Viscious & The Job Lot - TV Review

With ITV putting both these new sitcoms on one after the other maybe they were anticipating them both to be reviewed and seen together and in that sense hedging their bets. That if one bombed then the other might be a hit. For me, I thought both were pretty good, Viscious being surprisingly the funnier, edgier show. Edgier may seem a surprising word to use given the two main characters of Viscious are an extrovert gay couple living in a room which could have easily been a setting for a number of sitcoms in the seventies. However, a lot of the jokes I found were funny, deliberately over the top, and in this age of everything being PC, this gay inspired nostalgic comedy was indeed taking a risk now and then. The main comedy though lies in the barbed insults Derek jacobi and Ian Mckellan constantly throw at each other. 'I was young, famous and handsome' says one to which the other replies ' You were barely one of those' Other opportunities for humour lie in the arrival of an 'attractive' young man who moves in upstairs and is thrust into their closed world of insulting banter. A world where the curtaains are never opened and the dorrbell ringing is a major event. Another typica joke is Frances de la Tour asks the young man from upstairs if he is Zac Efron or is he from Zac Efron not quite sure who or what Zac Efron is. It's a show which no doubt, as has been seen already on Twitter, you either go with or go against. I'm going with it and be watching it next week. The Job Lot was set in a Midlands job centre and with it being another mockumentary style show it couln't help bring comparisons (as with every such show) with The Office. Especially with Russell Tovey as a kind of Tim type character stuck in a job and surrounded by people he'd do anything to escape. Sarah Hadland plays another character, the office manager driven to despair by her workforce's reluctance to match her enthusiasm and spirit which itself is an act. There's a set list of characters which include genuine claimants who want to work, those that don't, hapless security guards, otehr job centre workers who seem to be extremes of real people. It all seemed fairly predictable but like Viscious, with this being the first episode, it certainly has the potential to build further in the coming weeks.

Planet Earth Live

I've already seen this programme getting a hammering on different forums. But I thought I would add to the criticism of this programme because it needs to be criticised in my view. That whoever was responsible for this needs all the 'advice' he or she can get. I mean I knew something wasn't quite right with this programme at the start with Richard Hammond standing there in his Indiana Jones hat pointing into the pitch black darkness saying 'one of the crew thinks he might have saw a buffalo about ten minutes ago'. Then there was the very annoying constant cutting from film to presenter to film to presenter every twenty seconds. Then constantly being told how wonderful and amazing it all was. The people, the BBC, the technology etc as if this satellite television thing was something invented yesterday by Hammond himself. Then there was indeed Hammond himself. Someone should have a word in his ear that he's not as great as he likes to think he is. With or without stupid hat. On the plus side I like Julia Bradbury and they did have pre-recorded film of cute animals. But even then it seemed to be more about the reactions of the presenters as much as the actual footage of the animals themselves. Overall the whole programme was self-indulgent, misleading, badly thought out, poorly presented nonsense. I wasn't impressed.

Matthew Wright - A Waste of a Good Show.

I have constantly enjoyed the Matthew Wright Show. With the right mixture of guests, it's not only entertaining but manages to be topical, insightful funny and intelligent. Matthew Wright himself seems to be an under-rated and in fact, under used TV host. For a live show, five days a week, it is no mean feat to continually produce entertaining TV as The Mattew Wright Show does. However.

He can be extremely annoying. Irritating. Because out of no-where he will come out with a comment which is highly disagreable. And I don't just mean in the sense he says something I personally don't agree with. Because I agree a lot with what he says. But he makes inappropriate jokes or comments which immediately make me want to turn over.

Yesterday was one such case. During the newspaper review, more often than not entertaining, he made light of the murder of a Stornaway teenager along with his guest Charlie Baker, laughing their heads off whilst putting on fake Scottish accents and saying 'there's been a murder.' etc.

I do believe Matthew Wright had no idea of how insensitive this was. Which is not said in his defence. It's rather a sign of his lack of judgement at times about what to say and what not to say. This isn't an isolated case. So often, during the newspaper review especially I've been astonished at the jocular manner they'll discuss a rape or murder or some other tragedy which is in no way, shape or form funny.

I would say the consistant main culprit in all this is not Mattew Wright himself but the audience. Who appear to have been told to make as much noise or laugh as much as they can, at anything, in order to give the show some atmosphere. So the audience, supposedly in the hope they'll get asked back, laugh at the slightest hint of humour by Matthew or one of his guests.

If you watch the show, you'll continually hear hysterical laughter which after a certain amount of time you realise is just noise. They don't even know what they are laughing at. So you'll often, and I mean often, have a situation in the newspaper review where some tragic event is being discussed and the audience, wrongly picking up on Mattew or a panel member being light-hearted will burst out laughing in their desperate bid to be heard making a noise on national TV. Not realising, or perhaps more appropriately, not caring they're laughing at a very serious and often tragic news story.

It makes for very uncomfortable viewing. Matthew Wright or someone else in production should have got together and addressed the problem before now. Because it ruins what is otherwise a very good show. That's why it's so annoying and irritating. Matthew Wright may think of himself as the victim in all this. That people are misinterpeting the 'joke' and that no hurt was intended. That's no excuse. The family and those involved with the murdered teenager in Stornaway are hurt. Of course, they have more to care about right now than some silly daytime TV show and it's host. However, this incident is perhaps another reminder to The Matthew Wright Show that it needs to get it's house in order. So that people like myself will not feel the need to stop watching the programme.

Review - Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror : The National Anthem

There has been many points of view expressed already about Charlie Brooker's The National Anthem (Sunday CH4 9PM). One of three dramas in his Black Mirror series. People seem to have, perhaps inevitabley, loved or hated it. Inevitably since a drama about the Prime Minister having to have intimate relations with a farmyard animal in order to save a popular Princess from execution was always going to divide opinion.

I was one of those who hated it. I found the premise wholly unbelievable. And at least part of it was meant to be believable. Part of it's message was about what could happen regarding such an event in the light of Twitter, Facebook, You Tube and all the other paraphanalia of the internet age. You were meant to say at the end.' You know that could actually happen'. Yes, the animal relations was an exaggeration but it was an exaggeration made in order to prove an overall point. But I found it too exaggerated. I was always too conscious of the self-conscious plot and the aims behind the plot to fully enjoy it.

As said, the whole prepostorous story about the PM having to commit such an act because of the power of the internet was to illustrate a point about the power of the internet nowadays. Yes, well OK. The internet and the collective opinions expressed on it can be powerful. I get that. So what? Tell me something new.

On the plus side, most of the acting was excellent, particularly from Rory Kinnear as the troubled PM caught between an execution and a soft place. But apart from the end, there was no real plot twists or depth to the piece. It's simple point of the the way new technology can influence news events became boring. In fact, it was a relief for the PM to finally come to his fate. As I'm sure it was for the PM.

One point made in this drama's defence was, regardless if it was good or bad, it was good to see such a different drama on TV. In an age where every drama is cop, lawyer, hospital based etc, that it was good to see airtime given to an 'original' drama with such a different storyline.

Yet it's not really good. If you think about it. It's rather depressing in fact. Because the fact is if Charlie Brooker wasn't behind it, the probability is the drama wouldn't have been made in the first place. Charlie Brooker is a popular guy right now. Always with a distinctive, charismatic, realistic and humorous voice which is enjoyable to hear.

But he himself has benefited from this internet age. He is a darling of the Twitter community. His 'street cred' is fairly well-established. And as said, the internet has helped his own popularity and in turn his fame. That's what depressing in some ways. I don't believe if he wasn't famous this drama would have ended up in production. It seems even TV dramas now, albeit original ones, only get produced if someone famous is behind them. Would this contentious drama involving the PM, a farmyard animal and execution of a princess really have been made without the TV companies knowing Charlie Brooker was behind the script? Brooker helped produce it of course but that doesn't alter the main point. More and more in everyday culture, if you're famous for one thing it seems to mean you're seen as talented at anything. Fame itself is seen as an all-round talent.

So this drama wasn't something to be celebrated even for being original. Charlie Brooker is of course a very talented guy. But if the TV companies took more chances on writers who have not yet known fame, then the chances of a truly great and original TV drama appearing on our screens would be much greater. But anyway, I'm digressing. Back to my original point. Black Mirror : The National Anthem. I didn't like it.

Phone-ins and Constant Ad-Breaks. The Price of Modern TV.

It wasn't that long ago that if you watched an hour long programme on ITV, that you'd expect to see about three advert breaks of around three minutes long. Now though, watch an hour and a half of The X-Factor or I'm a Celebrity on a Saturday night and you can expect to sit through six advert breaks with around twenty five minutes worth of ads in total. That's to say out of ninety minutes show time, twenty five minutes or nearly a third is adverts. But it's not only far longer and far more frequent ad-breaks you have to sit through whilst watching your favourite programme nowadays. Add in recaps, previews, phone-in competitions and all the rest, the amount of actual programme you get for your well-earned time is even less.

Almost every live programme on ITV for instance has a phone-in competition which the presenters will relentelessly plug at every ad-break. If gambling was supposed to be something discouraged then no-one's told ITV. These simple phone calls will cost at least a pound a time. And the odds of winning the prize are very, very slim indeed. A pound may not seem a lot but when you have people phoning up more than once to these competitions or entering two or three a week then it all adds up. Not to metion the profit the TV channel is making from these phone calls.

Because you have hundreds of thousands trying to win that one prize. That one prize. Yes, it may be a good prize, a holiday or car or whatever. But if you have one hundred thousand people phoning up, then your odds of winning are one hundred thousand to one. You may as well go down the bookies with your pound and stick it on a reasonably priced horse. At least you have a fair chance of winning some money back.

And the reason you have around one hundred thousand people entering is because these ABC phone-in quizzes they set are ridiculously easy by anyone's standards. It's usually along the lines of 'What's the capital of England?' Is it A- Norwich. B- London or C- Britney Spiers. Or it could be asking what's the name of the planet we live on? A -Earth. B – Jupiter or C – Britney Spiers. The question is deliberatly as easy as possible because the object is to get as many people phoning up as possible. Another unfortunate consequence of this is you'll have people who are not the brightest getting excited, phoning up immediately because they know the capital of England isn't Britney Spiers and they're fairly sure, not certain, but fairly sure they aren't living on Jupiter.

When I say 'not the brightest' people by the way I don't mean that in a disparaging way. I could say the most vulnerable. But it's no doubt, those in these hard times who can't afford to lose their money gambling who will do so. The most desperate. And the actual cost of the call is easily lost in the excited spiel of the voiceover. True, the price of the phone call is shown on screen as well. As well as the fact you can enter online for free a lot of the time. But of course the miniscule print at the bottom of the screen is almost impossible to read.

Daybreak, This Morming or Loose Women are but three daytime programmes which not only have phone-in competitions but at least a two or three minute segment shown every fifteen minutes to get you to gamble your money away by making a simple phone call. Only then can you watch the adverts and see what you can buy with any money you have left.

It's certainly not just ITV who does this. Cable TV channels are even worse for adverts. It seems that whatever commercial channel you're on, the adverts aren't built around the TV programmme anymore but the other way around.

Of course, adverts bring in revenue for the TV channel and are a necessary evil. And understandably perhaps, with ITV's recent record debts they have obviously decided to squeeze out every last commercial drop of value in each programme they show. And to be fair ITV's debts are now coming down, slowly but surely. In fact, the way things are going it's only a matter of time before they turn things completely around. They are a commercial organisation and are there to make money.

It seems however one of the main aims of any commercial TV programme nowadays is to get you not only to spend your time in front of the TV but to get you to spend your money as well. Yet the morals of the phone-in competitions alongside the ever expanding ad breaks mean that making money seems to be the overwhelming priority over making entertaining programmes. The balance between ads, phon-in and actual programme content is just about tolerable at this time. But any more swing towards making profit instead of just making programmes may mean that could change sooner rather than later.

Review : Life's Too Short - A Joke I've Heard Before.

The fourth episode into Life's Too short and I have that feeling of somebody telling me a joke and halfway through I suddenly realise I've heard it before. In other words there is a distinct feeling of deja vu with this comedy. Nevertheless, considering the original joke was of such a high standard, (The Office, Extras) there's still some enjoyment in seeing this retread of some old material.

I won't give an opinion of whether this comedy is morally wrong in some way. Whether Ricky Gervais is making fun of short people or sympathising with short people or trying to make a comedy with a short person as he would with any other person. Not that it's a trivial question, but given Gervais says we have to see all six episodes to fully understand his viewpoint, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt right now.

So in the fourth episode we find the diminutive main character Warwick Davis, playing a supposedly more egocentric, selfish version of himself, flat hunting with his extremely dim secretary (played by Rosamund Hanson, perhaps the real star of the show). This flat hunting scene ends with Warwick, his trousers off, falling into a toilet bowl. I didn't find it particularly funny. In fact I didn't find it at all funny. In fact he'd already been stuck in a toilet bowl in a previous episde. 

Next we see Warwick take his unbelievably incompetent accountant to a meeting with his wife and her lawyer to discuss their upcoming divorce settlement. His accountant, like Warwick Davis, is someone else who seems to be doing an all too good David Brent impersonation. The accountant, wondering out loud what job he would be good at instead of an accountant asks and answers his own stupid questions in classic Gervais style. And so that scene ended and we went on to the next scene and the next and the next...It still wasn't particularly funny.

There are one and sometimes even two moments in each episode however which are funny enough to make the rest of the episode worth sitting through. Often it's when Warwick visits Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant at their swish London offices. The funniest part of the whole series so far for instance was in the first episode where Liam Neeson is pitching ideas to Gervais about how he could get into comedy. He does so in a manner more akin to a depressed undertaker reading a shopping list as an exasperated Gervais tries to politely guide him out the door. In this fourth episode we had Gervais slagging off Steve Carell after making a video call to him. Not realising the phone call is still connected and that Carell hears everything Gervais was saying. Cue much embarrassment and Gervais showing how being Ricky Gervais in an embarrassing situation should really be done.

The point is, four episodes in, I don't find this sit-com particularly funny now. The benefit of the doubt I gave it after the first episode has gone. And I can't judge this comedy as a stand-alone work because with every knowing sideways glance at the camera by Warwick Davis and practically every other character, I'm constantly reminded of The Office and Extras. That I've seen most of this before. It's still worth watching perhaps. I mean it was a good joke the first time I heard around but admittedly now it's starting to wear a bit thin.