the wonderful Anne remembered to record The Hollowmen for me – delivering it to my door this morning – on dvd no less (isn’t she technologically advanced!!)
I’m looking forward to watching and giving my verdict very soon – although it’s always a bit tricky to judge a new series on the first episode – so we’ll see.
sometimes working dog really hit the mark (Frontline) and sometimes they don’t (Funky squad). Against my better judgment I quite liked thank god you’re here – although it’s quality was always so dependent on who the guest actors were. Some people clearly cope better with improvisation than others.

Anyway back to the Hollowmen… Anne also alerted me to the fact that it draws its name from a poem by TS Eliot, (a point of which I, with my fancy schmancy degree in popular culture, was in ignorance) which I have just googled…it’s not the most cheery of verses. Wikipedia (my favourite resource for “looking up stuff” tells me that the final stanza is perhaps the most quoted of all Eliot’s poems:
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

but I thought the opening stanza was wonderfully evocative also:

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw.
Alas!Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us — if at all — not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

“Our dried voices when we whisper together are quiet and meaningless” – beautiful…I wonder if and how the TV series resonates with Eliot’s poem (the rest of which you can find yourself through the vast resources of the internet).

to be continued…..