BBC | The Cutprice Guignol

November 18, 2012

A little bit married

I was enjoying a casual afternoon with a good male friend today. We got lunch, I sat and flicked through magazines while he got a quick trim at the barbers, then popped to Argos to pick up an inflatable bed for a visitor next week. Over coffee and idle leafing through of The Observer, we had to acknowledge that we were- in the most grimly platonic, middle-aged way possible- a little bit married.

This got me to thinking about platonic marriages on TV. Secret, unspoken matrimonies between presenters and stars that dare not speak their name. Here are my favourites.

1. The Doctor and Captain Jack

The lurid sexual tension between Christopher Ecclestone and John Barrowman notwithstaning, the Doctor and Jack are obviously in love. They’re the couple at the dinner party who bicker the whole time with a twinkle in their eye. Jack would get a bit too tipsy and the Doctor would sweep him away before he made too much of a scene. I always hoped to see a DW-spinoff with this as the main plot.

2. Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry

If ever I was to ship a couple, it would be this one. Berryhood display such constant, raw chemistry that I assume the other presenters are only employed to fill airtime as they made brutal love over the apron holders. With her matronly air and his washed-up gigolo looks, Berryhood are going to be the next Brangelina.

3. Bill Turnbull and Sian Williams

Ever since I was young and sat in front of BBC Breakfast before school every morning, I’ve prayed for a wedding between the two brilliant presenters. Despite their constant playful flirting, Bill and Sian had a great respect and love for each other to such an extent I have and will continue to measure all my relationships against theirs. Romance incarnate.

September 15, 2012

Proper Enthusiastic

Total Wipeout this weeks opens with a shot of the contestants jumping up and down and cheering hysterically. Now, take a moment to think about the filming of that shot. “Now, lads, we want you to jump up and down and cheer, right, but proper enthusiastic. And for ages. Don’t you dare let those smiles waver for a second.”

Total Wipeout, a sort of hi-tech It’s A Knockout, features contestants fighting a huge, nightmarish version of a primary school playground for a cash prize. Before they have a go at the course, the human smug machine Amanda Bryam performs a quick interview with them with the sole intention of making them look like the dinner party guest from Hell- an arrogant, stupid, middle-class bastard who likes the sound of his or her on voice far too much. Then we get the brilliant shots of them running the course. Still filled with, well, you know, rural rage, seeing the Sons-of-bankers bastards taking a pounding and crawling through mud to Richard Hammonds commentary which summates to a comedy toot-toot noise is verging on patriotic. Speaking of the mud, it appears to be laced with morphine, as even the liveliest contestants is turned into a virtually comatose zombie within seconds. There’s a surreal, crammed-in-in editing sequence specifically to point and roar with laughter at failed contestants. And ignore that Hammond is middle-class- IGNORE IT- DON’T EVEN THI-

It’s okay that Amanda Bryam is middle-class, you think, because we’re not meant to like her. And she’s oddly pretty when she’s laughing at contestants misfortunes. And God knows if they thought we would like the contestants. One of them’s an opera singer which, although cool, makes me want to punch him when he sings a “spontaneous” burst of his opera music. It’s teatime; I don’t want to be made to feel inferior. And one woman has donned a t-shirt emblazoned with “WELSH AND WACKY”. Imagine her deciding the two words that described her most- “Well, I’m Welsh, obviously, and….Yes, I would say I’m wacky, too. Yes, put “wacky”.” It’s that type of person we’re dealing with here.

But I tell you bloody what- once I’ve got over my cynicism, this show is brilliant. It’s good, clean, teatime fun, the course looks like it’s properly difficult, making it a thrill when someone gets over it, Hammond’s little asides are patchy but even mildly amusing at points, and the contestants fully commit to the cheese of the show and look like they’re having a whale of a time. And occasionally, thrillingly, someone is in some pain- and we just point and laugh. It’s great.

September 11, 2012

Avoid. Avoid. Avoid.

The iPlayer chronicles continue. I awoke this morning at an hour far, far too small for my liking, needing dry, white toast and painkillers washed down with last night’s Fosters. So, my traditional early morning couldn’t be the Horizon episode I had pulled up. No. It was time for Snog Marry Avoid?, a show that, had it been made by ITV or Channel 4, it would have been an inspirational show, a we’re-all-in-it-together perkfest for the sort of people who go to festivals . However, this is the BBC, so this show is specifically to encourage middle-class, low-impact students like me to point and laugh at proles.

The premise is that Ellie Taylor rounds up a few mooing, orange walking hair extensions, and throws them to POD, a machine that only understands “Natural Beauty”, who verbally abuses them until they agree to commit to it’s (her?) regime of industrial make-up remover, ritual burning of all fake tan mitts and the quiet, brutal death of dissidents (probably). It’s like What Not To Wear meets RoboCop and I love it. I keep waiting for POD, with her perky, accusatory tone, and the one ropy CGI shot of her peering lens, to turn into Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Ellie Taylor would suddenly come to her senses and slowly begin to dismantle POD, while the machine would calmly, gently beg her to stop. Then cut her throat on the scissors usually reserved for removing particularly stubborn hair extensions. You know, in the episode I watched, POD called someone disgusting. And they just took it. I think this, if nothing else, shows that you can say anything to anyone as long as you pretend to be doing them a service. That’s right. Now suck my cock, you disgusting, puny prole, and we’ll have you sorted out with a capsule wardrobe in no time.

The contestants (victims?) are the making of the show. Almost exclusively edited to look like blistering idiots who are completely baffled as to why all the CGI floaty graphics aren’t there, the show takes a sadistic delight in pissing all over their fashion taste, their make-up, their looks, their hair, their ambitions. It’s all topped off with a reassuringly inspirational sequence where their family all weep for joy and POD presumably frigs herself to electronic orgasm as she tells them how “beautiful” they look.

And they never bloody do.