Charlie Brooker's Screen Burn

by Charlie Brooker

  As for Scout, he threatens to rival Will in the dullard stakes until he meets a local girl called Bella, who works on the pumps in her daddy’s garage when she really ought to be out doing something more suited to her appearance, such as advertising Timotei. Scout and Bella fall in love with suspicious haste; nervous chit-chat one second, slobbery kisses the next, moon-eyed talk of lifelong commitment three minutes later – until the discovery that they’re actually blood relations hurls a considerable spanner in the works. Expect to spend the next seven episodes being disturbed by the sight of them staring hungrily at one other, like athletes awaiting a starting pistol that never fires.

  Actually, they’ll probably be too busy staring into the lake to look at each other: Rawley Academy sits beside a vast expanse of calming water, strategically placed so troubled teenage souls can stand on the shore and gaze meaningfully at the wonder of it all, to the accompaniment of some timid acoustic guitar. Huge though it is, the lake can only really accommodate a maximum of two troubled gazers at any one time; with the amount of angst flying around, finding an available time slot must be a nightmare.

  The remaining central characters, blue-eyed Hamilton and the mysterious ‘Jake Pratt’, should probably block-book the shore for a summer of protracted staring now. ‘Jake’, you see, is actually a girl disguising herself as a boy – a flagrant breach of school regulations and narrative authenticity. Having undertaken the challenge of concealing her gender within an all-male boarding school (for reasons beyond normal human understanding), ‘Jake’ makes the small mistake of trying to snog Hamilton almost immediately. Hamilton, who has presumably never seen the episode of Blackadder II in which Edmund fell for ‘Bob’, finds himself reluctantly falling for ‘Jake’, prompting fears he may have turned gay. Within a few weeks they’ll have to fly in a skilled negotiator to sort the mess out. Fortunately, such a negotiator already exists within the academy – infuriating ‘inspirational’ teacher and patriarchal linchpin Finn, who walks and talks like an absolute prick from the moment he appears. ‘Just call me Finn,’ he says to the assembled boys, ‘no need for the “Mister”.’ Then, to their astonishment, he strolls straight into the lake fully dressed, to prove how unconventional he is. Combining the self-consciously eccentric traits of every ‘inspiring’ character Robin Williams has ever played, coupled with looks that hover somewhere between Harrison Ford, Ralph Fiennes and an understanding lion, Finn is the ultimate TV teacher. ‘Spirit is the thing,’ goes his subliminal message, ‘but it helps to be telegenic, like me.’

  Young Americans looks slick and strangely golden, with the majority of scenes apparently shot on a warm, honey-coloured summer’s evening. The formula is identical to Dawson’s Creek: beautiful youngsters vapidly discussing complex problems. Emotionally compelling in the most anodyne way: an agony column crashing headlong into a Wrigley’s commercial. So provocative yet so bland: consequently, the fiercest criticism and the highest praise I can muster is this: ‘’S all right, really.’

  Las Vegas Swirling down a Plughole [26 May]

  Saturday evening, ITV? Not tonight, I’ve got a headache: is it my imagination or is some shadowy group of broadcast engineers applying an invasive audio filter to the entire Saturday prime-time stretch, transforming the mildest audience reaction into a massive discharge of ultra-compressed tinnitus that scrapes limescale from the inner walls of your skull as it blasts through your head?

  No? Then perhaps I just need to fix the treble on my television. Last week I was reduced to watching ITV’s Saturday offerings with a makeshift cotton-wool hood pulled tightly over my head. It took a while to pluck eyeholes in the thing, which meant most of You’ve Been Framed was hidden from view and had to be enjoyed in sound only. Still, once you’ve seen one blurry clip of a twirling prole fracturing their spine at a wedding reception, you’ve seen them all.

  In fact, with the visuals obscured, You’ve Been Framed is much more fun; a simple guessing game in which you attempt to deduce the nature of the footage from the sound of the audience reaction. An ‘aaahhh’ indicates a kitten poking its head from a wellington boot; an ‘ooohhh’ signifies a man falling off a roof to land headfirst on the patio. Oh, and a high-pitched stilted burbling noise means you’re in the middle of a piece to camera by Lisa Riley, a one-woman audio multi-tasker capable of sounding cheerful, terrified and condescending all at once – like a woman being forced to explain the alphabet to a class of remedial children at gunpoint.

  Then: commercial break! Incredibly, the PG Tips chimps are still going, still miming their way through a series of excruciatingly unfunny half-minute exercises in dignity-theft at the behest of a teabag company, despite the fact that half the audience become dewy-eyed with shame at the mere sight of them, and the other half aren’t paying attention and have forgotten these are real monkeys. They should ditch the ropey sitcom conceit and film a miniaturised remake of Nil By Mouth instead. That’d wake everyone up, although it might not shift quite as many teabags.

  First came Muppet Babies. Then Young Indiana Jones. Now ITV are pinning their hopes on Reeves and Mortimer Junior, in the form of Slap Bang with Ant and Dec, a genuinely uplifting slab of excitable primetime silliness that only the most stonehearted, cod-faced curmudgeon could object to.

  Slap Bang is essentially Noel’s House Party minus the beard and the whiff of contempt: a mish-mash of strands and sketches performed with such palpable glee that even their lamest gags (of which there are plenty) are instantly rendered more endearing than embarrassing.

  The humour is a curious blend of Whizzer and Chips and Roy Chubby Brown; groansome puns mingle seamlessly with absolutely filthy jokes about semen. The relentless spunk gags presumably dodge the watchdog radar on the basis that younger viewers won’t understand them – although were the duo to deliver a 15-minute lecture on ejaculation, using explicit biological terminology and a series of close-up diagrams, the toddlers wouldn’t get that either. Somehow – somehow – they get away with it. To watch Slap Bang as an adult is to be reminded how it felt to watch TV as a starry-eyed seven-year-old: quite an achievement. Still too sodding loud, though.

  Then: commercial break! Jamie Oliver and a gaggle of Nathans lad their way through yet another strangely bleached Sainsbury’s ad. Suddenly the PG chimps don’t seem so bad (and they probably took less time to train).

  Then: Stars In Their Eyes, with its songs and anxiety and garish, cavernous set (think Las Vegas swirling down a plughole). Why are the members of the public only allowed to mimic proper singers? Why not retain the musical numbers, but widen the celebrity net? I’d pay good money to see a Harrogate dentist impersonating Peter Sissons trying a cover version of ‘Welcome to the Jungle’.

  Back in my cotton-wool hood, the audience hubbub reaches a dangerous peak during the finale, assaulting my eardrums like a maniac armed with a white-hot knitting needle. I’m forced to switch off the set and crawl away in search of Nurofen. Next week I’ll try watching with the sound off and the subtitles on – although I suspect Stars In Their Eyes might lose a little in the translation. Ah well.

  An Everyday Schmoe Picking Their Nose [2 June]

  Big Brother 2: The Next Generation. As a gang, they’re a mighty improvement. Last time around, only Anna and Nick could be considered truly interesting and, Anna aside, the only agreeable candidates were Craig and Darren.

  Craig was clearly a lovely human being, but not much to think home about: he dumboed his way through each conversation like a man born with a knee where his brain should be. Yet, astonishingly, he was twice as smart as Darren, who was even nicer, but spent most of his time frowning incredulously and asking people to summarise what they’d just said in terms a spoon could understand. The other six were brighter, but projected all the instant loveability of unrepentant seal cullers.

  For the 2001 edition, either the calibre of applicants has been higher than before, or the producers simply couldn’t stomach the prospect of spending the next nine weeks watching dullards work out which
hand to wipe with.

  Who you side with is down to you: on my personal ‘Likeable’ list are Bubble (hoarse, bright Jack-the-Lad with a laugh so filthy it sounds like someone flicking soil at a joke book), Amma (sassy), Dean (sardonic Brummie) and Brian (Graham Norton). In the centre of the Venn diagram, in the subset marked ‘Undecided’, lurk Penny (batty born-again Christian), Narinder (stroppy) and Helen (Courtney Love) – which leaves just three in the ‘Overtly Objectionable’ area: Elizabeth (quiet, boring), Paul (prat on crutches) and Stuart (Satan in a Gold Blend commercial).

  Together the ten conspire to make Big Brother Live (E4), the most addictive piece of broadcasting in recent memory. For the duration, Channel 4’s digital offshoot is spooling live footage direct from the house, affording us the opportunity to eavesdrop around the clock (minus breathers for the odd Ally McBeal or Hollyoaks omnibus). Once you tune in, it’s hard to switch off.

  Most people like to leave the TV on in the background while they go about their daily business, for which a more compatible programme than this is hard to imagine: the ultimate in ambient television. Nothing much happens; the housemates natter away, mill hither and thither and occasionally pick at their arses in close-up. Yet somehow the more mundane the action, the more riveting it becomes. It’s infinitely more diverting than ITV’s Survivor, whose overtly swish camerawork only serves to distance you from the contestants. Besides, it’s easier to relate to an everyday schmoe picking their nose in East London than a mud-caked macho shitwit chewing maggots on a tropical island.

  Plus, Big Brother doesn’t suffer Survivor’s distracting musical soundtrack. The moments when the camera chooses to spy on a lone contestant silently wandering through the house are particularly haunting: all you’re left with is raw, undiluted voyeurism – the Rear Window Network.

  Intimacy aside, there’s another advantage to the live edition: the contestants discuss things they’re probably not supposed to – members of the production team, and gossip involving celebrities.

  Of course, nothing illegally juicy makes it onscreen: to prevent a salvo of f-words battering the nation’s ears during lunchtime, there seems to be some kind of time-delay system which ensures inappropriate language can be edited out by a scrutiniser armed with a blue button that dubs background noise over top of the speech – often the sound of passing trains, temporarily lending the exercise a seriously avant-garde air.

  The scrutiniser’s list of audible no-nos presumably consists of the following: pre-watershed smut, allusions to backstage personnel, addresses and phone numbers, libels and inadvertent product plugs. Must be nerve-racking – let a whopping transgression pass and the ITC will don horseshoes and dance on your fingers.

  Still, bearing this list in mind, viewers at home can turn the live broadcast into a guessing game: the moment the sound of a train kicks in, use your judgement to ascertain which of the conversational rules has been breached (and in the case of a libellous statement about a celebrity, earn bonus points by imagining something horrendous involving a glue gun).

  God knows what the scrutiniser would do if someone ran through the house at 10.30 a.m. sporting an erection: hopefully, activate a big red button that would replace the offending area of the image with the beaming, winking face of John Leslie. You wouldn’t get that on Survivor.

  Oh. Apparently you would.

  Only Flirts and Dunces [9 June]

  Text messages! They’re GR8! Actually, they’re not – in fact, they’re sixteen times less interesting than phone conversations, which in turn are sixteen times less interesting than face-to-face conversations.

  Given their length, and the gnashing inconvenience of typing letter by letter like someone entering their initials in a Donkey Kong high-score table, there is little you can communicate in a text message beyond ‘I LIKE YOUR BUM’ or ‘ME GO WEE PLOPS’.

  Which is why only flirts and dunces use them. Oh, and teenagers, who fall into both categories by default.

  Nevertheless, for some unhinged reason, BBC1 considers text messaging remarkable enough to devote this evening to The Joy of Text (BBC1), a broadcast that promises to be jam-packed with all the thrills and spills you’ve come to associate with the ASCII-based SMS mobile communications system.

  They might as well broadcast nothing but a caption reading ‘WE HAVE GIVEN UP’. Or simply tour the nation door to door, asking viewers to watch ITV instead. In fact, they’re doing something only marginally less humiliating: bunging on a documentary that’s simply one of the most desperate, worthless non-programmes ever to cross the airwaves.

  How desperate? Well, for starters, it relies heavily on talking-head contributions from Vanessa Feltz, Steps, John McCririck, Ian Wright and Hannah Waterman.

  Q: Hannah Waterman?

  A: Yes, you know – Ian’s wife in EastEnders. Dennis Waterman’s daughter.

  Q: Ah. So what’s she got to do with text messaging?

  A: Ummmm …

  Despite clearly having been selected solely on the basis of their availability rather than any particular interest in text-based mobile communications, the nano-celebs in question gamely chirrup away about this astonishingly TV-friendly phenomenon.

  ‘You know the rude ones where you get pictures on the screen? I can’t get them on my phone for some reason, which is really disappointing,’ reveals Waterman.

  ‘When I’m angry, I write things like “What the bloody hell are you talking about?”’ confesses Ian Wright.

  On and on they go, occasionally pointing at their phones and smiling when there simply isn’t anything to add. Worst of all, it’s hard to shake the nagging suspicion that these pointless pieces-to-camera are being stored in a vault somewhere, to be resurrected in nine years when ‘I Love 2001’ hits the screens.

  Perhaps the lowest point is when they’re asked to input the words ‘I have discovered the joy of text’ into their mobiles, against the clock, while the Formula One theme tune plays in the background.

  Q: Why?

  A: To see who’s fastest at inputting text messages.

  Q: Yeah, but why?

  A: I DON’T KNOW.

  Still, it isn’t all celebrity typing. There’s also a selection of true-life SMS stories (a man who met his future wife by sending a random text message, a woman who sent details of her sex life to the wrong number, blah-boring-blah) reconstructed in such plodding detail, chances are you’ll begin to wonder what’s making your chest wet, then realise you’ve been weeping for the last 10 minutes.

  Perhaps the evening’s live elements will cheer you up: we’re promised an opportunity to ‘interact’ with Ulrika Jonsson via text message. And it’s just possible they could make this bit interesting. Perhaps you’ll be able to make obscenities appear on her forehead. Or rewrite her autocue so she ends up imploring the audience to hurl their first-born out of the window. I once had an idea for a live TV show called ‘Text Message Theatre’ where actors holding mobiles read dialogue supplied off the cuff by viewers at home: if they go anywhere near that, I’m suing. But don’t hold your breath. According to the preview blurb, viewers will be encouraged to send in their own anecdotes and jokes, the best of which will be collected in a book.

  Q: If SMS messaging is such an amazing means of communicating, how come these contributions have to be collected in a book – a centuries-old form of communication?

  A: Because text messages are rubbish, and anyone vaguely interested in them should have their brain impounded.

  The Joy of Text smacks of desperation; of taking an idea that might fill a passable 15 minutes on BBC Choice and stretching it right across the Saturday night schedules like a grubby tarpaulin. To tune in for 20 minutes, you’d have to be stupid. But to sit through two and a half hours? U’D HAV 2 B A RT CNT.

  Bishi Bashi Special [16 June]

  Remember when it became legal for betting shops to have proper, clear windows you could see through? Made a huge difference to their image. For years they’d been secretive male hidey-holes with a whi
ff of sleazy mystique – and suddenly casual bystanders were afforded a glimpse within.

  And what did we see? Invariably, a roomful of chain-smoking, ruddy-faced drunks chewing the ends of their stunted biros, staring grim-faced at a bank of winking televisions upon which their dreams got strangled on a daily basis. Failed betting slips and fag butts littering the floor around them like the dandruff of despair. In other words, a scene about as far removed from the glamour of Casino Royale as it’s possible to get without lying in a skip lapping rainwater.

  But gambling fought back. First came the Lottery, which turned widespread financial disappointment into a popular phenomenon. Then the white-trash aesthetic became hip, and twenty-somethings started flocking to Las Vegas to blend in alongside genuine US mullet-wearers, ironically pump coins into fruit machines and snap up authentically tacky $5 T-shirts that would set you back £85 in a Covent Garden prick boutique.

  Now here comes the third and final stage of the Great Gambling Makeover – Banzai (C4), a pseudo-Japanese game show which gives a whole new meaning to the term ‘odds’ by shamelessly encouraging viewers to bet on the outcome of a relentless stream of absurd situations. Two geriatrics race towards each other in motorised wheelchairs – which will chicken out first? When a one-legged footballer takes on a one-armed goalkeeper, who will be the victor? How many helium-filled balloons does it take to lift a kitten into the sky? You could say Banzai prompts you to ask questions you’d never normally contemplate. You’d be right.

  It’s a con trick really – Banzai feels fresh and different, despite the fact that it’s actually a compendium of the kind of self-consciously off-beat comedy stunts Chris Evans used to pull on TFI Friday week after week (‘How many hotdogs can Anna Friel poke down her cleavage?’ – that kind of thing), but given a late-night adult twist (i.e. it contains penises).