Fresh Meat
Remember how when Beaver Falls aired earlier this year and I said it was one of the best examples of what is a very poor genre, the YOOF-oriented dramedy (you can tell it’s a dramedy because it’s an hour instead of 30 minutes). Yeah, well, Channel Four’s Fresh Meat is far far far far far far far far superior to it in every possible way (bear in mind that I did change my mind about Beaver Falls soon after). It’s not just good for a YOOF-oriented dramedy, it’s really really good by any standards.
It helps that it is written by Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, the men behind Peep Show (and part of other amazing things such as Four Lions and The Thick of It), and that it doesn’t follow all the annoying formulas of other examples of its genre (Instead of current pop music, we get the MC5, instead of cardboard, we have characters. It also avoids the poorly handled transitions between humour and pathos of other series). It’s premise isn’t exactly original (students starting university and meeting for the first time), but is handled with aplomb. The cast, of which I recognised none besides Joe Thomas, of The Inbetweeners (playing a similar, though seemingly more intelligent character than in that series) and stand-up comedian Jack Whitehall (perfectly cast, with none of that ‘I’m well known in real-life, I’m just showing I can act’ air about him), were all superb, and the writing unsurprisingly sharp and biting.
As yet, my reservations are limited to the character of a lecturer who we have seen SO MANY GODDAMN TIMES BEFORE (I’m praying he won’t become the annoying cockney girl from The Hour of this series) and the fact that there isn’t really an insane supporting character in it to compare with Peep Show‘s Super Hans thus far, though hopefully this will be amended soon.
In short, if you didn’t catch this, go on 4OD right now and do so, because I’m looking forward to next weeks installment a ridiculous amount.
[}(spooks}])(!!!111!!!
Spooks (or [spooks] as THE MAN would have you call it) is really really great. It’s silly, completely inaccurate, overblown and predictable, but at the same time utterly thrilling and compelling (and featuring a killer theme tune). It’s really sad that this series will be the last, though not entirely unsurprising, it’s hardly the cheapest thing to make for the BBC and despite the constant killing off of major characters, every episode is pretty much the same.
And Sunday’s opener was no different. It was what we have grown use to, some problems for our photogenic spies, some explosions and guns, and then some revelations. It had all of the good points and all of the bad points of series past, and was as immensely enjoyable as ever. Most people who dislike Spooks (IN YOUR FACE, MAN) are just sad pedants, really. Seriously, who doesn’t get a kick out of seeing 57 year-old former horse defiler (and the show’s only permanent fixture) Peter Firth forearm-smashing some anonymous thug in the face. SERIOUSLY.
Anyway, there’s nothing new to say here, if you enjoyed Spooks before, then you will enjoy this series, if you didn’t, then you’re sad, and won’t enjoy this. And if you’ve never seen Spooks before, then, provided you don’t take your self too seriously, you should totally watch this series.
Oh, and anyone expecting a Downton Abbey review can piss right off, for the record.
The Body Farm
The Body Farm isn’t very good, despite a reasonably interesting premise. It’s ridden with cliche (protagonist sm0king in opening scene, stock characters such as the potential psychopath and the young, working class girl) and is just incredibly, monumentally unoriginal and slow. This is all I can say about it. It’s not diabolical enough to warrant a GIANT RANT, it’s just dull, and so a slimline review like this seems about right. So basically, the moral of the story is: Don’t watch The Body Farm, it’s not very good.
Oh actually, it also has literally THE WORST VOICE-OVER EVER.
LITERALLY.
Friday Night Comedy #2
Outnumbered (BBC One, 9:00pm) back to its best, Would I Lie To You? (straight after, same channel) entertaining, if a little overcrowded, and Comedy Showcase: Coma Girl (Channel Four, 10:30pm) mediocre.
BOX SET TIME: Justified
Hello. I haven’t posted in a while, so I’ve decided that this place could do with a NEW REGULAR FEATURE. In ‘BOX SET TIME’, I will report back on TV series of the past that I have missed and am now enjoying through the wonders of home entertainment. The first of these is Justified, the ‘neo-western’ series starring Timothy Olyphant (the bad guy in Scream 2/the bad guy in Die Hard 4.0/The morally ambiguous hero in other stuff) and some other people. Among these people are:
A man who was at one point ‘Lost’ (HARHARHAR):
I've never seen Lost, so for all I know this could be the only shot he's ever featured in.
That guy from 2004 teen comedy EuroTrip (aka the only thing I’d seen that had a member of the Justified cast besides The Olyphant in):
'This isn't where I parked my car...'
And a really good actor who, like Marlo from The Wire and large numbers of the Heroes cast, is now doomed to forever be playing bad guys.
Anyway, Justified is proper good and EVERYONE should watch it. It’s easily the best procedural around at the moment and I hear another series is on the way. The performances are all perfectly realised and the script both crackles with humour and ramps up the tension. It’s far superior to all those other ‘He’s a cop but he’s also a….’ series that are out there, the character of Raylan Givens, expertly played by a badassery-oozing Olyphant, is both complex and cheer-compelling. I’m nearing the end of series one at the moment, and it is with great excitement that I anticipate both series two and three.
I also have a Breaking Bad box set lying around somewhere, so once I’ve finished Justified I shall watch and review that. Until then, BOX SET TIME SAYS: ‘GOODBYE.’
Last Night’s Sitcoms
There were two returning sitcom series on last night, both from opppsite ends of the comedy spectrum. Outnumbered, the safe, overtly middle class (don’t you just hate those guys?) but consistently funny family sitcom returned for its fourth series on BBC One. Whereas over on EDGY Channel Four we had their Comedy Showcase Strand, where sitcom pilots are aired every Friday night over about six weeks, in the hope of getting a full series commisioned.
Outnumbered has for very long depended on the charm of the two youngest members of it’s cast, the pyschopathic Ben and imaginative Karen. However, this sits alongside SERIOUS ISSUES involving the parents, like cancer and stuff. Anyway, despite this kind of thing not normally being my cup of tea (My Family springs to mind) I’ve always enjoyed Outnumbered. However this new episode contained none of the laughs of previous series provided, partly because the kids are growing up, and the series is slowly focusing on the adults more and more. There were also more of those forced sounding jokes that crept in occaisonally in previous episdodes, and the whole ‘No, Ben, I’ve told you before, you can’t do (insert ridiculous thing)’ business is getting a little old. However, there have been weak episodes of this series before, so maybe things will pick up by episode 2.
Over to Channel Four then, where the Comedy Showcase strand began with Chickens, written by and starring two of the Inbetweeners, as well as some other guy. The Comedy Showcase tends to get about half the episodes shown commsioned into series, which has lead to both decent fare such as Plus One, and utter crap like Pete vs. Life. Anyway, Chickens is very funny, and one of the best things the Comedy Showcase has produced. It’s set in World War One, and revolves around the only three men remaining in a village after every other man has gone off fighting. The WW1 setting waas original, and all the characters and performances are entertaining. It made me laugh much more than Outnumbered did, and is richly deserving of a full series.
Page Eight
As someone not old/theatrey enough to have the name David Hare immediately draw me to something, it was the cast of last night’s espionage thriller that secured it as my evening viewing. Bill Nighy, Rachel Weisz, Michael Gambon, Ralph Fiennes and that guy from Trainspotting are actors that can work in America easily, so surely something that’d cause them to come back here would be excellent?
Well, yes and no. There were parts that were excellent, all of the performances, in particular Nighy at the centre of everything, were superb (as is a given in British drama). Most of the good bits were in the end down to the strength of Nighy’s character, an ageing MI5 agent disillillusioned with 21st Century spying. It came as no surprise to me to see from Wikipedia though, that David Hare is primarily a playwright. The dialogue was highly stagey, expositional and melodramatic, but often witty and amusing (‘This is the 21st Century’, Nighy is told, to which he replies: ‘Why do people keep telling me that?’). It was also almost entirely without thrills, very little actually happened during it’s hour 40 run time, and rather than finishing on a crescendo, its candle slowly and limply burned out.
And that, I’m afraid, is my conclusion to Page Eight, that it didn’t really work as what it was supposed to be. Sure, it rattled along at a fair old pace (I was never really bored), and it’s great seeing such a wonderful cast together. But this was marketed as a thriller, and when a thriller doesn’t thrill (no matter how classy or witty it is), then a thriller hasn’t worked.
Wilfred is a BBC Three (No, come back!) sitcom, starring everyone’s favourite hobbit (and sometime Beastie Boys member) Elijah Wood. It’s about a guy who imagines that a dog (I’m not sure if it’s his or not) is actually an Australian stoner in a dog suit. The premise is great, and it’s entertaining, but also weirdly formulaic, despite large parts being more strange than funny. I just watched the third episode, and I probably would have judged it better had I seen the first, BUT THE HOLIDAYS ARE OVER SOON AND I’M MAKING THE MOST OF IT WHILE IT LASTS.
Anyway, sorry about the long delay between posts, and I’ll try and watch some more tellyvision soon.
Why BBC Four cutbacks are as silly as everyone thinks they are.
It is unlikely that there will be a single journalist who approves of the mass cuts apparently planned for BBC Four. It is an unequivocal tragedy, they will cry in anguish, that this channel so adored by every self-respecting intellectual will be succumbing to the almighty scythe of the Big British Castle.
And in many respects they’re right. BBC Four is brilliant, making dramatic cuts is without doubt silly, and will probably have serious consequences. However, it is not as surprising as many will think. Just look at Adam Curtis’ interesting (if a little self-important) All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, which aired on BBC Two earlier this year, something that could never have happened a few years ago. BBC Two has slowly been attempting to become more and more highbrow of late, hence the very serious ‘Original British Drama’ titlecards that have preceded shows like The Hour and the sometime superb, sometime unintentionally hilarious The Shadow Line (oh, I see what you did there, Mr. Writer-man, naming the two-dimensional hardened woman cop ‘Honey’, such strong female characters).
This change has been slow though, Women in Love, BBC Four’s D.H Lawrence adaptation fared rather well ratings wise when it was aired earlier this year, beating More 4′s Emmy-winning The Good Wife and the ever-popular American Idol on ITV2.
What makes the cuts more irritating is in the other places they could be made. BBC Four is unlike any other channel on TV, whereas BBC Three is nigh on indistinguishable from E4, or ITV2, the other chief exponents of crappy YOOF TV. Added to this are ridiculous expenses such as sending weather presenters to AMUSING PLACES to report from, as well as the whole ridiculous salary business that almost certainly did not end with the sacking of Jonathan Ross.
So these cuts are awful, if not as surprising as some might say. The consequence will be more archive things (most of which are great, in fairness) and a mass exodus of British Drama to BBC Two. It also, unfortunately, does not bode well for fantastic foreign drama that BBC Four routinely picks up, such as The Killing, Wallander and Spiral, which BBC Two are far less likely to air, because, you know, normal people can’t read, and we will see more safe bets like stuff about trains presented by former MP’s. Ah well, at least they’re not trying to YOOF IT UP by showing surgery gone wrong ‘documentaries’ and getting a hilariously accented announcer.
Beaver Falls episode 2
I just saw the second episode of Beaver Falls, and don’t really understand why I was so kind to it before. It’s quite funny, but also rather tedious and full of cliche. My reservations about the previous episode were more prominent in this one and parts were very irritating and needlessly, annoyingly YOOFY. The mix of cardboard cutout school stereotypes and then the occasional flash of character depth sit uneasily alongside one another and the plotting is predictable. However, as I mentioned earlier, there were still funny parts, even to be found in the well worn comedy tropes such as a young character having to dance with an old lady and a naive kid asking about sex terms. It’s also one of the better examples of the world’s worst genre – ‘teen dramedy’. Anyway, I’ll have to end it there, as I’m just back from holiday and writing articles on iPod is not as easy as I’d hoped.
