BNP Wives

(Sky Three Documentary)



NEILL says:

While flipping channels last night I had one of those curious 'did I see that right'? moments, flying through the long Freeview hinterland between where BBC4 ends and E4 begins. I went back a couple of stops and realised that, yes, I had seen that right. Sky Three were indeed showing a programme titled 'BNP Wives'. Incidentally, the last time I was so arrested by an intriguing title was Sky Three again, with 'Darts Players Wives'. This seems to indicate both a certain theme to that channel's output and a weird equivalence in the station controllers' minds between Darts Players and Far-Right Nationalism.

I only managed to catch the last 10 minutes of the show, which would not ordinarily be considered sufficient grounds for review, but based solely on what was contained in those minutes I think it's fair to say this may have been one of the most fascinating films ever to appear on British Television. As I tuned in events were already in full swing, with a series of scenes filmed at some bizarre BNP countryside fair. Fat-necked skin-headed men sat around in folding deckchairs, their demented tattoos of Germanic knights on proud display, watching some wholesome BNP-approved entertainment. This seemed to consist of a teenage boy singing Sinatra and a dumpy middle-aged woman reading hilariously, spectacularly bad poetry about her adulterous husband. Apparently her work was too awful even for the fat-necked tattoomen as they all left, and she finished her reading to an empty stage. The whole scene was utterly surreal, like watching a Village Fete run by Vogons.

It turned out that the betrayed fascist poetess was one of the Wives of the programme's title, three women involved in the BNP in various ways who were followed around for some time by the documentary-makers and given every possible opportunity to show themselves to be amongst the worst and stupidest human beings ever to drag down the grade curve of this green and pleasant land.

During one segment, the poet woman - who I think was in fact a BNP councillor - tried to evade questioning on the admittedly subtle and complicated question of whether Britain should in fact have gone to war against FUCKING HITLER. "To be honest, I've never really thought about it", she said, before starting a sentence that began "I don't agree with everything Hitler stood for, but..."

I don't think we really need to finish that thought, do we? Has any sentence worth hearing ever started out "I don't agree with everything Hitler stood for, but..."? I tried to write a few, just for the purposes of Comedy and honestly, it's almost impossible.

• "I don't agree with everything Hitler stood for, but... it's raining"?
• "I don't agree with everything Hitler stood for, but... I quite want a sandwich"?
• "I don't agree with everything Hitler stood for, but... I'm a MASSIVE IDIOT NAZI WHO WRITES TERRIBLE POEMS"?

So just to reiterate, this is a person who is actively engaged in politics - specifically the politics of race and nationalism - indeed, who seems to have made those politics central to her whole life. And who claims to have 'never really thought about' such issues as Nazism, Hitler or Whether He Was Bad. This is either genuine, in which case it is possibly the most shocking and jaw-dropping stupidity ever expressed by a human being, or it is an attempt at being disingenuous so pathetically ill-advised as to actually be even more stupid.

Watching this programme was, of course, depressing in its way. But mostly it was just astonishing. To see these people going about their days, living in their seedy and depressing bubbles of hatred and idiocy, and thinking through it all that they are the normal ones. I honestly think these people fail to understand an important simple fact, so I'm going to state it here as clearly as I possibly can.

We - and I'm going to speak here for the overwhelming majority of people in this country who are, you know, NOT NAZIS - despise your ideas. We despise them. It's not that we are afraid of them, or that we don't understand them, or are 'not ready to hear them'. We understand them fully, we understand their roots and their implications, and we despise and utterly reject them anyway. The reason we understand all this is because a) we are so very, very much cleverer than you, and b) unlike you, we have actually thought about this.

The overwhelming ignorance that these people kept falling back on when pressed on any significant point was actually, in the end, oddly hopeful. It seemed to confirm something I dare to dream in my more optimistic moments: that most of what we call evil - this kind of low-grade goose-stepping flag-waving/flag-burning variety of evil, anyway - is just ignorance, at its core. And whilst 'evil' can seem mysterious and unstoppable, ignorance can be defeated relatively easily; by, oh I don't know, reading a book once in your entire fucking life. For example.

BNP Wives - the documentary, last 10 minutes thereof: 7/10
BNP Wives - the actual human beings portrayed therein: 0.4/10

Lost

(TV Series)



JAMES says:

It was so close. I almost didn’t start watching Lost at all. How nearly identical things might have been. The thought of a glossy drama about a bunch of whiny Americans trapped on an island didn’t strike me as my thing. However, having recently finished Robinson Crusoe, and also just returned from being stranded in the Pacific for a number of months following an ill-thought out mutiny attempt, I was in a desert island kind of place mentally, so thought I’d give it a try. However, as a backup plan I also played Scrabble with the wife, so if it was crap I hadn’t wasted the evening.

Jack, heroic

Luckily it takes very little of my mental power to beat Debbie, so I was able to follow the initially formulaic and lacklustre plot. That was until the polar bear appeared. A momentous polar bear, it marked the moment when American TV decided to embrace its slightly insane side. Or at least, when one show did, and then was quite successful and slavishly copied by everyone else.

As well as the increasingly intricate and ludicrous mysteries the show also had an innovative structure whereby interspersed with all the running around the jungle you get a little flashback story about one of the characters and the crazy things they got up to back when they had different hairstyles. This meant that you got a good mix of ongoing developing stories, and self contained little vignettes, something you don’t see so much these days.

And all was well and good and Boon died and that was even better. However, when it came to the second series the makers took the controversial decision to make it just really dull. The running around the jungle that was innovative and ground breaking in the first series now looked tired. Every other episode seemed to focus on Dr Jack, an actor with a face so dull it couldn’t really be said to have even one expression. When the momentum seemed to dip either they’d find another hatch or Sawyer would take his top off again and look angry.

Jack, scared

When this dampish Smallville of a season reached its end the shock news came through that free telly people would no longer be showing it, and it seemed like a natural time to give up on the whole thing. I believe a number of people went through a similar testing of the faith, but most of them failed like the disappointing idiots that they are. However, I was able to start viewing the third series in the format that fits it best, badly recorded video tapes. The first three episodes probably contained more excitement than a whole season of Britain from the Air.

The third series on DVD, along with the American Office series 3, got us through the hard first few months of parenthood, whilst the fourth series got us through the slightly less hard but no less lethargic recent couple of weeks. And whilst one of the most fun parts of it, discussing it with co-workers the next morning, has been Lost, at least I have the comfort of knowing I have seen series 4 whilst Neill hasn’t.

Jack, perplexed by the baffling metaphysical inconsistencies of his universe

Admittedly the whole thing is little more than ‘what’s in the box?’, ‘oh, it was a monkey in a hat, that’s slightly disappointing. But look, here’s another box. What could be in this?’ etc. Etc. But as Scooby Doo knows, mysteries are cool and distracting and help you fill up the wasted hours being working and sleeping. And that’s what Lost does. And if strange magical islands don’t rock your world there is an incredible assortment of humorously bad accents to laugh at, many of them inexplicably done by people who hail from the very area that the accent belongs to.

8.9/10

---

Buy Lost - The Complete Fourth Season [2008] on DVD from Amazon now! Then you too can lord it over Neill in an irritating fashion!

---

Get caught up:

Andromeda s1, ep 7: "The Ties That Blind"

(TV show)



NEILL says:

As part of our current week of space-themed reviews, I thought it would be an interesting exercise to watch and review a random episode of the science fiction TV series Andromeda. I have never seen Andromeda nor indeed do I have any idea what it is about. All I know is that it is a science fiction TV series starring Kevin "that guy who was in that thing that was like Xena but with a dude" Sorbo.¹ I thought it would be fun to review something with absolutely no background or familiarity, to judge it solely on its effectiveness as a dramatic presentation, free of any pre-existing bias or preconception.

Here is the episode summary, which I read before proceeding:

Andromeda s1, ep7
"The Ties That Blind"

Beka is unexpectedly reunited with her con-artist brother when a Wayist courier ship asks Andromeda for help after being attacked. Rafe Valentine claims to be a devout Wayist, making the Andromeda a prime target for Restorian attack, but does the conman have a hidden agenda?

Here were my observations upon reading the above.

• Oh God.
• "The Ties That Blind"? Really?
  
• One of the characters is called "Rafe Valentine".
  
• Seriously, maybe this wasn't such a good idea.
• "Wayist"? "Restorian"? Suggests some kind of appallingly cackhanded religious allegory.
• There's going to be lots and lots of talking, isn't there?

I even went so far as to jot down my predictions for what exactly would happen in the story, based on this description. These read:

Act 1) Brother introduced, seems charming. Kevin Sorbo is suspicious of him.
Act 2) Kevin Sorbo learns that Brother is a wrong 'un. Tries to tell 'Beka' (love interest?) - but she gets angry with him and tells him to GO TO HELL
Act 3) Faced with some incontrovertible proof of Brother's wrong-'un-ness, 'Beka' is given opportunity to turn him in / blow him up / similar (DRAMATIC CLIMAX), but lets him go. Promise of redemption for Brother? Ends on bittersweet rapprochement between 'Beka' and Kevin Sorbo.

Now, I'd like to be all smug and sit here and tell you that this cynical and sneering caricature of a plot was, in fact, exactly what did happen in the episode, but I can't honestly say that it did. What I can honestly say is that it would have been much better if it had.

As it turned out, events went like this:

Act 1) Brother introduced, seems charming. 'Beka' is suspicious of him. Kevin Sorbo smiles faintly smugly at everyone. Several of the worst actors ever to be paid money to act talk about religion extensively and excruciatingly.
Act 2) Neill turns off television, literally unable to bear it any longer.

That's right. Reader, I gave up. I made it through approximately 22 minutes before I abandoned my sacred reviewer's duties, thought to myself "seriously, I'm not getting paid for this" and threw in the towel. I think that we've established on this blog that I have a pretty high tolerance for crap, so believe me when I say that this was something special. Suffice to say it displayed every cliche of bad science fiction, which would have been forgivable were it not for the fact that those cliches were literally all it was. I'm not even going to talk about it any more, as it would only depress me and annoy you. Let's all go and have a nice cup of tea and try and forget it ever happened. Does that sound nice? A nice cup of tea?

1/10

¹ I'm just kidding. I know exactly who he is, he's Kevin "Hercules" Sorbo.

---

Buy Andromeda - Season 1 on Amazon now!

...no, hang on, DON'T.

Space Pirates

(Children’s TV Show)



JAMES says:

Space, a hackneyed setting for children’s television. These are the voyages of the starship Gusto, it’s 22 episode mission to present a selection of music interspersed with general comedy “business” as a means of distracting children and possibly, hopefully, providing parents with a few precious fleeting moments of peace. In what must be the least prolific pirate radio station in space, three songs are played each week, a video, a live performance and an interpretation by the puppet-rat Jingles. Proceedings are managed by the fortuitously christened Captain DJ (played by Marcus Brigstoke, despite what Debbie and the end credits say), assisted by a crew including a robot parrot microphone and a sentient fungi living on the hull of the ship who provides travel and weather.

Despite the stratospherically high concept of a pirate radio station run by actual pirates in space, it maintains interest through that rarity in children’s TV, actually quite funny comedy. This is provided by the captain, a slightly pathetic specimen beaten down by his overbearing mother and his failed dreams of becoming a Blues musician. He’s a bit like Harold Steptoe. In space. With an oversized comedy moustache. Also the music is incredibly catchy, and I often find myself humming the theme to the Zorst Report to myself in my idle moments.

It’s not all good news. For pirates there’s little in the way of drunken debauchery (I think there was a bottle of cough syrup in one episode), and it’s always slightly embarrassing when an actual live human who made the effort to come into the studio is beaten in the best song contest by a bunch of muppets singing ‘Sexual Healing’ or an old Spice Girls video. Worst by far, however, is the usual Achilles Heel of children’s TV, children. In this case it is a couple of urchins called Honk and Tonk who mooch around the place overacting and generally irritating me.

And yet, for all this, Space Pirates has become something of a beacon of hope to me. As someone who is not afraid to use CBeebies as a momentary distraction on the unstoppable parasitic momentum of a one-year-old it stands as a shining example of quality amidst the black ocean of poorly animated blobs with cynically youthful trappings and jovially grating Scotsmen that threaten to corrode my very soul.

8/10

Vernon Kay and June Sarpong

(Television Presenters)



NEILL says:

I have never been beaten up and then peed on by a gang of PCP-crazed Albanian sadists wearing David Hasselhoff masks, so I can't technically guarantee that it is the only thing more degrading and unpleasant than watching ‘T4’ as presented by Vernon Kay and June Sarpong; two people so colossally mentally subnormal that one can only imagine they are somehow the inbred bastard offspring of each other.

But I would hazard a guess.

1/10

The Theory of Everything

(Scientific Television Programme)



JAMES says:

I like to think of myself as a man with quite a broad base of knowledge, but before watching this program I didn’t know really much at all about string theory. And now I do, a bit. So, job done. It was actually a very well put together program, despite being annoyingly American. It made things clear though it did rely very heavily on visual analogies to make things clear. It ended up being very flashy, which is quite an achievement seeing as how neither sub-atomic forces nor physicists are the most visually exciting things in the world. But, it didn’t go too quickly and you really did start to understand stuff. However, the offshoot of this understanding is now I have a whole new heap of things to be paranoid and afraid of. For instance, the entire universe might instantaneously cease to exist due to membranes bumping into each other. And how did the first scientists know when firing atoms at each other at high speeds that they weren’t going to explode the Earth? These scientists, crazy guys. Anyway, after sitting through all of this and feeling quite pleased with myself for understanding it, they then turn around and tell you that it’s all unproven and could turn out to be completely wrong. Couldn’t have just told you this at the start, I ask you. Also, there was a distinct lack of giving things a mark out of 10, which I know I appreciate.

7/10

Xander off Buffy

(Fictional Character)



NEILL says:

"The aim of art", said Camus, "the aim of a life can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot, under any circumstances, be to reduce or suppress that freedom, even temporarily. No great work has ever been based on hatred and contempt. On the contrary, there is not a single true work of art that has not in the end added to the inner freedom of each person who has known and loved it." Albert Camus died in 1960, so it seems contingently unlikely that he was familiar with popular US TV import 'Buffy The Vampire Slayer', which any way you look at it is a tremendous shame. Buffy, taken as a work, espouses an ethic of personal responsibility, moral freedom and fraternal loyalty that is thoroughly commendable and not a million miles away from the ideas which drive Camus' own The Plague. What's more, there are kung-fu vampires. At the heart of Buffy (the show) is the character of Xander Harris. In a chaotic sea of supernatural evil, demonic warfare and lesbian empowerment, he is a point of viewer identification par excellence; the everyman's everyman. We laugh as he makes obscure Jimmy Olsen jokes. We sympathise as he gets beaten up by every monster-of-the-week for seven straight years. And, crucially, we cheer as he notches up intimate relations with (to name but a few, to date) Alyson Hannigan, Emma Caulfield and Eliza Dukshu; this is a show that understands audience wish-fulfilment alarmingly well.

Surrounded by his more colourful and dramatically interesting castmates, the hapless, geeky Xander rarely gets a chance to truly shine. He hangs out with witches, warriors and werewolves, yet his own powers stretch only so far as the well-timed sarcastic quip (to wit: "mix in a little rectal surgery and its my best day ever", "just because you're better than us doesn`t mean you can be all superior", and the classic "I laugh in the face of danger, then I hide till it goes away"). However, when get he does get a show to himself, it's a goody and then some. The one time Buffy has run with a wholly and unreservedly Xander-centric episode, Season 3's formally experimental zombiefest 'The Zeppo', is renowned amongst true connoisseurs of the arts the world over as, well, pretty much the Best Thing Ever. Seriously - it's a total cultural barometer. Try applying this simple rule yourself, on meeting a new person: do they dig 'The Zeppo'? If yes: this is a person it is worth getting to know better. If not... well, I leave it to your judgement.

The downside to viewer identification this strong is that it cuts both ways, and later seasons of Buffy became increasingly uncomfortable to watch due to Nicholas Brendon's ever-puffier jowels and intangible but accumulating air of 'angry bitter failure'. One has to feel some slight concern for the actor's future, as well - once upon a time he was a fresh-faced young man with a nice line in teen-Chandler-Bing schtick, and was even hotly tipped for the role of Peter Parker in the then-proposed cinematic version of Spider-Man. That was a long time ago. But, hey, screw it. I wish him nothing but the best. Xander, we salute you. Through you we have had seven years of absorbing good-hearted escapist entertainment, which I dare say has probably added something to the inner freedom of at least some of those who have known and loved it.

7.7/10

JAMES Says:

I dig 'the Zeppo'! Although I always identified more strongly with Buffy.

7.3/10

Comparitive Review: The Flintstones VS The Jetsons

(Hanna-Barbara Cartoon Families)

JAMES says:

The Flintstones


Apparently, the stone age was just like a 1950s American Sitcom. Who would’ve thought it? The Flintstones contains so many factual inaccuracies it would take a whole review to list them. So I will. For a start, no matter what Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell might tell you, at no point in history did man and dinosaur coexist. In the era of the dinosaurs the only mammals were little furry mice. Even considering some kind of Lost World style enclave which survived extinction, the dinosaurs portrayed in The Flintstones (those that had any basis in reality) would not coexist. They’d eat each other, then Fred Flintstone. Plus, all the inhabitants of Bedrock are Caucasian, but it is implicit that the series is set in America, judging by the climate and fauna. Yet there were no Caucasians in America, save a few Vikings, until 1496. Even the indigenous population were fairly late arrivals archeologically speaking. And to hypothesise that, not only was there a society of white people and dinosaurs living together in harmony, but that this society had progressed to the stage of developing currency, buildings, even rudimentary transport, for goodness sake, it just stretches the imagination a little too much. The Flintstones makes Braveheart seem historically accurate.

7/10

The Jetsons



Now this is more like it. A worthy extrapolation of what the future will be like, and in the 21st century it’s uncanny just how much they’ve got right. Sure we don’t have robot maids or flying cars yet, but video phones, computers and short bad tempered bosses are all common place. But, the genius of the show is how it used the future as a mirror to satirise the society of the time. Kids unintelligible dances and fashions become even more unintelligible and alien. The increasing mechanisation of the workplace is represented by George’s job consisting of pressing one single button. By looking at the future the show forced Americans to look at themselves. But it was satire with a heart, and that heart was George and his family. They all loved each other, even the hired robot help, and it was reassuring that love and family would still be around, even though they looked in danger of collapsing at the time. The future’s bright, the future’s The Jetsons.

6/10

Jack Klugman

(Actor)



NEILL says:

Jack Klugman, a.k.a. Quincey, M.E. is something of a hero of mine, I must confess. I admire him of course for his forensic skills, solving outlandish murders each and every week with nothing more to go on than the evidence provided by the victim’s dead body. Which would be tricky enough without the added challenge provided by the fact that, due to the archaic and repressive regulations governing family TV in the 1970s, the cadaver in question never actually appeared on screen. Now that’s quite a trick. There’s also his admirable sense of personal style and his impressive ability to SHOUT! Mostly, though, I just admire him for his sheer goddamned manliness. Whenever he shares a scene with Garry Wahlberg’s Lt. Monaghan the screen lights up with an easy masculine banter reminiscent of an older, fatter and awesomely uglier Robert Redford and Paul Newman. He was a man’s man, so confident in his manly manliness that he wasn’t afraid to show that, god damn it, he cared. A kindly old uncle for the troubled modern world, Quincey’s passionate sense of moral outrage exercised itself on issues-of-the–week from Killer Pot to Killer Punk Rock to Killer Premarital Sex.

Sinster social agenda? What sinister social agenda?

8.6/10

Lenny

(Guy)



JAMES says:

The heart and soul of the Simpsons. Lenny may not be as brash and showy of some of the other cast members, such as the Sea Captain or Krusty the Klown, but to my mind, he’s the best. He makes every scene he’s in with his understated wit. No real catchphrase (‘Awww… Nuts’ is about as close as he gets), Lenny goes beyond such simple notions to a deeper world of humour. While he is often used as the fall guy in gags, you can’t help but love him for the dignity he carries it off with. In many ways I think he is dragged down by being too closely identified with his Heterosexual Life Partner, Karl. In my years of Simpsons I’ve never come across a Lenny centred episode which, in the words of Barry White, is a Damn Shame. Still, that’s Lenny’s charm. He’s happy to stay in the sidelines, letting others take the lime light. He’s a real class act.

7.4/10

24

Series II
(TV Show)



JAMES says:

The equally longest day of Jack Bauer’s life. Although, at 24 hours, it’s about as long as most people who aren’t crossing international date lines days. Jack’s back, and this time he’s grittier. He even has a beard to start with. The ante’s been upped as well, with the looming threat this time a NUCLEAR BOMB IN LOS ANGELES!!!! It actually was very disturbing watching the scenes of the cabinet discussing just how everyone would die and how if this happened, especially when you grew up with a mother who would tell you about how many nuclear bombs have gone missing in the break-up of the Soviet Union and how powerful all those terrorist organisations are. However, the start wasn’t too promising. Some blonde chick is getting married, and her blonde sister didn’t like it, and blonde Kim is looking after a small blonde girl for her blonde mother. It was all getting a bit Hollyoaks. Thankfully, Jack came in to start sawing peoples heads off, and everything was OK. Well, not really, the magic had gone a bit. What was new and innovative last time round was starting to get a bit dull by the end of the first series, and I was nowhere near as gripped this time. Sure, I watched most episodes, but it didn’t really matter if I missed one. My interest waned further after the killed off Darleen from Roseanne, unforgivably, then built up a bit towards the explosion of the bomb, surprisingly timed to go off exactly on the hour.

But, then what? You’ve exploded a nuclear bomb, what do you do next? You get a bit boring, that’s what. After finding evidence that ‘Three Middle Eastern Countries’ were behind the bomb (no need to name them, you know the ones) it settled into Jack trying to disprove the evidence while Senator Palmer sat around looking thoughtful. And it was all a conspiracy, obviously. What was good, though, was that Jim Robinson got to be President, which I think is a vindication of his tough but fair parental style. Meanwhile, Jack descended into action star self parody. One memorable line ‘It’s nothing, I was just clinically dead for a bit a few hours ago.’ Which wasn’t helped by him starting to look a bit pudgy and red in the face.

It all followed the similar line, or leitmotif, of someone trying to do their job, while their superiors, and indeed inferiors, didn’t trust them. And lots of people getting shot. It got a bit absurd, though, when they wouldn’t give any slack to the man who actually saved LA from a nuke. What’s a guy have to do to get some support? And don’t get me started on the Perils of Kim. Not content with getting chased by a Lion, she met, by my count, at least 5 different psychopaths in one day. You have to wonder if maybe she has some kind of effect on people. And, all the time, whinging a lot and having nothing to do with the main plot. If she wasn’t so goshdarn cute, I’d say get rid of her entirely.

So, an absurd but mildly entertaining show that I’ve wasted about 18 hours of my life on.

4.8/10

---

Buy on Amazon: 24: Complete Season 2

Dawson's Creek

(TV Series)



Or, The End of an Affair

JAMES says:

It’s a sad fact of TV programs, and one that is exploited by evil execs, that if you find characters who you engage in a TV series, there is a disproportionate amount of crap you will go through following them. How else to explain TV series continually being made after all originality and quality has gone? We liked these characters, we’ll sit through barge loads of crap like later series of the X-Files or Hollyoaks during it’s low periods (not that I do, but people must, I would imagine). So, it is with great relief that I find myself physically unable to watch Dawson’s Creek these days without shooting the TV, Elvis style.

I should’ve got out a long time ago, I know, but they caught me when I was young. When ‘the Creek’ started, it was a charming little teen drama. You couldn’t take it too seriously, but it was good soapy fun. And, y’know, in a way I was just like Dawson. I experienced painful break-ups, I was more sophisticated than all the stupid jocks. I had a wise-cracking best friend, who I never really saw as he was busy with his own storylines but we usually talked about our problems about once a week. My forehead wasn’t quite so big, granted, but I had my identification character right there. And hot chicks fancied him! So, the first series of Dawsons, all very good. Especially on a Sunday when you had a hangover.



But, like Buffy, they had to shake it up by adding new characters. It wasn’t so bad to start with, a wisecracking girl for Pacey, and a sensitive bloke for sensitive Joey. But every year they’d be a new intake of partners for the mains, and mostly they’d be gone by the next year. It all served to dilute the essential Dawson/Pacey/Joey/Jenness of it. Plus, they started messing with the characters. Pacey became the sensitive troubled teen lead, which kind of left Dawson with nothing to do but sit around and think about how much he loved movies. Which is a bit unfair, as it was his creek after all. Plus, the whole Dawson/Joey love affair, established as basically the centre of the entire series, was certainly too weak to merit it As the whole on-again, off-again thing happens for the 8th time, you’re forced to wonder just how much you really care. The answer: not at all.

There was no overnight drop of quality, however. The reason I didn’t get out sooner was that it was a gradual process, so it took a few moments of absolute naffness before I could step back from myself and realise just how utterly pointless the whole thing was. Case in point, the character of Jen. Now, she couldn’t just be a wild party girl because she was stuck in a dull one-creek town filled with self-analytical stereotypes. She had to have issues. So, they built up her relationship with her psychiatrist, so she could discover some repressed memories. And, even though all of this was pointing to an abusive relationship with her father, and was actually being handled quite sensitively, they absolutely copped out and invalidated the entire character by saying that the repressed anger and need for self destruction she had was because she saw her dad having sex with a girl she knew. I mean, that’s certainly icky, but I don’t think it would scar you completely at such an emotional level.



To be fair, it wasn’t just a case of the series getting crap, sometimes it was the series not changing at all. Like Sisyphus pushing his stone up the hill, the cast can never really sort out their issues, because if they did they would have nothing to moan about. It’s like a friend going through a hard time. To start with you feel compassion and sympathy, but after a while you get the sense that they enjoy wallowing in self pity, and that they go looking for problems, and you just want them to pull themselves together. I mean who amongst us has not wanted to give Dawson a big ol’ slap across the chops. If you look at these people’s lives, you have to wonder how they manage to find so much to complain about. Joey’s a genius and an incredibly talented artist/singer going to a good university, Pacey’s a talented chef who’s shacked up with the most well endowed member of the cast, Jen’s a DJ (?!?) and Dawson is, as far as I can make out, assisting a director on a Hollywood movie and shagging one of the actresses. It is representational of American culture that people can be achieving their dreams and still find so much to be upset about. The Dawson gang should spend a couple of weeks in Eastenders, they they’d get something to complain about.



That’s not to say that it’s descent into mediocrity didn’t contain some classic moments of humour, mostly unintentional. If you’ll indulge an old man, I’d like to share a few of them. When Joey got mugged, for instance, but managed to do it in a sharp talking, excessively dialogued way; ‘Give me your money’ ‘oh, that’s real original’ ‘Listen, you stuck-up little girl’ ‘Hey, you don’t know how hard it is for me’ etc. etc. Or when they tried to ironically spoof the Blair Witch Project by just copying it and adding lots of over analytical talking. Look at Sunset Beach’s superb Terror Island sequence for how to do horror film homages in bad soap. Or when Jack was gay, only it didn’t mean he slept with men, just that he was quite deep and pouted a lot. Only then he became a football player, to stuff their stereotypes down their necks and stopped being sensitive.
However, these occasional moments of laugh out loud rubbishness did not cover up the fact that the whole thing was just no fun any more. I didn’t care who was going out with who, why they’d all managed to end up in Boston even though they had ironically mocked TV shows which had all the cast members go to college in the same city. I didn’t give a damn that Pacey had a beard or Joey was now smart talking with yet another young spunky lecturer. All it did was reinforce how much of my time had been wasted on this shambling corpse of a TV show. But maybe, we can take something from this. Don’t watch a program when it stops being good. Drop it, cold. It might get better, but really life’s too short. So, mark-wise, I would give the first series of the Creek 7/10, then subtract one for each subsequent series. Which would make the 7th and last series, by my reckoning

1/10

NEILL says:

Yeah, but you'd still do Joey, wouldn't you?

5/10

---

Buy on Amazon: Dawson's Creek: The Complete Collection

Famous Five go to Smugglers Top

(TV Series)



JAMES says:

Me and my big ideas. I thought it would be a good prize in our guest review competition to give the winner the chance to nominate something for us to cast our critical eye over. How could I know my girlfriend would win, and force me to watch an episode of the 1970s Famous Five TV show to review it? Actually, it was pretty obvious to all involved that precisely this sequence of events would occur. Anyway, here I am torn between my duty to you, dear reader, to give my honest opinion and my desire not to get hit over the head with a ukulele by Debbie when I get home. Actually, seeing as Debbie probably is the only reader this isn’t so much of a dilemma, but I’ll give my honest opinion anyway.

Luckily for my head it wasn’t too bad. It had people with funny clothes and accents, and a fine line in cheesy 70’s incidental music. However, I wasn’t quite able to enjoy it to the extent that Debbie did. Kids on TV are always annoying if you’re not a kid, and I did find myself kind of wishing that the evil environmentalists would drown them in the marshes, them and their little dog! Damn Punk Kids.

As a thrilling adventure, it was certainly no 24, but then it is for kids, so you don’t really need coherent plots or believable situations, just evil working class people and the threat of getting sent to bed without dinner. I can understand why Debbie likes this, in much the same way as I can watch Knightmare these days even though it is about as fun as watching someone play the Hobbit Spectrum adventure game, just because it brings back happy memories of eating Mars Bars on a Thursday afternoon. Coming to it cold, though, I can’t really say it appealed that much. Therefore, if you loved it as a child, pretend I’ve given it 10/10, and go and think about how great Frazzles were, everyone else I’m afraid I can only give it

4/10

Urusei Yatsura

(Animated comedy series based on the long-running manga by Rumiko Takahashi)



JAMES says:

Literally ‘Those Obnoxious Aliens.’ That should be enough for you, a TV show about obnoxious aliens. If it isn’t, I suppose I should delve a little deeper. Based on the Manga of Rumiko Takahashi, who also created Ranma ½, the basic plot revolves around Ataru, a hopeless lech, and Lum, the horned bikini clad alien who loves him. And thence the humour arises. But that’s not all, there is a supporting cast who cause emotional or physical pain to Ataru at any given opportunity, including a wizened little monk, an incredibly rich and handsome rival, a girl next door, numerous bikini-clad alien women (bikini’s were ultrafashionable in space in the 80’s, and still are for all I know) and many, oh so many more. Oh, and a giant cat, who never actually seems to do anything, but is always there. Unlike Western cartoons, UY was never content to have a static cast, and was constantly evolving and adding, as witnessed by the group shoots that seem to end all the movies, usually chasing after Ataru. I don’t know who they all are, as the videos rather inconveniently stopped in the UK with only about 8 of the 50-odd volumes available, but are all endearingly odd.

The strength of UY lies in the combination of humour with strong characters that you care about, and bikinis. A lot of the jokes run along a few certain formulas, eg. Someone, usually Mendou, will make an incredibly dramatic/overwrought speech, before something happens to break the tension and make them pull a funny face. But, even though you know this is going to happen every time, the timing is always so impeccably done that it is always funny. There are a fair few jokes about Japanese politics or culture which will pass over most Westerners heads (explanatory liner notes and humour do not really mix), but for my money this is balanced out by the humour of the bizarre, with many moments which are just inexplicable. To my mind at least.

One of the good bits, however, is that some of the odder moments are not just wilful obscurity, by come from UY’s basis in Japanese folklore and the Shinto religion. That small child with an axe riding a bear? Why, he’s a Japanese god, of course. The section where Lum’s family compete with a staggeringly odd collection of misfits to throw beans into a giant set of scales is based on a traditional method of chasing off evil spirits. Therefore, not only is it a wacky screwball comedy, but you also learn about another culture's history and tradition. Although it has its limits, as I found out to my disappointment when visiting the shrine of Benten in Ueno Park I found no gun wielding, space-bike riding babes.

I think Urusei Yatsura is certainly a better anime than Ranma, which is surprising as the Manga of Ranma is by far the btter of the two. However, Ranma the TV series chooses to emphasis the soap opera aspects of the comic, at the expense of the comedy, whereas UY balances the two perfectly. And to those of you who wonder why I’m wasting your time reviewing something that hasn’t been on release for years, I say, seek and ye shall find. You can buy the TV series on region 1 DVD on play.com, and eBay often has old copies of the UK videos at bargain basement-ish price. Or you could come round mine, I’ve got loads of them on video. So, get out there and make it ‘Weird and Weird, Super-weird!’


8.9/10

NEILL says:

And what other obscure cartoon series can claim to have lent its name to a successful Glasgow indy band? Except Belle & Sebastian.

9.2/10

Ranma 1/2

(Animated martial arts comedy series based on the long-running manga by Rumiko Takahashi)



Guest Reviewer of the Week DEBBIE says:

James made me watch Ranma one night when I was too tired to argue with him. I had my reservations as I fail to see how drawings of people are as satisfying to watch as real ones. What's more I don't think it's fair on real actors that drawings get air time (although people like Johhny Vegas and Leslie Ash prove that this may be no bad thing!) I tried to put this prejudice aside and with an open, albeit irritated and tired mind I began to watch. We decided to watch it with dubbing rather than subtitles so that I could concentrate on the animation.

My first impressions were not great - the drawings are incredibly crude and the eighties pop soundtrack a little cringe making. I don't like violent animation apart from Tom and Jerry but they are talking animals so it is comfortably unbelievable anyway, so when the episode opened with a small girl with red(?) pigtails being chased by a large panda and then engaging in martial arts fisticuffs, I wasn't terribly impressed. It seemed a bit far fetched for the panda to be there at all but he was quite cute so it didn't bother me that much. As the story panned out, the presence of the panda and the fact that the red pigtailed girl kept turning in to a black pigtailed boy were fully explained. I must say that the story (surprisingly a love story) was well plotted left me wanting to see the next episode.

I suppose the real advantage to animation over proper television is that the artist has scope to create the fantastical. The realism loving audience however have to retrain their minds to appreciate this kind of entertainment. Personally I still prefer realism as I find it easier to relate to a nice bit of Chekhov than a cartoon (oops, sorry "Animation")but I think I am now in a better position to enjoy it. I can honestly say that although I entered into this as a sceptic and have no interest in martial arts, I found Rannma really rather charming. Would I watch another episode? Yes - I already have done and although it isn't really my cup of tea, like the occasional cup of coffee, it can make a nice change.

7/10