I had a bit of a treat last night: the BFI’s season on radical drama neared its end with a preview screening of episode 4 of the new series of Shameless, followed by a discussion with Paul Abbott, Bryan Elsley, veteran producer Kenith Trodd and newly-appointed Head of Drama at Channel 4, Camilla Campbell (also a veteran of No Angels, Sugar Rush and Skins, so regular readers of the blog will know I was impressed!).

A quick word on Shameless first of all: the episode was excellent, and several prominent characters, including a Gallagher, appear to have been written out by the mid-point of the series. I’ll say no more. A trailer for the new series of Skins was also shown, which seems to promise the heady mix of outrageous behaviour and characters being put mercilessly through the wringer that we’ve now come to expect from the show. Paul Abbott joked, “I paid 25 quid for that as a porn DVD, and now Channel 4 are showing it!” He continued to laugh at this for quite some time.

Indeed, it was worth the price of admission for the bons mots from Abbott alone. Most strikingly: “If you wouldn’t watch it, don’t fucking write it.” This heartfelt advice, and some of the comments concerning continuing drama from  other panellists, remind me that I really must get round to writing about the BBC’s use of continuing drama as the entry-point for new writers. But that’s for another day: last night I particularly enjoyed Abbot’s “You don’t write from your heart, you write from your spleen, so you go >>spleeuurrggh<<!”

The discussion that followed the screening was absorbing. What follows covers only a part of it.

The session was chaired by Jonathan Powell, whose questions to Bryan Elsley in particular seemed to attempt to put words in his mouth, only to be greeted with a polite “not really, no.” So, is there an agenda with Skins to depict an unrepresented section of society? “Not really, no…”

We know Skins’ writers are young: the youngest is 19 for this series, although she has been contributing material since age 17. Elsley made an interesting point about the generation gap on the show, which depicts both teenagers and their parents. I’m firmly in that gap in between, my teenage years long gone but nowhere near having teenage kids; perhaps refreshingly, people in their late 20s and 30s seem to be wholly absent from the writing team as well as cast.

Kenith Trodd, who sadly was not the inspiration for the TV Comic robotic villains of the 1960s, but has instead been producing television since around that time, including much work with Dennis Potter and others, had many interesting reflections. Among the first was: “The name of John Birt has to figure here as someone who screwed things up…” Since the 1990s, as Trodd sees it, the BBC in particular has become much more institutionalised, and producers and writers enjoy far less creative latitude in TV drama. “It haunts me still,” he later observed, that in the mid-80s he heard Dennis Potter lightly remark, “Everything is now for sale.” At the time, he didn’t understand what Potter meant. He sees Abbott as a “survivor” from this past era, having started on coronation Street in 1983 and co-created Children’s Ward in 1988 (not 1998 as the programme carelessly claimed).

Powell suggested that the development of the independent sector was important, dynamic and stimulating. Abbott, however, exhibited distaste for it: it had led merely to a proliferation of “little businesses.” He later expanded on this: in 1994 there were ten A-list writers and five independent production companies; now there are twelve A-list writers and 50 or so production companies. He despaired of how quickly conversations move from being conducted in creative terms to being conducted in commercial terms, where the creator is held to account by business standards; he sees a “total contradiction between business and creativity”.

Powell amplified this with an interesting perspective: the TV “food chain” will see a body of 70 or more episodes as something that “will make money forever”. Is this a pressure Bryan feels on Skins, to crank out as many episodes as possible? Not really, no: interestingly, the youth of the cast and writing team makes it impossible to make more than ten episodes a year. This is partly down to the inexperience of the writers meaning that more time needs to be taken over crafting the scripts, but also because they and the cast have to go to school as well.

Elsley then spoke very frankly about Casualty, a programme for which he used to write. When it was 12 episodes a year, it was “premier drama” and a privilege to work on it. Now, at 48 episodes a year, he feels it cannot honestly be called premier drama, and states unambiguously that its quality has suffered.

The position and esteem of writers then came under some discussion. Camilla ventured that Channel 4 and the BBC feel very different, and Channel 4 will pay more heed to new writers and giving creators their head, a point on which she was politely bullish. Did Bryan, Jonathan wondered, feel part of an agenda to blaze a trail and restore the esteem of writers by making them more integral to production via a “showrunner” model? Not really, no: both Elsley and Abbott pointedly said they did not endorse a “showrunner” model, even though they have both often been described as operating one.

Rather, both advocated that writers should be more aware of production considerations – not necessarily the same as being the producer. More responsible writing, Abbott suggested, could lead to first drafts emerging to the standard that many writers only manage with the third draft. Elsley too described himself merely as “a writer who has an interest in production”.

These views may or may not be held widely by others in the industry; they certainly jar at times with the conventional wisdom often held out to new writers. I might try to write more on that another time, but for now let’s conclude with some interesting facts about Shameless past and future. Abbott wrote Shameless seven years before Channel 4 commissioned it, for Screen Two, but felt he didn’t get it right. He spent the next seven years working at it, to get the tone and feel that are now so familiar and seem so effortless.

Abbott also confided that he was terrified of the following day, when he would be flying to LA to cast the US version of Shameless, which starts filming in January with John Wells. The lack of a benefits system like ours makes the American proposition rather different: as Abbott casually put it, “there’s no skagging.” Whatever happens in the US, the UK version of the series, pared back to eight episodes next year, will run for a massive 22 in 2011. It’s quite a challenge for Abbott and his young writers – it will be great to see them tackle it.

Jolly good fun, this song from MJ Hibbett (though I included another one of his Christmas songs in my Christmas podcast - you’ll have to download it to find out which, though a recent blog post will give you a fairly massive clue). I contemplated joining in and contributing a video clip, except I genuinely can’t think of anything I particularly want to be given for Christmas, nor could I think of anything funny to write. Perhaps ‘don’t worry about it, just give me the money instead’ would have worked, but it’s only just occurred to me, and raises all sorts of questions of present-giving etiquette that are better left un-raised.

Happily, so many people did better than me and responded that there are two versions of the video: gents above, and ladies below. And if it makes you feel in the mood for festive music… did I mention I have a podcast of the stuff that you can download?

As promised, here’s the first of the two Christmas podcasts, featuring music from Broken Dog, Half Man Half Biscuit, Mitch Benn, the Pocket Gods and many more.

If you enjoy what you hear, please consider supporting the artist with a purchase.

I think it’s just about acceptable to regard it as more-or-less Christmas now. I’m not trying to be all bah-humbug about it, but it annoys me when all the adverts and shop displays make it seem like it’s been “Christmas” for ages, to the point where by the time it actually arrives I’m thoroughly bored of it – I want to enjoy Christmas, not be fed up with it! Still, this song got an outing at Totally Acoustic last night, which has pretty much fired the starting-gun as far as I’m concerned – a more Christmass-y Christmas song you will struggle to find.

Just in case you’ve not picked this up from listening to the last podcast, I’ll be doing a couple of Christmas podcasts this month, showcasing the best in indie Christmas tuneage – do have a listen when they’re up!

It’s taken a while, but here’s a new edition of the ‘radio’ show, featuring music from Spiral Beach, Piney Gir, the Samurai Seven, Blue Roses and many more, natch. As always, if you like what you hear please consider supporting the artist with a purchase.

As mentioned in the podcast, before the end of the year I will be publishing a Top 100 albums of the decade, a John Kell Vs. Santa Christmas poadcast (or possibly two) and probably the usual end-of-year music and TV round-ups.

The real block on the driver market this season was not, as was widely suggested at one point, Ferrari’s delay in announcing their signing of Alonso: it was the negotiation between Daimler (ie Mercedes-Benz) and McLaren over the terms on which their partnership would end and Mercedes could buy Brawn. Until that was settled, the question of whether Button, Raikkonen or Heidfeld would take the two vacant race seats, one at McLaren, one at Brawn, could not be sorted.

The outcome is in fact still unclear, but the hot rumour currently seems to be that Brawn – or Mercedes, as they will be – will opt for an all-German line-up of Rosberg and Heidfeld, leaving McLaren with an all-English, all-World Champion line-up of Button and Hamilton. Is this wise?

There is potential for this to be a real lose-lose for all parties. While Mercedes might like the idea of an all-German line-up, a driver pairing of the same nationality tends to make sponsors’ lives harder and play less well commercially outside the territory that originated the men in question. For that reason alone I’m surprised to see such an outcome apparently looming; worse still, an England-Germany championship rivalry will be manna from heaven for The Sun, and I really fear for what distasteful guff they are likely to come out with over the course of a season.

But there are racing-related reasons for scepticism as well. From Brawn’s perspective, Rosberg and Heidfeld is surely not as strong a driver line-up as a Rosberg-Button one would have been? Both drivers are well-respected, but neither has yet been able to prove themselves a world-beater; Heidfeld in particular was out-paced by Kubica last year when they were in a car that could challenge for the title. Nor will the team get the nice garages at the end of the pit lane. That said, it could be a line-up that will settle down nicely and provide a platform for a title push by Rosberg.

The McLaren half of the equation looks much dodgier, however. While it would be surprising to see a repeat of the Alonso-Hamilton or Prost-Senna situations, there could still be tensions. The team is built around Hamilton, so how will Jenson play it? He had to win a set of mind-games with Villeneuve when he joined BAR… but then again, Villeneuve was overtly confrontational; Hamilton fils et pere are more subtle, and will more likely just keep Button marginalised by a soft use of their existing relationships at the team. What exactly will Button be able to do about that? Quite possibly nothing, which will place him at a psychological advantage, to compound the very real risk that Hamilton will be plain quicker than him.

Such a scenario could be uncomfotable for McLaren, but perhaps ultimately advantageous. If Hamilton guns for the title and Button can only trail in behind him mopping up points the only loser will be Button’s reputation. Indeed, history strongly suggests, as I’ve said here many times, that a new driver joining an established driver in a team will always be out-paced by the old hand for at least half a season – whether they can actually be quicker or not will not become clear until the second half of the season. Or to put it another way, unless Button races at a surprisingly high level, he cannot reasonably expect to be able to defend his title next year in a McLaren.

There is a danger for McLaren, however: for warnings from the past, they should be looking not to 2007 or 1988, but to 2000, when the team’s policy of not having a preference for either driver cost them the title. Coulthard was stronger in the middle of the season  and was the main challenger to Schumcaher at one point, taking points of Hakkinen; but at either end of the season, Hakkinen was the dominant of the pair. They took points off each other and Ferrari came through the middle to win. See also Vettel and Webber this year, Raikkonen and Massa last year (and in 2007, when Raikkonen only just squeaked through), Raikkonen and Montoya in 2005, Montoya and Ralf in 2003. Having two equally matched drivers and no team orders is a good way to lose titles.

Still, amid all this talk of British drivers, everyone seems to be forgetting to ask whether Anthony Davidson will get a well-deserved race seat; if one of the new teams decides to hire him, it will surely be a more sound decision than any of those apparently taken in Mercedesland recently.

Now, I’ll cheerfully admit to being an armchair F1 pundit. I don’t claim any special insight at all; rather, I follow the TV coverage and select online sources, and like to think I’m among the better-informed of the BBC’s viewers – nothing more, nothing less. I blog about it because commenting and speculating on F1 is one of its pleasures.

But one significant story has threatened to slip under my radar. For some time, the prospect of a USF1 team under the aegis of long-standing F1 journalist (his is the voice you usually hear in the post-race press conferences) and also ex-employee of Williams and Ferrari, has been in the offing. At the time of the contest for the new places on the grid, it appeared to be the best-established bidder apart from Dave Richards’ perennially ill-fated Prodrive effort. Its selection for 2010 was unsurprising.

But rumours have been circulating for some time that the team is making poor progress. It has trumpeted its novel location – America, plus a European base in Spain – and its supposedly cheap method of meeting in coffee shops and other non-business venues for conferences. And Windsor knows his F1 onions: this has reportedly been his dream for years; and he is joined in the endeavour by Ken Anderson, the technical boss who moved both Jordan and Stewart up the grid in the late 1990s.

So, where is the bad press coming from? Curiously, it has chiefly reached me via the Twitter account of Fake Max Mosley, one of the now too-numerous-to-follow Twitter clan of Fake F1 personalities. Fake Max is easily one of the most amusing, being wonderfully droll and sardonic and, frankly, worryingly plausible. Whoever runs the account also seems to be at least slightly well-connected – I’d be very interested to know who it is.

I’m sure there have been other more mainstream journalistic reports of the USF1 story, but this one caught my eye: it cites Ross Brawn, no less, expressing surprise at the American team’s lack of progress in crash testing so far. Another source quotes the chance of the team being ready to race as ‘zero’ and it is also reported that Windsor apparently wants to keep open the option of selling his entry to someone else.

My more regular F1 news sources have not yet reported this story (as far as I have seen – and I read them fairly thoroughly). It may be a bit speculative for the ’straight’ news websites of the BBC and ITV (full marks to them for keeping their excellent F1 website running), but established journalists and bloggers Joe Saward and James Allen haven’t addressed the story either. And understandably so: as both men’s blogs make plain, the F1 world is small and the world of F1 journalists smaller still. They undoubtedly both know Windsor well, and will not unreasonably be hesitant to piss on his chips in public.

To be fair, the team are adamant that things are progressing as they should, and unless and until there is an announcement to the contrary it’s impossible to gainsay that with confidence. But if it does go wrong for them, it will surely take a lot of explaining.

As always, pundits and observers are hailing a the season of Formula 1 just gone as a classic, and the best for many years. It has certainly been an interesting one: the remarkable closeness of the field and development race over the season led to every team bar Toro Rosso being at the front of the field on merit at some point or other, while Jenson Button’s ascent to the championship was a truly great story.

But in truth the racing has usually been dull, certainly compared to 2008 when a boring race was a rarity. The nature of the year has been that it’s been hard to predict which teams will be strong at which circuits; the corollary of this has been that at most weekends only one or two cars have been challenging for the win, with the rest some way behind and a lack of genuine racing for the lead.

Where it has been a vintage year has been in the off-track intrigue. The rise of FOTA, the threatened breakaway and the eventual exit of Max Mosley would have made it remarkable enough on its own, but the hounding of McLaren and Hamilton at the start of the year, the rebirth of Honda as Brawn, the saga of Schumacher, Badoer and Fisichella in the second Ferrari, the exposure of the Singapore race-fix and the banishment of Flav and Pat were all fascinating spectacles. However much their disruptive effect might have been deplored at the time, they were what made the season so fascinating.

The trouble with – or the great benefit of – off-track action, however, is that it doesn’t respect the end of the season. I omitted the saga of the departing manufacturers from my list, as that is what I want to talk about most. Honda’s exit was anomalous in some ways: as a manufacturer, they had been making all the right decisions up to that point, bringing in a top engineer and manager to re-shape the team. How stupid they must now feel, knowing that for the same amount of money as they paid to offload their team, they could have had their brand all over the championship-winning car.

Toyota and BMW, by contrast, were manufacturers whose exits were admissions of disastrous error. Toyota’s lack of racing ethos led it to what was probably the least efficient use of money in Formula 1’s history, with huge amounts spent and no race wins. BMW’s mistakes were not so serial, but their decision not to go all-out for the championship last year when they had the chance has been proved thoroughly wrong; their gamble on getting the new regulations right and their insistence on KERS being used – when all other teams were willing to drop it – compounded the wretchedness of the error.

But with all bar three (possibly two, if Renault clear off) of the manufacturers gone, and three new private teams due to turn up on the grid next season, Formula 1 will have changed far more fundamentally than was achieved by the new rules this season. The resulting formula is likely to be much less close than this year, and potentially even less exciting.

Let’s look at the teams. McLaren, Red Bull, Brawn and Ferrari should all be at or near the front, but behind them…? Renault, Toro Rosso, Force India, Williams – who knows what sort of pace they might have, ditto the new teams? New F1 outfits are, after all, not renowned for making fast and reliable cars in their first years. We could have a lot of cars that are there purely to make a noise.

The closeness of the racing this year has been largely down to the presence of the manufacturers: for the first time in many years, perhaps ever, there was not an F1 team on the grid that was poorly funded or under-equipped. Sure, some had more money than others, but the manufacturer teams were well-resourced as ever, Williams had perfected the art of the tight F1 ship, the Red Bull teams were well-funded and had decent current-spec engines from Ferrari and Renault despite being nominally private, and Mercedes was providing close support to Brawn and Force India.

So, while Eddie “The Mouth” Jordan (bless him) and others might go on about how F1 had managed will without the manufacturers before and will do so perfectly well again, let’s remember what that F1 looked like. The gaps from the front to the back of the grid were much bigger, and there were numerous teams unlikely to score points all season. The numbers of blatant pay drivers was higher too – while some drivers relied on patronage and commercial deals in 2009, would an Enrique Bernoldi or Jos Verstappen have got a seat on that grid? Unlikely, surely.

Of course, there are good reasons for wariness around the manufacturers, as the indispensable Joe Saward, among others, has pointed out. They come and go as they please, and may threaten the stability of particular teams, and even the sport in general, as they do so: Honda, BMW and Toyota have all harmed a lot of people’s careers, and the latter two’s involvement in FOTA was not negligible – a set of exclusively privateer teams would no doubt have felt less confident about proposing a breakaway series.

The biggest item on the charge sheet against the manufacturers is of course that they drive up costs. Williams, Jordan, Benetton, Arrows, Tyrrell and Prost were all sent either down the grid or out of the sport as the manufacturers moved in at the start of the decade, or even in the late ’90s – some of them later hooking up with manufacturers to save themselves. But there lies the great irony: the commitment to spending restrictions has finally been made, after a decade of working up to it, and at exactly the point when F1 has found a way to live with the manufacturers, and produce a good show at the same time, the manufacturers go and clear off!

So I seem to be alone in this, but I can’t help but feeling next year’s F1 is likely to be less interesting. F1 is not about to collapse or die by any means, but it may be in for an awkward period of re-adjustment. The off-track shenanigans of this year certainly can’t be topped; fewer teams and drivers seem likely to be challenging for poles and wins; and a higher number of teams trundling round at the back risks undermining F1’s claim to be the pinnacle of motorsport.

Then again, anyone who tries to predict anything in F1 – at least, anyone writing from an armchair perspective like me – will probably be wrong, so I’m happy to wait and see. After all, the situation with Alonso and Massa at Ferrari looks tasty; there are machinations in the driver market to come (will Robert Kubica be unlucky enough to have two successive teams pull out on him? Whither Raikkonen, Kovaleinen, Glock?); we may yet see Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton duking it out for the world title; and at least three impossible things I’ve not even thought of are bound to happen. I’ve long said F1 isn’t often exciting, but it’s always interesting; that seems likely to be the case for some time.

Brooke Gallupe

I was pleased to hear Immaculate Machine would be back in the UK again, but felt a little nervous as the gig drew nearer. Since I’d last seen them, they’d changed from a breathless and at times manic bassless three-piece to a five-piece with a more conventional line-up and an apparently less crazy drummer.

The resulting album, High On Jackson Hill, contained a lot of good songs, but felt transitional somehow, as if the band was caught half-way between its old sound and a not-yet-formed new one that forsook the energy of old for something more reflective.

To make life even more tricky for the band, vocalist and keyboardist Kathryn Calder, one of the remaining original members, has had to absent herself from touring after the terrible news of her mum’s diagnosis with motor neurone disease; although Lynn Calder very sadly died earlier this year, Kathryn was not with the band this evening. Indeed, the touring line-up looked very different from the line-up advertised on the band’s web presences, two boys apparently replaced by two girls.

So, amid confusion that appeared to verge on turmoil, could the band deliver the goods live? It turned out they very much could: we got a storming set that revealed the strengths of the album, verging on ‘70s rock territory at times with  muscular renditions of many of the songs. Material from the old line-up was also thrown in, although almost entirely from the more restrained 2007 album Fables, with only one cut from earlier – a very enjoyable stab at No Such Thing As The Future.

Perhaps in this incarnation the music is more straightforward: without Luke Kozlowski on drums, the energy is perhaps more controlled, and without Kathryn the medlodies less versatile, but there’s no getting away from the basic facts: these are good tunes well played, and thoughtful lyrics well sung. Props in particular to the new guitarist whose name I can’t find out with any certainty online; whoever she was, she succeeded in replicating many of Kathryn’s keyboard lines on guitar (her style seemed to favour playing the lower strings, which made for a good contrast with lead singer/guitarist Brooke Gallupe’s style on the higher strings), and vocals as well.

Mystery guitarist and mystery keyboardist

The only sour points were the relatively sparse attendance, considering this is the band’s fourth foray into the UK at the very least, and they’ve got four (possibly five) albums available, and also the over-running of two  mediocre support acts which meant we were denied and encore by the venue’s curfew. Hopefully the band’s slot at this year’s In The City will garner them some more support from the industry in the UK. As an aside, I reviewed their Brixton Windmill show in 2006 in Artocker; I wonder if this might still be their only live review in the national music press here – probably not, but it could well have been their first.

Meanwhile, what else might the future hold for Immaculate Machine? The touring line-up seems to have gelled extremely well (are there any good bootlegs of this tour knocking around…?), and it would be nice to hear an album that harnesses some of its brutal energy. Quite where Kathryn would fit in should she return is hard to see; then again, her Myspace currently hosts some really lovely-sounding solo material, so an album from her would be extremely welcome as well. Whatever way it falls, there seems sure to be more good music to come from this band, and I look forward to seeing them again soon.

Part of me doesn’t like using this blog to whinge, but I don’t have much else open to me. Word of mouth can count for a lot, so this is my small effort at seizing redress from Talk Talk.

I’m about to move flat, and it’s taken them two weeks to respond after I submitted my move details to them online; I had to chase them by phone, and they claimed not to have received the information, although the email I received from them just now clearly shows they did. They claimed they were unable to contact me – they don’t say when they tried, but I’ve no unexplained missed calls on any phone, so I’ve no idea when that was.

I’d already decided to move away from Talk Talk when my 18-month contract expires: while the broadband service is cheap and pretty reliable, the customer service I received over another matter was rotten. And so it continues: because I’m moving address, they’re going to lock me into a new 18-month contract; apparently they can restart the clock, even though I’m not allowed to leave early without penalty.

I thought I’d better post this now, as apparently I could be without broadband for up to 14 days when I move. I know it’s a bit petty to have a moan like this, but what else can you do?