Farewell Bear Facts - Newcastle

Well, that's a nice surprise - I haven't listened to this episode for a while, and it works much better than I thought it did. It's a good introduction for Herc - the first time in the show I was deliberately introducing a new recurring character - and Martin's embarrassments with both Eddie and Linda are justified (and therefore funny), I think, because in both cases it's entirely his own fault - Linda is extremely patient with him, really; and Eddie only torments him when challenged. I've said before, though, that one episode per series is always more of a headache than all the others to write, and for some reason this was series three's. What I've always thought about it is that I'd like to go back, take it apart, and expand it into two episodes - that Herc and Linda deserve an episode to themselves, and so does Mark Williams' wonderful Eddie. But listening back now, I'm not so sure - I don't think anyone's under-served in this episode. True, Douglas reaches new heights of helpful mellowness... but they're in character, and he still has that rather nice scene where it turns out he's printed out a CV as well.

- Sometimes people ask me if the cold open was written specially when we knew Tom Goodman-Hill would be stepping in as Martin. To which I always think… what sort of sense do you think it would have made otherwise?

-I've already posted a deleted scene for Newcastle, here.

- This midway point seems a good time to mention a couple of people who have been pointed out to me  as doing unexpected and delightful things with this Cabin Pressure advent calendar thing (Which is, of course, these guys' idea in the first place.) The first is All Things Linguistic, a blog which is improbably managing to find a linguistically interesting detail about each episode, and thereby making my jokes sound far, far cleverer than they actually are, for which I can only thank them. The second is Tealin, a professional animator who is somehow finding time to do a daily, full-colour picture which basically look like stills from an imaginary Golden Era Disney movie of Cabin Pressure (I hope she'll take that as a compliment, I certainly mean it as one). They're extraordinary - do have a look. Here's my favourite so far (reproduced without permission, do tell me if you'd like me to take it down, Tealin.) [UPDATE: In fact, Tealin has kindly given me permission to reproduce all her pictures from this exercise, and so I've included each one in the relevant blog post. Thank you!]