Love Island Australia

To what extent is showing a 2018 season of Love Island Australia an adequate replacement for a new series of summer Love Island in the UK?

While this is a question I could ask ITV, it’s actually the essay question I have set myself for this week’s blog entry.  No, sadly I’ve not completed an impressive foreign boxset that I’m going to tell you all about this week (though a third and final series of Dark has dropped).  So we’re turning to what is fast becoming my favourite lockdown viewing.  Let’s be honest, this pandemic has a lot to answer for.  We’re not allowed to have strangers invade our personal space on public transport.  We can’t spend all day in an office wondering what the dog is doing while we’re not home.  We can no longer speculate whether our elected (no, really) government could cope with a national crisis (they can’t).  These are all things we can live with (or without).  But when ITV pointed out that a socially-distanced version of our favourite reality dating show might not fulfil our expectations (you can’t watch a couple under a twitching duvet via night vision if they have to be two metres apart), all while having no clue whether foreign travel would be in any way possible, it felt like the final straw.  This pandemic might just be a bad thing.

However, in a stroke of genius, they decided to whack on another nation’s first series, probably reasoning it was close enough.  The good news about Australia is that we’re super familiar with it.  It doesn’t suffer from the gloss of the US’s TV output (the scripted dramas, I mean, not the dross of their political news).  Generations of Brits grew up on Ozzie soaps – every weekday dinner of mine after primary school in the early 90s was accompanied by Home & Away and Neighbours.  We swap our populations back and forth, nowhere more so than in the media industry (where I work (from home)).  Australiana is pretty easy to get used to.  In addition, the Australian version has all the familiarity of also being filmed in Majorca.  Not in the same villa, mind, but near enough.  I’m struck by the imagined statistic that 80% of this Balearic island’s GDP comes from various nations filming their versions of Love Island on it.  These two points made Love Island Australia a much more obvious choice than the US version, whose departures from key format points and inclusion of actual Americans means it loses all the charm of the original.

Alongside the classic setting, we also have the characteristically irreverent voiceover, though the Celt of choice here is an Irishman instead of a Scot.  The stray cats that visit the villa provide most of the ammo for his humour but I think we can all agree there is nothing funnier than a cat.  Just look at the reason for the internet’s invention: cat videos.  We also have a glamorous hostess entering the villa with bad news for the couples at random junctures.  Sadly, we lost the UK’s OG presenter earlier this year after our vile tabloids hounded Caroline Flack to her death yet faced no consequences, with Laura Whitmore taking over from her dear friend.  In the Australian version, former popstar Sophie Monk proves a feisty equivalent, and her antipodean vowels are so wonderful that I can’t help but suspect she may be a new character from Kath & Kim.  There are still texts with hashtags in them.  In summary, it’s similar enough then…

So, in order to answer the question (and if I learnt anything from GCSE it’s that’s you must make sure you answer the question) we need to look at the contestants.  This was perhaps my greatest stumbling block when it came to convincing myself that I had been provided with a worthy replacement.  They didn’t do much to grab me in the first episode, though the girls’ reluctance to step forth for anyone at all was amusing.  There was a major lack of diversity.  But then, with any season, it takes a few days to marinade and, before long, I began to look forward to catching up on the previous night’s shenanigans with all my new pals after a videocall-heavy day at the laptop.

Somehow, then, this can become an adequate replacement.  But there are certain rules that I must impart when it comes to being able to enjoy it as much as a brand new series of our own.  The first is that you mustn’t look ahead online to find out what the future held in store for these young Australians who are so full of hope in 2018.  To do so would deflate any of the tension that makes the show so compelling.  The second is that you need to attune to a different vibe on the behaviour.  So far, the Australian girls have proven much quicker to attack one another, never hiding their mutual dislike (split along hair colour lines) which, while a contrast to the British besties that emerge, is actually palatable as a more honest approach to the villa’s interpersonal relationships.  The boys seem to be predominantly from the socio-economic group that Australians describe as bogan, but on the whole are a slightly gruffer and less flamboyant equivalent of our own tattooed chaps.

I’ll conclude my essay with the answer to my own question.  Love Island Australia is quite an adequate replacement, offering charm and entertainment in its own way.  To illustrate, we’ll touch on my favourites of each gender.  From the boys, it’s Josh who, while one of the slenderer and under-tattoeed specimens, wins out consistently on personality simply because he speaks with the authority of someone who knows that confidence is the same as, if not better than, intelligence.  When the boys ask him for wisdom, he’s happy to fabricate his responses with the hilarious consequence that they almost always believe him.  From the girls, it’s Millie.  Shrugging off any nonsense from those of her own gender when it comes to disagreements, she’s practical and resilient, and would much rather be writhing around in the pool on an inflated flamingo than getting into arguments.  Wouldn’t we all.

Come Dine With Me

I’m on the cusp of being able to buy my first ever home.  This doesn’t mean I have been squatting in a crisp packet this whole time, but that I have spent the last 11 years renting and sharing (and huge apologies to all former and current flatmates; I really am dreadful).  I’m around 18 months behind on my own personal life schedule with this purchase (let’s blame Brexit) but the fact that it’s so close is half-terrifying, half-spectacular.  I even found myself looking at massive tellies in John Lewis today, even though my parents have saved me one from a dead neighbour and are keeping it under their bed for me (the telly, not the neighbour).  As a future home owner, what I plan to do, and what I have never really done in any of my rentals, is to have friends round for dinner.  I have a list of all the dear chums I need to pay back for the hospitality: all their wine I’ve drunk, all their main courses I’ve not really chewed but swallowed down like a gannet due to hunger and hanger mismanagement, all the puddings I’ve spooned in my face because excess fat and sugar don’t count if you’re in someone else’s house and have already surpassed your recommended daily allowance of alcohol units.  I’m not going to be held back by the fact I can only really make a few things and have little to no interest in how food tastes most of the time.  I just hope they all like porridge.  I do.

Anyway, this has led me to consider Come Dine With Me for this week’s self-absorbed few hundred words that I’m hoping some people will want to read.  It’s a show that’s about having people round to dinner as a competitive sport.  And please note, these aren’t friends you’re having round, these are strangers that the casting team have decided will make good telly.  Each guest scores their host, before the tables turn on the following night.  Once everyone has had a chance to arrange Parma ham on slices of melon and to slag off each other’s desserts for being too sweet, the highest-scoring contestant is revealed and richly rewarded with a wad of cash and some intensely petty envy.  TV gold, I’m sure you’ll agree.  In the UK, ITV Studios produce this show for Channel 4, which is a fun fact for your next dinner party (you’re welcome).  It’s also, the last time I checked, the most syndicated TV format in the world, currently showing in, I don’t know, a million territories or something.

But now that the serious journalism bit is out the way, let me tell you what things I like about the show the most:

The terrible characters

You need an array of personality defects to want to be on this programme.  There are the obvious ones, such as over-confidence in your cooking abilities, a strong conviction that your approach to hosting is world class and a compulsive need to be the centre of attention.  But this is where the genius of the casting comes in.  That annoying loudmouth in your office whose voice you can’t block out?  They’d be in.  The person in your family that seems to create awkwardness every Christmas?  Them too.  That schoolfriend who’s always showing off about their unorthodox lifestyle choices?  Of course.  Oh wait, I’m just describing myself now.

The irreverent voiceover

I believe strongly that irreverence is the best way to treat most things (though this does mean I have lost the ability to know if I am being sarcastic or not, which is challenging).  The narrator of Come Dine With Me takes this to another level, though, as he clearly thinks that every contestant is an absolute bellend.  It’s probably what inspired the mickey-taking of Love Island’s voiceover, and we all know what joy that brings us.  The hosting contestants often genuinely believe they are culinarily gifted food professionals, so when they talk us through their pedestrian recipes, they are ripe for ribbing.  The guest contestants behave like seasoned restaurant critics, often directly to their hosts’ faces, so it’s a gratifying shared joke for us viewers to hear the voiceover take them down a peg or two.  I can guarantee you laughing out loud here.

People’s awful homes

When you watch a cookery programme normally, things take place in some sort of deliciously artisanal kitchen with rustic herbs a-dangling and distressed work surfaces a-glistening and clutter-free.  But if you delve inside the actual average British kitchen, it’s a bad-taste buffet of mismatching cutlery, damp patches and novelty teacups hanging limply from mug-trees.  Behind closed doors, that dodgy chopping board or the limescale visible on the side of your kettle are just part of what makes it a normal home.  But on camera, it always looks like the site of a natural disaster.  You expect to hear Michael Buerk asking you to give just £5 a month so these people can afford some decent kitchenware.  But then I don’t know if the people that already have quite nice stuff are actually worse, because they seem to have no taste in the first place.  They arrange rocket salads on square plates, or use wine glasses the size of church fonts, or have blingy knives and forks.

I didn’t mean to slag it all off so much, as it does make for wonderful entertainment.  Being rooted in reality, however, does take away any aspirational edge (for most people – for me, having friends to dinner is still only an aspiration).  Therefore, watching it, despite the titters, can end up accompanied by the suspicion you could be doing something better with your time.  Episodes either last an hour and cover a group of four contestants with each dinner party in a fifteen-minute segment, or you can get strips of five episodes, where each lasts half an hour and covers a different event, with more focus on the prep.  The latter has a curious habit of drawing you in for, quite literally, just one more episode, if you ever stumble across it on More4 of a Sunday afternoon.  We’re running out of time to mention the celebrity specials, the fact that contestants also snoop around each other’s homes, or the story that some colleagues once recreated the format in real life, which involved one of them getting up repeatedly throughout the night to moisten their pulled pork, and still not winning.  My final nugget though, which I once read on a trashy website, is that each episode takes hours to film, what with all the pieces to camera, so the hosts end up serving desserts at 3am and the guests end up sloshed off their faces.  Maybe this explains some of the behaviour.

Once in a while, then, it’s ok to treat yourself (in the style of Parks & Recreation) and wallow on your sofa, scoffing at these real people, their homes, their food and their manners, safe in the knowledge they can’t see you, where you live, what you eat, or how you treat your guests.

Westworld

Sometimes you want a TV show to make you ponder the very essence of what it means to be a human.  And sometimes you just want something with plenty of sex and violence.  Maybe these two things aren’t that separate after all, as Westworld manages to deliver both, and all in a cheeky cowboy hat.  Let’s be honest, sex and violence are, after all, key parts of the human experience.  According to Westworld, they are definitely key parts of the cowboy experience too.

Billed, as with all big new shows, as something that would fill the Game Of Thrones hole in our lives, I let the first series of Westworld pass me by.  It was everywhere on my Sky EPG, posters followed me on my commute and trailers constantly rolled on every screen I went near.  It all made me lose interest, especially as nobody in the office seemed to be talking about it.  Could this big-budget western be a major dud?  But then, looking for a new show to start, and giving careful consideration to what should be covered on Just One More Episode, I consulted IMDB’s top rated TV shows: a list of 250 programmes that viewers have rewarded with up to ten stars.  Once I filtered out all the really old stuff and nature documentaries, Westworld (currently at #36) was the highest ranked entity I thought I could bear to watch.

My final barrier to overcome was that Westworld was also the name of a hip hop clothing shop at university and one particular friend used to dress in their attire from head to toe after watching You Got Served.  We all experiment with style when we’re young, but I should emphasise there is no age limit to enjoying a film produced as a streetdance vehicle for B2K.

From the cowboy chat so far, it should be clear that Westworld is a western, of sorts.  Not the kind of western made in the fifties that they repeat on TCM and your dad still watches during the daytime even though it’s sunny outside.  The western world of Westworld is actually a theme park.  Rather than queuing up at Thorpe Park to lose your lunch on a roller coaster though, the visitors to Westworld inhabit a near-future USA where technology has advanced enough to create artificial beings tasked with bringing history to life.  The wealthy book passage to this resurrected era, dressed for the period (a bit like those weird photo booths that actually are a part of normal theme parks), arriving by steam train at a frontier town.  Have they hired impoverished actors to flesh out the illusion?  No; these are, essentially, robots.

Right then, so it’s robots and cowboys – together at last.  Of all the historic periods you could create using animatronics, I’m still not sure I would go for cowboys.  What about all the courtly intrigue of Tudor England, or the licentious lifestyles of the Romans?  That might just be me.  Either way, the cowboy theme allows the paying visitors to shoot guns and whore about (literally) with little concern for the consequences.  Only the hosts can be killed, as they are programmed not to hurt humans.  Their purpose of existence is solely to fulfil their storylines in order to entertain.  But, such is their sophistication as pieces of tech, the ultimate tension comes from the slowly revealed truth that the hardware is starting to get emotional.  Cue a glacially paced and artfully crafted build up through series one to the inevitable pay off of the lunatics taking over the asylum.

With sinister grandpa Anthony Hopkins as the park’s founder and the hosts’ co-inventor, Dr Robert Ford, it’s all a bit Jurassic Park.  But that’s a huge part of the fun.  Let’s just say the future doesn’t look great for theme parks.  However, it does look good for A-list actors, as the cast is a roll call of household names, or at least names where you recognise the faces and can get distracted agonising over trying to remember where you saw them last.  They’re all enjoying themselves immensely, from James Marsden providing the cheekbones and jawline of the handsome cowboy hero, to Thandie Newton having the time of her life running the whorehouse as a tart with not just a heart, but a very complicated backstory.

And that’s the beauty of it.  The hosts play out storylines where they die, but then they are picked up by staff, tidied up, wiped and rebooted and sent out to play again in an endless cycle of suffering.  What if the memories start to come back?  Saying more isn’t possible without reeling off spoilers, so let’s instead focus on some questions that I always ask myself while watching.

Why do they have to be naked when they are getting serviced?

When a host is in for repair, they sit in glass rooms in the nude, while human technicians re-programme them using fancy tablets.  Not only is it unrealistic that the tech hooks up every time (the wifi never disconnects temperamentally) and nobody suggests turning it off and then turning it on again, but you’d think someone could afford the poor hosts something for their modesty.  Instead, their exposure further emphasises their abuse by the humans that run them.  Luckily, Newton’s character Maeve does finally get her own back in the second series, almost recognising the show’s surplus of wrinkly willies with one more wrinkly willy.

What’s up with the way the hosts die?

They’re robots, but they seem to have circulatory systems.  When shot with guns, blood spurts forth.  It’s not enough that they mimic humans in every way, they have this further facet of realism to provide.  Is the hardware designed so that injuries are categorised into fatal and non-fatal so the tech knows exactly when to shut down in order to maintain the storyline?  It’s kind of philosophical really.  Nevertheless, they’re back in the park the next day to do it all again.  They also never run out of battery, whereas my iPhone needs two charges a day just to keep up with Whatsapp.

Where is this place?

For the concept to be believed, we need to accept that somewhere there is a massive expanse of land that can be given over to leisure.  Our view of the outside world is, at first, limited, so we are as blinkered as the hosts to life beyond Westworld.  By the second season, characters suddenly start referring to an island, which curiously has never come up before, so I am wondering if they are now writing themselves out of a hole.

All of these niggles are just part and parcel of creating something so ambitious.  The scope of the show is as enormous as the park needs to be.  The first series takes it time letting you into Westworld and then works through twists that shatter your understanding.  Don’t get impatient, as repetition is used to show the farcical nature of the hosts’ lives.  I do admit that I have fallen asleep in almost every single episode, but don’t let that put you off.  It’s something that I have been watching late at night when I invariably start to reason that I can watch the last part with my eyes closed and then wake up to find it’s all over.  I’ve therefore had to re-watch some sequences a few times.  It’s better when you’re awake, or you won’t understand what’s going on.  The one time I didn’t fall asleep, I was ironing shirts at the same time as watching, so that kept me up luckily.

The complete first series is available on Sky Boxsets, while the second season is in the middle of premiering as I type.  This means I have gone from being able to hit up an episode each evening of series one to having to wait for my weekly instalment like some historical artefact.  Maybe this is how cowboys had to view boxsets before on-demand platforms existed.  I hope I remember what’s going on, but this enforced rationing should ensure more time to contemplate Westworld’s inner philosophical debate.  After all, what does define human consciousness?  I shall give it a good think while my eyes are glued mindlessly to the screen, trying to stay awake, watching naked people shoot each other on the telly.

Peaky Blinders

“If I catch this next train, I’ve got time for a Peaky Blinders when I get in,” said a colleague in the pub one evening, swiftly seeing off the dregs of a gin and tonic before grabbing her handbag and flying out of the place.  Picture the scene!  It’s not actually a true story though.  As we all know, whenever my workmates suggest a drink after office hours, I flat-out refuse so I can spend more time with my real friends: boxsets.  I also lost the ability to handle alcohol in 2014.  But there was a time a few months back when Peaky Blinders was the boxset of choice for all the folk back in my nine-to-five world, especially those in various stages of pre-married and married life, settling down buying homes in zone 17 and therefore commuting on timetabled trains (the best excuse for being late everyday there ever was).  Let’s unpick why people with stable, conventional lifestyles enjoy programmes about crime, shall we?

First, we must ask ourselves: what is a Peaky Blinder?  Well, my phone’s autocorrect would actually prefer that we called it a Pesky Blinder.  You change one letter and suddenly it’s like you’re at the end of a Scooby-Doo episode when the villain is unmasked and revealed to be harmless.  In fact, I don’t even really need the letter change.  Every time someone in the show unleashes a hail of bullets and quips “Courtesy of the Peaky Blinders” I’m transported to a world of Hanna-Barbera animation for children.  I just don’t deserve good television, do I?

The Peaky Blinders are a criminal gang run by the Shelby family, with the first series joining their story in 1919.  The accents that the cast approximate are brummie, as the show is set in Birmingham.  It’s nice to see Britain’s second city getting a bit of dramatic attention – it’s as if the place doesn’t get out much.  People claim it’s boring.  One of the very few decent talks I have been to in the media industry posed a good question about the city in light of billions being spent to improve its rail links to London.  Why not spend billions making Birmingham worth visiting in the first place?  It’s very unfair, as I once had the time of my life there at the Watch The Throne tour, including a night out at Gatecrasher that BEGAN with a bouncer throwing a clubber down the stairs after punching him.  Good times.

The Shelbys are big names thanks to their illegal activities.  Their services are very diversified.  They start with running unlicensed betting operations and racketeering, before branching into publicanism, owning and training racehorses, legal betting and various other forms of roughhousing.  In later series, there is legitimate trade as well as smuggling.  I even think there are some contract killings but things get very complicated so I just focus on enjoying the period scenery.  As time passes, the running tension comes from the desire to do one last big job before finally going straight.  So let’s see who these Shelbys are (focusing on those that are there at the beginning, as some relatives’ appearances constitute spoilers):

Tommy Shelby

Not the oldest Shelby brother, but he’s in charge due to having the largest face.  The large face comes courtesy of Cillian Murphy (star of my favourite film, 28 Days Later, even finding time to get his willy out in something about a ‘zombie’ apocalypse) and I would watch that face do anything.  He’s all about being so mad he might just be a genius, and his word is law.  I expect it was him that decided all the lads would have hipster haircuts.

Arthur Shelby

Tommy’s older brother, but he’s happier as a henchman (most of the time).  You can take a picture of him to the barber and come out with a really fresh fade.

John Shelby

This is the cheeky Shelby.  Joe Cole plays him as if he is about to sneeze the whole time, but let’s remember that history was a dusty place, so it makes perfect sense.  He probably has slightly better hair than Arthur, but it’s a tough choice.

Finn Shelby

The baby brother who is just a boy at the start, but soon gets old enough to join in with the haircuts.

Ada Thorne née Shelby

Yes, women are allowed in the family too.  This is the Shelby sister.  She doesn’t do a lot of the crime, but tends to serve as a plot device as and when suits.  Wears hats.

Polly Gray née Shelby

This is the Shelby clan’s aunt, played by the amazing Helen McCrory.  There’ll be a cigarette hanging out her mouth and she won’t take any nonsense, but there are moments of beautiful vulnerability with this character, while her relationship with nephew Tommy is at the heart of how the family is run.

It’s often those around the Shelbys that are the most interesting, though.  Chester Campbell, the antagonist of the earlier series, starts off sympathetically, but ends up a focus for all your hate, despite the most extravagant Northern Irish accent from Sam Neill.  Derby Sabini, the leader of an Italian gang in London is always a pleasure, while you feel there’s more to Esme Shelby (one of the wives) and Lizzie Stark (a former prostitute whom Tommy hires as his secretary) than you ever get to see.  Tom Hardy even pops in, but you know he’s having too much fun swearing and shouting for this to be one of his best parts.  Series four also has some big household names, but Netflix don’t have that yet so we can’t talk about it (and I forgot to watch it at Christmas).

In conclusion, it’s sometimes the background of Peaky Blinders that’s more interesting that the main story.  A lot of the show is made up of the gang walking along in slow motion, all period hats and manly swagger.  Who on earth are the ones in the background?  Maybe they do part-time peaky blinding.  These moments are triumphed, however, in the third season when the Shelby women go on strike and get their own slow-motion swagger with cool soundtrack.  The set design, though, is cracking.  You have a real sense of the grime in the period, though there does seem to be a factory that specialises in balls of flame, like some sort of hellfire manufacturer.

But this is stand-out British drama.  Each series of six episodes grows and builds the blinders’ peaky world, responding to real-life actual history.  The First World War’s conclusion precedes the show’s beginnings, bringing to life all that war poetry you did for GCSE (Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori, anybody?).  There’s a Winston Churchill (but a bit younger than the old duffer in The Crown).  There’s communism and the fight for home rule in Ireland.  In series three, loads of Russian aristocrats arrive fleeing the Revolution and cope with this loss by having lavish orgies which characters try and act in front of but you’re just watching the background in case you spot a bit of tit.

While it’s fun to be irreverent, I will finish by saying that this show is the peakiest of all the blinders.  It’s like Downton Abbey with indie music, only more happens.  Go to work, come back on the train, do an hour of wedmin, pay a bill or something, then settle down to live vicariously through history’s best-dressed criminal family.  You’ll sweat buckets screaming at the telly and praying Tommy can pull off his latest heist.  Just don’t get distracted wondering where he finds the time to get his haircut done so often.

The End Of The F***ing World

When I lived in Germany in 2006 and 2007, we didn’t even have a TV.  Can you imagine?  There was a living room and we would sit in there and have conversations.  I drank quite heavily then.  On the wall was a big poster for the film Trainspotting.  You know, the one that carries at the top of it the following quotation from Empire: “Come in Hollywood… your time is up.”  I’ve just finished watching The End Of The F***ing World, and this is the sentiment that broke into my tiny mind when I was giving a moment’s thought to how I might write about it on here.

So let’s go through my reasons for this in agonising detail.  We’ll do the basics first.  It’s funny, but only if you can laugh at things that are uncomfortably dark.  It’s based on a graphic novel, but I’ve never heard of it.  I am glad that it was made into TV though, and that people kept talking about it in front of me and saying I would love it, especially as the episodes are only short and there are just a handful of them.

It’s about two disillusioned teens.  I’m not really going to recount the initial plot – just go and watch the first episode as it’s neatly packaged up and opens things perfectly.  It’s a boy and a girl, but the hook is that the boy identifies as a psychopath, so it follows (apparently) that he wants to kill the girl.  That’s a bit of narrative tension for you.  Jessica Barden plays Alyssa and her sardonic responses are an absolute joy.  The only thing more joyful is the way she says sh in most words.  She calls a lot of things “shit” and there is such delicious and deep sibilance in the sh that I have the most amazing time listening to it.  Alex Lawther’s James is also spot on.  You won’t be able to help sympathising with a psychopath, such is his raw human edge.  Both leads have internal monologues that we as the viewers can hear.  Being party to their conflicting thoughts is a very reliable source of humour.

Supporting our young lovers, the rest of the cast twinkles with British talent.  Gemma Whelan brings law enforcement with a heart, but you might know her as Lara Greyjoy in Game Of Thrones.  She also featured in an episode of The Crown, so I’m now declaring her a new national treasure for abilities in character acting, alongside Michaela Coel from Chewing Gum.  Her partner, played by Wunmi Mosaku, gives her the best and subtlest side eye throughout almost all of their exchanges.  Finally, Nighty Night legend Felicity Montagu enjoys herself guest-starring in some hilarious petrol station scenes.  Yes, I said it, hilarious and petrol station in the same sentence.

Right, as well as the actors, I want to talk about the writer, mostly because I used to be obsessed with her in a slightly stalkerish way which I think is fine to reveal to everyone here.  Charlie Covell was in the same year as me at university.  There was a drama competition for each college’s first years to submit a 30-minute play for judgment.  It was called Cuppers.  These were simpler times, ok.  My college’s submission, which included me playing a political advisor (I think; I didn’t really understand it) got nowhere.  Covell, however, and the production of The Maids starring her, got to the final.  I went along to watch it and was immediately transfixed.  She’s since cropped up in a number of TV shows, both acting and writing.  I’m just really excited about what she’ll do next, because it will all be brilliant.

These are the first two reasons, then, why Hollywood’s time is up (if we go on this show and this show alone): the acting and the writing.  But, in addition, there’s everything else.  I don’t really know if I mean the cinematography or the production design, but let’s just say that it’s all of it.  Somehow, this show, set in a UK as viewed through the eyes of jaded, depressed teens, makes our miserable country look undeniably cinematic.  Every location, building, interior or bloody petrol station fits in with a tone that is at once stylised yet completely plausible.  Even driving a car around, one of the most tedious things you can do in your average commuter town, takes on an element of the big screen.  Feast your eyes on it.  Normally, in films, the UK is twee and nostalgic and ye olde mock Tudor.  In each episode, it looks like a place where films can happen.

This only comes a cropper in later episodes when some of the action moves to a static home.  The characters sit about outside on sofas, surrounded by sun-drenched fields.  It looks really American because, as we know, you can’t really have your sofa outside in Britain; when it’s not raining, it’s drizzling.  I’ve just spent about two minutes googling whether the original book is American but I’m still not sure.

But look, everyone, the UK seems to have made quality TV rich in visuals and storyline on a level with the US.  Take that, Hollywood powerhouse of boxset manufacturing.  It might only be eight episodes, but sometimes you don’t need 22 hours in a series (I’m looking at you, How To Get Away With Murder).  By giving us less, we will always want more.  It’s a bit like Girls.  I’m taking quality over quantity, though it’s probably not the end of f***ing Hollywood.

Altered Carbon

I’m hip; I’m cool.  I can react to current trends with this blog, rather than just running through things I liked on the telly when I was 12 years old.   A few weeks ago, my Facebook feed was awash with people talking about Altered Carbon.  And by awash, I mean there were about two posts from friends I suspect to be fans of this sort of science fiction thing anyway.  Nevertheless, the show was unavoidable on Netflix for more or less a whole evening and I weakly succumbed to the power of suggestion and clicked play on the first episode.  I’d get through the ten-part series in no time at all and crack out the freshest post this blog has ever seen.

Weeks later, I’ve only just limped to the end of it.  I didn’t like it.  Critics of this blog (and most of you only say nice things (or point out my typos with a glee that can only be built up from years of me criticising every apostrophe misuse you have ever committed)) will note with rolling eyes that I seem to like most of the things I write about.  That’s why I write about them: to share them (and my opinions; oh, and to seek attention).  But I hated Altered Carbon.

I don’t say this lightly.  I wanted to love it.  On paper, it’s 100% my type.  I love zombies.  I love high schools.  I love a period drama.  But, I also love dystopian futures.  It looked slick and stylish and I had naively begun to think that Netflix only greenlights top-notch entertainment.  So gather round everyone, while I, with all my experience of working in an office, take you through my subjective ranting.

So why’s it called Altered Carbon?  I literally don’t know.  I’m also not going to Google it as I’m not really interested.  Next we must ask what it’s about.  Altered Carbon is a series of well-lit scenes where the unclothed body of actor, Joel Kinnaman, looks redunka-dunkulous.  I clutched my own belly paunch in despair that all my gym efforts so far have failed to get me in anything like that sort of shape (along with my own Netflix series).  Kinnaman is Takeshi Kovacs.  Well, kind of.  Kinnaman plays the body that the character of Takeshi Novacs has been put in.  Confused?  Panic now.

The key premise of Altered Carbon is that, in the future, humans will contain hardware that their whole being can be downloaded into.  If their body dies, they can then be put in another body, or sleeve.  You can even back yourself up to a Cloud like an iPhone.  This is at the centre of everything about the plot.  If you don’t buy this, then you can just give up.  Just think of all the human interaction complication that can arise from this.  If you’re wealthy, you can just buy new bodies (or clones of yourself) and live forever.  Race, gender, age, religion all become abstract constructs that you can alter at will.  For the casual viewer, it’s a lot to keep up with.

But then, we are talking 350 years into the future.  This is an embarrassment of future to handle.  Body-swapping is just the beginning, but it gets very disorientating when everything you think you know about human morality is called into question as a result of all this sleeving and re-sleeving and double-sleeving, not to mention keeping track of which character is in which body in this very complicated plot.  The temporal plains of action are wide and varied.  Let’s face it, I just wasn’t intelligent enough to follow this, so I lost interest.

With any vision of the future, the glimpses into how the rest of the world looks are always, for me, the most intriguing.  I might have fallen asleep in Guardians Of The Galaxy (as I do in all Marvel films – sorry, Black Panther) but I remember being most interested in all those people walking around in the background.  You know, on those walkways as if the future was simply an outdoor shopping centre.  In Altered Carbon, Bay City (which is San Francisco in hundreds of years’ time) is seen either in micro or macro detail, but the lack of in between prevents it ever seeming real.  It does rain a lot, though, if you enjoy Blade Runner getting ripped off.

In addition, every camera effect ever is used in a tick-box exercise to help the viewer navigate between the past, the distant past, the present, virtual reality and fantasy sequences.  This does little to give the show any edge, and in fact dilutes the impact of its excessive sex and violence.  Initial episodes are a bit like early Game Of Thrones when there could be a boob or willy at any moment.  The only edge seems to come from the fact that, despite all this technological advancement, the main character is still smoking.  What a rebel!

The characters all seem to be stock fodder, lifted from other pop culture works and dropped off without any depth.  Even Kovacs seems to be nothing more than a lot of witty quips, but his voice is so deep from all the smoking that I found it really hard to understand any of them.  They probably weren’t funny anyway.  Given the plot revolves around him waking up after 250 years of being in storage, he doesn’t seem at all arsed by the future in which he finds himself.  Again, too busy smoking, quipping and being in flattering lighting whilst scantily clad.

I’ve ranted so much I’ve forgotten the storyline.  Effectively, it’s a whodunit murder mystery, but with everything else thrown in too.

So there we have it.  Hopefully proof I don’t just love everything I watch.  I want to avoid being an internet troll, though.  Altered Carbon had so much potential, but something about it just didn’t work for me, and this led to each thing about it getting more and more annoying until it all snowballed into the vitriol I have thrown up here.  I probably therefore shouldn’t have continued to put myself through the whole ten hours of it, so that’s my mistake right there.  Maybe there’ll be another series and maybe everyone will love it.  I hope so on both counts.  I just won’t be watching (especially if it clashes with series two of Survival Of The Fittest).

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!”

Bromans

I don’t know what it says about me as a person, but Bromans really was 100% my format on paper.  Even back when I had only just found out what it was called, I knew I would be watching it.  It was an inevitability as certain as me fast-forwarding through the bad dances on Strictly Come Dancing or averaging about 1.5 episodes of Friends per day (and still laughing out loud).  In my real actual job, I work closely with ITV and had seen this gem coming up in the schedules a mile off.  In fact, it was going to be called Ladiators, but changed at the last minute.  The fact that both names are genius just goes to show that we are working with televisual gold here.

Have you ever wondered how today’s lads would fare if they were forced to train as Roman gladiators?  Have you ever wondered how their girlfriends would also fare if they were forced to live in Ancient Rome?  Me neither, but Bromans strove to answer these questions with as much slow motion footage as possible of attractive young people in scant cladding.

Despite its 2017 debut, Bromans stuck rigidly to assigned gender roles.  Was this historical accuracy, or just a lazy format?  The boys were the ones who actually got to take part in the fighting, wrestling, posturing and chasing.  Casting was a reality TV dream.  There was the skinny TOWIE cast off, the muscular TOWIE cast off, lots of tattoos, a Northern joker and a very well brought up rugby chap (each with a matching girlfriend).  Mostly in their underpants, they would take part in training sessions in the blazing sunshine under the watchful eye of Doctore.  I’m not sure what was more entertaining, none of the contestants remembering the word Doctore for the first few episodes, or David McIntosh’s very earnest attempt to play a serious character while he put the lads through their paces.  I’ve since bumped into David at a party. And by bump into, I mean that I was knocked across the room like a rag doll after accidentally colliding with his enormous bulk while getting out of someone else’s way.

Meanwhile, the girls would pursue more domestic activities, such as crushing grapes for wine and offering spa treatments to the boys.  In Bromans’ defence, the couples did share the duties during the laundry task, which descended into a piss fight.  I should point out that, for historical accuracy, the show recreated the Roman practice of using piss as a detergent, much to the contestants’ retching.

Each episode would culminate in the lads’ final competition, before, in a lavish ceremony, the bottom two performers would be forced to try and persuade the others to keep them.  Public speaking didn’t seem to be on the list of requirements when casting Bromans, so these slightly awkward moments are luckily topped by what follows: the remaining Broman couples then stand behind which lad and girlfriend they want to save.  The losing boy subsequently realises that everyone has mugged him off, is forced to remove his toga and march off in his golden underpants.  Classic.  Meanwhile, a banner emblazoned with his face is torched to signify his departure.  Depending on the wind, it might also flap into the other lads’ banners and set them on fire too, but they don’t show that on camera.  It’s more something you can assume.

In all of this, you have an epic set, complete with extras.  The budget seems to have been there literally to rebuild Rome, and it probably took more than a day.  Maybe two days.  I’m assuming the show was filmed abroad, which probably means the toga-clad extras have no idea what’s going on, but I’m sure they still really enjoyed themselves.  Because the couples live and sleep on set throughout, the show takes on a Love Island vibe.  They don’t shout out about getting a text (this is Ancient Rome, silly) but there are the usual arguments which tick the boxes of people looking for a bit of drama.

So finally, I hear you ask, what happens when you watch Bromans?  Firstly, you are torn between lust and wanting to go to the gym, depending on your sexual preferences (it’s 2017 so we are making no assumptions).  There are muscles, if you like those, and there are bikinis getting torn off, if you like those.  If you like both, then you may need to sit on a wipe-clean surface.  Secondly, you will learn approximately one thing per episode about how the Romans probably lived.  But you won’t care.  And lastly, knowing that this show was a must-watch for me, you’ll be appalled at me and my viewing choices.

Nighty Night

After so many American boxsets, I really want to focus on a good old piece of BBC comedy.  And in high contrast to the whitened straightened teeth and sunny scenes of Hollywood’s finest comedies and dramas, Nighty Night’s darker-than-dark humour and parade of grotesque imagination is the perfect antidote.  No other show has inspired so many in-jokes or turns of phrase among groups of my friends.  Both series aired between 2004 and 2005, before I hammered the DVDs into obliteration following their home entertainment release.

But why is one obscure BBC sitcom so significant?  There must be many reasons, but I can’t really put my finger on any of them.  Instead, I will tit about with the things about it that I like, because I can do whatever I want.  Firstly, the setting.  Nighty Night is set in the worst place imaginable: a suburban British cul-de-sac.  Statistics I have made up show that over half of all middle-class Brits start their lives in these sorts of soulless wastelands, with the other half aiming to move into these sorts of soulless wastelands at a later point in their life journey.  So close to home was Nighty Night’s setting, that some of the outdoor scenes were recognisably filmed in Dorking, a crap town down the road from my own, Leatherhead, rated the crappest of all towns.  Take that, New York and other such glamorous locations.  Places I have been in have been on telly.

Secondly, the lead character is evil.  It’s normally hard to root for a baddie, but this one has a West Country accent.  Therefore, even the shadiest statements sound cheery and reasonable.  Julia Davis, who also created and wrote the show, plays Jill Tyrell.  You might recognise Julia from the background of loads of different British comedies, which is really bad as I only like it when she is at the front.  She was even in Gavin And Stacey (which I have never watched, purely because everyone used to watch it and that put me off, when normally it makes me want to watching something).  While the rest of us ignore or suppress our selfish side, Jill embraces hers.  So much so that, when new neighbours Cath and Don arrive, she wastes no time in making Cath’s life hell in order to live out her fantasy of seducing Don (or any of their sons; she’s not that picky).  I should point out that Cath has MS and is in a wheelchair.  I should also point out that Jill removes her own husband from the scene by checking him into a hospice for the terminally ill, despite him being fighting fit.  Nothing can deter Jill from her goal.  In fact, Cath’s inability to stop being British and polite is what allows Jill to walk all over her. 

And not just walk all over her, but drive her around until she vomits after hearing she gets travel sick, put on a meaty buffet despite knowing Cath is vegetarian, slam a door in Cath’s face leaving her alone in the garden while pretending someone has called her back in the house, “Pardon?”, have her dog jump all over her after finding out she had a run in with an Alsatian as a girl.  There is simply so much that going through it all here, while hilarious, would not do it any justice.  The main life teaching from this is that if someone lets you take advantage of them, then go for your life.  It’s their own stupid fault.

Finally, the supporting characters are worth their weight in gold.  From Ruth Jones’s asthmatic Linda, to an awkward Angus Deayton as loverat Don himself, not to mention Mark Gatiss as the repulsive Glen.  Jill horrifically manipulates each and every one of them in the cruellest way and in the vilest scenes, but somehow watching it is pure bliss.

Do not watch this if you are easily offended.  Do watch this if you need to cut loose from beautiful people in beautiful situations.  Do watch this is you can laugh at anything and live with the guilt, or better yet, not experience the guilt at all.  Do watch it if you want to be reminded of how risky the BBC used to be with its comedy.  My only warning for those that do watch it is not to do with the offensive content, but the fact that, after the dating agency scene, you will never be able to say “thank you” the same way ever again.