Category: TV

#oneaday, Day 323: A Little Balance On The Gaming Issue, Please

An hour ago, the BBC aired an episode of Panorama, our go-to investigative journalism programme, on the subject of video games. The subject, predictably, was the ever-present “are video games addictive?” question that has been raised and not answered many, many times prior to now.

The programme made a few fair points that are more common sense than anything else. Firstly, those with addictive personalities are prone to becoming addicted to games. Many games have in-built reward mechanics which those who get easily addicted to things will… well, get addicted to. Social games like Farmville, MMOs like World of Warcraft and popular multiplayer titles like Call of Duty all take great pains to ensure a regular stream of rewards and gratification being sent in the player’s general direction. Whether it’s a “medal”, a “completed quest” or simple experience points, there’s a constant flow of something that leads the player to believe they’re achieving something. Those who become addicted to things easily can use that as a justification.

Secondly, the programme pointed out that parental controls need to be used more effectively. Many children and teenagers are given free reign on their use of video games and as such don’t limit themselves on how much to play, to the exclusion of other things. Parents need to get better-informed about the facilities available to them to control their children’s playing habits. This is, sadly, something that many parents are very resistant to, despite the fact that the tools are there for use, particularly on the Xbox, which offers some of the most robust family controls that there are—as does the Mac, oddly enough.

There were no concrete conclusions drawn, however. The “conclusion”, if you can call it that, was that more research was needed from an independent body.

The thing is, this discussion has been going on for decades now, and no-one has thought to actually do that research in an appropriately investigative and non-biased manner.

I was reading through a few Formspring answers from Leigh Alexander (I think) the other day and she made the very good point that those of us out there who write about games can’t be called “journalists” in the same sense as those who write for, say, national newspapers on breaking stories. Our role as members of the games press involves reporting on carefully-disseminated information provided by PR companies, critiquing products on general release (occasionally before general release) and sometimes interviewing a developer from the industry. There’s no real “investigation” there, there’s no hard-hitting stuff. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but given that mainstream media tends to come down on the more negative side of the fence when investigating gaming, I think there’s certainly scope for a counter-argument: someone who does know the industry well investigating the burning issues. And investigating them thoroughly using established journalistic, sociological research techniques.

Who’s going to be the first person to step up and do that, though? More to the point, would anyone read it or take it seriously? Gamers, by their very nature, are defensive creatures, having been made out to be “the bad guys” by the mainstream media once too often. And those not “in the know” are often inclined to have their minds made up by sensationalist stories in the aforementioned mainstream media.

What we need is balance. What we need is a hero.

Wait, what?

#oneaday, Day 315: Mad, Bad, Sad, Glad Men

I started watching Mad Men recently thanks to the generous loan of the Season One and Two DVDs from my old school friend and fine, upstanding gentleman Mr Andy Plummer, with whom I met up with for the first time in nearly ten years recently. Of the last two times I saw Mr Andy Plummer, the first involved the pair of us, drunk as skunks, consuming a pound of Tesco Value Mild Cheddar cheese between us at about 3 o’clock in the morning. No bread, no crackers, just cheese. It seemed like a fantastic thing to do at the time. The second time involved someone (I forget exactly who, though I know for certain it wasn’t me) vomiting copiously out of a mutual friend’s bedroom window onto the corrugated plastic roof of their student house’s conservatory. The next morning involved dangling a mop out of the window and attempting to remove the… actually, this is completely beside the point, not to mention disgusting so I shall leave the rest to your imagination.

Anyway, Mad Men. I didn’t know anything about it prior to watching it save that it was set in the 60s, featured the delectable and hefty-bosomed Christina Hendricks and involved a character named Don Draper. Beyond that, I just know that a lot of people whose opinion I trust and respect were going crazy over it, so I figured I probably ought to check it out.

I’m glad I did. I’m taking my time getting through the series as it’s the sort of show that you have to pay attention to. The characters featured, while mostly obnoxious, chauvinistic pigs, are all individual and interesting, and you end up liking them against your better judgement. Or if not “liking”, then at least being interested in seeing what happens to them next. Draper, in particular, has a lot of baggage which may go some distance to explaining why he is the way he is.

The upshot of the characters being such arses all the time is that when one of them does show some humanity and vulnerability, it’s extremely affecting. Towards the end of the first season (trying to avoid spoilers here for those who intend to watch it), one character takes very ill, for example, and the fact he’s shown to be a human being with real emotions as he faces his own mortality is a deeply affecting, poignant moment.

One of the best things about the show is its casual acceptance that it is the 1960s and Life Was Different Then. Characters drink and smoke to excess without a second thought. No-one has ever heard of “drunk driving”, or if they have then no-one cares. Parents get their kids to mix their cocktails. Disciplining children through the medium of giving them a good hiding is accepted and even, in some cases, encouraged. And there are constant references to events that really happened throughout the time period. But it never feels like the show is ramming “IT’S 1960!!” down your throat—it feels like a natural, organic setting and after a few episodes of culture shock, you’re right there with them. Just make sure you come out again afterwards.

If I could level a criticism at the show it’s that I’m not sure where it’s “going”. It’s very character-driven and there doesn’t appear to be much of an overarching “plot” as such. This is fine, as I’m a fan of character-driven material, and the developments through which even minor characters in the show go are fascinating, entertaining, often amusing or tragic to watch. I’ve certainly found myself flip-flopping back and forth on a number of characters, thinking they were arrogant, greasy, disgusting assholes one minute and figures to be pitied the next.

Where it’ll all end, I have no idea. But I’m certainly enjoying the ride so far.

#oneaday, Day 292: TV Get Bent

Most times I watch TV, I’m reminded why I don’t watch TV any more, besides the occasional isolated incident of The Apprentice (which I can’t really be bothered with this year, anyway). And the reason for that is that 99.87% (approximately) of it is complete, unadulterated, unfiltered dross and bollocks, and the rest are reruns of old, unadulterated, unfiltered dross and bollocks.

Now I understand and appreciate that some people enjoy zoning out in front of the TV and enjoy having things that they don’t have to think about. I do the same with video games. But at least I’m interacting with video games, and even the most mindless, dumbest video game requires at least a bit of co-ordination and use of your reflexes. Unless it’s Farmville, in which case you just require to be non-vegetative enough to click a mouse a few thousand times. But even that demands more brainpower than staring at the TV.

Not all TV is rubbish of course. But I find myself picking up favourite TV shows on DVD rather than watching them when they air. There are a couple of reasons for this: firstly, being tied down to a schedule at the behest of an inanimate object is a pain that I can do without. Secondly, if I really get into a show, it’s nice to be able to watch several episodes of it in succession to get a greater sense of “coherence” than watching a one-off. Try watching a season of 24 when it airs on TV as opposed to being able to watch several in a row on DVD and you’ll see what I mean. Not that I ever got into Lost (the TV schedule thing meant I lost—no pun intended—interest about halfway through the first season) but I imagine that, with all its confusion, would be much the same.

The kind of TV that doesn’t lend itself to a sense of “coherence”—random quiz shows and reality TV—doesn’t particularly interest me anyway. So everyone’s a winner, then. TV can keep its dross, its reruns, its uninspired crap and endless repetitions of Alexander the fucking Meerkat adverts. I’ll stick to my DVDs, iPlayer and 4OD, thanks.

Will we eventually reach a stage where the concept of traditional TV broadcasting itself is obsolete? Thanks to services like those I’ve just mentioned, it’s entirely possible to have a completely personalised staring-at-the-gogglebox experience consisting entirely of programmes you actually enjoy. And with services like Netflix, LoveFilm and MUBI offering a variety of niche as well as mainstream content, you can even populate your own personal TV and movie playlist with things that would never have been on TV in the first place.

Also there is no need to wait for Alexander the fucking Meerkat to come on screen to go and have a toilet break, either.

The more I think about it, the more this concept sounds very appealing. But will the TV studios ever go for it? The concept of “primetime” is still very firmly in the heads of most broadcasters, and so it’s likely that scheduled programming will continue for at least a little while yet. But as time goes on? Who knows. Perhaps one day TV will move to an exclusively on-demand system.

I look forward to that day immensely.

#oneaday, Day 278: Trippin’ on Kids’ TV

Children’s TV is weird. Anyone who has turned on the TV in the mid-afternoon recently will be familiar with this fact. As we speak, I am watching the end of CBeebies. (There is a child present, I hasten to add.) In the last half an hour, I have borne witness to talking trains (some of which can fly, making their rails somewhat redundant), a lion who drives a train and is best friends with a Brummie camel that is made of upholstery, a selection of small furry creatures with massive eyes who do yoga and, right now, a selection of hallucinogenic creatures and wooden Asian people with big moustaches.

None of it makes any sense!

That’s the cry that goes up regularly from critics of modern children’s TV, of course, along with the old favourite “where’s the educational value in that?” Most people over a certain age will inevitably follow this with “it was much better when I was a kid”.

Was it, though? Sure, we had shows like Blue Peter and Knowhow (memorable for being the only show I know of that featured a poo in a lunchbox) that at least had pretensions of being educational. But then we had things like The Clangers and Trap Door which, while awesome, made little to no sense at the best of times.

I wonder where the assumption that “kids like weird shit” came from. Because it’s been around almost as much as television itself. From the “flobbadobbadob” of Bill & Ben, Flower Pot Men back in the days of black and white telly to the hallucinogenic mayhem that is In The Night Garden (presently featuring a group of three odd creatures cleaning their non-existent teeth in harmony with a hoedown-style piece of music), it seems that weirdness has forever been a staple part of children’s televisual entertainment. Perhaps it’s something to do with children having more active imaginations, a skill which many people sadly lose as they grow older. Perhaps adults should get more in the way of weird, surreal programming to enjoy.

Except we do, of course. It’s just sometimes not as obvious. But try explaining that animé film you just watched to someone unfamiliar with the genre. Or anything from the sci-fi oeuvre. Or some of the more out-there sketch shows out there.

But if you truly want to enjoy the experience of taking a selection of hallucinogenic drugs without all that pesky illegality (not to mention a handy “off” switch if it gets a bit bad-trippy) then you could certainly do far worse than switching over to the CBeebies channel (or, if you’re looking for something a little stronger, the frankly terrifying BabyTV) and tuning your brain out for an hour or two.

Me? I’ll stick to shows where teenage girls kick the asses of vampires whilst dealing with their own angst, thanks.

#oneaday, Day 275: Inexplicable Advertising

Advertising copywriters have a largely thankless task in front of them. Responsible for making people want to buy shit that they don’t really want to, it’s their job to come up with new and innovative ways to attract people to various products and inspire them to give them a try, usually by convincing people that they wouldn’t possibly be able to live without said product.

Some advertisers and product designers take an entirely different tack, however, and lapse into the realms of the bizarre. Let’s explore a few, shall we?

Options: Sexy Hot Chocolate

Hot chocolate: sexy. Confused nerd: less sexy.

Think of a nice warm mug of hot chocolate and what is the first thing that comes to mind? Perhaps snuggling under a nice warm blanket, maybe in front of a roaring fire. A large shaggy dog may be draped over the rug in front of said fire. Alternatively, you might be thinking of a camping trip, gathering around the campfire to warm yourselves before. Whatever specific image you have in your head, it’s probably related to night-time, warmth, cosiness and possibly being about to go to bed. For sleeping. Not for naughty reasons.

So, then, let’s take a look at the mint chocolate variety of Options hot chocolate.

“The flirty mint green kitten heels were madness at the garden party,” proudly proclaims the sachet. “Mint” and “madness” are much larger than the others, so you have to look close to read the rest of it.

Which is probably just as well, because it’s complete nonsense. What in the name of the nine Hells has mint green kitten heels (whatever they are) and garden parties got to do with a steaming hot chocolatey beverage? Why is there a woman in a slinky dress on the logo? She’s not even wearing heels!

Options hot chocolate is delicious, by the way, despite all this.

Maoam Stripes Enjoy Back-Door Lovin’

The fact the orange is winking leads me to believe that this is EXACTLY what it looks like.

Maoam are weird fruity chew things that taste like fruit flavour and are very addictive. They also have a weird name that is impossible to type correctly first time every single time it becomes necessary to type them.

Now, perhaps the nature of the sweets dictated the artwork on them—a fusion of fruit flavours, or something—but is it really necessary to have a picture of a lime gleefully bumming an amputee orange on the wrapper? I vote “no”.

These bizarre decisions pale in comparison to what you find in your average commercial break on digital or satellite TV these days, though:

Alexander the Asshole… I mean Meerkat

For those of you outside the UK, this irritating twat that a frankly depressing number of people seem to find utterly hilarious is the product of an advertising campaign for an insurance price comparison website called “Compare the Market”. The “joke” is that “Compare the Meerkat” sounds a bit like “Compare the Market”. If you’re a complete retard who can’t speak properly.

The above video is for his book. Yes, his book. A character dreamed up to sell insurance has a book out. I guess this should be a heartwarming story of a new national comedic treasure. But… oh, for heaven’s sake, it’s a mildly racist advertising campaign with an annoying catchphrase for—let’s not forget this fact—insurance—and the world is going crazy for it. Actually, the world is just going crazy.

Go Compare? Go Away

I don’t think anything else needs to be said, apart from pointing out insurance price comparison websites’ predilection for changing one of the most boring things in existence into one of the most irritating things in existence.

The Credit Idiot

“Hey, boss, shall we hire some actors?”

“Nah, fuck it, hire the guy from the takeaway around the corner. He’s cheap and he’s always wanted to be on TV.”

Seriously? All these ads have convinced me is that I never want to use any of those services, ever. Yet when I do actually need a service like that, the only sites I can think of are these ones because of their incredibly irritating adverts. Which I guess is sort of the point.

Oh well.

And people wonder why I don’t watch much TV.

#oneaday, Day 266: Shiny!

Yeah. I know. Don’t look at the timestamp. But technically I haven’t broken the rules as I haven’t gone to sleep yet. Therefore it’s still yesterday.

Again, don’t look at the timestamp.

The reason I’m awake at this ridiculous hour and not sleeping the night away? Firefly.

I am super-late to the party on Firefly but a selection of Whedonite acquaintances have been bugging me to watch it for ages. One in particular tipped me over the edge and convinced me to grab the DVDs from Amazon. (They were cheap.) So I have. And now I’m hooked, particularly as I’ve spent the last several hours virtually watching Firefly with said person and commenting via IM.

I’ve always loved Joss Whedon’s work (well, Buffy, Angel and Dr Horrible) as he is a masterful character creator. Firefly is no exception. There is not one single person in that cast who is “filler”. They all have a role to play and all are unique, entertaining people who bring a great deal to the series. The tone is kept quite light-hearted throughout, despite the serious scrapes they find themselves in at times, and that, too, is a hallmark of Whedon.

What I wasn’t expecting was the tone and feel of the series in general. Firefly is a Western! In space. And not even a little bit. There are times when it doesn’t even try and hide it. Cattle ranching. Weaponry that looks mysteriously like revolvers, rifles and shotguns. A slightly bastardised form of Wild West American English. And some cracking saloon fights.

There’s also an element of Chinese in there, too, with the “Galactic Language” (which seems to be reserved for swearing) being Chinese, apparently. Quite what that’s all about, I’m not sure yet.

The best thing by far, though, is the writing. Every character gets some magnificent lines and Whedon’s trademark quick-fire exchanges are present, correct and frequent. Nathan Fillion’s wonderful performance as Mal is delivered with such wonderfully deadpan gusto that it immediately makes him a wonderful character. But his supporting cast are incredible too, with tough guy Jayne being a particular highlight.

One of my favourite things about the series, though, is the slang used throughout. It actually brings to mind classic RPG Planescape Torment in that, to begin with, it’s sometimes difficult to work out what these characters are talking about. But after spending a bit of time with them, you soon start getting wise to their idiosyncratic way of speaking. And you too will start using the word “shiny” in conversation.

At this stage (nearly two discs in) I’m wondering why on Earth this show ever got cancelled. It’s magnificent. It’s well-written, tightly-scripted, beautifully acted and tells an excellent story. But someone, somewhere at Fox didn’t like it, it seems, and didn’t feel it was worthy of renewing. Which is a crying shame when you see tripe like The X-Factor gracing our screens for year after year. I know X-Factor isn’t Fox. But it is shit, unlike Firefly.

So, if you (yes, you) have never had the pleasure of watching Firefly, drop everything you’re doing, watching, playing and pick up the series on DVD from Amazon.

#oneaday, Day 262: Padawan

I hate reality TV. Loathe it with a passion. I actually want to throw things at the TV if The X-Factor dares to show its face. And Big Brother just makes me want to… also throw things at the TV.

But I have one exception to this rule, one guilty pleasure, and that’s The Apprentice. I’m not sure why this is, as it is consistently home to some of the most obnoxious peen-arses that have ever graced the nation’s TV screens. But there’s something oddly addictive about it.

Twitter helps, of course. The Apprentice is one of those shows that a lot of people on Twitter get behind, narrate, comment and enjoy together. It’s like sitting together with an enormous group of friends, pointing and laughing at the prize gits on screen and (possibly) drinking to excess. Of course, it wouldn’t be Twitter without other people trying to tell you what you can and can’t post on your own stream, so add at least one person to the metaphorical throng of people who is sitting in the corner with their arms folded, sulking, whinging about everyone else having a good time.

That is an overstatement, of course. Most of my non-Apprentice-watching friends politely informed me that they’d either be avoiding Twitter for a while, or temporarily unfollowing me. Perfectly fine; it’s the way Twitter’s designed to work, after all. The image of the sourpuss in the corner was too amusing to leave out, though. And there are certainly those who do like to throw a strop when people aren’t posting what they think should be posted. Balls to them, I say! Or indeed, I point them to this response to me from the fine and lovely @velourvelvet:

(Also, look, see? #newtwitter is good for something. You can see my original tweet and the reply! Stop moaning.)

Anyway. Tonight’s episode revolved around sausages and the manufacturing and sale thereof. Naturally, the episode was edited to include as much innuendo as possible. Come on, we’re British. What’s the world coming to if you can’t snicker at the line “Hello there sir, you look like a sausage connoisseur”?

As usual, the people involved appear to mostly be prize dicks. They have, of course, been chosen because they make “good telly”. Pop in some grade-A peens amongst the blokes, pop in a few hotties and a few bitches amongst the girls, light the fuse and simply sit back. Easy. It also helps that grade-A peens who are also self-professed “entrepreneurs” up the knobjockey potential by, like, tenfold.

Tonight’s casualty was Dan, who looked like a mashup between Nicolas Cage and Bruce Willis. If indeed it were possible to do a mashup of people’s faces. Dan took on the poison chalice that was the first episode’s project manager position. And his style of project management was to slam tables, say “fuck” a lot and stand back not doing very much besides adjusting his cuffs. And his response to “why didn’t you sell anything?” was “I was managing the group”. Yes. Badly.

It was actually quite a surprise to see him go, though. As one friend put it on Twitter, “they usually keep the biggest cunt in for at least 4-5 weeks”. But to be fair, Dan has plenty of rivals for that illustrious post. Chief among them is Stuart, who deserves a punch in the balls for coming out with the line “everything I touch turns to sold” [sic] and miming punching numbers in on a calculator at every opportunity. The smart money is either on him being next out, or on him being kept in as long as possible to stir up as much discord as possible. My vote is for the latter.

Anyway. Enough talk of nonsense TV. And possibly time for bed.

#oneaday, Day 260: In Between

I don’t watch much TV, unless you count DVD box sets of favourite series like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. British TV has three main types: utterly terrible (Last of the Summer Wine, Dad’s Army, anything involving Eamon Holmes), moderately inoffensive (usually involving people wandering around houses going “hmm, it’s got character”) and bloody brilliant (Spaced, Black Books, The IT Crowd, QI). One of the latter category I will always make an effort to watch is The Inbetweeners from Channel 4.

For the uninitiated, The Inbetweeners is a show about a group of four sixth formers (college-age 16-18 year olds, to the Americans among you). And it doesn’t pull any punches whatsoever. Rather than being the sanitised view of school/college life that you see in most shows, this show is how it is. At least if you grew up in the late 90s or beyond. Possibly before; I couldn’t say, since I only went through my late teens once and did so in the late 90s.

By “realistic”, I mean “foul-mouthed, disgusting and sex-obsessed”. And yet the characters involved are somehow likeable despite being, in many cases, terrible human beings. It’s the contrasts that work well; there’s Will the “specky twat”, Simon, who is relatively normal despite stropping at his parents every five seconds, Jay the sex-obsessed, lying arsehole and Neil who is so very, painfully stupid. They’re the perfect comic foils to each other, and the best thing about the show is that I know (or have at least met) all four of them at some points in my life. And no, I shan’t be sharing who each one of them reminds me of!

The other thing that works so well is the variety of scrapes that they all get into. They’re all situations that will be familiar to anyone who remembers being a sixth former. Getting your first car and it being crap. Panicking over sexual encounters. Taking advice from your friends even when you know they’re a bunch of complete fucking idiots. And finding your place in the world.

I’m probably making this sound deeper than it actually is; mostly it’s a comedy show with a wide variety of gross-out humour and a foul mouth. But despite its extremeness at times, it remains consistently entertaining, hilarious and, at times, horrifically uncomfortable.

If I didn’t know so many people who loved watching it, I’d say it was perfect viewing for an exclusive audience of teenage boys… or at least those who remember being teenage boys. But judging from my Twitter feed there are a wide variety of people who love the show and feel much like I do; they’ll make a specific effort to watch it and will happily quote it at every opportunity.

Channel 4, despite being the home of Big Brother for so long, has long been the home of awesome shows like this. Let’s hope there are many more like it in the future; and that audiences around the world get to enjoy them too. With the content as it is, I couldn’t say if it would ever make it onto American TV (tonight’s episode featured Simon punching himself in the dick whilst shouting “GET BIG, YOU CUNT!” for example) but for those of you across the pond who like the idea of “kids talking like kids” and doing things that kids do, be sure to check it out.

#oneaday, Day 241: The Gogglebox

Television is generally a good indication of what to expect from a country’s culture. Of course, it’s not the be-all and end-all of their cultural output. Thank God. But it does give some indication of the values of that country, the things they find entertaining and their general outlook on life.

Tonight I happened to catch a little bit of possibly the most uninspiring quiz show I’ve ever seen. It takes the very essence of England and Englishness—grey boringness; small talk about grey, boring things; reluctance to show any sort of enthusiasm whatsoever—and turns it into a spectacular example of how to get what is a pretty well-established format amazingly wrong.

The show is Eggheads. It appears to pit a team of clever people against a team of “Ha! They’re from the public! They must smell awful!” people. Presumably it’s intended to be some sort of triumphant David and Goliath situation, with, at some point, the team of great unwashed defeating the people with two brain cells to rub together.

There’s one very simple thing this programme gets wrong. Tension. Quiz shows are made by their tension. It can be created in many ways, and for many, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? is perhaps the best example, as it uses all of them. Music. Audience reactions. A host who milks the situation for all it’s worth. None of these are things that require lots of money and flashy effects to produce. They simply require a bit of personality. And, crucially, an audience.

Eggheads doesn’t have an audience. This means that even the most spectacular victory scored by the hoi-polloi is greeted by absolute, complete and utter stony silence. And this means the participants have no energy whatsoever. If they won, they’d probably just nod their head sagely and go “oh, thank you.”  It’s the televisual equivalent of when you find yourself sitting outside the headmaster’s office and all you can hear is the ticking of a grandfather clock. Assuming you went to the kind of school that had grandfather clocks in it.

Contrast this with even the most cheap and nasty of American game shows and you’ll see a very different side of things. You’ll see participants whooping, hollering, cheering, jumping around and generally acting like they’re happy to be there. Of course, you have to be in the right mood to find this entertaining, as overzealous enthusiasm can be just as grating as stark boringness if you’re in the wrong frame of mind. But it somehow seems rather more appropriate for the game show format than what I witnessed tonight.

As for Japanese game shows? They do stuff like this. Kind of like The Generation Game. But, you know, good.

#oneaday, Day 216: I Wish The X Was Ex

So I believe the new series of The X-Factor kicked off tonight. I’m saying this purely based on a few comments on Twitter that I happened to witness earlier on, and not by having watched it at all. The reason I don’t watch it? The X-Factor incites the kind of burning rage and despair at society that is matched only by how I feel during major football tournaments. It’s one of the main reasons I don’t watch TV at all. Not The X-Factor specifically. But shows like it. And by God there are a lot of them.

And they’re always the same. It’s all very well saying that it’s Just Entertainment, and that other forms of entertainment are just as guilty of the offences that The X-Factor commits.

But no. The X-Factor is pretty much identical every year, bar a couple of minor alterations to the format and the inevitable fake “controversy” over who is going to be a judge.

We start with the auditions. Everyone who watches the show uses the auditions section as the main reason to convince people who don’t watch the show to watch the show. “It’s funny!” they’ll say. “There are really shit people sometimes!”

If I want to watch shit people singing, I’ll go direct a school choir. I don’t need it on my television. And it’s not funny. It’s just embarrassing. Yes, these people did it to themselves by signing up for the show. But there’s no need for the “clever editing” (hah!) that goes into the show to focus on them quite so much. And what are we supposed to think? The show inevitably builds them up with one of its famous sob stories, then knocks them down flat when the judges decide to brand them “awful”. What are we, as viewers, supposed to take away from that? “Hah! Look! This person’s had an awful life! But they’re shit at singing and quite ugly, so let’s laugh at them and their misfortune! They’re going to die alone!”

Then, as I recall, there are “Boot Camp” sections, where the judges get to show us all how obnoxiously rich they are out as a result of the clone armies they’ve built over the years. This is ostensibly the “training” section, where the performers get to learn how to, well, perform better. Funny how we rarely see much in the way of training. Instead, we see when they fuck it up, because that’s Better Television.

After that we’re into the interminable, never-ending live shows. Every week, the remaining grinning idiots, who have had all semblance of personality sandblasted out of them by this point, come on stage, sing an incredibly twee and wet version of an existing song, listen to some “criticism” from the judges (which inevitably involves one or more of the key phrases “I liked it”, “I think you could be the next big thing”, “You’ve got the X-Factor”, “You… could win this show” or equivalents towards the negative end of the spectrum) which doesn’t actually offer any constructive advice at all, and then bugger off the stage either crying or going “YES!”

During the live shows, the black woman with the incredibly powerful voice will inevitably almost get to the final and then not quite make it. The “novelty act” which everyone thinks is Really Funny will be kept in for an inexplicably long time, despite being a one-joke act who don’t actually have any talent whatsoever. During the final, the performer who is the better singer will be kicked out in favour of the performer who is more generic and boring. And during the final, the “Winner’s Single” will be revealed to be a dirge-like ballad that makes everyone who listens to it want to kill themselves.

After the show has finished, the Winner’s Single will be released, it will sell like the proverbial hot cakes for a few weeks then disappear without trace for at least six months, after which time the winner will then release their “Stunning Debut Album!” by which time the whole world has forgotten who they are, at least it would have had they not been in the tabloids and on Sky News every five minutes every time they pick their bum or scratch their nose. As a result of this, the obsessive fans become like the people I talked about yesterday, and the people who don’t watch the show and have no time for manufactured pop nonsense are about ready to commit an act of terrorism.

So there you go. I’ve saved you having to watch it at all this year. The X-Factor can fuck off and burn in a fire.