Absolutely brimming over with wrongability News Posted by John Hoare on 15th December 2005, 01:58 “Ah, now that looks really nice!” – Craig Charles, VII Commentary
Without asking for anything too specific, how well would you say the documentary dealt with Rob’s departure? Not entirely related to the picture above, of course, but it brought the question to mind…and it’s not quite arrived in the US yet…
I’d say it dealt with it better than anything has before, and I reckon it probably gives us as much info as we’re ever going to learn. Doug sounded quite baffled by the whole thing, frankly, and until we get Rob’s side of the story, I think the others have given us all they’re going to. I was quite pleasantly surprised that the opening part of the documentary, in which they discuss Rob, really didn’t just retread old ground, and made a genuine attempt to discuss his departure in a frank way.
Thanks, Seb. I was re-watching the V documentary a few days ago and only then did it hit me how candidly honest the interviewees were about Juliet May. I think my first time throught I was more interested in the episode anecdotes and kind of glossed over it…but this time I was genuinely impressed at how honest they were about her shortcomings. Really can’t wait for this one.
Personally, I look at the Rob and Doug split like this – Rob: I want to write something different and on my own for a change. Doug: Well fine, you do that, but I’m sticking with Dwarf. Rob: OK…goodbye… And that’s it really. Anything else isn’t really worth discussing as it’s between them. Obviously they had fuck off rows which they maybe regret now (and some that Robert overheard, which is pretty funny when he talks about it on the doc) but…there you go. Shit like that happens. And it’s a real shame when it does. But do you know how much I’d pay to see them writing again. A hell of a lot. Obviously, like the movie, it’s never gonna happen.
I don’t know, you know. I think more if it is down to the timing with which Rob decided to strike out on his own. Reading between the lines, I think there’s a lot of bitterness on Doug’s part over the way he was left in the lurch during the making of The 10%ers. But you’re right, it is a personal thing that’s between them. However, the simple “Rob decides to leave so he can write something else and on his own, Doug says OK” explanation has been in place for years, and it’s never seemed to quite add up to the fact that they basically haven’t even really spoken in over ten years – which is weird, given that they’d been mates since college. So I think that’s why there’s the burning curiosity, even though, as private individuals, they have no obligation to really explain what went on at all. Which is why I was quite pleased with the way the documentary approached it. Instead of being uncomfortably probing (oo err) and going “But WHY did this happen, WHY did you fall out?” all the time, what it did was approach it from the angle of examining how the split affected all the cast and crew. Which made for fascinating stuff, hearing about their own experiences firsthand.
I don’t think Rob wanted Dwarf to run as long as it did. As Doug says, he had threatened to leave the series before on a couple of occassions. He obviously wanted to strike out on his own, but sadly we all know how crap that turned out in the end. The fact is they wrote better scripts together. I have a feeling that Doug could write a hundred episodes of Dwarf on his own and none of them would be as good as if he and Rob had written them together. Their partnership was just gold.
