Football: broken

.An annoying thing about being a highly principled television related blog such as ourselves, is to see one of our principle, er, principles torn asunder by simple circumstance. It's like resolutely refusing to watch The Friday Night Project (as is correct), only to find out that Friday's guest presenter is Larry David or The Dark Haired One Out Of Tatu, and therefore having to tune in. Or, on a lesser scale, having to eat human flesh to survive a plane crash (or, say, to win a bet).

One such principal we've stuck to for years was that, despite what numerous sports columnists might say, it doesn't bloody matter who the anchorman is for football coverage. We've always been able to put up with Gary Line-acre's weak whimsy, Gaby "Sure, My Dad Both Played For And Managed Wales, But I'm Going To Support England Because It'll Be More Marketable" Logan, Matt "Live and Exclusive only on ITV4" Lorenzo's bland ramblings or HelloandwelcometofootballonfiveI'mJohnbarnes, because the real reason we're here is to watch the football that'll be on in a minute. Since about 1988, we've been telling anyone who'll listen (friends, relatives, people on buses) that anyone claiming to be a football supporter who actually cares whether the person sitting on a comfy chair in a corporate box with a broadcaster's logo in the background is any good, should just go and live in a ditch.

Sure, it'd be nice if all presenters of televised football were as good as Adrian Chiles, but if they prefer to trot out a Ruud Nistelrooy / long face 'quip' instead, we could be less bothered. As long as there's a decent amount of actual football coming up soon (as opposed to the early days of ITV1's The Premiership, or latterly 'Ally and Andy' standing on the touchline with a plastic table for no useful reason whatsoever), we're happy. And that's the way we've felt ever since The Match burst onto our screens, feeling the need to jazz up that whole 'football' business.

So, how foolish did we feel when tuning into five, only to be confronted with ubiquitous radio eejit Colin Murray hosting the coverage of Bolton's clash with Marseille. Granted, it could have been worse (i.e. Moyles), but within seconds he'd already said 'Chelski', which even a jug-eared crisp peddler would have baulked at, and we were scrabbling for the remote control to watch five minutes of EastEnders instead. And we really, really hate EastEnders. So: thanks, Colin Murray. You've ruined football for us.

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The Worst Thing About Lots Of People Not Liking The IT Crowd Is

That in a few weeks, the rubbish Green Wing will be back on, and lots of gushing idiot columnists can start banging on forever about how 'cutting edge' and 'good' it is, despite the fact that it's:

(a) Little more than Jam: The Sitcom, but worse.

(b) About as amusing as a visit to a real-life Serious Burns Unit. Or TLC, and at least that had Tim Brooke-Taylor in it.

(c) A waste of Mark Heap and Tamsin Greig.

Even more so than before, as all the tedious pricks who've heard that it's Simply The Programme It's SO Cool To Pretend To Like since the end of the first series are about to latch onto it.

Mind you, if it'll get this blog mentioned in meejaguardian, we're now going to replicate the Green Wing 'style' (i.e. copying off of Jam) by typing most of this sentence at a normal speed, then typingthelastbitveryfastfornoreasonotherthanitlooks-interestingifyou'rewatchingitinapubwiththesoundturnedoff.

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How Times Change, Eh?

1990: Radio 2 listeners needed a specially-made television promo featuring Derek Jameson on a Borrowers-style giant kitchen-table-and-radio studio set, explaining, in meticulous yet easy-to-follow detail, how to re-tune your radiogram to the station's new fangled FrequencyModulationotronic wavelength, now that the old-school Medium Wave transmissions were to cease, making way for the short-lived Radio 5. Just in case that was too complicated for the Radio 2 infirm key demographic, there was even an address at the end, where especially confused listeners could request a written copy of the instructions in even more laborious detail.

2006: Radio 2 listeners are implored to subscribe to RSS podcast feeds of their favourite shows, with no detailed instructions given at all.

You know, we can't help but feel there really ought to be a promo running on BBC One after Neighbours featuring Dermot O'Leary and a bookcase-sized Nano to go along with this.

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If You Don't Tolerate This Another Series Of Space Cadets Will Be Next

(A Disjointed Collection Of Words About The IT Crowd Hammered Out After Two Hours Sleep That Prove Why We’d Never Make It As Proper Writers)

The I.T. Crowd
Fridays, 9.30pm
Channel Four

First episodes of new sitcoms are very often so preoccupied with introducing all the characters, there isn't much room for top-quality jokes. Plucking three examples at random, the first episodes of Spaced, Black Books and Futurama (not to mention the first thirty-odd Simpsons episodes, the first few episodes of Fools And Horses, the first series of Men Behaving Badly, we could whip through half of the BBC Comedy Guide at this point) were all below par compared to episodes that followed, and they're all classics, if only in our misjudged (no, hang on, INCONTROVERTIBLY CORRECT) world view.

This didn't pose much of a problem in The Olden Days, where the only competition was likely to be The Nine O’clock News, Snooker and Rumpole Of The Bailey, so people would give a new show, say, three or four episodes to hit it's stride. Often, this would lead to programmes gradually gaining an audience until they become a national phenomenon. Equally often, a lacklustre programme would reach the end of it’s run with a still respectable number of viewers, even if most of them were still wondering which were supposed to be the funny bits (ever wondered why Comrade Dad has never made it to DVD? Nor us).

Now, there are all manner of other distractions, so programmes have to make an immediate impact if they want to avoid being shunted to a midweek 11.30pm slot . Say you’re working on a Friday night Channel Four comedy show. One way is make an impact is to go all out to:

• Appeal directly to braying idiots (The Dirty Jackasses Of Steel Wish Live Project, The Leigh Francis Swearing And Mentioning Celebrities Show, Eighteen Stone Of A Disappointing Johnny Vegas Vehicle).
• Have a Unique Selling Point (the first-person majesty of Peep Show, or Green Wing, which looks like it might be quite good and interesting if you’re watching it in a pub with the sound off, but isn’t).
• Do a panel game, so no-one can complain if the ratings are rubbish because it only cost 7p to make (8 Out Of 10 Cats, which we’d give up on like *that* if Sean Lock left).
• Copy off of BBC’s worldwide smash hit (i.e. some people in America have seen it) That Office, but get it all horribly, horribly wrong (Spoons, The Oh God Turn It Off Or Just Kill Me Where I Stand Book Group).
• Be Peter Kay, and chuck out any old crap because you’ve turned into The Hitler Of Comedy and can do what you want (i.e. Anything since series one of Phoenix Nights, or as it’s disgracefully called on DVD, “Peter Kay’s Phoenix Nights”, even though he only co-wrote it and didn’t direct it.)
• Have another ill-advised stab at re-creating TFI Friday.

One thing that simply doesn’t happen these days is, as David ‘Grumbleweeds Radio Show’ Liddiment pointed out recently, the traditional studio-based sitcom in front of an audience. And going by the amount of whining on various parts of Science’s The Internet about the first couple of episodes of Channel Four’s newie The I.T. Crowd (or, if you’re a continuity announcer, ‘The It Crowd’, of course. And this is actually one of the things people are moaning about), you can’t blame them.

“I CAN HERE PEOPLE LAUGHING INSTED OF JUST HAVING CHARACTER B STARING AT THE OTHER PERSON IN EMBARISSED SILENCE, I DON'T UNDERSTAND!!!' says BRENTFAN9823. "yes whats with the caned laughter its like watching the flintstones or something" concurs BillHicksReference2133. "There's a woman in it! Women shouldn't be allowed in comedy, because I've arbitrarily decided they're not funny ever. I now hate Graham Linehan and Chris Morris, and have microwaved my The Day Today DVD in protest!" sulks TedMaul23847324. "You're all wrong, of course. The I.T. Team is refeshingly great, and is likely to become increasingly great as the series progresses" corrects the dashingly lithe Mark X.

Of course, going by the evidence of the first two episodes, it’s not as good as Father Ted. But since when has ‘coming up with a new show that’s not as good as the Official Eleventh Best Sitcom Of All Time by the end if it’s second episode’ been a crime? Since never, that’s when, you comedy I like not-liking Nazis.

Sure, there were weak bits in the first episode (“Get back in there and do some work to do with computers”, with the last word pronounced in a way that someone who doesn’t know how to pronounce it would pronounce it, which was just rubbish, and the tiresome stock ‘post modern pratfall followed by heavy bleeding’ gag – it’s the Del Boy Falling Through The Bar for the Balls Of Steel Generation, that is), but there were weak bits saved by great bits (the predictable “do you want me to connect your phone” line was rescued by the delivery of the “no, I’m using my phone”, “But… how!?” follow-up), and a great deal of great bits in their own right (The A-Team picture and their names, the lift button, “Chairman WOW!”, the fairground photomontage over the end credits).

Episode two was even better, with Linehan using the Simpsons Comedy Model system of gags coming through so thick and fast that any duff lines are soon forgotten about, because a great one has gone chasing straight after it (“I’ll just put this over here with the rest of the fire”, the ‘emailing the fire brigade’ bit, the home-made Stress Machine – for all the people on Science’s The Internet complaining about Richard Ayoade: you’re wrong, there’s three examples of Ayoade Gold right there. Also: “Fire? I’m late for GOLF!”).

Also, away from the meat of the programme itself, it was incredibly nice to see a programme finish without the need to dump a massive ‘4’ logo and voiceover over half of the screen. Something ‘they’ should do more often – if we want to know what’s next, we do have a special button for that very purpose on your digital TV remotes, you know. Oh, and what a fantastical title sequence – if that fails to put you in a good mood before the opening scene, you’re not human. See, it’s all good.

Science Fact! If this rate of continuous improvement continues, by episode five a Decent Comedy Vortex may well develop, and both Will & Grace and The Friday Night Project will be sucked inside, only to be spewed out the other side as repeats of Soap and Saturday Zoo. So, that’s something else to look forward to.

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We'll Go Back To Hating It When The Next 'Regular' Big Brother Comes Around, You Know

Want to vote to see a celebrity housemate kicked out of the CBB house? But not sure which one to vote for? We've filtered several weeks of bickering from each one of Wednesday's potential evictees into one representitive soundbite, to help you decide.

George: "The yolk's on you, Michael!"

Gnn. If there's ever a surefire way to judge someone's character, it's to allow yourself get hit by an egg. If the thing they say next revolves around the fact that the word 'yolk' sounds a bit like the word 'joke', then it's probably a good idea to try and set them on fire. GEORGE MUST GO!

Dennis: "'Cos I don't give a shit."

Uttered pretty much every single time anyone says anything at all to him, to assert to fact that while everyone in the house treats their stay in the CBB building as if it's the pinnicle of their glittering career, he don't need to be there. No, he don't, he could be on Miami Beach with his assorted hangers on. Now, we don't even have the remotest interest in rearing yaks, so last year did we decide to spend an entire month of our lives on a SODDING YAK FARM IN TIBET? NO, WE DIDN'T! DENNIS MUST GO!

Chantelle: "I thought Dundee was in Wales."

Bless. She ain't the most astute tool in the box and she looks like Paris Hilton, but at least you can argue she hasn't got even the remotest trace of maliciousness in her DNA. We want her to win, which is fairly surprising as we haven't got any money on her. The odds are way too short now - we'd stupidly gone for the long shots of Traci (40/1 on Betfair), Faria (80/1), 'Other' (160/1), and Zombie Elvis Presley (1000000/1). But that's our fault for being crap at betting. CHANTELLE MUST STAY!

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Drama Update!

24: Day Five
Fox, Mondays 9pm
(Or the internet, Tuesday morning).

BrokenTV's Spoiler-Free Review of 24: Day Five.

1) Having the same Fox News newsreader as Arrested Development just makes us think of him wearing 70's retro garb and a daft smirk.

2) The Nixonish President Idiot is back! And he has brought his wife!

3) Chloe is back. This is a major plus point. Chloe's ace.

4) Despite initial reservations, it's still very good. Not 'Lost' good, but still very good. Rest assured there's a lot of stuff here we're dying to mention about what's happened, but don't want to ruin the suspense for you.

5) Oh, we will say this - downloaded the special Day Five Preview mini-ep? Well, you can pretty much ignore it.

"Hi! I'm Mary Lynn Rajskub. Not only am I in 24, but
I was in The Larry Sanders Show and Mr Show, and as
such, I'm one of the best people ever.
I'm going to act all moody now.
Blimey, I'm ace."

Prison Break
five, Mondays 10pm

As you'll probably know, this is the one with a premise that's dumber than a big box of frogs watching Fox News. But is it any good?

Commendably, it cuts straight to the chase, automatically assuming everyone tuning in already knows about the whole architect/tattoo/death-row-brother thing. This leaves lots of time for First Episode Thrills And Spills, we reckon. Oh, they're just using the first episode for lots of quite dull scene-setting dialogue, the quite predictible fight-with-top-dog's-goons-stopped-by-guards-in-watchtower aside. And Main Character doesn't even know whether Brother Character has even been framed or not until he's already robbed the bank, been to the tattoo parlour, and got himself banged up, the silly arse. All we're saying is: the quiet one out of Fargo had better do something excellent by the end of episode two, or we're giving up on Prison Break.

"Look closer at my tattoos to see the map. Here's a pointless
CGI special effect to help you." We'd sooner have the "I'm
'aving 'oops" bit of Life On Mars on an endless loop for an
hour.

Now, if you'll excuse us, we've got to jump on a flight to JFK so we can catch tonight's 24 without illegally downloading it.


BrokenTV's Drama Premiership, 23rd Jan 06.

1) Lost (ABC) - 62 pts
2) 24 (Fox) - 48 pts
3) Life On Mars (BBC One) - 46 pts
4) House (five) - 44 pts
5) Prisoner Cell Block H (if it was still on) - 41 pts
6) Prison Break (five) - 29 pts

Quick probably too late by the time you see this heads Up! The UK debut of Chapelle's Show in on Tuesday 24th Jan at 10.10pm, on FX. We'll be watching.

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Hey, where have I seen that Donny Jones character in tonight's episode of My Name Is Earl before?

The first series of 24.

No need to thank us.

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So. This is what it's like being part of the other 90%.

Now, BrokenTV is as cynical as the next television blog. As such, we've resolutely failed to subscribe to the annual Big Brother hysteria. So, it's come as a sizable personal surprise to find ourselves somehow addicted to the current series of Celebrity Big Brother. Don't worry, listeners. We still hate The Friday Night Project and Bo Selecta, and fully expect to revert to our natural state of RealiTV* indifference once the next series of Regular Big Brother grips the nation. (*Google hits for the term RealiTV: 796. We're amazed more people haven't thought up that term.)

Why the sudden volte-face? Well:

The line-up seems to be monumentally more interesting than previous Celeb BB's. No Mark Owens or John McCrirricks here (we don't care how his surname is actually spelled). While we may not neccessarily have heard of all this year's participants (Traci Who?), or even like the ones we had heard of (although we did see Michael Barrymore perform live, supporting Little And Large on Blackpool Central Pier, when we were eight years old. He was doing his 'sending people out of the theatre for dissent' schtick at the time, and we were easily impressed), but you can't deny that this year's bunch are, mainly, interesting. Well, you probably won't, but at least we now have something to talk to girls about other than hoping they like football or Nintendo DS games. Er, although we still feel oddly compelled to follow up the words "so, did you see Big Brother last night?" with "We're not gay, by the way". Yes, we clearly have 'issues'.

Also, if Traci wins: someone else at Betfair gives us £80. If Faria wins (unlikely at the moment, but we can't see the others putting her up for eviction any time soon, and who knows what could happen from there), we get a lovely £160. And if you know BrokenTV, you'll know getting to talk to girls and the promise of free money are the two main things most likely to get us interested in anything.

We're not even going to make any lazy "that Chantelle seems a bit thick" comments. She seems perfectly nice, even if she didn't know what a gynecologist was. Plus, she's a trillion percent less annoying than her looky-likey Paris Twatting Hilton is, so we'd gladly have her round for tea any time.

Mind you, we can't imagine wanting to see her
on our telly ever again once CBB06 has
finished. We expect to suffer disappointment there.

What have we learnt since then? That despite how much any one of a random selection of celebrities may annoy us, everyone has at least some good in them. After all, even Jodie had her "Michael has a massive problem with vegetarians. Well, I've got a problem with dead bodies in swimming pools, but still" which was entertainingly blunt and great, and Pete redeemed himself after all that bitchiness with responding to the housemates' reduced food budget with "hey, we could just eat Dennis. Eh, Dennis?". Oh, and even Margaret Thatcher helped invent Butterscotch flavour Angel Delight. Not that she's involved in CBB, but it helps illustrate our point.

Mark you, George Galloway 'being' a cat is the most disturbing thing we've ever seen on television, ever. Personally, we want to see Rula voted out next, just to piss him off. And we're still fucked if we're watching the follow-on show hosted by Russell "Britain's Biggest Cunt" Brand, though.

Ah, there's that healthy sense of disdain - how we've missed it.

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The Worst Programme Of 2005

See, we hadn't forgot about this. You've seen our choices of the tenth to second worst TV shows of the year, and now we're about to reveal the worst. Well, what is it? The nominations are:

The Girl in the Café (BBC One)

A good cast and the all-too-rare prospect of seeing a BBC Wales/HBO co-production made this sound like it's be worth an hour of anyone's Sunday night. How wrong we all were, eh? Just displaying a page from Ceefax with a large flashing MODE 7 double-sized "Global poverty is bad" to a soundtrack of Coldplay's Mopiest Hits for ninety minutes would have been a much more cost effective way of meeting the same ends. Can't we arrange for a Life On Mars-style time-travel car accident to send Richard Curtis back to 1987, in the hope it kickstarts his brain into being any bloody good again?

"Dear the BBC, I thought global poverty was good
until I saw your programme The Girl In The Cafe.
Now I know it is bad. Well done, Richard Curtis!"

18 Stone of Idiot (Channel Four)

We sat through all of Celebrity Big Brother the other night, just in case the rumours of Johnny Vegas taking part were true. This is because Johnny Vegas is ace. Not that you'd have noticed by watching this sprawling mess of sub-sub-sub-TFI pish. A classic case of having too much money to throw at a project, we'd say. We'd much rather they transmitted the hour or so Johnny Vegas spent on Price-Drop TV in full.

Spoons (Channel Four)

Cunts, more like (See what I did there? I swore. I am, like, so cutting-edge).

Nighty Night (BBC Three)

The first series was uncomfortable but oddly watchable. This second series was just tedious. Still here's hoping it turns out to be one of the final nails in the coffin marked "Comedy That's A Bit 'Dark'". ("How about having someone still alive trapped in this coffin you mention?" - A Passing BBC Three Commissioning Editor.)

So bad it literally makes Angus Deayton look like Justin Lee Collins.

Blessed (BBC One)

If everyone reading this rushes out and buys a second copy of every Father Ted DVD up for grabs in HMV right now, there's a chance Ardal O'Hanlan won't need the money from a second series of Blessed. Hang on a minute, 'second series of Blessed'? That's crazy talk!

According to Bex (BBC One)

Gah. We like Jessica Stevenson (even if we did have to imdb her to check the spelling on her surname), so this turning out to be rubbish was a real let-down. We even gave it until the fourth episode to start getting good, which we used to do with every new sitcom regardless of quality, before the good/shite ratio became too heavily weighed toward the latter and made us reconsider our policy. Post-Bread Carla Lane-penned shows not included in that, obviously.

Broken News (BBC Two)

I think we've already done a comment about the writers accidentally losing all their well-crafted scipts for this due to a hard-drive mishap, and ended up printing out the first British stab at The Onion they could Google before the cast turned up for recording (rehearsals? Aye, as if). Still, we could just pretend to cut to another blog, and have it written out again, in a different font with slightly different wording, perhaps pretending to be written by an American. That would be clever and dangerously satirical, wouldn't it? Oh.

World Shut Your Mouth (BBC One. Yes, really. I'm as surprised as you are.)

The BBC finally realising that Dom Joly is a one-joke pony, there. Ha ha! A joke about Germans, beaches and towels! In 2005!

---

But ignore all the above, here's our choice of Worst Television Show Of The Year. Scrub that, Worst Thing In The History Of Television Ever. (Sound of imaginary envelope opening.) It's:

Balls of Steel (Channel Four)

This is what Channel Four think comedy is. This, and Spoons.

A man in a devil costume smearing fake dogshit on the button of a pelican crossing. A woman interviewing minor celebrities at events, with a bit of her microphone's logo-box displaying a rude message, and an arrow pointing at their stupid unknowing celebrity faces. Alex Zane hosting pretend gameshows where contestants end up looking a bit undignified (except they don't, even). A woman trying to ruin relationships, and that's it - that's all she does, actually trying to fuck up people's lives. A man in a cowboy hat (called 'Neg', because he's a complete cuntwipe) literally jumping on Members Ov Da Public, because Da Public are all faceless scum who work in factories and have never even bought a copy of Sleaze Nation or paid upwards of £50 for a haircut, and therefore deserve everything they get.

Cut back to Mark Dolan in the studio, looking pleased with himself. Even the joys of Randy Campbell - the sole section of the show to display more than a single weak idea dragged out over several weeks and where, crucially, the only person to get hurt or look foolish is Randy Campbell - can't stop this taking the award for Genuinely The Worst Thing On Television Ever.

Well done, Channel Four!

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BrokenTV's Predictions For 2006

1. Jimmy Carr will make a 'joke' connecting the fact that there is a small swimming pool in the Celebrity Big Brother house, and Michael Barrymore.

Er, that's it for now.

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