Showing posts with label television. Show all posts
Showing posts with label television. Show all posts
Friday, May 06, 2011
The Shadow Line
Over at The Dabbler I review The Shadow Line (BBC 2). Not glowingly, it must be said.
Thursday, March 03, 2011
Jamie's Dream School
Over at The Dabbler I review Jamie's Dream School (Channel 4).
And when I saw 'review', I mean I take a sledgehammer to it, smash it into smithereens, then take each of those smithereens and smash them into super-smithereens, then I gather the super-smithereens into a bag, put them on a bonfire, burn them, put the ashes into an urn and fire the urn into the heart of the sun.
And when I saw 'review', I mean I take a sledgehammer to it, smash it into smithereens, then take each of those smithereens and smash them into super-smithereens, then I gather the super-smithereens into a bag, put them on a bonfire, burn them, put the ashes into an urn and fire the urn into the heart of the sun.
Friday, December 03, 2010
More equal than others
Watching Question Time last night, in the usual wincing, groaning, masochistic way, a disturbingly elitist thought came to me, and try as I might, I couldn't shake it off.
There are three clear intellectual classes on Question Time:
1) The small class of people who, for all whatever faults they might have, can handle the possibility that an issue might be complex, with no single easy solution, but nonetheless can make a reasonable judgement about it and say something worthwhile (on last night QT: Danny Alexander, Sir Christopher Meyer) . They never get clapped.
2) The slightly less small class of people who can handle the possibility that an issue might be complex but can't make a reasonable judgement about it nor say much worthwhile (Tory MP Nadine Dorries, Ken Livingstone, John Sergeant, Dimblebobble himself) . They elicit claps.
3) Idiots (all the people who go along to watch Question Time and clap).
There are three clear intellectual classes on Question Time:
1) The small class of people who, for all whatever faults they might have, can handle the possibility that an issue might be complex, with no single easy solution, but nonetheless can make a reasonable judgement about it and say something worthwhile (on last night QT: Danny Alexander, Sir Christopher Meyer) . They never get clapped.
2) The slightly less small class of people who can handle the possibility that an issue might be complex but can't make a reasonable judgement about it nor say much worthwhile (Tory MP Nadine Dorries, Ken Livingstone, John Sergeant, Dimblebobble himself) . They elicit claps.
3) Idiots (all the people who go along to watch Question Time and clap).
Monday, May 17, 2010
Argument Clinic – some advice for Liberal Democrats
The luxury of being in political Opposition is that you don’t have to worry too much about reality, which is a series of compromises, fudges and lesser evils. Being able to attack without needing to defend is safe and fun, if rather hollow. This is the biggest and bravest sacrifice the Liberal Democrats have made by going the whole way with the Coalition.
I tuned in to Thursday’s Question Time – a programme I usually shun because the audience is comprised of such self-righteous, self-selected, clap-happy fools – to see how the panellists would cope with the unusual circs, and it was interesting to note how badly Simon Hughes, representing the Lib Dems, performed. Eventually I decided that this was because he found himself in entirely unfamiliar territory. If Opposition is a luxury, think how it has been for the Lib Dems, revelling in Double Opposition, free to attack both Labour and the Tories at will and to adopt the kind of crazy policy (Euro, Trident etc) which has to be instantly ditched if Office and reality approach. Simon Hughes’s entire debating career has been spent as a sniper; now he found himself a target. The discomfort of novelty is the only kind excuse for his lame performance because the arguments were all on his side. Essentially Hughes faced a four-pronged attack. He should have trounced all comers but he was only comfortable dealing with the Labour representative, Lord Falconer.
The easiest prong to deal with should have been the idealist Lib Dem voters in the audience who accused him of ‘betraying their principles’ by joining with the Tories. This is twaddle and could have been countered by pointing out that in practical terms the Lib Dems chose the route that would mean having some (a surprisingly large amount) of their manifesto implemented rather than none of it. Of course practice never trumps principle for idealists so he should then have gone on to observe that the key principle of the Lib Dems is that consensus governments can work and that the interests of the country should not be sacrificed to score party political points in our rotten, confrontational system. Refusing to join a coalition on the grounds of principle would therefore have resulted in a self-defeating paradox and only a damn fool would even make such an accusation. Unfortunately the damn fool making it was a 17-year old politics student still young enough to think that ‘hypocrisy’ is something that matters – in other words, exactly the kind of person from whom Hughes has spent a lifetime extracting applause. In his confusion he made a hash of it.
The other two prongs were loonies of the left and right commentariat. Hughes could easily have played them against each other, but he didn’t and furthermore made the critical mistake, which surely no experienced Government representative would have done, of treating them seriously. Melanie Phillips, representing the loony right, described the coalition as a squalid stitch-up of self-interested parties. The correct method of dealing with her would have been a patronising tone, a dismissive wave of the hand and a ‘your cynicism says much more about you than it does about us, you old dinosaur’.
Slightly more of a challenge was someone called Medhi Hasan, speaking for the loony left. This man is, apparently, the political editor of The New Statesman. Dear me, what a prize prune he is. A ghastly applause-chaser, all witless punchlines and self-important table-thumping. Both stupid and sarcastic (the most irritating combination), never listening but always using the time in which others talk to plan what he’s going to say next. No argument or reasoning would have worked on this muppet, the only solution was to ignore him. Hughes made the schoolboy error of attempting to engage, and lost. He should have just let Hasan rant on and on until he got his applause, paused for ten seconds while it died down, and then opened with: “Anyway, back on Planet Earth…”
That, I’m sure, is how Chris Hitchens would have done it. The Lib Dems find themselves having to debate at a disadvantage for the first time in their political lives; they could do a lot worse than call the Hitch for some coaching.
I tuned in to Thursday’s Question Time – a programme I usually shun because the audience is comprised of such self-righteous, self-selected, clap-happy fools – to see how the panellists would cope with the unusual circs, and it was interesting to note how badly Simon Hughes, representing the Lib Dems, performed. Eventually I decided that this was because he found himself in entirely unfamiliar territory. If Opposition is a luxury, think how it has been for the Lib Dems, revelling in Double Opposition, free to attack both Labour and the Tories at will and to adopt the kind of crazy policy (Euro, Trident etc) which has to be instantly ditched if Office and reality approach. Simon Hughes’s entire debating career has been spent as a sniper; now he found himself a target. The discomfort of novelty is the only kind excuse for his lame performance because the arguments were all on his side. Essentially Hughes faced a four-pronged attack. He should have trounced all comers but he was only comfortable dealing with the Labour representative, Lord Falconer.
The easiest prong to deal with should have been the idealist Lib Dem voters in the audience who accused him of ‘betraying their principles’ by joining with the Tories. This is twaddle and could have been countered by pointing out that in practical terms the Lib Dems chose the route that would mean having some (a surprisingly large amount) of their manifesto implemented rather than none of it. Of course practice never trumps principle for idealists so he should then have gone on to observe that the key principle of the Lib Dems is that consensus governments can work and that the interests of the country should not be sacrificed to score party political points in our rotten, confrontational system. Refusing to join a coalition on the grounds of principle would therefore have resulted in a self-defeating paradox and only a damn fool would even make such an accusation. Unfortunately the damn fool making it was a 17-year old politics student still young enough to think that ‘hypocrisy’ is something that matters – in other words, exactly the kind of person from whom Hughes has spent a lifetime extracting applause. In his confusion he made a hash of it.
The other two prongs were loonies of the left and right commentariat. Hughes could easily have played them against each other, but he didn’t and furthermore made the critical mistake, which surely no experienced Government representative would have done, of treating them seriously. Melanie Phillips, representing the loony right, described the coalition as a squalid stitch-up of self-interested parties. The correct method of dealing with her would have been a patronising tone, a dismissive wave of the hand and a ‘your cynicism says much more about you than it does about us, you old dinosaur’.
Slightly more of a challenge was someone called Medhi Hasan, speaking for the loony left. This man is, apparently, the political editor of The New Statesman. Dear me, what a prize prune he is. A ghastly applause-chaser, all witless punchlines and self-important table-thumping. Both stupid and sarcastic (the most irritating combination), never listening but always using the time in which others talk to plan what he’s going to say next. No argument or reasoning would have worked on this muppet, the only solution was to ignore him. Hughes made the schoolboy error of attempting to engage, and lost. He should have just let Hasan rant on and on until he got his applause, paused for ten seconds while it died down, and then opened with: “Anyway, back on Planet Earth…”
That, I’m sure, is how Chris Hitchens would have done it. The Lib Dems find themselves having to debate at a disadvantage for the first time in their political lives; they could do a lot worse than call the Hitch for some coaching.
Friday, May 14, 2010
Tonight show stitch-up
Following Welsh rugby captain Gareth Thomas’s courageous self-outing there is an interesting television documentary to be made about the reasons that professional sport lags behind the rest of society in its toleration of homosexuality. Unfortunately, last night’s Tonight programme, Afraid to be Gay wasn’t it. The ITV show instead attempted to prove that society is still intolerant of homosexuals by using precisely the same disingenuous tactic employed by Panorama to prove that Britain is still racist.
They took a couple of pretty gays, dressed them in tweedy boyband suits and Jedward haircuts and with hidden cameras followed them parading about the streets holding hands and snogging, until they had collected enough footage of name-calling from male teenagers to ‘shock’ us. The ITV producers performed this stunt not in London or another metropolis where the sight of a gay couple wouldn’t raise a single eyebrow; but in Wigan town centre, carefully selected for being a chav hotbed. In other words, they went fishing for idiots in a pond swarming with them and, not surprisingly, they caught a few. In Wigan town centre, merely sporting spectacles and wearing anything other than trackie bottoms and a crew cut will be more than sufficient to elicit name-calling from teenage male chavs; the snogging was quite unnecessary.
The treatment of the lost British white underclass is a national disgrace. Ignored by the political class, especially Labour which should be its champion, it has been left to stew and turn septic in a hopeless, inescapable swamp of welfare dependency and lawlessness. I hope this is what Cameron-Clegg mean when they talk about ‘deep social problems’. The chav-fishing method employed by Panorama and now Tonight says precisely nothing about our national attitude to race and sexual orientation – which by any reasonable comparison either to previous decades or to other nations, is exceptionally tolerant – but everything about the media class’s attitude to the white poor. They are either exploited and dehumanised by Jeremy Kyle or vilified by the London hipsters for hate crimes, and every year the chasm between the underclass and the rest of us widens, and the prospect of any particular poor boy or girl successfully leaping it diminishes.
They took a couple of pretty gays, dressed them in tweedy boyband suits and Jedward haircuts and with hidden cameras followed them parading about the streets holding hands and snogging, until they had collected enough footage of name-calling from male teenagers to ‘shock’ us. The ITV producers performed this stunt not in London or another metropolis where the sight of a gay couple wouldn’t raise a single eyebrow; but in Wigan town centre, carefully selected for being a chav hotbed. In other words, they went fishing for idiots in a pond swarming with them and, not surprisingly, they caught a few. In Wigan town centre, merely sporting spectacles and wearing anything other than trackie bottoms and a crew cut will be more than sufficient to elicit name-calling from teenage male chavs; the snogging was quite unnecessary.
The treatment of the lost British white underclass is a national disgrace. Ignored by the political class, especially Labour which should be its champion, it has been left to stew and turn septic in a hopeless, inescapable swamp of welfare dependency and lawlessness. I hope this is what Cameron-Clegg mean when they talk about ‘deep social problems’. The chav-fishing method employed by Panorama and now Tonight says precisely nothing about our national attitude to race and sexual orientation – which by any reasonable comparison either to previous decades or to other nations, is exceptionally tolerant – but everything about the media class’s attitude to the white poor. They are either exploited and dehumanised by Jeremy Kyle or vilified by the London hipsters for hate crimes, and every year the chasm between the underclass and the rest of us widens, and the prospect of any particular poor boy or girl successfully leaping it diminishes.
Monday, May 03, 2010
Happy Birthday to me
Talking of daughters, for God's sake don't accidentally catch the new John Lewis ad if you have a young one, or an old one, or indeed if you are a human. A terrible cheap trick, reminding us about Time; and it uses that bloody Billy Joel song. If I wanted to well up and stifle sobs every evening I'd simply spend them listening to Handel and endlessly re-reading the last couple of chapters of The Leopard, thank you very much.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Review Show zinger
BBC2 live cultural discussion programme The Review Show (formerly Newsnight Review, formerly The Late Review) has of course declined significantly from the golden era of the mid 1990s when the regular dream team of Tony Parsons (cocky), Tom Paulin (preposterous) and either Julie Myerson Alison Pearson (head-girlish) or Germaine Greer (even more preposterous than Paulin) waffled away under the expert stewardship of Mark Lawson.
The presenters on today’s roster, including Malty’s favourite Kirsty Wark, aren’t a patch on Lawson, and, though the likes of Michael Gove (soon to be wasted on Government) and Joe Queenan provide some relief, too often the pundit-sofas are stuffed with interchangeable Guardian columnists who insist on mentioning the ‘illegal war in Iraq’ in every sentence and all talk over each other in their haste to do it, with Sarah Churchwell the rudest and most breathless talk-overer. The show doesn't need to be broadcast live; I’m convinced the whole thing would be much better if it were pre-recorded over a few hours and then edited down, to reduce the sense of hurry.
That said, Friday’s episode was a good one, with the usual political ratio reversed and some Scottish bloke called Pat Kane the only left-leaning conspiracy theorist. Most socialists have a contemptuous, impatient hatred of the People and must put the enduring popularity of conservativism amongst them down to ignorance or brainwashing by a sinister elite. Quite probably it does not occur to Kane - it is not even a possibility in his universe - that people can be decent, sentient and broadly right-wing all at the same time. It was warming to watch his fellow guests poke fun at him, and David Aaranovitch got off a real zinger right at the end with this exchange:
Kane: The Republicans are quite explicit about the fact that the reason they have had an American hegemony is because they tapped into psychologically-based marketing techniques to be able to manufacture certain kinds of consent to certain kinds of agenda...
Aaranovitch: Or to put it another way, people agreed with them.
The presenters on today’s roster, including Malty’s favourite Kirsty Wark, aren’t a patch on Lawson, and, though the likes of Michael Gove (soon to be wasted on Government) and Joe Queenan provide some relief, too often the pundit-sofas are stuffed with interchangeable Guardian columnists who insist on mentioning the ‘illegal war in Iraq’ in every sentence and all talk over each other in their haste to do it, with Sarah Churchwell the rudest and most breathless talk-overer. The show doesn't need to be broadcast live; I’m convinced the whole thing would be much better if it were pre-recorded over a few hours and then edited down, to reduce the sense of hurry.
That said, Friday’s episode was a good one, with the usual political ratio reversed and some Scottish bloke called Pat Kane the only left-leaning conspiracy theorist. Most socialists have a contemptuous, impatient hatred of the People and must put the enduring popularity of conservativism amongst them down to ignorance or brainwashing by a sinister elite. Quite probably it does not occur to Kane - it is not even a possibility in his universe - that people can be decent, sentient and broadly right-wing all at the same time. It was warming to watch his fellow guests poke fun at him, and David Aaranovitch got off a real zinger right at the end with this exchange:
Kane: The Republicans are quite explicit about the fact that the reason they have had an American hegemony is because they tapped into psychologically-based marketing techniques to be able to manufacture certain kinds of consent to certain kinds of agenda...
Aaranovitch: Or to put it another way, people agreed with them.
Friday, April 16, 2010
The Great Debate
Following the Great Big Historic Seemingly-Endless Telly Debate last night, I’m sure the question on everybody’s lips this morning is: how the devil are they going to fill three more hours of this? They’ve already covered immigration, crime, health, education, the expenses scandal and defence, and we’re only a third of the way through.
Assuming they’re not going to stoop to a swimsuit round, or take to the Total Wipeout course when they reach the BBC, I estimate that the only burning national issues still to be covered are:
- Why do the Scottish hate the English?
- Is global warming a myth?
- How can we get Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard to play together in midfield for England?
- Does Richard Dawkins exist?
- Is a golf hole-in-one a matter of skill or fluke?*
- What does an unborn baby dream about?
(*that one should produce a few fireworks, it always does)
Assuming they’re not going to stoop to a swimsuit round, or take to the Total Wipeout course when they reach the BBC, I estimate that the only burning national issues still to be covered are:
- Why do the Scottish hate the English?
- Is global warming a myth?
- How can we get Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard to play together in midfield for England?
- Does Richard Dawkins exist?
- Is a golf hole-in-one a matter of skill or fluke?*
- What does an unborn baby dream about?
(*that one should produce a few fireworks, it always does)
Tuesday, April 06, 2010
Elizabeth, Doctor Who
I’d forgotten what an enjoyable film Elizabeth is (the 1998 one with Cate Blanchett, Geoffrey Rush etc). Structurally it’s similar to The Godfather, only more exciting. Christopher Ecclestone overcomes outrageous pantaloons to shine as Norfolk. Joseph Fiennes looks like Sir Robert Dudley but he acts too much.
Ecclestone is now two Whos ago. Saturday’s new Doctor Who with Matt Smith was really rather good; funny and quick and slightly less running down corridors shouting about THE END OF TIME ITSELF than usual. I’m glad it was good, because David Tennant, though presiding over the programme’s Golden Age, was looking ominously like taking Doctor Who up the A470 from Cardiff to Prestatyn. A timely reboot, that.
Ecclestone is now two Whos ago. Saturday’s new Doctor Who with Matt Smith was really rather good; funny and quick and slightly less running down corridors shouting about THE END OF TIME ITSELF than usual. I’m glad it was good, because David Tennant, though presiding over the programme’s Golden Age, was looking ominously like taking Doctor Who up the A470 from Cardiff to Prestatyn. A timely reboot, that.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Hell, handcart news: the Relics of Cheryl Cole
Last night on an episode of Channel 4’s hard-hitting social documentary Come Dine with Me, a young lady uttered the following profundity: “You know, I would really love it if Cheryl Cole brought out a perfume.”
This struck me as an unusually frank admission by a consumer that the quality of the product is not only secondary but irrelevant compared with the value of the celebrity endorsement.
Have we then reached the stage where a celebrity is no longer used as an excuse to sell pieces of merchandise, but where merchandise is used as an excuse to sell pieces of a celebrity?
Or is it only certain celebrities? And is it a new thing or has the Relic element always been there at the extreme end of the fame and tat-flogging business?
This struck me as an unusually frank admission by a consumer that the quality of the product is not only secondary but irrelevant compared with the value of the celebrity endorsement.
Have we then reached the stage where a celebrity is no longer used as an excuse to sell pieces of merchandise, but where merchandise is used as an excuse to sell pieces of a celebrity?
Or is it only certain celebrities? And is it a new thing or has the Relic element always been there at the extreme end of the fame and tat-flogging business?
Friday, March 05, 2010
Only Connect, the best programme on television
With the BBC deciding to kill off one of its best bits of expansionism, 6 Music (home of Pavement Panto fans Adam and Joe), we can only hope the cull doesn’t extend to the finest programme on television – by which I obviously refer to Only Connect.Cunningly scheduled to begin on BBC 4 just as University Challenge finishes on 2, and heralded by a similar diddle-diddle theme maintaining the mood of slightly supercilious, peering-over-spectacles, tea-and-scone civility, much as one might find at feeding time in the Pump Rooms at Bath (though better than the daytime-ish comfort mush that introduces Fry-fest QI), Only Connect is a brainteaser quiz. It’s quite tricky, you have to connect stuff like Tube lines if they were translated into the colours of snooker balls and whatnot - though I get more answers than I do on University Challenge these days (those students seem to get quicker every year…hullo, perhaps A-levels aren’t being dumbed down at all!). I haven’t yet devised a similar drinking game for it. Only Connect’s contestants are not unlike those on University Challenge only older, smugger and arranged in trios with something nerdish in common. "The Steam Railway Enthusiasts" might take on the "Series 1 to 4 of Red Dwarf Fans", for example. The team members always look like each other regardless of age or gender though sometimes the connections between them are pretty weak, such as that they all like quizzes containing the sorts of questions that are asked on Only Connect. It cannot be long before the “Only Connect Would-be Contestants” take on the “Victoria
I for one would be proud to join the latter team. Victoria Coren is a lovely poker-player, daughter of the late Alan Coren (a witty, likeable columnist and celebrity) and sister of Giles Coren (a columnist and celebrity). She is the presenter of Only Connect. In both looks and in the timbre of her voice Victoria is striking in her resemblance to the actress Joan Greenwood (who was, by the way, surely one of the very worst British actresses to have appeared on the silver screen, her mannered delivery wrecking The Importance of Being Earnest and threatening but not quite bringing down Kind Hearts and Coronets).
Also striking is the lack of a studio audience. Only Connect is a clap-free zone. This makes a refreshing change since most shows, such as Celebrity Family Fortunes or Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Plebian Clap-A-Long consist of little else. (Wouldn’t it be an interesting experiment, though, to film Family Fortunes without the audience? The processes of the show – playing or passing, attempting to ‘steal’ - would take on an air of business-like gravitas; the inexplicably daft answers - “Name a Shakespeare play”, “Baa baa black sheep” - would produce just tense sighs and glares from team-mates; best of all, a good twenty minutes would be shaved off the running time.)
The empty studio on Only Connect means that Victoria’s little witticisms and monologues are greeted with nothing but self-conscious chortling and snickering from the Railway Enthusiasts and Red Dwarf Fans. It’s infectious; I find myself self-consciously chortling and snickering along often. But then they are unusually good witticisms and monologues. Viva Vic. Well anyway, that’s Only Connect, it’s very British, check it out. Hang on I probably need one of these (thanks, Outer Spaceman)…
Monday, January 25, 2010
Appleyard versus Portillo 2
Not really a successful discussion programme: too short, too many guests and too broad and therefore shallow. You can watch it on iPlayer here. I’m spoiled now by (good) blogs as far as debating goes, I think. Dinner with Portillo is probably the best that telly can do.
But it was quite rib-tickling from the point of view of a Thought Experiments reader with experience of the Way of the Yard. Bryan made about four utterances each of which fell stillborn into baffled silence. The other guests plus Portillo appeared to be suspicious of him; and rightly so since the Yard was starting from a position in which he took it as read that describing science as ‘amoral’ is meaningless because apart from a very narrow series of actions, eg. in the lab or at the computer, everything about any kind of science – from the rationale for the research and the justification for the funding through to the use of the results – is moral. Therefore all the obvious rhetorical points which you might expect to hear in a sixth-form debate about science and morality can be skipped. The rest of the guests listened to him, nodded warily and proceeded to make all the obvious rhetorical points which you might expect to hear in a sixth-form debate about science and morality. The Yard looked tired and picked the carbs out of his dinner.
But it was quite rib-tickling from the point of view of a Thought Experiments reader with experience of the Way of the Yard. Bryan made about four utterances each of which fell stillborn into baffled silence. The other guests plus Portillo appeared to be suspicious of him; and rightly so since the Yard was starting from a position in which he took it as read that describing science as ‘amoral’ is meaningless because apart from a very narrow series of actions, eg. in the lab or at the computer, everything about any kind of science – from the rationale for the research and the justification for the funding through to the use of the results – is moral. Therefore all the obvious rhetorical points which you might expect to hear in a sixth-form debate about science and morality can be skipped. The rest of the guests listened to him, nodded warily and proceeded to make all the obvious rhetorical points which you might expect to hear in a sixth-form debate about science and morality. The Yard looked tired and picked the carbs out of his dinner.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Appleyard versus Portillo
The Yard is on telly tonight, which explains why he has removed himself from the country. Scoffing and Waffling with Portillo - 21.10 on BBC 4.
Should be a keenly fought meal, as it's about science and morals.
Should be a keenly fought meal, as it's about science and morals.
Monday, January 04, 2010
What I saw on the telly this Christmas
Didn’t watch as much Christmas telly as usual this year but I did catch The Royle Family, which the BBC managed to squeeze into one of the rare respites from David Tennant. Oh dear, I’m afraid Jim and the family well and truly jumped it. Leapt the leopardshark. Hurdled the hammerhead. Gaily galloped and gambolled giddily over the Great White. Pity, as The Royle Family used to be a treat. At its best it employed a dash of crude humour without relying on it, poked fun at the (non) working class without sneering at it, exaggerated reality but still rang true. This instalment blew all that. In particular, by making all the family as dim and selfish as Denise – who was always the only totally absurd one – the characterisation, so painstakingly constructed over many great episodes, was swiftly wrecked. Shocker. What else was there? The Gruffalo was a bit of a let-down. They dragged the wee story out to half an hour simply by reciting the dialogue very slowly. A gruuuuufalo?...
what’s
a
gruf
fal
o? This meant that the bouncy rhythm of the book was lost, which is the best thing about it. And what the hell was Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End about? I couldn’t make head nor tail of it. Lots of unpleasant characters standing about haggling over a bewildering array of MacGuffins, quadruple-crossing each other and then having a swordfight. Repeat for three very long hours. Doctor Who was alright but I hope they go back to normal-sized peril wherein a few people are endangered, rather than having to save THE UNIVERSE and TIME ITSELF amid shouts and explosions every week. Gavin and Stacey was ok.
what’s
a
gruf
fal
o? This meant that the bouncy rhythm of the book was lost, which is the best thing about it. And what the hell was Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End about? I couldn’t make head nor tail of it. Lots of unpleasant characters standing about haggling over a bewildering array of MacGuffins, quadruple-crossing each other and then having a swordfight. Repeat for three very long hours. Doctor Who was alright but I hope they go back to normal-sized peril wherein a few people are endangered, rather than having to save THE UNIVERSE and TIME ITSELF amid shouts and explosions every week. Gavin and Stacey was ok.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Television is meddling with the very nature of Time
Does anyone else feel they’re being diddled out of their rightful allocation of Time?
I refer, of course, to rubbish television programmes. Mostly these are scheduled to last an hour. On commercial channels fifteen minutes of this hour is ads, fair enough. But much more insidious is the sneaky format of virtually all reality/lifestyle/documentary-type shows, whether its Four Nasty Buggers Cook Food and Bitch, or Pissed-Up Brit Yobs A-Pukin’ in Marbella, or even more upmarket fare such as S’ralan’s Apprentice or Gordon Ramsay Shouts at Fools.
The sneakiness, I’m sure you’ve noticed, is the business of starting the programme with a little highlights-package preview of what’s going to happen, then showing it happening, then ending with a highlights-package round-up of what happened.
Increasingly the more proletarian channels such as Living, Living +1, Just About Conscious and Cor Blimey! are taking this approach to dizzying, wheel-within-wheel levels of complexity: a preview of it happening, immediately it happens, then a preview of what will happen after the ads, then after the ads a reminder of what happened before the preview before the ads, then a preview of what will happen now, then it happening, then a talking head talking about how it felt when it happened, then a clip of it happening again, then another, different talking head telling you that it happened and adding “Oh my God”, then a round-up, repeat, ads, repeat, then a preview of what will happen next week, the end. After a while it is impossible to tell what is ‘really’ happening, and what is just a precursor, or a reminder, or a commentary on a precursor of a reminder.
The worst example I’ve ever encountered was a show featuring anti-sex campaigner and Brizzle boy Justin Lee Collins, in which he tried his hand at diving off the top board at the swimming pool. I assure you I only watched this feebly-conceived entertainment because the climactic top-board jumping competition took place at Kingswood Leisure Centre, formerly run by the Local Character, my nearest pool and perhaps the least glamorous location in the UK. The programme lasted an hour but, by the end, I calculated that if you removed the many previews, reminders and direct-to-camera wafflings, we saw approximately six and a half minutes of actual action. And what we did see was pretty darn thin. All of which puts me in mind of the old joke told by Woody Allen at the start of Annie Hall about the two women in the restaurant: "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." "Yeah, I know; and such small portions."
I refer, of course, to rubbish television programmes. Mostly these are scheduled to last an hour. On commercial channels fifteen minutes of this hour is ads, fair enough. But much more insidious is the sneaky format of virtually all reality/lifestyle/documentary-type shows, whether its Four Nasty Buggers Cook Food and Bitch, or Pissed-Up Brit Yobs A-Pukin’ in Marbella, or even more upmarket fare such as S’ralan’s Apprentice or Gordon Ramsay Shouts at Fools.
The sneakiness, I’m sure you’ve noticed, is the business of starting the programme with a little highlights-package preview of what’s going to happen, then showing it happening, then ending with a highlights-package round-up of what happened.
Increasingly the more proletarian channels such as Living, Living +1, Just About Conscious and Cor Blimey! are taking this approach to dizzying, wheel-within-wheel levels of complexity: a preview of it happening, immediately it happens, then a preview of what will happen after the ads, then after the ads a reminder of what happened before the preview before the ads, then a preview of what will happen now, then it happening, then a talking head talking about how it felt when it happened, then a clip of it happening again, then another, different talking head telling you that it happened and adding “Oh my God”, then a round-up, repeat, ads, repeat, then a preview of what will happen next week, the end. After a while it is impossible to tell what is ‘really’ happening, and what is just a precursor, or a reminder, or a commentary on a precursor of a reminder.
The worst example I’ve ever encountered was a show featuring anti-sex campaigner and Brizzle boy Justin Lee Collins, in which he tried his hand at diving off the top board at the swimming pool. I assure you I only watched this feebly-conceived entertainment because the climactic top-board jumping competition took place at Kingswood Leisure Centre, formerly run by the Local Character, my nearest pool and perhaps the least glamorous location in the UK. The programme lasted an hour but, by the end, I calculated that if you removed the many previews, reminders and direct-to-camera wafflings, we saw approximately six and a half minutes of actual action. And what we did see was pretty darn thin. All of which puts me in mind of the old joke told by Woody Allen at the start of Annie Hall about the two women in the restaurant: "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." "Yeah, I know; and such small portions."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)