Here is the link to the pitch deck which Steve has created -- freely available to all who might be able to help in bringing the project to fruition. Feel free to share with anybody willing to help in the creation of a costume drama masterpiece........
The Angel Mountain Blog
This blog is created for the followers of Brian John's Angel Mountain Saga of eight novels, dealing with the life and times of a very imperfect heroine, Mistress Martha Morgan of Plas Ingli. She lived at about the same time as Jane Austen but struggled to survive in a very different world. Total sales for the series are now over 110,000, making this the best-selling fiction series ever published in Wales.
Wednesday 16 October 2024
Martha -- sometimes happy, sometimes sad, always complicated
Martha was nothing if not complicated, in the depths of despair one day and carried on a wave of optimism and joy the next. Here she is quite young, as she might have been in the first volume of the saga.
Thursday 3 October 2024
Parrog, by Graham Hadlow
This is a wonderful water colour painting of the Parrog (Newport) from artist Graham Hadlow. Almost Turneresque........
Graham has greatly simplified the housing along the Parrog shore, but in doing so he represents quite closely what the scene might have looked like around 1820, when Mistress Martha was in her prime........
The rather modern boats give the game away, but it's a lovely landscape painting anyway.
By the way, Graham kindly provided the paintings for the dust jackets of my hardback books of Pembrokeshire Folk Tales, back in the day.
Every story needs a monster
IN PRAISE OF MONSTERS
An eerie shadowy faceless figure dressed in black from head to toe walks -- or glides -- through the pages of "Dark Angel”, volume three of the Angel Mountain saga. Who -- or what -- is this strange creature that appears intermittently, leaving no trace of his movements, even when there is snow on the ground which should show up footprints? Is The Nightwalker a human being intent on stalking or terrorising our heroine Martha and her family and friends? Or is the creature a ghost -- or a devil -- or even the Grim Reaper, come to remind Martha of her mortality and maybe of her impending demise?
Anyway, the character of The Nightwalker is one of the most interesting of the 200 or so characters who appear in the stories. As an author, of course I have used the "creature" to symbolise the darker components of this story -- Martha's loneliness and despair, her paranoia, and her tendency towards depression. But it was also interesting to turn everything upside down towards the end of the novel, and to turn The Nighwalker into an ultimately pathetic and even tragic figure -- and the scene in which Martha is finally forced to confront this creature is one of the scenes of which I am most proud.... but I must not give too much away.........
Beauty and the Beast. The Phantom of the Opera. King Kong. Ogres, monsters and trolls. Literature is full of these terrifying figures who are demonised because they are different -- either because they are large, or ugly, or fail to conform with what we are used to seeing as beautiful or comfortable. The great film called "Monsters" comes to mind as well. All too often the monsters are themselves terrified because they have suffered from some traumatic event, or just because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Anyway, every story needs a monster……..
https://lnkd.in/eWwE6FmE
Sunday 29 September 2024
"A hymn to the human spirit....."
I was reminded last night, in a message from a friend who has been re-reading the 8 novels of the saga, that we should not spend all or time flagging up the darkness and the drama of the narrative. Supercharged action and unremitting gloom seem to be the predominant features of much modern TV drama -- and to a degree we have been sucked into the process of demonstrating that on that front the life story of Martha Morgan stands up against even the most violent TV dramas and films currently available. But, but.......
This is what my friend said: “The narrative is filled with humour, thought provoking challenges, beauty and inspiration. It really is a soaring hymn to the human spirit…."Monday 26 August 2024
Sunday 25 August 2024
Now we are on Instagram
Thanks to Steve, we now have a brilliant presence on Instagram. Look for "Angelmountainsaga" and thou shalt find. Hope you approve -- please like and follow!
Monday 12 August 2024
Wednesday 10 April 2024
The Portrayal of Wales (again)
Around 2015-2016 there was a lot of discussion in the media about "the portrayal of Wales", encouraged by a Senedd Committee set up to investigate the output (in Wales) of high-end drama in film and on TV. An Open University article included these words:
".........the Welsh national character is portrayed as anti-imperial, tolerant and internationalist, by contrast with the English, who are perceived as colonialist and racist. This is, of course, a part of national myth making and cannot be supported by available historical or contemporary evidence. However, it is a deeply held and powerful belief."
Almost a decade has passed since this was published:
.........and a lot of it still holds. But many films and TV series have been shown and broadcast since then, and the stereotypes are still being perpetrated. Maybe we see fewer coal mines and male voice choirs than we did back in the day, and its good to see a regular stream of productions taking advantage of the new opportunities for streaming (on Netflix, Amazon Prime etc) and appearing on the mainstream BBC and ITV channels. With S4C playing a pivotal role in the commissioning of new material, there was always a danger that the production companies would concentrate their efforts on small-scale and cheap productions for "internal consumption." But that hasn't happened, and many of the better productions have been reviewed in mainstream media and watched by large audiences across the UK and the rest of the world. So one is justified in asking this question: what does the rest of the world think about Wales, as it is portrayed on the large and the small screen?
One needs to do a proper study to find the answer to that, and in the meantime we can but speculate. In 2013, along came "Hinterland", to be followed by "Hidden" and "Keeping Faith" to confirm that Celtic Noir was really embraced in Wales, having already had a great success across the UK with "Shetland". Celtic Noir was accepted as a genre across the world, while never quite acquiring the status of Scandi Noir, which is still going strong (one series after another, many of them on the Viaplay streaming channel.) This is all rather subjective, but my feeling is that Welsh drama output has become a bit messy in the last 5 years, with series like "The Light in the Hall", "Wolf", and "Dal y Mellt" lurking in the shadows and "Pitching In" and "The Valleys", which were supposed to be funny, turning out to be disasters. But in spite of the brilliance of "Men Up", there is more dark than light. and we now seem to have moved on from Celtic Noir to Celtic Weird. How else to interpret "The Way" and "Tree on a Hill", two pretentious, chaotic and utterly dreadful series that I gave up on after the first episode. I know of many other viewers who did the same, and others who switched channels after just a few minutes.
"I really, really wanted to like The Way, especially as it's filmed locally; but so far, it's been nearly 40 minutes of pretentious drivel."
"TheWay on BBC1. Contender for worst drama of the decade."
Sunday 7 April 2024
Welsh TV -- Goodbye Celtic Noir, Hello Celtic Weird
WELSH TV -- GOODBYE CELTIC NOIR, HELLO CELTIC WEIRD
One minute we are celebrating the brilliant "Men Up", and the next minute we are thinking "What on earth is happening with Welsh TV?"
Ten years ago the critics were lauding "Hinterland" in Wales which followed "Shetland" in Scotland as a pioneer of this new thing called "Celtic Noir". I enjoyed "Hinterland" although its unremittingly dark portrayal of Wales was not to everybody's liking. It didn't succeed in quite the same way as "Shetland" did, and it did get a bit tired towards the end of its run. A bit more humour might have helped. It didn't make a vast amount of money. But it inspired a host of other effective dramas including "Hidden" and "Keeping Faith", and a number of other TV series filmed in both Welsh and English which seem to have become increasingly bizarre over the years. Some have been good and others have been terrible. Then we had the police investigative real crime reconstruction dramas called "The Pembrokeshire Murders" and "Steeltown Murders" -- the first pretty impressive and the second, in my opinion, somewhat contrived and overblown.
Then we come to the latest (2024) heavily promoted drama series. Am I the only one who gave up watching "The Way" at the end of the first episode, and then did the same with "Tree on a Hill" a few nights ago? Both truly dreadful programmes, in my opinion. "The Way" was a pretentious mish-mash of social protest rhetoric, ludicrous storyline, fairy tale, magic and historical symbolism. Some people liked it, I suppose, but segments of the media re-named it "The Mess", and I can see why. OK -- it was Michael Sheen's obsession and his name was enough to get it financed, created and broadcast. But did it do anything for the reputation of Welsh TV or the Welsh nation? I fear not.
As for "Tree on a Hill", I found it quite bizarre, which I suppose was the intention of Ed Thomas, who created it, wrote the script, executive produced, and directed it. Eccentricity in characterisation and storyline is OK, but here the characters are so bizarre and caricatured that they are all deeply unlikeable. In "establishing shots", the attempts to flesh out the characters of the key players are very crude. The storyline is preposterous. And the whole episode, which should hook in the viewer, is laboured and pretentious. Conversations are for the most part somewhat banal. The actors look bored. Scene after scene goes on for far too long, and all the humour falls flat. It is, after all, promoted as a "dark comedy"............ I wonder if Ed is trying to rebrand himself as the Salvador Dali of Wales? Surrealism is fine, in its place, but this is a mish-mash, maybe arising from a determination to push creative boundaries and create some great work of art that is impossible to pigeon-hole or categorize. Exciting? Radical? Experimental? Ground-breaking? Hmmmmm......
At the end of the first episode I found myself longing for a classical drama following the simple rule of portraying ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events....... I can understand that Welsh screenwriters and production companies want to do exciting and innovative work, and I can understand why the financiers and the broadcasters (not to mention Creative Wales) want to give their support, but drama output should be aimed not at earnest discussion groups in Film and TV degree courses, but at the viewing public.
Friday 29 March 2024
PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING IN WALES
https://senedd.wales/media/vfmmf1d1/cr-ld16426-e.pdf
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-68654383?fbclid=IwAR0w0UQo2z9SecsnrnERZNPYDU507KEjYw9qralOHSUvWw9eapAcXK4PEJE
Quote:
So there is no insistence that the BBC and the other broadcasters should devote serious resources to the telling of the Welsh story-- and play a role in developing Welsh national self-awareness and pride in its heritage. The "portrayal of people" in Wales is a different matter entirely. Wales is, arguably, already well portrayed through a string of "Celtic Noir" dramas, some of them good and some of them terrible -- but all portraying Wales as a pretty miserable place populated by psychopaths and weird hermits living in the dark woods and out on the bleak uplands! Owls, cobwebs, deserted farmhouses, and mutilated corpses proliferate.......
Monday 5 February 2024
Newport 1835
Note how ruinous the castle is. It was renovated and brought back into use as a dwelling around 1855 -- and the facade overlooking the town was changed almost out of recognition, with the trimming down of the left tower and the addition of assorted windows,
So this is how the centre of town will have looked around Martha's time..........
Sunday 17 December 2023
Christmas Quiz 2023 -- the answers
1. Rose Castle Tower, near Picton Point
2. Mountain Railway, Carningli, near Newport
3. Gedeon Chapel, Dinas Cross
4. Dinas Head, seen from the Nevern Estuary
5. Carn Meini (Carnmenyn) seen from the Waldo Williams monument
6. Ty Canol Wood, near Brynberian
7. Shell House, Cilwendeg
8. Baptistry, St Dogmaels
9. Pwll Deri seen from Garn Fawr
10. Trehowel, on Pen Caer
11. The Bennet and Traeth Mawr, seen from Newport Castle
12. Interior of Cilgerran Castle
13. Stepaside Iron Works
14. Cattle Pound, Mountain West, Newport
15. St Dogmaels, near the Abbey
16. Cwm yr Eglwys
17. Llanllawer holy well, Cwm Gwaun
18. Rosebush slate quarry
19. Folly at Monk Haven, near Milford
20. Solva lime kilns
21. Castell Henllys Iron Age Village
22. St Govans Chapel
23. Pembroke Castle keep
24. Priory Ruins, Haverfordwest
25. Five Arches, Tenby
26. Abbey, Caldey Island
27. Skomer Island
28. Haverfordwest Castle
29. Rhosygilwen Mansion
30. Maiden Castle and Lion Rock, Treffgarne