The great X-Factor auditions controversy

Waa-waa-waa boo-bloody-hoo. Look, I love a good bit of social networking to comment on TV. Twitter and facebook are half the bloody reasons to watch stuff like Apprentice, Question Time and the X Factor live as they air rather than recording them for later. It's fun to have causal banter about who should win (OMFG, DIversity 4EVA!!) and who should not (Ruth Lorenzo is ttl shte haha blaad :D) or make irreverent comments about politicians (Why does Margaret Beckett look like she's been drawn by Quentin Blake?). BUT all of this pales into comparison with what happened last Saturday. Last Saturday the X-Factor auditions moved from a dingy room and just the judges to a full blown arena, with the contestants given backing tracks. A bit cheesy, a bit naff but not that big a deal.

But oh, no. Not for my mates. It ruined it all. A nameless Scottish acquaintance said that the transition from small room, to boot camp to TV studio showed the journey of the performer. But, but said I in an incredulous manner... this is exactly how Britain's Got Talent works and nobody cared then. They moan, they howl, it's just different they say. And I do not care one fucking jot. Get over it, it's still trash, you still love it and you'll gossip about it til January.

PS - Next week in the biggest telly shocker of all time, instead of the most attractive female judge sitting on his right (once Dannii, now Cheryl) Louis shall take this role instead. Why I hear you ask. Are they having an illicit affair? Did Cheryl finally get so thin she's starting to decompose and smell bad? I invite you to speculate.

Rosh Bakir

The Israeli version of the popular 'Brain Wall' franchise (Hole in the Wall in the UK) is utterly sodding mental. Bearing in mind that the version we know and tolerate is doolally enough you may ask how this is possible.

In the UK version a wall comes towards you with a hole in it and you have to make the shape or else be slammed into a cold pool just behind you. In Israel, 'Rosh Bakir' aka Head in the Wall, the wall stays stationary (I am trying so hard not to make separation wall/fence comments at this point as to be absurd) and there is a BACKWARDS TRAVELLATOR contestants must battle to JUMP THROUGH a hole quite high up the wall. Were this not bad enough in a retro Mario Bros sort of way obstacles travel down the travellator at the poor bastards, knocking them off their lycra clad feet and giving them little chance of regaining composure before being sped to a splashy end.


awesome

I hate Valentine Warner

I hate this man. Here is why.

1. His stupid alpaca like face. He constantly seems as if he's just coming round from the anesthetic or as if he has suffered a blunt head trauma.

2. The way he describes food is really annoying. His mint tea with sugar was 'sweet and minty'. For fucks sake.

3. I (allegedly) saw him molesting an otter

4. He seems to be almost sexually interested in pulses, beans, grains etc. and in forcing them on the public. Try my fresh peas? Nibble my broad beans? How is this not a form of grooming?

5. He called his small, lavender meringues 'fairy tits'. Then he smirked a toothy smirk and a part of my soul died.

T'telly

Two shows have launched in the past fortnight about, well... telly. Similar formats aimed at totally different audiences.

In the BBC corner we have: 'As Seen On TV' a veritable smuggy chumfest hosted by rent-a-hunk celebrity-shagger Steve Jones where minor TV celebs answer TV nostalgia questions whilst making you feel old.








In the Channel 4 corner we have: 'You Have Been Watching' The Guardian and Screenwipe's razor sharp bastard Charlie Brooker's new 'mainstream' vehicle with a 'format'.












Rightio. So, which one is better?

Format:
ASOTV: Solid and dull. One imagines this was sat in some executives drawer for a rainy day. Well, it is just a classic TV quiz sort of a thing. (6/10)
YHBW: A weird hybrid between BBC4's Screenwipe and Have I Got News For You which tries to be both and manages to be neither. Confused but at least its trying (5/10)

Host:
ASOTV: Steve Jones is pretty and charismatic and just a touch too smug. But he isn't Charlie Brooker. (2/10)
YHBW: Charlie Brooker has the benefit of being Charlie Brooker. Seeing him squirm through the format and cope with an audience and guests he actually has to talk to instead of telling to fuck off is half the charm (9/10)

You know what, I could do a few more of these rounds but sod it. There's no point. YHBW is far superior to the fleck of TV dross that is ASOTV. The issue with ASOTV is, for a show about nostalgia, it's completely bloody forgettable. It only began yesterday and all I can remember is the set looked nice and the audience seemed to have been paid to laugh. Utter crap. And as for YHBW, it's nice but it just isn't Screenwipe. Sorry Charlie but you're not as funny when I'm reminded other people are in on the joke. You're much better ranting about how shitting awful the pissweasels and spunkpigeons in Brittania High are jacking off in your lounge via a webcam than being well lit on CH4 with a bunch of bohemian arseholes politely laughing at your critiques. Fix it, yeah?

A long time ago, we used to be friends

Dear UK,

If you haven't seen it before you now have no excuse. Rob Thomas' (not that one) seminal high-school noir series Veronica Mars is making its debut on Freeview channels, filling the Gilmore Girls shaped void in the E4 morning schedule from Thursday the 16th of July.

Charming, brilliantly written, cute, deep, and sharp as a hanzo sword this is one show that is well-worth getting into. Kristen Bell plays Veronica, a recently ostracized high school student by day but by night fights to save her dad's reputation by helping to solve the murder of her best friend. OK, it's Nancy Drew meets Raymond Chandler by way of Buffy.

Thank me later, in the meantime here's a cute clipreel of some of the series trademark punchy dialogue

Torch-what??!!

Something amazing happened yesterday. Whilst watching BBC1's ever-loving Angel/X-Files rip off summer thriller saga 'Torchwood: Children of Earth' I realised something. We've never had it so good. For three episodes in a row Torchwood has been consistently entertaining and not at all muddled and bollocks. The series usually finds itself as mediocre sci-fi adventures with quite good characters and rather rubbish 'Alien of the week' stories apart from a handful of episodes each season which totally justify the overall existence of the series.

For example, season one brought us the most unforgivably boring fight between a dinosaur and a robot ever in 'Cyberwoman', and an episode that was essentially Welsh, alien fight club. Still the season contained the truly heat-wrenching episode with Capt. Jack meeting the man he named himself for and a good-old romp in 'They Keep Killing Suzie' (a real contender for one of my favourite titles for anything ever)

Season two was generally of better quality but for every carnivorous shape-shifter impregnating brides before their wedding day (I don't care what you think, that was genius!) or cameo from Buffy's swaggering James Marsters, there were three episodes featuring the sullen face of Martha 'has anyone written me a personality yet?' Jones and one that revolved around harvesting Tesco value steak from a giant alien worm. Lovely.

COE may not be especially high-brow or cerebral but it is bloody good summer blockbuster entertainment. Sort of half 'State of Play' and half 'Torchwood' there's enough intrigue and involvement outside of the four main players we already know to make this miniseries work on a much more epic scale. So the twists are a bit predictable and the 456's projectile vomiting was a tad offputting but it's fun!! And I like fun? Don't you? Ah probably not you miserable bastard.


UPDATE 11/7/09

OK, I was wrong. Having seen the last two episodes this WAS clever TV, this WAS more than a summer alien thriller. This ran the gamut and went to Battle Royale, nay Warsaw ghetto levels in terms of questions of sacrifice, life and death. With that ending and such a strong appreciation for the plot (It's rare to see ratings go UP during the course of a series, usually you expect to see a slow drop especially for something requiring as much viewer attention and commitment as this) it's hard to see where the show goes next. If it's over, it left on a high and it's certainly impossible to ever go back to cheesy alien adventure romps, those days are beyond over. What we do know is that Capt. Jack will be in the Dr Who Xmas specials and maybe the good Doctor can knock some sense into him. Maybe not. Either way the third series of Torchwood was bloody exemplary. All previous mistakes forgiven.

Hit Me Baby One more Time - Upside yo' head

So, tonight, whilst abandoned by my family for some insufferable function which involved a lot of other jews being rather Jewish and quietly kvetching over a wedding, and myself being abandoned due to lack of a decent suit (it's in an envelope in Cambridge.... long story) I found myself channel-surfing until I came across this legend on BBC3:

Britney Spears Saved my Life

Wow. I mean, I love a good sensationalist title as much as the next person. Certain titles just make you stop and want to watch with some sort of morbid fascination as to what might come next. Titles include: 'Can Fat Teens Hunt?'.... the implication being if they can't they'll die, which would be amusing in some way, 'Two-tonne Man'... sensing a theme yet? 'Kirsten's Topless Ambition' in which some ex-CBBC lady I remember showing me how to draw motion blurs when I was 8 and loved cartooning considers getting her baps out etc etc. Deep stuff. It's like that one chip left on the plate, I know it's bad for me and damn I know I'm full but I want it, if only to see if it's like the others.

I do genuinely believe that whoever made this programme (a chap named Vikram Jayanti or so I am told) did so with good intentions, he has an impressive track record and in the article he wrote for the Guardian seems genuinely to have been touched by the people he met and the experiences he recorded despite being something of a Britney-sceptic. He makes it clear he doesn't want to take the piss out of fans but rather see the grip the current Princess of pop (well, until Lady GaGa goes at her with a machete... don't mock, it'll happen!) has over her legions of fans who have defended her through it all, even her Elmer Fudd lookalike phase.

I wanted to mention that because it's important. Important in that, although this is the aim of inviting 300 megafans to dress as schoolgirls and wobble to 'Baby One More Time' whilst getting some increasingly tragic life stories on the way, it really doesn't seem that way when you're watching it. Yes, it's all meant to be, as Jayanti says, a bit ironic and the title is meant to attract the lecherous viewer but without an almost pre-ordained level of smuggery, this is not some sort of pop-cult revelation where we see a fan's relationship with the artist for what it really is, rather it ends up being the freak-show it tried to avoid being in the first place. Fans leer at the camera, sing their favourite bits, show you their collections and tattoos... comfortable viewing it is not. It's like drinking undiluted Smash Hits, passing out and then waking up during some bad Drag-Queen tribute complete with red leather catsuits, pigtails and snakes.

Throughout infrequent clips of the Britneyites queuing, learning choreography, getting dressed as schoolgirls and then finally celebrating their idol in the most misjudged dance routine since the Nepalese prisoners did Thriller(... no wait, that was actually awesome) we're invited to learn a bit about their lives. Each little segment has a similar narrative, 'This is my Britney shrine, here's my fave song... please watch me listen to it whilst I stare at the camera like there are sweeties inside, this is what Britney means to me, here is my hideous personal sob story that I have somehow related to Britney'. Divorce, coming-out, self-confidence, cancer... these are all big personal deals at play that deserve a damn sight more respect than being secondary to Britney. One of the more tragic elements of this is how the fans croon over how Britney was controlled and all-American and now she's free, something that they wish to emulate. The sad part is that even sexed up and lip-syncing her way around the globe, Britney is just as controlled as ever. False Idol worship at its worst.

At its core what this show wants you to take away is that music helps people, it takes them to a place and that can mean a lot to people; lord knows in bad times I have Joni Mitchell and Aimee Mann on constantly. What it needs to say is that the message of the lyrics do not mean that the wordsmith will save you. Hell, if you did that this would be called 'Max Martin' saved my life.

Sorry but if I see a sensationalist title and then a parade of fans with sob stories I become more, not less cynical about the subject matter. Lordy I do wish the reverse was true here but sadly I don't feel the heart that I do recognise has gone into this.