A few years ago, Nicko Vaughan made it her goal to watch every single on-screen adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s great detective. At well over 350 titles, this was no small task.
This book gathers together an appreciation of just a few of the films and television shows which caught her attention. It’s a walk through of some of the strangest stories, most stupefying performances, and quirkiest manifestations of the detective. From animations to foreign language, from farce to po-faced, from John Cleese to Huey the Dog via Will Ferrell!
From kick-ass ghostbusting to educating us on the versatility of sheathed metal elements, Nicko guides you through the worst, taking the hit, so you don’t have to watch them.
You are welcome.
264pp. B-format paperback book.
ISBN: 978-1-84583-181-3
Published March 2021
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr Nicko Vaughan started out as a stand-up comedian back in 1996 when, at the age of 21, and after only two gigs, she performed in the final of the ‘open mic’ competition The Stand Up Show, which was broadcast on BBC One. It was also around this time that she started writing for the comedy magazines Deadpan and Comedy Review and became a contributor to the book Dates from Hell.
After a stint writing radio sketches and performing more stand-up comedy, she turned her back on the comedy world to pursue a career in the film industry. Here she became a script supervisor on a variety of independent films, short movies, television adverts and music videos, which would stand her in good stead for her passion-turned-career later in life.
In 2004, she was once more drawn to comedy, and wrote the stage show Songs We Think We Know, which she performed with her comedy partner Joe Timmins at the 2004 Melbourne International Comedy Festival. After receiving critical acclaim for that show, she returned in 2005 with another, Appetite for Distraction, before writing a third, Nicko & Joe Sell Out, which she performed at the 2005 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Her script Death Plays Black, a serialised disaster film for the radio, was shortlisted for the BBC Witty and Twisted Award, and she was commissioned to write and perform a promo ident for the Summer of British Film season on BBC Two, and for pilots on various projects for Talkback Thames. She also had a stint reviewing DVD releases and presenting The Comedy Zone on BBC 7/BBC Radio 4 Extra, as well as reviewing films in her column for New Empress magazine.
In 2006 she set up the interactive Bad Film Club from an idea she and Joe had kicked around while at the Edinburgh Fringe the previous year, and she has been writing and producing the show (including performances at Cardiff Chapter Arts Centre and the Barbican Centre in London) and touring it internationally ever since. In 2008 she also organised the first Bad Film Club Film Festival at the Barbican, where actress Jenny McShane, star of Shark Attack 3, accepted the award for best bad movie of all time. Bad films continue to be her passion, and she now uses them as a cautionary example in her lectures on screenwriting at the University of Swansea, where she is part of the Creative Writing Department.
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