Bland but funny, this is like Will and Grace in that occasionally it can be pretty funny, but too much of the time slums it and only raises the odd occasional chuckle. At least it’s never frustrating and extremely annoying like that show, but it very rarely even tries to do anything that original. So fine. But not essential by any means.
My Hero (8.30pm, Fridays, BBC1)
Sigh. When we emailed the BBC earlier this year to complain that My Hero was still being made, they replied “I am sorry to read that you feel this programme is of poor quality and not of the standard you have come to expect from the BBC over the years. Inevitably comedy is a subjective matter and different viewers will have varied tastes and interests.” But who?! Who are the insane people / ‘different viewers’ who find this programme funny? And not irritating, obvious and horribly tacky? Do by ‘different’ the BBC mean ‘mentally retarded’? We can only assume so.
Dead Ringers (9pm, Mondays, BBC2)
It’s a bit of an oddity for a BBC show, but Dead Ringers can actually be quite funny from time to time. Alas quality control isn’t a skill the writers of this show have learnt though, as at other times it’s painfully tiresome and ridiculously familiar material. But well, I’m in a positive mood today, and just for the ‘Dr Who goes Speed Dating’ and Newsnight sections alone, it’s worthy of seeing, and hopefully more will be made.
Smallville (5pm-ish, Sundays, C4)
Ah, Smallville, possibly one of the most annoying television shows of all time, and this is all due to the shocking disparity in quality from episode to episode. Sometimes it could be great, Buffy-esque in it’s self awareness, but at other times it could be tiresomely sub-x-files, with the villain of the weak trivially threatening to destroy Clark / Smallville / The world before good old all American Clarky would knock him out in one punch (though only after anyone present who could give away his identity was knocked unconscious or removed from the scene). As so many recent shows have proved, fans crave huge story arcs and developing characters, not the same old nonsense week in week out, and though occasionally events would move along, this was all too rare. The first season promised much, but hasn’t delivered, and if Season 3 isn’t a considerable improvement, Smallville soon won’t be worth watching at all. (AF).
Comments?
Leigh Francis, the man behind it all, hasn't really come a long way since the days of him doing 2 minute shorts for the Paramount Comedy Channel (most of which involved Leigh in his pants wearing a cardboard cut out of a celebrity's face and normally eating baked beans), as Bo Selecta is basically the same idea, but with a larger budget and some semi decent writers behind him, but when it works, it could be damn enjoyable. Alas when it doesn't (the all too tired Michael Jackass segments especially) it
Unfortunately Leigh's not afraid of doing a joke to death (Craig David pissing himself, Mel B attempting to be scary, The bear getting an erection week in week out, Sara Cox dribbling everywhere when she talks, Davina McCall swearing constantly), and at times it felt a little lazy. But when it works, and you’re in a ridiculously drunken state, it can be hysterical, if bizarre and sometimes surprisingly dark stuff. Jonathon Ross obscenely telling Stephen the squirrel to go away, Craig David catching a tribute act which turns out to be the real Craig David, were perhaps the best moments, but there were many laugh out loud jokes included too which made it worthy of watching.
Bo Selecta just needs to develop a little, take the established ideas currently used a step further, become really twisted and odd, and then Mr Francis might just have something really special on his hands.
Comments?
40Something (11.10pm, Saturday, ITV)
Christ the viewing figures for this must have been awful for ITV to take it from it's Sunday at 9pm slot and put it in a post pub slot on Saturday night. The fact that they replaced it with repeats of the god awful Midsummer’s Murders only compounds this.
The strange thing is that it's actually not that bad. Sure, it's hardly groundbreaking stuff, but all rather pleasant light farce that never, or, well, rarely, gets too annoying, and it's certainly a lot better than other shows (Bob and Rose, William and Mary) that have been in the same or a similar timeslot. It may not feel particularly real, but it was flimsily enjoyable, something which very few ITV shows can claim to be.
Hugh Laurie will always play the same role it seems, that of the intelligent but ever so slightly neurotic middle aged bloke, but he does it so well it seems churlish to complain. His Dr Slippery was warm, appealing and somehow manages not to annoy despite the increasingly odd antics he gets in to. Peter Capaldi's was equally as fantastic as the slimier than Michael Portillo and increasingly deranged Dr Pilfrey, and Anna Chancellor was reliably good as per usual as well as Slippery’s wife.
So okay, the plotlines are slightly on the daft side and it didn’t feel real at all, but there was enough quality on display here both acting and scriptwise for this to have been given a better chance at securing decent ratings than ITV gave it, and a second season is sadly out of the question now.
Comments?
Big Brother (9pm / 10pm, Nightly, Channel 4)
Well I’m not going to waste too much of your time with this, because, well, everyone knows where it all went wrong this year. But well, I feel like ranting, because they managed to screw up a show which so many used to love.
So first up, and the most obvious problem of all, was the thirteen housemates they chose to go in. And who, bar Federico, Jon, Lisa and occasionally Ray, were the dullest of the dull, seemingly wanting to go in to the Big Brother house not to entertain the nation, but to have a ten week holiday at our expense. Surely out of the thousands and thousands who applied, the producers could have picked better people than this? Well, I hope so anyway.
Once again the general public were too blame for some of the dullness though, with the usual voting out of anyone interesting really early on, and the keeping in of those who they could masturbate over but who didn’t say one interesting thing during the whole series. But this, as with all interactive shows, will always happen alas.
Where else did they go wrong? Well, the decision to position the cameras and eye-level was an appalling one, making the housemates all too aware that they were on tv all the time, hence so many times certain housemates didn’t say or do something because of this. Big Brother worked best in the first series where the housemates were convinced that certain footage would never be shown, and which of course was always the highlight of the episode. Now three years on everyone’s too self-aware, and whilst self-censorship was always going to take place on a certain level, it’s just be taken to far now.
Finally, the various tasks were largely dull (why they can’t take a leaf out of other BB’s across the world and steal some of there far more interesting tasks is beyond me), most of the stunts (bar the reward room and Cameron’s trip to Africa) failed miserably, and the decision to vote out two people at once was a horrendous one, and effectively marked the end of anything interesting happening in the house whatsoever.
Next year they’ll hopefully try and find some open and interesting people (with actual real life opinions) and make a show where we really get to find out who these people are. But that will only happen if the producer’s do there jobs carefully. I just hope that they do.
Comments?
Buffy (8pm, Thursdays, Sky One)
So it’s all over. The fat ladies sung, but boy, was the tune disappointing. So does anyone really care that Buffy’s ended? Before Season Seven I would have said I would have, but the last twenty two episodes were too hit and miss, too unpredictable quality wise, that I’d say it’s just in time really. Now regular garbled readers will know that Buffy’s been a guilty pleasure of mine for a while now, ever since season three really, but it has just about run out of steam by the end – it suffered from a problem which is inevitable to most shows in that the lead characters aren’t going to meet a grisly end, and well, if they do, they’re sure to be brought back from the dead somehow next season.
Buffy suffered from another US tv problem, that of the ‘too many writer’s syndrome’ – so whilst some episodes could be fantastic, gripping and damn sexy, but well, others could be tragically tedious. If only Joss Whedon had written every episode then I wouldn’t have cause for complaint, but alas with twenty two episodes to make per year that’s not really possible – it’s just a shame that certain writers were so appalling, and some had clearly not seen every episode of Buffy, hence repetitive plotlines and samey dialogue in too many episodes.
One of the show’s biggest problems though was that after Season 4 it looked like they didn’t really know where to go – Buffy saved the world on a weekly basis, and no one really looked like stopping her. But the decision to go all serious was a horrific one. Whilst Whedon managed to pull off the death of Buffy’s mum sensitively, the introduction of the whiney, agitating and often quite plain stupid kid sister Dawn was a horrible mistake, and whilst it may have been Glory who killed Buffy at the end of that season, it was Dawn who killed off the show for me. Self obsessed, hideously unfunny even when trying to be, and so irritating that many a time I found myself just millimetres away from kicking in the tv screen, she was an utterly pointless addition to the shows cast, as her increasingly reduced role in Seasons six and seven proved, as her character had nothing to do in these final two series apart from whinge on and on about how hardly anyone ever paid her any attention. But can you blame them? In the odd episode she was bearable, but these episodes were where she had a minor part to play. The Slayerettes were a terrible idea too – it was like having about twenty Dawn’s suddenly inserted in to the series, and if you hate the character as much as I do, well, then you’ll know how painful that was to see.
Too much of the series finale was pointless as well, Spike’s death meant nothing as he’s back in Angel next year, Anya’s demise was unneeded and lacked any dramatic impact, and though the final moments were nice enough, they lacked a real sense of closure. Perhaps this is so that viewers keep watching Angel (which they should as it’s usually better) in the hope of seeing former Buffy characters appear, but well, ultimately this really isn’t a good enough reason for such a limp finale.
I don’t want to be too negative, as at times Buffy truly could be something quite quite special, and that’s why I find myself getting so frustrated with it. The episodes Whedon wrote and directed (especially Once More With Feeling which I gushed over endlessly here) could be smart, funny and never predictable, they freshened up the fantasy genre with wit and humour, and occasionally genuine scares too, and sometimes the dialogue and self awareness of what the show was made it something truly extraordinary, and it was this that made it far superior to similar shows like Charmed or Smallville.
For a prime time fantasy show, the acting was surprisingly good too – Sarah Michelle Gellar was occasionally a little one note, but Nicolas Brendon, Anthony Stewart Head, James Marsters and Allyson Hannigan really developed over the years, and it’s just a shame that they didn’t have more screen time over the last two seasons instead of Dawn or even Buffy herself. Hopefully they’ll turn up in Angel, and make a show of a quality which Buffy really should have been, but all too rarely was.
Alex Finch.
Comments?
Want more tv comment? Then click below for reviews from:
April - May 2003
February 2003 - March 2003
December 2002 - January 2003
October - November 2002
August - September 2002
June - July 2002
April - May 2002
March 2002
February 2002
January 2002
December 2001
November 2001
October 2001
September 2001
August 2001
June - July 2001
January - May 2001
July - December 2000
January - June 2000
July - December 1999
