Hollyoaks

How the mighty have fallen.  This blog was going to be all about the high-brow boxsets I had uncovered.  Well, let’s be honest, that and a whole load of trash TV that I only watch ironically and as part of my job in media and just out of cultural curiosity and not because numbing my mind with garbage is the only way to cope with the traumatising experience of living in a country that’s repeatedly voting itself into oblivion.  Throughout, I’ve been scathing about the world of the soap opera.  Even though soaps give us a lot as a nation.  They provide the contestants for Strictly Come Dancing.  I think that’s it, actually.  I suppose they also reflect us as a nation and our slowly liberalising attitudes.  My nineties childhood teatimes featured witnessing a lesbian kiss in Brookside, swiftly followed by the discovery of a body under the patio (in Brookside, not at home in Surrey).  The British press railed at this travesty in a way not out of place in The Handmaid’s Tale, but, as we enter a new decade, nobody would bat an eyelid at this now.  People on TV (and in real life) are free to snog whomever they choose and, in this new apparently Tory4life Britain, we can hide whatever bodies we like under the patio.  So, with that in mind, let’s tear Hollyoaks apart.

While I don’t currently watch this soap, there was a period when I did.  Specifically, this was the early summer of 2007.  I was a finalist at Oxford, an institution that still asks me for money (I don’t have that much and they certainly aren’t top of the list for getting it), and every waking minute was spent preparing for our final exams, safe in the knowledge that roughly 100% of my final grade would be generated by the eight three-hour papers I would be sitting (in academic clothing known as subfusc).  Ever since I began the degree back in 2003, I’d noticed a guilt around our approach to studying: if you weren’t working, then you were aching with the bad conscience that you should be.  Pals at other academic institutions talk fondly now about memories of watching Neighbours twice a day and whiling away hours between a weekly lecture.  My average week involved 3,000 words of essay-writing (for which 40 hours of reading were expected – lol!) and translations in four different directions.  Therefore, as things inevitably ramped up under increasing pressure while finals approached, more and more time was spent studying and fewer and fewer moments remained for leisure.  However, this was and still is a recipe for burnout.

After a day buried in books, we would meet for dinner in hall, desperate for social contact and the support it brought.  Naturally, this was informal hall, rather than formal hall.  Informal hall involved a more canteen-like service, whereas for formal hall you had to don your gown over your normal clothes and be served a three-course meal that began with grace in Latin (which was sung by the choir on Sundays).  Just imagine Harry Potter and you’re pretty much there.  Both types of hall needed to be booked on a computer in the porters’ lodge (the main entrance to college) before lunchtime.  No, you couldn’t access this through the internet as that would be Oxonian heresy.  And yes, they really did need that many hours’ notice to broil an unidentifiable meat and mash some swede in time for that evening’s meal.  What a tangent!  The point is, after wolfing down this subsidised sustenance, we would still crave a further moment of unwinding.  Being 6.30, we would end up in front of someone’s TV.  And thus, Hollyoaks would end up in front of our eyes.

What began as ironic activity became something more important.  We began to look forward to our scheduled viewing, anticipating the storyline developments and speculating on the fallouts, anything to distract us from the 7pm drudge back to the library or our rooms for more fusty book-learning.  To this day, the first few notes of the Hollyoaks theme tune set my teeth on edge, but for that one summer, they were solace.  Our main problem, though, when it came to identifying with the characters in the production, was that they didn’t seem to be afflicted as we were with a constant need to be doing work.  They would walk about, talk to each other, do things, all without the omnipresent commentary of “Well, I really better be getting back to it.”  The reality didn’t match ours and their lack of work ethic didn’t compute.

But that didn’t stop us.  We were lost in the scripted tension that finally built up to John-Paul kissing his best friend Craig, all while Nancy and the other evergreen characters got smashed on half a sniff of Smirnoff Ice while “going out” at a venue that was, as with all local amenities, on the one street that they ever went along.  That was a terrible sentence, but it really brings to life the production quality of your average episode.  Let’s say my standards must have been lower, as, at no other time, have I been able to stomach multiple weeks of soap watching.  The plot developed at an agonisingly glacial pace, trapped within its own limited reality, chunked into daily cliff-hangers that got stretched so thinly you could see the next few weeks’ episodes through them.  It was still better than revising.

Exams completed, university a distant and overpriced recollection, I never returned to Hollyoaks.  To this day, it remains billed as the teen soap.  Yes, it’s still being made.  Occasionally I’ll catch a marketing trail on Channel 4 and be like: “Oh wow, this looks good,” but then I have to check myself and remember that this is one of those programmes whose marketing is better than the actual product.  Given the huge community of characters that make up the cast, unwieldy storytelling has to be avoided: only a handful of characters feature in any particular week.  It’s acting shift work.  And that’s always the complaint with soaps: the sheer quantity of entertainment they are required to produce harms its very quality.  Brookside may have long-since perished to cul-de-sac heaven, but Emmerdale seems to be on 43 times a week.  Either way, the 6.30pm broadcast was often well before home time once I became an office worker.  In fact, my favourite joke when on calls late in the day was to tell people planning to leave at 5.30 that it was good news they would be home in time for Hollyoaks.

So yeah, I’m not opposed to Hollyoaks being the 129^th programme on Just One More Episode.  As this week’s post demonstrates, this is mostly about me anyway, and Hollyoaks was in my life for a brief period in a former decade, despite there being nearly 4,000 episodes to catch up on, not to mention late night specials with extra sex and a whole array of scantily clad calendars nobody asked for.  Its approach to issues, too, should be commended, serving a national purpose to the country’s youth (who still watch TV and not just inane YouTubers) when it comes to coming to terms with and coming of age in a political entity that hates them.  With cuts to public mental health funding, Hollyoaks will soon be the sole method through which our young people are cared for, so I better get used to the jangly guitar notes of its opening sequence.  It’s only a moment of discomfort when compared to a future lifetime of being locked out of Europe.

Misfits

I’ve never really bought superheroes.  People wang on about the latest addition to the interminable Marvel Character Universe and I seem to zone out immediately.  What we can bear to watch comes down to what we can buy as a reality in which a story can play out.  My own mother can’t abide anything supernatural as it’s simply not realistic enough.  As a result, she cheerfully refuses to engage with the entire wizarding world of Harry Potter.  Sometimes I can’t work out why I’ll buy the things I’ll buy and reject the others.  Zombies?  Count me in no matter what (The Walking Dead and Kingdom).  Vampires?  Excuse me while I reminisce about loving True Blood.  I even sat through every season of Lost, long after I’d lost all hope of ever working out what I was actually buying.  But, typically, I’ll reject anything to do with costumed heroes.  So why, then, am I covering Misfits this week?

Well the truth is that I am behind with my boxset consumption and haven’t polished off anything new in a while.  But my viewing experience’s loss is your blog-reading pleasure’s gain, as I know we all love to trawl the archives.  I’ve cast my mind back to a show that did in fact deal with the real-life consequences of developing superpowers: Misfits.  The premise was not only a great excuse for orange jumpsuits, but also a sure-fire way to ponder the age-old question of just how much great power comes with which sort of great responsibility.  The premise was thus: some pesky youths on community service get caught up in a mysterious storm.  Superhuman new abilities ensue, with our drama served up by two sources: our characters coming to terms with their new faculties and the same characters coming across other individuals who enhanced their natural gifts in the storm’s rage.

Whenever I think what power I would have if I were a superhero, I always arrive at the conclusion that I can’t be improved.  I’ve occasionally thought it would be nice to be a bit taller, but I don’t think Slightly Taller Man would be a welcome addition to the Avengers when they’re next doing some of their assembling.  But don’t worry, the kids in Misfits got a good helping of powers each.  My favourite, regardless of power, was Kelly played by Lauren Socha.  At one point she was all over TV and I can’t fathom why this hasn’t continued.  Her voice had a quality to me that was pure entertainment and I just wanted her to say every line.  I’d have taken Misfits as a one-woman show if I’m honest.  Nathan Stewart-Jarrett (Curtis) appeared in a few things afterward, based on the strong vest-wearing he did in the show.  He once came to a party I was forced to attend as part of a work campaign (Primal Scream were playing but I just wanted to go home as I had no idea who they were) and I saw him in our VIP area.  “Yeah,” I thought, “there’s that man off the telly.”  Robert Sheehan provided impish charm with a hearty overegging of every scene as the very annoying Nathan.  He later appeared in Fortitude, which remains my least read blog (so click on it), and showed quite a different side to himself (and his private parts).  On the whole, though, everyone did a fantastic job in their parts.  Well done.  But some of those jobs got so over the top that I didn’t stick with things all the way to 2013’s fifth series.  It was the arrival of Rudy, played by Joseph Gilgun, in season three that started to wear me out.  I don’t like it when actors’ enjoyment of their own performances visibly outweighs the believability of their own performance.  You don’t see me at my office desk having a great time.

What made things really work was the gritty British urban setting of the whole thing.  Concrete wasteland is somehow a very plausible place for some inclement weather to dish out superhuman abilities.  But the greatest element of its own realism came from Misfits’ use of irreverent humour.  Sure coping with time-rewinding power and telepathy was deep stuff, but it also led to some LOLs.  This is why traditional hero fare always loses me.  At some point, our protagonist dons some sort of skin-tight outfit and begins posturing about the place as if we can take them seriously now they’ve got a uniform and a generic moniker that indicates their power.  I always think of Bananaman.  And I always hated him for being patronising.  The Misfits’ powers were buyable - probably just manifestations of the things we have about ourselves that make us think we are different to everyone.  I’ll confess here to my own hero creation: Bubble Boy.  Don’t worry; I didn’t think of the name.  My niece came up with that.  As an adult, imagination play is incredibly embarrassing.  I can spend hours building LEGO or playing board games with my sister’s daughter, but anything involving pretending goes beyond my comfort zone.  I was obliged to spend half the summer in the garden with her enacting superhero battles.  She was something to do with a ladybird.  Each battle starts with your pose.  It can be holding aloft a weapon or assuming some sort of proactive position.  Bubble Boy, whose name isn’t actually linked to any of my own digestive problems, draws a bubble with his hands.  Because, yes, he has the awesome power of bubbles.  Be afraid.  Don’t worry, I don’t proceed to assault a ten-year-old girl, as we are normally too busy laughing at our own posing to unleash any real violence.  Which just goes to show we British can’t take anything seriously.  I mean, just look at Brexit.

But if you want silly camp costumes, then Strictly Come Dancing is on every year.  Otherwise, dig out the old Misfits boxset for a masterclass in good British telly.  Nobody stands on a rooftop in Lycra with their hands on their hips.  They scowl while wearing dirty jumpsuits, before making some sort of quip about the whole situation.  The next time you see some disaffected youths, don’t forget that they might just have some superpowers you just don’t know about.

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.

Shipwrecked

This is a battle between two shows.  The first was a Sunday morning staple from the very earliest days of reality TV, which, when looked back on from 2019, is imbued with youthful nostalgia and innocence.  The second is a reboot of the format after nearly a decade’s hiatus.  The cynic in me wonders if this return is a response to the discovery by ITV2 of the formula for 16-34 TV gold: beautiful young people minus clothing plus sunny island equals captive audience (that would otherwise be on Instagram and not watching telly).  Yes, I was talking about Love Island just then everybody, but this post is about Shipwrecked in all of its guises, on T4, e4 and Channel 4, and with and without its suffix: colon Battle Of The Islands.

Cast your minds back.  It’s nearly the Millennium (which I still think of as the Minnellium, as the word better encapsulates the absolute naffness of this pointless event) and we children have been brought by our mother to Devon for a party with old family friends.  I remember two things: my sister’s guinea pig died while we were away, continuing our pets’ tradition of snuffing it on special occasions, and I laughed so hard during a game of cards that I farted loudly in front of my parents’ grown-up friends.  But, at the same time, months before Big Brother, Shipwrecked came to our screens.  Those first series, one running in 2000 and two (yes, two!) following in 2001, were from a more naïve era.  There was no competition.  This was simply a documentary crew following young people living a back-to-basics existence while receiving permanent skin damage in the sun of the South Pacific.  Animals were slaughtered, people got sand in their cracks, and dramas ensued about kissing boys and raising gay community flags.  But this wasn’t 24-hour surveillance; a film crew chased the islanders among the palms, waving a boom and clutching cameras, so we never knew how much was reality and how much was showing off.  Rumours later abounded that the juiciest action never made it to air: an island strewn with condom wrappers was the only physical evidence of how the crew and the cast inevitably succumbed to the holiday combination of heat, scantily cladness and being away.

Five years later, the format returned, only this time there were two islands.  And they were at war.  Adding some spice and jeopardy, new arrivals would appear each week, spending time with rival tribes before ultimately picking their permanent home.  The most populous tribe would nab some prize money, which, once divided twenty-five ways, was probably just enough to cover the psychological counselling anyone would need after spending weeks in a tropical paradise and then having to return to the UK.  As a sixth former, this was religious viewing.  You needed to be able to enter the common room debate about whether you’d rather be a Tiger or a Shark.  I honestly can’t remember which of the two was the tribe for me, but I do know it was the same animal each series.  T4, a curious youth strand on Channel 4, had cornered the market in weekend morning hangover TV, and we, graduating from being Inbetweeners, were more or less legally allowed to drink alcohol.  Every weekend was filled with eighteenth birthday parties and all the Smirnoff Ices you could drink.  Shipwrecked: Battle Of The Islands was perfect viewing.

I would go into more detail on what occurred in these episodes between 2006 and 2009, but this period, at least in terms of the internet, is a very long way away.  How we’re able to excavate ancient ruins and carbon-date millennia-old fossils, yet I can’t find a non-pixellated image of the 2008 cast is beyond me.  I do recall, though, that at some point, the scheduling shifted from weekend mornings to weekday evenings.  More specifically, Tuesdays.  In this age before reliable catch up and when your dad still controlled the VCR, I was devastated.  On Tuesday nights I pushed trolleys around the car park of Waitrose in Cobham.  I still therefore miss the series I never saw, despite the generous wages and benefits of the John Lewis Partnership.  Instead, I have memories of dodging the BMWs and Audis while fetching back the abandoned shopping carts, refusing to wear the high-vis jacket even when it snowed as it stunk of someone else’s BO, overhearing mums telling their children to work hard at school so they didn’t end up like me (despite me having a place at Oxford) until I finally got moved indoors.  Ramming twelve trolleys into the back of a Mercedes might have been part of it (the driver was still inside).

One series I was able to enjoy fully was the 2008 season.  This was when I started my job in media.  It was July 2008.  I had misspent a year in a headhunting firm where people were very serious, discussing the economy or rugby or braying about their children.  I had got in constant trouble so I was determined to keep a low profile in this new role.  I would resist piping up in all office discussions until I had proven I was good at my job.  But then, I overheard new colleagues (who are still beloved to this day) talking about the previous night’s episode of Shipwrecked.  It took all my willpower (and there’s not much) to resist wheeling over there in my desk chair and joining in.  But what it did prove was that I had come to the right place.

And now, it’s back.  This time, we’re broadcasting at 9pm each weeknight on e4, so we can have as much swearing and boobies as we like.  Sadly missing is Morcheeba’s The Sea, a track I will forever associate with Shipwrecked.  We have a new narrator.  Gone are Andrew Lincoln and Craig Kelly, both of whom sounded bored out of their minds while describing the antics of attention-seeking twentysomethings.  Vick Hope gently pokes fun at the characters, but mostly gets on with it, which somehow leaves me craving the acid-tongued lashings of Love Island’s Iain Stirling.  But much is the same.  Even Aygo by Toyota (the old sponsor of T4) is back on board (shout out to the friend who did this deal).  We have Sharks and we have Tigers.  The ante is upped though, as the new arrivals, who have so far in this first week come in pairs, also have to be picked by the island they choose, with a mismatch resulting in a one-way ticket back to Blighty.  This has brought high tension and just desserts, though I have just watched the fifth episode, where the complication of having a pair of identical twins as the arrivals made the format seem slightly cruel.  Having gone through secondary education with five twins in my form of thirty (and a further two pairs in the year group – clearly something in the water in Horsley) my twindar felt quite sensitive to the onslaught.

Sadly I’m not yet watching this on a massive f***-off telly in my own home.  I can pick between the non-HD live broadcast where I’m overwhelmed by adverts, or catch up on All4, where I’m overwhelmed by adverts.  Both scenarios also include the inhabitants of the flat upstairs, divided from ours by a ceiling made presumably of hopes and dreams, stomping about constantly, so if I’m not distracted by the heel-walking of the morbidly obese, I’m squinting at the low-def picture, filling in the gaps with my imagination.  This year, the Sharks are a lovely bunch, while the Tigers have a nastier streak.  I’m therefore definitely a Tiger, as that sort of person is always more interesting.

Is it as good as we remember?  Well, after some acclimatisation, this could be a vintage year.  Times have changed, and it’s hard to work out if this is a dating show or a survivalist documentary.  In addition, I’m now ten years older than most of the contestants, rather than them seeming like inhabitants of a distant future adulthood that was years away.  I can’t help but wonder if it would be rewarding if the cast had greater maturity and life experience.  Maybe I could bowl up: hi, I’m Rob; I’m 33 and work in advertising; I enjoy too much telly and going to bed early.  Maybe not.  It’s just that these young people seem to shriek so much.  There’s a boat: cue screaming.  There’s a palm tree: cue caterwauling.  There’s a pontoon: cue sh*t being lost.  Then a friend articulated my reservation perfectly: this is hangover TV, but we don’t have hangovers.

The Inbetweeners

Growing up a Brit can sometimes be a bit shit, but it’s also hilarious as a result.  Until The Inbetweeners came along in 2008, no show had captured this accurately.  We British teens were forced to try and translate our lives into American high schools, as that’s all there was available at the time.  The people on screen were too attractive.  They didn’t wear uniforms.  The climate looked reliably sunny.  They were played by people in their thirties.  They didn’t talk like us and so on and so forth.  I should point out this didn’t stop me watching this stuff, but then The Inbetweeners showed up and highlighted the stark contrast between US TV and UK real life: with all its ugly people, school uniforms, drizzle, awkward young people and British banter.  Sure, we only managed three series of six 30-minute episodes (plus two successful films) but that’s really what passes for a season in the UK (rather than 22 hours of mind-boggling plots that cost you the will to live).

This programme still has a special place in all of our hearts.  Not a week goes by in my adult life when someone is described as a wanker for liking something.  They might say they like hummus and get called a hummus wanker, or tell everyone what a great weekend they had in Ibiza and get called an Ibiza wanker.  Nor is an opportunity ever missed to tell someone they are being feisty in the famous structure of “Feisty one, you are.”  It applies to all adjectives – try it next time you cuss someone important at work: “Boring one, you are.”  Or “Tedious one, you are.”  The Inbetweeners’ cultural impact was huge because it represented a culture that nobody had managed to bring to screen before: the age of being in between.

At seventeen, you can just about drive.  You’re ready for adult life, but you’re probably at the same school you’ve been at since the age of eleven, when puberty might just have been a rumour that went around the changing rooms after football.  Now, adolescence is a driving force making you want to do all of the adult things (apart from work nine to five, pay taxes, talk about mortgages and get excited about mattress discussions with colleagues).  But one enormous pillar of adult life is denied to you: the legal right to buy alcohol.  Thus, you are trapped in between adulthood and childhood (and not in that Noel Clarke film, Kidulthood).  And you’re not only trapped there, you’re trapped in Britain.

The Inbetweeners revelled in such ridiculous Britishness that it almost dared itself not to get syndicated abroad (despite over 20 other countries broadcasting this glorious nonsense).  It was based in a sixth form college, after all.  Its humour came from the differences between private schools and state schools.  There was work experience.  There were Home Counties boys venturing into London.  There was detailed knowledge of British law around the sale of alcohol (including mead) to minors.  There was the college fashion show.  There was the trip to a potential university campus.  There was even the motherchuffing Duke of Edinburgh Award.  I hope that Americans went “wait, what?” just as much as we do when we hear words like valedictorian and sophomore.

Britishest of all was the humour of teenage boys.  Nobody seemed to have realised that the way we/they talk to each other is disgusting.  I’ve left the pronoun undetermined as I still do this with most of my male friends.  And most of the female ones.  And colleagues.  Especially colleagues, actually.  Anything could be laughed about.  Any insult could be brushed off.  It was only once things had really gone too far that you could finally see you had crossed the line, though you couldn’t in fact see the line as it was about hundred miles behind you.  Let’s look at some of the most disgusting things that were said and revel in the fact that, no matter what we claim, we’re still amused by potty mouths and toilet humour.  My dad, for example, still believes there is nothing funnier than a fart.  Any passing wind in any form of media (and, sadly, real life) will guarantee a LOL from my father.  Why resist it?  Life’s too hard not to laugh at nonsense:

Jay’s dead hand

Jay hears that if you cut off the blood to your own hand by sitting on it, you can trick yourself into thinking a third party’s hand is tugging you off when you are, in fact, masturbating.  However, it’s not ideal if you need to slam your laptop shut when your family barge in and porn moans are being broadcast at full volume into your room…

Any time Jay talks about female physiology

Up to your nuts in guts just conjures such powerful imagery.

Simon talking dirty

Everything he did was beyond cringe, mostly as it was visually punctuated by the most dated gelled quiff ever seen on TV, but no dirty talk for me has ever surpassed “I’m going to fuck your fucking fanny off, you twat.”

Simon’s London shoes

We’ve all been turned away from a terrible nightclub for wearing trainers, but how many of us have paid a tramp to swap shoes with us?  Simon lost £20 but gained a pair of urine-drenched shoes that got him in, but ensured no girl would come near him.  It reminded me of a time a friend was sick in my trainer overnight on a camping trip and I had to travel back to London from rural Wales the next day with only a plastic bag between my sock and chunks of his half-digested burger and chips.  Yes, I really was an inbetweener.  Incidentally, it was a toss-up between this and Simon’s testicle hanging out at the fashion show.

Will’s first exam

He poos his pants.  Tee hee.

It’s this comedy gold that saw the viewership of The Inbetweeners grow from around 400,000 in the first series to a peak of 3.72m for the third – not bad for e4’s first UK commission.  Clearly, word of mouth spread amongst “fwends” that this wasn’t to be missed.  But the gross-outs were complemented by more subtle observations, such as Simon’s hatred for his parents, even though they were totally chilled about everything he wanted to do, or Jay’s genuinely hurt feelings each time his dad bullied him.  Even now, I cannot resist a re-run if I’m ever left with ten spare minutes before bed time.  I always forget how much I can’t abide the headmaster, Mr Gilbert, but then I’m always happy to be reminded of the music of Kate Nash, whose song Foundations seems to score almost every scene transition in series one.

Ah, sixth form.  Don’t take me back.