D’oh! The king of horror’s been beaten to it by Homer Simpson
THE creepiest question ever asked is ‘ What if?’ and horror novelist Stephen King asks it better than anyone. For 40 years, he has been using ‘What if?’ to chill the blood and churn the stomach.
What if vampires moved into small-town America? What if a mad stalker kidnapped her favourite writer? What if a convicted killer could heal sickness with a touch?
Fans will instantly recognise the plots of Salem’s Lot, Misery and The Green Mile, all books that became major TV or cinema hits.
So, what if a sleepy mid-West town was trapped under a forcefield like a fly under a wineglass? How would the community react?
But hang on — that’s not a Stephen King novel. That’s the plot of The Simpsons Movie, which grossed half a billion dollars and was compulsory cinema viewing in 2007 for anyone with a child under 13.
It must rank as the best-known story in the history of America’s most famous cartoon family: how Homer escaped from the dome with an angry mob at his heels, and then came back to rescue his hometown, Springfield. Did the producers of Under The
Dome (C5) really think no one would notice? It’s all very well for them to point to King’s novel, but that wasn’t published until 2009.
The author’s notebooks prove he first had the idea in the late Seventies, but the fact is that someone else beat him to it, and that someone else has a yellow face and ping-pong balls for eyes.
It was hard to believe in this drama, starring former fashion model Mike Vogel and Twilight actress rachelle Lefevre. Even if you could forget The Simpsons, the special effects were doing everything possible to stop you from taking Under The Dome seriously.
When the invisible forcefield lassoed the town, it slashed through buildings and cars and even cattle. A docile cow chewing the cud was suddenly bisected, and we saw that it was filled from hooves to horns with minced beef.
No entrails, no bones, just a crosssection through mince. Note to the props department: next time you need to know what half a cow looks like, visit an abattoir, or simply ask Damien Hirst.
Clearly, we were expected to suspend our disbelief from a great height. Why didn’t anyone try digging under the forcefield? Come to that, this being mid-West America, why didn’t local rednecks start firing their guns at it? And wouldn’t Joe, the boy genius character, want to know why light could penetrate the forcefield when radio waves couldn’t?
The story rattled along despite all that, and it was crammed with familiar Stephen King themes: the ravens, the dank woods, the clinker-built houses, the sheriff who sleeps in his own cells. Under The Dome lacks the polish of this summer’s other eerie imports, the French alpine zombie tale The returned and the luminously odd Top of The Lake from New Zealand. But it will add a little spice to Monday nights.
The Incredible Spice Men (BBC2) claimed to have the same ambition, but they came across as a couple of tourists beamed from a distant planet that was trying to cut back on its quota of idiots.
Cyrus Todiwala and Tony Singh were visiting the Sussex coast to convince seasiders to curry up their cooking. They had been working on their double act: Cyrus called Tony ‘sir’ and Tony called Cyrus ‘chef’. Cyrus was the one with the goatee and the cloth cap, who said things like: ‘You know that fish is female, sir? It is winking at me.’
Tony was the one with the turban and Edinburgh accent who looked like he wanted to punch Cyrus.
They took over a chippie and shovelled coriander, cumin, turmeric and chilli powder into the fish batter — then served it to a cortege of black- leathered bikers, in an act of reckless courage that merits an extra star.
And they were completely baffled by the sight of Morris dancers. ‘That looks Bavarian . . . sort of German,’ said Cyrus. Lucky for him he wasn’t overheard, or he might have been belted with a pig’s bladder on a stick.
That would have been worth the full five stars.