Charlie Brooker’s Screen Burn (34 page)

Shot entirely with handheld cameras, apparently using natural light and semi-improvised dialogue,
Curb Your Enthusiasm
is like a sitcom take on the Dogme 95 movement. The resulting ‘ambient’ tone is initially disorientating, but stick with it: it’s a major grower.

Larry David plays himself: a pampered, embittered misanthrope wandering dazed, through the LA celebrity circuit, digging absurdly deep holes at every opportunity. And while there aren’t any ‘jokes’ as such, there’s an almost obscene level of enjoyment to be had watching him doggedly convert a minor inconvenience (such as a pair of bunched-up trousers that make him look aroused) into a full-blown social catastrophe. David surely can’t be this big a dick in real life (no one would employ the man) and the masochistic relish with which he’s made himself the butt of every situation raises serious questions about his mental state – but thank God he’s out there, and thank God the BBC are showing it, albeit on a digital offshoot (presumably so unsuspecting BBC2 viewers won’t get confused by unexpectedly encountering a bit of golden comedy amid all the lifestyle makeover shows).

Speaking of embittered misanthropy, have you seen former
Double Dare
presenter Peter Simon on the live auction channel
Bid-Up TV
recently? I swear to God, the man’s turning into Howard Beale from the movie
Network:
sighing audibly on air, describing himself as ‘sad’ and muttering about how lonely he is – half the time I’m not even sure if he realises he’s speaking out loud.

It’s surely only a matter of time before he starts shuddering, or
crying, or urging viewers to hang themselves with their trouser belts – and, if they obey, he ought to be given some kind of award for services to the national gene pool. I do hope it’s all a massive put-on; if not, you can bet Dan Clapton and his camera crew will be nipping round to stick their gongs through his letter box some day soon.

Attention, attention. This is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill. Go to your shelters. Do not stop to retrieve belongings. Do not venture out until instructed to do so. We have reached Imbecility Event Horizon. Clouds of noxious thickery are billowing across the nation: do not risk exposure. If you have a television, smash it now. It is acting as a conduit. On no account switch it on. On no account watch
Boys and Girls
(C4).

Even a fleeting glimpse can cause inoperable brain damage. A nightmare vision of the future, folks, but one I fear could come true at any moment. Let me explain. The shelves of Waterstones are littered with breeze-block-sized sci-fi novels with the following premise: a group of scientists attempt to create a black hole in their laboratory. They succeed. Planet Earth is engulfed by an out-of-control vortex of nothingness. The end.

Well, that’s what’s happening with
Boys and Girls
, Channel 4’s new Saturday night bozo-cast. It’s not so much a TV show, more an organised attempt to create a newer, more toxic form of crap; one that can eat through the screen and pollute the human brain within minutes, leaving the victim unable to perform anything but the most basic motor functions, such as chewing cud or masturbating.

And it’s in danger of going wrong. I’m scared. They’re meddling with things so far
below
the realm of human comprehension, they may inadvertently create a swirling portal to a whole new dimension of stupidity. All solid matter in the universe may get sucked in. For God’s sake Blair, send the troops in now.

What follows is an excerpt from notes I made during last Saturday’s edition.

Please excuse the scrappy nature of the text; I was undergoing heavy exposure at the time.

The time has come to protect yourself and your family from the
Boys and Girls
menace. Collate a survival kit: you’ll need books, magazines, paper, pens, an old Nirvana CD and videotapes of
24
and
Curb Your Enthusiasm
. Detach the aerial lead from your television set and establish a protective cordon around it on Friday and Saturday nights. If anyone goes to switch the TV on during this time, shoot them.

Fortunately, early data indicates far fewer innocent viewers than anticipated have been exposed to
Boys and Girls
. Best-case scenario is that this trend continues until it withers away, at which point field operative Vernon Kay can be scrubbed, defumigated and returned to active service. Do not be fooled. This is not, repeat
not
, a harmless exercise in feelgood nonsense. It is a cynical, hateful, 
nauseating and witless insult to humankind. It is sub-ITV. It is sub-ITV2. We
must
act now, lest it destroy us.

Return to your shelters, beloved populace. And may God be with you.

Fact! There’s a saucer full of extra-terrestrial pod people lurking behind Jupiter, intercepting our TV transmissions, collating information on human culture. And over the last 18 months they’ve reached three unusual conclusions. 1) Earth people sit on specially designated park benches when upset (
EastEnders
). 2) Earth people settle arguments by seeing who can bellow their point of view the loudest (
Kilroy
). 3) Earth people loathe celebrities and enjoy watching them suffer (every other programme on TV). The third conclusion is correct, of course. We’ve watched them huffing their way through
Fat Club
, sobbing in the
Big Brother
house and eating maggots in the outback. Now we’re subjecting yet another gaggle of faded stars to something even worse: total career humiliation, courtesy of
Reborn in the USA
(ITV1).

Usually, my last remaining scrap of human decency means that I find it hard to join in the collective sneering whenever a has-been celeb is publicly ridiculed, but there’s something so damn perfect about
Reborn
that it leaves me rapt with admiration at the workings of this infernal machine. Here’s the mechanism: ten former British pop stars are flown to the USA, where they’re even more unknown than over here. They perform live in front of American audiences, who vote for their favourite performer. The two with the lowest scores are separated from the pack; the British public phones in to decide who gets drowned in a bucket before the next episode. On paper, another format; on screen, a hypnotic cross between
Pop Idol
and
Alan Partridge
. Before a note had been sung we were subjected to a spectacular tantrum courtesy of Mark Shaw of Then Jericho, who managed to single-handedly redefine the term ‘wanker’ by a) sleazing over a potential groupie at the airport, b) flicking ash in Michelle Gayle’s food because she thought he was
childish, and c) announcing that he wouldn’t have any more to do with these ‘fucking has-beens who couldn’t hold a note if their lives depended on it’.

Previously, I’d never even heard of Then Jericho but now I’m half-tempted to seek some of their albums out, if only to see if the percussion section consists of a baby hurling toys from its pram. Then there’s Dollar: not so much a car crash, more a 200-vehicle pile-up with massive loss of life. Physically, David Van Day has turned into a precise replica of William Petersen from
CSI;
Thereza Bazar has been replaced by a Kafkaesque locust. Together, they resemble the ballroom-dancing couple from
Hi-De-Hi
, and, accordingly, their performance last week came straight from the end of a recently bombed pier. I recently saw an uncut copy of
Cannibal Holocaust
, in which a live turtle is torn apart; sitting through that was a breeze compared to watching Dollar inflict equally horrific injuries on ‘They Can’t Take That Away From Me’.

And Sonia: Jesus Christ. Astonishingly, she possesses a powerful singing voice, but like a nuclear bomb in the hands of a madman, that’s not a Good Thing. During her nightmarish rendering of ‘The Greatest Love of All’, she shuddered, howled and shook her fists, like Shirley Temple in a remake of
The Exorcist
.

The rest are less interesting. Leee John could pass for the bloke from the Halifax commercials if you gave him a pair of Penfold specs; Gina G has the weakest voice but the pertest arse; Tony Hadley looks like a stage magician; Michelle Gayle is great; Go West’s Peter Cox (heroically replacing Shaw) seems pleasantly unassuming; Elkie Brooks could be your best friend’s mum; Hay-don from Ultimate Kaos was unknown to everyone beforehand but seems destined to succeed. In other words, most are likeable performers who stand a decent chance of reinventing themselves.

Ignore the insanely ubiquitous Davina McCall and concentrate on the greasy horror of it all:
Reborn
is great Saturday night TV. And it’ll utterly trounce C4’s despicable
Boys and Girls
– another reason to love it. Fact!

At the time of writing, the world’s first widescreen war has yet to begin in earnest, so there’s still time to contemplate the important things in life, namely
Reborn in the USA
(ITV1) and more specifically, the moment at which David Van Day and Thereza Bazar lashed out at humankind (in the guise of Sonia) for thwarting their inevitable return to power. Sonia left the show, only to return, which gave rise to a conspiracy theory in Van Day’s head: she hadn’t just flipped out in the wake of her ridiculous performance in show one, oh no: the devious minx had done it deliberately in order to, er, win. Cue tears from Thereza (‘I only wanted to sing,’ she wailed, prompting sofa-bound cynics everywhere to bellow ‘You tried that already, and look where it got you’ at the screen), while David fumed that disparaging remarks about them on Sonia’s website proved their imminent ejection was due to ‘dirty tricks’ from a shadowy Liverpudlian cabal – as opposed to, say, Dollar being rubbish. Things reached a head when Van Day, clutching his smoking gun evidence of Sonia’s duplicity (a print-out of the web page) hectored the ginger chanteuse backstage until she begged him to leave her alone. Later, Dollar were kicked out, Sonia compounding their defeat by taking the stage and giving a decent performance (surely the ultimate treachery). Now they’ve got some free time, Dollar should become professional conspiracy theorists. Among the mysteries they might be able to clear up: what happened to their recording career? Why was ‘Mirror, Mirror’ so irritating? Why do people laugh whenever Van Day appears on television? The truth is out there.

They could be the new Mulder and Scully – perfect timing, since the old Mulder and Scully have vacated the position. Yes, after nine years,
The X-Files
(BBC2) has come to an end, an event celebrated with a feature-length finale that purports to clear everything up. I loved the first two series of the X-Files, but stopped watching around the time it turned to shit – i.e. when they stopped investigating fun Scooby Doo-style mysteries and concentrated instead on interminable uber-conspiracies involving alien DNA, shape- shifting agents and anything else they could think of. But ignorance on my part doesn’t excuse this ludicrous final episode, which is easily the most incomprehensible slice of TV I’ve seen since the day I accidentally banged my head on a door frame and tried to watch an episode of
Pobol Y Cwm
.

Mulder is on trial for murder, and the only way to clear his name is to prove the existence of ‘the conspiracy’ in a military court, prompting a procession of witnesses from throughout the series, each of whom triggers a string of flashbacks that attempt to tell the entire story of
The X-Files
in bullet-point form – an exhausting load of bum wipe about ‘super soldiers’ and meteors and conspiracies within conspiracies, all of it impossible to follow without a three- dimensional diagram to back it up. Harry Knowles lookalikes might cream their jeans when, say, Harris the Moleman from season 52 episode 96 puts in a cameo, but everyone else is going to shrug and flip channels.

The X-Files
stands as a stark reminder of what happens when a series passes its sell-by date and starts lazily satiating the most rabid fans: average viewers couldn’t give a toss whether Mulder’s sister is a clone or not, they just want to see the duo chasing bogeymen through the woods. The
X-Files
finale is the equivalent of one of those terrible live tour versions of popular comedy shows, in which beloved characters simply walk onstage and utter a catchphrase, prompting 15 hours of rapturous applause from an audience of imbeciles – instead of actually telling some jokes.

They say the first casualty of war is truth, but actually it’s picture quality. I’m not being callous … it’s just that this being the twenty-first century I thought we’d get a digitally perfect, Dolby Surround kind of war, with swooping Michel Gondry camera moves and on-the-fly colour correction. But no. It’s all shots of empty skylines and blurry videophone bullshit. Most of it isn’t even in widescreen, for Christ’s sake.