Charlie Brooker's Screen Burn

by Charlie Brooker

  Hence, possibly, the canine theme of the latest ‘cruel’ offering – Ulrika Jonsson’s Dog Eat Dog (BBC1), in which six contestants spend 24 hours getting to know one another on a mental and physical assault course, then attempt to exploit their new-found knowledge of one another’s weaknesses in order to get their hands on a cash prize of £10,000.

  Trouble is, it simply isn’t dog-eat-dog enough. For one thing, Ulrika is about as menacing as a pastel sketch of a lonely duckling. She couldn’t appear nasty under any circumstances – if she approached you in a dark alleyway waving a hunting knife, you’d assume she was going to carve a smiley face on the wall. Even after she’d stabbed you with it.

  Another letdown: the contestants themselves, who spend most of the time smiling and winking at each other like it’s all a big joke. For pity’s sake, this is supposed to be a fight to the death: they shouldn’t wink unless someone tosses a handful of powdered glass in their eye. Worse still, they’re allowed to perform a group hug at the end, without a stormtrooper stepping in to break it up with a truncheon. Pathetic.

  Listen here, BBC: you can’t go building up our bloodlust, only to offer ice cream and free rides on the donkey instead of full-blown gladiatorial horror. It’s grossly irresponsible. You want to bring us ruthless gameshows? Then do it properly or you’ll have an uprising on your hands. Here are a few simple suggestions based on subtle modifications to existing programmes. They’re yours for the taking:

  Suggestion One:

  Title: A Question of Do That Again and I’ll Smack You

  Synopsis: Two teams of sporting celebrities answer questions

  while twanging gigantic rubber bands at each other until all bonhomie disappears.

  Pros: Cheap.

  Cons: May result in the blinding of a jockey.

  Suggestion Two:

  Title: Who Wants to Be a Deaf Millionaire?

  Synopsis: Contestants answer questions read with increasing

  volume directly into their right ear. A dormouse whispers the

  opening teaser; the final jackpot question is blasted through a

  loudhailer connected to one of Concorde’s engines, producing a

  decibel level high enough to atomise the human skull.

  Pros: No one will win.

  Cons: People in neighbouring continents will start banging on

  the wall to complain about the noise.

  Neither of those fit the bill? OK, since Dog Eat Dog is a shameless genetic splicing of The Weakest Link and The Krypton Factor, why not blend two other successful programmes together to create a brand new sado-quiz – like, say, a cross between It’s Only TV but I Like It and Son of God, in which a contestant is led up a hill and crucified, then asked to correctly identify a selection of popular theme tunes whistled by Phil Jupitus. Or a combination of the Generation Game and the Antiques Roadshow in which Jim Davidson gets examined by experts and told that he’s worthless.

  Incidentally, that last one isn’t a programme suggestion; just an idle fantasy.

  In the meantime, I would encourage deflated viewers of Dog Eat Dog to make the proceedings seem more sadistic in their heads by imagining that instead of being asked to sit on ‘the losers’ bench’, failing contestants are ordered to squat on a pine cone until their eyes water. And are then smacked in the face with a broom. Oh, go on. It’s funny.

  Conspicuous Dunces [28 April]

  Hands up if you’re a teenage Limp Bizkit fan. It’ll make you easier to spot as I scan the horizon through the sights of my high-velocity sniper rifle, in search of conspicuous dunces.

  Sorry. It’s just that I’ve been watching a lot of MTV recently, and simply don’t understand what it is all these nu-metal pissbabies are getting so worked up about. There they are, living in the lap of luxury in the wealthiest nation on earth, and they’re still throwing tantrums. Shouting, jumping up and down, punching the air, screwing up their faces like a pig shitting pineapples – what? What’s wrong? What’s the matter? I wish they’d just put down their instruments and tell us.

  Ah, MTV. It’s the angry, subversive videos I like most. You can tell them a mile off – they look like they cost $250 million to make, with funds presumably supplied by the Subversion Corporation. $1 million on a set resembling Nick Cotton’s squat (because grime annoys ‘The Man’), $1 million on a menacing helicopter that circles outside, waggling its floodlight and generally representing authority, $1 million creating a Force 9 gale for the lead singer to bellow into, and $247 million on the expensive post-production digital effects required to eradicate the minefield of zits on his forehead. After all, once you’ve spent a fortune making yourself seem as furious and alienated and forbidding as possible, you don’t want to knacker your sales curve by revealing you’ve also got a face like an asteroid belt rendered in pus.

  Pity Beavis and Butt-head aren’t around any more to appreciate it. Speaking of B&B, MTV now offer their live-action equivalent in the form of the ‘cast’ of Jackass (MTV); stoners, frat boys, overgrown skate kids and suicidal maniacs, starring in a half-hour wrongcast of stunts, pranks and self-consciously gross acts of goofy derring-do.

  Unlike most ‘stunt comedy’ shows, the majority of these pranks are self-inflicted – the participants fritz themselves with stun guns, hurl themselves off window ledges and gobble hard-boiled eggs until they vomit.

  Ultra-lo-fi apocalyptic white-trash slapstick – all accompanied by the sound of a sniggering amateur cameraman. It’s hard not to warm to a group of people so intent on seriously injuring themselves for our benefit, and laughing out loud as they do so – there’s a perverse joie de vivre about it that’s genuinely entertaining.

  But the moment they pick on the public, it collapses. Head Jackass Johnny Knoxville (a punk Vince Vaughn) repeatedly performs a ‘gag’ in which he enters a restaurant, orders a meal, places a genuine dog turd on the plate, and calls the waiter back to complain, thrusting the offending matter under their nose whenever necessary.

  Funny on paper, perhaps, but in reality you’re ultimately watching a blameless wage-slave deal with a sneering prick waving shit in their face. Well, ho, ho, ho. In such spiteful moments, Jackass starts to resemble the spiritual cousin of those nasty websites filled with gory accident photography, run by US teens who confuse nihilism with rebellion. What’s Johnny Knoxville going to do next? Fart in his hand and hold it over a paraplegic’s nose? Hurr-hurr-hurr, dude. Hurr-hurr-hurr.

  In other teenage news, Channel 4 have turned Sunday mornings into an angst marathon; first Hollyoaks, then the nifty As If, whose title might ironically refer to its shaky handle on realism. If you haven’t watched it, do: it’s far more addictive than it should be – like Cold Feet for kids, carried along by quickfire editing and an excellent cast. Finally, the daddy of them all: Dawson’s Creek, back in a slot where it can be properly savoured by its most enthusiastic audience – hungover Observer readers.

  There’s been much hoo-ha of late regarding Joey and Pacey’s inaugural romp, but for my money, the main focus of interest is Dawson’s forehead, which seems to be expanding by the second. Dawson’s Creek? Mekon’s Creek, more like. Once you start staring at it, it’s impossible to tear your eyes away.

  It’s just so big. It’s the world’s first IMAX forehead. They could project Pepsi ads onto it throughout each episode and really clean up. And it’s not just wide, it’s tall. Impossibly tall. To fit it all in, they’d have to rotate the widescreen signal 90 degrees or ask him to tilt his head sideways. It’s a sheer drop. His hair must get vertigo. The cast probably call him ‘Precipice Face’ behind his back. But enough about the forehead – tune in and see for yourself. You can’t miss it.

  The 100 Greatest Attention-Seeking Reality TV Pricks [5 May]

  Who will top the list of the 100 Greatest TV Characters (C4)?

  I’m not going to tell you – partly because I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but mainly because I don’t have a clue.

  If preceding Top 100s are anything t
o go by, however, you can expect the voting public to have elected their current favourite as opposed to the genuine all-time best. In previous polls, the Guinness ‘surfer’ ad was crowned Greatest Advert, and Richard Madeley’s Ali G impression (superbly accurate though it was) became Greatest TV Nightmare; voters had plumped for whatever they’d been watching that week. By this reckoning, the Greatest Character poll should see Yosser Hughes, Larry Sanders and Francis Urquhart being upstaged by the little yellow bleating thing from Pokemon.

  The key to not getting enraged is to ignore the ranking and concentrate on the archive footage (oh, and if Paul Ross comes on to trot out a bit of blokey nostalgia, leave the room for a few minutes and concentrate on something less irritating, like pushing a spoon handle into your eye).

  Actually, memory-challenged voters could run into trouble this time around, because with so many ‘reality TV’ programmes cluttering the airwaves, locating a decent contemporary fictional character in the schedules is harder than ever before. How long before we’re being asked to choose the 100 Greatest Attention-Seeking Reality TV Pricks? Nasty Nick! Nasty Nigel! Maureen from Driving School! Whatsisname from that thing about traffic wardens! Vote now!

  Personally I’d go for Matt Thornfield. You know – the chubby, smiling dancing man from the Halifax advert. The one who sings the awkward cover version of Who Let the Dogs Out? and dances like every embarrassing uncle in the world rolled into one. My favourite moment arrives at the end of the advert, when he stands on the spot performing a curious shaky jig, like a man with both feet in a glue puddle trying to dislodge a church mouse from his underpants without using his hands. It’s strangely heartwarming. With any luck nightclubs will be packed with people ‘doing the Thornfield’ before the end of the month.

  It’s the most bearable instalment of the bizarre Halifax ‘karaoke’ advertising campaign so far – previous entries have included a weird Penfold lookalike blinking his way through ‘Sex Bomb’ and a woman performing a version of ‘La Vida Loca’ that wandered so far away from any conventional notion of melody that it seemed to be single-handedly ushering in a new regime of dissonant noise. They should bundle them into one big variety show, with karaoke musical numbers interspersed with sketches performed by the gimps who pop up in DIY superstore commercials, pointing at a Black & Decker workmate and enunciating so awkwardly you want to lean into the screen and slap their mouths off.

  Back to the week’s schedules, and in the must-see stakes, the hilarious misery of Surviving the Iron Age (BBC1) – more on which next week – comes a close second to the latest instalment of the superb Secret Rulers of the World (C4) in which Jon Ronson follows David Icke around on a promotional tour of Vancouver.

  In 1991, Icke suffered national humiliation after sensationally claiming to be the son of God during an edition of Wogan. The audience, convinced he’d gone insane, crowed with laughter – although why he should be considered any loopier than someone who’d travel all the way to Shepherd’s Bush in order to sit in a studio audience and endure Jim Davidson (also on the bill that night) is unclear.

  Since then, Icke has transformed himself. He’s ditched the turquoise shellsuits and now resembles a dapper, retired Tarzan, with eyes so piercing that you duck involuntarily whenever he looks to camera. He’s also jettisoned the whole ‘I am the son of God’ shtick (it was never going to catch on – there’s too much competition) and reinvented himself as a successful New Age conspiracy theorist, explaining to appreciative audiences that he believes our world is run by a sinister cabal of 12-foot, shape-shifting lizards – including among their number the Queen, George Bush, Bob Hope and Boxcar Willie. The burning question is whether Icke’s use of the word ‘lizard’ is a coded reference meaning ‘Jew’ – as the Anti-Defamation League believe.

  This series is shaping up to be a masterpiece of even-handedness, with the added bonus of being bloody entertaining. Don’t miss it.

  Surviving Reality TV [12 May]

  Camping holidays: I spit on you. Camping holidays are about as much fun as eating a stranger’s bathtowel. At gunpoint. The whole point of taking a break should be to relax and pamper yourself a little, not waste your free time mired in the kind of rural hardship a medieval serf would consider excessive.

  Unconvinced? Then consider the typical camper’s itinerary:

  4.20 a.m.: wake, suicidal, inside canvas triangle. Traverse hectare of wet grass en route to grim communal shower block. Inadvertently crush snail underfoot while quaking beneath merciless freezing spray.

  Noon: squat before portable Calor Gas stove, stirring beans in dented pan. Pick bits of hay from damp woollen socks. Watch gathering rainclouds.

  10.30 p.m.: cocoon self within unbearably restrictive sleeping bag. Jettison book in frustration as torch batteries dwindle. Spend 200 hours trying to sleep with rock jutting into back, spider weaving hammock inside right ear and imbecilic tent-mate repeatedly breaking wind and giggling. Drift off at 4 a.m., to be woken 20 minutes later by painful frost forming on surface of eyeballs.

  See? Camping is rubbish. Still, if people who deliberately subject themselves to the standard vanilla camping expedition are mildly unhinged, the seventeen members of the public who volunteered to ‘go hardcore’ for Surviving the Iron Age (BBC1) must be utterly deranged.

  The trailers claim they’re ‘ordinary people’, but let’s be honest: anyone prepared to spend seven weeks up a hill re-enacting life in 300 bc is about as ‘ordinary’ as a horse with gills.

  Sure enough, in Thursday’s opening episode they came across as grinning New Age do-gooders; the sort of sanctimonious know-alls who brag about how much organic food they eat (scoff all the corn-fed equal-opportunity couscous you like – you’re still going to die) and could bore the legs off an oil rig with their dreary bleating about how we take the luxuries of modern life for granted. (Of course we do, stupid – what’s the alternative? Jerk with astonishment each time we catch sight of a toaster?)

  Listening to their enthusiastic predictions about the incredible freedom of it all, it was obvious reality was bound to fall short of expectation. What’s remarkable is how far and how quickly it fell. Within four days their starry-eyed gushing was washed away by a tsunami of misery.

  First, the weather conspired against them. The series was filmed last year during the wettest autumn on record. I remember it well because it looked miserable enough from where I was sitting: indoors, in a warm, dry flat, playing ‘Petrochemical Destructo Wars’ on a radioactive Sony Killstation, while they waddled through organic mud in their organic rags, soaked to their organic bones.

  Then they undercooked some chicken and got severe food poisoning – bad news when you haven’t invented toilet paper yet. Forced to intervene, the crew called in twenty-first-century medics to deal with the crisis. In a distinctly inauthentic Iron Age scene, the Hillfort residents accused a BBC producer (in jarring modern dress) of piling on too much hardship, too quickly. The conversation took place in the main hut and was rudely terminated when his mobile rang.

  In that moment, the focus swung from ‘Surviving the Iron Age’ to ‘Surviving reality TV’ – with the inhabitants looking less like the Iron Age civilians of yesteryear and more like hapless inmates tethered to a pointless conceit.

  Things get worse (and therefore funnier) in this week’s edition. There’s yet more illness and intervention, and the absurd sight of one of the volunteers using a mobile phone (still, in the interests of realism, at least he isn’t shown exploring its WAP capabilities). Plus there’s the bonus of watching all remaining community spirit go up in flames during a bitter argument.

  So what’s the point of Surviving the Iron Age? It’s not a game show, as there’s no overall winner. It’s not really a docusoap either, because the setting is contrived. So is it educational? Well, there’s loads of information on how Iron Age society functioned, but all we really learn is this: make their day-to-day existence as difficult as possible, and people get narky.

  Ultimat
ely it’s just entertainment. So why not ditch the historical silliness altogether and simply crank up the discomfort?

  This time next year: ‘Surviving the Centrifuge’, in which seventeen volunteers spend two months living inside a steel drum revolving at 1500 r.p.m.

  ‘It’s now week nine and the inhabitants are still pinned helplessly to the walls. Six are begging the production team to kill them; the remaining eleven are too busy weeping and vomiting.’

  Not bad. Still beats camping.

  Beautiful Boys with Big Issues to Tackle [19 May]

  New! Tonight! From the makers of Dawson’s Creek! It’s Young Americans (C5)! And it’s set in prestigious all-male boarding school Rawley Academy – although as far as realism goes, it might as well be set inside a gigantic tin banana slowly orbiting the sun.

  Rawley Academy is stuffed with Beautiful Boys with Big Issues to tackle. First up is our leading character, the Dawson of the series: local working-class kid Will Krudski, who’s cheated his way into Rawley in a desperate bid to escape an abusive father. Whilst his dad is clearly a nasty piece of work – we see him snarling in the first 15 seconds – Will closely resembles the sort of freckle-faced scamp you see pulling awestruck expressions on toy packaging, making it hard to believe he’s ever suffered anything worse than an unincluded battery. It’s early days, but already Good Will seems like a prime contender for TV’s Blandest Teen Idol 2001 (although he’ll have to work hard to overtake old forehead-face himself, the legendarily insipid Dawson).

  Within 20 minutes of arrival at Rawley, Will’s made himself a new best buddy in the form of chiselled senator’s son Scout Calhoun; the pair quickly bond during a remarkably homoerotic sequence which sees them wandering lazily through a forest wearing nothing but their boxer shorts, trading innermost secrets like Top Trumps.