How to avoid jumping the shark

I caught up with the latest episode of Mad Men on BBC3 (Series 3, Ep 6 'Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency) and saw once again concrete proof of the greatness of this show. Sultry Joan Holloway (Christina Hendricks) was taking her leave of the Sterling Cooper ad agency for a life of unlikely domesticity but the plot twist in the episode gives her a moment with Creative Director Don Draper (Jon Hamm).

These two (pictured left) are the alpha male and alpha female of Sterling Cooper, they are apex predators in every sense of the word. Joan is sex on legs, the sort of woman who would make Marilyn Monroe feel frumpy, while Don is testosterone on a stick, the manliest man on television. Ever! It would make sense in lesser hands that their moment contains at least an indication of the seething passions that each must hold for the unattainable other. Not so.

There is an acknowledgement from Draper that she will be missed, and a demure peck on the cheek from Joan in return. That's it - that and a secret smile from each of them that speaks volumes about their relationship. The circling shark recedes into the distance its dorsal fin slipping beneath the waves resolutely unjumped. Having Don and Joan get it on would be suicide for a show which excels in its quietest intimate moments. Show runner Matthew Weiner knows these two are like Superman and Wonder Woman; everyone thinks they should be together but they know better.

It's brilliant writing, superb playing, and another example of why every episode of this series should be cherished.

How long would you wait to see a film?

How about 46 years? That's how long it has taken me to get round to seeing Becket and believe me it was worth the wait. I was so keen to see this film that I even bought the Sunday Telegraph this week to get the free DVD. A couple of days without satellite meant I had no excuse not to watch it and I have to say it is one of the best films I have seen recently.

For those of you not up on your 12th century English history Thomas Becket was the boyhood friend of Henry II. When Henry was having problems with the Church who rather unreasonably refused to pass his laws, he thought that making his boyhood chum Archbishop of Canterbury might solve things. However once Becket became Archbishop he unexpectedly found himself called to God rather than the King. An exasperated Henry cries out 'Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest' - not what he actually said but you get the gist - four passing knights mistake a rhetorical question for an instruction and before you know where you aee Becket is lying mortally wounded in the nave of Canterbury Cathedral.

For a film that runs for a whisker under two and a half hours there's not a lot of action other than what I've described above. What there is is dialogue, lots and lots of dialogue, and what dialogue it is. Allowing for the fact that some characters spend a lot of time thinking aloud in front of crucifixes, this is one of the best written films I have seen. The dialogue is intelligent, provocative, subtle and an absolute gift for the cast.

The big deal with Becket in 1964 was the pairing of Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton, fresh from their successes in Lawrence of Arabia and Cleopatra. This was a clash of the giants. It is easy for us to think of these two great actors as they were towards the end of their careers with their powers much diminished, but this is them in their magnificent pomp. The intensity and dynamism of their performances is spellbinding; the power of Burton's rich tones and the mercurial volatility of O'Toole as a king who only wants to be loved make a heady combination.

Both actors were among the films twelve Oscar nominations - they lost out in the Best Actor category to Rex Harrison for My Fair Lady - but in the end the only win was for Edward Anhalt's magnificent screenplay.

Even so the film is stunningly shot, superbly played, and a constant joy.

Some thoughts on BAFTA

The potential for disaster was there but happily BAFTA resisted the temptation to embrace the faddish and deeply flawed Avatar and instead honoured a deserving film in The Hurt Locker. The six BAFTA haul was a decent tally for a film that looks certain to have a long and prosperous life ahead of it on DVD and satellite after being ignored on its theatrical release.

As for Dances with Smurfs it ended up with two awards - special visual effects and production design - which strikes me as one too many. Visual effects at a stretch but production design, surely not. We are not talking about someone like William Cameron Menzies creating Gone With the Wind here; production design on Avatar amounts to 'if you imagine it we can draw it' which is hardly an insurmountable challenge.

I should declare an interest here as a BAFTA voter in that I was desperately keen to avoid the sort of embarrassment that regularly afflicts the Oscars; how many Oscar winning movies of the past ten years will be regarded as genuinely great films ten years from now? I suspect Oscar may embarrass himself again this year by giving the big prize to Avatar, which is a clever film, and shutting out The Hurt Locker which has the potential to be a film that defines its era. Of course they will give Kathryn Bigelow a well deserved Best Director Oscar and use that as the fig leaf to cover the shame of not having honoured a woman in this category in the past. As for James Cameron, what he did on Avatar was clever and worthy of some kind of recognition but I'm not sure it was directing.

This years results also rather neatly encompass the discussion in BAFTA circles about just how British these awards are. In the Britain vs. Hollywood argument I remain fairly agnostic. There are plenty of awards out there that cater exclusively for British films and for BAFTA to go down this path would be insular and restrictive. British creatives work in a global industry and the awards should reflect this; that said it would have been nice for A Prophet, White Ribbon, or Let the Right One In to have broken out of the foreign language ghetto. It would also be nice if UK audiences were a bit more enthusiastic about home grown product. I'm not talking about blindly supporting UK movies just because they are British - what an awful thought! - but it would be nice in a year when we produced An Education, Nowhere Boy, Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll and Moon, to name a few, if at least one of them had done well at the box office.

The closest the awards came to tokenism is in the Leading Actor and Leading Actress category. I think Carey Mulligan is a deserved winner for An Education but, personally, I think Jeff Bridges on Crazy Heart is better than Colin Firth in A Single Man. However if this did come down to a Yanks vs. Brits contest it would be churlish to grudge Firth for a great performance which comes midway through a career of great performances. Both Bridges and Firth have in common the fact that although they have made bad movies they have seldom been bad in them. Their weakness has always been in their choices and an opportunity like this may never come along again; it's a shame it comes for both of them in the same year.