Crackanory was a modestly-budgeted comedy show made by Tiger Aspect for UKTV’s
Dave Channel for four years in the mid-2010s, structured around the idea of bedtime
stories for adults. Each episode was narrated by a different celebrity - Catherine Tate,
Harry Enfield, Carrie Fisher and Christopher Lloyd are a few that spring to mind - while
a revolving cast of players (including Steve Oram, Alice Lowe, Tony Way and Kevin
Eldon) acted out choice bits. Each story had a different writer and there were even
three directors over the course of the four series. But the music for all 44 instalments
was written and recorded by me.
The basic gist: me learning how to write music for TV - which means, generally
speaking, I got better at it as I went along. Mainly because, at the beginning, I had no
idea what I was doing. But I was cheap, and eager to learn.
The turnaround was pretty quick - I only had two or three days for the first draft of
each score - so I guess it’s what you’d call a ‘baptism of fire’. I was usually totally
burned out by the end of each series - especially the last two, which were pretty much
wall-to-wall music throughout.
But at the end of it all, look what I’ve got! Piles and piles of music, a fraction of which
I’ve compiled on this page. Not all of it’s world-class. But hopefully, you’ll be able to
trace the development from someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing to
someone who knows a tiny bit more about what they’re doing.
CRACKANORY
2013 - 2016
THEME TUNE
CRACKANORY (Main Theme)
August 28, 2013
SERIES 2
CODENAME SURPRISE (from ‘The Surprise’)
May 26, 27 & 29, 2014
CANNIBALS (from ‘The Crisis Plan’)
May 21, 2014
IN SPACE, NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU CLEAN
June 2, 3, 4 & 6, 2014
PICKLE GOES MAD (from ‘In Space, No One Can Hear
You Clean’) - June 2 & 6, 2014
THE WEATHERMAN
May 28, 29 & 31, 2014
SERIES 3
THE SAT NAV DID IT (from ‘D.I. Sat Nav’)
June 16, July 3, September 3, 4 & 5, 2015
UNCIVIL WAR
September 1, 2, 3 & 9, 2015
THE CATCHMENT AREA - Main Theme
July 23, 2015
THE ZOMBIE THAT ROARED
September 6, 7, 8 & 13, 2015
ABATTNOIR - Main Theme (vocal demo)
July 2, 3, 6 & 7, 2015
SERIES 4
LIVING WITH A LIE - First Draft
October 21, 24-26 & 30, 2016
A CLOSE SLAVE
October 17-20, 23 & 24, 2016
FROM THE HEART (from ‘Living with a Lie’)
October 26, 2016
THE DESPOT OF TEA
October 27 - November 1, 2016
SERIES 1
GREENSLEEVES: Psych Mix (from ‘Fakespeare’)
September 6 & 9, 2013
POLLY PUT DEPRESSING ON (from ‘The Teacup Has
Landed’) - March 11, 2013
BITTER TWEET (unused original score)
September 10 & 11, 2013
FOR HE’S A LOVELY FELLOW (from ‘What Peebee Did
Next’) September 17, 2013
LOVE YOU (from ‘What Do You Say?’)
September 19, 2013
COME SPY WITH ME (from ‘Pleasure Drone’)
September 26 & 27, October 4 & 6, 2013
ANXIOUS TALK (from ‘The Translator’)
October 1, 2013
ROUND THE HOUSES (from ‘My Former Self’)
October 9, 2013; Remix October 15, 2015
MEANWHILE IN UGANDA (from ‘The Newsreader’)
October 22, 2013
THE BIG DECISION (from ‘The Newsreader’)
October 22, 2013
DREICH (from ‘The Weatherman’)
June 8, 2014
SHOPPING SPREE (from ‘Return to Sender’)
June 9 & 10, 2014
A SPOOKY PLACE TO LIVE (from ‘The Obituary Writer’)
June 20, 2014
SELF STORAGE
June 26 & 27, 2014
DOMINIC (from ‘Let Me Be The Judge’)
July 3, 2014
THE UNTANGLER
July 11 & 14, 2014
NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM (from ‘I’m Still Here’)
July 17, 2014
SPECIAL BRANCH (from ‘I’m Still Here’)
July 17, 2014
THE LAST LAUGH
July 6; September 23 & 24, 2015
THE NOISES (from ‘Bob’s House’)
September 29, 2015
ONE FLICK AND IT’S OVER (from ‘Bob’s House’)
September 29, 2015
THE BIG SECRET (from ‘Bob’s House’)
September 29, 2015
INTO THE VENT (from ‘The Vexed Message’)
July 17, 2015
WEEKEND CONFERENCES IN HEMEL HEMPSTEAD
(from ‘The Vexed Message’) - October 7, 2015
BUSINESS AS USUAL (from ‘The Truth About Suz’)
October 11 & 12, 2015
FOR HE’S A CREEPY FELLOW (from ‘What Peebee Did
Next’) September 18, 2013
PIZZA FOR BREAKFAST (from ‘My Former Self’)
October 9, 2013: Remix October 15, 2015
CAMANIMANAMANEMO (from ‘The Catchment Area’)
September 18, 2015
YOU’RE ONLY YOUNG ONCE (from ‘Dread and Breakfast’)
September 11, 14 & 15, 2015
The basic idea: take an existing piece of music suggested by the story’s main theme -
preferably one everyone knows - then spin out variations to fit the emotional beats of
the story. This worked extremely well when the tune was already in the public domain
- a folk song or nursery rhyme, like Greensleeves or Polly Put the Kettle On, both of
which we used early on. But we ran into hot water when trying to work with more
recent tunes. Turns out you can’t just rewrite someone else’s song without asking
them if that’s OK. And even if it is OK, it can get pretty expensive. More than one score
ended up having to be rewritten as a result.
I only had an entry-level orchestral software package - EastWest Symphonic Orchestra
if you need to know - and no experience of writing for an orchestra, so a lot of this
early stuff sounds a little unrefined. But I was discovering new ways of doing things all
the time and introducing other non-orchestral sounds where I thought they might fit.
Sometimes this didn’t work out – my psychedelic GREENSLEEVES didn’t make the final
edit of ‘Fakespeare’ – but other tunes (like the jazzy COME SPY WITH ME) fit the show
perfectly. By the end of the series, faced with an episode about a journalist in 1970s
Uganda, the orchestral stuff went out of the window entirely, leaving me with a blank
canvas for the rest of the run.
SERIES 1
Paradoxically, even though I was working with better orchestral software for the
second series (EastWest’s Hollywood series, because I know you’re keeping score), I
ended up using far less of it. I hoped the music might mirror the scripts, which meant
a tendency towards being more eclectic - the aim being that each story had its own
unique sonic palette. So one week it’s sci-fi, the next it’s a spooky thriller, the next
one’s set on an island paradise - I just wanted the soundtrack to reflect that as well as
it could. Not always possible when you’re rattling through them every few days, but it
always felt better to aim high.
One thing that’s surprised me listening back to all this is how much guitar there is. I
got briefly obsessed with a series of virtual guitar plug-ins by a company called Ample
Sound and wanted to hear them on everything. So none of the guitar you hear on any
of this stuff was played live by a guitarist - it’s all programmed samples. The melody
line on THE UNTANGLER is probably the best example of this, but you can hear the
same guitars on CODENAME SURPRISE, A SPOOKY PLACE TO LIVE and DOMINIC.
The biggest steps forward, musically speaking, came with IN SPACE, NO ONE CAN
HEAR YOU CLEAN - in which I successfully managed to blend strings and synthesiser
for the first time - and SELF STORAGE, which didn’t actually end up in the show, but did
feel like a window into a whole new world of 80s-inspired funk. The funky infatuation
continued through SPECIAL BRANCH and NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM - but that’s where it
ends.
Sadly, I can’t write about Series 2 without mentioning the death of Rik Mayall, one of
our narrators that year (for THE WEATHERMAN). I’d just finished working on the music
for his episode the day before it happened, so it came as a terrible shock. He was a
huge hero of mine - had been ever since I saw Kevin Turvey as a nine year old and got
punched in the head for doing impressions of him in the playground. It’s an abiding
privilege to have worked on something that bore his name.
SERIES 2
This series felt like a huge leap forward. On the one hand, I’d had a bit of practice now.
I’d just finished my first feature film score and the first series of Murder in Successville,
both of which had pushed me into darker sonic territory. On the other, I was now
writing directly to picture. I don’t know why it hadn’t happened before, but most things
I wrote for Series 1 and 2 were approximations inspired by the script or unedited
footage, and this is the first time I wrote Crackanory to precision timing.
Director Richie Pengelley was really getting into his stride by this point, turning out a
wildly different, crazily-ambitious piece of work every few days. This often meant the
rough cuts came loaded up with library music - usually stretching through every single
second of the show - the all-encompassing vision being that this show should have
music played through every second of its existence.
The upshot of all this is that I ended up writing more shorter cues rather than fewer
longer ones. It’s only now I’ve been able to return to the original material and
assemble it into suites that I can appreciate it properly. I can’t promise every second of
the music on this page made its way into the show - some will be alternate takes,
other bits will have just fallen by the wayside - but it astonishes me how much there is.
A quick count the other day told me I recorded almost 2000 cues for Crackanory over
its four years. So this is still just scratching the surface.
The music this year is much more eclectic than the other series, I think. The orchestral
pieces (like UNCIVIL WAR and THE LAST LAUGH) are much more unapologetically
orchestral, but often in different ways. The ones written for bands are much more
bandy. There were vocal pieces, for the first time (though the demo of ABATTNOIR
presented here was just a joke that never made it to the screen). The electronic scores
for BOB’S HOUSE and THE ZOMBIE THAT ROARED were a dry run for the next series of
Murder in Successville. And the score for the final episode was written entirely for
piano (BUSINESS AS USUAL being one of the few cues that had any overdubs).
SERIES 3
The fourth series was the best. Or at least, my favourite to work on. We all knew what
we were doing by now, plus the episodes were longer, so there was more room to
explore the themes. It wasn’t entirely clear to me until I assembled the suites on this
page, but basically all my favourite pieces come from Series 4.
The music may not be as wildly varied as the previous series, but the styles are much
more carefully delineated. A CLOSE SLAVE and THE SURVIVOR are both orchestral, but
while the former is a cinematic adventure set in Ancient Rome, the latter is a much
more intimate story, charting a tender romance through a scenario worthy of The
Twilight Zone. THE DESPOT OF TEA - about a British actor who finds fame in Eastern
Europe making tea commercials - is a suitable blend of British and European. NOT
EXACTLY LIVING LIFE (from ‘Proxy Lady’) is as sad and lonely as the character in the
story, but EVERYTHING’S BETTER WITH BRIAN suddenly lights her up with hope.
There’s a lot of piano and keyboard work. Spectrasonics had just released a program
called Keyscape which showcased a bevy of stunning collector keyboards, so almost
every score from Series 4 has some kind of quirky keyboard sound pushed to the fore.
THE DISAPPEARANCE is probably the best example of this, being made almost entirely
on Keyscape with grand pianos, tack pianos, toy pianos, clavichord, dolceola, dulcitone
and God knows what else all piled on top of each other.
There was of course still time to do a Prince parody (PURPLE MILL STREAM) for the
end credits of ‘Devil’s Haircut’ and a couple of metal-inspired rockers (INFINITE
BENDER and LIQUID LUNCH) for the final episode. That last episode in particular had
me throwing in every last Crackanory idea I had left, in the almost certain knowledge it
would be the last time I’d get the chance.
Looking back on it though, my favourite pieces were all written for an episode called
LIVING WITH A LIE. The main suite here is cobbled together from various pieces I
wrote for the first draft of the episode. I wasn’t quite sure what it needed so I just
muddled my way through it, writing these sort of dreamlike, proggy pieces which I
absolutely adored but wasn’t convinced were right for the show. And then one night -
one of those especially special nights when you stay up banging your head against a
wall and nothing ever comes (until about four in the morning, when suddenly
everything makes blinding sense and the music just pours out of you) - I wrote a piece
called FROM THE HEART, which changed how I looked at the score. After which I went
back and rewrote most of the score from scratch. So I’ve ended up with two scores for
that episode, both of which are equally valid and both among my favourite things I’ve
ever written.
God, I miss Crackanory. It was a licence to experiment and the place I learned to do
most of what I’ve learned to do. Eternal thanks to producer Arnold Widdowson for the
golden opportunity.
Music from Crackanory licensed courtesy of Tiger Aspect Productions and Endemol
Shine.
SERIES 4
A HANDSOME YOUNG MAN (from ‘the Survivor’)
November 2, 2016
ONE HOT NIGHT (from ‘The Survivor’)
November 4, 6, 7 & 8, 2016
NOT EXACTLY LIVING LIFE (from ‘Proxy Lady’)
November 9-11, 14 & 15, 2016
EVERYTHING’S BETTER WITH BRIAN (from ‘Proxy Lady’)
November 11, 2016
PURPLE MILL STREAM (from ‘Devil’s Haircut’)
November 18, 21 & 22, 2016
THE DISAPPEARANCE
November 24-29, 2016
INFINITE BENDER (from ‘Pickled’)
November 30, 2016
IT’S YOUR ROUND (from ‘Pickled’)
December 1-6, 2016
PEELING BACK THE LAYERS (from ‘Pickled’)
December 3 & 4, 2016
RATNER’S REVENGE (from ‘Pickled’)
December 3-6, 2016
LIQUID LUNCH (from ‘Pickled’)
December 1, 2016
CRACKANORY
2013 - 2016
CRACKANORY (Main Theme)
August 28, 2013
Crackanory was a modestly-budgeted comedy show
made by Tiger Aspect for UKTV’s Dave Channel for
four years in the mid-2010s, structured around the
idea of bedtime stories for adults. Each episode was
narrated by a different celebrity - Catherine Tate,
Harry Enfield, Carrie Fisher and Christopher Lloyd
are a few that spring to mind - while a revolving cast
of players (including Steve Oram, Alice Lowe, Tony
Way and Kevin Eldon) acted out choice bits. Each
story had a different writer and there were even
three directors over the course of the four series.
But the music for all 44 instalments was written and
recorded by me.
The basic gist: me learning how to write music for TV
- which means, generally speaking, I got better at it
as I went along. Mainly because, at the beginning, I
had no idea what I was doing. But I was cheap, and
eager to learn.
The turnaround was pretty quick - I only had two or
three days for the first draft of each score - so I
guess it’s what you’d call a ‘baptism of fire’. I was
usually totally burned out by the end of each series -
especially the last two, which were pretty much wall-
to-wall music throughout.
But at the end of it all, look what I’ve got! Piles and
piles of music, a fraction of which I’ve compiled on
this page. Not all of it’s world-class. But hopefully,
you’ll be able to trace the development from
someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing to
someone who knows a tiny bit more about what
they’re doing.
The basic idea: take an existing piece of music
suggested by the story’s main theme - preferably
one everyone knows - then spin out variations to fit
the emotional beats of the story. This worked
extremely well when the tune was already in the
public domain - a folk song or nursery rhyme, like
Greensleeves or Polly Put the Kettle On, both of
which we used early on. But we ran into hot water
when trying to work with more recent tunes. Turns
out you can’t just rewrite someone else’s song
without asking them if that’s OK. And even if it is
OK, it can get pretty expensive. More than one
score ended up having to be rewritten as a result.
I only had an entry-level orchestral software
package - EastWest Symphonic Orchestra if you
need to know - and no experience of writing for an
orchestra, so a lot of this early stuff sounds a little
unrefined. (The industry term for this is ‘plinky-
plonk’.) But I was discovering new ways of doing
things all the time and introducing other non-
orchestral sounds where I thought they might fit.
Sometimes this didn’t work out – my psychedelic
GREENSLEEVES didn’t make the final edit of
‘Fakespeare’ – but other tunes (like the jazzy COME
SPY WITH ME) fit the show perfectly. By the end of
the series, faced with an episode about a journalist
in 1970s Uganda, the orchestral stuff went out of
the window entirely, leaving me with a blank canvas
for the rest of the run.
SERIES 1
GREENSLEEVES: Psych Mix (from ‘Fakespeare’)
September 6 & 9, 2013
POLLY PUT DEPRESSING ON (from ‘The Teacup Has
Landed’) - March 11, 2013
BITTER TWEET (unused original score)
September 10 & 11, 2013
FOR HE’S A LOVELY FELLOW (from ‘What Peebee Did
Next’) September 17, 2013
LOVE YOU (from ‘What Do You Say?’)
September 19, 2013
COME SPY WITH ME (from ‘Pleasure Drone’)
September 26 & 27, October 4 & 6, 2013
ANXIOUS TALK (from ‘The Translator’)
October 1, 2013
ROUND THE HOUSES (from ‘My Former Self’)
October 9, 2013; Remix October 15, 2015
MEANWHILE IN UGANDA (from ‘The Newsreader’)
October 22, 2013
THE BIG DECISION (from ‘The Newsreader’)
October 22, 2013
FOR HE’S A CREEPY FELLOW (from ‘What Peebee Did
Next’) September 18, 2013
PIZZA FOR BREAKFAST (from ‘My Former Self’)
October 9, 2013: Remix October 15, 2015
Paradoxically, even though I was working with better
orchestral software for the second series (EastWest’s
Hollywood series, because I know you’re keeping
score), I ended up using far less of it. I hoped the
music might mirror the scripts, which meant a
tendency towards being more eclectic - the aim
being that each story had its own unique sonic
palette. So one week it’s sci-fi, the next it’s a spooky
thriller, the next one’s set on an island paradise - I
just wanted the soundtrack to reflect that as well as
it could. Not always possible when you’re rattling
through them every few days, but it always felt
better to aim high.
One thing that’s surprised me listening back to all
this is how much guitar there is. I got briefly
obsessed with a series of virtual guitar plug-ins by a
company called Ample Sound and wanted to hear
them on everything. So none of the guitar you hear
on any of this stuff was played live by a guitarist - it’s
all programmed samples. The melody line on THE
UNTANGLER is probably the best example of this,
but you can hear the same guitars on CODENAME
SURPRISE, A SPOOKY PLACE TO LIVE and DOMINIC.
The biggest steps forward, musically speaking, came
with IN SPACE, NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU CLEAN - in
which I successfully managed to blend strings and
synthesiser for the first time - and SELF STORAGE,
which didn’t actually end up in the show, but did feel
like a window into a whole new world of 80s-
inspired funk. The funky infatuation continued
through SPECIAL BRANCH and NIGHT AT THE
MUSEUM - but that’s where it ends.
Sadly, I can’t write about Series 2 without
mentioning the death of Rik Mayall, one of our
narrators that year (for THE WEATHERMAN). I’d just
finished working on the music for his episode the
day before it happened, so it came as a terrible
shock. He was a huge hero of mine - had been ever
since I saw Kevin Turvey as a nine year old and got
punched in the head for doing impressions of him in
the playground. It’s an abiding privilege to have
worked on something that bore his name.
SERIES 2
CODENAME SURPRISE (from ‘The Surprise’)
May 26, 27 & 29, 2014
CANNIBALS (from ‘The Crisis Plan’)
May 21, 2014
IN SPACE, NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU CLEAN
June 2, 3, 4 & 6, 2014
PICKLE GOES MAD (from ‘In Space, No One Can Hear
You Clean’) - June 2 & 6, 2014
THE WEATHERMAN
May 28, 29 & 31, 2014
DREICH (from ‘The Weatherman’)
June 8, 2014
SHOPPING SPREE (from ‘Return to Sender’)
June 9 & 10, 2014
A SPOOKY PLACE TO LIVE (from ‘The Obituary Writer’)
June 20, 2014
SELF STORAGE
June 26 & 27, 2014
DOMINIC (from ‘Let Me Be The Judge’)
July 3, 2014
THE UNTANGLER
July 11 & 14, 2014
NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM (from ‘I’m Still Here’)
July 17, 2014
SPECIAL BRANCH (from ‘I’m Still Here’)
July 17, 2014
This series felt like a huge leap forward. On the one
hand, I’d had a bit of practice now. I’d just finished
my first feature film score and the first series of
Murder in Successville, both of which had pushed
me into darker sonic territory. On the other, I was
now writing directly to picture. I don’t know why it
hadn’t happened before, but most things I wrote for
Series 1 and 2 were approximations inspired by the
script or unedited footage, and this is the first time I
wrote Crackanory to precision timing.
Director Richie Pengelley was really getting into his
stride by this point, turning out a wildly different,
crazily-ambitious piece of work every few days. This
meant the rough cuts came loaded up with library
music - usually stretching through every single
second of the show - the all-encompassing vision
being that this show should have music played
through every second of its existence.
The upshot of all this is that I ended up writing more
shorter cues rather than fewer longer ones. It’s only
now I’ve been able to return to the original material
and assemble it into suites that I can appreciate it
properly. I can’t promise that every second of the
music on this page made its way into the show -
some will be alternate takes, other bits will have just
fallen by the wayside - but it astonishes me how
much there is. A quick count the other day told me I
recorded almost 2000 cues for Crackanory over its
four years. So this is still just scratching the surface.
The music this year is much more eclectic than the
other series, I think. The orchestral pieces (like
UNCIVIL WAR and THE LAST LAUGH) are much more
unapologetically orchestral, but often in different
ways. The ones written for bands are much more
bandy. There were vocal pieces, for the first time
(though the demo of ABATTNOIR presented here
was just a joke that never made it to the screen). The
electronic scores for BOB’S HOUSE and THE ZOMBIE
THAT ROARED were a dry run for the next series of
Murder in Successville. And the score for the final
episode was written entirely for piano (BUSINESS AS
USUAL being one of the few cues that had any
overdubs).
SERIES 3
THE SAT NAV DID IT (from ‘D.I. Sat Nav’)
June 16, July 3, September 3, 4 & 5, 2015
UNCIVIL WAR
September 1, 2, 3 & 9, 2015
THE CATCHMENT AREA - Main Theme
July 23, 2015
THE ZOMBIE THAT ROARED
September 6, 7, 8 & 13, 2015
ABATTNOIR - Main Theme (vocal demo)
July 2, 3, 6 & 7, 2015
THE LAST LAUGH
July 6; September 23 & 24, 2015
THE NOISES (from ‘Bob’s House’)
September 29, 2015
ONE FLICK AND IT’S OVER (from ‘Bob’s House’)
September 29, 2015
THE BIG SECRET (from ‘Bob’s House’)
September 29, 2015
INTO THE VENT (from ‘The Vexed Message’)
July 17, 2015
WEEKEND CONFERENCES IN HEMEL HEMPSTEAD
(from ‘The Vexed Message’) - October 7, 2015
BUSINESS AS USUAL (from ‘The Truth About Suz’)
October 11 & 12, 2015
CAMANIMANAMANEMO (from ‘The Catchment Area’)
September 18, 2015
YOU’RE ONLY YOUNG ONCE (from ‘Dread and
Breakfast’) September 11, 14 & 15, 2015
The fourth series was the best. Or at least, my
favourite to work on. We all knew what we were
doing by now, plus the episodes were longer, so
there was more room to explore the themes. It
wasn’t entirely clear to me until I assembled the
suites on this page, but basically all my favourite
pieces come from Series 4.
The music may not be as wildly varied as the
previous series, but the styles are much more
carefully delineated. A CLOSE SLAVE and THE
SURVIVOR are both orchestral, but while the former
is a cinematic adventure set in Ancient Rome, the
latter is a much more intimate story, charting a
tender romance through a scenario worthy of The
Twilight Zone. THE DESPOT OF TEA - about a British
actor who finds fame in Eastern Europe making tea
commercials - is a suitable blend of British and
European. NOT EXACTLY LIVING LIFE (from ‘Proxy
Lady’) is as sad and lonely as the character in the
story, but EVERYTHING’S BETTER WITH BRIAN
suddenly lights her up with hope.
There’s a lot of piano and keyboard work.
Spectrasonics had just released a program called
Keyscape which showcased a bevy of stunning
collector keyboards, so almost every score from
Series 4 has some kind of quirky keyboard sound
pushed to the fore. THE DISAPPEARANCE is probably
the best example of this, being made almost entirely
on Keyscape with grand pianos, tack pianos, toy
pianos, clavichord, dolceola, dulcitone and God
knows what else all piled on top of each other.
There was of course still time to do a Prince parody
(PURPLE MILL STREAM) for the end credits of ‘Devil’s
Haircut’ and a couple of metal-inspired rockers
(INFINITE BENDER and LIQUID LUNCH) for the final
episode. That last episode in particular had me
throwing in every last Crackanory idea I had left, in
the almost certain knowledge it would be the last
time I’d get the chance.
Looking back on it though, my favourite pieces were
all written for an episode called LIVING WITH A LIE.
The main suite here is cobbled together from various
pieces I wrote for the first draft of the episode. I
wasn’t quite sure what it needed so I just muddled
my way through it, writing these sort of dreamlike,
proggy pieces which I absolutely adored but wasn’t
convinced were right for the show. And then one
night - one of those especially special nights when
you stay up banging your head against a wall and
nothing ever comes (until about four in the morning,
when suddenly everything makes blinding sense and
the music just pours out of you) - I wrote a piece
called FROM THE HEART, which changed how I
looked at the score. After which I went back and
rewrote most of the score from scratch. So I’ve
ended up with two scores for that episode, both of
which are equally valid and both among my favourite
things I’ve ever written.
God, I miss Crackanory. It was a licence to
experiment and the place I learned to do most of
what I’ve learned to do. Eternal thanks to producer
Arnold Widdowson for the golden opportunity.
Music from Crackanory licensed courtesy of Tiger
Aspect Productions and Endemol Shine.
SERIES 4
LIVING WITH A LIE - First Draft
October 21, 24-26 & 30, 2016
A CLOSE SLAVE
October 17-20, 23 & 24, 2016
FROM THE HEART (from ‘Living with a Lie’)
October 26, 2016
THE DESPOT OF TEA
October 27 - November 1, 2016
A HANDSOME YOUNG MAN (from ‘the Survivor’)
November 2, 2016
ONE HOT NIGHT (from ‘The Survivor’)
November 4, 6, 7 & 8, 2016
NOT EXACTLY LIVING LIFE (from ‘Proxy Lady’)
November 9-11, 14 & 15, 2016
EVERYTHING’S BETTER WITH BRIAN (from ‘Proxy
Lady’) November 11, 2016
PURPLE MILL STREAM (from ‘Devil’s Haircut’)
November 18, 21 & 22, 2016
THE DISAPPEARANCE
November 24-29, 2016
INFINITE BENDER (from ‘Pickled’)
November 30, 2016
IT’S YOUR ROUND (from ‘Pickled’)
December 1-6, 2016
PEELING BACK THE LAYERS (from ‘Pickled’)
December 3 & 4, 2016
RATNER’S REVENGE (from ‘Pickled’)
December 3-6, 2016
LIQUID LUNCH (from ‘Pickled’)
December 1, 2016
THE GHOUL
(ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK)
Available for streaming and download
exclusively on Bandcamp
