Joanna Lumley

Spending time watching DVDs of Sapphire and Steel while slightly out of it on antibiotics and a solid chest infection is an interesting way to break your brain. 6 Seasons of Sapphire and Steel over 2 days will do that, the episodes are short, the number of episodes per season vary between 4 and 8 episodes and each story is self-contained.

Sapphire and Steel are two time-travellers who investigate where time has broken in our world and try to fix it with the least damage. Season 1 is where the show more parents have disappearaed and it's apparently a nursery rhyme to blame, they get some help from the cheerful Lead. season 2 is set in a disused railway station where some ghosts deal with drustration at not having had a full life (and was probably my favourite, except for how they had to fix things). Season 3 has historical researchers from the future whose situation has broken down (and my least favourite); also features Silver. Four is where photographs take on a sinister life (probably my second favourite along with Season 1); Season (or often titled Assignment) 5 involves a 1930s themed party where past and present become intertwined. The final season, 6, also features Silver; and it's a motorway service station where time is standing still and where a trap is being laid. It's a complex and messy story and things end in an interesting way.

That end though... wow.

There's a leaflet with viewing notes that's quite useful in the box set I viewed. show less

If you've heard the lovely Joanna Lumley speak, you will thoroughly enjoy this, I clearly heard her voice throughout the book. Written as a conversation between herself and an interviewer, she natters on about family life, her house, mementoes and things that are important to her. When I'd finished, it felt like the end of a happy day spent chatting with a friend. I sighed as I put the book down, stood up and went off to bring in the washing.

Eschewing the usual biographical style, Lumley takes us on a tour of her house, stopping in each room to tell stories about the mementos and memories invoked. This works well on the whole, but is disrupted by short Q&A sections with the questions asked by a voice on behalf of the reader.
Like Lumley the writing is jolly hockey sticks and fun, but although we do get a good sense of her personality and enthusiams she reveals little of her real life and virtually no family details thus show more continuing to protect their privacy. Coyly she suggests she will write a further proper autobiography ...
Interesting but bring on the full monty! show less

Joanna Lumley is stunningly beautiful, was a model, a very accomplished actress, a hilariously-funny comedian (Absolutely Fabulous http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/abfab) and a very successful animal and human rights activist and is in fact considered a National Treasure in Nepal since she won the Gurkhas the right to settle in the UK after service in the British Army.

You would think that with all this material she would have written a really interesting book, but it wasn't. The structure, of show more going room by room in a house and using that and the objects within it as a jumping-off point for relating events in her life was soft, more suited to one of the people called 'celebrities' who really haven't done anything much except employ PR companies to get their picture everywhere. The fact that she seemed to be terribly nice and no one ever said a bad word to her or did her wrong is also soft. A drop of the hard stuff, a little gall, a squeeze of acid brightens up an otherwise bland dish, and so it is with a biography. Mind, it would be good serialised in a woman's magazine illustrated by Patsy Joanna dressed impossibly well showing us around her house.

But I'm not sorry she can't write particularly well, she'd be perfect if she could and then I'd have to hate her! show less