider to be the best crafted records of the decade. The Damien Rice album is song-for-song the best Singer Songwriter album that I've ever heard; every single track hits the spot and does what it set out to do. PJ Harvey's Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea is arguably the best rock album that I've ever heard and the same can arguably be levelled at the Arctic Monkeys.

Category 3 albums are not perfect and tend to stick within a certain set of historical boundaries but sum up their moment in history so brilliantly well that they reinvigorate their own genre. The Libertines are a great example of this; you can pick out all of the post-punk influences like the Clash and the Jam mixed in with an Indie/Brit-Pop framework but at the same time, they are unmistakably The Libertines. On each of their albums there were massive highlights and some disappointments but it didn't stop every guitar band in the country suddenly abandoning their pathway and trying to imitate the sound.

The Strokes are a similar case in point and if anything there's even less originality but there's no doubting that when I hear it, it reminds me of the early part of the decade when the New York garage rock scene really took off. It is a good album - if not a great one - but it really summed up its time in a way that few albums released in the decade managed to do.

So what makes a great album? Simply grab one of these ingredients and watch the salt: Great songs, originality and fantastic craftsmanship. Failing that, just release it at the perfect moment and watch it fizz.

The Thick Of It: A View

Last week saw the end of the second series of Armando Iannucci's political satire The Thick Of It; eight episodes of sheer brilliance that was so good that I think it could well be the best British TV show of the year.

So good, in fact, that I'm going to moan about it for the next 400 words.

I had a few issues with the series, although a lot of these weren't actually related to the individual episodes. What troubled me was the way that the whole series knitted together and all too often, how it jumped from one storyline to the other without offering sufficient build up or back story.

I'm fairly sure that Iannuci's argument back to me would be that things in politics move that fast; one day things are fine and the next day you've been sacked. That viewpoint seems to forget the actual politics themselves though; the daily agendas, the negative undercurrents, the deterioration of professional credibility. What's more, basic TV writing suggests you need to introduce plots and characters with a degree of subtlety; not sledgehammer them to death in a quick and brutal murder.

The two things that irritated me were concerned mainly with the final two episodes. Firstly, the introduction of the character of Steve Fleming as Malcolm Tucker's rival press officer so late in the series seemed a little forced. We are encouraged to believe that there is a back story whereby Tucker shafted Fleming early in government life but for all that the viewer knows, he arrives without any prior warning.

The problem was that Tucker didn't seem to be losing his grip during the first six episodes. You could argue that his rants were getting increasingly more socially unacceptable (and punching a civil servant in the face is pretty socially unacceptable) but there was no evidence until - with two episodes to go - Fleming was introduced and the two engaged in a power struggle. Effectively, in thirty minutes we went from believing that Tucker was in complete control to being forced to resign. It didn't ring true.

There was also a fabulous cameo from Tom Hollander as Conservative Press Maniac “The Fucker” which was memorable and funny but completely at odds with the rest of the series. You can't just bring characters like that in for two minutes at the end of a series; it just unbalances everything else. What's more, The Fucker didn't really serve any great purpose in the programme other than to make the point that both politic parties are the same (i.e. as soon as the Tories get into power, a conservative Tucker clone would emerge to do the exact same thing). As a storyline it seemed forced and rushed; almost as if Iannuci was trying to throw as many things into the last episode as possible and hope it stuck.

The way in which it culminated with a general election being called also felt like a bit of a damp squid; no great resolve like the other individual episodes in the series, it just left a great deal of uncertainty.

Despite all of these things, The Thick Of It was an overwhelming success. It is a measure of the quality of the programme that it can have as many problems as this and still have at least four or five genuinely laugh out loud funny. The characters are superb, the quality of the satire in direct comparison to real life events was equally as good. It just needed a bit more thinking out when it came to the series as a whole.

Guardian Angels

It perhaps says more about me that I have formed huge attachment on several writers on the Guardian newspaper. It started with Laura Barton, a writer who seems to share all of my main opinions and tastes and can express them in a way that's so undeniably passionate that it makes me want to proclaim her my dream woman.

I feel the same way about Marina Hyde, the columnist behind the weekly Lost In Showbiz column and Charlie Brooker (although he at least doesn't conjure up the dream woman analogy quite as well). So much so, the last two books that I've read have been written by both of these two writers. The books in question are Marina's "Celebrity: How Entertainers Took Over the World and Why We Need an Exit Strategy" and Charlie Brooker's "Dawn Of The Dumb".

Hyde is best known for her Lost In Showbiz pieces, where her deeply satirical, whimsical and consistently hilarious pieces are published in Friday's G2 supplement. I was delighted to hear a few months ago that she was releasing a full length book based on these pieces but studying them in more detail. My copy was not sat on the shelf for very long before I devoured it in a few short bursts.

Stylistically, Celebrity is a mixed bag. One thing instantly sticks out as troublesome, whereby a lot of her jokes are stuck in footnotes* which takes a little getting used to. This device is used on most pages and although some of the jokes gain a little from the "Reveal" of having to go down to the bottom of the page to reach the punch line, it ultimately disrupts the rhythm and flow of the writing. You do get used to it as the book goes on but it does leave a lasting impression that it could’ve been handled in a more reader friendly way.

Another thing that becomes clear with the book is that there isn't quite enough material to spread it out over a full length piece of work. For the first half this isn't as much of a problem but as the book progresses, it tends to get a little stuck with the same cast of celebrity characters and similar stories.

That said, when it hits the mark it really obliterates its targets with Hyde's trademark wit. This book contains some of her best work when you boil it down to its smaller chapters and segments and perhaps that's the biggest problem.

When it comes down to it, the more successful of the two books was Brookers - which wasn't really a book as much as a chronological publishing of the already published columns in the Guardian from the past few years. In doing so, a lot of the writing was very much of its own time; for example lots of the pieces were about television shows happening at that time, like X Factor and Big Brother and this doesn't translate that well when these events have passed and the people involved in them are forgotten.

The reason why Dawn of the Dumb works better is purely its brevity and mainly because it hasn't been edited to try and become something other than a collection of newspaper articles already published.

Marina Hyde should be applauded for taking a subject that she's written about with great success and trying to craft a piece of work that's different in style and nuances, but expanding on all the main themes. It is a proper book rather than just a cynical attempt to move into the more lucrative paperback market.

Celebrity is still worth reading, make no mistake. Hyde's writing is perhaps the most engagingly funny and brilliantly satirical that I've ever read. But, as a style and a form, there's a reason why it was much more successful in short, sharp weekly newspaper articles.

* I'm not funny enough to do these as well as Marina.

Location, Location, Location

When going to some kind of prestige, serious musical concert ones of the most important thing for the organisers is to make sure that they get the right venue. Over the past seven days I've been to three wildly different concerts; the Wainwright family Christmas show at the Royal Albert Hall in London, the Halle Orchestra at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester and Spiritualized playing their 1997 album Ladies and Gentleman We Are Floating In Space at the Manchester Apollo. What's more, in all three concerts I was sat on the front row of the Stalls.

The unfortunate aspect of the three concerts was that the one I was most emotionally connected with was at a really poor choice of venue.

Since I bought Spiritualized's 1997 album Ladies and Gentleman We Are Floating In Space, it has been a record that I continually find myself coming back to. At the time, I thought it was a good album but as the years have gone on I keep finding new things from it. The songs are rich, full of colour both on the surface and underneath the sheen. In short, it is an amazing record.

Anyway, a huge stage of people (including a gospel choir, a string and brass section) descended onto the stage at the Apollo. What puzzles me is how anyone would think that the venue was capable of coping with this sound; having seen an orchestra there last year with the Last Shadow Puppets I can promptly confirm that it simply doesn't have the sonic capabilities to pull such expansive sounds off.

This time the sound was ruined by an increase in volume across the board to try and squeeze all of the sounds contained in that brilliant record to the rest of the theatre. All this meant was that singer Jason Pierce's voice was pushed over the top and the brass section in particular was reduced to a shrill high-pitched squeal. When the band went off on the noise-scape done so beautifully on the album, all that you could hear was just a stupid mess of loud noise.

Put Spiritualized at the Royal Albert Hall or the Bridgewater Hall and these problems could well have been resolved. In the surroundings of the Apollo, all that happened was that I came away disappointed and have a rather concerning level of ringing in my ears 24 hours later.

In comparison, the sound wasn't the best at the Royal Albert Hall for Not So Silent Night and the consistency of the evening struggled when there wasn't an eminent Wainwright on stage (Martha or Rufus). There were moments of magic: Guy Garvey covering Joni Mitchell's River, Ed Harcourt and Martha singing Fairytale of New York, Rufus and his boyfriend singing Silent Night in German. The problems with the sound were the complete opposite of Spiritualized in that if anything, the vocals weren't loud enough and the drums seemed a lot louder in the mix than they should've been.

As a confirmed fan of all of the members of the Wainwright and McGarrigle clans, it was an enjoyable enough evening. Reviews in the press afterwards were mixed and I can understand why; for non-fans I can imagine that the show dragged a little and lacked a little imagination at times. Considering I'd spent quite a bit of money on travelling down to London and all that entails, I came away with a slight feeling of disappointment too.

I didn't have too much time to dwell on this though. A few days later, I was at the Bridgewater Hall for The Halle Orchestra's "Halle Pops" evening, featuring some of the most famous classical music ever written with compositions from Mozart, Bach, Vivaldi and Mendelssohn. Being the first classical concert that I'd ever attended, I wasn't really sure whether or not I was going to enjoy myself but I soon settled in to the spirit of things and made the most of the occasion.

Some of the traditions of classical music - the soloist leaving the stage and then coming back on at the end of every piece, for example - seemed a touch unnecessary. Another striking difference I noticed was how members of the orchestra didn't particularly look like they were enjoying themselves, something that when pop performers would be critically mauled for.

The Bridgewater Hall is a fabulous venue, far and away superior to the Royal Albert Hall in every way other than size. Sitting on the front row for the event wasn't necessarily the great choice that I was anticipating though - too many music stands and large instruments obscure the view in these situations.

And then, on to the Apollo. The feeling of disappointment from the Wainwright concert was permeated; almost to the point that it detracted from one of my all time favourite albums. I would question why the slightly reclusive Jason Pierce wanted to re-enact what was a quite painful period of life and he never looked totally comfortable on stage performing. At a different venue, this wouldn't have been a problem. At the Apollo - with ringing ears and a front row seat of which a sound monitor obscured the entire middle of the stage (drums, brass and strings included) - it lost a lot of its magic.

So, what are my general conclusions about music venues?

A. If you have a prestige concert it needs to be in a prestige venue.
B. The Manchester Apollo is a dreadful venue for anything other than guitar-bass-drums basic bands.
C. Sometimes the front row tickets aren't always the best
D. Did I mention that I hate the Manchester Apollo?

In Treatment: A View

Having just watched the final episode of the first series of the HBO therapy drama In Treatment, I feel compelled to write of its virtue.

Staggered over five weeks, with one 30 minute episode showed every weeknight, I was initially slightly dubious about making the commitment to watching something so time-intensive as I'm not always at home every night to keep up. Fortunately, I started watching and the rest is history. Even when I wasn't at home, I found myself watching a week’s worth in one go at the weekend; each episode hungrily munching into the next.

For those who didn't see any of the mass media publicity geared towards its broadcast in the UK nine weeks ago, In Treatment follows the psychotherapist Paul (played in perhaps the role of his life by Gabriel Byrne) treating four new patients. Each one gets a 30 minute programme each week, with the Friday show being Paul attending his own therapy with Gina (another superb performance from Dianne Wiest).

Nothing much happens physically in these episodes; it is just dialogue, character-to-character. On a week-by-week basis, new developments emerge from each patient as we slowly build up their back-stories and this structure is one of the most entertaining parts of the programme. The reason it works, largely speaking, is the quality of the writing and the timing of new developments with each character and treatment. For the first few weeks as you got to know them, there was one key revelation in each programme - usually about three quarters of the way through and this key moment was often so impeccably timed that it made the whole programme.

The characters are a brilliant mix that illustrated the way that most humans are messed up - on one hand completely dislikeable and then on the other, hard not to love. Take Laura, for example. She's one of the main storylines of the first series, which begins with her announcing that she was in love with Paul in the first episode. On one hand she is clearly vulnerable and scarred but this manifests itself through a series of games and fanciful stories designed to unsettle the natural order. In doing so, she helps to manifest a mid-life crisis in Paul which reaches its climax by the final episode.

At this point, it is clear that she doesn't actually love Paul and that she was chasing after the unattainable, testing the boundaries as opposed to searching for anything else. She is a neurotic and unreliable character, yet still strangely sympathetic.

The other characters are a little more hit and miss. Alex, a traumatised fighter pilot is a riddle of contradictions and the least successful of the patients; he is difficult and cold and there are several puzzling plot holes that restrict him. In contrast, Sophie - a deeply troubled young gymnast who has tried to kill herself - is a much more loveable character and is perhaps the only one of the four that I found real sympathy with. I wanted her to sort herself out and I was concerned about her in a way that I wasn't with the others.

Finally, there's Jake and Amy. Jake is a hothead musician whose relationship with Amy is based upon a volatile dynamic that therapy manages to remove. Rather than strength their marriage, the lack of tension results in the end of it and by the end, the roles have reversed in that Jake is the sympathetic character - once the audience has the time to understand why he acts the way he does, it becomes a different storyline altogether.

Ultimately though, the best thing about In Treatment is that it takes place in a single room, conveying emotions and storyline through dialogue and extreme Ingmar Bergman style close-ups. It is reassuring that there is an audience for slow build up and that you can tell a story without having to lose all realms of subtlety. Sure, you could argue that the characters undergoing therapy are overly dramatic but that is part and parcel of the form that the programme has to take.

As far as fantastic television goes, In Treatment is up there. If you missed the series on Sky Arts then I'd recommend investing in the box-set and gorging on its 43 episodes.