In Theatre Studies we spent a lot of time learning about theorists such as Konstantin Stanislavsky. We discussed their approach to acting, the preparation, the performance, and the aftermath. As someone ill-equipped to embrace method acting (I was a lousy actor) I embraced the French dramatist Antonin Artaud.
In a nutshell, his “Theatre of Cruelty,” was all about sweeping gestures, grotesque scenes, extraordinary sounds, and bizarre images. The idea was that these types of expression were more effective than simply reciting the text (even if you were a method actor). One of his more bizarre notions was the thought that you should burn down the theatre after a performance. No lingering after-party, no watching it back on a home video. Once the show was over it was over and would be obliterated from the face of the Earth.
I never put his ideas into action — I just thought he was kind of cool in a weird sort of way. I finished my fledgling acting career, went into business, then became a writer. At this juncture, I decided to create an entertainment website: BestBritishTV.com. As the name suggests, it was a website devoted to British telly.
It began with a few reviews of my favorite TV shows, then I started getting interviews with obscure but fascinating figures from the “black and white days” of TV. Men such as writer/producer Derrick Sherwin (Doctor Who). The site started developing a following pretty quickly. Daily unique hits rose from a handful to dozens, then hundreds within a short period of time. With the power of “an audience” behind me, I started reaching out to more contemporary people of interest such as Ian Wright from “Lonely Planet,” and Louise Jameson (Doc Martin). Again, the hits went up fairly quickly.
Before long, the site was receiving tens of thousands of daily views and an odd thing happened: people started contacting me asking me to interview their clients. TV companies starting mailing me DVDs of upcoming shows to preview on the site. American Public Television contacted me to interview the stars of their upcoming Masterpiece Theatre shows. It was through this I was able to interview John Nettles (Midsommer Murders) — a childhood hero of mine from his earlier show (Bergerac). I was also solicited to interview a cast member of Downtown Abbey for the website while she was in L.A. for the Emmys. To use a Mafia analogy I was a made man. Or within my own realm, I was a made person who starts a small-time website for fun and suddenly people take you seriously.
But, with the positives came the negatives. The audience started contacting me relentlessly on Facebook, email, or in-person with suggestions. “Review this show, interview this person, write about that.” I did as they asked and had more interviews, some of which I enjoyed greatly (Brenda Blethyn, Honeysuckle Weeks etc) and then there were ones when it was awkward. A young soap actress whose agent pushed her into doing some media. She had zero interest in the conversation, and I was feigning interest in her show. All because it was what the people wanted.
I had to stop watching shows I liked (Luther, Whitechapel, Vera) and take time to do reviews on shows that I did not enjoy. The website was becoming more successful but I was not enjoying it. I was a sell-out, essentially. I wasn’t doing what I wanted and what I had put my heart and soul into. I was no longer having heartfelt discussions with aging tv directors, I was reciting prepared quotes handed to actors by over-eager agents.
I decided to stop. In fact, I took a break from TV and writing altogether. I took up soccer refereeing and coaching. I became an avid hiker. I enjoyed the outdoors and I let my website grind to a halt. Immediately, I started getting Facebooks notifications that people were saying “why hasn’t Best British TV had any new articles today?” which evolved into “this week?” and finally “this month?” All of a sudden it was time for me to renew the domain, and all that ancillary stuff that costs hundreds of bucks every year. I chose not to. The website was gone. It was my Antonin Artaud moment. Oblivion.
Years later, I realized that I had made a really big mistake. Not least because I hadn’t backed up the thousands of articles written by myself and others. It was all gone into the abyss. 10 years of hard work down the drain. Thankfully, the fire I set was not quite as ferocious as the one Artaud envisioned. A few snippets of the material were still laying around on old word files, or printouts in my home. I decided to salvage these in a very unartaudian moment and create a new website, with mere snippets of what went before. You can see the last remnants of that decade-long project now at www.bestbritishtv.uk.
