Andrew Marr does fantasy

Ep 2 of "Sleuths, Spies and Sorcerers: Andrew Marr's Paperback Heroes", about fantasy, on BBC4 tonight at 9pm. I'm recording it. Someone let me know if it's any good.

The first in the series, sleuths, was.

I also enjoyed the first.

I really enjoyed the first one too (and I'm not a huge reader of detective fiction) - the fantasy one should be good.

Did Marr just call GRRM a Texan, or were my ears deceiving me?

I set up to record the second one, thinking it was one episode about all 3 genres. And it's not? I guess I'll watch it anyway, but I was kind of expecting John Le Carre writing an urban fantasy with wizards. Almost tempted to go ahead and write just that.

Gonk the Insane said:

kind of expecting John Le Carre writing an urban fantasy with wizards. Almost tempted to go ahead and write just that.

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I'll read it.

Gonk the Insane said:

John Le Carre writing an urban fantasy with wizards

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Two questions:

1. Does John Le Carre know any wizards?
2. Are the wizards good writers?

Here's the link: Sleuths, Spies & Sorcerers: Andrew Marr's Paperback Heroes, 2. Fantasy

I like the description of fantasy writers as "gothic philosophers of the modern age".

We're part way through watching and I am afraid every time they show rolling countryside and Hadrian's Wall with the Game of Thrones music playing in the background I see this:


Other than that, so far fairly interesting, done GRRM, Tolkein and CS Lewis, with mention of how many fantasy authors come from Oxford University.

Ursa major said:

Does John Le Carre know any wizards?

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Uh, I'm going to say probably. In my head he was chasing them around Berlin in the middle of the Cold War.

It was OK, but the sleuths one, which I watched afterwards, was much better in my opinion: more focused, and with more interesting interviewees.

HareBrain said:

It was OK

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Ah, well, I have an, erm, slightly different view. I was quite looking forward to it (despite the lack of spy thriller/wizard mash-up).

There were some really interesting interviews with authors in the programme, but unfortunately that's the only positive thing I can say about it. I thought the biggest problem was this: Andrew Marr spends an hour explaining what Fantasy is and how the genre works, but he does this by dropping spoilers for dozens of classic Fantasy novels. Now, American Gods was the only one I wasn't already familiar with, but it seems like the programme was designed for pretty much no-one: if you've read all the classics he spoils, the chances are pretty high you already understand what he's about to explain. And if you haven't read them, then in one blow he's ruined some of the best Fantasy fiction ever written by revealing endings and twists.

To be fair, he did at one point say "spoiler", but this was after already delivering spoilers for half a dozen greats, and there was about a nanosecond gap between him saying that and delivering the actual spoiler, so stopping the TV at the point would have been nigh on impossible. I was imagining some youngster who hadn't yet discovered CS Lewis or Tolkein watching this before reading them, and perhaps never picking up those books because Marr ruined it for them.

Aside from that, I found the general tone to be condescending, with overly simplistic views of what the Fantasy genre is. And the presenter was just irritating: he spoke so fast that at times it was difficult to keep track of what he was saying. There was some nice archive footage and interviews, but overall I found the programme to be incredibly irritating - so much so that I turned off before the end.

Perhaps a lot of that was Marr trying to tell me his rather simplistic view of what Fantasy is, which is something I just don't agree with. Sure, it's Lewis and Tolkein, and the hero's quest. But isn't Fantasy so much more than that? What about contemporary Fantasy that does something different? Does Fantasy have to hold a mirror up to our own world? It felt like he was delivering his own views as gospel, but perhaps I'm being too precious about the whole thing? Or perhaps it's because I thought I might learn something, but instead found him trotting out tired bits of old information - GRRM was influenced by the War of the Roses? Really? Was Wikipedia the sum of his research?

Sorry, but that was genuinely one of the worst TV programmes I've ever seen

There were elements of the programme I enjoyed, but I think the subject matter was too big to be squeezed into an hour - felt like it was rushing from point to point without sufficient depth. There was a lot of - too much- recyling of well-known info, though arguably for viewers less familiar with fantasy fiction they would be more interesting. Perhaps as a 'primer' on fantasy it would work, but it was not the right format (you'd need a series) to explore all the themes mentioned. It was frustrating at times to have just snippets of interviews - for example I'd have happily listened to Alan Garner be interviewed for an hour...

I enjoyed it better than the first episode and can't see how he could have done it without major spoilers,but would have expected the casual reader to have known most of the details anyway.

The one criticism I have would be the lack of Moorcock in the equation, not merely as an author but as a champion of other writers and a counter culture pioneer.