TV that s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-s itself out

Did anyone see Dispatches last night? It featured an earth-shattering exclusive:

SHOCK!
Pre-packaged sandwiches can be bad for you!

HORROR!
Big posh sandwiches full of cheese and meat can have a lot of fat in them!

OUTRAGE!
Some factories that prepare these sandwiches aren't that clean or nice!

I actually sat through the full hour of this show, with Mr Third String C4 News presenter striding around shopping centres and looking at pigs' hooves in a bin and turning his nose up. God it went on. A mate said it was one minute of actual information strung out over an hour. Too bloody right.

I've been railing against Pret and Eat for not putting any info on their sandwiches, saying that because they're made fresh on the premises they can't exactly tell what's in each one. What tosh. I've eaten sarnies from at least fifteen different Prets and they're all the same. So what if it's +/- 10% - at least there's a guide. You can check on their website but that's not particularly practical when you're in a sandwich shop. Although I've got an iPhone so perhaps...

Well, anyway, the trouble with this show is all down to C4 trying to be good. A full hour of current affairs every Monday, that's half an hour more than poor old wee half-hour Panorama. Look, Ofcom, we're super-nice and public-spirited! Ignore the hour of Big Brother on after, we have a 50 minute news bulletin then a small documentary thing made by a tiny company about something quirky then an HOUR of hard-hitting factual programming.

But it's not. It's padded as much as David Walliams dressed up as a fat lady in Little Britain. It'd been far better as a half-hour. You would've lost nothing apart from Alex Thompson (yes I've remembered his name) hassling innocent sandwich eaters outside Subway.

The one thing I got from it was that Boots are quite good - fairly healthy and clearly labelled. I went there this morning and bought a salad. I'm not sure if that's a good thing, being influenced by the television and all that, but there you go. A programme I'm berating Changed My Life.

I'm nothing if not complex, am I not?

Better late than never...

OK, I was away when the finale of Doctor Who was on. Also my Tivo froze and didn't record it, meaning it had to be reset. This took three full days, one of which was poor old Teevs sorting through hundreds of channels using computer tehcnology from 1987 no doubt.

But when the little Tivo cartoon man did his warm up run and swung into the corner of my screen I shed a tear. Sniff. It would've been Sky+ otherwise, even though I only have one satellite socket and therefore it wouldn't work properly.

Techie issues aside, I managed to record it again on Sunday, thanks to the BBC running out of money and rescreening it/deciding to treat viewers who had malfunctioning PVRs to a welcome encore screening (DELETE AS APPLICABLE)

My main thought was that if, in the last ten minutes, a massed army of walking kitchen sinks stomped in I wouldn't have batted an eyelid. Russell T Lady threw everything else into it. Mickey! Rose's mum! K9! That kid off of Sarah Jane again! After the first part when Harriet Jones, Former PM turned up too.. as well as Dempsey out of Dempsey and Makepiece... if Servalan out of Blake's Seven came in riding on Jabba the Hut it wouldn't have surprised me in the slightest.

A load of old hokum, to be sure - shaky story, two Doctors (one with a slightly worse suit and somewhat less terrific hair), Donna having some of the Doctor in her (steady!), Captain Jack hamming away mercilessly (well, the 5% of his face that haven't been Botox'd into maskness), plot holes totally ignored (that Dalek squishy starfish thing saying "one of the Doctor's family will die" - er, will they?), and a fairly shitty ending with poor Donna becoming a simpleton again ("but she's better wif' you" sniffed grandad Bernard Cribbins as Real-Doctor-Fab-Hair looked on blankly) and Rose having to settle for the alternative world and Fake-Doctor-Merely-Lovely-Hair... a bit poor to be frank.

On the other hand...

Fantastic, incredible music. Special effects that were simultaneously great yet blended in perfectly. For God's sake - K9!!!!!1!111!!! Jokes. Utter Britishness, through-and-through. Totally gripping from start to finish, tv drama at top pitch. I bloody LOVED it.

The thing is Who is ALWAYS a load of old hokum. A man travelling in time in a police box? Yeah right... Regenerating every so often when the lead actor leaves or dies? Very convenient for the producers, ain't it? Sonic screwdriver? Don't make me larf. The Face of Bo? Please....

None of this matters. It's just rollocking good fun. As said before, best show on telly full stop. I'm normally not a big fan of the end-of-series ones but this was a cracker - as the ratings and audience appreciation figures reflect.

Well done Russell T. Now go off and write something as groundbreaking as new Who or Queer As Folk or Bob and Rose or the one with Ecclestone being Jesus II: The Sequel. You can do it Russie boy! We're counting on you...

And back in Wholand, we've Cybermen at Xmas to look forward to. The hairdressers in Cardiff must be stocking up on Mr Tennant's hair gee as we speak. He does have the most stunning hair though, doesn't he? A tribute to the Hair Product Industry of this fine nation.

Holiday tv musings

OK, apologies for the gap in postings - yeah, I've been away. Italy and Spain, very nice ta for asking.

I managed to miss all the six-hour variety shows with ladies in bikinis singing songs to fat moustachio'd men in white suits this time. Sky News seems to have spread everywhere, complete with a hardly-ever updated text list of stories where the UK ads go. CNN is there, as ever.. they've now got ads to replace the "CNN is shown at these fine hotels" captions they used to run.

But a few English language entertainment channels were being shown in Spain. Fox was one, otherwise known as FX here - complete with original soundtrack US voices but Spanish-voiced ads and trailers. So I got to see some eps of Family Guy and those fair-but-strong-district-attorney-against-crooked-local-mayor shows that fill up the endless hours on that channel.

Even more interestingly (well, to a tv anorak like me) they subtitled the songs in Family Guy but nothing else. I assume cable operators stick on a different audio track on the voices but not over the songs. Indeed some shows I've made for kids have been translated in a similar way, despite the target audience being mainly unable to read. Simple really - redubbing voices = cheap, re-signing songs = ooh costly.

From what I could make out via my fairly useless language skills (ie not much in Italy, a bit in Spain), their tv news was labelling the G8 summit as a triumph for Gordon Brown. Err, probably. He was in it a lot and the words 'triomphe', 'Zimbabwe' and 'climatic controllio' were used over pics of our socially inept leader. And, um, it said people thought that in a paper I read on the plane back.

All the news I saw was being presented by Carla Bruni-style gorgeous-but-strict looking ladies in immaculate short-skirted-posh-jacketed outfits. In Italy she was made to stand up and lean against a high round table, like out of a pub with no stools left. There was a distinct lack of "LIVE!" whooshes or CG graphics, which made me sad, but the occasional featurey piece with sad tinkley music over footage of old ladies in black weeping. I have no idea what made them cry, save it wasn't the lack of sound effects or cartoon reconstructions on their evening news.

But my favourite bit of foreign telly was watching the same European hospital drama in two different countries and realising it was either (a) not Italian; (b) not Spanish, or (c) not the product of any one country, as the words didn't fit the lips in either nation.

How Not To Make A Sitcom

I've been trying to write a comedy show over the past few weeks. OK, so I've been doing other things, stuff that might actually pay my wages some day, but this idea for a sitcom has been churning away in the back of my head and I've finally put finger to keyboard and started to write it.

God knows if it'll be any good at all, and the chances of the People What Run Proper TV commissioning a sitcom from my babyshow company are miniscule, but I'm in one of those 'just give it a go' moods.

Except now, obviously, I'm avoiding the 'go' and blogging instead. It's because I've lost my chocolate bar. I wish that was an innuendo or allusion but, disappointingly, it's a simple fact.

My frankly illogical and pointless decision to try and write a sitcom - something that happens at least once a year - has reminded me of my long-dead cartoon sitcom about just-dead people. I'd just started my own company, came up with this idea, and set about raising some funds to make it.

And - what a break! - someone I'd worked with introduced me to a very rich man who wanted to fund comedy. Result, eh? Well, not really. Firstly, this man might have been very rich but he certainly wasn't going to give actual money to me without a fight. Meetings, parties, booze, meals - that was all fine, lots of lovely schmoozing in great places, but genuine money for scripts or characters or the existing-in-the-real-world items that might get a broadcaster interested in the show - nah...

Secondly, he was somewhat... er, slightly... now, how should I put it? Incredibly, astonishingly, overwhelmingly rude, arrogant, unfunny and loud. And, lastly but not leastly, he was disliked by almost everyone in the comedy industry - as in totally hated and bad-mouthed and cursed about. Until he'd turn up at the Groucho Club, card behind the bar, when everyone smiled and laughed at his puns and agreed to do reams of work for no money but more wine.

One such meeting - or 'meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeding' as he'd call it - had me and my techie co-company owner being picked over by an Animation Expert to see how and why our cartoon systems were so special. The truth was that they weren't, it was just we used computers and programs designed to create video game animation for the telly. And video game animators, who were a tenth of the price of proper ones.

We couldn't tell anyone that - we thought they'd copy us, and our paranoia was fuelled by lots of beer at 11am in the morning for a lunch at 2pm - so we made up loadsa shit. My mate said he hard-wired the computers himself. I had to stifle a giggle. The expert asked if he could see one. I said no, the software was secret. My mate hid his face behind the menu, pretending to cough to cover his laughter. The expert asked if we could bring a computer to his office, not even switch it on, just so he could see what we'd done to it. My mate said the computers couldn't leave our building, they were attached to the floor for 'stability'. I had to go to the toilet to laugh for ten minutes.

After my boss threatened to pull the plug on the whole thing Mr Rich Man finally promised some money. It turned up months late but it was something. In the meantime he got on with asking big-name writers and voices to do things for free. The people who wrote a pilot script have since written some mighty fine sitcoms. The voices in the show were even more famous then than they are now - and you'd recognise all their names today. The animation looked good for the time, if a little scratchy ten years' later.

But no-one bought the cartoon. Mr Rich Man mishandled the sales process appallingly, being all bolshy and salesman-y about it. That dun't work in the hallowed world of the meeeeja.

He got the then-head of C4 comedy (now Very Senior C4 Boss Person) in at the same time as the Sky head of comedy (now Very Senior BBC Comedy Person), and made them wait outside his office together. They smiled politely and then both rejected the show immediately. He went to the biggest comedy independent producer and boasted he could make the show himself. They said they were sure he could and therefore there was no need for them to be involved.

In desperation, I went to the head of ITV comedy on my own. She loved the idea, liked the pilot and script - yay! Then she asked to meet the backers, and we then sat through a disastrous meeting where Mr Rich Man said he didn't want any input from ITV as their comedy record was shit. So ITV said fine, they'd give no input and, obviously, no money either, and we never heard from them again.

It's easy to smile at the memory of the endless writers' meetings that would start with cocktails at noon and meander on all day. One such affair ended up with me, my comedy writer mate and a very old alternative comedian sitting on a balcony of someone's flat in Soho making up limericks. I have no idea who's flat it was but their fridge was well-stocked with fabulous wine.

But it was a grim and depressing time, to be honest, and has really scarred my view of the funtastic world of tv comedy.

Reality Show Clip Time

The title is from The Soup, the world's best tv show ever (see http://www.eonline.com/on/uk/shows/thesoup/index.jsp?edition=uk ) when host Joel McHale takes the piss out of the worst of America's reality shows. Well, that's the caption that pops up, but Mr McHale usually just looks into camera and screams "it's reaali'eee' hoe ipppp ime!!"

My thought today, with the meeja websites full of Apprentice bumper ratings news, Big Brother bullying rows and the like, is why... well, er, just... WHY?

Apprentice is massively popular - as well it should be, a well-produced show and a worldwide format. BB is less popular generally but hugely high-rating for that all important (to C4 and advertisers) yoot audience.

But I can't be arsed with either of them, and was wondering why.

BB first. My view is that the first series was genius - original, compelling, a good mix of people and a genuinely interesting premise. Series 2... well, fatigue set in and I thought I'd kinda seen it all before. And now it's up to series 9. Or 15 if you include the celebrity versions and that very odd thing they did last time instead of the celebrity thing.

The reason I find it unwatchable is simple. The contestants - and that's what they are, not 'housemates' - know the construct. They are aware that by being chosen to be on the show that they've made it. By the time they step out of that limo to enter the set - and that's what it is, a set, not a 'house' - they're famous. And that's what every spoddy yoot watching wants to be. Famous. Even if it's for being thick, like millionaire Jade Goody, the average young viewer watching just wants to be An Celebrity.

So there's no jeopardy at all in the format any more, as all the contestants have won. The meeja often forget or ignore the actual winner in favour of someone else (Ms Goody versus that Christian virgin man from a Scottish isle who disappeared after winning). The contestants will forever have the prefix "former Big Brother star" in front of their name. Someone somewhere will always recognise them. And that, to them and to the audience, is champion.

So what's the point of watching these people sit in a set dressing up, getting drunk, being split into groups and slavishly following the dictats of a bunch of producers in a darkened room, pretending it's all Very Important Indeed. When it's not. As the contestants in series one sang occasionally "it's only a game show". Bet that annoyed the producers no end.

Apprentice is different, in that it's all pre-recorded and the press, oddly, go along with the conceit of it happening sorta-kinda-now. The fact the Guardian do a live web blog when it's being broadcast is one of the oddest things I've ever encountered. There are preview tapes of the show available. Why watch it live and type stuff up like it's new? It's not. It's on tape.

In some ways this show is more harmful than the wannabe-Heat-cover-star mentality of BB. It encourages the idea that to succeed in business you have to be a right twat, mouthing corporate speak, destroying all others and being a sneaky, underhanded, evil arsewipe.

What a load of shite. Yes, in some businesses you need to be ruthless. But if you act like a total twunt all the time, no-one you work with will like you. And at some point in the future, when you go for an interview for a better job, the person in front of you will be someone you shafted previously. And they'll smile sweetly as they hire someone else...

The even funnier thing is Sir Alan Sugar being presented as this incredibly successful business guru. Er, right. SAS (as no-one abbreviates his name) runs a small company that doesn't really produce much of note. When did you last actually choose to buy an Amstrad product? You may have a Sky box with that brand on, but you get sent them for nowt when you subscribe. SAS runs a company no-one would actually choose to buy a product from. His brand name is worth as much as Saisho or Matsui, the two pretend names that Dixons and Currys used for their own brand rubbish cheapo tellies*

Amstrad's last products, that awful email phone and the anti-wrinkle zapper, are the sort of thing you see advertised in the back of Sunday supplements, like elasticated-waist fat pants and baths with doors in them. SAS makes lots of money, but that's from property he's accumulated - wisely and very efficiently, sure, but not exactly rocket science. Amstrad itself makes little profit.

But, oh no, working for him is like worshipping at the feet of a modern day God of business. Pffft. Loada shite.

So Apprentice doesn't work for me either as it's a bunch of over-gelled hateful sales people doing crappy challenges to get a pointless job they probably won't even take up. Where's the jeopardy? The contestants on this show are the BB contestants for a slightly upmarket and older demographic - being interviewed by Steve Wright on Radio 2 or the Mail, instead of Moylesy and the Star.

Or maybe I'm just getting old.

*Dixons and Currys purposely picked Japanese-sounding brand names for their own stuff as people liked buying Japanese brands, as they were seen as reliable and high-quality. Anyone who had the misfortune to own a Saisho tv or a Matsui hi-fi (my hand is in the air at this point) will know these were, to be frank, unreliable creap crap.

Best ever tv?

There was a bit of fuss recently in The Times when one of their reviewers described one Monday night as the best ever night of tv in ten years. I'd link to it but searching timesonline.co.uk for 'best tv ever' doesn't really work.

Anyway, the poor tv reviewer was laughed at by all and sundry for his views. I must admit his choice of a Monday night was a bit poncey - all Dispatches, Panorama and some arts' programmes.

But he has a point.

Last Saturday night was a top tv treat, and no mistake. You can say what you like about those 'find-a-musical-star-and-advertise-the-musical-too' BBC One shows but they're good to watch, full of familiar toons and earnest new faces. And I'd Do Anything was very well made, the great Barry Humphries adding a layer of intellect to the constant Norton gags about Nancies.

So there was the final of that, with a sublime ep of Doctor Who in the middle, easily the best of the series so far. And boding so well for the next lot, as Little Mr Moffat who writ it will be in charge of the whole kit and caboodle when Russell T Ladyboy leaves.

Over on ITV1, there was the twelve-hour final of Britain's Got Talent, surely the only time in history Piers Morgan and talent have been billed together. But what a great show, reminding me why Antandec are the best presenters of live tv in the business today, looking utterly fantastic, great simple format and, yes, Simon Cowell doing what he does best. He's got three facial expressions - his "God, this is pants" face, his bored face and the double-take-look-of-shock-at-how-good-it is-after-initially-being-bored face.

He used all three over and over again. Amanda Holden only has one face, as it's been botoxed to hell, and cried slightly less than she did last year. Probably due to botoxing her tear ducts.

And what can you say about Piers Morgan? He's possibly the least likely ITV1 face ever, and joins Anne Robinson in the list of ex-journos with massive tv success to their name.

But again, a great show. The winning breakdancey boy will, er, not be the world's hugest star in my opinion, but great story and marvellous show.

And for the poncey ones, there was a repeat of Andrew Marr's peerless doc on modern Britain.

Top tellytastic night! And here's an odd fact - there were more people watching network tv in the UK (pop:60m) than in the USA (pop:360m I think) last Saturday, fifteen million alone watching Talent. And they say broadcast tv is dead.

Pah!

PS: Eurovision obviously rumbles on. Dame Wogan Of Floraldance echos what was said last week on this very blog:-

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/2058833/Eurovision-song-contest-Terry-Wogan-blames-Eastern-European-racism.html

Why-on-myou-nee nul pwoins

As you probably can't tell by my attempt at phonetics in the title, this is about Eurovision.

I managed to miss it as a televisual event for the first time for ages, but have iPlayered it... well, the bits I could manage to sit through. Favourite part: Lord Terrence of Woganville's line when a rather, er, hefty lady singer came on stage. "Just so you know, it's not over when she's finished", or words to that effect.

As usual with Eurovision, it was lavishly staged, stunning to watch and full of hilarious singers and the compulsory Worst Costumed Act Ever (pirates!) thanks to Lordi's win a few years back. And Sir Wogan of Irony was on top form, gently poking fun at something that has long lost any sense of being an actual song contest.

And then the voting. Ah yes, the voting.

Now it's true it's always been stupid and arbitrary, the Scandis all voting for each other, Greece and Cyprus shenanigans, and our pact with the Irish. But there was always a chance anyone could win. Not now. The block voting of the new Eastern Europeans means, realistically, no Western European country can ever win now.

But I don't think it was a mistake to let these countries in. It's good that everyone is there, even those bits of countries that no-one can remember, especially if it provokes Duke Wogan of Terrytown into even more splutters of indignation.

Singing in English is also mentioned but, if anything, that evens things out more as neighbouring countries tend to have similar languages. Err, well, I have no actual fact to base that opinion on, but it's a blog so fact isn't really required.

I've even heard the war in Iraq blamed for making the UK even more unpopular. Hmmm. I don't think people boogeyed to Andy Dustmanthing on Saturday then decided to vote for the Russian lad with his shirt undone due to deception on WMDs or our policy in Helmand province.

(Although I've also read interweb gossip that lots of the newer democracies in the east are known to have 'issues' with race, and the UK being represented by a black man would have influenced their votes. Disgraceful, but there you go)

Here's my solution. I think the rot started earlier, with letting the public vote on the whole thing. Let's face it - the public can be mighty stupid. Lordi and 'Hard Rock Hallelujah' prove that conclusively.

The public can also be very canny. Azerbaijan are more likely to vote for the Huge Powerful Neighbouring Former Superpower Wot Provides Their Heat And Water than, for example, Belgium. Who provide, um, some chocolate they can't afford.

Bring back the juries of 'music experts' I say. Scrap the phonelines and go back to the way it always was. Or, simply, ignore the country that comes top in any vote. That is almost always the one the block vote goes to, and it's too hard to fiddle them to come second, so leave out the one that gets the most.

OK, OK, it's totally undemocratic but neither was the old system. And I agree with Woges that block voting will end up pissing off the major funders of the competition - ie us - and that the competition will die. It will be dead for me the day our beloved Irishman decides he won't commentate on it any more, even if the ratings-hungry BBC won't scrap it as, yet again, it reached a massive audience for them on a Saturday.

There are more important issues at stake here than viewing figures, oh BBC highups. And, yes, I do realise the ridiculousness of using the word 'important' in a sentence about Eurovision.