Charlie Brooker's Screen Burn

by Charlie Brooker

  Perhaps I’m a wuss but I think harassing the heartbroken for funnies is disgraceful. Clearly, the producer, Dan Clapton, believes that human suffering equals big guffaws, so if anyone out there has any first-hand accounts of him having his heart broken, send me the juicy details and I’ll reprint them here so we can have a good hearty ho-ho together. After all, it’s just a bit of fun, right Dan? Right?

  Anyway, onto this week: Larry ‘Seinfeld’ David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm (BBC4) – which takes the comedy of discomfort into previously uncharted territory. If you thought The Office was good at making you wince, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Honestly, it’s like sitting on a pine cone for half an hour – but in a good way.

  Shot entirely with handheld cameras, apparently using natural light and semi-improvised dialogue, Curb Your Enthusiasm is like a sitcom take on the Dogme 95 movement. The resulting ‘ambient’ tone is initially disorientating, but stick with it: it’s a major grower.

  Larry David plays himself: a pampered, embittered misanthrope wandering dazed, through the LA celebrity circuit, digging absurdly deep holes at every opportunity. And while there aren’t any ‘jokes’ as such, there’s an almost obscene level of enjoyment to be had watching him doggedly convert a minor inconvenience (such as a pair of bunched-up trousers that make him look aroused) into a full-blown social catastrophe. David surely can’t be this big a dick in real life (no one would employ the man) and the masochistic relish with which he’s made himself the butt of every situation raises serious questions about his mental state – but thank God he’s out there, and thank God the BBC are showing it, albeit on a digital offshoot (presumably so unsuspecting BBC2 viewers won’t get confused by unexpectedly encountering a bit of golden comedy amid all the lifestyle makeover shows).

  Speaking of embittered misanthropy, have you seen former Double Dare presenter Peter Simon on the live auction channel Bid-Up TV recently? I swear to God, the man’s turning into Howard Beale from the movie Network: sighing audibly on air, describing himself as ‘sad’ and muttering about how lonely he is – half the time I’m not even sure if he realises he’s speaking out loud.

  It’s surely only a matter of time before he starts shuddering, or crying, or urging viewers to hang themselves with their trouser belts – and, if they obey, he ought to be given some kind of award for services to the national gene pool. I do hope it’s all a massive put-on; if not, you can bet Dan Clapton and his camera crew will be nipping round to stick their gongs through his letter box some day soon.

  Imbecility Event Horizon [8 March]

  Attention, attention. This is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill. Go to your shelters. Do not stop to retrieve belongings. Do not venture out until instructed to do so. We have reached Imbecility Event Horizon. Clouds of noxious thickery are billowing across the nation: do not risk exposure. If you have a television, smash it now. It is acting as a conduit. On no account switch it on. On no account watch Boys and Girls (C4).

  Even a fleeting glimpse can cause inoperable brain damage. A nightmare vision of the future, folks, but one I fear could come true at any moment. Let me explain. The shelves of Waterstones are littered with breeze-block-sized sci-fi novels with the following premise: a group of scientists attempt to create a black hole in their laboratory. They succeed. Planet Earth is engulfed by an out-of-control vortex of nothingness. The end.

  Well, that’s what’s happening with Boys and Girls, Channel 4’s new Saturday night bozo-cast. It’s not so much a TV show, more an organised attempt to create a newer, more toxic form of crap; one that can eat through the screen and pollute the human brain within minutes, leaving the victim unable to perform anything but the most basic motor functions, such as chewing cud or masturbating.

  And it’s in danger of going wrong. I’m scared. They’re meddling with things so far below the realm of human comprehension, they may inadvertently create a swirling portal to a whole new dimension of stupidity. All solid matter in the universe may get sucked in. For God’s sake Blair, send the troops in now.

  What follows is an excerpt from notes I made during last Saturday’s edition.

  Please excuse the scrappy nature of the text; I was undergoing heavy exposure at the time.

  Boys and Girls: awful. No, worse: possibly illegal. Vernon Kay must be liberated. Man looks lost. Send search and rescue team immediately. Audience consists of opposing teams of 100 men and 100 women. Bellowing cow people. Mass outbreaks of hollow-skulled whooping. The noise, the noise. Going to be sick. Going to [text unintelligible]. Please God stop the noise. Taliban definitely right. Is this an al-Qaeda recruitment film? Sheer level of witlessness terrifying. Quantities of tackiness not balanced by equal quantity of sly intelligence, leading to potential China Syndrome of Shitness. Reminded of difference between Wayne’s World and Dude, Where’s My Car? – both puerile, but the latter rendered unwatchable by utter absence of clever: Boys and Girls even worse. Getting worse. Jade Goody cackling, ‘Sex or beer, sex or beer?’ as audience bellows around her. Consider possibility this is live-action version of Hieronymus Bosch triptych.

  Cannot believe this cost half a million pounds. Must call Hans Blix and request immediate dismantlement. More cackling. Can sense idiocy piercing own brain. Must look away. Must look away. [Remainder of text obscured by blood.]

  The time has come to protect yourself and your family from the Boys and Girls menace. Collate a survival kit: you’ll need books, magazines, paper, pens, an old Nirvana CD and videotapes of 24 and Curb Your Enthusiasm. Detach the aerial lead from your television set and establish a protective cordon around it on Friday and Saturday nights. If anyone goes to switch the TV on during this time, shoot them.

  Fortunately, early data indicates far fewer innocent viewers than anticipated have been exposed to Boys and Girls. Best-case scenario is that this trend continues until it withers away, at which point field operative Vernon Kay can be scrubbed, defumigated and returned to active service. Do not be fooled. This is not, repeat not, a harmless exercise in feelgood nonsense. It is a cynical, hateful, nauseating and witless insult to humankind. It is sub-ITV. It is sub-ITV2. We must act now, lest it destroy us.

  Return to your shelters, beloved populace. And may God be with you.

  The Greasy Horror of it All [15 March]

  Fact! There’s a saucer full of extra-terrestrial pod people lurking behind Jupiter, intercepting our TV transmissions, collating information on human culture. And over the last 18 months they’ve reached three unusual conclusions. 1) Earth people sit on specially designated park benches when upset (EastEnders). 2) Earth people settle arguments by seeing who can bellow their point of view the loudest (Kilroy). 3) Earth people loathe celebrities and enjoy watching them suffer (every other programme on TV). The third conclusion is correct, of course. We’ve watched them huffing their way through Fat Club, sobbing in the Big Brother house and eating maggots in the outback. Now we’re subjecting yet another gaggle of faded stars to something even worse: total career humiliation, courtesy of Reborn in the USA (ITV1).

  Usually, my last remaining scrap of human decency means that I find it hard to join in the collective sneering whenever a has-been celeb is publicly ridiculed, but there’s something so damn perfect about Reborn that it leaves me rapt with admiration at the workings of this infernal machine. Here’s the mechanism: ten former British pop stars are flown to the USA, where they’re even more unknown than over here. They perform live in front of American audiences, who vote for their favourite performer. The two with the lowest scores are separated from the pack; the British public phones in to decide who gets drowned in a bucket before the next episode. On paper, another format; on screen, a hypnotic cross between Pop Idol and Alan Partridge. Before a note had been sung we were subjected to a spectacular tantrum courtesy of Mark Shaw of Then Jericho, who managed to single-handedly redefine the term ‘wanker’ by a) sleazing over a potential groupie at the airport, b) flicking ash in Michelle Gayle’s food because she thought he was chi
ldish, and c) announcing that he wouldn’t have any more to do with these ‘fucking has-beens who couldn’t hold a note if their lives depended on it’.

  Previously, I’d never even heard of Then Jericho but now I’m half-tempted to seek some of their albums out, if only to see if the percussion section consists of a baby hurling toys from its pram. Then there’s Dollar: not so much a car crash, more a 200-vehicle pile-up with massive loss of life. Physically, David Van Day has turned into a precise replica of William Petersen from CSI; Thereza Bazar has been replaced by a Kafkaesque locust. Together, they resemble the ballroom-dancing couple from Hi-De-Hi, and, accordingly, their performance last week came straight from the end of a recently bombed pier. I recently saw an uncut copy of Cannibal Holocaust, in which a live turtle is torn apart; sitting through that was a breeze compared to watching Dollar inflict equally horrific injuries on ‘They Can’t Take That Away From Me’.

  And Sonia: Jesus Christ. Astonishingly, she possesses a powerful singing voice, but like a nuclear bomb in the hands of a madman, that’s not a Good Thing. During her nightmarish rendering of ‘The Greatest Love of All’, she shuddered, howled and shook her fists, like Shirley Temple in a remake of The Exorcist.

  The rest are less interesting. Leee John could pass for the bloke from the Halifax commercials if you gave him a pair of Penfold specs; Gina G has the weakest voice but the pertest arse; Tony Hadley looks like a stage magician; Michelle Gayle is great; Go West’s Peter Cox (heroically replacing Shaw) seems pleasantly unassuming; Elkie Brooks could be your best friend’s mum; Hay-don from Ultimate Kaos was unknown to everyone beforehand but seems destined to succeed. In other words, most are likeable performers who stand a decent chance of reinventing themselves.

  Ignore the insanely ubiquitous Davina McCall and concentrate on the greasy horror of it all: Reborn is great Saturday night TV. And it’ll utterly trounce C4’s despicable Boys and Girls – another reason to love it. Fact!

  The Truth is Out There [22 March]

  At the time of writing, the world’s first widescreen war has yet to begin in earnest, so there’s still time to contemplate the important things in life, namely Reborn in the USA (ITV1) and more specifically, the moment at which David Van Day and Thereza Bazar lashed out at humankind (in the guise of Sonia) for thwarting their inevitable return to power. Sonia left the show, only to return, which gave rise to a conspiracy theory in Van Day’s head: she hadn’t just flipped out in the wake of her ridiculous performance in show one, oh no: the devious minx had done it deliberately in order to, er, win. Cue tears from Thereza (‘I only wanted to sing,’ she wailed, prompting sofa-bound cynics everywhere to bellow ‘You tried that already, and look where it got you’ at the screen), while David fumed that disparaging remarks about them on Sonia’s website proved their imminent ejection was due to ‘dirty tricks’ from a shadowy Liverpudlian cabal – as opposed to, say, Dollar being rubbish. Things reached a head when Van Day, clutching his smoking gun evidence of Sonia’s duplicity (a print-out of the web page) hectored the ginger chanteuse backstage until she begged him to leave her alone. Later, Dollar were kicked out, Sonia compounding their defeat by taking the stage and giving a decent performance (surely the ultimate treachery). Now they’ve got some free time, Dollar should become professional conspiracy theorists. Among the mysteries they might be able to clear up: what happened to their recording career? Why was ‘Mirror, Mirror’ so irritating? Why do people laugh whenever Van Day appears on television? The truth is out there.

  They could be the new Mulder and Scully – perfect timing, since the old Mulder and Scully have vacated the position. Yes, after nine years, The X-Files (BBC2) has come to an end, an event celebrated with a feature-length finale that purports to clear everything up. I loved the first two series of the X-Files, but stopped watching around the time it turned to shit – i.e. when they stopped investigating fun Scooby Doo-style mysteries and concentrated instead on interminable uber-conspiracies involving alien DNA, shape- shifting agents and anything else they could think of. But ignorance on my part doesn’t excuse this ludicrous final episode, which is easily the most incomprehensible slice of TV I’ve seen since the day I accidentally banged my head on a door frame and tried to watch an episode of Pobol Y Cwm.

  Mulder is on trial for murder, and the only way to clear his name is to prove the existence of ‘the conspiracy’ in a military court, prompting a procession of witnesses from throughout the series, each of whom triggers a string of flashbacks that attempt to tell the entire story of The X-Files in bullet-point form – an exhausting load of bum wipe about ‘super soldiers’ and meteors and conspiracies within conspiracies, all of it impossible to follow without a three- dimensional diagram to back it up. Harry Knowles lookalikes might cream their jeans when, say, Harris the Moleman from season 52 episode 96 puts in a cameo, but everyone else is going to shrug and flip channels.

  The X-Files stands as a stark reminder of what happens when a series passes its sell-by date and starts lazily satiating the most rabid fans: average viewers couldn’t give a toss whether Mulder’s sister is a clone or not, they just want to see the duo chasing bogeymen through the woods. The X-Files finale is the equivalent of one of those terrible live tour versions of popular comedy shows, in which beloved characters simply walk onstage and utter a catchphrase, prompting 15 hours of rapturous applause from an audience of imbeciles – instead of actually telling some jokes.

  The Third World War in Low-Res JPEGs [29 March]

  They say the first casualty of war is truth, but actually it’s picture quality. I’m not being callous … it’s just that this being the twenty-first century I thought we’d get a digitally perfect, Dolby Surround kind of war, with swooping Michel Gondry camera moves and on-the-fly colour correction. But no. It’s all shots of empty skylines and blurry videophone bullshit. Most of it isn’t even in widescreen, for Christ’s sake.

  I’m writing this on Tuesday morning, so apologies if things have changed: I know it’s a war, and I’ve been as horrified by the ‘Shock and Awe’ bombardments as anyone (well, less than the average Iraqi, but you get my point), but the fact is our modern news channels are so obsessed with bringing us live images they’ve failed to notice there often isn’t anything to show: all have broadcast hours of an unchanging skyline, while the newsreader apologetically explains that you probably can’t see the explosions from this angle because it’s a fixed roof-top camera and blah blah blah, but the moment we get a shot of someone’s leg coming off we’ll let you know.

  With my Freeview box I can pick up three dedicated news channels, each carrying 24-hour war coverage. You’d think one was enough, but no. Before long, you develop a distinct channel-hopping routine. Here’s mine: I keep it on Sky News most of the time, because its absurdly over-excited ‘BREAKING NEWS!’ ticker tape tends to break the most sensational (i.e. inaccurate) stories first. If something particularly juicy comes up, I hop to ITV News to see if they’ve picked up on it, before alighting on BBC News 24 to see if they’ll confirm it (like most British viewers, I don’t believe anything until the BBC says it’s true).

  Apparently, they’re aware that viewers are flipping about like maniacs, which is why they keep trying to cram as much onto the screen as possible. Ticker tapes, banners, constant split-screens and replays – it’s like a cross between an episode of 24 and the impenetrably busy Bloomberg channel.

  But since they’re constantly claiming something’s about to happen, it’s hard to switch the mess off: you know whatever occurs, you’ll see it unfold live on air. They’re willing you to think like a ghoul.

  This obsession with live coverage reached a ridiculous nadir last week on the ITV News Channel: Alistair Stewart breathlessly announces incoming live footage of behind-enemy-lines conflict; cut to an indistinct green blur with the odd dark blob wobbling around, like a plate of mushy peas behind a layer of gauze. But the viewers’ bafflement was nothing compared to Alistair’s – because he’s got to explain what’s happening
. ‘And there you can see … uhhh … well, it’s hard for me to make out because my monitor is situated quite far away, but I’m sure at home you can see more.’ Nice try, but all I could see was my own bemused reflection. Sod the Second World War in Colour – this is the Third World War in Low-Res JPEGs.

  Still, the fuzzy pictures are nothing compared to the fuzzy language. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard military pundits ending a discussion with the phrase ‘but this is all mere speculation’. In which case, why talk about it at all? You might as well speculate over what would happen if Saddam suddenly turned into a shoebox, and Charles Dance arrived on the back of a clockwork dog and kicked him into the ocean.

  But they keep yapping because there’s air time to fill. Hence the constant repetition of custom ‘war’ idents. Sky’s ident takes the piss, frankly: a pompous barrage of CGI tanks, fighter jets and fireballs, with the Sky News logo emerging victorious at the end. Of course, if they wanted to accurately reflect what’s happening, they could superimpose their logo over a long tracking shot of an overflowing graveyard, or that footage of an Iraqi boy screaming in hospital – hey, they could even make the logo spin out of his mouth!

  But that won’t happen, because viewers might start to think war is horrific. And not just another TV show.

  Skull-Flaunting Cueballs [5 April]

  Hooray! We’ve achieved equality! For years it was rubbish being a woman. Now it’s equally rubbish being a man! Hey, gals – let’s join hands and celebrate the erosion of the gender gap together! What’s that? You don’t want to hold hands? You’re calling the police? Oh. Sorry.