BBC's "Gormenghast"

Oh by the way, Jeremy Scherer has joined the blog this week! (See list of contributors on the R of the page)

Oh wiki, you're the best: "The series is usually described as a fantasy work. However, there is no magic and no intelligent races other than humans, as is usual in high fantasy such as The Lord of the Rings. Another valid classification would be to place Gormenghast in the genre of the fantastic, with marked gothic and surrealist influences."

Thinking of the BBC Miniseries version of Neverwhere (see previous post) made me think of Gormenghast. I first heard about it because it starred you-know-who-mr-now-oh-so-famous-actor-dude. Despite and per usual I'm a sucker for silly costumes and castles. It's a great story - and the characters are SO animated, it's entertaining. I can't say much about the trilogy by Mervyn Peake, as I've never read them - but the mini-series is intriguing enough to add to your Netflix queue for sure.

Gormenghast's stories are so good they inspired some musics: Irmin Schmidt, founder of seminal German 'Krautrock' group Can has written an opera called Gormenghast, based on the novels, and a number of early songs by New Zealand rock group Split Enz were inspired by Peake's work, in addition to 'The Drowning Man' by The Cure.

Off topic: Word of the day - I just had to share.
flibbertigibbet \FLIB-ur-tee-jib-it\, noun:
A silly, flighty, or scatterbrained person, especially a pert young woman with such qualities.