Gareth Preston's Blog, page 8

Very British Futures – Knights of God

Response to the first episode of Very British Futures was very warm, and now I am keen to push on and get several more recorded between now and September, when my workload will increase. Next out of the gate is Knights of God, the ITV 1987 family adventure series set in the then future year of 2020. Now 2020 was not a bundle of fun for most of us, but at least the country had not collapsed into ruins and being ruled by a jackbooted religious order. It’s an impressively mounted television series ...

Very British Futures – My Podcast Adventure

For the last few months I have had a project secretly coming together, something to look forward to as I laboured on the third year of my degree apprenticeship. I have enjoyed being a guest on other people’s podcasts but it has left me with a desire to do more. So it was only natural to start thinking about my own podcast series. Now episode one has been released on the Anchor platform and Spotify, and hopefully will gradually be made available on other sources too soon.

Very British Futures ...

TV21 Daleks – The Emissaries of Jevo

It’s time to take care of a little unfinished business. Back in 2020 I was kindly invited by Dylan Rees onto the podcast Doctor Who – Too Hot for TV to discuss the legendary TV21 Dalek comic strip. I was in the process of moving house at the time so my own copy of the strips and other related books were locked away in storage, so I had to rely on my memories and the internet for details. It all worked out in the end I think Dylan and I created a fun episode. However there was one story which nei...

Proceed… The Strange World of Gurney Slade

This first statement can be read as a symptom of age. My inner dad coming out. But its fair to say that it is quite rare for something genuinely innovative to appear. So much that people think is new and daring has often been done before. Take characters being meta-textual, self aware of the format they inhabit. Long before Fleabag was giving conspiratorial glances to the camera, or Gurney Slade worried about only having 25 minutes of existence left in his final episode, the Marx Brothers were b...

When the Bells Ring Out

That sounds like quite a Christmassy sort of heading doesn’t it? But in fact this post is really belongs in Halloweentown because it concerns a tale of vampirism. I’ve mentioned before that around the turn of the century I was involved with the now defunct timelord.co.uk, which was for a while quite a hotbed of creativity, producing fan fiction writing, videos and audios including Deconstruction. Not surprisingly several of us wanted to movie into original fiction, and one of those projects was ...

Stages in Waiting

Lockdown has not been kind to theatres or indeed creative groups of any discipline. Overcoming restrictions however can be its own kind of inspiration and this month saw the release online of my most ambitious video in quite a while.

To give credit where it is due, Stages in Waiting (working title – BLT Lockdown Podcast) was initially conceived and written by Peter Scofield, the actor and director who I’ve worked with quite a bit over the years, both as a co-star and behind the scenes. When i...

Guest blog: A Disney Journey

Today Rowena Preston analyses some classic Disney cartoon characters from a personal perspective.

1937: “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves”

: Now, I’m warnin’ ya. Don’t let nobody or nothin’ in the house.

: Why, Grumpy, you do care.

[Kisses the reluctant Grumpy on the head]

I love Grumpy best of all the dwarves! He is initially suspicious of the stranger in the house, but gradually warms up to her. She offends him by laughing at him occasionally, but she mainl...

Worktown Words Anthology 1

A few months ago you may have read here that I guest edited an online issue of Worktown Words for my old friends over at Live from Worktown. It was a new experience for me, curating a month of poetry submissions, all on my chosen theme of Celebration. The standard of entries was genuinely high. My thanks to editor Paul Blackburn for inviting me and his help.

Tina enjoying the new anthology

Now a selection of the best of the first ten issues has been released in paperback form and I receive...

Life Bites – A new series of monologues

Keep looking for opportunities they say. With no chance of Bolton Little Theater or indeed anyone else’s theaters opening for business anytime soon, creatives are turning to the internet to tell stories and keep connected with their audience. Quite a few local theaters and film-making groups have ventured into monologues, with their obvious advantage of combining lockdown friendly simplicity with potentially great acting and writing. After all, Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads is considered a drama ...

Horror in a Pack – Hot Trumps

Horror and childhood are closely linked. Not just because we are having the formative experiences that future storytellers will be tapping into for the rest of our lives, but because children are paradoxically one of the major markets for terror filled merchandise. Halloween is around the corner and the supermarkets are full of gaping mouthed zombies, scowling skeletons and howling ghosts, all aimed at the family market. Plenty of toy franchises have their share of monsters. Harry Potter is infu...