You’ve Been Framed

So here we are, getting into the second century of posts on Just One More Episode.  Sadly, we’re not able to celebrate the storming success of the historic hundredth post last week (Dark) because hardly a badger has read it.  Whether people are put off by it being in German or if they’ve simply had enough of me talking about myself, we’ll never know.  But it does give us a chance to search our souls in order to understand the purpose of this loose collection of prosaic ramblings.  Mostly, it’s to tell people about good telly that I think they should watch (apart from when I accidentally watched all of Altered Carbon and slagged it off).  Navigating the world of boxsets requires confidence and peer permission, so I’m prepared to go boldly and check these episodes are worth your limited viewing time.  But sometimes, we stop off to indulge ourselves in the shared experience of a culturally significant programme, despite there being no special occasion to warrant it any additional relevance (leading to the suspicion I just choose shows at random – I mostly do).  I’ve discussed Friends and University Challenge at times when, like now, everyone is watching Love Island, so if you’re looking for method to this madness, you’ll only leave disappointed.  However, if what you need is an irreverent rundown of a hilarious home video show that’s been on our screens since 1990, then let’s get started.  Readers, I give you You’ve Been Framed.

“But, why now?” I hear nobody asking.  I’ll admit to the occasional moment of telly switch-on (typically a weeknight after aggressively commuting home, swapping work clothes for slacks, plating up enough food for a family of four that I intend to eat alone, and sinking into the sofa) and, before I can hit the Netflix button that my duty as a Millennial compels me to do, I end up catching a few moments of ITV2.  If I’ve made it to zone 2 early enough (and we can judge this by the trail of dead bodies I have left in my wake on the Victoria Line), I might just catch a repeat of You’ve Been Framed.  It feels dirty: the grainy picture quality, the low-cost format, the canned audience chortle.  But, without fail, I will laugh out loud.  Recently, we tested this theory in the office.  A debate on the show’s various presenters preceded my department’s captain YouTubing some clips from YBF’s 1998 vintage.  It may have been the giddiness of impending first-time fatherhood, but more likely it was the joyous silliness of people taking leave of their common sense on videotape that had him howling with hysterics and encouraging the rest of us to gather round and share in the mirth.  People really just are a bit stupid.  I’ve talked before of the importance of silliness (Miranda) but while its consequences can be dangerous (proven by things such as Brexit, the climate crisis and Boris Johnson), they can also be harmless and entertaining.

Let’s revisit some of the top categories of human silliness that You’ve Been Framed celebrates so successfully in this non-exhaustive list of the things we can expect to see:

Fat person doing something they oughtn’t

In order to cope with the elephant in the room (which is normally them) fat people don’t like their obesity to be mentioned constantly.  But this can sometimes lead to a denial of the basic laws of physics.  Oh I’ll just balance on this plastic bench despite being 25 stone.  Oh I’ll just hang off this rope swing despite my 48 inch waste.  Oh I’ll just try out this child’s bike despite wearing size XXXL jeans.  By the dictates of gravity, they as an object exert a force on the item onto which they have heaved their hulking mass.  Cue snapping materials and the payoff of a bouncy bouncy landing.

Geriatric about to stack it on a wedding dancefloor

Let’s continue this tirade against marginalised groups, moving from the overweight to the elderly.  There’s Aunty Pat giving it some swing at Steve and Beverley’s reception, shaking her skirts and shimmying out of time to generic Disco Dave fodder.  She’s pulling faces to the camera, really going for it with the showing off.  But the parquet flooring has just been polished and her slingbacks’ grip has worn down.  Over she goes, comedically obliterating her hip in the name of a good time.  Bonus points for pulling a tablecloth down with her, or for her dentures flying out.

Child-based collisions

They have so much energy, racing about the garden chasing dogs or riding bikes, until, bam, they’ve smashed into any available obstacle.  Luckily, these children all seem to have rubbery qualities, which is just as well as their care-givers normally can’t do much else but laugh at them.  My dad, too, always seemed especially enamoured by children falling over.

Awful American brats

Bolstering the British public’s lack of hilarious content (and the fact that even £250 cash can’t overcome our reservation about looking like a silly sausage on national TV) the USA has produced enough home video howlers in our mother tongue that we can mix in seamlessly.  A highlight is always toddler Brandon, overshadowed by a mountain of Christmas gifts, telling his poor mugs of parents that he didn’t want whatever plastic tat they have lavished on him.  Sadly, though, this isn’t an acerbic comment on consumerism from our Brandon, but a damning indictment concerning the inhumanity of spoiling your children.

I could go on, but I’m sure we’ve all got our own favourite categories.  What I need to leave time for is the special ingredient that could make or break an episode of You’ve Been Framed: the host.  For the first seven years, early nineties TV darling Jeremy Beadle was our introduction to thematically linked montages of people’s pratfalls.  Bizarrely, a studio audience gathered to witness a man show them videos, which must have resulted in many disappointed coach trip passengers voyaging up to that there London for some culture.  But these were more innocent times, and this was must-watch telly.  But it was, if I remember correctly, broadcast too late on a Sunday evening for me at the young ages of five, six and so on.  Besides, Sunday night in our household was hair-wash night.  Mum would get the bucket (the same one that was fetched if either of us threatened to vomit due to illness) and deftly wash the Johnson’s Baby Shampoo off us while we grew up in a household that hadn’t yet been able to afford installing a shower.  I would cry, whether or not my eyes stung, simply because I wanted to watch a goateed man introduce funny videos, occasionally escalating my protest to weeing in the bath, knowing full well my older sister would be up for her hair wash next and using the same water.

Beadle (RIP) retired from VHS duties in 1997 (though I know Beadle’s About had been another vehicle for his comedy – too young to understand the concept, I thought the joke was that he simply hid from people while having their cars vandalised).  The show’s producers needed a new anchor and, naturally, got in Mandy Dingle off of Emmerdale.  Our opening credits now showed a moo-moo-clad Lisa Riley greeting CGI video cassettes like they were her pals before reeling off scripted intros while everyone just waited for the clips to play.  Things felt tired, and this failed to change when Jonathan Wilkes took the helm in 2003.  Yes, I know we had all forgotten about him.  He was brought into the public eye because he was Robbie Williams’ pal and that was enough for a music/media career in those days.  He seemed like a nice bloke, but I have literally no recollection of any of his output.  Sadly, we are reminded of Robbie Williams much more regularly.

In 2004, someone had a stroke of genius.  They got rid of the studio audience and the links between the clips, as these got in the way of the clips themselves.  Instead, the videos were enhanced by irreverent voiceover, specifically, the imaginative stylings of Harry Hill.  Much less annoying without his visual of big collar and wide eyes, Harry’s tone leant itself well to everything, and suddenly the most mundane video moments were elevated by his hatred of white plastic garden furniture, or by referring to every fat man as John Prescott and every fat woman as Anne Widdecombe.  It was a magic formula: a higher density of money shots, with the set up to each improved with humour that was a touch more intelligent than the slapstick we tune in for.  Fifteen years later, we still can’t get enough.

Granted, nobody bursts into the office demanding: “Did anyone watch You’ve Been Framed last night?”  They’d be laughed out of their skinny jeans.  But it does indeed remain a show to unite the family.  My niece can squeal at the cute animals, while my dad can indulge his adoration of Child-Based Collisions.  The pointing and laughing are guilt-free, as each clip nets someone £250, so we can assume they’ve volunteered to share their mishap with the nation.  YBF allows my parents to indulge their love of considering everyone but themselves to be idiots (which, regular readers will notice, especially this week, that that’s an apple that hasn’t fallen far from the tree), and my mum will look up from the ironing to issue a caustic “silly arse” if she considers anyone’s potential life-changing injury to be self-inflicted.  It’s not a glossy boxset with A-list actors, nor is it some hidden gem that will earn you kudos among the office intelligentsia.  But let’s take a moment to laugh at people falling over, as long as Harry Hill provides the commentary.  I defy you to watch an episode and not laugh out loud.  And we could all use more laughs, couldn’t we?

I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here

In the old days, they had seasons to tell them what time of the year it was.  In this golden age of television, we have the return of certain TV shows to indicate where we are in our annual cycle.  In fact, you could rely on ITV1 not only to provide shiny-floor entertainment, but also to fulfil this function: Britain’s Got Talent lets you know it’s nearly Easter, The X Factor heralds the end of summer and, finally, I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here makes it unmistakeable that here we go again it’s only already ruddy Christmas isn’t it.  Of course, you might be part of the camp that believes it’s not the festive season until you’ve wept at the John Lewis ad (reminding you of the true meaning of Christmas: promoting Elton John) or until you’ve seen a Coca Cola truck (reminding you of the other meaning of Christmas: using carbon-heavy distribution methods to ensure fat people can access fizzy, sugar-laden drinks).

But, whether you love this time of year, or, like me, you think we should only really do December 25^th every few years, the return of I’m A Celeb is arguably more important than the alleged birth date of a man who claimed god was his dad and who still seems to yield unprecedented influence over two thousand years later.  This is because it reminds me, without fail, that the year is almost out, and all I’ve done with it is watch too much telly.  All those things I vowed I would achieve back in January… they’re still mere vows rather than actual actions.  Instead of prompting me to get a wriggle on and deliver something, I instead resign myself to rolling them over to the next year, slouching down on the sofa, and tuning in for another nightly hour of jungle fun.

But it wasn’t always this way.  When the first series broadcast in 2002, I had no interest at all.  My perspective of its genesis might be skewed, but I am totally writing it here without checking any of it.  TV had just been rocked by the arrival of proper reality TV: Big Brother.  Convinced it needed its own version to rival Channel 4’s ratings hit, ITV acquired Survivor (and BBC done Castaway but that was more to do with the Millennium, apparently).  Instead of a house, there was a jungle, but it was basically the same: some skulduggery, some exhibitionism, some normos competing for a cash prize.  The main difference was that nobody wanted to watch it, despite untold marketing hype.  Then, I assume, someone gave it a quick tweak and turned it into a celebrity version.  Thus, according to my hazy recollection and fabrication, I’m A Celeb was born.

To me, though, it remained an irrelevant format.  All these people that claimed they’d never stoop so low as to watch the desperate wannabes on Big Brother, but would later happily sit through The Apprentice, extended this double standard by watching I’m A Celeb.  Yet surely this was the most desperate form of reality TV: faded household names doing anything to get famous again, whether that be eating kangaroo penises or withstanding a shower of thousands of cockroaches and crickets.  All for our amusement.  And not just our collective enjoyment alongside them, but for our point-and-laugh-at-their-sorry-state derision, at their expense and humiliation.  Starved in a camp on basic rations, pooping in a dunny and sleeping in hammocks, participants then fight for food in Bushtucker Trials by enduring close physical contact with scary critters (think helmets filled with spiders) or down drinks that will churn any stomach (think blended beetles).  It was cruel, but it was also super broad.  As a teenager, I needed things to feel niche and subversive, only there for me to discover, rather than shared with millions of average viewers.  I could watch Buffy instead.

Even in 2007, the show brought me out in hives.  Flicking through the freeview channels in my Belsize Park five-man flatshare, in the days before I had any way to watch telly other than tuning in at the right time (a barbaric era), I came across series 7.  Jason “J” Brown (from Five) and Gemma Atkinson (from Hollyoaks) were suspended above a jungle creek in an old aeroplane.  I don’t know why.  Everything was so offputting.  They had on horrible beige shirts.  There were red fleece bodywarmers, with phone numbers on the back.  I still detected the air of delighting in the end of someone’s showbiz career.  I switched over.

Things changed, though, back in 2012.  I was staying temporarily with a friend while in between flatshares (I told her three weeks, but stayed for three months – soz).  As the homeowner, she was in charge of evening viewing.  It was also my first Sky household, and I didn’t know how to work the remote.  She wanted I’m A Celeb, I was in no position to say no, and into series twelve we dived.  Her rationale was that the links, presented by Ant and Dec, were funnier than most other things on TV.

How right she was.  I can guarantee anyone viewing this show more than their fair share of LOLs on their witty interactions alone.  They’re irreverent when talking about the contestants, teasing their foibles and emphasising their idiosyncrasies.  To my surprise, this wasn’t done aggressively.  It felt like the gentle ribbing you see among friends, rather than full character assassinations.  Either way, they were spot on.  Alongside these the lads share camaraderie with the offscreen, yet audible crew, laughing at themselves as much as they do at the celebs.  As such, they’ve even built up their own parlance – a set of known phrases that appear every year.  My highlights are below:

I’m No Doctor, Guys But…

The job role here is interchangeable, but this one was originally wheeled out for medical issues, pointing out that contestants probably shouldn’t be eating/drinking that (that often being pureed turkey testicles).

I’ll Smash Your Face In

A threat of violence from Dec to anyone that dares to slight him.  Of course, he is not a violent man, so its incongruity with everything else that’s going on plays perfectly at tickling the chuckle bones.

Evening, Prime Minister

Whenever anything political comes up, a knowing glance is given to camera, alongside a cheeky bow, lampooning any potential viewing from our premier.  I enjoy the image of DavCam or T Maz perched on the edge of the sofa, glued to the telly while international diplomatic nightmares play out around them.

But now, our beloved Ant is having time off and Holly Willoughby is on Dec’s right on our jungle set.  I mean, yeah, she’s doing ok.  I don’t want to be horrible about people here, but she’s one of the least friendly presenters I’ve ever met through work, so it’s nice that she smiles her chops off in front of the camera.  I would too, if I were that smug.  So let’s focus on the set.  What is this place!?  There are camps, and rope bridges, and treetop walkways, not to mention unlimited Bushtucker Trial locations.  I’m imagining a full out-of-town complex off some motorway in Queensland.  But how can it be sustainable to run this whole place (breeding the cockroaches, stroking the snakes, cutting off the kangaroo penises etc) when it’s just in use for one month a year to torment past and future stars of British panto.  I’m sure once ITV have cleared out they ship in the Argentine version of Ant and Dec or the Swedish version of Christopher Biggins and all hell breaks loose once again.

So, let’s finish with a round-up of my favourite participants since I started watching the show in 2012, with apologies to anyone who did a good job on it before I could be persuaded to watch.

Helen Flanagan, series 12

Some child of the cobbles of Corrie was now all grown up.  Grown up enough not to want to do any Trials.  She completely abandoned one at the first hurdle, on seeing a room containing an emu.  Ant and Dec struggled to hide their frustration, but at least they got to finish early.

Ashley Roberts, series 12

A worthy runner up, kept from the spotlight in the Pussycat Dolls, but charming British audiences with her American enthusiasm.  I once walked past her outside the Wolseley.

Rebecca Adlington, series 13

An absolute champ, building on her Olympic medal collection with a down-to-earth and practical approach to jungle life, all while revealing that even a gold-medal swimmer can suffer from insecurities.

Gemma Collins, series 14

I find everything this lady does hilarious.  Including when she literally couldn’t be arsed past day 3.

Vicky Pattison, series 15

I loved her on Geordie Shore, and I loved her winning this series and transitioning to a mainstream national treasure.

Lady Colin Campbell, series 15

A posh old white lady with a Jamaican accent?  As if that wasn’t enough, she was also the most stubborn contestant ever known and gave Duncan Bannatyne a run for his money in the dour stakes.

Joel Dommett, series 16

I hadn’t heard of him, but, the minute he appeared, I got all these texts claiming he and I are the same person.  And we basically are.

Larry Lamb, series 16

It was just nice to spend time with Gavin’s dad from Gavin & Stacey.

Amir Khan, series 17

An extreme case of manchild.  He was the first celebrity to consume his Dingo Dollar Challenge treat himself before taking it back to the camp.  Fair play to him.

Special mention to Gillian McKeith, who appeared in 2010.  I must have been shown her performance (pretending to faint to avoid Bushtucker Trials) by someone else, but it enabled me to enjoy this song in its full intended glory (because, why is Gillian so reptilian?).

No matter how terrible some of the contestants, the field is soon whittled down to a loveable bunch whom we come to see as friends.  We share their private jokes, their jungle memories, and their journeys from pampered C-listers to primeval survivalists.  This is brought to life more than ever in the last days before the final.  I’m tingling now at the thought of Celebrity Cyclone, the best of all the Bushtucker Trials.  An enormous slip’n’slide with water cannons, colourful capes and an array of projectiles that illustrates just how much our new pals have bonded.  I’m almost sad when they finally announce the winner.  Where else can a diminutive rapper (Tinchy Stryder) and a former Tory battle-axe (Edwina Currie) go camping together in a rainforest? It’s no longer about a shameless plug for attention, but about how far they’ve been prepared to come to get the nation to take them back into their hearts. So yes, it really is the most wonderful time of the year, and it doesn’t need baby Jesus or Elton John’s stupid piano.

University Challenge

Blimey, this is relentless.  Trying to keep up with my boxset viewing so I can post about a new show every week is taking its toll, so I’m having to trawl the archives again.  I’m spaffing the best part of an hour a night on Big Brother, plus Netflix has distracted me with new series of Bojack Horseman and Making A Murderer.  These aren’t just first world problems, they are overwhelmed-with-content first world problems.  This will be the greatest challenge of our modern age (after Brexit, Trump and global warming): there’s too much to watch.

Luckily, recent events have reminded me of a whole category of televisual programming that has been entirely absent from Just One More Episode: quiz shows.  Everybody loves a good quiz, especially me.  My college years saw me develop an unhealthy addiction to quiz machines, touring townie pubs under the mistaken view that the local clientele’s sub-par intelligence would be no match for our 18-year-old brains.  The machines’ algorithms were calibrated in our favour, we thought arrogantly, until we lost all our pound coins and finally realised that seasoned drinkers are some of the greatest treasure troves of trivia in British society.  My grad years in London saw many weeks punctuated with a good old pub quiz.  I think we once won the jackpot at The King William IV in Hampstead, where the quizmaster was a drag queen devoid of any sense of humour, though we never repeated this success at The Flask around the corner.  Each week, a band of elder gents calling themselves The Drinklings clinched the title, though they too looked thoroughly miserable about it.  So, does this mean that quizzes bring no joy?

Heck, no.  A friend’s birthday at the weekend included a quiz as part of the organised fun.  We all transformed into competitive monsters, none more so than I during the Beat The Intro round.  I’m genetically pre-disposed to a few things, such has having bits of ginger in my beard or feeling travel sick in automatic cars, but one of my favourite DNA traits is being able to identify any known song from its first beat (and by known, I mean known to me – I have no hope, obviously, if I’ve never heard it).  In that single second, the whole song plays to me instantly in my mind’s own radio station (where nobody judges the playlist).  Science has proven that this is genetic, as my dad and sister are the same, whereas my mum claims to have lost interest in music in 1983 (when my sister was born), so we know this is a dominant Honeywood gene, alongside tolerating comments about our surname and still laughing out loud at You’ve Been Framed.

Hang on, we’re three paragraphs in and I’ve not even reached the show in question yet.  To chime in with this recent quizzical development in my life, I’m taking on University Challenge.  Don’t worry though, as we’re not going to dwell on every tedious detail since the show first broadcast in 1962 or the fact it’s been on both ITV and the BBC (a bit like The Voice UK, but in the other direction).  Doing that wouldn’t allow enough time to talk about me (in addition to the first three paragraphs) so we’re just going to focus on my interactions with it and subsequent one-sided opinions.  I’m assuming this is entertaining for you, but there are gifs throughout which you can look at if it’s not.

I’ll confess to the fact I never really knew what the show was until I got to university.  People seemed to think it was acceptable during Freshers’ Week to talk about an intellectual gameshow, a format that was already 41 years old in 2003.  It’s worth clarifying that our Freshers’s Week lasted a matter of days before the first essays were set and the fun was killed off – welcome to Oxford, bitch (a throwback to a previous post on The OC; swap Californian sunshine for bone-chilling frost, surfing for swotting and enjoying your teenage years for a higher volume of work than a person can ever realistically deliver, and they’re basically the same thing.)  New fellow students asked if I had seen how our college had done (getting beaten by London Metropolitan University in the first round, but making it through to the quarter finals on a highest losing score loophole).  I hadn’t; I was probably watching Little Britain or Celebrity Big Brother instead.

Fast forward a few years, and I was an impoverished graduate sharing a flat with four others above a Costa in Belsize Park.  Income was low, but London was (and is) expensive, so communal TV viewing became a mainstay of our pastimes (alongside the pub quizzes mentioned before).  On Monday evenings, in particular, none of us were out and about.  Thus, University Challenge soon became our favourite programme.  And this was because we didn’t just watch the show, we watched it competitively.  The trick was to shout out answers before the contestants did, or, better still, before Jeremy Paxman even finished the question.  To this day, even if I find myself watching Uni Chall (my affectionate abbreviation… that’s never caught on), I still call out answers to nobody.  Maybe the neighbours upstairs, when not trotting about in heels on wooden floors, are impressed.

“Woah!” I hear you readers cry, “What do you mean you knew the answers!?”  Indeed, let’s dwell on the fact that this is TV’s most academically challenging quiz.  This isn’t The Weakest Link, where questions come directly from the GCSE syllabus for double science, nor is it National Lottery In It To Win It, where Sally from Ashby de la Zouch is counselled through deciding whether Rome, Paris or Madrid is the capital of France by a wonderfully patient Dale Winton (RIP) before plumping for Rome because Pat off of next door once went there and said it was well good.  No, these are the hardest questions ever, veering from chemical formulae to mathematical equations via obscure literature, forgotten painters and niche geography.  Yes, there can be music rounds, but this isn’t Beat The Intro on the biggest radio airplay hits from 2000 to 2010 (my specialism), this is opera and classical and all that jazz, including, funnily enough, jazz.  Therefore, if you’re getting between one and three answers in a thirty-minute episode, you’re reaching the upper echelons of British intellect (although this is against a low base of people who’ve voted Conservative and for Brexit).

Each university that is being challenged puts forward four of its brightest minds.  Oxford and Cambridge, however, divide themselves into their constituent colleges, so the 70 or so students of St Benet’s Hall, Oxford can take on a team representing the 28,000 undergraduates and 13,000 postgraduates of the University of Manchester.  A starter question, worth ten points, is read out, and anyone can buzz.  Get it wrong, and you’re punished with a deduction.  Get it right, and you freeze out the other team, unlocking three questions, worth five points each, on a single subject, though the answers must come through the team captain.

Play then ensues and often features the following highlights:

Jeremy Paxman telling off the contestants

Paxman by name, man who packs a lot in, by nature.  Does that work?  Never mind.  In short, Paxman ain’t got time for your shit.  If the conferring goes on too long, viewers are treated to a gloriously withering, “Come on, Emmanuel, let’s have it,” wrong-footing the captain into giving a clanger of an incorrect answer.

Jeremy Paxman laughing at you for being wrong

Further derision from Paxman greets each clanger.  Nothing consolatory is ever said, as stupidity is a sin at Uni Chall.  “No!” he’ll chuckle before shuffling his question cards.  Easy for him to hurl out abuse, what with the answers written down for him.

Contestants’ faces during a music round

While some unknown concerto fills the studio, it’s hard to know what expression best befits the situation.  Poised to identify the sixteenth century composer, our academic challengers inadvertently strike something between a baby’s poo face and the nose wrinkle you make when walking straight into a dangerous fart.

The Shakespeare strategy

I’ve made this up, but the three five-point questions are always on a theme.  If you even understand the question, which can be demanding in itself, you might as well guess the answer, as you’ve got three changes for it to be right.  Therefore, if Jeremy asks “Which Shakespeare play…?” just keep shouting Macbeth and, chances are, you’ll pick up five points eventually.

A slightly embarrassed mature student

There’s no age limit, so don’t be surprised to see a silver-haired sexagenarian studying for a doctorate in anthropology and aromatherapy cringing in their cardigan each time a greasy teenager exposes their lack of knowledge about the Byzantine Empire.

Some personalities

Over the years, controversy has swirled around the show.  Debates have arisen over whether female contestants’ appearances are subjected to unfair criticism, something the men are spared (though should also experience based on some of their jumper choices).  Student life is a time to try out being an adult with no obligation to buy the real thing, so if a young mind is more focused on the deep study of Renaissance architecture than on how often human hair should be washed, then more power to them.  We scoff at their jumpers and hairstyles to cover our own insecurities.  We don’t know any of the answers, but these bright young things will go on to earn more than us, or their further studies will add knowledge to human life and provide a benefit to us all that we simply can’t see yet.  So yes, chuckle now at the double-barrelled pipsqueak going cross-eyed doing on-the-spot geometry.  His thesis will render your whole industry obsolete, probably.

University Challenge is a safe space for the intellectuals, holding out on primetime TV while we race to the bottom of human achievement with the likes of Love Island and Ex On The Beach.  It’s as British as being splashed by a bus driving through a puddle, only we’re showered in useless knowledge instead of murky rainwater.  May Uni Chall last another 56 years, brightening our Monday evenings with the sight of young geniuses getting berated for not knowing their Boticelli from their botany, their Galileo Galilei from their Gail Trimble and their network topology from their Netflix.

Footballers’ Wives

I have no idea why I’m doing a show from 2002, but it seems to have been a classic year for vintage TV.  In addition, the Desperate Housewives post whipped up a storm of reads, so I’ve decided that wives is a popular theme, and this show is about wives as well (clue’s in the title).  Then, I’m amplifying that with the power of nostalgia, after the Buffy The Vampire Slayer post drew more attention than I was prepared for: turns out we like to relive our memories of shows from when we were younger and less jaded, safely in the EU and certain of an economically prosperous future.

The next uninteresting detail I will talk you through at length is the orthography of the show’s name itself.  After some soul searching, I’ve decided to go with Footballers’ Wives, as you’ll see from the header on the post.  This is significant because at any one time I am devoting 20% of my life’s energy to grammatical pedantry.  Even at the age of 17, when this week’s programme was first broadcast, my teenage self was appalled at the lack of plural possessive apostrophe concluding the opening credits: Footballers Wives.  You’re only young once, so I’m glad I spent that time obsessing about punctuation.  Otherwise, how on earth are you supposed to know that the wives belong to the footballers?  It just looks like a strange, unconnected list.  But then, matters were made worse once I reminded myself how things really appeared: footballers wive$.  I won’t unpick why this is an abomination in my eyes (and if you don’t know why, then get out now please), but it does serve handily to illustrate the level of class on offer in this show.  In short, there was none.  Let’s crack on, then.

But first, it’s 2018, so let’s dispel the myth that wives are the property of their husbands (with or without the appropriate apostrophe to indicate this possession).  Yes, in this day and age, people can’t wait to rush up the aisle in order to spend thousands of pounds on flowers that nobody will remember and to secure a sofa buddy for future series of The Crown, but vows tend to be more about an equal partnership rather than referring to any duty of obedience.  But this was the beauty of Footballers’ Wives – the ladies wore the trousers.  Everything about the menfolk was incidental.  There were merely possessions to trade.  Even their footballing prowess was limited to a couple of lines in the script – almost no actual match footage ever appealed.  For someone with better things to do than sit through any sort of ballsport (such as watching reruns of dinnerladies) this only added to the programme’s appeal.

Let’s look at Tanya Turner, the ur-WAG.  Throughout the five series (yes, five!) she ended up in all manner of relationships, working through around half of the Earls Park FC first team, a proportion of the support staff and anyone else who just happened to be passing for that matter.  This wasn’t a search for love, though, but a quest to keep herself in acrylic nails and extraordinarily tacky outfit choices with no expense spared.  Once ex-captain Jason was dispatched, she fought for a place in new signing Conrad Gates’ bed (despite his straightened hair), dallied with sports agent/chairwoman Hazel Bailey and even found the time to get herself astride Frank Laslett, the overweight, over-age chairman of the club, specifically with the intention of shagging him to death.  Imagine talking about that storyline in the office the next day.  But the combination of cocaine, booze and vigorous love making did the job – our Tanya got what she wanted out of each chap (or chapette, in the case of Hazel) and then moved on to the next one.  Played with bags of aplomb by Zöe Lucker (whom I don’t seem to spot on TV these days, but ought to be a national treasure), Tanya was a popular creation, rooted for by an audience that was fully entertained by her outrageous behaviour.

In fact, the show suffered whenever she was absent.  IMDB tells me that Gillian Taylforth (Cathy from Eastenders, everyone) appeared in the most episodes, playing Jackie Pascoe, the overbearing pushy mother.  Yet, my most memorable character is Nurse Dunkley.  The name in itself is a comic moniker for someone you’re never going to take seriously.  But her arc was as sinister as they come: caring for Frank Laslett during his coma (obviously) she went from an apparently incidental background artist to front-of-camera abuser, pursuing a physical relationship with the unconscious man in her care, while whispering sweet nothings to him in her simpleton-sounding northern accent.  Her spectacles practically steaming up with lust is an image that still haunts me to this day.

But this was what we all tuned in for: far-fetched melodrama.  But you can watch that in most soap operas, so the attraction is better qualified as: far-fetched melodrama involving wealthy, mostly attractive people in glamorous settings.  Which is loads better.  Babies were swapped.  Boob implants caught fire.  Murders were attempted and completed.  Sex videos were leaked.  Joan Collins popped in.  Peter Stringfellow popped in.  This was the level of Footballers’ Wives.  As a result, it was wickedly fun.  I’m not ashamed to admit I also really enjoyed the foul language and frequent nudity – seeing someone being told to f*** off when their boobs are peaking over the duvet is oddly gratifying when you’re a teenager with punctuation-related anxiety.

Sadly, the show ended in 2006; it may well have been shagged to death itself to be honest.  I don’t even know if there’s any way to watch it these days, shy of trawling car boots for the old DVDs and then squinting at the appalling image quality with your HD-accustomed eyeballs, before realising things look appalling due to the noughties fashions the show so willingly embraced.  In fact, I don’t even recommend re-watching; times have changed, and the old show’s website still exists here, reminding you how crude the old internet was.  Have a click around and think of times past.  This is the trash that brought millions to ITV’s peak schedule.  At least now we have Love Island, eh?

The Voice UK

It’s never a good sign when a TV show’s name has to be suffixed with the name of the country it’s being shown in.  But such is the case with The Voice.  It’s our UK version, because there are literally hundreds of other ones going on all around the world, so we don’t want people getting confused and ending up watching The Wrong Voice (which sounds like an Aardman Aninmation).

Nevertheless, within a year of the Dutch format hitting airwaves in Europe, we welcomed series one to our BBC screens in 2012.  Now, series six is desperately trying to fill that Saturday night hole where X Factor used to be over on ITV.  Surely this is just the X Factor, though?  Of course not!  This is the X Factor, but with blindfolds.  Contestants cannot be seen at their first auditions as the judges’ chairs are all facing the wrong way, so they can only be assessed on their… voice.  Keeping up?  It’s a neat concept and actually the rest of the show is all downhill from this initial phase.  If one of the celebrity judges likes what they hear enough, they have a button to hit on their chair that turns them around to reveal who they’ve been listening to.  This adds great tension: will the singer totally nail it and get four chair spins, sending the crowd wild?  Or will a judge turn around and have to maintain a poker face when they see the contestant they’ve wasted a turn for is an absolute hogpig?

This whole part is best watched on fast forward, not least because its new home on ITV means there are more adverts than you could possibly use in your future purchasing decisions.  Naturally, each singer comes with their own sob story: I have a baby, I have to work in Topshop, Voldemort killed my parents.  Then, if multiple coaches turn, they have to pitch for that singer and it all descends into showing off.

The following stages don’t make much sense.  There are Battles, where two singers must duet, but then only one can actually go through.  This often becomes competitive caterwauling, adding a great dimension to love songs as the two singers give each other snake eye over romantic lyrics.  After that, the producers try and think up other ways to cull the field.  Sure enough, as a last resort, we resort to a public vote.  As we know, the British don’t have a great track record with democracy: Leon Jackson winning X Factor 2007, Tory governments, Brexit.  Therefore, The Voice UK has yet to produce a household name.  Stevie McCrorie, anyone?  What about Andrea Begley?  Thought not.

So why on earth am I watching?  Occasionally, just occasionally (and particularly in the 2013 series) there’ll be a performance that transforms a well-known song into something completely different and amazing.  Get your ears round this number here or indulge in the brilliance one of the Battles can produce here and here.  It’s even more reassuring when some old lounge singer limps through a boring old standard and all the judges fail to turn.

What of the judges?  Well, you’ve got Tom Jones looking confused.  So confused he missed a whole series while Boy George sobbed in his chair.  Otherwise, it’s been a home of the over-exposed: Jessie J, Rita Ora.  But the only interesting one is will.i.am – you just know he is looking for something bonkers.  I went to see the second series recorded with a good friend who worked on the casting and Will spent every gap in filming glued to his smartphone.  But then, there was also a lady in the front row waving her crutch about in time to the music, so there was a lot to take in.

The good news is that I was born tone deaf, so I’ll never be among the 310 (so far) winners of different versions of The Voice around the world.  But I can just imagine my VT playing out as I approach the blind audition from backstage: “I watch a lot of bad TV and then write about it in a blog.  But I want more from life!”

Downton Abbey

You might wonder why someone would want to write about Downton Abbey, three years after the final episode aired.  But it’s still out there to watch, endlessly repeated on ITV Encore or available to stream.  I defy anyone not to be charmed by its, er, well, charms.  What’s not to love?  Everything about it, from the setting to the storylines, harks back to a golden age that nostalgic baby boomers just can’t get enough of, because, as people get older, they can’t help but feel the past was better.  Of course, this isn’t the case.  They simply prefer a time when they were younger.

Dissecting Downton Abbey for examination makes it all the more surprising that its success was never expected by ITV.  Julian Fellowes’ deft screenplays and detailed character creations apparently didn’t seem enough on paper.  But scheduling it for 9pm Sunday nights, the latest possible hour for people planning to go bed at a sensible hour before the start of the working week, had to be a cynical move to strike at viewers at their most vulnerable.  Inevitably, fans of the show compared its bygone values to an impending Monday morning of emails, passive aggression and conference calls, and understandably couldn’t get enough of the world of Downton.

Following the X Factor Results shows, it was even more obvious by contrast alone that this was the perfect antidote to average-looking and sounding teenagers who “just really, really want it,” giving us 1910s heroes who knew their place and weren’t afraid of a bit of bloody hard work.  But that was its beauty.  Pop your phone away in a different room to avoid second screening, and surrender yourself as soon as the opening credits roll with their non-threatening music to a good hour of the televisual equivalent of a cuddle with your old nan.

Even among jaded office workers in the media industry, it became essential viewing.  One colleague, prone to misnaming things, couldn’t stop calling it Downtown Abbey.  This alternative show, with visions of drive-by shootings and the Dowager Countess pimping out the scullery maids, had the potential to be as entertaining as the real one.

Initially bundled up in their Drama package, ITV soon realised the show’s potential for standalone sponsorship with a price tag in the millions.  The show even travelled well, picking up awards in the US, where viewers probably thought it was reality TV.  As a result, their demand for episodes increased and the need for storylines placed a strain on the show, resorting to tragic scenes that ended up ruining a few Christmas afternoons.

But as drama, and as period drama, it was rather exquisite.  What’s more, it played to our moral sensitivities.  We knew which characters were good as, like us, they had liberal responses to things such as extra-marital sex, political activism, women’s rights, ethnic minorities, homosexuality etc.  Ultimately, a crueller age was presented through a lens that wouldn’t upset the modern palate, thereby throwing all historical accuracy out of the window and onto the well-manicured lawns.  This therefore moves Downton into the spectrum of fantasy drama, which is why it is still to be recommended as a way to escape reality.