Alrightreads: Companions

I don't think I've ever used a companion book in its intended read-along sense, what with them having their heyday before fan wikis largely satisfied that behind-the-scenes niche and before streaming and downloads enabled me to watch TV series on my own schedule.

Preemptive reading would spoil plot developments up to several years in advance of BBC repeats reaching those points, while postmortem reading would fill me in on interesting trivia I'd forget by the time I got around to watching a series again. Here's a bit of both.


Allen Eyles, The House of Horror: The Story of Hammer Films

1973 / Ebook / 128 pages / UK

***

I enjoy Hammer horrors, but could never be bothered to go through them all. This admirably concise filmography does it for me, interestingly capturing the exact moment when the studio became irrelevant and hit its sharp decline – something its new boss was clearly oblivious to with his lofty cross-platform ambitions for the brand. After reading dry interviews with the important men behind it all, your patience is rewarded with a photo gallery of Hammer babes and boobs. I'm sure this was a big hit with young fans at the time, they love behind-the-scenes trivia.

Bruce Dessau, The Official Red Dwarf Companion

1992 / Ebook / 98 pages / UK

***

Having already dog-eared a Red Dwarf Programme Guide for a couple of years before finding this second-hand in the late 90s, this official but less thorough and outdated alternative (up to series five only and never updated) was mainly notable for all the behind-the-scenes photos. Reading again decades later, courtesy of an archive.org scan, it was mainly notable for all the little mistakes.

Hy Bender, The Sandman Companion: A Dreamer's Guide to the Award-winning Comics Series

1999 / Ebook / 273 pages / USA

****

I re-read Sandman again again intermittently over the past year, not bothering to document my thoughts since I already went overboard the first time. This giddy guide from a knowledgeable fan has extensive elaborations from Gaiman himself every few pages, demystifying the metamyth slightly but making me appreciate some of it even more. It was also interesting to get a snapshot of the contemporary consensus on what were seen as the best and least best runs of the series, those 90s idiots.

J. F. Roberts, The True History of the Black Adder: The Unadulterated Tale of the Creation of a Comedy Legend

2012 / Ebook / 464 pages / UK

*****

You couldn't ask for a more in-depth oral history of a classic sitcom, exploring every branch of the comic royalty's family tree before, during and after their memorable reign, cunningly getting in there before they started dying. Elsewhere, the chronicler's in-character alt-history postulations are brief enough to be fun rather than annoying interludes and it's padded out at the back with photos and thankfully-unproduced scripts, which is just showing off, really.

Alrightreads: Alrightbiographies

Funny people being serious in their own words, although mostly neither.


Alan Partridge with Rob Gibbons, Neil Gibbons, Armando Iannucci and Steve Coogan, I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan

2011 / Audiobook / 366 pages / UK

*****

Re-re-read as part of a full 2010s Partridge revival rewatch(/read), this AGP sourcebook novelising familiar events from a warped or revisionist perspective and filling in the missing but perfectly-fitting pieces is the definitive Alan statement. It's also probably the funniest fictional book I've ever read (not in the mood for maintaining the illusion, sorry). Maybe next time I'll finally get around to actually reading it with my eyes, but I doubt it. The in-character audiobook narration is impossible to resist.

Alan Partridge with Rob Gibbons, Neil Gibbons and Steve Coogan, Alan Partridge: Nomad

2016 / Audiobook / 360 pages / UK

****

More Alan in print was unlikely to be as good as his definitive second autobiography was, but I'm still very glad that they bothered. Like the near-contemporaneous Scissored Isle "documentary," it's a passionate Partridge inflamed by the delusion that he's got something worthwhile and challenging to say, while being ultimately opportunistic and self-absorbed. Diminishing returns or not, please keep them coming.

Limmy, Surprisingly Down to Earth, and Very Funny: My Autobiography

2019 / Audiobook / 352 pages / UK

***

I only properly checked out Limmy a couple of years ago, and the combination of impressive lo-fi self-production and nostalgic Scottish aggro (even if it's the wrong coast) made him an instant favourite. It helped that he's very funny. This candid backstory is less funny, what with all the despair and everything, but that's okay. Though I was more interested in the behind-the-scenes insights to the TV stuff, which says a lot about my interest in people's lives and why I don't normally read biographies.

Ranking the Bottom episodes

Of all the TV shows I was technically too young to be watching at nine, Bottom stood out as the naughtiest. It wasn't until much later that I grew to appreciate the darker nihilism underpinning the Tom & Jerry style domestic violence, but even then, it's not a programme I ever felt the need to ruin through analysis.

But I recently caught myself rewatching loads of them for fun, and that's not on, so time to ruin it. Here are my Top Bottoms.

Ranking the Sylvian Chomet films

I'm not usually an animation fan, being a grown-up (just teasing). But as a bit of a Luddite, I can respect someone sticking to unnecessarily time-consuming old-school practices for the sake of art. So here are my The Top 6 Sylvian Chomet Films.

Blake's 7

I've never seen Blake's 7 at the time of writing this intro (Jan 2019). I've heard that it was an influence on my beloved Farscape, which I'm going to assume means it's about a crew of escaped prisoners being hunted by a hell-bent military commander rather than helium-farting Muppets and stuff.

Other things I know are that there's someone called Blake, someone called Avon and some kind of legendarily downbeat ending, which I'm going to imagine means everyone dies so I can feel elated if the robot dog ends up making it out alive.