All the Small Things - Aren’t Choirs Exciting?
Last night on tv I saw the 2nd episode of ‘All the Small Things’; a series about the trials and tribulations of a parish community and its competing singing groups and their members. After the 1st episode last week i wasn’t sure if it was worth writing an “OMGTHISISAMAZING” style post, but after ep2, i decided it’d be worth a “yesthisisquitecoolbuthere’swhati’ddobetter” style post instead.
Now, parish choirs aren’t too exciting, which is why after only 2 hours of screentime we’ve already seen 1) a pretty young woman (Sarah Alexander of Green Wing series 1 and Coupling (:O another Dr Who link!)) split up a strong marriage, 2) a new pair of characters join the choir/church committee with a mysterious love-hate relationship, 3) a pretty young man (Richard Fleeshman) overcome his shyness and disabilities to lead his singing group to win the ‘music fest’, 4) the above-mentioned estranged wife of the choirmaster setting up her own singing group to compete with her husband’s church choir and beat them in the music fest. Oh, and we’ve also seen Richard Fleeshman get bullied for being a “spazz” and being too obsessed with how Tom DeLonge of Blink182 would’ve played it, and one of the basses of the church choir gets bullied out of it by Layla, Sarah Alexander’s character.
I like the idea of this show, because i go all music-geek about choir music, and i’m not too upset by acoustic versions of blink 182 songs which Kyle (Fleeshman) sings rather nicely, but the main reason i wanted to point out this series to you is that the casting agents seem to have been waiting outside Doctor Who’s studios to sign up cast members - so far we have Sarah Lancashire (aka Miss Foster from series 4′s ‘Partners in Crime’); Annette Badland (aka Margaret the Slitheen in Series 1′s ‘Boom Town’); and Clive Rowe (aka Morvin van Hoff from the 2007 christmas special ‘Voyage of the Damned’) who has a startlingly good singing voice. Whilst Lancashire and Badlands look quite different (Miss Foster was svelte and in control, whereas Esther in ‘All the Small Things’ is a watery pushover housewife, and Badlands has gone from politician of the people in DW, up a few classes to the town toff in ATST) and Rowe doesn’t have a pivotal part in either dramas (he dies in DW and is nicknamed Shrek in ATST) its still a little unnerving to see 3 aliens in a parish choir at once…
So anyway, they’ve sexed up a drama about a church choir with some attractive people and some scandals about marriages and bullying disabled people and an obvious storyline in ep1 about the underdog choir of Esther’s beating the established parish choir of her husband Michael’s.
I’m kind’ve hooked, just to see if Ethel Tonks (hmmm HPmuch?) unzips her forehead, or Esther reveals that she’s a nanny for a giant spaceship full of adipose (well, it’d be an unexpected twist anyway), so expect more rantings and or ravings to come.
Thats all folks 
