Prison Break

Welcome to the blogpost on Prison Break, or Why Some Shows Should Only Have One Series Really.  It’s been a light week from a TV viewing perspective.  New home ownership has seen my evening and weekend hours spent away from my favourite screen (and I haven’t bought a telly yet), whether that be spiralling in Old Kent Road B&Q because I don’t know what drill to buy, or spiralling at home because I’ve drilled fixings into the wrong bit of wall and totally destroyed the home I’ve saved for ten years to buy, or spiralling with happiness now that I’ve finally got a blind up over the bedroom window, sparing my new neighbours (and any innocent passer-by) the daily torment of my genitalia appearing in their line of vision while I’m putting my pyjamas on.  And yes, the whole blog so far has been about me putting a blind up.  Buying a flat has made me the most boring person in the world and I know this because my friends have not been shy in confirming it to me.

But this means we are indeed trawling the archives of old stuff I watched when my life still had hope.  Why prisons?  Well, thanks for that question.  It’s nice when we’re interactive, isn’t it?  I’ve been partly inspired by the return for a seventh and final series of Orange Is The New Black.  One of the good things about my flat (cue more boring chat – let’s call it flat chat) is that I have a bath again, but I get bored in there quickly, as lying inert in scalding water waiting for Epsom salts to assuage the cramps of my Crossfit-overtrained limbs and unravel the angry knots in my back isn’t as entertaining as I would like.  I’ve therefore been taking my laptop into the bathroom with me, positioning it away from the water on an old duvet box and enjoying me a bit of on-demand premium content while my glasses steam up and my fingertips go all pruney.  This is how I got through the mind-boggling second series of Dark (even more wildly ambitious that the first outing – watch it now).  I then thought I could catch up on the latest The Handmaid’s Tale in there (this is over a number of bathing occasions – I haven’t just been in the tub for weeks in one go) but Channel 4 only have the catch-up rights to that for twenty-five minutes or so after broadcast.  So off I went to trusty old Netflix to catch up with the ladies of Litchfield.  I’d forgotten who most of them were, but I soon remembered that I loved them.

Prisons, then…  A friend first showed me Prison Break during my final year of university.  We’re no longer in touch, but that is not a result of his boxset recommendations.  When people ask where I studied, I like to retort with a bit of modesty and say Hogwarts.  I’m not actually a wizard, but people’s viewing experience of the Harry Potter films is the best way to bring to life the realities of my tertiary education.  I loved learning so much that I got myself into ye olde Oxford University, where diversity meant someone didn’t go to Eton (I didn’t) and a Scout was a local woman who smoked in your bedroom whilst wearing a tabard and changing an empty bin.  I’m only naming the place for context: my college days were spent working hard.  Not as hard as I should have, but the workload was inordinate.  The approaching final exams, then, which accounted for 100% of my degree, rendering the whole four-year faff (with year abroad) an excessive preamble, only served to ramp up the fervent book-learning.

But each night we allowed ourselves an hour of leisure before bed, and that’s where the Prison Break DVDs got whipped out.  My friend wanted me to watch the whole of season one to demonstrate its mastery of the art of suspense.  He was righter than ever.  Each instalment ended on such an earth-shattering cliff-hanger, that we were succumbing to the concept of Just One More Episode long before I realised my life would end up with me writing an unpopular blog.  If you haven’t watched it, you’ve probably guessed that the storyline revolves around people breaking out of prison.  Pow, there’s your narrative tension straightaway.  Our hero is Michael Scofield.  He is so determined to break out his unjustly incarcerated brother (though he deserved his sentence for crimes against the male plunging neckline, by having a plunging neckline) that he has elaborate escape plans tattooed over his entire body and then commits a bank robbery to place himself within the prison walls.  Wentworth Miller’s growling, earnest whispers characterise his every line, while Dominic Purcell as the wrongly accused Lincoln Burrows barely grunts in return.  At each stage of progressing their plan some sort of compromise would be contrived that forced them to link in one more escapee.  Some we rooted for, like dear old Sucre, overreacting to everything, while the sinister sexual predation of T-Bag made skin crawl, though it did prompt discussions about who would be whose prison bitch.  Apparently, you just need to turn one of your pockets inside out and whoever held onto the protruding material was yours to do bitch things with.

Their chances of success were stretched out over a phenomenal first series, with twists, turns and panic-inducing disasters.  I’ve got to be careful to give away any spoilers, but if your whole first series is about breaking out of prison, where do you go from there?  Subsequent series, which I won’t dwell on here, became echoes of this first burst in descending order of volume.  Some characters would be on the run, others would be wrongly imprisoned elsewhere, someone else would be trying to break into another prison.  Then the womenfolk were getting imprisoned as well.  And throughout, LJ (Lincoln Burrows’ awful son) was gurning at the camera and chewing the scenery in response to the implausibility of it all.  To expand on some sort of justification for the whole thing, naughty corporation The Company was suddenly invented, along with some very devoted employees (I hated Gretchen), and I began to question my viewing choices.

In conclusion, some series really should only have had one series.  It’s called the Lost effect.  A good idea works really well as a single arc, but then gets stretched out to capitalise on audience demands till it snaps.  It’s like when someone brings salted caramel M&Ms to the office and you really enjoy having just one, but then suddenly everything is a blur and you’ve eaten 75 of them.  Prison Break even came back for a fifth series in 2017, but our only focus must remain the masterpiece that is the premier season.  That is its legacy.  And also, tattooing things on your body in case you’re worried you might forget about them later.

Derry Girls

“Oh, you should watch Derry Girls,” everyone said, “It’s so funny.”  Well, I did.  And it is.  My fame as a TV blogger has been spreading far and wide, resulting in an inundation of recommendations for things I should watch and write about.  A lot of the time I nod and smile, wondering if people realise these posts are more about me than any of the programmes in question, but the input is mostly welcome.  Like any normal person, I don’t always know which boxsets won’t let me down.  Peer-to-peer word of mouth comes in very handy.  I had totally missed the first series of Derry Girls when it premiered back in early 2018, and I still hadn’t sorted myself out in time for the second in March 2019.  If I’m honest, I don’t like watching things on Channel 4 that much.  It’s because I’m exposed to trails for their other shows and want to watch almost everything else, and we can all see that I already spend far too much time with telly.

Nevertheless, the first series is on Netflix, while I was able to catch up on the second with Channel 4 On Demand.  I don’t know if it’s called All4 anymore, or if it went back to 4oD, or maybe it’s Catchy Uppy or something (and I should know really, given my job), but I do know they don’t frequency cap their ads on there.  I’ve seen the same McDonald’s spots upwards of ten times, yet I’m still unswerving from my lifelong vow never to consume food from that hellhole.  Their agency has literally wasted them around 5p on me.  The good news is, after all the award wins, Derry Girls will be back for a third series.  Let’s unpick what has made it so successful.

Silly Accents

For those that don’t know, Derry is in Northern Ireland, so most of the dialogue is in the famous local accent and dialect where “how now brown cow?” becomes “hurr nurr brurn curr?” though I was disappointed that my favourite ever Northern Irish word didn’t make an appearance: a friend from the same town grew up thinking that passing wind was called doing a roodie doodie (say it out loud in your best Northern Irish accent) until he, as an adult, realised it was actually just his family that did that.  Either way, I commented in my post on Nighty Night how the right accent can make everything seem funny.  Add a good old “so it is” on the end of each sentence and this Celtic turn compounds the effect even further.

Nostalgia

We’re not just in Derry, we’re in Derry in the 1990s.  Mobile phones weren’t yet a thing, PJ & Duncan hadn’t become Ant and Dec and double denim was still on its first time around.  Derry Girls plants you unmistakably in the decade, not just through the hair and fashion and (lack of) tech, but through a soundtrack that surprises and delights the viewer at every turn.  That’s if you’re old enough to remember.  If you’re not, then get out.  But who would have thought that Gina G’s Ooh Aah… Just A Little Bit would still sound like such a banger?  I’m sitting here with a Spotify playlist lifted directly from the show, wondering how on earth I bring about some sort of personal Ace of Base reunion tour.

The Hilarity of Sectarian Violence

The Troubles, at least to a Surrey schoolboy, always seemed a bit far off and endless – the kind of thing you tune out as it’s a bit overexposed: a bit like climate change, Brexit or Boris Johnson.  While teenage life is full of frustrations (see the post on The Inbetweeners), I can’t imagine the further paralysing effect of growing up in the midst of a conflict that claimed over 3,000 lives.  Our Derry Girls are of the Catholic persuasion (allowing easier pickings for jokes about priests, nuns and the Pope) but any real antipathy towards protestants is reserved for their parents and grandparents.  A protestant boy is as good a ride as any, at least according to Michelle.  If you’re not familiar with the Troubles, though, you can look forward to the whole thing being reignited for an unnecessary sequel, courtesy of our good pal Brexit.

Outstanding Characters

You’ll come to love the Derry Girls (and boy) but it’s Michelle that has all the best lines: “You can’t ring Childline every time your mother threatens to kill you.”  Her scrunchy perm and hoop earrings are mere accessories to her pursuit of the best craic no matter the consequences.  Cousin Orla, meanwhile, clinches it for the best individual accent, aided by the strangeness of her every utterance.  Our lead, Erin Quinn, has amazing timing, but her mouth never stops moving, while Clare spends most of each episode shrieking.  It’s actually the supporting cast I enjoy the most.  School swot, Jenny Joyce, is an instant favourite, with her delicious unstoppable smugness at every turn wonderfully foiled by Sister Michael’s utter disgust at her sycophancy.  Jenny’s assembly harmonies show a voice as weak as her two shoes are goodie.

But Erin and Orla’s family deliver the most laughs.  We’ve all been cornered by an Uncle Colm – a relation whose unending stories guarantee instant boredom.  We all know someone as self-centred as Aunt Sarah – the kind of person who wears white to a wedding.  And we all love a matriarch as domineering as Mary.  Erin’s mum truly is a domestic force to be reckoned with, often ending up an unwilling accomplice in the girls’ ill-advised misdemeanours.  She captures some major universal mum-isms that can be recognised among the Irish, the British and the world over.  She gets the names of new things wrong, mistakenly thinking that Take That are called This And That.  And she has strong sentiments about laundry, flying off the handle when someone suggests doing just a half load of washing because doing “A half load goes against everything I stand for.”  My own mother once matched this when I asked her innocently why she preferred Sainsbury’s over Tesco, to which she responded instantly, “I just hate everything Tesco stand for as a company.”  Fairly neutral then.

So, well done to Lisa McGee, the show’s writer and creator.  She’s added something to the national canon that’s so nuanced and local that I’m thrilled at the thought of other English-speaking countries struggling to work out what on earth is going in each episode.  Maybe someone’s told them they should watch Derry Girls because it’s so funny.  But they can’t.  It’s ours.

Skins

With Love Island until recently taking up an hour of viewing time each night (apart from Saturdays when there’s no new episode worth watching), I’m struggling to complete any new boxsets.  Luckily that show is over (as I’ve just turned down my invitation to the final waaaah), but I’m raiding the archives again this week.  Let’s talk about Skins.  It’s often there in the Trending Now part of your Netflix.  Nostalgia sees me hover over it every time, curious to see if it’s as I remember.  But then, I remember not liking it all that much, so it can’t be nostalgia for the show that’s driving this.  I still watched nearly the whole bloody thing, desperate that at some point I would love it like I was supposed to.  Therefore, my urge to sit through it all again must come from nostalgia for my life at the time when it first aired, back in January 2007.  I was finishing my final year at university.  Before long I would be renting the first in a long line of dodgy flats in London while pretending to play careers with other real adults.  I had a lot more energy.  I was a bright young thing.  Now, I’ve recently fulfilled my lifelong ambition of owning my own home (and not having to share it with people who can’t shower without creating a body hair-strewn tsunami).  Instead of being young and fun I’ve spent the weekend cleaning the bathrooms, on the phone to John Lewis about ordering the wrong ironing board and feeling guilty about not buying any more furniture for my flat.  No wonder I’m tempted to relive a part of my long-lost youth.

Busting out on its spiritual home of e4, Skins promised to expose the real truth about being a teen in a way that no other drama had dared to do.  Its first two series followed an initial generation of friends, each beset by their own psychological traumas, external pressures, hormonal urges and web of relationships across the group.  A key premise was that all adults (played by a variety of household names having inordinate fun with their cameos) would be flawed so obviously that we were naturally to conclude that it was no wonder these children were struggling with modern life.  The results of all this bad parenting were lots of sex, drugs, partying, inadvisable behaviour and, to my academic geek sensibilities, not a lot of schoolwork going on!  But whereas this should have provided ample drama and entertainment to the viewer, each episode drew itself out so painfully that I would tut in frustration at its luxuriation over every hard-laboured point (a bit like my prose here…).

The pace was glacial.  It was as if every actor had been told that long pauses between lines equal dramatic scenes.  They didn’t – it just made everything take ages.  Sure, I talk fast in real life, but I don’t expect this of all TV characters.  I just like them to get a wriggle on occasionally so some momentum can develop in order to charge us through to the climax.  Each instalment focused on a different character which also irritated me.  Rather than progressing the group narrative, we would dwell on introducing all these incidental people in that person’s life, delaying things further.  Nevertheless, its attempts at honesty were original, but it tripped into cliché on its way there, developing its own classic trope of each character crying on the floor, swigging from a bottle of neat spirits while claiming “Everything is so f***ed up” as if nobody’s ever had a bad day before.  Having done teenage life myself, I can attest that it’s not actually that bad (especially from the perspective of my mid-thirties).

Despite all this, I persisted, as I wanted it to give me what it had promised.  Besides, we all wanted to see what puberty had done to the About A Boy boy’s eyebrows.  Nowadays, Nicholas Hoult is one of our smashingest actors and, indeed, the class of 2007 have enacted their contractual clause of no future quality entertainment being made without them.  Whether it’s Joe Dempsie and Hannah Murray in Game Of Thrones (which I promise I will eventually cover here), Dev Patel in Slumdog Millionaire and beyond or Daniel Kaluuya in Get Out and Black Panther (no longer pigeonholed as Posh Kenneth), the talent was clearly there.  Maybe it was just practising.

All this said, though, the second series finishes superbly, and the way is paved for the next generation.  Tony Stonem’s younger sister, Effy, played by Kaya Scodelario fulfils that classic British destiny of following in sibling footsteps at school and becomes the alpha of the new crop.  Her love interest, Cook, steals the attention from her though, thanks to Jack O’Connell’s red-raw performance, something he has taken through to everything he has done since (seriously, watch everything he has done right now).  There’s also Luke Pasqualino who’s in lots of things these days, but I only remember him from an obscure scene in Miranda.  Either way, the themes of relationships, sexuality, excess, trust and good old fashioned growing up are investigated further.  By this point, I was more acclimatised to Skins’ sluggish rhythm and more susceptible to its melodrama.  So much so, in fact, that by the time the third generation arrived, I just couldn’t be arsed getting into it all over again.  They just didn’t interest me and I bailed out, cherishing what I had witnessed so far, despite all my frustrations.

Certain scenes still occur to me now and then, whether it’s Cassie’s distressing demonstration of how someone with an eating disorder convinces others she’s eating by rearranging food on her plate, or the moment she whispers “Wow, f*** you, Sid” at a lad who always wore glasses and a beanie.  I still call a wild night a Skins party, after the Gossip-soundtracked promo trail.  For every Jal’s clarinet, there was Cook bouncing off brick walls with the intensity of it all.  For every overuse of effing and jeffing until it lost all its impact, there was heart and truth struggling to get through.  Skins was a step in an evolution of British confidence in its own youth drama, only coming to fruition in more recent times with the likes of Fleabag and The End Of The F***ing World.  So yeah, when I’m wondering what’s going to tempt me from the Netflix algorithm, Skins will always tempt me.  But I’m going to eschew the repeat view in favour of the memory.  You can’t turn back time, but you can do better things with your adult life than watching old things (and cleaning the bathroom).

Cardinal Burns

After going for broad appeal with last week’s homage to Made In Chelsea, I’ll be taking things in a much more niche direction this week.  Cardinal Burns was a sketch show that ran on e4 in 2012 and then Channel 4 for its second series in 2014.  Why on earth would I be talking about it now?  Well, it too had a sublime parody of scripted reality, which I almost included last week, but instead decided to branch out into its own post this week (see, I do plan).  Secondly, and this takes us back to the niche point around the show, the only other person who loved this show as much as I did is a dear former work colleague whose response to a number of years in the same office as me was to move as far away as possible to Australia.  I’ve got a guilty conscience as he messaged me this week just as I was running out the door to a wedding, so hopefully he reads this and forgives me.

I’ve talked about my love of the sketch show before when covering Little Britain and Come Fly With Me.  Even Bo’ Selecta! has been fondly remembered in this blog (and, after little to no interest from readers at the time, that post has been gathering clicks like nobody’s business and is now my second most popular piece of content – no idea why, or why now).  Every two minutes, you’ve got something new to look at.  It’s either a new set up where you’re wondering what humour will strike next, or we’re given returning characters that are nice and familiar.  If a scene doesn’t work, it’s over before you know it, and if it does, you can chuckle into your microwave meal or Ottolenghi sides, making a mental note to remember the best lines for work tomorrow, safe in the knowledge you’ll have forgotten everything by the time you reach your desk.

Below I’ll run through some of Cardinal Burns’ top characters, but the selection is merely incidental.  Seb Cardinal and Dustin Demri-Burns, the namesakes of the show in question (though it’s not actually called Cardinal Demri-Burns) have acute skills of observation which they couple with an ability to enact incredibly accurate mimicry.  Each character has a root in the banal and everyday, but the lads’ amplification of behaviours we might otherwise miss, exposing them with comedic acid for the silliness that they are, elevates their scenes and characters to the exact level of wit you need when you only know one other person who watches a show.  My highlights are as follows:

Camp Ghost Hunters

Phil and Jase channel their inner Yvette Fielding from Most Haunted and dive into dark spooky houses in search of the paranormal, accompanied by a film crew.  Their passive-aggressive bickering, “Someone’s a bit tetchy,” soon escalates until they fully miss each and every ghoulie they would otherwise come across among the shadows, which is bound to happen if you’re worried about texts from Steve asking to borrow your juicer, or if you fancy the priest at an exorcism.

Banksy

In real life, it’s universally agreed that Banksy is cool.  But in Cardinal Burns, he is a big old saddo.  He’s agreed to be filmed, but only if he can wear a really naff disguise.  We see him interviewed by local radio or struggling with his satnav, all with underlying currents of casual racism and a deep underestimation of the meaning of his own work.  Things ramp up as he tries to get his stepson on side, but nothing comes close to his announcement that he has taken the last nana from the fruit bowl.

The Office Flirts

Flirting is a huge part in the world of doing business.  People do deals with people they fancy.  I wear skin-tight shirts so nobody realises I have no idea what I’m doing.  In this series of sketches, the culture of flirting is given a Microsoft Outlook approach, with a dreary office temp scheduling quick flirts with various office females, telling them they look nice, which shows his distinct lack of game in this area.  Suddenly, the New Guy enters.  Seb Cardinal with bouffant hair and a leather jacket projects a give-a-shit attitude that has all the girls losing control and giggling coquettishly.  At one point, he parades about on a motorbike.  The original office flirt is impressed and signs up for a masterclass in this artform, but nothing beats New Guy’s departure from each scene, which typically involves punching a random square-on in the face.

Young Dreams

And so to the Made In Chelsea link, but this also has an air of The Hills about it.  Young Dreams is a spoof scripted reality vehicle following three girls, introduced with some saccharine pop music while we get the roll call of the girls.  Cardinal is Rachel, the alpha queen with immaculate hair and pronunciation so affected that you won’t recognise a single vowel.  There’s Olivia, a dogsbody for Rachel who mostly just hides her giant mole, and, lastly, we have Yumi, a Japanese transfer played by Demri-Burns.  All are convincing.  Each segment plays out around some scheme of Rachel’s to do whatever she pleases, typically prefaced with her declaring that “this little fishy is about to” before announcing her self-serving intentions.  Inadvertently, Yumi always manages to ruin everything with some sort of faux pas.  At this point, the emotional music scores in, Rachel storms off, and Yumi is left shouting out in a racially insensitive Japanese accent: “Raaaachel, pleeeeasse.”  I don’t know why this line has stuck with me, but I’m unable to address any Rachel I work with without replicating her emotional whine.

I won’t go on anymore – there’s no time for Vomit Cops and I daren’t describe the Fiery Hawk sketch (where an enthusiastic young actor obediently follows a casting director’s ever more sinister directions) – oh, I just did.  Either way, if you’ve not heard of Cardinal Burns, get to watching it.  It even comes with the epithet of award-winning.  I don’t what awards these are, and I can’t be bothered looking it up, but I can give it my own award: the award for the show that my friend and I really liked.  I hope the chaps turn up working together somewhere else soon (though I did spot Demri-Burns in an episode of Peaky Blinders), but until then, this little fishy is going to have to think of shows that more people have watched (help).

Made In Chelsea

In a wild departure for the 104^th blogpost spectacular (please make sure you’ve read them all or don’t speak to me anymore) I’m branching out to sneer at a show I don’t actually watch.  Made In Chelsea popped politely onto our screens in 2011 and, of the 17 series and five abroad specials so far (and counting) I would say I am about 199 episodes short of the 200 plus that have cluttered up various e4 schedules in the eight years since.  But that doesn’t stop me weighing in with a few thoughts and observations, as its cultural influence is so great that even non-viewers like me can’t exist quietly without a passing awareness of its stars and storylines.  To summarise the action for those that have never tuned in for the adventures of Proudlock, Mark-Francis, Jamie, Victoria and chums, Made In Chelsea is a scripted reality show following a bunch of the well-groomed progeny of wealthy families living it up in London’s cash-drenched SW3 while dating each other silly.  In my (very grown-up) job alone, teams have used Chelsea talent in advertising campaigns and even sponsored the bloody show itself.  I don’t know if I could sit through an episode (and we all know I’ll watch anything) but let’s celebrate this modern juggernaut that yields no signs of stopping.

We’ll talk casting first.  In a noughties update of the Sloane Ranger, Made In Chelsea’s guys and gals are all posh.  In fact, it’s probably the main thing about the whole production.  This has a great bonus in creating watchable telly.  Posh people have often had access to good educations.  As such, the cast members are all more articulate than your average attention seeker.  They know the long words and that.  In addition, there’s something about their boarding school humour that layers a little bit of wittiness over the top.  That, and some cracking diction that hits every consonant, never dropping an H, gives the snob in us all an aspirational viewing experience.  I’m not saying posh people are better than normos like us, but let’s face it, they are worth more (based on the investment in their education).  But it’s not just the cast that are filtered to create a better version of reality…

The locations!  After 12 years living in London, I’ll be the first to admit it can be a hideous hellhole.  When the skies are grey and the drizzle persistent, there are concrete neighbourhoods that can bring a man to weeping, whether you’re stuck on a bus on Southampton Row or picking litter off your shoe in Clapham Junction.  Somehow, however, the researchers, location scouts and producers on Made In Chelsea make the city look immaculate.  Maybe it’s the lenses they use, or the fact they stay around the King’s Road, or perhaps they have an inordinate budget for special effects, but every location the cast rock up at for passive-aggressive discussions of dating etiquette makes you want to go there.  It could be a bar you know is shit – Made In Chelsea will have you grabbing your coat and heading out the door before your Millennial mind can repossess its senses.  Then you realise that you can’t actually afford to be out all the time, as your parents didn’t found the McVitie’s biscuit empire, reminding us all that London is a great place, but only if you’re rich.

And so we come on to how Made In Chelsea really has nothing to do with reality.  We’re not simply a fly on the wall.  Instead, each scene is set up with rigorous control.  Sure, the conceit is that two big-haired young rahs have run into each other on the street, but the establishing tracking shots and the fact than any homeless people have been cajoled out of screen betray a strong sense that everything is ruthlessly planned.  Ours ear are bathed in an expertly curated soundtrack (while the theme music, Midnight City by M83, has been used in every media creds reel I ever seen in my job over the last eleven years), which then fades out so the awkward dialogue may start.  I know I’ve mentioned the cast are good conversationalists, but, for some unknown reason, every scene only cranks into gear after several verbal misfires that not only make my toes curl up, they rip themselves off and run out the room screaming.  Here’s how our exchanges usually begin, following on from the interstitial shots of the road name sign or someone pouring cocktails:

“Oh hey Hortense; how lovely to see you.”

“Spiffy – I didn’t expect to see you here.”

*air kiss, air kiss, air kiss*

“So, how are you?”

“Oh, you know, really busy.  How are you?”

“Really busy.”

*awkward pause*

“It’s fortuitous that I have seen you really because, er, I wanted to…”

And then you just insert any of the following and you have yourself an episode:

“I wanted to ask you about last night with Arabella.”

“I wanted to know why you have been talking about Winston.”

“I wanted to let you know that I also really really like Georgie.”

If that imagined script has failed to bring it to life for you, then please watch this excellent parody from Watson & Oliver that perfectly captures the inanity.  People call this entertainment, but it’s no different to being pulled for a chat around the gardens of the Love Island villa, only the latter situation has more brow sweat and fewer items of clothing.  But this is where my interest dies: the Made In Chelsea storylines revolve solely around dating.  It’s as if they are all terrified of being alone (with their millions).  If I were them, I would focus on enjoying my life (and my money) and maybe volunteer in the community, certain that true love would find me only when I was least expecting it.  But that wouldn’t make very good drama, would it?

Where the wheels really come off is any multi-cast member party scene.  Aimless extras shuffle about clutching drinks while our romantic leads are brought to the fore to thrash out whatever dating shenanigans we have all lost interest in.  Loud music would interfere with the mics, so everyone must sway in time to silence so that the tunes can be added later, giving things an even more stilted edge than normal.

But I’m not a hater of Made In Chelsea.  There are many things to love.  You can’t beat a posh nickname, with many of the girls monickered with increasingly euphemistic ones, from Caggie to Toff to Binky.  Why not just be done with it and introduce the following new cast members: Jizzy, Flappy and Titty?  Either way, the Chelsea lot are always charming – Cheska was beyond professional when she did commercial work for us, while those that have popped up in Celebrity Big Brother or I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here have been a joy to have on screen.  I’ve even bumped into Spencer at my gym, and by bump, I mean I almost fell over his dog.

So, in the world of reality TV, Made In Chelsea is like the King’s Road – it’s nicer than the alternatives.  Whereas shopping on Oxford Street with the great unwashed hordes requires having to press the button and wait for the green man so you can be chased across the road by an angry cab driver while carrying your poverty-indicating Primark bags, the King’s Road has lovely zebra crossings so you can strut out into traffic at any juncture, beelining for Jack Wills, and the BMWs and Mercedes politely halt lest you be turned into expensive roadkill.  London is run for the wealthy, by the downtrodden, but watching Made In Chelsea at least gives you an hour’s fantasy that you’re rubbing shoulders with the right crowd.

Schitt's Creek

Have you seen Schitt's Creek?  I have.  It’s really good.  And there’s where we could end this week’s post, but we all know that’s not going to happen.  You’ve clicked to read this and that means you’re my captive audience while I tell you things, some about the show in question, and some about other things that seem totally irrelevant, and probably are.  I’ve talked before (in any one of the previous 102 posts on Just One More Episode – please go back and make sure you’ve read them all) of the requirement to have different episode lengths covered among whichever boxsets you have in rotation.  You need something around the hour mark for a serious sit-down and viewing, and then it’s always advisable (by me) to have something sub-thirty minutes in case you find yourself with a snack to shove in your mouth but nothing to shove in your eyes while you’re doing it.  Schitt's Creek episodes are all in the shorter category so making your way through its five series is manageable and plenty of fun – at least, this was the recommendation from a dear friend on his completion of viewing.  And how right he was.

I will now explain a bit about the show, as, alongside so much other tempting content in your Netflix menu, Schitt's Creek is easily overlooked.  First, there’s the title.  We all know how I feel about a missing apostrophe in a programme name (Footballers’ Wives), so I won’t dwell here in this punctuation-based aberration.  Schitt's Creek is (hilariously) a shitty town, home to the Schitt family (lol) and, presumably, near a creek or similar body of water.  It doesn’t matter much, as it simply seems to be some sort of midwestern backwater, representing the cultural abyss our media has us believe exists between the two coasts of the USA.

More important is the family that moves to Schitt's Creek, very much against their will.  Cue the Roses: mother, father, son and daughter who, within the opening minutes of episode one, are transposed from the inordinate wealth of their New York lifestyle to their father’s one remaining asset, which happens to be a crap town he bought as a joke.  The financial particulars are vague, but the Rose fortune’s origins in the home video rental market are explained in more detail, if only so we can all laugh about a past where people had to leave their homes to borrow physical VHS copies of nineties movies (giving me reason to recall nostalgically trips to the Fetcham branch of Apollo Video where my sister and I would agonise over our choice, before selecting without fail something awful).  Let’s now go through each one of these Roses in turn, as you may come to cherish them as I do, despite their initial appearance on the show thumbnail provoking a whole load of meh when positioned beneath the new series of Stranger Things or the glossy sex-baiting of Riverdale:

Johnny Rose

Our paterfamilias is played by Eugene Levy.  You know, he was the awkward dad in American Pie.  In fact he was one of the few cast members to persist in appearing in every offshoot of that franchise, culminating, probably, in American Pie: We Shouldn’t Have Bothered With This One in which the character of Jim’s Dad has increasingly frank conversations about masturbation with ever younger teenagers until the cringe factor breaks right through to Operation Yewtree.  In Schitt's Creek, he is a kindlier soul who, across the seasons, comes to value the more important things in life once liberated of the burden of riches.  Primarily conveying emotion through the medium of large eyebrows, and always sporting a smart suit, Johnny is at his best when quarrelling with his wife.

Moira Rose

At first, I wondered where Moira had to go.  Her early comedy lines revolve around her lack of interest in her kids and her abundance of interest in her wigs (whose alternating appearances create a barrier to the character in that you have to check you recognise her each time she appears).  With every episode, though, more layers are added, about her companionship with Johnny, her ramshackle acting credentials and, most touchingly, her growing affection for the town and people of Schitt's Creek.  And then, Catherine O’Hara seems to discover how much fun she can have making Moira pronounce things strangely, and suddenly the most banal words take on cheeky extravagant twists (baybayyy).

David Rose

Playing Eugene Levy’s son is Eugene Levy’s real-life son, Dan Levy.  In fact, the pair of them created the show and write a lot of it.  Well done them.  It’s nice to do things with family.  David has a lot of the best lines, trolling everyone who speaks to him with sardonic irony.  I even wrote down his advice on what to do in New York: “Watch a series of Girls and do the opposite of what they do.”  As the Rose’s late-blooming heir, he’s not the fashion-victim disappointment to them he at first seems to be.  In fact, they root for his every relationship and support him as he becomes more independent in Schitt's Creek, as he leads the charge in gentrifying a run-down location.

Alexis Rose

And so: the spoilt daughter.  Played with great enjoyment by Annie Murphy, Alexis is at her best when hearing only what she wants to hear and when name-dropping Hollywood A-listers in all-too-brief tales of her youth as an enfant terrible.  There’s nothing she hasn’t done.  Like her brother, though, she too gradually lets down her cynicism about their new home, seeing her old life for all its valuelessness and investing in her relationship with local good-boy vet, Ted Mullens (played by 90210’s Ethan, all grown up).

The rest of the town seems to have been cast in about five minutes, with characters easily manipulated to serve whatever storyline that episode has cooked up.  Jocelyn Schitt, the mayor’s wife and eventual firm friend of the Roses, seems to have whichever personality suits the scene in question, while her husband, Roland Schitt, is invariably my least favourite thing about any given moment.  Nevertheless, the supporting cast are really only there for exactly that: to support the Roses as they make the most of their situation and learn what it means to be self-sufficient.  Stevie Budd gets perhaps the closest to them, mostly through her abusive friendship with David, which truly conveys what happens when two souls fully understand each other.

Maybe it’s its Canadian origins, but everything about Schitt's Creek is just so nice.  Its name might sound like a Samuel Beckett novel or play, but it’s infinitely more accessible.  There’s wit and there’s sentiment.  There are heartfelt gestures, such as when Patrick and David sing Simply The Best to each other, and there’s degrading ridicule (“Fall off a bridge, please!”) thanks to David’s ability to scathe seethingly scathing insults.  There’s a refreshing approach to sexuality (people just seem to fall in love with people – well – David does) and an uncovering of what’s truly important in this life: compassion (while taking the piss).  So let’s conclude.  I’ve seen Schitt's Creek.  It’s really good.  You’ve read this whole thing, so off you go now and watch it please.

Luther

“Luther; is he really as dirty as they say?”  Well, this was the question I had been asking myself when I finally succumbed to clicking atop Idris Elba’s brooding face on my Netflix menu.  Now an experienced viewer of gritty British crime dramas (Happy Valley, Line Of Duty), I was prepped to plumb further depths in my exploring of the nation’s obsession with murders and police officers.  Christmas 2018 had been peppered with constant conversational mentions of buses becoming worrying territory after a harrowing scene in the fifth series that the BBC broadcast as part of their festive schedule.  As someone whose average daily consumption of London buses is between three and five (I end up on the 137 most days, but most covet the rare appearance of a spiffy little P5), this warranted further investigation.  Also: Idris Elba.  I like his coats.

All I knew was that he plays a copper, but most likely one who doesn’t care much for due process, particularly after I gleaned a reference to anger issues in the blurb.  John Luther specifically works in the department of the police that looks at murders.  I’m not sure what other sort of law enforcement I thought he would be doing.  You don’t get your own series prosecuting for benefit fraud, I suppose.  Based in and around East London (which means I’m often distracted during exterior set-up shots trying to see if I can recognise various Prets I’ve grabbed overpriced gluten-free snacks in on the way to meetings in that part of town) the Victorian brickwork and city history create an environment abundant in stylistic aesthetics and stabbings most horrid.  Whereas I expected each series of a handful of episodes to revolve around a singular detailed case, the first season episodically works through a number of different killers.  With the exception of the first perp we come across (the fiery Alice Morgan who, if only to demonstrate sizzling sexual tension, turns up throughout future instalments) most of the killers Luther goes after are of the serial variety, often with specialist perversions.

Enter, then, a revolving cast of supporting actors whose odds to survive even ten minutes into the drama are not high.  If they’re not an established character, you’re really just counting down the moments until the come a cropper on the end of an axe (though this arguably also happens with established characters).  It brings to mind the Saturday evenings of growing up, when the family would gather round the box for Casualty.  In between progressing long-running storylines of the hospital staff, character actors would appear for set-up scenes.  We all knew someone was going to end up in accident and emergency, so there was a grisly thrill in eying each wobbly ladder or erratic motoring decision before we could tut at the crunching of bone and bursting forth of blood that necessitated a visit from Holby’s finest.  Similarly, with our Luther, we lay in wait as viewers, eager for the closure of each bit-part’s untimely dispatching at the hands of some sort of fantastical psychopath.  Often, Luther himself is trying to anticipate a maniac’s next move, glancing at some bits of paper pinned to a board in order to leap unfathomably to incredible conclusions that allow him to deduce the upcoming location of the culprit’s next hit.  Racing across town in his awful Volvo, Luther must have lost count of the number of times he’s been too late to save the victim.  If I’m late to a meeting at work, we just start five minutes later.  If Luther arrives delayed, folk get murdered.

I’m sure that makes for some awkward chats in his end-of-year reviews.  Later series see him under the leadership of DSU Martin Schenk (a more sort of subterranean Ted Hasting with much less lustrous hair).  Given the track record of Luther’s subordinates to end up dead themselves, we can only imagine what sort of constructive criticism is offered for his line management skills.  Getting assigned to his team can’t just therefore signify a death knell for any young detective sergeant’s career; it also drastically reduces their life expectancy.  Oh well, there’s still plenty of decent shop chat.  One police idiom for being convinced a suspect has committed a crime is expressed with the verb to fancy someone for something.  “Did you fancy him for it?” Luther will ask a seasoned colleague when the database throws up candidates for various bodily mutilations.  I think it’s meant to sound blokey, but all I can think about is the playground usage of to fancy: my head is filled with an embarrassed DCI giggling as they ask a hardened criminal if they’d like to dance at a school disco.

But Luther is such a lad that he can say and do what he wants and still he’d be our hero.  Plagued by family problems, career problems, and wedged-in problems where new hangers-on suddenly emerge to whom he seems to owe excessive favours, the jeopardy of whether Luther will solve the case before the rest of London is brutally slain is multiplied by pressure from mafia bosses and other such inconveniences.  For me, these pale in interest to the actual killings, but that’s more likely just me struggling with complex storylines.  Either way, these plot devices lead to one of my favourite scenes where Luther beats off two would-be assassins.  His weapon of choice?  A bin.  Truly legendary.

Altogether, though, Luther is a classy contribution to the insatiable canon of British crime drama, with more grit than a Highways Agency lorry on a frosty morning.  He’s made me consider investing in my own set of baggy grey work shirts, but Luther’s greatest sartorial achievement if twinning tweed overcoats with blazers, turning up the collars on both, chasing after a criminal and then not having to take everything off at the end of it due to be too sweaty.  I did mention he’s an extraordinary man, as he doesn’t seem to get as hot as I would.  Watch Luther at home alone with the lights if you’re feeling brave, then go out and ride the deserted top decks of night buses through underpopulated suburbs and see how your nerves hold out.  Luther focuses your mind back on the endless human potential for evil, filtered through the lens of work being a pain in the arse.  Whether there’s a murderer under your bed or a serial killer in your cupboard, you’ve still got to drag yourself into the office in the morning, just as Luther needs to keep solving crimes in order to afford his lavish collection of the same shirts and coats.  We can conclude, then, that he’s not as dirty as they say, as he clearly has a clean outfit for each day of the week.