BrokenTV

BrokenTV’s THTSOT 00s*: Number 26

noreply@blogger.com (Mark X) — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 18:10:00 +0000

(*Using the phrase “Top Television Shows Of The 00s Part [x]” each time really messed up the look of our RSS feed, you know.)

Welcome back to the rundown. From this point on, we’ll be posting updates to the list one by one. This means you won’t have to wait so long for each update, what with our uncannily inability to use 1,200 words where a couple of dozen would do, and that you won’t have so much dross to read through each time we do post an update to the list. Plus, it should also mean we can squeeze out a couple of updates per day, with any luck. And so, as Oskar Schindler once said, let’s have a look at the next bit of this list, then.

Malcolm in the Middle was pretty much a tale of how hard it is being the second youngest child in a large working-class dual-income family, with the titular Malcolm being the middle child of three sons still living at home. So, it’s a family sitcom with three child actors in the lead roles. Look, there’s no point in running away now, it was actually marvellously plotted, cleverly scripted and impeccably acted landmark television comedy YES REALLY.

Hard as it might seem coming from heartless bastards who don’t even like Outnumbered (you heard us, send us to comedy prison, we don’t care), but Malcolm In The Middle was far, far better than it really ought to have been. After all, the notoriously riskophobic US networks rarely allowed ‘clever’ comedy shows – even latecomers to the network party Fox, and even when they did, it almost had to be done by proxy. The Simpsons only made it to air after proving the most popular part of The Tracey Ullman show, and had to grow from a relatively sedate sapling into the magnificent beast of season three onwards, Married With Children had to evolve from similarly watered-down beginnings, and the nod was only given to Family Guy and Futurama once The Simpsons had grown large enough to merit a 51st star on the US flag.

From the get-go, ‘Malcolm…’ started off as slightly smarter than the rest of the pack, what with the main character being indentified as a reluctant child genius, introducing non-schmaltzy disabled character Stevie, and being soundtracked by kings of geek rock They Might Be Giants. By episode eight, the programme had really got going, with a large scale episode featuring over a hundred extras, based at a school picnic, with sub-plots spiralling off in all directions. As the series progressed, it was able to take more and more risks, such as the marvellous (and dual Emmy-winning) Sliding Doors-style episode where the boys spend an evening at a local bowling alley – one reality in the company of control-freak mom Lois, one reality in the company of easy-going pop Hal.

With each new season, the boys took new steps on the road to maturity, providing fresh scope for more involved plots, often taking in the family as a whole. One episode saw the family cancel vacation plans at the last moment, leading to their discovery that the entire neighbourhood happened to hold a “Hoorah, That Lot Have Buggered Off For A Fortnight” festival each time they went away. Another, late-period episode saw the family end up at the Burning Man festival, and Malcolm end up in bed with fortysomething shaman Anita (played by Rosanna Arquette) largely because he’d preferred The Go-Gos to the B-52s. The programme wasn’t afraid to take subtly disturbing turns, too. Once youngest brother Dewey starts to show signs of his own genius, Malcolm earnestly advises him to flunk an IQ test, as him being placed in a class for gifted children had led to him feeling socially outcast. Dewey subsequently takes Malcolm’s advice, only for his low IQ test score leading to him spending the remainder of the entire series placed in a remedial class, thereby becoming even more of a social pariah.

As might be expected, the writing was of the highest quality, with witty lines delivered frequently from the mouths of the marvellously rounded characters, even from lesser-spotted residents of the neighbourhood, and plots would interweave with sub-plots before crashing into each other explosively at the end of the third act. Even the sub-plots could be controversial (given the timeslot), such as Francis trying to get close to a girl at his theatre group by pretending to be gay, only for her to be revealed as a fundamentalist Christian determined to help him “pray out the gay”, or wonderfully daft – Hal wins a sizable sum on an instant lottery ticket, only for him to secretly spend his windfall on hiring a steamroller, and buying several deliciously squashable consumer goods. There was also a metric ton of cracking turns from experienced comedy actors, such as Jason “George Isn’t At Home… Where Could I Be?” Alexander, Bea “Lazy Transsexual Reference” Arthur, Susan “Tim Robbins’ Mom” Sarandon, Patrick “Brock” Warburton, Heidi “4% Of Our My Documents Folder” Klum, Julie “A hospital? What is it?” Hagerty, and some brilliant performances from Cloris Leachman as the boys’ hard-bitten Slavic grandmother.

Even aside from Malcolm In The Middle’s ranking on a notional humour scale (which, for the record, we’d rank at Milligan Force Eight), it’s a pretty damn interesting programme in its own right. For starters, as far as we can remember (and we fully expect to be corrected here), it was the first network US sitcom to use the single-camera, no-studio-audience format in at least fifteen years. At the time, a number of more adult-themed cable sitcoms like Dream On and The Larry Sanders Show had taken the same approach, and while other network shows like M*A*S*H, Sledge Hammer! or The Wonder Years did use a single-camera setup, the producers felt the US home audience needed the reassuring sound of audience laughter (even if, of course, M*A*S*H and Sledge Hammer! originally arrived in the UK without the sound of an audience). The only example of this previous to MITM was 1982’s Police Squad!, and that was cancelled by ABC after four episodes.

Since then, the single-camera no-audience approach has been used by pretty much every single US network sitcom of note – such as Everybody Hates Chris, Samantha Who?, Scrubs, The (US) Office, Parks and Recreation, The Knights Of Prosperity or The Job (Denis Leary? As a corrupt cop? Lasted one season between 2001 and 2002 on ABC? Cropped up on BBC Three over here? Just us? It was good, you know), alongside many several others.

Not only that, but show creator Linwood Boomer took the intriguing and wonderful decision never to reveal the name of the town where the MITM live (going one further than The Simpsons, which famously has never revealed the state in which the show takes place), or to even have the family’s surname ever fully revealed, ever, throughout the entire seven-season run. The only clue to the family name was when eldest brother Francis was seen wearing a name tag “Wilkerson” on this school uniform on the pilot episode – though, brilliantly, in the final episode of the entire series Francis is seen to drop his workplace name tag, on which the name “Francis Nolastname” is printed. Aside from those two references, the family surname is never mentioned at any time, throughout the entire run – the one time someone tried to mention it, again in the final episode, it was drowned out by microphone feedback. You’ve got to admire a programme willing to do something like that for no real reason. In fact, there’s a similar policy here at BrokenTV HQ, where we’ve always carefully avoided letting the readers know that our favourite Monkee is Peter Tork.

Eh? Oh.

It doesn’t stop there – the programme saw a welcome return for the theatrical tradition of the lead actor breaking the forth wall to speak to the audience directly (it’s tricky to do this without seemly smugly self-referential, but luckily for all concerned, it worked perfectly), plus the programme was directly responsible for They Might Be Giants returning to the UK Top 30 singles chart after an eleven year break. Really, it’s almost as if Malcolm In The Middle is some kind of magical television elixir, formulated specifically to impress us. Bit of a shame BBC Two decided to clumsily trim lots of not-even-remotely-contentious moments from the show over here, really.

Next update: The programme that is at number 25 on our list.

BrokenTV’s Top 100 Television Shows Of The 00s: Part 10

noreply@blogger.com (Mark X) — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 00:52:00 +0000

Merry Festivus, one and all! In a special present to you all, here’s the next part of our big countdown. Admittedly, it’s not a brilliant present. More a three-pack of handkerchiefs than a full instrument set of Beatles Rock Band , if you will. But, hey, there’s a recession on. We’ve kept the receipt in case you don’t like it.

We love TV programmes about advertising, us. Well, unless they’re ITV1’s ‘Ads Of The Decade’ (ITV1, 2009), and it means we’ll have to put up with Paul Ross telling us why the Honda ‘Cog’ commercial is good, and how he likes it when the meerkat says “simples”. Luckily, the programme at number 32 in our rundown is so far removed from ITV1’s ‘Ads Of The Decade’, you’ll actually find yourself wondering if Paul Ross and Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner are even members of the same species. Additionally, had the creatives at Weiner’s fictional Sterling Cooper ad agency been consulted for said ITV1 programme, we’re quite sure the bloody price-comparison meerkat wouldn’t have been voted into a higher position than “Cog”.

Mad Men, then. Those shagtastic residents of Madison Avenue in the 1960s. Why, if they’re not playfully slapping the butt of some cutie from the typing pool with a cigarette hanging assuredly from the corner of their gob, they’re whipping up a slogan that’ll somehow convince Middle America to buy a breakfast cereal called Trotsky-O’s. If Gene Hunt had been to Harvard, he’d be them. And where Life On Mars had Annie, Mad Men has Peggy, played wonderfully by Elisabeth Moss. On her expositional introduction to the firm in episode one, she appeared to be the very personification of innocence, but she soon displayed just how sharp a tack she really is. Then, stuff happens with and to her. We’re not saying quite what, in case you’ve not seen the programme. So go watch it. We think if you download a torrent of it on our say so, you can’t be prosecuted, so go do that. Now.

In essence, and this isn’t just us making the best of a bad analogy, Mad Men is pretty much Life On Mars, only with advertising. “Life On Mars Bar Brand Awareness Campaigns”, we’d say here, if we didn’t suspect you’d stab us in the eye for doing so. In main protagonist Don Draper, you’ve got your Sam Tyler figure – the smartest guy in the room, with his own dark reasons for never letting in on his past. A huge difference between Life On Mars and Mad Men is that while the former tended to dangle its self-satisfied coolness in your face just a little too often (“see how we jump over this desk in slow-motion, like we’re in a Roni Size video!”), Mad Men managed to ooze below room-temperature cool quite effortlessly, right from the hypnotically gorgeous title sequence, soundtracked by RJD2.

In short: Mad Men: It’s Toasted. (Reader’s voice: “That doesn’t make any sense.”) Shush, you.

A tricky one to place, this. Back when the show started in 2001 (or 2002 in the UK), it was quite simply the most thrilling import from US television since, ooh, The A-Team. Indeed, it went down so well when it was shown each Sunday night on BBC Two, the official reason given for Chris Morris not collecting his 2003 BAFTA for best short film (for My Wrongs #8245-8249 & 117) in person was that he was at home awaiting the opening episode of season two (admittedly, it was all part of keeping in with the Chris Morris ’brand’, but still). Not only that, but we’re pretty sure 24 was the very first television programme shown in the UK to utilise the scheduling tactics of “pop over to our flailing digital outpost NOW to see the next episode a week early” and the lesser-spotted “late-night monthly-omnibus of the previous four episodes in case you missed them”. And not only that, but for the second series, each (week-early-‘preview’) episode on BBC Choice was followed by a half-hour studio discussion show, where assembled D-listers could gabble on about how great it all was (and by extension how with it they are for liking 24). Now, apart from Big Brother, we don’t think any other television show has ever attracted that level of coverage – even Doctor Who Uncovered is merely a repackaged ‘making of’.

Sadly, as is so often the way, once the second season was out of the way (to a relatively modest audience, but “the right type of modest audience” if you’re a BBC suit) on BBC Two/Choice, the UK rights to the third season were nabbed by Sky One. Not helped by the action being interrupted by mood-shattering ‘wacky’ sponsor bumpers by Nivea For Men every twelve minutes, it didn’t really settle on the channel – the premiere episode of season three (12 Feb 2004) attracted a reasonable 1.05 million viewers, but after that the show struggled to sneak past the likes of Stargate SG-1, Dream Team and repeats of The Simpsons into the weekly top ten ratings for the channel. It took until 4th March 2004 until the show sneaked back into Sky One’s weekly top ten, with 710,000 viewers. After that, 24 really struggled, it being bossed by the less-heralded Angel and Road Wars until it reappeared back in the weekly top tens a few more times (on around 500,000 viewers) in June, July and August. Compare that to the show’s performance on BBC Two, with the finale of season one attracting 3.17 million viewers on the 18th of August 2002, making it the most watched BBC Two broadcast of that week (and for the record, the season two finale bagged 2.78 million). The finale of season three was watched by just 620,000 hardy souls on Sky One, even though the standard of the show was (at that point) as high as ever.

Oh, and yes, we are well aware that us going on about ratings and scheduling in such disgusting detail is really rather boring, but then everyone already knows what 24 is about, and how it became pretty rubbish after season five.

(Source for all our ratings based tedia: barb.co.uk)

Created by Dylan “How Do You Want Me?” Moran and Graham “Ted” Linehan, with episodes written by (over the course of the series) Moran, Linehan, Arthur “Also-Ted” Matthews, Kevin “Armando Iannucci Shows” Cecil and Andy “Also-Iannucci Shows” Riley, you’d expect it to be more than merely a bit good, especially with it starring Moran alongside Bill “Is It Bill” Bailey and Tamsin “Love Soup” Greig. And happy, it was more than merely a bit good. But then, you’d probably guessed that. We’re into the top thirty, we can’t really expect to be surprising anyone by saying “and it did turn out to be a good show” at this stage.

Black Books – a programme centred on a moody inebriated Celt with floppy hair, who snaps at any people wandering into the room expecting him to perform the duty for which he is paid. Now aside from the fact that Hat Trick probably owe us image rights… ("Reader’s voice: “you’ve done that gag already”) …oh. Anyway, in the subset of Linehan (co- or solo-) scripted sitcoms from the 00s, we’d rank Black Books well above The IT Crowd mainly due to the brilliant character of Bernard Black. One of the deftest tricks to pull off in the world of sitcom is that of the Fawlty-esque lovable bastard. Bernard Black was a great example of that – for all the moments where he gives Manny, Fran or his customers woozy drunken hell, the parts where he ventures out into the ‘real’ world and turns into a naive man-child, totally win you over. Moments like the scene where he visits a betting shop for the first time, filling in a betting slip with the words “please may I have a bet on a horse at the Lingfield race at 3:30 this afternoon? I will bet ten pounds that this horse wins. Here is my ten pounds. Thank you. I hope it wins. Yours faithfully, Bernard Black”.

Bill Bailey and Tamsin Greig also put in great performances as Manny, who is effectively Bernard’s non-sexual wife, and Fran, Bernard’s oldest (and only) friend. The situations experienced by the trio range from the Seinfeldesque (Fran goes to absurd lengths to gain revenge for being ‘blanked’ by an acquaintance) to something approaching Milligan’s Q (Bernard and Fran hide under a restaurant table during an uncomfortable meal with Manny’s parents, only to find a tiny pub under there). It’s that, combined with more excellent little gags that you could shake an Eric Morecambe at, plus the traditional Rising-Damp-ish studio-audience based set (which is always best*) that make Black Books such a winning compound of all-over splendidness.

(* One thing we really wish is that British sitcoms wouldn’t ape the US one-camera set up so often. Done properly, it can work magnificently. Done badly, which most Channel Four Comedy Showcase pilots or BBC Two sitcoms will tell prove, it fails utterly, a case which is all the more frequent, and it just looks cold, dreary and rubbish. It has been said that traditionally, US television would try to be cinema, but UK television would try to be theatre. That really ought to be the case more often.)

No Family Guy on the list, what with it starting in 1999 and all, but Seth MacFarlane’s second animated sitcom for Fox is well worthy of a place here. Indeed, in a lot of ways American Dad is preferable to its more popular sibling. Each episode of Am Dad has a sturdy, well-crafted plot, rather than the bedraggled tissue with which to throw the unrelated cutaway non-sequiturs and pop culture references that comprises your average Fam Guy plot. Plus, a clear majority of Am Dad jokes are on-topic, rather than about Huey Lewis or Melissa Joan Hart or Airwolf or something. Even when the writers want to work in a joke about furries, it’s relevant to the plot.

“Steve, look at those kids. They’re athletes – when was the last time you ran anywhere? And I mean with your actual legs, not by pressing ‘X’.”

If often remarked that the central characters in Family Guy are far more entertaining than in Am Dad, but really, aside from the marvellous Brian and Stewie, are they really? Really? Peter Griffin is basically a brain-damaged Homer Simpson (yeah, searingly groundbreaking insight from us there, eh?), and the remainder of the family rarely get to even do anything interesting. At least the central characters in American Dad are all of at least Europa League standard (UEFA Cup, if you’re reading in black and white). Anyway, if it’s a group of bland animated characters you’re after, there’s always The Cleveland Show. Commendably, Am Dad is always willing to introduce interesting new characters to the mix, such as Dale, the fey Southern dandy once forced into marriage with a brainwashed Hayley – who are likely to appear in just one episode, and never be seen again, even though they could be used for a quick and easy joke at several points.

“You look like a two-dollar whore. And keep in mind the dollar is weak right now.”

Of course, and this where we go all “Jeremy Clarkson after he’s just spent the first eight minutes of the review slagging off a new supercar”, we do admit that Family Guy is the funnier show. After all, chuckles obtained via shock references to abortion count just the same as giggles gleaned from cleverly worded political gags. So, despite the Fam Guy writing team spending too much time pointedly copying jokes from cult comedy films without even adding a twist of their own (from Office Space, Back To The Future, etc, etc) – cynically targeted for those extra self-congratulatory “ha ha! I get that reference!” yuks – it is the slightly more enjoyable show. However, American Dad follows it very closely indeed, and that is why it is utterly deserving of 29th place on our big list.

See? BBC Four didn't have the monopoly on dramatising the troubled lives of great British comedians after all. This one-off drama was largely based on Harry Thompson's biography of Peter Cook, so while this was supposedly a docudrama looking at the lives of both Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, the action was mainly centred on the former. This is not necessarily a bad thing, of course - people who generally tended to fuck things up are always more entertaining topics for drama. In fact, it's the philosophy central to our very existence. Film rights still available, Hollywood!

Admittedly, the programme didn't fit everything in from the life of Peter Cook - Private Eye was barely mentioned, his solo ITV show Peter Cook & Co, his roles in US sitcom The Two Of Us and Hollywood flop Supergirl were passed over completely - but then, that's probably the fault of the late Peter Cook for having done so many things, the awkward fucker. Mind you, it might have been interesting to see who would have been cast as Chris Morris if they'd included Why Bother? The non-Cook career of Dudley Moore was barely even mentioned, but it could reasonably be argued that his own filmography is a little more widely known anyway.

Back to Cook, Not Only, But Always did fit in important moments like him having to play the ‘Hank Kingsley’ chat show sidekick role next to Joan Rivers on her 1986 BBC yapathon ‘Can We Talk?’, resulting in the frankly horrid sight of Cook being talked down to by Bernard fucking Manning, and later touching on his (happier) appearance on Clive Anderson Talks Back, along with his calls (as Sven the Norwegian fisherman) to LBC Radio. All well worthy of inclusion here.

Now, while we can't claim to be experts on the lives of Cook and Moore, we'd guess there are a number of inaccuracies. For one, we don't think Dud was ever mortified that the Derek & Clive recordings were given a release, or that Pete felt utterly lost without the presence of Dud. But hey, in situations like that, we suppose we ought to go with Tony Wilson's ethos of "go with the myth every time" . Also worth mentioning is that Rhys Ifans puts in a brilliant performance (maybe even career-best – yeah, take that, fans of Rancid Aluminium) as Cook. Meanwhile, Aidan McArdle manages a good portrayal of Dud, though some real-life moments (such as where Dud corpsed winningly during the “Greta bloody Garbo” Pete and Dud sketch) aren’t portrayed as well as we’d have liked.

Triv corner: according to the director’s commentary on the DVD, most of the cast – aside from those playing the Fringe-Beyonders and Elanor Bron – were from New Zealand, where the entire thing was filmed. Yep, the blog men done a research.

See also: Peter Cook: At A Slight Angle To The Universe (BBC Two, 2002). A proper documentary looking at the work of Peter Cook in much more detail, including his time working on The Two Of Us, his booze-fuelled departure from same, the quite honestly unsettling footage of a simpering Cook playing third fiddle to both Joan Rivers and Bernard Manning on ‘Can We Talk?’, and his live shows with Mel Smith. A perfect companion piece to Not Only, But Also in many ways, and a shame that the differing source networks prevent the pair from ever being broadcast together.

Also see also: Peter Cook: A Posthumorous Tribute (BBC Two, 2002). Filmed on the 29th of September 2002 (more research, there) and broadcast immediately following ‘At A Slight Angle To…’, this theatre performance included turns from Sir David Frost, Terry Jones & Michael Palin, Griff Rhys “Have Your Apocalypse Now” Jones, Josie Lawrence and Clive Anderson, alongside then-new gagsmiths like Jimmy Carr and Jon Culshaw, who just did their own material in order to further their careers, so less said the better, there. And even less really ought to be said of Dom Joly and Angus Deayton’s mauling of ‘One Leg Too Few’. In fact, strike the previous sentence from your brains.

The best bit of the performance, as far as we’re concerned, was when Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson popped up as Eddie and Richie, trying to make the best of their misunderstanding of the evening. “This parrot is dead, you cunt!”, indeed.

A programme from the early days of BBC Three (it having recently regenerated from the twitching corpse of BBC Choice) with several episodes also repeated on BBC One, Adam And Joe Go Tokyo was the most recent (and to date, last) joint TV project for messrs Buxton and Cornish. The programme saw A&J relocate to a studio in Tokyo for eight weeks, reporting on the most fascinating and bewildering aspects of Japanese life. Sort of like Lost In Translation, but centred more on things like squid flavour ice-cream, alongside interviews with interesting local figures and glances at Japanese television.

As might be expected from the minds behind Song Wars, ‘…Go Tokyo’ included a marvellous regular feature called Big In Japan, where Ad and Joe would try to become major celebrities in the land of the rising etc. Perhaps the closest they came to genuine popularity was when they formed “Gaijin Invasion”, a pop band performing a song (partly in Japanese) about how overwhelming Japanese pop culture can seem to unsuspecting western visitors. After initial performances in a local park, the ‘band’ were spotted by producers of a Japanese pop music programme, leading to them performing the song live on the very same networked Japanese pop show. Another memorable episode saw the chaps attending the Japanese premiere of The Matrix Reloaded in eye-catching outfits – Adam with several cardboard clones of “Agent Buxton” attached to his back, Joe in a Kenny Everett inspired backless “agent” suit.

Another enjoyable aspect of A&J Go T was the selection of brilliant Japanese bands who would play out each programme. Amongst others, there were live performances from Polysics and Guitar Wolf - thrilling for us, as we were already fans of those acts (yeah, look at us, we used to be cool). Best of all, the final episode closed with a great turn from the marvellous Plus-Tech Squeeze Box, performing ‘Early Riser’, a song then being used to advertise Powerade in the UK (in a strange Japanese-avant-garde-alterno-pop-energy-drink advert face-off with Cornelius, whose “Count Five Or Six” was being used to advertise Lucozade at around the same time). And here is that Plus-Tech Squeeze Box performance.

Hopefully, what with the pair being easily the most popular show on 6 Music (figures printed in the Guardian last February put their show on 69,000 listeners, some 29,000 ahead of the next most popular show on the digital station), and their podcast being one of the most popular from the entire BBC, they might well get another bite at the TV cherry in the near future.

[Merry Decemberween, y’all. Back in a few days with the next thrilling instalment.]

BrokenTV’s Top 100 Television Shows Of The 00s: Part 9

noreply@blogger.com (Mark X) — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 15:46:00 +0000

Look, we’re really sorry for the delay. We’d written a massive update last week, really we had, but then our dog went and ate our computer. Or something. Anyway, here are three thousand words about eight television programmes.

Oh, and also, we’re aware all this is getting a bit disjointed if you want to read the entire rundown in one go. We’re working on compiling them into a more manageable format. Stay tuned for that.

Craig Cash and Phil Mealey took the concept integral to the success of The Royle Family – dipping into the life of a working class family in north-west England for unexpurgated half-hourly spells – and relocated the action (such as it is) to small Manchester boozer The Grapes. Each week saw, well, not very much actually happen. One character might get a little more self-confidence with regards to asking out the woman he fancies, another character might move another half-inch closer to getting back together with his wife, but in general, nothing really happens. Only the finale of each series hinted at any real excitement – and even then, as with the trip to (and return from) the races at the end of series one, any action taking place outside of the pub simply wasn’t shown.

And yet – as you might have guessed, what with it being on this list – it all worked really rather well, despite the non-involvement of Caroline Aherne, as had originally been planned. Shifting the action from a single family to a public house allowed for a greater range of characters, able to dip in and out of episodes wherever necessary. John “The Cops” Henshaw put in a marvellous performance as landlord Ken, aided to varying degrees by his step-daughter Melanie, barmaid Tanya and his scheming mum Jean, with miserable old sod Tommy, dim but relentlessly cheery couple Eddie and Joan, Joe and Duffy, two blokes stumbling blissfully unaware towards middle age (played by writers Cash and Mealey), and flirty single mum Janice generally to be found on the other side of the pumps. Throw in weekly visits from crooked coppers Phil and Nige, alongside acerbic cleaner Winnie and Melanie’s current beau (played by James McAvoy in the first series), and you’ll realise how much can be done without anything really happening.

Early Doors bags a place at the deep end of our list mainly due to the magnificence of the first series. While the second series was still very enjoyable, it did tend to slip into autopilot a little too often – indeed Craig Cash seemed to have forgotten to give his own character anything to do, generally only being there to mutter “bluddy ‘ell” as a footnote to someone’s else's comments. Nitpicky misgivings aside, Early Doors was a brilliant little show, and hopefully one still ripe for a comeback.

See also: Sunshine (BBC One, 2008). Also written by Craig Cash and Phil Mealey, this miniseries saw Steve Coogan’s character – Manchester binman Bob “Bing” Crosby – struggle to cope with his gambling addiction, with quite entertaining consequences.

“And now on BBC Two, it’s time to… Look Around You.” A glorious tribute to television of yesteryear, no matter which of the two series you’re looking at. The first series of shorts, a parody of 1970s/1980s ITV Programmes For Schools And Colleges (replete with white-on-blue-background countdown clock and musak), was absolutely packed with funny little blink-and-you’ll-miss-‘em asides, like the bottle labelled “music”, the band names scribbled on the pencil case containing Garry Gum, or the answer to a puzzler being “an eighthpence”. The second series took a different direction, parodying early 1980s Tomorrow’s World style primetime science programming. Perhaps understandably, what with the extended thirty-minute timeslot, the latter series wasn’t quite as packed with gags, but there was still plenty to enjoy for the keen-eyed viewer, such as the rundown of programmes for St. Frankenstein’s Day, or “HRH Sir Prince Charles”.

Because we’re objectionable TV spods, we can’t help but point out the fact almost all of the presentation was spot-on as well, with authentically lo-fi captions, the old “==2==” BBC-2 ident before each episode, and the programme was even broadcast in the 4:3 aspect ratio. No mean feat in the age of (gngh) “BBC End Credit Guidelines” and the like.

A horror-drama that quite frankly deserved better than to be chucked out on consecutive nights on E4. Remember E4? The channel that was meant to be “Britain’s HBO” when originally planned? And which now contains little more than repeats of Scrubs, Hollyoaks, Friends and anything else Channel Four have got cluttering up their US imports cupboard? It’s still going, apparently.

Anyway, Dead Set. Big Brother meets Shaun Of The Dead, if you must. Writer Charlie Brooker restricted all of his stock “you stupid titted idiot!” sarcasm to the one character, shitbag producer Patrick, allowing everyone else to concentrate on running around, getting killed, fighting back, or standing around being completely oblivious, depending on where they were during the initial outbreak. Yes, yes, Davina McCall was better than you might have expected in it, but we were more pleased to see Kevin Eldon’s character make it all the way to the final episode, given we were sure he’d be killed of after doing something stupid in episode two.

In Peep Show, Mr Mitchell and Mr Webb regularly delighted the million or so viewers who tuned in every week. But, for some reason, rarely many more than a million, even when Mitchell and Webb appeared on Soccer AM to plug the third series (during which Tim Lovejoy claimed he loved the show, but hadn’t seen the then-current series as he was Sky-Plussing them all to watch in one go later on, which is special TV presenter speak for “I have never seen your programme”). When it was announced Mitchell and Webb would be taking on a BBC Two sketch show , Peep Show fans were – we’re assuming without an ounce of proof – a little apprehensive. After all, Peep Show saw the duo play characters not a billion miles away from their own individual personas – could they slide into a variety of wacky characters convincingly? And there was to be a pool of writers for the show – would it lose the coherence that Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain brought to Peep Show?

(Reader’s voice: “Stop saying “Peep Show”. You’re not writing about Peep Show yet.”)

Well, as people sexy and brilliant enough to have watched The Mitchell and Webb Situation on Play UK and to have listened to That Mitchell and Webb Sound on Radio Four could have told them, “yes they could” and “no it wouldn’t”, in that order. Well, maybe a tiny bit with the latter, but not enough to really matter. When it comes to BBC Two sketch-based comedy, our quality benchmark is generally A Bit Of Fry Ampersand Laurie. After enjoying “…Sound” hugely, the first series of the television translation went reasonably well. Maybe we’re still a bit grumpy that when radio sketches were re-used, they tended to choose the slightly less good ones. Even so, the enjoyable but slightly uneven first series(really, was there a need to shove out Numberwang every blimmin’ week?) wasn’t too far behind the similarly not-quite-there-yet first series of ‘A Bit Of…’ (really, did they have to end that many sketches by breaking the fourth wall?).

2008 saw a second series, which we’d say dipped below the standards of the first (where, as every schoolboy knows, Fry & Laurie really stepped up a gear for their second set of shows – don’t make us put all this in a chart), but with the third series of That Mitchell & Webb Look, we saw a real improvement. Indeed, by series three, the translations of some brilliant radio sketches were practically being tossed away on The Red Button extras (aka “Tough Luck If You’re Recording The Series And You’ve Got Sky Plus, As You Can’t Record The Red Button” extras). Maybe we do need to put all this in a chart.

There. So, we’re scoring series two of Fry & Laurie at 0.83, with series three of Mitchell & Webb very nearly matching it. A remarkable result. As everyone knows, series four of F&L saw a dip in quality (though it was still very good) – can Mitchell and Webb avoid doing the same? Time will tell.

Wish we’d thought of doing charts about thirty entries ago. It would have saved us loads of time. And as far Mitchell and Webb, it would have been fantastic if they’d had the gall to do a television version of the radio sketch (Series 2, episode 2) where the party planners basically slag off Greg Dyke for four minutes.

Used as one of the flagship shows for the then-new Virgin1 channel in the UK, The Riches followed the exploits of the Malloy family, a group of travelling con artists who, taking on the identities of the recently deceased Rich family, try to fake their way through life in Edenfalls, an exclusive gated community. Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver put in impressive performances as husband and disillusioned drifter Wayne (or “Doug”), and recently paroled recovering meth addict wife Dahlia (or “Cherien”), alongside kids Cael (played by Dirk Kuyt lookalike Noel Fisher), Di Di (Shannon Marie Woodward) and Sam (Aidan Mitchell).

The initial premise – family of travellers try to get by in an uptight community without being detected while Wayne struggles to hold down a job as a legal counsel at a large real estate firm – could easily have been enough to see out a good few seasons, but thrown into the mix are the remainder of the Malloy clan – most notably the sociopathic Dale, cousin and intended husband of Dahlia, who is determined to take revenge on Wayne by any means necessary. Meanwhile, the three Malloy children struggle to fit in at the uber-snobbish Rosemere Academy, and everyone is wary that people from the past lives of the real Riches could turn up at any moment.

The sight of Izzard playing an American – and thankfully, he does a much better job here than he did in Mystery Men – takes a little getting used to, but it’s something you soon get used to, especially once Wayne/Doug turns on the charm in his new job. Minnie Driver slides into the role of Dahlia/Cherien brilliantly, with the character struggling to fit into her new pretend persona whilst still having trouble juggling the numerous problems Dahlia has been hiding from her family. The characters of Cael, Di Di and Sam are anything but an afterthought too, with the actors playing them making the most out of their individual situations. Shannon Marie Woodward is especially good in her role of Di Di.

Throw in the well-rounded personalities of neighbours Jim and Nina (Bruce French and Margo Martindale) – both growing weary of living a lie of their own, and the various characters at Panco Real Estate, and you’ve got a drama series that really deserved to survive for much longer than a mere one-and-a-half seasons. Due to the 2007-8 WGA strike, season two lasted for just seven episodes, leaving the action in what would have been mid-season. Sadly, lacklustre viewing figures led to FX cancelling the show, leaving the plot hanging in the middle of what we believe is called a “game-changer”. Hopefully, plans for a one-off movie to tie up all the loose ends will come to fruition, and we won’t have seen the last of the Malloys.

We’ve gone on about Craig Ferguson a few times before now, which is handy because we can just re-use bits of our earlier posts on The Late Late Show.

After early stand-up performances as Bing Hitler, occasional guest appearances in shows like Red Dwarf, Chelmsford 123 and One Foot In The Algarve, and a one-off Sunday night pilot for ITV, Ferguson landed his first full series on BBC2 in 1993, called The Ferguson Theory. Despite imdb claiming two series existed, we’re fairly sure it only lasted for one, and that we only managed to catch the last episode of it. Providing it is the show we’re thinking of, it ended with a musical montage of clips, followed by the exchange “That’s your party tape?” “Aye. The party’s crap.” We may be wrong, there.

In 1994, Ferguson moved to the USA, taking in a few small parts in sitcoms before landing a key role in what we’ll forever refer to as The Criminally Underrated Drew Carey Show. Despite putting on what he gleefully admits to being a terrible English accent throughout much of the shows eight seasons, he was a hit, and was soon a minor darling of the talk show circuit, occasionally standing in as guest host (for Craig Kilborn) on post-Letterman jabberfest The Late Late Show.

In December 2004, Ferguson became the full-time host of The Late Late Show, replacing a Hollywood bound Kilborn. And do you know what? He’s bloody good at it. Thanks to YouTube we can check out how Craig Ferguson will happily open shows by miming to They Might Be Giants records, by calling non-voters morons, or (and this is an important bit) by performing one of the greatest opening monologues ever:

The YouTube video we’ve linked to right there is the reason we’ve got a huge amount of time for Craig Ferguson. That and the fact he still avoids pronouncing his first name as “Creg” to try and fit in with the US audience (seriously, we’d have expected it to be one of the conditions of his US citizenship). Annoyingly, Craig Ferguson’s chat show is the only one of the “big four” never really given an outing in the UK. Whereas weekly compilations of both ‘The Tonight Show’ and ‘Late Night’ pop up on CNBC at weekends, and Letterman has been tried out about half a dozen digital channels to diminishing audience figures, we think the only time The Late Late Show with Britain’s own Craig Ferguson has been seen at all over here is when a specially recorded monologue clip made up part of the Family Guy episode “We Love You, Conrad”.

And do you know what? It’s a shame the size of three buses. Given how most of each show is just Craig Ferguson being relentlessly and wonderfully silly, it should go down a storm to the fifty thousand viewers or so likely to give it a go (hey, it’s hardly going to be a ratings smash, and this is a nation where a show with 2000 viewers can make the weekly top ten for some digital channels). Come on, someone. Give it a go.

Life on Mars managed to be something which has been all too rare on British television – a high concept crime drama that remains captivating and popular over a prolonged period. Anyone for a box set of Crime Traveller? Space Cops? Paradox? Thought not. When it came to the escapades of DI Sam Tyler, the audience was largely hooked from start to finish, even when the plot of each episode started to get a little formulaic (oh, it turns out the only character we’ve been introduced to this episode, but who hasn’t had much to do yet, did it? Gosh).

Instead, the most compelling aspect of the show wasn’t really the crime of the week, but rather the situations it would put Sam, Gene Hunt, Annie, Ray and Chris into. Each episode’s “next week” trailer would allow us to roll the thought of marvellous situations – like Sam and Annie going undercover at a wife-swapping party only for Gene Hunt to gatecrash with a floozy in tow – around in our heads for a week until we could see how it all pans out. Precisely how they’d arrive at these situations didn’t seem to matter too much – the crime could have been reported to the station by a cartoon duck as far as we were concerned, as long as it’d give Gene Hunt an excuse to dish out bollockings and one-liners.

It certainly helped that the both lead actors John Simm and Philip Glenister, with Liz White not too far behind, put in brilliant performances each week. This is highlighted by the glossy-but-underwhelming US remake, which aside from having a better money shot in the first episode (US Sam realises he is back in 1973 when he notices the still-standing World Trade Center looming over him, UK Sam merely gets a slightly unrealistic billboard announcing a new motorway), is inferior in pretty much every regard. Compare Philip Glenister’s authentic tough guy portrayal of Gene Hunt with Harvel Keitel’s ‘angry short bloke with Napoleon Complex looking to start a pub fight’ remix of the character, then throw in Jason O’Mara – Sam Tyler as former high school jock. Wrong. And that’s before you look at the respective endings each each version – one involving (SPOILERS) the suicide of the lead character, one involving an actual manned trip to Mars. You can probably guess which is which.

See Also: Ashes To Ashes. The inevitably disappointing follow-up to Life On Mars, but once this had found its feet, it blossomed into a very, very good programme it its own right. Admittedly, Gene Hunt had become a little more sitcom-cop than he had been previously, but the second series was almost up there with the first series of Life On Mars. If you’re one of the many to have given up on Ashes after the first few episodes, give the second series a go before the third and final series kicks off.

What was that we’d said about high-concept crime drama? Awkward, geeky, floppy-haired, writer’s-block-stymied drifter, who finds comfort in reading Raymond Chandler novels decides to bluff his way through being a modern day Philip Marlowe on the streets of Brooklyn, if only so he'll meet people in his cold, emotionless city that he can really talk to. Ignoring the fact HBO might well owe us compensation for image rights, this is a brilliant premise for a show, and happily, the execution is as good as the idea.

Jason “Oh, Sorry, I Thought You Were Demetri Martin” Schwartzman stars as Jonathan Ames, with stand-up Zach “Copy-Pasted Surname” Galifianakis as his best friend Ray, and Ted Danson putting in a great turn as George, Jonathan’s neurotic and eternally bored multi-millionaire editor . Schwartzman is perfect in the role of The Stoned Detective, bumbling from one case to another, trying to seem as rugged as he can in front of female clients whilst ordering a glass of white wine at the bar (“I avoid the wagon by drinking white wine. It actually has a very low alcohol content”), or fretting over whether the dame he’d just bedded had an orgasm. Ray helps out where possible, providing his girlfriend lets him borrow her SUV, while George is always likely to distract Ames at the most inconvenient of moments, demanding his company on the flimsiest of pretences.

The entire programme fits together wonderfully well, with entire episodes able to pass by without the central premise even being touched on (as early as the third episode, too – a brave move for a new show), without it becoming any less entertaining. Hopefully, this is one that can run and run. Given its impressive ratings for HBO, reportedly adding new viewers with every episode, this will be the case. Fingers crossed for it being picked up by BBC Four soon.

More soon!

BrokenTV’s Top 100 Television Shows Of The 00s: Part 8

noreply@blogger.com (Mark X) — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 16:59:00 +0000

Absolute proof that ITV (or more specifically, Granada) still has the power to create something utterly brilliant when it wants to. The plot of Pierrepoint is pretty much explained away by its international title, ‘The Last Hangman’. In this true story, Timothy Spall puts in what just might be a career best performance as Albert Pierrepoint, Britain's last ever executioner.

This made for television film proved to be such a powerful work, it was deemed worthy of a theatrical and DVD release before actually being broadcast on ITV1, three years after it was completed, in 2008.

Admittedly, we could as easily have picked Palin travelogues Sahara or Himalaya as his representatives on our big list, as they're all reliably enjoyable. Indeed, Himalaya was very nearly our choice, including as it did brilliant moments like where Michael Palin amused a class of schoolchildren by doing a bit of slapstick with a shoe, and a thrilling moment where Palin met the Dalai Lama, only to be told by the Lama that he was a big fan of Palin's output. Sadly, that only meant his travel documentaries, not Life Of Brian or Flying Circus. Aw.

New Europe wins it for us, mainly due to it providing true insight into the former Eastern Bloc states, improving upon what is generally known amongst people in the UK (including us) - namely that they're all countries we’ll see drawn against a home nation in a World Cup qualifying draw, causing us to foolishly think "ooh, three easy points there". Palin took in the varied delights of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Transnistria, Moldova, Romania, Hungary, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic and former East Germany, and there was barely any depressing grey anonymous architecture, or local residents plotting how best to sneak their families aboard the BBC truck in order to gorge themselves on our luxurious benefits system. Ouch, our expectations!

In a word: fabulous. We'll hold back from using the term 'life-affirming', as it'd make us sound like gushing idiots, but even that very nearly applies here. It's programmes like this, where you get to see that the vast proportion of Them Foreigners are actually perfectly friendly, personable, generous and splendid people, and that maybe your own personal outlook that people, of all creeds, colours and nationalities, are fundamentally decent human beings. A bit rubbish we might need that outlook confirmed occasionally, of course, but that's what happens when you're daft enough to read newspapers.

Speaking of newspapers. The bouncing Czech. The Aldi Rupert Murdoch. Captain Bob. The former MP for Buckingham. Call Robert Maxwell what you like, it won’t change the fact that David Suchet put in an impressive performance as the crooked newspaper proprietor. Not sure why you’d be looking to change that fact by trotting out misremembered insults from the pages of Private Eye, but there you go. Sadly, there wasn't a scene where Eye owner Peter Cook, with Ian Hislop in tow, phoned a furious Maxwell in New York, from Maxwell's own office in the Mirror Builiding after having sneaked in.

Now, the above event is something we were a bit worried we'd imagined - a Google "I'm Feeling Lucky" search for '"Peter Cook" "Robert Maxwell" office' results in... er, this blog. Luckily, a bit further down the search results is this Parkinson interview with Ian Hislop, where the full, majestic story is told. Really, it’s possibly the greatest Peter Cook anecdote of all time.

Several years ago, on a trip from north Wales at Essex to help a friend collect a sofa (long tedious story), we came up with an idea for a film. It would be a road trip across Europe featuring two people, with the USP that the first half of the film was told solely from the perspective of one person, the second half from the other, with all manner of twists and revelations being sneaking out of the second viewpoint. Now, clearly, what with us having shag-all actual talent, or even the willpower to follow up ideas, the thought pretty much left our heads about as soon as we’d stepped out of the van. With that in mind, we can't really think about pursuing any legal action against Peter Kosminsky, writer and director of two-part Channel Four serial Britz.

Told over two nights, Britz looked at two British Muslim siblings, Sohail and Nasima. The first film followed Sohail, who unbeknownst to his family had joined MI5 in the hope of preventing future terrorist attacks on British soil. The second film followed Sohail's story, who grows increasingly militant after heavy-handed anti-terror laws lead to the persecution and eventual suicide of her best friend.

The two parts were told completely in isolation, with the only real crossover being the conclusion of each story. While the message put out by the whole serial isn't one "the establishment" would enjoy, that anti-terror laws are needlessly harsh, the programme proved to be truly captivating and eye-opening.

One supplemental point – Channel Four promoted the show by using billboards of the two main characters above the strapline “Whose side are you on?”, as if they were assuming a healthy proportion of those viewing to ponder “hmm, think I’ll side with the axis of evil on this one…”.

The person Paste Magazine dubbed the funniest man of the decade, Dave Chapelle is one of those performers you automatically warm to. Maybe it's the way Chapelle often seems to barely suppress a smirk during his performances, or maybe it's just the excellent material, even (maybe especially) when dealing with edgy subjects. Maybe the best-known example of this was the spoof Frontline report from the very first episode, dealing with Clayton Bigsby, a bland Klan member who had spent his entire life unaware that he was black. This was shown on BBC One during the clip compilation rounding off Red Nose Day 2005, as far as we know the only time a Chapelle sketch has been shown on ‘proper’ telly in the UK. A clear majority of his sketches land on the 'hit' side of the coin, too, with skits like ‘Pretty White Girl Sings Dave's Thoughts’ (as his thoughts are too controversial for America to hear coming from a young black man), ‘Life Like a Video Game’ (the folly of trying to carry out actions from GTA in real-life) or ‘The Niggar Family’ (a take on retrospectively insensitive 1950s sitcoms).

The second (and, to date, final proper) season of the show ended with the rather prescient "Black Bush" sketch. This dated from early 2004, still an age where the US media were fearful of criticising George W Bush, who up to that point had been protected by the theories that "he's still new, give him time!", "having a pop at the President would be letting the terrorists win!", "hey, we're at war, Saddam-lover!". The sketch - also featuring Jamie Foxx as "Black Tony Blair" and Mos Def as head of the CIA - made the point that had the President been black, there's no way he would have been given the benefit of the doubt in the lead up to the Iraq War, and would surely have been called to account for trying to deflect attention by banging on about gay marriage when the war wasn't going to plan.

Now, here's a picture of Glenn Beck, from March 2009. About six weeks after President Obama took office.

More tomorrow!

BrokenTV’s Top 100 Television Shows Of The 00s: Part 7

noreply@blogger.com (Mark X) — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 01:35:00 +0000

Into the TOP FIFTY we roar on our special critical moped, with us briefly pausing to remind patrons that only TV shows which began in the years 2000-2009 are getting included here, so don’t expect to see The Sopranos or The Daily Show or Countryfile.

Yes, you read that correctly. Popular children's television programme Doctor Who is only at number fifty. Not only that, but we've decided it falls within the remit of our listing, as we've decided that Doctor Who began in 2005. Now, admittedly, we've partly done that because it'll irritate the sort of people who get way too precious about such matters, but mainly because it was a proper reboot of the franchise, and is therefore eligible. On a similar tip, we could have included the rebooted updates of Crossroads, the Ving Rhames version of Kojak and the Al Bundy version of Dragnet, only we haven't, because they were all rubbish.

Anyway, to nick a phrase from brilliant early 1980s Dicky Howlett one-off Marvel UK comic book Channel 33⅓, Doctor Whom. It has been a tricky programme to place in the rundown, mainly because the quality of the show since it returned has been massively variable. Had the standard remained anywhere near as high as the five best episodes (which, putting our spod hats on, we'd say are "The Unquiet Dead", "The Empty Child", "The Doctor Dances", "The Girl in the Fireplace" and "Blink"), it'd be sitting quite comfortably in the top three. Sadly, far too many episodes have been packed with annoying plot resolutions where the Doctor points his sodding sonic screwdriver at the problem he wants to go away, or says "hang on, if I can just reverse the polarity on this [otherwise harmless object]...", so number fifty it is.

As any geek worth their black T-shirt with an ironic in-joke printed on the front will tell you, 80% of our five best episodes come from the head of soon-to-be head writer Steven Moffat, so it's likely the programme will become much, much better from the new year onwards. Heck, even if Moffat panics and simply re-uses a load of plots from Press Gang, it'll still be brilliant. If nothing else, he'll avoid having the entire globe attacked by Daleks and/or Cybermen at the end of each series, only for everyone on the planet to forget all about it the next time it happens.

Written by Simon Day and Andrew Collings Off Of Podcasts, this was surely one of the least BBC Three-friendly BBC Three sitcoms to ever be given a full series. Grass involved over-friendly Londoner Billy Bleach (Simon Day reprising his character from The Fast Show) inadvertantly witnessing a gangland slaying, and subsequently relocating to a sleepy rural village on the witness protection programme, finding himself placed in the care of dozy village bobby PC Harriet (Robert Wilfort, who we'd noticed not long afterwards in a Channel Four comedy pilot doing a sarcastic but enjoyable impersonation of Ross Noble, and who we haven't seen much since. Possibly Ross Noble has had him killed).

There's a lot more to the plot than that, involving the couple of CID officers sent from the big smoke to keen an eye on things, the attractive lady vet Billy repeatedly tries to woo, the slightly eerie child prodigy, the enigmatic poacher, fellow Fast Showee Mark Williams as the pretentious city boy trying to win the locals round to his gastropub idea, and his philosophical head chef, which go some way to explaining just how involved it all was. In fact, the show could have been hugely enjoyable even if the central character Billy hadn't been there at all, seeing as the supporting characters had such thoroughly well rounded personalities. Sounds like a trite things to say, but all too often we’ve had to put up with sitcoms where Character A is ‘this’ type of person, Char B is ‘that’ type of person, and so on, and so on. In Grass for example, the CID officers didn't just slot into the good cop/bad cop-shaped holes - one was a modern Blairite detective always ready to consider the bigger picture and use the training from all the courses he’d been on, while the other was a middle-aged detective who'd seen more of the world, was something of a traditionalist, but was also coming to terms with having recently come out of the closet, and getting used to his gay relationship with the first CID officer.

So, with all that that going on, one might expect the central character plucked straight from The Fast Show to be a little jarring, with him spouting a catchphrase every couple of minutes. Not a bit of it, the setting allowed the character of Billy Bleach to flourish, allowing for some nice interplay between him and PC Harriet, first when the pair are muddling through sharing a cottage together, and later when the CID officers arrive and duly treat the duo like a pair naughty kids, sending them to their bunkbeds early.

It really was a brilliant little show, quite unfairly treated by BBC Three - fellow Fast Show spin-off 'Swiss Toni' seemed to have much more attention lavished on it by the digital channel, despite that not being anywhere near as good. Grass probably would have been more at home on BBC Four, but hopefully it'll one day turn up on Dave, allowing more people to see just how good it really was.

Yeah, she figuratively died on her arse when she did that highly-priced live show in London, and indeed fared about as badly when she guested on both …Buzzcocks and 8 Out Of 10 Cats (as seems to be the case for every US stand-up who comes over here to promote something, only to discover where ‘they’ have a 'chat show circuit' we have a 'panel show circuit', where they're expected to understand jokes about X-Factor and Atomic Kitten). But here's the thing: The Sarah Silverman Program was brilliant.

To the casual viewer, it might well have come over as another half-baked attempt to shock (albeit within the framework of Comedy Central's language and decency guidelines, so the writers couldn't just have someone saying 'fuck' every three minutes). It was actually quite a lot cleverer than that, with almost all of the offensive lines coming from the relentlessly optimistic and whimsically naïve character of Sarah. One episode sees Sarah debating with a black waiter at her local coffee shop about who has the hardest time in American society - black people or Jewish people. To try and see things from his perspective, Sarah innocently aims to get first-hand experience of what it's like to be black in 21st century America - by spending a day wearing blackface. The appalled and disgusted reactions she receives from everyone leads her to assume that everyone else is racist. Think of it as like Mike Leigh's "Happy Go Lucky", but with jokes about fanny farts. It's possibly quite telling that three of the main players (Silverman, Brian Posehn and Jay Johnson) were involved in the majestic Mr Show, to which The Sarah Silverman Program exhibits a very similar feel.

Bonus fact for fans of the show at number 50: One episode sees Brian Posehn's character become obsessed with a campy British sci-fi DVD boxset, in which the lead role is played by a certain Christopher Eccleston.

It might just be the people we went to school with, but as far as we were aware, out of Newman and Baddiel, it was Rob Newman that everyone liked the best. However, possibly due to the fact Newman had never shared a flat with Frank Skinner, when “Robert Newman's A History Of Oil“ appeared on More4 in 2006, it was the first time we'd seen him do something new on TV for aaaages. About thirteen years, by our watches, which for some reason have a “how long was it since Robert Newman last did something new on telly” setting.

A History Of Oil helped prove just what a shame that was, what with Newman having spent the time since '...In Pieces' becoming a sort of funny Mark Thomas, if you can imagine such a thing. This programme looked at the history of... oh, you've guessed. Very illuminating it was too, making a number of very interesting points, such as how oil in Iraq was one of the primary reasons behind the First World War. But - and here's where Newman took a very different approach to Mark Thomas - it was also very funny, as opposed to just being very self-satisfied about the bits where receptionists got bullied.

The entire shebang can be seen on YouTube, starting from here.

See also: The History Of The World Backwards (BBC Four 2007). This being Newman’s ‘proper’ TV comeback, this had a lot of really nice ideas – not least of all the central premise of “what would history be like if time ran backwards?” – but did lack a certain something special. Still an interesting programme, but not quite ‘there’. Pity.

Sealab 2020 was an early 1970s Hanna-Barbera cartoon show about an underwater research base. Pretty much in the Captain Planet vein, it aimed to teach the kids about the need to respect marine life, and the sea, and whatnot. It didn't really succeed in those aims, and was cancelled after just sixteen episodes had been made, only thirteen of which were actually broadcast.

Arriving almost thirty years later, Sealab 2021 visited the crew a year later. By this time, the crew have become more than a little sceptical about their mission, if not entirely stir crazy. They tend to spend the majority of their time arsing about, having extended conversations about what they'd be like if they were robots, killing each other, or trying to take over the world. Coming from the brains of Adam Reed and Matt Thompson (previously mentioned in our list for their later work Frisky Dingo), .you've got to admire the concept of a show lampooning a kids cartoon from three decades previous, that practically no-one remembered anyway. It'd be like someone in this country putting together a sitcom where DJ Kat went on to become a shambling alcoholic.

We might be excused of giving our descriptive powers the day off when we say this, but all you really need to know is that Sealab 2021 is absolutely fanfuckingtastically brilliant. For one thing - in a manner similar to World Of Pub (see earlier in the list) - most episodes end with the Sealab facility being destroyed and everyone getting killed. For another thing, it has played host to some of the most majestically demented episodes ever seen of any television programme since the BBC stopped letting Spike Milligan make any. Case in point, the episode quite innocently titled "Vacation" - it needs to be seen in full to get the full impact, and luckily you can do just that here.

Go on, watch it. It’ll give you something to do until the next episode of BrokenTV’s Top 100 Television Shows Of The 00s.

BrokenTV’s Top 100 Television Shows Of The 00s: Part 6

noreply@blogger.com (Mark X) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 01:22:00 +0000

As we steam toward the halfway point of our rundown, here are numbers 54 to 51. We’ll try not to ramble on as much as we did yesterday.

One thing that often irks us is when infuriating broadsheet columnists – such as Damian Thompson of the Torygraph – have a bit of a pop at Twitter’s Stephen Fry. “He’s not as clever as he thinks he is!”, they’ll occasionally whinny, deftly stopping themselves just before they type “after all, I’m cleverer than him! Look, my parents sent me to this really expensive school, and I’ve got my own newspaper column, so why doesn’t everyone love me instead? Waaah”.

One of the reasons Fry is so disarming is that when it comes to programmes like ‘Stephen Fry In America’, you can’t help but feel that despite him being a really quite clever chap, he’s there to learn from all the new experiences and the new people just as much as he’s there to make a TV series and write a best-selling book. Now, we might be wrong in that assumption (it wouldn’t be the first time. After all, we’re idiots), but it’s his willingness to Get Involved that makes him likeable, while lots of other people would merely arrive at a set of assumptions that happen to keep in with their blinkered world view, despite there being plenty of evidence to the contrary if they moved from behind a desk. You know, like your Jan Moirs, Richard Littlejohns and Damian Thompsons of the world. Or us, as that’s what we’re doing in this very paragraph. But, as we’ve said, we cheerily admit we’re idiots.

Oh, and given Fry visited all fifty states for the making of the programme, why on earth was it only six episodes long? Come on, the BBC. It should at least have been a thirteen parter, though we’ll cut you some slack for not censoring a bit where the word “fuck” could clearly be seen in graffiti on an establishing shot in one episode’s 7pm BBC Two same-week repeat.

Completing a brace of affable factmongers, here’s Andrew Marr, and his History Of Modern Britain. Taking what could be called (by us, here, now) a surprisingly accessible look at Britain’s post-war history, the series saw Marr visiting not just the more obvious landmarks that shaped 21st Century Britain – the stock exchanges, or the dockyards – but also the unexpected – the spot on Harrowdown Hill where the body of Dr David Kelly was found, or revisiting that tiny London flat which sold for a fortune in the 1980s. It was this comprehensive approach which made the series so very compelling.

Quite splendidly, the entire series can be viewed in full on Google Video:
episode one | episode two | episode three | episode four | episode five

Now, no-one really likes to admit it. but is there anything finer in life than seeing someone who deserves it getting a great big bollocking? You might counter with “well, raising a child is a little bit more enjoyable than that, you cynical git”, but you’d be lying. Seeing someone else getting an industrial strength ticking-off is always fun, only in reality you have to be all “Oh, I should probably leave the room” and avoid-eye-contact-y.

Well, thanks to Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, you can see people getting loudly rebuked in the comfort of your own home. You can even rewind the best, loudest, bollockingest bits over and over again on your Sky+ box, imagining that you’re Gordon Ramsay, and that the luckless head chef represents everyone you’ve ever worked with, and yeah, who was it who mixed up the fax machine and the shredder for a year’s worth of invoices now, eh fucko? Eh? ANSWER ME! But then, that’d be taking things a little bit too far, and you should probably start seeing Dr Mayhew again.

Actually, of course, the main enjoyment from the show actually comes from seeing struggling restaurateurs manage to turn their businesses around, thanks to the helpful if sweary advice from Ramsay. It’s really quite uplifting seeing a small restaurant keep on the same staff, not need any additional investment, and still manage to make a silk purse from the mouldy old pigs ears at the back of the freezer, all because Ramsay reinvigorated a disenfranchised kitchen staff and added (or removed) a few dishes to the menu. Though admittedly, we only started watching it to see people getting shouted at.

You’d never guess just how hard it is to be so wonderfully stupid. This Canadian sitcom centred on the antics of Ron (played by Jeff Kassel) and Pete (played by Steve Markle taking on the human form of Tommy Scott from Space). What with both being dumb and shiftless, they make ends meet by becoming human guinea pigs for product testing facility Testico. Yep, ‘Testico’. That’s about the level – we’re talking Bottom meets Jackass basically, and that’s a good thing.

Each episode would centre on a single product being tested on the pair, and the subsequent consequences. So, one episode sees the pair take an experimental drug that temporarily removes their ability to feel pain. Ignoring all warnings from the doctors, as soon as they’re let out on the street, the pair decide to neck enough of the pills to keep them pain-free for a solid week. Ron instantly decides to become a low-rent daredevil, while Pete starts dating an attractive dominatrix who just loves guys with dangerously sturdy piercings ‘down there’. The rest of the episode basically writes itself, and unless you’ve a heart of solid stone, you’ll have cried laughing at least three times by the end of it.

One of the most remarkable aspects of the programme is the lengths the lead actors have to go to. For example, in one episode the luckless Pete messes up a prank involving an experimental solvent, and spends almost the entire episode with his face glued to Ron’s bare arse. And Ron certainly isn’t going to stop having regular sex with his new girlfriend after a minor setback like that. We think you’ll find that is proper “I-had-to-watch-it-through-my-fingers” comedy, folks.

Sadly, the show didn’t make it past the end of the first season (can’t imagine why), but we implore you to track down at least one episode of the show. While it’s very much the televisual equivalent of a greasy chicken kebab after a hard night’s drinking, it’s one of the best kept comedy secrets of the last decade.

And so, into the Top 50 we go. Join us again tomorrow (probably) for the next part of our increasingly fractured rundown.

BrokenTV’s Top 100 Television Shows Of The 00s: Part 5

noreply@blogger.com (Mark X) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 00:25:00 +0000

As a few entries in this list have suggested, one of the things ITV can still do to impress us is to look back over its own history. What with 2005 being the 50th anniversary of the network, ITV Plc saw fit to treat us to an entire half-century’s worth of lookbackery.

Oh, lookbackery is so a word.

The flagship programme from amongst these celebrations was the Bragg-helmed “The Story of ITV: The People’s Channel”, a multi-part documentary series looking at the successes of the channel on a genre-by-genre basis. There was even a tie-in book for the series (by Simon Cherry, published by Reynolds & Hearn, ISBN 1-903111 98-6 – we’ve a copy of it to hand, you see). All in all, the series made a pretty good case of reminding everyone just why ITV used to be the nation’s most popular channel. Tellingly, when it came to the most recent years of ITV’s life thus far, it was mainly about the various pop talent shows and ‘…Millionaire’. In the case of the episode on comedy, the example used to highlight the network’s continued commitment to mirth was… Frank Skinner’s ‘Shane’ – the same Frank Skinner’s ‘Shane’ that flopped so badly, the pre-emptively produced second series was made yet never broadcast. Even worse, we don’t think TV Burp even got a mention.

See also: ITV50, the regional shows (ITV1, 2005). In many ways, these were an even better way of showcasing the history of ITV, with each region putting out a retrospective of their own output. This gave viewers a brilliant chance to take in the histories of all the regional outposts they’d likely only ever seen on occasional holidaying visits to other parts of the UK – a rare treat for those of us who’d read the references in TV Cream to such figures as Harry Gration and Gus Honeybun. Entertainingly, the only ITV region to have actually been on air for the entire fifty years was London, meaning all of the other big regional celebrations had to kick off with lines like “of course, ITV have only been serving the Border region for forty-four years” which is the kind of thing we like seeing happen, because we’re odd. We’re assuming that the thinking behind that was, if ITV Plc have their way, by the time most regions actually do reach their 50th anniversaries, there won’t be any regional ITV channels left to celebrate.

However – and any description of a large-scale ITV project in the 21st century just has to contain a ‘however’ – any goodwill was piddled up the fence by all of the regional celebratory shows being sneaked out quietly on a Sunday afternoon, and they didn’t even make the most of all that effort by putting any of them out nationally on ITV3, meaning TV spods like us had to patiently wait for someone to put them all on UK Nova. Oh, ITV. An hour a day for a fortnight, at 1am on ITV3? Not even that?

Also see also: MTV: 15 Years In Europe (MTV, 2002). Another look back, this time from the perspective of a network with a somewhat less than rich history. That didn’t mean that MTV didn’t make an effort, putting together fresh interviews with big names from the golden age of MTV Europe, along with some brilliant clippage, such as the slightly misguided live Christmas (or maybe New Years Eve, we don’t have our tape of it to hand) special with guest presenters Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson, from the tail end of the 1980s. Free from the grip of the BBC, Rik and Ade put on explosive and expletive-strewn performance (such as Mayall introducing a song with the words “Now, he’s not just a fuckcunt, but he’s also a cuntfuck!”), ending with the duo demolishing the very-much-not-designed-to-be-demolished set.

As with the ITV retrospectives, once the documentary reached a certain point, things took a much duller turn. While the first two-thirds of the programme had been marvelling in how lively, fresh and exciting MTV Europe had been in the early days (Ray Cokes! Front 242 on daytime rotation! Half of the adverts being in German!), once it made the split to MTV UK & Ireland, MTV France, MTV Germany et al, there wasn’t much left to say, other than “well, we couldn’t really afford original programming for each nation, so we bunged on a bunch of American MTV shows and hoped for the best. Ooh, but we do still have the MTV Europe Awards! Which, er, is usually hosted by an American, and all the nominations are usually American”. A shame, both for the sake of the documentary, and for the channel itself.

You know when you’re really, really looking forward to a new programme? And there’s a new sitcom coming, and it’s based in the world of IT, and it’s actually performed in front of a studio audience, and it’s being written by Graham “Black Books Father Ted The All-New Alexei Sayle Show Dr Crawshaft’s World Of Pop” Linehan, and Chris Morris is in it? It’s pretty much destined to seem a little disappointing, isn’t it?

Indeed, it did take us a while to warm to The IT Crowd, but by the time the second series got into full swing (after the “Moss and the German” ep, if you’re counting), we were won over. Admittedly, it can suffer from Duff Episode Syndrome occasionally (we didn’t find ourselves enjoying the haunting-Adam-Buxton or introducing-Matt-Berry episodes nearly as much as other people seemed to), but as the series goes on, the laughs are falling from our mouths increasingly quickly, as if, oh, we don’t know, someone had installed a faster Laughter Card running Direct X 11 in our brains. Or. Some. Thing.

One thing that relentlessly bugs us about US sitcoms – even ones that we really like – is that the characters in the vast majority of them are, at the very least, comfortably off. Yes, we know such shows are there for the purposes of escapism, and if a cafe waitress happens to look like Jennifer Aniston and can easily afford a huge New York apartment (“ah, but Rachel shared that apartment!” – A reader missing the point) it’s okay because it’s NOT REAL, But really – what are the most popular sitcoms of all time in the UK? Steptoe & Son, Fools & Horses, Porridge, Open All Hours – all about people basically struggling to get by, making the most of a bad lot. Even accounting for Dad’s Army or Fawlty Towers, they look at people stuck in a situation they’d rather not be in (either living in wartime Britain, or running a not-successful-enough hotel).

Now, look at most US (live-action) sitcoms. While there are pesky examples like MASH or Cheers to undermine this, for the most part they centre on really quite successful people who merely don’t have everything going their way. Soap, Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Larry Sanders Show, 30 Rock or Frasier are all brilliant shows, but you never really get the feeling any of the characters are ever really trapped in their surroundings. Sure, the main characters may feel ego-bound to do whatever they do to cause mayhem in 22-minute syndicated bursts, but they could just as easily sell up for an easier life in Idaho. The marvellous Everybody Hates Chris takes a more British approach to comedy, looking at the fortunes of a hard-working but financially struggling black family in 1980s Brooklyn, with the action centred on eldest child Chris – who, of course, will grow up to be millionaire comedian and actor Chris Rock, but ignore that for now.

A sadly underrated show over here – not helped by being buried on Five and Five US, and often having its more hard-hitting lines censored to boot (including the pivotal use of the word ‘nigger’ by the school bully towards Chris in the first episode, which pretty much sets up the dynamic between the pair from that point on) – it’s another great example of the kind of tightly plotted, cleverly scripted, brilliantly casted US sitcom that we’re really going to need to think up some more decorative prose for by the end of this rundown.

The central character of Chris (played winningly by Tyler James Williams) is handled magnificently, being a fundamentally good, well mannered and honest kid who ends up in all manner of scrapes through little fault of his own. It’s the well-rounded characters making up the rest of his family – indeed, the regular characters from the neighbourhood – that help this show stand out from the crowd. Rochelle, the sassy, intimidating and fiercely protective mother. Julius, industrious, easygoing but frugal father. Drew, younger and to the almost-imperceptible annoyance of Chris, bigger and more popular of the two brothers. And finally, Tonya, youngest of the three children, perpetual antagonist for her two brothers and a relentless attention-addict, always likely to win her parents over in the event of any argument. All brilliantly written characters, and all played wonderfully by the cast.

On a superficial level, the streets of Brooklyn, New York don’t have much in common with small villages on the outskirts of Wrexham, north Wales, which is where we happened to grow up. However, with us being of a similar age to Chris Rock, we can see a lot of the families we grew up amongst in the Rock family and their neighbours. People struggling to get by, people preferring to rip people off friends and neighbours instead of struggling, hard kids in school looking to distract themselves from the problems in their own home lives by taking it out on anyone unlucky enough to be deemed different, it’s all really quite uncanny. If we had an ounce of talent, we might even consider writing our own “Married For Life”-style spin-off for ITV.

(Oh, and please don’t leave a comment along the lines of “Well, [American Sitcom X] is just like that too! Why haven’t you mentioned [American Sitcom X]? Eh?”. We’re only at number 58, and we probably will mention it. Assuming by “[American Sitcom X]” you don’t mean a whimsical spin-off of the Ed Norton race-hate drama.)

The first programme from south of the equator on our list, and one of the few to actually make it to a mainstream channel over here – several ‘best of’ shows (stripped of the more Aussie- centric content) were broadcast on BBC Four earlier on this year.

Coming from Australian satire troupe ‘The Chaser’ (think ‘The Onion’ or ‘National Lampoon’), ‘War…’ was the follow-up to their ABC-broadcast news spoof CNNNN (Chaser NoN-stop News Network), and took a (slightly) more traditional, studio-audience led approach **LAZY GENERALISATION ALERT**, think a sort of “Saturday Night Armistice meets Fantasy Football League, meets Trigger Happy TV”.

Much of what BBC Four viewers would see of the show centred on the “ha ha, aren’t members of the public/drones who work in retail/public figures of authority” aspects of the show, making it seem – at its worst – little better than Balls Of fucking Steel (case in point, the skit where a Chaserbloke walked into shops wearing a balaclava and a hidden camera, causing blameless staff to panic, fearing they were being robbed). This was a bit of a shame, really, as much of the original show centred on Australian current affairs, with often-entertaining consequences. For example, in 2006 a story had broken in the Australian press about a student who had hugged then-PM John Howard whilst holding a screwdriver. The Chaser team decided to check the level of security surrounding the PM, by sending Chaserbloke Craig Reucassel out to hug Howard during one of his morning constitutionals. Whilst holding a large (if plastic) battleaxe. Reucassel managed to succeed in his task, and subsequently tried to up the ante by trying again on another morning, but this time with a running chainsaw, albeit to a less successful outcome.

Similar stunts were a large part of the show (along with sketches that carried a lesser risk of imprisonment, such as where Andrew Hansen would write angry letters – under a false name - to the ABC, complaining about sketches in the show, and broadcasting the subsequent replies), especially so in election-themed spin-off The Chaser Decides. At the time of the 2007 Australian elections, the actions of the Chaser team were deemed interesting enough to merit a special report on BBC News 24 in the UK (we noticed the report on a Sunday morning, in a cafe that had its television’s sound turned down, so we’ve no idea what was being said. Still, that’s first person research from us, right there).

Possibly the team’s most high-profile stunt (discounting the pointless tabloid-filling bluster over the hugely rubbish anyway “Make A Realistic Wish” sketch) saw the crew visit the 2007 APEC Leaders Summit in Sydney, under the guise of a fake Canadian delegation. Using rented limousines adorned with the Canadian flag, and waving faked ID passes at security, the Chasers were able to breach the APEC restricted zone, and stop outside the hotel where US President George W Bush (remember him?) was staying. It was only when a Chaserbloke dressed as Osama bin Laden emerged from the back of the rented limo that this particular “jig” was very much “up”. The two Chaserblokes fronting the stunt, along with nine crew members, were detained, questioned and charged by New South Wales Police, under an act which carried a maximum six month prison sentence. Now, while the charges were finally dropped (helped, we’re quite sure, by the overwhelming public approval for the team’s actions, and the fact lax security was largely to blame for them getting as far at they did), we’re quite sure Alex Zane, Olivia Lee, Mark Dolan, Neg Dupree, Toju Okoradudu, Dawn Porter et al would literally shit themselves before trying to pull a similar stunt. “Balls Of Steel”? Balls of marzipan, more like.

We first looked at Land Girls back in September, in a very rare “actual update about an actual television programme being broadcast at the moment” update. And we can see why – to our cost, this rundown has reminded us just how long it bloody takes to ‘form opinions’ and ‘write sentences’ about TV programmes. Someone really ought to have warned us. The sooner we can go back to just posting a YouTube clip of Ceefax On View and saying something sarcastic about Michael McIntye every four days, the better. Anyway, Land Girls. This is what we’d said at the time:

“The trailer managed to confuse us on Sunday night, with what seemed to be a relatively expensive WWII period drama being shown at the surely-it-must-be-a-Bank-Holiday time of 5.15pm, but no, that’s the timeslot for it. And in our defence, we’d spent around 80% of Sunday in bed drowning in a sea of the most devilishly feverish visions – the concept of cricket or toast would probably have had us similarly floundered by the time we finally made it to the sofa. It’s on every weekday this, er, week at that time, suggesting it’s geared towards elder children.

Not a bit of it. Episode two alone featured 1940s teenage pregnancy and subsequent attempted abortion, a nine-year-old boy selling bootleg whiskey, arguments aplenty, a bar brawl, thwarted equestricide, and three cast members from the magnificent Early Doors to boot. All in the traditional Blue Peter slot.

Despite us just making it sound like First Of The Summer Skins, or BBC Three’s Fuck Off I’m A Civilian Landworker, it’s all handled as sensibly as if it had been filtered through the typewriter ribbons of Michael O’Neill and Jeremy Seabrook. All the characters you’d expect to find in a classic BBC children’s drama are there:

The plucky teenage girl who’d lied about her age in order to help with the war effort, spunky and idealistic, and who’d think nothing of marching into the American soldiers’ mess to demand they improve the lot of their black compatriots.

Her steadying influence of an older sister (Christine Bottomley, below left), ready to pluckily corner any American GIs who’d try to take advantage of her young sis, and prod their chests so hard their medals will leave indentations in their ribcage.

A plucky pre-teen scallywag happy to aid the scam-hungry farmer (Mark Benton) with some wizard carrot-related wheezes.

A nosey parker Sergeant willing to spend as much time peeking into the business of his own men as carrying out his duties. If this were being made in 1983, he’d be played by Stephen Lewis.

The Lord Of The Manor – a well-meaning war hero who is always on hand with a word of cheery encouragement or some first-aid tips gleaned from his time in the Somme

The deceitful Lady Of The Manor, on hand to pass on the valuable lesson to children that at least 50% of posh people throughout history were evil (legal note: may not be true).

The perpetually cheery (and plucky) midlands girl who refuses to dwell on the hand life has dealt her, lest it cause her to waver from her land-tending duties.

The superficially plucky land girl who is probably Up To No Good, We’ll Wager.

And at least half a dozen more characters more interesting and well-rounded that you’d find in a great deal of post-watershed dramas. We’re happy to make that judgement call after seeing just one-and-a-half episodes, and recommend everyone visit the Land Girls iPlayer page to dip into it. Go on, do it now.”

Now, admittedly, that iPlayer link won’t work any more (unless the BBC repeat the show over the Christmas break, which they should, because it was brilliant), but us posting all that does save us the effort of coming up with something new to say. Phew for that! Oh, and we were being a little disingenuous with the “on in the Children’s BBC slot” angle, but no-one really picked up on it anyway. So: phew for that, too.

A programme that could incorrectly be labelled as “landfill documentary” by anyone not bothering to actually watch the programmes themselves. Now, that grouping could quite conceivably include the BBC bean counters who’d seen the proposed outline for the show, and who’d said “Really? Is that what you’re doing? A series of historical documentaries focusing on individual 24-hour periods? Here’s some money from the back of our couch to make it with. And we expect change”. You see, despite the programmes in question – taking in subjects such as “The Assassination of Franz Ferdinand”, “The Birth of Israel”, “The Resignation of Nixon” or “Hiroshima” – having rather grandiose remits, especially as most one-hour episodes took in two such subjects, there clearly wasn’t that much of a budget to play with.

For example, while the flagship BBC One docudrama on the bombing of Hiroshima (from 2005, winner of a BAFTA and an International Emmy) was narrated by John Hurt, used a huge cast of actors and interviewees, employed impressive CGI and went out in a prime-time Sunday night slot, the episode of Days That Shook The World covering the same topic (series one, episode four) doesn’t even warrant its own IMDB page.

That kinds of messes up our comparison of the relative cast sizes, but we will categorically state that despite costing a fraction of the amount to make, and despite containing only a handful of players taking on the pivotal roles in the reconstructions of the events of that day (in both cases, taking in the human cost on both sides of the blast,), Days That Shook The World was able to tell the same story every bit as well. Indeed, the concentration on stating the facts so comprehensively – from both sides wherever possible, of course, belying Johnny Rotten’s assertion that “history is just the winners saying what a bad bunch the losers were” – was to the credit of the people behind the strand, in most cases tasked with boiling down a hugely pivotal 24 hours in global history to a half-hour slot, from which can a few minutes be easily edited out? After all, we want to cram these onto Discovery as well, so we need the space for commercials. Thanks, loves.

Cripes, we’ve managed to drone on for ages, there. Why didn’t we just make this a top twenty, eh? Then we could just have spent the remainder of the month posting YouTube videos or links to other, much better, websites and relaxing. Not to mention how angry everyone is going to be when they realise they’ve sat through ninety-nine entries just to discover we’ve put The Sunday Night Project at number one… Bah! Anyway, check back tomorrow, when we’ll update anew, with an as yet undetermined quantity of entries on our list…

The Thick Of It: That Huge Shocking Revelation

noreply@blogger.com (Mark X) — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 11:26:00 +0000

Last night’s episode of The Thick Of It,eh? Bloody hell! Who could have possibly seen that coming?

Yes, getting to see inside Malcolm Tucker’s front room! But it doesn’t end there…

Malcolm Tucker’s DVD collection! So, what’s there?

Well, from what we can recognise the spines of:

Taxi Driver
The Departed
Layer Cake
The Godfather Trilogy (?)
Lethal Weapon Box Set (?)
Brotherhood
Memento
R-Point
Titanic
The Italian Job
School Of Rock
Hot Fuzz
Shaun of the Dead
Meet The Parents
24
Citizen Kane
Outnumbered
South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
The Shield

Now, clearly, the contents of the DVD shelf clearly weren’t actually on the physical shelves of the fictional character Malcolm Tucker, more that they happened to be in the residence the crew were filming in, but you’ve got to enjoy the thought of him getting in after a hard day’s bollockings, only to pour a glass of scotch and to plonk South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut on his DVD player.

Also, anything interesting happen in the rest of the programme? We stopped watching it after five minutes.

BrokenTV’s Top 100 Television Shows Of The 00s: Part 4

noreply@blogger.com (Mark X) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 16:30:00 +0000

Eagle-eyed readers will have noticed we failed to update the rundown yesterday. As punishment, we’ve compiled a double update, taking in numbers eighty to sixty-one. Additionally, we’ve just given ourselves a Chinese burn. Ow.

Going out live after ITV’s matches from Euro 2000, the first series of this show made for very interesting viewing. No plan, just Frank and Dave being witty on a couch? Count us in. As the series progressed, especially once it had become pre-recorded, it became a bit less essential, but for ITV to take the risk of showing it in the first place it deserves to be here.

Notable moment: During the live Comic Relief mini-episode of the show in 2005, Frank pointed out “now we’re going to see a film about some of the work Comic Relief does. Aw, I always hate those, they always ruin the mood”, thereby making a point everyone had been thinking for years but had been too polite to say out loud.

Moffat-penned Saturday night horror. How could it fail? Well, it did try at times, most notably when Hyde (played by Jimmy Nesbitt wearing slightly scary contact lenses and slightly mad hair) turned back into Jekyll (played by Jimmy Nesbitt without the slightly scary contact lenses and with slighly less mad hair), causing any witnesses to wonder aloud “hey, who are you? And where did that scary maniac disappear to?”

Maybe we’re being a little harsh. Jekyll was a great little show. It’s available at a laughably cheap price on DVD, too. Check it out. (If nothing else, you doing so would make us feel a bit better about skimming over this entry somewhat.)

Yeah, we know. It’s full of self-obsessed idiots, only idiots watch it, we don’t watch it in our house, et-bloody-cetera. Despite all of the received opinion on the show – and we’d love to know what percentage of people who love to complain about the show have actually watched it – there has been a lot to like about Big Brother over the last decade. While people would generally concentrate on the more disagreeable participants – Nasty Nick, Jade, Charley, Ziggy, or bigot-tits herself Danielle Lloyd – they tend to skip over the people who were in the majority (at least until the slightly more desperate later series when the ratings began to slip), the ones you’d probably taken an instant dislike to at the start, and ended up liking once they were able to be themselves.

It’s as if in this short attention span era, the most disagreeable thing about Big Brother is the way we’d need to watch it for at least eight hours each week to decide whether we should be hating these people or not. After all, who’s got the time for that? Luckily of course, we’ve got the tabloids to tell us who to hate. “PAGE ONE EXCLUSIVE: BB MEL IN EVIL RACIST OUTBURST, BURN HER! BURN THE WITCH! Page six: Muslims are evil and are taking over Britain.” You know the drill.

While we’ll admit we stopped watching Deal Or No Deal a long, long time ago, we still admire DOND(UK) for sticking with its rather lo-fi approach, especially when compared to the bombastic American and Australian versions. We could go into it in more depth, but instead we’ll point you towards this superb Bothers Bar review of the show from 2005.

One of the most underrated sitcoms of the decade, we’d say. World Of Pub was a great programme with a wonderful premise. Each episode would start and end in much the same way. Pub landlord Barry (Phil Cornwell), working alongside his idiot brother Garry (Peter Serafinowicz), would bemoan the lack of customers in his boozer. Regular barfly Dodgy Phil (Kevin Eldon) would come up with a plan to improve the fortunes of the pub. The plan would be hatched, carried out, events would ensue, and the pub would be destroyed in the final scene. Every week. It’s hard not to love a sitcom with that premise, frankly.

Yes, yes. It might have merely been a clip show, the new material the duo performed wasn’t very good, and a few of the chosen archive sketches turned out to be a little disappointing and all that, but it was brilliant to see them back together one last time, wasn’t it? Additionally, it was nice to see Ronnie B and Ronnie C modestly offer the lion’s share of credit for their favourite skits to the writers.

See also: The Smith & Jones Sketchbook, suggesting this might have been a become a new strand for bygone double acts (and hopefully not just a repeat of the revolving door approach to the hosts of Commercial Breakdown). That turned out not to be the case, cruelly depriving the nation of The Lee & Herring Sketchbook.

While we might not be big fans of David Letterman, we’ve got to admit his production company Worldwide Pants sure knows how to find gold. Case in point – The Knights Of Prosperity, a sadly short-lived ABC comedy following a bunch of misfits who come up with a plan to rob Mick Jagger, and other celebrities once Plan A inevitably goes awry.

It’s often said that the best formula for comedy is to base it on “the idiot who knows nothing, and the idiot who knows everything”. ‘Knights…‘ took things a step further, being based on one idiot who knows everything, and five other idiots of varying intelligence. For a programme where the premise is based entirely on stupidity, the writing was remarkably tight, with the episodes being expertly plotted and deftly scripted. Sadly, it wasn’t enough of a hit with viewers. and after being messed around with by the network (it was cancelled after nine episodes, rescued, then cancelled again two episodes later), ended up with just thirteen episodes in the can.

The first animated show on the list, Frisky Dingo was something we’d describe as – if you threatened to kill our family - Superman meets Seinfeld. The central plot (at least for the first season) revolved around megalomaniacal supervillain Killface and his super-heroic nemesis Awesome X, but the main humour came from the demented turns each episode could – but wouldn’t always - take. The entire first episode revolves around Killface meeting with the marketing team he’d just kidnapped, exploring how best to publicise his plan of crashing the Earth into the Sun. The entire second episode saw Xander Crews (narcissistic alter ego of Awesome X) pondering how he can avoid hanging up his cape, in order to avoid running the corporation he’d inherited.

As the series progresses, the plot flits between the mundane and the ridiculous. One episode sees Killface finally activating his Annihilatrix - it malfunctions, merely moving the earth three feet further away from the sun, thereby ending global warming. As a result, he becomes a national hero and decides to run for President. Meanwhile, Xander Crews finds himself destitute, resorting to boiling used hypodermic needles and selling them back to the homeless.

Coming from the minds of Adam Reed and Matt Thompson – creators of Sealab 2021 – the jokes flow thick and fast throughout each episode (“Put some glitter on this and fax it out.” “You can’t fax glitter!” “Well, not with that attitude…”), and make the region one DVD boxsets well worth investigating.

Another fond studio-audience based glance at a show everyone used to love, and probably still would if anyone ever bothered repeating it. Excellent to see this on the air, but aside from a single repeat showing of the ‘Winter Olympics’ episode about a week and a half later, the Beeb still don’t seem to show us any of The Goodies.

For our money, videoGaiden was – and still is – the best videogaming programme ever broadcast in the UK, taking in the assumed knowledge of its audience, quickfire humour and cheery in-jocularity of magazines like Your Sinclair, Zero and Amiga Power at their best. And it was all aimed at grown-ups, too. Despite it receiving hugely favourable feedback from its viewership, it exists no longer, never making it out of the BBC Two Scotland region. Maybe if Rab and Ryan had put on Charlie Brooker masks throughout each episode, it’d probably be running on BBC Four even now.

See also: Thumb Candy (E4, 2001). Iain Lee looks at the history of videogames, and is surprisingly non-thumpable for the entire duration of this one-off documentary.

Also see also: Charlie Brooker’s Gameswipe (BBC Four, 2009). But then we’ll guess you already know all about that.

And not, of course, “Peter Kay’s Phoenix Nights”, no matter what the DVD cover says. What with Kay’s subsequent actions (taking sole credit for Phoenix Nights despite Neil Fitzmaurice and Dave Spikey being co-creators and co-writers of it, releasing a DVD of the same stand-up set every year, using the plot of a Max & Paddy episode to mean-spiritedly flick V-signs at Dave Spikey, etc, etc), it almost comes as a surprise how good the first series of Phoenix Nights really was. Give it another go. Go on, here’s one of the episodes on YouTube, right here.

By the time series two rolled around, some of the magic had gone, especially in the case of the final few episodes, which practically served as pilots for underwhelming spin-off Max & Paddy’s Road To Nowhere. However, that doesn’t diminish the majesty of the first series, which we think didn’t even have anyone using the words “garlic” and “bread” together in the same sentence.

More from PlayUK, this was a prime example in Doing Things Properly. Aside from just mentioning the Sex Pistols quite often, implying that all music in 1976 was Prog Rock, and showing that archive footage of thousands of full bin liners in a London park because the all bin men had been on strike, this ten part series (ten part!) covered everything from the Pistols to Crass, Sniffin’ Glue to Oi!, Billy Bragg to Sonic Youth, and all points in between. It also played host to lots of interesting pieces from the archive, such as a young Gary Bushell on Newsnight flailing under questioning as to why his record label had put out an Oi compilation clearly inspired by Nazi party sloganeering, or highlighting just how bloody rubbish Limp Bizkit were.

The full series can be viewed from here.

Any series which opens with Kevin Eldon, clad in a red Lycra outfit with a huge question mark on his front, running around a field screaming “What am I?” over and over again, must be good. It’s one of the principle laws of television comedy. Simon Munnery’s alter-ego The League Against Tedium fronted this magnificently bewildering programme, atop a transit van slash battleship in a series of car parks and a big hat. The title sequence of each episode consisted of a voice over informing the viewers how they are shaven monkeys, arse-mouths, army surplus and such before a series of surreal vignettes (such as Kombat Opera, or 24 Hour News Read By A Man Who’s Been Up For 24 Hours – an early TV outing for Johnny Vegas). For the most part the show would comprise cracking dialogue from the baroque mouth of League.

“It is said that at the age of fifty-five, each man becomes that which he most despised at the age of twenty-five. I live in constant fear, lest I should become a badly organised coach trip to Cleethorpes.”

Sadly, Attention Scum fell foul of that most annoying of curses – being commissioned by someone’s predecessor. By the time the show had been made and ready for broadcast, there was a new Mayor Of BBC Two (or whoever gets to decide these things), who didn’t much like the idea of the show, and it was dropped haphazardly onto the schedule so as to be out of the way before anyone would notice. Annoying, but there you go.

Here is episode one. Of it.

“If a million monkeys were given a million typewriters… why, that would be the inter-net!”

Based on the diaries of Kenneth Williams, Fantabulosa! saw Michael Sheen play the role of Williams quite magnificently. As far as we can remember, this was the first of several impressive BBC Four dramas looking at the lives of well-regarded British comedians of yesteryear, but was easily the best.

Pop Fact! Michael Sheen is actually undertaking a massive project where he is due to take on the role of every single notable public figure from the British Isles between the years of 1958 and 1998. We can’t wait until 2037, when he’s pencilled in for “Thought Of A Number: The Johnny Ball Story”.

More archive clippery, but this took things a little further than asking Radio 1 daytime jocks just how much they liked it when David Brent did that dance. Comedy Map Of Britain went on the road around the UK, checking on locales important to the back stories of artists as varied as (deep breath*) Angus Deayton, Anton Rodgers, Arthur Smith, Hale and Pace, Bill Bailey, Chris Moyles, the Chuckle Brothers, Dudley Moore, Eric Idle, Graham Fellows, Hugh Grant, Ian Hislop, Ian Lavender, Jim Davidson, Jon Culshaw, Mark Thomas, Maureen Lipman, Michael Palin, Terry Jones, Paul Merton, Richard Whiteley, Ricky Gervais, Ronni Ancona, Rowan Atkinson, Roy Chubby Brown, Steve Coogan, Syd Little and Eddie Large. Even the stories on the comedians we haven’t got much time for proved to be interesting – we even found ourselves enjoying the part where Leigh Francis visited the house he’d lived in as a teenager, finding some of his early cardboard masks still in the attic.

(*’Deep breath as we copy and paste all those names in from Wikipedia’, admittedly.)

If there’s a ever a place for “programme suffering the worst scheduling slot ever” in the Guinness Book Of Records, we imagine Biffovision would be in with a shout for it. The first showing of this BBC Three pilot first went out at 3.15am on a Tuesday morning. And was listed in the EPG as being a repeat showing of Two Pints of Lager. Surprisingly then, it didn’t attract that many viewers, and wasn’t picked up for a full series.

That’s a massive, massive shame, as we thought it was one of the most promising comedy shows of the last decade. Coming from the minds of Paul Rose and Tim Moore, the men behind seminal Teletext magazine Digitiser, Biffovision took the form of a surreal 1980s kids show where literally anything could happen. Yes, literally anything. The show also spiralled off into what seemed to be more traditional sketches, but which often ended in a less-than-traditional way (“these aren’t even my real hands!”), and while there were a number of cracks in the show you’d hope would have been Polyfilla’ed up before reaching a full series, it all works really well.

The pilot did finally get a repeat in a slightly more reasonable slot (at midnight), and watching it again on YouTube, even now we can’t help but be impressed by the relentless energy and sheer verve of the thing. It could have been a worthy companion to The Smell Of Reeves & Mortimer, but it seems what with the show not being instantly applicable to that all-important key BBC Three demographic, maybe it never, ever stood a chance.

If you’ve never seen Biffovision, we urge you to remedy this now. There’s probably a 60-70% chance you’ll hate it, but that’ll be all your fault for being wrong.

See also: Adam Buxton’s MeeBOX. Another BBC Three pilot not picked up because it contains at least one joke people under 25 might not get. Though, oddly, it’s fine when Family Guy spends half of each episode referring to 1980s pop culture.

A two-parter looking at the history of swearing on television, along with the now standard explanation of why there isn’t any surviving footage of Kenneth Tynan saying Britain’s first televised ‘fuck’ over a montage of furious tabloid headlines. Key moment: Felix Dennis refusing to be proud of being the first person to say ‘cunt’ on TV.

See also: The C-Word: How We Came To Swear By It. Will “Thick Of It” Smith takes a look at the history of fuck’s more offensive brother. The programme quite nicely made the point that certain sections of society are still happy to get on their high horse over its use. by highlighting the Daily Mail’s pre-emptive outrage over the programme itself.

The kind of show we always love to see on our screens, this eight part series looked at different aspects of L.E. over the years. Each episode of The Story Of Light Entertainment concentrated on individual Light Ent genres, such as double acts and impressionists, even spending an entire show on stars of the radio – a laudable thing for a modern day TV show, we’re saying.

Happily, the talking heads on offer tended to be more on the ‘know what the hell they’re on about’ side of the fence (Beadle, Yarwood, Large), even if we did have to put up with Avid bloody Merrion adding absolutely nothing to proceedings.

From the same corner of BBC Scotland that brought us Comedy Connections, That Was The Week We Watched sneaks in ahead of that show due to its broader (but paradoxically, narrower) appeal of concentrating on a specific weeks viewing from the past, with scheduling info and clips aplenty. And yes, we were utterly spellbound by the beautifully rendered CGI recreation of pages from the Radio and TV Times.

Beating the similarly themed Swap Shop retrospective in our list because Tiswas was much better than Swap Shop. Is there a “Best Of Swap Shop” on DVD? No, there isn’t. This is precisely the thing ITV should be putting out on Saturday nights more often, no matter than the eighteen million X Factor viewers think.

Blimey, all that was hard work. Expect 60-51 on Monday!

BrokenTV’s Top 100 Television Shows Of The 00s: Part 3

noreply@blogger.com (Mark X) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 01:40:00 +0000

Cracking on with this, we’re going to go with ten entries a day from hereon in. Mainly because it’ll free up more time for us to bore everyone with hugely esoteric fare about “BrokenTV’s Top Ten Discontinued Snack Foods 2000-2009” and the like, but we suppose it’ll also make each daily visit a bit more worthwhile for you lot, our several readers. That’s also a good thing, in a way, we guess.

Pre-empting Peep Show by several years, ‘The Mitchell and Webb Situation’ went out relatively unnoticed on much-missed digital channel Play UK, before finally being sneaked out on middle-of-the-night BBC Two in 2008. Especially when compared to some of the sketch comedies that have hit the main channels since this first went to air, that’s a bit of a shame (speaking of which, don’t hold your breath for The Kevin Bishop Show, Revolver or Velvet Soup on this rundown, 'kay?). What you’ve got here is pretty much That Mitchell And Webb Look on a reduced budget, so while several of the filler sketches fall a little flat, for the main part the standard of writing wins the day. Look, here’s a clip of a running sketch from the first episode.

See also: Play UK (nee UK Play) in general. Foolishly launched as a digital-only channel in 1998, back when only a few hundred thousand TV geeks had digital TV, it pumped a load of money into all-new programming (almost entirely made by channel part-owners The BBC). Helped by the channel’s other main bad decision – being placed in the '”music” section of Sky’s EPG due to its daytime output being mostly music-based, but depriving it of a prime slot in the “entertainment” section – many of the shows on offer didn’t get the audience they deserved, what with the channel being shoved on the far end of channels like ‘The Box’. By the time Play UK made the move to the “entertainment” section in 2001, it was at the arse-end of that section – not very conductive to ‘passing trade’ (as it were), and the channel closed a year later. It was probably relaunched as UK Repeats Of Changing Rooms, we imagine.

One of the main reasons we’d fight to the death to protect the licence fee is because BBC Four are always likely to commission documentary series like this one. Well, not ‘fight to the death’ as such, but we’d probably take a minor scar on a part of our bodies that’s usually covered by clothing. Comic Britannia was a lovely Iannucci-voiced three-part series, with each episode looking at a different ‘type’ of comic book borne of Old Blimey. Episode one (“The Fun Factory”) was of the greatest interest to us, what with it centring on the likes of The Beano, Whizzer & Chips et al, but the other parts, looking at the comics aimed squarely at each gender, followed by a look at more ‘grown-up’ comics such as Watchmen were both just as entertaining. Admittedly, it’s the simple thought of giving a good few minutes airtime to people saying how ace Leo Baxendale was that helped cement this show’s place in the top hundred.

Twitter’s funniest man wasn’t always restricted to being witty in sub-140 character bursts, of course. Peter “Quick, Copy-Paste His Surname From Somewhere” Serafinowicz’s sketch show wasn’t pure gold by any means – sketches such as the lamentable “You’re A C**t” X-Factor spoof, Gay Holmes or the Clone Brother sketch (which admittedly did have the “argument-bargument” line) fell utterly flat in our living room – but overall, it’s hard to watch this and not be a little mystified why Serafinowicz hadn’t been given his own show earlier. Also, he’d help cement our theory that the entertainers who are the very best at doing impressions seldom restrict themselves to just being ‘impressionists’. See also: Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Rob Newman. Yeah, flip you, Culshaw.

For fairly understandable reasons, Chris Langham won’t be picking up too many cheques for repeat fees these days. Sadly, that means this one-off BBC Two docudrama isn’t likely to get much of a re-airing any time soon, and that’s a huge shame.

Despite being one of the most lauded authors of the 20th century, and despite him actually working for the BBC at one point, there isn’t a single surviving frame of George Orwell in any film or TV archive in the world. When it came to trying to put all this into a television film, Chris Durlacher came up with the approach of ‘inventing’ a series of scenes featuring Orwell, but making sure that every word uttered by his depiction of Orwell had originally been written by the man himself. As a result, Orwell (played by Chris Langham) appears in scenes such as a never-actually-happened episode of Face To Face, or documentary films on his chosen subjects – such as serving in Burma, the Spanish Civil War, or highlighting poverty in Paris and London.

In short, it’s a remarkable piece of television, and you do kind of suspect that were it not for the identity of the lead actor being used as a stick for the Mail and Express to beat the BBC with, it would crop up more frequently in repeat form on BBC Four.

The Real Hustle pretty much created itself a new genre when it hit the digital spectrum in 2006: “factual TV you should be terrified of not watching”. After all, if you didn’t watch each episode, would you have known about the popular scams therein? Each episode ended up revealing at the very least one moment of “Buh! Of course! I’d better bloody look out for that in future”, often more. Admittedly, some of the scams pulled weren’t much of a threat – the one about people wandering into PC World and downloading the software from demo PCs to USB drives was a bit daft – but the vast majority of them were frighteningly plausible. After all, we’re probably not the only ones to be visiting elderly relatives when they’ve received a cold call from from someone claiming to be be The Red Cross, and can they have your debit card details….? Hey, hang on….*

As time went on, the central scamsmiths fell pray to their own popularity, meaning their undercover identities could be too easily rumbled (in much the same way Donal MacIntyre’s had in 1999’s MacIntyre Undercover). This meant the programme relocated overseas for the most recent series, to Las Vegas and beyond, but sadly (at least for us) this has meant the original appeal has become slightly diluted.

Personally, we’d only tuned into it because we’d thought it’d be an animated spin-off from ‘Hustle’, in the same way ‘Ghostbusters’ led to ‘The Real Ghostbusters’. (nb. Not really. We couldn’t stand ‘Hustle’.)

(*And yes, admittedly, said cold callers could well be The actual Red Cross, but… really: flip right off! If you’re an actual charity phoning people (who, in the case of The Actual Elderly Relatives We’re Talking About, already voluntarily give to The Red Cross), don’t. Give people the free will to contribute if they wish to, don’t badger them into it. If you do, you’re a bunch of shitbags. Yes, you are. Yes, even if you are a charity. This is the thing we think, if you do the thing we’ve just said.. You heard.)

In the pre-show publicity (at least the parts of it where Lee hadn’t penned articles under a false name saying how his show was going to be rubbish and people should just watch Michael McIntyre instead), Stewart Lee expressed his hope that his Comedy Vehicle would be a return to the days of Dave Allen on a stool being brilliant. As it turned out, he wasn’t quite right (if nothing else, Lee’s show didn’t include jokes with rape as a punchline, unlike Dave Allen*), but Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle was a very good show nonetheless.

We might be pissing in the face of received comedy wisdom here, but when he’s doing a live gig, Stewart Lee does have an unhappy habit of making forty minutes material last for two hours, doesn’t he? In his 41st Best Stand-Up Ever set, his Tom O’Connor ‘Sardine’ bit seemed to take up about 40% of the show. It was probably a lot less - we didn’t time it or compile a graph or anything - but it seemed to be about that much. But when given a number (that number being ‘six’. Not sure why we’ve said ‘a number’. Maybe we’re merely trying to increase the word count) of half-hour slots to fill, he was able to be a little tighter. Okay, maybe the stand-up on our screen was a little bit too tight, what with the programme including cutaway scenes merely reaffirming the point he’d just made without even bothering to include an extra gag, but the fact each episode seemed to whizz by so quickly was testament to the quality of Lee’s stand-up.

(*This is true, sadly. As the BBC Two repeat run of Dave Allen At Large in 2005 showed, there was once an Allen sketch where a young woman is drowning in a swimming pool, repeatedly shouting “help!” to notify people of her plight. The lifeguard (played by Allen) duly dives in to save her, and pulls her to the side of the pool. The lifeguard then carries her to a changing room (off camera) and begins molesting her, causing her to shout “help! help!” all over again. And that was the punchline. Really. Frigging hell. All credit to BBC Two for showing the episode uncut meaning we’re able to make up our own minds on the matter, of course, but bloody hell. Still, at least he didn’t say something rude about the Queen, eh?)

See also: The lovely Red Button extras for the programme, where Lee would improvise banter with Armando Iannucci about the subject of each night’s episode, intercut with out-takes from the studio recording. For the last two episodes, Lee also quite generously broadcast highlights of the warm-up acts used for some of the shows. That’s certainly the first time we’ve seen that done (mainly because no-one had bothered switching on the cameras for the warm-up acts before now, we presume), but something we wish more comedy shows would do. Oh? What’s that? We’re stuck with forced joyless discussions between a Phill Jupitus and Noel Fielding who’d rather be in the pub on our Red Button channel? Ah.

Don’t also see: Time Trumpet. Despite the involvement of Armando Iannucci, Stewart Lee and Adam Buxton, and despite it following on from the brilliant (but somehow not on this list) ‘2004: The Stupid Version’, it was a bit crap.

More BBC Four fantasticness. If you were going to put together an hour-long documentary on a videogame for BBC Four, what would you choose? Half-Life? Ico? The Grand Theft Auto series could probably stretch to a whole hour? Mario? No, try that one where the shapes drop onto each other.

Yes, Tetris. One of the lynchpins of the channel’s Hard Drive Heaven series (despite – GEEK HAT ON! – no version of Tetris we know needing to be installed to a hard drive to run), Tetris: From Russia With Love looked at the slightly surprising history behind the puzzle game. If nothing else, the fact the programme highlighted a huge legal tussle between Robert Maxwell and Nintendo makes it worth watching. Oh, and it’s also worth us mentioning that Tetris topped the list of (long-forgotten videogaming website) Xbollox’s Top 100 Videogames Of All-Time. That might just seem like we’re trying to force everyone to read something we wrote back when we were any good, but we’d like to state that Stu Campbell once called that article “the best list of Top 100 Games not done by me” (on the old Edge forum, we think, though we can’t be clear on the actual syntax he’d used at the time. What’s that? No-one cares? Oh).

Representing precisely the kind of 9pm-10pm Saturday night documentary-on-a-slightly-lightweight-topic pioneered by ‘I Love 19[decade][year]’ at the turn of the century, The Smash Hits Story looked at arguably the most brilliantly 1980s publication there ever was (yes, it ran from 1978 to 2006, we know). Inspiring everything from lame copyists ‘No1’ and ‘Fast Forward’ to the mighty Your Sinclair, The Smash Hits Story looked at the peak years of this publishing phenomenon, and commendably treated the last ten years or so of it’s publication with commendable short shrift. Just as when we’re allowed to to do a documentary on the NME, we’ll only bother covering up to 1998. It’ll happen, just you wait.

Special ironic post-script: the plug was pulled on Smash Hits just in time to miss the reigns of La Roux, Ladyhawke, Annie, Lady GaGa, Florence, Saturdays and Hot Chip. But there was a mini-comeback for Michael Jackson once he was dead, so well done there.

Possibly the bravest scheduling of the decade. Come December 2001, merely a few months after 9/11, the whole topic of “New York” was still very much off-limits for TV comedy. Remember how brave it’d seemed when Frank Skinner had shown his brilliant “You’ve Bin Laden” video out-take sketch only a few weeks earlier? Well, with hindsight, Skinner’s sketch was at about the same level as The Dandy publishing “Addie and Hermy” strips circa 1940, while – if you were an idiot, admittedly – this show could be seen as making gags about the holocaust in 1939.

In actual fact, this show had been recorded well before the events of September 11th 2001 – a fact the Channel Five continuity announcer went to great pains to point out before each episode – but even this hadn’t been the case, Sadowitz (who, to their eternal credit, the nascent C5 seemed to have chosen as their flagship comic, what with The Jerry Atrick Show, The People Versus and all that) surely wouldn’t have shirked from telling it like it was. The first episode ended with Sadowitz berating man-mountain WWF manager Johnny Valiant over the fakery of wresting, with furious condequences, and the remainder of the series pretty much went on from there.

In a decade where more people than ever have access to the non-traditional channels, the amount of interesting repeats seems to be lower than ever before. While UK Gold launched on the back of The Innes Book Of Records, Morning Sarge and KYTV, where are we now? Only Fools And Horses, Porridge and The Vicar Of Dibley on a constant loop. For shame.

Luckily, ITV4 felt fit to buck this trend – even if it were only on the daytime and early evening schedules, with verbatim repeats of not just The Big Match, but also occasional offerings from the other 1970s ITV regions, mainly Granada’s Barry Davies/Elton Welsby-helmed “The Kick-Off Match” (Wrexham vs Sunderland? Yay! We suspect Wrexham’s Racecourse Ground was the only one still readily identifiable from these repeat broadcasts). All this was brilliant to see, not least for the most minor of factors, like the way Big Match host Brian Moore always kept a big beige telephone on his desk, in case the gallery needed to contact him, or the way Moore would always read out the full names and addresses of competition winners: “Congratulations to Mrs Edna Smith of 27 St George Road, Leicester! You’re the winner of two tickets to the European Cup Final in Munich next May.” Quite how Mrs Edna Smith reacted on getting home from Munich two days after the European Cup Final only to find she’d been burgled, TV history hasn’t deemed fit to record.

Pertinent postscript: Kudos to Twitter’s @Custard_Socks for noticing this - repeats of The Big Match Revisited are currently running on Men And Motors on Wednesday nights. Y’know, at the exact same time either Champions League highlights are being shown on ITV1, or League Cup highlights are being shown on BBC One. Remind us, why did we forget that Men And Motors still exists again?

Tomorrow (or: “later today”, given how late it is), 80-71.

BrokenTV’s Top 100 Television Shows Of The 00s: Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Mark X) — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 17:55:00 +0000

While we’d like to spend a little time musing on the way BBC North-West and Granada* have failed to heed our advice and simply fallen off-air at the end of their analogue tenure, we’re instead going to crack on with:

(*Though, really… Granada? You used to give a flying crap about things! You just collapsed off-air in the middle of a film no-one cares about. If you still had an ounce of decorum, you’d have summoned up a roll-call of continuity announcers, like Colin Weston, Richard, Judy, Bob Greaves, Lucy Meacock, and the rest… for shame.)

There have been quite a lot of “wry looks at unusual people” from just beneath Louis Theroux’s faux-concerned brow over the last decade, but it’s this which has stayed in our memory. Louis And The Nazis saw Theroux visit California, specifically the home of the man dubbed “the most dangerous racist in America”, Tom Metzger, in order to see just what makes him tick. Tick with bilious bigoted fury.

While Metzher spent most of the programme trying to be polite and well-mannered (as racists tend to do when appearing in documentaries), one pivotal scene of the documentary saw him, alongside his family, angrily excommunicate Theroux from him home, after Louis courageously refused to reveal whether he was Jewish or not.

See also: Nazi Pop Twins. A 2007 Channel Four documentary where James Quinn travelled to meet Prussian Blue (who were also shown in “Louis And The Nazis”), pretty much the white supremacist answer to Tegan & Sara.

TV’s Believe It Or Not was (what seemed to be) a curious yet enjoyable pair of pilots for Sean Lock. Both programmes dipped into the less remarkable depths of TV history, be they UK-based (such as popping in and out of The Sky At Night’s ill-judged dalliance with cloud-strewn live astronomy) and US-based (Shatner. Rocket Man. That is all). On first transmission, episode one ran from 8pm-9pm, and was a family-friendly flip through the more mockable parts of the television archives. Episode two ran from 9pm-10pm of the same night’s BBC Four schedule, and was an expletive-packed glance at similarly kickable televisual offcuts. With the perpetually quick-witted Lock at the helm, both programmes were as hugely entertaining as you could reasonably expect such a thing to be – maybe Victor Lewis-Smith about fifteen years ago could have handled the show slightly more entertainingly, but only just so.

“Liiiiiiiive astronomyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!”

Sadly, this hasn’t yet mutated into an actual series. And sadly, it hasn’t stopped people on the internet calling Sean Lock “Sean Locke”.

You know all the things the infuriating Extras decided to pretend was wrong with studio-audience sitcoms? And you know Ash Italia’s ill-considered theory in a Word Magazine article about how British stand-up comedians are incapable of penning half-decent sitcoms? Well, this quite comprehensively slaps the latter around the chops, and kicks the former quite forcedly in the balls. And was it Not Going Out that felt the need to include a teeth-clenching cameo from the star’s top showbiz chum Chris Martin? No, it wasn’t.

So, Not Going Out happily debunked many of the misconceptions about the British sitcom. It had a live studio audience (of course, so did Father Ted and I’m Alan Partridge, but columnists tend to forget that when they’re getting in a lather over The Sodding Office). It was primarily written by a stand-up comedian (of course, so were many prime US sitcoms, but columnists tend to etc). It went out on BBC One (of course, so did Men Behaving Badly, but people seem to have forgotten how good that was when when making lists).

Anyway, to detract from us just finding excuses to attack perceived prejudices, we’ll just note that each episode of Not Going Out contained enough piss-funny lines to win us over, no matter how weak the plot tended to be, or how underused Miranda Hart was once she was written in as a proper character. If nothing else, in this age of “relentless promotion before the first episode of each series, fingers crossed most viewers stick around for episode two”, Not Going Out saw its audience grow episode by episode, despite never really being promoted by the BBC. So, naturally, it was axed before series three had finished. Hey, that’s marketing for you. Expect the final, Christmas themed episode on your screen over the end of this month, unless the BBC One schedulers are even more clueless than even we’d fear think.

He looks and sounds a bit like Andrew Collings. He writes and thinks a bit like us, if you were to believe a reply to one of our posts on the NotBBC comedy forum a couple of years ago (we post there under the less-than-wacky pseudonym ‘Mark’, which presumably led to the confusion). Clearly, the latter isn’t at all appropriate (if nothing else, you’d have to take everything we say, but then replace the words “Shaun Micallef” with “Neil Kinnock” or something), as we’d never be capable of making biographies of Lord Byron, Karl Marx, Thomas Paine or Harriet Tubman accessible to, well, berks like us.

The Mark Steel Lectures was able to take such lofty subjects and make them accessible to the YouTube-video-sized attention spans of Generation X, putting them in the contexts of Room 101 (the Merton-fronted TV show, as opposed Orwell’s original) or the Match Of The Day studio. This led to modern-day dullards like us learning things by deceptive proxy. This is a good thing.

One of our favourite things about BBC Two over the last decade has been their propensity to broadcast programmes like this. It would have been just as easy to run a clip show fronted by a former kids TV presenter wandering around a hamfisted mockup of the Live & Kicking set, but they didn’t do that. Instead, they invited Noel Edmonds to front a retrospective of BBC One’s Saturday morning kids output – in front of a huge studio audience, and alongside his original co-stars – to great effect.

While you could quite justifiably claim such a programme was just a cynical exercise in memory-gland tugging, we’d counter that even the cold mechanical heart of a cyborg Norman Tebbit would have found the phone call from a stricken Tony Hart to be genuinely moving.

BrokenTV’s Top 100 Television Shows Of The 00s: Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Mark X) — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 17:35:00 +0000

It’s December, and that means it’s time for AN UPDATE A DAY from your super soaraway BrokenTV, all the way up to Christmas Day. No matter how busy, drunk or lying unconscious in a ditch we are, there’ll be something new on this blog every day. And if you’re going to start something like that, why not start big? Time for:

BrokenTV has called in all of its staff, including all of the staff members who never seem to post any updates to the blog, a cherry picked team of top media players, alongside several major figures from the television industry. Together, they embarked on a week’s stay at a top secret Travelodge and spent a sixty-hour week locked in vitriolic negotiations about just what abbreviation we should be using for the decade that is about to splutter out. “The noughties” has never sounded quite right (indeed, it’s December 2009, and our spell checker still doesn’t recognise it), “the zeroes” sounds too American, and we can’t use “the 2000s” because that’ll leave us nothing to use when we pen our roundup of the century’s television in December 2099. Stay tuned for that, by the way, just ninety years from now. It’ll be a blast.

In the end, the panel settled for “The Oh-Ohs”. Of course, it’s the only decade this century to end with two zeroes, it’s quite catchy, and the panel felt that when uttered, the phrase successfully encapsulated the events of the preceding nine years and eleven months, what with the war, the terrorism and the economic strife and everything. So there you go. “The Oh-Ohs”.

Then we got the work experience kid to cobble together a list of the best hundred telly shows from the decade. We would have asked the panel for their input, but they wouldn’t stop going on about when they’d be allowed to see their families again. That was apart from Mark Lawson, who was desperate keen to stay and help. Of course, we’re not that desperate.

* A quick note on how we’re doing this: to keep things interesting, we’re only including television programmes which have started in the last decade. For example, don’t expect to see The Sopranos (HBO, 1999-2007) in there. On we go!

Ah, high concept television. While it could easily be annoying - imagine an edgy sketch show where the last line of every skit was "I see you've bought a new ladder" - it can often become second nature. For example, when Peep Show started, surely we weren't alone in thinking the entire first-person-view schtick would get timesome by about the third episode. And how wrong we all were, eh?

But this isn't about Peep Show, it’s about (to give the show its full title) ‘Frank Sidebottom’s Proper Telly Show in B/W, With Repeats In Colour’. As you might expect from the title, the first time each programme was broadcast, it was in monochrome, giving the (already pretty lo-fi) programme the feel of being captured on CCTV. When the same-week repeats rolled around, they were in full colour. An utterly pointless conceit, and as such one that we enjoyed seeing quite a lot.

Anyway, the programme itself. Anyone who stayed up too late too frequently in the early 1990s might remember Frank’s Fantastic Shed Show, a decidedly cheap yet cheerful affair going out on the wrong side of midnight on ITV. This is largely the same, but with about a fifth of the budget, meaning your enjoyment of the whole thing will hinge on whether you find Frank Sidebottom entertaining or not. We happen to think he’s endlessly entertaining, more so when the studio guests on ‘Proper Telly Show’ (yes, there were studio guests) didn’t know anything about him. David Soul, for example, clearly didn’t have the foggiest what was going on, and presumably spent most of his off-camera time pondering how long the sixth circle of hell had been in Manchester.

Notable mention: Frank Sidebottom, alongside Little Frank, also starred in Channel M’s overnight test card until the handover to Euronews. This meant the test card would appear as usual, only the centre was taken up by recordings of Frank improvising banter with his puppet alter ego. And best yet, no scary cloth clown in sight. (Second notable mention: We were delighted to notice that Frank appears in the US television commercial for FIFA 10, just the same as he does in the UK version.)

More hi-concept hi-jinkery, this time from the pen (and whatever implement people primarily use to direct things) of Peter “Chicken Lollies!” Baynham. I Am Not An Animal was the Triffic Films-animated tale of a group of highly pseudo-intelligent animals rescued from the laboratory of a vivisectionist, being forced to fend for themselves.

A top-drawer collection of voice artistes lent their voices to the show, including Steve Coogan, Kevin Eldon, Amerlia Bullmore, Julia Davies, Simon Pegg and Arthur Matthews, the latter as a rabbit bred specifically to provide telephone IT support. The main humour to be derived from the show is the relentlessly optimistic yet slightly bewildered nature of the main characters. On first being set free, finding themselves in a field of cows, paternalistic horse Peter remarks how they must be in “[a] weird giant nightclub with an uneven green dancefloor, which the overweight, naked clientele insist on eating”. Similar confusions ensue as our suburban menagerie find their own house, and (unwittingly) avoid capture from their former owners Vivi-Sec UK.

Hardly the most EPG-friendly offering on our list, Penn & Teller: Bullshit! sees the punk illusionists calling, well, bullshit on a number of pseudoscientific notions, fads and misconceptions.

Many, if not all, of the topics should often have a default setting of “bullshit” in the minds of most reasonably thoughtful people, but that doesn’t stop it being an interesting, and useful programme. In an age where far too much television exploits people buying into the myths of “talking to the dead”, alternative medicine or crypto-zoology, it’s kind of comforting to see a programme roundly debunking such things – and showing their workings as they go. As well as swearing quite a lot.

As you might expect, it’s far from being a show for everyone. Penn and Teller’s libertarian viewpoints mean that left-wing prejudices are attacked as often as those from the right, so while Timmy Guardianreader might well lap up episodes focusing on creationism or so-called ‘family values’, he’d be spitting tofu with apoplectic rage at the episodes attacking environmental hysteria, recycling or PETA (well, not ‘apoplectic rage’ as such, but he might mutter something and scratch his beard angrily).

If we do have one problem with the show, it’s that the producers can occasionally be as prone to cherry-picking their ‘evidence’ as those they are attacking. An early episode looked at the ‘myth of secondhand smoke’, which Penn Gillette has since admitted had been misleading. And so would Teller if he hasn’t been in character, presumably.

Given it’s arguably the greatest revelation in communication since the invention of the printing press, it’s surprising there haven’t been many television documentaries taking a look at the history of the internet. Or possibly, given the way we’d said “the printing press” and not “television” in that sentence, not that surprising (because television allowed only a tiny proportion or people to put out their crackpot views to millions, whereas the printing press and internet allowed anyone with the necessary equipment to pump out their demented ideas without fear of censure, like what we’re doing now. If you were wondering).

It seems that for this decade, Download: The True Story Of The Internet is as comprehensive a retelling of the tale as we’re going to get. It’s not absolutely perfect – the slightly odd presentational style of host John Heileman can be a little offputting – but all credit to the producers for having the show helmed by a journalist who has been closely involved with the web from its early days, and he does know what he’s talking about. Just remember, if the show had been made in the UK, it’d probably be hosted by Iain Lee instead. So, think on.

The first episode of ‘Download…’ can be viewed in full on Google Video here.

Quite annoyingly, John Simm doesn’t seemed to have aged a single day over the last ten years. 2000’s Never Never was a two-part drama for Channel Four, written by Tony Marchant. It saw Simm playing John Parlour, a darkly charming loan shark, forever hovering around the residents of a sink estate with the promise of funding a Christmas their kids really deserve, and hey, something special for you as well. After a fashion, karma ends up taking its revenge on Parlour, putting him in a position where he needs to help of his former victims if he is to survive.

Very well written, and as good a performance as you’d expect from Simm, this is a nicely engrossing story that really ought to see an outing on More4.

Tune in tomorrow for shows 95-91! Or whatever the web equivalent of ‘tuning in’ is. Click in? Ah, you know what we mean.

Shaun Micallef’s His Generation (As Proper A Review As We Are Capable.) (Of.)

noreply@blogger.com (Mark X) — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 21:39:00 +0000

Stealing an image directly from The Vine’s interview with Shaun Micallef to use at the start of this review probably wouldn’t be legal, would it? But what if we took a screenshot of part of The Vine’s website that happened to have a photo of Shaun Micallef on it? Surely that would just be classified as coincidental, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t it? We’re pretty sure it would. (“Taxi!” – BrokenTV’s Legal Dept)

Well, we’ve been listening to My Generation, the debut album from one-man comedy renaissance Shaun Micallef, and guess what? It’s really good. As we’ve mentioned, it’s more of a traditional comedy album, taking in specially-written sketches and songs, as opposed to being Just Comedy Songs or Just Live Stand-Up, like other comedians would put out. Here’s a track by track breakdown, containing mild spoilers because copying out lines from the album is much easier than us coming up with ‘opinions’ and ‘being interesting’.

Track One/Two: A Welcome / I Remember You

An introduction to the album, followed by a rendition of the Frank Ifield classic. The cover begins as a fairly straight version of the song, before trailing off into silly voices while the backing singers (well, a multi-tracked Susie Ahern) continue stoically with the ‘proper’ version. Interestingly (well, or inconsequentially, depending on whether you’re us or not) it’s a completely different take of the song than that lip-synced by Shaun on the Rove clip we linked to yesterday.

It’s A Bit Like: Vic Reeves, circa Big Night Out

Track Three: Treading The Boards

An second-division English thesp looks back over the career of himself and his top showbiz chums. The first outing on the disc for some of the splendid wordplay we’ve come to associate with Mr Micallef, which is always more than welcome. Plus, any comedy album released in 2009 that uses Kenneth Tynan as a reference is a welcome thing in our book, and not just because already knowing who Kenneth Tynan is makes us feel a bit superior for about three seconds (although after that our feeling of superiority is outweighed by our default setting of ‘self-loathing’, meaning the equilibrium is restored, not least because we’ve just realised we’re the sort of twats who’d use a word like ‘equilibrium’. But hey, this isn’t about us).

“O! If his mouth could talk, the stories it could tell…”

It’s A Bit Like: Peter Cook

Track Four/Five: An Announcement/Christopher Walken Sings David Bowie

Shaun does Bowie’s ‘Fashion’, in the voice of Chris Walken. Brief enough to avoid outstaying its welcome. Previously used as a gag on Micallef Tonight, of course.

Track Six/Seven: Women/Things That You Can Do

A postmodernly faux-sexist ditty about female heads of state around the world (including, as you might expect, multiple references to Ukraine’s Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko), followed about a harpsichord-backed tune from the 1950s about “The Things An Australian Wife Can Do”, performed in the style of Noel Coward. More delightful wordplay on offer, which works much more impressively when listened to, than when merely transcribed on the internet by idiots like us. But still:

“Clever things that you can do-oo / Clever things that you can do-oo / Just keep the lino polished / your cares will be abolished / you’ll wonder where the daylight hours flew.”

It’s A Bit Like: Spitting Image, then Noel Coward

Track Eight/Nine: An Interview/Accident Medley

In a piece that could have been written then deemed not quite suitable for Newstopia, Shaun meets Neil Brady (played by Shaun), a schoolteacher who has written a heartfelt medley about the Death Of Princess Diana, and other tragedies.

”Oh, they chased her down a tunnel, but she couldn’t get away / if only they had dared to stop and think / But they went snap! Snap! Snap! The crazy pap- / -arazzi were to blame, and her driver who’d had too much to drink.”

It’s A Bit Like: Newstopia, like we just said

Track Ten: Medicine Man

Splendid. Micallef performs a monologue in the guise of an old-fashioned doctor from a Yorkshire village, who holds no truck with the modern ways of that fancy coroner from the Big Town.

It’s A Bit Like: Alan Bennett, or Stephen Fry

Track Eleven: They Whisper His Name

Sotto Voce!

It’s A Bit Like: The title theme to series three of Alexei Sayle’s Stuff, but taken in a different direction

Track Twelve: Charlton Heston Reads The Bible

One of our favourite things. Shaun gets another chance to do his brilliant Charlton Heston impersonation, previously heard in the reports by “Pilger Heston” on Newstopia. Charlton Heston is in a recording studio, trying to record a speaking book of The Bible, with amusingly splendid consequences.

”This God-damn Bible is taking forever!”

It’s A Bit Like: Newstopia, or Smith & Jones when they were at their peak

Track Thirteen: Love Theme From Roger Explosion

Performed by Susie Ahern, it’s a theme for the Roger Explosion sketches from Full Frontal (the 1990s Australian sketch show that we’re always mixing up with the similarly alliterative Fast Forward, even though Fast Forward was rubbish and Full Frontal was great and had Eric Bana as a cast member and everything).

It’s A Bit Like: They Might Be Giants’ theme for Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.

Track Fourteen: Slap On The Terrorist

Another sketch we presume was originally penned for Newstopia, Shaun interviews Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the terrorist behind the failed 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Yousef clearly has long-held issues with the 9/11 bombers, who had clearly plagiarised his idea, and to compound matters, had carried it out with none of the panache and flair that he’d had. A great sketch, with Shaun putting in good performances in both roles.

It’s A Bit Like: Newstopia again

Track Fifteen: Jesus Was A Good Man

A country-tinged melody about how Jesus was really good, and how the devil is rubbish.

It’s A Bit Like: A satire on Toby Keith, or someone, we imagine

Track Sixteen: A Visit

An uncaring son visits his bewildered elderly father at an old people’s home. A brilliant sketch that works best when you hear it for yourself, so less said the better. It’s basically a fleshing out of a certain sketch from Micallef P(r)ogram(me), and the post-credits scene at the end of an episode Micallef-devised sitcom Welcher & Welcher, if you’ve seen those.

It’s A Bit Like: The Micallef P(r)ogram(me), or heck, Monty Python. Probably Cleese as the son, Jones as the father. Maybe even Cook & Moore.

Track Seventeen: Hell Of A Time

Just dandy. A short song from the perspective of a dead man reaching heaven, and being delighted about all the things he can do now he’s there. Oh, if only there were a way you could hear what it was like.

It’s A Bit Like: Eric Idle in full pomp

Track Eighteen/Nineteen: An Explanation/Modern Day Folk Heroes

Shaun muses on how Ned Kelly is Australia’s sole folk hero and how there should be more of them. He duly introduces a song about some more contemporary equivalents to Kelly in the hope they they could subsequently be held in similar regard to old bucketbonce. Said song is then performed in the style of Bob Dylan.

It’s A Bit Like: The Bit In Newstopia Where Shaun Sang A Song As Bob Dylan

Track Twenty/Twenty-One: A Briefing/Dalgetty’s Fruit Wholesalers

Mr Dalgetty, owner of a fruit wholesale firm visits a slick American advertising agency, and tells them all about the background of the family-owned firm, and what they’re looking for. The agency then performs their radio advert for the company. A bit one-note, but hey.

It’s A Little Bit Like: The Songs Victor Lewis Smith Did Between The Prank Calls On Nuisance Calls

Track Twenty-Two/Twenty-Three: A Synopsis/Cahiers Du Cinema

A French actor introduces his song in a near indecipherable accent, followed by his song, performed in something which may not necessarily be in actual French. We’re not sure, as like Girls Aloud, we can’t speak French.

It’s A Bit Like: Don’t know, but the backing music was also used for the menus in at least one of the Micallef P(r)ogram(me) DVDs.

Track Twenty-Four/Twenty-Five: An Early Morning/Tipworks Market

An eager father wakes up his children, because they are all going to… Tipworks Market. A short song about said market is then performed, in the same breathless style as Victor Lewis Smith circa Inside Victor Lewis Smith.

It’s A Bit Like: Victor Lewis Smith, moreso than the Dalgetty sketch

Track Twenty-Six: Poetica Zirconia

Just super. More top wordplay from Shaun, via a look at the work of poet Sir I.P. Whittingslow. Great stuff that we’re not going to spoil by transcribing here, so you’ll just have to buy the album. As the sketch contains several funny poems that work very nicely in isolation, this could be cherry-picked for an episode of The Smith Lectures, if Radio Two still do that. We wouldn’t know, as they’ve stopped putting their comedy shows on Saturday afternoons, because they’re idiots.

Track Twenty-Seven/Twenty Eight: A Tribute/My Generation

Shaun introduces and performs an electro cover version of the The Who classic, before waxing philosophical on matters historical.

“If history teaches us anything, it’s that we learn nothing from it. It’s a valuable lesson that’s worth remembering, and unless we do, we’re doomed to repeat it, or at least sit a supplementary exam during the holidays.”

Track Twenty-Nine: Happy New Year

Shaun’s celebratory tune designed to create global togetherness just after 11.59pm on every December 31st, by way of impersonating residents of several trouble-stricken nations forgiving their tormentors. A nice end to the album, and one we’ll hope to see performed on Shaun Micallef’s New Year’s Eve show on Australia’s Channel Ten. Or more specifically, the following day, if we can find a (“wholly legal advertising-supported streaming video of it. Where’s that bloody taxi?” – BrokenTV’s Legal Dept).

It’s A Bit Like: Spitting Image, again

So there it is. Much more of a ‘lazily-compiled breakdown of the tracks alongside a bunch of facile comparisons’ than an actual ‘review’, admittedly, but that’s just how we roll. In summary though, it’s really good, save for a few duff tracks like “Cahiers Du Cinema” or “Dalgetty’s Fruit Wholesalers”, which we didn’t really rate that highly. In a nutshell: the good tracks more than outweigh the bad, and if you don’t buy it we don’t think you shouldn’t legally be allowed to vote.

To round things off, how about offering a sample track? After all, it’s what successful music blogs do, it would genuinely help promote the album as people can hear for themselves what the contents are like, and probably won’t end with a harshly worded cease-and-desist letter being fired off at Broken Industries Inc. Yes. That’s what we’re going to do. it’ll be a good thing to do. A nice thing. An honourable thing.

MP3: Shaun Micallef – Hell Of A Time

Buy a copy of His Generation from here if you’re in the UK, or from here if you’re in Australia. If you’re from neither, both links are probably equally applicable.

(“Thank God you’re here. Driver – the airport please. We want nothing to do with this.” – BrokenTV’s Legal Dept.)

YouTube Thing And Album Of The Day

noreply@blogger.com (Mark X) — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 13:43:00 +0000

We've been listening to the new Shaun Micallef CD plugged in the above Rove interview. Except, Micallef being Micellef, he instead plugged a wholly fictional album, and brought with him a copy of The Best Of The Smiths to display.

The actual proper album is a really rather splendid "old-school" (if you will) comedy album like what Peter Sellers or Monty Python used to make, containing a few comedy songs ("Christopher Walken Sings David Bowie's Fashion") and a load of enjoyable sketches. Favourite so far: "Charlton Heston Reads The Bible". You can buy it here. Or elsewhere, probably. Like iTunes if you're in Australia, we shouldn't wonder.

(Yes, this is a bit of a placeholder update until we come up with something else. Still a great album, though.)

Update: It's also available from Amazon Marketplace for under a tenner. Thanks to Paul from Hot Cuss (which should be updated more frequently. Tsk) for the heads up.

Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out In The Middle Of BBC News 24 – It’s The Digital Switchover!

noreply@blogger.com (Mark X) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:23:00 +0000

Not one, but two disappointing YouTube-based updates on the same day? We’re spoiling you, we really are.

So, the Big Digital Switch-Off is now underway, and given the number of posters featuring That Robot Formerly Voiced By Matt Lucas But Which Has Since Become Mute (possibly not the robot’s real name) hanging from lamp-posts in our vicinity, it’s a big deal. Certainly big enough for us to have to retune our Freeview box every few weeks if we want to avoid accidentally recording Five’s 8.30pm output with our series link for The Daily Show, and big enough for ‘our’ BBC region to become BBC Wales, but for our ITV region to remain Granada. Maybe the region thing is down to continental drift, who knows. But anyway, yeah, big.

How is this being marked? Pretty much every transmitter has been pumping out an analogue signal for at least fifty years – you’d hope they’d be given a last hurrah before having the plug kicked out. While it’d be a bit much to expect the sort of big showbiz farewell old ITV franchises used to put on once they’d lost their licence, it would be nice.

You could guess the drill here. A montage of some of the programming put out over the transmitter over the years, interviews with local ‘celebrities’ (possibly restricted to a reporter from the local news and the bloke from Safestyle Windows, but hey). A sombre chat with the engineers who’ll be carrying out the actual switch off. A jovial glance at some of the transmitter-based bloopers over the years – mostly where the picture would cut to static, but if we’re lucky there could be a misspelling of the word “Independent” on the transmitter-generated caption for the 1979 ITV strike.

Actually, having said all that, it’d be a rubbish idea. No wonder we’re not director general of the BBC. We didn’t even make it to the interview stage.

They could at the very least give the switch-off a cursory mention on the BBC News Channel just before the channel falls off air, in the manner of Philip Schofield saying “goodbye to Northern Ireland” when he was in The Broom Cupboard and they were about to cut to their regional news. That’d be quite good. Or maybe just put up a special caption, and a nice bit of music. Even a Ceefax page saying what’s going on, for the benefit of the elderly and/or bewildered. Or even, just for a bit of a giggle, let the nuclear attack emergency broadcast system kick in. Chortle!

After all, with such a rich history in broadcasting, surely the BBC wouldn’t let the UHF signal they’ve been sending us so lovingly for so many years end with a whimper? By just letting it die in the middle of the overnight BBC News simulcast? Surely not that. That’d just be shi- oh? They did just that? Ah.

“Bye Winter Hill! Don’t let 56 years of transmission hit you on the arse on the way out!”

“See you in hell, Moel-Y-Parc!“

So much for BBC Two in the UK, but what about the digital Checkpoint Charlie in other nations? Germany, for example. Back in the pre-digital Sky era, we used to love wandering through the high numbers on the Pace receiver checking out German telly, and it seemed to be very professionally put together. Some channels used to fill the wee small hours by broadcasting repeats of news bulletins from the 1970s (yes, really! How excellent is that, eh?), or rolling as-live thru-windscreen coverage of someone driving through Germany (again, yes really! How utterly uninteresting is that, eh?). Surely our stereotypically efficient Teutonic cousins would make the effort?

Sadly, and similarly, no. Going by this grainy couldn’t-even-be-bothered-running-an-aerial-lead-into-their-PVR footage, German station ARD (was that the one who ran repeats of Monty Python series four in the mid-90s?) simply fell off the air with a whimper in the middle of an entertainment show.

Meanwhile, the feed of ARD on the Grünten E2 transmitter at least had the good grace to go out after the end of a news bulletin, before crashing quite amusingly into the testcard and a piece of hugely inappropriate music. Five bonus points to them.

Leave it to Sweden to do things properly. The analogue farewell for viewers of TV4 saw a news bulletin interviewing the very engineers who’ll be shutting off the analogue signal, before falling off-air in the middle of a cooking programme. Admittedly, it should have been done with a special closedown concert featuring Whale, The Wannadies and The Knife, but it’s a marked improvement on what we’ve seen so far.

Hopping over the Atlantic, the home of Still Bothering To Do Regional TV Properly, it seems quite a bit more was made of the switchover.

A lot of – if not all - channels ran rolling captions over their analogue broadcasts detailing what was about to happen. If nothing else, it gives us an excuse to post a clip of the hugely underrated Drew Carey Show.

As for the actual turn-off itself, it was handled so well, we’re almost feeling guilty about about the haphazardly Photoshopped picture just up there. There are plenty of clips of these on YouTube, so we’ve had the BrokenTV researcher monkeys poring over as many as several of them to bring you

BROKENTV’S TOP 3 US ANALOG(UE) SWITCH-OFF CLIPS

Iiiiiiiiiin three! Illinois-based WGEM went about things very nicely, with the whole thing making up part of a news bulletin. No Swedish engineers in ill-considered knitwear here – the switch-off is handled by one of the station’s reporters, after a cheery explanation on what’ll happen next. Hurrah!

Iiiiiiiiin two! Unless Fox News have been lying to us, PBS affiliate WSRE is sure to sign off with a BBC World News bulletin, a plea to get everyone driving hybrids, and will end on an animation of Richard Dawkins jumping up and down on Old Glory as a sarcastic Europop remix of The Star-Spangled Banner plays out in the background. Well, it doesn’t. Instead, we get a lovely slideshow of transmission rooms, musings on the era of analog(ue) broadcasting, a tremendously overcomplicated mention of the frequency the channel has been broadcasting on (along with a somewhat overdesigned slide of the number “23”), information on the FCC’s stipulations on channel closedowns, a quick ‘compilation’ of test patterns (including the infamous ‘Indian’ one), shots of past WSRE programming (“Fish’n With Andy”), and a quick “thank you” to loyal viewers.

In short, just like how an IBA Engineering Announcement would look in 2009, if they still existed. Splendid.

And iiiiiiiiiiin one! WDEF-TV does things in as perfect a manner as humanely possible. Bonus points right from the start, for cutting off David Bloody Letterman in mid-sentence, cutting to a “DTV Update” as if it were a newsflash. Newsflashes are always exciting, as long as they don’t involve our impending deaths. There then follows a quick look back at the history of the analog(ue) coverage offered by the network over the years, and a rundown of just why digital is much better. The bulletin ends with a splendid montage of local WDEF output over the years, including glances at delightfully lo-fi weather reports, news teams and caption cards. After that, it’s quickly back to Letterman, with the signal quite nicely cutting out before Dave can open his gob. Textbook.

In summary, come on The BBC. You’ve still got several regions to close down – get the local news teams in to make something special of it. It’s no good looking at ITV – their regional output has long since been a joke, but the annual regional concerts for Children In Need show that the Beeb can still do this sort of thing properly. Come on, we want to see Gordon Burns on BBC North-West blowing out a candle at 00:29 on the 4th of December to mark the end of analogue, and we want it, erm, then.

The Unsettling North American Television Ident Awards

noreply@blogger.com (Mark X) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 11:59:00 +0000

What is it with pre-90s US television networks, eh? They’re not content with merely having channel identities that look like the corporate logo of a sinister megaglobal corporation pumping out robotic vigilantes that go wrong and kill everyone in early 1980s straight-to-VHS movies, no. They have to ramp up the chill factor my animating them badly and playing in music recorded by (we’re guessing) a hook-handed killer given a Bontempi organ for the first time. In short, they make the 1970s and 1980s Open University ident seem cosy by comparison. What do we mean? Here’s what we mean.

Aargh!

Aiee!

Urg!

Spuh!

Meh.

Fuh. Though admittedly this last one is from Australia.

Website(s) of the Week (and Competition Winner)

noreply@blogger.com (Mark X) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:31:00 +0000

Firstly, we have a winner for our Spitting Image DVD Box Set competition. Step forward James Wallace. Expect the goodies in the post soon. Meanwhile, thanks to everyone else for entering. We wish we could have given each of you a prize, though not to the extent of actually going out, buying lots of things and sending them out to you. We’re merely paying lip service to politeness there. But thanks for entering, anyway.

Secondly, why have we never thought about posting links to other websites we’ve just discovered before now? Er, don’t write in. It’s not another competition or anything, we were just wondering aloud. This is the sort of thing we’ve found on our travels around the web:

And what is that? A logo for a local radio station? A new streaming music service? Well, interestingly enough, it’s the original, rejected-before-launch channel identity for MTV. It was later replaced by the amorphous channel identity you’re probably already very familiar with:

Exciting 1980s US TV ident related facts such as this can be found at the utterly engrossing Fred/Alan Archive and at the personal blog of Fred Seibert.

Fred (Seibert) and Alan (Goodman) were the duo behind much of the design and feel for the fledgling MTV network, back when there was nothing else quite like it anywhere else in the world. While the MTV ‘brand’ isn’t anywhere near as iconic nowadays, what with it being yet another outlet for imported reality shows and little else, in the 1980s it represented a huge change in how cable television was perceived in the US. Until MTV, many people thought the term ‘cable TV’ was synonymous with ‘HBO’ and little else, but Fred and Alan’s branding help change that perception.

In 1983, Fred and Alan left MTV to form the world’s first “TV Branding Company”. Named Fred/Alan in reference to a quote from old radio superstar Fred Allen (“This drudgery, this sham, this goldmine”), The company helped develop and launch a number of (now well known) networks, such as VH-1, Nick At Nite and Comedy Central, and helped transform the flailing Nickelodeon from the worst performing cable channel in the USA to the most popular, within six months. The company dealt with the identities and promotion of several more channels, with various degrees of success, before closing its doors in 1992.

The Fred/Alan site contains a lot of interesting information on how all this came about, and also contains lots of interesting ident montages that couldn’t be any more 1980s if they were wearing stonewash denim. The personal site of Fred Seibert – who became president of Hanna-Barbera on leaving Fred/Alan - contains a lot of insider information on the world of TV design and promotion as well as the world of animation. Interesting stuff. Retro TV spods should also enjoy embedded Scribd documents of old magazines, such as a copy of Cablevision from 1982.

The Fred/Alan Archive: http://fredalan.org/
Fred Seibert: http://fredseibert.com/

Printed Pisstakery (Spitting Image Giveaway Part 3)

noreply@blogger.com (Mark X) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 10:35:00 +0000

Today is the last day of our epic (by our workshy standards) Spitting Image giveaway. Providing you’re reading this before 11:59pm Sunday November 15th 2009, there’s still time to enter our competition in association with VoucherCodes.co.uk. Details on how to enter are at the bottom of this update. Go there now and take part, on the proviso you come straight back to this point of the article immediately afterwards. DO IT NOW.

Welcome back from the bottom of the article. As you may well have deduced from your scroll down then back up the page, this final Spitting Image update looks at some of the printed offerings put out under the Spitting Image brand. In short, it’s our

TOP 5 SPITTING IMAGE BOOKS OF ALL TIME

A title arrived at only partly because we own a grand total of five different Spitting Image books. Sadly, the Lee & Herring penned booklet that came with some-or-other Spitting Image VHS isn’t one of them, so don’t be holding your breath for that. For each title, we’ve taken a number of spine-damagingly illustrative scans, each of which can be viewed in huge-o-vision by clicking on the thumbnails. In time-honoured Top Of The Pops tradition, we’ll go through them in ascending order of quality, starting with:

5. SPITTING IMAGE: THE GIANT KOMIC BOOK

100 pages / 1988 Pyramid Books / Various authors / ISBN 1-871307-48-1

For the most part, this book actually has very little to do with Spitting Image. Save for the inclusion of a few spoof photo-love stories featuring Spitting Image puppets, this could just as easily have been called The Big Bumper Book Of Topical Cartoons Probably Not Quite Right For Viz. In fact, featuring strips from the pens of Banx, Ian Jackson, David Haldane and Graham Thompson, large parts of the book could just as easily have been taken from late-period Oink! comic. In fact, for all we know, they were – Oink! folded a few months before SI:TGKB was published. That’s not to say there wasn’t an impressive roster of non-Oink! contributors. The book also contains strips written by Spit regulars Geoff Atkinson, John (aka Jack) Docherty, Moray Hunter, Ian Hislop, Guy Jenkin, John O’Farrell, Nick Newman, Geoffrey Perkins and Harry Thompson, and artwork from (amongst many others) Steve Bell and Gerald Scarfe.

Being slightly cynical, we could claim this book only really exists because Viz was starting to become huge around the time of publication, and the publishers fancied cashing in on something similar with a recognised satirical brand on the cover – even considering the contributors, it could just as easily have been Private Eye: The Giant Komic Book were it not for the puppet photo stories. That’s not to say the content isn’t worthwhile, and there’s even a dig at Viz in there (“Johnny Onejoke”). Here are some sample pages.

Restaurant Review with John Hurt. As you can see, very little to do with Spitting Image specifically. While some make mention of the sort of public figure you’d expect to see on the show…

Some have a bigger point to make. In the case of The Adventures Of God, on organised religion. Eagle-eyed comic spods might note that the above strip makes much the same point as many of Ruben Bolling’s God-Man strips from the marvellous Tom The Dancing Bug, only eight years earlier. And they’d be right.

Banx’s “They Came From Outer Space”. One that could easily have been used in an issue of Oink!, and for all we know, might have been lined up for the piggy periodical before it folded.

A page containing Gerald Scarfe’s “Mister Gillray’s Deadliest Sins”, featuring those old-world lower-case esses that we’ll wager a good 60% of the UK population saw used for the first time in the closing credits for Blackadder The Third.

4. THE APALLINGLY DISRESPECTIVE SPITTING IMAGE BOOK
100 pages / 1985 Faber and Raber / Various authors / ISBN 0-571-13670-2

At least, we think there are 100 pages in this. The book is taken up almost entirely by spoof sections culled from other publications such as What Sausage Weekly, Police Information Gazette, The Daily Turd, Campain (not a typo,obv) and Which Home Personal Computer Micro Boring Dull Yawn Magazine, each page of which comes with contradictory page numbers. Hey, all part of the fun.

This offering has much more to do with the show itself, with most pages containing those lovable latex rogues, including many shots of specially created models – some made especially for the book, others made for other publications years earlier. Again, many of the better Spitting Image writers worked on the book, including Fluck, Law, John Lloyd, Rob Grant, Doug Naylor, Ian Hislop, Nick Newman, Geoff Atkinson, Docherty/Hunter and (it says here) Lord Lucan. The contents are as acerbic as you’d expect given the people involved, but we especially like the way the layouts of each section are laid out accurately. While sadly different types of paper stock weren’t used (unlike in, say, The Rutland Naughty Weekend Book or The Goodies Disaster Movie), you can tell at a glance which pages are meant to represent The Face, The Sunday Times Magazine or the Yellow Pages. Clue for the last one: the page is yellow. Here are some scans. See if you can guess which ones we’ve included because the page had already become detached from the rest of the book, so we’ve done both sides of it.

Any book taking the piss out of 1980s computer magazines is sure to get a thumbs up from us. We loved them at the time, but dipping into them now (which you can do here) shows them for what they were. Your Sinclair not included, obv. Speaking of Mr Sinclair, a lovely spoof ad for Sinclair Research, too.

Spoof TVTimes listings and an attack on Midland Bank’s Griffin mascot? Okay, this is starting to seem like the makers of this book focus grouped it with a room full of cloned versions of us aged ten.

Luckily, ten year old us wouldn’t have understood this page.

Let alone this one. Note the spoof ad for the FT. The series proper did a similar parody, only replacing the Financial Times with The Beano. A move which surely would have delighted us at the time, had we been allowed to stay up late enough to see it.

3. TOOTH & CLAW: THE INSIDE STORY OF SPITTING IMAGE
146 pages / 1986 Faber and Raber / Lewis Chester / ISBN 0-571-14557-4

Not much we can do by way of scans here, as it’s a proper paperback book looking at “the remarkable story of the men and women behind the mocking puppet masks”. Now, admittedly, we’ve only had this book in our possession for a few days now, and as such haven’t had time to read much of it yet. This isn’t too surprising in itself, as we’re exactly the type of person to buy a load of cheap paperback books purely for the purpose of having full bookcases in our front room, so that visitors think we’re dead clever. They don’t know we’re too busy playing GTA4 and posting our every mundane thought on Twitter to actually read any of them.

From what we’ve been told about it (from people who actually know what they’re talking about), it’s a brilliant read, including as it does detailed information on Clive Sinclair’s investment in the pilot show, the recording of that pilot show, and Central’s insistence on the show containing canned laughter. The book also takes a look at much of the tabloid furore over the early episodes, normally involving them making puppets of various royals. Tabloids desperate to manufacture outrage? How times have remained exactly the same.

2. SPITTING IMAGES
66 pages / 1987 Century Hutchinson / Various Authors / ISBN 0-7126-1758-2

Only 66 pages, and it’s in second place? Half of the book is taken up with full-page photographs? And they’ve got the name wrong? Even everyone’s mum stopped calling it “Spitting Images” by the end of series three! Well, the lofty position can be explained in part by the list of writers credited on the back cover. Alongside a few of the usual suspects from the other books (the ever-prolific Hunter, Docherty and Lloyd), this book includes work from Julie Birchill, Richard Curtis, Ian Dury, Ben Elton, Harry Enfield, Stephen Fry, Germaine Greer, Barry Humphries, Sue Townsend, John Wells and Gore Vidal. Admit it, even the ones you don’t much like from that little list were still really good in 1987.

It doesn’t end there, either. The “Images” part of the book title comes from the fact that each full-page photo contains a specially taken shot of each puppet model. All the puppets had been refined for the special photoshoot at the studios of John Lawrence Jones, with some even being completely rebuilt for the shoot. The results are, by and large, brilliant. The photos hark back to Fluck and Law’s pre-telly practice of constructing one-off caricatures for a single photo shoot, meaning for the most part they’re positively dripping with venom. When you combine that with the fun way the articles are uncredited – as the back cover has it “figuring out who is savaging who is just one of the many delights of this brilliantly illustrated book” – you’ve got a lovely printed snapshot of mid-80s satire. Well, lots of snapshots. Anyway, scans:

P.W. Botha. “Worse still they objected to being half-starved and beaten by the police just for being black.” Our guess of writer: John Wells? (Legal note to the legal representatives of J. Wells, the piece is quite clearly being sarcastic.)

Rupert Murdoch. The dirty digger has never looked so much at home. “Rupe is an old Melbourne pal of mine from way back; I first learnt to read about the Big Wide World in one of his father’s wonderful newspapers. Let’s face it possums…” Our guess: Ooh, wouldn’t be Barry Humphries, would it? Clearly it would, yes.

Ron and Nancy. Given the accompanying piece for this is a nicely entertaining apology letter stating how he’ll pass on taking part in this project, signed by Gore Vidal, we’ll guess that the writer for this one is… erm, Gore Vidal. We’re two for three!

Mrs Thatch. “I would rather spend the night with Guy the Gorilla (Yes, I know he’s dead) than climb aboard one of those vile rattling contraptions and visit you all up there in slag heap land.” Our guess: Not Ben Elton. Too restrained to be him.

1. A NASTY PIECE OF WORK: THE ART AND GRAFT OF SPITTING IMAGE
226 pages / 1992 Booth-Clibborn Editions / Roger Law / ISBN 1-873968-31-0

Brilliant. This is the pick of the bunch, even if the title itself isn’t wholly accurate. A Nasty Piece Of Work is largely an autobiography of Spitting Image co-creator Roger Law, and doesn’t even get around to mentioning Spitting Image properly until chapter nine (or page 163, in case you’re assuming all the chapters are really small). This is a good thing, as up to that point the book looks at Roger Law’s earlier work, both on his own and alongside Peter Fluck.

Even back in the early days, Law’s work made for interesting reading; his first nationally published work (in 1962) was a weekly collaboration with Peter Cook for The Observer. From there he moved on to providing illustrations for The Sunday Times Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, National Lampoon, Magnet News (Britain’s first black newspaper, despite Law not being black), album covers for Hendrix and The Who, as well as selling eggcups in the shape of royalty.

Once the topic shifts to Spitting Image (as it does from page 163 onwards), there’s still a lot of interesting ground covered. The non-broadcast pilot of Spitting Image was hampered by the team spending ages on trying to get a robotic parrot (due to be perched on the shoulder of the Reagan puppet) working properly. Progress was only made once the android psittacine was scrapped for parts. Of further interest is the huge amount of behind the scenes information on offer, even going as far to include the storyboard for the title sequence of The Mary Whitehouse Experience (a Spitting Image production, you’ll remember), rough sketches for puppets and pieces on the largely unheralded artists who’d worked on the design of Spitting Image.

In short, it’s brilliant. Here are some scans from the book.

The book contains lots of delightfully vicious magazine illustrations, such as this one of Richard Nixon, used in National Lampoon during the Watergate scandal.

From one horrible arsehole to another. From the pre-Spitting Image days, this had been the first time Fluck and Law had made a fully upholstered body, ordered to illustrate a Sunday Times article on unfunny racist comedian Bernard Manning. After all that effort, the Sunday Times eventually chose not to use it, but the illustration finally saw publication after being used in the TVTimes parody section of The Appallingly Disrespectful Spitting Image Book.

Our eyes! A photo used for a 1979 Men Only article on the UK’s new Tory government, alongside several nude shots of the Tory cabinet, which we don’t include here. Interesting aside: our scanner actually made a worrying squeaking noise when we scanned the above image. Don’t forget lads, click the thumbnail for the full-sized version.

An illustration of the newly-elected Ronald Reagan at nuclear loggerheads with Leonid Brezhnev, created in 1980 for the CND’s own magazine.

Finally, the cover of Thatcha!, the cover artwork for a never-finished, never-published Spitting Image book set to mark The Iron Lady’s tenth year in power. (Reader’s voice: “well, of course it was never published if it was never finished. Idiot.”)

So, that’s that. If you’re now interested in picking up a copy of any of the books we’ve mentioned here, they tend to crop up with different degrees of regularity on eBay, and quite affordable prices. If you’re very lucky, you might stumble over one at a car boot sale. With the possible exception of Komic Book, we’d say that if you don’t already own them, and you’ve read this far through this blog update, snap them up.

Now, your LAST CHANCE to get a material reward for reading BrokenTV. Remember, from tomorrow onwards the only thing you’re likely to be left with after reading the blog is a slight sense of disappointment, as per usual.

In association with VoucherCodes.co.uk, we’re still giving away an excellent DVD BOX SET of the FIRST SEVEN SERIES of Spitting Image, worth SIXTY QUID, and there's still time to enter our competition.

“Hang on, Voucher-what-dot-co-dot-where?”

Look, we told you this the other day. Twice.

"Sorry, I wasn't paying attention then.”

Tch. You said that the other day. It’s almost as if we’re copy-pasting all this, then changing a few words in the hope no-one will notice. VoucherCodes.co.uk brings together the best voucher codes, 2-for-1 restaurant vouchers, printable vouchers, deals and sales for hundreds of leading online stores to help save you more money. You can pick up a Lovefilm Discount Code, an Amazon Promotional Code or even Sky Offer Codes from the site

“Of course, silly me. What was it I need to do again?”

While it’d be tempting to pose a tremendously difficult “which photo is on the top right of page 167 of A Nasty Piece Of Work” question, it’s hugely unlikely VoucherCodes.co.uk would let us keep the box set ourselves, so we may as well ask something more open ended. Namely: which was your favourite Spitting Image puppet, and why? No special criteria, it could just as easily be one of the heavy hitters like Tebbit, Coleman or Gielgud as opposed to the Brett Anderson puppet that appeared once. It could even be the Downing Street cat that talks like Tony Hancock from the last few series, we’re easy. One entry will be chosen at random to win the prize. Come on, give it a go. The odds of winning are much better than you might expect.

“Fair enough. How do I enter?”

As we’ll need to actually contact the lucky winner, we’ve had to come up with a bit of a compromise for entering. When it comes to taking part, you’ve got two choices. Choice one: if you’re a Twitter user, leave a comment mentioning your fave Spitting Image character, along with your Twitter username. We can then send you a Direct Message over Twitter if you’re the winner. Choice two: fire off an email containing your entry to us at brokenindustries@gmail.com – that way, we can get in touch if you win. Don’t worry, unlike a lot of online competitions there’s absolutely no chance we’ll pass your email details on to nasty marketing types (partly because we don’t know any, and don’t really want to).

Technically there’s also choice three: post a comment including your email address in the body of said comment, but note that it’ll be openly viewable to everyone, and will probably mean your inbox is subsequently packed with a ton of spam, so it’s not a very good idea. It’s the internet equivalent of sending cash through the post. We’d go with either choice one or two, frankly.

“Is there a list of terms and conditions, like you get in proper competitions?”

Just because we’re a bunch of slackjawed ne’er-do-wells, it doesn’t mean this isn’t a proper competition, you know. All the T’s and the C’s can be found at http://www.vouchercodes.co.uk/competitions, but basically:

* You must be a UK resident aged 18 and over.

* Entries to be made via comment or email (as detailed above).

* The competition starts 5th November 2009, and the closing date is 23.59:59 on Sunday 15th November 2009.

* Only entries received before the specified closing date and time will be submitted into the Competition. eConversions Ltd. accepts no responsibility for lateness, loss or misdirection of entries.

* No purchase is necessary to enter this competition, largely because we don’t sell anything. Maybe we should start selling stuff. If we ever do start selling stuff, you don’t need to pre-order it to enter this competition.
* It is a requirement of the Competition that the entrant has access to the Internet to submit their entry. Bit unfair on the Amish, but there you go. * Anonymous entries to the Competition will not be accepted. * The prize will consist of a Spitting Image: Series 1 – 7 Boxset
* No cash alternative is available for the prize. What you can do is just put it on eBay once you’ve won it, or just give it away as a Christmas present.

* The promoter of the competition is: eConversions Ltd., 9 Dallington Street, London, EC1V 0BQ, UK

* Entries are limited to one per person. We’ve got super secret IP address reading powers, you know. And a cricket bat. (Legal notice: we’re joking about the cricket bat.)
* The winner will be selected at random on 16th November and notified by the email within 96 hours. * The winner's name will be published within 15 days of the Competition’s closing date at: www.vouchercodes.co.uk/competitions. * Employees (and their relatives) of eConversions Ltd. and other companies associated with the competition are excluded from entry.

“What if I don’t win? How am I supposed to get hold of a box set then? Come on fatty, bet you haven’t thought about that.”

If you miss out on the competition prize, you can always head over to VoucherCodes.co.uk and use an Amazon promotional code to get one at a bargainous discount, of course. Buggerlugs.

“Look, I don’t even like Spitting Image. When are you going to do a proper update?”

We’re working on another Spotify Top 100, Stay tuned for it.

Satira Virulenta del Látex (Spitting Image Giveaway Special, Part 2)

noreply@blogger.com (Mark X) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 03:16:00 +0000

Slightly later than we'd envisioned due to circumstance, here's the second of our Spitting Image specials. Don't forget, thanks to our excellent chums at VoucherCodes.co.uk, you can walk away with (have sent to you in the post) a DVD box set of the first seven series of the show. Full details at the end of this blog post.

Before we stick our hand up the back of Part Two, a quick 'thank you' to a couple of people for filling in a few of the gaps in our great big rubbery heads. First up, TV Cream's Steve Williams for pointing out what was actually going on with the studio audience in the first 1.4 episodes of the show. Steve?

it's - gasp! - canned laughter. The book Tooth and Claw about the making of the series said that they dubbed it on the first show by order of Central, but the second show ran way over schedule and I think they were still editing part two while part one was actually on the telly, hence the rather haphazard laughter. But that show meant they were able to convince Central it wasn't required, and they never used it again.

Funnily enough, the copy of Tooth & Claw we'd ordered last week from an eBay seller arrived this very morning. Extra thanks to Steve for pointing out the above, as the flipping book doesn't have an index, meaning we'd have had to spend ages going through the it trying to find that out. We can't help but think the Spitting team quite deliberately used the sound of a distinctly unimpressed studio audience, to help them get their own way. That's an achievement in itself, as canned laughter tapes containing such a meagre smattering of giggles can't be easy to find. Of course, when Rubbish 3 Sponsor Bumper Stand-Up Bloke did his bits in front of a similarly unimpressed pretend audience on Channel Four's comedy output for much of this year, it would have been from a downloaded clip, which would be much easier to get hold of.

Our second helping of thanks goes to Matthew Rudd (of the reliably splendid Does That Make Sense?), for pointing out that the third escapee from Some Of Our Puppets Are Missing was of course Leonard "To Be Or Not To Be, That Is... Illogical, Captain" Nimoy. Of course. Bluh. Thanks Steve and Matthew. (Ooh, and also thanks to the entrants so far.)

So, what aspect of moulded cocksnookery are we looking at today? Well, one of our favourite facts about the show is the way a slew of foreign broadcasters soon jumped on the idea soon after the show premièred in the UK. With that in mind, what could be more fun than taking a look at some of those? Quite a lot of things, but we're going to do it anyway. Starting off with a trip to

ARGENTINA ("Kanal K")

Pronounced "Canal Car", and featuring puppets with cloth hands, as opposed to the 'proper' latex hands we all remember from Spitting Image. That's not doing it right. When we saw that the people behind "I'm On Setanta Sports/Special 1 TV" were using the 'cloth hands' method on their puppets, it took a lot for them to win us over (specifically the subliminal shots of Jose in a Liverpool shirt around the time it looked like Rafa Benitez was getting the boot. No, first time round). Cloth hands isn't doing it properly. Sure, it might be cheaper, more convenient and more comfortable for the puppeteer, but it's still not right. Anyway, as you might have guessed, we don't have a bloody clue what's going on there, as it's all in Spanish, so we're wittering on about something inconsequential.

What we do know is that Kanal K was aired by Canal 13 in the early 1990s, only to be taken off the air (officially) after the show ran with a sketch where the puppet The Pope said "va fangulo" (Italian for "fuck you"), or (reputedly) after repeated criticism of former President Carlos Saúl Menem. Either way, the clips of the show we can find on YouTube don't make much sense to us.

AUSTRALIA ("Rubbery Figures")

After learning that Rubbery Figures came from the same stable as Aussie sketch show Fast Forward, we had quite high hopes for this, especially when we saw a YouTube clip showing us their take on the Iron Lady (see above). Sadly, as you'll probably have noticed if you've glanced at the above clip, it's not very good. Firstly, the title music sounds (to our ears) like an outtake session for one of the 'jaunty, relax, so we're all going to die, so what' music stabs from the Protect & Survive video (brr). The main thing is, it's all done very cheaply indeed. Now, it seems this is deliberately so - the captions are made from felt tip, and it seems for much of its life Rubbery Figures was a segment in another show, but it does make the accompanying humour seem rather cheap too. Two bonus points for the John Howard puppet making a cameo appearance in an episode of The Micallef P(r)ogram(me), however.

And after all that, we remembered that Full Frontal was the really good Aussie sketch comedy we were thinking of, not Fast Forward. Fast Forward was rubbish. And BrokenTV's fourteenth law of television dictates that felt-tipped captions are only any good when they're done by Bob Godfrey.

GERMANY ("Hurra Deutschland")

Best title of the lot, we think, what with it translating as "Hurrah Germany".Hurrah! The puppets are much more identifiable as being from a Spitting Image spin-off, too, with properly burly torsos and faces capable of more than one expression. We can't really speak for the humour, as the pitiful amount of German we know was gleaned from MTV Europe ad breaks circa 1993. We suspect the clip here could well be the Teutonic adaptation of the John and Norma Major 'peas' skits that everyone got a bit bored of in the early 1990s over here.

The show ran in its original guise from 1987 to 1991, and the programme was later resurrected in 2003 under a title which translates as "Hurrah Germany - Now more than ever!", though sadly it seems to have been a bit '2DTV', and was soon forgotten.

SPAIN ("Las noticias del guiñol")

Now you're talking. One of the few examples of the show still going (as it has since 1995, though it was more directly inspired by the French version of Spitting Image, "Les Guignols de l'info"), this is hosted by a latex take on former Liverpool and Eire striker Michael Robinson, who as everyone knows is now a well-known. TV personality in Spain, having ended his football career there (with Osasuna), and liking it so much he stayed there. Even better, the clip we've found here is from their World Cup 2006 show (or shows), and includes interviews with David Beckham, Fernando Torres, The Sun (centre of solar system, rather than tabloid), and a popular Spanish politician (we think) as Homer Simpson.

We even think we understand some of the jokes. Beckham is flogging cologne, The Sun is there over something to do with the weather at Germany 2006, while (Spanish PM) José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and (opposition leader) Mariano Rajoy are busily trying to outdo each other with their feverish support for the Spanish national side. Now, if only everyone else had been considerate enough to make their programmes all about football, we'd be sorted.

SWEDEN ("Riksorganet")

Another one with 'proper' Spitting Image puppets. Sadly, despite extensive research (ahem) we can't find out much about it. i.e. there's no Wikipedia page for it.

FINLAND ("The Autocrats")

While this isn't a direct spin-off from Spitting Image, it's probably interesting enough to include here. The Autocrats is more of sitcom in feel, taking the viewer behind the scenes of Finnish politics. No, wait, come back. It's all in quite impressive CGI, especially so considering the show has been running for over 230 episodes since 2001. There are generally between thirty and forty episodes produced every year. That's a lot of CGI.

Oh right, we haven't got to the bit that's interesting yet. Well, in 2003, an episode was made entirely in English. Named "Operation ESC", it sees Tony Blair, George W Bush and Vladimir Putin up to some international shenanigans, with The Autocrats team determined to intervene, or at least seem fleetingly relevant. And that's the first part of it up there. As we say, quite interesting, if not exactly a laugh riot. Hey, we said 'interesting', not 'funny'. Well, we've never watched a Finnish CGI sitcom before now.

Thus ends our fleeting trip around the World Of Puppet-Based Satire, but stay tuned for the third and final part of our Super Rubber Giveaway Trilogy. Now, a quick reiteration of some actual interesting stuff., and nothing to do with Finnish politics In association with VoucherCodes.co.uk, we’re still giving away an excellent DVD BOX SET of the FIRST SEVEN SERIES of Spitting Image, worth SIXTY QUID, and there's still time to enter our competition.

“Hang on, Voucher-what-dot-co-dot-where?”

Look, we told you this the other day.

"Sorry, I wasn't paying attention then.”

Tch. Try harder, this time. VoucherCodes.co.uk brings together the best voucher codes, 2-for-1 restaurant vouchers, printable vouchers, deals and sales for hundreds of leading online stores to help save you more money. You can pick up a Lovefilm Discount Code, an Amazon Promotional Code or even Sky Offer Codes from the site

“Ah, now you mention it, I do remember. What was it I need to do again?”

While it’d be tempting to pose a hugely difficult question about the Chilean version of Spitting Image (Los Toppins, coincidentally) that hardly anyone would know the answer to, it’s hugely unlikely VoucherCodes.co.uk would let us keep the box set ourselves, so we may as well ask something more open ended. Namely: which was your favourite Spitting Image puppet, and why? No special criteria, it could just as easily be one of the heavy hitters like Tebbit, Coleman or Gielgud as opposed to the Brett Anderson puppet that appeared once. It could even be the Downing Street cat that talks like Tony Hancock from the last few series, we’re easy. One entry will be chosen at random to win the prize.

“Fair enough. How do I enter?”

“Is there a list of terms and conditions, like you get in proper competitions?”

Just because we’re a bunch of lackadaisical bumpkins, it doesn’t mean this isn’t a proper competition, you know. All the T’s and the C’s can be found at http://www.vouchercodes.co.uk/competitions, but basically:

* You must be a UK resident aged 18 and over.
* Entries to be made via comment or email (as detailed above).
* The competition starts 5th November 2009, and the closing date is 23.59:59 on Sunday 15th November 2009.
* Only entries received before the specified closing date and time will be submitted into the Competition. eConversions Ltd. accepts no responsibility for lateness, loss or misdirection of entries.
* No purchase is necessary to enter this competition, largely because we don’t sell anything. Maybe we should start selling stuff. If we ever do start selling stuff, you don’t need to pre-order it to enter this competition.
* It is a requirement of the Competition that the entrant has access to the Internet to submit their entry. Bit unfair on the Amish, but there you go.
* Anonymous entries to the Competition will not be accepted.
* The prize will consist of a Spitting Image: Series 1 – 7 Boxset
* No cash alternative is available for the prize. What you can do is just put it on eBay once you’ve won it, or just give it away as a Christmas present.
* The promoter of the competition is: eConversions Ltd., 9 Dallington Street, London, EC1V 0BQ, UK
* Entries are limited to one per person. We’ve got super secret IP address reading powers, you know. And a cricket bat. (Legal notice: we’re joking about the cricket bat.)
* The winner will be selected at random on 16th November and notified by the email within 96 hours.
* The winner's name will be published within 15 days of the Competition’s closing date at: www.vouchercodes.co.uk/competitions.
* Employees (and their relatives) of eConversions Ltd. and other companies associated with the competition are excluded from entry.

“What if I don’t win? How am I supposed to get hold of a box set then? Come on fatty, bet you haven’t thought about that.”

If you miss out on the competition prize, you can always head over to VoucherCodes.co.uk and use an Amazon promotional code to get one at a bargainous discount, of course. Sillychops.

Latex Lampoonery (Spitting Image Giveaway Special, Part 1)

noreply@blogger.com (Mark X) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:08:00 +0000

Latex lampoonery. Rubber ribaldry. Profane puppetry. The Muppets with swearing. Call it what you will, but you can’t deny that Spitting Image was a landmark satirical comedy show, running for for 141 episodes between 1984 and 1996. In fact, in it’s prime, it was inarguably the most biting satirical show ever broadcast on ITV, maybe even on British television entirely. And if at this point you’re thinking “well.. I don’t know. What about 2DTV?”, you might like to stick your face in a fire.

Why do we mention this now, just the thirteen years after the blimmin’ thing finished? Well, Network have just released a mammoth eleven-disc DVD box set of the first seven series, and in association with our good friends at VoucherCodes.co.uk, we’re GIVING AWAY a copy of the Spitting Image Series One To Seven DVD Box Set (RRP £59.99) to ONE LUCKY READER. (They think we’re a proper telly website. Now shush, no-one tell them the truth. Hopefully they’re okay with having their company mentioned in the same intro as us telling fans of 2DTV to stick their faces in a fire.)

Details on how to enter our special competition are at the bottom of this update. But hey, at least read some of it first. It took ages, and just skipping to the part where you can win stuff is just rude. At least look at the screencaps and nod as if you find them interesting. We’ve got feelings. Jeez.

To kick off, a few interesting things about Spitting Image, in handy bullet form:

* The first episode wasn’t actually very good. At this point, the team were still finding their feet with the format, and were still coming to terms with making an entire thirteen-episode series in thirteen weeks, given that the (unscreened) pilot had taken them five months. There were other issues to contend with, such as the production of the show being split between London (where all the puppets were made, kept and repaired) and Birmingham (where it was actually recorded), Indeed, many of the people involved in the making of the show struggled to get the time to actually see the first episode go out.
* By the time the show reached it’s final episode, it wasn’t very good, as it had pretty much “jumped” the “shark”, which is why it was getting cancelled. Luckily of course, the majority of the shows in between were brilliant (from about episode three onwards, in fact). Clumsily, ITV chose to mark the 20th anniversary of the final show by repeating… the first and last episodes. Boh.
* One quite nice fact about that first ever episode: Central Television forbade Spitting Image from using their puppet of The Queen in the series debut, as (non-puppet) Prince Philip was due to open the company’s Nottingham studios later the same week, and he isn’t exactly the sort of person to let such a matter go unremarked. This was a bit of a blow for the team, who’d felt our monarch’s rubber persona would be the star of the show – with director Peter Harris, who’d previously worked on The Muppet Show, having proclaimed her as “our Miss Piggy”. Not to be outdone, the first episode featured a number of running sketches where the Queen (unseen and unheard) was keeping Margaret Thatcher waiting for a private audience. Indeed, the very first sketch on the show involved the Cabinet being introduced to “your most gracious sovereign, The Queen”, who walked on screen as… Mrs Thatch in a crown. A nice little in-joke, there.
* Another early sketch banned, this time by the IBA, involved “Bernard Levin” explaining why he became a writer. “I think it was because I was circumcised with a pencil sharpener”.
* As every schoolboy knows, the very first episode of Spitting Image featured the sound of a studio audience. Their presence didn’t really work, and the idea was swiftly ditched. Curiously however, and contrary to what we’ve read elsewhere, the sound of a studio audience seemed to stick around for a few sketches early in the second episode. Firstly in a pre-titles sketch where resurgent Tony Benn proclaims “Back! Back! Back!”, before slumping forward to reveal several knives have been shoved into his back. Cue polite titters. The muted chuckles then fade to applause as the titles roll, but then the audience disappear for the next sketch, Mary Whitehouse saying how disgusted she was with the first episode (and it’s not as if they just didn’t find it funny – Whitehouse makes reference to ‘big pink floppy things’, which would have been a laugh riot for the 1984-located brains of the audience). A few skits later, the sound of an audience reappears, disappears for the rest of the first half, then returns to applaud the title card for part two, before buggering off for the rest of the series. Very strange.
* This is all the more strange as the first show wasn’t actually recorded live in front of a studio audience, unless they were the most patient studio audience in the history of time itself, so it’s not as if they were actually present at the recording and therefore couldn’t be removed from the soundtrack. Roger Law points out in his excellent autobiography A Nasty Piece Of Work (ISBN 1873 968 000) that “it took one hour of studio time to produce one screenable minute of Spitting Image”, so it’s quite safe to assume the audience were shown recordings of the sketches. If that were the case, why couldn’t the non-audience versions be shown? Anyway, all trace of the audience was gone by episode three, and they wouldn’t return until an actual live-in-front-of-a-studio-audience pre-election episode screened towards the end of the show’s life.
* Spitting Image Pet Theory Of The Femtosecond! The quality of each series was inversely proportional to the effort put into the title sequences. Certainly, the titles for the last few seasons –pastel-coloured animation in it’s dying days, preceded by a Punch & Judy show in the years before that – were much more visually appearing than the live-action marionettes of the early years. Not a fact, admittedly, but hey.

Anyway, all that’s not really the point of this update. Now, everyone remembers the main targets of the show – Mrs Thatch, Norman Tebbit, Reagan, Kinnock, Prince Phil, David Colman, Frank Bruno, Sir John Gielgud at al. We’re here to play tribute to the lesser spotted puppets, rubber realisations of those who were either less obvious targets for contemporary satire, or those who weren’t based on real-life figures at all. Sometimes they were background figures from history, sometimes they were comic creations magicked entirely from the sketchpads of Spitting Image Productions, sometimes they were of people so inconsequential to the public eye the TV Times had probably needed to mention who they were beforehand. In all cases, they made for welcome companions in our fight to wring out that last ounce of weekend TV enjoyment before bed on a Sunday night, and if we’d missed it we’d have no idea what everyone was talking about on the school bus just ten hours later. So, join us now, as we sneakily switch on the bedroom portable (at a volume so low mum and dad won’t hear us watching it) and delve into the first seven series of rubber ribaldry, picking out the more enjoyable cameos. And forwarding past half of the songs they did, because they weren’t often very good.

Ed

First seen: series one, episode one.

Unfailingly loyal cube-bonced aide to Ronald Reagan, Ed was always on hand to carry out Ronnie’s wishes, to offer helpful advice, or just to get called an asshole. Spent most of the first series trying to reclaim or replace the President’s brain, which had done a runner after being removed for safety purposes.

Harold Macmillan

First seen: series one, episode one.

First seen playing a small part in one of the first ever sketches (Harold Wilson is moved to an Old Prime Ministers Home, much to his chagrin), the usually mute MacMillon generally appeared wherever a generic elderly MP was needed to fill in background space. He’s ninety, you know. (Well, not any more he isn’t, he’s dead.)

Generic Soviet Cabinet Ministers

First seen: series one, episode one.

Seen wherever the scene was set behind the Iron Curtain, these would make up the entire male non-president population of the Soviet Union in sketches set in Eastern Europe. The female population would of course be played by… Generic Soviet Cabinet Ministers puppets in dresses. Spent most of the early shows trying to convince everyone that Soviet President Konstantin Chernenko was still alive, pre-empting Weekend At Bernie’s by several years.

Elderly Hitler

First seen: series one, episode one

Retired dictator, now going under the name of “Jeremy”. First seen living at No. 9 Downing Street, where he would often give neighbourly policy advice to his next door neighbour, Mrs Thatcher.

Mrs Thatcher: “Have you ever been inside number 10?”

“Jeremy”: “Once, in 1940 I came *that* close. But with you there, I almost feel like I run the place…”

Later to be spotted as a background character many times, including popping up in the United Nations representing Argentina, presenting Top Of The Pops, or as a Tory back-bencher.

Lord Lucan/Harold Angryperson

/
First seen: series one, episode two (Lucan), series one, episode three (Angryperson)

First seen (as Lord Lucan) refusing to reveal his whereabouts while appearing on Question Time. Later seen in a variety of roles, but most enjoyably in silhouetted form as Harold Angryperson in the regular scandal round-up CRIMINAL LIBEL (first seen, S1EP3). That first Criminal Libel report centred on the (fictional) dodgy antics of Mark Thatcher. How times change, eh?

Extra bonus fact: episode seven sees Harold Angryperson voiced by Ade Edmondson in Vyvyan mode, as opposed to the more regular Chris Barrie.

Commissioner Newman

First seen: series one, episode three

First seen parading around in front of 10 Downing Street in episode three, doing… absolutely nothing at all, really. Would later show up quite frequently, highlighting Britain’s heavy-handed policing of the 1980s. When he wasn’t finding a flimsy pretence for duffing up Leon Britten, he would often to be found giving a good bollocking to…

Norris Dimbleby

First seen: series one, episode nine

Usually seen playing the role of dimwitted bobby, Dimbleby was first spotted playing the new Police Spokesman For Racial Affairs, apologising for the behaviour of his predecessor. “May I assure you that for him, the future looks very nig-nog indeed”, cue him being dragged off and replaced by a succession of replacements, each in turn being dragged away after saying something racist. First seen as a regular peeler in episode 12, getting shot by Commissioner Newman in an unarmed combat training course.

Anthony Anteater

First seen: series one, episode four.

Yeah, those bloody anteaters, eh? Glad someone socked it to them on a satirical sketch show after what they did to the unions, eh? Eh? First seen refusing to appear on set in a David Attenborough-helmed nature documentary, resulting in Attenborough having to visit his dressing room to reason with him. “David! It’s typecasting! Why can’t I play something else, like a swan, or a lion?” Much later seen in the enjoyable late-period in-show serial “Some Of Our Puppets Are Missing”, alongside David Steel and someone whose name will come to us about three seconds after we click “publish” on this update.

“I said to him, David, I said. a line of ants? I’d rather a line of cocaine!”

The Grim Reaper

First seen: series one, episode seven.

Popping up for the first time as one of the Flying Pickets, singing about how ugly they all are. Generally spotted afterwards in his more traditional guise as collector of souls, with the occasional appearance as Yorick.

Potato

First seen: series one, episode nine

Potato cropped up in a number of guises, usually of the Irish variety. For Ronald Reagan’s 1984 visit to Ireland, Potato played Reagan’s “closest Irish relative”. Later popped up as the Irish ambassador at the UN, and hosting Rubber News.

Central Continuity Announcer

First seen: series one, episode eleven

The first live-action person ever seen on the show. Kept manufacturing phony transmission errors within the show, just so he could appear on screen, right up until the point his director gave him a bollocking over the phone.

(The Real) Denis Healey MP

First seen: series one, episode twelve

The second live-action person to appear on the show, and as far as we’re aware the only real-life MP to ever appear on the programme (no matter how much Jeffrey Archer would have liked to have been the second). Popped up during (puppet) Sir Robin Day’s Euro Election Phone-In to point out that the European elections had actually finished a week earlier. Sir Robin replied that European elections are so damned exciting he just couldn’t wait four years for the next lot.

COMPO TIME

That’s the end of the first part, but expect more rubber recollections tomorrow. Now, onto the interesting stuff. In association with VoucherCodes.co.uk, we’re giving away an excellent DVD BOX SET of the FIRST SEVEN SERIES of Spitting Image, worth SIXTY QUID. You know, just like a proper website might do. Yes, really.

“Hang on, Voucher-what-dot-co-dot-where?”

Tsk. VoucherCodes.co.uk brings together the best voucher codes, 2-for-1 restaurant vouchers, printable vouchers, deals and sales for hundreds of leading online stores to help save you more money. You can pick up a Lovefilm Discount Code, an Amazon Promotional Code or even Sky Offer Codes from the site.

“Fair enough. So, what do I have to do?”

While it’d be tempting to pose a hugely difficult question that hardly anyone would know the answer to, it’s hugely unlikely VoucherCodes.co.uk would let us keep the box set ourselves, so we may as well ask something more open ended. Namely: which was your favourite Spitting Image puppet, and why? It doesn’t have to be one of the lesser lights that we’ve gone on about in the preceding 2000 words, it could easily be one of the heavy hitters like Tebbit, Coleman or Gielgud. It could even be the Downing Street cat that talks like Tony Hancock from the last few series, we’re easy. One entry will be chosen at random to win the prize.

“Fair enough. How do I enter?”

“Is there a list of terms and conditions, like you get in proper competitions?”

Just because we’re a bunch of clumsy idiots, it doesn’t mean this isn’t a proper competition, you know. All the T’s and the C’s can be found at http://www.vouchercodes.co.uk/competitions, but basically:

* You must be a UK resident aged 18 and over.

* Entries to be made via comment or email (as detailed above).

* The competition starts 5th November 2009, and the closing date is 23.59:59 on Sunday 15th November 2009.

* Only entries received before the specified closing date and time will be submitted into the Competition. eConversions Ltd. accepts no responsibility for lateness, loss or misdirection of entries.

* No purchase is necessary to enter this competition, largely because we don’t sell anything. Maybe we should start selling stuff. If we ever do start selling stuff, you don’t need to pre-order it to enter this competition.

* It is a requirement of the Competition that the entrant has access to the Internet to submit their entry. Bit unfair on the Amish, but there you go.

* Anonymous entries to the Competition will not be accepted.

* The prize will consist of a Spitting Image: Series 1 – 7 Boxset

* No cash alternative is available for the prize. What you can do is just put it on eBay once you’ve won it, or just give it away as a Christmas present.

* The promoter of the competition is: eConversions Ltd., 9 Dallington Street, London, EC1V 0BQ, UK

* Entries are limited to one per person. We’ve got super secret IP address reading powers, you know. And a cricket bat. (Legal notice: we’re joking about the cricket bat.)

* The winner will be selected at random on 16th November and notified by the email within 96 hours.

* The winner's name will be published within 15 days of the Competition’s closing date at: www.vouchercodes.co.uk/competitions.

* Employees (and their relatives) of eConversions Ltd. and other companies associated with the competition are excluded from entry.

“What if I don’t win? How am I supposed to get hold of a box set then? Come on fatty, bet you haven’t thought about that.”

If you miss out on the competition prize, you can always head over to VoucherCodes.co.uk and use an Amazon promotional code to get one at a bargainous discount, of course. Bignose.

Lamb: Slaughtered

noreply@blogger.com (Mark X) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:50:00 +0000

In April, we sharpened up our most satirical crayons and cobbled together this:

And as a DIRECT CONSEQUENCE just seven months later:

No need to thank us.

But ignoring the thoughts of needlessly bitter telly blogs who’d rather 6Music had just kept the Jupitus-Coe dream team on mornings, what do the actual people think? Well, we’ve just done a Twitter search of the last hundred mentions for “George Lamb”, and totted up the types of reaction to the news. We’ve accounted for people expressing delight at his departure, people expressing their regret at his departure (alongside pleased Lamb-fans who are happy they can now hear him at the weekend), and even totted up the tweets simply reporting the news without expressing an opinion either way. We’ve discounted any retweets linking to the story that haven’t expressed a preference either way, as there’s not much point to them. Erm, except there isn’t much point to any of this, is there? And yet we’ve spent valuable moments of our one and only life calculating these figures. We could have been out selling poppies or being polite to tramps. God, what are we doing?

Oh, and we’ve also accounted for people using the news to moan about something else entirely, because it’s the internet, and there’ll always be people wanting to do just that.

So there you go. Sixty individual people taking time out of their day to express the delight they felt at the reduction in annoying samples being played out on 6Music at random in lieu of actual content, with just sixteen expressing their dismay. The story (which was several hours old by 6pm) was deemed worthy of reporting by fifteen twitterers, and just two people used it as the catalyst for a different bugbear entirely (namely how much they respectively hate Jon Holmes and like Andrew Collins).

If there’s a downside to all this, it’s that Lauren Laverne taking over Lamb’s slot means a slightly reduced chance of any Kenickie records being played between 10am and 1pm (because she’s too modest), and that current host of the weekend breakfast show Iyare is getting dumped altogether. A shame, as he always seemed to prefer playing records to promoting his own ‘brand’ (y’know, like disc jockeys are meant to do). In any case, 6Music, and by extension The Whole Of The BBC is now slightly better off. Shabba.

Another Top Hundred Spotify Comedy Albums Of All Time (Pre-amble)

noreply@blogger.com (Mark X) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:44:00 +0000

Well, it has been a good six weeks since our earlier (Graham Linehan-approved) update of our personal Top 100 Comedy Albums on Spotify, so it’s time for a follow-up. Even though it was actually more of a “Top 114”, but then that’s just the way we roll, baby. If the sequel we’re preparing actually ends up as a “Top 86”, then the equilibrium will be restored, and nobody can really complain. Hopefully, anyway. Anyway, here’s a sort of “preview” for that, taking in the following brand new digital object….

Various Artists – Bruce Forsyth Presents…. (2009)

“Wait a minute, wait in minute, I’m in charge!”

An interesting yet curious find. A compilation which might possibly be a recording of a finely-honed radio variety show of the 1960s, but which we strongly suspect is an edited selection of various live recordings, interlinked by Bruce Forsyth from years ago. And by “strongly suspect” we mean, “unless we’re completely stupid” as the telltale fading up of the “studio” “audience” does rather give the game away.

Now, this possibly doesn’t really qualify as “comedy”, but it’s the inter-song banter from future-Sir, surely-Bruce that makes the whole affair worthy of inclusion (“Now, our next guest has been working with me this past season in pantomime, Val Parnell’s Sleeping Beauty at the London Palladium. Ladies and gentleman, my pal, Edmond Hockridge [cut to a recording clearly recorded from elsewhere of Edmond Hockridge]”). Just where has this recording come from? A light programme off-air from the early 1960s? Surely not, as the banter at the end of track six reveals it’s from a vinyl recording (“now, don’t go away, there’s a lot more to come on the other side. That was the end of part one, no commercials, just turn over quick!”). Tellingly, none of the artists mention the presence of Bruce at all, save for a cleverly re-recorded bit of banter with Petula Clark.

Basically, we suspect this to be a digital-remastered recording of highlights from Sunday Night at the London Palladium, only with fresh-at-the-time introductions tacked on from Brucie, all gleaned from aged LP recordings. Oddly, the artwork – a hugely half-arsed job using a single Photoshop filter* and some freeware typefaces – is clearly modern, and both the Spotify and eMusic release dates suggest this release was only shoved out recently (going by the eMusic release date, on the 6th of October 2009, in fact). All quite strange – anyone know any more? Surely this is from a much-earlier vinyl recording? Could it be something that was recorded but not released at the time? Anyone?

(*And really, it’s very half-arsed. That’s not even Bruce on the artwork, is it? And we’ve had our half-arsed microscopic-indie-label cover art printed in the NME before now, even that was better than the thumbnail up there.)

Brucie? “I lived in a town once… but they moved!”

Ha. Anyway, keep your lug-holes peeled (not to mention peepers, unless you’re blind, in which case we feel all uncomfortable now) for the remainder of our new list, due over the next few days. There’ll be at least one absolute gem on there that you don’t already know about.

Well, only if you’re not already following our Twitter feed (or more pertinently, the Twitter feed of the mighty Sweeping The Nation, as they’d pointed us towards it). Whatever, come back soon, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel.

Griffin Ravers

noreply@blogger.com (Mark X) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:51:00 +0000

A few thoughts tonight’s Question Time, where Britain’s most prominent comedy fascist, Nick Griffin met a suspiciously tiny audience of Question Time viewers. Seriously, that must have been one of the tiniest crowds we’ve seen for an episode of QT, especially so considering it took place in Television Centre. Next week’s episode from the sleepy north Wales seaside town of Llandudno is likely to have a much larger audience. They should have let some of those people from outside into the studio. They certainly seemed quite keen to attend the recording. Anyway, this is mostly culled lazy from what we’ve said earlier on Twitter, so if you’re following us on there, expect much of this to sound familiar.

Near the start of the show, Baroness Warsi made a reference to a quote from the BNP’s Mark Collett. The actual transcript goes like this:

Baroness Warsi: “When today we talk about how Churchill is referred to by the BNP, I’d like to refer to one quote, which I’m going to have to have some bleeps in, which is from Mark Collett, who is the BNP’s director of publicity…”

Nick Griffin: “He’s not.”

Baroness Warsi: “He basically said this; “"Churchill was a fucking cunt who led us in to a pointless war against other whites, the Nazis, who were standing up for their race”."

Really, Nick? Because from what we can find, including on far-right website Stormfront.org (link), he actually is the BNP’s Director of Publicity, or at the very, very least was quite recently. We’ve tried to find reference to him on the BNP website, but for some reason the search function isn’t working. Can’t imagine why.

For the record, doing a Google search for the words “Mark”, “Collett” and “BNP” brings up a very interesting web page in second place:

Far be it from us to reflect on the accuracy of said web page, as we have no idea of the facts involved, but still, interesting.

INTERESTING FUN FACT! We were able to copy and paste the above Collett quote from the NorthWestNationalists blog (who we’re not going to link to, but if you really want to find it it’s easy enough to Google). Entertainingly, they censored the words “fucking” and “cunt”, because naturally they wouldn’t want anyone to get offended by the content of their website, would they?

It was interesting to note Griffin’s repeated claims that holocaust denial is a crime in the UK, and that as he’s never actually been convicted for the crime of holocaust denial, he surely can’t be a holocaust denier. As every schoolboy knows, it’s only actually a crime in Austria, Germany and France. Anyway, here’s a Fun Fat Hitler Fact for you all: Nick's "Holocaust myth" quote – specifically:

"I am well aware that the orthodox opinion is that six million Jews were gassed and cremated and turned into lampshades. Orthodox opinion also once held that the Earth was flat … I have reached the conclusion that the 'extermination' tale is a mixture of Allied wartime propaganda, extremely profitable lie, and latter witch-hysteria."

was from 1998. Now, on tonight’s show he claimed that

"I can't tell you why I used to say those things anymore than I can tell you why I have changed my mind, I can’t tell you the extent to which I’ve changed my mind, because European law prevents me from doing so."

Except, of course, it doesn’t even remotely do so. Anyway, with that in mind, he made no attempt to actually tell us why he did change his mind (our theory: he hasn’t, only he’s realised there aren’t many votes in expressing that sort of thing), other than saying something about hearing about it on the radio since then. But be fair, when he originally said those words in 1998, Griffin was merely a young and impressionable 39 year old. Why, he was barely out of nappies! We’ll wager that most people say things at the stupidly young age of 39 that they later regret, like “I’ll never buy a pair of slippers!”, “You’ll never catch me listening to Terry Wogan in the mornings”, or “ooh, cheap tripe? Get in!”

Another choice quote from the pudgy nationalist:

“My policy is for a truce with Islam.”

Is that why the BNP website carries juxtaposed imagery of smiling pure and white English children with a shot of hajib-wearing Muslim women, as below? What are they hiding, eh Nick? Why, they aren’t even wearing hajibs with huge St George’s crosses printed on them. Coming over here, hiding their presumably sneering faces, laughing up their sleeves and being given free houses and that.

At one point, Dimbleby interrupted mass panel disquiet after a Griffin outburst with the words: "If you all attack on different fronts, we'll get nowhere." Sadly, he didn't add "...if Hitler taught us anything, it’s that, eh Nick?"

One point where Griffin really tried to connect with the masses was when he stated, on the subject of homosexuality, how:

“I’ve said that a lot of people find the sight of two grown men kissing in public really creepy. I understand a lot of homosexuals don’t understand that, but a lot of us feel that way. A lot of Christians feel that way, Muslims, all sorts of people.”

From that, we can’t help but wonder if Griffin’s feelings only extend to “grown men kissing in public”. Does he think that if it were two young boys kissing in public, he’d be putting a supportive arm around their shoulders while saying “go on, make the most of it. Why, in a few years what you’re doing now will be wrong, so make hay while the sun shines”? Or does he just spend entire evenings at home, on his own, sitting by his fireplace, thinking vigorously about two grown men kissing each other in public, and pondering just how that makes him feel? Either way, we’re sorely tempted to write a series of slash fiction stories about him and Abu Hamza, just for the sheer heck of it."'Put your hook there and sort of wiggle it about a bit', cooed Nick."

Sad to say, there are a couple of slightly depressing conclusions to make from tonight’s programme. Firstly, that hundreds of thousands of people will go to work in the morning, and jokingly ask their colleagues if they saw Question Time, only to receive a reply along the lines of “yeah, I thought what he said was too bloody right” from their previously respected co-workers. We frigging hate it when things like that happen.

Secondly, the alarming realisation that for every single person from the “too bloody right” brigade, who’d nodded sagely when Griffin spewed out the bilious theory that gay people are allowed to be gay “as long as they keep it behind closed doors”, their vote come the general election will count just the same as the vote of someone who’d pored over local politics, BBC Parliament coverage, Hansard and Private Eye for the last ten years. Maybe voter apathy isn't always a bad thing...

In summary: sigh. Here’s an entertaining image to end things on a relative high, culled from the pages of B3TA, and Jpeg genius Monkeon:

Channel Four: Programmes Continue Shortly

noreply@blogger.com (Mark X) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:14:00 +0000

Sadly, no time to add to our comprehensive series of Channel Four ratings rundown tonight (Reader's voice: "Oh, boo hoo. How will we ever cope?"), which means no excuse to post slightly unflattering photographs of the C4 Top Brass. To hold you over until the big Programme Head-to-Head Battles, here are some adverts, from Channel Four, from 1983. Yay. There's even an advert for the first ever Now That's What I Call Music.

Video uploaded to YouTube by "JayFirestorm".

Channel Four In Numbers II: Ratingsgeddon

noreply@blogger.com (Mark X) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 01:09:00 +0000

Yes, we know we said ‘more tomorrow’, but we’ve been busy laughing in the face of EU Working Hours legislation. Bwa-ha-ha-hangonwe’rebeingexploited.

Anyway, numbers. Our mammoth listing of eleven years of weekly Channel Four viewing charts takes in 11,736 individual broadcasts, which is possibly about the same as the average lifespan of a shirehorse. A few days ago, we looked at the highest rated programmes, but what of those hearty mainstays? The shows that flutter around the top thirties week in, week out, maybe not quite getting mammoth audiences, but always somehow in your peripheral vision, like a moth waving a flag? What of them, eh? The list contains a grand total of 1,964 different shows, and here are the hundred appearing most frequently in each weekly BARB rundown. Just under a shot of Michael Grade looking a bit dishevelled in 1990.

“The annual report shoot is today? Frigging heck, I thought it had been postponed until Wednesday.”

Rank	Programme	Appearances on list	Av. Weekly Pos.
1	Hollyoaks	1824	18.74
2	The Simpsons	1257	17.74
3	Countdown	1213	13.24
4	Deal Or No Deal	1040	11.53
5	Big Brother	836	5.74
6	Brookside	575	5.05
7	Richard And Judy	527	23.52
8	Friends	485	14.34
9	Fifteen-To-One	445	23.44
10	Pet Rescue	442	22.36
11	Paul O'Grady	439	15.85
12	A Place In The Sun	249	18.25
13	V Graham Norton	241	15.92
14	Come Dine With Me	240	16.90
15	Frasier	187	15.68
16	Ricki Lake	183	22.07
17	E.R.	163	14.06
18	Time Team	162	15.05
19	Celebrity Big Brother	120	6.87
20	Will And Grace	115	14.43
21	Desperate Housewives	111	11.67
22	Property Ladder	110	7.67
23	Grand Designs	101	4.26
24	Location, Location, Location	95	7.71
25	Sex And The City	90	13.62
26	Scrapheap Challenge	89	14.37
27	Wife Swap	82	11.91
28	Ally McBeal	79	16.41
29	Relocation, Relocation	76	3.62
30	Eurotrash	73	16.68
31	So Graham Norton	69	13.01
32	10 Years Younger	67	12.19
33	Father Ted	66	18.65
34	Cricket Afternoon	66	19.45
35	Big Brother's Little Brother	66	23.42
36	Shameless	65	9.98
37	T.F.I Friday	63	20.13
38	Without A Trace	56	18.79
39	South Park	55	17.62
40	Cutting Edge	54	15.63
41	Lost	52	8.10
42	No Going Back	49	8.33
43	Ugly Betty	49	14.65
44	How Clean Is Your House?	48	11.71
45	Stargate Sg-1	46	20.17
46	8 Out Of 10 Cats	44	10.89
47	You Are What You Eat	42	8.86
48	Selling Houses	42	9.26
49	Montel Williams Show	41	24.56
50	Supernanny	38	5.55
51	Gordon Ramsay's F Word	38	7.08
52	Dispatches	37	19.27
53	Teachers	36	13.56
54	The Salon	34	24.03
55	How Clean Is Your House	33	7.76
56	Secret History	31	17.74
57	Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares	29	3.72
58	The Secret Millionaire	29	4.90
59	Location/Location	29	13.17
60	It's Me Or The Dog	29	13.69
61	The City Gardener	29	14.34
62	Jamie At Home	29	16.07
63	Home From Home	29	25.38
64	How To Look Good Naked	28	8.79
65	Top Tens	28	20.43
66	My Name Is Earl	27	23.26
67	Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares USA	26	4.85
68	The Osbournes	26	12.42
69	Scrubs	26	19.92
70	Channel 4 News	26	22.50
71	Trigger Happy Tv	24	10.58
72	Smack The Pony	23	17.26
73	Driven	23	24.30
74	The Games	22	13.00
75	Secrets Of The Dead	22	13.91
76	Faking It	22	16.82
77	No Angels	22	20.59
78	Enterprise	22	22.00
79	Nypd Blue	22	23.45
80	Bremner, Bird And Fortune	21	23.24
81	Pet Rescuers	21	24.00
82	Room For Improvement	21	24.19
83	Salvage Squad	20	20.55
84	Supersize Vs Superskinny	19	11.63
85	Battle Stations	19	17.37
86	A Place In Greece	19	19.05
87	Heroes Of Comedy	19	20.21
88	Location, Location, Location Revisited	18	6.39
89	Other People's Houses	18	14.22
90	Peter Kay's Phoenix Nights	18	14.39
91	Max & Paddy's Road To Nowhere	17	16.29
92	Spin City	17	20.35
93	The Friday Night Project	17	21.06
94	Real Gardens	17	21.71
95	Equinox	17	21.88
96	Grand Designs Revisited	16	5.63
97	A Place In France	16	8.13
98	Gok's Fashion Fix	16	11.06
99	Football Stories	16	21.44
100	Stargate S G-1	16	22.19

And so, despite taking an average weekly position between 18th and 19th in the charts, and featuring lots of characters from Chester (we’re from Wrexham, it’s a local thing), Hollyoaks is the most ever-present show in the BARB hit parade over the last eleven years. That’s a full 567 broadcasts ahead of The Simpsons in second, despite it being, as far as we’ve been able to tell when seeing any of it, well, a bit shite actually.

Other notables: Countdown pipping Deal Or No Deal into third on the list, but given DOND has only been on air for less than half of the period under consideration, well done Noel. Big Brother and Brookside are the only shows in the top twenty to regularly warrant a place in weekly top tens. Meanwhile, Richard And Judy, Fifteen-To-One, Pet Rescue and Ricky Lake make the list of twentymost perma-hits, despite averaging placings in the lower third of each weekly rundown.

Slightly unsuprisingly, Friends is the most popular non-Simpson comedy, clocking up 485 appearance, most of which are repeats, while Frasier only performs slightly less admirably. In the arena of homegrown sitcommery, Father Ted reigns supreme, notching up 66 appearances in the list. That’s especially impressive given that the figures listed on BARB’s website don’t even start until five weeks after the premiere of the last ever Fr Ted episode, meaning that each appearance in the list is from a repeat showing. Indeed, there were only 25 episodes of Ted ever made, compared to 236 episodes of Friends (many of which were first-run). That means the average Ted episode appears 2.64 times on the list, whereas the average Friends ep makes it there just 2.06 times. This means that Craggy Island is officially better than New York. Sort of. In other US sitcom news, the magnificent My Name Is Earl sits in 66th place, narrowly beating the got-annoying-after-four-series Scrubs, yet the only reward both shows received was a sideways shunt onto E4. Bah.

As for US drama shows, E.R. is king, with Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin But With A Skinny American Woman… sorry, Ally McBeal following closely. Without A Trace performs admirably in 42nd place (just in front of the surely-everyone-hated-it-by-then TFI Friday), but Lost performed very well, putting in 52 appearances from the 49 episodes C4 had the rights to, most of which were premiered on E4. After all, Lost isn’t really a show that lends itself to repeat showings.

As for lifestyle shows, there are sterling performances from Pet Rescue, A Place In The Sun, Come Dine With Me, Time Team, Property Ladder, Grand Designs and Location x3. No idea why most of their advertising is from personal injury lawyers and 21st-century-rag-and-bone-men if they’re that popular.

Anyway, enough of annoyingly successful programmes. Here are a few selections from lower down the list that are sure to infuriate you, if you’ve got any sense. So much so, in fact, you might want to post a screenshot of the following table into one of those ha-ha-larious “demotivational poster” memes marked “when you see it, you’ll shit bricks”. Just after a shot of Michael Grade and a great big cake.

Rank	Programme	Appearances on list	Av. Weekly Pos.
93	The Friday Night Project	17	21.06
136	Bo Selecta!	10	17.80
158	The Kevin Bishop Show	8	17.25
176	The Sunday Night Project	7	20.29
205	Peter Kay's Pheonix Nights	6	22.17
246	Dotcomedy	5	25.20
258	Star Stories	4	8.75
269	The I.T Crowd	4	11.00
299	A Bear's Tail	4	21.25
367	Film: The Net	3	13.67
384	Film: On The Buses	3	16.00
442	Le Show	3	28.00
456	Rude Tube	2	3.50
584	Peep Show	2	16.50
700	Spaced	2	25.50
1793	The Sopranos	1	28.00

Interesting for a number of reasons that might want you to think about buying a gun. Spaced clocking in at the 700th position on the list, even though all 14 episodes were first aired in the period under consideration here. Of those 14 episodes, just two made it into the Top Thirty for the weeks of transmission (for the record, w/e 26/9/99, 21st position 2.58m viewers, and w/e 11/3/01, 30th position and 2.37m viewers). Similarly, just two episodes of Peep Show make the weekly thirty (11/8/08, 28th, 1.46m, and 20/9/09, 5th, 2.16m – though that was from the most recent chart we’ve looked at, suggesting more of the current series will be there).

Beating it in the charts: A Bear’s Tail (“Oh no, my tail, which is actually a cock, has popped up for about the billionth week in a row”) appears four times, despite only having a single series, with Bo Selecta!, and its three jokes, appearing ten times. The cocking Friday/Sunday Night Project appear a total of 24 times, even though when they BBC had come up with the Saturday/Friday Night Armistice in the mid/late 90s, it was cancelled before you could say “whore in a helicopter”.

Other good/bad points: The I.T. Crowd being trumped by Star Stories, while Phoenix Nights (and no matter what you think of Peter Kay, the first series was brilliant) is bettered by The Kevin Bishop Show, both by appearances on the chart and average position. Meanwhile, in the world of classic US drama, The Sopranos made it into the Top 30 for a single solitary week, in 28th place.

For comparative purposes, you may also like to note that Peep Show and Spaced, both heralded (with more than a little justification) as modern classics of the sitcom format, have been bettered by well-meaning-but-ultimately-rubbish-Eurotrash-spin-off Le Show (no relation to the ace Harry Shearer show of the same name) and a repeat of the On The Buses film. Now, they aren’t sitcoms, admittedly, but hey, the single series of “grainy RealVideo clips blown up to full screen” internet clip show DotComedy made more appearances in the Channel Four weekly top thirty than both shows combined. The normal rules of logic clearly do not apply here.

Here’s a photo of Adam & Joe to make it all better.

Want to guess how many times The Adam & Joe Show appeared in the weekly Channel Four Top 30? Series three, four and five were in the in the timeframe applicable to it. So go on, guess. If you said “not even once, and yet a showing of Nuns On The Run made it onto there, for fuckity fuck’s sake”, award yourself a correctness point.

Sigh.

BrokenTV

BrokenTV’s THTSOT 00s*: Number 26

BrokenTV’s Top 100 Television Shows Of The 00s: Part 10

BrokenTV’s Top 100 Television Shows Of The 00s: Part 9

BrokenTV’s Top 100 Television Shows Of The 00s: Part 8

BrokenTV’s Top 100 Television Shows Of The 00s: Part 7

BrokenTV’s Top 100 Television Shows Of The 00s: Part 6

BrokenTV’s Top 100 Television Shows Of The 00s: Part 5

The Thick Of It: That Huge Shocking Revelation

BrokenTV’s Top 100 Television Shows Of The 00s: Part 4

BrokenTV’s Top 100 Television Shows Of The 00s: Part 3

BrokenTV’s Top 100 Television Shows Of The 00s: Part 2

BrokenTV’s Top 100 Television Shows Of The 00s: Part 1

Shaun Micallef’s His Generation (As Proper A Review As We Are Capable.) (Of.)

Track One/Two: A Welcome / I Remember You

Track Three: Treading The Boards

Track Four/Five: An Announcement/Christopher Walken Sings David Bowie

Track Six/Seven: Women/Things That You Can Do

Track Eight/Nine: An Interview/Accident Medley

Track Ten: Medicine Man

Track Eleven: They Whisper His Name

Track Twelve: Charlton Heston Reads The Bible

Track Thirteen: Love Theme From Roger Explosion

Track Fourteen: Slap On The Terrorist

Track Fifteen: Jesus Was A Good Man

Track Sixteen: A Visit

Track Seventeen: Hell Of A Time

Track Eighteen/Nineteen: An Explanation/Modern Day Folk Heroes

Track Twenty/Twenty-One: A Briefing/Dalgetty’s Fruit Wholesalers

Track Twenty-Two/Twenty-Three: A Synopsis/Cahiers Du Cinema

Track Twenty-Four/Twenty-Five: An Early Morning/Tipworks Market

Track Twenty-Six: Poetica Zirconia

Track Twenty-Seven/Twenty Eight: A Tribute/My Generation

Track Twenty-Nine: Happy New Year

YouTube Thing And Album Of The Day

Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out In The Middle Of BBC News 24 – It’s The Digital Switchover!

The Unsettling North American Television Ident Awards

Website(s) of the Week (and Competition Winner)

Printed Pisstakery (Spitting Image Giveaway Part 3)

5. SPITTING IMAGE: THE GIANT KOMIC BOOK

4. THE APALLINGLY DISRESPECTIVE SPITTING IMAGE BOOK 100 pages / 1985 Faber and Raber / Various authors / ISBN 0-571-13670-2

3. TOOTH & CLAW: THE INSIDE STORY OF SPITTING IMAGE 146 pages / 1986 Faber and Raber / Lewis Chester / ISBN 0-571-14557-4

2. SPITTING IMAGES 66 pages / 1987 Century Hutchinson / Various Authors / ISBN 0-7126-1758-2

1. A NASTY PIECE OF WORK: THE ART AND GRAFT OF SPITTING IMAGE 226 pages / 1992 Booth-Clibborn Editions / Roger Law / ISBN 1-873968-31-0

Satira Virulenta del Látex (Spitting Image Giveaway Special, Part 2)

Latex Lampoonery (Spitting Image Giveaway Special, Part 1)

Ed

Harold Macmillan

Generic Soviet Cabinet Ministers

Elderly Hitler

Lord Lucan/Harold Angryperson

Commissioner Newman

Norris Dimbleby

Anthony Anteater

The Grim Reaper

Potato

Central Continuity Announcer

(The Real) Denis Healey MP

COMPO TIME

Lamb: Slaughtered

Another Top Hundred Spotify Comedy Albums Of All Time (Pre-amble)

Griffin Ravers

Channel Four: Programmes Continue Shortly

Channel Four In Numbers II: Ratingsgeddon

4. THE APALLINGLY DISRESPECTIVE SPITTING IMAGE BOOK
100 pages / 1985 Faber and Raber / Various authors / ISBN 0-571-13670-2

3. TOOTH & CLAW: THE INSIDE STORY OF SPITTING IMAGE
146 pages / 1986 Faber and Raber / Lewis Chester / ISBN 0-571-14557-4

2. SPITTING IMAGES
66 pages / 1987 Century Hutchinson / Various Authors / ISBN 0-7126-1758-2

1. A NASTY PIECE OF WORK: THE ART AND GRAFT OF SPITTING IMAGE
226 pages / 1992 Booth-Clibborn Editions / Roger Law / ISBN 1-873968-31-0