Ex On The Beach

After an earnest few weeks on the blog, it’s time to return to the world of trash TV and my conflicted opinions about not being able to stop myself watching it.  At the heart of this will be the fact that I wish I was more like the people on these shows (more muscular, better at going out, on a free holiday), while simultaneously enjoying a smug feeling that I am better than them (I am not taking part in desperate reality shows).  Ultimately, switching my brain off while this nonsense is on is my version of meditation and mindfulness, so we can pretty much guess my level here anyway.

Ex On The Beach is back for an eighth series.  No, really.  Those who thought that the 2014 concept couldn’t live on through the years has been proven wrong.  It’s a bit strange really, as the central hook of that first series all those summers ago was that the contestants had no idea what show they were actually taking part in.  They thought they had been whipping their bodies into shape for a beach-based dating reality show, only to find out that, one by one, their exes would be washing up unannounced on the beach, leading to the same feelings of regret as brought on by the sickly sweet cocktail whose name forms the hilarious pun of the show’s title.  In all subsequent seasons, young folk in bikinis and short shorts have willingly turned up to have the dirty laundry of their tawdry love lives dragged out of the sand for all to see.  Honestly, you really can’t believe what personal things people will share in order to gain attention.  It’s a bit like an unwanted blog about TV shows I suppose.

Sharing its home channel with Geordie Shore, I knew this MTV format was right up my alley.  Forcing the housemates in the boys’ house I shared in Brixton at the time was less certain, but by hook or by crook I managed to keep up with those first eight episodes.  I had to find out whose ex was next.  They were placated by the stringiness of the bikinis on show, as the programme’s casting team ensured sure that only the most spectacular bodies made it in.  But all the contestants somehow looked better than they deserved, as their behaviour was in turn the appalling factor that, once drawn in by gratuitous footage of bikini bottoms being hoiked out of sandy bum cracks, kept viewers like myself hooked as the drunken car crashes played out one after the other.

And the show really does need something to keep you viewing, as you are wading through a lot of flannel.  The average one-hour episode is split into four quarters by advert breaks.  Once you’ve taken out 15 minutes of commercials, the remaining time is bulked out by each quarter beginning with a recap of what’s just happened and ending with a throw-forward to what’s happening next.  So not only are you watching trash once, but each occurrence gets three airings until thoroughly burned into your bleeding retinas.  Attempts at tension-building are also manifested by the ever-present countdown to the next ex, which can be in T-minus 48 hours or ten minutes or anything in between.  Traditionally, the Tablet of Terror (which seems to be the only communications device the contestants are allowed) pings in the least terrorising way possible to summon three housemates to the beach on which these exes simply won’t stop appearing.  You’re asked repeatedly whose ex is next until you can’t think about anything else.

Obediently, the three chosen ones wait on sun loungers getting increasingly anxious about whose psychotic ex-bird or possessive jilted boyfriend will emerge from the surf to ruin their free holiday.  You can bet your bikini bottoms that someone will make a comment along the lines of “my anus is twitching like a rabbit’s nose” which really helps non-viewers understand the tone of the show (in case they hadn’t gathered this already).  Cue some very drawn-out editing and probably a cut to a commercial break before, finally, some drowned rat appears in the surf trying to look sexy.  I’m not sure if we’re supposed to believe that they’ve swum all the way from home.  I always imagine the production team helping them get waist deep in the waves while trying to prevent the three on the beach from noticing.  Presumably, somebody else is also attempting to stop bemused holiday-makers from wondering into shot.  Somehow, the ex doesn’t drown and makes their way to the sun loungers, and high drama immediately ensues.  Invariably, one half of the ex-couple wants to get back with the other, but the other has already been through all the contestants like a steam train, or cheated on them 36 times with a minibus of singles from Sheffield.  Either way, at some point, they’ll still claim to love each other.

And so it goes on.  More exes appear.  Alcohol is used to goad arguments.  The Tablet of Terror sets up dating opportunities designed to drive the most jealousy possible.  Lads try to crack on.  Girls get pied.  Each situation can only climax in one of two ways.  Either there’s actual fisticuffs which erupt after cocktails get flung poolside in outbursts of rage.  Or enough adults finally consent to a bit of rumpy-pumpy, in which case you can readjust your undercrackers watching a duvet quiver through night-vision lenses.  If this doesn’t fulfil you, then you don’t deserve to watch.

I should point out that nobody wins the show.  Some contestants get booted off at arbitrary moments, all with an irreverent voiceover that’s genuinely glad to see the back of them.  More recent series have included twists to liven things up, such as exes appearing at surprise moments rather than just on the beach.  And there always seems to be a Geordie Shore cast member in the mix just in case the real people don’t know how to drink too much and then let loose with their bottled-up emotions.  It all reminds you why encountering other British people abroad on holiday is so embarrassing.

Series 5 was a particular hoot where the best exes from the previous seasons showed up again to prove they had learned nothing from their own behaviour the last time around.  In fact, they had actually worked out that the more outrageous their behaviour (in terms of womanising, man-ising (is that a word?), fighting and throwing tantrums), the more likely they were to get invited onto other reality shows, such as Celebrity Big Brother, to draw out full media careers from a skillset that basically boils down to having colourful sexual histories and enjoying a bit of camera attention.  Cue my jealousy again.

This is because, in this day and age, both genders can do whatever they want, with or without each other, and I am only too happy to see it broadcast across my screens.  All you need is a sizeable social media following, a big presence on the nightclub scene of a regional city and oodles of wild abandon, and you too could be slopping your way into a show that’s repeated in MTV’s schedule as often as what seems like ten times a day.  And with series 7, filmed in Thailand, appearing to unveil a deep lowering of the standard in physical appearances for the contestants (I don’t want to call people fat or ugly, so I’ll just beat around their bushes instead), we’ve all got a much better chance.  Maybe the more beautiful folk are on Bromans or Survival Of The Fittest.

I’ve already gone on too long, but I can’t bear not to mention the spin-off show, called Ex On The Beach: Body SOS.  In it, Vicky Pattison (love her) and her celebrity trainer mates help real people get bodies worthy of emerging from the sea as if they were an ex on a beach.  You don’t actually need to have been a love rat to be on this.  An episode typically has a slim lad looking to bulk up with his first muscle, and a girl with wobbly bits from too much drinking who’d like to wear a bikini without people poking her with sticks and chasing her from their village with pitchforks.  Each victim is cruelly forced to strip down in their raw state and walk into the British sea, before finally emerging transformed from the sea somewhere much sunnier, where their friends and family have gathered to approve of them more than they did before.  I fast-forward everything in between as it’s just people whingeing and crying, but worth a watch if you like that sort of thing and don’t expect any helpful information about how to live more healthily.

From my position on the self-diagnosed autistic spectrum, modern dating is hard to understand.  Suffice to say that Ex On The Beach sheds no further light on why people do certain things, just that they do them while ranting and raving.  Sex and affection are used as weapons in a battle of the genders.  The only winner really is me on the sofa, wilfully numbing my brain so I no longer feel the torment of office life in London, titillating myself with all the emotional highs and lows of a drunken holiday without having to worry about sun-burning my shoulders or how much liquid I can take in my hand luggage on easyJet.

dinnerladies

There are certain shows that, when they stumble back into your life, you are powerless to resist the urge commanding you to re-watch every episode immediately.  This is what happened to me and dinnerladies last week.  Scrolling through the EPG, innocently just checking if there was anything else that could be on in the background while I cooked, now I have reawakened an intolerance to Friends after so much repeated viewing, I suddenly spotted series one, episode one of Victoria Wood’s classic sitcom from the late nineties nestled in there as the listing for GOLD.  Within seconds of the familiar northern factory canteen set filling the screen, I had series-linked the whole lot.

Despite my strategic approach to which boxsets are lined up to watch once I have finished my current crop, despite all the recommendations people have given me around what I have to get into next (some of which I take on board, others I have no intention of listening to – have fun guessing where you fit in) and despite knowing there weren’t enough minutes before bedtime to get through enough episodes to satiate me, the comedic equivalent of a massive hug had drawn me in.  Sometimes you just have to get a show out of your system.  I was gone.

I have always loved Victoria Wood.  I think it was the fact that her comedy always made my mum laugh which first impressed me.  And not just laugh, but lose all control in fits of hysterics at her incredibly apt and perceptive observations of British life.  My sister and I subsequently whiled away many an hour watching her material on VHS: As Seen On TV, An Audience With (from 1988 where you literally cannot believe the haircuts sported by British showbiz royalty).  I even had the DVD of her stage musical Acorn Antiques sent to me by Lovefilm.  If Victoria Wood had anything to do with something, then I had to watch it.

Her comedy is gentle enough to be comforting, but strong enough to expose life at its most ridiculous.  She could always be relied upon to spot what was ridiculous, mostly because life is ridiculous.  This ridiculousness is then compounded by being British, as this has always been a particularly ridiculous thing to be.  And what’s more ridiculous than being British?  Being a middle-aged British woman.  Not because they themselves are ridiculous, but because what we as a society expect of them is.

Nowhere was this laid bare more deftly than in dinnerladies.  I’m not going to dwell on the lack of capital D.  I’ve made my peace with that.  Let’s instead dwell on how her shrewd observations and the incredible rhythm to her scripts turned the most humdrum of locations into a place where the highs and lows of life were played out with a plausibility that was second to none, all while guaranteeing a good handful of uncontrollable belly laughs.  More than anything, it was the inordinate accuracy of her characters that made the humour so identifiable.  Every walk-on part, from a pie delivery man to a woman asking about the availability of knives in the canteen (as there were no knives), came embellished with some unique quirk or declared behaviour that rooted them in the ridiculousness of reality.

When the show premiered on the BBC in 1998, we were still in an age where the whole family had to watch telly together, at a schedule dictated by the broadcasters and communicated to the masses in glossy tabloid supplements that were saved from the weekend to guide midweek viewing.  dinnerladies regularly pulled audiences around the ten million mark, which is unheard of now you can Netflix yourself silly as and when it suits you.  Even then, most of the names the characters referenced were famous way before more time.  On this third viewing, though, I certainly understood a lot more of the sexual references.  Cleverly wrapped up in layers of innuendo, it was never quite graphic enough for my teenage mind.

This blog is about shows that are special to me, and this is the main reason I have included dinnerladies.  I mentioned my year abroad last week, and while I currently have the benefit of rose-tinted spectacles to look back through on this time, those nine months or so thirteen years ago were difficult.  Living abroad hadn’t exactly been a choice and I missed Britain (and its ridiculousness).  A childhood friend had, by chance, been allocated a school in the same town where we were both language assistants – we sat in the back of classrooms acting as human dictionaries.  With German school starting unfeasibly early, our working days were done by about ten each morning.  Even with hanging around das Fitnessstudio and making pancakes, as it was the only thing I could cook, we were still left with whole afternoons to fill.  Cue a care package that contained dinnerladies on DVD.  Each scene-stealing line delivery from Julie Walters would give us the resolve to carry on.  It was a lifeline in a world where our senses of humour didn’t translate into a language which has sixteen words for the.  Even back in Blighty years later, we found a production of dinnerladies on stage in Guildford and laughed ourselves silly reliving again the show and everything it had come to mean to us.

Let’s conclude on some melancholy.  With Victoria Wood dying just under two years ago, re-watching dinnerladies has taken on a more haunting quality.  Woven throughout the two series are frequent though unspecific references to canteen manager Tony’s cancer and treatment.  Bren, Wood’s character, supports him throughout, yet in reality, it’s Andrew Dunn we see remembering Wood fondly in the accompanying series Dinnerladies Diaries.  It has been pointed out before that the lyrics to the theme tune, again, written by Victoria herself, lamented the tragic running out of time that prevents many of us from realising our dreams.  Indeed, the will they, won’t they Brenda-Tony love story that was at the heart of the show brutally illustrated that life is for the grabbing, otherwise opportunities are for the missing.  True love isn’t glamorous Hollywood kisses.  It’s people with bad haircuts finally having a snog in a factory canteen.  It’s, you know, ridiculous: hilarious and tragic all at once.  It’s tragic that Victoria can never again give us new comedy, but it’s hilarious we can carry on enjoying what she left us, and that what she did leave us can mean so much.

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 Walking Dead

I don’t know if I can carry on with The Walking Dead.  It doesn’t give a lot back.  I’m persevering because, when it’s at its best, it’s truly among the most impactful television I have ever seen.  But series eight, which has just returned from its mid-season break, is a gruelling and gruesome onslaught of hopelessness.

I mean, who has a mid-season break anyway?  With the average American series over twenty episodes, compared to Brits calling it a day after about six or seven, I realise I don’t have a leg to stand on.  But where are the other mid-season breaks in adult life?  I’m very much in favour of bringing some sort of half term to working life, otherwise it’s just endless, isn’t it?

But anyway, they’ve had a good innings.  Who’d have thought such an incredibly graphic and violently gory drama would attract such international acclaim?  There was a slight head start from its roots in a series of popular comic books, but I don’t know anything about these really, so I won’t wade in with my views (though a lack of knowledge has never really stopped me before).  In short, the initial premise is that a man wakes up from a coma to find that a zombie apocalypse has taken hold on the USA.  Cue eight seasons of struggles to stay alive.

And what a man.  Rick Grimes is the Southern sheriff whose sweat-soaked shoulders end up bearing the weight of leadership: he finds himself the de facto head of a ragtag band of survivors.  Around him, there develops a cult of Rick.  He seems to be able to keep people safe.  Repeatedly, the characters end up in nice new communities: planting a few crops (they seem to favour beans), sticking spikes through zombies’ heads at their perimeter fence to avoid being overrun, teaching the children how to cope (mixed ability, of course).  This obviously lowers the scope for drama, so it never lasts long.  After a while, you begin secretly to wish it will all go terribly wrong.  After a bit longer, you realise this is inevitable and merely bide your time until the undead stream into whichever compound and thin out the cast a bit.

However, Rick doesn’t go around mansplaining how to kill a zombie to a bunch of terrified mother hens.  He’s epic, but the strong female characters run rings around him.  Michonne, Sasha, Tara, Rosita and Maggie are just some of the bad motherf*ckers keeping his show on the road.  For me, though, the most impressive is Carol.  While every cast member of The Walking Dead grows and develops, Carol’s beginnings as a brow-beaten housewife couldn’t be further from where she ends up.  The first episode of series five, No Sanctuary, is proof of her undeniable badassery.  It’s one of the greatest things I have ever seen.  Take a bow, Melissa McBride.

This is what happens to Rick’s people.  They get tough.  And then they come across other people that are softer, and dominate them, or they come across other tough people, and fight with them.  This seems to be the rut we are stuck in.  With each series, more times passes since the apocalypse.  The undead might be more decayed than before, but it’s the humans who are even more monstrous.

I’ve already covered the spin-off show, Fear The Walking Dead, where I mentioned that the constant threat of death makes the drama more intense.  Your favourite could be killed at any juncture.  Never are they more at risk than at the huge storyline climaxes that have punctuated the start and end of each season (and each mid-season for that matter).

It’s these peaks that have been more like troughs in recent series.  In an effort to avoid being predictable and allowing its main characters to seem immortal, The Walking Dead will desperately cull a few of them, just to keep you on your toes.  But these deaths feel like betrayals, particularly when they don’t take the storylines anywhere.  There’s a balance to be struck here, but the striking has failed to hit the mark like it used to.

I should have seen the end in sight when a tiger appeared in the second episode of the seventh season.  Shiva might also be in the comics, but this wild animal’s introduction in The Well, obeying its human masters, shattered many illusions for me.  The dead coming back to life?  I’ll buy it.  But a tiger that knows which people to maul based on the community they come from?  Come on!

Countless friends have abandoned ship, complaining that the storylines are too drawn out, that there is too much build up before the release of any action.  But then series eight has been constant battle action, and that doesn’t feel right either.  When you’ve invested so much in a show, you feel it owes you something.  I’m sticking with it in case I can work out what I feel it owes me.  Maybe I’ll know when I see it.  I don’t want to be a fan that expects everything to be done just to please them, so I’m bearing in mind that this is still one of the best shows out there (which I seem to say every single week on here…).

Given my love of trash (Bromans, Survival Of The Fittest, Geordie Shore), I’ll tolerate a lot of things.  I’ve come to terms with how much the cast perspire in the 100% Georgia humidity.  I don’t mind that so many of them seem to be British, which makes me constantly scrutinise their accents for an accidental syllable of Home Counties pronunciation.  I don’t mind that the rest were in The Wire.  I could handle The Cell (series seven, episode three) when Daryl is held captive and tortured with the same song on loop (ruin your day here).  And finally, I can handle the current storyline doldrum.

The reason for this is series two, episode seven, Pretty Much Dead Already.  It ends with an epiphany.  It makes you question all you thought you knew about zombies, about humans and about humanity.  It turns on its head the unwritten rules of TV.  I felt like the sofa had collapsed away from under me and I was freefalling into a new world.

I’m just waiting for that to happen again.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer

If you look at a 12-year-old these days (just in an observational way, not in an Operation Yewtree way), they always seem so together.  Stylish clothes, loves a camera lens, down to the last ten in The X Factor, full of confidence and dreams.  When I was this age, I was an awkward mess of a human being.  I used to refuse to brush my hair and parade around in a fleece and a retainer.  I was so keen at school that I often illustrated my school exercise books with lovingly shaded crayon sketches, such was my addiction to House Points.  So, the sudden appearance of Buffy The Vampire Slayer in my life could not have been more timely.

At first, I thought it was a stupid name.  Buffy.  Everyone I knew was called Laura or Sarah or Robert.  There were four Matthews in my class.  But, then again, nobody would have paid attention to Gemma The Vampire Slayer.  And pay attention we did.  We’re talking 1997 here, way before our slavery to TV scheduling was anywhere near an end.  That 6.45pm slot on BBC2 every Thursday was convenient to nobody (I’ve already explained about my Dad pretending to know how to work the VCR) so we all had to spend the fourth day of the week at school buzzing to rush home and get ready to wait a few hours for the show to come on.  Thursday was already an epic day as it was supermarket (Sainsbury’s) shop day in our household (and to this day I can still only have food from Sainsbury’s).  Life goals were a Goodfellas pizza followed by our choice from the patisserie counter AND a treat yoghurt that was more chocolate than dairy product.

As I got older, I’d make plans with friends to pile round one of our houses and watch the show together.  This felt like the right thing to do, as we were desperate to have others engage in our enthusiasm, but it was always immediately regrettable.  Our excitement would translate into not being able to keep quiet and concentrate during each episode, constantly shushing each other and then forgetting and making our own comments out loud.  We’d miss crucial dialogue and plot points and rue the decision to share the viewing experience.  In some ways, it was a precursor of the Whatsapp group chat that you try to participate in while chunking through a boxset, ending up stuck in a limbo between ever getting fully to grips with either.  Yes, you’re a terrible person.

But what did I love about it?  Firstly, I always loved something set in a high school.  Secondly, another favourite theme of mine is the supernatural.  Thirdly, the perfect combination of points one and two leaves us with something that really was a bit of me.  It’s probably what’s led me, even in recent times, to my embarrassing viewership of Teen Wolf.  Buffy was a teenager, and I was becoming one myself.  I didn’t have to slay vampires, but I did have to survive a British comprehensive school.  Buffy and her friends also spoke only in ironic witticisms, cleverly playing with words and engaging in what would later become known as banter.  A bit like Friends, people hadn’t spoken like this before, though it didn’t translate that well into my Surrey playground experience.  I tried to ask someone what their “childhood trauma” was and got sent out the classroom.  Sorry, sir.

There are seven series out there.  Buffy and her friends evolve, grow and develop into young adults.  They have the angst of killing demons compounded by the angst of having to go off to university.  Controversially, I’m not sure their adventures stand up to re-watching.  I keep spotting the show in the EPG plastered across the SyFy channel, but it looks like each episode was filmed through a pinhole camera, as the aspect leaves acres of blank space on the screen, which does nothing to make you want to watch a randomly selected instalment halfway through, especially when Netflix is offering you the eyeball-caressing supernatural effects of Stranger Things.  What’s worse, their clever dialogue now seems unoriginal and dated.

But, Buffy still has a very firm place in my heart.  It taught me how great and significant TV could be.  I tingled every time the theme tune came on.  When Blondie released Maria and Capital FM played it 200 times a day, 1999 became a very tingly year, as the opening chords of that song sounded exactly like Buffy’s theme tune.  I even used to read my episode guide (entitled the Watcher’s Guide, obviously) while a poster of Buffy looked down on me from my bedroom wall.  I totally could have been a Watcher as I am very English, still quite awkward, and enjoy being in libraries.

The Buffyverse’s vampires look exactly like humans until faced with blood or aggression.  Instantly, their fangs emerge and their foreheads crease into a much angrier and more monstrous expression.  Oddly, this is exactly what happens to me every time I get hungry at work, so the programme really is extremely easy to identify with.  But as much as the vampires and demons brought the edge and the action, it was Buffy’s pals, the Scooby Gang, that held the story arcs together (even though I inexplicably hated that term for their group).  Here, I shall go right through some of them while wilfully leaving out others:

Xander

I’ve slowly realised that I only ever found his wiseguy rapid speech quite irritating.  He was either pining with unrequited love or balls deep in a relationship, and that’s fair enough really.  I was never jealous of his hair, which is a key factor for me in male TV characters.

Willow

As I reflect, I again wonder if her cutesy act was a bit annoying.  It wasn’t at the time, but I’m much more impatient these days.  And, of course, I can only ever hear phrases combining brass instruments with female sexual organs whenever I see Alyson Hannigan.

Cordelia

100% sass and a great foil to Buffy, so it was a shame she was in so few series.

Faith

Not really a full member, as she was a sort of rival slayer that sprung up due to an admin error at slayer head office.  Somehow, she was more bad-ass than Buffy.  Whatever happened to Eliza Dushku?  I wish I could be bothered to Google.  Most importantly, she went on to star in Bring It On, a film I promise I have never seen and from which I cannot recite lines of script extensively.

Giles

The best librarian ever.  As with all British actors in American shows, he sounded like an American doing a bad accent, but I believe he has been knighted for his services to tweed blazers.

Spike

Now this really was an awful English accent.  I felt like he got more attention in later series simply by hanging around and waiting for his time to shine.

Buffy

What a lead.  Everyone could find a way to connect with Buffy.  Her whole life was a big “why me?” moment.  But then Sarah Michelle Gellar tried to shake off her teen image in Cruel Intentions, and as that saliva strand was drawn out between her lips and Selma Blair’s, a little piece of my childhood died.  A childhood that involved tingling at the thought of a show where teenagers shoved stakes in the hearts of their classmates.

By writing this, I’ve added nothing to the existing reams of fan discussion about Buffy The Vampire Slayer.  I’ve probably angered some core fans, which isn’t my intention.  What this proves, if anything, is that, twenty years later, the awkward 12-year-old is now an awkward 32-year-old.  Whereas, twenty years later, Buffy is still a show remembered so fondly and whose legacy still has such enormous influence, that I am merely a failed nostalgic who is holding classic TV answerable to modern standards.  And you’re reading it…

Survival Of The Fittest

Winter Love Island, they said.  It will fill the gap between series of your favourite Balearic-based flesh-fest, they promised.  And so, ITV2 unveiled Survival Of The Fittest, from the same people that brought you reality TV’s breakout formula.  This blog was going to be a highbrow guide to the quality boxsets that vie for your attention on Netflix and Amazon, causing you the inertia I referenced here.  Instead, I’ve been unable to hide my addiction to trashy formats, especially if those feature attractive young people in beachwear.  I’m saving Love Island for this coming summer, and Bromans has already been covered, but I’m very happy to say that Survival Of The Fittest falls in the same vein.

It could not be better timed.  Something about 2018 so far means it’s not only been cold and wet, but it’s been consistently the coldest and wettest year since records began (and by that I mean since I last paid attention, which might be linked to the fact that I got used to 35 degrees during my South Africa trip).  It therefore follows that an hour of telly each night that’s set in a place so hot the contestants visibly glisten in front of the cameras is the broadcast equivalent of vitamin D.  Coincidentally, the show is actually filmed in the shadow of Table Mountain, so it’s serving a dual purpose of reminding me about how much I enjoyed my fantastic holiday (did I mention I went to South Africa?) and reminding me that hot weather exists.  The African theme is impossible to avoid.  The only prize on offer to the contestants seems to be safaris, but that’s not a prize to be sniffed at.  And indeed, the African heat somehow makes Love Island’s Majorca setting look like a rainy caravan park in Blighty.  It’s clearly as hot as old balls.

So what on earth is this show?  Its prime purpose, aside from filling a gap in ITV2’s schedule, is to answer the age-old question: which is the better gender, males or females?  This is a battle between the sexes to find out who comes out on top.  The fact that the fighting typically involves timed assault courses with puzzles at the end gives you some understanding of the academic and scientific rigour on hand in the formula.  We have six boys and six girls, with each team desperate to prove theirs is the sex that is better at assault courses and puzzles.  Whichever team loses a challenge is then vulnerable to the opposite gender selecting one of their ranks to be sent home from the free African holiday.  Don’t worry though, as a replacement (in beachwear) is brought in the next day to even the numbers back out.

But what about the shagging?  Well yes, you can’t have nearly naked beautiful people in extreme heat without some shenanigans twitching the duvet covers while we watch through an infra-red camera.  The whole twist of the show comes from the expectation (which is quickly proven correct) that relationships will spring up between the genders and cause team loyalties to be questioned.  So be warned, it’s more complicated than Love Island’s premise of get in a couple or get out.  It’s a case of fight for your gender but also see if you can diddle someone of the opposite sex so they don’t vote you off in case you are slower at assault courses and puzzles.

Some other things you should know, handily arranged in bullet points to speed up your decision-making process about whether these three weeks of titillating telly are required in your life:

• The Flack role is covered by Laura Whitmore, who copes well with the wobbly bridge that leads to the savannah lodge the contestants inhabit, though she does seem to view the boys and girls themselves with irritation
• There is an irreverent voiceover, but it’s not with a Scottish or regional accent, so is around 35% less funny.  This means it’s still quite funny
• Sometimes, little monkeys raid the kitchen, reminding you that this is Africa, just in case you had forgotten among all the shots of hippos and giraffes
• As with Bromans, the bodies on display are banging, and you’ll be torn between arousal, and self-hate that you should be in the gym and not shoving your face with Crunchy Nut Cornflakes on the sofa while watching kids half your age have the time of their lives
• Danny Dyer’s daughter was in the first line up and was just embarking on her own “don’t tell anyone, but I was in Blazin Squad” moment before she smashed her shoulder in on one of the, er, assault courses
• There’s an app.  You know, for your smartphone.  So you can be a millennial while you watch

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This is all capped off by a bewildering sponsorship by Beauty Bay, though their best idents do feature Alex and Olivia from, you guessed it, Love Island.  I assume Beauty Bay is some sort of online make up jumble sale, but I refuse to give them any more attention here.

To conclude, we must ask ourselves, is this Winter Love Island?  And the answer is a resounding: sort of.  It’s set somewhere else, so it’s more like Winter Love Island In Africa.  Plus, it’s a battle of the sexes, rather than a battle to have sex.  So it’s actually Winter Love Island Gender Battle In Africa.  And finally, there are assault courses and puzzles, so the most accurate name is Winter Love Island Gender Battle In Africa With Assault Courses And Puzzles.  But that’s a ridiculous name, so they gave it the lame name of Survival Of The Fittest.  But I’ll finish on these three words: feast your eyes.