Fight the future

I never understood what that meant.  How can you fight the future?  Why would you fight the future?  Surely like Buck Rogers would, I should embrace the future like the big old genetically-engineered bear-soldier it is?  Surely?

I’ve just gone through one of my periodic reformulations of Benny and Burke.  (Although I always called them Benny and Berk, we have Mr David Thomas to thank for that spelling of Burke.  Like Burke’s law, rather than like Berk of Trapdoor.  Oh Willy Rushton, how we miss you.  And Leo McKern too.  And Kenneth Williams.  I digress.)  So now, Burke is an ex-spy who ends up helping out Benny who is a hapless private eye.  This because I’m reading a Campion novel by Margery Allingham (purely because Peter Davison played Campion on telly) and I like the idea that the detective did stuff in the war that he doesn’t talk about, but acts like some reticent, flippant gentleman.  Don’t know why that appeals to me.  No sir.

The thing about Benny and Berk is this.  They’re like Batman or Laurel and Hardy.  You can re-format them for anything.  My original conception was that they would appear in a series of films, like L&H, with wildly differing stories and settings.  So they could be in the wild west, or fighting a cyborg Russian, or on a pirate ship.  And it’s therefore hard to build a cohesive world picture around them, because things have to be loose to allow this re-purposing.

They’re like Sam and Max, but they’re not a dog and a bunny.

Also, I’m pleased and surprised to see that MicMacs is out at the cinema.  I’ll see that next week I think.