Time for all good chaps to stand up and say, hurrah that Lucinda won't be Surulun's Apprentice!
We are all too prone to wish for our favourite characters to "win" on tv contest shows, but the truth about The Apprentice is that the prize is one anybody with the full complement of marbles would pay good money to avoid.
Work in a shabby office in Brentwood? With a grumpy little scratchy faced gremlin shouting and harumphing at you? Having to wear ugly clothes and have people say horrible personal remarks to you? For a salary cut? Why would Lucinda want any such prize? Why would anybody?
This probably accounts for the overall repulsiveness of the candidates on the show. Anybody who would want to work in such conditions is clearly wanting in either imagination or common sense - and neither type is somebody you'd miss much down the pub. Or in the office, come to that. Lucinda was too polite and too clever and too amusingly dressed to be part of the gruff little gremlin's business empire. I wish her well, and couldn't combine that with wishing her Viglen. Two of the remaining candidates are quite hideous in terms of morals and manners, and they richly deserve it. They are also eye-poppingly incompetent and cannot identify good practice when they see it. Quick! to Brentwood with them!
All good people say amen.
NEVER FORGET
I just accidentally caught Take That in concert on T4. It was amazing. Gary Barlow sounds exactly like a Alex from A Clockwork Orange - it's like the character has been reincarnated as a Butlin's Redcoat. And I have never seen four people work so hard in my life. Mr Barlow is nearly not a Suet Pudding Boy any longer; though Mark Owen can still find an inch to pinch, it is on Mr Barlow's bum, where anybody should be a bit squodgy.
Jason Orange and Howard did pole-dancing, which was frankly terrifying. It explained exactly why no woman frequents such clubs, as did the remainder of the number where the ladies wore the silver jackets (though disappointingly not the trowsis) and the lads did the lap dancing. Any man opening a club for the ladies' market runs the risks of instance arrest for what looks like some sort of shape-up-and-sexually-harass to music class.
Then they all stood on a piano and made the audience sing, Gary Barlow terrifying people into acquiescence with his bizarre Malcolm McDowall channelling and Howard skipping about like a loose-limbed 6 and a half foot puppet. He's the scariest one to have on your lap.
Gutted I didn't go now.
Showing posts with label BBC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BBC. Show all posts
Sunday, 8 June 2008
Thursday, 20 March 2008
Too Late ...
Torchwood may be improving, but its credibility is being hopelessly undermined by Capn Jack's parallel universe existence as Judge John on I'd Do Anything. I am hopelessly ashamed of myself - as is so often the case when I admit to my preferred telly viewing - but already I am doomed to be drawn more and more into I'd Do Anything. It is the inevitable attraction of opposites: belonging to the humanoid sub-genus "I'd do nothing under any circumstances including probably the threat of death by encroaching natural disaster bar make a last cup of tea", I am magnetically attracted to the stories of those best described as the sub-genus "those who can be a little bit arsed" and mesmerised by "those who'd do anything".
Although loathing Andrew Lloyd Webber with a fixed and beady hardness which he has done nothing much except appear on my telly to deserve, I suffered similarly during How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria. I grew increasingly fixated on the Romanian Maria who was unsuitable but could sing circles round any of the others. Blatantly bloody scary, having survived a post-Soviet hell-dimension and escaped, she had neither the accent nor the softness to play a singing ninny-nunny-nanny type, but how could you not admire her sheer flinty determination? You weren't given much of a choice; it was a total fix for Connie from the get-go - see Krenztvs passim on anti-democracy in vote-in shows on the BBC. ALW got to choose. Sometimes he chose crapcakes candidates to make sure Connie wouldn't have any competition. One suspects that the reason the BBC promotes Comic and Sport Relief so enthusiastically is that the public phone in money which is then spent without the smallest reference to the donors, and nothing gets the BBC hot like money whose destination they choose. I'm not suggesting they embezzle it, just that they love to be the Power who picks what's worthwhile and what isn't.
I couldn't watch Joseph because it made me feel ill. I was unable to fancy ANY of them, and I didn't go much on the Judges' opinions of good singing voices either, because they all seemed to me to have trained in the Tinny and Nasal School of Song - you know, We'll Make You Sound Like a Calling Kitten OR YOUR MONEY BACK!
But Nancy and Oliver - what more heady cocktail could the BBC offer? Girls with tragic stories (and only one, disapproving Daddy between them) and big eyed boy children with perfect skin and unbroken voices (every single one with a Very Supportive Daddy); the whole thing is a festival of camp that only the hardest heart could refuse.
Over the coming weeks, the many, many sad stories of these girls' lives will be put to the test; their poverty, lack of opportunity and struggles against adversity explored, explained and subjected to the public vote, until one girl, who may or may not seem to be the best at singing, acting or dancing (but who will at some stage be called upon to smooch Capn Jack, mark my words gentle reader) will be crowned Queen of the Nancies. It's ten weeks of utter bliss.
Although loathing Andrew Lloyd Webber with a fixed and beady hardness which he has done nothing much except appear on my telly to deserve, I suffered similarly during How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria. I grew increasingly fixated on the Romanian Maria who was unsuitable but could sing circles round any of the others. Blatantly bloody scary, having survived a post-Soviet hell-dimension and escaped, she had neither the accent nor the softness to play a singing ninny-nunny-nanny type, but how could you not admire her sheer flinty determination? You weren't given much of a choice; it was a total fix for Connie from the get-go - see Krenztvs passim on anti-democracy in vote-in shows on the BBC. ALW got to choose. Sometimes he chose crapcakes candidates to make sure Connie wouldn't have any competition. One suspects that the reason the BBC promotes Comic and Sport Relief so enthusiastically is that the public phone in money which is then spent without the smallest reference to the donors, and nothing gets the BBC hot like money whose destination they choose. I'm not suggesting they embezzle it, just that they love to be the Power who picks what's worthwhile and what isn't.
I couldn't watch Joseph because it made me feel ill. I was unable to fancy ANY of them, and I didn't go much on the Judges' opinions of good singing voices either, because they all seemed to me to have trained in the Tinny and Nasal School of Song - you know, We'll Make You Sound Like a Calling Kitten OR YOUR MONEY BACK!
But Nancy and Oliver - what more heady cocktail could the BBC offer? Girls with tragic stories (and only one, disapproving Daddy between them) and big eyed boy children with perfect skin and unbroken voices (every single one with a Very Supportive Daddy); the whole thing is a festival of camp that only the hardest heart could refuse.
Over the coming weeks, the many, many sad stories of these girls' lives will be put to the test; their poverty, lack of opportunity and struggles against adversity explored, explained and subjected to the public vote, until one girl, who may or may not seem to be the best at singing, acting or dancing (but who will at some stage be called upon to smooch Capn Jack, mark my words gentle reader) will be crowned Queen of the Nancies. It's ten weeks of utter bliss.
Sunday, 25 November 2007
Just How Sexist Are We These Days, Anyway?
I grew up in an era when girls did have to pretend to be boys to get on. I don't have any complaints; a bloke who disliked girls with hairy pins when I was first at University could resign himself to three years of celibacy, and Serve The Rude Baskets Right.
However, I can't pretend it wasn't a bit of a relief when we could start being a bit saucy again and the Lesbian Contingent were allowed out of their hideous handknits. And all the time the pay gap was closing ... or well, it wasn't really, was it?
I look at the BBC these days and wonder WTF they're up to. Oggling the old goggle box, I often wonder where are the women on telly? And the answer is, in the newsroom. The number of women newsreaders is very striking and nowadays you even occasionally see TWO WOMEN (in trouser suits, usually) reading the main news on the main channels. Oooh.
Strangely, women have largely disappeared from light entertainment; panels for Never Mind the Buzzcocks, Mock the Week and Have I Got News For You are often entirely male, which puts me off programmes I would otherwise watch. Anne Widdecombe enlivened the latter considerably on Friday, and should be hired permanently. Fat chance; having more balls than most of the male room she was presenting, she still lacks the main hiring criterion.
ROBIN HOOD AND HIS INDISTINGUISHABLE MEN
Finally the Great Leap Backward - because this is the kind of serial I grew up with, where there was one woman, with whom all the guest men fell hopelessly in love each week, and met with Quite Inexplicable Rejection, for the Hero never gave the Heroine so much as a chocolate kiss, let alone any commitment. Were life to resemble these serials in its sexual behaviour, humanity would have died out hundreds of years ago. Or at least shrunk to the population of the Isle of Wight.
All the regular men are quite indistinguishable from each other. I have watched this show regular-like from the start, and can barely tell the Treacherous Bastard member of the gang from the loyal 4th in command, or either from Robin. They are as monozygotic a selection as ever despatched from central casting, which may explain why the guards in Nottingham never recognise them as they stroll merrily in and out of the castle with the odd change of headwear, but always in a Large Gang. Last week, indeed, the gang managed to get all the way from Sherwood Forest, on foot, before any among them noticed that the forbidden-by-Robin Maid Marion had accompanied them. Is it mildly offensive that Robin does nothing but tie Marion up and order her about, and she has to apologise to him for disobedience, while he never does? You decide.
The chief indication of sexism, though, is that there are hardly any women in the cast. Why is Gisbourne hopelessly in love with Marion? Because there are No Options, the whole of Nottingham being empty of women. For those of you who remember your reading of The Dialectic of Sex, Ms Firestone's idea was that women's lower sex-class means that to justify partnership with them, men must believe that the One they love is Special. If Robin Hood's treatment of Marian doesn't furnish a glaring example of this, while "Jak", also a woman, is like George in the Famous Five, or a Serbian Sworn Virgin, a woman who accesses the privileges of the higher caste sex by denying her own, further illustrates it, it's hard to know what does. Though the constant belittling of Much might be a further example.
Though technically male, Much is Robin's faithful servant, and does the cooking. The others treat him like a skivvy, and upon occasion throw his cooking at him. Because there are no women, Much is treated as one, and not in the way any woman would be pleased by.
A show often stands or falls by its portrayal of same sex relationships. I stopped watching Smallville after an episode where all the "goodies" were so appalled and repulsed by a lesbian that she was deemed to be wicked solely on that premise. (This is a series shown on Channel 4. How very politically correct is that?) The fact that she was also wicked in terms of storyline helped to confirm that the programme-makers' political views really were as nasty as those of the characters.
Compare with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a show which had one of its principal characters develop into a lesbian with no ill effects on her character whatsoever - almost as though sexuality is not any kind of moral barometer. Buffy was a radically different show, with real sophistication and depth, reflected in its character development, and it was the maturity and possibly real life experience of its makers that allowed it to be so.
In an era when in real life most half-way sensible blokes marry high-income-generating women - lawyers, doctors, architects, business-women - is this a programme which shows women or men in a way we really aspire to be? Hell no. A lack of imagination and awareness makes this a pretty poor piece in terms of politics or reflection of society. Escapism? After watching this, how I long for some.
However, I can't pretend it wasn't a bit of a relief when we could start being a bit saucy again and the Lesbian Contingent were allowed out of their hideous handknits. And all the time the pay gap was closing ... or well, it wasn't really, was it?
I look at the BBC these days and wonder WTF they're up to. Oggling the old goggle box, I often wonder where are the women on telly? And the answer is, in the newsroom. The number of women newsreaders is very striking and nowadays you even occasionally see TWO WOMEN (in trouser suits, usually) reading the main news on the main channels. Oooh.
Strangely, women have largely disappeared from light entertainment; panels for Never Mind the Buzzcocks, Mock the Week and Have I Got News For You are often entirely male, which puts me off programmes I would otherwise watch. Anne Widdecombe enlivened the latter considerably on Friday, and should be hired permanently. Fat chance; having more balls than most of the male room she was presenting, she still lacks the main hiring criterion.
ROBIN HOOD AND HIS INDISTINGUISHABLE MEN
Finally the Great Leap Backward - because this is the kind of serial I grew up with, where there was one woman, with whom all the guest men fell hopelessly in love each week, and met with Quite Inexplicable Rejection, for the Hero never gave the Heroine so much as a chocolate kiss, let alone any commitment. Were life to resemble these serials in its sexual behaviour, humanity would have died out hundreds of years ago. Or at least shrunk to the population of the Isle of Wight.
All the regular men are quite indistinguishable from each other. I have watched this show regular-like from the start, and can barely tell the Treacherous Bastard member of the gang from the loyal 4th in command, or either from Robin. They are as monozygotic a selection as ever despatched from central casting, which may explain why the guards in Nottingham never recognise them as they stroll merrily in and out of the castle with the odd change of headwear, but always in a Large Gang. Last week, indeed, the gang managed to get all the way from Sherwood Forest, on foot, before any among them noticed that the forbidden-by-Robin Maid Marion had accompanied them. Is it mildly offensive that Robin does nothing but tie Marion up and order her about, and she has to apologise to him for disobedience, while he never does? You decide.
The chief indication of sexism, though, is that there are hardly any women in the cast. Why is Gisbourne hopelessly in love with Marion? Because there are No Options, the whole of Nottingham being empty of women. For those of you who remember your reading of The Dialectic of Sex, Ms Firestone's idea was that women's lower sex-class means that to justify partnership with them, men must believe that the One they love is Special. If Robin Hood's treatment of Marian doesn't furnish a glaring example of this, while "Jak", also a woman, is like George in the Famous Five, or a Serbian Sworn Virgin, a woman who accesses the privileges of the higher caste sex by denying her own, further illustrates it, it's hard to know what does. Though the constant belittling of Much might be a further example.
Though technically male, Much is Robin's faithful servant, and does the cooking. The others treat him like a skivvy, and upon occasion throw his cooking at him. Because there are no women, Much is treated as one, and not in the way any woman would be pleased by.
A show often stands or falls by its portrayal of same sex relationships. I stopped watching Smallville after an episode where all the "goodies" were so appalled and repulsed by a lesbian that she was deemed to be wicked solely on that premise. (This is a series shown on Channel 4. How very politically correct is that?) The fact that she was also wicked in terms of storyline helped to confirm that the programme-makers' political views really were as nasty as those of the characters.
Compare with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a show which had one of its principal characters develop into a lesbian with no ill effects on her character whatsoever - almost as though sexuality is not any kind of moral barometer. Buffy was a radically different show, with real sophistication and depth, reflected in its character development, and it was the maturity and possibly real life experience of its makers that allowed it to be so.
In an era when in real life most half-way sensible blokes marry high-income-generating women - lawyers, doctors, architects, business-women - is this a programme which shows women or men in a way we really aspire to be? Hell no. A lack of imagination and awareness makes this a pretty poor piece in terms of politics or reflection of society. Escapism? After watching this, how I long for some.
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