Category Archives: TV and Film

The following two shows are popular: Glee and The X Factor. This would suggest that combining the two could potentially be huge if done by the right people. Thankfully it doesn’t really matter because the company that came up with this combination is none other than the broadcaster of such high class content as Live from Studio Five.

Enter Don’t Stop Believing, a show aiming to find the best show choir in Britain. Ignoring the obvious flaw that hardly anyone knew what a show choir was until Glee was shown on TV, it’s your bog-standard talent format but somehow made unbelievably worse.

The name of the series is an obvious reference to what inspired it, but that’s also is really the rainbow-painted elephant in the room because as well as the name; the colours, font, visual style and even songs being sung have all been chosen to make you think of The-Show-That-Must-Not-Be-Named whilst still being legally different.
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Jonathan Ross leaving the BBC might have caused a bit of stir in the world of talk shows, but leave it to the Americans to do everything bigger and better as over the last few weeks there’s been a huge fuss surrounding NBC’s The Tonight Show.

Over in the states, the late night talk shows are big business. The major networks show multiple shows a night every weekday with guests, comedy and music entertaining you from 11:30pm onwards. Shows such as The Tonight Show are considered television institutions, dating back to 1954. That’s the show that’s been the centre of controversy recently as a series of appallingly stupid decisions by moronic executives is seeing the show’s 3^rd host, Conan O’Brien, being shafted out of the show after only 7 months to allow for the return of prior presenter Jay Leno after his primetime show tanked and left affiliate stations angry. Great way to reward him for failure, I know.

The shambles led to a hilarious two weeks in the late-night TV world in America (accessible by all thanks to the Internet), as hosts of rival shows such as David Letterman and Jimmy Kimmel ripped in to Jay Leno and NBC for their decisions, with the latter of the two hosts presenting an entire episode in parody of Jay Leno mocking him and his actions. Watching Jimmy make pathetically simple and poor jokes in the style Jay does was amazing, but also baffling as you realised that was the actual quality of material that NBC are choosing to put back on the schedule. Jimmy Kimmel even made an appearance on Jay’s show, when asked what the best prank he ever pulled was, he said “I told a guy that—five years from now—I’m gonna give you my show. And then when the five years came, I gave it to him, and then I took it back almost instantly.”

Conan’s last week on the show also pushed him to creating some of his funniest content yet in the slot. Practically going rogue, he went all out attacking the network. When discussing a rumoured clause in a settlement agreement stopping him from saying anything bad about NBC, he chose to sing remarks in the most tuneful way of saying “incompetent morons”, mocked the projected $200 million dollar loss apparently being made on the Olympics, and tried to sell himself and the show on Craigslist. One of the show’s writers Deon Cole made regular appearances, trying to explaining the situation by saying that NBC was a pimp with several talkshow hosts as ho’s, justifying it by asking questions such as, “do you work at night?”, “is your job making people happy before they go to sleep?”, “do you ever get the feeling everybody wants a piece of you and no-one cares?”, “has Charlie Sheen ever been on your couch?” and “do you give a percentage of your earnings to someone who sponsors you, but they don’t do no work and tell you what to do?”.

One of the funniest segments in the final few shows were comedy sketches not based around humour, rather that they were “crazy expensive”, as until NBC yanked them off their air they could do whatever they like. So, new ‘comedy characters’ were introduced such as a Bugatti Veyron dressed as a mouse and a prizewinning racehorse wearing a mink snuggie in sketches valued at between 1 and 4 million dollars. The team didn’t really buy these, of course, and instead raised the cost through the use of music and clips that are extremely expensive. In the final show, Tom Hanks walked on stage to the tune of The Beatles’ Lovely Rita, a tune which reportedly costs half a million dollars to use. Subtle, and expensive.

The final show, aired on Friday 22^nd, was not just funny, but an extremely classy affair. Rather than continuing to rip in to the network that ruined his dream of hosting the show, he focused on the mantra “let’s have fun, on television”. In a funny show that reminded why he was actually the right person to host the show, there were great gags in the monologue, entertaining interviews and fantastic musical performances – everything that made the show great. He wanted to have a laugh, and for you to laugh along with him.

But right at the end, the tone changed completely. Instead of a final attack before the “nothing negative” clause kicks in, he chose a graceful and also meaningful approach to his final speech on the show. He gave sincere thanks to NBC for employing him for the last 20 years, and for allowing him to present the show he cares about, even if just for 7 months. He praised his crew, and the fans that had rallied at venues across the country to show support despite the weather throughout the week, saying: “I can never thank you enough for your kindness to me and I’ll think about it for the rest of my life.”

It might be TV and the showbiz industry, but it was a speech that truly felt like he meant it after decisions that took hard to make. He may have more millions now due to it than he may ever need (and I’m damn jealous of that much money), but at the end of it he seemed like someone who just wanted to make people happy, and was glad that he managed to. Even if he only got 7 months on the show.

“Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen. ”

30 women. 1 man. I’d say it was like a dream I had last night, but in reality it was considerably more disturbing and possibly not repeatable for legal reasons. However, a gender outbalance is the basis of ITV’s new dating show where a lineup of girls each get to pass judgement on a succession of single men to see if they can find the one for them.

The programme starts out with high aspirations. Within the first 20 seconds of the show, a quick cut selection of interviews sets out some of the standards the women will be judging by, such as “I’m looking for Mr Right to float my boat” and two twins simultaneously saying “our ideal man is a footballer”, which is a sadly accurate representation of the participants on the programme.

In the most predictable entrance music possible, the 30 women walk on set to the tune of “Single Ladies”, while their clothing looking like the result of an explosion in a Primark factory. Initial interviews with them seems to emphasise the importance of physical attributes over everything else (or in fact, as the only thing), and makes it even more clear that the group has the collective IQ of a bag of salt.

Each of the girls has a button on their lightbox podium to hit if they don’t like what they see from the man. If they’re interested, they just stand there looking… vacant. Nice and simple, though if it were any more complex half of them wouldn’t understand what to do.

Making an entrance on the “love lift”, each male makes their way to the centre of the set to stand facing the disturbing vision of juries of the future. The first round, “flirty for thirty”, sees the man give a small talk about him as the ladies will respond throughout if they’re turned on or turned off. A wonderfully tasteful task, demonstrating both how it’s wrong to make massive judgements on people in such a small period of time, and how not to make someone feel bad by showing to them through lights and sound people becoming disinterested in them. Oh, wait, no it encourages both of those things.

Again, for a show about judging men, it seems to work in reverse as when you see a considerable number of the lineup “turn off” to such outrageous things as “I’m looking for a girl who has traditional values”, “a high moral compass” and “one day I’m looking to have a family of my own and a couple of wee babies”. In fact, after such crazy demands from the women, only 6 out of 30 were left when the time ran out. When one of the blonde bimbos was asked what it was she didn’t like from his speech, she said that she “was not the housewife type”, clearly misinterpreting the family comment, and then went out on the attack thinking that he was saying that the man should go out to work while the woman stays at home and cooks. Ho ho, watching people being complete idiots is a right hoot, I’m so glad I can laugh along with the studio audience.

The show continues until 1 light is left at the end of the round and the lucky man gets a date with either the least bad of the lot or the most desperate, but if no lights are left on they get to escape on their own. Another man enters, and as the process repeats it becomes increasingly clear that if any of the participants were to say that they were deep, it would more likely to be in a conversation about previous penetrations.

It’s an awful show. However much I may be getting some cynical enjoyment out of ripping in to it and mainly the people involved, there’s a worrying, and increasing, number of people out there who will be watching, making vain and pathetic snap judgements about people in that way, probably sitting in their seat going “you go girlfriend!”

For a show meant as light entertainment, behind the laughs it does feel like it’s masking something quite cruel as reasons for turning off such as “was he eating a cheeseburger in that clip” are paraded right in front of them in the row of lights becoming more red by the second. Sure, you do have to turn people down on a dating show, but surely it should be nice, funny, friendly and amusing, a positive take on things representing the whole idea of dating and relationships behind it.

However, it’d would make my day to see a man walk on, take one look at the lineup and go “Uh, no” and exit stage left. I’d watch that.

Oh, I should say, so I’m not sexist, yes – some of the men are tossers too.

Adverts annoy me.

This is a problem because they are quite an important part of the world of media, funding everything outside of the BBC, and are my own source of income. However, it’s a well known truth that ads are the most effective way of being wound up, more than a crank powered torch being operated by a chronic masturbator.

A recent example of this is the advert for ITV’s new dating show ‘Take Me Out’ in rotation on Spotify, which sees a conversation between a man and 50-or-so women speaking at the same time as they gradually pass judgement on him eventually deciding that somebody who lives with their mother a turn-off of catastrophic proportions. It’s an advert that is so offensive to the ears it makes me want to find the person responsible for it, and then hire 100 annoying sounding women to walk in to their office and all speak inane rubbish in unison for 30 seconds every 20 minutes, leaving said advertiser to live in fear that whatever he’s listening to, soon will arrive a collection of voices that will make them want to die. Or maybe lock him in a room with the opera singer for the GoCompare adverts.

Factual inaccuracies are also a source of constant suffering. Not just the exaggerations about a product’s effectiveness, that’s expected, but with the trend for adverts to try and artistic spectacles has led to them demonstrating things that just aren’t possible, and sometimes that just can’t be forgiven. Santander is currently running an advert involving the building of a massive bridge using oversized Lego bricks. Fair enough, you might say, they are entitled to some artistic license. Well to that, first I say shut up, this is my article I didn’t ask for your opinion, and secondly, anyone who watched James May’s Toy Stories will know that there is absolutely no way they got planning permission to build the red bridge without any other structural support, and they had enough problem making a second floor that could be stood on, let alone something at least 5 times higher with an F1 car driving past it. Besides, the fact is it’s blindingly obvious it’s CGI, and it’s not beautiful enough so that the CGI isn’t something that detracts from it… you know it’s as fabricated as the content of the Daily Mail, and you’re left unimpressed.

Clearly, something needs to be done to solve this problem, particularly in the TV marketplace. Now, the commercial media industry basically works as “if people want to consume this, then it will be made”. Such logic means that sales and viewing figures often dictate the content they produce – however, adverts aren’t bound by this as much. If people don’t like an advert, we still get shown it… there’s little motivation for actually making good ones, whether they be funny, clever, or visually interesting such as the Bravia adverts with paint explosions and plasticine bunnies.

Thankfully, digital TV and interactivity does mean there is potential for hope on the horizon. What if, the red button on your remote, rather than load up additional content you’ll rarely ever use, acted as a KILL button. You know, as red is for no, bad things, etc. If you’re annoyed by an advert, you press red.

Here’s the clever bit. Rather than stop showing the advert, as that wouldn’t help the industry, clever computer systems tally up the amount of red button presses: and the more people who hate your advert, the cost of it is increased. People will watch more adverts rather than skipping them due to the element of power, and companies will be striving to make decent content so that they don’t have to pay five times as much to show some twats walking in a white void looking for car insurance.

This does leave TV companies with the slight worry that they’ll be making less money if every company produces high quality advertisements, but realistically not all of them will be, and you just need to have a baseline cost.

There’s always a worry that such a system could be abused: after all, this is the great British public who voted to keep John and Edward in the X-Factor, so we could expect people to keep the worst of the adverts on out of ironic amusement, but on the other side of the coin, it’s also the same great British public that got Rage Against the Machine to Christmas number 1.

People watch things as in some way; they’ll get some enjoyment out of that content. Adverts form a significant amount of the time you spend watching something, so there’s no reason they should be an exception. After all, if you’re going to make me watch 30 seconds of adverts before I can watch that short clip on your website, it better be amusing otherwise I’ll just not bother.

Breaking news: It’s snowing. It has been for a few days now. The country is currently so white, even the BNP would be happy.

This is something the news has chosen to drum in to us at every opportunity – and however entertaining it might be to laugh at people slip over as they try and get behind the presenters of Sky News, today it was highly amusing to watch Anglia Tonight try and fill time.

As well as a funding crisis, local news also happens to have a ‘content crisis’, particularly in Suffolk, where a dog visiting a hospital is noteworthy information. So earlier today, Anglia Tonight led with the snow as a top story – and it managed to show quite a few of the problems with TV news.

At the time, my mum was stuck in traffic around Ipswich, where she had just heard on Radio Suffolk that Ipswich was pretty much entirely closed off – and there were reports of a burst water main, or something, causing further problems. I can also tell you that there was an accident on the A12. Clearly, a county town being completely locked down is something of considerable note. Does it get covered?

It’s 6pm, and I’m watching ITV. On come those friendly, chummy faces who are telling us the groundbreaking information that schools have been closed. They have been for a few days now, but this is still something considerable enough to cover in depth with a package and a live interview for five minutes. The issue was as to whether schools should be shut, because the impact it could have on parents having to look after kids. The highlight of this was a headteacher, who did open his school, being interviewed by the presenters. Despite their best efforts to get him to say that all the closures were wrong, he “refused to comment on other schools”, and responsibly commented that it’s up to the school depending on the situation they are in.

In the studio, they ask him why don’t schools just open with skeleton staff, for those who can get in? Surely, it’s best for EVERY school to do this?

“Well, it depends on the school, and if they can get the teachers in.”

For the duration of this vague moment of sense delivered via satellite, the headteacher is standing outside his house, for no actual benefit whatsoever. I’m sure it was decided by the news team that this would make for a greater picture (it’s TV, pictures rule over content), but the only purpose it really serves is to demonstrate to me, the viewer, that it has snowed, and that snow happens to have settled.

I KNOW it’s been snowing, you’ve been going on about that for the last 5 minutes, and if I wanted to see something that as you say has been affecting us all, I could look out the bloody window!

He wasn’t the only person left out due to the cold. The woman, who the strapline stated was responsible for weather (the reporting of it, rather than the control of the climate in general), was inexplicably standing on a street, presumably just outside the Norwich studio, to tell us that yes, it has been snowing, and it will continue to. Again, I’m fairly sure that it has been snowing, and so her standing on a street does nothing to aid my understanding of this story. It might not look as good, but I’d rather her two-way piece was live from the newsroom, where I would at least assume that she is there because that’s where all the equipment and data that allows predictions about the weather to be made is! While standing on the street, the most accurate information she can give at this time is “well, it’s snowing now. It might do later. Or it might not. It’ll PROBABLY be cold.”

Sitting in the living room, I was in a better position to make judgements about what might happen… it just so happens that myself and my Dad were, using the trends of #uksnow tagged messages on Twitter to figure out where the snow had been and when to get rather accurate guesses as to where it would hit and when, ones that were more detailed and closer to reality than the Met Office!

Well, maybe there’ll be some more luck on the next item, the travel situation. Again, for some reason, the presenter did not appear to be at a place of much use to serving the information needs of an entire region, by being able to show us that this specific stretch of road was going alright. Maybe she’ll mention Ipswich being practically closed down?

“There’s a few problems on the A12 around Ipswich, with issues stretching back to Woodbridge.”

That’s it. No mention of the crash, the water pipe, or that traffic wasn’t moving for about 12 miles. Handy information there.

Oh, and to rub it in more, they then trailed in a ‘coming up’ montage that they’ll be showing us what animals are causing the footprints you’re seeing in the snow are. OH BOY!!!!!!!!

As well as being a demonstration of the quality we’ve come to expect from local news, it also was a good demonstration of the issues with TV news. For all the benefits you get of the visual medium for allowing as further understanding to the story as well as adding significant realism, the use of pictures seems to be more important than useful content, and it’s considerably slowe- oh, sorry, we’re going to go live now to our blogger, who is currently standing outside. Jonathan, what’s the situation out there, has there been snow..?

..yes, I can confirm, there has been snow here.

Thanks Jon. Now, before we go, the weather. It’s gonna snow. And the travel news… well, travel might be difficult. Because it’s been snowing.

Oh, and in case you didn’t catch that, there’s been snow.