Chelmsford 123: Heads You Lose

The second series of Chelmsford 123 brought a few changes - a new, more arty opening sequence, no Gargamadua (thank goodness) and a new blonde hairdo for Aulus. This opening episode is largely notable for featuring Chris Langham, the actor formally known for The Thick of It before his imprisonment in 2007, and Geoff McGivern, the original voice of Ford Prefect, in his new recurring role of Wolfbane.

As the episode opens, the sheep-shagging, bearded emperor is confirmed as the chronologically correct (though no doubt spinning in his mausoleum, as he never touched a sheep in his life) Hadrian, and he has ordered Aulus to organise the building of his famous wall, which Aulus feels is a waste of time because the Caledonians are famous for their ladders.

The most successful parts of this episode are those that combine post-modern playing about with actual knowledge of the Greco-Roman world. Aulus, for example, is struggling with authority issues and calls in a psychologist who, as a Freudian, is a good 1800 years ahead of his time, but, as a Roman period physician, is appropriately dressed as a Greek (most physicians were Greek or trained by Greeks). After Aulus has condemned Badvok to death for repeatedly breaking into his office, Wolfbane tries to persuade Aulus to let Badvok off by pretending to appear to Aulus in a dream as the Ghost of Next Week. This is quite a nice combination of Dickens' beloved A Christmas Carol and the genuinely Greco-Roman recurring trope of people being persuaded to do things by ghosts or gods in dreams.

One other example is, however, perhaps a little forced. Wolfbane, who is Welsh-sounding and appears to be a druid, tells Badvok at length the details of Roman mythology relating to the afterlife, which seems very odd - but this is largely so they can make a then-relevant joke about how the powers that be have been talking about building a tunnel under the Styx for years (the Channel Tunnel was still in the planning phases when this episode was made).

Overall, this is a pretty forgettable episode, and a somewhat disappointing start to Series 2. The episode ends with Badvok's execution and a voiceover joke about how the part will be played by Bonnie Langford from now on, but this is revealed to be a dream of Grasientus' at the beginning of the following episode. Exactly how much of this episode was supposed to be Grasientus' dream is unclear, but Badvok is alive, well and free when we next see him, so presumably quite a lot of it. One can only conclude that McGrath and Mulville had watched a bit too much Dallas before writing this one.

Chelmsford 123: Peeled Grapes and Pedicures (and Nine Circles of Thesis Writing)

I had planned a Xena post for today, but that ran into technical difficulties, so, since the Christmas season is coming up, I decided to start getting in the mood with this Saturnalia-based episode of Chelmsford 123 instead. In this episode, Aulus and Functio plan to have an orgy to celebrate Saturnalia and to make the stupidest man around king for a day, but Badvok, as king, declares that he’s changed the rules and is now permanent King of Britain.

Considering this is a 1980s British sit-com (i.e. it’s about slobbish losers trying to get laid, Yes, Minister aside of course) set in ancient Rome, it’s something of a miracle that it took six episodes to get to the orgy. There is some concession to history, as Functio’s wife makes a comment about Romans and boys and Aulus points out she’s mixed them up with the Greeks (and people will continue to do so, Aulus). But really, this episode is playing with cultural stereotypes of Rome and it knows it. And, to be fair, the British are as much into complete sexual liberty in honour of Saturnalia as the Romans are.

I was entertained by a conversation between Functio and his young daughter, who asks what an orgy is, because my parents gave me the exact same answer when I was younger and watching I, Claudius (‘it’s a sort of party’). We also get to hear Badvok start a speech with ‘Friends, Britons, Countrymen!’ which is obvious but funny anyway. As a former inhabitant of Ipswich, I also found Badvok’s confusion when he was told to meet ambassadors from the East pretty amusing (Well, I once met a man from Ipswich...' Ipswich is a town in East Anglia, on the east coast of Britain). Badvok also tries to learn Latin and is given the traditional British Latin class drill ‘Amo, amas, amat…’ and, on being told there are two ‘yous’, declares that he’s abolishing all plurals. I think a lot of people probably wish he’d been successful there.

There’s something almost politically savvy and satirical about Badvok changing the rules of Saturnalia to make himself king forever – this is, after all, roughly analogous to what Caesar (consul, later got himself elected Dictator for Life) and Hitler (democratically elected) did. However, I’m not entirely sure political satire is the main point of this story – though lawyers certainly come in for some stick when Aulus tries to consult a money-grabbing one (played by Angus Deayton!). And Badvok certainly comes to regret his decision when he realizes that not only does being King entail some work, it’s also extremely dangerous.

Aulus manages to scare Badvok out of being king and all ends well, except for Grasientus, who’s stuck in a cell with Badvok and a cow. And so ends Series 1 of Chelmsford 123, on a reasonably high note, since this episode had a decent few laughs and played on some nice ancient themes – politics, kingship and the ever-present Roman orgy.

On an entirely unrelated note, earlier today Nathan Bransford posted on the Nine Circles of Writing Hell. This was an hilarious account of writing a novel corresponding to Dante's Nine Circles of Hell, which could almost apply as well to writing a thesis as writing a novel. And so, with all due acknowledgement to Bransford and to Dante, whose work this really is, I present for your amusment the Nine Circles of Thesis-Writing Hell...

With apologies to Nathan Bransford and Dante Alighieri

First Circle - Limbo

I want to do a PhD and get to call myself Doctor and wear a fabulous floppy hat and look like Harry Potter for the third time. What’s that? I need an original research idea for a thesis? Ah…

Second Circle - Lust

Oh this is it! This is The Idea. This is going to completely change the face of scholarship! This will get every bit of funding going and become a book straight away and I will get invited to conferences to be keynote speaker because everyone will be totally in awe of my amazing insight!

Third Circle - Gluttony

(Sung, a la Finding Nemo) Must keep writing, must keep writing, writing, writing…

Fourth Circle - Greed

You know what, this is going so well, I think I’m going to submit it early and get it out as a book by next year.

Fifth Circle - Anger

I can no longer see anything except words upon words in Times New Roman, I dream about my thesis, when I eat I imagine I’m eating my thesis. I hate my thesis. I have never hated anything so much in my entire life. Not even a Pot Noodle.

Sixth Circle - Heresy

This eminent scholar has no idea what she’s talking about! She clearly doesn’t understand the evidence or the theory and I don’t know how she ever became so well known, she’s obviously an idiot! I’ve devoted two chapters to bringing her down, point by point… who did you say my external examiner was?

Seventh Circle - Violence

Dear IT department, there has been a slight accident with the printer…

Eighth Circle - Plagiarism

Who needs a million frikkin’ references anyway?!

Ninth Circle - Treachery

Oh examiners, I know, the whole thing is the biggest pile of rubbish you’ve ever read, never mind giving me a PhD, you should probably take away by BA right now and I promise I'll never show my face in academia again!

Chelmsford 123: Vidi, Veni, Vici

Still a bit rushed off my feet with moving and so on, but I did find time while unpacking to watch an old episode of Chelmsford 123 on 4oD (which now offers streaming so you don't have to download it, which is nice!)

Well, you can really tell all you need to know about this episode from the title – 'I saw, I came, I conquered'. Badvoc is kidnapped and his (rather surprisingly) distressed girlfriend Gargamadua goes to stay with Aulus Paulinus, who pretends to look for Badvoc while actually trying to get off with her. He succeeds, briefly, but eventually gives up and finds Badvoc leading his kidnappers in an attempt to defraud Aulus himself.

Badvoc is kidnapped by a vicious tribe called the Triconi, whom Badvoc claims never to have heard of, which I’m choosing to interpret as an in-joke, since they’re not real. In fact, they later explain that they’re not really a tribe, there’s only two of them.

There's very little in this episode that really relates to the Roman Empire - for the most part, this story could have been set in any time period, or at least any time period where the threat of kidnapping was a problem. Chelmsford 123 frequently portrayed its characters as no different at all from modern men (and the odd man's view of what a modern woman is like) and this one does so even more than most. The story may have been inspired by the dangerous side of life in Roman Britain, surrounded by discontented tribal warriors, but it interacts very little with its historical setting.

This episode suffers from the fact that there is another, later sex-based episode which was rather more memorable and funnier – this one is mildly amusing but not laugh-out-loud funny. The bit where Aulus brings wine over, talking about its nose, and Gargamadua knocks in back in one as if it was beer was funny, and might possibly still work as a joke about an Italian and a Brit, depending how much we want to deal in stereotypes. We also get a reference to the Roman poet Catullus and the sparrow which is pretty funny. Catullus' most famous poem is about how his girlfriend's sparrow is dead (actually there are several poems about the sparrow, but this is the best known), and apparently it's actually very rude, though I've never sat down to work out how exactly. Aulus wants to read one of them to Gargamadua but tries to translate it literally, with predictably awful results, which is fairly amusing. Overall, though, this episode is too much based on paper thin characterisation and stereotypes (nagging girlfriend, drunk mates and so on) to be really entertaining.

The English Patient (dir. Anthony Minghella, 1996)

Well, this post was going to be on the next episode of Chelmsford 123, but unfortunately I've lost my source of Chelmsford 123 episodes, so I've had to come up with an alternative rather quickly. As a result, this post is based on my somewhat hazy memories of the film in question, so please forgive any glaring errors or omissions!

I'm torn about The English Patient. On the one hand, this is a film which features both Ralph Fiennes and Mr Darcy (sorry Colin Firth, but you will always be Mr Darcy!) and not only provides a chance to talk about the desert, but was filmed in the very bit of desert that I went to! On the other hand, it's very, very, very depressing. It's like either the novelist or scriptwriter thought of the most depressing story they could, then added to it's misery by killing off Sergeant Lewis into the bargain.

The bit that interests me here, of course, is the battered and much-doodled in copy of Herodotus that the Patient carries around with him. Herodotus seems to hold an intriguing place within the popular imagination. No popular culture hero that I can think of carries around a copy of Thucydides or sings his praises - Thucydides is considered simply too dull. A character who professed a great love for Thucydides would be a bore, a nerd/geek/dork/whatever, a person more interested in dead Greeks than in the living. On the other hand, plenty of popular heroes are very fond of Homer, and may own copies of the Iliad or the Odyssey. But that wouldn't be quite right for The English Patient either. Homer is too mythical, too unreal (and before anyone suggests that the Iliad is more 'realistic', remember that there's a talking horse in it) and, perhaps, too military. The English Patient is about war, but is is much more about romance and prejudice, themes not especially prevalent in Homer. A hero who reads Homer is a soldier or an adventurer, an Achilles, a Hector or an Odysseus, and the Patient (Count László de Almásy - no, I can't remember, spell or pronounce his name!) is none of those things.

So why does the hero here read Herodotus? Perhaps because Herodotus stands for a love of travel and a wide-ranging interest. Herodotus is certainly a more entertaining read than Thucydides, and he is famously open-minded, recording vast amounts of material even he seems to doubt and allowing plenty of space in his narrative for non-Greek peoples and characters. Herodotus was well-travelled and included an entire Book that's more or less a travelogue, and he recorded several of the most famous incidents in Greek history (Croesus and the Delphic Oracle, Thermopylae, Marathon, the 'wooden walls' and Salamis). Someone who loves Herodotus is broad-minded (very important in this story), fond of travel and interested in bizarre and unusual stories.

The Atlas mountains, at Chebika, where some of the movie was filmed.

Herodotus also occupies an intriguing cultural niche - not as well-known as Homer, more well known than Thucydides. Someone who has never read any Greek literature - me at age 16 for example - has probably heard of Homer and has some knowledge of the contents of the Odyssey if not the Iliad, may have heard of Herodotus but not really know what he wrote about other than Greek history, and might not have heard of Thucydides, or might not know what he wrote about (I've left out Xenophon, who would occupy a similar place to Thucydides, but without the reputation for crushing boredom). So a hero who reads Herodotus is someone with 'interesting' taste - someone who reads things that are classics and that are clearly interesting and worth reading, but not common reading material - just that little bit exotic.

Perhaps this is the appeal of Herodotus to authors (this is not the only story to have a hero who likes Herodotus. Neil Gaiman's American Gods, for example, also features Herodotus prominently at the beginning as a sign of education and interest, but I still haven't even got halfway through that book, so please don't make a comment that spoils it for me!). Herodotus is familiar - a classic text, studied by generations of schoolchildren, especially at the time The English Patient is set - but also just a little bit exotic, just a little bit less familiar than Homer might be. With Herodotus' text itself so interested in the strange and the exotic, the combination serves to make the hero 'interesting' in the best way, making his character more intriguing and less predictable than he might otherwise be.

This area is actually by a really big oasis, one of the biggest. Knowing this can make it hard to get into the tragic spirit at the end!

Chelmsford 123: One for the Road

This is one of Chelmsford 123's more memorable episodes, in which the Roman desire to build straight roads comes into conflict with the Romano-British desire to patronise good brothels.

The one thing most British schoolchildren are taught about the Romans (in addition to the layout of a villa and the constituent parts of a centurion's uniform) are that the Romans built straight roads, and two of their roads, the Fosse Way and Watling Street, still run across large areas of the Midlands. So this episode plays on a very familiar aspect of Roman life, and gets a great deal of mileage (mileage - hah!) out of its use of the words 'straight' and 'bendy' on the way.

The plot follows Badvok and Functio's efforts to save their favourite brothel in Romford from being torn down to make way for a new (straight) Roman road. The episode also has a lot of fun at the expense of Romford, but I've never been there, so I can't say how deserved or otherwise this is!

Meanwhile Gargamadua, Badvok's betrothed, continues to flirt with Aulus, leading Functio to save Romford by threatening to sacrifice her to the local god Thingy, only for Aulus to discover and tear down the brothel in the process anyway. For some reason, while preparing for a meeting with Gargamadua, Aulus decides to wear what looks distinctly like Caligula's gold bikini get-up from I, Claudius. Quite why he thinks a practical woman like Gargamadua - or, indeed, any woman - will find this attractive is a bit of a mystery.

What makes this episode so memorable, of course, is the combination of lots of sex jokes, a very familiar element of Roman culture being satirised, and the use of a real place that you can see on a map or pass on a (bendy) road. Although the previous two episodes, about the tension between the British and the Romans and about a Boudicca-like tribe of warrior women, had certainly played on familiar aspects of ancient Rome, it's the combination of a specifically Roman source of comedy with the more everyday and familiar that really works here - culminating a an amusing post-credits segment where a British cart and a Roman cart crash on the new road because the Britons are driving on the left and the Romans are driving on the right.

Chelmsford 123: The Girl of my Dreams

Hello again everyone! Back from holiday, which was brilliant and involved hardly any work. (I quite often go to parts of the Roman Empire on holiday and tour archaeological sites, which I love doing and which is partly why I choose those places, but does mean there is an element of work in the holiday. This time, I went to New York City, so I was able to fully enter the 21st century - or at least the 20th - for most of the holiday, except for an hour or so photographing pots and statues in the Metropolitan Museum of Art). Unfortunately, however, the airline have lost my suitcase (after waiting a full day for them to do a two and a half hour journey, they turned up with the wrong one - never check baggage in to KLM). This means I have to wait in for it, which means I can't go and see Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief in Birmingham this evening, which means I probably won't get around to seeing it until it appears in Blockbuster or on Sky Movies. Sorry about that - my wonderful words of wisdom on it will have to wait.

This episode sees Badvok, Aulus, Grasientus and Functio beseiged in Aulus' villa by an army of furious women who demand a male sacrifice, or they will sit outside until the men starve. The episode tries to get around the fact that this plot is based on the idea that their leader wants to avenge the attempted rape of her daughters by making the daughters very, very ugly, implying no one would want to rape them anyway. (sarcastic voice on) Well, that makes it OK then (sarcastic voice off). This motivation is sometimes attributed to Boudicca, though according to Tacitus' Agricola, rape in general in only one of a number of grievances that led to the revolt. Modern retellings seem to feel the need to explain why a woman is taking arms by making the offence a close personal one - the rape of her own daughters - whereas Tacitus says that Boudicca led the revolt simply because the Britons did not have male primogeniture at the time and leaders could be of either gender, something apparently conveniently forgotten by modern authors.

The episode claims that the story of the fearsome tribe of women (the Silugae) who beseige the men, only to move on when they realise they've got the wrong town, and eventually raze the town they're after and put some man's genitals in a jar, is told in Tacitus' Histories. As far as I can tell without actually re-reading the entire Histories myself, this isn't true - the Histories tell the story of the Year of the Four Emperors. The revolt of Boudicca, which seems to be the inspiration for the episode, is described in Tacitus' Agricola and in Cassius Dio (and the Roman governor who fought was, in fact, Paullinus). It's a shame, because the crack at the end, about how maybe we shouldn't take either Tacitus or Suetonius too seriously, would be quite funny if it was based on a real example. There's also a rather nasty scene where the men prepare to eat Grasientus alive - OK, it's meant to be funny, but it is a bit gross for my tastes.

The best bit of the episode is the first scene, where Aulus goes to a dream interpreter to find out what the horrible blob in his dream means. The dream interpreter inspects the entrails of a goat to try to find out - this is actually pretty accurate, dream prophecies were sometimes verified by extispicy - checking the entrails of a sacrificed animal. The dream interpreter appears to do the New Zealand All Blacks' Haka first, then stabs the goat, which he says establishes that the goat is dead. It's pretty funny. Afterwards, still with no answers, Aulus wonders how he has offended the gods and suggests that perhaps the gods have gone vegetarian and they should be sacrificing carrots, which is even funnier. There's a fairly amusing section towards the end where the men compare war cries (the British 'arrrrgggghhh!' vs the Roman 'Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori') but if only the rest of the episode had lived up to these first few minutes!

The New Zealand All Blacks rugby team, performing the haka

Chelmsford 123: What's Your Poison?

The second episode of Chelmsford 123 is sadly devoid of Latin, which will not appear again until the very last episode. It is set before and during a banquet held by new governor Aulus Paulinus for the local tribal chieftan Badvok and guests. There's a misunderstanding involving Aulus' slimy brother-in-law Grasientus trying to poison Badvok, while Aulus thinks Badvok is planning to poison him and Badvok think Aulus is trying to poison him (using the fast poison, not the slow one that takes five years...).

Aulus hires an epic poet calling himself Cicero who says he can recite 10,000 lines of Virgil (author of the Aeneid, often considered the best Latin epic poem, though I also like Flaccus' Argonautica and Lucan's Civil War). No one looks terribly enthusaistic about this - the product of writers who were forced to do Latin at school no doubt. Personally, I think it would depend which 10,000 lines of Virgil it was - if it was extracts from Books 2, 4 and 6 of the Aeneid (the Fall of Troy book, the Dido book and the underworld book) then I would happily listen to the lot, but if it was from Books 7-12 of the Aeneid, I'd be falling asleep 10 lines in (these are the books that are supposed to emulate the Iliad, but the Iliad, catalogue of ships aside, is much more exciting - the second half of the Aeneid is, I find, deathly dull). Cicero also has his own 50-verse epic poem about Aeneas, which Aulus is even less enthusiastic about.

Meanwhile the feast proceeds, with Badvok unable to remember the jokes he was told the week before and the food tasters everyone has brought either dropping dead or eating all the food. There's also the obligatory 'what's your poison?' line, meaning 'what alcoholic beverage would you like?' Eventually the truth comes out when Grasientus is forced to eat one of the olives he poisoned, only for the poison not to work. The episode ends with Cicero the epic poet being offered a host of poisoned drinks, produced by both sides under the belief that they were about to be poisoned themselves, thus saving everyone from 10,000 lines of the exploits of Aeneas.

I don't find this episode quite as funny as the first one - no Latin! no Doctor Who! - and it is all rather predictable, but it's not without its laughs. When I saw this as a teenager, I seem to remember being even more underwhelmed, since I didn't get any of the jokes about epic poetry, Virgil or Aeneas - now I find that these are the highlights of the episode. In a way it's a shame that they imply that Virgil and Aeneas are so boring, as a lot of the Aeneid is really very good and well worth a read. On the other hand, this is one of those situations where you can't help wondering if a lot of Romans felt the same way too... And any episode that poisons someone called Cicero (I can't stand the famous Cicero - sexist, priggish, dull) can't be all bad.

Chelmsford 123: Arriverderci Roma!

Chelmsford 123 was a sitcom that ran for two series in the 1980s, currently available to view on 4oD in the UK. It was good fun - some episodes were better than others, obviously - but my two favourite episodes were the first one and the last one, because those two included some Latin.

The first episode opens, in an obvious homage to I, Claudius, at the Emperor's dining room in the middle of a feast. This Rome is the bog-standard city of vice and immoral behaviour so often shown in popular culture - the dinner has a 'prostitute course', for example. Technically, since the show is set in AD 123, this is the Emperor Hadrian, but he bears almost no resemblence to anything we know about Hadrian, except that they both have beards. This emperor is a combination of all the traits associated, in the popular imagination, with Roman emperors - so he's completely mad, he's married to a horse ('Portia'), divorced from a goat ('there were kids involved') and having an affair with a sheep.

While the characters are in Rome, they speak in Latin, with subtitles. Although the Latin is accurate (and pronounced in the correct Classical style), the jokes are all based on the English translation, as in the 'kids' example, though several jokes are also based around the fact that it's just funny to hear a rude word in a dead language - 'testiculos' for 'bollocks', for example (though I'm not 100% sure this is right...). It's a rather more fun way to practise Latin than grammar exercises though - I wish more sitcoms would film sequences in Latin.

The British characters, of course, speak English, as do the Roman characters when they arrive in Briton (supposedly they've learned the local language to try to blend in - highly unlikely, but unlike me, most of the country doesn't want to watch a sitcom filmed entirely in Latin). There are some more linguistic jokes in this episode, as the Romans struggle to get the hang of the language and mistake 'piss off' for a greeting.

Then there's this - one of the funniest things I've seen on a sitcom. But then, I have a very bad sense of humour. (The Doctor here is Tom Baker's Doctor - demonstrating that for many, many people, pre-David Tennant, Tom Baker really was THE Doctor, the best known and best loved of the lot).

I tend to find the Roman sequences funnier than the British ones in Chelmsford 123. Perhaps it's because the Roman sequences mock the popular perception of ancient Rome and previous Roman epics (chiefly I, Claudius of course) while the British sequences rely more on fairly generic pub humour involving blind men being cheated at cards and one very stupid character who doesn't understand anything (though his observation that all Romans are called Marcus did amuse me). Chief Badvok's 'girlfriend' is also an intensely irritating character (dropped for the second series), made more so by the inappropriateness of an historical character having a 'girlfriend' rather than a wife or mistress/concubine. ('Boy/girlfriends' in the modern sense don't exist in many historical societies).

By the end of the first episode, our Roman characters, Aulus and Grasientus, have started to settle in (despite the unfortunate 'piss off' misunderstanding) and the relationship between Badvok and Aulus - official emnity with an underlying sense of friendship only occasionally disturbed by attempts on each other's lives - has been firmly established. The rest of the series continues in a fun, silly vein, though sadly without the Latin, which doesn't reappear until the very last episode...