Eat your scones!
A much stronger episode - number three, Where's Johnny?, written by John Patterson and directed by Michael Caleo - in which Uncle Junior shows definite signs of Alzheimer's, driving off to the old neighbourhood in search of his dead brother Johnny Soprano (who was, as we remember from Livia's catchphrase, "a saint"). A literal turf war between Paulie and Feech shows just what a violent pyscho the old capo is - breaking the arm of a gardener whom he felt was encroaching on his nephew's patch by dragging his inert body, by the balls, to a kerbside, and stomping on the bone. Ouch. Anyone who saw Robert Loggia, who plays Feech, in Lost Highway or Scarface will know how good he is at this kind of thing. Tony, now sharing with Artie Bucco, is seen trying to mediate a tripartate power-sharing arrangement between Johnny Sack, Angelo Garepe and Little Carmine (he of the "wet t-shirt contests" in Florida). Sack, his eyes darker than ever, tells him where to stick it ("What's this, the fucking UN now?"). Meanwhile Junior insults Tony at the dinner table about his lack of athletic prowess as a kid. Tony takes it badly and says that his uncle is "dead to him." (Good to hear that phrase.) Then he finds out about the Alzheimer's and they almost have a Moment at the end of the episode. Some great conflict in this one - not least Tony's frustrated flare-up at Janice, who went off to California and left him with their mother. "I'm left here mired in her bullshit, trying to be a good son, and you're off dropping acid and blowing roadies!" Her hapless husband, Bobby, looks at her and says, "Roadies?" (Oh, it was Paulie who said the scones line, to his Aunt. Men are talking!)

Boo!
This is to mark the sideways move of Leona McCambridge, who has been my producer on 6 Music for two and a half years. These things happen. It's good for presenters to have the comfort blanket pulled out from under them, keeps things fresh etc. I've been at the BBC for long enough now to know their ruses. Just when you're getting into some kind of rhythm with a programme team (and at weekends, in the studio, Leona is my programme team), it's management practice to "mix things up". Thus, Leona is moving back to the weeks, to look after Gideon, and Jude is coming over to weekends, from Steve's show, to look after me. (I can promise you I don't take much looking after. I do my own photocopying. I don't require links "scripting" for me. I usually refill my own water bottle, and often supply gluten-free biscuits for all. I even nitpick the programme's webpage, which is a joy for whoever has to update it.) Anyway, it's been a gas, and it sure beat working. That's the long and short of what I wish to say on the matter. I shall look forward to working with Jude, but I shall miss Leona, with her apparently fantastic shoes and her microwaved Quorn leftovers and her LA Law ringtone and her constructive criticism and her Gary Davies anecdotes and her occasional misspelled word on the Chart Show running order (Return To Cookie Monster a great favourite) and her military precision and her childlike pouts and her 80s tunes and her salute to the opening credits of The West Wing. All who appreciate good radio - and behind every good show there's a good producer, usually silently going about their infrastructural work - should salute her.

Grandpa Munster over here
I can foresee getting through Season Five at a lick. Episode Two, The Rat Pack, written by Matthew Weiner, directed by Alan Taylor, who I'm sure used to present Mr & Mrs before Derek Batey took over, revolved around the appearance of Tony's cousin, Tony (Buscemi, downplaying his rattiness somewhat), which led to much manly hugging and back-slapping - a useful way to check to see if someone is wired, of course, as much as an Italian-American display of brotherly love. Tony wishes to go straight, put the massage course he did in the joint into practise, and Tony gets him a legit job driving for a Korean laundry firm in the interim. The trouble comes when Tony forgets that Tony is now the boss, and he casually disrespects him in mixed male company. (He also calls Paulie Grandpa Munster because of those magnificient white wings of his, and that goes down badly too. Hey, he was just busting your balls a little bit!) It's amazing how quickly familial love can turn to paranoid distrust. There's a lot of business with a horrible painting of the Rat Pack too, given to Tony as a gift (he doesn't usually like "modern art"), and climactically thrown from a bridge at the end. The significance, of course, is that various people are ratting, including Adriana, who's reaching the end of her informer's tether.

They're ba-ack!
Return of The Sopranos. And not the return you're thinking of. Season Six, the final season, is back on E4. We're watching Season Five on disc. It was the much-trumpeted return on E4 that forced us to reassess our lives. Fearful that we were in fact two seasons behind, a quick recap on the episode guides revealed that we had seen Season Four (Adriana and the Feds, Johnny Sack, Pie-Oh-My), and thus were only one season out of whack. Duly purchased, we have decided to catch up with Five, and then purchase Six when we're ready. The world of DVD box sets means you're never in synch with the real world, but, as Tony would say, what da fuck?

So, you enjoy Six, and we'll enjoy Five. It feels so long since Season Four ended, I can't even remember whether we watched it on E4 or C4. Certainly, in the early days of E4, the digitial picture was so poor, we opted to wait until terrestrial transmission. This teaches you patience. The Sopranos needs watching in sequence, in controlled conditions, and without missing a single episode. (Likewise The West Wing, which I had to abort mid-season due to missing two in a row. I await the final-series box set, which is coming this month. I found that missing a whole chunk of Six Feet Under didn't harm the flow. I don't know why. But I got bored of the last series, and never saw it to the end. You have to trust your instinct.) My instinct on The Sopranos is that I've never seen a bad episode, except perhaps that dream sequence one at the end of Season Two, with the talking fish, but that was redeemed by the shooting of Pussy on the boat. So ... Episode 1 - or 65, in sequence - The Two Tonys, written by David Chase and Terence Winter, and directed by Tim Van Patten:

Tony and Carmela are separated. She and AJ have a bear in the yard. AJ has a "five thousand dollar" drum kit - a noisy manifestation of his father's silent guilt. Paulie and Christopher are at odds, not least over restaurant tabs, which leads to the accidental death of a waiter. Tony's after Dr Melfi in a non-professional capacity. Carmine, the old don, has a stroke at the golf club, after smelling "burning hair" (is that a common warning sign?). But the most important strand, seeded here, is the emergence of the Class of '04 - that is, a wave of mobsters released from prison back into the community, including Tony Blundetto, Tony's cousin (Steve Buscemi - as yet unseen), Phil Leotardo (Frank Vincent, who I can't wait to see, as he was killed by Joe Pesci in one Martin Scorsese movie, and kills Joe Pesci in another!) and Feech La Manna (Robert Loggia), a vest-wearing, vicious old capo who's amazed mainly by the shaved "bushes" since he got out ("I went over to Silvio's - it's like the Girl Scouts in there"). It's these supporting characters, and actors, who make The Sopranos. That said, it's comforting to know that the principal cast remain solid, with James Gandolfini still spitting out his lines and brooding like a bear, Edie Falco mixing indignance with hurt at that breakfast bar, Michael Imperioli cursing and bitching like an old man while still deep down a boy, and the imperious Lorraine Bracco refusing to let down her guard, all the while smouldering beneath.

A great set-up episode, leaving Tony in the leaf-strewn yard (shades of the Corleones' Lake Tahoe compound), with an AK-47, waiting to make bear meat. Protecting his family, which is what he does at the end of the day. (Oh, and the Easter baskets was something Christopher made excuses about to Tony. Tony didn't know what he was talking about. Neither did we. I love touches like that. The Easter baskets!)

Listen to the man talking
Humorous open-mic moment on CNN (and I hope you read that in James Earl Jones' voice: "See-En-En") that of course none of us saw, but was well reported in the press. If you want to watch the clip it's here. During live coverage of President Bush's comforting remarks from New Orleans one year on from Katrina, a fruity-seeming anchor called Kyra Phillips (where was Wolf Blitzer?) went to the "bathroom" with her lapel microphone still on, and while Bush droned pointlessly on, her conversation with a female co-worker went out live at 12:49pm EDT, whatever that is.

Phillips: "... assholes. Yeah, I'm very lucky in that regard with my husband. My husband is handsome and he is genuinely a loving, you know, no ego [unintelligible], you know what I'm saying. Just a really passionate, compassionate great, great human being. And they exist. They do exist. They're hard to find. Yup. But they are out there."
Unidentified woman: "We'll see. He's going to come, you know, he's set for an extended visit [unintelligible]"
Phillips: "I mean, that's, that's how you figure it all out, those extended visits. [laughter] ... Brother, of course, brothers have to be, you know, protective. Except for mine. I've got to be protective of him ... Yeah. He's married, three kids, but his wife is just a control freak."
Unidentified woman: "Kyra!"
Phillips: "Yeah, baby!"

Another newsreader, Daryn Kagan, jumped in to rescue the situtation:

Kagan: "Alright, we've been listening in to President Bush as he speaks in, uh, New Orleans today [Oh no we haven't!]. This is the one year anniversary of Katrina making land shore there. President Bush saying if another natural disaster hits, our country, we must, uh, react better than that. Let's listen in once again to President Bush."

Boo! Put the gossipy ladies back on! I found a transcript of this, by accident, on a right-wing US forum, which prides itself on "exposing and combating liberal media bias." (Yeah, there's too much of that in America.) Not much for the right wing nutcases to chew on here, other than the misfortune of a woman on an apparently liberal news channel, so they say. This gentleman had a go, though:

"For crying out loud, that is an awful lot of conversation before someone reacted. And these people pick on Bush for waiting for the all clear before he left the school on 9/11 and they can't even turn off a mike in a reasonable amount of time?"

Yeah, baby! Exposed. And combated.

The refrain in Spain
Bank Holiday Monday treat: the new Almodovar. Volver is being hailed as a return to form for the Spanish Fellini, just as every new David Bowie album is hailed as a return to form. To which assessment you must ask the question: return from where? He's seemed pretty on-form to me for a long while. In Sight & Sound, Peter Mathews takes the opporunity to bring Almodovar - and the legions who love him - down a peg or two, daring to suggest that he was never that great to begin with, and that he just recycles the same old themes with the same old formidable actresses and the people lap it up because of his dizzying brand. There's little arguing that Pedro returns again and again to the same well. Volver - which means "coming back" or "coming home", named after a song - ticks all the boxes, but that doesn't stop it being a stirring, evocative, funny and affecting female drama.

big question: what was Penelope Cruz doing knocking about with Tom Cruise and flirting with Hollywood? She's so much better on Spanish soil. Indeed, this is the role of a lifetime for her. She plays a suburban Madrid housewife of rural roots with a young daughter and a useless husband, who is haunted by her past but gets on with it. A textbook Almodovarian heroine. She looks fantastic in it - with a certain 60s look, heavy eyeliner, on teetering heels, little cardies stretched around her ample bosom, she's Sophia Loren, or Anna Magnani (who appears herself on a TV screen, as if to hammer the point home). It's all very deliberate, but Cruz pulls it off, coping admirably, but on the verge of tears much of the time. Presumably it takes a gay man to create female characters like this. Certainly, he puts women - especially mothers - on a pedestal, but he grounds them in gossip and "trash TV" and getting their hair done. They remind me of the women in my family, who used to congregate round our house on a Thursday and have their hair done by Auntie Janice. The smell of perm solution always takes me back there. I don't suppose people would fete me if I wrote a film about three generations of women in Northampton, but it works in Madrid. (Of course I felt immediately like going back to visit Madrid while watching the film, by the way.)

Only a gay male director would be allowed to occasionally objectify (ie. worship) his leading lady like Almodovar does with Cruz, in one scene shooting her washing up from above, all the better to see down her cleavage. Imagine Ken Loach doing that! I also liked the references back to Almodovar's childhood in La Mancha, with its fierce wind (fabled to send women mad) and its windmills. While Don Quixote tilted at the old-fashioned kind, now we get a landscape of wind turbines, the same energy that brings insanity and brush fires (it is a fire that killed Penelope Cruz's character's parents), bringing power to the small village where The Past took place. It's a striking image. But this is a director that does striking.

Yet again, it's a foreign-language film that relights my fire. I'm pleased that the Odeon at Wimbledon would reserve one of its screens for Volver, but even more so that the cinema, albeit one of the smaller screens, would be on its way to full on a Monday afternoon. It's nice to know there are people out there who will read subtitles. Volver makes me want to watch some old Almodovars. Peter Mathews is harsh. This is a four-star film. Not his very finest work (I prefer All About My Mother), but up there.