HOW TO MAKE A KILLING Part 1, by Claire N #PGat35
IMPORTANT: This review contains SPOILERS. Massive great honking ones. If you haven’t ever seen Press Gang (Seriously?! Are you a KD?!!! What are you even doing here reading this, you fool?! Click right on over to Amazon, buy yourself the complete series boxset and remedy that situation immediately before you read any further…) #CommissionsEarned
Who is this girl, and just why does she draw on the pavement in front of a block of flats every month?
By now the Junior Gazette is up and running, the characters are familiar, both to the viewer and one another, and the news team is ready for a new challenge… No, not actually going home and doing their homework, but investigative journalism. And the idea springs from a quite unlikely source: professional Lynda calmer-downer, ‘nice’ Kenny Phillips.
Kenny has noticed that a girl from the nearby town of Macton goes to the same block of flats on the same day each month and draws a chalk outline of a person on the pavement. The figure is pointing at something. As his investigations continue he discovers that a boy fell to his death from the same block of flats two years ago. The Gazette report on the death is strangely sparse and Chrissie acts suspiciously when questioned about it. Kenny thinks he might have uncovered something big…
This is why I think HTMAK is a great episode.
Kenny (and Lynda)
I have to come clean here and admit that I’m a massive Kenny fan. He’s kind, patient, loyal and all round lovely. I can’t think of any other character quite like him in any media. In fact if I’d discovered Press Gang as a teenager I probably would have had a poster of him on my wall.
This is the episode where Kenny finds his voice. Instead of being office bound, correcting people’s spelling and acting as Lynda’s personal peacemaker, he’s out there in Spike’s usual territory, finding a story. At first Lynda isn’t convinced that there is something to find, but she allows Kenny to continue investigating and by halfway through he’s changed her mind.
In my opinion, one of the best things about this episode is the bickering between Kenny and Lynda. Whereas Spike and Lynda’s sniping is flirtatious and often spiteful, Kenny and Lynda are like an old married couple, raking up stories from ten or more years ago. When Kenny is waiting nervously for Jenny’s phone call, the usual roles in the relationship are reversed: he is agitated, and Lynda attempts to calm him down.
Kenny: I’ve been trying to keep the lid on the head of this girl since I was five years old and now she tells me I’m worked up.
Lynda: Don’t exaggerate.
Kenny: For twelve years I’ve been walking behind her picking shrapnel out of people.
Lynda: He’s exaggerating. He always exaggerates about everything.
They are so involved in their argument that neither of them notice when the phone eventually rings, leaving Sarah to answer it.
Unfortunately for Kenny’s nerves, he then has to call Jenny back. This leads him to confess that he’s never phoned a girl before. Sarah offers support, but Lynda takes the direct approach.
Lynda: That’s your trouble, Kenny. You can’t do anything for yourself, whatever it is you need me with you.
Kenny: Oh yeah!
Lynda: Absolutely! You can’t even make a phone call on your own.
Kenny: Can’t I?!
Lynda: Obviously not!
Kenny: Right! (Kenny picks up the phone.)
Lynda: This should be good.
Kenny: It will be…
Lynda: Can’t miss this!
Kenny: Better not!
Lynda: At long last, Kenny Philips goes solo.
Kenny: Yeah, so watch out!
I’m not sure whether this is Lynda continuing the argument or whether she riles Kenny deliberately to push him into making the call, but it works as the next scene is…
The Date
Kenny and Jenny meet at Czars (where else?) for the briefcase-swap-turned-date. The whole sequence is brilliant. Nervous Kenny being rather aggressively flirted with is great to watch and the whole thing is well-acted by Lee and guest star Sadie Frost (proving that she is actually a pretty good actor). When, in amongst the flirting, Kenny mentions the Highpoint Flats, Jenny’s negative reaction (she says it’s a ‘bad subject’) leads him to abandon his questions for the rest of the date.
After Jenny leaves, it is revealed that Frazz has been sitting on the table behind throughout the whole date, presumably brought along for moral support. He’s not impressed by Kenny’s reporting skills to say the least.
Information gathering techniques with questionable moral standards
Previous episodes have demonstrated that the Junior Gazette team aren’t averse to obtaining information in slightly dodgy ways. HTMAK is no exception. Kenny must have been following Jenny for some time to know that she goes to the Highpoint Flats on the same day each month. As they’ve never spoken this seems quite like stalking. Additionally, he seems to have taken Danny along to take photos with his telephoto lens. Nothing creepy about that at all then!
Then there’s the briefcase swap. Two identical briefcases, a bit of low-level sexual harassment from Spike and Frazz and Jenny has a briefcase containing Kenny’s phone number. An old ploy but an effective one on this occasion. Still, a bit on the dodgy side though.
Back at the newsroom, Billy has a sudden change of heart and agrees to allow Chrissie to interview him for the adult paper. Of course, the only reason for this radical change in his stance is to provide cover for Kate to sneak into Chrissie’s office, ‘borrow’ the notebooks she claimed were lost, and copy out the relevant bits. Although the intentions were honourable, I’m not sure the Leveson Inquiry would approve of this method.
INTERFACE, by Laura Nunn #PGat35
IMPORTANT: This review contains SPOILERS. Massive great honking ones. If you haven’t ever seen Press Gang (Seriously?! Are you a KD?!!! What are you even doing here reading this, you fool?! Click right on over to Amazon, buy yourself the complete series boxset and remedy that situation immediately before you read any further…) #CommissionsEarned
I’m going to lay it out for you. Interface has never been among my favourite episodes. So if this is in your top five, you may wish to look away now and think about Colin in a bunny suit, whilst humming Disco Info songs to yourself…
The Junior Gazette hears of the Roxburgh Award – an opportunity to win a computer for the newspaper (a lovely ahead-of-its timeline from Colin, who can “almost taste the computer; in megabytes”). We see the paper’s progression through the various stages of the award over a few weeks, via amusing scenes of Tiddler delivering post, including to a somnambulant Frazz. One does wonder why the Junior Gazette gets quite so much post that they need to make mail delivery a ‘thing’, and specifically, why anyone, ever, would want to write to Frazz.
The computer is duly won and installed with a modem (a modem, folks! In 1989!) and then the proper narrative starts in earnest. And oh boy, is there an awful lot of earnest.
Let’s test out this modem then. Danny (clearly because every other main character was visiting their aunt in Sherrington that day) and Miss Hessope/Jessope (I assume it’s double-barrelled) are in the school office, sending wind-up messages to Lynda. There is no explanation as to why the school needs a computer with a modem in 1989. I think we can just assume Mr Winters has an ASCII porn fetish. He looks the type.
We learn Kenny’s dad has a computer and a modem. I have a theory about Kenny; in the first series and flashback episodes, Kenny’s house seems quite nice, quite middle class and he lives near Lynda. In later series, he appears to live in a very grotty council flat and no longer seems to have a dad. I am guessing the 1980s collapsed round Kenny’s stockbroking Dad’s ears, his parents’ marriage failed, despite Kenny’s best intentions at peacemaking and he emigrated to Australia to get away from the unpleasantness. Right, good, that’s canon now.
Lynda goes a bit… unbalanced next. Yes, I know she’s still getting over her heartbreak with James Armstrong, but I’m not sure we can completely excuse her behaviour. Seeing Colin making a ‘virtue of a necessity’ and selling the Mystery Writer angle, Lynda suggests she’s not selling papers so much as selling her soul. Yes, Lynda. Selling the Junior Gazette to children is selling your soul. This is especially the case when the Mystery Writer’s TV column is about Miss Marple, which as every teenager knows, is a gateway drug to Inspector Morse, and nothing good comes of that. I hear that’s how Whatsisname started, on a bit of Marple, nothing serious. Before he knew it, he was mainlining Columbo and the rest is history.
As the queue of Mystery Writers lines up (including Steven Moffat pulling a Hitchcock* for the very sharp-eyed), Lynda continues to overreact, talking to a blank computer screen, telling the Mystery Writer that he’s “ruining her life”. Bit strong Lynda, bit strong. Save something for There Are Crocodiles. Interestingly, she seems a lot less bothered about anonymous articles when it comes to Friends Like These and removing Sarah’s name from the article. Maybe, what with her life already ruined and all, she’s just stopped caring.
Lynda decides to pop over to Spike’s house to pick his brains about the whole Mystery Writer situation, and a lovely scene unfolds where Spike thrusts his dirty underwear at her (not in that way), mistaking her for his father. Lynda’s “I can’t tell you how much this means to me” is perfectly delivered, as is Spike’s reaction. To facilitate conversation, they decide to play Trivial Pursuits. This seems to be entirely like Trivial Pursuit, but with an extra ‘s’ on the end. Perhaps it is the Norbridge edition.
Lynda and Spike are in detective mode, working out that from the page number from the Roxburgh Award advert, and a film showing at the cinema, they should be going to 26 Laurel Avenue. What a load of shit. Totally impossible, would never happen. The unison, Famous Five, ‘Laurel Avenue’ is enough to make you vom. Don’t. Hold onto it; you’re going to need it in about ten minutes time.
Onto Laurel Avenue, and Lynda enters the house alone, despite Mr Homer’s best serial killer impression. He looks a bit like Mr Winters and Matt Kerr; I wonder if the casting director got a buy-two-get-one-free on middle-aged gingers.
Anyway, Lynda finally meets Billy, and another nice line, “You’ll understand if I don’t get up”. Moffat certainly shows the ability to bring bathos and humour to the character. Billy doesn’t want to talk to Lynda, so she pops off for a chat with the serial killer instead, and helps him with the drying up. Mr Homer explains he got the computer from work, “What’s one computer to Roxburgh’s?” Hmm, in the 1980s, I’d guess at about £1500, or to put it another way, about 3 months’ average salary in 1989. It seems unlikely that his boss would have OK’d this. I suspect fraud. Perhaps something for the Junior Gazette to investigate at another time.
Spike, who evidently doesn’t believe in doorbells, appears in Mr Homer’s kitchen just in time to hear Lynda say that he’s kind of sweet, and in another lovely moment, we get to hear “I can’t tell you how much this means to me” thrown back at Da Boss. It becomes clear that Spike was the man on the inside, as an old friend of Billy’s, rather undermining all his clever ‘detective’ work earlier in the episode.
Lynda does a great job of treating Billy as she would treat any other member of the news team – “be there or forget about the Junior Gazette altogether”. One wonders why she’s so bothered about this, as the Mystery Writer features is proving a boon for sales, but – as we realised before – Lynda equates selling copies of her newspaper with selling her soul. Perhaps she’s in the wrong job.
Anyway, fast forward to the team meeting, and it doesn’t look like Billy’s coming, so they crack on. But oh – look, just as they’re about to start, the newsroom doors swing open and who is it, but our favourite serial killer/fraudster, and his disabled son. You know that vomit you were holding onto earlier? Release it now. Spike starts to slow-hand clap. The rest of the news team joins in. Tiddler actually gives him a standing ovation.
If I were Billy, I’d have wheeled myself right out of the newsroom, and would have been sure to leave massive scrape marks all along their corridor. But he doesn’t. Lynda, at least, continues to treat him like any other member of the team and asks for the minutes to read: “Billy Homer – late”.
*not a euphemism
READ MORE from Laura at the most excellent LAURA’S PLOG
Press Gang @ 35 