Sacre bleu!

"WHAT," the nation bellowed last night, "IS THIS ON MY TELLYBOX? THERE ARE WORDS ON THE SCREEN!"

And so Channel 4 finally give Great Britain some credit and screen excellent French drama The Returned in prime time positioning, 9pm on a Sunday. None of this shove-it-onto-BBC4-and-hope-for-The-Killing-Mark-2 timidity. No siree - conversely, not only has a major commercial network taken the risk at their audience aren't too spangled from their weekend's frivolities to reach for the spectacles, they've hijacked an ad break and shown all commercials in French. Mais non? Mais oui, indeed.

It seems odd that anything subtitled generally lives in the relegation zone of Saturday night on a freeview channel. The success of The Killing, which pulled in some of the highest ratings BBC4 had ever seen, should have really given the telly execs a bit of food for thought, but no - other European successes which followed still cropped up in the slot that BBC4 schedulers must have named "Saturday night foreign intelli-cop procedural time".

However, did the risk pay off? 1.5 million  tuned into The Returned last night - it might sound like a lot, but percentage wise it had 7% audience share, whereas Poirot took home nearly 22% with 4.8 million. And anyone who watched it will be able to say that it's not going to be a program you can jump into halfway through. I watched the entire hour-and-a-quarter opener last night, in silence, only to turn around at the end and say, "well, I haven't got a fucking clue what's going on, but I'm enjoying it". Is that kind of heavy, delineated drama going to attract audiences on a Sunday night; traditionally the enclave of the easy-on-the-rain brain mush, such as Call The Midwife, or, indeed, Poirot? Do people want to be deciphering why loads of dead French people are reappearing in a small town and scaring the living crap out of them the night before they have to go back to work and present the annual figures to Gary From Accounts?

It's definitely going to be an interesting experiment for Channel 4. I for one hope it is a success, as there are all too many excellent pieces of television being made around the world that this country is missing out on, because of the belief that "people don't want subtitles". Well, as one of "the people", I'm fine with it, so please, bring it on.

NB: If anyone has a clue about what the hell is actually going on in The Returned, I'd greatly appreciate any tips.

20 Things I Wish I Could Tell My Teenage Self

1. This is the worst your hair will ever look. Take some small comfort in the fact that it can now only get better.
2. That is still absolutely no excuse to cut your own hair, because you saw how to do layers on an episode of Ricki Lake.
3. Although you love Britpop, perhaps dressing like one of the Gallagher brothers for three entire years was not the best decision, sartorially speaking.
4. The show This Life is not a documentary.
5. It is also not a reason to deliberate doing a law degree.
6. The Truth Is Not Out There, so you may wish to remove that poster of the UFO from your bedroom wall.
7. Chasing the drummer from that band you love down Bourke St to ask him if he really is that drummer from that band you love is not very dignified, and is also a traffic hazard.
8. Don’t ever go on a date to McDonald’s with that boy you met at the school social doing the Macarena. It will result in being on the receiving end of some truly horrifying poetry.
9. Bargaining with other students to get the absence slips out of their school diary is advisable and should begin as close to the beginning of the school year as possible, as you will have forged your parents signature on your whole allotment by the middle of the first term.
10. Crawling on your hands and knees past the door of the class you’re supposed to be in order to sack off school early and bother the staff in HMV is a valid career choice.
11. Wearing a copy of Geri Halliwell’s Union Jack dress to the final year formal dance may be a decision that, in the future, you look back on slightly less favourably.
12. Wearing trainers with said dress, however, was and still is a great idea.
13. Despite what your teachers say, you can actually annoy your way into a job just by hanging around the shop long enough. You will go on to do this successfully twice, and are trying for a hat-trick.
14. Keeping all your videos of music filmclips that you carefully recorded, labelled and filed was probably one big waste of time as VHS is now an outdated format.
15. Keeping all the videos of the X Files that you carefully recorded, labelled and filed was definitely just one big waste of time as now you want to die of embarrassment when you even think about it.
16. Everyone telling you that school is the “best time of your life” WAS wrong. It was fucking horrific – you knew it then, and you still agree now.
17. University is not a whole lot better. In fact, in many ways, it’s worse.
18. That person who made your life a living hell for 12 years will have the balls to apologise for their behaviour three years after leaving school.
19. You’re still going to be pissed that they introduced you to everyone on the first day of high school as “stupid, fat, ugly Courtney Allardyce” though.
20. You have to forgive yourself for the dead goldfish. How were you to know they couldn’t survive in 38 degree heat?

Magnets, bitch!

PLEASE NOTE: This post contains Breaking Bad spoilers. If you've not seen the first half of season 5, and don't want to choke out a stifled scream halfway through the post, you should probably wait to read this when you're up to date. Yo.

So I've wanted to write something about Breaking Bad for the last couple of months, but it is truly the insurmountable task. I could write a book about it (any publishers out there who would be willing to sub me an advance, I'm very reasonably priced and just desperate enough to be mildly taken advantage of) but it's not something that you could really jot down in a blog post. So I'm just going to go through a couple of reasons why BREAKING BAD IS THE SINGLE GREATEST SHOW OF ALL TIME AND YES I'M LOOKING AT YOU THE WIRE/THE SOPRANOS/NEIGHBOURS.

1. Every single character is, essentially, a total arsehole. Completely hideous in nature, but drawn in a way that isn't the usual clumsy cartoonish depictions we're so used to seeing.  Walter White is slowly morphing into a meglomaniacal psychopath with every episode. Jesse, although arguably the conscience of the show, is a petty thug - a drug dealer, who puts his friends at risk of being jailed or shot on street corners. Skylar is a money-laundering, deceptive, deceitful (and complicit) fraud. Marie is a freaking kleptomaniac. And Hank is the biggest prick of them all - waving his gun around at a family party (although it is set in America, so that might just be what goes on), pressuring his innocent (ahem), terminally ill brother-in-law to ferry him round on stakeouts - he seems to be completely at ease about being a selfish douche. And yet somehow, Vince Gilligan has managed to make every one of these characters a real, rounded human being; they all have the motivation and their reasons for their behaviour. Very little of the protagonists behaviour is borne out of a sense of entitlement, or a sense of greed. It's utter desperation, and terror that drive them forward; the inability to drag themselves out of the rabbit hole they've somehow fallen into. An audience can empathise with that desperation and that humanity. This is where I couldn't watch The Wire; I found every character revolting but had no empathy for any of them. (Disclaimer: I only made it through 45 minutes of episode one. Don't judge me, okay?)

2. The writing is completely immense. How in this day and age can you get an entire audience of viewers to start shouting "Science, bitch!"? It's such a lovely change to have a program where the creators don't treat their audience as completely inept thickos. So much of the detail comes back to pay off later - sometimes much later - in the series, and manages to do so without the imagery and the detail being unnecessary. The small details of the program - the pan over to the Lily Of The Valley plant in Walt's garden, the pink bear in the pool after the plane crash - it's all there so that the creators DON'T have to sacrifice the quality of the writing to allow the main characters to break the fourth wall and explain, "Oh, so you see, the whole thing there was that Walter saw Jane die, and could have saved her, but chose not to as she was blackmailing him, and therefore is indirectly responsible for her death, unbeknownst to Jesse! Mmmkay?" to the audience like it was story time on CeeBeeBeebies. Hurrah for brain activity! It's been quite a while.

3.  IT HAS AN END. I rarely watch any US television because, quite frankly, I don't have the time or energy to expend on a program that is going to suck up 22 hours of my life a year, for 8 years, and either gets cancelled and leaves you high and dry without an ending, or resolves itself in the manner of Lost, which, I think we can all agree, was reason enough to throw your TV's into the nearest skip and live a life from that point forward where the high point of your electronic entertainment of an evening was tuning into the shipping forecast. How that show was allowed to a) rip off their viewers like that and b) let a pretty good opening storyline turn into such utter crap is beyond me. If I cared enough, I would be more than happy to launch a class action against the producers for compensation for the 8 years of our lives we can never get back. Knowing that Vince Gilligan has the ending allows the scripts to be tighter, sharper, and even though I will be utterly bereft for months after it finishes, I would prefer 5 incredible seasons to 14 mediocre ones.

4. Jesse Pinkman is fit. Well, he is now that he seems to have slightly better dress sense than in the first season. Those trousers, man. Seriously. Hats off to you, wardrobe department, because I certainly haven't seen a leg width like that since Kriss Kross. They looked like a child's bedsheet that had been sewn down the middle.

5. Finally, Gus Fring. The most unlikely villain you will ever see. Sure, there are some question marks about how he would actually be able to get away with what he's doing - do none of his employees ever go into his office? How does he have time to go home and make dinner for Jesse when he's working 26 hours a day running a successful international meth operation as well as eleven outposts of Los Pollos' delicious fried chicken outlets? What exactly is in the secret Los Pollos recipe? Is it as good as KFC? But (and anyone who hasn't seen the final episode of S4, you have a treat coming your way) any villain - however meek or mild or businesslike - will struggle to match up to the end of Mr Fring's reign where, for a few split seconds, you turn to the person next to you and breathe in quietly, "Oh my God. Gus Fring is a REAL-LIFE FREAKING ROBOT."

At Last. Something Beautiful You Can Own.

So this weekend I've basically smashed through the fifth series of Mad Men. I have been dying to see it. Every friend of mine has said, "Oh my God. That episode. That episode." And I think this is what I've just watched.

Mad Men is a strange beast, which takes the viewer back to a time of, let's face it, better dresses, better hair, better work stylee. By work stylee, I refer to the fact that all the men have untold numbers of bottles in their office, seem able to take naps at whim, and have "an apartment in the city" as a euphemism for a bit on the side. Wherefore are those days gone.

However the uncomfortable side of the late 60's Mad Men displays in glorious technicolour, is the all-too comfortable relegation of women to mere playthings. Peggy, a talented copywriter, is consistently passed over for jobs based on the simple fact she's a woman: "We can't have a woman working on a car account", says Don, the surprising hero of the piece. Betty, a fallen model on her second marriage is relegated to a now apparently overweight housewife who needs to go to WeightWatchers meetings to find a small sense of her former self-worth. And Joan. Beautiful, composed, cutting Joan, whom to all outsiders has the world at her feet. Joan, who is pushed into a world of corporate prostitution, to try and form her own mark on a company. For a sense of duty; for her employer, SCDP.  For the company. For the men that run it.

And sometimes I wonder, are things that much different these days? I have worked in many companies, often headed up by alpha males, who would demand a certain level of submission to their own bawdy hilarity in order to "fit in". How much further than this does the tide turn, for women, into the prostitution of their own self? Where do we draw the line? Where it becomes okay for some jokes to pass, and where some hit below the belt (as it were)? Where do we say, "Hey, these jokes about my arse being enormous were hilarious, and everyone seems to be enjoying them, but now I'm getting a bit pissed off?"

 I know what the majority of people will say about this. "Why would you put up with this? Complain to HR! Make your point!" But anyone who says that has never been in this position. Relationships, particularly in work, are a billion times more complicated than that. And most of the time, unfortunately, it's just not that easy.

Are we too sensitive? Should we be pulling up every person who makes a joke about someone's tits, at the risk of being that killjoy? Or is it better to just fit in, laugh along with the jokes, all the while thinking how much you despise this moment in time, whilst knowing that if you just fit in, if you just carry on, everything will probably be just fine.

Joan ended up experiencing the hardest end of this dilemma. I don't envy her. But I sincerely wonder, some times, if we've moved as far beyond these apparently long-left-behind times as we like to think.

Revolution TV update

This blog has been shamefully neglected over the past few months, whilst I embarked on a new job and an even newer mid-life crisis. Both are proceeding marvellously, running at a good pace alongside one another - isn't it nice when things in life align like that? - and if I tried to write any sort of mentally taxing piece right now, I would end up crawling into the linen cupboard and eating all my bedsheets. So, for the protection of the minimal amount of haberdashery we actually own, I'm going to avoid that and just list some stuff you should probably be watching on't telly.

1. The Real Housewives of Orange County

Now anyone with a full-time job or a smattering of self-respect won't really know anything about this. Whilst I have a full-time job, I also have TiVo which allows me to watch a full five hours of this abomination of a program a week. FIVE WHOLE HOURS. I know. RHOC is one of those Bravo-funded "sopumentaries" about the trials (literally - in the judicial sense) and tribulations ("oh my GAHHHD my boobs are too big/too small/too fake/not fake enough") of five women, whom I think have all been divorced at least twice, living it up in the illustrious suburbs of the OC. They have to keep swapping various cast members out at the end of each season due to various lawsuits they keep filing against each other, and the main hobby of the entire cast seems to be getting absolutely shitfaced on cocktails and taking (usually verbal but occasionally physical) swings at each other. I hate myself but I can't help but watch it - it's like when you're absolutely starving and the only thing in the house are three frozen yorkshire puddings and a piece of four week old cheese; as a meal it's so wrong but my God it tastes good going down. It's ridiculous but hey, it makes me feel a little better about my life choices: even though I'm not a multi-millionaire living in the sunshine, I don't resemble a leather handbag by choice.

2. The Last Weekend

This was a complete surprise as a mini-series, and every review of it I've seen has said much the same. Not because the novel it was based on was crap (quite the opposite), or that the actors were pants (again, couldn't be farther from the truth); but because it was on ITV. My other half and I routinely refer to anything on ITV after the watershed as a "another poor quality ITV drama" and it would seem the majority of television reviewers hold the same opinion. I think the real strengths for this three-parter were the solid screenplay based on the truly terrific book by Blake Morrison, and the two male leads, Rupert "posh bit of fancy pants" Penry-Jones, and the truly creepy Shaun Evans as Ian. There is a real sense of burgeoning dread that infiltrates what seems to be a light and fluffy weekend away, and the conclusion of the second part shunts the story into an entirely new and quite unexpected territory. As it seems with all mini-serieses, the ending suffered a little from the anti-climactic "meh", but overall it's definitely worth checking out on DVD or maybe on the "poor quality ITV drama"-Player online.

3. The Thick Of It

Yeah, yeah, I know, everyone loves this, but it really is worth all the hype. This fourth series is playing with the format, controversially putting the Coalition government of Tory old guard Peter Mannion and the gobby, power-hungry upstarts from the LibDems at the forefront. Sticking Malcolm Tucker in the background (at least in what we've seen so far) was a pretty brave move from Armando Iannucci, but it's paid off. Roger Allam's Peter Mannion is every bit as scene-stealingly brilliant as Capaldi's Tucker, and his complete befuddlement at the onward march of the digital age has brought about some of the funniest lines of the season. Episode two which showed Nicola Murray now as head of the opposition was incredibly uncomfortable to watch, both in terms of her complete ignorance to what's going on around her, and seeing Malcolm kowtowing (at least superficially) to Nicola's whims. However the episode set up a forthcoming coup very neatly - so we'll have to wait and see if we get a revitalised Tucker on the warpath against the Nutters this week.

4. Doctor Who

I love Doctor Who. This is because I am a nerd. I am not ashamed of it, and nor do I apologise for it. But I've had a difficult time with the old Doc the last couple of series, mainly due to the bordering-on-ridiculous detail of the story arcs. Steven Moffat has made no bones about saying the goal of the writing in this series was to present more stand-alone stories, and so far they're doing rather well - with the exception of that stupid second episode starring a terminator-style robot that bore more than a passing resemblance to Greg Davies with tinfoil taped to his face. The new companion, Jenna-Louise Coleman has showed her face already in the guise of a human trapped in a Dalek, and the general consensus in Casa del Me was that she was incredibly irritating. However I said the same thing about Catherine Tate who went on to star in one of my favourite episodes ever, "Turn Left", so we'll see. Word on the street is the good old ginger nuts Pond kicks the bucket this week, so brace yourself for a tear-jerker. I will be personally preparing with a curry and at leads four cans of Strongbow.

You should probably also all still be watching Neighbours, but you knew that already.

140 Characters and Counting

Tidy the Pugalier: "Stephen Fry has blocked me again."

I’ve been chucking out brain wibbles of 140 characters or less on Twitter for (I think) about 3 years now, and I don’t plan on stopping any time soon. I feel that I am my peak abilities of communication when trying to work out if I can keep that apostrophe in, or if that will push the tweet over the 140 character limit. (Don’t even get me started on the TweetLonger options available. If you want to bang on for longer than Twitter’s cut-off character limit, piss off back to Facebook where you belong, you vociferous time wasters.) I love the fact that you can watch politicians literally end their careers with a drunken smashing of their smartphone keypad after they’ve had eight-too-many Beaujolais in the publically funded parliament bar. I love the fact that I can follow my friends when they’re on a night out and can be up to date on who got kicked out of what club, without having to make the effort to change out of my comfy pants with the moth holes in the arse.

As my time on Twitter progressed, I started following a variety of different people to the ones I had started off with. My feed spread to include a lot of columnists and journalists, food bloggers and reviewers, radio presenters and newsreaders. And slowly I started to realise that they all knew each other. They were all, constantly tweeting each other. Making hilarious, pithy observations amongst themselves. They all seemed like they were having so much fun, all the time! How wonderful!

The problem that then becomes apparent, however is that YOU CAN’T JOIN THEM. Oh you can tweet them an amusing anecdote along the same lines of their conversations; sure. Will they respond to you? Chances are pretty slim. This doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re lording it up on Twitter Hill, refusing to acknowledge the pleb population of the Great Unwashed below. The people in question have 100,000 plus followers usually – their @ replies are constantly pouring in, racing down the page like so many Watership Down bunny rabbits after the first barbeque of the season. They’re never going to see you. But that doesn’t mean you don’t try, does it?

Or does it? I confess when I first turned to Twitter, I didn’t quite get it and was a lot less discerning about who I would tweet. Until I realised that if I had a mate who followed both me and whatever minor celebrity I had tried to muscle my opinions on to, they would be able to see both my excitable tweet to aforementioned minor celeb, and the uncomfortable radio silence that followed as my tweet went unacknowledged. I don’t need that. I spent the majority of my formative years in high school going to parties and being ignored. I don’t need to recreate this scenario in my adult years, nor  do I need to parade it online in front of everyone else. I can embarrass myself in actual public quite competently, thanks very much.

But a few years down the line and something has changed. After careful observation from afar on when it is appropriate to interject in a Twitter conversation, I have slowly began to start garnering responses from the very people who would have turned their nose up at my “HAAAI GUYS DO YOU LIKE LOLCOPTERZ” attempts at conversation not so long ago. I’ve amazingly received @ replies from some of my heroes – Grace Dent agreed with me about The Daily Show being cancelled from More 4. Jay Rayner has been round the @ replies with me.  Richard Bacon tweeted a one word reply – “yes” – in response to my bemoaning missing his radio show the previous day. Is that an agreement? An air punch? Who knows. Giles Coren has tweeted me TWICE in two days. A number of members of Elbow have politely replied, with an air of “back away from the crazy” implied. Basically, in my mind, I’m IN. Twitter LOVES ME. These people are all my NEW BEST FRIENDS.

My internal belief that I am actually friend with all these online bods probably culminated on Saturday, when I set off for a charity walk with my friend Kat. Walking past Embankment tube, I stopped, mid-walk, and screamed out “HAAAAI GARETH!!”, waving wildly to a brilliantly coiffeured young man sat outside the tube station. He stared at me, with the expression of someone not entirely sure if they should be ringing the emergency services at this juncture, before hesitantly waving back. This was not an unusual reaction for him to have, considering HE HAD NEVER MET ME BEFORE. I follow him on Twitter and recognised him from his avatar. It’s the equivalent of wandering up to Ryan Gosling in Tesco in your S Club 7 pyjamas, and telling him that you’d been considering leaving your husband for him. This person doesn’t actually know you. You probably shouldn’t do that to them.

But bless Gareth, he was extremely gracious under pressure and we struck up a lovely conversation over the @ replies. And I went away feeling very happy that I’d shouted out like a crazy person, which is not a reaction crazy people normally have about frightening Northern chaps in public. Because for all the talk about social media creating more distance between people, as we apparently move towards communicating solely through handsets and computer screens; in that moment I had made connection with a Real Life Human Being, which never would have happened had it not been for Twitter. And that can only be a good thing.

Throwing Bricks In Glass Houses

NB: not the actual Samantha Brick

So imma just gonna say a couple of things about this Samantha Brick debacle and then we can all go and have a nice cup of tea, and think about what we've done. That okay with everyone?

Yesterday morning, The Daily Mail posted an article by some woman called Samantha Brick, banging on in a facetious and obnoxious manner about how women hated on her because she was so damned attractive. Being attractive was SUCH an obstacle in her life, it seems, that she has been passed over for promotions, lost friends, and (gasp) has never even been asked to be a bridesmaid. Accompanied by a number of cheesily posed pictures of a fairly regular looking woman, I happened across this article at about 9am, and, I confess, was pretty outraged, sharing the link with a female friend of mine.

Two hours later, I checked the story again. It had managed to attract an enormous 1450 comments on the Daily Mail's website. I clearly don't have the mental strength or agility to pore over these all, but none of the comments I saw were supportive. They were revolting, verging on trolling. It was hating for hatings sake. And, in fairness's sake, the article was appallingly written: no discernible structure, no actual point being made, just a series of "woe is me, I suffer from hunger being this skinny" vignettes, none of which seemed to go anywhere. It was just one pointless anecdote after another. Fine. Whatever. Liz "semen stealing" Jones has made a career out of it, so why can't this woman.

Then I saw this morning's follow up, and I felt a bit queasy. The Daily Mail had decided, in their all-pervading wisdom, to get this woman to write another article, based on the fact she had become the most villified, most pilloried member of the British community overnight. She mentioned she had been in tears for a lot of yesterday. Understandable, surely, when you see that 1450 people had taken the time - by midday - to deride this woman in public. But hey, I hear you cry - she put herself up to this, didn't she? SHE wrote the article. IT'S CLEARLY ALL HER FAULT.

I'm not so sure. Giles Coren, the Times journalist, tweeted last night that he wondered if anyone had considered that the Daily Mail had basically set her up for a fall. (In the interest of direct quoting, he actually said "fucked her over", but you get the point.) And really, this is where the blame lies. Regardless of how inflammatory her piece was to start with, this has gone past sub-editors, and editors, and they've probably rubbed their hands together, cackling, thinking of the amount of traffic to their site this would generate. Their advertisers must be rolling in piles and piles of furore-scented cashback right now. And the Mail made that possible.

If this woman really was in a fragile state yesterday, is the responsible thing to do to get her to do it ALL OVER AGAIN? The second article is even worse than the first; still poorly thought through, with no real point but this time with so much tangible "woe is me" that the commenters went just as ballistic as the day before. And all this is doing is driving more traffic to a website that is based around outrageous, inflammatory, poorly written trash pieces that all us middle class Guardian readers adore slagging off, but still sneak around to peeking at just to see "what all the fuss is about". Don't say you don't. I know you do, because I do it too. Mark my words, this will be covered on lefto-comedy program 10 0'Clock Live tonight - if it's not, I'll eat my hat.*

Just give it a bone, people. None of us are coming out of this smelling of roses. The amount of pure bilious venom that has spewed from those comments over the past 48 hours is enough. Can we not now just forget about the whole thing, and move on to examining where the real bile should be poured: onto a publication that not only allows, but openly relishes, in holding women like this up for public ridicule and judgment.




*I will not actually eat my hat. I'm probably allergic to cotton.