Well that was a big pile of fucking terrible. Obviously some of you out there don't agree. You're strange and wrong, of course. What am I talking about? Doctor Who, of course. That little BBC show that was off the air for about fifteen years and was brought back in 2005, to much fan fare and fandom creaming. Really, about nine years down the line the shine's tarnished a bit. And by 'a bit' I mean its now about as shiny as a tennis ball. So it goes without saying I feel the need to go on a spoiler-ridden rant about it.
Seriously. SPOILERS, morons. If you don't want anything given away because you haven't caught up don't read on. Although, I don't think anyone who is interested in Doctor Who will be behind that much. You never can tell.
I'll admit I was one of the many people who got very excited when it was announced Doctor Who was going to return. I watched it as a kid. From what I learned more recently I was the only one in my household who enjoyed it. How's that for making you feel shit? Makes me feel like I was some kind of pre-pubescent dictator of the television. That just sounds hilarious when thrown out into the ether.
So, the excitement in the year or so before Russell T. Davies brought Doctor Who back to the screen was quite palpable*. Christopher Eccleston was a good choice. An actor with gravitas and the ability to play it light. And ears, such magnificent ears. My enthusiasm lasted through that first series. Even then, there were concerns.
I mean the format for Doctor Who was always multi-part stories, told in half-hour chunks. Davies came back and changed the format to stand alone forty-five minute stories. It wasn't too terrible, for a while, but we'll come to that.
Then there was Rose Tyler. In the first of this new series, the preoccupation with the companion was quite refreshing. Rose Tyler wasn't a terrible character, and I was surprised how good an actress Billie Piper is, being more accustomed to her previous incarnation as teeny pop performer. Now I see that's when the rot started to set in. Russell T. Davies ran with this and Steven Moffat's taken that cue and gone further with it. The companion being either a fawning cypher or unreasonably stubborn. Whatever the companion, they shoved in one of my pet hates about modern storytelling: the pathological need to have a romantic subplot. It's not the pinnacle of story, most of the time it's as interesting as overhearing a loud teenager's phone call. Now we're here, on the cusp of the abyss**.
The latest series of Doctor Who has been a dismal affair. It's not just the preoccupation with the companion, in this case the empty vessel that's Clara Oswald, but let's dwell on it a moment. In a show that's ostensibly a fantasy/science fiction premise, it felt like a lot of time was lavished on the life of Clara Oswald. It's happened since Rose Tyler, through What's-Her-Name† and Amy Pond. These last series it's been turned up a couple of notches. To the point it felt like a standard drama with some sci-fi spotted through. Not even interesting drama. The most mundane and boring stuff they could dredge up:
"What's for tea tonight?"
"Chips."
"Oh, okay...Oh look. The Doctor."
Wouldn't have been so bad if the sci-fi stuff counterpointing it was at all interesting, but it was like a shot of beige thrown into a wall of grey.
It doesn't help that Steven Moffat can't seem to write women. This post here details his many crimes against women characters. Clara Oswald was a dull character who was supposed to have strong traits, but never managed to show them. She could have been played by a washcloth on a stick with 'Clara Oswald: Strong Female' stitched on it‡. In the last episode of the latest series The Mistress describes her as a 'control freak'. What? I never got that. You can't just say that without having the character display it. She was deceitful and wilful when she wasn't being a compliant puppet, but control freak? And her wilfulness was always used in the most stupid way, in order to advance a plot that was in danger of plunging down a hole and managed to find another one. Not that plot holes worry Steven Moffat much...
...Because, as Cracked observed, Doctor Who currently lives in a fucking plot hole. And fuck does it. I couldn't even tell you what the last few episodes were about, they were such a mess. I have been chided in the past about my stories lacking internal logic. You know, that thing where, no matter how nonsensical something is in a story, it makes sense in context. Sapphire and Steel was great at it. Most people couldn't follow what the fuck was going on, but there was a sense of some underlying logic that you just didn't understand. Current Doctor Who tosses that out the window BECAUSE SOMETHING FUCKING COOL IS HAPPENING! That only works in small doses, when entire episodes are full of contradictions it gets tiresome. It feels like the writers have been throwing things on a page and hoping they miraculously come together. That only works with stir fries.
I could even forgive the twisted mess the stories have been if they had been interesting, but they have completely lacked any kind of excitement. You can see they want to be, like the kid who's wearing the glasses and drawn-on scar, really wants to be Harry Potter, but doesn't quite do it. Russell T. Davies wasn't great at this kind of narrative excitement, but he did manage it, possibly by pure chance, in all the arm-flailing and scurrying around. These recent episodes have been plodding affairs desperately pointing at the screen and shouting, "See! Excitement!" while pointing at a tree. The stakes never felt that high.
The stakes should have felt high, since the reboot, the series has been running on series-wide arcs. These in themselves aren't a problem, but it's the need for a new story every week that's ground down the poor show. It's the same problem that dogs American television, with its obsession for twenty-two and -four episode series. It gets tired. There's only so much that can be mined out of a premise. Before for Doctor Who, that took almost thirty years, with the previous longer-form, multi-part stories, but it's been accelerated this time with so many stories being thrown at us in a series.
And the cardinal problem, for me, is that in a show called Doctor Who, we haven't seen that much of the Doctor. Whether that's actually the case, I don't know, I'm sure some pedant will show me a spreadsheet showing, empirically, the Doctor was in the show the most. The problem is, stories don't run on empirical evidence, they run on feelings and if you leave viewers feeling like the eponymous character hasn't been seen enough, you've done something tragically wrong. Yes, they pulled it off in Blake's Seven, but there was actually a valid narrative reason: Blake was dead. What's Doctor Who's excuse? Steven Moffat wants to concentrate on Clara and Danny going down to Asda? We really need to know how many times a week they see each other? Come on, that's not drama, that's a desperate bid to make people turn off the television.
For me, after discussing it with my wife, it comes down to a basic problem: Doctor Who is a pure nostalgia-fest. People who watched the original run, like yours truly, and loved it. We are hoping for a snippet of that feeling, but for me at least, it's not coming. I've tuned in week after week only to be disappointed and bored again. Yes, there have been good things, but they're bogged down and buried by the utter shit. Don't trot out that tired, "it's a kid's show" bit, because that's no excuse for shitty writing. Doctor Who is tired now and I suspect a proportion of people tune in hoping it improves, only to be disappointed, their little forty-five minutes of sadness on a Saturday night for a few weeks. This could be the only thing keeping it afloat.
After the Christmas episode, I'm out, and I'll probably cringe my way through that. I can't handle the disappointment any more. I can't handle the fucking terrible stories, either. The final episode of the recent series was an exercise in not creating tension. It was remarkable that scenes with a plane besieged by Cybermen could be so boring. It was so bad I can't even come up with an amusing simile that encapsulates tedium. But Michelle Gomez was fucking amazing.
There are some things that can be done to improve it: for a start, give us the Doctor, doing things, being mad, solving problems like a fucking beast. He's smart and he's resourceful, but that hasn't come across well recently, because he's been mostly absent. Ditch the cult of the companion, it's the worst while giving us an interesting companion, even go so far as a non-human or non-contemporary human. Think through what's happening in the story more, dude. Pulpish madness only works when there's a baseline somewhere, without that, doesn't matter how mental that baseline is, the viewers are floating around with a nothing plot. I'd even plump for longer story arcs, two or three episodes to tell a story and let it breath more – the, "woo! thrown into the plot" thing makes me weary.
None of the above will happen, mind you. Too many people are vocal in their love of Doctor Who, but for me it's lost its appeal. It's a bit sad, but I'll be off watching things that are fun, instead of hoping for another episode of Doctor Who to end.
* I may have jumped up and down clapping at one point. It's out there, deal with it.
** Hyperbolic? Me? I resent your unspoken implication and challenge you to a duel. That I won't turn up to and call you a prick for going.
† Yeah, I skipped the series with Catherine Tate, because I found her comedy vapid and unfunny, I couldn't imagine watching her as a companion. I might have been wrong in my assessment, but that's where we are.
‡ Before anyone starts shouting at me for some misogynistic slight, Danny Pink could have been played by another washcloth on a stick with 'Danny Pink: Man'.
Will
Showing posts with label television. Show all posts
Showing posts with label television. Show all posts
Wednesday, 12 November 2014
Wednesday, 26 March 2014
Them Ole Square Eyes.
TV. Teevee. Telly. Television. It's been a big part of my life for as long as I can remember. As you can imagine I was the weird kid who would disappear home to watch television while everyone else was out playing. Drove my mother nuts, to the point where she would kick me out of the house so that I would get some fresh air.
As a teenager I was a bit of a recluse. Not terribly sure why. I would go to school and then go home and spend most of my time with the television on. Yeah, I'd sit and scribble things: stories, games and bad drawings. All the time the comforting grumble of the television going on in the corner of the room. Film and TV are, unsurprisingly, my biggest influences when it comes to fiction. My brain is full of flotsam and jetsam from years of watching some of the most obscure things because I couldn't bring myself to hit the 'off' switch. Oh, fucking hell, does late-night Channel Four programming in the nineties have a lot to answer for*.
So. Now you know what my viewing habits were like as kid**, you get to see the special relationship I've developed with it over the years. The magpie effect of flicking around when nothing was on means I know things about programmes I didn't chose to watch. It's had the dual effect of making me more discerning and more willing to try new things. I know, for instance, bone-deep, that I ain't going to sit through an episode of a soap opera; horrible cancerous things that choke out anything else that might turn up on the air.
In the interests of community-mindedness, I'll give you a little list of the current programmes I'm watching and enjoying. Should be fun. Might show you a shocking lack of taste in your eyes, and if that's the case: FUCK YOU, YOU MALICIOUS CUNT! HOW DARE YOU JUDGE ME! I'LL JUDGE YOU RIGHT BACK!
SEE! THAT'S ME JUDGING YOU! DON'T LIKE IT, DO YOU? NOOOoooOOO!
Ahem, anyway, onto the list.
Person of Interest. I'll actually start with a complaint about this – go me! Why are we in the UK a year behind on this? Not everyone has Netflix, motherfucker. Channel Five have to be applauded for showing it, but it's irritating having to avoid places because there are people who have to talk about what's going on twelve months ahead because it's so fucking good! I want to know!
The show had a bit of a slow start. The first half of the first series is almost a write-off. Then it hit its stride. It's a fantastic mix of conspiracy thriller, A-Team style good-deed of the week and comedy. It's exciting, dark and asks some big questions. Just don't tell me what happens in series three, I will have to have you killed or, at the very least, severely beaten.
The Blacklist is another bit of conspiracy and espionage, but it manages to be far darker and uncompromising than Person of Interest. We are introduced to the wonderful character Raymond 'Red' Reddington, a criminal facilitator and extremely bad man who drops himself into the FBI's lap telling them he'll give them access to criminals they haven't even heard of, the titular blacklist. Oh and he'll only talk to a particular analyst. It's murky in the best kind of way. There's no question about the people Reddington is handing over are extremely bad, but his motives aren't clear and as it goes on it's obvious a lot of the characters' motivations are uncertain. I don't know what the fuck's going on and I love it. You should jump in and not know what's going on either.
Talking about being reeealllyyyy behind on series, I give you Parks and Recreation, a comedy programme filmed in a fly-on-the-wall documentary style† and we're three series behind on this. This took even longer than Person of Interest to get into its groove, but in the third series the insanity set in and the documentary presentation gives great opportunities for characters to give silent reactions to the madness around them or getting little interviews to give their insights. For ages before BBC Four started showing it I was seeing things about Ron Swanson on the internet and got really annoyed, but now I see the appeal, he's a stand-out character in a programme of brilliant characters.
Without Community, I would never have tried Parks and Recreation. This is another one I'd been hearing about for a while and finally found the whole first series on catch up. That was a rewarding Sunday afternoon. For a while we were a year behind this one as well, but last year the Sony channel showed both series three and four. Four wasn't quite as good because Dan Harmon had been dumped as show runner, but it still managed some interesting episodes. Community relies on the interplay between the fantastic ensemble, guiding us through their time at a US community college. It starts off pretty grounded, with some odd moments, but by the end of the first series and the paintball episode it laid the groundwork for the strangeness to come. Then we have the references, you remember what I said about references, right? It's chock-full. A lot of it is self-referential, something a lot of people point out as a bad thing, but I think it's great and gets you invested in the strange family unit of the Study Group.
The most recent addition to my watching is Brooklyn 99. This is an odd one, because it has a bog-standard police procedural as its basis with all the beats and tropes the genre has, yet it's all wrapped up in a comedic skin. Yeah, I know a lot of police procedurals have elements of comedy in them, and Castle is even described as a comedy-drama, but the writers will ditch any semblance of comedy trappings in favour of a dramatic storyline. Brooklyn 99 is straight-down-the-line funny. Yes, there's a case of the week, and it forms a big part of each story, but the characters' eccentricities make up the rest of the bulk. It could have been fucking awful, but it, amazingly, works.
There are others, like the slew of crime dramas I watch, like Castle, Rizzoli and Isles, Elementary‡ and Bones, but the ones above are the programmes I feel most excited about watching of a week. I highly recommend them if you can get access to them.
* Now a bit of a sad imitation of its gloriously vibrant and mad landscape. Late-night television, in general has become a depressingly conformist precession of gambling shows. That made me a little sad, writing that.
** Or reiterated for some of you. Yeah, I'm looking right at you, dude.
† As pioneered in The Office. One I never did get around to watching in either its original UK run or its US incarnation.
‡ That I think in a lot of important ways is far superior to Sherlock, though I did enjoy that too.
Will
As a teenager I was a bit of a recluse. Not terribly sure why. I would go to school and then go home and spend most of my time with the television on. Yeah, I'd sit and scribble things: stories, games and bad drawings. All the time the comforting grumble of the television going on in the corner of the room. Film and TV are, unsurprisingly, my biggest influences when it comes to fiction. My brain is full of flotsam and jetsam from years of watching some of the most obscure things because I couldn't bring myself to hit the 'off' switch. Oh, fucking hell, does late-night Channel Four programming in the nineties have a lot to answer for*.
So. Now you know what my viewing habits were like as kid**, you get to see the special relationship I've developed with it over the years. The magpie effect of flicking around when nothing was on means I know things about programmes I didn't chose to watch. It's had the dual effect of making me more discerning and more willing to try new things. I know, for instance, bone-deep, that I ain't going to sit through an episode of a soap opera; horrible cancerous things that choke out anything else that might turn up on the air.
In the interests of community-mindedness, I'll give you a little list of the current programmes I'm watching and enjoying. Should be fun. Might show you a shocking lack of taste in your eyes, and if that's the case: FUCK YOU, YOU MALICIOUS CUNT! HOW DARE YOU JUDGE ME! I'LL JUDGE YOU RIGHT BACK!
SEE! THAT'S ME JUDGING YOU! DON'T LIKE IT, DO YOU? NOOOoooOOO!
Ahem, anyway, onto the list.
Person of Interest. I'll actually start with a complaint about this – go me! Why are we in the UK a year behind on this? Not everyone has Netflix, motherfucker. Channel Five have to be applauded for showing it, but it's irritating having to avoid places because there are people who have to talk about what's going on twelve months ahead because it's so fucking good! I want to know!
The show had a bit of a slow start. The first half of the first series is almost a write-off. Then it hit its stride. It's a fantastic mix of conspiracy thriller, A-Team style good-deed of the week and comedy. It's exciting, dark and asks some big questions. Just don't tell me what happens in series three, I will have to have you killed or, at the very least, severely beaten.
The Blacklist is another bit of conspiracy and espionage, but it manages to be far darker and uncompromising than Person of Interest. We are introduced to the wonderful character Raymond 'Red' Reddington, a criminal facilitator and extremely bad man who drops himself into the FBI's lap telling them he'll give them access to criminals they haven't even heard of, the titular blacklist. Oh and he'll only talk to a particular analyst. It's murky in the best kind of way. There's no question about the people Reddington is handing over are extremely bad, but his motives aren't clear and as it goes on it's obvious a lot of the characters' motivations are uncertain. I don't know what the fuck's going on and I love it. You should jump in and not know what's going on either.
Talking about being reeealllyyyy behind on series, I give you Parks and Recreation, a comedy programme filmed in a fly-on-the-wall documentary style† and we're three series behind on this. This took even longer than Person of Interest to get into its groove, but in the third series the insanity set in and the documentary presentation gives great opportunities for characters to give silent reactions to the madness around them or getting little interviews to give their insights. For ages before BBC Four started showing it I was seeing things about Ron Swanson on the internet and got really annoyed, but now I see the appeal, he's a stand-out character in a programme of brilliant characters.
Without Community, I would never have tried Parks and Recreation. This is another one I'd been hearing about for a while and finally found the whole first series on catch up. That was a rewarding Sunday afternoon. For a while we were a year behind this one as well, but last year the Sony channel showed both series three and four. Four wasn't quite as good because Dan Harmon had been dumped as show runner, but it still managed some interesting episodes. Community relies on the interplay between the fantastic ensemble, guiding us through their time at a US community college. It starts off pretty grounded, with some odd moments, but by the end of the first series and the paintball episode it laid the groundwork for the strangeness to come. Then we have the references, you remember what I said about references, right? It's chock-full. A lot of it is self-referential, something a lot of people point out as a bad thing, but I think it's great and gets you invested in the strange family unit of the Study Group.
The most recent addition to my watching is Brooklyn 99. This is an odd one, because it has a bog-standard police procedural as its basis with all the beats and tropes the genre has, yet it's all wrapped up in a comedic skin. Yeah, I know a lot of police procedurals have elements of comedy in them, and Castle is even described as a comedy-drama, but the writers will ditch any semblance of comedy trappings in favour of a dramatic storyline. Brooklyn 99 is straight-down-the-line funny. Yes, there's a case of the week, and it forms a big part of each story, but the characters' eccentricities make up the rest of the bulk. It could have been fucking awful, but it, amazingly, works.
There are others, like the slew of crime dramas I watch, like Castle, Rizzoli and Isles, Elementary‡ and Bones, but the ones above are the programmes I feel most excited about watching of a week. I highly recommend them if you can get access to them.
* Now a bit of a sad imitation of its gloriously vibrant and mad landscape. Late-night television, in general has become a depressingly conformist precession of gambling shows. That made me a little sad, writing that.
** Or reiterated for some of you. Yeah, I'm looking right at you, dude.
† As pioneered in The Office. One I never did get around to watching in either its original UK run or its US incarnation.
‡ That I think in a lot of important ways is far superior to Sherlock, though I did enjoy that too.
Will
Wednesday, 19 February 2014
It's Not A Confession If I Don't Give A Shit.
Yep, so I liked Two and A Half Men. It's a weirdly derided and reviled television show, getting a shitload of flak from various quarters. I'm not entirely sure why, other than the catch-all of people are fucking weird. I'm also not entirely sure how it got to be so popular, either, but the vitriol it gets seems...disproportionate. It's an entertaining bit of sitcom fluff by and large – you watch it once and then pretty much forget about it once the end credits have rolled. Kind of like you wish you could forget about that body in the garden, the one that keeps whispering about the monkeys.
No doubt I'll get a bit of stick for admitting I enjoy (or rather enjoyed) a show that's considered trash and a perfect target for ridicule. Fair enough. In a lot of ways I should have been part of the crowd catcalling the programme and decrying it as shit from the start. It's not as if I'm above that kind of thing, there are quite a few things I find myself getting on the bandwagon of disliking*, but I couldn't see what all the fuss was about.
In the last couple of series it's started to lose its enjoyment factor. It managed a half decent season after Charlie Sheen went off the deep end and started ranting about tiger blood and whatever else squirmed into his head through the coke-fuelled haze. Then it lost its way, and the fact there wasn't a 'half' man anymore became this great foghorn, blaring, "We have no idea what the fuck is going on! Keep watching anyway!" I can't help feeling they took their cue from ole Carlos Estevez.
What kept me watching when I first stumbled on the early episodes shown on Channel Five back in, like, the misty times of 2005 was that it was a little different from your average sitcom. It still had all those sitcom tropes: the canned laughter, the aggressive grip on the status quo and the growing implausibility of the premise. I mean it's the same with most sitcoms, the whole situation gets harder to maintain the longer they go on, like a frustrated erection. And Two and A Half Men is onto its eleventh series; it's starting to go a bit floppy. Friends only ran for ten series and by the last three it became a smear of unpleasant, mawkish shit**.
Mawkish has never been an accusation that could be levelled at Two and A Half Men. Yes it did go down the sentimental route on occasion and that was cool, it kept the characters feeling human – or as human as sitcom characters ever get. It needed a core of humanity because it had a gleeful air of cynicism, capering like a sadistic, sarcastic elf, giggling while it tells that guy with the broken back it feels so bad for him. Perhaps it was this that bothered so many people – the show wasn't about fluffy bullshit, it was about this narcissistic, partying, virtually sociopathic arsehole having his life invaded by his needy, slightly parasitic brother. There aren't a lot of warm fuzzies in that set up.
The cynicism continued in the portrayal of Jake, the kid in the show. He wasn't one of those smart arse moppets nor was he wise for his years and he certainly wasn't the hellion Bart Simpson was. He was a dumb, ordinary, kid and he mostly said and did dumb things, like real human beings of any age. Just like human beings of any age he would rarely say anything that was profound or smart, but on the one or two occasions he managed insightfulness it fleshed him out, made him feel a bit more real. The episodes where he was oblivious to all the adults' shenanigans were funny, though, and reminded me of myself sometimes..
Then there was Alan, played by Jon Cryer, who, before that was most famous for playing Duckie in Pretty In Pink. In the beginning of the show he was a sensitive loser, who managed to make all the wrong decisions. Most of these decisions had a habit of leaving him destitute. As the series went on it became clear he was shaped by the way he was treated by his mother and older brother growing up. Then Alan started veering into the land of the caricature. Out went the sensitivity and in came the amoral leech, changing him from a likeable, sympathetic character into one that makes you want to turn the TV off every time he's on screen.
This is where things get weird and it highlights the problem with US networks' obsessions with syndication – the magic twenty-two episode season. Long running US programmes start to creak very quickly because each series runs for so long. Stories get boring and repetitive, and you can almost see the whisky stains of burnt-out writers on the screen. It all gets stale and the networks obsess over it. This is where the greatest paradox comes in: change fucks everything up.
And not in a good way.
Fine, the production landed on its feet by creating a likeable, if a little boring new lead, Waldon, played by Ashton Kutcher†,. The changes made to Alan's character started to put a strain on the narrative abilities of the writers and the production as a whole. Then, in series eleven a new character was introduced: Charlie's niece, Jenny. Clearly supposed to be a substitute for Charlie Sheen's character. Jenny is a boozing, promiscuous narcissist, just like the Charlie‡ character; and, for some reason Waldon allows her to stay in his home§. There are three things wrong with this character: she's unpleasant, she's fucking boring and she doesn't fit. The producers should maybe have gambled on bringing a completely different character into the mix, maybe something that didn't make the, admittedly already shaky, internal logic of the show screech in unholy agony.
Since this character's arrival the stories have become unfunny messes. The programme meanders along trying to squeeze laughs out of us with increasing crassness and tastelessness. I've got nothing against crass tastelessness – I can get a giggle out of a good fart joke§§. A good fart joke. They haven't managed one of those in a fucking age.
But that was just a slow rot. What almost made me unplug the TV in rage and has properly put me off the whole show is Blurred Lines. That fucking song I heard about, but managed to avoid for most of last year. I avoided, at least, until I watched the generally trashy and sometimes amusing year-in-review type programmes over Christmas and they all fucking played this piece of shit. Everything about it, from the tone, the music to the lyrics just make anyone who likes it look like a cunt. Then they used it on Two and A Half Men. And I'm done. I'll muddle through to the end of the series and then it's getting wiped from the TiVo, because there are some lines that shouldn't be crossed, blurry or not.
* Finding my own way, you understand. I'm not some mindless sheep who follows things non-critically, I've told you this before. I can do independent intolerance.
** And then the final episode turned into this out-and-out nasty piece of fan service bullshit with queasy shades of misogyny just to get the skin really crawling. That's why any of us watch sitcoms, isn't it? To have our skin set to crawling. Right? RIGHT?
† Another unduly vilified figure as far as I can see. Fuck, I thought I could be intolerant. He's fucking Mila Kunis, yes we get it, move on.
‡ Charlie Sheen can't handle a character that doesn't share his stage name, it seems. He's been Charlie in Spin City and now again in Anger Management. There are probably more examples, but I just can't be bothered finding them. It's probably all the drugs he's done have turned his memory to mush. I have no real excuse for not researching this further.
§ The show already constantly jabs at the ridiculousness of him allowing Alan to stay, so they aren't unaware of the oddness.
§§ And that's just the tip of the tasteless iceberg. I'm actually quite hard to offend.
Will
No doubt I'll get a bit of stick for admitting I enjoy (or rather enjoyed) a show that's considered trash and a perfect target for ridicule. Fair enough. In a lot of ways I should have been part of the crowd catcalling the programme and decrying it as shit from the start. It's not as if I'm above that kind of thing, there are quite a few things I find myself getting on the bandwagon of disliking*, but I couldn't see what all the fuss was about.
In the last couple of series it's started to lose its enjoyment factor. It managed a half decent season after Charlie Sheen went off the deep end and started ranting about tiger blood and whatever else squirmed into his head through the coke-fuelled haze. Then it lost its way, and the fact there wasn't a 'half' man anymore became this great foghorn, blaring, "We have no idea what the fuck is going on! Keep watching anyway!" I can't help feeling they took their cue from ole Carlos Estevez.
What kept me watching when I first stumbled on the early episodes shown on Channel Five back in, like, the misty times of 2005 was that it was a little different from your average sitcom. It still had all those sitcom tropes: the canned laughter, the aggressive grip on the status quo and the growing implausibility of the premise. I mean it's the same with most sitcoms, the whole situation gets harder to maintain the longer they go on, like a frustrated erection. And Two and A Half Men is onto its eleventh series; it's starting to go a bit floppy. Friends only ran for ten series and by the last three it became a smear of unpleasant, mawkish shit**.
Mawkish has never been an accusation that could be levelled at Two and A Half Men. Yes it did go down the sentimental route on occasion and that was cool, it kept the characters feeling human – or as human as sitcom characters ever get. It needed a core of humanity because it had a gleeful air of cynicism, capering like a sadistic, sarcastic elf, giggling while it tells that guy with the broken back it feels so bad for him. Perhaps it was this that bothered so many people – the show wasn't about fluffy bullshit, it was about this narcissistic, partying, virtually sociopathic arsehole having his life invaded by his needy, slightly parasitic brother. There aren't a lot of warm fuzzies in that set up.
The cynicism continued in the portrayal of Jake, the kid in the show. He wasn't one of those smart arse moppets nor was he wise for his years and he certainly wasn't the hellion Bart Simpson was. He was a dumb, ordinary, kid and he mostly said and did dumb things, like real human beings of any age. Just like human beings of any age he would rarely say anything that was profound or smart, but on the one or two occasions he managed insightfulness it fleshed him out, made him feel a bit more real. The episodes where he was oblivious to all the adults' shenanigans were funny, though, and reminded me of myself sometimes..
Then there was Alan, played by Jon Cryer, who, before that was most famous for playing Duckie in Pretty In Pink. In the beginning of the show he was a sensitive loser, who managed to make all the wrong decisions. Most of these decisions had a habit of leaving him destitute. As the series went on it became clear he was shaped by the way he was treated by his mother and older brother growing up. Then Alan started veering into the land of the caricature. Out went the sensitivity and in came the amoral leech, changing him from a likeable, sympathetic character into one that makes you want to turn the TV off every time he's on screen.
This is where things get weird and it highlights the problem with US networks' obsessions with syndication – the magic twenty-two episode season. Long running US programmes start to creak very quickly because each series runs for so long. Stories get boring and repetitive, and you can almost see the whisky stains of burnt-out writers on the screen. It all gets stale and the networks obsess over it. This is where the greatest paradox comes in: change fucks everything up.
And not in a good way.
Fine, the production landed on its feet by creating a likeable, if a little boring new lead, Waldon, played by Ashton Kutcher†,. The changes made to Alan's character started to put a strain on the narrative abilities of the writers and the production as a whole. Then, in series eleven a new character was introduced: Charlie's niece, Jenny. Clearly supposed to be a substitute for Charlie Sheen's character. Jenny is a boozing, promiscuous narcissist, just like the Charlie‡ character; and, for some reason Waldon allows her to stay in his home§. There are three things wrong with this character: she's unpleasant, she's fucking boring and she doesn't fit. The producers should maybe have gambled on bringing a completely different character into the mix, maybe something that didn't make the, admittedly already shaky, internal logic of the show screech in unholy agony.
Since this character's arrival the stories have become unfunny messes. The programme meanders along trying to squeeze laughs out of us with increasing crassness and tastelessness. I've got nothing against crass tastelessness – I can get a giggle out of a good fart joke§§. A good fart joke. They haven't managed one of those in a fucking age.
But that was just a slow rot. What almost made me unplug the TV in rage and has properly put me off the whole show is Blurred Lines. That fucking song I heard about, but managed to avoid for most of last year. I avoided, at least, until I watched the generally trashy and sometimes amusing year-in-review type programmes over Christmas and they all fucking played this piece of shit. Everything about it, from the tone, the music to the lyrics just make anyone who likes it look like a cunt. Then they used it on Two and A Half Men. And I'm done. I'll muddle through to the end of the series and then it's getting wiped from the TiVo, because there are some lines that shouldn't be crossed, blurry or not.
* Finding my own way, you understand. I'm not some mindless sheep who follows things non-critically, I've told you this before. I can do independent intolerance.
** And then the final episode turned into this out-and-out nasty piece of fan service bullshit with queasy shades of misogyny just to get the skin really crawling. That's why any of us watch sitcoms, isn't it? To have our skin set to crawling. Right? RIGHT?
† Another unduly vilified figure as far as I can see. Fuck, I thought I could be intolerant. He's fucking Mila Kunis, yes we get it, move on.
‡ Charlie Sheen can't handle a character that doesn't share his stage name, it seems. He's been Charlie in Spin City and now again in Anger Management. There are probably more examples, but I just can't be bothered finding them. It's probably all the drugs he's done have turned his memory to mush. I have no real excuse for not researching this further.
§ The show already constantly jabs at the ridiculousness of him allowing Alan to stay, so they aren't unaware of the oddness.
§§ And that's just the tip of the tasteless iceberg. I'm actually quite hard to offend.
Will
Thursday, 14 June 2012
There's actual sunlight?
My, but I like my films. I enjoy sitting and letting myself be taken away by a story. Or failing that, I enjoy mocking the cack-fisted attempts at story thrown together, recorded and called a film.
In the last month or so I've been watching a lot of films. I've gone through more new (for me) films in the last few weeks than I've seen in the previous two years. It's left my head crammed with all sorts of silliness, so I thought I'd spray you with some nonsense about my film-viewing.
You won't be surprised to learn that a lot of this will be negative, with Viewing Joe that I am pointing and laughing at the pitiful abortions plastered on the screen in hopes of eking money from me. And they might want to entertain, too, but it's harder to prove that.
Micmacs is a prime example of a jolly good film. It has 'we are crazy French film makers' plastered all over it, but that's fine, because it's charming and you actually like this odd collection of characters and you can't help but applaud what they're doing.
Not something that can be said for Dread. I should have been on my guard the moment one of the half dozen or so producers was Clive Barker. Pushing aside my misgivings I watched and an age passed, humanity went extinct around me and a new civilisation of floating amphibious celeriac came to power. Then I look at the time: I'd been sitting for ten minutes. Arrrgh! What the fuck, man? Did you people set out to make the most boring, boneheaded film ever? You probably failed, but you weren't that far off. You didn't add any interest by tagging on a torture porn third act. Dead-eyed, humourless and boring are not how horror films should be. That's something you should've learned in primary school.
At least Rec. and Rec. 2 had a bit of life about them. They were still bunk, but they managed to make the 'found footage' film interesting to me. No mean feat after seeing the snooze-and-whine-fest The Blair Witch Project in the cinema (although, in fairness, it's a better experience on television, just). The films start off silly and just keep getting dafter as they go on. But they pull the case zero apocalypse thing that I find overdone and dull too.
Still, better than Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. A whinging, creepy main character surrounded by annoying caricatures isn't an inviting premise. The saving grace of this film are the fight scenes, but you have to wade through dreary navel-gazing scenes of unfunny dialogue to get to them. If I wanted to do that I'd watch The Ultimate Fighter on TV. I wouldn't be quite so annoyed by this if there hadn't been months a couple of years ago of people dribbling about how fucking awesome it was. You were wrong, you bastards.
The same applies to Super 8. This is another film that commits the supreme sin of being fucking tedious. I had the curious feeling when it was being advertised with the desperation of a failed writer trying to get you to buy his wares (what the fuck are you looking at, shit clomp, go about your business). And yes. it was terrible, stupid and dull, just like a Tory MP. The best part of it was the intentionally shit film they showed over the credits.
Weeks before I sat down to churn my way through Super 8 I'd decided to give Salt a go. I was presented with the world's longest pilot for an '80s television pilot, right down to setting up a baddie of the week structure. Clearly this was both fantastic and horrifying to watch in equal measure.
I've watched a lot more than that, but I'm not Rotten fucking Tomatoes, you want recommendations, go there.you bastards, stop expecting me to do WORK!
Will
In the last month or so I've been watching a lot of films. I've gone through more new (for me) films in the last few weeks than I've seen in the previous two years. It's left my head crammed with all sorts of silliness, so I thought I'd spray you with some nonsense about my film-viewing.
You won't be surprised to learn that a lot of this will be negative, with Viewing Joe that I am pointing and laughing at the pitiful abortions plastered on the screen in hopes of eking money from me. And they might want to entertain, too, but it's harder to prove that.
Micmacs is a prime example of a jolly good film. It has 'we are crazy French film makers' plastered all over it, but that's fine, because it's charming and you actually like this odd collection of characters and you can't help but applaud what they're doing.
Not something that can be said for Dread. I should have been on my guard the moment one of the half dozen or so producers was Clive Barker. Pushing aside my misgivings I watched and an age passed, humanity went extinct around me and a new civilisation of floating amphibious celeriac came to power. Then I look at the time: I'd been sitting for ten minutes. Arrrgh! What the fuck, man? Did you people set out to make the most boring, boneheaded film ever? You probably failed, but you weren't that far off. You didn't add any interest by tagging on a torture porn third act. Dead-eyed, humourless and boring are not how horror films should be. That's something you should've learned in primary school.
At least Rec. and Rec. 2 had a bit of life about them. They were still bunk, but they managed to make the 'found footage' film interesting to me. No mean feat after seeing the snooze-and-whine-fest The Blair Witch Project in the cinema (although, in fairness, it's a better experience on television, just). The films start off silly and just keep getting dafter as they go on. But they pull the case zero apocalypse thing that I find overdone and dull too.
Still, better than Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. A whinging, creepy main character surrounded by annoying caricatures isn't an inviting premise. The saving grace of this film are the fight scenes, but you have to wade through dreary navel-gazing scenes of unfunny dialogue to get to them. If I wanted to do that I'd watch The Ultimate Fighter on TV. I wouldn't be quite so annoyed by this if there hadn't been months a couple of years ago of people dribbling about how fucking awesome it was. You were wrong, you bastards.
The same applies to Super 8. This is another film that commits the supreme sin of being fucking tedious. I had the curious feeling when it was being advertised with the desperation of a failed writer trying to get you to buy his wares (what the fuck are you looking at, shit clomp, go about your business). And yes. it was terrible, stupid and dull, just like a Tory MP. The best part of it was the intentionally shit film they showed over the credits.
Weeks before I sat down to churn my way through Super 8 I'd decided to give Salt a go. I was presented with the world's longest pilot for an '80s television pilot, right down to setting up a baddie of the week structure. Clearly this was both fantastic and horrifying to watch in equal measure.
I've watched a lot more than that, but I'm not Rotten fucking Tomatoes, you want recommendations, go there.you bastards, stop expecting me to do WORK!
Will
Tuesday, 10 April 2012
Flicky-clicky! The Art of Intolerance.
The last couple of posts have been very writer-centric. I may have already alienated folks. Now I reckon I'll alienate a couple more. Now, how can I do that?
It's a love/hate relationship I've had since I was young. Like most people of my generation, I suppose, but being the introverted antisocial troll that I was, I took it a bit further. I won't go into just how insular I was, you might cry and I don't want anyone getting their keyboard all soggy on my account.
As I've got older though, I haven't watched quite as much television. Other diversions have vied for my attention: computer games, writing, reading, going out to (hey look at that, finally!) socialise and, of course, women. But I always go back, quite often to disappointment and repeats.
My current deep disappointment is aimed at programmes like Jersey Shore and The Only Way is Essex. These are programmes that I'm put off of the moment I see trailers for them, as they look like the most vapidly lazy programming. They all centre around the worst that humanity has to offer, which wouldn't be so bad, if it weren't for the feeling that the characters (because let's all be honest here, that's what they are, there aren't any real people, just actors looking for an easy break) are being held up as role models. Now, I can't say for certain (and I'm not some big city lawyer), but I'm sure that the original intent was to mock these orange caricatures. Instead what we have is a world in which Snooki (urg, can't people see the producers are taking the piss?) has a lucrative book deal. Yes, a woman who is supposed to look and act like she has trouble reciting the alphabet has a book deal, and I can't get la- er, published*.
Yeah. It annoys me. They clog up the airwaves with as much mediocrity as soap operas. We all know the reason for it, smart arse. I know why I don't like having my toe crushed by a mallet, doesn't change my opinion on it.
Another kind of 'reality' television that I have less intolerance for are cookery programmes (take a look at this for more on my cookery programme fascination). I can hear you smirking, fucko. Nothing wrong with enjoying cooking and eating. It's life enriching. You should think about that the next time you're choking down a sausage supper with enough cholesterol to clog the London Underground Central Line.
But, in this, dear reader I have my prejudices. Let us take the sainted (or at least ordained) Nigella Lawson. I used to quite like Nigella as a programme host, outside of the weird, fetishy sexualisation (and that her father is a Tory and she followed suit, boo! Hiss!) of food she seemed quite personable. Then I started noticing something, something that made me blink in slight confusion and now it makes me want to attack the TV with a fucking tenderising mallet: snobbishness. There's always room for a bit of snobbishness in life, but not if it's presented as THE ONE TRUE PATH. Ingredients that seem innocuous to the layman become a benighted spectre to Nigella Lawson. Use the wrong (read: least expensive) kind of capers and pal you better have a good fuckin' excuse. It's infuriating and quite often it's utterly arbitrary. Use what you can use and fuck what some rich woman on the TV says.
Speaking of crazy women cooks. My wife and I have been watching the The Little Paris Kitchen which involves woman-child eternastudent Rachel Khoo proving that she's almost mental enough to start throwing buckets of molten butter over her balcony onto any heathen who deviates a tenth of an iota from TRUE FRENCH PATISSERIE. Seriously, this woman is bonkers. She lives in a Paris flat that's barely large enough for an adult and runs a restaurant from her optimistically named front room. A lot of her cooking looks rather nice, but her style gives an over-romanticised view of France and Paris in particular that doesn't quite match up to the living quarters she has. Perhaps she's deluded or perhaps she really is happy there; all I know is I'd be gnawing my arms off because of the claustrophobia.
Or maybe I'm deluded and should step away from the remote, verrry slowly...
*(Yes, yes, I understand that there's a demand for it. I'm not ignorant of these things. I'm still allowed to rail and have the opinion that it's peddling mediocrity and general human shittiness.)
Will
Television!
As I've got older though, I haven't watched quite as much television. Other diversions have vied for my attention: computer games, writing, reading, going out to (hey look at that, finally!) socialise and, of course, women. But I always go back, quite often to disappointment and repeats.
My current deep disappointment is aimed at programmes like Jersey Shore and The Only Way is Essex. These are programmes that I'm put off of the moment I see trailers for them, as they look like the most vapidly lazy programming. They all centre around the worst that humanity has to offer, which wouldn't be so bad, if it weren't for the feeling that the characters (because let's all be honest here, that's what they are, there aren't any real people, just actors looking for an easy break) are being held up as role models. Now, I can't say for certain (and I'm not some big city lawyer), but I'm sure that the original intent was to mock these orange caricatures. Instead what we have is a world in which Snooki (urg, can't people see the producers are taking the piss?) has a lucrative book deal. Yes, a woman who is supposed to look and act like she has trouble reciting the alphabet has a book deal, and I can't get la- er, published*.
Yeah. It annoys me. They clog up the airwaves with as much mediocrity as soap operas. We all know the reason for it, smart arse. I know why I don't like having my toe crushed by a mallet, doesn't change my opinion on it.
Another kind of 'reality' television that I have less intolerance for are cookery programmes (take a look at this for more on my cookery programme fascination). I can hear you smirking, fucko. Nothing wrong with enjoying cooking and eating. It's life enriching. You should think about that the next time you're choking down a sausage supper with enough cholesterol to clog the London Underground Central Line.
But, in this, dear reader I have my prejudices. Let us take the sainted (or at least ordained) Nigella Lawson. I used to quite like Nigella as a programme host, outside of the weird, fetishy sexualisation (and that her father is a Tory and she followed suit, boo! Hiss!) of food she seemed quite personable. Then I started noticing something, something that made me blink in slight confusion and now it makes me want to attack the TV with a fucking tenderising mallet: snobbishness. There's always room for a bit of snobbishness in life, but not if it's presented as THE ONE TRUE PATH. Ingredients that seem innocuous to the layman become a benighted spectre to Nigella Lawson. Use the wrong (read: least expensive) kind of capers and pal you better have a good fuckin' excuse. It's infuriating and quite often it's utterly arbitrary. Use what you can use and fuck what some rich woman on the TV says.
Speaking of crazy women cooks. My wife and I have been watching the The Little Paris Kitchen which involves woman-child eternastudent Rachel Khoo proving that she's almost mental enough to start throwing buckets of molten butter over her balcony onto any heathen who deviates a tenth of an iota from TRUE FRENCH PATISSERIE. Seriously, this woman is bonkers. She lives in a Paris flat that's barely large enough for an adult and runs a restaurant from her optimistically named front room. A lot of her cooking looks rather nice, but her style gives an over-romanticised view of France and Paris in particular that doesn't quite match up to the living quarters she has. Perhaps she's deluded or perhaps she really is happy there; all I know is I'd be gnawing my arms off because of the claustrophobia.
Or maybe I'm deluded and should step away from the remote, verrry slowly...
*(Yes, yes, I understand that there's a demand for it. I'm not ignorant of these things. I'm still allowed to rail and have the opinion that it's peddling mediocrity and general human shittiness.)
Will
Thursday, 24 December 2009
Oh, I can't be bothered changing the channel...
“On the first day of Christmas TV gave to me,
Hours of depressing soap operas!”
It’s the season to be merry, have fun, relax (kind of…well not really, but it’s a nice thought, isn’t it?), overeat, over drink and sit down to watch some bad television. Y’know, the stuff that the channels have been hooting and hollering about since the end of October.
Every year, for those of us who watch any television, we switch on the goggle box whenever we manage to roll out of bed and after we’ve unwrapped our presents and we hope beyond reasonable hope that this year it will be different. This year our expectations will be, if not met, at least given something to chew on.
We will look out on the Arctic nightmare the outside world has become, this year we’re looking at heavy snowfalls and sub zero temperatures, and feel cosy as we curl up in front of the television.
(The bookies must be shitting themselves this year. Hoping that we’ve had all the snow we’re going to get in 2009. Y’see, snow lying on the ground doesn’t make it an official White Christmas, snow falling does.)
We want to be enthralled, entertained, made happy that its Christmas and that we don’t need to interact with our relatives, alternatively grinning at us like they want eat some vital part of our anatomy or scowling at us like they want to eat some vital part of our anatomy. Yes, you’ve given us some lovely gifts and I’m most grateful, honestly, but right now could you stop staring at me like you’re one of the cast from ‘The Hills Have Eyes’ and let me inure myself to the season with something mindlessly amusing flickered into my brainstem.
Yes, we get the odd gem of good telly. Things like ‘Wallace and Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death’ and a good film from four years ago will be highlights, but they tend to be few and far between, stuck amongst things like the Queen’s Christmas Speech and any number of rank smelling dramas and television shows that wouldn’t be allowed on air at any other time.
I mean Noel Edmonds is a master of bringing us foetid television, the worst being (and I’m not the only person to note this and I may even have been pointed in the direction by Charlie Brooker, so what? This is the internet, I don’t no stinking original ideas!) ‘Noel’s HQ’ and ‘Noel’s Christmas Presents’. Horrific examples of celebrity guilt schmaltz that would make Frank Capra break out into hives.
Then you have the catering to the soap opera junkies. These poor, zombified souls have been steadily hooked more and more by these insidious dramas, going from being shown two or three nights a week to encroaching on every night. Now the vicarious living that’s offered by these programmes is ingrained in quite a portion of the UK population.
It probably wouldn’t be so bad if the portrayals of life in these fictional places was, y’know something akin to real life with ups and downs, but the wisdom of dramatic imperative for programmes like ‘Coronation Street’, ‘Emerdale’, ‘River City’ (which is only in Scotland, the rest of the UK can heave a sigh of relief about that) and the grand master of them all ‘Eastenders’ is that life for working class people is a never-ending slog from one kind of deep misery to another. The characters listlessly go through their joyless existences until they are swept off the mortal coil in some way so tragic that it stops you from wanting to get up in the morning. Unless a character comes into the show when they are older, they are unlikely to reach anything approaching old age – most of them are lucky if they make it out of their teens. And don’t even get me started on the miraculous metamorphoses that take place.
The grand high wizard of this crushing misery is ‘Eastenders’, a programme so morose that you’d be lucky to see an actor smile in a month, let alone an episode. These people live such uncertain, tragic and short lives that you wonder why anyone would want to live in Albert Square. Murder, rape, insanity, disease and disaster are staples of soap opera life, but only ‘Eastenders’ is innovative enough to pile it all onto the one character. Yes. Yes! They are visionaries in their desperation to keep the viewers coming to the show.
And the Christmas episodes are the jewel in the miserable crown of the ‘Eastenders’ year. A day when they have to double the depression. We are treated to an hour long episode filled with less Christmas cheer than in the city centre of Tehran.
Which brings the thought of what the writers would do if they could get away with it. I mean, they seem to be so keen to portray life with such grey joylessness, and bleak desolation, why not step it up, take it to the next level? I’ve been thinking about this and it wouldn’t be that hard. It would actually be cheaper than their normal offerings, whether they used special effects…or not.
It start like this: you open with the ‘Eastenders’ theme tune as normal, then you would have the characters all sitting in the Queen Vic. All of the tables and chairs have been removed so that everyone has to sit down. As you have come to expect, no one is smiling, but this time there is quite a concrete reason for this – they are all holding shotguns in their mouths.
Slowly the camera pans across their faces, the deadness created by their grinding lives shining there, perhaps a hint of pleading in the younger characters’ eyes. No one says a word, they just stare long and deep into the camera.
Then the person at the end of the line fires. And so it goes, they blow their brains, making a tune: ‘Jingle Bells’ in 12-gauge minor.
Once this spectacle ends the camera drifts across the bleeding, twitching corpses, showing us the growing pools and rivers of blood as they form on the wooden floor. In the background a baby cries and over the sound track plays Adagio for Strings. This continues for the rest of the hour-long running time, going into silence once the music stops, the only sound now the crying baby.
And now ‘My Family’.
Now, I know that this is what people want, but sometimes perhaps the channels might want to consider thinking a bit differently and have something fun, even funny for us to watch after gorging on our Christmas meal.
A nice dream.
And on that note I say Merry Christmas and, if I don’t feel another rant coming on beforehand, a very happy New Year!
Will
Hours of depressing soap operas!”
It’s the season to be merry, have fun, relax (kind of…well not really, but it’s a nice thought, isn’t it?), overeat, over drink and sit down to watch some bad television. Y’know, the stuff that the channels have been hooting and hollering about since the end of October.
Every year, for those of us who watch any television, we switch on the goggle box whenever we manage to roll out of bed and after we’ve unwrapped our presents and we hope beyond reasonable hope that this year it will be different. This year our expectations will be, if not met, at least given something to chew on.
We will look out on the Arctic nightmare the outside world has become, this year we’re looking at heavy snowfalls and sub zero temperatures, and feel cosy as we curl up in front of the television.
(The bookies must be shitting themselves this year. Hoping that we’ve had all the snow we’re going to get in 2009. Y’see, snow lying on the ground doesn’t make it an official White Christmas, snow falling does.)
We want to be enthralled, entertained, made happy that its Christmas and that we don’t need to interact with our relatives, alternatively grinning at us like they want eat some vital part of our anatomy or scowling at us like they want to eat some vital part of our anatomy. Yes, you’ve given us some lovely gifts and I’m most grateful, honestly, but right now could you stop staring at me like you’re one of the cast from ‘The Hills Have Eyes’ and let me inure myself to the season with something mindlessly amusing flickered into my brainstem.
Yes, we get the odd gem of good telly. Things like ‘Wallace and Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death’ and a good film from four years ago will be highlights, but they tend to be few and far between, stuck amongst things like the Queen’s Christmas Speech and any number of rank smelling dramas and television shows that wouldn’t be allowed on air at any other time.
I mean Noel Edmonds is a master of bringing us foetid television, the worst being (and I’m not the only person to note this and I may even have been pointed in the direction by Charlie Brooker, so what? This is the internet, I don’t no stinking original ideas!) ‘Noel’s HQ’ and ‘Noel’s Christmas Presents’. Horrific examples of celebrity guilt schmaltz that would make Frank Capra break out into hives.
Then you have the catering to the soap opera junkies. These poor, zombified souls have been steadily hooked more and more by these insidious dramas, going from being shown two or three nights a week to encroaching on every night. Now the vicarious living that’s offered by these programmes is ingrained in quite a portion of the UK population.
It probably wouldn’t be so bad if the portrayals of life in these fictional places was, y’know something akin to real life with ups and downs, but the wisdom of dramatic imperative for programmes like ‘Coronation Street’, ‘Emerdale’, ‘River City’ (which is only in Scotland, the rest of the UK can heave a sigh of relief about that) and the grand master of them all ‘Eastenders’ is that life for working class people is a never-ending slog from one kind of deep misery to another. The characters listlessly go through their joyless existences until they are swept off the mortal coil in some way so tragic that it stops you from wanting to get up in the morning. Unless a character comes into the show when they are older, they are unlikely to reach anything approaching old age – most of them are lucky if they make it out of their teens. And don’t even get me started on the miraculous metamorphoses that take place.
The grand high wizard of this crushing misery is ‘Eastenders’, a programme so morose that you’d be lucky to see an actor smile in a month, let alone an episode. These people live such uncertain, tragic and short lives that you wonder why anyone would want to live in Albert Square. Murder, rape, insanity, disease and disaster are staples of soap opera life, but only ‘Eastenders’ is innovative enough to pile it all onto the one character. Yes. Yes! They are visionaries in their desperation to keep the viewers coming to the show.
And the Christmas episodes are the jewel in the miserable crown of the ‘Eastenders’ year. A day when they have to double the depression. We are treated to an hour long episode filled with less Christmas cheer than in the city centre of Tehran.
Which brings the thought of what the writers would do if they could get away with it. I mean, they seem to be so keen to portray life with such grey joylessness, and bleak desolation, why not step it up, take it to the next level? I’ve been thinking about this and it wouldn’t be that hard. It would actually be cheaper than their normal offerings, whether they used special effects…or not.
It start like this: you open with the ‘Eastenders’ theme tune as normal, then you would have the characters all sitting in the Queen Vic. All of the tables and chairs have been removed so that everyone has to sit down. As you have come to expect, no one is smiling, but this time there is quite a concrete reason for this – they are all holding shotguns in their mouths.
Slowly the camera pans across their faces, the deadness created by their grinding lives shining there, perhaps a hint of pleading in the younger characters’ eyes. No one says a word, they just stare long and deep into the camera.
Then the person at the end of the line fires. And so it goes, they blow their brains, making a tune: ‘Jingle Bells’ in 12-gauge minor.
Once this spectacle ends the camera drifts across the bleeding, twitching corpses, showing us the growing pools and rivers of blood as they form on the wooden floor. In the background a baby cries and over the sound track plays Adagio for Strings. This continues for the rest of the hour-long running time, going into silence once the music stops, the only sound now the crying baby.
And now ‘My Family’.
Now, I know that this is what people want, but sometimes perhaps the channels might want to consider thinking a bit differently and have something fun, even funny for us to watch after gorging on our Christmas meal.
A nice dream.
And on that note I say Merry Christmas and, if I don’t feel another rant coming on beforehand, a very happy New Year!
Will
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