BrokenTV

This Is An Update To This Blog

2012-01-30T19:16:00.001Z

Yeah, that’s it. Quiet for weeks, and then something as phoned in as that.

Boh.

No Need To Beware The Smoking Ghost (Look Around You 10th Anniversary Short)

2012-01-13T19:07:00.001Z

Just in case you’ve not felt backrubbingly old today, we’d just like to point out that the first series of Look Around You, Robert Popper and Peter Serafinowicz’s wonderful parody of 1970s/1980s schools programmes, began ten years ago yesterday.

Celebrate this fact by taking in the new short film the duo have created especially for the 10th anniversary event at the BFI. It is splendid.

Part Of Just Why Breaking Bad Is The Best Television Programme Of The Last Five Years

2012-01-12T21:57:00.001Z

Is that it can often be this beautiful to look at.

A compiled montage from YouTube user kogonada, taking in POV shots used throughout the series thus far, most often from the point of view of an inanimate object such as frying pan or toilet. AND IT IS BEAUTIFUL.

The BrokenTV Awards 2011: Part Three (Paperback Edition)

2012-01-10T18:59:00.001Z

PART THREE of the epic awards bash previously presented in video form here (TV shows) and here (songs). As a special treat, we’ll also list all the awards from parts one and two in text form, for those too darned lazy to sit through about half an hour of esoteric nonsense we knocked up during Christmas week. Tsk, eh?

Don’t worry, this time it’s all in text. No twenty-seven minute long tribute to Granada Jobfinder or anything to sit through.

First up, a dash through our top, er, twelve songs of the year. Just a listing of them, mind. If you want to see our excellent Chart Show (Channel 4 Years)-style captions for each song, you’ll have to download the full video we posted the other day. The one that was TOO HOT FOR YOUTUBE (/too disrespectful of copyright, whatever).

(Note to selves: send that out of court settlement to TV Cream for stealing the phrase “Fact’s Amazing” from them.)

We do include YouTube links to each song in full, however. We’re not monsters.

12. Caravan Palace – Crash

11. Justice – Civilization

10. Jedward – Lipstick (YES JEDWARD LIPSTICK IT IS ACE SHUT UP AND NO WE DON’T LIKE ANYTHING ELSE THEY’VE DONE)

9. The GO! Team – Buy Nothing Day

8 Pop Will Eat Itself – Chaos & Mayhem

7. Regina – Unessa

6. Azealia Banks Feat Lazy Jay – 212

5. Boy – Little Numbers

4. Library Voices – If Raymond Carver Was Born in the 90s

3. Peter, Bjorn & John – Breaker Breaker

2. The Pack A.D. – Sirens

1. M83 – Midnight City

Yes, we really DO like Lipstick by Jedward. We’re not just being contrary. Well, only slightly.

TOP TEN ALBUMS 2011

Something we were going to do another video for, but after having that first one pulled from YouTube within minutes of it being uploaded, quite reasonably didn’t bother. So, here’s our list. With Spotify links where available, so you can listen to them for yourselves instead of reading our meanderings.

10. MEN – Talk About Body

9. The GO! Team – Rolling Blackouts

8. Washed Out – Within and Without

7. Lady Gaga – Born This Way

6. M83 – Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming

5. Cults – Cults

4. Kids On A Crime Spree – We Love You So Bad

3. Metronomy – The English Riviera

2. Boy – Mutual Friends

(Note: sadly, the album’s not on Spotify, so here are some more YouTube links. Second single ‘Waitress’, which is very nearly as good as ‘Little Numbers’ from our top 12 songs of the year. ‘Skin’, an illustrative sample of how good the non-single songs are on Mutual Friends. Ach, just listen to this YouTube playlist of live and studio tracks by the duo. And be a little surprised to discover that they’re actually from Austria and Switzerland, which certainly doesn’t come across in the songs. Buy the album from 7Digital here.

1. Peter, Bjorn & John – Gimme Some

TOP TEN REMIXES 2011

With YouTube links, unless where stated. Yes, the songs might not be from 2011, but to the best of our gin-addled knowledge the remixes are.

10. Arcade Fire - No Cars Go (Christian Strobe Remix)

9. Beataucue - Disque Oh! (Eumig & Chinon Remix)

8. Beastie Boys feat Santogold – Don’t Play No Game That I Can’t Win
(SebastiAn Remix)

7. Yeasayer - One (Coupons Remix) (Hype Machine link)

6. The Wombats - Techno Fan (Diplo Remix)

5. Sonic Youth - Kool Thing (Cracks remix)

4. Calvin Harris - Flashback (Millions Like Us Remix)

3. Foster The People - Pumped Up Kicks (Grouplove & Captain Cuts Remix)

2. 12 Inch Plastic Toys - Toys (Gain On Top Remix)

1. Rachel Goodrich – Light Bulb (ANR Remix)

So good, we used it for the intro and outro of our Best 12 Songs Of 2011 video. The only reason it wasn’t included in that list is that we were planning this remixes listing, which it would easily top. It would have been at, ooh, number three of that list, in case you’re wondering. As for the original track… meh, it’s okay, but this remix blows it out of the water.

We can even forgive it for having been used in a BT Broadband advert.

TOP 20 TV SHOWS OF 2011

As originally listed here, if you want us to show our workings for all of them.

20. Lost Christmas (BBC One)

19. Children's Hospital (Adult Swim)

18. Shooting Stars (BBC Two)

17. Would I Lie To You (BBC One)

16. The Bazura Project (ABC2)

15. Black Mirror (Channel 4)

14. Friday Night Dinner (Channel 4)

13. Dear Censor (BBC Four)

12. The Secret Life of Bob Monkhouse (BBC Four)

11. Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle (BBC Two)

10. Jon Benjamin Has a Van (Comedy Central)

9. Holy Flying Circus (BBC Four)

8. Rev (BBC Two)

7. Pointless (BBC One)

6. All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace (BBC Two)

5. Eric & Ernie (BBC Two)

4. This is England 88 (Channel 4)

3. Penn & Teller: Fool Us (ITV1)

2. Limmy's Show (BBC Two Scotland)

1. Breaking Bad (AMC)

Onto some quickfire awards to round off:

REPEAT OF THE YEAR

Friday Night, Saturday Morning (BBC Four)

Finally. More of this kind of thing, BBC Four.

FILM OF THE YEAR

Rubber

All other films this year were rubbish by comparison. Especially Cowboys and Aliens.

LETDOWN OF THE YEAR

Dexter season six

“Could [INSULTINGLY OBVIOUS TWIST THAT EVERYONE SAW COMING THREE WEEKS AGO]?”

MAN OF THE YEAR

Upinder Randhawa

The man behind the most compelling live television of the year. You may remember that strange time in August where a bunch of hoodlums set England on fire. For much of the time when it was all going on, Twitter was oozing information about what was really going on, while the rolling TV news duopoly were simply repeating the same few moments of footage on a seemingly endless loop of tut-tuttery.

That wasn’t the case for Midlands-based community channel Sangat TV, however. Reporter Upinder Randhawa and his cameraman hopped into a car with a satellite uplink, and went hunting news. Not only that, but in front of a backdrop that was mostly on fire, Randhawa eschewed lazy sensationalism, instead opting for improvised stirring monologues alongside his pleas for local residents to stay away from flashpoints. “Humanity is the religion we must follow right now.” This is what we want from our newscasters, especially as all this was coming from the heart.

So, not like that awful bit with Huw Edwards and the Torch Of Hope (or whatever it was) in that weak episode of Doctor Who, then.

VIDEO PODCAST B: The BrokenTV Awards 2011, Part Two - The Top 12 Songs of 2011

2012-01-01T22:25:00.001Z

Over 127,136,643,191,541,302,394 songs were released around the world during 2011. But, say you're going to be stranded on a desert island for some reason and are only allowed to take twelve of them with you. Yes, twelve. we don't know why. Shush. Which twelve would be the ones you should pick? Big ask, we know.

Using COMPLICATED SCIENCE, BrokenTV has calculated the twelve best songs of 2011 (that someone is probably going to chip in with a comment pointing out that at least three of them were actually from 2010 for something, but again, shush). And here they all are.

(Actual video this time. Not just a tribute to 4-Tel.)

Note: the embedded video probably makes it really hard to read the captions. Here’s the full-sized 720p high-definition version.

(We’ve kept the original source video, in case some idiot record company has the entire video pulled. If that happens, please let us know. Thanks!)

Oh, and happy new etc.

UPDATE:

Blocked by YouTube already. Gah. Not to be outdone – not least because the rundown only contains small one-minute chunks of songs – we’ve now made it available to download as a hefty 720p MP4, or as a 360p MP4 for people with more modest needs. Links:

720p MP4 file (227.78MB): Multiupload (8 different file hosts)

360p MP4 file (62.54MB): Multiupload (8 hosts)

VIDEO PODCAST: The BrokenTV Awards 2011, Part One - The Top 20 TV Shows of the Year

2011-12-30T18:27:00.001Z

In 720p high-definition and everything! This took an unbelievably long time, so here’s hoping the 17 people who’ll sit through it all enjoy it.

Apologies if you have to keep pausing it to read all the text. This was originally a 32 minute epic, before (after uploading the 900MB source video) YouTube kindly informed us that while people who upload entire copyrighted movies without permission can post videos longer than 15 minutes, so bally well can’t. Boo, eh?

Anyway, unlikely there’ll be an update tomorrow, so see you in early 2012 for part two of the awards. Happy new etc!

Why We Are Stupid

2011-12-27T12:00:00.000Z

Merry December 27th, everyone! We hope your Christmasses were all lovely. Ours were fine, apart from the bit where our car broke down four metres away from our front door on the way back from visiting family on Christmas Day, and the weird bit where an old woman we’ve never met before knocked on our front door at 12.37am on Boxing Day morning to ask if we had any alcohol she could come in and drink*.

(*We lied and said ‘no’, but then felt a bit bad about lying afterwards because it was still sort of Christmas. And that’s not just some rubbish whimsy that we made up for comic effect just there, that actually happened. She might even have been Jesus in disguise or something, like in that Fist Of Fun sketch)

Anyway, on to Why We Are Stupid. On a day when the twitching corpse of the art of being funny was dealt the duel hammer blows of THE ROYAL BODYGUARD (really, is it David Jason’s tribute to Ronnie Barker’s similarly disappointing CLARENCE or something? It was woeful) and MRS BROWN’S BOYS CHRISTMAS SPECIAL (there are no words), we finally got around to watching our DVD of THE FOUND FOOTAGE FESTIVAL PRESENTS ZANY ZINGERS AND BONKED-OUT BLUNDERS.

You might be familiar with foundfootagefest.com from the WINNEBAGO MAN episode of BBC Four’s documentary strand STORYVILLE, which aired earlier this year. If not, the film took a look at the antics of a certain Jack Rebney, who spent much of the 1980s as an RV salesman (and if you are familiar with it, it still did. You can’t change the past). More specifically, it looked at the outtakes from a promotional video which aimed to flog said Winnebagos, featuring numerous cuss-crammed outbursts from Rebney, which ultimately made him a cult hero at the aforesaid Fests of Found Footage. If you get the chance, watch it. It is both excellent, and emotionally warming.

ANYWAY. Happily, all of the brilliant clips on the DVD helped us rediscover the ability to laugh, and all was well with the world once more.

Apart from the bit where we remembered how stupid we are.

See, while the majority of the DVD features marvellous clippage from irony-free 1980s instructional videos (how to train your cat to use a toilet, tie-in rap videos for pet rocks, the art of silent screaming etc), there’s a special section of ‘short films’ listed as a menu option. The first of these purports to be an unedited employee training video for a gas station chain going by the name of ‘Gas ‘N’ Fuel. And – we feel compelled to add here - once you’ve become adjusted to the mindset made clear by the previous two hours of otherworldly VHS miscellanea, even the cheesiest moments of it somehow make the utmost sense. No, really.

Yes, there are moments that are clearly there to ‘be’ a funny uplifting respite from the need to keep everything suitably shiny and safe, and lots of moments that are (seemingly) unintentionally ha-ha-bloody-larious (“a toddler could freeze to death in there in just 20 or 30 minutes!”). As the video goes on, the weirdness very gradually gets cranked up and up, but for those as innocently dim-yet-cynical as we, it all seems juuust on the right side of plausible. “Ha ha, those 1980s idiots! I’m laughing at the joke they just did, but not for the reason they intended! I am best with my late-2011 mindset and clothes from 2008 and haircut from 2004!”, you may well be smugly sneering inwardly (if you’re us).

Until… you reach the point that you (we) finally cotton on that – disappointingly, considering much much you’re been silently mocking them with your disparaging thoughts up until then – it’s all an expertly crafted spoof. “Bah, yet… bravo!”, you hiss inwardly. Then enjoy the remainder of the video in the manner of which all the non-stupids had been enjoying it from pretty much the beginning.

And here it is. Sadly, not in full – the DVD version of the film is about twice as long, the extra bits being sufficiently dull to trick you into thinking it’s a real corporate training video – but hopefully enough to entertain you through a little part of the that post-advent period where you really regret polishing off the tub of Celebrations before Boxing Day Match Of The Day had even started.

See how long you can last before realising it’s a spoof! Oh, hang on.

SLIGHTLY SHAMEFUL BROKENTV FACT: BrokenTV’s Mark X has actually appeared in a corporate training film. He played the part of “Office Worker In Cold Storage Depot” when he was 22 years old, and luckily has never ever had to watch the recording of. He also got photographed weighing Quorn for a pamphlet or something on the same day. He didn’t want to do it, but he was ordered to by everyone else in the office because he was the youngest. Hopefully, all the negatives of everything from that day were destroyed in a big fire.

Happy Festivus, Everyone!*

2011-12-24T12:01:00.000Z

(*Okay, Festivus is technically on the 23rd. Still, shush.)

Have a Merry Multi-Denominational Midwinter Festival, everyone! Back on Boxing Day, or possibly the 27th, hangovers permitting.

YouTubeXLUSA: More Televisual Wonder Than You Could Shake The Washington Monument At

2011-12-23T12:00:00.000Z

Extending our run through of complete programmes that can be found on YouTube for an extra day, we’re going to take a quick dash through American programmes available on the streaming service. To mark the occasion, here’s a photo of Tiffany.

Just in case you weren’t getting depressed how old you are today, we’d just like to point out that Tiffany is now 40 years old. No need to thank us, gramps.

Duckman

A great show to start off with. Duckman was USA’s (that’s the American TV network USA) answer to the post-Simpsons craze for grown-up animation. See also: The Critic, Beavis & Butthead, Aeon Flux, The Maxx. Don’t also see: Stressed Eric, King of the Hill (yeah, take that, internet!), and God, The Devil and Bob.

Voiced by Jason “The Human Foundation” Alexander, Duckman ran from 1994 until 1997, and kept up a tremendously high good/bad episode ratio throughout its four seasons. Best of all, they mostly seem to be online in full, albeit in slightly grainy VHS-o-vision. Linked up there is the pilot episode “I, Duckman”, but we’ll also recommend the episodes American Dicks, About Face (first aired on Sky One on Christmas Day in, ooh, 1996, we think), Duckman and Cornfed in Haunted Society Plumbers, Noir Gang and a brilliant combination of satire and feelgood comedy called America The Beautiful.

The Critic

Also known as The Reason Matt Groening Took His Name Off The Credits For An Episode Of The Simpsons, for the most part The Critic was a splendid little show. Aired over here on Bravo (when that channel reinvented itself to appeal to FHM readers), the show was pretty much an opportunity for Al Jean and Mike Reiss to lampoon Hollywood without having to resort to non-sequitors, by seeing the action take place around embittered film critic Jay Sherman.

The first season of the show, aired on ABC in the ‘States, was very entertaining indeed, with writing so tight you didn’t even mind that the endless whine of Jon Lovitz’s voice was assaulting your ears for 22 minutes at a time. For season two, the show was picked up by Fox, where quality subsequently… well, let’s just say you’re best sticking with season one.

Noel’s New York House Party

Okay, this is a slight cheat on our part, but this is too interesting a video not to include somewhere. In March 1997, Noel relocated the antics of the Crinkley Bottom crew to Manhattan for a week. Why? Because it’s was big bollocks Saturday evening TV, that’s why! Actually, we’d always assumed the point of this was Noel trying to flog the format to American networks, with it acting as a backdoor pilot for an American version, but we can’t find any actual evidence to back that up. It certainly seems that Noel found this episode – along with a subsequent show beamed live from Florida – to the a “daft and embarrassing” waste of time and money.

Was he right? You be the judge. SPOILER: Yes. Yes, he was right. Worth watching now, if only as a fun trip back to how naff telly could be in the mid 1990s. And yes, that is Shatner in that screencap.

The Tick

David Puddy. Brock Samson. Joe Swanson. The only person to come out of Men In Black 2 with a shred of integrity intact. Whichever role you know him best from, Patrick Warburton is also worth watching here, in cruelly mistreated live action superhero comedy The Tick. The full series is online via Crackle (whatever that is), all nine episodes of it. It’s way better than you’re probably expecting it is.

The Unusuals

Hey, speaking of cruelly cancelled American series that are now available to watch in full using Crackle, here’s unconventionally dark and funny NYPD cop show The Unusuals. Including at least four actors who’ll have you muttering “ohhhhh… what else do I know them from?” – GUARANTEED.

Sledge Hammer!

Trust him. He knows what he’s doing. We loved this show when we were small, despite having to stay up until Granada Night Time to watch it, and it’s nice to know that it’s still entertaining now we’re old and cynical. David Rasche (latterly seen on In The Loop and Bored To Death) plays the titular Sledge, a sociopathic detective who cares more about his gun than anything else. Here’s the pilot in full. Enjoy.

The Charts Show: A Tale Of Two Sitcoms (BBC Two Comedy Zone Week 7)

2011-12-22T12:00:00.000Z

Yep, it’s taken us until now to realise that adding an ‘s’ to the title of this ratings-based strand makes it work much more effectively. See, now it works as both a pun on the title of the 1980s pop rundown show AND as a description of the content of each blog post, as in “the charts show that [whatever we’ve decided is our version of the facts]”*. Some may argue that “The Chart Shows” would be a better title, considering that each update only contains a singular chart, but until they work out our password for Windows Live Writer, there’s nothing they can do about it. NOTHING. (It’s a really clever password, too.) (That’s also a clever pun, our Windows Live Writer password is ‘password2’.) (Oh bugger.)

ANYWAY. It’s no wonder that Warwick Davis’ character was always so defensive, given the way every single stranger he encountered during the run of LIFE’S TOO SHORT decided to be so needlessly unpleasant to him, is it? Conversely, the Christmas episode of REV followed on from the preceding six episodes of the series by being absolutely bloody lovely and excellent. It did irk us a little when the writers went for the clichéd device of “having children do a swear in front of a well-meaning adult”, but that aside it was a genuinely heartwarming episode. Yay.

ON WITH THE OVERNIGHT RATINGS AND THE CHART THEREOF.

It’s probably fair to account that the final episodes of each series aired on a different day to the remainder of the series for each show, and both performed about as well as could be expected after recent weeks. The relatively underpromoted Rev finishes 28.3% ahead of Life’s Too Short ratings-wise. (R. Gervais’s voice: “Aaah, but the BBC have just told me that 7.2 million viewers watched the show in the window of Dixons, so I’m still popular and brilliant.”)

It’ll be interesting to see if LTS performs well enough on HBO** to warrant a second series. The series airs in the USA from the 19th of February. It’s possibly telling that LTS featured (for the most part) British celebrities that the US audience will be familiar with – such as Sting, Cat Deeley, or Right Said Fred. (UNRELATED FACT: Gervais and Merchant commendably kept in most UK-centric references for the US edits of Extras. While the Extras finale had scenes clumsily edited to mention ‘DirectTV’ (sic) adverts and Katie Couric, it kept in jokes that the audience wouldn’t understand unless they knew who Robbie From Eastenders is or who Hale & Pace are.) If it doesn’t impress stateside viewers, it’s possible that even the shared cost of production between HBO and the BBC might not be enough to save the show. Maybe they’ll merge the show with Little Britain USA to cut costs. That would be funny. Ha ha.

(*Of course, we’ve only just realised that the title of the film ‘The King’s Speech’ has a double meaning. That’s ‘speech’ as in ‘a prepared written statement to be read to an audience’ AND in the sense of ‘the act of speaking’. Doh, eh? It’s Hill Street Blues all over again.)

(**Coincidentally, HBO have just cancelled the marvellous Bored To Death, the rat bastards. They are now officially on our enemies list.)

YouTubeXL: More Packed With Entertainment Than Seventeen Double Issues Of The Radio Times (Part Three)

2011-12-21T12:00:00.000Z

Blah blah TV shows on YouTube blah blah after the ‘jump’ blah blah photo of Tatu.

Is it January yet? Can we stop doing this now?

In The Red

Great bigbollocked late 90s ensemble comedy miniseries don’t come finer than In The Red. This features Warren Clarke, Alun Armstrong, Keith Barron, Stephen Fry, John Bird, Richard Griffiths, Rik Mayall, Siobhan Redmond, John Sessions, Richard Wilson, Rebecca Front, Sally Phillips, Kevin Eldon, Reece Shearsmith, Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton, Zoe Ball and Kevin Greening at various points throughout. What’s not to like?

Is It Bill Bailey?

A keyboard. Straggly hair. A Bastard Bunny t-shirt. Edgar Wright on directing duties and Simon Pegg as a supporting player. Oh, and despite it being brilliant, it didn’t make it past one series shoved on the dark end of Newsnight.

Episode one doesn’t seem to be online in full, so here’s episode two.

Time Shift: Missing Believed Wiped

Courtesy the splendid CooperWeekend, another documentary we should have put in that earlier blog update about documentaries. This time, BBC Four’s 2003 glance at shows that had been thought lost forever.

Monty Python's Flying Circus

Pretty much every episode of Flying Circus is up there, so that you can rediscover for yourself that, despite what is often claimed, Python was more hit than miss. Here’s The BBC Entry To The Zinc Stoat of Budapest (or series 1 ep 6).

That Was The Week That Was

Frosty. He’s grrrreat. And so is Roy Kinnear. Et al.

Comedy Playhouse: No Strings

Timecode ahoy! From 1974, Rita Tushingham and Keith Barron play two single people trying to share a flat. FUN FACT: This is the source of that “COULD YOU HURRY UP, PLEASE!” archive clip seen in bumpers on Fist Of Fun. If you own that on DVD. Like us.

Hi-De-Hi – Pilot Episode

From 1980, the first outing for the Maplins massive.

The Man From Auntie Series 2

Incorrectly regarded as rubbish, it seems, this is long overdue a critical re-evaluation. Yeah, try to ignore everything Ben Elton has done over the last ten years, this is good. And the entire second series of it is available on YouTube.

Still Game – Cauld

To close, a perfect antidote to the winter blues. Mainly by seeing how Jack and Victor cope with the coldest season themselves.

Phew, eh? Tomorrow: something else.

YouTubeXL: More Packed With Entertainment Than Seventeen Double Issues Of The Radio Times (Part Two)

2011-12-20T12:00:00.000Z

Our trawl through the bits of the British television archives that trundled out of Windmill Road and straight onto YouTube continues. Just after, as we hope will soon become traditional, another photo of Tatu.

That Mitchell and Webb Sound: Series 1

First up today, a video that isn’t even video. It’s the first series of Radio 4’s That Mitchell & Webb Sound, which is very good indeed. Though as it’s from the commercially released version of the series, each episode opens with a not-proper version of Strangers On The Shore, which just sounds terrible. But, y’know, stick with it.

Fanorama

Here’s a curious one. From (we think) E4 in 2002, a full episode of a show called Fanorama. Hosted by Claudia Winkleman, this panel show sees two fans of a particular artist take on another pair of musical devotees. Each ‘team’ is captained by a comedian, in this case one David Mitchell and Rhys “Bellamy’s People” Thomas. This episode: Marilyn Manson versus Absolutely Fabulous.

Spitting Image 1987 Election Special

Quite a few full episodes of Spitting Image knocking around, but if you don’t fancy the (slightly rubbish) last ever episode or the special episode looking back at the presidency of Ronald Reagan, how about this? The infamous Spitting Image Election Special from 1987. Tomorrow beeeeeelongs… (etc)

Video Gaiden 1.1

TV shows about videogaming, eh? Why can’t they do it? It was all either “Dear Gamesmahstah, how do I get past the Visigoth in Nodes Of Yarmouth Part III?” or Nam sodding Rood on sodding Bad Influence, or maybe Steve Priestly on Movies Games & Videos telling us everything is fantastic and they all tried really hard to make the games good so it’d be rude not to buy every game on sale, eh?

Well, a few years ago, BBC Scotland gave Rab and Ryan from Consolevania ten minutes a week to tell us about games. So they did, then filled the other eight minutes each week being brilliant in lots of other ways. And it was incredibly popular, with viewers from all around the UK dusting off the BBC Two Scotland channel on their EPGs to join in the fun. At one point, it was the BBC Scotland programme with more positive viewer feedback than any other show. So: how did the BBC react to this popularity? Was it:

a) Moved the show to BBC Two throughout the entire UK?

b) Moved the show to BBC Three in an earlier slot, with an extended runtime?

c) Neglected to show the third series on television at all, not even in Scotland, only making it available on the BBC website?

Yep, it was ‘C’.

Still waiting for a second episode of Charlie Brooker’s Gameswipe.

The Story of The Young Ones

From the 25th Anniversary DVD of the landmark sitcom, this 50 minute documentary looks at the story behind the series. As you’ll have already guessed from the title.

The Full Wax - Eddie Izzard & Carrie Fisher

Remember when Ruby Wax was a proper big TV star, and not just someone who cropped up on things occasionally? To be honest, it was a bit of a mystery just why she fell from favour so suddenly, especially when her shows were always fun enough. She’s basically like Clive James, only a woman, American, and not that much like Clive James at all now we think about it.

Here she interviews Eddie Izzard and Carrie Fisher, in 1994.

Life Without George: Episode 1

Very much “of it’s time” 1980s pseudo-sophisticated sitcommery, you say? Here you go. It’s got Simon Cadell in it and everything.

That single screengrab from the opening titles probably tells you all you need to know.

People Like Us: The Managing Director

One of a several complete shows uploaded by BBC Worldwide, and a very fine choice it is too (along with, it seems, classic Doctor Who, The League of Gentlemen and, surprisingly, This Is Dom Joly), The presence of Chris Langham probably curtails any chance of this appearing on Dave, so thankfully we get this chance to take in this marvellously underrated sitcom that bettered The Office before The Office even appeared on our screens.

Arena: Ken Dodd's Happiness

Yeah, we did documentaries the other day, but this is too good not to include. A lovely look at the life and work of Britain’s most hardworking funnymen.

TOMORROW: MORE VIDEO GOODNESS.

YouTubeXL: More Packed With Entertainment Than Seventeen Double Issues Of The Radio Times (Part One)

2011-12-19T12:00:00.000Z

So, as promised we’ve been on the prowl for more excellent full shows that are available on YouTube. We’ve actually found such a bumper crop, we’re going to have to split them over two updates, and even then use the old ‘read more’ button to try and keep everything relatively neat and tidy.

So, if you’re reading this from the main page of the blog, click the ‘read more’ button just beneath this photo of Tatu. If you’re already reading the full article, hey, here’s a photo of Tatu!

Why Tatu? Because it’s nearly Christmas. It’s our present to ourselves. We haven’t mentioned them for ages. BROKENTV FACT! We’ve gone off The One With The Dark Hair Out Of Tatu, now. Our favourite one out of Tatu is now The Ginger One Out Of Tatu.

Okay, on with the show. In a slight modification of what we said last time, most of the videos we’ll be linked to should play on the Xbox’s new YouTube app. As we discovered after sitting down in front of our proper telly to watch that Handmade Films documentary the other day, some of them are automatically blocked on Xbox Live due to ‘copyright restrictions’ (which we suspect is a cover for the fact it’ll take the processing power of the forthcoming Xbox 720 to cope with the awesomeness of Granada continuity announcer Colin Weston).

So, sit back, relax, and enjoy at least a 60% probability of enjoying the following on your proper television for free! (Or on your computer.) (Or tablet computer.) (Or whatever.)

The Bazura Project’s History of Sinema

From that Australia. This is one of our sleeper hits of the year, being the kind of show that we checked out because it sounded quite interesting – a pair of witty film nerds wax wry about the seedier side of cinema. Or, as they have it… Sinema. Oh, you saw that in the title just up there? Well done you.

If you want a handy reckoner, it’s kind of like Adam & Joe doing a version of Newswipe only about films, and not really anything like we’ve just made it sound. Or if you prefer, a bit like classic late-night Channel Four video review show Vidz, except not that much really. Ah, just give it a watch, it’s really good. The first episode might not grab your attention fully (it didn’t with us when we watched it anyway, though we are grumpy bastards, so your mileage may very), but from episode two onwards it just gets better and better.

Some nice guest appearances in there for fans of Newstopia, by the way. As if us telling you to watch it isn’t enough to compel you to watch it anyway. You kids!

End of Part One: Series Two

For our money, this might just be the best comedy show ever broadcast on ITV. Yes, better than Rising Damp (which we’ve always felt is overrated, to be honest). Yes, better than Spitting Image, Hot Metal, The New Statesman, even Bottle Boys. We’ve gone on about it numerous times before, and despite it being as good as we’ve said all those times, it’s still no closer to appearing on ITV3 or on a Network DVD. For shame (though we suspect all the parodies of other shows contained within would make it an absolute nightmare to clear for release).

So, for now, enjoy the several episodes that have been uploaded in full to YouTube. The first series is still floating around there in chunks, but it’s full-everything-in-one-go episodes we’re looking at here, so we’ll give you an episode from the superior series two to be going on with. Several other full episodes from that series are also on YouTube, which we’ll not link to directly here just in case ITV’s ninja lawyers are lurking. Oh, they’re fast enough to remember they made this show when it suits them, aren’t they?

This Morning With Richard Not Judy: Series Two

Happily from what we hear, sales of the Fist Of Fun Series One DVD are looking healthy enough to suggest Lee, Herrings and Evans will consider doing the same for Fist S2, and if we’re especially lucky, TMWRNJ after that. So, what better time to revisit the most distant of those potential releases, so that you’ll remember how good it was, but by the time it gets released you’ll have forgotten all the specifics and have to buy it again in order to watch it?

No better time, that’s what.

Tiswas Reunited

From a brilliant, fondly remembered yet never repeated show that first went out on early Sunday afternoons, so Saturday mornings. Or more specifically, a Saturday night a few years ago. (“Eh?” – Reader’s voice.) Yes, it’s Tiswas Reunited, the reunion show for the most anarchic kids TV show of all time. (“Ah.” – Reader’s voice.)

And if that’s not enough, how about twenty-two minutes of the original show itself? Featuring the St Winifreds Choir, Dr Hook and Cliff Richard. Or, if you want to recall what happened after the ‘Was finished, twenty-five minutes of it’s Hampshire-based successor, No. 73.

The Best of The Marty Feldman Comedy Machine

From the ATV years, meaning it’s sadly unlikely to get proper repeat showings any time soon. A huge shame. For a real treat, skip to 13 minutes and 40 seconds to see the brilliant undertakers sketch guest starring Spike Milligan.

Prisoner Cell Block H

Now this is one of those moments that will make you glad we live in such a wondrous age. You know when you tentatively do an internet search for something, knowing that there’s no way it’ll ever be there, but it won’t hurt to try? But it’ll never work, not ever, never, no? And then that thing IS there, and you start getting all carried away wondering if you can move on to be able to pause time using willpower and stuff?

Well, good news everyone! Every episode of Prisoner Cell Block H is available in full on YouTube. Vinegar Tits, Bea Smith, The Freak, Lizzie Birdsworth, Meg Jackson, Lexie Patterson, all there in their full glory. (Well, we think it’s every episodes, there are certainly loads of them there anyway.)

Here’s the first ever episode. Don’t blame us if you end up watching the lot and later find yourself making bathtub grog or running a numbers game in order to become top dog.

The Micallef Pogram

Staying down under, here’s one of the greatest television comedies ever broadcast, and the genesis of our pathetic nonsexual man-crush on Shaun Micallef.

Following on from The Micallef Program and The Micallef Programme, this third series saw the action get even more stupidly enjoyable than before. This series probably generated most of the material used for the UK edits of P(r)ogram(me) that were shown on Paramount over here, and it’s not hard to see why. It’s just so freaking enjoyable – even now, the title sequence (comprised of material purporting to be from sketches in the show, but actually being from unused skits) makes us do a great big soppy old smile. See, THAT’S how good it is. The ‘best of’ bits in the titles weren’t good enough to actually get in the show.

Ah, the Amazing Vole. We hardly knew ye.

Inspector Herring The Movie

We’re on a Micallef tip now. Here, in full, in Russian with English subtitles, is Inspector Herring: The Movie. Or, as it’s generally known, the final episode of Newstopia. Starring ‘Zorn Micalley’.

Thank God You're Here

More Micallef. This time in the original Australian version of Thank God You’re Here, the UK version of which ITV have one series then dumped it. Still, fingers crossed for series two of The Marriage Ref, eh?

In English, but with Polish subtitles. For some reason. (That reason being it’s been uploaded by a Polish improv comedy website.)

TOMORROW: MORE VIDEOS OF THINGS.

2016! 2016! 2016! (etc)

2011-12-17T23:20:00.001Z

Too busy to do a proper update today, so here – as seen on 77.2% of all blogs on the internet this weekend – is a thing.

It’s not a one-off either. Here, from the same Ghanaian movie studio, are trailers for Devil May Cry and The Killer.

All this is making us feel the forthcoming BrokenTV Awards 2011 Video Podcasts have relatively high production values after all.

The Chart Show: BBC Two Comedy Zone Episodes Six

2011-12-17T12:00:00.000Z

We love Thursday night Comedy Zone on BBC Two. Basically because, as you’ll have grasped by now us chucking the overnight viewing figures into Excel gives us a really easy update each Saturday*. So, instead of us wittering on or providing any kind of insight, on with the numbers. Figures from the Digital Spy forum ratings thread

(*Well, each Friday evening. We love Blogger’s ‘queue post’ function even more than we love the Thursday night Comedy Zone on BBC Two.)

A surge in figures for all three shows this week, due to… circumstances we’re too lazy to research. A huge boost for REV this week (and with good reason, another hugely enjoyable episode), seeing the ratings rise back up to episode two levels. THIS IS TWENTY-EIGHT MINUTES TOO LONG made a recovery too, with an additional 260,000 viewers able to have their intelligence insulted by the scene with the washing machines. Meanwhile, Lord FRANK SKINNER of Sealand’S OPINIONATED increased in popularity for the fourth consecutive week, the final episode of the series saw numbers rise up to 1.4 million.

Series closers for REV and LIFE’S TOO SHORT switch to Tuesday night, so it’ll be interesting to see how each fares. Will the lack of a primetime same-week repeat for SHORT see the first airing of the finale gain even more viewers? Time – more specifically next Wednesday’s MediaGuardian and/or Digital Spy Ratings Thread – will tell.

YouTube XL: Classic British TV Documentaries In Full

2011-12-16T12:00:00.000Z

Following on yesterday’s look at films available on YouTube, here’s a delve into the digital factbucket of documentaries made available on there. If you want to queue them all up on your Xbox, PC or whatnot, here’s several of the finest all in one playlist. Or, if you’d like to see them individually, read on.

As with our last collection, all of these are now viewable on Xbox Live’s YouTube app. Go on, even the dullest of these is 758 times more interesting than Call Of Sodding Duty 3.

BBC Synth Britannia (1h28m)

Splendid BBC Four documentary on the rise of electronic music.

This Is The BBC (1h21m)

Dating from 1959, this film – which won a BAFTA for ‘Best Specialised Film’ in 1959 – looks at 24 hours in the life of Auntie Beeb.

Television - The Race For Television (52m)

Also courtesy of the Alexandra Palace Television Society (who are well worth following on YouTube if you like old telly) is this, episode two of Granada’s excellent 1985 documentary series on the history of television, called ‘Television’. This episode looks at the early development of the gogglebox. Also includes terrifying footage of the puppet’s head Baird used for his early test transmission. It is terrifying.

Nineteen Eighty-Four (1954 BBCtv Version) (1h47m)

Not a documentary, UNLESS YOU’RE COUNTING IT AS A FUTURE DOCUMENTARY ON HOW LIFE WILL BE UNDER THE IRON FIST OF DAVID CAMERONS IF HE CONTINUES TO HAVE HIS EVIL WAY WITH THE PEOPLES OF BRITAIN, but worthy of inclusion while we’re going on about television landmarks. A live teleplay of George Orwell’s finest work, starring Peter Cushing.

Bill Hicks: Dark Poet (58m)

Yeah, we don’t even care about keeping to the theme now. This Radio 2 documentary from 2007 sees Phill Jupitus look at the life and work of Bilbo Hicks.

Arena – William S. Burroughs (1h26m)

Advice for young people: watch this, it is good. Dating from 1997, this Arena documentary provides an intimate and often moving portrait that reveals the man
through his own account of his life and his friends Allen Ginsburg,
Lucien Carr and Herbert Hunckie.

Dusty Springfield: Full Circle (58m)

Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders catch up with Dusty Springfield in this look back at her life, first broadcast in 1991 (we think). Martha Reeves, Dionne Warwick, Neil Tennant and Burt Bacharach all pop along for the ride.

Horizon - Nice Guys Finish First (45m)

In a subject also touched upon in his book ’The Selfish Gene’, Richard “God? Boo!” Dawkins looks at the subject of selfishness and cooperation, arguing that evolution often favours co-operative behaviour. First shown in 1987.

The War Game (46m)

If you’re planning on not spending the night being unable to sleep due to cowering under your duvet at the thought of nuclear annihilation, then look away now. This 1965 docu-predicto-drama looks at the effects of nuclear war on Britain. Not quite as piss-terrifying as Threads, but still galling enough to be pulled from the schedules at the time, not actually being shown on British screens until 1985.

The Movie Life of George (56m)

George Harrison, that is. This from Granada in 1989, an absolutely lovely look at the work of Handmade Films, including Life of Brian (which, in case you’ve not spotted, is where the title comes from). Even better, the video includes in-vision continuity from legendary Granada announcer Colin Weston. AND Michael Palin doing an after-dinner speech.

John Pilger - Japan Behind The Mask (51m)

Also available as part of the brilliant “In The Name of Justice” DVD box set, this Granada documentary from 1987 takes a look at Japanese society and the rising sense of nationalism amongst the Japanese population.

TOMORROW: ENTERTAINMENT

YouTube on Xbox Live: Full Movies You Can Watch. On It.

2011-12-15T12:00:00.000Z

So, the new Xbox Live dashboard is now available. If you’re like us, you probably nabbed it as soon as possible, then thought “Oh. Right. Is that it?”

Luckily however, ‘it’ is no longer all that ‘that’ ‘is’. By which we mean the proper video apps are now trickling through, most notable of which is YouTube. And that, our fine friends, is A Very Good Thing Indeed. Here’s why: YouTube seem to have really relaxed their tight-ass controls on what people can put online. No longer is everyone limited to ten minutes or less per video. Sprawling epics can now be shared on there. And, what with The Internet being The Internet, it’s not all videos of pets doing amusing things. Yes, it’s mostly videos of pets doing amusing things, but it’s not ALL videos of pets doing amusing things. There are also full films on there, at least until The Man does something about it.

So, until then, here are a few great ones. Open the links in a new window, add them to playlists on your YouTube account as needed, log into your YouTube account on your Xbox, and watch these films in full, for free, on your proper big tellies. (We’ve just tested the first film on our Xbox, and they DO currently work.)

LEON (1994)

EASY RIDER (1969)

THE OUTSIDERS (1983)

THE HILLS HAVE EYES (1977)

TALLADEGA NIGHTS: THE BALLAD OF RICKY BOBBY (2005)

SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS (1964)

FLIGHT OF THE NAVIGATOR (1986)

SHORT CIRCUIT (1986)

HACKERS (1995)

(Yes, it’s terrible. That’s why it’s worth watching.)

WAR GAMES (1983)

EVIL DEAD III: ARMY OF DARKNESS (1992)

and lastly, possibly the best film noir of them all*…

KISS ME DEADLY (1955)

(*No, it is, shut up.)

Even more, here.

The Seventh Most Misjudged Attempt At A Christmas Number One of the Early 1990s (That We Meant To Include But Forgot But Then Governmentyard Reminded Us. Of It.)

2011-12-14T12:00:00.000Z

Hurrah!
But anyway, onto the glaring omission from yesterday’s music rundown. We feel even more ashamed, because us remembering this song was the reason we’d written that blog update in the first place. Boh.
(We’d also forgot to namecheck SOTCAA in the Fist DVD review, too. Without their work on it, we strongly suspect it would have been a noticeably weaker purchase, and their comprehensive sleevenotes that come with the DVD set are thumpingly compelling. Belated thanks, chaps.)

Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine - The Impossible Dream

Year: 1992 Peak chart position: 21

Except… well, we were kind of right not to include it.
We recall the NME trumpeting the fact Jim Bob and Fruitbat had tentatively planned to release their excellent cover of a song originally written for 1965 musical Man of La Mancha just in time to make 1992’s Christmas number one. That was just after lead single from chart-topping LP ‘1992: The Love Album’, The Only Living Boy In New Cross, moshed its way into the top ten, giving the duo their biggest hit to date. From there however, the self-styled “awesomely loud cross between the Pet Shop Boys and Mega City Four” dipped in popularity a little, with follow-up single Do Re Me (So Far So Good) falling outside the top twenty. That after an animated promo video directed by Richard “Roger Rabbit” Williams, to boot*. (*We think. We’re pretty sure we remember the pop-up from The Chart Show at the time correctly. Unless it was directed by someone less senior, it was certainly someone involved in Roger Rabbit though**.) (**Oh, and that video featuring photos of animal testing probably didn’t help it get much daytime rotation on MTV Europe.)
Getting slightly cold feet, record company Chrysalis ended up putting The Impossible Dream out in late November 1992, where it reached a fairly respectable number 21, but had fallen outside the top 75 by the time of the advent rundown. At the time of the release, anyone only vaguely interested in Carter probably already owned the album, though the extra tracks on the EP made it a worthy purchase for their fanboys, especially barnstorming stomper ‘When Thesauruses Ruled The Earth’.
So, not really a missed shot across the bows of The Good Ship Christmas Number One after all, but worthy of inclusion here because it’s such a bloody good version of the song. The truncated version of it in the video up there (on Top Of The Pops) doesn’t quite do it justice, but our search for the proper video on YouTube led us to this video, where the song has been used to soundtrack a photo montage of Barack Obama’s victory in the 2008 US Presidential Election. If you’re asking us (and we’re going to assume you are, because we’re hugely misguided about our popularity), it captures the majesty of the song pretty damn well. It’s so good, we don’t even want to kneecap the uploader who disabled the option of embedding the song elsewhere. It’s THAT good.
-
With thanks to Government Yard. Go visit his blog. Or badger him on Twitter. Or hide in his dustbin and wait for several days, biding your time until he goes out there to take the kitchen rubbish out, then spring out while yelling “I AM THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PRESENT! FEAR MY FESTIVE WRAITH!” into his bewildered face.
No, hang on, just the first two.

The Six Most Misjudged Attempts At A Christmas Number One Of The Early 1990s And A Photograph Of Little Mix to Try And Get Some Google Traffic Trickling In

2011-12-13T12:00:00.000Z

Above: Jade Thirlwell, Perrie Edwards, Jesy Nelson, Leigh-Anne Pinnock, and the dawning realisation that we’re going to be so far down the Google rankings for those search terms we really, really shouldn’t have bothered

Almost time to find out what this year’s Christmas Number One is*! Except everyone already knows it’s going to be Little Mix off of X Factor. That’s X Factor’s Little Mix and their cover version of Damien Rice’s Cannonball. Sung by Jade Thirlwell, Perrie Edwards, Jesy Nelson and Leigh-Anne Pinnock. Little Mix, X Factor, Little Mix, X Factor, Little Mix, X Factor, X Factor, Little Mix. This is how search engine optimisation works, isn’t it?

Anyway, far more fun these days is looking at all the “spoil Cowell’s fun” songs nominated by the Facebook hive mind, and for the most part, their valiant but ultimately futile attempt to get anyway near the same postcode as the Christmas top ten. Last year at least saw Kunt And The Gang make the Official UK Singles Chart (albeit just outside the top 40), after all.

This time round, it sounds like the official spoilersong is Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit, which is a bit boring – we’d have gone for Smells Like Nirvana by “Weird” Al Yankovic, at least. There are a few other token efforts hoping to challenge the Syco supremacy, but they’re all a bit, well, boring and worthy. The Military Wives (not an indie band, actual military wives), 10-year-old Arianna Morgan, the cast of The Only Way Is Essexzzzzz, and basically, well, oh dear.

BUT! What of years gone by? When proper bands, cynical record companies and two-bit celebs brought out special records in time for the big day, hoping that this could be their year? Which then utterly, utterly failed to challenge the likes of Cliff for the top spot? Well, here are a few we’ve uncovered from the early 1990s.

Pet Shop Boys – Was It Worth It?

Year: 1991 Peak chart position: 24

Just four years after their cover of Always On My Mind shoved Rick Astley into the Gallup Christmas tree to steal the big prize, The Smiths You Can Dance To had big hopes for this effort, a song only otherwise available as a bonus track on their singles collection Discography. A big brash bouncy belter about countering doubt with jubilant enthusiasm, could this lift the hopes of a Britain still adjusting to a grey future under John Majors?

Nope, it couldn’t. Not even a Moby remix on the 12” could drag this into the top 20, and it’s not even really remembered fondly by Pet Shop Boys fans. Well, not us, anyway. It’s certainly no You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You’re Drunk.

Digital Dream Baby - Walking In The Air

Year: 1991 Peak chart position: 49

Well, it was an age when you could shove a drum track behind the music from Tetris and get a top ten smash. Doing the same with Aled Jones’ theme from The Snowman? A sure fire banker, one would have to assume? Well, nope. The song being terrible certainly didn’t help.

Mel Smith – Another Blooming Christmas

Year: 1991 Peak chart position: 59

Digital Dream Baby weren’t the only act to attempt an assault on the festive countdown by appropriating a Raymond Briggs character in 1991. Mel Smith – at the time when Smith & Jones had not long made the successful transfer to BBC-1 – voiced this kid-friendly track, performing as cheeky curmudgeon Father Christmas. Note lots of use of the word ‘blooming’, which was really rather quite daring if you were a tiny child at the time, we imagine.

We haven’t looked, but we’re also going to assume that someone brought out a Christmas single by the old couple from Briggs’ When The Wind Blows. And that it was a festive pastiche of Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Two Tribes. And that it only got to number 74.

Spitting Image - The Christmas Singles

Year: 1990 Peak chart position: 84

The third, final and most frequently forgotten single from Spitting Image, this being an attack on cheap cash-in Christmas singles, despite it actually being a cheap cash-in Christmas etc etc. It’s not especially bad (it’s by Phil Pope, and therefore automatically worthy of merit), but you can just tell it was a regular song used to close an episode of the series, subsequently shoved onto the shelves of Woolworths and Our Price, y’know, just in case.

Sadly for Fluck and co, the series had long since stopped being a national talking point, and the success of The Chicken Song didn’t happen again. Or even the semi-success of Santa Claus Is On The Dole.

Vic Reeves – Abide With Me

Year: 1990 Peak chart position: 47

If ever you needed proof that being a hero to students didn’t mean Jack Shit in the Christmas pop charts, here’s Vic Reeves and Abide With Me. Coming off the back of two top ten hits in 1991 – his cover of ‘Born Free’ having made number six in April, and ‘Dizzy’ reaching the top spot alongside The Wonder Stuff in the month before this single – success seemed certain. A rave stomper of the hymn (we think remixed by The Grid, though we could be wrong), a video containing a muddy Vic on a horse while an astonished Bob Mortimer looked on, and a CD single containing several remixes and even a ‘straight’ cover of the song that you could play to your mum. Top ten at least, shurely?

Well, it bombed spectacularly, not even making the top forty. Copies of the single cropped up in record shop bargain bins well into the summer, and it took another four years until Mr Vic plucked up the courage to put out another single (the much better I’m A Believer, along with Bob and The EMF, of course).

Hulk Hogan with Green Jelly - I'm the Leader of the Gang

Year: 1993 Peak chart position: 25

This actually existed.

Remember kids, if anyone over the age of 30 tries to tell you music was better before The X Factor came along, play them this, then kick them in the shins and run off. It’s the only way people like us will ever learn.

---

(* “Aah, but this year’s Xmas number one will be announced on Xmas Day, not this weekend, you wrongfaced idiot. Don’t you even know that?”, you may whinny. To which we retort “shove off bignose, our original idea of exposing how all the Comedy Award nominees come from the same few management companies kind of fell apart, when it turns out that they didn’t. We’d prepared a funny joke about Jack Whitehall and everything.”)

The League Of Funnymen 10: Lee & Herring’s Fist of Fun Series One DVD

2011-12-12T12:00:00.000Z

TODAY: “It makes me maaaad with power!”

LEE & HERRING’S FIST OF FUN: COMPLETE SERIES ONE

£25 (Go Faster Stripe)

It’s remit-tweaking time here at BrokenTV towers, as our list of stand-up DVDs from 2011 makes room for a sketch comedy from the mid-1990s. Ah, d’you remember the mid-90s, viewers? Trance Europe Express compilations in Our Price, Roy Evans’ swashbuckling Liverpool side never quite winning anything apart from the League Cup, the 3DO being resolutely ignored on the shop shelves of electronic goods retailers, and BBC Two playing host to all manner of excitingly offkilter comedy. Shows like the The Glam Metal Detectives, Is It Bill Bailey?, The Ghostbusters of East Finchley, The High Life, Pulp Video, Fantasy Football League, The All-New Alexei Sayle Show, The Fast Show, In The Red, Does China Exist?, The Saturday/Friday Night Armistice, London Shouting… some good, some bad, some even strangled at the pilot stage, but you have to feel that they’re all precisely the kinds of comedy that wouldn’t be allowed to happen on the BBC in 2011.

Arguably the most popular of all cultish mid-1990s comedy shows – at least if you polled a certain type of comedy fan who has spent way too much time on the internet since about 1997 – featured a tall-but-not-that-tall man called Stewart and a shorter-and-fatter-but-not-really-that-much-shorter-or-fatter man called Richard.

And it’s now out on DVD.

Finally.

And it is good.

It’s the kind of show that had lived on in the memories of comedy geeks ever since it was first broadcast, mainly because that was the only place it had to go. It was never repeated, and never released on any physical format. It never even made it to the likes of UK Gold or Paramount. And yet, at least for us, it was pretty hard to wander into any internet forum from that point on without at least a few of the participants making oblique references to weak lemon drink, moons on sticks or typing “aaaah” after they’d made a point they were particularly pleased with.

With the notable exceptions of Fantasy Football League and The Fast Show, that didn’t really seem to happen with other BBC Two comedies of that era. If you’d said “Och pish, it’s just a wee voddy” more than three weeks after the final episode of The High Life aired, people would have stared at you in bafflement. And if you’d made any references to The Glam Metal Detectives at any time at all, even when it was actually being shown on a television in the room you were in, people would have probably walked away after a short awkward silence. The Betty’s Mad Dash bits were quite good though, eh? Yet, with Lee & Herring, they seemed to stick in the collective consciousness of many who found themselves between the ages of 15 and 21 when the series went out.

While it might be simple to dismiss the show as catchphrase comedy (that’s you that is. Oh, wait), it hailing from the age of British Comedies Being Given Decent Budgets meant that very few of the ideas actually recycled themselves. Perhaps with good reason – on the commentary track Rich and Stew lament the fact that the recording schedule (shows two and three were recorded before show one had aired) meant that the few running characters they did have in the show hadn’t been seen by the studio audience before*, meaning they generally met a muted reception. Oh, and because much of the audience had actually turned up hoping to see Big Break instead. Oh, BBC ticketing policies of the mid 1990s.

(*Apart from the members of the studio audience familiar with their 1FM series, obviously. Aah.)

And what an inventive show it was, too. We absolutely adore comedy shows where every last effort has been made to cram in as much material as possible, like imperial phase Simpsons where the titles were reduced to just Marge driving into the garage and the couch gag so they could fit a bit more tomfoolery into the episode proper, or full-pomp Seinfeld not even having a title sequence or full closing theme, just non-stop excellence. Lee & Herring continued in this tradition by throwing in lots and lots of freeze-frame humour that you could only get to enjoy if you’d taped the show beforehand (or were incredibly quick at reading). Some of the jokes would be self-referential, such as highlighting where cuts from different recording sessions were used in the same sketch. Some were calls to arms, such as the suggestion to complain about or commend a scathing review of the show in a Somerset local newspaper, so that the responsible TV reviewer was either sacked or promoted. Some, well, they were often just material from the radio series, but thrown at the screen over the end credits in one final burst of pause-button delight.

(QUICK QUIZ – What was the first British TV show to use extra freeze-frame material over the end credits? Answer at the bottom of this update.)

The strange thing is about these freeze-frame gags – no-one else has really ever done them since, even in the age of the PVR. The first series of The Adam & Joe Show did also use the idea in and out of ad breaks, but it was ditched by the time series two came around. Since then, we don’t think anyone has used it, until Comedy Central UK used similar pages of text to bookend their ad breaks (slightly foolishly, because you’d be reading the text on live pause instead of watching the ads which, y’know, do pay for the channel. It’s like you’re stealing television!). Even more strange – despite Fist of Fun being the kind of show you had to record onto VHS to get the most out of, it seems very few people actually kept the tapes. Certainly, while hundreds of obscure TV gems resurfaced in crystal-clear quality around the advent of BitTorrent – including lesser-spotted programmes like End Of Part One or Rutland Weekend Television – it seemed that the only copies of FoF lurking around the internet were sloppily encoded Windows Media files.

Happily, they’re all on DVD now, so you can re-watch everything in digital spankovision, and read all the freeze-frame gags with clarity instead of fuzzy VHS wobbleview. And that’s not the only benefit of getting this disc. The FoF set plays host to what must certainly be the best set of extras ever seen for a British comedy DVD release. Here’s a quick run-through:

* Each episode in full.
* BUT! If you press ‘left’ on your remote with an episode selected on the main screen, each episode is preceded by the original VT clock. NERDGASM AHOY.
* Commentaries on each episode by Stewart Lee and Richard Herring.
* The entire Lee and Herring Live at the Cochrane live show from 1995 (the VHS release that sometimes cropped up on Paramount, the only L&H to ever get repeated on the channel we think, unless you’re counting Festival of Fun, and we don’t).
* Lee and Herring’s 90s Nostalgia (filmed in Rich’s garden).
* The original non-broadcast pilot
* DVD-ROM content – scripts, press releases, fan club letters, a live audio bootleg and various scribbles made by Rich at the time of recording.

and, best of all

* All surviving studio rushes from four of the episodes. Retakes, warm-ups (from K Eldon), arsing about, entire deleted sketches, slightly hissy reactions to having to do another retake, awkward silences and all.

That last part is what makes this really worth the £25. As far as we’re aware, the only other DVD set to include studio rushes is the box set of the Complete Larry Sanders Show – and that’s the greatest DVD set ever produced. And that only covered selected scenes, with (as far as we recall) only one long, 20-minute cut of the show-within-the-show actually on there. This contains as much material as could be uncovered, with rushes lasting between 30 minutes and a whopping 86 minutes. While it’s not all non-stop entertainment, if you’re a fan of comedy it’s absolutely fascinating to see.

If you’ve read this far without dozing off, we suspect you’re already aware of the story behind the release, but we’ll skip through it anyway. The BBC didn’t want to release it, so Lee and Herring themselves, along with Go Faster Stripe honcho Chris Not That One Evans bought the rights themselves, and set about making the best goddamn DVD set they could. Yes, it’s £25, but for that you get over ten hours of video, with an extra 4+ hours of commentary tracks. And if it doesn’t sell, not only will that put the kybosh on FoF series two, along with This Morning With Richard Not Judy ever appearing on shiny disc, but might spell disaster for brilliant lo-fi DVD production company GFW.

This must not happen.

And hopefully, it won’t. In an ideal world, this will sell enough copies for all involved to make a decent return, and the idea will catch on. Who knows, maybe one day there could even be a two-tier approach to putting out TV shows on DVD. For the majority of people, the standard set you can pick up in Tesco will contain the episodes and nothing else. For the hardcore, multi-disc sets packed with special features like you’ll find on this set, all for a premium price. It’s something that a lot of bands already do with album releases – bog standard iTunes versions for the casual fans, £25 sets including signed DVDs, live tracks and art prints for the fanboys. Who knows, maybe at some point in the future, we’ll all be sending off for the deluxe boxset of The Pallbearer’s Revue, safe in the knowledge that Jerry Sadowitz will personally gob in each and every digipak.

See, how wonderful could the future be? BUY THE LEE AND HERRING’S FIST OF FUN SERIES ONE DVD.

CHART UPDATE:

(QUICK QUIZ ANSWER: It was Children’s ITV computer games show Bad “This Game Is Good Because The Graphics And The Gameplay Are Good” Influence, and their during-credits ‘Datablast’ sequence.)

<>

2011-12-11T12:00:00.000Z

C:\Users\BrokenTVHome>cd\

C:\>DIR EMERGENCY_BLOG_UPDATES
Volume in drive C is BrokenTV-O-Tron2000
Volume Serial Number is 01-811-8055

Directory of C:\EMERGENCY_BLOG_UPDATES

03\07\2011 19:57   <DIR>     .
03\07\2011 19:57   <DIR>     ..
07\08\2010 20:53   <DIR>     TATU_VIDEOS_1
07\08\2010 20:53   <DIR>     TATU_VIDEOS_2
07\08\2010 20:53   <DIR>     TATU_VIDEOS_3
07\08\2010 20:53   <DIR>     LEGAL_THREATS_FROM_TATUS_MANAGEMENT
07\06\2010 16:23   <DIR>     STUFF_NOT_EVEN_ABOUT_TELLY
23\11\2011 16:23   <DIR>     GRAPHS_THAT_WE_HOPE_PROVE_US_RIGHT
17\06\2007 23:58   <DIR>     BRAND_NEW_EXCITING_BLOG_IDEAS
27\10\2011 00:01   <DIR>     SCANS_FROM_1970S_TV_TIMES
10\12\2011 21:27   <DIR>     STUFF_FOUND_ON_YOUTUBE

C:\>CD EMERGENCY_BLOG_UPDATES\STUFF_FOUND_ON_YOUTUBE

C:\EMERGENCY_BLOG_UPDATES\STUFF_FOUND_ON_YOUTUBE>QUICKBLOGUPDATE763.BAT

Hello! We’re too busy <<DRINKING/CRYING/BEING STUCK DOWN A WELL/WATCHING OUR NEW FIST OF FUN DVD>> to do a proper update today. Never fear, because in mind of that we bring you an excellent YouTube video of <<A HISTORY OF FAMOUS DRUNKS/THAT BIT IN TOY STORY 3/WHAT IT’S LIKE TO BE STUCK DOWN A WELL/THE ENTIRETY OF LEE & HERRING’S REASONABLY SCARY MONSTERS FROM BBC TWO’S MONSTER NIGHT IN 1999>>.

<<INSERT YOUTUBE EMBED CODE HERE. DON’T FORGET TO DELETE THIS PLACEHOLDER TEXT, YOU IDIOTS.>>

Hurrah! That was <<EMBARRASSING/TRAGIC/DARK/FUN>> wasn’t it? Our favourite bit was when <<WE GOT DRUNK ON THE VERY GIRLIEST OF ALCOPOPS ON OFFER BUT WE’RE SECURE WITH OUR MASCULINITY SO IT’S OKAY/WE STOPPED CRYING/CLAMBERED OUT OF THE WELL/LEE AND HERRING SAID FUNNY THINGS WITH THEIR MOUTHS>>.

Don’t forget to join us again at the same time tomorrow, when we’ll have a much bigger update, almost definitely the next instalment of The World Cup Of TV Comedy, yes, definitely, we wiSYNTAX ERROR UNRECOGNISED STATEMENT
ABORT, RETRY, FAIL?

The Chart Show: BBC Two Comedy Zone (again)

2011-12-10T12:00:00.000Z

The new Thursday night overnight rating figures are in! And you know what that means? That’s right - an incredibly easy update for us. Phew.

So, Life’s Too Short continues to struggle, though the rate at which it’s losing viewers is slowing. Maybe that million viewers realised it’d be the strongest episode of the series so far, with it managing to last an entire 28 minutes without Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant popping up on screen, and without there even being any famous Americans on screen. When we say ‘strongest’ it’s all relative, obvs – it still had woeful LOLRAPISTS and LOLPEADO jokes in there, but it wasn’t quite as bad as the previous episodes of the series. And hey, no dwarves in toilets this week, so that was a thing.

Meanwhile, Rev is getting more and more enjoyable – the latest episode was a delight, with Mick being treated to a homecooked meal by Rev Adam and Alex being a wonderful little scene (“Thank you… do I eat a potato next? Thank you… do I eat a vegetable next?”). Not only that, but Richard E Grant turning up, effectively playing Banker Withnail. That’s how you ‘do’ celebrity cameos. It certainly looks like the televiewers of Britain are in agreement with us on Rev, with it holding steady on 1.24 million viewers.

Slightly surprisingly, Frank Skinner’s Opinionated is now the most popular of the three shows, not least because we don’t think the BBC have promoted the series at all. It’s still a perfectly amiable programme, though hardly Skinner at his best. Even so, it’s interesting to see the series improve its viewership for the second week running, and even more interesting to note that dip in the ratings between the three shows – about a fifth of the audience for Rev switch over at 9.30pm, then switch back at 10pm to watch Frank Skinner. (Well, it could be an entirely different 240,000 people, admittedly. We haven’t conducted a poll.)

PREDICTION: The controller of BBC Two moves Life’s Too Short to 10pm at the last minute, to try and get a return on the big expensive programme it ended up paying half of. After all, the only reason it’s not popular is because it must be in the wrong timeslot.

The League of Funnymen Part 8: Angelos Epithemiou

2011-12-09T21:17:00.001Z

Him off Shooting Stars.

ANGELOS EPITHEMIOU & FRIENDS: LIVE

£12.97 (Amazon)

The first thing we wondered when seeing the cover of this was whether the “& Friends” part of the title suggested Renton Skinner would be spending much of the runtime showing off other, less interesting comic creations of his. Luckily for those who have enjoyed his turns alongside Vic and Bob, it’s Angelos all the way on this disc. The ‘friends’ in question tend to be the acquaintances of Epithemiou’s from his supposed everyday life, pictures of whom occasionally flash up on the screen at the back of the stage as we’re told about their antics.

It has been said that Angelos is another example of a comedian lazily mocking disability (cf. The Morgana Show, Gervais circa monggate), but we wouldn’t really go with that. If anything, he plays a slightly naive eccentric who lives in his own version of the world, and the version of the world he’s created for himself is one where he’s the winner at everything. Much like Frank Sidebottom only without the songs or head, and a tad more world-weariness.

Aside from all that, you might be wondering just how a full gig compares to the short bursts of Angelos Epithemiou in Shooting Stars. Pretty well, in fact. If you’re looking to us for a half-baked comparison, it’s not a million miles away from the live shows of Vic Reeves’ Big Night Out. Angelos’ DJ rig is decorated in much the same curious manner as the desk in Big Night Out (there’s even a horsebrass on it), and there’s even a great bit of That’s Justice-ish audience member participation in his ‘game show’ Epithemiou or Bust. While it doesn’t quite hit the heights of that slice of early 90s gold, it’s as close as you’re likely to get to such demented whimsy nowadays, and it’ll be interesting to see how this DVD performs against other more traditional stand-ups.

It’s commendable how Renton Skinner manages to keep in character throughout, even during parts of the audience Q&A where people ask funny questions that get a huge response from the rest of the crowd. He even remains in character at that most annoying occurrence at a DVD-record gig, a couple of selfish oafs in the front row walking out with about three minutes of the gig left.

Overall impressions, then – if you enjoyed his performance in Shooting Stars (or on Never Mind The Buzzcocks the other night), you’ll almost definitely find this DVD an enjoyable way to spend 85 minutes of your winter (or summer if you’re reading this while wondering if you should be buying it from a sale seven months from now). If you’re unconvinced about him, try to give it a watch anyway – being drawn into the world of Angelos properly will let you make up your mind about him properly. Only a few of his gags (such as they are) appeared in Shooting Stars, and they’re pretty much the weaker ones. And he doesn’t do any of the rubbish stuff about Ulrika, because, well, she’s not there. CAVEAT: If you hate comedy where there aren’t any proper jokes or anything, you’ll hate this. If anyone you know has bought you this for Christmas, it’s probably their way of telling you they hate you. You misery.

Us? We really enjoyed it. We certainly found ourselves laughing out loud more often than with most of the DVDs we’ve looked at so far, which puts it pretty high up in our SPECIAL REVAMPED LEAGUE TABLE WHICH ACCOUNTS FOR OVERALL QUALITY RATHER THAN JUST SIMPLE ORDERING.

SAMPLE GAG: “If you find yourself in France, don’t panic. Just lie down on the floor, curl up in a ball, and wait for rescue.”

The Six Most Unsettling Moments In That BBC One “Consider Yourself” Promo

2011-12-08T12:00:00.000Z

6. DAVID JASON LURKS

What’s he planning? And why has he got that disturbing grin on his face? Oh, we can’t see it at this resolution, but we can tell. We can just tell. Brr.

5. GRAHAM NORTON WILL EAT YOUR SOUL

Is this Christmas, or a very, very late Halloween promo? Right now, we aren’t sure.

4. LENNY HENRY KISSES BY FALLING ON TOP OF THE PERSON HE IS TRYING TO KISS

What other possible reason could there be for him falling over after Ms Cotton steps aside at the last moment, eh? He’s a big bloke, too.

3. THE TWO OPPOSITE ENDS OF THE COMEDY QUALITY SPECTRUM CLASH

Isn’t Frank Skinner only on BBC Two, anyway? Also: it is too much to hope that despite the above image, there actually isn’t a Christmas special lined up for Mrs Brown’s Boys? Or, as Michael Legge excellently summed up the show, “FUCK FUCK FUCK POTATO FUCK FUCK”.

2. DOT COTTON DROPS ONE

Well, it snapped Norton out of that demonic possession, anyway.

1. DAVID JASON WINKS AT YOU

This is just outright creepy. We know Del Boy is Britain’s favourite sitcom character and everything, and this Christmas marks David Jason’s return to sitcom, but… well, basically, WAH. We actually had to make an animated version of this, just to prove how disturbing it is.

As if the wink isn’t bad enough, the way he looks both ways with a mischievous grin on his face beforehand… why is he checking the coast is clear? What doesn’t he want anyone but us to see? The more we think about it, the more scared we are. In summary: WE WANT TO GO HOME THIS ISN’T FUN ANY MORE.

The League of Funnymen: Jason Manford Live

2011-12-07T19:58:00.001Z

JASON MANFORD LIVE

£12.93 (Amazon)

A quick addition to our scoreboard of stand-up today, and it’s Salford scamp Jason Manford. With his schtick being “cosy observation”, you can pretty much guess what’ll be coming up here, and there aren’t any surprises on offer. Topics touch on being a parent, obsolete names (“you never see a baby called Geoff any more, do you?”), how the penis adds context to the testicles, lady shampoo, and his dad.

Time for one of our theories about stand-up: while it’s expected that every American comic has to have a routine on airports because they spend so much time flitting between east and west coasts (if they don’t perform such a routine once per gig they probably get kicked out of American stand-up equivalent of The Magic Circle or something), with British comedians it’s ‘driving’. Is this why the British public seem more likely to take stand-up comedians to their collective hearts? Our more compact landmass affording our millionaire mirthmeisters that extra shared experience of motorway service stations while touring the country, while their stateside cousins have to try and remember what it was like the last time they flew coach in 1987 if they want to connect with their audience like that?

Yeah, probably not, it’s only a theory we’ve held for about seventeen minutes. It does mean that when Manford does his bit about driving, including the difficulty of putting petrol in your car to the nearest tenner when filling up, we couldn’t help but lament he’d missed the much better punchline that we thought of. Which is this: “and then, after finally managing to somehow squeeze that final pennyworth of petrol into your car, you go in and pay for it… by card”. See, shared experiences between comedian and audience.

Luckily for Jason Manford, that’s the only bit where we thought of a much better punchline than him (no, it IS a much better punchline, shut up). It certainly helps that he maintains a steady air of The Funniest Bloke At Work, the kind of bloke who you’d be a bit disappointed if you go out on a work ‘do’ and he’s not turned up. (Look, our version of that petrol joke works better because, you know, the guy doing the till isn’t even going to be giving you any change! You might as well just have got £22.43 of petrol! That’s why it’s funny! IT IS!) Unless, of course, you always get annoyed by people like that, in which case this DVD isn’t really going to realign your liking-Jason-Manford-or-not-sensors. But, if you’re a fan of faintly undemanding comedy about things like supermarket self-scan tills, you’re in luck. (Yes, we know there’s pay-at-pump, but then the joke doesn’t work. Look, it’s a valid joke. Leave us alone.)

File under: safe bet Christmas present for brother-in-law.

SAMPLE GAG: “The most commonly searched for term on Google is ‘sex’. That’s too broad a term, surely? It’s like going into Tesco and asking ‘where’d you keep your food?’”

UPDATED TABLE!

Our Favourite Review of Black Mirror Episode One

2011-12-06T12:00:00.000Z

The League of Funnymen: Part Three (Chris Addison Live)

2011-12-05T12:00:00.000Z

Our ranking of ribaldry rumbles on.

CHRIS ADDISON LIVE

£11.88 (Amazon)

“Star of BAFTA Winning Comedy THE THICK OF IT” screams the cover. Not quite sure why it didn’t mention the Oscar-nommed spinoff In The Loop as well, in which Addison plays a more central role, but there you go. Mind you, if we’d been in charge of designing that cover we’d have gone with “Star of That Sunday Morning Music Programme On UK Play When It Started In 1998, You Know, That One With Lauren Laverne On It As Well, At Least We Think It Was Chris Addison. Oh, And He Did Dotcomedy As Well, But No-One Ever Mentions That Nowadays”. All in the Papyrus font. Mainly because we just hate humanity.

ANYWAY. After several days of diminishing returns on our list (five stand-up DVDs rated so far, each has been ranked lower than the last. More through accident than design, though we do admit we were keener to see the Tim Vine and Milton Jones DVDs than Jimmy Carr’s. From hereon in, we’re looking at DVDs we have no real preconceptions, so these could be placed anywhere in the list. ANYWHERE.

So, Chris Addison, then. Best known for The Thick Of It, in which he didn’t have a hand writing. When he did share penmanship duties on a sitcom, it was the roundly derided Labrats (which we’d personally put down as a gallant effort that just needed a couple more drafts at scripting stage, but we seem to be in the minority there). He has been a bit disappointing when cropping up on Have I Got News For You, but one of the best guests on the current series of QI. (Shush, that’s how comedians are judged nowadays.) He made Channel 4’s list of 100 Greatest Stand-Up, but trying to put on a show that can be put on DVD and sold in supermarkets can do terrible things to a stand-up’s act. WILL IT BE GOOD OR WHAT, THEN?

Topics include the boringness of British roads, the Pope not being able to stand up in the Popemobile any more because of The Taylor Report, the BNP, golf clubs. the cultural identity of the modern Briton, ITV’s current affairs output, and what it’s like being married (as is the law for all stand-up comedians who’ve been performing for more than ten years). All delivered by a 40 year old man seemingly trapped in the body of a sweaty, giggly 27-year-old from the year 1999. And happily, well, it’s enjoyable and many of the things that he says while talking are funny. (“Dear BrokenTV, thank you for applying for the position of chief comedy critic of Newsnight Review. Sadly, that vacancy is no longer available, and you work sadly didn’t quite reach the critical standard required for the position, and seriously, “it’s enjoyable”? God, you’re rubbish. Yours, J Hadlow, Controller, BBC Two.”)

In amongst all the cavorting, picking on nicely unthreatening subjects, material about having to cope with being a slightly ineffectual excuse for a male by any traditional standards (“I’m so non-sexist, I even married a woman. And in many regards, so did she”), there are a few moments of slightly annoying punching down (“imagine if you did crash on an Easyjet flight, eh? On a snowy mountain… would you want to eat those people?” being an especially grating line), but he pretty much makes up for those moments with the remainder of his act revolving around gentle middle-class self-loathing (a huge chunk of this act is even delivered in a self-scarhingly twee Guardian-reader whine).

Harder to take are the routines based on topics pretty much every British stand-up of the last decade has done endless times before (ooh, we’re no good when there’s a bit of snow, are we? Aah, don’t we buy rubbish when drunkenly in charge of the internet? The Daily Mail – bit right wing, innit?), but we just assume those are all based on rants he thought up on the spot while on Mock The Week (#SARCASM. Oh, wait, we’re not on Twitter now). Either way, Addison’s breathless energy, charm, use of the ‘hard a’ when saying the word ‘bastard’ (always wins us over, that), is more likely to mean you’ve got a smile on your face for much of it.

SAMPLE GAG [When talking about universities with vague names like “University of Central England” being substandard compared to other universities]: “U.C.E… so called because those are the grades it takes to get in!”

So, where does this fall on our Top Gear-style table? (If any Chris Addison fans are reading this, Top Gear is that programme about cars. You’re probably watching a box set of The Wire when it’s on.)

Man, we’re going to get annoyed with having to renumber all the entries after we’ve done about twelve of these, aren’t we?

NEXT TIME ON THE COMEDY DVD REVIEW ROUNDUP THAT WE WRITE AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE AND DON’T EVEN BOTHER TO PROOF READ OR REDRAFT: Um, not sure. Possibly Jason Manford Live.

The Chart Show: BBC Two’s Comedy Zone

2011-12-04T12:00:00.000Z

"People are straight away thinking it's going to be a cruel comedy – why? Why do they assume that? It's their prejudice.” – Ricky Gervais promoting Life’s Too Short, The Guardian, 4th November 2011.

Yeah, no huge surprise that we’re not a fan of LIFE’S TOO SHORT, though we really didn’t think the first episode was markedly worse than the debut episode of EXTRAS, and the first series of Extras turned out to be ‘quite good’. Sadly though, Life’s Too Short only got worse and worse from the opener onwards. Meanwhile REV, the lead-in for Gervais latest vehicle is remaining hugely enjoyable, while FRANK SKINNER’S OPINIONATED continues to be a fun if undemanding half-hour.

“But, how are they all doing in the ratings?”, you’ll be asking. Welp, us being us, we’ve looked up the overnight figures for every episode of each, and bunged them into a lovely chart.

And here it is:

So, all three shows have declined from a strong set of opening figures, but while viewing figures for Rev seem to be levelling out, and those for Opinionated are pretty solid, Life’s Too Short is in freefall. If you want a comparison, when BBC Two showed the first series of STEWART LEE’S COMEDY VEHICLE, it attracted a fairly solid million or so viewers, despite being a cult comedian telling long routines about books and stuff, and didn’t even have any Hollywood A-list stars or dwarves vomiting onto their own genitalia or anything.

Still, this does give a reason to keep looking out for Life’s Too Short. Why not have your own office How Low Will The Ratings Get For Life’s Too Short By Episode Seven Sweepstake? We’ve done one, and have plucked out the ticket containing ‘700,000 to 720,000 viewers’. Fingers crossed!

YuleTube.

2011-12-03T10:17:00.000Z

Did you see what we did there?

Stepping aside from our League Of Funnymen for a day, how about one of our December mainstays? Namely, a ramble through some ephemera of Chrimbles past. (READER’S VOICE: “Oh, good. A YouTube roundup. You’re really pushing the boat out this year, aren’t you?”)

Pfft.

First up, thanks to YouTube (seemingly) relaxing their maximum video length, we have the entirety of groundbreaking BBCvt Christmas Tape WHITE POWDER CHRISTMAS. All in one go, all 35 minutes of it. Lovely.

“And now, let’s change the mood with a few musical numbers.” “Er, excuse me Mr Bendall…” All that. Assuming if the video hasn’t since been removed because of it containing so much of Kentucky Fried Movie, anyway. We’re actually writing all this three days ago.

Hey, remember last Christmas? More markedly, the highlight of the entire Christmas schedule – repeats of The Goodies on late night BBC Two? Brilliant, wasn’t it? And pleasingly, several of the episodes attracted viewing figures more or less on a par with recent episodes of Life’s ~~Twenty-Seven Minutes Too Long~~ Too Short. Lovely. To mark that event, here’s the opening titles to SATURDAY BANANA CHRISTMAS SPECIAL 1978. No dwarves were put in toilets during the making of this introduction.

Last up, friend of the blog Applemask (hey, anyone who doesn’t scream at us down the phone about us owing them money is a friend of ours. We’ve as many as seven friends, you know), and his fifteen-minute gawp at how ITV did Christmas in the past. SPOILER: They didn’t just bung a load of films on and take the rest of the day off, like they do nowadays. Well, except when they did do just that.

Back tomorrow with another thing we probably wrote several days ago!

The League Of Funnymen: Part Two

2011-12-02T16:37:00.000Z

Our festive fumble through the firesale of funny continues, with another addition to our leaderboard of laughmongers. Today:

JIMMY CARR: BEING FUNNY

£11.99 (Amazon)

In a way, you have to hand it to Jimmy Carr. Despite dealing primarily in one-liners, and having to juggle his stand-up with hosting 8 OUT OF 10 CATS and 10 O’CLOCK LIVE, he has now managed to release seven completely different stand-up sets on DVD in the last eight years. He doesn’t skimp either. The main feature on this DVD manages to last for an entire hundred minutes. That’s 100 minutes of brand new material, put together, toned, previewed, toured and recorded, all within twelve months. Fair dues.

In another, more correct way: Jimmy Carr can jolly well get fucked. This is largely the same set of jokes as on all his other DVDs, the only difference being that the set-ups to each joke have changed slightly. There are still the same four punchlines: LOLRAPE, LOLGAYS, LOLPAEDOS and LOLMISOGYNY, all put on shuffle. But hey, this is a godless universe in which Sickipedia is more popular than Gun Show Comic, so go figure.

Okay, we’re being a little harsh here. In keeping with our long held suspicion that when Bob Monkhouse died his spirit possessed a marketing executive but then got really lazy with his material, Carr does come up with some quality gags during Being Funny, but the shame is that it’s all buried in amongst some exceptionally poor shock-factor stuff that would put a fourteen-year-old boy to shame. And when the amount of good material on an entire DVD could easily fit into a YouTube-friendly highlights package, it’s not really worth £12 of your hard-earned money.

SAMPLE GAG (GOOD): “If things carry on the way they are now, it’s predicted that in forty years time the average toddler will be… forty-three.”

SAMPLE GAG (BAD): “Childhood is now effectively over by eleven. ‘Cos that’s when the pubs close and Uncle Terry gets home. Oh, Uncle Terry!”

Oh Jimmy, you lazy hack.

So, what does that do to our table?

Tune in for another update tomorrow!

The League Of Funnymen. And Women. And Andy Parsons. (Part One)

2011-12-01T00:28:00.001Z

It’s that time of year again! Where we try to update the blog at least once per day right up to Christmas, like a crazy kind of disappointment-themed advent calendar. First up: part one of a new thing that we’ll definitely see through to the end, no really, we will, honest.

Once upon a time, the last-minute Christmas gift from an auntie who was trying to get as many presents bought in HMV as she could before her Pay & Display ticket expired was the out-take video. It being the VHS age, it really didn’t really matter that the likes of “Red Dwarf Smeg-Ups” or “Bottom: Fluff” comprised mostly of someone saying something a bit wrong, then maybe yelling ‘FUCK!’ before murmuring “okay, okay, let’s go again”, because hey! It was ‘hidden’ telly, and being allowed to hear Lister say the f-word felt really dangerous because we were twelve.

Later came the DVD age, and with it a deluge of Own Goals & Gaffes compilations, where anyone with any kind of public profile would pop up in between shoddily filmed clips of Uruguayan Segunda Division left-backs slicing backpasses over goalkeepers’ heads to mumble through sub-Rory McGrath gags about David Beckham. Pretty much anyone was allowed to front this production line tat, usually wearing a forced grin on the cover, and often an England shirt if they weren’t really very popular in the first place. Everyone brought one of these out, Piers Morgan, David Seaman, Gordon Ramsay, Tyrone off Corrie, everyone. You probably don’t remember the tabloid furore in late 2003, when a contracting mix-up at Vivendi led to the poorly-received ‘Dr Harold Shipman’s Injury Time”. Though that would be because we’ve just made that up.

Then: someone deep within a DVD publishing company – possibly the same person who’d originally decided “interactive menus” counted as a special feature worth listing on the back of a DVD sleeve – came up with “Interactive DVD Quiz Games”. They’re like really disappointing tie-in videogames you don’t need a videogames console for! They led to a semi-revival of Telly Addicts! They were uniformly terrible! The nadir was probably the Newsnight Interactive DVD Quiz Game, mainly because it was actually just Jeremy Paxman calling you an idiot for two hours no matter which answers you selected.

Latterly things have sort-of improved, with the type of release most likely to be piled up into a fancy display in the entrance of Morrisons these days being stand-up comedy. And hey, that must be good, right? Comedy is a good thing, and it can’t be any worse than the kind of football DVDs that were shovelled into shops half a decade ago, right?

Right?

Ah, right.

This year must surely be the busiest winter ever for the stand-up genre, with at least twenty new offerings jostling for position amongst the Family Guy and Mrs fucking Brown’s fucking Boys Series fucking One boxsets in the TV DVD section of your local gigastore. But… how will we know which ones are best? And more importantly, which ones deserve to be sealed in concrete and dumped in the North Sea?

Well, that’s where we come in. We’re going to compile snappy little reviews of each stand-up DVD we encounter, and then place them onto a Top Gear Star In A Reasonably-Priced Car style leaderboard, only without implicitly proclaiming undying support for the Conservative Party. It’ll be a non-literal riot!

First up:

TIM VINE: THE JOKE-AMOTIVE

£11.99 (Amazon)

Ah, a wonderful start. There are two kinds of people in the world as far as we’re concerned – people who think Tim Vine is brilliant, and people who are wrong about Tim Vine. A quart of quickfire quips that are pretty amusing in their own right, but delivered in Vine’s breathless matter they have an effect not unlike having your skull fractured via relentlessly repeated raps with a teaspoon. In a good way.

Possibly the most likeable stand-up on the circuit right now, and it’s not just due to the quality of his act. Alongside it all, he seems disarmingly modest – his previous DVD (Punslinger) ended with the crowd calling for an encore, leading to Vine stepping back on stage to sheepishly admit he hadn’t anticipated such an event before bantering good naturedly with the crowd for a while. This time around, he’s a little more prepared for it, and we can confirm that there’s a pseudo-sequel to his infamous Pen Behind The Ear routine. Tim even gives a generous amount of screen time to support act John Archer, which is nice to see.

Admittedly, the runtime of the gig is just over an hour, but we promise that as long as you have a soul, you’ll spend at least 34 minutes and 27 second of that hour frantically suppressing giggles in order to hear the next joke properly. And hey, next time an elderly relative at a family gathering complains about how all the comedians, you’ve seen them all, on their Saturday Night Live At The Apollo, all the comedians, need to use bad language, you can show them this.

SAMPLE GAG: “I’ve got a job helping out a one-armed typist whenever she wants to do capital letters. It’s shift work.”

MILTON JONES: THE LION WHISPERER LIVE

£12.99 (Amazon)

There are two kinds of people in the world as far as we’re concerned – people who think Milton Jones is brilliant, and people who are wrong about Milton Jones. A hundredweight of hypersonic howlers… ah, you know the score. Another hugely funny comedian delivering a series of puns and one-liners. This time a little more surreal and in front of a slightly larger crowd and slightly more expensive-looking backdrop (we only really mention this in case Waddingtons ever bring out a “Quickfire Comedian Top Trumps” set and people are looking for strategic advice. Though whoever gets the Stephen Wright card will probably win anyway).

As might be expected from such an accomplished stand-up, it’s all of a very high quality, though it does lose pace a tad around the mid-point where Jones reappears as his own grandfather. Oh, and any time you remember that Milton Jones occasionally appears on Mock The Week. Still a very worthwhile purchase, mind.

FUN INTERACTIVE DVD GAME! Try and work out why Vine’s DVD is a PG, while Jones’ is a U.

SAMPLE GAG: “I’ve got a friend who’s into self-defence. He’s got a black belt… well, he’s got five black belts… okay, he’s a wasp.”

JOHN CLEESE LIVE: THE ALIMONY TOUR 2011

£11.99 (Amazon)

An Audience With John Cleese, more like. As anyone who may have read reviews of his tour will know (er, or anyone who’d seen it), this isn’t so much John Cleese going out on stage and doing a load of jokes, but rather a fairly endearing wander through memory lane as he tells us all about his rise to stardom and too many wives. Seasoned Python fans really won’t be learning anything new here, and the whole affair has the air of an abridged audiobook on once comically-cranelike legs.

As the title suggests, Cleese makes no bones about why he’s on stage instead of sat at home watching BBC Four, and at the beginning we did begin to worry it might be largely about slagging off the ex-Mrs Cleese who necessitated the tour. Luckily, it all settles into a puffed-up Powerpoint presentation on The Life Of Cleese, and the audience’s fond regard for the man helps it all become a perfectly jolly way to spend eighty minutes of an evening. Much of the show is made from watching clips of 1948 Show, Python and Fawlty, but it’s nice to hear Cleese put his own honest take on all the events, and pointing out which of the especially disgusting bits of the undertaker sketch were Chapman’s doing.

As we say, the whole show is much more like an episode of ITV’s An Audience With…, only with John Cleese fans in the audience instead of Olly Murs and Interchangeable Only Way Is Essex Drone #34. It’s lovely to hear Cleese’s encyclopaedic knowledge of his work, even down to knowing how many years Wanda director Charlie Crichton had previously spent as a film editor (SPOILER: fourteen years). (FURTHER SPOILER: He mentions Wanda as his film writing debut, but that would be neglecting his co-writer gig on The Rise and Rise Of Michael Rimmer). Moments like this do help make up for hearing about Terry Gilliam eating steak in a manner that so annoyed the hotelier who inspired Fawlty Towers for the eleventeenth time, though this is maybe a DVD best left until it hits the sales.

Still, better than Monty Python: Almost The Truth.

SAMPLE GAG: Sorry guv, lengthy warm anecdotes are the order of the day here.

PETER KAY: THE TOUR THAT DIDN’T TOUR – TOUR

£11.99 (Amazon)

In an age where twatty PR blurb tells us “[X] Is The [Y]-iest Comedian On The Planet”, often attributed to bloody Chortle, kind of nice to see Kay’s strapline here being “one of Bolton’s funniest comedians”. That’s pretty much where the modesty ends, though – the emphasis is very much on LOOK HOW MASSIVELY POPULAR PETER KAY IS, with much of the intro being about it all being at the O2 for “fifteen bloody niiights”.

The gig itself seems to be set in a strange kind of comedic stasis, with Kay seemingly having fallen into an endlessly repeating time loop since just after his last actual live DVD was released. The routine on Sky+ isn’t especially poor or anything, but really – taking until 2011 to come up with a routine about Sky+? Or his dad remarking on the ‘novelty’ of plasma televisions? Or texting? Was his twelve-minute routine on the iPod Mini reluctantly dropped after the preview gigs or something?

Still, at least multimillionaire Kay strives to keep his material relatable, and that’s to be welcomed. Even if this does lead to the director cutting to endless shots of audience members pointing at each other and mouthing “yes! See? You totally do that like ALL the time!”. Instantly preferable to someone like R**** G****** banging on about the neverending angst of being massively famous on both sides of the Atlantic, and something that at least makes this a DVD worth watching, if not quite shelling out the full £12 for. Just wait until after Christmas Day and then visit any one of your seven relatives who will have inevitably been bought this as a present. (“You’re really not helping us clock up Amazon referral cash, you know.” -Ed.)

Oh, and press ‘stop’ on the DVD before you get to the musical encore, unless you really want to undo all the goodwill Kay had just spent seventy minutes regaining from you.

SAMPLE GAG: “Mate of mine’s just been sacked from the dodgems. He’s suing them for funfair dismissal!” And lots of other gags that people had nicked and tried to claim as their own on Sickpedia since

Ah, that’ll do for now. Here’s the ranking thus far:

We’ll update the table as the month goes on, in much the same way as that thing on Top Gear. Only without us calling for genocide on The One Show to try and promote a cash-in spin-off DVD of it, obvs.

Belated Musical Justice Corner #1: World of Science

2011-11-05T22:01:00.001Z

In news that’ll surely turn out to be terrible for our bank account, we’ve discovered the majesty of Soma.fm’s radio station Poptron. It’s a donation-funded internet radio station that plays nothing but “electropop and indie dance rock with sparkle and pop”. Speaking as the kind of infuriating hipster twots who can’t get enough of bands like Cut Copy, Datarock, MGMT, Hot Chip, Metric, Chromeo, Passion Pit, LCD Soundsystem, Royksopp, Yacht, Crystal Castles, Fischerspooner, New Young Pony Club, Au Revoir Simone and lots of other similar bands we could mention here in order to try and incrementally nudge up our Google search rankings for such terms, it’s proved to be a bit of an aural honey pot for our collective ears.

So, upon hearing it play a wonderful song by a band going by the excellent moniker of World of Science earlier this evening, we nimbly scampered over to the office PC to see if the song could be purchased without having to give any money to bloody sodding Apple. Luckily, it turns out that we could, but the story doesn’t end there (otherwise it’d be a really rubbish story) (Actually, it probably still will be.) (Remember when we used to be any good? Ages ago, wasn’t it?).

We discovered that by going to World of Science’s own website, anyone can currently buy an MP3 download of their debut (and sadly since the website hasn’t been updated since 2008, presumably only) album Makeout Songs for just FOUR DOLLARS AMERICAN. That’s just £2.49 of your actual Queen’s British Pounds. Go click on the ‘merch’ link of their website if you’d like to do so.

It’s so cheap you probably won’t even mind that the person making the songs available couldn’t be frigging well bothered ID3 tagging them remotely properly, or embedding album artwork in them so you’ll chuffing well have to re-tag them all yourself and then manually add the album artwork to them all from the image we helpfully paste just below! (Feel free to use that as a review quote if you’re reading this, guys.)

Reader’s Voice; "But BrokenTV, much as we’re sure you’re correct in ordering us to do so, what with you being best at liking music and everything, is there any real reason we should be doing so?

As well you may ask, gentle viewer. Well, first up: our research suggests that World of Science are a hugely excellent band who quite staggeringly only have a meagre total of 760 listeners on Last.fm right now. This in a universe where Justin bloodycocking Bieber has around eleventy squillion followers on Twitter. Clearly, there is no God, but there is almost definitely a Satan.

Secondly, well… here’s a YouTube video of the marvellous album opener “You’re So Handsome”. Even though we had to just flippin’ well upload it ourselves to YouTube, as it wasn’t there already.

MUST WE BE RELIED ON TO FIX THE INTERNET EVERY TIME?

Whoever Said “You Don’t Always Get What You Want” Was Full Of SO Much Crap. Yes, We Mean You, Jagger. (Chris Serle and Windmill)

2011-11-01T22:43:00.001Z

Funny the things, eh?

Earlier this evening, in order to keep our hungry minds busy while cooking our dinner, we clicked on a Twitter link containing a ranked listing of every Simpsons Treehouse Of Horror Segment In The History Of Ever. From there, via a chance comment from Sweeping The Nation’s S Tyers, and us being followed back on Twitter by the co-writer and co-star of Adult Swim’s Fat Guy Stuck in Internet and NTSF:SD:SUV, we got thinking about just where we discovered a lot of our favourite classic British comedy programmes.Too young to remember the likes of Dave Allen At Large, Monty Python’s Flying Circus or It’s Marty when they first went out, we must have got into them from somewhere, right? But… from where? And there we remembered. It’s all down to the work of one man.

Okay, not actually Griff Rhys Jones, but rather the person he’s parodying in the above clip from Alas Smith & Jones. Step forward former member of Esther’s nancies on That’s Life, sometime stooge of Dave Allen and (slightly surprisingly) the fleetingly glimpsed warmup for one of Paul Merton’s BBC Four documentaries on silent comedy, Mr Chris Serle. Back in the mid-to-late-1980s, Serle hosted a modest little show going out on BBC2 during Sunday lunchtimes, which was called Windmill. It might seem a little strange now, but in those days the concept of TV nostalgia was a pretty alien concept, with Windmill (the name taken from the location of the BBC-tv archive - Windmill Road, Brentford) offering one of the first delves into Auntie Beeb’s Big Box Of History the British public would ever get to see.

With the wealth of whatever-hadn’t-been-taped-over-yet to pick from, along with the “here’s a budget, now bugger off and make sixty minutes of whatever” ethos still present in Television Centre at the time, it made for a dizzying mix of enlightenment for a youthful television blog such as we. This was an innocent age where we’d been fooled into believing Copy Cats or The Grumbleweeds on early evening Granada was the pinnacle of light entertainment, so when we were confronted with the likes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, It’s Marty, Dave Allen At Large, Not Only But Also or Ripping Yarns, our tiny minds were literally blown away (not literally).

Sadly, it seemed the ephemeral nature of such a show would mean it no longer existed in any form. Surely? Hey, the clips themselves are now readily available in the form of the original broadcasts, why bother keeping footage of a guy in a jumper talking about them? NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF TELEVISION GEEKERY. Wikipedia contains a wonderfully concise episode guide of Windmill, and better yet, several segments of the show seem to have surfaced on YouTube. Such as: this lovely chat between host Chris Serle and Michael Palin taking place on the then-new Docklands Light Railway in east London. Splendid.

And to think, we got around to all that, just because we decided to busy ourselves with an article on The Simpsons while our dinner was OH BLOODY BOLLOCKING HECK.

Forty-Five Seconds Of A YouTube Video Where Someone Flips Through US Cable Channels At 3.15pm On January 29 1989, And What It Tells Us About The Human Condition

2011-10-27T00:31:00.001+01:00

YouTube, the internet’s home of pretty much everything recorded ever (until the rights holder insists it’s all taken down immediately). A world of possibilities, where anything from the whole of (visually-) recorded history can live on once more, in a form accessible by anyone on Planet Earth (except where the rights holder insists that etc etc and so on).

So, which type of video has been mesmerising us this week? Pretty much every pop video of every single we’ve ever liked in the history of always? Revisiting footage of childhood holiday locations as they are now? Donkey porn?

Nope. It’s time for the inaugural instalment of…

Today, we’ll be looking at ClassicGarth’s work “Channel Surfing: Sunday, January 29, 1989 3:15 PM”.

It kicks off with the tail end of an NBA Sports interview with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, then coming to the end of a long career with the LA Lakers. With this, we can’t help but feel that the uploader is trying to point out how this signifies the end of the last truly American decade.

With recession, the first Gulf war and New Kids On The Block looming large, the giant Lakers no. 33 represented a fading dream, the dying embers of an ideology where a clearly defined bogeyman could be railed against, and the middle classes may soon have to face up to the fact they it is they who are responsible for their own future, any failings could no longer be blamed on an overblown Red Menace. Eastern Europe was in the last throws of communism, sure, but the clearly defined distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ sides of the globe were soon to become as dim a memory as deely-boppers and Coke II. Abdul-Jabbar, most famous for wearing a purple Lakers uniform on the court, of course represented a then aging but still adept American everyman (purple = what you get when you mix the red and blue of the US flag), an everyman the Joe American could still unequivocally revere even though he has a name that sounds “a bit Muslimy”.

It’s a brave way to spend the first four seconds of the video, but one that we feel says so much. On to second five seconds of the video, and ClassicGarth really gets things going. Via a split-second clip of a film that looks a bit European, we’re on to a clip of a silver-haired rich white man in a suit with a microphone in front of an indistinct logo. A toll-free phone number sits in the bottom-middle of the screen, as names of callers scroll along beneath it, complete with small quantities of cash. Here, it almost seems as if ClassicGarth has pointed out how this was still an America that doesn’t wish to take in any of that cockadoody foreign culture (that European film was on-screen for less than half a second before being callously whipped away from the gaze of the viewer), but rather an America that much prefers the sight of Old Rich Men In Suits telling people about the value of things.

Some might say the man is the owner of a local chain of stores, cheerily imploring viewers to phone in and announce how much they saved in their previous visit to whatever the name of the store is (our guess: “Westernoids”). Other, more correct viewers might point out that it’s some kind of telethon, but maybe that’s ClassicGarth’s masterstroke? Where does commerce end and charity begin? If you spend money on goods and services, you’re proactively helping the unemployed, by keeping their employer in business, meaning that they never even become unemployed in the first place. Effectively, is capitalism not the very ultimate act of altruism?

This charmingly simplistic view of capitalism also provides an evocative view of Western civilisation in the late 1980s. Hard-bitten modern day cynics might point out that if a company sees profits rise nowadays, they’ll probably sack everyone anyway, and move their manufacturing plants to Timbuktu in order to protect that precious double-digit growth, but back then things were so much simpler.

Onto the ninth second of the video, and the viewer finds themself confronted with another rich-looking white man in a suit, but this time a person who is somewhat less jolly, and is speaking in a language we can only correctly categorise as “foreign”, before another final fleeting glimpse of Jolly Silver Haired White Telethon Man In A Suit. Perhaps this is there in order to reinforce the view that the 1990s are lurking, and a deregulated Europe that promised to be simultaneously confusing, frightening, bewildering and brilliant was then just a few years away. It took ITV’s brilliant comedy drama series Root Into Europe about eight weeks to make the same point, but ever the auteur, ClassicGarth wraps it all up within five seconds of footage.

From here, we’re tossed headlong into a dizzying whirlwind of marketing, whizzing around our eyes at such a rate we can barely take it all in. A barely perceptible glimpse of an advert for the Chevrolet Astro here (clear subtext: Detroit is dying along with North America’s manufacturing base), a garishly animated ident for a segment of something seemingly called “TRAVEL TRAVEL TIPS TIPS” (subtext: 1929 is all happening again, the second great Wall St crash cannot be far away. Travel far, far away from all that you treasure, everything you hold dear, it’s the only way to avoid seeing it all crumble and die before your sobbing consumer eyes), a crappy photo-stop-motion advert for hair product (subtext: knowledge and skill is now bunk, superficiality is the only currency of worth for the next two decades), are all thrown at our staggered face before some more sedate footage. OR SO IT SEEMS. A cute little bear climbing a tree in a forest might seem innocent enough, a hark back to frontier days, perhaps. Except of course: the bear represents Wall Street. The tree represents your 401k. Subtext: FEAR CAPITALISM. MONEY IS A LIE. Most telling of all, is the lack of the other large mammal usually associated with Wall Street. NO BULL = ALL OF THIS WILL DEFINITELY HAPPEN.

Okay, at this point ClassicGarth must be well aware that our entire belief system has taken such a kicking we’re not altogether sure the very air molecules that we breathe aren’t somehow bugged by a CIA sleeper cell, so there’s a bit of nice classical guitar, played by a well-dressed man in front of a blue background (one of the colours of the American flag, of course. And the man is wearing a white shirt, which is another of the colours of Old Glory. There is no red to be seen in this part of the video, reminding us that communism is still very much alive in Eastern Europe at that time). But, there IS a midpoint of those two poles. Between communism and the laissez-faire utopia that is George Herbert Walker Bush-era America, there is…

Aah. Footage of a Frenchman with a beard debating something. A spectacular choice by ClassicGarth here. Could this be signifying the ways of neo-socialist France, a nation very much still in thrall to the power of unions, but still maintaining a publicly-acceptable corporate political overview? We can’t quite tell, because we failed French at school, but we’re going to say “definitely yes”, even though we just guessed at all that stuff about French life in 1989.

Then, another flurry of frantic flipping: a man panning for rice or something, a shopping channel promoting a thing in a box marked “The Promax 57 Chevy Full Function”, a clip of an old Tony Curtis movie, the half-time statistics of a match between Ohio State and Louisville. In short, the natural world takes no heed of events elsewhere, rice will always need to be panned (or something), objects in boxes will always need to be hawked by excitable men in cheap television studios, the history of art grows ever larger therefore relentlessly diluting the good while simultaneously making it more rewarding to find, and the same applies to pointless sporting statistics. Is that Tony Curtis’ best film? Was the rice panned to an acceptable degree? Is Louisville having amassed 18 rebounds in the first half of their match against Ohio State a good thing, or a bad thing? So many questions, so many things that we will never know, our souls before increasingly insignificant when set against the totality of human knowledge, so hey, why not buy a lovely Promax 57 Chevy Full Function.

The last few seconds of the first forty-five try their best to sooth our now frenzied and frankly frazzled minds. A single shot of a calming winter scene in an old-timey town, the screen filled with relaxing blue lights falling upon crisp white snow (again, the colour red is ominously absent). This represents the ‘winter’ of our years, to remind us all that death comes to all men, be they rich, poor, or women. We start as a zero on the statistics page of life, and end it with a ‘score’ of the sum total what we were able to bring to the lives of others.

Then, 1.7 seconds of a shot panning outwards, taking in a clock and the studio of a radio station. Time marches mercilessly onwards, ClassicGarth seems to be saying here. The studio microphones, placed unattainably behind a pane of soundproof glass, represents the public voice that we all wish we had, but one that we shall never be able to attain. No-one will ever truly hear our thoughts, especially if they only ever update their sodding blog once every four weeks.

Then, two frames of a weather report. This represents the uncontrollable elements that shape our one and only spell in this godless universe, about which we can do absolutely nothing. All that is left to do is keep calm, and do all that we can to simply carry on. Lower your expectations. Re-evaluate all that you think you know. The Last Great American Decade is drawing to a close. A tumultuous storm is coming (which THE GOVERNMENT REGULATED MEDIA will almost definitely report as ‘scattered showers’ in order to quell rebellion). Say everything you need to say, and say it quick, for there is at least a 40% chance of precipitation (subtext: precipitation = an existence filled with a nagging sense of ennui and self-doubt).

The final frame of the first forty-five seconds of the video contain several heavily VHS-ravaged frames of a man (possibly representing The Establishment) clasping his hand over the mouth of a woman (possibly representing The Free Thinker). This seems to have been chosen by ClassicGarth to clearly underline the central theme of this, possibly the finest and unquestionably the most personal of his 27 YouTube uploads. Don’t speak out, you won’t be heard (see also: the radio station scene). And even if you think you might be heard, the dodgy tracking on the great VCR in the sky will ensure that a great big static line covers up most of your face. That’s if The Establishment’s Big Hand Of Censorship doesn’t do it first.

Now, at this point we got a bit bored of the video and went off to do something else, leaving the last ninety seconds of the clip unwatched, but we feel this is what ClassicGarth was truly aiming for. The unwatched portion of the clip represents the fact that life simply carries on without us when we die (/stop watching the YouTube video). All the children you’ll never see grow up, all the great works of art you’ll never get to experience, all the incremental improvements made to mobile phones, they’ll all carry on long, long after you’ve gone.

Some might say we should just watch the rest of the clip, that we’ve embedded it at the top of this update anyway, and if we were so bored about it why have we written all of this horseshit? This, we feel, would be an affront to ClassicGarth’s masterpiece.

We couldn’t do that to him.

It wouldn’t be right.

It’d be like asking to see Mona Lisa’s tits.

---

NEXT UPDATE: 8,500 words about a video of someone waving their iPhone camera about at an Arcade Fire gig.

Football News Summed Up Via Doctored Videogame Screenshots: 1. The Hicks and Gillett Damages Claim

2011-10-01T10:02:00.001+01:00

Number one in a series of one.

Group Hug Of The Week (Gordon Burns leaves North West Tonight)

2011-10-01T09:50:00.000+01:00

Anchorman of the BBC's teatimely glance northwesterly for fifteen years, Gordon Burns finally called it a day on the 30th of September 2011. A region looked up fondly from its tea at this, a touching tribute to the ex-Krypton Factor host's time on the sofa. Including contributions from Freddie Flintoff, Mark Radcliffe, Stewart Hall, Stuart Maconie and Johnny Vegas, this sums up his tenure nicely.

R.E.M.R.I.P.– A Chartblast Infographic

2011-09-21T21:24:00.001+01:00

So, Bingo Handjob have called it a day. Time for a quick CHARTBLAST looking at how Georgia’s finest performed in the hit parade over the years, on both sides of the pond.

Interesting to note that in the UK, R.E.M. clocked up 19 top twenty singles, but only 5 in the USA. Indeed, the last time Stipe and Co even made the top forty in America was a whopping 17 years ago – since then they’ve had seven top ten hits in the UK. From this we can conclude that Britain is best at liking R.E.M.

“O! You soulless mechanic monsters and your relentless quest to turn art into numbers”, we hear you murmur, possibly while raising the back of a hand to your furrowed brow. We understand your concern, and so instead we present what we’re saying is R.E.M.’s finest five minutes. From the annoyingly limited CD single of Near Wild Heaven, it’s an absolutely breathtaking acoustic version of ‘Low’, and for our money, Stipey’s brooding vocal delivery has never sounded finer.

How To Make Your TV Shows On DVD Collection 107% More Excellent (For Under £50)

2011-09-20T12:31:00.000+01:00

It’s the first of an occasional series of blog updates that’ll soon fizzle out into nothing! (Oh we WILL so continue with our World Cup of TV Comedy, really we will.) (Yes, really.) (REALLY.)

Long story short: thanks to our excellent now ex-colleagues, we’ve got some Amazon gift card virtu-cash to play with, so we’ve been having a look through Amazon, and there are quite a few great DVD bargains on the go at the moment. Ignoring all the movies on DVD (which will turn up on sale at £2.99 in Home Bargains in three months after being released, so quite why anyone ever pays full price for them we’ll never understand), here are a clutch of brilliant TV on DVD bargains currently on offer.

To make it more fun*, we’re going to spend an imaginary £50 of YOUR money on DVDs, and subsequently improve your DVD collection beyond all belief. Think of it as a kind of “Telly Geek Eye For The Normal Guy Or Girl (But Statistically Likely To Be A Guy)”. Or as being a bit like that round on Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation where they do something a bit similar only with goods from the past and no-one’s noticed yet that the logic behind the game doesn’t really work.

(*We may mean ‘fun’ in the same way that Intel once claimed the Pentium II processor was somehow ‘fun’, i.e. not fun at all.)

(All links are to Amazon UK, and include our referral code so we might make a few pennies out of any purchase, though you won’t pay an extra bean for your goodies – that’s the BrokenTV Pledge™. If you hate us or just get turned on by the thought of us dressed in rags, feel free to just copy and paste the DVD titles into Amazon yourself.)

1. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy : The Complete 1979 BBC Series £4.87

GENUINE CLASS. Newly remade into a Oscar-magnet of a movie starring Gary Oldman and Benedict Cumberbatch, you can now pick up the original BBC series starring Alex Guinness, Joss “You Are No Longer Here” Ackland and Ian Richardson for under a fiver. Cripes, eh? We ‘spy’ with our little eye something beginning with ‘B’. (It’s ‘bargain’. That thing we spied was a bargain. The bargain of this DVD.)

2. Smiley’s People: The Complete 1982 BBC Series £4.87

JEREMY’S… IRON? Yeah, we admit that the former Playaway presenter isn’t actually in this series, but shush. More semi-sedentary spy escapades with another adaptation of a classic Le Carré bestseller, this time with the likes of Patrick Stewart, Alan Rickman, Bill Paterson, Michael Elphick and Beryl Reid popping up alongside Guinness. At that price, it’s hard to say no.

RUNNING TOTAL: £9.74

3. Sherlock: Series One £5.49

“But Brokes”, you may be whinnying at this point, “I love the idea of watching the original TV version of Tinker, Tailor, Candlestick Maker, Spy, but I badly need a fix of Cumberbatch excellence. What of folks like us, eh?” We’ve thought of that. The entire first run of the greatest television series 2010 had to offer, which even includes the different edit of episode one that served as the unbroadcast pilot. At that price, you won’t even be slightly irked that episode two isn’t that brilliant.

RUNNING TOTAL: £15.23

4. House: Season 4 £5.99

Maybe you prefer eighteen* engrossing hours of a grumpy doctor firing pithy putdowns at his underlings? If so, you can’t say fairer than House. We’ll ‘maison’ (reason) that you won’t be able to find the entire season four at a price much bunga-lower than this, no matter how detached you feel from American drama series in general. We’d bet our mortgage on it.

Cripes, we’ve got just a semi typing all that.

(*Might be less than eighteen, actually. We’ve just realised that this might be cheaper than the other boxsets because it coincided with the shorter season runs associated with the US writers’ strike. Still an utter bargain, mind.)

RUNNING TOTAL: £21.22

5. 15 Storeys High: Complete Series 1 & 2 £5.49

This list is a bit light on laffs so far (READER’S VOICE: “You’re telling me”), so what better way to remedy that than by including one of the most underrated comedy series of the last decade – and indeed, a series we voted 18th best television programme of the 00s.

If you enjoy Sean Lock’s appearances on the likes of QI, or him always being the funniest person by far on 8 Out Of 10 Cats, and you’ve not seen 15 Storeys High, it’s something you really, really ought to remedy immediately. And at ten bob under six quid for the entire two series run, you’d be pretty bloody daft not to, is what we’re saying.

RUNNING TOTAL: £26.71

6. Black Books: The Complete Box Set £6.99

It often seems to us that Black Books is the lesser heralded of Channel Four’s quartet of generally accepted sitcom classics (alongside Father Ted, Spaced and Peep Show). The DVD sets never seemed to have been quite as prominent in Tesco, and the Channel Four PR machine never quite seemed to find fifth gear when it came to promoting each new outing for Bernard and company. While that’d generally be a shame, in this case it does mean you get the entire collection of episodes for what amounts to £2.33 per series. That’s a price so low you won’t even mind that unlike the Australian box set of the series, this doesn’t come with a free limited edition corkscrew.

RUNNING TOTAL: £33.70

7. Edge Of Darkness: The Complete 1985 BBC Series £3.49

Moving back from sitcom to drama now, and it’s the acclaimed (which is a word we use when we mean “we’ve not actually watched it, but everyone else says it’s really good”) thriller Edge Of Darkness. The two discs on offer here contain full, uncut versions of the six episodes – unlike the earlier DVD release of the series – along with a specially made documentary on the making of the series, and something you simply don’t see enough on DVD releases, an isolated music track. Better still – “promotional segments from Breakfast Time and Pebble Mill”. Maybe it’s just us, but we’re happy to pay £3.49 just for those. (READER’S VOICE: “Yeah, it is just you.”)

RUNNING TOTAL: £37.19

8. The Best of Dave Allen £3.79

Okay, moving on here, we’ve just priced ourselves out of including the box set of every single bloody episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus (a stupidly cheap £12.49 considering how much we paid for the R1 A&E boxset about a decade ago – if memory serves, the postage from America alone was about twice that). So, if you need a fix of brilliant seventies snickery, we recommend The Best Of Dave Allen, who is after all, the funniest Irishman who ever lived (stop moping, Oscar Wilde; it’s true). Quite sadly, none of his full series have ever been released on DVD – not even his brilliant stand-up-only 1990s shows, one for BBC1, one for Carlton (though we’ll admit, a few of the sketches from “At Large” are best left in the past), so this Best Of is as good as we’re going to get for a while. Still, it’s a heck of a bargain.

RUNNING TOTAL: £40.98

9. Police Squad: The Complete Series £3.49

“You’re not the man I married!” “How can you say that?” “Because here’s the man I married.” [OPENS CLOSET DOOR TO REVEAL SURPRISED ZUCKER SMOKING A PIPE]. We’ve gone on about this before now, so in summary: come for the complete six episode run of one of the five best US sitcoms ever, stay for the brilliant DVD extra features. IT CONTAINS SCANNED PRODUCTION MEMOS, PEOPLE,

RUNNING TOTAL: £44.47

10. The Plank £2.99

Eric Sykes. Tommy Cooper. Jimmy Edwards. Roy Castle. Stratford Johns. Hattie Jaques. A plank. If you like British comedy history, this is a landmark offering and an unbeatable price. Erm, ‘wood’ you believe it? (READER’S VOICE: “You sicken me.”)

RUNNING TOTAL: £47.46

BONUS ITEM: Eric Morecambe – Mr Lonely (Kindle Edition) £0.99

Eric Morecambe’s novel from 1981 takes in the career and tumultuous life of fictional two-bit comedian Sid Lewis. Any good? Well, Spike Milligan thought so, but we’re not yet sure, as we’ve just bought it ourselves. But hey – 99p? No brainer.

A nice enough way to round off the listing, we feel. AND you’ve got £1.55 left over to spend on sweets. We’re too good to you, we really are. Can we have a Malteser? Thanks, we… ugh. How long have you had those in your pocket?

After ‘Red Or Black?’: Those New Syco Gameshow Formats In Full

2011-09-06T18:38:00.001+01:00

Following the runaway success of ITV1 ratings juggernaut (SUB: PLEASE CHECK) RED OR BLACK, Simon Cowell’s production company Syco have devised a number of new and innovative gameshow formats, due to hit the nation's screens in 2012. BrokenTV's Dark Arts Dept have infiltrated Syco's underground lair to obtain these EXCLUSIVE details on What Simon Cowell Did Next.

THE X AND O FACTOR

Two teams of 512 contestants, one captained by Ant, one by Dec. Each must take part in the world's biggest game of noughts and crosses, assembling themselves into shapes on a huge 3x3 grid on board an aircraft carrier in the North Atlantic. After each game, the remaining players are assigned into two more teams and the game repeated in a different pointlessly huge locale, until two individuals finally face-off in front of a live studio audience for the chance to win ONE MILLION POUNDS.

EXTREME POOH STICKS

Two teams of 1024 contestants. Two giant logs adorned with the letters 'A' and 'B', two cannons, and a trip around the great rivers of the world. Only one contestant can ultimately win a trip to Disneyland, where they will battle a giant animatronic Winnie The Pooh (with sticks) for a chance to win ONE MILLION POUNDS.

ROCK, PAPER, DIVERSITY

12,288 lucky contestants have been bussed into Syco's secret underground studio, where they are expected to predict the outcome of Rock, Paper, Scissor matches between members of inoffensive dance combo Diversity. One lucky winner will be the recipient of ONE MILLION POUNDS, while the 12,287 unlucky losers will be forced into a lifetime of servitude reporting unauthorised uploads of Syco artists on YouTube.

WHAT NUMBER IS DAVID HASSELHOFF THINKING OF?

65,536 contestants are packed into Wembley stadium, and each has been assigned a number between one and a hundred. Will their number be picked by walking internet meme and Syco employee #2457 David Hassellhoff? If so, they get to continue their journey towards winning a prize of HOW EVER MANY POUNDS DAVID HASSELHOFF IS THINKING OF.

HEADS OR TAILS WITH JUSTIN LEE COLLINS

Oh, wait.

Expectation Versus Reality (Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation UK)

2011-09-04T16:50:00.001+01:00

Aussie television blog TV Tonight reports that a British version of transgenerational celebrity panel show TALKIN’ ‘BOUT YOUR GENERATION could well be in the works, with original host Shaun Micallef under consideration to present the pilot episode. Now, that would clearly be great news for British fans of Shaun Micallef, of which there seem to be a surprisingly large amount considering the only work of his to ever be shown in here went out on Paramount on weeknights at 11pm about seven years ago, and whose work has never been released on DVD in the UK. Micallef fans aside, it could also provide a shot in the arm for pre-watershed non-Cowell entertainment on ITV, with the only genuinely exciting new format of the last few years, the marvellous PENN & TELLER: FOOL US being bounced around the schedules so much the series finale was sneaked out several weeks after the rest of the series on a different day of the week.

While some might (incorrectly) argue that the Penn & Teller show held little of interest for those who think magic shows are a relic of the past, TAYG should hold a more universal appeal by design. The format of the game – a battle of wits between the Baby Boomer generation, Generation X and Gen Y – means that there’s something viewers of all ages can relate to. Given the right host and team captains, while it’s not a format likely to gather a huge audience immediately, it could certainly prove to become a sleeper hit that grows an audience steadily as time goes on, much as happened with TV Burp. Providing of course, that it isn’t ditched because the first episodes didn’t bag seven million viewers.

A big part of TAYG’s success down under is down to the choice of team captains, with the mumsy Amanda Keller, smart-alecky bigger brother type Charlie Pickering and Josh Thomas, very much the ‘Alan Davies’ of the ensemble, who maintains a pupil/teacher relationship with host Shaun Micallef, combining effortlessly with the format of the show. Another major factor is that the show has evolved as each series has progressed, with what started as a relatively traditional quiz-based panel show having since become less and less conventional, to the point where the episode screened in Australia just a few hours ago saw the cast members switching roles, performing an entire episode dressed up and performing as each other.

Having the right choice of host – who in this instance happens to be the co-creator of the format – is integral to all this, with more and more of the humour we’ve come to expect from Shaun Micallef seeping into the show, even going as far to include specially shot sketches with the likes of Francis Greenslade and Kat Stewart, or pre-recorded appearances from characters performed by Micallef himself, such as “Former Heavyweight Champion of Goat Island” Milo Kerrigan, or a Japanese cliché-spouting Hello Kitty toy, with which real-Shaun interacts expertly.

The changes that have taken place are perhaps best illustrated by screencaps of the questionmaster in action. Here’s Shaun in the first series, with a modest desk, and a single prop telephone, regularly used to mimic angry calls from the producer each time he delivers an especially corny joke.

By the time of series three, any number of props appear on the desk, changing from episode to episode, most of which are never even referred to (like Shaun’s Tyrell Corp high-backed chair), while some (such as Stuart the Stuffed Meerkat, who springs up holding items any of the guests might be there to plug) are frequently remarked upon.

And that’s before we get to the increasingly common themed episodes, of course:

All of which makes us a little concerned at how the ITV version of the series might turn out (and it would be ITV – the show is a Granada Australia/ITV Studios production, so they already own the rights). The last decade has taught us that when ITV has a new light entertainment format, they tend to spin the ITV Whirly-Wheel Of The Half-Dozen Presenters We Like Right Now, and give it to whichever name clicks into place. Should TAYG UK become a full series, we suspect the host would end up being VERNON KAY, DERMOT O’LEARY, JONATHAN ROSS, JASON MANFORD or (may God have mercy on our souls) PADDY McGUINNESS. and we can’t really imagine any of those having the same sort of impact.

Instead, there are only five real candidates for the role as far as we’re concerned. And here they are:

SHAUN MICALLEF

THE CASE FOR: Clearly the best at doing the job. Effortlessly funny. A keen student of classic British comedy, so much so that the last episode of TAYG saw him throw in a Goon Show reference. More television viewers in this country would be introduced to the work of Shaun Micallef.

THE CASE AGAINST: Micallef might well not want to be away from his family for the few months of the year that TAYG UK would run, and even then, nor might the co-writers who help make the show what it is. More importantly, we suspect the ITV programme commissioners couldn’t countenance the idea of giving a primetime UK television show to someone who isn’t already well-known here.

PETER SERAFINOWICZ

THE CASE FOR: Probably the British comedy performer most like the multi-talented Micallef. After seeing Brian Butterfield slot in so well with the Shooting Stars format last week, having occasional questions posed by a pre-recorded Butterfield in a British version of TAYG would be wonderful, and Serafinowicz’s inventive humour would be well-suited to coming up with the kinds of question asked during the later rounds of the game.

THE CASE AGAINST: When Peter S does crop up on panel shows like Would I Lie To You or 8 Out of 10 Cats he hasn’t really been at his best, though that might because chipping in with the occasional comment isn’t really his style – a programme centred around him would be a different prospect. More pertinently, with him becoming increasingly popular in the US – his was the most interesting character in sitcom misfire Running Wilde, and he’s due to take part in the Arrested Development movie – he may well have neither the time nor inclination to host an ITV panel show.

ROB BRYDON

THE CASE FOR: Quick witted, able to adapt to a number of personalities, the kind of performer everyone’s mum likes. There’s a good chance he’d be willing to take on the role too, we’d imagine.

THE CASE AGAINST: We don’t think he’d be quite as good in the hosting role as Micallef or Serafinowicz. Might be tied to the BBC – we don’t think he’s fronted anything for another network since 2004’s Director’s Commentary for ITV1.

JASPER CARROTT

THE CASE FOR: Maybe a bolt out of the blue this one, but his spell hosting early evening gameshow ~~Gits Win Prizes~~ Goldenballs proves that he’s perfectly capable of hosting such a show. If Carrott can rediscover the form the saw him become Britain’s favourite stand-up for the late 1980s and early 1990s, he could still do well here. If nothing else, it’d be brilliant to have Jasper Carrott back on Saturday night telly.

THE CASE AGAINST: Now in his sixties, he’s probably a bit too old now to go back to doing characters, even if that would only be a minor part of the show. Of the people on our shortlist, Carrott would possibly prove the biggest risk, and there’s a large chance he’s perfectly happy living off the fortune he made from Celador.

HARRY HILL

THE CASE FOR: Surely he’ll have to try something that isn’t TV Burp eventually? No, we’re not counting You’ve Been Framed, it seems he just knocks out all those voiceovers in a single week. Mr Harry could certainly breathe a lot of life into a British version of TAYG, and the format would give him an ideal opportunity to bring back characters such as Stouffer the Cat or Bert Kwouk.

THE CASE AGAINST: There’s a danger the show would become more about Harry Hill than anything else, and unlike with (say) Shooting Stars where the guests are merely meat in the room, the guests on TAYG are there to actually take part. Such a role would require him to come a little bit out of character at time – which as we’ve seen with his godawful I Wanna Baby single or radio interviews where he bemoans the BBC spending money on programmes that he doesn’t like, might not be a good thing.

Sadly, we do suspect that it’ll be none of the above, and it’ll probably end up as a vehicle for Keith fucking Lemon. PROVE US WRONG, ITV. Just because Australian television picked the wrong host for their version of TV Burp (Ed Kavalee, who we don’t have anything against, just that he wasn’t quite right for the series), it doesn’t mean that you should return the favour.

Here’s a sample clip of the show in action. It’s a segment from a special episode where the guests are real-life relatives of the team captains, and where Josh Thomas’ grandmother Mona puts in a wonderful performance.

Usavich vs Paul Merton: The Series (WORLD CUP OF TV COMEDY)

2011-09-01T23:27:00.001+01:00

So, welcome to the opening match of the BrokenTV World Cup of TV Comedy 2011. Before 'kick off', an interesting bit of background - BrokenTV's Mark X originally came up with the notion of putting each match up to a public vote, in very much the same manner used in the BETEO Song Wars, which he devised and is best at. Upon realising that (a) no-one would really sit through two entire episodes of a TV show before voting in each round, (b) getting hold of complete, legally viewable episodes of each show online would be near impossible, and (c) he's clearly the best at liking comedy anyway, the decision was made to do things this way.

And so, over to our commentary team for today's match, Tony Gubba and Egyptian polymath/high priest of the sun god Ra, Imhotep.

TONY: So, a bit of a controversial choice for the finals here. USAVICH is a series of short animations - made for MTV Flux Japan - clocking in at just 90 seconds long. In order to participate, the competition organisers have agreed to count each full season as a single 'episode'. As that still totals just 21 minutes, it has been agreed to let the plucky Asians take part.,The crowd seem a bit uncertain about this, Imhotep.

IMHOTEP: Suspect the tetchiness of the crowd might be down to us having nicked this fake sporting commentary riff from J Nash, Tony.

TONY: It's a homage, Imho. You know, like when Family Guy steals jokes from things on telly in the 1980s.

IMHOTEP: Boy, this is worse than the time I dropped acid with the cast of Rentaghost, Tony.

TONY: That's the level, Imho. Up against Usavich today is oft-forgotten sketch show PAUL MERTON: THE SERIES. Coming from that short period where people let the London-based funnyman make actual proper comedy on television instead of just having him react to things in a wry manner, or front engrossing documentaries on cinema.

IMHOTEP: PM:TS was certainly the high watermark in Merton's career, possibly even the funniest sketch comedy to ever be shown on Channel Four, aside from Absolutely. The two series run maintained a very high standard throughout, which made it all the more surprising when his two subsequent pilots for the BBC, The Paul Merton Show (BBC Two, 1996) and Does China Exist? (BBC Two, 1997) proved to be on the disappointing side. And nowadays of course, Merton seems to have been replaced by an unfunny doppelganger willing to make jokes about the Daleks' inability to climb stairs on Have I Got News For You. In 2011!

TONY: Luckily, it's that high watermark we're looking at here, courtesy of the entire series being freely available to view on 4OD. The first episode was promoted by Merton wearing a T-shirt that said "TURN OVER AT 11" on Have I Got News For You an hour previous, and a later episode closed with Merton furiously eating a massive bowl of cornflakes, with the punchline being "that was a party political broadcast for the Campaign To Legalise Cannabis" which the studio audience found utterly hilarious but which I still don't get. But which will episode will be sent out to bat today? Over to King Edward VII at the randomiser.

USAVICH: SERIES ONE

PAUL MERTON THE SERIES: SERIES TWO, EPISODE TWO

TONY: Here’s how it’s going to work. Both of the chosen episodes are to be watched SEMI-SIMULTANEOUSLY (the team tried watching both actual-simultaneously, but things soon got hugely confusing). As events in each programme catch the eye of the ‘referee’ at key points of the ‘match’, points can be added – or subtracted – accordingly. If it works out at all, I’ll be astonished quite frankly. If nothing else, it’ll be a huge strain on the creaky old PC in the BrokenTV office. Over to today’s match officials, the BrokenTV crew.

KICK OFF

1 minute

Paul Merton gets off to a sedate start, with its familiar “letters on a washing line” title sequence, while Usavich leaps straight into gear with a snappy title card, and a setting we’ll be getting very familiar with, the inside of the prison cell that contains our two rabbit pals, with Green Rabbit jogging keenly on the spot while his cellmate, the volatile Red Rabbit, lies on his bed reading a magazine about sneakers. A prison guard arrives, and delivers the prisoners’ dinner: one raw fish each. Green Rabbit takes his fish, but before he can drop it into his rabbity mouth, the fish springs to life, slapping him about the face repeatedly in a comical manner.

Red Rabbit looks at his plate, and with clear distain walks to the cell door in order to remonstrate with the guard, throwing his unappetising meal in the cell’s toilet bowl as he does so. The guard reacts by sliding through an alternate meal: a Looney-Tunes-issue fish skeleton on a plate. Chuffed at his piscine retort, the guard guffaws with gusto through the slot of the cell door, only for Red Rabbit to SLAM the plate of fishbone into the guard’s chortling chops. The guard chokes tearfully from behind the cell door, and with frenzied rage uses a pair of grabby metal arms to try and beat Red Rabbit with a club. And yes, all that happens within the first sixty seconds.

Over in the Merton corner, the first thirty seconds are taken up with that title sequence before we cut to Paul Merton’s chirpy news-stand vendor character, effectively the lynchpin of the show. Aside him on his newsstand is a record player, pumping out some jaunty muzak, which Merton explains contains subliminal messages with which to encourage customers to buy more.

We soon see what he means, as a customer enters (played by Robert Harley). As he requests a couple of items from the stand, the muzak track calmly suggests in a measured tone, “buy a newspaper”. With a slightly bemused expression falling across his face, the customer appends “…and a copy of the Daily Rubbish, please” onto his list of items.

Nice little bit, but Usavich’s cracking pace takes the point: USAVICH 1, PAUL MERTON THE SERIES 0

1-5 minutes

Yeah, we’re not doing actual minute by minute, we’d be here all week. In the time since the last update, Merton’s customer felt compelled to buy some cigarettes (“what brand?” “I don’t know, I don’t smoke”), a pig on a stick, and due to the record skipping, eight boxes of chocolates. From here, Merton goes on a riff about sending Picasso portraits into space along with a note asking aliens if any of them look like the paintings because no bugger down here does, and wonders why every single man in Iraq has a black moustache (“because they can’t all think it suits them”). And he said some other things while we were typing all this.

We’re on a roll now, and into the first proper sketch, Merton and players at an army medal-giving ceremony (whatever they’re called, we’re too busy to think properly). Merton’s major and the general (probably, no time for fact-checking) soon run out of DSOs, leading to the remaining soldiers picking the medals they fancy most from the box, as if they were a box of Celebrations. The medals soon run out entirely, meaning the squaddies end up being awarded anything Merton can lay his hands on, such as a fag packet, a Shredded Wheat, and a saucepan, all of which are dutifully pinned onto their chests. A nice bit of surrealism, and a nice punchline at the end that we won’t spoil. As we reach the five minute mark, a beauty salon sketch opens up, meaning this has been a good five minutes for the lad Merton.

Meanwhile, it Japanese-animation-studio Russia, Red Rabbit has gone totally batshit on the guard, so much so that instead of his fishbone lunch, he’s rewarded with a lovely juicy carrot. The episode closes as he tucks into it, pulling back to reveal the fish still slapping Green Rabbit about the face. Onto episode two: “Time For Work”. We know this because we can read Japanese (oh, okay, we looked at the filename). The prisoners are told to earn their upkeep (well, shown, as there’s no dialogue in the entire series). Green Rabbit is given a tray of mismatched Russian Dolls, which he soon keenly assembles into their correct order. Unimpressed, the guard gives him another task: sexing chicks.

Green Rabbit keenly slides the various baby chickens into the correct tubes, much to the annoyance of the guard. Until, that is, Green Rabbit arrives at the curveball placed in the tray: a transgender baby chicken. Nervous sweat drips from Green Rabbit’s head as he ponders what to do, until he tries classifying the androgynous chicklet as a female. This turns out to be incorrect, leading to the sound of a klaxon and Green Rabbit getting slapped across the face with a whip. At this point, the door changes to a pseudo bank, where Green Rabbit is to receive his ‘payment’ for the day’s work: a single shiny coin. The banker flips the coin into the cell in slow-motion, and as the sound of Bach’s cantata Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben BWV 147 plays (and yes, we looked that up so you’ll think we’re cultured) the coin falls ever nearer to the toilet bowl, upon which Red Rabbit is sitting. Calmly, Red Rabbit moves aside, allowing the coin to land inside the toilet bowl, closely followed by Green Rabbit.

Ep three begins, with both Green and Red Rabbit receiving showers from a firehose held phallus-like by the guard. This ends with Red Rabbit ripping the cell door from the hinges, the guard (still hidden behind the now unattached cell door) giving Red Rabbit a less humiliating shower, while a naked Green Rabbit dries on a clothes line, his modesty covered by a hovering Transgender Baby Chicken. This takes us up to the first thirty seconds of ep four, where Red Rabbit fashions a crude game of pool from the cell door, nine Russian dolls, and TGBC.

So, Usavich still cramming a load of content in there, but Merton’s blend of whimsy, trad comedy foolishness and Shredded Wheat sees him nab an quick equaliser. USAVICH 1, PAUL MERTON THE SERIES 1.

5-10 minutes

Usavich to kick off. The pool game starts with the cue ball slammed painfully into a cheeping TGBC. A game of ping-ping is then fashioned, and long story short, it all ends sadistically badly for the guard. And TGBC gets eaten by a frog in the toilet.

Onto ep 5, and it’s an entertaining fusion of everyday sounds in the cell combining to make a form of music. You know, like the bit with Tyres in the kitchen in that episode of Spaced, or a bit like something in a Cornelius video, if you prefer. It ends with the frog shitting out a noticeably embarrassed TGBC. Yep, this isn’t particularly highbrow, but still oddly compelling. We dash into ep 6 (“Time for Visitors”), and Green Rabbit is excitedly hoping to see a member of his family drop by, only for the visitors to turn out to be The Frog’s Mum, and TGBC’s sexless parent. The tearful reunion for the latter pairing is cut short, as the frog eats TGBC again. A frenzied Mr (or Mrs) TGBC bursts through the glass and leaps into the cell to the sound of Bach. Sadly for Mr (or Mrs) TGBC, he (or she) lands on the notoriously short-tempered Red Rabbit, who reacts by eating cooked Mr (or Mrs) TGBC for lunch (or dinner).

The first minute of ep 7 (“Time for Exercise”) has the guard peep a whistle for Green Rabbit to exercise along to. The pace of the whistling quickens, leading to Green Rabbit getting more and more exhausted, finally collapsing on the cell floor. The guard, clearly unimpressed at Red Rabbit not joining in with the routine, bangs loudly on the cell floor in order to attract the attention of Red Rabbit. Red Rabbit takes this new event as well as you might expect, but instead of flying into a furious rage, menacingly strolls to the cell door, and takes the whistle from the hand of the terrified guard.

Goal kick to Paul Merton, and that beauty salon sketch. A nice throwaway gag about a new assistant forgetting to slice cucumbers before placing them on customers’ eyes. Next sketch, a pair of mountaineers trapped in a freezing hut halfway up a mountain. wondering what terrible fate might have befell their companion who’d ventured out in a blizzard to try and get some rations a long time ago. It seems he must surely have succumbed to the terrible conditions, a fate surely now awaiting themselves. Enter Merton, carrying shopping bags while complaining about the wait he’d endured in the supermarket.

Cue one of Merton’s always enjoyable bits where he plays the comic foil to a room full of essentially ‘straight’ characters, our favourite of which would probably be the one where he plays Frankenstein’s monster (but which isn’t in this episode). Here, he goes through the collection of items in his shopping bags, stating how items quite useless in this situation such as kitchen roll and light bulbs couldn’t be passed up at such bargain prices. The sketch rolls on from there for about a minute or so, until we hit the eight minute mark, and a sketch where Merton (in a suit) addresses a scrum of reporters and photographers. It turns out that he’s a spokesperson for a hospital, where an unlucky patient turned out to be the surprise recipient of a new heart she hadn’t asked for. Unfortunately, due to a further misunderstanding, the heart she’d had transplanted into her body had been that of a pigeon. The story grows yet more surreal from this point, with our diagnosis being: this is a nice sketch.

Interesting to note that while PM:TS was a pretty low-budget affair by 1993 standards, it probably had more money spent on it than a sketch series you might see on British television nowadays, leading to the same half-dozen gags being recycled endlessly, if only to cut down on the costume and location budget, plus that gives you something to put on your tour T-shirts.

Back at the series, another trad sketch, where Paul Merton’s treasure hunter follows a map displaying a dotted trail leading to a tantalising ‘X’ symbol. Reaching the coordinates displayed on the map, he starts to dig, and…

Hey, sometimes the obvious jokes ARE the best jokes. Though you’ll know we think that if you’ve read this blog for any length of time.

USAVICH 1, PAUL MERTON 2.

10-15 minutes

Usavich to kick off, and we’re back at the exercise episode, with Red Rabbit having just taken the whistle. As might be expected, Red Rabbit forces the guard to do some exercises as strenuous as the ones which made Green Rabbit a wheezing mass of sweat and fur at the start of the episode. ONTO EP 8, and Green Rabbit is playing a game of cards with the guard. Each hand Green Rabbit plays suggests the outcome he’d like to see, showing cards that generally involve him finally being set free from the prison. The guard’s hands are more menacing though, involving nooses, electric chairs and the like, sending Green Rabbit into a nervous cold sweat. As Green Rabbit finally collapses with shock, Red Rabbit decides to take part in the game.

A nervous guard plays the same hand he’d used to frighten Green Rabbit into submission, but this time is just met with the cold unblinking gaze of Red Rabbit, who plays his ‘Joker’ cards, denoting a demonic Red Rabbit going Tonto with various weapons. The scene ends with Red Rabbit counting his winnings while the battered guard serves him chilled wine.

EP NINE – “Time for a Snack”. The two rabbits are given a snack of what appears to be sugar cubes on a plate. Green Rabbit sucks pleasurably on his, while Red Rabbit rises, walks to the cell door, and forces them into the eye sockets of the guard. The guard reacts by serving an alternative snack, a delicious pudding, albeit one containing a barely-concealed bomb. Red Rabbit eats the snack in one chomp, the bomb exploding inside his belly, resulting in no more damage than a puff of black smoke floating from his burping mouth. Onto episode ten: “Time for Toilet” – Green Rabbit, while dancing, realises he desperately needs to go plop-plops. One problem – his psychotic cellmate is using the only toilet in the cell. The guard spots this, and ramps up the tension by prodding at Green Rabbit’s abdomen with a long stick. The episode ends with… ah, we won’t spoil it.

THROW-IN TO MERTON, and a return to the newsstand for the remainder of Part One. A customer approaches the newsstand, and notices a sign stating that everything is on sale. “Everything’s half price, it’s all fire-damaged stock”, explains Merton. “Alright then, I’ll have a packet of cigarettes”, requests the customer, only to be handed an ashtray full of cigarette butts. It’s not that much of a con, though – Merton also offers the customer the smoke from the cigarettes, contained within an inflated balloon. Merton then goes into a lovely routine about a one-legged man at a bus stop, a choc-ice, and a mass slaughter of Loyd Grossman lookalikes.

PART TWO and we’re back at the newsstand, and Merton eating a big spoonful of Brylcreem. Via a bit about his newsstand offering dry cleaning (“Haven’t got one that’s white with green stripes, just this one that’s green with white stripes”) we’re onto his ace sketch about a man placing unorthodox bets in a bookmakers:

“Here, d’you remember me? I came in here last week and made a bet that they’d discover life on another planet within the year. Here’s my betting slip.”

“Oh yeah, £5 at 10,000/1, I remember.”

“Well, I’ve just been up to Mars, and I found this ant up there.”

Even more brilliant betting-based banter ensues. Lovely stuff.

“Right, when you’re dead in the year 3000 you can come in here and claim your winnings.”

If you’ve not seen it for a while – or (gasp!) ever – it’s definitely worth watching Paul Merton: The Series again. While it was put out in a post-watershed slot on still-any-good-era C4, it’s easily the kind of humour that could’ve screened during Christmas Day on BBC One.

USAVICH 1, PAUL MERTON THE SERIES 3

15 minutes +

Merton reclaims the ball straight from the kick-off (because we want to see the ending of the brilliant bookmakers sketch). Back to more stand-up delivered amongst newspapers and Mars bars, and it’s all a reminder of what a bloody good stand-up Merton was at the time. The twenty minute mark is reached during an enjoyable two-hander with Paul Merton and Neil Mullarkey on a studio-set train platform. A throwaway gag about videogame addiction aside (back when they were still referred to as ‘computer games’), a throwback to a running gag from series one (we think), and a final sketch with Robert Daws and Merton playing businessman in charge of a struggling company. What seems like it might be a diverting but unspectacular ending to the episode takes an unexpected turn when Merton’s character comes clean about his past in the illicit world of Old Woman Racing, with the action displayed in the live-action/stop-motion manner also used for Monty Python’s Furniture Racing sketch and Spike Milligan’s Standing Still Race.

So, a possible chance to claw back some dignity by the Usavich camp. Four episodes to go, which see the guard attempt to decapitate, poison, torture, shoot, and explode Red Rabbit, all to be… ‘vigorously rebuffed’.

Finally, in the series closer, Green Rabbit is due for release. Upon spotting a particularly enticing pair of sneakers for sale in his magazine, Red Rabbit soon has ideas for an exit of his own, leading to the first action taking place outside of the cell, and setting up series two very nicely indeed.

A late consolation for Usavich, then.

FINAL SCORE: USAVICH 2, PAUL MERTON THE SERIES 3

Usavich is certainly a series of animations well worth seeing, especially if you’re a fan of the utterly demented Japanese humour that you might find in games like WarioWare, PuLiRuLa or Super Galdelic Hour. You can see the entire first series of Usavich here, though be warned, it’s running at a distractingly less than optimal frame rate. Various episodes of the other series are on YouTube too, though their availability seems be at the mercy of Viacom’s legal department.

Unfortunately for Kirenenko and Putin (the real names of the rabbits, we’ve just looked them up), Paul Merton: The Series is just too bloody good a comedy show for it to compete against, though that works out quite well for us, as we’ve only got one more series (i.e. twenty more minutes) of the show in full, and it’s all so packed it’s a nightmare to write about in a hurry. Phew, eh? If you read all that up there, well done to you, frankly.

So, Paul Merton takes up the first slot in Round Two, but who will be joining him? Looking at our schedule, the next match is a tantalising tussle between CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM and HANCOCK’S HALF HOUR. See you then!

(Reader’s voice: “When?”)

Erm, soon. These take ages to do, you know.

Love Football (Celebrity Big Brother), Hate Racism (The Racism Of Richard Desmond’s Newspapers) LIVE BLOG

2011-08-18T19:58:00.001+01:00

LIVE BLOG GO! Updates at the bottom, refresh for latest.

Hello and welcome to the beginning of/the entirety of BrokenTV's Celebrity Big Brother 2011 coverage. How so? Well, it's kind of like this: despite everything, we still enjoy Celebrity Big Brother when it's done properly. A couple of genuinely interesting characters in there, or at least someone dislikeable who'll soon be given the chance to show everyone what a deluded buffoon they really are (c.f. that bit where George Galloway claimed he's easily the most well-known of the housemates because "one billion Muslims know who *I* am"), and it's worth investing your time in. Some people you may previously have dismissed as no longer relevant get the chance to prove how entertaining they can still be (the excellently grumpy Dirk Benedict and Leo Sayer), while some you might not have been familiar with use their fifteen minutes to show just how spiffingly game they are (Jermaine Jackson, Mutya Buena). Then there who forget they're on telly and end up showing the nation just how horrible they truly are (Danielle Lloyd, Jo O’Meara, Jade Goody and Jack Tweed), and those who end up being as pointlessly ghastly as you'd suspected the second they stepped onto your screen for the first time ("Donny" "Tourette"). It's a right old tin of Inequality Street and no mistake, and that's why it's always been worth at least the occasional gander.

But this year, the entire series is blighted before the start by a figure more off-putting than any to have sat on the unnecessarily ornate Diary Room chair: Richard Desmond, publisher, businessman and current owner of Channel 5. He also happens to be owner of the Daily Express and Daily Star newspapers, a pair of – as anyone who glances at their front pages from time to time will have worked out for themselves – despairingly horrible publications more determined than any other to spread as many hatepacked half-truths as humanly possible, as long as it’ll glean a few more pennies from splutteringly redfaced bigots throughout Britain.

We’re talking about a man who employs a pair of newspaper editorial teams who look at what The Sun and the Daily Mail do, and then think “we can go more downmarket than them - that’ll be the way to go!” One newspaper especially hates Muslims, the other really hates Europe, and they treat those topics mainly by claiming how Muslims and Europe want ALL YOUR MONEY AND FREEDOM. They’re both unabashedly racist, and don’t really mind misreporting facts, blowing non-stories out of all recognition, or even just flat out making shit up to get an extra few quid out of their target audience. When it comes to the Star, we’re talking about a British tabloid SO BAD, even a seasoned tabloid reporter resigned in disgust at the levels of Islamophobia continually published within.

And who’s the person letting this happen? Richard Desmond. As we said up there. Though for once, he’s found a story big enough to knock the Muslims and their secret plans to replace all programming on the BBC with readings from the Koran or whatever from the front page of the Daily Star. And it’s not the aftermath of the rioting taking place throughout England, either.

Even the Star’s supposedly ‘quality’ sister publication found room to splash on Big Brother, alongside a characteristically misleading headline for the main story.

And so, we've made a decision. We'll give the big launch night show a 'target'. Here is a barchart.

...as you can see, there's a tiny bar on the left, which reflects the current level of interest we have in Celebrity Big Brother 2011. There's a big bar in the middle - that reflects how much we hate Richard Desmond. Lastly, over there on the right, is our 'control' bar, just so you know how much we dislike the proprietor of the Daily Star and Daily Express. Currently, it's set at "having every radio station on planet Earth relentlessly play nothing but records by Paramore from now until the day we die", but might change as the programme progresses, depending how bored we get (or are distracted by Hearts vs Tottenham on ITV4).

As each housemate is revealed, we'll adjust the chart accordingly. If, say, someone like Sean Lock or Neil Tennant unexpectedly enters the Big Brother house, expect the chart to zoom upwards. If someone like Lembit Opik or Paris Hilton turns up, get ready for it to plummet. If nothing happens to the chart for a long time, we might have got bored and started watching Torchwood instead. Yeah, things might get *that* bad. Whatever happens during the show, if the bar on the left remains smaller than the bar in the middle at 10.30pm tonight, that's it for Celebrity Big Brother from us.

Oh, and there'll be a special shock-fuelled jolt in the graph should any followers of Islam become a member of the Celebrity Big Brother house, considering the other arms of Richard Desmond's media empire spent so much of their time printing lies about how the billion Muslims who know George Galloway are about to move here to claim double-helpings of benefit payments and gold-plated six-storey council houses.

Given the stories we’ve seen about who'll be appearing in the CBB house, we're not feeling that hopeful about the need to trouble Photoshop much tonight, but time will tell.

Here.

At 9pm.

Tonight.

BE THERE. (Here.)

[9.00 PM]

IT BEGINS. Just before the start, there was a ‘teaser’ advert, letting us know we’ll be able to see the full version of that bloody annoying Lucozade advert at 9.15pm. Erm, “woo”?

Brain seems to be adept enough at presenting so far. INCISIVE COMMENTARY ENDS.

First up: it’s…. KERRY KATONA. One of those people everyone has heard of, but kinds of wishes they didn’t. WHAT WILL THIS MEAN FOR THE CHART?

[9.10pm] As reported all over the place, next up is TARA REID. Who was quite good when she was in Scrubs. Though that was only for about three episodes.

[9.20pm] Next? Um, Mickey Rourke’s let himself go. Oh, it’s PADDY DOHERTY. Off of… My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, according to Twitter. We really should have put more negative interest space on our chart, we suspect.

QUICK WIKIPEDIA ENTRY SIZE ROUNDUP: Kerry Katona: 2801 words. Tara Reid: 1339. Paddy Doherty and Amy Childs: NOT ON WIKIPEDIA AT ALL.

[9.25pm] It’s someone from another reality show again. This is going to be a long boring ninety minutes, isn’t it? It’s vacant clone AMY CHILDS. Care.

We would post an updated version of the chart, but it’s so negative at the moment it’s burning a hole in the CONCEPT OF TIME ITSELF.

[9.33pm] Yet another ad break. We make it 703 ad breaks so far, and we’re only 33 minutes in. Meanwhile, people should be chosen by public vote to go on Celebrity Big Brother, whether they want to or not. At gunpoint if necessary. And then not put it on telly. Our vote would be for Piers Morgan.

[9.36pm] Next up, vapid miseryleech DARRYN LYONS, or as he prefers to be known, MR PAPARAZZI. Current status of chart: spinning around in furious rage at twice the speed of the Large Hadron Collider.

[9.40pm] We’re due a MAJOR STAR right about now… Nope, it’s SALLY BERCOW, wife of the Speaker of the House of Commons. No wonder Channel 5 are getting all their allocated ad breaks out of the way by 10pm. No-one will be left watching the channel by 10pm at this rate.

[9.50pm] Housemate 7… LUCIEN LAVISCOUNT. Whoever he is. If Paul Ross turned up now, that would actually be raising the bar, you know.

[9.56pm] We’re not going to get a Dennis Rodman or a Michael Barrymore this year are we? OH WAIT… from Baywatch… iiiiit’s…. PAMELA… Oh, PAMELA HASSELHOFF.

CURRENT STATUS OF INTEREST BAR ON BARCHART: so far underground it’s battling with Ray Harryhousen stop-motion skellingtons.

[10.06pm] It’s BOBBY [waits for name to appear on screen] SABEL. Channel 5 paid LOADS of money to get the rights to Big Brother. This is what they do with it. It’s like us buying a brand new Lexus, then only using it to keep our recycling in.

[10.10pm] The final guests: the ones that all the money was spent on. It’s…. ONLY THE BLOODY CHUCKLE BROTHERS! Nah, not really, it’s JEDWARD.

That means we can complete our chart AT LAST.

We do actually like Jedward – they’re wholly uncynical, managing to see the entire world through magical pairs of contact lenses that make even the most mundane things seem magical, and seem to be genuinely nice human beings. Considering everything else though, we can’t really imagine feeling compelled to trouble the ‘5’ button on our remote control over the next few weeks.

Unless we’re watching another channel that has a 5 in it.

And if we do, we won’t be admitting it.

[11.08pm] My, viewing figures DO come through quickly these days. Tomorrow’s Daily Star went to press as the programme was starting, but they’ve still somehow found out that the show has achieved a “RECORD AUDIENCE”:

We’ll leave the last word to Danny Baker, we think.

Goodnight!

A Proposal For The Opposite Of Whatever A “Stealth Tax” Is (BBC Four Cutbacks)

2011-08-17T10:41:00.000+01:00

The Guardian reports that as part of ~~David Cameron’s ongoing game of Kerplunk with all that makes British society worthwhile~~ Our Great Nation’s clamour towards the return of economic prosperity, the BBC may be forced to strip BBC Four of everything costing more than 17p. This is mainly due to the six-year freeze on the licence fee, itself hampered by the World Service now being funded from the that fee, instead of general taxation.

As you might expect, the Twitterati which we’d like to think we’re a part of (but which we very clearly aren’t) got their hashtags in a huge twist over this, and with good reason considering BBC Four is pretty much the last stronghold of Reithian values within the BBC. By which we mean his “giving the people what they don’t yet realise they want” ethos, rather than that whole “I like the cut of that Hitler chap’s jib” thing.

When we were tiny, we’d often gaze in bewildered wonder at the highbrow documentaries on Egypt, canals or bronze that BrokenTV’s Dad would sit through on a Sunday evening, wondering if we’d ever be clever enough to appreciate such works as The Ascent of Man, Civilisation or Life On Earth. Despite the fact we’re probably not that clever – the monocle we wear to social events really isn’t fooling anyone – the closest British television has to that now is on BBC Four. That’s not to say modern-day BBC Two isn’t without merit, we’re as enthralled by James May building an actual house out of Lego as anyone, but BBC Four is so damn good at times, it’s almost as if it’s cheating. The other channels spend a fortune trying out hundreds of formats in order to find that right blend for the whole family, while BBC Four give an hour to a documentary on the Black Power Salute in the 1968 Mexico Olympics, and we’re captivated. And if it weren’t for BBC Four, we’d have had to Google the Olympic year where Tommie Smith and John Carlos’ made their historic gesture.

From what we’ve read, the most likely casualties from Mark Thompson’s knowledge cull will be BBC Four’s drama and comedy output. We can’t help but feel that would be the beginning of the end for the channel. Without the additional viewers brought to the channel by the likes of The Thick Of It, QI (series A actually premiered on the channel), Fantabulosa!, Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story, Micro Men, Hattie, Lennon Naked, Newswipe, Screenwipe, On Expenses, Canoe Man, Thatcher: The Long Road To Finchley, The Road to Coronation Street or the forthcoming Holy Flying Circus, would other programmes on the channel have been brought to the attention of nearly as many viewers? And with the remaining programmes less likely to attract the same viewing figures they currently achieve, how long before the channel is dismissed as an irrelevance by the BBC-hating press, and calls begin for it to be closed completely?

Programmes such as The Curse of Steptoe attracted around 1.6 million viewers, a figure likely to be much higher than that attracted by the forthcoming series of Celebrity Big Brother on Channel 5 – surely that’s something to be protected at all costs? Yes, some of the bigger shows could supposedly debut on BBC Two, but in the modern-day hypercompetitive TV market there’s no room for risk. Could the 21st century model BBC Two really have taken a chance on The Thick Of It being given three pilot episodes? On broadcasting the latest version of The Quatermass Experiment, the first live made-for-television drama to be shown on the BBC in twenty years? On giving Charlie Brooker thirty minutes a week to tear the television industry a new SCART socket? Or even to try out programming that didn’t quite work, such as Robert Newman’s long-awaited return to TV comedy, with The History Of The World Backwards?

We’ve long held the (possibly misguided) notion that BBC Four is the very last outpost of British television where the right people can happily be given a budget and a timeslot, and be told “go off and make something” without being followed by a swarm of middle-managers who prod the talent with sticks while hissing “can we skew younger?”, “can we get Mickey Flanagan in here somewhere, I owe his agent a favour”, or “this play about Shakespeare is all very worthy, but I don’t like Shakespeare. Can it all be about him being shit?” It’s the BBC of the Radiophonic Workshop, of a thirteen-part series being made because of something Barry Took said in the BBC bar, of half-hour sitcoms lasting for thirty-four minutes because that’s how long it needs to be – or as close to that bygone Beeb as it can be in the era of credit-squeezing and logo usage guideline documents.

In short, if BBC Four were a person, it’d be Alessandro Del Piero taking part in an under-12s football match, and it’s time for him to have his bootlaces tied together to give everyone else a chance.

So, what are the alternatives to clipping BBC Four’s wings? People on Twitter seem to have come up with a few ideas, though they don’t really hold up to much scrutiny.

“JUST CLOSE BBC THREE INSTEAD! I DON’T LIKE IT, SO I’M HAPPY FOR IT TO CLOSE.”

A popular opinion, but one we’d have to disagree with. Yes, it’s full of shows called JAMES CORDEN’S WELL GOOD FUCK OFF I’M GINGER AND WAHEY LADS SHAGGING EH SHOW or whatever, and despite making huge amounts of original content most people only watch EastEnders repeats and Family Guy, but there is an audience for it.

One of the reasons we stopped liking Harry Hill quite as much is down to a recent interview on Five Live, he was asked why TV Burp had stopped poking fun at BBC Three’s Freaky Eaters. His reply was along the lines of “it’s awful, that’s why. And I’m paying for it!” Well, sorry to break this to you Harry. The people who watch BBC Three pay their licence fee, too. They’re paying for the things they like, you’re paying for the things you like. Oddly, considering “young people are always moaning, they don’t know how lucky they are!”, we never really hear fans of Spendaholics or Being Human complaining about their licence fee funding coverage of The Chelsea Flower Show or Countryfile, but whenever the Beeb send a team off to Glasto to capture around sixty hours of entertainment for less than the price of two hours drama, it’s as if the ghost of Sir Hugh Greene is personally sneaking into the houses of Daily Mail readers and rifling through their handbags.

“SACK CHRIS MOYLES! THAT’LL PAY FOR A DOZEN BBC FOURSES.”

Much as we dislike Radio One’s self-satisfied money vacuum, millions of people do like him. And his contract is reportedly due to end soon, anyway. Hey, if you wanted Chris Moyles off the radio, you should have watched the eighteen different attempts to make him a TV star in numbers larger than piss-all. By the time he realised he wasn’t suited to it, Nick Grimshaw or someone would be sitting in his DJ chair.

“WAH WAH WAH THE BBC LICENCE FEE IS BAD AND WRONG ANYWAY WHY SHOULD I HAVE TO PAY MONEY TO HAVE COMMUNISM LITERALLY INJECTED INTO MY EYES EVERY NIGHT?”

See this?

That’s you that is, you absolute flapping gibbons. As we’ve said before, for the first time in history you CAN legally watch telly without a TV licence. Buy a plasma or LCD screen that doesn’t have a digital tuner built-in. Connect a PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 or computer to it, and use online services to watch catch-up content from a variety of UK television providers* on it. Hey presto, you don’t own a device capable of receiving a ‘live’ television signal, so you don’t need a TV licence. AND what’s more, the includes anything the BBC have put on iPlayer – if you’re not watching it go out live, you don’t have to pay a penny, and it’s all legal. Us licence fee payers are the ones paying for your entertainment now. And guess what – we don’t resent you for it. Not a bit. Enjoy. Be entertained. We’re not selfish, entitled dicks, you see.

(*Oh, unless you’re including Sky in that. You’ll have to pay BSkyB a fucking fortune to watch their catch-up service online. But hey, enjoy those repeats of To The Manor Born on UK Gold.)

“ONLY IN BRITAIN, EH? WHY SHOULD WE HAVE TO PAY FOR ETC ETC ETC.”

Sigh. It might surprise some people to learn that the BBC isn’t the only state-funded broadcaster in the world. Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Macedonia, Malta, Montenegro, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Serbia, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Israel, Japan, Korea, Pakistan, Ghana, Mauritius, Namibia, South Africa and Brazil ALL have broadcasters funded by licence fees. Do you hear many people saying “say what you like about Slovenia, their nature documentaries are the best in the world”? NO.

Meanwhile, in Australia, the Flemish region of Belgium, Cyprus, Gibraltar, Hungary, India, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal and Singapore state-funded broadcasters are paid for from general taxation. Too poor to own a telly in India? Tough, you’re still paying for the programmes.

OKAY, SMARTY BOLLOCKS – WHAT ARE YOU PROPOSING?

Well, the opposite of what the “waaaah stealth tax! Stealth tax!” whingers who probably cried that bit more as a baby because mummy’s breast milk didn’t taste like Twining's tea want. In what is supposed to be a democracy, and where people complain that you’re not allowed to have the choice of paying the television licence fee or not, we’re saying: we should have the choice to pay more for our licence fee if we want to. We’re told that the licence fee has been frozen for six years to ‘help’ us all in this tough economic climate. Fine, but why shouldn’t we have the option of paying more to help keep the BBC the way we like it?

The licence fee as it stands is £145.50 per household per year, with that price frozen solid until 2016. Why not just make that the minimum mandatory licence fee? Watch a lot of BBC shows? Love BBC Radio? Is the BBC website your homepage? Well, why not decide to pay the corporation a total of £165.50 per year? You won’t get anything special for that extra donation. You won’t be more likely to have your flailing arm picked out of the audience on Question Time to grill the Shadow Energy Secretary. You won’t be more likely to have your missive read out on Points Of View. You won’t get to guest host Have I Got News For You. You’ll be doing it because you believe in rewarding someone for the good job they do. After all, what could be more British than that? Sure, there’ll be stuff put out there in the name of the BBC that you personally don’t like, hundreds upon hundreds of hours of it, but that’s because the BBC is for everyone, and everyone deserves the best BBC they can get.

Don’t want to pay an extra penny? Like to mutter into your cocoa about how “they’ll” probably replace Songs Of Praise with “Lee Nelson’s Well God Show” the second your back is turned? Well, then don’t. Pay your minimum, carry on kidding yourself that having a strong BBC doesn’t help other broadcasters do the good things they do – would ITV still keep letting John Pilger make shows such as the powerful The War You Don’t See if they weren’t playing catch-up with the Beeb, for instance?

It needn’t stop there. How about the licence fee reminder letters including a form that allows you to allocate your extra contribution to the areas you’d most like to see receive it?

We’ll pay more than our fair share if and where we can, and maybe, just maybe, we’ll keep BBC Four, and the rest of the BBC, every bit as good as it is now.

The 2011 World Cup of TV Comedy: GRAND DRAW

2011-08-16T20:34:00.001+01:00

We’ve been a bit quiet lately, mainly due to a prolonged period of our idea muscles being strained. But we’ve come up with an exciting and NEW idea, one that we’re sure will run and run. And idea that should easily last for around thirty updates, and which we’ll never, ever get bored of. And hey, hopefully you won’t too. Announcing:

THE BROKENTV WORLD CUP OF TV COMEDY

What’s that? We kind of spoiled the big reveal by putting that in the title of this update? Ah. And the big, lazy Photoshopped image just above this text? Oh.

HOW IT WORKS:

We’ve taken a list of fifty classic (and future classic) television comedy shows from around the world. Not necessarily the fifty greatest comedy series ever, programmes that we’re able to lay our hands on without too much effort have been favoured. Of those fifty, thirty-two ‘qualify’ for the finals. From that point on, it’s a straight knockout. One episode of “Show A” is chosen at random, and pitted against a random episode of “Show B”. We watch each episode, award a score out of five to that episode depending on how much we enjoyed it. The programme with the higher score goes through to the next round.

Oh, and we’ll try to relay what’s happening in each episode on a minute by minute basis, as if it’s a football match.

WHAT KIND OF COMEDY SHOW WILL TAKE PART:

Scripted television comedy. Not just sitcom, you’ll also find sketch shows, panel shows and animated shows in the list. In order to accurately reflect the global aspect of the medium of laughter, a total of 8 nations will take part: the USA, England, Scotland, Wales, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Japan are all there. And France, if you count the Monsieur Aubergine sketches from Alexei Sayle’s Stuff. Sadly, the entire island of Ireland was banned from taking part, because we remembered that Mrs Brown’s Boys exists. Especially harsh on the Republic admittedly, but you can’t be too careful.

THE FIRST ROUND DRAW:

And so via satellite, to Zurich where the live draw is finally about to take place. The assembled audience have had to sit through three hours of a European man talking about the importance of comedic fair play (“…Rule 473(b): simply having someone say ‘fuck’ is not an acceptable punchline…”) and a stilted performance from a soft rock band who are equally inoffensive and pointless in any language.

The fifty shows have been trimmed to thirty-two after a lengthy series of heated discussions that saw the entire list fed into random.org’s list generator, and the bottom 18 shows left to try again in 2015. Pretty harsh on shows like Arrested Development, Mr Show, World of Pub, Smith & Jones or This Is David Lander (aww), but does leave some of the more interesting options on the list. This means the following matches are lined up for round one:

Stephen Fry in This Is David Lander. Sadly, not making the cut.

So, first up we’ve got wonderfully demented MTV Japan animation Usavich against Paul Merton’s finest series of half-hours. Which episodes will be chosen to do battle? How will we get away with breaking our self-enforced rules in the first match, considering each episode of Usavich is only actually ninety seconds long? Will it be the Paul Merton episode that has the dolphin sheriff in it? LET BATTLE COMMENCE.

Tomorrow, that is. See you then!

Another Nice Internet Thing To Look At

2011-08-11T17:44:00.000+01:00

It’s John Cleese on a 1971 episode of Joker’s Wild And it is splendid.

Remember, this was what daytime television was like in the early 1970s. DAYTIME BLOODY TELEVISION. We really liked both Land Girls and The Indian Doctor, but seriously, bloody hell.

AND it was on ITV.

RIOTING SPECIAL: Six Nice Things On The Internet To Look At Instead

2011-08-10T23:38:00.001+01:00

So: the riots. Or the lootings. Or a few thousand morons who think they live in a 50 Cent video acting like scumbags. The rolling news coverage has been a mixed bag, with dramatic footage (often lifted from YouTube) combined with the usual parade of self-proclaimed 'experts' telling us how it's all the fault of that Twitter/the rap music that they have nowadays/the cuts/lack of national service/the lack of stringing up bad people/benefits/Facebook/consumer culture/clothing with hoods rather than a sizeable minority of Britain's youth being a bunch of selfish scumbags going for the whole "dilution of responsibility" thing.

But: all that’s pretty much the kind of thing being covered elsewhere, most effectively on the brilliant Sangat TV (Sky 847, Freesat tune to 9/14/210, Astra 1A 5.1E, Frequency 12523 Sr 27500 Vertical (V)), who broadcast rolling coverage of reporter Upinder Randhawa and his cameraman driving around the streets of Birmingham, Wolverhampton and West Bromwich, talking to members of the community while the aftermath of the riot burned away behind them.

So instead, here’s six NICE things that are NICE.

1. Astonishing Examples of Long Exposure Photography (Buzzfeed)

Because the world can be a beautiful place when you’re not setting fire to bits of it.

2. A Guy on US Military Duty in the Middle East Captures His Friend’s Reaction On Announcing He’s Gay

Ooh, cripes. If perceived stereotypes are to be believed this is going to be awkward. He’ll probably jump out of the vehicle and start bellowing or somethi… no, quite the contrary. In a further blow to received opinion, the video currently has 779 “likes” and only 21 “dislikes”. On a YouTube video. AND of the comments we looked at, the only negative comment was someone complaining about the audio quality on the video.

3. The New M83 Single

One of the best noises to find a way into our heads this year, the first track to be released from the French electro maestros’ forthcoming album “Hurry Up We’re Dreaming”. Download the MP3 for free from the band’s website: ilovem83.com. Your ears will thank you.

4. The Unbroadcast Pilot Episode of Vic Reeves Big Night Out

You just TRY and not to find this exciting. If you’re incapable of enjoying this, you’re an AFFRONT TO HUMANITY. Markedly different to the finished version (not least with the completely different title sequence, a young(er) Charlie Higson as announcer instead of Lord Peter Allen, and SCENES SHOT OUTSIDE), it’s quite fascinating to see what we presume is a show that bit closer to the original stage version of Big Night Out that the series that clattered into Britain’s living rooms in 1990.

Yes, the sound quality is awful and lots of the jokes were re-used in the series proper, but stick with it. (Reader’s voice: “Man With A Stick with it?”) No.

5. A Sketch From Monty Python’s Flying Circus That Never Gets Shown On TV

“There now follows a party political broadcast on behalf of the Conservative and Unionist Party.”

Kicking off with a specially recorded PBS pledge drive promo featuring Graham Chapman and Terry Jones is interesting enough, but this clip goes on to feature a sketch that seems to have been missing from all UK copies of Flying Circus. Quite why that is, we’re not sure, but as it involves John Cleese doing a funny dance with a serious expression on his face, followed by a Gilliam animation of Ted Heath and Harold Wilson in a ballet studio, we’re glad to see it now.

Factmonsters SOTCAA have more information on the cut sketch, along with details of a a further bit of caption-based whimsy that should be in place just before it. Always worth reading.

6. A Cat Eating Pancakes

Just because.

George Costanza: The Movie

2011-08-01T17:01:00.000+01:00

George Costanza becomes a hardened criminal, forever being hauled off to chokey by the cops. Until a spell in prison sees him vow to make a change, and inspired by his father’s health problems he becomes a champion of good causes. A heartwarming tale of redemption.

Ah, if only eh? Here’s a splendidly constructed trailer made from episodes of Seinfeld.

Meanwhile, in 1995

2011-07-30T14:40:00.001+01:00

The internet used to be simultaneously the MOST EXCITING THING EVAAR and a bit rubbish. MTV News reports in what the uploader of the video says is 1995, but we think is probably actually 1996.

The BrokenTV Continued Existence Appeal 2011

2011-07-22T00:20:00.002+01:00

[A BLACK SCREEN. SLOWLY, A MONOCHROME EXTERIOR SHOT OF THE BROKENTV OFFICE FILLS THE SCREEN. THE MELLIFLUOUS TONES OF JOANNA LUMLEY POLITELY INTRODUCE THEMSELVES TO YOUR EARS OVER A DELICATELY CHOSEN TRACK FROM A JOHANN JOHANNSSON ALBUM.]

LUMLEY: The offices of BrokenTV, the nation’s favourite telly-related website, after TV Cream, SOTCAA, NotBBC, and most of the others. For six long years, they’ve been trying to make us laugh, to learn, and to love.

[SHOTS OF BROKENTV’S FOUR GOOD UPDATES FADE IN AND OUT OF THE SCREEN – THE ONE WITH THE FOOTBALL STICKERS, THE ONE WITH THE TVTIMES PROGRAMME GENRE ICONS, THE ONE THAT LOTS OF PEOPLE MISTAKENLY THOUGHT WAS A PRO-PIRACY POSTER BUT WAS ACTUALLY JUST ANTI-UNSKIPPABLE-ANTI-PIRACY ADVERTS ON DVDS, AND THE ONE THAT WAS JUST A BUNCH OF SPOTIFY LINKS THAT GRAHAM LINEHAN RETWEETED ONCE]

LUMLEY: Sometimes, they even succeeded.

[SHOTS OF THE MORE ESOTERIC UPDATES FILL THE SCREEN IN RAPID SUCCESSION, LIKE THE ONE THAT WAS ALL ABOUT CRISPS THAT YOU COULDN’T EVEN BUY, OR ALL THE ONES THAT WERE JUST A LINK TO A YOUTUBE VIDEO, OR THE MULTI-PART UPDATES THAT NEVER EVER GOT FINISHED OH AND BY THE WAY THE BEST TV SHOW OF 2010 FROM THE RUNDOWN THAT NEVER GOT FINISHED WAS GOING TO BE SHERLOCK.]

LUMLEY: Often, they didn’t.

[CUT TO INTERIOR OF BROKENTV OFFICE. YELLOWING PAGES FROM MEDIAGUARDIAN STRUGGLE PATHETICALLY TO SERVE AS ‘WALLPAPER’. CRISP CRUMBS LITTER THE CARPET, THE COLOUR OF WHICH IS RENDERED INDECIPHERABLE DUE TO YEARS OF DUSTY NEGLECT. A WONKY MANTLEPIECE GROANS BENEATH THE WEIGHT OF MUSTY E180S, ATOP WHICH SITS A VOODOO DOLL OF SUNDAY MIRROR TV CRITIC KEVIN O’SULLIVAN.]

LUMLEY: Inside the dream factory, all is however not as well as you might suspect from the eternally sunny outlook displayed on the BrokenTV blog and Twitter feed.

[THE CAMERA SLOWLY PANS ACROSS THE ROOM TO TAKE IN MORE OF THE BLEAK OBJECTS WITHIN. A SECOND-HAND N64 GAMES CONSOLE HANGS BY ITS FAULTY AV CABLE FROM A DAMAGED TELEVISION STAND, JUST BELOW AN INTERFERENCE-RAVAGED CRT TELEVISION DISPLAY, FROM WHICH FLASHING GHOSTLY IMAGES OF LOOSE WOMEN TUMBLE UP THE SCREEN, ILLUMINATING MORE OF THE HORRORS SURROUNDING THIS GRIM TABLEAU. MORE NEWSPAPERS ARE SCATTERED OVER MUCH OF THE CARPET, UNOFFICIAL MADKATZ N64 CONTROLLERS SNAKE OUT BENEATH THE TV STAND IN VARIOUS DIRECTIONS, TORN POSTERS ADORN THE WALLS, SAVE FOR A WHITEBOARD UPON WHICH A SERIOUS OF WEAK DRAFTS FOR PUN-BASED TWITTER JOKES ARE SCRAWLED. FINALLY, THE CAMERA REACHES A FORLORN FIGURE ON HUDDLED ON A SOFA. IT IS BROKENTV PROPRIETOR AND SELF-PROCLAIMED ‘WIT’, MARK X. HE IS STARING DOWN AT A PLATE IN SEMI-STARVED RESIGNATION. THE CAMERA PULLS BACK TO REVEAL THAT ON THE PLATE IS THE ONLY ‘FOOD’ LEFT IN THE BROKENTV OFFICE. IT IS AN OLD WORKMAN’S BOOT. MARK X SIGHS AS HE SPRINKLES A LITTLE SALT ON THE BOOT, THEN PICKS UP HIS KNIFE AND FORK.]

LUMLEY: Times are hard at BrokenTV. For a fortnight now, the staff here have had to subsist on a diet of stock 1930s cartoon clichés. Only last Sunday, one fish skeleton had to feed three staff members. By Tuesday, the two remaining staff members had to make do with the cheese from a mousetrap. By Wednesday, the sole remaining employee of BrokenTV had to make do with a soup consisting of torn resignation letters floating in the salty bitter tears of despair. Even now, each time a passer-by passes by the window of the office, the hungry website proprietor hallucinates them turning into a giant strolling hot-dog in a hat.

Help is needed. And you can be it. The cupboards of the BrokenTV archives have been thrown open, and the contents spilled onto moderately popular tele-shopping world wide web-site “eBay”. Hundreds of magazines from the last twenty years, over a hundred of the finest DVDs a surprisingly small amount of money can buy, and three Wii games are all up for grabs, with many, many more due to be added to the list soon.

Lots of copies of PC Zone when Charlie Brooker was writing for it? They’re there. The majority of backissues from the entire history of videogaming magazine Edge?They’re there. Dozens of copies of no-really-it-used-to-be-really-bloody-good-then Loaded magazine? Yep. Copies of Select, Deluxe, internet magazines from when it was still quicker to read about things on the internet in a magazine rather than the internet itself, and many more? All there. Loads more to appear too, including music, books, and whatever else is in the big boxes of stuff the BrokenTV team have in their ~~spare room~~ extensive archive? All up very soon.

“But, Joanna Lumley, how can we make astonishingly high bids for all this stuff? TELL US, TELL US NOW?”, you may be asking. Why simply by visiting this link right here. That’s how!”

[CUT TO A SHOT OF JOANNA LUMLEY ON THE MANKY SOFA SAT NEXT TO MARK X, SMACKING HIS LIPS AS HE SLURPS A GRUBBY BOOTLACE INTO HIS MOUTH AS IF IT WERE THE MOST DELICIOUS PIECE OF SPAGHETTI IN ALL OF ROME.]

LUMLEY: After all, we want this team back to full strength as soon as possible! Ha ha ha ha!

[JOANNA LUMLEY PATS THE BURPING TV BLOGGER ON THE HEAD, UNTIL HER EXPRESSION SWITCHES TO ONE OF DISGUST, LEADING TO HER WIPING HER NOW GREASY PALM ON HER SKIRT.]

[CAPTION: “THE BROKENTV CONTINUED EXISTENCE APPEAL 2011: DONATE NOW!”]

VERSION FOR PEOPLE WHO COULDN’T BE BOTHERED READING ALL THAT:

The BrokenTV people are selling a load of stuff on eBay. Please buy some. Of it.

To play us out, courtesy of reader Matt Hamer, is an entertaining “mash-up” combining chart-topping smash “Barbara Streisand” from Duck Sauce, with the gallery-shaking bellowings of BrokenTV hero Stewart Morris. Enjoy!

Hello Vegetables! (Brilliant YouTube Thing of the Week)

2011-07-17T13:03:00.001+01:00

You’ve gotsta love Belgian noise scientists Soulwax. Not only do they make loads of astonishingly good what we still call ‘mixtapes’, commendably sticking with the whole mash-up thing a decade after it stopped being fashionable, but they’ve made a free iWhatever app allowing you to download or listen to them all. You can also listen to them over the internet at 2ManyDJs.com, but best of all, it seems many of them are on YouTube, allowing us to embed one of them here.

And why? Because it opens with a spoken word intro from Neil’s Heavy Concept Album, and we like The Young Ones, so it falls within the remit of this blog. That’s why.

Taking what occasional Chris Morris collaborator Osymyso does and extending it, there.

“Does anyone remember the News of the World?”

2011-07-12T08:38:00.000+01:00

You know when you hear something really good, and think “I am SO putting that on YouTube so more people can hear it”, but then realise lots of other people have had the same idea so you don’t need to bother doing it?

A marvellous monologue from John Finnemore, covering events of the News of the World phonehacking story on last week’s The Now Show.

Hearing Finnemore’s performance in this format is much, much better than actually listening to The Now Show, because in this format the crescendo the routine builds to isn’t immediately deflated by having to listen to Mitch bloody Benn perform a rubbish song about not washing your pants. And we didn’t even make that up.

WARNING: If, like us, you’re listening to the above routine just after listening to the latest episode of the thunderously marvellous radio sitcom Cabin Pressure, the initial impact of it is slightly dissipated by it seemingly being performed by Arthur, the in-flight dimwit played by John Finnemore in that programme. Stick with it, or imagine David Mitchell’s reading it all out or something.

If you haven’t yet listened to Cabin Pressure, remedy that immediately (after listening to the embedded video above). It’s got TV’s Benedict Cumberbatch in it and everything.

Look-i(Pho)n(e): A Review of the ITV Player iPhone App

2011-07-10T18:54:00.001+01:00

After a week of banging on about a now-defunct newspaper (just before it relaunches with a new name but without several dozen salaried employees who hadn’t stopped to think why working for a company where union membership is forbidden might be a bad idea), back to telly stuff. Have you ever wanted to carry The Light Channel around in your pocket? Well NOW YOU CAN, with the ITV Player app for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Here is our mildly comprehensive review. Of it.

Because we grew up reading a lot of videogame magazines, we’ll score it out of 100. To make things interesting, we’re going to assume a basic score of 50%, then add or subtract points by feature, then arriving at a final score.

First thing you’ll notice is that on installing the app (a free download +5% with a mere 2.8MB footprint +5%, that works on both handheld and tablet iThings +3%) is that it asks where you live. This is to ensure that you’re in a region where you’re allowed to watch the programmes they have the rights to, which is certainly fair enough. You wouldn’t expect a Hulu app to work in the UK, after all, and no reason why an ITV app should work overseas.

Only one problem here, though. Thanks to ITVplc’s long-running feud with tartan-clad mavericks STV, allow your iThing to detect you’re in Scotland and you’ll be frozen out of the fun –6%. But before you mutter a forlorn “jings! Crivens! Help ma boab!” to yourself, it’s easily circumvented – you don’t have to use the location recognition, you can simply tap in a postcode. The app’s FAQ even tells you how to wipe the details you’ve entered and resubmit a location, so you don’t even need a day trip to Berwick to get it up and running. Phew. +5%. We’re not sure if this means you can easily use the app outside the British Isles by simply tapping in SW1A 2AA as your home address. We’re happy to test it out if anyone wants to buy us a plane fare to, say, Tokyo.

Into the app itself, and by default you’re taken to a screen where recommended programmes appear in a sidescrolling bar at the top of the screen, Alternatively, selecting a channel brings up a new sidey-scrolley bar beneath the channel icons, allowing you to view the available programmes from the last seven days in reverse-chronological order. Failing that, there’s a scrolley-bar for the most-watched programmes on ITV Player, and one for programmes you’ve watched using the service so far (if any).

It all moves with tremendous smoothness and no slowdown (at least on our 4th gen Touch), and despite initially seeming a bit cumbersome actually works wonderfully well. The programme icons glide about in a wonderfully satisfying manner, and even with promo photographs for each programme in place, there don’t seem to be any pauses for the loading of images once the app has initialised. Lovely. +5%

Of course, if you don’t want to look through the programmes by icon, you can just select the A-Z icon…

Oh dear.

Yes, despite there being a limited selection of programmes on offer, the clonkingly stupid design decision was made to have the user flick clumsily through each letter of the alphabet to see what’s on offer UNDER THAT LETTER ONLY. While just having one full list would only contain about 60-70 titles, you have to laboriously select each initial letter one at a time, many of which merely report “Sorry, no programmes available”.

This is hugely annoying for anyone wanting to flip through and see everything on offer in (what should be) as brief a time as possible. Guh. –12%

Still, once you pick a programme things become lovely again. You’re given a screenshot and summary of the episode in question, along with the option of picking a particular episode if it’s a show that had been on more than once during the past week. From there, tap to play, and away you go. Couldn’t ask for more, really. +4%

Once the pre-programme advert (or trailer for another ITV show) is out of the way (which is, of course, why the app is free), there’s the most minor of pauses for buffering, and you’re into the show you want to watch. Anyone used to the glacial pace of streaming videos from YouTube onto their iThing should be mightily impressed at how speedily the streaming video gets going. No lengthy pauses, no buffering breaks, just the antics of Jeeves & Wooster, Penn & Teller or Phil & Fern playing out BEFORE YOUR VERY EYES. Um, because that’s what television is. We probably didn’t need to capitalise that. +7%

Controls in-play are few but functional. You can tilt your device to view video on your iThing in landscape or locked-aspect-ratio portrait mode (which might sound a bit silly – why would you want to view it in tinyvision? – but if you’ve got a speaker dock that doesn’t allow your iThing to tilt 90 degrees it’s a must) +3%. It’s a very minor annoyance that you can’t double-tap the screen to force 4:3 video to fill the screen, though –1%. Balls to you, picture-crop snobs!

Handily too, you can use the slider bar at the bottom of the control to skip to any point in the programme, without a noticeable pause in the proceedings for buffering +6%. You can’t skip the adverts, but that’s hardly a surprise. Hey, it’s not as if there’s a test at the end to make sure you’ve actually watched all the adverts. Use that time to scratch yourself or get some crisps or something.

Using the menus with your iWhatever tilted into landscape mode changes functionality. Select a channel, then slide around to pick a programme from that channel. This isn’t quite as easy to find a programme of your choice, but then you’ve got portrait mode if you want to do that, and it looks absolutely spiffy. More so if you’ve got your iObject plugged into your telly using witchcraft and an overtly expensive cable, we’d wager +3%.

And, that’s about it. What’s there is beautifully simple, and lets you find what you want in the bare minimum of ‘clicks’ (providing you aren’t using the infernal A-Z option, anyway). An extra-big bonus of +8% to ITV for making this the first TV catch-up app from the main UK broadcasters to actually work on the iPhone and iPod Touch, too. Both the BBC and Channel 4 have had their iPlayer and 4OD apps available for the iPad for quite some time, but seem in less of a hurry to reach the much larger handheld audience (though the BBC have made an Android iPlayer app that works on non-rubbish Android phones, which counts us out then).

The main problem we can honestly say about the app is the range of programming on offer. Yes, yes – a-ha-ha-ha it only gets ITV shows who’d want that eh eh LOL ROLF OMFG etc – but with such a brilliant archive knocking around in dusty cupboards somewhere at ITV, it’d be lovely to more of them appear on the app. As we’ve said before, ITV.com once had a brilliant ‘Classics’ page where visitors could enjoy full episodes of The Army Game, Whicker’s World, Press Gang or Catweazle, which soon made way for a ‘redesigned’ page that instead offered up a bunch of shit with Keith pissing Lemon in it. The nature of the app (and presumably a whole clutch of rights issues) means that only certain shows broadcast in the last seven days can appear, but hey! That’s a good excuse to have a bit more variety on ITV3. Admittedly, we’d never get Bruce’s Big Night, but a few episodes of Spitting Image or (FINALLY) End Of Part One wouldn’t be bad.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Hopefully, as take-up of the app increases, and contract negotiations for repeats account for on-demand viewing, the selection will improve. For now, it’s a pretty damn lovely application. Fingers crossed other broadcasters are taking note of it.

FINAL SCORE: 90%

News of the World to close

2011-07-07T18:44:00.001+01:00

…And that’s the end of that chapter. Except, of course, it isn’t.

Unless Murdoch is going to relaunch Today as a Sunday-only newspaper, it’s pretty clear what is about to happen. We’ll be surprised if there’s even a gap between the News of the World closing and a replacement popping up in its place, considering that’d let the two Mirror Group red tops pick up a bunch of extra readers. So, we may as well get this done nice and early…

Boycott the News of the World: A Cut-Out-and-Give-Away Guide

2011-07-05T20:12:00.001+01:00

[UPDATE 7pm WEDS 6th JULY: The flyer and all uploads now updated to include the latest news. If you downloaded it before, you might want to nab the latest version as well. Many thanks to everyone who’s mentioned the flyer on Twitter, Facebook, various web forums and the Guardian comments section. Feel free to adapt, amend, mirror or host any versions of that flyer yourself. Get that message out there!]

The News of the World phone hacking scandal rumbles on, with fresh allegations that the paper targeted the families of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. A Twitter-led campaign to boycott the newspaper has been rumbling on since the story broke, along with a concerted campaign requesting that a number of companies re-evaluate their advertising spend. Some members of the public are even phoning the News of the World newsline (0207 782 1001), yelling a certain word starting with the letter ‘C’, then hanging up.

All perfectly admirable behaviour, but we can’t help but feel a big bunch of people who probably didn’t buy the News of the World in the first place pledging not to buy the paper won’t really make too much difference. Indeed, any member of the public who chooses to get their ‘news’ from tabloid newspapers may well remain blissfully unaware of the story – at the time of writing, only the Daily Mail is giving any prominence to the latest phone hacking revelations, featuring the story on the front page of today’s edition (though not the main story), and at the time of writing it’s the only tabloid to feature it as top story on their website. In the other tabloids it’s rather suspiciously deemed worthy being tucked away in the inside pages, leaving front page room for Ashley Cole, Prince William and the latest desperate health scare (yeah, that’ll be the Express).

What might help is to try and get the story out there, where tabloid readers are a little more likely to see it. Say for example, you could print out a quick synopsis of the phone hacking story as it stands, and discreetly place it atop the pile of News of the Worlds in your local newsagent, petrol station forecourt or supermarket. Something a bit like this, perhaps?

Full JPEG (641KB) | PNG (607KB) | PDF (122KB)
Word 2003 Document (420KB) | Word 2007 Document (407KB)
Photoshop PSD (Zipped, 9,714KB)

There’s the above sheet in a variety of formats, feel free to download, print, disseminate, or even adjust it as you wish to make any number of points expressing how you feel about the News of the World. Feel free to host these files on your own websites, Twitpic accounts, blogs, Facebook sites or whatever – the main thing is to get the message out there.

You might even remain strongly in favour of the paper, and want to re-edit the document to express how you think hacking into the voicemail of missing children is actually a good thing, and that Rebekah Brooks should now become Prime Minister. Though, y’know, you’d be an idiot.

The main thing is, if the tabloid newspapers – who you’ll remember think that taking any approach to get a good story is wholly justified – don’t want this story out there, we might just have to do it ourselves.

A News of the World employee hacks into the mobile phone voicemail of missing schoolgirl. Is that newsworthy or not?

2011-07-04T19:21:00.001+01:00

So, The Guardian reports creditable claims that an employee from the News of the World hacked into, and deleted messages from, the voicemail of missing schoolgirl Milly Dowler in 2002, leading to false hope for her parents that she was still alive, and misleading the police investigation at the time. That's a pretty big story, and unquestionably a much bigger scandal than the kind of "FAMOUS MAN OFF TELLY OR FOOTBALL SAYS OR DOES SOMETHING A BIT CONTROVERSIAL" thing that would cover an entire wall of a newsagent like bilious wallpaper.

The stories broke a couple of hours ago (this is being typed at 7pm), so Her Majesty's press have had plenty of time to put the story on their websites. Which of them have it "above the fold", that is, have the story in a position that's visible on the front page of their website without having to scroll down or carry out a search?

YES:

The Guardian: lead story

The Independent: lead story

The Telegraph: lead story

The Times: fourth story, though the News of the World’s sister newspaper takes a very different approach to the story, instead reporting it as “Dowler family sues News of the World”:

NO:

Daily Mirror: no coverage of the Milly/News of the World phonehacking story, but Fearne Cotton has a “new boyf”.

NOTW’s sister paper The Sun: no coverage, but a “Fat bloke is at top of Next modelling poll”.

Daily Star: No coverage, but “Gorgeous Gemma is making her page 3 debut today” is considered newsworthy.

Onto the supposedly “quality tabloids”, then. Starting with the Daily Express: no coverage, though blah blah cancer, holidays, Miliband, the EU.

The Daily Mail: no coverage. But two of the three lead stories are that Kate and Wills are in Canada. Of course, dead schoolgirls are only important to the Daily Mail when they can blame it on striking teachers.

So, that’s how the press are covering (or not) the News of the World/News International Milly Dowler phonehacking story. The broadsheet press have decided it is a news story. The tabloids, well, we can’t imagine why they wouldn’t want to throw any more light on the whole ‘dark arts of tabloid journalism’ thing. Can you?

Meanwhile, over on News International’s corporate website, a irony-free reminder of just what constitutes “world-class journalism”:

When TV Critics Don’t Even Watch The Show They’re Reviewing

2011-07-04T17:19:00.000+01:00

Move over The Guardian’s Sam Wollaston, there’s a new contender in town for “Britain’s most clueless television critic”. It’s the endlessly thumpable Kevin O’Sullivan of the Sunday Mirror, who it seems really wanted to write a piece slagging off ITV’s new weekend output, and wasn’t about to let piffling things like “the truth” get in the way:

Now, unless you’re writing something for the Daily Mail or Daily Express, both places where “You must NOT admit to ever enjoying anything involving Jonathan Ross” is on page five of the employee handbook, we’d say it’s pretty bloody impossible not to be hugely entertained by Penn and Teller: Fool Us. Assuming you’ve actually watched it and not, say, half-read a one-paragraph press release detailing the content of the show about a month ago.

As many will know, what Fool Us actually contains is a variety of fresh, entertaining and innovative magicians who through years of practice and performance deserve to perform in front of a primetime TV audience, every single one of which pulls off their trickery absolutely flawlessly. Best of all, far from Penn and Teller merely “gawping at nonentities”, the duo (who, you may remember, spent much of their 1994 Channel 4 series “The Unpleasant World of Penn & Teller” tearing the British magic establishment a new one) display unabashed delight at seeing the acts perform. At one point during Piff The Magic Dragon’s performance (pictured above), Teller was laughing so hard he was actually jumping up and down on his chair with glee.

Far from the confrontational style the pair display in their US cable series Bullshit!, Penn & Teller remain refreshingly uncynical from start to end, instantly preferable to the “while I enjoyed it, I have to slag off your performance because I’m trying to be the next Simon Cowell” kind of judging you might find elsewhere. No spurious phone votes (and we’ll ignore the “what colour was the red flag Teller was waving?” premium rate competitions, as that’s how ITV have to pay for things now). Even the one part of the show where a bit of ‘edge’ could have been inserted, having Penn & Teller (well, Penn) explain to everyone explicitly how each trick was done, has been ignored, allowing the acts the chance to carrying on performing the debunked illusion in their act. While that might seem a bit annoying in practice, with the people who know all about a thing you don’t talking about it in terms you don’t really understand, any annoyance is diluted by it all being done for the right reasons.

And, as anyone who actually watched the show instead of overhearing someone talking about it then slagging it off in your Sunday Mirror column will know, Penn and Teller actually do perform magic, which serves as the finale to each and every episode.

Still, maybe it’s just that Kevin O’Sullivan has much higher standards than blogchimps bashing away haphazardly at their keyboards like us. Maybe he has to needlessly diss even the more entertaining programmes using lazily fibpacked rhetoric so that when he does really get behind a television programme, you know it’s going to be as brilliant as discovering a filmed but never previously shown episode of Alan Bleasdale’s GBH, or all those previously wiped episodes of Dad’s Army turning up in a previously jammed drawer of Mark Thompson’s desk. Just what calibre of televisual entertainment gets the O’Sullivan thumbs pointing skywards?

Oh. Right. Okay.

British TV Comedy Spin-Offs We’d Love To Have Seen

2011-06-30T17:15:00.000+01:00

With an Alan Partridge film in the works, the character has come a long way from presenting the sports on Radio 4's On The Hour. It seems that with this, In The Loop and the output of Sasha Baron Cohen (Reader's voice: "But those films are years apart!"), it seems like the concept of British comedy spin-off movies is back. After grinding to a halt after mid-80s movies like Morons From Outer Space, Whoops Apocalypse, Bloodbath At The House of Death and The Boys in Blue all proved to be commercial flops, the concept went into near hibernation for a couple of decades, twitching a leg occasionally to let out celluloid farts such as Guest House Paradiso. We can't help but feel that's a bit of a shame, as it deprived cinemagoers of the following potential comedy offshoots we've just thought up. (Reader's voice: "Hang on, what about Stella Street, Kevin & Perry Go Large, The League of Gentleman Apocalypse...")

1) Tony & Control in Never Say Never Again, Please

Unerringly polite undercover capers as British spy Tony Murchison (Hugh Laurie) is captured while deep behind enemy lines after asking for a cup of tea in a Stalingrad vodka bar. The head of the British Secret Service, known only as "Control" (Stephen Fry) must return to active duty to rescue his colleague.

2) The ‘Bridge That Roared

Due to an internal misunderstanding at a town council meeting, Stoneybridge comes to be recognised as an independent sovereign state and tax haven. Hi-jinks ensue as the council members clamour for power. Guest starring Nick Hancock as the British Consulate.

3) One Hundred And Fifteen Storeys High

Vince Clark (Sean Lock) has received some interesting news - his eccentric New Yorker uncle Vance has died, leaving him ten million dollars, on one condition: Vince and slow-witted flatmate Errol Spears (Benedict Wong) must relocate to a lavish hi-rise apartment in Manhattan that - chuckle! - is home to an even wider range of zany characters than they were used to back in England! Guest starring Henry Winkler as the late Uncle Vance Clark.

4) Yes, Mr President

PM Jim Hacker (Paul Eddington) travels to Washington to try and prevent a war in the South Atlantic, only for Sir Humphrey Appleby (Nigel Hawthorne) to have other ideas. Pretty much the same as In The Loop, only without the swearing and weak Coogan-based subplot. Guest starring Gore Vidal as himself.

5) Monsieur Aubergine's Holiday

Alexei Sayle's sped-up physical comedian takes a continental vacation. If you want to see how it would have turned out, just watch Mr Bean's Holiday at four times the normal speed while listening to a compilation of laugh tracks from old Hanna-Barbera cartoons.

6) Pope Show

Mark (David Mitchell) has received some interesting news - his eccentric Italian uncle Marco has died, leaving him fifteen million euros, on one condition: Mark and Jeremy (Robert Webb) must relocate to the Vatican. Guest starring A Respected Italian Actor Who Foolishly Accepts The Role Thinking It Will Help His Career In English Speaking Countries, (or French actor Vincent Cassel if the producers can make him forget he did Guest House Paradiso).

7) Baddiel & Skinner Unplanned: The Movie

A Borat-style pseudo-documentary, this sees Dave (David Baddiel) and Frank (Frank Skinner) on a road trip around Europe, pursued by a coachload of British tourists asking Frank lots of questions about wanking, with Dave getting the occasional enquiry about being Jewish. Shot purely adhering to the rules of the Dogme 95 movement, all footage is that captured on VHS camcorder by the members of the public aboard the coach.

8) KYTV in Cincinnati

Anna Daptor (Helen Atkinson-Wood), Martin Brown (Michael Fenton Stevens), Mike Flex (Geoffrey Perkins) and Mike Channel (Angus Deayton) all decamp to the USA after media baron Sir Kenneth Yellowhammer (Angus Deayton in a false moustache) buys out a small cable network on the other side of the pond, sacks all the staff, and forces the talent from his UK operation to simulcast to both continents. Guest starring Jimmy Smits as embittered former weatherman Dwight "Whitey" White.

9) Sunnyside Ranch

Phil Daniels' Character In Sunnyside Farm (Phil Daniels) has received some interesting news - his eccentric Texan uncle has died, leaving him twenty million dollars, on one condition: Phil Daniels' Character In Sunnyside Farm and The One From The Full Monty Who Got To Star In The Flintstones Viva Rock Vegas And Then Ended Up Doing Those Supermarket Commercials With Fay Ripley (Mark Addy) must relocate to his sprawling 50,000 acre cattle ranch in Texas. Guest starring Rob Schneider as Sheriff Shitkicker McGee.

10) Married For Life... With Children

Contractually obligated sitcom mash-up where the Bundys and, from the ill-judged 1996 ITV remake, the Butlers find themselves having to cohabit the same log cabin in the Boondocks. Interestingly, each scene in the film that features Ed O'Neill, Katie Segal or Christina Applegate is actually a craftily re-edited shot from the original series, as the actors were all too busy to take any part in the film. David Faustino was, however, available. Lucky scheduling, we guess.

BrokenTV

This Is An Update To This Blog

No Need To Beware The Smoking Ghost (Look Around You 10th Anniversary Short)

Part Of Just Why Breaking Bad Is The Best Television Programme Of The Last Five Years

The BrokenTV Awards 2011: Part Three (Paperback Edition)

12. Caravan Palace – Crash

11. Justice – Civilization

10. Jedward – Lipstick (YES JEDWARD LIPSTICK IT IS ACE SHUT UP AND NO WE DON’T LIKE ANYTHING ELSE THEY’VE DONE)

9. The GO! Team – Buy Nothing Day

8 Pop Will Eat Itself – Chaos & Mayhem

7. Regina – Unessa

6. Azealia Banks Feat Lazy Jay – 212

5. Boy – Little Numbers

4. Library Voices – If Raymond Carver Was Born in the 90s

3. Peter, Bjorn & John – Breaker Breaker

2. The Pack A.D. – Sirens

1. M83 – Midnight City

TOP TEN ALBUMS 2011

10. MEN – Talk About Body

9. The GO! Team – Rolling Blackouts

8. Washed Out – Within and Without

7. Lady Gaga – Born This Way

6. M83 – Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming

5. Cults – Cults

4. Kids On A Crime Spree – We Love You So Bad

3. Metronomy – The English Riviera

2. Boy – Mutual Friends

1. Peter, Bjorn & John – Gimme Some

TOP TEN REMIXES 2011

10. Arcade Fire - No Cars Go (Christian Strobe Remix)

9. Beataucue - Disque Oh! (Eumig & Chinon Remix)

8. Beastie Boys feat Santogold – Don’t Play No Game That I Can’t Win (SebastiAn Remix)

7. Yeasayer - One (Coupons Remix) (Hype Machine link)

6. The Wombats - Techno Fan (Diplo Remix)

5. Sonic Youth - Kool Thing (Cracks remix)

4. Calvin Harris - Flashback (Millions Like Us Remix)

3. Foster The People - Pumped Up Kicks (Grouplove & Captain Cuts Remix)

2. 12 Inch Plastic Toys - Toys (Gain On Top Remix)

1. Rachel Goodrich – Light Bulb (ANR Remix)

TOP 20 TV SHOWS OF 2011

20. Lost Christmas (BBC One)

19. Children's Hospital (Adult Swim)

18. Shooting Stars (BBC Two)

17. Would I Lie To You (BBC One)

16. The Bazura Project (ABC2)

15. Black Mirror (Channel 4)

14. Friday Night Dinner (Channel 4)

13. Dear Censor (BBC Four)

12. The Secret Life of Bob Monkhouse (BBC Four)

11. Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle (BBC Two)

10. Jon Benjamin Has a Van (Comedy Central)

9. Holy Flying Circus (BBC Four)

8. Rev (BBC Two)

7. Pointless (BBC One)

6. All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace (BBC Two)

5. Eric & Ernie (BBC Two)

4. This is England 88 (Channel 4)

3. Penn & Teller: Fool Us (ITV1)

2. Limmy's Show (BBC Two Scotland)

1. Breaking Bad (AMC)

REPEAT OF THE YEAR

Friday Night, Saturday Morning (BBC Four)

FILM OF THE YEAR

Rubber

LETDOWN OF THE YEAR

Dexter season six

MAN OF THE YEAR

Upinder Randhawa

VIDEO PODCAST B: The BrokenTV Awards 2011, Part Two - The Top 12 Songs of 2011

VIDEO PODCAST: The BrokenTV Awards 2011, Part One - The Top 20 TV Shows of the Year

Why We Are Stupid

Happy Festivus, Everyone!*

YouTubeXLUSA: More Televisual Wonder Than You Could Shake The Washington Monument At

The Charts Show: A Tale Of Two Sitcoms (BBC Two Comedy Zone Week 7)

YouTubeXL: More Packed With Entertainment Than Seventeen Double Issues Of The Radio Times (Part Three)

8. Beastie Boys feat Santogold – Don’t Play No Game That I Can’t Win
(SebastiAn Remix)