The Other Way Is Sussex

Television isn't in a great place at the moment. There are moments when brilliance peers through, like the sun shining through occasional holes in the dark, rain-filled clouds of idiocy, but overall, only taboo language can successfully describe the light emitted from everyone's televisions. Dramas are, for the most part, relatively predictable and usually pretty boring these days. Comedy's are, for the most part, aimed at the stereotypically stupid and mentally disabled. Talent shows are, for the most part, fixed to give Simon Cowell media coverage and money. And documentaries; they seem to be choreographed to show the 'real lives' of the stereotypically stupid and horny, shown on ITV 2 and E4.

With television being mostly repeats, it's not so much a bother that the output is mainly crap, than it would have been 15 years ago before we had a huge selection of TV to choose from, but it is. With there being very little output of new shows, we need those shows to be brilliant, fantastic, sensational, inspiring and many other buzz words. Let's take comedies as an example. It's all a matter of opinion, I know, but comedy isn't funny.

I can think of three sitcoms in recent years, that have come from British television, which are reliably funny; Outnumbered (BBC 1), The IT Crowd (C4) and Not Going Out (BBC 1). The former is a great, part improvised, comedy with child actors to be jealous of and wish were your own children. It is the younger, funnier brother of My Family, in that most people can relate to it in one way or another. The IT Crowd is just written by one of our greatest comedy writers in current times; Graham Lineham, who created characters people emphasis with whilst laughing at, and has storylines that take the strangest of turns and can have a house of people cackling madly. The latter, Not Going Out, has those brilliant one lines that resonate and make you laugh louder the more you think about it and stay with you for a long time. The acting may not be anything special, but those lines make up for it. The BBC made a good choice when they decided to 'uncancel' it. Also, take Horrible Histories (CBBC), highly amusing and possibly one of the greatest current comedies, with it mixing intellect with witty sketches. The kids have it so good these days. I had an idea that they should create an adult version for a prime-time BBC 2 slot, but you know what, I think if they showed the CBBC episodes in the evening, it would be just as successful. Plus, people might actually learn something about the Romans, The Tudors and more importantly, The Stuarts! I loved those books when I was child, and turning it into a television show, albeit 10 years late, was a great idea.

The other sitcoms that keep spewing out are not reliably funny and can sometimes make you cringe and want to eat your own eyes and ears so you don't have to withstand another second of it. Anything on BBC 3 usually ticks that box. Lee Nelson's Well Good Show, which I hope is ironically named, is awful, disgusting and utterly vile. Coming of Age seems to think it has cleverly exaggerated the teenage stereotype with humorous consequences, but has instead created glaringly wretched characters with storylines so weak an Ant could beat it in a fight. We Are Klang, from 2009, with Greg Davies had some great ideas, but they were tearfully mistreated, and in the true style of BBC 3, unfunny and utterly cringe worthy.

My Family (BBC 1) should have been cancelled years ago. I used to really enjoy it when I was younger, but now I'm older, the show is older and the family are older, it just doesn't work anymore. Most people will agree that it went downhill when Nick (you know, the man from the BT Ads. He recently became a father and got married. We're all happy for the BT couple…) left the show. Now the children aren't children, it has failed to continue to be a family sitcom, which is were Outnumbered steps in and takes the reins. Everyone wave goodbye to the Harper family. Go on, wave! It's the final series. Toodles!

I come from the era of Ben Elton and Richard Curtis. Back in the days when they wrote comedy and when comedy was great. How can I watch comedy from 30 years ago and laugh harder than what I do at current sitcoms? Blackadder: Sarcastic brilliance. Fawlty Towers: Unbelievably angry humour. Monty Python: Mind-blowingly, erratically random, superbness. Not The Nine O'clock News: Fantastically satirical sketch show. One Foot In The Grave: Belly laughter with a dash of sentimentality. Anything with Ronnie Barker: Well he was just a linguistic genius. There are so, so, so many more. Why can't we make shows like them anymore? Who the bloody hell thought Mrs Brown's Boys (BBC 1) was funny? The audience laughed at the word 'Willy'. That is how bad comedy is; people found that show so funny, it's been commissioned a second series. The BBC 1 controller is robbing ME and YOU of brilliant, clever, witty, laugh out loud humour. How dare him! I will soon be paying my TV license to fund television atrocity such as that.

The God of our dear English language!

Soaps used to represent the real lives of real people. Sure, they exaggerated it a bit to make it more entertaining than mundane, but it still had the ingredients of real life. Now, they seem to have lost the recipe and are now just experimenting to try and give it a bit of a kick; and they ruined it. Coronation Street is the main culprit. A tram crash. Numerous explosions within the past year. Dead bodies buried and hidden everywhere. The placentas of illegitimate children cover the cobbles. Murderer's hide everywhere. What kind of street is this? The crime statistics of Coronation Street must be awful. Its surprising people move there. The writers need to be strung up and shot. The story lines are awful. Then, they're about to destroy the Rovers Return in a huge riot. These aren't stories to entertain, infuse and grab the viewers’ attentions while helping them forget their problems. It's not that anymore. Coronation Street used to be funny. Now, they're trying to turn the soap into a huge production; like they're The Bourne Ultimatum or something. It's ridiculous I tells ya!

Talent shows are now so unbearable to watch. Sure, they were not exactly the most entertaining or morally right shows on the box a few years ago, but now they're just ridiculous. I think Simon Cowell should now just go and live with his metaphorical mistress (America) and leave us (Britain) to move on and carry on life without him. He's either with us, or with those slutty Yanks. The same goes for Piers Morgan while we're on that topic. Keep them, we don't want them back. They're your problems now! Anyway, talent shows are on the way out, and they should just leave respectfully instead of kicking up an undignified fuss. Britain's Got Talent (ITV) is over, you don't need to import David Hasslehoff for us to realise that. Britain has very little talent, and dancing dogs are not part of it. The X Factor too has gone. It can never recover now the peoples' princess, Cheryl Cole, has had her public image tarnished in such a disrespectful way. A show with Gary Barlow, Kelly Rowland and Tulisa? Please, that sounds worse than an American chat show hosted by scared-ferret-in-a-suit, Piers Morgan.

Yet, for some reason, they won't let Big Brother die. Last year, it finished. This year, Channel 5 and that bastard Richard Desmond, have brought it back. Now, I also think reality television is, even if very slowly, dying. We all know that comebacks usually don't work. Take the band Blue; they came back and we still hate them. Take Michael Schumacher; he was World F1 champion, but since he returned last year, he hasn't even won a podium. There should be a general rule, which means should you chuck in the towel, you can never come back. That's the one positive thing about Jade Goody; she isn’t coming back! We don't seriously need Big Brother do we? It's always the same every year; a few gay, very bitchy men, in a house with a few idiotic slutty blonde men and women, a hip black man, a middle aged man trying to impress their child and a few people who resemble house plants and vacuums with gormless faces drawn on. Exactly, we don't need Big Brother!

Now, reality television shows are being replaced by ‘reality documentaries’. Big Fat Gypsy Weddings (C4) seemed to be the first to kick it off with its huge popularity. You know those novelty toilet brush covers from the 90's? The women in the show look just like them. It's just a way of making people who work hard all their life think 'How the hell can they do nothing with their lives and afford that wedding, when I work 5 days a week and think buying a pizza on a Friday is pushing the boat out!' It made you resent Gypsies even more; but not as much as the Gypsies you see in town forcing heather in tinfoil down people’s throats for £1.

The popular reality documentaries now, are The Only Way is Essex (ITV 2) and Made In Chelsea (E4), with a new show Geordie Shore (MTV) slowly gaining popularity. These three shows are the tackiest shows on British television, possibly ever.  I haven't watched them, but from the adverts and from what I've heard, these are the stupidest, sluttish, glamed-up freaks that we have ever seen. Big breasts, hair extensions and more make-up than the Avon catalogue; it's like Katie Price has been cloned, and then, they’ve spread them across the country and sent TV crews to film their integration into society. THEN, The Only Way Is Essex won a bloody BAFTA! This is the evidence that television is going down the drain. Society is going down with it, and we're drowning in that dirty bath water, urine, excrement and the stubble from the legs of females, and it'll get in your throat and, it just doesn’t bare thinking about.

So, a conclusion. There is very little comedy that is actually funny. Documentaries are not very informative. Dramas are very little in way of dramatic, apart from occasional glimpses of greatness on BBC 1. Reality hasn't shown the real lives of anyone recently. Soaps are competing with Hollywood films. Talent shows are just a way of showcases Simon Cowell's new facelift. And Gypsies; since when did they become popular?

The Comedy Downturn – Part One

The state of comedy on Telly at the moment is pretty terrible, and it must be enough to make Ronnie Barker spin in his grave at the thought of it. It’s not because TV is ‘dumbing down’ like a lot of people think it is, it’s because good comedy costs money, which no one seems to have, and therefore all good comedy is on hiatus, while the unfunny comedy rules the comedy scene. It’s not just new comedy shows which are awful, but also the old classics are now beginning to date and are becoming less funny, and yet television bosses continue to commission them.

It was reported widely last week that people are not laughing as much as they did last year. It’s not because of the credit crunch or because we’re all going to drown in the next 10 years, it’s because the new series of ‘My Family’ is on BBC again, for its 9th Series. I personally think it has had its time as a popular Sitcom, and is now beginning to drift down the comedy river with a hole at the bottom, which is causing it to slowly and painfully sink, taking Robert Lindsey (Who I quite like) with it.

Another comedy show which will be wreck on the bottom of the metaphorical comedy river (hopefully) soon, is ‘Horne and Cordon’. On paper I should like this show. It’s a fast paced comedy sketch show, which is unfortunately on BBC 3, and not a lot of successful comedy comes from there. It is basically just half hour of recycled jokes which other comedians have done, and frankly, done much better than they did.

Another show, which again, on paper I should like, is ‘Al Murray’s Multiple Personality Disorder’. Again, it is a comedy sketch show (although not very fast paced) with Al Murray, one of my favourite comedians, which even in the sketch show, pokes fun at people of different social classes and countries. Shame is though, it’s awful. Although the show does show that Al Murray can do other things other than be the Pub Landlord, it is unfortunately, predicable rubbish. The sketches are not very good, with the Homosexual Nazi being an utterly awful creation with lots of sexual innuendo’s and ‘Prudent Dad’ is basically Al Murray putting on a Yorkshire accent and mentioning sex a lot, in a way that doesn’t even make me (a sex obsessed teenager with an incredibly dirty mind) laugh.

Then we come onto Red Dwarf. In its past, it is widely known that not every series of Red Dwarf is considered to be brilliant, with other series being more entertaining than others, and luckily, the new series shown on Dave kept to that formula. Even though it was still quite entertaining and funny, it didn’t seem to have the same chemistry as the old series'. Although, it is widely known that comebacks don’t tend to really work unless Gary Barlow is involved. It was never going to be as good as the classic Red Dwarf which we now watch on Dave, but I was disappointed with it. Although I’m not going to go as far as to say it was awful, because I don’t think it was that bad.

There is a lot of comedy these days which is purely ‘Crap’. Gone are the days when Richard Curtis wrote comedy Sitcoms that made the whole family laugh and gone are the days when duo’s done cleaver comedy with each other while wearing trademark glasses. It also seems the day of the catchphrase has got just as rubbish. I remember the days when everyone went around saying ‘I Don’t Believe It!’ whereas the school playground now is full of people wearing Burberry and saying to each other ‘Yeah, but, no, but, yeah...’ Trash, that’s what comedy seems to be these days, trash.

Not all comedy is trash though, there is some good old fashioned comedy still alive today, and tomorrows blog will be the second part of ‘The Comedy Downturn’ blogs, but it will be (slightly) more positive and will look at more successful comedy shows which have been on the Television recently and in the past, and why the hell some of them haven’t been commissioned for another series by the BBC, to make room for this ‘new talent’ as they seem to call it.

Toodles m’dearys
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