TV
What a year it’s been.
The soaps have become sillier and sillier while any attempt at non-soapy drama has been abandoned by its network at the first sign of falling ratings. The public service ethos has finally been superseded by the pile it high sell it cheap mentality which has seen original productions consigned to the late night graveyard while repeats of Steve Penk’s Naughtiest Blunders are allowed to occupy and pollute prime time.
Now more than ever, shifting boxes of Persil is more important than cultural integrity.
The soaps have seen one iconic villain return from a watery grave while another returned from his. Sun Hill has seen a massive rise in the crime rate, mainly because the crimes are now being committed by it’s own officers, while it’s been de rigueur for every continuing drama to have its own serial killer.
Despite protestations of overkill, reality TV has expanded at an alarming rate, giving the lie to Andy Warhol’s statement that everyone would be famous for fifteen minutes. It now seems that everyone will be famous for six half hour episodes plus the obligatory interview with Lorraine Kelly or of they’re really unlucky, Ben Shepherd.
The world of magic attempted to make a comeback but was hampered by young bucks Blaine and Brown and their slightly off kilter expressions of what constitutes magic.
The news was dominated by the invasion of Iraq by a coalition of nations who do, without a shadow of doubt, possess weapons of mass destruction while the world of sport (the real one, not Trevor’s) was enhanced greatly by England’s victory in the World Cup.
The drama problem. While the BBC celebrated the return of the political thriller with Paul Abbott’s State of Play, ITV struggled manfully trying to find vehicles for Ross and Martin Kemp that viewers actually wished to climb aboard while consigning a host of dramas to late night slots if they failed to catch the public imagination by episode three. This is a risky strategy for ITV who should realise those eventual ratings bankers such as Minder and much more recently, Cold Feet wouldn’t have come to fruition if their lives had depended on initial ratings alone.
Drama bosses seemed shell-shocked to discover that putting a former EastEnder in a leading role was no guarantee of success, something BBC bosses should take note of as they look for something for Steve McFadden to do during his Albert Square sabbatical. Family, Single and Fortysomething, none of which were truly terrible, were snuffed out quickly and consigned to the witching hour, with only prime time showings on the backwater of ITV2 as solace. More concerning still must have been the failure of Sweet Medicine, to all intents and purposes a clone of ratings dead cert Peak Practice.
To combat the decline of old style drama series we’ve been completely swamped with soap and something had to give. The victims of soap overkill came thick and fast as we said farewell forever to Night and Day, Yvon Grace’s hideous pastiche of old favourite Crossroads and sadly but inevitably old warhorse Brookside.
Brookside’s departure was more of a mercy killing than an assassination. The show had long since lost its connection with its audience. A pity as this was the show that once showed all the other soaps how it should be done. Over the years, just like Jimmy Corkhill, it lost its grip on reality and serious issues were lost in a sea of sensationalism and regular explosive set pieces. Its move to the filmic look employed by stable mate Hollyoaks was the final barrier to turn to me off. I returned for its death throes and the final episode, involving the lynching of Britain’s least convincing drug dealer by the rest of the male cast was sad in the extreme. Jimmy Corkhill’s final diatribe to the camera on the state of the nation and its television showed just why Brookie finally failed. Once with its finger firmly on the pulse it merely lost touch with the public that helped to make it successful in the first place.
Coronation Street has being moving away from being a cosy family drama for years but the despatching of Maxine during family viewing time finally put paid to its reputation for being a show you could watch with your kids. The cut from Maxine being bludgeoned in the head to a piece of bloody meat in the Rovers may work well in a Tarantinoesque movie but is not the sort of thing you want your kids to be watching before you tuck them up in bed. How nice of ITV to care about our sensibilities like that.
Other Corrie “high spots??? included Tracey Barlow’s cringeworthy seduction of the hapless Roy and her stepbrother Peter’s two weddings and a caution storyline. Indeed the script writers seem to have it in for Trace, what with her being knocked up by Sleazy Steve and having had a fling with her grandmother’s boyfriend. All very salubrious, I don’t think.
We also saw violent scenes as Mick the two-dimensional copper laid into the spiritual wasteland that is Les Battersby. This must be one of the few occasions in British TV history when the public cheered a bent and violent police officer on.
As if the moral tone couldn’t get any lower we were forced to witness the toe curlingly awful “relationship??? between Katy “Lolita??? Harris and the only nurse in Weatherfield, Martin Platt. Quite what a seventeen girl sees in a bloke who looks like he only gets excited at the prospect of an angling trip is quite beyond me. Katy’s dad’s Neanderthal behaviour is being attributed to this liaison but to me I just think he’s miffed at the terminal decline of Sheffield Wednesday and his wife’s inability to sound the letter “T???.
What’s on Martin’s mind is open to question. Perhaps it’s just a reaction to discovering that the true love of his life, Naughty Nurse Rebecca, has popped in an Albert Square as none other than PC Kate.
PC Kate is the highly believable character that turned up in a honey trap plot to prove that Phil was a murderer. This failed as it turned out that Phil hadn’t offed his ex, the terminally whinny Lisa, at all. Shame that, he could have done us all a favour. However Kate turned her back on the scuffers when she fell head over heels for the knuckle dragging one on discovering that he hadn’t murdered his former paramour but merely psychologically terrorised her to the point where she actually gave up her only child. Who couldn’t fall for such charms? Running a nail bar in an area where all the women tend to be manual workers must be preferable to a career in the Met. Phil being Phil reacted to this show of love and loyalty by going off and getting himself banged up for armed robbery. Oh well, the path of true love never did run smoothly.
The return of perennial panto villain Dirty Den Watts with a hugely predictable “ello Princess??? was a highlight of the year and proved what most of us suspected fourteen years ago, that daffodils aren’t lethal after all. Den’s return was the signal for yet more smouldering from the murderous and often shirtless toxic Dennis, presumably the product of a union between Den and a jackal. It also gave the unsinkable Sharon another excuse to trot around haughtily like a cockney Miss Piggy. As for Vicky, what’s going on there? Is there a weekly competition in the Radio Times to guess what accent she’ll be sporting this week? I’ve not heard such inconsistent mangling of vowels since Meryl Streep tried to be Danish in Out of Africa. Priceless stuff.
The ray of sunshine that had been Shane Ritchie as cheeky Alfie Moon soon became as downcast and depressing as the rest of the cast, having made the mistake of getting involved with grubby Slater girls. In an episode of mind numbing unbelievability Super Shane managed to stop the wedding of Walford’s most famous good time had by all and still survive with his legs intact, despite the fact she was supposed to be getting hitched to local crime lord Eddie Santini out of The Bill.
We also waved goodbye to Mark Fowler who was so traumatised by spending more than a decade selling dodgy veg that he fled to Sun Hill where discovered that his real mum wasn’t Miss Brahms from Are You Being Served at all but Sun Hill fixture June Ackland. On making this discovery he promptly slept with her. Yet more family viewing from ITV1, bless ‘em.
In fact it’s hard to find a copper in Sun Hill who is not bent these days. Polly’s banged up for murder; Phil got mixed up with all sorts of villains including that nasty Marcus Tandy out of Eldorado; the DCI got involved with a high-class hooker, well I say high class, she was a reject from the defunct Night and Day. Even squeaky clean Inspector Gold had her drink driving covered up by Smithy, the guy that earned promotion on the back of shooting Bob Cryer. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Des “Barry Grant??? Taviner went on the run although it’s unclear whether this was because he feared discovery over the fact he’d torched six of his fellow officers or merely shame over the fact that he’d got a Nolan Sister up the duff. Serious crimes all and that’s without mentioning Lisa Maxwell’s acting.
As the year came to an end the latest custodian of law and order to go a mad killing spree was Cathy Bradford. The only decent copper seemed to be Mickey and for the heinous crime of being law abiding, he was raped. Have ITV heard of the watershed?
While the fictional world became more and more detached from the real one, the real one was constantly thrust at us. Wife Swap had a triumphant second outing and Boss Swap is now in the offing. The success of The Salon means that you can now tune into E4 during the day for live coverage of people, er… having their hair done. Riveting stuff. The sight of ex Bucks Fizz warbler Cheryl Baker having colonic irrigation must rate as an all time cultural low.
Not a good year for Cheryl as ITV fought back at the demise of Blind Date by getting Mark Durden-Smith to throw celebrities out of an aeroplane in the cause of entertainment. This escapade broke Cheryl’s ankle and several reputations.
Durden-Smith has formed a partnership with the indestructible Tara Palmer-Tomkinson on various ITV2 offerings, which all tend to bear the hallmark of not being worth watching, usually featuring inept interviews with half-cut celebs or pointless “xtra??? footage of ITV1 shows. Fortunately they weren’t allowed to sully Pop Idol Extra, which was watchable due to the underrated talents of Kate Thornton.
Pop Idol itself seemed to struggle for a lack of talented performers, coupled with bizarre voting for what can only be tome deaf viewers. Michelle is no match for Will, Gareth or Darius. Sam Nixon proved to be a discovery though.
Big Brother looked to be running out of steam with a batch of dullard contestants, the dullest of which, Jon “the Toaster??? Tickle became the star of the summer. Yes, things were that desperate, although I’m a Celeb 2 provided some much needed entertainment but spawned an unfortunate side effect. It’s now getting extremely difficult to view a commercial break without coming across the annoying cheerful Linda Barker. Ho–hum.
In Sport, the Beeb won the rights to put Match of the Day back (thank goodness), while ITV contrived to botch the Rugby World Cup coverage, relegating one of England’s games to ITV2 so that GMTV could show mindless cartoons and no, I’m not talking about Fiona and Eamonn when I say that. The rugby’s appearance on ITV deprived sports fans of the excellent interactivity offered by Sky and the BBC. They’ve got a lot of catching up to do at ITV post merger.
TV’s magic moments were hardly a spectacle either. Derren Brown played Russian Roulette liveish on Channel 4 but this was devoid of tension because it was blatantly obvious that that it was a stunt and not even Channel 4 would let someone risk blowing their head off live on air. As for David Blaine living in a box, what was the point? Was he really in there? Does anyone actually care?
So then, a year when former cultural oasis Channel 4 became less and less distinguishable from Sky One, a year in which ITV became increasingly twitchy and ratings sensitive at the expense of on screen quality and five continued to buck this trend but upping its range and image. For true custodianship of the standard of British television, it seems we must rely on the BBC. Let’s hope Mr. Dyke and chums don’t let us down.
Of course there’s always Sky to fall back on. With quality like Is Harry on the Boat? I don’t know what I’m worried about!
The soaps have become sillier and sillier while any attempt at non-soapy drama has been abandoned by its network at the first sign of falling ratings. The public service ethos has finally been superseded by the pile it high sell it cheap mentality which has seen original productions consigned to the late night graveyard while repeats of Steve Penk’s Naughtiest Blunders are allowed to occupy and pollute prime time.
Now more than ever, shifting boxes of Persil is more important than cultural integrity.
The soaps have seen one iconic villain return from a watery grave while another returned from his. Sun Hill has seen a massive rise in the crime rate, mainly because the crimes are now being committed by it’s own officers, while it’s been de rigueur for every continuing drama to have its own serial killer.
Despite protestations of overkill, reality TV has expanded at an alarming rate, giving the lie to Andy Warhol’s statement that everyone would be famous for fifteen minutes. It now seems that everyone will be famous for six half hour episodes plus the obligatory interview with Lorraine Kelly or of they’re really unlucky, Ben Shepherd.
The world of magic attempted to make a comeback but was hampered by young bucks Blaine and Brown and their slightly off kilter expressions of what constitutes magic.
The news was dominated by the invasion of Iraq by a coalition of nations who do, without a shadow of doubt, possess weapons of mass destruction while the world of sport (the real one, not Trevor’s) was enhanced greatly by England’s victory in the World Cup.
The drama problem. While the BBC celebrated the return of the political thriller with Paul Abbott’s State of Play, ITV struggled manfully trying to find vehicles for Ross and Martin Kemp that viewers actually wished to climb aboard while consigning a host of dramas to late night slots if they failed to catch the public imagination by episode three. This is a risky strategy for ITV who should realise those eventual ratings bankers such as Minder and much more recently, Cold Feet wouldn’t have come to fruition if their lives had depended on initial ratings alone.
Drama bosses seemed shell-shocked to discover that putting a former EastEnder in a leading role was no guarantee of success, something BBC bosses should take note of as they look for something for Steve McFadden to do during his Albert Square sabbatical. Family, Single and Fortysomething, none of which were truly terrible, were snuffed out quickly and consigned to the witching hour, with only prime time showings on the backwater of ITV2 as solace. More concerning still must have been the failure of Sweet Medicine, to all intents and purposes a clone of ratings dead cert Peak Practice.
To combat the decline of old style drama series we’ve been completely swamped with soap and something had to give. The victims of soap overkill came thick and fast as we said farewell forever to Night and Day, Yvon Grace’s hideous pastiche of old favourite Crossroads and sadly but inevitably old warhorse Brookside.
Brookside’s departure was more of a mercy killing than an assassination. The show had long since lost its connection with its audience. A pity as this was the show that once showed all the other soaps how it should be done. Over the years, just like Jimmy Corkhill, it lost its grip on reality and serious issues were lost in a sea of sensationalism and regular explosive set pieces. Its move to the filmic look employed by stable mate Hollyoaks was the final barrier to turn to me off. I returned for its death throes and the final episode, involving the lynching of Britain’s least convincing drug dealer by the rest of the male cast was sad in the extreme. Jimmy Corkhill’s final diatribe to the camera on the state of the nation and its television showed just why Brookie finally failed. Once with its finger firmly on the pulse it merely lost touch with the public that helped to make it successful in the first place.
Coronation Street has being moving away from being a cosy family drama for years but the despatching of Maxine during family viewing time finally put paid to its reputation for being a show you could watch with your kids. The cut from Maxine being bludgeoned in the head to a piece of bloody meat in the Rovers may work well in a Tarantinoesque movie but is not the sort of thing you want your kids to be watching before you tuck them up in bed. How nice of ITV to care about our sensibilities like that.
Other Corrie “high spots??? included Tracey Barlow’s cringeworthy seduction of the hapless Roy and her stepbrother Peter’s two weddings and a caution storyline. Indeed the script writers seem to have it in for Trace, what with her being knocked up by Sleazy Steve and having had a fling with her grandmother’s boyfriend. All very salubrious, I don’t think.
We also saw violent scenes as Mick the two-dimensional copper laid into the spiritual wasteland that is Les Battersby. This must be one of the few occasions in British TV history when the public cheered a bent and violent police officer on.
As if the moral tone couldn’t get any lower we were forced to witness the toe curlingly awful “relationship??? between Katy “Lolita??? Harris and the only nurse in Weatherfield, Martin Platt. Quite what a seventeen girl sees in a bloke who looks like he only gets excited at the prospect of an angling trip is quite beyond me. Katy’s dad’s Neanderthal behaviour is being attributed to this liaison but to me I just think he’s miffed at the terminal decline of Sheffield Wednesday and his wife’s inability to sound the letter “T???.
What’s on Martin’s mind is open to question. Perhaps it’s just a reaction to discovering that the true love of his life, Naughty Nurse Rebecca, has popped in an Albert Square as none other than PC Kate.
PC Kate is the highly believable character that turned up in a honey trap plot to prove that Phil was a murderer. This failed as it turned out that Phil hadn’t offed his ex, the terminally whinny Lisa, at all. Shame that, he could have done us all a favour. However Kate turned her back on the scuffers when she fell head over heels for the knuckle dragging one on discovering that he hadn’t murdered his former paramour but merely psychologically terrorised her to the point where she actually gave up her only child. Who couldn’t fall for such charms? Running a nail bar in an area where all the women tend to be manual workers must be preferable to a career in the Met. Phil being Phil reacted to this show of love and loyalty by going off and getting himself banged up for armed robbery. Oh well, the path of true love never did run smoothly.
The return of perennial panto villain Dirty Den Watts with a hugely predictable “ello Princess??? was a highlight of the year and proved what most of us suspected fourteen years ago, that daffodils aren’t lethal after all. Den’s return was the signal for yet more smouldering from the murderous and often shirtless toxic Dennis, presumably the product of a union between Den and a jackal. It also gave the unsinkable Sharon another excuse to trot around haughtily like a cockney Miss Piggy. As for Vicky, what’s going on there? Is there a weekly competition in the Radio Times to guess what accent she’ll be sporting this week? I’ve not heard such inconsistent mangling of vowels since Meryl Streep tried to be Danish in Out of Africa. Priceless stuff.
The ray of sunshine that had been Shane Ritchie as cheeky Alfie Moon soon became as downcast and depressing as the rest of the cast, having made the mistake of getting involved with grubby Slater girls. In an episode of mind numbing unbelievability Super Shane managed to stop the wedding of Walford’s most famous good time had by all and still survive with his legs intact, despite the fact she was supposed to be getting hitched to local crime lord Eddie Santini out of The Bill.
We also waved goodbye to Mark Fowler who was so traumatised by spending more than a decade selling dodgy veg that he fled to Sun Hill where discovered that his real mum wasn’t Miss Brahms from Are You Being Served at all but Sun Hill fixture June Ackland. On making this discovery he promptly slept with her. Yet more family viewing from ITV1, bless ‘em.
In fact it’s hard to find a copper in Sun Hill who is not bent these days. Polly’s banged up for murder; Phil got mixed up with all sorts of villains including that nasty Marcus Tandy out of Eldorado; the DCI got involved with a high-class hooker, well I say high class, she was a reject from the defunct Night and Day. Even squeaky clean Inspector Gold had her drink driving covered up by Smithy, the guy that earned promotion on the back of shooting Bob Cryer. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Des “Barry Grant??? Taviner went on the run although it’s unclear whether this was because he feared discovery over the fact he’d torched six of his fellow officers or merely shame over the fact that he’d got a Nolan Sister up the duff. Serious crimes all and that’s without mentioning Lisa Maxwell’s acting.
As the year came to an end the latest custodian of law and order to go a mad killing spree was Cathy Bradford. The only decent copper seemed to be Mickey and for the heinous crime of being law abiding, he was raped. Have ITV heard of the watershed?
While the fictional world became more and more detached from the real one, the real one was constantly thrust at us. Wife Swap had a triumphant second outing and Boss Swap is now in the offing. The success of The Salon means that you can now tune into E4 during the day for live coverage of people, er… having their hair done. Riveting stuff. The sight of ex Bucks Fizz warbler Cheryl Baker having colonic irrigation must rate as an all time cultural low.
Not a good year for Cheryl as ITV fought back at the demise of Blind Date by getting Mark Durden-Smith to throw celebrities out of an aeroplane in the cause of entertainment. This escapade broke Cheryl’s ankle and several reputations.
Durden-Smith has formed a partnership with the indestructible Tara Palmer-Tomkinson on various ITV2 offerings, which all tend to bear the hallmark of not being worth watching, usually featuring inept interviews with half-cut celebs or pointless “xtra??? footage of ITV1 shows. Fortunately they weren’t allowed to sully Pop Idol Extra, which was watchable due to the underrated talents of Kate Thornton.
Pop Idol itself seemed to struggle for a lack of talented performers, coupled with bizarre voting for what can only be tome deaf viewers. Michelle is no match for Will, Gareth or Darius. Sam Nixon proved to be a discovery though.
Big Brother looked to be running out of steam with a batch of dullard contestants, the dullest of which, Jon “the Toaster??? Tickle became the star of the summer. Yes, things were that desperate, although I’m a Celeb 2 provided some much needed entertainment but spawned an unfortunate side effect. It’s now getting extremely difficult to view a commercial break without coming across the annoying cheerful Linda Barker. Ho–hum.
In Sport, the Beeb won the rights to put Match of the Day back (thank goodness), while ITV contrived to botch the Rugby World Cup coverage, relegating one of England’s games to ITV2 so that GMTV could show mindless cartoons and no, I’m not talking about Fiona and Eamonn when I say that. The rugby’s appearance on ITV deprived sports fans of the excellent interactivity offered by Sky and the BBC. They’ve got a lot of catching up to do at ITV post merger.
TV’s magic moments were hardly a spectacle either. Derren Brown played Russian Roulette liveish on Channel 4 but this was devoid of tension because it was blatantly obvious that that it was a stunt and not even Channel 4 would let someone risk blowing their head off live on air. As for David Blaine living in a box, what was the point? Was he really in there? Does anyone actually care?
So then, a year when former cultural oasis Channel 4 became less and less distinguishable from Sky One, a year in which ITV became increasingly twitchy and ratings sensitive at the expense of on screen quality and five continued to buck this trend but upping its range and image. For true custodianship of the standard of British television, it seems we must rely on the BBC. Let’s hope Mr. Dyke and chums don’t let us down.
Of course there’s always Sky to fall back on. With quality like Is Harry on the Boat? I don’t know what I’m worried about!
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