2007 - Dawn of the Dumb

by Charlie Brooker

  It’s not perfect (it sags slightly in the middle, and one character feels like a stock TV nasty), and it’s not always subtle, but it’s the best thing on the box this week by a long chalk. People need to see this. And by people, I mean you.

  A roomful of squealing Josephs

  [14 Apni 2007]

  Musicals are not to be trusted. They’re not right. They’re creepy. If the performing arts are a family, musicals are the suspect uncle inviting the kids to sit on his knee and play horsey. Serial killers hear show tunes in their heads while slicing up their victims. Musicals aren’t right.

  And right now, there’s no escaping them. Saturday night TV has become one big amateur chorus line, what with Any Dream Will Do on BBC1 and Grease Is the Word on ITV. You can’t move for grinning, twirling bastards bursting ineptly into song. It’s like being trapped in a Halifax commercial.

  The BBC’s effort is a follow-up to last year’s Sound of Music search-a-thon, which posed the question ‘How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?’ and successfully answered it with the words ‘Connie Fisher’. This time, they’re trying to fill the lead role in Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat— a musical so uniquely irritating, even its title makes you grind your teeth.

  The programme itself is the campest example of mainstream BBC entertainment since Larry Grayson took over the Generation Game in 1978: Graham Norton, John Barrowman and a roomful of squealing Josephs. Yes, Josephs. They call the aspiring stars ‘Josephs’, which somehow sounds like an insult, especially if you were a schoolkid circa 1981, when the word ‘Joey’ was regularly employed as a term of abuse on the hilarious basis that it was the name of a man with cerebral palsy who’d featured heavily on Blue Peter. It was a cruel and infantile way for kids to get an easy laugh.

  Anyway, this bunch of Joeys are set to annoy the nation for weeks to come. Two stand out: Lewis, a blond-haired Gillette-advert-in-waiting who looks like he’s auditioning for a role in Wilmott-Brown: The Early Years; and sweet-natured Johndeep, pronounced ‘John Deep’—perhaps the greatest pornstar name in history.

  The live studio shows start tonight, which is just as well, because last week’s ‘boot camp’ episode was so choppy and packaged it felt like an extended trailer, packed with obviously manufactured moments of drama, yet oddly devoid of substance even though emotions amongst the Joeys were clearly running high. I’ve never seen so many grown men crying. Either someone kept letting off spectacularly eggy guffs in the rehearsal room (I’m looking at you, Denise Van Outen) or they’re taking the whole thing far too seriously.

  Or maybe they were simply scared of Andrew Lloyd-Webber, whose repeated arrivals were accompanied by a burst of Phantom of the Opera organ music on the soundtrack, which had the unfortunate effect of making him seem like a monster in a silent movie, which isn’t hard, given that he looks like the sort of thing that normally breathes through gills on its neck.

  Actually, that’s unfair. He’s not scary-faced at all. He looks like Droopy. He does! Google it. See for yourself.

  While the BBC’s Joey Hunt restricts itself to sifting through irritating men, ITV’s Grease Quest is also open to irksome women. They’re seeking a Danny and a Sandy to play the lead roles in a new production of the popular high school musical. ITV have two main advantages here: (1) thanks to the movie, Grease is more familiar to viewers than Joseph; (2) they’ve got David Gest on the panel, who’s always entertaining (even if he doesn’t speak, you can simply marvel at his face, which coincidentally looks like Lloyd-Webber impersonating Paul Simon).

  As a programme, it’s all packaged together in precisely the same way as The X Factor, and I mean precisely: the main difference being that in addition to singing, the wannabes are also required to dance and act, thereby affording the producers three separate opportunities to humiliate them. It’s telling that so far, we’ve only been shown ‘acting’ from the terrible auditionees, where it’s used as an extra bucket of shit to throw over them. Just how brilliant at acting were your shiny happy chosen ones, then, eh? Eh? Eft?

  Further proof that edit suites, like musicals, are not to be trusted.

  Steamy hand-on-Bible close-ups

  [21 Apni 2007]

  One hundred per cent uncensored judicial procedure! Steamy hand-on-Bible close-ups! Hardcore gavel-banging action! Girls who love oaths and want to swallow YOUR testimony! Yes! It’s Sex in Court (4)—the show in which sexual intercourse and the British legal system are combined at last, to create the creepiest bit of broadcasting in quite some time.

  It works like this. Find a couple with some kind of sexual dysfunction (she can’t climax without using a vibrator; he insists on shrieking ‘You can’t handle the truth!’ just before ejaculating, etc. etc). Invite them into a convincing replica courtroom. Find a real-life judge who doesn’t mind presiding over this sort of’case’, and twelve members of the public prepared to form a ‘jury’. Switch the cameras on. Done.

  Prospective masturbators lured by the title are likely to be disappointed. The programme largely consists of close-ups of old women on the jury listening attentively to sexual problems being discussed using explicit terminology. The judge, who also features a lot, resembles a cross between the dead one out of Two Fat Ladies and the Queen of Hearts from Disney’s Alice in Wonderland. In a recent edition she discussed cunnilingus at length with an eighteen-year-old who wanted his girlfriend to let him perform oral sex because ‘Every woman would like to get her pussy licked—even you, your honour—you’d like to get your pussy licked, innit?’ Occasionally, they call an ‘expert witness’—often an old doctor who holds up medical diagrams of genitals and spends rather too long pointing out the sensitive bits.

  In other words, it’s less erotic than choosing a door handle from a Dutch home-fittings catalogue. The only way they could make it less arousing would be to intermittently cut to footage of a squatting farmhand crapping into a pail—shot from the pail’s point of view, so it looks like a fat brown snake squeezing through a quoit. In fact it’s so powerfully unsexy, I suspect it’s part of some government initiative aimed at curbing procreation. Remember that scene in A Clockwork Orange where they feed Alex some kind of nausea drug and force him to watch footage of rapes and beatings until he can’t contemplate either without feeling ill? This is more effective, and doesn’t require drugs. After half an hour of Sex in Court, you won’t be able to have sex for weeks without haunting close-ups of jurors’ faces drifting through your mind’s eye. That must be what it’s designed to do, because it doesn’t seem to serve any other purpose. Weird.

  Speaking of weird, a quick update on 24 (Sky One) seems in order, simply because the current season surely constitutes the most awesome example of wholesale shark-jumping in TV history. First they detonate a nuclear bomb in the Los Angeles outskirts in episode four, which initially caused a bit of panic and general running-around, but now, a few hours later, doesn’t seem to have affected the infrastructure or population one iota (in fact, round episode seven, there was a hilarious shot of the mushroom cloud on the horizon, which then panned down to a motel where a maid was blithely going about her minimum-wage job as usual).

  The terrorist plot, which is so incomprehensible as to be meaningless, has already involved Islamic terrorists, Russian generals, an Australian, an autistic hacker, and Jack’s own brother and father. People have been tortured with injections, carrier bags, cigar clippers and drills. Last week a terrorist chopped his own arm off with an axe. The vice president is nuts, and the president, who’s been in and out of a coma, is about to launch a nuclear strike against an innocent country just because someone called him a pussy.

  To cap it all, the blond boy from cloying 19805 sitcom Silver Spoons has turned up, playing an ultra-tough CTU agent. All they need now is a robot, and the transformation from must-see thriller to flailing joke is complete.

  Then again, I’ve said that before, and I’m still hooked on the poxy thing. It’s worse than bloody smoking.

  In no way s
imilar to The Apprentice

  [28 April 2007]

  Everyone likes to think they do a difficult job. After all, if anyone could do what you do, what’s the point in turning up? You might as well be replaced by an empty cereal box with a face drawn on it. Makes sense from your boss’s point of view: he doesn’t have to pay a box anything, and he can kick it or shag it as often as he wants, without fear of a tribunal. In many ways it’s the perfect employee.

  All of which explains why people feel the need to exaggerate how tough their day’s been, even though listening to someone bang on about what a nightmare they’ve had at work is twenty times as boring as hearing them describe their dreams, i.e. so boring it almost qualifies as physical assault.

  ‘Oh God right first I spend all morning on this report and then the email goes down so I can’t send it and then this cow from HR turns up and…’ FOR CHRIST’S SAKE SHUT YOUR THICKHOLE.

  Yes, most jobs are tedious beyond measure. Which is why it’s far more entertaining to see an ostensibly reasonable occupation rendered impossible for the sake of entertainment, as Deadline (ITV2) proves. The setup: a bunch of glittering stars try their hand at producing a weekly celebrity magazine under the aegis of Janet Street-Porter, the Fleet Street legend famous for sounding like she’s rolling five broken dice in her mouth whenever she speaks.

  Each week, there’s a tense showdown in the boardroom (sorry, ‘meeting room’) during which she fires someone (although she doesn’t actually say ‘you’re fired’, she says ‘clear your desk’, thereby convincing the viewer what they’re watching is in no way similar to The Apprentice ).

  Janet’s assisted by two deputies: Darryn Lyons and Joe Mott. Mott (played by a young Kenny Everett) spends most of his time quietly moping at the edge of frame in a stupid flat cap, a bit like Jack Tweedy in this year’s Celebrity Big Brother. He seems almost depressed, which is possibly something to do with having to share an office with paparazzi supremo Darryn Lyons, a monumental bell-end who looks precisely (and I mean precisely) like Mel Smith playing a King’s Road comedy punk, circa 1981.

  This being a fabricated telly job, the bosses will have been instructed to behave like rude, uncompromising, dick-swinging bastards throughout—an opportunity Lyons gleefully seizes with both hands. He struts, he barks, he bollocks, and he bangs on and on about how important it all is, in the dullest and most macho manner possible, as though he’s single-handedly leading an SAS task force into Syria. It can’t be much fun being bellowed at by a man who looks like a forty-six-year-old Woody Woodpecker impersonator undergoing a messy divorce, especially when he’s shouting at you just because you failed to get a decent photograph of Pete Doherty—something the world needs like increased carbon emissions.

  Yes, because unlike a real editorial team, the celebrity trainees are expected to take their own photos as well as writing copy, which makes it about as accurate a depiction of the magazine production process as an episode of Ugly Betty. Of the trainees, only Dom Joly, who seems to have turned the whole thing into some surreal personal adventure, shows any promise whatsoever. The rest just mill around bumping into each other like blind chickens. Considering this, and the fact that 50 per cent of the job (i.e. typing) isn’t very televisual, the end result is far more entertaining than it has any right to be.

  Still, there can’t be many more careers left for TV to ‘re-imagine’. We’ve had farming, hairdressing, teaching, catering, and now journalism. A different job each week. It’s like Mr Benn. What next? Celebrity Balloon Factory?

  Actually, how about an all-star branch of Ryman’s? Yeah! It’d have to be needlessly tough for telly purposes, obviously. The boss kicks you in the nuts each time a stapler goes missing. Instead of customers, it’s drunken giraffes. And every Friday, the shop bursts into flames for no reason. And one of you WILL get fired.

  A terribly serious drama

  [5 May 2007]

  In life, certain things are designated ‘funny’ and others are designated ‘not funny’. You’re supposed to laugh at the former and nod sagely at the latter. And while what officially constitutes ‘funny’ has altered throughout the years—at one point it was custard pies and fart noises; now it’s awkward pauses and catchphrases so simple a dog could recite them—the contents of the box marked ‘not funny’ have remained largely unchanged throughout history. War crimes, terminal disease, children’s funerals…they’re the polar opposite of a laugh riot, and to react with anything other than pained reverence would be inhuman.

  Unless you can’t help it. Even funerals can be funny in the right circumstances. Say one of the pallbearers blows off, and they drop the coffin, and a dead kiddy spills out and everyone flails about trying to pop it back in his box, but they keep trapping its head in the lid, and its arms are all poking out, and it’s all so inappropriate that before long you’re doubled over, slapping your thighs and hooting your lungs dry in front of his horrified parents. Any reasonable person would forgive you for tiiat.

  Likewise, I expect to be forgiven for guffawing my way through Saddam’s Tribe (C4), a terribly serious drama about Saddam Hussein’s family based on interviews with his daughter Raghad, which inadvertendy straddles the funny/not funny divide. On the one hand, it’s the inside story of an insane, brutal, real-world regime in which torture and murder were commonplace. On the other, it’s a bit like Dynasty. And once you’ve decided it’s a bit like Dynasty, it’s impossible not to laugh, even when Saddam walks around shooting dogs in the head and things like that.

  Speaking of Saddam, he comes across as a less subde version of lan McShane’s Al Swearengen character from Deadwood (minus the swearing). Plus he’s got an oaky, baritone voice which makes him sound like Joss Ackland doing the voice-over for a gravy commercial. And for some reason I can’t put my finger on, he reminded me visually of Captain Pugwash. I doubt this is the effect they were aiming for.

  Stealing the show, however, is his son Uday- an outright psychopath highly reminiscent of Al Pacino in Scarf ace. In reality, Uday was apparendy an unspeakable bastard who raped and tortured people for breakfast. The fictional Uday, however, lights up the screen like you wouldn’t believe. He’s played with absolute conviction by the naturally charismatic Daniel Mays, who had me in fits, not because he gives a bad performance (he doesn’t—quite the reverse, in fact), but because by the time he’s shown gleefully machine-gunning a crowded cocktail bar, my brain had already decided none of this was real and was actively willing him to commit even greater atrocities.

  At one point I actually shouted ‘Go on Uday, have him!’ at the screen, which is pretty weird behaviour however you look at it.

  On this evidence, they should turn the whole thing into a sitcom (the theme tune’s already been written: ‘They’re creepy and they’re kooky/ Mysterious and spooky/ They’re altogether ‘ooky/ They’re Saddam’s family’). I’d Sky Plus the lot.

  The problem is that the current trend for fictionalised accounts of real events is inherently camp. The Queen, for instance, was bloody ridiculous. And there can’t be many stories left to cover. Saddam this week, Robert Maxwell last week, Blunkett, Blair and co. already in the bag…Who’s next?

  My money’s on Sir Clive Sinclair. A ninety-minute TV drama spanning the period from the introduction of the ZX8i, taking in the triumph of the ZX Spectrum and the failure of the Sinclair QL, culminating in the ill-fated launch of the Sinclair Cs. Starring David Thewlis as Sir Clive, and John Thomson as a young Alan Sugar waiting in the wings. And with Uday Hussein thrown in for no good reason. You’d have him torture Rod Hull with a hammer or something, just to sex things up. Ratings dynamite—and audience chuckles—guaranteed.

  Obsessed with Katie Hopkins

  [19 May 2007]

  According to the popular imaginary superhero Jesus Christ, it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. In either case, it’s not impossible. To solve the camel/eye-of-needle puzzler you need a liquidiser, an extremely tiny s
pout, a steady hand, and a shit-load of patience. To get a rich man into heaven, get him to take part in a televised public atonement exercise, such as Channel 4’s Secret Millionaire, or Filthy Rich and Homeless (BBC2)

  The set-up: five loaded members of the public give up their cosseted existence to live like homeless people for ten days—sleeping on the streets, begging for scraps of food, arguing with drunks—accompanied only by a cameraman who leans in for a good hard watch each time they snap and start beating the pavement with their fists, shrieking and wailing and begging to be taken home.

  Among the volunteers is Clementine Stewart, twenty-one-year-old-daughter of pint-sized ITVnews-bellower Alistair Stewart. In ‘normal life’ she spends most of her time riding horses and chortling. Here, she’s dumped, late at night and in sub-zero temperatures, in the ‘crack triangle’ of Soho, and commanded to find somewhere to kip. It’s hard not to feel sorry for her as she tearfully wanders the streets with her mangy sleeping bag, desperately seeking a dry shop doorway to lie down in. Hard, but not impossible. Bastards will laugh themselves blue. (Clem spoils things the next day, spectacularly breaking the rules by hanging around outside the This Morning studios until spotted by family friend Fern Brit-ton—who immediately whisks her into a dressing room for a wash, a drink, a bite to eat and an illicit £20 note.)