Dawn of the Dumb

by Charlie Brooker

  Lost? They should’ve called it Metaphor Island.

  The flashback format doesn’t help. This week’s episode keeps nipping back in time to examine Jack’s past—which is hard to care about. And I suppose over the coming weeks we’re going to go through all the other characters, one by one, discovering there’s more to them than meets the eye, and they’re all running away from something, and they’ve all got demons to face and so on. Instead of enjoying some good old-fashioned spooky fun, we’ve got to wade through a load of narcissistic ‘look deep within’ bumwash: whiny self-obsession masquerading as a spiritual quest. That’s not a supernatural thriller, that’s a psychologist’s chore.

  Well I don’t care about their wounded inner children. I just want to watch them fighting ghosts on monster island. But they won’t let me. They’re too busy running around with their heads up their backsides. No wonder they’re lost.

  If I sound annoyed it’s because I started out enjoying the show and I’d quite like to go back there, thank you very much. Maybe it’ll improve. I wouldn’t know: I’ve been dodging spoilers like nobody’s business. One thing’s for sure—if the series ends with a big wobbly question mark and a promise of further revelations next year (instead of a neat Twilight Zone ending that solves the mystery), I’m going to sue the entire American TV industry for wasting my time.

  Actually, I won’t. But only because they’ve also given us Dead-wood (Sky One), which I genuinely think I could watch from now until the end of time. Sky seem to be nudging it further and further back in the schedules—hopefully not a sign they’re losing faith in it (it’s a ‘hard watch’, but worth it). When the series is over they should broadcast the whole thing again, back-to-back over a single weekend.

  Not for their benefit—for mine. Saves me leaving the sofa for a good 48 hours.

  Hooray for telly!

  [3 September 2005]

  There’s a general consensus among TV folk that one of the greatest crimes you can commit is making a show that’s too ‘in’—i.e. one that concerns itself with the process of programme-making. Shows that analyse, explain or satirise TV are of interest solely to people who work in the industry, whereas the actual audience couldn’t care less.

  Cobblers. The schedules are already full of programmes so ‘in’ they’re in danger of physically imploding—those cheery list-show retrospectives that celebrate the past while promoting the idea that telly today is more sophisticated than it used to be. In other words, if all you’re saying is ‘hooray for telly!’ you can be as ‘in’ as you like on the box.

  If you want to be ‘in’ in real life, however, you have to go somewhere like the MediaGuardian Edinburgh TV Festival (last weekend, Scotland), where you’ll find hundreds of like-minded folk talking, debating, whispering and occasionally bellowing about nothing but telly, for three whole days on the trot.

  The telly business involves more guesswork than most professions (largely in the form of execs sitting around debating the mores of the aforementioned mythical, unknowable, thick, ugly, stinking, ignorant audience). Consequently, the Edinburgh TV sessions consist almost entirely of questions such as ‘Is the audience sick of celebrity reality shows?’

  That one was posed during a panel discussion featuring Jade Goody, James Hewitt and Jayne Middlemiss, all of whom took quite a while to conclude that the answer was ‘maybe’. Still, perhaps the audience’s opinion will finally get off the fence if Celebrity Shark Bait (ITV1) scores a kill, eh? Fingers crossed.

  Not all the questions were so straightforward. One session simply asked ‘Can working in TV make you happy?’ I can answer that one, because on the first night of the festival I found myself in the temporary Edinburgh incarnation of Soho House at 2 AM, swigging champagne, surrounded by stars, listening to a fellow media type making crass jokes about the London bombings while a woman in the background exhibited the kind of facial spasms I’d normally associate with strychnine poisoning, and I started wondering aloud whether it’s possible to commit suicide using nothing but a small Yale key, which was the sharpest item I had to hand. (I eventually worked out the correct method would be to tear your throat open with the ragged edge, then firmly drive the key into your tearduct using a flattened palm—but by this time I was talking to myself.)

  What I’m saying is no, it doesn’t make you happy.

  The rest of the festival was less depressing. There was a spirited row during a session on ‘TV controversies’ in which Stephen Green from Christian Voice boo-hooed about Jerry Springer: The Opera. ‘If they know we may be offended by a programme, they have the chance to stop it, but they just keep going,’ he said. I share his pain, having recently read a Christian Voice pamphlet against gay policemen (sample quote: ‘Homosexual police are involved in the most disgusting perversions imaginable—how can they bring clean hands to any investigation?’). Astoundingly offensive, but Christian Voice just keep going.

  Usually, the big event is the MacTaggart lecture, traditionally a horrified wise man ranting about plummeting standards. This year Lord Birt performed the honours and was widely acknowledged as a damp squib, being neither horrified nor ranty enough to draw blood. But as with any industry convention, most delegates’ personal highlights take place either during the silly ‘fun events’ (this year, a live version of Simply Come Dancing featuring pirouetting TV execs) or back at the hotel bar. All of which probably explains why, despite the festival’s annual questioning, navel-gazing and proclamations about ‘commitment to quality’, the inherent nature of TV itself rarely changes. It’s a big dumb wash of tinsel and jabber, specked with intermittent flashes of quality. And it probably always will be.

  Ha ha you’re grieving

  [10 September 2005]

  Hey, Channel 4—pay attention to me! Because I’ve just seen Balls of Steel, right, and it’s given me a great idea for a new TV series, yeah? It’s a comedy show called Ha Ha You’re Grieving, and it stars me as a wizard, yeah, in a hat and everything, and what I do is I go up to people who’ve been bereaved, not actors, but real members of the public, and I tell them I’ve got, like, ‘magic information’ about how their dead relatives died! And they get upset, so we zoom in on that quite a bit, but the funny thing is I’d be, like, totally straight-faced and serious throughout? Cos I reckon I can do that. Cos I’m, like, heartless and reprehensible and that?’

  Yuk. But Channel 4 wouldn’t actually broadcast the above programme. Partly because it would be revolting. And partly because it’s already available on Living TV, albeit in a slightly different form and going by the name of The Psychic Detective.

  ‘Who do you turn to when the case is closed?’ asks the blurb. ‘Tony Stockwell is the Psychic Detective who uses his extraordinary psychic gift to help ordinary people investigate the unexplained and mysterious deaths of their loved ones.’

  Now, I’m not calling Tony a liar. I can’t do that unless I want to get sued, so I won’t. I can, however, point out that if Tony really does possess a ‘psychic gift’, it follows that the rules of science will have to be rewritten.

  This is usually the point where some bleating moron emails me to say that ‘science doesn’t know everything’. You’re right. It doesn’t. I mean, what is science anyway? Only a rigorously tested, peer-reviewed, continually evolving system of knowledge about the way our world works, built up over centuries—that’s all. It’s not a patch on mindless superstition, which has been around far longer, and is responsible for bringing us such exciting gems as ghosts, demons, witch trials, the tooth fairy and the Psychic pissing Detective.

  Another thing the blurb doesn’t mention is that Tony’s a fat-faced Prince William lookalike, which is the first thing to strike you when you tune in. He’s also got one of the weirdest accents I’ve ever heard—a cross between Cockney and Klingon. And he’s incapable of pronouncing the letter G: rather off-putting in a psychic.

  ‘I’m connectin’ to the spirit world now- I’m pickin’ somethin’ up—your grandmother’s tellin’ me som
ethin’…’

  If you’re going to exploit my grief, you could at least make an effort to speak properly.

  Mind you, maybe that’s how dead people speak in the spirit world, and Tony’s just picked up their mannerisms. That would also explain his corpse-like facial expressions: he continually flops about with his gob hanging open, like a dim cartoon yokel trying to work out an optical illusion. Perhaps they should’ve called it The Psychic Farmhand instead.

  This isn’t the first time I’ve had a pop at psychics, and regular readers could be forgiven for thinking I’m obsessed. But I’m attacking them because they’re an easily identifiable symptom of a far deeper malaise—the widespread rejection of rational thought in favour of emotional response. That’s what’s messing the planet up for everybody at the moment, if you stop and think about it.

  In other words: people like Tony may be microscopic fleas drawing blood from a big dumb backside, but having claimed the moral high ground, I can do what I like, stupid.

  Ooh—just time to recommend the funniest show of the week: Chris ‘SAS’ Ryan’s hilarious How Not To Die (Sky One), an unbelievably shouty worst-case scenario survival guide, little short of pornography for neurotics.

  The high point of the series so far came during the ‘Holiday’ edition, which, in between coach crashes and hotel fires, carried a truly gruesome reconstruction of a man being mugged by bandits, then getting his kidney sliced out and sold.

  At which point Chris popped up to say, ‘Thankfully, this is just an urban myth.’ Phew! And thanks for drawing it to our attention.

  DickleSS

  [17 September 2005]

  Although by and large I enjoy being a man, I’ve always had an awkward relationship with some of the niche aspects of maleness, such as the dull preoccupation with sport and pubs, or the deluded belief that breaking wind is funny. I like to think there’s more to us than that.

  Apparently I’m wrong. That’s all we are. We’re goons.

  Well, according to the telly, anyway. We’re not portrayed as sex objects. We’re not portrayed as bastards. No. We’re portrayed as bell-ends, and it’s getting embarrassing.

  He’s Having a Baby (BBC1) is the final straw. The premise: each week, Davina McCall hosts a live studio show following a group of first-time dads (some whose partners have recently given birth, some who are still expecting). And each week, a couple of these dads are given hilarious tasks to undertake—such as organising a toddlers’ party, or teaching a kiddywink to swim. These reach us in the form of side-splitting VT segments, generally accompanied by comedy parp-parp music. After which we cut back to the studio where Davina takes the piss out of them while the audience laughs. Because men are hilariously rubbish! They’re big useless boys! Ha ha ha! But they’re cute, too, bless ‘em! A can of beer and some footie on the box and they’re in heaven! Awww! Wook at his wickle face! He’s dreaming about pubs! Tee hee! Men! Lovable, huggable, tumbling ninnies, the lot of ‘em!

  NO! NO! JESUS CHRIST, NO! If we men must be reduced to paper-thin cartoons, I’d rather see us depicted as warmongering rapists-in-waiting than dickless pudge-faced clowns. Every man involved in He’s Having a Baby is a sex traitor who should hang his head in shame (except for Danny Wallace, who should hang his in a box of seriously irritated rats).

  It isn’t the only offender, of course. We’ve also got to contend with the downright jaw-dropping Bring Your Husband to Heel (BBC2), in which ‘misbehaving’ men have their behaviour ‘modified’ by a dog trainer, and Kept (ITV1), a reality show about a wizened hag (played to perfection by Jerry Hall) choosing a pet boy from a bunch of dismal, preening bimbos.

  You could be forgiven for thinking Michael Buerk’s recent grumble about women ruling TV was correct. But you’d be wrong. There are loads of women in television, but few are network controllers; ultimately men are nodding these through. Why?

  Well, since the anal study of demographics became a number-one priority in TV land, it’s been noted that men are a tough audience to snare. So perhaps it’s an act of revenge. Here’s a quote in which Nick Elliot, ITV’s controller of drama, explains why most of his output is aimed at women: ‘You can bash your head against a brick wall trying to make dramas for sixteen- to thirty-four-year-old males, but if they only want to watch football or videos and PlayStation, there’s no point…I’m not sure what a very male drama is. Maybe it’s about business or something. We do guns and violence for boys occasionally…We actually thought Footballers’ Wives would appeal to men, but it doesn’t very much…they soon suss out it isn’t about football.’

  Jesus! He hates men! And no wonder: from the sounds of it, they’re morons! Because that’s what you see when you study any demographic: a hateful, ignorant, unthinking mass. And in this case, a mass which doesn’t watch much telly.

  Everyone in telly studies demographics. And I think that’s why they hate us.

  So—how about a Saturday night show called Tumblebloke Twit Time, in which men in nappies bounce around inside a large revolving drum, while Jerry Hall sits at the side laughing whenever one of their balls pops out? And in the second round they climb greased poles to reach a can of beer perched on top? And in the third round we let them off their leads in a park, and they scamper about and blow off and talk about football—and it’s cute! Because that’s where we’re headed, chaps. Pass the noose.

  A deep-Med sofa

  [24 September 2005]

  Somebody somewhere is having a Toffee Crisp. And the chances are that somebody is Barry Austin—Britain’s most overweight man.

  Let’s not beat about the bush here: Barry’s quite fat. He weighs 50 stone and looks like he’s just eaten a sofa. A deep-fried sofa with cheese pillows. He’s so hopelessly blobsome, his legs aren’t recognisable as legs. They resemble a pair of doner kebabs that have stopped revolving and started melting. Thick, gutty rolls of skin hang in heavy folds across his body. He looks like a sweating, heaving heap of outsized blubbery tits, all stacked on top of each other, with a swollen spluttering face poking out the top, like an overweight tortoise that’s exhausted itself trying to clamber out of an obscenely plump Yorkshire pudding.

  Just to reiterate: Barry’s quite fat.

  Now, it’s often the case that when you’re physically repellent, celebrities don’t want anything to do with you (that’s the voice of experience talking—I’ve been phoning Jenny Powell non-stop for seven years now, and all she ever does is hang up or apply for injunctions). But TV’s Richard Hammond is clearly made of more sympathetic stuff. He’s perfecdy happy to get intimately acquainted with fat Barry. In fact, he’s prepared to physically enter him on television.

  The result is Inside Britain’s Fattest Man (Sky One), best described as a cross between Fantastic Voyage and an extended public information film. This is high-concept stuff for a documentary—the concept being that Hammond has magically shrunk to minute proportions and been injected into Barry’s backside. Using his hi-tech nano-explorer craft, we’re told, Hammond can travel around Barry’s hulking carcass for 24 hours and see what sort of state the internal organs are in. Cue computer-generated footage of Hammond peering through the window of a bubble-shaped spaceship, pointing at bits of stomach and looking disgusted.

  As well he might, because Barry’s interior is a wreck. His lungs are so restricted by the surrounding blubber, he sometimes stops breathing in his sleep: his liver is sib heavier than average and is marbled with grey fat, like a slab of pat. Well, it is in the CGI recreation we’re shown, anyway—although by that point the show had become so overwhelmingly disgusting they could’ve shown his liver vomiting into a bucket and I’d have taken it at face value.

  These ‘indoor’ CGI shenanigans are accompanied by live action ‘outdoor’ segments following Barry’s grotesque daily routine. Over an average 24-hour period, Barry wolfs down two or three full English breakfasts before moving onto fish and chips at lunchtime and a couple of curries for dinner—interspersing this ceaseless carnival of food with ar
ound twenty packets of crisps and countless pints of lager (each of which he swallows in a single gulp). His mouth’s like a plughole to another dimension: a vacuum hell-bent on magnetically inhaling all the edible matter in the universe.

  The programme recounts much of this with a sort of amused respect, backed by comedy parp-parp music, even though you’re keenly aware that you’re watching a man eat his way to the grave, especially during the sections when you see him suffering with leg ulcers and almost wheezing to death.

  For a show involving large quantities of food, it all leaves a funny taste in the mouth. We understand Barry’s extremely unhealthy the moment he waddles onscreen—so to then spend a whole hour circling his gall bladder feels morbidly pornographic. To sit through the entire broadcast, you’d have to be a seriously committed vulture.

  Still, as a dietary aid, it’s unbeatable. Here’s my advice: tape it, then watch it in eight-minute segments, every morning for a week, eating a pork pie as you do so. You’ll be anorexic by Sunday. You might lose your hair, your skin and your sanity, but those jeans’ll fit you like a condom. And who knows? Instead of playing parp-parp music behind your back, those nice TV people might invite you to form a girl band instead.