2007 - Dawn of the Dumb

by Charlie Brooker

  The only terrestrial channel currently not substituting little live action epics for good old fashioned animated idents is BBC2, which means that’s surely next in line to be assimiliated. Here’s hoping they stick to their guns—actually, here’s hoping they revert to a 2D cardboard-and-scissors kind of ident, just like the good old days. Something cold and distant and iconic and simple. A logo on a background. No slow-mo shots of jugglers. None of that bullshit. Or it’s another yet smack in the face for your marketing chum, I’m afraid.

  CSI: Jihad

  [ IB April 2006]

  Terrorists! They’re funny, aren’t they? Those distorted belief systems and murderous schemes really crack me up. Actually they don’t. They spook me to the core. We’re always being told we shouldn’t be afraid of terrorists because ‘that’s precisely what they want’—but since they’d never be classed as ‘terrorists’ if they weren’t doing ‘terrifying’ things in the first place, that strikes me as a bit of pointless argument; a bit like expecting someone not to flinch when you shout ‘boo’ at them. Besides, take the ‘terror’ out of ‘terrorist’, and what’re you left with? A ‘wrist’. And what use is a wrist? Aside from providing you with a pleasant, fleeting distraction from encroaching global terrorism, I mean?

  Scared and confused though I clearly am, I’ve nonetheless spent the last few days guzzling my way through Sleeper Cell (FX), a US mini-series about an FBI agent infiltrating a group of fundamentalist terrorists hell-bent on bringing death and destruction to Los Angeles. The first episode starts this week; unusually, I was sent the entire series for preview purposes, and sat through the whole thing in two marathon sessions.

  Which isn’t to say it’s brilliant. It’s actually rather jarring. Sleeper Cell resembles two entirely different programmes bolted together: one a complex and often intelligent look at Islamic fundamentalism, the other a dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks TV thriller. It’s like an episode of The A-Team scripted by Robert Fisk.

  The main character is undercover FBI agent Darwyn Al-Sayeed, who, as luck would have it, is also a devoted, peace-loving Muslim. He’s also ridiculously good-looking—the sort of guy you normally see getting his shirt torn off in a Beyonce video. Posing as an ex-convict, smoulderiri Darwyn is recruited by a terrorist sleeper cell led by Farik, a charismatic extremist who (somewhat cheekily) spends much of his waking life pretending to be a devout Jew.

  Just to confound expectations, Farik’s the only member of the sleeper cell from Arabic origins—the others being a Bosnian schoolteacher, a French ex-skinhead, an ail-American blue-eyed bell-end called Tommy and Darwyn, who’s black. Politically correct, maybe—but it’s also straining credibility, especially since the French ex-skin is even more of a beefcake than Darwyn. This is the hunkiest group of would-be mass murderers the world has ever seen.

  Plausibility levels continue to fluctuate wildly throughout the series: for every well-researched reference to contemporary global politics, there’s a scene in which the sleeper cell swagger around as though they’re in Reservoir Dogs— either that or we’re treated to a dull, formulaic burst of love interest. Furthermore, it’s glossy. So glossy they could’ve called it CSI: Jihad instead.

  If there’s one message the show is keen to hammer home, it’s that Islam isn’t inherently evil; that these guys, whilst understandably angry about global injustice, are psychotically misguided and unrepresentative of the whole. While that’s a well-meaning sentiment, it frequently becomes downright patronising—especially during one scene in which Darwyn patiently informs a group of confused toddlers (i.e. us) that not every Muslim wants to fly planes into buildings. Well, no shit, Sherlock. What’s on next week’s Did You Know? Not all Frenchmen wear berets?

  Anyway, purely on the level of a TV thriller, Sleeper Cell is a mixed success. Episode one is intriguing; then the series turns to mush for a while—until about two-thirds of the way in, when the sleeper cell’s plan takes shape and it rapidly becomes as gripping as a good episode of 24 (and approximately 15 per cent more credible). The finale is pretty much non-stop thumping excitement (not to mention sodding terrifying, especially if you have nightmares about chemical warfare) although you’ll have forgiven the show a multitude of sins if you make it that far.

  But is it worth watching? Yes. I think so. If nothing else, it’s different. Complex topical issues and cartoon-level drama don’t really mix, but it’s fun to watch them fondling each other’s balls for a while.

  Hardcore action

  [29 April 2006]

  Following a minor setback with this year’s series opener, my love affair with Doctor Who (BBC1) is firmly back on: tonight’s episode, in which Kg and Sarah-Jane return, brought tears to my eyes. Perhaps I’m losing my mind, or perhaps I’m just a sucker for a bit of bittersweet nostalgia, especially when it involves a ludicrous robot dog.

  Since my burgeoning Whomania knows no bounds, I’m prepared to go to any lengths—or sink to any depths—to indulge it. And if that means covering a crappy pornographic spoof called Dr Screw (The Adult Channel), then so be it.

  Last week’s episode began with Dr Screw and his assistant Holly clambering inside ‘The Turdis’ (a time-travelling Portaloo), journeying to the medieval era, and getting into a laser-fight with some knights—all of which was realised courtesy of some surprisingly proficient CGI. This took about five minutes, which is just long enough for you to forget it’s a mucky programme at all—until suddenly ‘the Doctor’ whips out a ‘sonic dildo’ and everything turns rude and stays there.

  It’s traditional for highbrow critics to feign ennui in the face of pornography. Sit Tom Paulin down in front of a cheery Ben Dover gang-bang or the latest hyper-explicit arthouse sexfest and he’ll probably yawn himself into a coma so deep it makes death itself resemble a light snooze. That’s because highbrow critics are made of sterner stuff than you or I. Not for them the simple call-and-response reaction of us simple apes. They only masturbate to harpsichords on Radio 3.

  Well, I ain’t highbrow: I be dumb. As such, I don’t mind admitting I didn’t find Dr Screw boring. No. I found it morbidly fascinating.

  What got me was this: the pornstar cast are clearly having genuine sex—yet thanks to our hopeless censorship laws both they and the programme’s editors are forced to perform a bizarre game of mucky-pup peek-a-boo as they do so.

  The end result is a nonsensical compromise. It’s OK to see an erect penis, apparently, but you can’t see it penetrating anything…except sometimes you sort of can. Cunnilingus is shown in fairly explicit detail, while blowjobs are hidden behind cupped hands or strategically posed thighs…except sometimes they’re sort of not. It’s like an orgy that can’t decide how rude it wants to be.

  I’m not complaining—just baffled. These regulations seem inherently pointless, like the American public drinking law that leads winos to swig cans of beer from within brown paper bags. At the end of the day they’re still winos, still in public, still drinking beer. So what’s the point?

  Protection, presumably. Yet since the show is broadcast on a restricted-access post-watershed channel requiring PIN code entry (and a payment) to view, then who, precisely, are we protecting? The mugs prepared to pay to watch it? That’s so circular it makes my head spin.

  Hardcore smut has been legally available in Britain since the introduction of the Ri8 certificate six years ago. More recently, Michael Winterbottom’s 9 Songs (which features more real sex than most marriages) was broadcast uncut on Sky Box Office (another PIN-restricted service). The other week, a leering C4 documentary on notorious bestial porn flick Animal Farm included a close-up of a man’s face while he had sex with a chicken. Yet dedicated adult channels aren’t allowed to show explicit consensual sex. Why?

  Because pom’s embarrassing and tawdry and we don’t want that muck on our airwaves? Then ban it outright and have done with it. This present fudge just makes Ofcom look like bigger idiots than the pornographers themselves. And that’s saying something.

  In the meant
ime, I can live without seeing Dr Screw’s high-jinks in their unexpurgated glory. As for porn channels per se—from what I can tell, their faux-moany erotic ‘personas’ are just a bit crap and condescending. If I want to see uncut hardcore action, I don’t need a TV Just a ladder and my neighbour’s windows. Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.

  The Badger hulks out

  [6 May 2006]

  This is not a game! There is no ‘panel of judges’ here! There’s no ‘text-a-number’!’ No ‘text-a-number’? What sort of technophobic grandad-speak is that? Holy bleedin’ cobblestones, Sir Alan, this is the twenty-first century! You run a technology firm for chrissakes! No ‘text-a-number’, indeed. I suppose you’d say it ain’t a game of yer computerised Space Invasions, neither? None of yer Megadrive cassette tapes here, eh?

  This series has seen an exponential coarsening of Sir Alan’s already coarse demeanour; he now sounds more like a world-weary, misanthropic prison warden than a high-flying fat cat. Who the hell wants to work for that? A few weeks ago he used the phrase ‘as sure as there’s a hole in my bloody arse’, and my brain filled with horrifying images—grisly close-ups of the aperture itself- which still play a starring role in my nightmares. Incidentally, is it just me, or is he starting to resemble Mrs Tiggywinkle from the Beatrix Potter books? You know—the hedgehog washerwoman? I swear he does. Especially if you squint.

  No wonder he’s looking for new blood. And this time around, said blood is lady-flavoured. Yes, The Apprentice (BBC2) shudders to a climax this week, with a live girl-on-girl finale featuring Ruth ‘Haystacks’ Badger and Michelle ‘Eyebrow Pencil’ Dewberry. If you haven’t been watching the series thus far, suffice to say it should play out like a grudge match between Biffa Bacon’s mum and a translucent, whining coat-stand.

  Actually, that’s horrifically unfair: both candidates have easily held their own over the past twelve weeks. I’m only being snippy because that’s my job. As project manager of this column, petty unpleasantness is my number-one priority, and I’m proud to say I always meet my targets.

  Yes, in reality, I admire them both—although admittedly, my admiration of Ruth is almost entirely rooted in fear; by the irrational suspicion that she might lunge through the screen at any given moment and squish my balls to paste in her fist. She’s a cross between Lucy from Peanuts and a career-oriented Minotaur—pushy, stubborn and perpetually teetering on the brink of fury; Pauline Quirke meets the Terminator. If Sir Alan fires her on Wednesday, chances are she’ll ‘Hulk out’—punch her way through the wall, roar into the street and start tossing cars around like pillows.

  And as for Michelle—well, I’ve developed an alarming crush on her, even if she does draw her eyebrows on with a pube-thin crayon and speak in a voice so flat and off-putting I can only describe it as the aural equivalent of the taste of earwax. As I suspect most viewers did, I initially found Michelle a touch cold and distant—a spectral estate agent with a curiously expressionless fizzog.

  Last week’s ‘job interview’ special cast her in a new light, for the first time revealing her to be a tough little soldier who’s overcome all manner of hinted-at hardships to forge a wildly successful freelance career—without banging on about it every five minutes, like Syed.

  Ah, Syed. He’s like something out of I, Robot-a synthetic android sex doll with undiluted Microsoft Excel pulsing through his veins. And he’s back this week, a phoenix from the flames, assisting with the gang’s-all-here final task—so for God’s sake savour your final minutes with him. Peppy bell-end businessmen are two a penny, but Syed’s a special kind of peppy bell-end businessman, the kind whose peppy bell-endism is so relentless and blinkered it eventually transcends annoyance and becomes hugely endearing. You’ll miss him when he’s gone, damn him.

  Anyway, someone’s got to win, and speaking as someone who always roots for the underdog, I favour Michelle. So there.

  Oh, and BBC, if you’re listening? How about a detective serial starring Margaret Mountford and Nick Hewer, in which they solve crimes in the city by lurking in the background and peering at the suspects one by one until someone cracks and confesses? It’s got ‘hit’ plastered all over it.

  Top-hatted warthogs

  [13 May 2006]

  Panic! Scream! Kick the house down! Punch yourself in the forehead! Because the Conservative Party’s on the comeback trail and there’s nothing we can do to stop them. You can see it coming a mile off- simperin’ Prime Minister Cameron and a cabinet full of jowly top-hatted warthogs smugging their way through a four-year term. Arrrrgggh!

  Thanks Labour. Thanks for cocking things up and handing the Eternal Enemy a second chance. We’re doomed—doomed, I tells ya.

  It’s going to be like the 19805 all over again. What better time then, for The Line of Beauty (BBC2), a coming-of-age drama set in gaudy, salmon-pink Thatcherite Britain. It’s been adapted from the Booker-prize winning Alan Hollinghurst novel by Andrew Davies, the one-man screenplay sweatshop whose annual workload would put a Cyberman to shame.

  More on those later. Anyway, The Line of Beauty tracks the fortunes of Nick Guest, a naive young gay guy lodging with the Fed-dens, a blisteringly posh, offensively loaded family living in a Notting Hill house the size of a flagship branch of PC World. Daddy Fedden is an aspiring MP, a personal friend of Mrs Thatcher and, most importantly, a thumping great git. The rest of the Feddens are more sympathetic, particularly their daughter Cat—a textbook beautiful mess.

  Nick is soon drawn into a world of glamorous parties populated exclusively by chortling dinner-jacketed bluebloods with names like Toby and Jerome and Sebastian and Saffron and Camilla and Glyndebourne and Squiffy. Incredibly, rather than instinctively vomiting into his hands and smearing it round their tittering, privileged faces, he finds himself rather seduced by it all, and sets about becoming a professional hanger-on.

  In the meantime, he’s also exploring his sexuality with the demented zeal of an automated buggering machine. Early on, we’re smacked in the face by a helping of enthusiastic al fresco sodomy which promises to send the BBC’s homophobe hotiine into meltdown, largely because it looks like jolly good fun. And that’s by no means the end of it. Nick will have sex at the drop of a hat. Especially if someone bends down to pick it up.

  Chuck in a blizzard of cocaine and the ever-lengthening shadow of Aids and…well, you can see the icebergs looming.

  Appropriately for something called The Line of Beauty, the cast is preposterously beautiful. Nick, played by newcomer Dan Stevens, is a bit like a Muppet Baby incarnation of Hugh Grant, all limpid eyes and bewildered, stuttering smiles; while Hayley Atwell, playing Cat, starts out pretty and gets better-looking by the second. By the end of the first episode, she’s so stupendously gorgeous, she’s almost physically painful to look at. I had to rub an ice cube directly onto my heart just to sit through her scenes. That woman takes the piss.

  Mind you, Mrs Thatcher turns up in episode two, and in this world even she’s bloody beautiful. Honest. I damn near abased myself. To the Iron Lady. It’d take years of psychotherapy to undo that.

  It’s all sturdy, classy stuff, albeit slightly hamstrung by the passive presence lurking at its core—Nick’s such an eager-to-please social chameleon he feels like more of an interested bystander than a lead character, and the Hugh Grant act starts to grate pretty quickly. A good watch nevertheless, even if it never really quite takes off the way you hope it will.

  The Tories aren’t the only heartless, blank-eyed, nightmarish, marching, mankind-crushing army of despicable automatons making a televisual comeback this week: the Cybermen return in tonight’s Doctor Who (BBC1). Like the Tories, they last posed a serious threat back in the Eighties. Unlike the Tories, they can traditionally be killed by rubbing a lump of gold into their chestplates. If only real life was as simple as the world of populist fantasy.

  This series is turning out to have some impressively hardcore sci-fi ‘chops’, and The Rise of the Cybermen is a prime case in point, with more id
eas packed into its 45 minutes than most shows—and all Tories—manage in a lifetime.

  A banana skin and an open manhole

  [20 May 2006]

  My theory that 98 per cent of everything is absolutely rubbish doesn’t quite hold water when it comes to the world of cinema. There it’s more like 99.3 per cent.

  I recently had one of those evenings where you sit indoors alone, so bored and lonely you teeter on the verge of gouging one of your own eyes out just so you’ll have something to tell the grandchildren. In desperation, I flipped through Sky Movies, desperate to find something interesting to look at. In the event, I might as well have stared up a cat’s bum instead.

  Modern cinema is downright embarrassing. It’s all Adam Sandier this and Will Smith that. Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson smugging their shortarsed, bent-nosed heads off. Ocean’s Twelve. I, Robot. Garfield. Miss Congeniality 2. The Chronicles of Riddick. The Chronicles of Riddick. The Chronicles of Riddick. The Chronicles of Riddick.

  And what about Crash? Triple Oscar-winning Crash. Jesus. Have you seen it? It’s the single most patronising film ever made: the characters might as well be walking around wearing sandwich boards with ‘RACE IS A COMPLEX ISSUE’ printed on them in massive, flashing letters. I half-expected ‘Ebony and Ivory’ to start playing over the end credits—but no: that might’ve been funny, thereby rendering the film 1 per cent less awful, and that would never do. Not when there’s berks to feed.

  Of course, mankind’s been churning out terrible movies ever since the first motion cameras were invented; over time, our culture simply forgets the really bad ones, like a repressed abuse memory. Curiously though, while the rare gems of brilliance get praised to the hilt, we rarely get a chance to actually see them.

  Case in point: Buster Keaton. Since year dot I can remember being told that Buster Keaton was a comic genius; that he virtually invented ‘deadpan’ comedy; that he made audiences laugh so hard they’d cough blood all over the seat in front, which is why cinema seats are traditionally coloured red. I’d seen the famous clip from Steamboat Bill, Jr. in which Buster survives being crushed by a collapsing housefront by standing in the tiny gap where the window should be, and was suitably impressed, but the rest of his work blurred into a mass of speeded-up film and tinkling pianos in my head, none of which seemed the slightest bit amusing.