woof woof woof goes the wolfhound

[raven]

I have spent the last few days listening to season 9 of John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme, which has been.... incredible. John Finnemore is the writer and one of the actors in Cabin Pressure, everyone's favourite Radio 4 sitcom about the staff of a very small very crap airline ("Airdot. You cannot put only one aircraft in a line.") starring Benedict Cumberbatch (before he was famous, and then for a quite a long time after he was famous!), Roger Allam and Stephanie Cole. And Cabin Pressure is very, very funny and clever and ends in a brilliantly satisfying way and I'm sure I've recced it to all of you a million times, hi. (Also I never get tired of telling people this, but I was in the studio audience for the last series, having had my name drawn out of a hat with 17,000 other people in it).

The Souvenir Programme was the follow-up to CP, and it is also very good! It's a straightforward-ish comedy sketch show, with lots of silliness and funny songs and a few brilliant recurring bits (of which the best is "So You Ask Me For A Story", a character played by John Finnemore called John Finnemore who tells... stories). Until this year there had been been eight series of JFSP and it's all good though the show probably had peaked a couple of years ago? Definitely recommend it.

Series 9 of the Souvenir Programme isn't a sketch show though. It is, in a way, in that it's full of short self-contained bits. But it doesn't have a studio audience because pandemic, and Finnemore has taken the opportunity, as he says, to do something different. Which is - I can't quite believe this - a history of a queer Jewish family, in vignettes spanning more than a century. Each episode tells the story of one member of the family, backwards, crossing generations, so there's one bit set at a character's 2021 vaccine appointment and another at Christmas in 1898. And it is just... wonderful. Very very funny (it's still a comedy!) but deeply and profoundly moving. And it is, at its heart, very much a queer story. It starts with Russ, who comes out in the early 2000s and by 2021 is living happily and quietly with his husband and daughter, and ends with Newt, Susanna and Gally, Russ's great-great grandparents, who sit down in 1915 and decide what kind of queer family they want to make. It brings in some covid stuff, lightly, just because covid is how we live now, in a way that feels inevitable and right. And it does that with a lot of other themes, love and music and family and loss, just deftly picked up and set down again, precisely on the beat. I couldn't have loved it more. It's all on iPlayer of course, six episodes of 25 minutes each, it may bring you some joy.

Comments

[skygiants]

I in no way expected where this entry was going; thanks for telling me about it because I will absolutely be seeking it out.

[raven]

Please do report back if you listen to it! I also in no way knew where it was going, I put it on as I always put on Radio 4 and then... was crying? ...into the washing-up? I just. *hands*

[brainwane]

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

I listened to episodes 1-5, and then today listened to them all again and then listened to episode 6, and I just lay on my bed crying at the sweetness of the ending, all 5 of those characters together, 4 of them singing together in the car to comfort the 5th. It's such a HAPPY family (almost always, really) in how they treat each other, how they love each other.

The stories! Newt and the reveal of how the nonsense poems got used! Vanessa talking to the woman whose garage door she blocked! And it's such a domestic story. The Keeper of the Cakes of Pan! The garage cleanout!

It's so moving and I love the characters so much. And it's so achingly touching how the wolfhound song changes and persists over time, like a family that iterates and has something durable at its core.

[raven]

omg I knooooooooow. I'm listening to it again this evening and feeling all that so hard. The way things echo through time, particularly - they rip up the cracker hats in 2021 because MR James (!) did it in 1898! The family call each other "spaniels" in the later sketches and you don't find out why until the kids clean out Jerry's shed! And the whole story of Newt, Susanna and Gally is going to stay with me a long time. The scene where they're in the hotel room! Newt doesn't know you sometimes have to do it more than once! The whisky in the flask!

And, jfc, when you realise Newt is telling Russ the silly story about the teenage mutant hero turtles (heeeee) partly to keep Russ distracted but also to keep himself distracted, because his daughter is dead - graaargh. So good. There's this fabulous article in the Big Issue where Finnemore comments that it's a response to Tolstoy, that actually happy families are all happy in their own way, and I think that's absolutely it. They're not uncomplicatedly happy, and there is grief like a thread through the stories, but it's a real core of love and connection under everything.

may I link?

[brainwane]

I would like to link to this in a more public way on my non-DW blog since it's the best recruiter post I know of for JFSP Season 9; may I?

Re: may I link?

[raven]

Yes certainly!

[brainwane]

Just relistened and thought of you again throughout. <3

[petra]

Well heck, you had me at "There is a series 9 of JFSP" because more John Finnemore oeuvre in the world is a wonderful thing.

Then you went on and now I am very sad that I have to go to work today instead of listening because it sounds, in a word, brilliant.

[raven]

omg, I know you're going to love it! It is brilliant and - shhhh - I may like it a teeny little bit better than CP? Never thought I'd say that!

[silverhare]

Woof woof woof goes the wolfhound was my favourite. I started cackling so much I had to stop running. (Have to listen to podcasts when I'm running, no other time; can't concentrate.)

Thank you for the reminder - I must finish the series!

[raven]

I hope you enjoy the rest of it just as much!

[silverhare]

It very quietly and beautifully emotionally destroyed me this morning as I listened to the remaining four episodes. What a beautiful, clever, queer and wonderful thing.

[tau_sigma]

Weirdly I bloody *loved* it but it's your writing about it that has actually made tears prick at my eyelids, so thank you for that. (For the avoidance of doubt, that's genuine thanks ! Sometimes emotions are hard to let out.)

I just loved it. Neeewwwwwt. Susanna & Gally! Oh. So beautiful. I actually feel a little bereft that I've managed to listen to it all in one day, but I'm definitely going to listen to it multiple times again & it's one of those things that I will be able to enjoy the things I missed first (& probably second, third & fourth) time around.

[raven]

Awwww. <333 I said so on twitter but I'm so happy you loved it the same way I did! I listened to it in about three days and then went straight back to the beginning and listened to it again in a day, there's so much there on the second listen. Newt's HAT was the thing that destroyed me the second time, to be honest! I suddenly realised that the hat Russ throws up in is the hat Gally made Newt buy in 1911 because she wanted him to go and pretend to be a male impersonator on stage (!!!) and then I had to go have a lie down, aaaaaaah.

[aella_irene]

Hello I found you via the circle.

"It will last a lifetime" Gally told him, and it did. It lasted Vanessa's lifetime.

[raven]

Hello! It did! And it lasted Newt's lifetime too - he was eighteen when he bought it and he had it until he was almost 100. God I loved it so much.

[petra]

Reporting back from ep 3: nearly wept at work over the hereditary poetry. Definitely going to learn the song. Ever so fond of everyone in this family.

I think the aphasia/post-stroke bits are my favorite so far. They're so lovingly observed in the best Finnemore style.

[raven]

The poetry! The song! They both made me WEEP by the end. And you have so many of the best bits still to come!

[petra]

Right, I meant to listen with a friend but devoured it instead. Newt's episode made me beam my face off, and when I hit the end I went back to the beginning, knowing more and wanting to put the pieces together more clearly.

I love the way this family is happy, in its particular way that might well have flummoxed Tolstoy. The threads of the traditions they create and keep make me happy-cry. The poetry for the SOE is exquisitely silly and poignant at the same time, which is the peak Finnemore experience. I love the way the relationships are illustrated, especially Walter not needing eyes as long as he has his wife, and Newt and Gally's excellent taking care of each other.

[raven]

Did you see the Big Issue article where Finnemore talks about the Tolstoy quotation? It's so powerful, I thought, to just upend it and make this brilliant story about a complicated happy family. Newt and Gally taking care of each other is SO good, oh my goodness. It broke my heart a little when Gally asks Newt if he shares "the family failing" and then the way she immediately understands the truth when he admits to it, oh nooooo. I think I might have to listen to it for a third time and then request it for yuletide.

[petra]

Re: the family failing, I wondered about Mr. James' role in the Nightingale household.

The Big Issue article is spot on and it all makes me feel all the feelings.

Yuletide sounds like a great idea. On my second listen, I've started a family tree for nonspecific fannish purposes. Once I finish the relisten and the quest for details, I'll link you.

[raven]

Ahhhh I did NOT think of that!!

Would love to see your family tree, thank you! I have a feeling this may be a v nice niche yuletide fandom upcoming.

[petra]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qUHIUYcy6CasGJbUZ1a02V_lgw7AFR7U90NDret-Pw4/edit#gid=0 -- I have yet to work out how to format it properly, so you get the quick-and-dirty version.

If you know what the German woman's name is, I will gladly add it.

[raven]

Ooh so Jerry’s wife is Hilla, though I had completely missed that we had a name for Newt and Gally’s mother. I forgot to say, I did a scribbled family tree as well but it’s not so detailed!

What kind of thing would you ask for in Yuletide? I think the story that I really want to hear is what would happen if Russ learns the truth about Newt, Gally and Susanna- I just love the idea of these two queer families a century apart.

[petra]

I'm glad I'm not the only one with the curation urge.

I've added Hilla's name, thank you.

As for Yuletide, I would really like more Newt. Newt and Gally, at whatever phase of life -- do we have canon on who writes the Midnight & Noone songs in general? Newt seems a likely culprit, or perhaps the family failing also involves the ability to rhyme and scan.

I would love to see Russ finding out, however he does, and coming to terms with not being the only gay cousin by a long shot.

[china_shop]

I'm in the middle of my third listen. Thanks so much for reccing it! ❤

(Btw, do you know who the woman is in the canal boat with Vanessa when they haven't washed?)

[raven]

Oh I'm so glad you liked it! It has been such an unexpected gift in this horrible year and I ended up relistening to CP as well this week and that was an excellent choice.

I think the woman in the canal boat is a friend of Vanessa's (she does say her name but I can't remember it) who doesn't appear elsewhere? Or, possibly, she's the same friend who's with her when they persuade the man at the lock to blindfold his horse?

[china_shop]

It's so wonderful! (After petra's suggestion, I'm finding myself shipping Lettie and terrible!Patrick and Mr James, hee!)

I think the woman in the canal boat is a friend of Vanessa's (she does say her name but I can't remember it) who doesn't appear elsewhere? Or, possibly, she's the same friend who's with her when they persuade the man at the lock to blindfold his horse?

I didn't hear any names in that segment, but I might well have missed it. Yes, probably the same friend as in the other canal vignette. I wasn't sure if they were supposed to be a couple (the family failing!), or if the other one was one of the other female relatives and I was just reading into it. I wonder if anyone's written out the list of vignettes and how they all fit together...