Running out of time

I'm fast running out of time to get much work done before heading off on holiday. I'll be away from my desk for 24 days visiting family and sightseeing in New Zealand. That's easily the longest break I've had since, well, the last time I went back to NZ in 2003. Five years since I've seen anyone from my family. I'm guessing they'll be much as same, but with a few more wrinkles.

It's a strange phenomenon, seeing your family grow older in five year bursts. I tend to remember them best as they were when I saw them most every day - but that's 18 years ago. I've seen them four times since then; this will be my fifth trip back to New Zealand after emigrating to the UK. My sister was 12 when I left, more than half her lifetime ago. Takes some getting your head round.

In the meantime I'm scrambling to do all the things I need to achieve before heading south. Thanks to an unexpected windfall [the best kind] has helped calm the nerves. Taking three and a half weeks off when you're self-employed is financial suicide. But a nice addition to my bank account means I can concentrate on largely speculative work between now and flying. First things first, I need some index cards.

Plotting any multi-layered, multi-viewpoint story, I've adopted the popular method of using index cards to scrawl story beats. I'll plot out the key moments for one story strand, before moving on to another strand. Once I've gotten those sorted, I can mix and match to my heart's content, finding the strongest sequence. So I spend time shuffling my cards on a bright blue pin-board.

Some clever writer once said the most important part of any story were the transitions, that moments that link one scene to the next, that transport the audience from one sequence to the next. I think there's a lot of truth in that. Just check out the work of graphic novel scribe Alan Moore [Watchmen, Halo Jones, etc]. He writes some of the best transitions in comics, utterly compelling shifts that propel you through the narrative, drive you to the finish. Great stuff.

So that's what I'm trying to do today - juggle several plot threads for two projects. I also need to collect the car from the garage, remember to eat breakfast [and lunch, come to that], learn three more pages of the script I'll be appearing in on stage come May, not out the rehearsal schedule for the same show, and a thousand other things all more urgent than the last. Time to get moving. Onwards.

West Wing: Obama, Clinton & McCain = video

Earlier this month, I noted the incredible similarities between this year's presidential primaries in the US, and the fictional presidential primaries and election campaign in seasons 6 and 7 of hit TV drama The West Wing.

Slate magazine has been digging into the same similarities and discovered Barack Obama was a model for fiction candidate Matt Santos, as the video below reveals. But the parallels between John McCain and fictional Republican candidate Arnold Vinick? That's just coincidence, it seems. So life is imitating art which was imitating life, as well as life simply imitating art.

TPO review: "Absolutely excellent."

Got back late from That Fancy London last night, after a madcap round trip involving much dashing around, excellent and stuff I can't talk about yet. [Ask me again in a couple of months.] Meanwhile, American comics writer Steven Grant has posted a lovely online review of THRILL-POWER OVERLOAD, my hardcover tome detailing the history of iconic British comic 2000 AD. Here's a few excerpts from what he had to say...

Coffee table books about comics tend to pretty tepid "official versions," watered down histories to put the subject matter, and creators, in the best possible light. This excellent history of 2000 AD, one of the pivotal comics of the '70s, isn't one of those ... author David Bishop gets it exactly right, neither snarky nor obsequious, freely cuing us in on both the praiseworthy and the warts ... ridiculously entertaining tribute to a little magazine that ended up an incredible phenomenon. Absolutely excellent.

You can read the full review and much, much more at Steven Grant's thoughtful, thought-provoking column, Permanent Damage.

There Will Be Procrastination, Regret, Pants

Some genius has reconfigured old Garfield cartoons by removing Garfield. The results can be pretty bleak, or often just bizarre. Embrace the existential angst...

When Buseys attack

Right, off to That Fancy London, so no time to blog today or tomorrow. In the meantime, savour the madness that is the red carpet scrum before the Oscars. See Ryan Seaquest 2012 [or whatever his name is] squirm! See Jennifer Garner look radiant, and afraid! See Gary Busey go in for a hickey! [Shudder]

Doctor Who vs The Master - old school stylee

Triumphant return for Morse spin-off Lewis

Lewis returned to British TV last night for its second series, and hit the ground running with a strong episode by Alan Plater. The partnership of DI Lewis [Kevin Whately] and DS Hathaway [Laurence Fox] has gelled, both characters sparking off each other in a different way from how Lewis and Morse worked together. It's more of a collaboration, less of a mentor and pupil relationship. Lots of humorous asides, as you'd expect from a great writer of comedy and drama like Plater, and a mystery just as twisty-turny as anything Inspector Morse ever tackled. Quality.

No real surprises at the Academy Awards, with the BAFTAs having correctly presaged most every Oscar. A bit night for non-American actors with foreigners stealing all the limelight, while the Coen brothers got three nods for No Country For Old Men. Lovely to see charming Irish musical Once pick up two awards for its songs, and no surprise that Diablo Cody won best original screenplay for her debut effort, Juno. That's a dream come true for every wannabe film scribe around the world. I'd be seething with jealousy if the award wasn't so well deserved. Right, got a meeting in Glasgow today and I'm off to That Fancy London tomorrow for an overnighter, so must dash.

Die, Die, Die annoying pop-up ad for Gillette

There's something inherently daft about advertisements for male shaving products. It's not just the profusion of extra blades on safety razors, although that's getting pretty silly. I could understand when going from one blade to two was considered a revolutionary act in that product field, but now some brands are up to five blades. Better than ever, the closest shave you ever had scream the hype-merchants. How many more blades can they fit on a safety razor? If five blades are so much better than four [or three, or two, or one], why not have 100 blades? A thousand?

Then there's the slogans and TV ads that accompany these breakthroughs in shaving technology. [Shaving technology? Give me a break. You're scraping whiskers of hair off a face, not solving cancer. Get over yourselves.] It's not enough for a safety razor to go a good job. No, now it has to be THE BEST A MAN CAN GET. See this square-jawed, bronzed Adonis of a man scraping whiskers off his face? You can be like this if you use our product. Be buff! Be tuff! Make bad guys yell enough!

Cue the inspirational music, so bombastic and over the top you'd think they were announcing applications had opened to become a freaking astronaut. Conquer space! Get any woman [or man] you want! Have facial so soft and smooth no sane human can resist your sheer animal magnetism! Conquer worlds! Achieve greatness! Obviously, they can't go with the truth: be less hairy after using our product. Try not to cut yourself. Use this and don't give your loved one stubble burn so much.

If you're wondering what's set off this diatribe, it's the world's most annoying pop-up add. Some genius at Microsoft redesigned Hotmail and, try as I might, I almost always have to get past an introductory screen to reach the contents of my inbox. That was vexing enough, but now this stupid arse drop-down ad for Gillette featuring Thierry Henry, Tiger Woods and Roger Federer appears from nowhere to cover the inbox button. Making it impossible to read my emails.

If I ever contemplated buying a Gillette product, this vexation has put me off the company's products FOR LIFE. Burn in hell, Gillette, and take you pissy ad with you. Thierry Henry I like, but Tiger Woods always looks like he's about to burst into tears [it's that weak chin and child from a velvet painting eyes], while Roger Federer I find slightly less appealing than a green potato. Sorry, ranting now. Time for my morning coffee. Will try to calm down before blogging again.

Life On Mars begat Ashes To Ashes, what next?

Had an email discussion the other day with an old friend, knocking jokey ideas back and forth for transferring the time travelling fish out of water premise popularised by Life On Mars. That transplanted a 2006 cop to 1973 Manchester, contrasting the attitudes, methods and lifestyles of the two eras.

Life On Mars ran two series before begetting the spin-off Ashes To Ashes. Essentially a remake of the same premise with a new time traveller and a more knowing attitude, Ashes To Ashes has London in 1981 as its destination. But where else could the premise go?

SPACE ODDITY: Brilliant young female scientist from 2009 is caught in a laboratory explosion. She wakes up in 1969, working alongside Professor Quatermass at the British Rocket Group, racing the US to get the first man [or woman] on the Moon...

SOUND AND VISION: Talented classical guitarist wakes in 1977 and finds herself taking Glenn Matlock's place in the Sex Pistols are punk rock reaches its apogee during the Silver Jubilee celebrations...

CHINA GIRL: Mixed raced businesswoman visiting Beijing for the Olymic Games wakes up in 1983, to find a China very different from what it has become. Arrested for spying, can she find a way home...

GOLDEN YEARS: Footballing prodigy used to WAGs and acclaim wakes up in a lower division team fighting for survival in grubby 1975. Can he guide his team to the FA Cup or will football hooliganism, bribery and corruption undo him...

The need to match David Bowie hit song titles and the year they were released does tend to restrict options. But think outside the box and you can always blur reality a little. Any other suggestions for new versions of the Life On Mars formula?

I've started reading for fun again

When you're a freelance writer, letting guilt rule your choices is all too easy. For example, giving yourself permission to goof off can be problematic. There's work that needs doing, bills that need paying, and [hopefully] always another deadline looming. But you can only keep going, keep working without respite for so long before the machinery gets jammed. Think of your imagination as a well, fed by a natural spring that bubbles ideas up from deep within your psyche.

Every now and then you've got to stop drawing on the well, give it a chance to refill a little. And you also need to feed the psyche. Go see a film or three. Visit a gallery. See a play. Watch a DVD of some classic film you've never seen before. Read a book - but just for fun. Most of all, try to switch off that analytical part of your mind that interprets and criticises and pulls apart an event as it happens. Relax. Just enjoy the moment, let yourself be swept away by it happening.

Reading for fun isn't something I let myself do much. The vasst majority of my reading in any given week, month or year is for research purposes. I'm thinking of branching out into a new genre of novel, so I've been reading current works from that genre to get a better sense of its style, conventions, limits and opportunities. I spend a lot of time reading online - industry publications and practitioner blogs, Broadcast and Variety, Media Guardian and Digital Spy, any of the blogs on the right hand side of this screen - they all update my knowledge of how things are.

But reading for fun? Not so much. I'll wait until I'm on holiday and then devour a novel a day, maybe more. Having starved myself of entertainment reading, I'll chow down on murder mysteries, comfort reading of old favourites and even tackle a tome or two that I've been longing to read but never gotten round to. The problem is I hardly ever go on holiday. For me a holiday takes place away from home, ideally near a swimming pool, most often in another country.

Last year I had one such week in June. Didn't do much over Christmas but can't honestly say I unplugged myself from the matrix. This year I'm off to New Zealand for 24 days, so I expect to get plenty of reading done. But I surprised myself last week by buying a book just for fun and even read the first few chapters. Guess my psyche's in need of a feed. And the book? Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day by Winifred Watson.

While I am reading it for fun, I'm also looking at it because there's a film adaptation coming soon. I like to read a book before the film adaptation gets released, imagine how I would adapt it. Once the film emerges, I can go along and compare my version with the screenwriter's take on the same material. More than half of all Hollywood films are adaptations, so it's a muscle worth exercising.

Sigh. Even when I try to read for fun, my subconscious still pulls the old bait and switch routine on me. You can turn off your computer, leave your mobile at home and ignore the world at large, but disconnecting the psyche - never easy.

Under The Eagle: new Cartmel play debuts

Writer Andrew Cartmel has a new play at London's White Bear Theatre from tonight. Under the Eagle is a darkly humorous political drama exploring the nature of Britain's 'special relationship' with the United States. It runs from Tuesday February 19 to Sunday March 9 [not on Mondays] at the White Bear, 138 Kennington Park Road.

Tuesday to Saturday performances start at 7.30 pm, while Sunday's show is a 5pm matinee. Tickets are £12 [concessions £10]. Nearest tube station is Kennington. Call the box office on 020 7793 9193.

I thoroughly enjoyed Andrew's last play at the same venue, despite it being staged on one of the hottest days of the year in a venue without air conditioning. That shouldn't be a problem this time, with winter still leaving ice on the great outdoors most nights.

Lewis returns; 3rd Complete Morse out now

Lewis returns this Sunday for a second series of murder mysteries set in Oxford, starring Kevin Whately and Laurence Fox. The Inspector Morse spin-off launched with a hugely popular pilot that became the most-watched non-soap drama on British TV in 2006.

That success convinced ITV to commission three more feature-length stories, broadcast this time last year. They couldn't match the astounding success of the pilot, but still pulled close to nine million viewers, making a second series all but inevitable. Now the second series of Lewis is here, increased from three to four episodes.

To coincide with this, a new edition of my book The Complete Inspector Morse has just been published by redoubtable chaps at Reynolds & Hearn. Revised and updated to include the first four Lewis mysteries, The Complete Inspector Morse also covers all 33 episodes of the smash hit TV series.

Most Morse reference books concentrate on the detective's TV incarnation, or focus on the locations used to film the hit TV series. The Complete Inspector Morse goes further, delving into every Morse story ever published by the character's creator, Oxford author Colin Dexter. It's the definitive Morse tome.

A long time coming, now rapidly arriving

Nearly a year ago I booked myself a place on the Milford Track, a renowned hike across high ground in New Zealand's South Island that takes five days and four nights. Such is the popularity of this trek, you have to book a year in advance. I was born and raised in New Zealand, but never got round to walking the Milford Track while I still lived in the country. As if often the way, you're more likely to visit local sites of tourist interest when you have visitors to stay then you ever are of your own volition.

I emigrated to the UK in January 1990 to avoid the Commonwealth Games, so I've now lived in Britain for 18 years. There are still traces of my Kiwi accent left [get any New Zealander to say 'fish and chips', you'll soon have proof of their origins] and I still only have a New Zealand passport, but going home now feels like visiting a foreign country. I consider myself a Kiwi, supporting NZ in any sporting event, but my knowledge of life in my native land is out of date and rusty.

I haven't been back since 2003, so this will be my first visit for five years. I haven't seen any blood relative in that time, so it'll be a chance to catch up and see how everyone has changed. Travelling halfway round the world [and back again] is an expensive and tiring business, so I average a jaunt home once every day years. Indeed, in the 18 years since I left I've only been back four time. I've plans to retire to NZ, but don't expect that to arise for a few decades yet.

In the meantime, I'm trying to get fitter for the Milford track, marching around the town with a well-stuffed rucksack on my back. My new hiking boots are slowly getting broken in, my collection of fleeces and thermals is expanding, and I'm doing my best to develop a few well-placed callouses round my feet for the forthcoming march. Most significant of all, the suitcase came out from under the spare bed in preparation for packing. Suddenly the trip seems real and close, meaning I have to prioritise my work between now and departure day [March 12, thanks for asking].

So I can't guarantee a lot of blog entries between now and then, with little prospect of any while I away. So bear with me if radio silence descends on Vicious Imagery. I'll endeavour to keep you apprised of progress on my writing goals, and any other incidents and accidents that the next three weeks and two days will bring. In the meantime, I heartily recommend a spot of spring cleaning. I found all manner of strangeness lurking in my drawers yesterday. Insert joke here.

Screen Academy Scotland [slight return]

Going back to school this method as guest speaker for the Research Methods module. I did the module last year as part of my screenwriting MA, and my research dossier got a mark of D4 - a high distinction. So the tutor's asked me back to offer some advice for this year's students on how to tackle this academic module. I found last year's guest speaker for this session extremely useful, so feel a responsibility to be just as helpful to this year's crop of students.

Afterwards I'm meeting a few of my former classmates at the Filmhouse in Edinburgh to catch up, see how everyone's getting along. Doesn't feel like I've made any great leaps forward since graduating in November, but I'm chipping away at my ambitions of becoming a TV drama writer. Seeking representation has proved even tougher than I expected, and nobody's in a rush to roll out the red carpet for some newbie writer with no TV broadcast credits - no surprises there.

Perhaps the hardest thing to reconcile is finding your unique voice as a writer while simultaneously being able to sublimate the voice, style and tone of a particular show. Producers, script editors and agents all want to see great spec scripts entirely of your own invention, as evidence of your distinctive writing voice. But if you do get work on a TV series, you need to emulate the show and fit in.

Experienced, talented writers are able to preserve their own voice while writing within the parameters of an ongoing show. For people like me, that's not so easy. An agent recently read several of my scripts - one radio, one TV, one short film. They liked my writing, but wanted to see more examples to get a better sense of me as a writer. Why? The TV sample was a trial script for an existing show, so it best demonstrated my ability to write for that show.

The radio play was the third in a series of five, so it demonstrated my ability to write for radio in the context of an overarching narrative with pre-established characters and locales. The only sample that demonstrated my voice as a writer was the short film script for DANNY'S TOYS. But that's shrunk to just 13 pages, not much upon which to judge the merits of a writer. So I submitted my two original TV pilot scripts, and await the agent's verdict.

In comics, there are two kinds of good writer. One is the creator, who invents brilliant concepts, characters and stories. The other is the developer, who takes those brilliant concepts, characters and stories - and improves upon. The developer extends and enhances, delves deeper into the characters, finds fresh narrative approaches to the core concept. Unsurprisingly, the creator writer is much rarer. But the developer writer gets more work.

Why? The developer works with pre-existing material, eliminating the difficult gestation period all new creations much go through. Developers help extend the lifespan of a great creation. Great developers can be plugged into almost any story, any concept, and they'll thrive. But creators are often only comfortable working on their own creations. They've got enough skill and craft to produce a decent script for somebody else's creation, but their talents are best employed on their own stuff.

I suspect I'm a developer, not a creator. I can create, but most of my work has come from working with other people's characters. It's why script editing and storylining appeal to me, because I can build upon solid foundations. I enjoy finding fresh takes and new angles upon familiar material. I don't need much to kickstart my creative jucies. Often research is enough. I'll find some obscure fact and that'll generate everything I need to build a story upon.

Alas, being a developer rather than a creator means I'm still struggling to find my own voice as a writer. It's an elusive thing, and I'm not convinced I know what it is yet. Some wise person once said that you can find your voice by studying what you've tended to write most often in the past - the kinds of stories. Mine tend not to be contemporary; I have to make a conscious effort to set stories in modern times. I favour bleak endings, thwarted love stories and tales of Pyrrhic victory. If you're a character in one of my scripts, things are likely to end badly.

Food for thought, and something I'm still mulling over in my noodle. What kind of writer are you? How do you stories want to end? Are you a creator, imagining whole stories, even whole worlds from scratch? Or are you a developor, happier building on pre-existing foundations?

BBC3 loves that Phoo Action

When I was editing the Judge Dredd Megazine [back before the dawn of time, if memory serves], I was also in charge of Dredd summer specials. In one of those I introduced six all-new strips as standalone stories - pilots for potentially ongoing serials. The special even included an interactive element, enabling readers to vote for which story they felt deserved to get a full series commission. [It wasn't a new idea, by any means. Ronnie Barker starred in a series called Seven Of One, featuring pilots for potential series. This begat classic British sitcoms Porridge and Open All Hours - not a bad success rate.]

This year digital channel BBC3 launched a new series of six hour-long shows, all potential pilots for ongoing series. First out the box was Phoo Action, based on an old comic strip by Jamie Hewlett [co-creator of Tank Girl and member of cartoon rock outfit the Gorillaz]. Estimated overnight ratings suggest less than quarter of a million people watched Phoo Action, only two thirds of the normal BBC3 audience for the timeslot. Not a massive success, considering the amount of marketing push put behind the action comedy spoof. But today it's reported BBC3 has already commissioned a six-part series of Phoo Action.

Is that folly, blind faith, or a commendable belief that the series will find its audience over time? Time will tell. Phoo Action's notable for being first drama filmed at the new BBC Scotland headquarters, Pacific Quay. Ordered a full series to be shot in Glasgow later this year will certainly help offset concerns that too many shows commissioned by BBC Scotland are being shot elsewhere.

I've only seen the first 15 mintues of Phoo Action, as iPlayer kept quitting on me. It certainly bore the Hewlitt stamp, like one of Jamie's eyepopping cartoons had been brought to life. But the pacing felt slow, slow, slow - as if a cracking 30 mintue idea for a jazzy post-pub funfest had been stretched to fill 60 minutes without the budget to match. If the show's to succeed, it needs more story, more depth. Satire poptart sensibilities get wearing in heavy doses.

As for that Judge Dredd summer special with the readers' poll to choose the most popular pilot to get a full series, well, that was a totel swizz. I'd already commissioned the two series I wanted from among the batch of six. The rest were one-offs I had no intention of ever continuing. The readers' vote was a totally cynical gimmick designed to elicit interest in some sub-standard one-offs. [No wonder the Guardian newspaper once described me as an opportunistic marketing spiv.] Let's hope BBC3 is more genuine than that.

As Piers has pointed out in the comments section, I should apologise to all those who voted in this particular poll some 15-odd years ago for my cavalier attitude at the time. I could blame the follies of youth, but I've always been something of a jaundiced misanthrope, so that probably won't wash. Anyway, sorry for being such a git. Moral of the story: don't bother voting in entertainment polls, who never know which arsehole is manipulating the results.

Help save Friday Night Lights

Across the Atlantic fans have launched a campaign to save the wonderful TV drama Friday Night Lights from becoming an inadvertant casualty of the now-settled writers' strike. I heart FNL to bits, and hope it survives for a third season. Fingers crossed.

Because Klingons have needs too

Support authors - sign the PLR petition

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has announced plans to reduce Public Lending Right funding. The PLR is the right for authors, illustrators, photographers, translators and editors to receive payment for the loans of their books by public libraries. More than 23,000 people are entitled to receive payment under this scheme, and for many the annual PLR payment is an important part of their income. PLR is particularly valuable to those people who receive little or no royalty on book sales — their books are more often borrowed from libraries than bought in shops. Please spare a minute to sign the petition.

Finger on the pulse, or just a dead script?

There's no such thing as an original story, but give a dozen writers the same story and they'll create twelve different scripts. Some will go comedic, others tragic. Some opt for an upbeat, positive ending while others [we're-all-going-to-die merchants like me] will reach for a slice of bleak. The idea for a new script can appear fully formed in your imagination, and the same story appear in a film, novel or TV show not long after. It's no conspiracy, it's just coincidence.

For example, I wrote a TV drama pilot script called Taking Liberties when I was part of the Scottish Book Trust's mentoring scheme last year. It was a conspiracy thriller set in a near future, surveillance society Britain where ID cards are compulsory. My initial concept was a school teacher came back from a year working in the Third World to discover the UK's transformation in her absence. Members of her family get unjustly imprisoned and she becomes politicised.

This evolved during the mentoring process, so the protagonist remained in Britain while the changes took place, living out her own life and not noticing the slow, inexorable erosion of civil liberties. But she's forced to face reality after her husband dies in suspicious circumstances while in police custody. I think I've written five drafts of that script and it's a taut, pacy little piece. I've been using it as a writing sample, but not for much longer.

Today's Radio Times features a new conspiracy thriller starting on BBC1 next week, called The Last Enemy. It tells the story of a Brit who returns home after five years abroad. He discovers a changed country where ID cards are compulsory, and tackles key issues like the balance between national security and civil liberties. The protagonist is drawn into a world of secrecy and subterfuge, and... Well, you can guess the rest.

In a way, it's nice to know that Taking Liberties addresses many of the same issues. It shows I was on the right track with my pilot script last year, had my finger on the pulse. Unfortunately, it also means my script is history. The Last Enemy has covered that ground, my effort becomes an irrelevancy, a dead script. It's kind of frustrating, but also useful - now I need to create a new pilot to replace Taking Liberties in my script portfolio.

There's one more thing worth remembering: no script is wasted. As a writer you will learn something from every script you write, discover some crafty shortcut or improve your grasp of storytelling essentials. Don't believe me? Go back and read something you wrote a year ago. Feel your hand twitch for the editing pencil or the delete button. Now go read something you wrote three years ago. Back then it was the best you could do. Now it reads like baby poo. Keep writing and you'll keep learning, especially if you seek out and absorb constructive criticism. Onwards.

Good news, bad news, other news

Went to see a band called Hijak Oscar in Glasgow on Friday night, and bloody good they were too. Eventually got home after two in the morning, and checked emails to discover my short film script DANNY'S TOYS was not among the finalists for the BlueCat Screenplay Lab contest. Disappointing, but that script has already won one prize, so it felt a swizz to be in the running for another prize with the same script. I already know it's good, time I wrote something else.

Bad news can often be a crushing experience, killing you mood and making it impossible to muster much enthusiasm for writing. But the day before I'd gotten a piece of great news that made the BlueCat result seem less than significant. I can't go into details yet, but I've got my foot in a door. Now all I need do is climb the staircase behind that and I'll have made a major step forward in my career. Sorry to be so vague, but superstition strikes hard at such moments.

Across the Atlantic it seems the writers' strike is all but over. The WGA has won a fistful of things for which it's been striking since last November. The Directors' Guild got a deal first, paving the way for the writers, but the DGA would never have gotten that without the WGA. Loosening the lid on a recalcitrant jar, that always seems to be the writers' role in such things. I suspect future generations will have a lot for which to thank the 07-08 strikers.

Strung out on heavens high

Last night saw the debut on Ashes To Ashes, a TV drama spin-off from the smash hit series Life On Mars. This time a female police detective gets transported back to the recent, with 1981 her apparent destination. Unlike her 1973-bound predecessor, this character knows she hasn't really travelled back in time or gone mad. She's trapped in a fantasy created by her own psyche at the moment of death.

Can she survive long enough to get back home to 2008? And how will she cope with the screaming misanthropy of DCI Gene Hunt, let alone New Romantics, Thatcher's bloody Britain and the Royal Wedding? A significant part of Life on Mars' appeal was the mystery about how Sam Tyler had gone back to 1973, certainly in the first series. By the second series it was obvious Sam was trapped inside some coma-induced fantasy.

For the spin-off, the production team have admitted defeat and given their time traveller full knowledge of the show's central conceit, since the audience already has that knowledge. Fine, well and good. But the opener episode struggled to establish a clear tone, with John Simm's internalised angst replaced by a more extroverted female character. Hopefully that will settle down in subsequent episodes.

The 1981 trappings were a lot of fun and [alas] I'm old enough to remember all the music from the first time round. I'm In Love With a German Film Star by The Passions, what a great song. And I'd forgotten how much I liked early Duran Duran. Hard to believe, but they were hip for about five minutes. The early 80s fashions, gadgets and look were all spot on, the stuff of nostalgia for me.

Setting aside the central conceit's transparency and the new setting, there's another significant difference between Ashes To Ashes and its progenitor. Life On Mars was told almost entirely from Sam's point of view. He was in almost every scene, his perspective provided the audience's perspective. Like the televisual equivalent of a first person narrative in a novel, it created instant empathy with the character.

Ashes To Ashes has abandoned that. I can understand why, as it makes for easier storytelling and puts less strain on the time travelling protagonist. Dinosaur copper Gene Hunt is as much the star of the new show as displaced protagonist Alex. Opting for a third person narrative approach makes Alex a much less empathic character. The audience is now on the outside, observing her plight, rather than sharing it with her.

Morse spin-off Lewis - series 2 soon, DVD too

Amazon.co.uk has let the cat out of the bag regarding scheduling for the second series of TV crime drama Lewis, the spin-off from Inspector Morse. A four-disc set collecting all four episodes of the show's second run will be released in Britain on March 31 this year [recommended retail price £25, cheaper on line]. Assuming the show returns in its primetime Sunday night slot on ITV1, that means the first episode will be broadcast no later than March 9th - just five Sundays away.

Got to say, I'm really looking forward to the second series. The Lewis pilot was always going to get huge ratings when broadcast in 2006 - indeed, it was the year's highest rating non-soap drama on British TV. ITV immediately commissioned a first series of three feature-length episodes, screened early in 2007. While not matching the ratings of the Lewis pilot, these still got huge audiences. I felt the show grew in confidence week by week, and this was reflected in ratings tracking upwards over the three eps.

Recognising a rock solid hit, ITV commissioned a second series of four feature-length stories, filmed last summer and autumn. Lewis has proven a worthy successor to Inspector Morse, though it'll never quite escape the shadow of Colin Dexter's curmudgeonly detective. But executive producer Ted Childs has reportedly exited the Lewis team over creative differences, and will not be returning should a third series be commissioned. It remains to be seen if these differences are reflected on screen.

Super Duper winner? Ask The West Wing

Yesterday was Super Duper Tuesday in America, with voters in 22 states choosing the Republican or Democratic candidates they want to run for president. In the Republican race, projections suggest John McCain was the big winner, but things are considerably less clear cut in the Democratic race. Contenders Clinton and Obama both claim plenty of victories from yesterday, but neither is close to a mandate.

The funny thing about all of this is the results were predicted in the final season of a TV drama, The West Wing. A large part of its sixth season was devoted to the primary season that precedes a US presidential election. In the fictional version, the Republicans locked up their candidate far earlier than the Democrats, choosing moderate Arnold Vinich [as played by the wonderful Alan Alda].

But the Democrats could not choose between their candidates, with the decision going all the way to the party convention. In the fictional version, the choice was between the establishment figure of Vice President Bob Russell [Gary Cole, a man seemingly destined to play creepy characters] and minority outsider candidate Matt Santos [NYPD Blue alumnis Jimmy Smits]. Santos won the nomination.

If anything, truth is more outrageous than fiction this year. Hillary Clinton may be getting painted as an establishment figure, but she's the first woman to have a realistic shot at running for president, making her a breakthrough candidate. On The West Wing, Santos was a Latino candidate - Obama is the first credible black candidate. The parallels are kind of freaky, to be honest.

Right now, projections show no clear winner from the Democratic candidates as a result of Super Duper Tuesday's voting. The race for the candidature continues, and could yet go all the way to the Deocratic convention. But McCain looks likely to lock up the Republican nomination, just as Arnold Vinick did. If life keeps imitating art, Obama should squeeze home at Democratic convention.

Then what happens? On the TV version, Vinick was a clear front-runner, reaching out beyond the Republican base to embrace independents and even some Democratic voters - just as McCain is likely to do. Santos gained some ground, but it took a deus ex machina to even out the race for the White House. It remains to be seen if life will keep imitating art.

Cover me, I'm going in [Version]

As regular readers of Vicious Imagery will know, I have an unhealthy interest in dodgy cover versions. Desecrate a classic and I'm there, applauding with inane enthusiasm. iTunes has proven quite a boon in searching out the outrageous, by virtue of its search facility and the capacity to hear 30 seconds extracts before purchase. No need to buy whole albums to get a single track anymore, kids - now you can pick and choose. Aces.

So, what gems of vinyl solution have I uncovered in my quest for the unlikely and the unruly this week? Well, I've definitely fallen in love with the dubious delights of lounge singer Richard Cheese [Dick to his friends]. He wins prizes for his album titles alone - Aperitif For Destruction, anyone? - but his iconoclastic approach to holy bovines deserves applause too, such as pricking the pomposity balloon of U2.

Richard Chesse's Mambo take on Sunday Bloody Sunday has to be heard to be believed, while there's something breathtaking about his kitsch cover of Do They Know It's Christmas? Perversely, Beat It sounds much better as a torch song, even with tongue planted firmly in cheek. If you want to lounge against the machine, I also recommend recent efforts by Paul Anka. Quirky.

There's a long tradition of reggae artists offering some easy skankin' versions of tracks from other musical genres. If you haven't already sampled the genius of Easy Star All-Stars, you're missing a trick. Not much of a Pink Floyd fan myself, so their dub-steady dissection of Dark Side of the Moon don't mean much to me, but their Radiodread riff on OK Computer is class in a glass.

Now you can add The Dynamics to the playlist, thanks to their album Version Excursion. There you can savour Prince's Girls & Boys getting lively up itself, while the Rolling Stones' Miss You gets the reggae groove it always deserved. Of course, The Dynamics are not to be confused with Dynamics, an acapella ensemble from an American university that also goes cover-crazy. Breakfast At Tiffany's anyone?

It's a winter wonderland outside

Time to stay in, build a roaring fire and get snug on the sofa. I knew that Homicide: Life on the Street boxset of 122 episodes [only $100 in a recent online sale at Barnes & Noble] would come in handy. Hmm, taste precursor to The Wire...

Speculation, but not much accumulation

Trying to build a career as a screenwriter is all about the long game, about having patience. Yes, there are always going to be frakish, one-off cases of people who write a single piece of work and it finds a path through the maze to be hailed as greatness. For the rest of us, it's about the grind. Do good work, strive to improve, nurture the dream that maybe one day someone will pay you to write what you want to write. The vast majority of scribes spend years knocking on doors before getting an opening.

I've been lucky in a lot of ways. I've been making my living from writing for seven and a half years now. I've had 18 novels published, a radio play broadcast by the BBC, even won a screenwriting prize. But the truth is I've no idea if I'm any closer to my achieving my dream of writing TV drama than I was when I started down this road in the summer of 2005. I believe my scriptwriting has improved. I believe I have stories to tell, stories worth telling, stories people want to hear.

But nobody gives you a free pass to success. You've got to want it, and you've got to earn it. You can't expect opportunity to come and offer itself, you've got to go out and find it. That means writing spec scripts, and rewriting them, and rewriting them. That means create new material all the time, and honing it. That means taking time away from the job which pays your bills to write material destined never to be seen in public. That means sacrifices, and the inevitable pain of rejection, and having enough of a stubborn streak to get back up and start again.

What did I do in January? Wrote a trial script for TV. Write some sample prose for an exciting book project. Write a horror short for a competition. Write a pitch for a TV format. Write a comedy-drama short for a different competition. Write to several agencies, seeking representation. Sent a pilot script and series bible to the BBC writersroom. Applied for a mentoring scheme. Read screenplays and treatments for two different agencies. Wrote the synopsis for a 32-page comic strip.

You know what I earned from all of that? Eighty quid. That's about $150 American. For a month's work. Will any of those speculative ventures pay off later? It's too soon to tell. This time next year I may see January 2008 as the month I got my goals and ambitions on track, or as a month I threw away on projects that went nowhere. That's why pursuing this dream is not for the faint-hearted or those short on patience. Genius is genius, and I can't claim to possess that.

But talent will out, if coupled with persistance. I've met plenty of people who could write better than me, but they lacked the discipline to succeed, the willingness to make the sacrifices necessary to break through. If I'm going to fail, it won't be for wont of trying. So I keep plugging away, challenging myself to do better, trying to raise my profile and become known for the quality and rigour of my work. Carving out a career as a drama writer is a marathon, not a sprint.