Welcome to twenty eleven TV- already letting you down

It has recently come to my attention that people actually read this blog. This may, in part, be due to a tendency I have where, immediately upon completion of a post I'll sling a link up on Facebook. I know that the surprise I felt when I realised people read some of those posts, and possibly even, through reckless abandon, looked at some of the previous topics of inane dross, was due to the fact that despite attempts to attract attention to my ramblings all posts and links were entirely assumed to be ignored.

With that said, to those of you who have read Binned Pages and Ink Stains in spite of either knowing who wrote it, not knowing who wrote it (I'm not sure which would bring a more negative slight to your opinion of it) or my poor self-made public awareness campaign, a hundred percent appreciation if aimed in your direction.



Along with several apologies and the semi-sincere assertion that you don't have to read it just because you know me. Along with the voice in my head screaming that yes, in fact, you do. All that guff and bollocks aside, back on with the grumbly mentality, the prickly exterior, and on with the show- the latest baffle-induced experience of the world pulled apart and sprinkled liberally with barbed comments and anger. And we're back with the source of many rants, past and potential- the idiot box, and the quality of what is piped onto it.

The first month of the new year has heralded many first-time broadcasts equivalent to opening a gigantic box at the arbitrarily assigned day of giving gifts and realising that whatever it holds is not what you wanted, but something which vaguely resembles it bought from Aldi.

I'm sorry folks, I can't list them all here, mainly because many of them went by me unnoticed and definitely undesired, but there are two programs in this category I genuinely sat down to watch. Tool Academy. 10 O'Clock Live. Adopting a Richard Burton voice, now- And oh... I had such high hopes.

The biggest thing that I have to say about this, and the biggest thing that I was dissapointed with and therefore will hold against it is that it is not the show which was advertised. Knowing Brooker's past shows such as Newswipe, in which he deconstructed news on TV perfectly with fake reports he wrote himself to illustrate the industry, and Mitchell's previous work on That Mitchell and Webb Look ridiculing the twenty four hour news culture and its desperation for viewers to involve themselves in the stories from the mundane to the apocalyptic, I had in my mind a sort of Brass Eye for or The Day Today for the 21st century.

Alas. It wasn't this.

The moment the show started I knew this was not the case. And why? One word= audience. A live frakkin' audeince. Which COMPLETELY ruins the closed set satire which I'd been led to believe the show would have.

After that it was a mish-mash of multi-coloured dominoes stood to face different directions, all ready to fall into each other. Starting with the weakest link Lauren Laverne, who offered nothing to the show. Then the sum of the shows part began to work, a dozen cogs running at different speeds not working as an engine as a whole, the show. Jimmy Carr's round up of what happened in the news recently (a la Mock the Week. A la Russel Howard's Good News. A la any attempt at a current affairs comedy show ever) just wasn't funny, far too serious, like the unexpected tone of the show.

Brooker's sections, for the most part, were the most dissapointing. No longer ranty current affairs-alluding anger mashes as we've come to expect from Brooker, they were a bit of a mess. And then there was Lauren Laverne. As a good friend of mine said whilst watching (and I hasten to add she's a female), "Women aren't funny! Get her off" As for me supporting said statement, I've been advised the closest I can go is to say that I find Lauren Laverne offensively unfunny. And all of her kind follow suit in varying degrees, as do men.

Or this.

Then there was the audience, cutting over the Brooker's monologue. From there it descended visibly, to the point where I'm not sure which bit didn't work. Jimmy Carr couldn't carry an almost offensively simple "tourism ad about INSERT CURRENT AFFAIRS LOCATION" bit, this week for Tunisia. David Mitchell presented a Newsnight bit with a banker, a politician and token "against both the others" figure, with too many serious people and too much interruption from the audience to count as quality or funny. Then there was Mitchell's version of a Ronnie Corbett monologue, satirical and angry.

The show seemed to run away from the creative talents who were almost all pulling in different directions. It had its moments when Brooker was allowed to cut loose a bit about Tunisia, but he could have done that on Newswipe. Away from the audience. David Willets being grilled by Mitchell was far too akin to Paxman on Newsnight for belief, and people may counter this with the idea that "the audience were going with him, laughing and cheering!", but to them I say this. Put that same audience in front of a Newsnight dissection courtesy of Paxman (should the sage of politics agree to and allow it) and they would clap and cheer making the same vocal noises as they did in front of the Mitchell interview. Throughout the show Brooker was obviously getting incredibly annoyed every time the audience interrupted him as he was mid flow of some put down or comment.

Or this.

The verdict on this dissapointment is simply this- I'll probably watch at least a couple of other episodes of the show, but unless it rapidly melds together into a coherent show, I don't think I'll stomach the countdown Laverne set at the start of the first episode- "the next fifteen weeks." And I doubt it'll become much funnier regardless of whether it becomes a more intact show or not.

And now onto dissapointment pulling me into a new circle of he... programme number two. Tool Academy. I genuinely thought there might be some point to this reality TV show, where dickheads are shown as being dickheads, embarrassed over it, humiliated publicly, and either remain a dickhead and suffer the seperation of the girlfriend who enrolled him in the institution, or change for the girl who enrolled him in the institution after such humiliation and a revelation. Call me naive and slap me silly.

Of course the 'Tool' remains a tool.

And the reality show remains just a shit trickle of reality television.

Tools. A bunch of spanners. They go into the show, don't change, come out.

There really is little else to say on Tool Academy- the one and only reason I watched the show was to witness, finally, people who are not worth being around, let alone with, get thrown down a peg or several, and to laugh as I watch, finally, the end of the glorification of absolute cocks through TV. Unfortunately, the show did not show this at all, and for that reason, I doubt I'll watch it again; lest it be that finally someone gets a comeuppance, a retribution bestowed upon them that they deserve, and don't waltz off undeservedly with their lives still intact and with a girl who, if she realised it and acted like it, could do so much better. I'll maybe keep you posted.