Reviews
Review: Marriage Technique For Beginners- Sweet Without Need For a Bucket
Channel 4, Friday 5th September, 7.35pm
Not being a fan of the old knot-tying joy myself (usual story…divorced parents…being too young…yadayada…), I sighed somewhat as I sat down to watch what sounds like a nauseating guide to wedded bliss. But you know what, I actually found that Marriage Technique For Beginners is quite a sweet yet practical documentary looking hopefully at an institution that is fading fast among our current generation.
In the run up to his own wedding and on a quest inspired by his grandparents’ manual, Marriage Technique Illustrated, Piers Sanderson, himself the product of a painful divorce, talks to couples of all ages to see if he can discover the secret to a happy married life. The couples he meets make this documentary. Their interaction is delightful despite what they say being at times quite surprising- one couple proclaims arguing to be the key to success and a pair of married club owners advocate a healthy bit of partner swapping! This, along with an amusing use of animations makes for a tone of light-hearted sincerity.
Although the presenter’s voice is not the most charismatic and his delivery of jokes surrounding a slightly contrived TV mission to write his wedding vows never leaves you clutching your sides, his intentions are pure. And this makes up for it. Just observing how much he lingers the camera lens upon his effortlessly beautiful fiancée as they tease one another affectionately, it’s not hard to see that this boy is head over heels. And the interview with his own father is poignant as he explains his fears rooted in their divorced family. The final shots are uplifting, showing him finalising his vows using what he has learned and marrying his fiancée.
So, what are the key techniques he has learned? I counted about six: Laughter, tolerance, healthy debate, lack of jealousy, freedom and love. Despite the cynical side of me not being able to resist mean thoughts that this TV testament might one day come back to haunt him (picturing him signing divorce papers and sobbing while clutching the DVD), I couldn’t help but be taken by the overall charm of the thing. Give this one a look for a half hour of refreshing optimism.
By Susan Allen
Review: When Women Rule The World- Ha! When Sexism is Blatantly Perpetuated
Channel 4, Thursday 4th September, 10.35pm
As news of the glass ceiling for women in business being, in fact, more of a reinforced concrete ceiling hits the headlines today, it is with great gusto that I say, women everywhere should take personal offence at Channel 4’s new show, When Women Rule The World. Quite simply, this is an insulting piece of rubbish founded on the premise that the situation of having women in charge is all a bit of a joke, an Amazonian dalliance from the real world, where, thank heavens, men are in control.
Set on an exotic island where ‘women rule and men obey’, the show hides beneath a thin veil of pro-feminist values mostly portrayed by a soundtrack of annoyingly mouthy “girl power” songs (Mystique feature heavily) but actually sets women up to look silly, naggy and bitchy. Apart from picking contestants whose faux-powerful occupations include a “Door Whore” and “the former Porn Queen of England” (actually just male turn-ons*) and dressing the ‘strong’ women in skimpy bikinis while they bicker (*see above), presenter and well-known ladies man, Steve Jones litters his voiceover with cringe-worthy comments about the boys “exploring virgin territory” and the incredulity of the whole situation, “the Ultimate Gender Experiment.”
Yeah, yeah, I’m sure many of you are thinking, “just chill out, love- it’s a bit of a laugh” but don’t you be taken in by that old chestnut. It’s a cunning tactic, Channel 4, getting a T4 presenter with all his trendy T4 irony to coolly present a show like this so we see that it’s aware of its own ridiculousness, honestly. However, that doesn’t mean you get away with it. Just airing this kind of formulaic nonsense blatantly perpetuates the bogus, yet scarily widespread perception of women as inadequate in positions of power, but presenting it as ‘just a bit of fun’ doesn’t just cover up this underlying idea, it reinforces it. Ah, isn’t it hilarious that women are ruling!
When Women Rule The World’s main fault is that it’s too extreme and it knows this, but does it anyway. It’s there to aggravate even the most reasonable of feminists (like me- yes, I’m reasonable) and entertain chauvinists and women, who have sadly been sucked in by the idea that this show portrays their gender as somehow powerful. Why not swap the ruling gender half way through (then we can see how most male-dominated organisations are actually run these day) and then mix the genders up? That would have been a more interesting, less predictable concept- but, wait, it probably would have shown women and men as real people, not 2D gender cut-outs and we couldn’t have that, could we?…
By Susan Allen
Review: Lost in Austen
Lost in Austen
ITV 1, Wednesday 3rd September, 9pm
I have a confession to make. I really, really like costume drama. Despite that my job is to cast a critical eye over all things television, I can’t help but go all girly at the mention of big dresses and silly manners.
So when the preview of ITV’s four part drama Lost in Austen came to me I was like a little kid, grabbing my DVD’s and settling in for a few hours of pure pleasure. Of course, I was also giving it the tough review it deserves.
I was so busy seeing the word ‘Austen’ I didn’t actually realise that the show begins in the modern day with our heroine Amanda Price. She is a 20 something girl with a drunken cad of a boyfriend, a boring job in a bank and a mother who keeps telling her to settle for less. Amanda is obsessed with the world of Pride and Prejudice, it is her escape from the mundanity of her boring old life until one day she opens her bathroom door and finds Elizabeth Bennett standing there. Now suffice to say that lots of goings on happen and the result is that Amanda and Elizabeth switch places, leaving Amanda stuck in the world of Austen.
At first the show grated a little bit. Firstly because I was annoyed there were no big dresses, but secondly because of the nasally theatrical voice over by Jemima Rooper. However when it moves into the Austen world, the show takes on a new life. The dialogue is a witty, warm parody of Austen’s voice but they never forget that this is a modern girl in a strange, constrained world that she doesn’t yet understand, much as she adores it. Claude Bennett is a great turn from Hugh Bonneville, whose benevolent yet scathing wit hogs some of the best lines in the show. It handles the careful dance between the Austen sensibilities and modern ones very well, often with very funny results. ‘Can I get you a dish of faggots’ politely inquires one of the Bennetts. ‘I’m alright for faggots thank you’ replies a faintly stunned Amanda.
This is a lovingly, wittily written homage to Austen which has more surprises that you might think. Oh and Rooper’s not so nasally grating in the end, but actually brings an endearing bemusement to her character that draws you in. All in all, a really enjoyable show.
Review: Katy’s Comedy Makes For Giggles
Katy Brand’s Big Ass Show
ITV2 Tuesday 2nd Sept 10pm
Katy Brand returns to ITV tonight with her sketch show Katy Brand’s Big Ass Show. Given that last week I had to endure the horror that was the Wrong Door it was quite a relief to have this lighter fare on my desk this morning.
Lampooning pop culture, Katy mocks everyone from Kate Winslet to Kate Moss with a fair few pop songs in-between. It isn’t necessarily the brightest comedy or the sharpest, but it has an endearing fluffy bitchiness that makes it watchable.
There are times when it slips into some pretty unfunny stuff. I can’t understand what was funny about the Godmother baby sketch in which she tells them she’s terrible with babies and then sticks it in the microwave. It is not blackly comic enough to pull off this sketch and so it falls flat like Amy Winehouse on a Saturday night i.e. very very flat.
It is held together by the pop song parodies, from the Ting Tings to generic RnB with the song ‘Love in Da Pub’, which are generally very mockable. Mainly though, this has bonus points for being a step above the last couple of sketch shows that we’ve seen in the sense that it doesn’t make you want to throw yourself from an office window.
By McGee Noble
Review: Fiona’s Story- A delicate handling of a precarious subject
Fiona’s Story: BBC1, Sunday 31st August, 9pm
This Sunday sees the airing of Fiona’s Story, a compelling one-off drama for BBC1 neatly proving that writing about precarious subjects such as paedophilia need not contain nauseatingly over earnest discourse about principles and a plot with an annoyingly obvious agenda. Here, the handling is delicate, resulting in an unpretentious approach that lets the situation speak for itself.
Bafta-nominee, Gina McKee stars as Fiona Mortimer, a woman who struggles to keep her family together after her husband Simon, played by Jeremy Northam, is charged with downloading paedophilic images. He is released on bail but returns to face a year in which Fiona’s trust in him is challenged to the limit. As events unfold and Simon’s denial about his actions persists, Fiona is forced to face the horrifying possibility that her three young girls may not be safe with their own father.
A beautifully crafted script, written by new-comer Kate Gabriel and subtly directed by Adrian Shergold (He Kills Coppers, Low Winter Sun), the thing that really strikes me about this drama is its absolute contentedness to be clumsy with characters’ responses to the distressing subject of child pornography. This is particularly highlighted in the reaction of Simon’ s brother as he describes viewing such images as “easily done”.
Fiona’s Story doesn’t feel the need to abuse its dialogue with sophisticated and wholly unrealistic speeches about the wickedness of paedophilia when it can instead, elegantly portray a family attempting to cope in the only way they know how. Much of the time is taken up with near unbearable silence and awkward postures as husband and wife coexist hesitantly around their three children and the devastating meaning of what Simon has done gradually takes hold.
Fiona’s Story reveals the lonely fragments of uncertainty that remain after the shattering of one’s happy, if delusional, domestic security. Without a doubt, it should most take a prominent place on your TV-watching schedule this weekend.
By Susan Allen
Review: A1: The Road Musical- How Did Anyone Ever Think It Was OK For Real Life To Be In Song-Form?!
A1: The Road Musical: Channel 4, Friday 29th August, 7.30pm
This show is the reason why real life should never be a musical. Ok, I admit, in the past there’s been a few times when I’ve found myself wandering down the street longing for a break from the humdrum sound of people and cars and stuff. Then, daydreaming, I’ve envisaged how cool it would be if it all suddenly turned into a scene from Oliver with men dancing around their brooms and women selling sweet red roses and yodelling about milk. However, Benjamin Till’s debut half-hour film A1: The Road Musical, part of Channel 4’s Generation Next, documentary new talent First Cut strand, has killed and buried any such whim.
Following truck driver, Dave Brown on a journey along the A1 from London to Edinburgh, a route he drives frequently, he sings and twiddles the radio as people who live along the A1 are introduced and proceed to sing about themselves. We hear how one woman felt when a stranger held her hand after a car crash (cringe) and another guy lost his brother in a road accident (guilty cringe) and another guy cares so much about his town being in Scotland not England- “Your borders out of order Mr. Brown” (bored and especially big cringe). Essentially, these people can’t sing or perform and I can’t feel for any of their stories because I’m too busy hoping the ground will swallow me up so I no longer have to listen to their awful crooning.
Now, I’m not someone to discourage artistic experimentation. In fact, this is one of Channel 4’s biggest charms. I love the fact that they roll out short films by wide-eyed writers and offer mere beginners a chance at enlivening the conversation on Hollyoaks in between the dialogue-less bedroom scenes- [kisses him and unbuttons his shirt]- but this bizarre take on a documentary defines the meaning of ‘random; not-in-a-good-way’.
I can’t help thinking, if a road musical really had to be made, why not go all out and make a unique, stylized masterpiece based on fact but with extravagant costumes and zany camera angles with professional actors? No doubt, the vision was there, but the budget wasn’t and instead, what we are left with here is mutated documentary spawn, a take on real life that rubbishes its sometimes tragic content with a warble-y song and a lame attempt at performing that often centres round the singer glancing furtively over the camera for reassurance from the director, who no doubt is trying desperately to keep his head from his hands.
Watch A1: The Road Musical to remind yourself why musicals should remain fantastical and ornate things, where we don’t question why someone’s describing their day to you in song-form, and never step over into normality. It’s not moving because it’s about real life, it’s just uncomfortable.
By Susan Allen
Review: Lets Hope the Wrong Door Slams Shut
The Wrong Door is a great premise- a sketch show with a hint of surreal, executed using animations and live action. There is a gap for a great new sketch show and not since the Fast Show has sketch comedy come with that bite of pure brilliance and hilarity that taps into our collective humour. Not since, and not now, as The Wrong Door so dramatically, hideously and unwatchably demonstrates.
What the hell happened to good sketch comedy? When was it that someone decided that a human spider crapping a web was funny? Some of the jokes you can see might have given a chuckle on paper but a whole lot of them are along the lines of: ‘oh hey what about a giant robot destroys London looking for his keys…’
‘and then…?’
‘and then- nothing- that’s the punchline.’
‘Oh dude, that is FUNNY. That is SO funny. Actually it’s so funny let’s make sure we return to that joke at least four times in thirty minutes’
I am not kidding when I say that there is a single funny joke in this. I deliberated telling you this joke to save you watching the show. As an act of kindness to the show I’ve decided not to but if you do tune into this horror of a comedy, then you’ll know the joke I mean. Because seriously, it is the only one.
So conclusions? Populated with obvious, aimless and a times just totally tasteless jokes, this is a show we can only hope dies an early death.
Yes, this is the Wrong Door and my suggestion is that you back away, run and DON’T LOOK BACK.
Watch Me Disappear: A moving glimpse into a lonely death
Watch Me Disappear: Channel 4, Friday 22nd Aug, 7:35pm Alert Me
Praise again for Channel 4’s Generation Next season, which promotes emerging filmmakers. The raw, genuine talent of many of these films is impossible to ignore and nowhere is this more true than in this beautiful short documentary by Lucy Cohen.
Each month in Britain around 200 people are buried alone. These unclaimed, unnoticed people are the subject of this moving documentary, as Lucy Cohen pieces together the lives of two of these individuals who slipped away from life unseen.
Beyond the shock of how many people die alone, this film seeks to capture the connection between these lost people and us, the faceless crowd who passed them by.
It is delicately made, often approaching the lives of its two subjects from the periphery by looking at the objects they surrounded themselves with- books, dolls or shopping receipts. Cohen talks to childhood friends and neighbours, looking for the impression left by their absence. Often she lets moments of natural absence speak for themselves- letting the camera hold on the expression of a boy who found the body rather than the boy who is talking.
There are times when the soundtrack overwhelms it, something which makes is distracting, but overall this is an enormously empathic film which gives voice to people have passed unseen from the world. Definitely one to watch.
By McGee Noble
Review: My Strange Brain- Brains really are strange…
Channel Five, Thursday 21st August, 11.05pm
My Strange Brain, a documentary series exploring unusual neurological conditions felt like a rather natural progression from my previous encounter with the BBC’s Blood and Guts series, the gory first episode shown earlier this week. I’d just got my head around the history of brain surgery, what modern day science can achieve. Sorted. Now, I prepared myself to be stunned by how much the human brain, when damaged, can play havoc with your personality.
Episode 4, Losing Control, tells the story of three individuals whose lives are controlled by their impulses. There’s Heather, the hypersexual, who endured a brain haemorrhage two years ago and since can’t stop humping other men, much to the annoyance of her husband. Then there’s the former chiropractor, John, who can’t control his urge to draw after undergoing brain surgery and Tony, the surgeon whose experience of being struck by lightning has left him haunted by a compulsion to play the piano.
In some ways, the series is a composed, even quite chipper look at the life of some random people, who are different now to what they were before. No big deal, right? Wrong. There’s something in it that’s a little more lingering. Though quite happily getting on with their new character traits, the underlying damage their strange brains have done to their family relationships renders the show poignantly rather bleak, even as they chat judiciously to the camera. There’s no denying, they are the ones who’ve suffered most from this dramatic alteration of persona.
My Strange Brain, on tonight, is a bit of a lesson in coming to terms with an unexpected and dramatic change. Whether trying to amend the effects or simply going along with what’s left, somehow they must deal with the aftermath.
Find out when My Strange Brain is on tonight.
By Susan Allen
Review: Jesus Boy & Goat Herd- Good if You Missed Your Brother’s School Play
This ten minute short comedy on E4 is endearingly bad, in the same way that when you see your kid brother perform in a play that’s he’s written himself with his mates, you find it charming but still, unavoidably, a bit cr*p.
It stars comedy up and comers Jack Whitehall ( Big Brother’s Big Mouth ) and Nathan Thomas ( semi-finalist in 2007’s So You Think You’re Funny ) and is described by E4 as a ‘laid back road movie sitcom’. This is kind of a good description actually, as the two characters spend most of the time in their car on the way to a rave (the rave by the way is probably the lamest I have ever seen put to film. But I think that’s the point).
It’s great when it’s making jokes between the two guys, with Nathan the straight man and Jack the bolshy, bullsh*itting friend. It’s bad when it starts get obvious- making kind of overly sleazy jokes about sex that aren’t very new or funny.
Now, I might be being harsh because these guys are young and this strand on E4 is here to promote young comic talent and the truth is they are actually a lot funnier than some of the other, much poorer stuff on telly (see Lab Rats for example). So really at its worst, it’s a bit like watching your drunken uncle trying to score at a wedding- it’s definitely funny but it also makes you cringe. At best it’s a quick glance at the inner life of teenagers that has lot of potential, not quite reached, but certainly makes you want to watch out for these guys in future.
By McGee Noble
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