The IT Crowd

People often ask me what do you do with yourself when you’re visiting Rome with pals but some of them have come over from China and therefore need afternoon naps to cope with the jetlag but you don’t sleep in the day because you wear contacts and are a machine?  The answer is simple: I watch The IT Crowd on the AirBnB’s Netflix account.  Part of my aversion to day-sleeping comes from a quality instilled in me by my mother that all time must be productive, otherwise I might have indulged in the slumber too.  In fact, given my penchant for early starts (5.30am on weekdays everybody) my body does shutdown if I am inactive for 45 minutes or more.  This makes afternoon meetings at work a huge no go, unless it’s me doing the talking, otherwise my plan just to shut one eye at a time so I’m only half giving into hibernation routinely results in nearly missed faceplants on company furniture.  Luckily I’m known for looking bored in all meetings, so this behaviour is part of a professional reputation I’ve spent over ten years building.  Secretly, I hear and remember all things (thank you, Asperger’s).

But yes, this well-loved sitcom (that ran 2006 to 2013) which I had never really seen before, despite getting halfway through the first season several times, proved to be one of the highlights of Rome.  Don’t worry – I had been before in 2005.  We did all the things, even spotting the then Pope (the former Nazi one, which reflects all my views on organised religion perfectly), not to mention me being stopped by elderly Austrian ladies while leaving a restaurant so they could tell me I looked like Hugh Grant’s younger brother.  Thanks.  This meant that my 2019 return was a chilled affair.  The non-Netflix highlights were my successful digestion of Roman gluten in several kilograms of pizza and pasta and a guided tour of the Forum by the talkative Giancarlo, whose palpable disappointment at his young charges actually being in their mid-thirties was exceeded only by his delight that one of my friends knew more than him about ancient Rome and ecclesiastical trivia.

Over a couple of afternoons, while it rained outside (mostly), I made my way through the four series and additional special of The IT Crowd, soothed under the apartment’s air conditioning, which made up for the major flaw which all AirBnBs subtly carry until you notice it on checking in: the third bedroom (mine) was actually a bed in a cupboard.  But let’s not dwell on the fact that I eventually commandeered the living room as my man pad and actually get into the telly bit of this week’s blog.  Back in 2006, every company’s IT department was endowed with majesty and mystery.  Nobody knew how their work computer functioned, yet a whole team existed to fix any bugs, viruses and digital runny noses that would occasion to happen (especially if you opened dodgy emails).  I’m pleased to report that, in 2019, things are exactly the same.  The Office perfectly captured the condescending IT geek whose one time to shine was while chastising the common worker for overheating their hard drive.  But the, er, crowd of The IT Crowd are a million times more lovable:

Roy

He of the ironic t-shirt and asking helpdesk callers if they’ve tried turning it off and then turning it on again (a joke that never gets unfunny, even in real life), Roy’s anger and impatience are a joy to behold.  This is because everything sounds delightful in Chris O’Dowd’s Irish accent.  Some of his best moments are in The Work Outing, when a toilet use misunderstanding is ensued by deeply offensive yet hilarious consequences, but I can’t get enough of him complaining about being kissed on the bottom by a male masseur in Something Happened.  Like me, O’Dowd is an actor who looks worse the younger he is.

Moss

This character at first seems like a caricature, but ends up with inordinate mileage and depth.  I think I enjoy him most in The Final Countdown when the amazing Richard Ayoade gets to deliver the immortal line: “I came here to drink milk and kick ass. And I've just finished my milk.”  His every attempt to be normal only makes him more unusual, and that’s why he’s so special.

Jen

Played by Katherine Parkinson, who I would like on my screens more often please, Jen has one of my favourite voices in television, let alone comedy.  One of the key conceits is that Jen doesn’t know a thing about technology, despite being head of the IT Department.  But she can front anything, even without knowing what the I and the T stand for, or while thinking the internet is a black block given to her by Roy and Moss.  Her funniest moments are in Italian For Beginners when, in a delicious send-up of woman-on-woman workplace passive aggression (a situation that arises when women fight each other for dominance rather than taking on the chauvinist men-pigs holding them down) Jen pretends she can speak Italian and ends up translating for a visiting businessman by reeling off various Italian brands and sounding genuinely convincing.

Alongside our three heroes in the basement of Reynholm Industries, we are treated to occasional appearances from Richmond (Bake Off’s Noel Fielding) and almost constant appearances from series two onwards of Matt Berry as Douglas Reynholm himself.  I won’t extol the virtues of each here, as, if you don’t already recognise their genius, you can close this window and buy a tabloid newspaper (such is your level).

While some jokes have dated as attitudes have modernised and sensitivities adjusted, The IT Crowd, while guaranteeing an average of five LOLs in a decent episode, provides a lot of commentary on elements of our collective culture that are still relevant today: the impact of the internet, how we behave on social media, inequality, sexism, nepotism, unchecked privilege and turning computers off and turning them on again in order to make them work.  Let this be added to the guidebooks alongside the Trevi Fountain as one of the wonders of Rome, but please rest assured this can be watched in other places as well.

The Dark Crystal: Age Of Resistance

For most of this year, my entire personality could be aptly described by the phrase “buying a flat.”  I lost any sense of self and became a wreck of completion dates, solicitor’s enquiries and a desperate need to exchange contracts.  Throughout my life, friends have become homeowners, home renovators and home sellers, but I never showed an interest.  They’ve also married and procreated, and still my interest has been at best dutiful, bopping along absent-mindedly at their wedding disco or holding their child aloft after they’ve thrust their firstborn into my arms, commenting that, yes, well done, you seem to have added a human to our overpopulated planet.  Over the years, my self-obsession should have repelled all of these people, yet they still politely ask how the new flat is going, seeming to permit me to launch into various monologues about the John Lewis website or how to find the most expensive kitchen bin.  Two months in, though, and I’ve really got a tale to regale them with.  Sure, little Johnny might have learnt to walk at a precocious age, or the wedding video might be undergoing final edits (in an effort to remove me and my inappropriate attire from all the main shots) but this all pales in comparison to the fact that I now have a 55” TV.

I feel a bit whack using inches.  As a top-end Millennial, I’ve come of age with a blend of measurement systems – gym weights in kilos, bodyweights in stone, furniture sizes in metric, but my penis in inches.  But yes, TVs are always measured in inches diagonally across the screen; this isn’t me being some sort of Brexiteer (I’m not an idiot) but simply following an archaic norm.  The point is: I have promised myself a 55” TV since 2010.  Ten years later and there’s my LG OLED wall-mounted on my pristine newbuild living room in absolute pride of place.  When I was still fun enough to attend every media industry event, I ended up at a Bauer Media event by Bloomsbury Square.  Truth be told, I was supposed to be at the Company Fashion Awards across time, but student rioting at the Tory Party HQ had seen that cancelled, so I had tailgated along.  Each room brought to life a different Bauer brand.  I remember telling the Deputy Editor of Empire that I hated Lord Of The Rings, but my recollections end there.  Until a point when we were all ushered into a room.  Making media people do anything is nigh-on impossible, yet some firm security staff must have forced the assembly.  Nobody wanted to go as we knew we would have to entertain an audience with Duffy to promote Bauer’s Magic brand.  Nothing against Duffy, mind, she had some ok songs (Warwick Avenue) until she committed career suicide in that Diet Coke ad, but I would rather have stood about chatting and drinking than having to watch Dr Fox ask her questions about singing and that.  Nevertheless, a brief encounter on the way in saw me hand over some personal details for a competition whose prize I didn’t even enquire after.

Next day in the office and it turned out I’d won a 55” telly!  This was monumental to a poverty-wage grad saddled with uni debts.  Of course, there was no point getting the huge appliance delivered to the flat I shared with four other broke young people, so off it went to my parents’.  But then they were moving house and wanted this huge box shifted.  I finally found a buyer and, by netting £1,500, paid off my overdraft.  Yet my heart broke.  Surely one day I could afford to get a massive screen back in my life.  Well, let me tell you, as an amateur TV blogger, nearly ten years of solid office work, climbing the ladder of the media world, have all proven worth it in order to enjoy fully 55” of my very own.

But what show did I select to test out my new tech?  Well, I was hanging on for the third series of Stranger Things, but it’s not really gripping me.  Then I thought the third season of Dear White People would look great up there, but the storylines only seem to have become apparent in the final episodes and the show has really suffered from a lack of the urgency that propelled its first two instalments.  No, instead I have allowed pure joy to abound into my eyes through the awe-inspiring The Dark Crystal: Age Of Resistance.  And yes, this is the longest the blog has rambled on for before announcing the week’s subject.

The Dark Crystal was a Jim Henson film from 1982.  We had it on VHS in my sister’s room and dared ourselves to watch the slightly terrifying tale of the dying world of Thra on more than one occasion.  Henson was known for his puppets, but this was less Sesame Street and more Game Of Thrones.  Either way, it was an instant cult classic at a time when fantasy was far from cool.  Thirty-seven years later and Netflix have returned to the rich subject matter for a ten-part prequel series.

The first thing I have to say is: puppets.  The primary characters in our story are the Gelfling – partly elfin, partly equine-looking humanoids divided into seven clans across Thra.  Over the series, we meet a great number of individual personalities.  At first, you might wonder why we rarely see their legs or why dialogue seems to get acted out behind rocky outcrops that obscure their lower halves, but before long, you completely forget these things have been knocked up in a workshop (apart from, maybe, the synthetic-looking hair) and fall for their charm.  You need to believe in them for the story to work and I openly admit to being willingly convinced.

Our baddies are the Skeksis: bird-like extra-terrestrials from the man-in-a-suit school of puppetry.  They, too, blow minds with the creative lengths to which the production teams have gone to make them seem real.  Hours after watching, you’ll still hear the creepy and constant “mmmmm” of Simon Pegg’s Chamberlain as the dastardly Lords of the Crystal cross and double-cross each other.  And, on that note, the voice cast is stellar – it’s as much a who’s who of British luvvies as Harry Potter, with Helena Bonham-Carter, Lena Heady and Taron Egerton all lending credibility to the project.

The rest of Thra is populated by a menagerie of other races and creatures, from the Podlings’ comic relief to the land striders’ feasibility as a transport solution.  In fact, every frame of every scene is a feast upon which human eyes can seek months of sustenance.  And there’s me, on my new sofa, in my new flat, drinking it all in on a 55” OLED.  Telly never looked so good.  And by telly, I mean puppets.  This is fantasy beyond any normal imagination.  It helps to know the plot of the originating film, as this adds a dimension of narrative tension that certainly propelled me through each instalment desperate to find out the action.  But even without, this Netflix programme promises and delivers nearly an hour of pure, eyeball-awakening escapism with each instalment.  I’m aghast at the labour that must have gone into every single shot.  I can’t even be bothered to watch the behind-the-scenes documentary, yet these people must have laboured for years to craft everything that has gone into this show.  By way of showing gratitude, we all need to watch this.  Right now.  I promise it contains no references to me buying a flat.

Top Boy

In 2001, the lyrics to So Solid Crew’s breakthrough number one hit 21 Seconds taught me two lessons that I have lived by ever since.  The first was “Asher D’s never fading” and, true to his word, Ashley Walters is back on Netflix screens across the country in a new series of Top Boy, prompting immediate Just One More Episode treatment in this week’s post.  And the second: “So Solid are amazing” is just a god-damn plain fact that nobody can deny.  You might wonder what a bookish young lad from affluent Surrey could find to identify with in the brutal rhymes of an inner London garage collective, but poetry is poetry and that song has soundtracked subsequent moments in my life on many occasions.  I remember a work ski trip where 80 of us took over an après bar (which already shows how urban I am) and requested this song.  Cue unleashed office workers clad in snowboarding jackets and salopettes stood atop tables in a group recital of every single verse.  At a recent wedding, this song came on, and even the southern French heatwave (see earlier comment about being urban) couldn’t stop me taking to the dancefloor, inebriated enough to be convinced I am not only the world’s best undiscovered dancer, but also an MC so talented that surely being able to shout along with every single word couldn’t fail to impress all the other guests.  Seeing them giving me a wide berth, their expressions concerned, was the proof I needed that any of us can be a member of So Solid.

Another way for me as a Home Counties young adult to gain access to this inner circle was to follow its members’ pursuits in other artforms.  Of course, I was therefore glued to the screen when not just Harvey, but also Romeo and Lisa Maffia took part in Channel 4’s The Games between 2003 and 2005.  But it was Ashley Walters in 2004’s Bullet Boy that really showed me So Solid really are amazing.  So when Top Boy appeared on Channel 4 in 2011, my viewership was guaranteed from the first promotional trailer.  The four episodes of that first series, and the four in 2013’s season two stayed with me long afterwards, but I was convinced the whole experience was a hidden treasure only I, and maybe my sister, had found.  Drawing up a list of beloved shows to cover here when I started this self-gratifying blog, Top Boy easily made the list.  But, uncertain of its broader appeal, it had to wait its turn.  Until now.  It turns out I wasn’t alone and being a fan of Top Boy is just one of the many things I have in common with Drake.  To paraphrase inaccurately the PR coverage surrounding the third series recently brought out by Netflix and trending at number one, this celebrity fan (Drake, not me) was able to click his fingers to have his favourite show resurrected, after Channel 4 were too busy with Bake Off (although maybe they could have collaborated on The Great British Drake Off).  So let’s relive the Top Boy journey below:

Season one, 2011

Now labelled as Top Boy: Summerhouse on Netflix and positioned as a separate companion series, I would actually attest that you need to watch both previous seasons of Top Boy before starting the new stuff.  In fact, recently re-watching everything in preparation for the new instalment only made me more certain that the episodes work best all together.  We’re introduced to the Summerhouse Estate in Hackney through the eyes of Ra’Nell, a fairly reticent lad who’s coping with his mother’s mental health problems while trying to hold down school and resist the lure of easy money offered by drug-dealing gangs he has to walk past every day.  Heading up one of those gangs are Dushane (Walters) and Sully (Kane “Kano” Robinson), and while the latter actively tries to recruit Ra’Nell and his hapless bestie Gem, Dushane is our dealer with a more complex moral compass.

There is neither glitz nor glamour in this production, just grimness.  Every interior betrays neglect, every exterior is swirling in trash on concrete.  Yet here are people trying to get by, and you can stare at them as much as you like from your middle-class bubble.  Everyone is trying to get out and do better, but it’s clear their options are limited, so their misdemeanours take on undeniable plausibility.  For example, pregnant Heather converts her spare room to a cannabis farm, babyface Michael swaps primary school for dealers’ errands, Dushane and Sully resort to kidnapping.  The drama unfolds, harrowing scenes rain down, but you can’t look away.  You learn that the good guys cannot win.

Season two, 2013

The repercussions of the first series’ climactic finale are still being felt, though there’s an injection of new characters that step the narrative on into new directions as well.  An underclass in himself, Jason shows the direct results of the drugs that the rest of the characters worry so much about dealing, coming and going from his junkie mother’s squalid squat and rarely catching a break.  Dushane, meanwhile, still runs the estate, but rather than glamorising his success, the show manoeuvres to expose his unenviable position.  His new legal counsel (and love interest) points out that the only way to protect his position is through constant paranoia and violence, all while being unable to enjoy the wealth his entrepreneurial spirit brings him.

Imagine if other industries operated like drug dealing.  If someone finds a better supplier, you steal that supply.  If someone brings out a rival product, you threaten or kill them.  Dushane sells his foot soldiers an unattainable goal, one they must pursue through unfair working practices, risk and deprivation.  Yet, again, we see this is their only option.  Series two examines the Dushane-Sully dynamic while ramping up the action with more violence.  Their story starts to seem more outlandish when compared to the first season’s reliance on the threat of violence.  But we remain rooted in the banal, with Ra’Nell’s mother fighting hopelessly against gentrification, and Ra’Nell himself, played with unrivalled intensity by Malcolm Kamulete, steering his course through the misfortune.  My beloved Michaela Coel (Chewing Gum) steals scenes while falling victim to Dushane’s darkest sides, but it’s Ashley Walters’ inscrutable expressions that come across as a masterclass in understated character.  We never know what he’s thinking, but we root for him.  Even though we start to suspect we shouldn’t.

Season three, 2019

And so here we are, six years later, on Netflix, with ten whole new episodes.  Just because Drake wanted it.  Imagine what else he could achieve.  Our settings have expanded into Jamaica, Ramsgate and prison, but inner London estates are still the scenes of our crimes.  The show takes pains to lay bare how much London has changed (gentrified), perfectly lampooning pretentious coffee culture as it perplexes Dushane.  We have new characters, with a household of brothers led by Micheal Ward as Jamie, treading a similar tightrope to Dushane: doing the right thing by his family while committing crimes to support them.  However, each time a character from the old series reappears, you feel a resurgence of emotion at the reunion.  Sadly, though, it’s clear that any expectations we were ever left with of happy endings are to be dashed.  Even those still standing on the same street corners have been ravaged by age and lifestyle, with Dris, though still in possession of his ability to make the most cutting remarks, a shadow of his former self thanks to excessive nitrous oxide use.  Nevertheless, Shone Romulus’s performance demands to be seen.  Immigration law becomes one additional strand woven in with the rest in this tableau of societal injustice but, ultimately, not much has changed beyond the price of coffee.  So we stand with Dushane, Sully and Jamie as they try to get by on the cards they’ve been dealt.  They deal.  It’s an appalling reflection on Britain today that Sully says, “What else is there?”

Filling the ten episodes does start to fall into the Netflix trap of overcomplicating the plot, but the later instalments crescendo as new layers of jeopardy are thrust upon our leads.  We’re spending more time getting to know the characters, creating narratives around the rival gangs rather than casting anonymous hooded figures, which adds greater significance to their actions and their actions’ consequences.  I would simply to urge everyone to watch all of this programme.  If not for the compelling drama, then click play for the stark look at the society we live in today.  There’s no one interpretation of its message – you’ll think about different things throughout.  Any claims of glorification or fetishisation fall away.  As a Londoner, certain scenes seem familiar, but my privileged upbringing means my reality is a world away.  If anything, I’m one of the awful gentrifiers in the background (I’ve bought a flat in an area of London undergoing extensive redevelopment and my only contribution to the local economy has been some overpriced coffee and a few hipster haircuts).  I shouldn’t have made my flippant fanboy comments about So Solid Crew at the start because they risk taking away from Top Boy’s serious effect.  While our politicians fail to govern due to neighbourly preoccupations, a whole generation is being left without access to the UK’s prosperity.

Naked Attraction

In the last few days I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been asked if I watch Naked Attraction.  It’s a bold question for anyone to pose in an office, as it comes pre-packaged with an assumption that the asker is proudly declaring their love for nudity-based programming, displaying an unashamed love for looking at other people’s bits and pieces from the privacy and comfort of their own living room.  I can answer that question now: I don’t watch Naked Attraction.  But that doesn’t stop me going on about it here.  Besides, when I say I don’t watch it, this means I don’t make an appointment to view the onscreen wobbly bodies.  It means I don’t make a point of downloading missed episodes on a catch-up service.  But sure, I’ve flicked through the channels of a late evening and found myself transfixed by a good fifteen to twenty minutes of crotch-first dating, so we can all rest assured that I have definitely qualified myself to comment.

For those that don’t know, Naked Attraction is a dating show that gets right down to business.  Our singleton is presented with six potential partners, obscured from their view by coloured screens.  As you would have guessed from its title, there is nudity.  But while our chooser is fully clothed, those that are submitting themselves for selection or rejection have taken off their vest and pants beforehand and are awaiting judgment in the altogether.  Bit by literal bit, the screens reveal the bodies behind, but we start below the waist, only factoring the face into things at a final stage.  After each round, one contestant is cruelly purged, judged to have the wrong genitalia and the game goes on.  The action culminates in the chooser disrobing for the final decision, joining in all the bare-arsery, putting the cock (or pea) in peacocking with visible relish at the thought of finally making everyone else look at their junk.

Regular readers will know I love a boundary-pushing format, but I just can’t get the commissioning meeting for this one out of my head.  It’s one thing to greenlight a naked dating show – Britain could do with taking a more European approach to nudity (shrugging with disinterest rather than pointing and laughing), but the fact that this goes beyond unclothed coupling up and pivots on the first impressions people’s external sex organs make on each other must have made for an interesting PowerPoint presentation.  “So, the entrants look at each other naked and we see if sparks fly?” is what I presume the Channel 4 commissioner asked.  “Not quite,” must have come the response, “one contestant looks only at the other’s privates in order to determine if they are a suitable life partner.”

I suppose it gets any awkwardness out of the way that may come up later down the line.  Nobody wants to have wasted three evenings of their life in various Pizza Express branches before finally getting down to consensual rumpy pumpy, only to find that what lies beneath falls short of expectations.  Why not be upfront about what you want?  Judith from series five (yes, five) certainly has been, and this is what has got our prudish British tongues a-wagging.  Asked for her ideal man, she was candid in her prerequisite of eight to eleven inches.  And fair play to her – it’s not the Dark Ages so we’ve no right to sneer at an older church-going lady who likes to accommodate well-endowed chaps.  Finding out these details is the wonderful Anna Richardson, mastering the hosting art of not looking at the choosing contestants’ crotches in each final round, probably because so many eyefuls are forced upon her beforehand, eagerly examining each mons and foreskin with that week’s date-seeking hopeful.  I imagine she has ensured the clauses in her contract stipulating no obligation for her to join in with the naturism are clad in iron.

Why shouldn’t real bodies get more airtime on TV?  Naked Attraction has been applauded for its inclusiveness, with every shape, size and hue of human mixed in among the skin-showing.  Where it finds contestants willing to undergo such scrutiny is anyone’s guess.  It would be impossible to avoid any awkwardness, especially as the scrutinees can’t speak until later rounds, resulting in people trying to answer questions with eye-level hip shimmies until you can almost hear the pubic hair rustling.  My favourite delicate moment is when the chooser meets the rejected contenders.  It answers the question to which humankind has long pondered the answer: how do you hug someone when one of you is naked?  The solution: the crotch-back hug.  Participants lean in from a slightly more distant stance than they would normally, sticking their bottoms back a little more lest bare flaccid willy graze someone’s jeans.

The toe-curling is actually strongest once the clothes are back on and we witness the final pairing’s first date, reassuringly conducted in a well-lit public space in case anyone tries to slip their slip off again and parade around desperately seeking attention.  The matches rarely work out, despite both having the unhinged glint in their eye that they are perfectly willing to take part in a national television show whose main premise is the detailed scrutiny of their reproductive organs.  Watch it at your own peril and talk about it at work while running a similar risk that everyone thinks you’re a titspervert.  But let’s shed our inhibitions like candidates shed their underpants and knickers.  If they’re happy living free of shame that their scrotum is extra dangly or that their labia are unique, then you can be free of shame that you spend your evenings looking at them.

Keeping Up With The Kardashians

After last week, we’re continuing the theme of keeping up with various things.  Whereas my last post was about the very British pastime of projecting the behaviour of a superior class on one’s friends and neighbours, revealed through sitcom chaos to be as exhausting as it is hilarious (Keeping Up Appearances), this week I’ll be linking that nineties sitcom with the very LA pastime of being a Kardashian, this time projecting the behaviour of a superior class not just on one’s own friends and neighbours, but on the whole world.

Now, you may have asked yourself at various points who or what a Kardashian is.  I have to admit I don’t really recall how and when they came into my consciousness, let alone that of the planet’s.  In isolation, a Kardashian sounds like some sort of medical mishap named after an obscure gynaecologist: “Oh dear, she’s got Kardashians again.”  In fact, for those that don’t know, the Kardashians are a family that is also a series of products.  I’ve paused here to see how I can succinctly explain how they all fit together, but I’m going to have to do it in long form.  We come to know these products, sorry, family members over something like forty-two series of their reality TV show, plus an array of spin-offs.  I’m not actually a willing viewer of any of this.  Sure, it ticks a lot of my boxes.  Trashy?  Yes.  Reality TV?  Most definitely.  The real world filtered to look better than it actually is?  Absolutely.  But there’s a hollow ringing to its message that makes each minute seem like time that could be better spent doing something else: watching You’ve Been Framed, for example, or thinking fondly of childhood memories.  So, let’s meet the Kardashians we are trying to keep up with:

Kris Jenner

Our matriarch styles herself as the momager, a title that’s as apt as it is sinister.  Her shrewd skills at self-promotion have seen her many progeny foisted into the spotlight for their earning potential.  It feels a bit wrong, but she’s very good at it, so we have at least unearthed some semblance of talent behind the worldwide fame.  She’s a loose cannon who thrills at embarrassing her children – you can’t miss her fun-loving attitude, even beneath several strata of expensive make up.

Kourtney Kardashian

The eldest sister, but the second-best wit.  She wins for being first to reproduce, with her most scathing stare reserved for ex-husband Scott Disick, who enjoys himself far too much throughout the whole show.

Kim Kardashian West

The internet requires nothing further to be said about this person.

Khloé Kardashian

The wittiest sister: Khloé has the best personality and is therefore the most attractive within a family that is already inordinately appearance conscious.  Her lines alone almost make the show worth watching, but you can actually scroll through endless gifs of them in various Buzzfeed listicles instead.

Kendall and/or Kylie Jenner

There are some younger half-sisters whose names also begin with K.  I have trouble distinguishing them but it doesn’t matter as both/either are wildly more successful than I will ever be.

Rob Kardashian

Yes, there’s a brother as well, but they couldn’t think of a name beginning with K for him, so this has caused him to spiral into obesity and obscurity.

Caitlyn Jenner

Before transitioning to live as a woman, this was Kris’s husband and the father of the two youngest daughters, with the elder siblings’ father, Robert Kardashian (the lawyer off the OJ trials) having passed away.  Divorcing Kris with mixed results, Caitlyn can now hair-flick with the rest of the Kardashians, though has faced as much criticism as praise since coming out as trans.  I’ve always found this individual wooden and boring, regardless of gender, so if that doesn’t make me a trans ally, I don’t know what does.

Anyway, that’s enough slagging off of real people.  There are also various babies and hangers on.  One pal, Jonathan Cheban, only got his spot on UK Celebrity Big Brother purely through dint of being Kim’s friend.  What an achievement.  Though I suppose Kim only got famous in the first place for being a chum of Paris Hilton.  Allegedly the whole concept of the show was conceived in partnership with Ryan Seacrest, but I can’t hear that name anymore without thinking of the Bojack Horseman character of A Ryan Seacrest Type so we’ll get straight into my other reasons for finding life too short to watch Keeping Up With The Kardashians.

While there is humour and drama, and plenty of escapism in this guilty pleasure, it’s their self-obsession that sees me itching to switch the station.  It’s hard to identify with people so privileged who still find so much to moan about, either in their soft-focus, flatteringly lit pieces to camera, or during the constant staged conversations in various expensive kitchens where everyone stands between the units pretending to eat food while never letting their smartphones out of their clutches, probably because another family member is on speakerphone.  While watching them jetting around the world, enjoying sumptuous meals out, splurging on jewellery, clothes and skin creams, the girls harp on about their anxieties and the resentment they harbour for each other.  They complain about their lack of privacy, which is delicious when you consider the camera crew has been invited into their private life (and I won’t even dignify Kim’s sex tape with a mention.  Oh.  Whoops.)  Rarely does the outside world get a mention, or do they prioritise using their platform for greater social good.

This was perfectly encapsulated by the 2017 fallout of Kendall Jenner’s appearance in a controversial Pepsi ad that indicated a carbonated sugary beverage could solve America’s entrenched racial inequality.  The episode was filled with Kardashians sympathising with their billionaire sibling, lamenting how hard she had worked only for people to be nasty about her on social media.  The real issue of a society that seems culturally prejudiced against people of colour was not mentioned.

So what is this show’s appeal?  An old flatmate used to watch it religiously, and it was only after a few viewings that I realised this wasn’t ironic consumption: she really did love the girls.  They sell, through their show and their social platforms, a lifestyle that is aspirational.  By being voyeurs to their TV-produced storylines, that lifestyle becomes tantalisingly close to reach.  This is what drives the capitalist minion in all of us.  Skipping down the street with a takeaway blended might make you feel like some Hollywood A-lister, but you’re really just a few quid worse off, consuming calories you don’t need and generating plastic waste that will end up in Our Planet.  And you still live in Leatherhead.

As a family, the Kardashians are winning at sweating their assets and their asses to make cash.  They are swept up in their own hype, but we needn’t be.  There’s not much to keep up with besides a lot of spending, some drama and only thinking about yourself.  I don’t know why I feel so aggrieved that they don’t use their fame for more good – they’re not the only celebrities setting questionable examples.  Just look at British right-wing politicians.  I think it’s because I am so aware of their influence on a generation of girls needing more support and sustenance than unrealistic expectations and unfair comparisons.  I have a way to prevent the Kardashians ever getting a hold of me: I just think of the Big Fat Gypsy Kardashians from the Keith Lemon Sketch Show.  They’ve got the biggest caravan on the site, so they do.