You Can't Judge A Videtalker By Its Blurb

Sometimes, when you start poking around in the increasingly daunting 'Drafts' folder (well, it's technically not a folder, but you get the point) and its seemingly endless roll call of unfinished and long-abandoned post ideas, it's surprising what you can find in there. For example, I've just stumbled across this long-forgotten doodle in the margin with the gobbledygook title You Can't Judge A Videtalker By Its Blurb (actually taken from Patsy Kensit-starring Nadsat-esque-spouting eighties Children's ITV sci-fi comedy Luna), which appears to have been driving towards making some kind of point about so-called 'Video Nasties'. It would have started, it seems, with a memory-searing childhood visit to the local video shop, with its sensory-assault-launching wall full of uncertified low-budget horror films with alarming cover art:

"One of these was of course the famously revolting cover to Cannibal Holocaust, so ridiculously over-the-top and retina-assaultingly rendered that it almost crosses a line into acceptability. The others that really seared themselves into my mind, however, were ones that you don't hear so much about now. The woman-grabbing photo on the cover of Don't Answer The Phone, for example, which made me feel in nauseous in a way I didn't really understand at the time, or the more traditional Granada Horror Film Slot Continuity Slide-style iconography of White Cannibal Queen, which it has to be admitted was not a million miles away from the 'Scary Picture' in Look Around You. Above all of these in the sleepless night stakes, however, was the priest cowering behind a giant crucifix on the cover of The Bogeyman. What's that? You've never heard of The Bogeyman? Well, that's hardly surprising. It came and went in cinemas with apparently nobody even noticing, and if it wasn't for its very brief spell at the top of the rental charts back at the dawn of home video, it's likely nobody would ever have noticed it; even when the tabloids were scrabbling around for a reader-enraging list of depravities in leading 'Nasties', all they could find to remark upon in this lower-rung post-Exorcist Hollywood underachiever was a telekinetically-driven scissor attack. It's about as dreary as early eighties mainstream attempts at doing mid-budget horror got, and that's no mean feat, especially when it's up against the likes of Dead And Buried. Yes, I did eventually actually see The Bogeyman, when I was a good deal older and indeed a good deal more interested in the obscurer corners of popular culture (oh, alright, rubbishy old films), and was quite surprised to find that it didn't exactly match up to the quakes of terror that had reverberated outwards from that hapless rental shop shelf"

Then there was a gap and the following fragment:

"So you can't judge a book by its cover but you can judge the idea by signifiers[...] the same way that I can make a fairly informed judgement about Lark Rise To Candleford or the eighteen millionth series of Shooting Stars"

...and that was it. Whatever point it was driving towards is now lost to posterity, alongside whatever would have gone in the blank posts headed 'Song 2 b-sides' and 'Adam Diment book in charity shop'. I did briefly consider reworking it into something about how, despite what people being paid to write columns with an eye on their next TV outing might say, it's perfectly acceptable to be opposed to the fundamental idea of Benefits Street without needing to watch it to form a value judgement about its actual content, but despite having a corking title (Can You Tell Me How To Get, How To Get Rid Of Benefits Street?) this was abandoned when Phil Norman did his superlative piece on much the same subject, and anyway, loads of people were sobbing "boo hoo hoo your opinions is giving me earrrrr infection can't you stop having opinions do more about Hardly Hare please ps i should win stuff by watching", so that was that, really, and 'malcolm tucker rant?' would never find its way into this post. Apart from just there of course.

Anyway, there was no conclusion planned out in the original half-post apart from the word 'conclusion', so let's just leave it there. I wonder who the real cannibals are?

It Was The Best Of Times, It Was The Worst Of Times Daaaaave...

Back in 2009, when I was still relatively interested in reviewing current television rather than going on and on about wiped black and white shows until time itself gets so fed up that it folds inwards and unwipes them, I was asked to contribute a couple of entries to a fairly heavyweight review of The Decade In Television. Although hardly Revolt Into Style, this was still quite an interesting project, as in retrospect the turn of the millennium marked the real starting point of a quest amongst programme makers for 'newness'-for-'newness'-sake at all costs, valuing technology and concept above quality, and creating a lasting malaise from which television is still only just staggering away.

Unfortunately, by the time I got around to actually contributing, the only shows left on the editor's list of the previous ten years' televisual landmarks that I felt even remotely qualified to say anything about were one that I was initially a huge fan of and then went off very dramatically, and one that I hated full stop from the outset. As such, it was a bit of a struggle to find something positive or defining to say about either (though I did just about manage to be civil), but it was nonetheless interesting to look at the legacy of both shows with a couple of years' distance, and indeed to look at those conclusions again now. All that 'Mong-gate' stuff was still yet to come...


The League Of Gentlemen

The four-man comedy team had already enjoyed one moderately successful series on BBC2 when, in the opening days of 2000, they really tore through the fabric with a macabre new character who took an unsuspecting audience by surprise. Yet despite his popularity, Papa Lazarou was ultimately just one component of an expertly-judged second series that deftly straddled the line between comedy and horror and restraint and excess, and by the end of the year had taken the cult performers to the level of Christmas tie-ins and sell-out tours. As a result, ‘dark’ was suddenly the new television fashion, and not just in comedy – the next couple of years saw a much bleaker tone descent over everything from drama to music shows to, well, Channel 4 broadcasting a live autopsy, revelling in grimness and explicit gore seemingly for the sake of it. Needless to say this was mostly done without the panache of the show that inspired it – indeed, even The League Of Gentlemen lost their way a bit, with a sprawling third series that seemed to value cruelty and shock above any tangible ‘jokes’ – and it’s telling that two huge comedy successes that came later in the decade were deliberately conceived as a contrast to the surfeit of ‘dark’ humour. Nowadays, things are looking far ‘light’er, and as the decade concludes, perhaps it’s fitting that one of the most talked about shows of recent times is Psychoville, a sitcom by two former Gentlemen that keeps its shock material very much secondary to its funny material.


The Office

Though some retrospective claims about the launch of Ricky Gervais’ sitcom, such as that it had inconsistent and late-night scheduling, are demonstrably untrue, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that a sitcom shot in an unfamiliar naturalistic style and starring a virtual unknown was something of a gamble for the BBC. But it was a gamble that paid off – The Office became a runaway success like few others before or since, eclipsing the more energetic and exaggerated comedy of The League Of Gentlemen and Spaced with its more subdued and understated approach. Yet though this style was certainly popular with viewers, few seemed to understand why. It had clearly struck a chord on account of its acute observation of workplace life rather than its style as such, but it was that style that was adopted en masse by anyone hoping to achieve similar popularity. A handful of shows, notably Peep Show and The Thick Of It, managed to apply this approach to a solidly-conceived look at another recognisable aspect of life. A great many others – amongst them such long-forgotten efforts as The Robinsons, The Last Chancers, and a deafeningly soundtracked mangling of radio comedy Absolute Power – simply slapped a ‘naturalistic’ style onto scripts that either didn’t suit it or just weren’t good enough to begin with. Even now, nearly a decade after its creator astutely wound the show up after two series to prevent it from becoming stale, there still exists a steady stream of copyists that look about as ‘fresh’ in comparison to The Office as Up Sunday did to That Was The Week That Was.