Author: Alan Kuhl Graham

Six Damn Fine Degrees #268: Agatha All Along

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Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

Okay – I’ll start with the headline. I absolutely love Agatha All Along. It’s one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe TV shows that stands up to a rewatch. It’s funny, creepy and, over the course of its nine episodes, slowly unravels a satisfying and unpredictable story. So many streaming shows these days feel like a single large plot arbitrarily cut to fit awkwardly into the episodic TV format. But Agatha All Along understands how to tell a story episodically, each week delivering revelation and plot, including some cracking cliffhangers.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #266: The ITV Ghost Story For Christmas

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Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

During the 1970s, the BBC were to make an annual ghost story to be broadcast over the Christmas period. Under the auspices of producer Laurence Gordon Clark, they delivered a festive dose of chills memorable enough that they have since acquired quite a cult following. These BBC ghost stories for Christmas are all excellent stand-alone dramas, brilliantly delivering a creepy, unsettling tale for the Yuletide audience.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #262: The Valeyard

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Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

Back in 1985, Doctor Who was not in good health. The show had been struggling in the ratings for a few years, and the planned relaunch of the show in spring of that year – with a new Doctor, a new format and a Saturday teatime timeslot – failed to find an audience. A show that for several decades had been demonstrating how to create imaginative stories on limited budgets seemed out of place against the slick action dramas of the Eighties. Rumours flew that the show was getting axed, but when it finally got recommissioned for its 1986 season, there were a few changes.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #256: The BBC Radio Lord Of The Rings Part Two: The Two Adaptors

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Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

A dark and stirring refrain swells up from the silence, musically suggesting something both epic and haunted. And then a brilliant voice is heard saying the following:

“Long Years Ago, in the Second Age of Middle Earth, the Elven smiths of Eregion forged Rings of Great Power...”

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #251: Carole Lombard, The Profane Angel

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Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

Screwball comedy suited Carole Lombard perfectly. She was an engaging, and energetic performer, possessing the fine ability to invest the lines with a real sense of fun. Called upon to play the vain, the arrogant, the naïve and the street smart, she always made you want to find out what these characters were going to get up to. For all the silliness in the plots, you have to be invested in the predicament of the leads to buy into it all, and Lombard’s effortless big screen charisma made that happen.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #247: Gandhi (1982)

Alan Kuhl GrahamLeave a comment

Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

In July 1981, my school went a bit mad. The heir to the British throne Prince Charles was getting married to Diana Spencer, someone the media genuinely referred to “a commoner”. Parts of the UK were getting insanely excited by the prospect, and this included my classroom. The Wedding, we were told, was a Big Event. For kids, this was an event that had everything. After all, there were Princes and Princesses, images of fancy soldiers and decorated palaces, alongside lots of maps smothered with pink. Union flags appeared in the school, and no trip to the shops was complete without seeing aisles of colourful tat with crowns on it.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #244: The Jack Lemmon-shaped hole in Billy Wilder’s “Kiss Me, Stupid”

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Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

One of Jack Lemmon’s most impressive skills as an actor is his ability to take the role of a slightly schlubby loser, a character prone to selfish and petty acts, and still make him likeable. You can really see this in his films with Billy Wilder, roles such as Jerry in Some Like It Hot, C.C. Baxter in The Apartment, Nestor Patou in Irma La Douce and Wendell Armbruster Jr in Avanti! But I think its perhaps best highlighted in his absence from another Wilder film – Kiss Me, Stupid.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #238: I have heard the Blood Music and I’ll never be the same

Alan Kuhl GrahamLeave a comment

Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

Last week, Sam talked about the classic novels that were an essential part of an English curriculum, and I can well remember something similar from my school days. Those books that were seen as being the official, proper and right things for developing minds to read. However, they were not the only books out there. Alongside the worthy classics, there were popular reads that nonetheless bore the taint of scholarly respect. No teacher would be too angry with you if you were reading an Agatha Christie.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #234: The Pet Shop Boys’ It Couldn’t Happen Here

Alan Kuhl GrahamLeave a comment

Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

At the height of their international success, the Pet Shop Boys made a movie. But following the collapse of their record label EMI, the production entered into a Rights Limbo. In other words, nobody quite knew who owned what when it came to the production, meaning no one could screen the film or release it on DVD or Blu-ray. It wasn’t clear whose permission they would need to seek and who they would need to pay to do it.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #230: Modern Folk Horror

Alan Kuhl GrahamLeave a comment

Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

A world away from the urban landscape and its City Lights lies the genre of Folk Horror. But what is “folk horror”? One of the trickiest aspects of a discussion about any film genre is to pin down a good definition. I do rather like what Wikipedia succinctly offers on this score at the start of their entry on the subject:

“Folk horror is a subgenre of horror film and horror fiction that uses elements of folklore to invoke fear and foreboding.”

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