{"id":693,"date":"2006-10-05T23:32:32","date_gmt":"2006-10-06T03:32:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/archives\/2006\/10\/05\/recommended-listening-absolute-power\/"},"modified":"2006-10-05T23:32:32","modified_gmt":"2006-10-06T03:32:32","slug":"recommended-listening-absolute-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2006\/10\/05\/recommended-listening-absolute-power\/","title":{"rendered":"Recommended Listening: Absolute Power"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-content\/images\/2006\/10\/absolute_power_2.jpg\" width=\"318\" height=\"344\" alt=\"Absolute Power\" title=\"Absolute Power\" class=\"alignright\"\/>This week&#8217;s listening material in the car has been the BBC Radio 4 series <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Absolute_Power_%28series%29\">Absolute Power<\/a>. The series stars <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Stephen_Fry\">Stephen Fry<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/John_Bird_%28actor%29\">John Bird<\/a> as former BBC executives who lose their BBC jobs and start up a &#8220;government media relations&#8221; firm. The core conceit is that they take on &#8220;image relaunches&#8221; and media campaigns for things that are impossible to put a good spin on, while also doing &#8220;hush hush&#8221; dirty tricks stuff for the &#8220;New Labour&#8221; government. For instance, in the first series the assignments include improving the perception of the Conservative Party (this is in 2000, when everyone hates the Tories), getting a Socialist elected Mayor of London, and increasing the Church of England&#8217;s &#8220;market share&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The series is a bit formulaic, in that there are definite set pieces in each episode, and the structure of each episode is identical, but the material is quite funny, and of course <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Stephen_Fry\">Stephen Fry<\/a> is tremendously entertaining as total bastard Martin Prentiss. (John Bird, as Martin McCabe, delivers a lower-key performance that anchors the show.) You do need to know a bit about British politics and pop culture (especially since 2000) to get all the gags.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m into the third series of the four that were produced for radio at the moment, and will probably finish the run by the end of the weekend. I&#8217;m making arrangements to (in a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.demonoid.com\/files\/details\/212226\/188682\/\">totally legal, and legitimate manner<\/a>, of course) get my hands on the two seasons of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/comedy\/guide\/articles\/a\/absolutepower_999031110.shtml\">the television show<\/a> that was based on the radio plays, with Fry and Bird in the same roles.<\/p>\n<p>If you want to check out the radio plays, all four seasons are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sadena.com\/radio\/\">available for download as MP3s<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"excerpt\">This week&#8217;s listening material in the car has been the BBC Radio 4 series Absolute Power. The series stars Stephen Fry and John Bird as former BBC executives who lose their BBC jobs and start up a &#8220;government media relations&#8221; firm. The core conceit is that they take on &#8220;image relaunches&#8221; and media campaigns for things that are impossible to&hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2006\/10\/05\/recommended-listening-absolute-power\/\">Read more &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","xfolkentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5UQvw-bb","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}