Talk about Blake’s 7 revival … and a quick mention about seven/eight-times weekly Nolan

I learnt two things from Rachel Cooke’s column in this week’s New Statesman magazine (which I rarely read, but a Google alert had pointed me that direction).

Firstly she doesn’t appreciate Stephen Nolan’s weekend Five Live phone-in, particularly now that it’s gone three nights (Fri–Sun) each weekend! To quote:

“His technique is vile, by which I mean that he would not sound out of place on TalkSport. Playing to his callers’ prejudices, Nolan often manages to sound both less liberal and less sophisticated than the borderline lunatics and insomniacs who bother to ring in. Believe me, that is some achievement.”

But secondly and much more interestingly, she brings news that there is a Blake’s 7 revival. An audio-only revival at this stage. But as a Blake's 7 fan (with a backlog of DVDs to watch through) I'm intrigued.

Script executive (and author of the first episode) Ben Aaronovitch comments in an interview:

“We’ve retained a surprising amount of the original stories but retold in a new way and of course adapted for audio which is quite a different media from television.

The characters should be instantly recognisable to fans of the original series, especially Vila and Avon. But what we’ve tried to do is bring some depth to those characters that were less well drawn in the original—specifically Jenna and Gan.

Our aim is to produce something so compelling that people end up listening to it at 3 am in the morning because they want to hear one more segment (the stories are split) into short segments - before they sleep.”

It seems possible that a live action (ie, film or television) version may follow on if the audio are successful. Keep an eye on the sometimes random Horizon fansite for opinions on the audios when they are released into the podcastosphere in Spring 2007.

One interesting fact (it's becoming a habit) from B7 Media’s website to close …

“During its original four season run (circa 1978–81) Blake’s 7 consistently achieved higher ratings (9 million+) than its iconic counterpart Doctor Who and has sold to over 40 countries worldwide.”

Bet you B7 don’t get Billie Piper to play Jenna!