Dark Matter
12-02-2007, 11:50 PM
Someone put me on to Grace Dent's weekly TV review some time ago. I feel the need to share her with you. If you're not UK based, and have never seen the shows she's referring to, I still think you'd find her amusing. I have her RSS.
Here's a flavour.
When Will I Be Famous?
Late last year, tucked away on teatime BBC2, there was a scarcely watched talent show called Let Me Entertain You hosted by Brian Connelly. What was on offer was old-fashioned variety, with buskers, amateur crooners and bad magicians queuing up to perform.
Let Me Entertain You was both rubbish and marvellous. Good for a cup of tea, a biscuit and a laugh. Each show appeared to have been made on a budget of £4.87. It was filmed in a badly lit studio, on two cameras, in front of a bemused audience who wore expressions of clear sadness that this wasn't A Question of Sport.
Acts were on stage and off again pretty sharpish. Some were good, some were bad and some were just surreal. But we'd hardly been promised the moon on a stick, so whenever some ten-year-old jumped on stage and did a perfect Pavarotti it was such a shock it'd put a tear in your eye. "I love this show! It's so good!" I wrote excitedly. "Bring back old-fashioned variety in primetime!"
I'm pretty sure I meant it at the time, although after BBC1's Saturday-evening variety extravaganza When Will I Be Famous? burst onto our screens with no expense spared, I'm not so sure. One thing's for certain though, Graham Norton was jolly excited.
"Ooooh, heavens! The atmosphere is absolutely electric here! We're live! Anything can happen!" squeaks Norton, standing centre stage in the all-action, crash-bang-wallop, lights 'n' lasers, multi-camera, mega-budget studio with live studio audience. "And we've got some of the best acts in Britain here! We've got an excited audience! We've got a panel of the top talent judges! We've got a panel of 100 viewers at home ready to vote! Can you hear us, viewers at home?!"
Above the stage, 20 screens fill with the faces of Joe Public sitting in their living rooms. This must have been a very busy night for the BBC outside-broadcast team. After another ten minutes of our host waffling about the voting system, who everybody on the panel is and how bloody exciting it is, I deeply want to vote with my remote control. "Oh, my word, this is so incredible!" gasps Graham. "The tension is mounting, isn't it, ladies and gentleman? Are we ready for Act One?!"
Yes, Graham, I was - 18 minutes ago, just after the opening credits. But this is Saturday-night TV so we can't just watch Act One, we've got to see a pre-made VT of Act One training for the show and some more footage of him in his home environment, with added profound soundbites about how going on When Will I Be Famous? will change his life. And then an interview with Act One's wife muttering, "I'm really happy for him, I hope he does really well blah blah blah…"
Eventually, after more trumpets, ticker tape, fancy computer graphics and being informed that this is the best act in the world ever, we get to see Act One…and it's some bloke with a stuffed bird on his arm saying "gottle of geer" for two minutes. Followed by a bloke doing a wheelie on a BMX. Then a dog that dances.
Safe to say, my world was not rocked. Although, saying that, after the hysterical build-up Norton could have beckoned out the second coming of Christ himself and encouraged him to do that trick with the bread and fish and I'd only have watched the first minute then flipped over to ITV1 for Harry Hill's TV Burp.
If When Will I Be Famous? was presented by Ant and Dec they'd manage to make it unmissable. They'd have an infectious twinkle in their eye at all times that said, "Look, we know this is crap. Let's just have a laugh. We're all in this together." There's something wonderful about the way they always pull that off.
In contrast, Graham Norton comes across like a sideshow conman, because telling us straight-faced that a bunch of 30-somethings in bandanas wheezing through an aerobics routine will "knock your socks off" is, quite frankly, dishonest.
The most interesting bit of When Will I Be Famous? (blunt answer: never) is the celebrity judging panel. There's poor Dave Spikey trying to lift affairs with the occasional dry one-liner, Max Clifford looking like he's waiting for root-canal surgery, and then there's the star of the show, Chuck Harris (think Estelle, Joey's agent in Friends, but in jam-jar glasses and a comedy Boris Johnson wig).
Chuck is such a caricature of how you'd imagine a brash old-school New York agent to be, it's impossible not to think he's being played by an actor. "You are the best vent act in the world!" yells Chuck at the bloke with the stuffed bird, who has just managed to make Roger DeCoursey and Nookie Bear look like the glory days of British comedy. "You're going to go far!"
If this is the cream of the UK's undiscovered "variety", I've got a sense of foreboding about what's left over for ITV's upcoming Britain's Got Talent. I'm sensing mega-budget productions, masses of hype, 45 minutes of nail-biting opening night build-up then, eventually, Act One…a man from Egremont standing on a box with his hand jammed in his armpit making a fart-sound along to Jump Around by House of Pain.
I'm very excited. I don't know about you.
http://www.radiotimes.com/content/features/tvod/?rss
Here's a flavour.
When Will I Be Famous?
Late last year, tucked away on teatime BBC2, there was a scarcely watched talent show called Let Me Entertain You hosted by Brian Connelly. What was on offer was old-fashioned variety, with buskers, amateur crooners and bad magicians queuing up to perform.
Let Me Entertain You was both rubbish and marvellous. Good for a cup of tea, a biscuit and a laugh. Each show appeared to have been made on a budget of £4.87. It was filmed in a badly lit studio, on two cameras, in front of a bemused audience who wore expressions of clear sadness that this wasn't A Question of Sport.
Acts were on stage and off again pretty sharpish. Some were good, some were bad and some were just surreal. But we'd hardly been promised the moon on a stick, so whenever some ten-year-old jumped on stage and did a perfect Pavarotti it was such a shock it'd put a tear in your eye. "I love this show! It's so good!" I wrote excitedly. "Bring back old-fashioned variety in primetime!"
I'm pretty sure I meant it at the time, although after BBC1's Saturday-evening variety extravaganza When Will I Be Famous? burst onto our screens with no expense spared, I'm not so sure. One thing's for certain though, Graham Norton was jolly excited.
"Ooooh, heavens! The atmosphere is absolutely electric here! We're live! Anything can happen!" squeaks Norton, standing centre stage in the all-action, crash-bang-wallop, lights 'n' lasers, multi-camera, mega-budget studio with live studio audience. "And we've got some of the best acts in Britain here! We've got an excited audience! We've got a panel of the top talent judges! We've got a panel of 100 viewers at home ready to vote! Can you hear us, viewers at home?!"
Above the stage, 20 screens fill with the faces of Joe Public sitting in their living rooms. This must have been a very busy night for the BBC outside-broadcast team. After another ten minutes of our host waffling about the voting system, who everybody on the panel is and how bloody exciting it is, I deeply want to vote with my remote control. "Oh, my word, this is so incredible!" gasps Graham. "The tension is mounting, isn't it, ladies and gentleman? Are we ready for Act One?!"
Yes, Graham, I was - 18 minutes ago, just after the opening credits. But this is Saturday-night TV so we can't just watch Act One, we've got to see a pre-made VT of Act One training for the show and some more footage of him in his home environment, with added profound soundbites about how going on When Will I Be Famous? will change his life. And then an interview with Act One's wife muttering, "I'm really happy for him, I hope he does really well blah blah blah…"
Eventually, after more trumpets, ticker tape, fancy computer graphics and being informed that this is the best act in the world ever, we get to see Act One…and it's some bloke with a stuffed bird on his arm saying "gottle of geer" for two minutes. Followed by a bloke doing a wheelie on a BMX. Then a dog that dances.
Safe to say, my world was not rocked. Although, saying that, after the hysterical build-up Norton could have beckoned out the second coming of Christ himself and encouraged him to do that trick with the bread and fish and I'd only have watched the first minute then flipped over to ITV1 for Harry Hill's TV Burp.
If When Will I Be Famous? was presented by Ant and Dec they'd manage to make it unmissable. They'd have an infectious twinkle in their eye at all times that said, "Look, we know this is crap. Let's just have a laugh. We're all in this together." There's something wonderful about the way they always pull that off.
In contrast, Graham Norton comes across like a sideshow conman, because telling us straight-faced that a bunch of 30-somethings in bandanas wheezing through an aerobics routine will "knock your socks off" is, quite frankly, dishonest.
The most interesting bit of When Will I Be Famous? (blunt answer: never) is the celebrity judging panel. There's poor Dave Spikey trying to lift affairs with the occasional dry one-liner, Max Clifford looking like he's waiting for root-canal surgery, and then there's the star of the show, Chuck Harris (think Estelle, Joey's agent in Friends, but in jam-jar glasses and a comedy Boris Johnson wig).
Chuck is such a caricature of how you'd imagine a brash old-school New York agent to be, it's impossible not to think he's being played by an actor. "You are the best vent act in the world!" yells Chuck at the bloke with the stuffed bird, who has just managed to make Roger DeCoursey and Nookie Bear look like the glory days of British comedy. "You're going to go far!"
If this is the cream of the UK's undiscovered "variety", I've got a sense of foreboding about what's left over for ITV's upcoming Britain's Got Talent. I'm sensing mega-budget productions, masses of hype, 45 minutes of nail-biting opening night build-up then, eventually, Act One…a man from Egremont standing on a box with his hand jammed in his armpit making a fart-sound along to Jump Around by House of Pain.
I'm very excited. I don't know about you.
http://www.radiotimes.com/content/features/tvod/?rss