August 20, 2006
TV WORK NEWS
FUCKING YES! I GOT ANOTHER JOB! (& CHARLIE BROOKER’S SCREENWIPE)
I got a message from my agent the other day informing me that a new sketch I auditioned for the other day has been commissioned! This is only the second time a show I auditioned for completely cold (ie. with no personal connection to anyone involved) has not only got the green light, but asked to use me as well. The first was The Last Chancers (which I talk briefly about on the introduction pages of this site.)
The show has the provisional title of Rush Hour and is going to be a 6 part sketch series for BBC3, themed more or less entirely around people travelling in…yup, the rush hour. We start production in October and it should be on early next year. I’ll keep you posted unless it turns out to be awful in which case I’ll just go mysteriously quiet on the subject. For now I’m incredibly excited and happy to have got another paying gig that I can actually contribute creatively to.
Rush Hour is being made by Zeppotron Productions who have made some shows I didn’t enjoy that much and a few that I thought were great. They make Charlie Brooker’s Screen Wipe which for my money is one of the funniest shows on TV right now though in this review of one of the three pilot programmes from earlier this year Rob Buckley thinks otherwise. Those first three shows were certainly not as good as the current series but even so most of Rob’s points are I believe, utter bollocks. At this stage I should declare my interest and say that Charlie is someone I know vaguely and like. I also provided a brief Ken Korda commentary segment for programme 4 in the current series of Screen Wipe. Hang on, I’ve just noticed that this clip of that very Ken Korda segment was loaded onto YouTube by er, Rob Buckley. That’s weird. Presumably it’s the same guy though, don’t you reckon? Maybe he’s come round to the show, or maybe he hates it and put the clip as an example of how dreadful it is? Surely not. Anyway all that notwithstanding, I would like to take pedantic, over-sensitive , internet style issue with a few small points towards the end of Rob Buckley’s review (which does actually have some positive things to say about Charlie too)…
He says ‘a bizarre interlude featuring Robert Popper of Look Around You adds another five-minute element to the mix: Z-list celebrity TV nostalgia, one of the things, ironically, that Brooker critiques endlessly in his Screen Burn column’ and that ‘it’s hard to see exactly what the point of the segment is, other than to add another element to the mix and to give Brooker five minutes off from the tiring job of presenting.’
Rob appears to be narked by what he considers Robert Popper’s ‘Z-list’ celebrity status. Apart from the fact that the whole A-list, D-list, Z-list obsession is so fucking tired and meaningless nowadays (and that’s not just because I’m a fellow Z-lister), that’s not why Robert was on the show. As I understand it, the segment (which was the same guest slot I contributed to) is not just about nostalgia . It’s simply an opportunity for someone other than Charlie to talk in an informed and hopefully entertaining way about a TV show they have strong feelings for. Robert Popper is a slightly demented collector of weird old TV shows. It’s hardly the same as getting Kate Thornton to bollock on about perfume ads for I Love The 70’s.
Why is it hard to see the point of this ‘bizarre interlude’? It’s a show with a variety of different segments and ideas of which this is one. Rob seems irritated by the notion that you would mix lots of different elements into one show, but I’ve never understood that attitude. Screen Wipe is a show about all aspects of TV so if it’s an interesting segment about a piece of TV then it fits the brief doesn’t it? What’s the problem with variety? It’s nice to add another voice to the mix isn’t it?
He goes on: ‘ ‘Popper spends his allotted span enthusing on the awfulness of Gyles Brandreth’s 1980s talent/game show Star Quality. While this is indeed as bad as Popper recalls, the segment suffers from all the same flaws as other list shows: Popper obviously remembers the show, but can’t recall all the details after nearly 20 years, so a team of researchers have clearly stuck him in front of a single episode to refresh his memory. This, of course means almost all his comments end up hinging on that one particular edition.’
Robert Popper was not ’stuck in front of a single episode to refresh his memory’. He has every edition of Star Quality on tape having had access to various TV libraries in the course of his working life. Robert P is obsessed with the fucking show. He has parties in order to unveil episodes to the unitiated. He can recite long sections like some Rocky Horror munchkin. He has formulated complex philosophical theories about the implications of the Star Quality set design. His memory needs no refreshing.
‘His comments hinge on one particular edition’ because I imagine it was decided that was a more convenient way to present Robert’s observations which would otherwise turn into a six week seminar.
I don’t suppose anyone apart from maybe Robert Popper and Charlie would care much about all that and Rob Buckley doesn’t seem to be a particularly bad TV critic but it’s so exasperating when a show with as much real passion and enthusiasm as Screen Wipe gets dismissed as muddled and hypocritical when so many TV shows celebrated by critics or embraced by the public are such a cynical pile of old shit. Charlie Brooker may be a cynic for entertainment purposes but that cynicism does not stretch to the way he makes his show. Not everything works in Screen Wipe (his debt to Victor Lewis Smith is sometimes too obvious) but the many good bits are as enjoyable as anything I can think of on TV right now.
Maybe I’ll change my tune when Charlie savages Rush Hour six months from now…