2007 - Dawn of the Dumb

by Charlie Brooker

  As for how she’s gone, I’ve no idea—at the time of writing, no preview tapes of tonight’s finale were available. I like that. Makes for more of an event. Not enough of them these days. As for series two as a whole…well, it’s been bumpy. My series three wish-list runs as follows:

  Curb the zaniness. David Tennant’s Doctor alternates between ‘boggle-eyed schoolroom wacko’ and ‘concerned intergalactic statesman’ almost without warning. There’s too much of the former, not nearly enough of the latter, and precious little in between. A bit of mucking about is fine; too much and it all starts to resemble The Adventures of Timmy Mallett in Space.

  Enough de’j& vu, already. Too often, the Doctor seemed scripted as a seen-it-all-before smartarse hell-bent on greeting every creature, artefact, space station and gizmo with a loudly over-familiar ‘Oh, it’s you’ bordering on camp. At its worst, this is a bit like going on holiday with someone who’s visited your destination before, and behaves like a squawking tourist guide the whole time you’re there, pointing out the best cafds and choosing from the menu on your behalf until you feel like ramming their digital camera up their arse, just so they’ll be able to take home a picture of something they haven’t seen before. I know the Doctor’s been exploring the universe for aeons, but a touch more humility would be nice.

  More two-parters, please. Several three- and four-parters wouldn’t go amiss either. Partly because it’d be nice to give some of the stories more space to breathe, and partly because I’m presuming the economies of scale involved might make it possible to do away with the occasional ‘cost-cutting’ talky episodes altogether.

  More episodes directed by Euros Lyn. Not only were his episodes the most visually interesting, but his name sounds like a space station and therefore looks really cool in the credits.

  My suggestions for next companion: Bez; Wayne Rooney; the entire cast of Channel 4’s Coach Trip; a purple CGI blob with a retractable anteater’s proboscis, voiced by Tim Westwood; Lisa Simpson; Chloe from 24; Charles Kennedy; Pink.

  More scary monsters. OK, so tonight we’re being treated to an all-out bundle between Daleks and Cybermen. That’s great. But some new regular nasties would be nice. Not the Slitheen; they’re just silly. I want to see an all-new race of humourless, fascistic bastards worthy of ranking alongside the old favourites. Oh, and they should be armed with drills. Not lasers. Drills.

  Stop the continuity announcers talking over the end credits so we can hear the theme tune properly.

  Anyway, that’s my two pennyworth. Said gripes and suggestions are, of course, born out of love. Although I found myself in the uncomfortable position of utterly hating one episode this series (the Love and Monsters wack-a-thon starring Peter Kay), and although it’s a series aimed primarily at an audience yet to experience puberty, it’s still the most consistently inventive, lovingly-crafted British drama on TV. Fact!

  Punishing the viewer at home

  [15 July 2006]

  The world is full of unexpected comebacks. Lazarus. Elvis. Noel Edmonds. Whooping cough. And now Love Island (ITV1), which has returned to our screens despite being the butt of every single topical joke cracked during 2005. Back then, of course, it was known as Celebrity Love Island— ITV have since dropped the C-word from its title, partly because the word ‘celebrity’ had become a talisman of failure, and partly because this year’s cast are so shockingly un-famous they make last year’s bunch look like the line-up for a new Ocean’s Eleven movie.

  Here in London, there’s a man who hangs around Oxford Circus preaching with a loudhailer. He’s popularly known as the ‘Be a Winner Not a Sinner’ guy, because that’s what he tends to shout at the thousands of tourists and shoppers who scurry past each week. With the possible exception of Sophie Anderton, I can comfortably state said Sinner/Winner guy is 10 million times more famous than anyone on Love Island. And I for one would love to see what he’d make of it. Let’s have a whip-round: we could have him choppered out there by this time next week.

  Two of the Love Island inmates—namely Gazza’s stepdaughter and Pierce Brosnan’s son—have been included simply because they’re related to famous people. This generous widening of the fame net is an exciting development for all of us. Soon you won’t need to share genetic information with a star to be considered a celebrity yourself- sharing a postcode should suffice. I’m pretty sure the woman who presents Ten Years Younger lives round the corner from me, therefore I automatically qualify for Love Island 2007, during which I intend to enjoy a steamy romp with a woman who thinks she once sat a few seats down from Adam Woodyatt on a train.

  Still, famous or not—and they’re not—at the time of writing, it’s too early to say whether the show itself will turn into a car crash or just a debacle. It’s designed, of course, to become an entertaining version of the former—and let’s face it, since no one there’s got much status to lose, they might as well throw caution to the wind and really get the nation talking. Here’s hoping by the time you read this they’ve decided to simply gather on the beach and rut like dogs in full view of the cameras, pausing occasionally to dig holes and crap in the sand. Fearne Cotton’s face should be a picture.

  Meanwhile, this year’s glaringly butterfingered Big Brother (C4 ) thunders on with its recent House-Next-Door recruits on board. Of the four, two are boring (Michael and Jennie) and one’s a walking joke (Spiral—picture a member of Goldie Lookin’ Chain impersonating Dougal from Father Ted ). The inclusion of Jayne, however, marks an important milestone in the programme’s history: for the first time, Big Brother has decided to abandon its usual housemate-torturing antics in favour of directly punishing the viewer at home.

  An entire Trisha studio audience condensed into one bellowing chub-armed fishwife, even in the self-obsessive wilds of the BB house Jayne stands out as an unusually raucous attention-seeker, which is saying something. Something bad. In real life she must be unbearable: truly military-grade awful. Her voice is so jarring, each time she opens her gob I feel like someone’s cracked a paving stone over my head and danced around cackling. What’s next, BB1 How you going to top this Jayne experiment? Fire metal spikes directly into our eyes?

  The remaining housemates, meanwhile, are starting to look like hopelessly institutionalised prisoners. Pete’s just dull, Nikki’s endless tantrums have ceased to be amusing and now border on Exorcist-level disturbing, while Richard’s on the verge of talking all the bullshit out of his body—soon there’ll be nothing but a hollow whistling sound whenever he tries to speak. The only one I’ve got any time for is Aisleyne, who I find trashily endearing. So let her win. Why? Because she’ll have to do.

  Bastards’ Hole

  [5 August 2006]

  The trouble with dumb names is they tend to stick. Snickers. P. Diddy. Snakes on a Plane. Absurd the first time you hear them, through repeated use they become as commonplace and boring as words like ‘cup’ or ‘pen’. I reckon I could even walk into a shop and ask if they had any Cilh’t Bang without feeling preposterous, such is the extent of my exposure to the advert. Bang and the dirt is gone. Of course. It all seems so normal.

  Dragons’Den (BBC2) represents the latest example of this phenomena. You could comfortably write everything I know about the world of finance on the side of a coin, but even I’m aware that the word ‘dragon’ is not standard city jargon for ‘potential investor’. A ‘dragon’ is a mythical lizard that breathes fire and chases knights around in old paintings.

  The first time I saw it, I simply couldn’t come to terms with Evan Davies’s dogged insistence on casually using the word ‘dragons’ in every other sentence throughout the show. He kept saying things like ‘Mike’s onion-dispenser has impressed the dragons’, or The dragons seem angered by Sue’s belligerence’, and I kept falling about laughing.

  This time round, I scarcely noticed. They’re dragons now, and that’s that. Normality has shifted to accommodate it. Congratulations, Evan Davies: mission accomplished.

  Mind you, I can’t
help wishing they’d called it Bastards’ Hole instead. After all, it’s far more fitting, and even after three series I’d still hoot my face to snot whenever Davies said ‘The bastards have spotted a flaw in Simon’s business plan’, or Two of the bastards are still interested’, or—well, each time he used the word ‘bastards’, basically.

  There are two new bastards this series: Deborah Meaden and Richard Farleigh. Deborah’s a furious-looking, middle-aged, disapproving matron type, which means Davies has to be careful not to use the word ‘dragon’ when the camera’s pointing her way. She’s far sourer than her female predecessor, simperin’ Rachel Elnaugh, who looked like she’d invest in any old new-age shit dangled in front of her. You wouldn’t catch Deborah Meaden hanging a dream-catcher over her bed. A burglar, perhaps, but not a dreamcatcher. If the first episode’s anything to go by, she (a) hasn’t smiled since the Belgrano went down, and (b) could chew the tin balls off a Cyberman. Fuck with the Meaden and you’re getting owned, bitch.

  Nor, it seems, would fucking with Richard Farleigh be a sensible option. He’s clean-cut and sports a head shaped like a cube—in fact, he vaguely resembles a slightly squashed Dolph Lundgren, although his accompanying Australian accent automatically makes you think he used to be a regular cast member in Home and Away, even when you know he wasn’t, because you actually went and looked it up on the IMDb. He seems to be filling the role Doug Richard played in previous series: the firm but fair technology expert who knows his stuff. He’s slightly more annoying than Doug ever was, mind. In his ‘bit’ of the show’s title sequence, Davies’s voice-over explains how mind-bombingly wealthy and successful Farleigh is, while we watch him winning a game of tennis, and somehow this grates more than the footage of Duncan Bannatyne waterskiing.

  Apart from that, nothing seems to have changed: as ever, the budding entrepreneurs are a mix of the inept, the deluded, and the occasional level-headed player, and most of the fun comes from watching them having their dreams pissed on—although disappointingly, Peter Jones, traditionally the most heartless dragon, shows signs of mellowing. At one point this week, he virtually begs someone not to sell their house and jeopardise their family’s future to finance the production of a insanely rubbish-looking ‘multimedia table’ the dragons have just scoffed at.

  Come on, Jonesy. Compassion is for wimps. Two series ago, you’d have laughed in the guy’s face. You’re a dragon! Breathe fire! Keep this up, and it’ll be renamed Pussies’ Corner before you know it.

  Pointing away from the problem

  [12 August 2006]

  So, as Big Brother (C4/E4) staggers to an end like a beaten hound tottering in the vague direction of an exit, what has it taught us? Is this simply an exercise in mindless entertainment, or is it something deeper than that? When we look at Big Brother, do we grasp what it means to be alive in the early part of the twenty-first century?

  No. It’s a gaudy circus act in which apes get goaded with sticks while the public throw rocks at them. As the world floats ever closer to a third world war, TV shows like Big Brother are essentially little more than brightly coloured, lightbulb-studded arrows, pointing away from the problem.

  Ah well. We’ve all got to die some day. So without further ado, let’s dish out the gongs for this year’s Screen Burn Big Brother Awards.

  The Instant Star award goes, obviously, to Nikki, the unstoppable tantrum machine. A bit like a female Tasmanian devil with the face of Ruth Gordon from Harold and Maude, Nikki’s already been signed up for a post-show series in which she ‘attempts to hold down a job’. If that isn’t a comment on the frothing cauldron of madness into which we’ve all been plunged, I don’t know what is. What next? Someone who can’t wipe their own arse?

  Speaking of arses, the award for Most Forehead-Gnawingly Objectionable Git goes to Sezer, the single most self-regarding housemate Big Brother’s ever seen. Strutting round the house with a face like a perineum with tiny black dots drawn on it for eyes, he was the human equivalent of a cock-shaped novelty pen with ego problems. I can say no more about Sezer for legal reasons—i.e. I’ll get up and kill an innocent bystander if I have to think about him much longer.

  The Most Irritating Voice award goes to Richard, whose pseudo-psychological babble filled the house like a radio tuned to Bullshit FM. On entry, Richard described himself as a ‘sexual terrorist’, which was one of those wacky soundbites auditionees like to bung in to improve their chances of selection—an unfortunate choice in this instance, since the phrase ‘sexual terrorist’ conjures up images of indecent assault and violent death, both of which would’ve been preferable to what he actually delivered—weeks of tedious monotone burble.

  Most Misunderstood Housemate was Aisleyne, who I stubbornly continue to admire, even in the face of close friends bellowing that I’m wrong. I refuse to believe she isn’t quite a nice person, actually.

  The Biggest Suckbowl Award goes to Mikey, the do-nothing Scouser with a brain of wet mud. Mikey was little more than a docile, incomprehensible sloth, who spent half his time accusing other people of ‘arse-kissing’ and the other half slumped by the bridge to nowhere emitting a low hum. Watching him was like sitting through a is-hour fly-on-the-wall documentary about the world’s thickest shop-window dummy.

  Finally, the Butterflngers Award for Clumsiest Housemate goes to Big Brother himself, who punctuated this year’s show with one thumping cock-up after another. The ‘rigorous selection process’ threw up unstable housemates, hunger strikers and a sulky posho who didn’t want to be there in the first place; the ‘Golden Ticket’ contest delivered a boring silicone-titted ghost who’d been auditioned and rejected several times in the past; and the ‘soundproof Secret House had walls made of atom-thin toilet paper.

  Even when the twists worked, there was something unfortunate about them: as the ‘prison’ task took place, the news broke that a former contestant had been arrested on suspicion of rape; suddenly the sight of housemates trudging around in cartoon jail rags felt downright haunting.

  Anyway, Big Brother 7: that was that. Big Brother 8 is scheduled to take place in the glowing centre of an irradiated war-torn wasteland formerly known as Earth. See you there.

  No one loves the ugly

  [26 August 2006]

  Mirror, mirror on the wall—please stop throwing up. Yes, it’s a hard life being ugly. People stop and stare, then wish they hadn’t. You ruin photographs just by being there. And worst of all, no one ever truly loves you. Oh, they pity you, sure. But love? Hah! Love’s the sole preserve of the slender, symmetrical ones. No one loves the ugly. And even if they do, they’re just being patronising—like girls who squat down and chat to the tramp by the cashpoint for five minutes to make themselves feel better.

  Actually, that’s nonsense. Despite our obsession with looks, anyone with an ounce of sense realises the old ‘it’s what’s inside that counts’ cliche’ is true—although you have to learn it the hard way. Years ago, I had a girlfriend who was so beautiful I once burst into tears simply watching her sleep. From the outside, an angel. But inside? Cold to the point of inhuman. I might as well have fallen in love with a shoebox.

  So sod looks. Besides, unprettiness has its advantages. I could, if I so chose, grind a broken bottle into my face, then punch all the shards in, safe in the knowledge that I couldn’t be any more hideous than before. How liberating is that? Sometimes I can scarcely contain the joy.

  But not everyone’s as comfortable with their own grisliness, even when they aren’t grisly in the first place. Witness the poor bastards scattered throughout BBC2’s Body Image season, paying particular attention to the lost souls showcased in Too Ugly for Love (BBC3) and My Small Breasts and I (BBC3).

  The former is a documentary following three people with body dysmorphic disorder—a mental condition whose victims become obsessed with their own imagined ugliness. Convinced passers-by are recoiling in horror, they resort to hiding indoors or behind a mask of make-up. In reality, they look fine: in their heads, they’d
make the Elephant Man sick up through the hole in his bag.

  The whole thing would be comic if it weren’t for the obvious agony involved. One man is so convinced he has gruesome dark circles under his eyes (which he doesn’t) he spends his entire life wearing opaque sunglasses. A woman despises her face so much her family virtually bankrupt themselves paying for repeated nose-jobs—which naturally, she’s never satisfied with. Eventually, she’s had so much surgery her conk is in danger of collapse. Yet she presses on, convinced she’s disgusting. Which she absolutely isn’t.

  My Small Breasts and I, meanwhile, follows three beautiful, little-titted women on a mission to improve their busts. One obsessively pumps them up using a terrifying suction device; another contemplates surgery; the third undergoes a bizarre ‘photo therapy’ which basically involves a photographer talking her into stripping off for some pictures.

  Now, speaking on behalf of all heterosexual males for a moment, no man worth his salt gives a sailor’s tug how big a lady’s chest is. We could get aroused simply glancing at a crude charcoal sketch of a single boob scrawled on the side of a shed. Place an actual, live pair of boobs in our immediate proximity and you’ve already fulfilled our every waking dream. Who cares how many atoms they’re made out of?THEY’RE BOOBS, FOR CHRIST’S SAKE! CAN’T YOU GRASP THE SIMPLE SOARING MAJESTY OF THAT?

  Anyway, it’s not hard to see where much of this dissatisfaction stems from. Celebrity twat mags circle patches of cellulite and run away cackling. TV is a warped slideshow of false perfection, backed with an alarming tendency to pillory anyone who doesn’t match up. It’s acceptable, for instance, for Simon Cowell to tell a homely wannabe that they’re simply too plain to be famous—we meekly shrug and accept that he’s just being honest. And in today’s stinking world, he is.