Saturday 24 April 2010

Did You Fun My Wife?

What with the BrokenTV team being a great big bunch of foulmouthed ne’er-do-wells, one thing that has always fascinated us is the history of swearing on various mediums. In the UK, as every schoolboy knows, Kenneth Tynan was the first person to say ‘fuck’ on British television, in 1965, and a Frost-baiting Felix Dennis was the first to say ‘cunt’ on-air, in 1970. The latter of these can be seen here, in the brilliant Without Walls documentary ‘The Greatest F***ing Show On Television”, put together by Britain’s Minister Of Swearing, Jerry Sadowitz. Both uses were broadcast live and very much against the wishes of the respective programme makers.

The first scripted use of the word ‘cunt’ came in 1979 ITV Playhouse one-off drama ‘No Mama No’, which we remember seeing in a clip show once (the programme on swearing preceding that Sadowitz prog, if our sketchy memory is correct). POP FACT: That episode of ITV Playhouse was directed by Roland Joffe, whose most recent directorial work was the terrible, awful t.A.T.u-based movie “You & I”.

Strange thing is, we’ve never been able to find out a few other sweary ‘firsts’ that you’d expect to be just as well known. We’ve heard from a few sources that John Cleese was the first person to say the word “shit” on television (not least from Cleese himself, when delivering his famous eulogy to Graham Chapman), but never where it was actually used. If it had been vetoed from use in episodes of Python, we can’t really see him having used it when appearing in other, tamer shows of that era, like At Last The 1948 Show, The Frost Report or the made for US television How To Irritate People. We’d guess that the only possible place it could be from would be a broadcast of a Secret Policeman’s Ball, or maybe a clip of it shown in an arts programme. Anyone know any different?

imageSimilarly, we can’t seem to find any record of the first scripted use of the word ‘fuck’ on British television. We expect it would certainly have to pre-date 1979’s ‘No Mama No’, and if so, given the first time the words ‘fuck’ and ‘cunt’ were used on the BBC was in a 1980 dramatisation of the ‘Penguin Books/Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ trial, it would have to be from an ITV programme. Anyone? Maybe Charlie Drake really did whisper it to Henry McGee during that Sunday Night At The London Palladium sketch shown in ‘The Greatest F***ing Show On Television”, of course.

When it comes to cinematic fuckery, it’s generally accepted that two films from 1967, a US/UK adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses, and I’ll Never Forget What’s ‘isname (the latter being one of the examples proving that yes, surprisingly, Michael Winner did once have a point for existing), were probably the first motion pictures where the word ‘fuck’ was used. It also seems to be the consensus view that the first major Hollywood picture to use the word was in Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H, from 1970, with actor John Schuck ad-libbing the line “All right, Bud, your fucking head is coming right off!" during the football scene, and director Altman deciding to keep it in. So, that’s that settled, then.

OR IS IT? There may well be a use of the F-bomb that predates those. By quite a margin, and from quite a surprising source.

imageBosko was an early Looney Tunes character, created by Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising. Created in 1927 while Harman and Ising were working at Walt Disney Studios, you might expect the case to be that Bosko is some kind of wacky talking animal. A mole, or something. Erm, you’d be wrong. When Harman registered the drawings of his new character with the copyright office in January 1928, it was under the description of ‘Negro boy’. Which might explain why there aren’t any Bosko stuffed toys, lunchboxes or theme park rides around these days.

Anyhoo, after moving studios a few times, Harman and Ising ended up at Warner Brothers, taking Bosko with them, and ‘the Talk-Ink Kid’ (as he was dubbed) starred in 39 early Looney Tunes shorts, the last of which was released in 1933, and was called ‘Bosko’s Picture Show’.

imageThis seemed to be pretty much a thrown together collection of odd ideas (and re-used sequences from earlier cartoons) presumably getting them out of the way before the character was retired, with Harman and Ising about to move to MGM. The plot – such as it was – saw Bosko hosting a movie show at his own fleapit cinema. After some tatty curtains are drawn, we cut to Bosko, sitting at his ‘Furtaliser’ organ, imploring everyone join him in a singalong of “We’re In The Money’.  

We then cut to a newsreel (from ‘Out-Of-Tone News’), including stories from a peace conference between World leaders in Geneva (i.e. a pleasingly old-school punch-up), and a visit to “Epson Salts, England”, which basically turns out to be an excuse to throw in a crowd pleasing spoof of the Zeppo-era Marx Brothers. There is also one of the first ever instances of Adolf Hitler being satirised, in a scene where “Famous Screen Lover” Jimmy Durante goes on European Vacation:

image Now that’s that’s pretty cutting-edge satire (er, no pun intended), considering it would be another five years before Charlie Chaplin even started planning The Great Dictator, and most other animated swipes at Hitler merely portrayed him as a hapless dummkopf. So, a cartoon ‘Negro boy’, and an animated Hitler chasing a (fairly offensive stereotype of a) Jewish entertainer with an axe. Have we got to the offensive bit yet? No.

After a fairly tame spoof of Laurel and Hardy (named ‘Haurel and Lardy’), it’s on to the main ‘feature’, a ‘TNT Pictures’ presentation of “He Done Her Dirt… And How!”, where devious villain Dirty Dalton plots to kidnap Bosko’s girlfriend Honey. The cur!

image No idea if legendary Mad Magazine artist Don Martin ever cited Harman-Ising as an inspiration for his style, but Dirty Dalton does look very Don-Martin-y there. Anyway, at this point in the cartoon we cut to a furious Bosko, standing on his stool and shaking his fist in anger, shouting an exclamation of… well. It’s here things get a little muddy.

According to the subtitles on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 6 box set, what he utters is “The dirty fox!”. Upon actually watching the cartoon, it’s quite clear this isn’t what Bosko is actually saying. Listen for yourselves, here’s the cartoon in full, and the interesting bit comes at 5 minutes and 51 seconds.

 

So, did you arrive at the same conclusion as us? As far as we’re aware, the word ‘fox’ has never, ever actually ended with a hard ‘K’ sound like that. While it’s true Bosko doesn’t clearly say the F-bomb itself (the sound is a bit scratchy even in this remastered version, meaning the middle vowel of the offending word sounds a bit distorted), what he says is closer to that than pretty much any other word in the dictionary. And hey, ‘fock’ is how people from Northern Ireland say ‘fuck’. Maybe he was from Northern Ireland, and had simply lost his Norn Iron accent for every word in the English language apart from that one.

Animation fans over the years have suggested this was placed deliberately by Harman and Ising as a swipe at Warners’ animation head Leon Schlesinger, who the pair had quarrelled with numerous times throughout their spell at Warner Brothers. Though, equally, Schlesinger and Warners did see fit for the cartoon to be distributed, which does dilute this theory somewhat.

It’s all a bit curious, to be honest. Nickelodeon re-edited the cartoon after it’s first screening on the network, copying Bosko’s later use of the word “cur” and pasting it over the word “fock”, though this is no guarantee that there was a great big swear, just that it sounded like one. The Bosko shorts were designed for adult audiences (hence the whole ‘Hitler chases Jewish entertainer with axe’ bit), but even so, using the word ‘fuck’ would still have been taboo. Hmm, eh?

Here’s our crackpot theory. Harman-Ising deliberately put that word in there, claimed “no, it doesn’t say that, he’s saying ‘fox’, clearly. Anyway, we’re off now, bye!”, and no-one really bothered to question it. This kind of undercover filth can slip past The Man from time to time, such as the Monty Python team getting the name “Mrs. B.J. Smegma of 13, The Crescent, Belmont” past naive BBC producers, or Ben Elton’s ‘Happy Families’ originally airing uncut in a pre-watershed slot on BBC One in 1985, despite containing a scene where Hollywood executives snort cocaine. Now, why isn’t Happy Families available on DVD, eh? It was brilliant.

 

POSTSCRIPT.

Yes, we know that wasn’t a very satisfying ending to this piece. Shut up. To try and make up for that, while trying to fill some of the swearing-related gaps in our TV knowledge, we stumbled over what might just be the most fascinating document on the entire Ofcom website. Dating from 1998, a 74 page PDF all about swearing on telly. Get in!

Highlights include:

The results of a survey on which kinds of programming could acceptably contain swearing:

image

The results of a survey where swearwords are ‘scored’ by offensiveness:

image

A similar table, but for the regional reactions to swear words. People in Scotland find the word ‘bastard’ more offensive than than southerners, for example:

image

But our favourite, by a long way, is a list of individual broadcasts containing swearing, from which clips were used for the qualitative research. It includes the time of broadcast, the programme, and the individual words used. This is marvellous, and something we could spend an entire update deconstructing. It’s on page 68, if you want to see it in full:

image Yep, that show at the top of the list is correct, a kids show, going out at 3.55pm, containing the phrase “dirty slut”. It was a reading of a Roald Dahl book, if you’re curious. Even more interesting was an episode of Noel’s House Party where the phrase “sack of shit” was uttered. Man, we pity whoever was in the gunge tank for that episode.

 

Finally, a table on the strength of swearwords from a 1994 study on “Radio and Audience Attitudes”:

image So, 3% of people still considered ‘damn’ to be a strong swearword in 1994, and 6% still thought ‘bloody’ was shocking. 11% of people didn’t know what a tosser was (and, having just typed it, neither does the inline spell check on Windows Live Writer), while one person in 20 didn’t know what a wanker was. [Clears throat, smiles wryly.] After all, Piers Morgan didn’t have his own television series until fifteen years later. [Crowd boos, throws rotten vegetables.] Ah, please yourselves.

The full Broadcasting Standards Commission report on “Bad Language – What Are The Limits” can be downloaded here.

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Wednesday 21 April 2010

BrokenTV’s Telly Board Game Bacchanal: Part One

Ah, summer’s approaching. You know what this means? That’s right, a week stuck in a caravan park on the north Wales coastline, drinking warm Kestrel Lager with only the sound of the tinny iPod speaker you picked up from a pound shop and the relentless paradiddle of the never ending rain on the tin roof for company. Oh, and the repeated whining noise of your life partner reminding you how you pissed the holiday money away on a 3D-ready television set, and that this is all you now can afford.

The only one way for two people confined to an ‘intimate’ metal box in bad weather to keep themselves ‘entertained’, if you know what we mean. Eh? Eh?

Yep, BOARDGAMES!

image

Now, as a telly blog, we’ve decided to round up a few of the best and brightest board games related to programmes on the gogglebox. As one might expect, the majority of these tie in with existing gameshows. After all, it makes sense to try and encapsulate the glitz and glamour of a pre-watershed ITV non-soap within the confines of a box. What could be easier to adapt than ‘Play Your Cards Right’? All you really need is a pack of cards and Wikipedia mobile really (“the estimated 2009 GDP of Lesotho is USD1.6bn – higher or lower?”), but you can also buy it as a proper boardgame.

BUT… we don’t want to give you that! (See there, a clever reference to that thing that man says on that quiz programme?) Instead we’re going to take a glance as some of the more curious choices of programme for the dice-and-counter treatment. We’re going keep a running score on each aspect of every game we rate, so that you can tell which is the best, and we’re starting with…

BREAD (BBC TV/Paul Lamond Games, 1989)

 

image (See how we’ve taken these photos on a rug, so as to better encapsulate the ‘family sitting on the floor huddled around a thrilling board game’ effect, but mainly because we’ve got a new rug.)

Yes, with a huge amount of gratitude to Derek Williams of the Erant Splendens blog, Iconochromatic podcast and ResonanceFM’s One Life Left for sending this in, what better way to while away a seemingly never ending caravan holiday than by playing a “family board game” “Based on the No. 1 Comedy Soap”?

image See? Whether the antics of the Boswells could really be classified as a “comedy soap”, we’re not sure. And even if it could, surely the number one spot would go to Soap, the marvellous ABC sitcom which ran from 1977 to 1981? Or, if the chart only permits UK comedy soaps, Acorn Antiques? Maybe we’re overthinking it. Either way, the cover of the board game uses the “porcelain hen stuffed with money” motif as seen in the title sequence of the show, which works pretty well. Admittedly, this could be down to Paul Lamond Games not having the rights to any photos of the cast, but in any event we do hope there is a little special plastic hen inside the box, which operates as ‘the bank’. +5 POINTS

In any case, what we’ve really got here is something we’re going to call Jobseekers’ Allowance Monopoly. How many people can play? And at what ages must they be? Will the game be geared more towards the first series of Bread, which aired in a post-watershed slot allowing for Grandad to mutter “piss off!” to whichever unlucky Boswell was delivering his dinner? Or the later primetime series’, where everything was toned down a bit?

imageHmm, probably the late-period of the series, then. This means there won’t be a special “Grandad tells you to piss off” card. –2 POINTS

So, shall we take a look inside the box? Yes, let’s!

image First up, the many, many rules. It’s all really quite complicated. This isn’t a good thing, as no-one likes having to sit a frigging exam before even rolling the dice for the first time. –5 POINTS

So, what’s the object of the game? Leave home. That’s basically it, fly away from the red terraced nest of Elswick Street, Liverpool. However, in order to do this, you need to fulfil a number of criteria:

image Interesting that Jean Boht’s character is referred to throughout the game as “Mrs. Boswell”, which seems awfully formal. Surely “Ma Boswell” would make more sense, but we’re not going to deduct points for that.

Each player must adopt the identity of one member of the Boswell family, which they must play for the duration of the game. Each of these has a number of characteristics, which has an impact on the things they can ‘do’ ‘in-game’. Let’s go through them:

image First up, it’s Joey, seen here in his classic Peter Howitt guise +5 POINTS, as opposed to that other bloke who never looked right with his hair like that. Joey hates manual work (much like us), and will NOT visit That Irish Tart Lilo Lil.

image Adrian, represented here by a slightly wonky portrait of Jonathon Morris, is the resident sensitive poetic type (much like us), and also refuses to do any manual labouring. Also, he will not defraud the social, again like us, no matter what anyone says or has photographic evidence of.

image Aveline, who is a model, never does anything dodgy (much like us), and cannot drive. Here she is in classic ‘Gilly Coman’ mode, which is good, as Melanie Hill never seemed right for the part once she left. +2 POINTS

image Youngest brother Billy, who here looks just like actor Nick Conway who played him in the series, save for his portrait here having a really unsettling mouth that grows more terrifying the longer you look at it (much like us), will not benefit from his partner, and never gets free telephone calls.

image Jack, played in the series by Victor “Goodnight Sweetheart, Sean’s Show” McGuire, only does manual work, and never gets free petrol. Much like us.

image Finally, there’s estranged patriarch, council sanitation operative and right scruffy old get (much like us) Freddie Boswell. Not only can’t he drive a car and be unable to do manual work on account of his dodgy ticker, his name was also used as a derogatory nickname for similarly unkempt former chairman of Liverpool FC, David Moores, which was quite funny. +2 POINTS

 

So, with such a wide range of characters to choose from, hopefully the actual ‘in play’ counters will look splendid, maybe being little action cut-out figures of the characters, or maybe even little Monopoly-type figures representing each Boswell? A little plastic dust-cart for Dad, or a little van with a rainbow painted on the side for Jack?

image

Oh. –6 POINTS

Anyway, what of the board?

image

Yes, it’s all quite involved, with the splendid addition of the family dinner table in the middle of the board. Sadly though, NO plastic hen to put the money into. –5 POINTS. As you can tell from the layout the bulk of the action hinges on the use of DHSS cards, and Mrs. Boswell cards. These take a similar form to ‘Chance’ and ‘Community Chest’ cards in Monopoly, and help of hinder each player accordingly.

image

They seem nicely professionally made from the backs of the cards, which is a nice touch. +5 POINTS.

image But the instructions on the cards themselves aren’t very professionally printed. We don’t even get little comic illustrations of someone getting kicked up the arse, like Mr Moneybags does in Monopoly. Boo. –3 POINTS

The cards themselves are where the character of the show comes into play, albeit in the same way as a ZX Spectrum text adventure based on the show might have done. The Mrs Boswell cards look at your relationship, family and personal life, and include finds like “you buy a Turbo Charged Reliant Robin (Cost £240, Resale value £120)”, or the punctuationally inelegant “Your partner walks out on you! (can’t compete with mum), taking half of your money. Return half of all your ready cash and return your partner card”. They also contain some fairly nonsensical comments, such as “TELEPHONE – A CILLA SPECIAL LORA LORA MONEY. Cost £120, Resale value £80”, or “SHOULD-A DROVE MORE CAREFUL LIKE – Car written off in crash”, that second one presumably being delivered by an Italian-Scouser. –5 POINTS

imageThe DHSS cards offer you benefits, jobs and accommodation, many of which are dipped a faux-humorous sauce, meaning you might find your character becoming a “Ducks Trotter Chicken Packer”, or “Cuta Da Finga Kitchen Gadgets Sales Demonstrator”. Hoo, our sides. –2 POINTS Luckily, the other cards don’t try to tweak our comedy nipples, meaning the choices of accommodation are along the lines of ‘terraced house’ or ‘high rise’, and the furniture cards merely say “Furniture”. Fair enough. +2 POINTS

imageAll in all, it’s a bit of a longwinded affair, and we’re not quite sure how many families opened this box on Christmas evening only to baulk at just how complicated it all is. A good board game should only need about two minutes of instruction, such as Trivial Pursuit or Hungry Hippos. With Bread, you pretty much need to be passing around the rules along with the dice –6 POINTS

image

Sorry Carla Lane. Sorry Boswells.

FINAL SCORE: MINUS 11 POINTS

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Tuesday 20 April 2010

Ten People Who Would Make Better Hosts Of Match Of The Day 2 Than Tim Lovejoy

Given this entertaining blog post, the Guardian certainly seem worried enough about the prospect of Tim Lovejoy taking over the soon-to-be-vacant presenter’s chair on Match Of The Day 2. And yet, we really can imagine it happening. “Well, he does test well with the under-24s”, we can envision a clueless BBC commissioning editor uttering in Meeting Room C, “and he really does encapsulate the fun element that we’re trying to convey with our Sunday night highlights show.” A bit far-fetched? Don’t forget, we’re only in this situation because BBC1 controller Jay Hunt had a bright idea along the lines of “well, The One Show is doing very well in the ratings, but we need Chris Evans on Fridays to try and bring in some of the magic that made ITV1’s OFI Sunday such a huge success back in 2005. Er, it was a success, wasn’t it?”

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So, would bringing in Tim Lovejoy be a good idea? A man that someone who’d been in a coma since 1994 might fleetingly think is ‘pretty cool’, right until the point where he starts talking? A man who prides himself on his achingly cutting-edge taste in hip new music stretching all the way from Kasabian, to The Cribs, to anyone else willing to pretend they’re mates with him on a televised sofa? The person who presented an edition of Sky One’s “Tim Lovejoy And The Allstars” whilst wearing a Ramones T-shirt, but when challenged by guest Martin Freeman to name two albums by the band, could only meekly murmur “er… the Best of The Ramones?”

No, then. So here, just in case anyone from BBC Sport is passing by, we present our list of TEN PEOPLE BETTER SUITED TO HOSTING MATCH OF THE DAY 2 THAN TIM LOVEJOY.

1, Bob Wilson, anchorman.

2. Re-edited archive footage of David Coleman.

3. Mark “Lawro” Lawrenson in a sparkly jacket and spinning bow tie, having just been handed a copy of that forwarded email containing a load of old Tim Vine jokes incorrectly attributed to the late Tommy Cooper, even though one of the jokes is about a film that wasn’t even made until about eleven years after Cooper died.

4. North Korean dictator, Chairman of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea’s National Defense Commission, General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea, the and the Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army, Kim Jong-il, who we’re guessing knows slightly more about British football pre-1992 than Tim Lovejoy does.

5. A big threatening wasp that hovers no further than six inches away from the perturbed faces of Lee Dixon and Martin Keown each and every time they try to dissect a controversial offside decision.

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6. The cartoon pig from the covers of Now That’s What I Call Music volumes Three, Four and Five. Despite not having been seen in public since 1985, retains a greater amount of credibility than the man who left Sky Sports to host Channel Five’s David Beckham’s Soccer USA.

7. A sixty-seven-year-old belligerent, drunk rugby union fan from Llanelli, who openly detests football with every last fibre of his very being, who insists on referring to the sport as ‘kick-ball’, the footballers as ‘them overpaid ponces’, and who insists on restricting any post-match analysis to the slow motion replays of tricky midfielders ‘going to ground easily’ that he deems the most overtly homosexual.

8. A spider.

9. The terrifying, slobbering, rasping shrieks of a man who, due to an ill-advised day trip to World O’ Rollercoasters by his eight-months pregnant mother in 1967, was born with an inside out face. Simulcast on BBC HD.

10. George Lamb.

 

Okay, okay, that last one was a comically unrealistic choice thrown in for shock value, designed to underline what a hugely unsuitable choice Lovejoy would be for the gig. In any event, the BBC should think carefully about who replaces the affable tobyjug face of Adrian Chiles on the Sunday night highlights show  we always manage to miss the first twenty sodding minutes of. The intelligent choice would be clearly be James Richardson, best known from Channel Four’s Football Italia, Setanta and the Guardian’s Football Weekly. The ooh-wouldn’t-it-be-good, pity-it-won’t-happen choice would be Sir Jeff Stelling.

Both of those would be great, perfect, even, and that’s why they probably won’t happen. You never get what you want in life, that’s why each new episode of Doctor Who will be between 20% and 50% more disappointing than you hope it’ll be, and why each haircut we get never quite makes us look as attractive in the mirror as we are in our heads.

That’s why we’d be happy to see the gig go to former Sky Sports News presenter, occasional Guardian Football Weekly stand-in and former host of 1990s BBC daytime game show Turnabout, Rob Curling. Why? Why not. He’s affable enough, he has the ability to be gently self-effacing when required, won’t make the mistake of assuming his opinion on events is why the viewers have tuned in – though that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s why BBC Sport employs pundits, and hey, he’d certainly be as good as anyone else. Just as long as it’s not Tim Lovejoy.

Or Colin Murray.

 

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Monday 12 April 2010

Our Favourite Bit Of New Doctor Who So Far

In the latest episode, where Amy is in the retro-future Britain starship’s information room, a display in the background of Starship UK’s informational terror video looks kind of familiar. Look to the left of beardy-Mc-Info’s shoulder here.

image Compare that to an old BBCtv on-screen ident, in use from 1962 until (we think) 1964 (when BBCtv would have become BBC-1 due to the launch of BBC-2, and would have needed a new ident). 
(image taken from the splendid 625.uk.com):

image An ident which would still have been in use in 1963, when Doctor Who first took to the air. A lovely little touch on the part of the set designers, there.

As for the remainder of New Who, we’re enjoying it a lot. Never mind fretting over any plot inconsistencies, clumsy exposition or The Doctor hacking every computer in the world using a mobile phone, and just enjoy the ride. It’s back!

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The Top 100 Television Programmes of the 00s: An Important Statistical Review

It’s the running theme that just won’t die. To round off the coverage of the 00s, just before we put the finishing touches to the book version of the Top 100*, here’s a bit of analysis. We know how all of our readers love pointless bar charts. Also, a poll of polls, which should be really exciting for people who love polls.

(* Three new entries! More pointless meandering! Fewer YouTube links, because really, what would be the point! The 25 worst TV programmes of the decade! Other things!)

TV CHANNEL OF THE DECADE

Which network was home to the most shows on our list? We’ve taken the channels that each programme started on – no point in giving BBC Two the credit for The Thick Of It when BBC Four took the risk of commissioning it, for example – and come up with the following:

imageSo, BBC Two tops that particular chart, with 21 of the hundred best programmes of the decade originating on the channel. Channel Four comes second, proving that it wasn’t all complete shit like Balls Of Steel, Bo Selecta and Fonejacker on there in the 00s. The fact that three of the top four on there are BBC channels does kind of prove how good the BBC actually bloody is, while the number of shows from Sky One, blushing poster boy of the free market system, is zero. No, James Murdoch, just throwing all your money at American imports, even if they’re really good American imports (that were popular on other British channels first anyway) doesn’t really cut it.

It’s not all bad news for the Murdoch family (“Phew! I was concerned there for a moment.” – R. Murdoch), as Fox proves to be the winner from the other side of the pond, taking up five positions on the list, including of course that all-important number one programme. Close behind, possibly the greatest source of genuinely exciting and groundbreaking new comedy over the course of the entire decade, is newcomer Adult Swim, and really, we could easily have included more Adult Swim shows here. A lot more. ITV1 fare better than might have been expected for a network that continues to employ Piers Morgan, sharing fifth place on the list with Fox.

But, of course, this system of working out which was the best channel of the decade is as unfair as the General Election vote of someone who’d pored over party policies, MP voting records and Hansard for the last two decades counting the same as someone who’ll vote for whichever political party leader has the most pregnant wife. This is a meritocracy, and as such, here is a list where each channel has been scored by the position of each show. The channel with the show at number one gets 100 points for that show, the channel with the show at number 100 gets just one point. And this is the result of that thing we just said.

image So, BBC Two remains top, though with less of a lead over second placed Channel Four. Fox leapfrog BBC One, BBC Four and ITV1 into third, thanks to their brilliant drama and comedy output, especially Arrested Development, being placed so highly in the rundown. The quality of programming from Adult Swim shines through here too, with it enjoying a higher position on our ‘leaderboard’ than NBC, HBO and ITV1. And BBC Three, but then that’s not really a surprise.

 

BEST TELEVISUAL YEAR OF THE DECADE

So with BBC Two walking away with the entirely notional prize of “Best Channel Of The Last Decade”, which year will prove to be responsible for the largest proportion of the Top 100? Or, to put it another way, as this is a listing of our favourite programmes of the decade, this will reveal which year of television we enjoyed the most, which could become a handy reference guide in case passing BBC Two researchers are looking for talking head gobshites to take part in the almost inevitable “I Love 200x” series. (Note to said researchers: we’ll do almost anything for money, apart from take part in a montage of clip show idiots singing along to a theme tune. But apart from that, yes, literally anything. If you know what we mean.)

As before, we’ve only considered the first year that a show was on air – no point giving 2004 the credit for a programme 2003 took the risk on – and here’s a first chart only taking into account the number of shows on the chart from each year:

 imageShut up, looking at this IS an interesting and worthwhile use of your time. So, fifteen of the programmes on our list were born in 2003, and fifteen popped out of a commissioning editor’s schedule-hole in 2007. 2005 and 2006 weren’t far behind, with the worst showing coming from 2009. Could this be because the new shows that made their inaugural appearance in the Radio Times that year have yet to become firm favourites, or that TV companies were too scared of tabloid scorn to take any interesting risks? Time, that fickle old strumpet, will tell.

“But which year is best? We want a list going by chart placing, like before!” scream the imaginary people we like to think are still reading. Well, just for you should you exist, here:

imageSo, 2005 pips 2007 to second place, largely thanks to programmes like My Name Is Earl and The Colbert Report. But, 2003 was the very best year for television over the last decade, helped by it being home to the mighty Arrested Development. And we’ll be handing 2003 the shiny silver “Best Year” trophy, just as soon as time travel is invented.

 

THE BIG POLL OF POLLS

Onto the main, pretty damn huge, and hugely damned pretty part of our stat-fest. We looked at ten other listings of “The Best TV Shows of the 00s”, from the UK, USA and Australia, and scored them all up accordingly. Not all of them were top hundred lists (which is probably why it didn’t take them until sodding April to get to number one, eh readers?), but we’ve accounted for that. Each show in number one position received 110 points – ten points bonus for being So Damn Good, the show in number two position on each chart received 99 points, number three 98, and so on for as long as there’s an entry to score. We’re sure you’re with us here. The other charts we’ve considered are from the following publications:

The Chiaroscuro Coalition
Entertainment Weekly
Hollywood.com
Starpulse.com
news.com.au
The Times
SFGate
Paste Magazine
The Onion AV Club
The Telegraph

…and of course, plucky British upstarts BrokenTV. And just to be extra fair, the programmes that we picked for our chart don’t score double points, even though we’re always right about everything.

Keep in mind that while our list only included programmes which began in the years 2000 to 2009, the others were happy to include anything broadcast in that decade. And so, here’s the rundown, a full Top 200:

Pos

Show

TOTAL

1

The Sopranos

1022

2

The Wire

906

3

The Office (UK)

860

4

Arrested Development

703

5

Mad Men

657

6

Lost

635

7

The West Wing

621

8

Deadwood

472

9

Curb Your Enthusiasm

423

10

The Daily Show

361

11

The Thick of It

360

12

Breaking Bad

348

13

30 Rock

347

14

Doctor Who

328

15

Big Brother

312

16

The Shield

280

17

Freaks and Geeks

278

18

The Power of Nightmares

277

19

24

273

"

Battlestar Galactica

273

21

The Office (US)

271

22

Friday Night Lights

263

23

Dexter

257

24

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

255

25

Peep Show

250

26

Flight Of The Conchords

228

27

QI

215

28

TV Burp

202

29

American Idol

196

30

The Apprentice

186

31

9/11

183

"

Sex and the City

183

33

The Colbert Report

172

34

Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!

169

"

Veronica Mars

169

36

Six Feet Under

168

"

The Venture Bros

168

38

Bleak House

167

39

Malcolm in the Middle

166

40

How I Met Your Mother

165

41

Chapelle's Show

157

42

A History of Britain

156

43

The X Factor

146

44

Strictly Come Dancing

145

45

Jamie’s School Dinners

141

46

The Chaser’s War On Everything

135

47

House

132

"

The Blue Planet

132

49

Who Do You Think You Are?

127

50

Skins

124

51

Life on Mars

123

52

South Park

122

53

Criminal Justice

104

54

In the Night Garden

102

55

Pop Idol

99

56

Survivor

97

57

Monarchy: the Royal Family at Work

96

58

Jam

95

59

Planet Earth

94

"

Slings and Arrows

94

"

Summer Heights High

94

62

Oz

93

63

Bodies

92

"

Everybody Loves Raymond

92

"

Gilmore Girls

92

66

Newstopia

92

67

The Armando Ianucci Shows

91

"

The Comeback

91

69

Marion & Geoff

90

"

Timeshift

90

71

Frontline Football

89

72

Band of Brothers

87

"

Futurama

87

74

Still Game

86

75

Phoenix Nights

85

"

Weeds

85

77

Family Guy

84

"

Firefly

84

"

Little Britain

84

"

State of Play

84

"

The Showbiz Set

84

82

15 Storeys High

83

"

The Fallen

83

84

Big Love

82

"

My Name Is Earl

82

86

Cranford

81

"

Wit

81

88

The Century of the Self

80

"

The Jeremy Kyle Show

80

90

Brass Eye Special

79

"

Rome

79

"

Tomorrow, La Scala!

79

93

Undeclared

78

94

Charlie Brooker's News Wipe

77

"

Out of Control

77

96

Top Chef

76

"

Top Gear

76

98

Adam and Joe Go Tokyo

74

"

Britain’s Got Talent

74

"

Krapp’s Last Tape

74

101

Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution

73

"

Eastbound & Down

73

"

Not Only, But Always

73

104

American Dad!

72

"

Dispatches: Beslan

72

"

Location, Location, Location

72

"

Wonder Showzen

72

108

Black Books

71

"

The Private Life of a Masterpiece

71

110

Living with Michael Jackson

70

111

CSI

69

"

Forgiven

69

113

Bored To Death

68

"

Da Ali G Show

68

"

Grand Designs

68

116

No Direction Home: Bob Dylan

67

"

The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson

67

"

Weakest Link

67

119

Desperate Housewives

66

"

Richard & Judy

66

"

The Riches

66

122

Never Mind the Buzzcocks

65

"

Stephen Fry in America

65

"

That Mitchell and Webb Look

65

125

Dead Set

64

"

Have I Got News for You

64

127

Early Doors

63

"

Footballers’ Wives

63

"

God on Trial

63

130

Look Around You

62

131

Damages

61

"

The Lie of the Land

61

133

The Unloved

60

134

Britz

59

"

The Lost Prince

59

"

The South Bank Show

59

137

Maxwell

58

138

Michael Palin’s New Europe

57

"

Soccer Saturday

57

140

How We Built Britain

56

"

Pierrepoint

56

"

Red Riding

56

143

MasterChef

55

"

Sealab 2021

55

"

When Louis Met the Hamiltons

55

146

Life on Mars

54

"

Robert Newman's A History of Oil

54

148

I Love…

53

"

Lost in Austen

53

"

The Sarah Silverman Program

53

151

Grass

52

"

Springwatch

52

153

Testees

50

"

Wife Swap

50

155

Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares

49

"

Restoration

49

157

Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain

48

"

Jerry Springer: the Opera

48

159

Outnumbered

47

160

100 Greatest Britons

46

"

Days That Shook the World

46

162

Land Girls

45

163

Who Killed Saturday Night TV?

43

164

The Deal

42

"

The IT Crowd

42

166

The Kumars at No 42

41

"

The Story of ITV: The People's Channel (& ITV50 Regional)

41

168

Tiswas Reunited

40

169

Bremner, Bird & Fortune

39

"

That Was The Week We Watched

39

171

Coast

38

"

The Story of Light Entertainment

38

173

Forty Years of Fuck

37

"

Spooks

37

175

Biffovision

36

"

Extras

36

177

10 O’Clock News

35

"

Comedy Map of Britain

35

179

Death of a President

34

"

Fantabulosa!

34

181

Attention Scum

33

"

Hannah Montana

33

183

Countryfile

32

"

The Punk Years

32

185

Gavin & Stacey

31

186

Deal or No Deal

30

"

The Osbournes

30

"

videoGaiden

30

189

Return of the Goodies

29

"

The Way We Live Now

29

191

Frisky Dingo

28

"

My Family

28

193

The Knights of Prosperity

27

194

Bloody Sunday

26

"

The Two Ronnies Sketchbook

26

196

Malcolm & Barbara: Love’s Farewell/Right to Die?

25

"

World of Pub

25

198

Blue Peter

24

199

SpongeBob SquarePants

23

200

Jekyll

22

"

Party Animals

22

And, there it is. The Sopranos, a programme that began in the late 1990s, is judged to be the best television programme of the decade, shortly followed by The bloody Wire and The bloody Office. Pleasingly, the mighty Arrested Development finishes in fourth place, so there’s some hope yet for those up-and-coming publications. Want to see where each chart placed each show? Here’s a full Excel spreadsheet of the calculations. Enjoy.

And there, for the sake of our own sanity, and very probably yours too, is where we leave the online portion of our Top 100 rundown. Now we can get back to being annoyingly esoteric on here. Get ready for BrokenTV’s TV-Tie In Board Game Jamboree. Yep, really.

(And yes, there is going to be a book of the Top 100. Once we’ve finished it. Blimey, eh?)

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Wednesday 7 April 2010

The GREATEST Television Programme Of The 00s

Finally. So, after forever, it’s all over. We can finally reveal the BEST television programme of the noughties. It’s not The Wire. It’s not The Office. It’s not The West Wing, or Deadwood, or The Apprentice. Instead, it’s a show that wasn’t even seen as much of a hit, despite being one of the greatest television series of all time.

It’s the story of a wealthy family who lost everything, and the one son who had no choice but to keep them all together.

imageIn the Simpsons episode “Brother From Another Series”, Krusty points out to Sideshow Bob’s brother Cecil that the misfortune of others – such as a custard pie in the face - is only truly funny “when the sap’s got dignity”. Arrested Development proved, quite conclusively, that the misfortune of others is even funnier when the saps have got the delusion of dignity.

Created by Mitchell Hurwitz and broadcast on Fox in the US, on BBC Two and BBC Four over here, Arrested Development followed the fortunes of the Bluth family. For the most part, the Bluths are a pampered, selfish, obnoxious bunch of freeloaders, utterly reliant on the money generated by the family’s real estate development firm, and utterly unwilling to earn any of it. The notable exceptions to this are George Sr (Jeffrey Tambor, almost unrecognisable from his role as Hank Kingsley in The Larry Sanders Show), patriarch and CEO of the Bluth Company, and middle son Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman), the only one of the siblings to take an active interest in the running of the company. On top of this, Michael is sole parent to his nervy but well-meaning and goodhearted son, George Michael Bluth (Michael Cera), after his wife Tracey had died of ovarian cancer, leaving Michael with the juggling act of spending as much time as possible with his son, as well as with the company.

At the beginning of the pilot episode, at a party thrown to celebrate the passing of the CEO position from George Sr to another member of the family, he is caught, arrested and sent to prison after a notable amount of “creative accounting” had been uncovered by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. As a result, it is soon left to Michael, still seething after it turned out the family member being handed control of the company wasn’t going to be him, to become head of the family. Not only must Michael try to keep the company business afloat, but he must also try to prevent his family from taking any more company cash for their ‘personal expenses’.

This proves to be anything but easy, as the extent of George Sr’s sticky fingering (so to speak) soon becomes all too clear, especially as the other members of the family expect their pampered lives to carry on in much the same way as before. Certainly, there is little sympathy from Lucille Bluth, family matriarch (Jessica Walter), who expects no interruption to her decadent lifestyle. Vain, domineering, effortlessly bitchy and Machiavellian, she will go to extraordinary lengths to make a point. This is especially true when it comes to youngest son Buster Bluth (Tony Hale), a socially inept manchild, terrified of just about everything (sheep, seals, birds, closed spaces, open spaces). Lucille keeps Buster on a metaphorical short leash, which for the most part Buster happily plays along with (indeed, one episode sees George Sr remark that Buster left “claw marks” in Lucille’s womb when he was delivered), but at times he clearly longs for escape. Lucille is always ready to punish Buster if he wrongs her, with one early episode having her bloody-mindedly (and drunkenly) adopt a young Korean child just to spite Buster. In the second season, Lucille makes a point to Buster by volunteering him for the US Army, when challenged to by a Michael Moore lookalike.

imageWhile the other two Bluth children would like to think they’re a little more independent, neither can cope for too long away from the family cash-teat. Lindsay Fünke (Portia de Rossi) is Michael’s twin sister, bored wife to disgraced psychiatrist Tobias (David Cross), and mother to Maeby (Alia Shawkat). Despite not getting on very well with her mother (who tends to use any excuse to call her daughter overweight), she has many of the same traits, such as her vanity, flirtatiousness and drinking habit, though without the devious intelligence, and with a lazy disinterest in her daughter’s fortunes. Meanwhile, Tobias is trying to make the move from psychiatry to acting, and is blissfully unaware of his overtly camp mannerisms. Maeby, it soon becomes clear, has a level of self-awareness that both her parents utterly lack, but she is hampered by a lifetime in schools that lean more towards “positive reinforcement” than actual learning, and as such has little actual common sense.

Lastly, and leastly in the eyes of his parents, comes George Oscar “Gob” Bluth (Will Arnett), an egomaniacal part-time magician. In the grand traditions of television comedy, he’s not a very good part-time magician, his tricks (sorry, ‘illusions’) regularly failing, and him being frequently overlooked by “the Magicians’ Alliance”. After getting little attention from his parents as a child, Gob puts on a show of being a cocksure womanizer, but will often burst into tears, or take dramatic measures to disguise his self-loathing. Often, he will make short-lived attempts to ingratiate himself with the other members of the family, but will often soon tire of this, and take up a contrary viewpoint. So, while he may offer to help Michael by mailing an important letter, he’ll soon be trying (and failing) to dramatically throw the letter into the sea.

In addition to the main members of the Bluth clan, there are also a large number of supporting characters, but more of that later.

The three seasons of Arrested Development each take in different stages in the life of George Sr. For the first season, he is in prison on bail, awaiting trail. In the second season, he is on the run, having escaped from his trial after faking a heart attack. In the final season, he is under house arrest, again trying to escape, but this time to get away from Lucille’s affections. The other characters also go through a number of changes as the series progresses, George Michael’s affections switch from his cousin Maeby, to his girlfriend Ann. Maeby’s lies see her accidentally land a job at a film production company. Michael begins dating again, with mixed results. Buster begins dating for the first time, most explosively with his mother's best friend, also called Lucille, as well as undergoing an even more shocking development. Gob finds he has a son, and somehow, a wife. Lindsay and Tobias both decide to see other people, though not necessarily, different ‘other people’. All with, as you might expect, splutteringly hilarious consequences.

image

Arrested Development is a blissful mash of contradiction soup. It has a simple enough premise – “rich family becomes poor, but doesn’t stop spending”. And yet, despite there being plenty of chuckles contained within each episode to satisfy the occasional viewer, it’s probably the smartest situation comedy we think we’ve ever seen, with an extraordinary amount of care taken over the content of each episode. Indeed, so mindbogglingly crafted is the writing, there are jokes in season one that can’t even be identified as jokes until you watch seasons two and three. That’s right, jokes that take up to three years before you reach the punchline – now that’s clever writing. It’s more fun if you discover those slow-boilers for yourselves, and while we’d love to toss you a bone here, we’re so wary of spoilers we’ll restrict ourselves to mentioning a seemingly throwaway line starting with the words “I don’t know what I’d do without my…” in an early episode.

As mentioned in our preamble, the show sadly wasn’t the ratings hit it really deserved to be. The second season averaged about six million viewers in the USA, not helped by Fox kicking it around the schedules, right into the path of live NFL coverage in many US states. As a result, the second season was cut down from a 22 episode order to just 18, with much of the season already having been recorded, resulting in frantic last minute re-writes. Worse still, the programme continued to suffer in the Nielsen ratings at the start of the third season, resulting in the order of episodes for what turned out to be the final season being slashed from 22 to just 13, the final four episodes being thrown out in one go, in a dead rubber slot against the 2006 Winter Olympics opening ceremony.

image(images mostly via the excellent AD fansite the-op.com)

However, this did allow for some delicious swipes at the programme’s broadcaster to be added during the frantic script changes. An episode recorded just after the decision to cut the size of season two included a weary resignation from Michael that the Bluth Company's order to design and build 22 homes has been reduced to just 18. Similarly, in a third season episode, where many media commentators were talking about rumours the show might be sold to a cable network, Michael and George Sr can be heard musing over how financial help from the “Home Builder’s Organization” is unlikely to be forthcoming, and that they should put on a big event to woo other investors. Or, more specifically, “Yeah, the HBO is not gonna want us. What are we gonna do now?” “Well, I think it’s Showtime.”

Similarly, despite (relatively) heavy promotion from the BBC, with a plum 10pm Wednesday night slot on BBC Two, and the following episode going out on BBC Four at half-ten each week, it wasn’t a ratings smash in the UK either. Possibly, it wasn’t helped by the Beeb using fairly unhelpful, and not especially funny when out-of-context, scenes from the show in the trailers – if David Cross hadn’t been in the show, we probably wouldn’t have given it a chance. It was soon going out in just the BBC Four slot, and the second and third seasons only saw BBC Four showings originally, though they did finally reach BBC Two in 2007, when the whole series was somewhat surprisingly scheduled between 1am and 3am, with two episodes going out every Saturday night. Of course, if it had proved to be popular over here, Sky would have just nicked the rights to it. At least it remaining a cult hit over here meant everyone who wanted to could legally watch it without a Sky subscription.

Despite a lack of bums on seats, it was a critical smash on the scale of a previously undiscovered Seinfeld episode guest starring Groucho Marx, Bill Hicks and Jesus, thanks to the miracles of time travel. Entertainment Weekly’s Tim Stack pondered "Is it beating a dead horse to once again state that this underappreciated gem is the best sitcom on TV? Too bad. 'Arrested Development' is the best sitcom on TV!" The Guardian’s Alison Powell called the programme “a farce of such blazing wit and originality, that it must surely usher in a new era in comedy." The AV Club named Arrested Development as the third greatest television programme of the decade. Paste Magazine named it the greatest television programme of the decade. And do you know what? So do we.

image

WATCH IT NOW ON: As far as we’re aware, it’s not currently airing on UK television, Happily, the DVD box sets are affordably cheap. Most trips to your local HMV are likely to bring you into contact with each of the season box sets for less than £13 each, but if you prefer to shop online, HMV.com are selling Season 1 at £9.99, Amazon and Play are both knocking out Season 2 at £13,99, and it’s back to HMV.com for Season three at under a tenner.

 

But that’s not all the Arrested Development fun we’re having today. Here are a couple more rundowns, in which we hope to clumsily cram in all the things we wanted to mention about the show, but couldn’t find room for in amongst the last few thousand words. So, in no particular order:

TOP TEN ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT QUOTES

"Everything they do is so dramatic and flamboyant. It just make me want to... set myself on fire."Lucille, on her party being interrupted by a gay rights protest.

“Okay, Lindsay, are you forgetting that I was a professional twice over - an analyst and a therapist. The world's first analrapist.”Tobias, reminding Lindsay of his professional past.

G.O.B: “Anyway, it involves us making some money with our Mexican friends from Colombia.”
Michael: “I think they're called Colombians.”
G.O.B (sarcastically): “Oh, I forgot we’re being politically correct now.”

Tobias: “Yes. Lindsay and I are planning a night of heterosexual intercourse.”
Michael: “You can just say intercourse.”

“I'm an ideas man Michael. I think I proved that with ‘Fuck Mountain’.”Gob, proving a kind of point to Michael.

George Michael: "Are those strippers?"
Michael: "If I know your uncle, they're at least strippers."
- on seeing Gob’s banana stand ‘mascots’.

Michael: “Gob, I'm going to need you to sneak Mom out of rehab.”
Gob: “Gee, I didn't think the woman I'd be checking out at Spring Break would be Mom.”
Buster: “She's better than the whores you date.”
Gob: “Don't call my escorts whores.”
Buster: “Mom's still got it.”
Gob: “I don't date whores.”
Lindsay Funke: “Stop it, both of you. This objectification of women has got to stop.”
(Beat)
Michael: “It's just Mom and whores.”

George Sr.: "The Brits set me up. I heard nothing about Iraq."
Michael: "Dad, we have a picture of you and Saddam Hussein."
[Cut to picture of George Sr. shaking hands with Saddam Hussein. Caption says "Bluth-Hussein Meeting 1998." ]
George Sr.: "I thought he was the Soup Nazi. I was just congratulating him on a great job. "

Waitress: "Plate or platter?"
Lucille: "I don't understand the question and I won't respond to it."
- Lucille reacts in the only way she knows to having her country club membership reduced to ‘pool’.

“George Michael was getting ready for school when he came across a box of love letters he'd written, but never sent, to his cousin Maeby. One letter, titled "If you weren't my cousin," was particularly incriminating.”The Narrator.

 

 

TOP SIX MINOR ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT CHARACTERS

Barry Zuckerkorn (Henry Winkler)

The longstanding legal representative for the Bluth family, Barry’s mind often appears to be elsewhere when dealing with the family’s affairs. Certainly, he does seem to have a habit of getting into trouble himself, with his first appearance coming just after he’d been sued by his homosexual assistant for using discriminatory language in the workplace. It’s behaviour like this, despite (or more likely because of) his own repressed homosexuality, that leads Michael to tire of Barry’s incompetent behaviour and poor grasp of the law, and finally sack him. Barry is eventually replaced by excellently named attorney Bob Loblaw, but not before providing the series with one of it’s most deliciously subtle sight gags. After meeting Michael at the harbour after Gob’s escaped seal has been found in the belly of a shark, and where a number of plot points happily slide into place, Barry (played by an actor best known for playing Fonzie in Happy Days, of course) nimbly hops over the expired selachimorpha. A move better known as, of course, ‘jumping the shark’. A joke purely for internet telly geeks? We likey.

Kitty Sanchez (Judy Greer)

George Senior’s fiercely loyal personal assistant. Oh, and mistress. As a result of her loyalty to George Sr, she makes no secret of her dislike of Michael, obstructing him from getting his way at every opportunity. However, that doesn’t stop her from flashing her bare chest at Michael at any given opportunity, generally accompanied with a shouted claim that he won’t ever get another chance to see ‘those’ again, punctuated with a load “WOO!”. Her loyalty to George Sr does waver when it comes to other members of the Bluth family, with Kitty hooking up with Gob and Tobias at various times in the series.

Lucille Austero (Liza Minnelli)

Best friend, next-door neighbour and social rival of Lucille Bluth, chronic sufferer of vertigo, widow, and sometime sixty-something girlfriend to Buster. Generally referred to by the Bluths as “Lucille Two”, and really, you rarely get two characters in the same show with the same first name, do you? Clearly, it’s done here to heighten Buster’s feeling that he’s subconsciously dating his mother, but it’s a nice touch. After all, in any extended family, group of friends, school or workplace, you often get two people with the same first name, often meaning one of them is afforded the prefix “Big-“, “Little-“, “Old-“ or “Fat-“. But, you don’t often see it in fictional television shows. So, nice to see it here.

Oscar Bluth (Jeffrey Tambor)

George Sr’s stoned slacker of a twin brother. Despite Oscar’s hippy lifestyle, George Sr remains largely jealous and bitter about his twin, mainly because of Oscar’s stress-free lifestyle allowed him to keep the long, flowing locks that George had long since lost, and which Lucille still finds irresistible.  With George Sr safely incarcerated, Oscar soon gets more involved with the family, soon making no secret of the fact he is rekindling his earlier affair with Lucille, and that he may just be Buster’s biological father. [SPOILER ALERT] However, George Sr does finally get his revenge on Oscar when, having escaped from justice, he knocks Oscar unconscious, shaves his head, and leaves him for the police, who mistake him for his escapee sibling.

Dr. Fishman (Martin Mull)

A doctor at the local hospital with a frustrating habit of expressing himself too literally. So, [MORE SPOILERS] when Buster is rushed to casualty after being attacked by a loose sea lion, Doctor Fishman informs the family that Buster will be “all right”. By which, of course, he means Buster has lost his left hand. Well, clearly.

Franklin Delano Bluth

If you could pick one character to sum up the majesty of Arrested Development, it would surely have to be Franklin. In an effort to make his magic act more accessible to urban audiences, Gob introduces Franklin, a black puppet, for which Gob clumsily, and borderline offensively, provides the voice. Franklin proves to be a quick-tempered, foul-mouthed, misogynist loudmouth. Not unlike Gob, of course. For some reason, the entire family seems to love Franklin, almost treating him as if he were a real person. Quite unlike Gob, of course.

Franklin’s finest moment comes when Gob uses company money to finance an album of duets between him and his puppet, with the aim of bringing the races together through the medium of song. His best intentions go awry, as the first recording session of ‘Franklin Comes Alive’ is cut short after the first song, It Ain’t Easy Bein’ White, causes the black sound engineer to leave the studio in disgust. Sample lyrics:

Gob: “It ain’t easy beeein’ white…”

Franklin: “It’ ain’t easy beeein’ brown…”

Gob: “So much pressure to be briiiiight…”

Franklin: “I got kids all over towwwwwwn!”

image

“GEORGE BUSH DOESN’T CARE ABOUT BLACK PUPPETS.”

 

 

AND… THAT’S IT. IT’S OVER. Except, it isn’t. We’ll be back in the next update with a special stat-based look back at the rundown, containing a brilliant ‘Top 100 of Top 100s’ mega list, and more charts than you could shake a Jeremy Vine at. Plus, news of a thing. Ooh.

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