Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina

Well, Halloween has been and gone and people are now trying to play Christmas songs in the office (which I have swiftly put a stop to), but this blog is only just getting round to covering Netflix’s big content play for All Hallows’ Eve 2018: Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina.  I wasn’t going to watch this at first, even though posters were everywhere.  A quick trip to see friends in Hamburg revealed that most of their rail network’s out-of-home display sites had been booked by this show, which, in German, actually has the same name.  But then I felt the need for something dark and gothic in my viewing life, and, before I knew it or could regain control of my actions, I was eyeballs deep in episode one.

Part of my resistance came from the fact I saw no need for Sabrina, The Teenage Witch to be overhauled.  That show lives on in Millennials’ memory for all the right reasons, dominating our viewing from 1996 to 2003 (coinciding exactly with the seven years I spent at secondary school).  But this new version was billed as darker, more relevant, and as closer to the original source material: some old Archie Comic thing we didn’t really have in the UK.  More than that, these Chilling Adventures also acknowledge one of the fundamental truths about witch folklore: these women were believed to sell their souls to the devil to obtain powers.  Therefore, one of the main points of divergence between the two imaginings of this teenage witch is the amount of devil.  The 1996 version had almost none.  The 2018 version is really rather devilish with an overload of devil.

Sabrina has been aged down, with perfect casting seeing Kiernan Shipka in the lead role.  As a child star known by me (and maybe you) for playing Don Draper’s bratty daughter in Mad Men, I keep expecting her to stamp her feet and throw a tantrum at Betty Draper’s bitchy comments, but her tantrums are instead directed at her aunts.  Aunt Hilda is our own beloved Lucy Davis, qualified for British national treasure status since appearing in The Office, while Miranda Otto brings luvvie steeliness to Aunt Zelda.  While the actresses are British and Australian respectively, Zelda seems to be an American to Hilda’s Englishwoman.  But then, cousin Ambrose, a sort of housebound, open robe-wearing smart-mouth, is very very English, whereas Sabrina is as American as apple pie.  This isn’t that interesting, but it’s one of many things that just seem a bit strange about the adventures.

Other things follow here.  Everything seems to be filmed through an Instagram filter.  The edges of the screen are all blurred and this is distracting for the first few episodes.  In addition, it’s hard to know when this is set.  The hair, the costumes, some of the lifestyle choices all smack of a bygone decade, maybe even the seventies.  You never see a smartphone or hear tell of the internet.  But this niggle ends up adding to the overall charm – what’s a bit of styling if it doesn’t add to the spooky atmosphere?  And spooky is just what Greendale is.  Dry ice roams the streets, while the school is staffed by all manner of paranormality.  And because witches aren’t enough, Sabrina’s friends all inevitably take on supernatural tendencies of their own, a bit like werewolves needing magical friends in Teen Wolf.  In fact, the likenesses with high school-based teen dramas featuring mythical creatures calls to mind that other great oeuvre in the genre, Buffy The Vampire Slayer.  Sadly, though, it’s only really Lucy Davis’s Aunt Hilda who has the witty lines, and she delivers each in a performance that makes you want her on screen the whole time.

Vamping things up, we also have Scottish actor Michelle Gomez, in a very sinister role as Miss Wardwell, a teacher possessed by Mrs Satan, bringing a lot of the darkness into the show.  I swear I can still see a twinkle in her eyes that betrays her madcap antics in Green Wing and The Book Group, but she remains, as ever, a joy to behold.

The ten episodes take us through pivotal times in Sabrina’s life as a school girl who is half mortal, half a witch.  Turning sixteen, she must decide between two destinies, and the initial tension comes from which she will choose: signing her name over to Satan, or remaining at normal school because there are boys there (and this time Harvey Kinkle isn’t played by someone who looks 35).  The pressure to pick overwhelms both Sabrina and us the viewers for the first few episodes, but once her initial decision is made, we move into a more episodic format, with different demons showing up for neat containment within the one-hour running time, and things feel a lot more fun because of it.  But the series’ climax builds back up to the initial struggle between humans and witches, culminating in a great set up for more seasons, and further potential to get even darker.

So, should you watch this?  It’s a yes from me if you love a teen melodrama, think real life is better with added supernatural powers or you simply want an antidote to the saccharine Christmas nonsense that starts to get wheeled out at this time of year.  Some elements of the Sabrina universe’s mythology are all over the place, as is the tone struck by the action, characters and dialogue, but the atmosphere almost makes up for this.  You’ll jump if you’re jumpy, but this is safe to watch in the dark and home alone.  Most of all, it’s a lot of fun and a welcome addition of difference to the Netflix canon.  I sadly can’t promise you an animatronic Salem jerking about, but Sabrina can promise you a good time while she has her chilling adventures.

I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’m No Doctor, Guys But…

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

I’ll Smash Your Face In

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

Evening, Prime Minister

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

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

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

Helen Flanagan, series 12

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

Ashley Roberts, series 12

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

Rebecca Adlington, series 13

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

Gemma Collins, series 14

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

Vicky Pattison, series 15

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

Lady Colin Campbell, series 15

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

Joel Dommett, series 16

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

Larry Lamb, series 16

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

Amir Khan, series 17

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

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

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

Jack Whitehall: Travels With My Father

We have some more firsts this week.  It’s the first travel show to feature on the blog (and Love Island doesn’t count, even though it’s the best holiday we’ll never get to go on) and it’s the first show to have a colon in its title.  The colon bit isn’t very interesting really, but the travelling part is what saw me select this from the overwhelming complexity of the Netflix menu.  I wanted something short, something vaguely British, and something with a few chuckles.  I also didn’t want there to be too many of them to get through.  And luckily, Jack Whitehall: Travels With My Father ticked all of those boxes.

I normally tend to avoid the genre of programme denoted by the term travelogue.  You know the thing.  It’s Joanna Lumley swanning around India looking at cats.  Or Michael Portillo sniffing the bedsheets at different hotels in hot countries while wearing a blazer the whole time as if he’s sold his soul to the devil in exchange for never sweating, despite the fact he stills come across as slimey, regardless of the dryness (or wetness) of his pits.  There’s even one where Chris Tarrant goes on trains.  I go on trains every day, but it doesn’t get put out on ITV1 in late peak and regularly pull in millions of baby boomer viewers looking for inspiration about where to thrust their money now they’ve used up all the wealth in the country.  But the rules that govern what I would never watch on normal telly go out the window when it comes to Netflix’s wily ways.  I’m powerless in the face of the endless choice.  Maybe the pressure will subside if I just watch one more show, bringing me that little bit closer to completing everything on there and becoming a hero of office conversation.  There’s not much else to live for.

The premise of the show is tenuous.  Whitehall never had a gap year (pronounced gap yah of course) what with his stand-up career taking off, thanks to the huge gap (minus the yah) in the entertainment market for a loveable posh boy who’s happiest when everyone is laughing at him.  Now is his time to hit up South East Asia for all the clichés imaginable, safeguarding a future where he can join the ranks of Thailand bores who discuss which islands they did and didn’t do while I slowly glaze over and die inside because I can’t join in.  But this isn’t enough comedy, so Whitehall Senior, Jack’s grumpy father, comes too.  Michael Whitehall likes to wear suits, live in luxury and doesn’t want to leave the comforts of South West London.  Cue ensuing hilarity as full moon parties collide with wine tasting and everything in between.

I’m lucky enough to have been a direct recipient of Jack Whitehall’s humour, so I can safely vouch for the fact that merely dropping him in confusing foreign situations should be entertainment enough.  At a work event, we were treated to a Comedy Central stand-up night.  I arrived just before the start and joined friends at the last remaining table just by the stage.  Someone warned me this would be a bad idea, but I was well tucked away and had no conspicuous features about me, so I felt certain that I wouldn’t be threatened by unwilling audience participation.  How wrong I was.  Within seconds of the compere appearing, I had been dragged on stage and subjected to a multitude of embarrassing situations.  By the time Jack came on, I had inadvertently become a focus for most of the acts.  “Where’s Rob?” was his first question.  He took a good look at me and then asked me what I did for a job.  My wanky media job is hard to explain, so I opted for the vague catch-all term of: creative solutions.  His response came in a beat: “More like pussy solutions.”  So, yes, we can all agree he is hilarious.

The addition of his dad is also a nice touch.  Well into his seventies, Michael hasn’t got time for any of Jack’s shit, including, but not limited to: being called Mike, being called mate, using any lavatory that deviates from the European norm, drinking anything alcoholic besides fine wine, all of Jack’s outfits.  There’s a deliciousness in the awkwardness whenever Jack brings up the ways in which his father has struggled to show affection or love in the past, such as sending him off to boarding school at a young age.  Michael is always quick to retort that Jack is a constant disappointment to him, so it really is like looking into a family mirror.

When being natural, I could watch these two explore anything, from the Killing Fields of Cambodia to Chernobyl (both of which get covered).  However, there seems to have been a terrible decision to include a number of constructed moments.  In these, obvious gags are set up and play out with such artificiality that it’s hard not to want to switch off.  A particular lowlight is Jack being pushed into a fountain by Steven Seagal.  Very strange.

The second series sees the lads conduct a grand tour of Europe (in the style of Victorian poets rather than in tribute to any consumer vehicle review show hosted by old white men in bad jeans).  Jack gets to live out one of his lifetime dreams, playing funky saxophone with SunStroke Project, a Moldovan boyband who don’t share his sense of irony.  Michael, meanwhile, is comforted by the continuing presence of Winston, a kind of creepy good-luck doll they picked up in Thailand and on whom he showers more love, praise and affection than it seems Jack has ever received.  This is oddly reassuring, as a fellow British person.

So, should you go on some travels with Jack Whitehall and his father?  Probably.  It’s easy viewing, mildly chucklesome, at points both touching and informative.  You can get a good cringe workout during each set piece, but they are soon over and you’re back to feeling inspired about booking that flight, exploring that foreign culture or cherishing time with your beloved parents.  You probably won’t get your own travelogue TV format commissioned, with its very own colon, such as Generic Person: Let Me Bore You With My Travelling Yarns, but that’s because you’re not Jack Whitehall and therefore nobody cares.  (Is anyone still picturing Michael Portillo sniffing bedsheets?)

Bo’ Selecta!

The epitome of a good parody has to be something that takes on a greater significance than the original target.  This week’s show is one that achieved that several times over.  It’s lucky it did, as I still had no inspiration for what to cover in this week’s post, and then a meeting this morning brought Bo’ Selecta! back into my life, sixteen years after it first appeared on our screens.

Members of our Management team had gathered in a meeting room for important and confidential discussions (though these will only be interesting to you if you work in content partnerships for a media agency).  One key member needed to be dialled in from home, where they had been using the classic excuse of a poorly baby to get an extra-long lie-in.  A mobile was placed on the table and our dialler-inner was put on speaker.  “Are you there?” we asked.

“Yes,” came the response.

“Good,” said someone else. “You’re on speaker, so don’t say f*ck or bugger.”  Naturally, I was furious that the joke hadn’t come from me.  I was just about to launch into my usual spiel where I tell colleagues to be careful, as I’ll do the jokes round here (which must be about as charming as it sounds to type out here).

Instead, the phone crackled with our remote member dropping a particularly loud C bomb.  Oh, how we fell about laughing.  Saying naughty words without your parents telling you off is one of the best things about being an adult.  It might actually be the only thing.

By now, you’re either wondering what the devil I’m on about, or you’re recalling fondly the Davina McCall character from Bo’ Selecta!  Or you’ve stopped reading entirely, as you can source boring stories about someone’s life in an office from the person next to you on any train.  Either way, it’s fitting in this final week of Big Brother (whose final final I caught up with and said goodbye to as another part of my youth slipped into the ether), that we are talking about a sketch show that took the piss out of it.  I would wager that more people have quoted Bo’ Selecta!’s version of Big Brother this year than have actually watched the 2018 series.

When speaking live to the Big Brother house, our host Davina always had to remind the potty-mouthed housemates to mind their effing and jeffing: “Big Brother house, this is Davina; please do not swear.”  Not a funny line in itself, until Bo’ Selecta! turned it on its head with the absurd, “Big Brother house, this is Davina; please do not say f*ck or bugger.”  How ridiculous: here’s Davina saying the words that aren’t allowed on air, and, what’s more, they’re not even the worst words.  Fair enough, I think the F bomb is second only to the C bomb, but bugger is probably barely in the top twenty of offensive things you can say.

But the deviation from reality didn’t end there.  Bo’ Selecta!’s impressions of popular and unpopular people from popular culture never cared much for accuracy.  That’s because most parts were played by a white man.  Instead of prosthetics, he just donned some oversized NHS glasses and an even bigger rubber chin.  Our favourite celebrities, from Lorraine Kelly to Gareth Gates, would then be portrayed as grotesque creatures that often had little to do with their real-life namesakes.  The famous Americans often came in for worse treatment, getting transplanted from the glamorous US origins to some crap town in Britain.

Yet, these versions often threatened to eclipse their inspiration.  In 2002, Craig David was one of the UK’s biggest popstars.  He was so smooth he even declared in an album title that he was Slicker Than Your Average.  But, in the world of Bo’ Selecta!, he wasn’t from Southampton anymore, but from Yorkshire.  He wet the bed.  He had a pet kestrel called Kes.  He was deeply uncool and it soon became impossible to see Craig David without donning a northern accent and shrieking Craaaaig Daaaavid.  Having seen the real Craig David in recent years at a Summertime Ball (via free tickets from work, but let’s be honest: I loved it), it seems time has finally allowed him to reclaim his own identity, with his resurgence enthusiastically enabled by older millennials desperate to relive the heyday of UK garage.

Other characters didn’t necessarily have quite the same impact, but, for me, there are still certain words or phrases I can’t hear without thinking of them.  Any time something is described as mint condition, I can picture Destiny’s Child in a bus shelter, with Kelly only able to say “Question?” while Beyoncé explains in a Leeds accent that the best way to remain in “totally mint condition” is to rub lard on your shiny legs.  I can’t hear someone say “no offence” without the Simon Cowell character coming to mind, telling an unsuccessful X Factor hopeful, “No offence, but I wish your mum was dead.”  If I’m ever told to bring a friend, I immediately picture a scouse Christina Aguilera giving two simultaneous handjobs offscreen in a caravan, while explaining that she is dirrrty as you like, and telling punters to, “Bring a friend next time.”

In fact, every time I hear the name, Christina Aguilera, I can see the Bo’ Selecta! Kelly Osbourne (whose dad had terribly long arms and whose mum went around looking for dog poos to treasure) switching between a cutesy American accent to welcome viewers to The Kelly Osbourne Show (“Hey, you douchebags”) before aggressively ranting in a British accent about how much she effing hates Christina Aguilera, before switching back to American to declare, “But she has the most wonderful voice.”  Manatees make me think of a posh Marilyn Manson.  Shazam makes me think of a pervy David Blaine.  Earpieces make me think of Ant Man and Dec Pet, and so on and so forth…

I could live without the show’s interstitials, which saw neck-braced Avid Merrion conducting a personal creepathon with his celebrity obsessions.  In fact, a lot of the humour was deeply crass, puerile and generally offensive, with some of the racial and sexuality stereotyping feeling a bit wide of the mark for today’s tastes.  But it was often done while knowingly being so far from the reality that its ridiculousness was the very source of the laughs.  It didn’t feel the need to celebrate celebrities.  Instead, it really went for them (though I did miss some of the jokes due to the accents and rubber masks, which were hard to hear through).

Nevertheless, such a subversive late-night Channel 4 show didn’t quite make a household name of its creator, Leigh Francis, but he is now practically an ITV treasure in his more palatable (though equally as flap-orientated) character of Keith Lemon.  On the other hand, other elements of the show are fondly remembered in my household (by my sister and me, not by our parents), such as the ground-breaking feature: The Week In Bits, With Jodie Marsh’s Tits.  This really was a round-up of celeb gossip voiced by an actual nipple.  I suppose it depends on your household.

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Dear White People

Sometimes you come across something on Netflix that seems perfectly aimed at you.  This is how I felt when I was first served Dear White People via their unfathomable algorithm (probably based on the fact I had watched Friends From College and The Get Down).  Surely, this was a show for me, as I am definitely a white people.  But, you know what?  I’ve got a careful line to tread here using the snarky and irreverent tone that regular readers of this blog are used to.  I’m still going to be flippant when taking apart its style and pace, but its head-on tackling of racial sensitivity will not be coming in for that sort of treatment.  Firstly, because that would be whack, and secondly, because this part of the show is absolutely banging.  From a cynical perspective, we can view this purely as a plot device and state that the black/white friction throughout each episode generates gripping drama.  But as a human (from one of the least diverse villages in one of the least diverse counties of England) it prompts constant questions and internal discussions, ladling surprises on disappointments on confusion on outrage in an endless cycle of much-needed re-evaluation.  Sometimes, we all need to be challenged.

Welcome to the fictional Ivy League college of Winchester.  Here, the USA’s brightest (and wealthiest) young minds pursue further education among the leafy quads and historic traditions.  One of these traditions is that a particular hall of residence’s residing residents are African-Americans, leaving the campus segregated.  Each episode focuses on an individual student’s experience of this situation.  Not only are they navigating their own transition into adulthood by way of the pretend adult world of university life, but most of our characters are also coping with being minorities in a historically white-dominated environment.  Romantic relationships, friendships and academic stress, along with a lot of extra-curriculars, are par for the course, but, for our black and dual heritage characters, they must also cope with the prejudice, fetishisation, enthusiasm and guilt of their fellow students of all skin tones (but with heavy emphasis on liberal white students getting it totally wrong – white readers will cringe hard each time they recognise themselves).

Don’t worry, though, almost everyone is beautiful, and each episode is tantalisingly shot as if this is fodder for a boutique cinema showing European arthouse flicks.  But it’s not; it’s really good telly.  Even the colour palette of the lighting, the wardrobe and the interiors carries a stylised theme, with warm autumnal hues circling the storylines.  You will, however, stop and wonder how so much garishly patterned wallpaper needs to adorn the walls of Winchester’s dorms.  This crafting calls to mind shows like Girls, and the thirty-minute run time drives the likeness further.  In fact, it hoodwinked me into quite a run of allowing myself just one more episode (as each was only an extra half hour before I got off the sofa) and I got through the current two seasons in two days.

So how does each episode unfold?  Well, there’s a clever formula.  An omniscient narrator sardonically eases us into each instalment before revealing who’ll be our focus.  There’s Samantha, the host of Winchester student radio’s eponymous phone-in, Dear White People, in whom it’s easy to recognise the idealistic student activist.  Far more interesting is her best friend, Joelle, who combines a wicked sense of humour with being top of the class in everything.  On the boys’ side, there’s Troy, the dean’s son struggling under the weight of expectation, but still finding time to do all the sit ups so you’ll feel like a blob each time his clothes come off (which is all the time).  There’s also Reggie, whose unrequited love for Samantha is matched only by the unrequited-ness of Joelle’s love for him, but I was forced to question the latter because he makes some really dodgy choices with his sweaters, and then let’s not forget Lionel, the unassuming, aspiring journalist coming to terms with his sexuality.  At first, the cast seems like a standard run-through of generic college tropes, but their depth and originality is uncovered as we journey through the racist-infested water with them.  They all also have a fair bit of sex, as all students do, so be prepared to look like a perv if your viewing is ever interrupted.

At each episode’s conclusion, the focus character makes eye contact directly through the camera with you, the viewer.  It took me a while to notice this and then it became all I thought about.  Is it a knowing glance to acknowledge the overall artificiality of the whole production or is it in the spirit of being caught red-handed as a voyeur feasting on other people’s (racial) dramas from a (safe, judgment-free) distance?  Either way, the soundtrack cranks back up with an epic song selection that leaves you sitting there letting it all sink in.  Until Netflix’s autoplay kicks in and you’re back in to find out what happens next.

And I genuinely wanted to know.  The thing about young people, whatever their skin colour, is that they are idealists.  Their passions burn brighter than those of people who’ve been chained to office desks for the last eleven years (hiya!), so I defy anyone not to connect with all the dear different people of Dear White People.  Series one deals with the fallout of a black-face Halloween party, before building to an altercation with a white, gun-happy college security guard and climaxing with a sham town hall meeting to iron out racial tensions on campus.  The second series doesn’t feel as tightly packed: the characters cope with the rise of anonymous alt-right social media accounts and prepare for controversial public figures to descend on Winchester.  Throughout both, our intelligent and articulate heroes broadcast their responses in the student paper or on the student radio station.  If anything, this was the least credible part.  Based on my university experience, nobody listened to student radio, and we only looked in the newspaper to see whose pictures had appeared in the Fit College section.  But series two offers some explanations, showing that the radio is broadcast over speakers into the quads.  It also shows for the first time that these students actually go to class.

We don’t have dorm segregation in the UK, but Dear White People should be essential viewing everywhere.  I laughed out loud, I did myself mischief through excessive cringing and I cared deeply about the human drama.  I was entertained, but not in a way that was intended to distract me from realising that discussion about race, and specifically the experience of black people in America at the hands (and patronising comments) of white people, is not something to shy away from.  IMDB claims a third series is coming and I can’t wait.  Not because I’m taking pains to sound woke in my writing here, but because Dear White People is Netflix at its best.  More please.

University Challenge

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Play then ensues and often features the following highlights:

Jeremy Paxman telling off the contestants

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

Jeremy Paxman laughing at you for being wrong

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

Contestants’ faces during a music round

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

The Shakespeare strategy

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

A slightly embarrassed mature student

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

Some personalities

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

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

Lost

Let’s go back to some glossy American dross this week.  I’m going to take on Lost, not because I feel I have anything truly valuable to add to the enormous canon of online chatter regarding this show, especially eight years after it ended, but because, in the art of determining what makes a great boxset, we need to acknowledge that Lost was nailing Boxset 101 long before boxset bingeing was really a thing (I’m not sorry I’ve said boxset so many times).  And, hilariously, its strengths in some areas are rendered utterly null by its awful, awful shortcomings in others.

In the UK, Lost premiered on Channel 4 in 2004.  To this day, the beautiful promotional trailers exist in my memory in perfect form.  On a beach setting, shot as if some sort of fragrance advert, a collection of striking people, diverse in skin tone, age, shape and size, stare moodily into the distance while a sea breeze gently caresses their tattered clothing, each character carefully placed among the smoking wreck of a crashed aeroplane, like a disastrous Kardashian Christmas card.  Music plays.  Supers appear on screen: one of these people is a murderer, one of these people is cheating etc.  I think I might have lied about remembering everything, as I honestly can’t recall all the stated facts.  Nevertheless, I was immediately drawn in.  The tension had me.  With all these secrets, the fall out at their inevitable exposition was bound to be epic.

But, a few episodes in, the show just wasn’t doing it for me, and I gave up.  How fickle.  Months later, I was deep in my year abroad in Germany.  Working in a school, I was often done for the day by 11am and had literally nothing else to fill my time with, even after hanging around in a gym for two hours despite the staff mistakenly calling me Roger, or making endless rounds of gluten-free pancakes because they were the only thing I knew how to cook.  One housemate had a large selection of DVDs and I made my way through all of them.  Even unmarked ones.  I didn’t realise how risky this could be, but instead of homemade porn, I found myself in possession of episodes 14 and 15 of Lost’s first season.  With nothing else to do, I eagerly watched both.  And I enjoyed them.

That’s when I got lost in Lost.  I’m gonna say it: series one was a masterpiece.  I loved everything about it.  And that’s because it had everything: the survivors of a plane crash building a new society on a desert island (such societal commentary – how would their old lives play out in this new situation?), unknown threats lurking in the jungle just beyond the beach (wait, is that a polar bear?), each character’s pre-crash backstory getting played out in flashbacks in their own dedicated episode (thrown to with the same sound effect that made everything seem more tense, slowly teasing out details relevant to the current on-island storyline), so much that couldn’t be explained (how come Locke can walk now?) and then each episode climaxing in a cliff-hanger that leaves you unable to live your life until you can find out more.

It also helped that this all played out in tropical sunshine.  It was like being on holiday via the television.  But while the first series was neat and tight, and the second nearly delivered on the promise to build on this epic set up, the later series up to the sixth seemed to suffer from a chronic form of and-thenism, where the writers desperately clutched at straws to try to explain what had come before, resorting to further and further fetched departures from reality until the show could no longer be classified in any genre other than gubbins.  I loved the creepiness of the Dharma Initiative, I wanted to get in the hatch so bad, I was obsessed with the numbers that had to be entered, I couldn’t work out why Hurley never slimmed down on a restricted castaway diet, I couldn’t cope with the excitement and intrigue offered by the Others.  Every time someone tried to get away from the island, nature seemed to thwart them.  I had to know everything about this place.

But with so many questions unanswered, Lost was never able to deliver a resolution.  There was a smoke monster, an invisible man rocking on a chair in a hut, an island that could be moved, key cast members leaving the island and then coming back, flashbacks that became throw-forwards and the constant presence of Ben Linus’s really really annoying face.  And then how did everyone know how to track?  They could follow someone across the whole island based on a few broken twigs and a leaf in the wrong place.  I’m looking at you, Kate and Jack.  What about the other people in the background?  I always wondered what they were up to, though I suppose Rose and Bernard (pronounced Bern-AAARRRD) broke the mould to come forward and say a few incidental lines.  Haemorrhaging fans, Lost limped to a listless conclusion, and, in the process, I lost hours of my life.

However, I gave those hours willingly, and that’s because Lost was a boxset masterclass in stringing the viewer along.  It built a whole world with its own mythology and expanded that out exponentially with a freedom no other show (that I have seen myself) had managed to do.  There was nothing else like it and I think we all loved the braveness.  We weren’t just working out why a prostitute was murdered, we were trying to piece together much more complicated things (while looking at beautiful people on a sunny beach).  All that suspense and tension needed the best pay off ever developed by a team of TV writers.  Lost bottled this so hard that it felt like assault.  This accusation is unfair, as the show was doomed from the start – it could never live up to its own expectations.

So, what have we learned?  Don’t tease out your audience for six series, only to have built up so much mystery that you forget what was going on in the first place.  But let’s commend the ambition.  Lost changed the telly landscape.  If we had lost Lost, it would have been our loss.