1773: Panel Beater

It was fashionable a while back to hate on that staple of British TV, the comedy panel show. I’m not entirely sure what there was to complain about — aside from the sheer number of this type of show on our screens, of course — but I never quite fell in line with what appeared to be popular (well, Twitter) opinion.

Why? Well, because I really enjoy panel shows. They’re simple, enjoyable, lightweight, eminently disposable entertainment that are perfect for vegging in front of the TV, watching over dinner or falling asleep in front of. They don’t place any particular demands on the audience, though if they’re a topical show they can be one means of viewing the week’s happenings, albeit through a comedically skewed lens.

And some of them have been running for a very long time indeed, which is impressive in itself. Have I Got News For You is, I believe, one of the most long-running examples, but I was surprised to discover the other day that music quiz Never Mind the Buzzcocks has been running for double-digit years, too.

These shows have remained fairly true to their original format over the years, though Never Mind the Buzzcocks has degenerated into chaos in an extremely enjoyable manner as the years have passed, with the latest series fronted by Rhod Gilbert being more like a bunch of slightly drunk mates sitting around pissing about than an organised game show.

The format has given us some true greats of television in more recent years, too. Few could deny that the show now most readily associated with the plummy tones of Stephen Fry — Q.I., of course — is an absolute classic of entertaining, educational television that masterfully combines cheeky humour with genuinely interesting facts about the world we live in and the people we share it with.

I’ve even pondered experimenting with the format myself in the form of a video games podcast in the panel show style. I still think it has a ton of unexplored potential in non-mainstream TV spaces, and think it would be an interesting thing to do at some point. It would also require a ton of preparation, however, so I’m not sure how practical it would be to do on a regular basis. Something to ponder, though!

1542: Terebi Desu

Our new TV arrived today at some ungodly hour in the morning — which felt all the more ungodly for the fact that excellent Vita dungeon crawler Demon Gaze had kept me enraptured until 3am — and I’ve been having a bit of a play with it. (For the curious, it’s a Samsung Series 6 55-inch LED TV; it has a catchy three thousand-digit model number but I have no idea what it is.)

When Andie suggested we grab a new TV, I was a little concerned that it might not be a significant upgrade over what we already had — a 40-inch Samsung, albeit one that is now about four or five years old. After all, despite the fact that my previous TV was an end-of-line model when I bought it — making it much cheaper — it was pretty good. Three HDMI ports, built-in Freeview tuner, full 1080p support — it had pretty much everything I needed, though it would have been nice to have an optical output port. Everything I connected to it worked just fine, though, ranging from the PlayStation 2 through the SCART port (yummy, blurry standard-def picture) to the various games consoles and PC through the HDMI ports.

With the previous TV working just fine, why buy a new one, you might ask? Well, having spent this evening playing some Final Fantasy XIV on it and having watched some anime and TV on it earlier… yes, it was a good investment. The increase in size is extremely noticeable — it’s big enough to have a touch of “peripheral vision” now, giving a much more immersive feel to both video and games — and the LED screen is lovely, bright and clear. I have no idea if I’ve optimized its settings appropriately — I’ve put the PC input into Game mode, because prior to that there was noticeable input lag, but haven’t really fiddled with much else — but it certainly seems to look very nice, although as Andie pointed out, the bigger the screen you get, the more of a dog’s dinner standard-definition footage and TV broadcasts look. Oh well.

It’s a Smart TV, too, which means it has two remotes, one of which has a trackpad rather than, you know, just being normal, plus “apps” for doing shit old, dumb TVs don’t do. There’s stuff like BBC iPlayer and Netflix built into it, for example, and even apps for things like Spotify and the like. (There are also games to download, but somehow I don’t see them being particularly worthwhile, and as such I will be giving them a wide berth.) I’m not entirely convinced how much I will use the “smart” features over time, but it’s nice to have them there, I guess — not to mention the fact it is seemingly now impossible to buy a new TV that isn’t 1) “smart” and 2) 3D.

The 3D thing surprises me somewhat, I must confess. I thought 3D TV and gaming had been a colossal failure, and yet all the televisions we looked at over the weekend were 3D in one form or another. The TV we ended up getting is “active 3D”, which is supposedly better because you have to turn the glasses on before they work properly (and for some other reasons, too) and sure, it’s quite fun — we watched a couple of trailers in 3D earlier and it was quite cool — but it’s not something I can see myself using a lot of, and certainly not for protracted periods of time. It will almost certainly be something to show off to people who come and visit, but little else.

Anyway, I’m very pleased with it. It fits nicely on our TV stand and doesn’t look too big or too small, and it’s a noticeable upgrade over what we had before — plus the almost bezel-free design, with the picture going right the way to the edges of the front of the unit, looks absolutely smashing.

I’m sure I’ll be taking it for granted before long — and I’m not looking forward to moving it when our new house is sorted — but yes; I’m glad we got it. And now I’m off to bed because I’ve been staring at it all evening and I think my eyes could probably do with a rest!

#oneaday Day 702: You Should Really Watch Community

Following relentless enthusing from the renowned raconteur and man-about-town Campfire Burning, I decided to spend part of the Christmas Amazon voucher from my brother on the Season 1 DVD of Community.

I knew nothing about the show going in, not even the premise. I’m pleased to report that it is, by far, one of the best pieces of television I’ve ever seen. Granted, I am but ten or so episodes into the run, but if it continues to be of this high quality throughout, then I will be very happy indeed.

For those unfamiliar with the show, it’s set at a community college where a series of “dropouts” from all walks of life have showed up in an attempt to better themselves and get their life back on track. Throughout the course of the show, we learn bits and pieces about these colourful characters’ backgrounds — what brought them to Greendale Community College, what it was that happened in their past life to make them hit “rock bottom” and how they put a positive outlook on their respective positions.

It’s strong character-based comedy-drama, with an emphasis on the “character” and “comedy” side of things. Every single member of the cast is a strong character in their own right, each with their own quirks, foibles and immediately identifiable idiosyncrasies. This even extends to the fact that each one is immediately visually identifiable, too, with their own unique “looks” allowing you to learn more about them even when they’re not speaking.

But it’s their interactions with one another where the show shines. There are a number of clashing personalities in the little group, and the way they learn to deal with each other is what the show is all about. Sometimes they get it very, very wrong, with hilarious consequences. And sometimes they get it right, leading to some very touching moments.

By the time the first episode is over, you’re fully invested in these characters and their futures. They may all have their own flaws, but this makes them both believable and likeable. Not one of them is “perfect”, and while each one of them has their own obvious “signature” quirk written into their role, they remain believable enough to be characters that you’d want to spend time with, to find out more about.

Take our leading man Jeff Winger: ex-lawyer, smooth talker and a man used to getting what he wants. Jeff’s character could very easily have tipped over into “obnoxious” territory, but his character displays sufficient depth to make us root for him in spite of the moments when he acts like a complete asshole. His interactions with the group he finds himself attached to lead him to learn a number of things about himself — and in turn, the other members of the group figure out things about themselves, too.

I shan’t give specifics as part of the joy of the show is discovering what makes these people tick, and seeing what they’ll get up to next. Also, at slightly less than halfway through the season, I can’t say what will happen next. But suffice to say, what I have seen so far has been exemplary television — entertaining, funny, touching and never outstaying its welcome. I recommend it without hesitation to anyone who wants to see something a bit different from the usual American sitcom. (I will also say that the post-episode skits over the credits are some of the funniest things I’ve ever seen, too.)

So what are you waiting for, hmm? GET!

#oneaday Day 536: IdiotBox

TV is rubbish. TV is so rubbish that I generally avoid the act of watching it whenever possible, usually preferring to catch the few things I do actually think are worth watching via video on demand services or purchasing a DVD.

It’s difficult to pin down exactly what the most rubbish thing about TV is, though. Is it the asinine programming, in which the nation still doesn’t seem to have noticed that The X-Factor, Britain’s Got Talent, Over the Rainbow, Shitbag Maria and literally (okay, maybe not literally) tens of thousands of other shows are all actually exactly the same thing? Yes.

Is it the stations’ inability to record more than one promo reel for an upcoming show and then bombard you with the same 15 clips every 5 minutes until the show actually starts and you find yourself actively wanting to avoid it? Yes.

Is it the fact that the BBC1 announcer sounds like he’s extremely uncomfortable when announcing programmed? Yes.

Is it the fact that Dave, despite having about 15 years worth of Top Gear repeats to draw on, insists on playing the same episode at least twice in one day, so that you can watch half of it at lunchtime and randomly turn on the TV around dinnertime to find yourself picking up exactly where you left off? Yes.

Or is it the fact that advertisers treat you like idiots? “We’re real lawyers,” say InjuryLawyers4U (pro-tip: if you have to make your main selling point the fact that your law firm employs “real lawyers”, you’re not exactly filling me with confidence). “I got the money I needed with QuickQuidDotCoDotYouKay,” says a woman with an unconvincing mouth and all the sincerity of a jam sponge. “Special K is only for women with body image issues!” implies a cereal advert. “Only women may shop in Boots!” suggests Boots, having now used the same piece of music for so long that even fans of the Sugababes want to throw things at the TV every time the ads come on. “All men are bellends who only care about sticking their cock in things and drinking, possibly at the same time!” imply 95% of adverts. “If you smell nice, slutty women will fall at your feet and get their baps out!” screams the Lynx advert, thereby condemning the entire country to continually smelling like a gypsy’s jockstrap. YES.

So in short, TV is shite and the few genuinely good things that do get made either get buried in the schedules and forgotten (Firefly) or repeated so often you can watch them with the sound off and do the dialogue yourself without any difficulty (Friends).

Thank God for whoever decided that video on demand might actually be a good idea. Because although you still occasionally get shitty adverts, you can easily avoid all the crap with the added bonus that you don’t have to fit your schedule around an inanimate object — it fits its schedule around you. And that’s the way it should stay.

At least until the machine uprising, of course.

#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.