Charlie Brooker’s Screen Burn (11 page)

Accompanying the music are clips from self-consciously controversial videos, from the calculated visual outrage of ‘Smack My Bitch Up’ (Drugs! Nudity! Violence! Dull twenty-something media tossbores calling it fantastic!) to the loveless S&M tinkerings of Madonna’s ‘Erotica’ promo (as arousing as watching Metal Mickey being jerked off by a calculator). Yawn, yawn, yawn – most ‘shocking’ videos are more irksome than upsetting, akin to teenage Marilyn Manson fans who like to think they’re undermining us all by getting their eyelids pierced. Incidentally, someone should tell them they’ve picked the wrong idol: Manson pops up tonight, like a ghost-train skeleton, but by far the most disturbing sight of the evening is the contemporary footage of Shane MacGowan, who looks like he’s accidentally banged his face against a tree 657 times in a row.

Immediately after the X-rated
Top Ten
, there’s a look at another corrupting influence on our youth, and one that coloured my teenage years more than music ever did.
Thumb Candy
(C4) may be billed as an exploration of ‘the history of video games’, but it’s far from comprehensive, concentrating heavily on the early years of arcade gaming at the expense of latter-day amusements – PlayStations barely warrant a mention, Doom and Quake don’t figure at all, and Sega have been airbrushed out completely. In fact, this feels more like the opening salvo of a potentially superb three-part series rather than a one-off; my guess is the makers had a lengthier run in mind. Still, until someone comes along to give gaming the full
Nazis: A Warning From History
treatment, this will do.

Thumb Candy
won’t tell unashamed games dweebos anything they don’t already know, but they’ll find it hard not to get a kick out of seeing the creator of ‘Pac-Man’ recounting the game’s genesis. And while it may not cover everything, what is there has been admirably researched: they’ve even managed to track down Matthew Smith, author of legendary Spectrum titles ‘Manic Miner’ and ‘Jet Set Willy’. Smith made a fortune overnight, blew it almost as quickly, then went a bit funny and ran away to live in a commune in Holland.

As a gawky teen I was so astounded by the brilliance of ‘Manic Miner’, I used to sit and watch the demo-mode loop over for hours on end, pausing only to go to the toilet or stare at the ceiling and sigh hopelessly about the girls in my class, most of whom were out having fun with older boys who didn’t waste their evenings watching a pixilated miner leap over a thistle. Smith may have wrecked my adolescent love life, but for introducing Miner Willy to the world, he deserves to be immortalised on Trafalgar Square’s spare plinth. The campaign starts here.

The first thing that hits you about
Meet the Popstars
(ITV) is the screaming. It’s truly hysterical: either the audience really loves
Hear’Say or a man has just chased them into the studio with a hammer.

Yes, you thought you’d seen the last of
Popstars
, but it seems The Man ain’t through with us yet. Welcome to a watered-down cross between
This Is Your Life
and
Summertime Special
, hosted by Davina McCall, a woman who’s become omnipresent to the point where you no longer notice she’s actually there, like a clock on the mantelpiece that your ear filters out after two weeks of constant tick-tocking. She really is ubiquitous: last week I glanced in a mirror and was astounded to discover she wasn’t hosting my reflection.

Not long ago, Davina was easy to warm to: she was dry, clever, strong. Now she just stomps about shouting about how great everything is. It’s as though her brain’s been spooned out and replaced with a rotating glitterball. Come on, McCall – we know you’re in there. Come out with your hands up.

Anyway, back to the show in question, and Hear’Say in particular. Reviewing the first edition of
Popstars
back in January, I wrote, ‘The final line-up is likely to consist of five fresh-faced interchangeables called Sarah, Sandra, Lorraine, Simon and Tom, and it’s going to be [hard] to get wound up by them, in the same way that getting annoyed by S Club 7 is a bit like waving your fist at a Lakeland Plastics catalogue.’ And sure enough, while it’s easy to snort at the mechanics behind them, Kym, Noel, Danny, Myleene and Suzanne themselves are proving infuriatingly hard to fully despise. Funny-looking bunch, though. Noel’s head distinctly resembles an obscure computer game character called Dizzy, a cheerful cartoon egg who appeared in a string of budget platform games in the late 80s. And then there’s Danny.

Picture Danny in your mind’s eye for a moment. Knead some mental plasticine around and ah! there he is! He really is astonishing to behold, isn’t he? Each separate component of his head appears to be engaged in a no-holds-barred fight for your undivided attention. I’d leap to my feet and applaud whether he sang through it or not.

Just as well, too, since for the duration of
Meet the Popstars
everything – absolutely everything – is greeted with thunderous clapping. The sight of the band’s mums walking onstage to show off old baby photos triggers deafening applause, while each musical number the band performs provokes mounting hysteria, despite the fact that most of the time they’re belting out covers – ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ (‘Beerrridge Ovah Ter-Ruh-Huh-Bulled Wahahderrr Mmmyeah’), ‘Monday Monday’, and a dreadful version of ‘Boogie Wonderland’ that sounds like a fairground ride dying in its sleep. If Hear’Say came on and kicked a dog to death, they’d receive the most roof-raising ovation since Live Aid.

There’s also weeping. Tears of pride and joy, dripping from the eyes of proud relatives and acquaintances, prodded on to yap about the flabbergasting loveliness of each band member in turn. The greater the flood of tears, the louder the applause from the crowd. Blub, clap, blub, clap: it’s a new form of hand-operated lawn sprinkler.

The only participant who doesn’t sob is ‘Nasty’ Nigel Lythgoe, off shooting the British version of
Survivor
in Borneo. Davina and the band chat to him via satellite and pretend it’s live: chinny reckon.

Since his dalliance with tabloid fame, Nigel’s lost weight and that grim haircut’s disappeared (it now vaguely resembles an orderly bird’s nest). He looks less like Admiral Ackbar and more like a million dollars: at least until he smiles, at which point he reveals a grin like a second-hand mah-jong set.

Song lyrics aside, Hear’Say themselves don’t say much. They’re just sort of there. Instead of
Meet the Popstars
, they should’ve called it ‘Look! Look! LOOK AT THEM! THEY’RE FAMOUS!’ That or ‘Grin Orgy’.

Snakes! They’re like bits of rope, only angrier. Snakes are feared by millions because a) they’ve been demonised by the entertainment industry, which portrays them as emotionless predators, and b) they look weird and awful when they try to swallow eggs.

Oh, and c) they kill about 100,000 people a year. Snake popularity
is currently at an all-time low, and with westerns also out of favour there’s a lack of decent serpentine roles in contemporary cinema.

No one would have cared about the outcome of Lars Von Trier’s
Breaking the Waves
if it had starred a pair of grass snakes. You’ll never see a puff adder share the star billing in a kooky Meg Ryan rom-com. I did once glimpse a snake enjoying a romantic clinch on the front of a video, but that was in an Amsterdam shop window which doubled as a kind of pornographic zoological triptych (as far as I could make out – and I didn’t stare for more than a couple of hours – the only animals that didn’t appear anywhere amongst that menagerie of lurid video sleeves were giraffes and coelacanths).

But I digress. Most people despise snakes but Australian maniac Steve Irwin adores them, and in
Deadly Spitting Cobras
(ITV) he scours the African countryside on his hands and knees in a bid to prove it, grabbing gigantic cobras by the tail and cheerfully dangling them in front of the camera as they jerk about trying to kill him.

Only dimly aware of Irwin’s existence prior to watching this programme, I am now an instant fan. Visually, he’s a cross between Bill Hicks and a mad baby, all podgy cheeks and boggling eyes, his little round head bursting with joyful awe at the sheer wonder of it all. Then there’s his gesturing – hands flying this way and that like a pack of startled crows. Animated? He makes Ainsley Harriott look like a lead bench. Kids must love him, although whether a man who deliberately provokes dangerous beasts for a living makes a suitable role model is open to question.

Still, who could combine childlike enthusiasm with suicidal bravery to such effect? The greater the threat posed, the happier Irwin becomes and the more compelling the result; it’s like watching a circus clown pirouette across a minefield. In these days of pofaced I’m-cooler-than-my-subject-matter TV-presenter bummery, it’s both rare and refreshing to see someone getting really stuck into an activity they genuinely love on TV, even if it does involve a cobra spitting acrid venom directly into their eyes.

‘Cor, look at that! Right in me face!’ Irwin says, indisputably
impressed as an angry cobra scores a direct hit. These lethal creatures squirt poison at potential enemies in an attempt to blind them; each snakey throatful has the potential to permanently damage Irwin’s vision, while a bite itself could kill – but he’s loving every minute. ‘What a grumpy lil’ snake,’ he says, venom dripping from his face, gleefully re-approaching a creature that’s not so much grumpy as coldly homicidal. ‘Isn’t he a beauty?’ Boom: another faceful. ‘Woo hoo!’

Woo hoo? His bravery is remarkable, but what’s truly astonishing is the way he’s also capable of imparting solid zoological facts while in mid-wrestle. Even as he mops stinging poison from his face with one hand and snatches the tail of a lurching cobra with the other, Irwin maintains a constant level of lively and informative patter, pausing only to grin from ear to ear, or suddenly leap backward and concentrate extra hard for a moment when it looks like the damn thing might actually kill him.

In summary then: Steve Irwin is David Attenborough gone horribly right. I’d pay good money to watch him shoot a documentary in a violent urban environment, grabbing muggers by the ankle and cheerfully pointing out where their knife is. Hang on: that’s Crocodile Dundee, isn’t it? Ah well.

Sadism isn’t simply wrong, it’s also fun to watch. You know it’s true. Nastiness trumps niceness every time. That notorious scene from
Reservoir Dogs
where Mr Blonde maltreats a policeman wouldn’t be half as famous if instead of slicing off an ear and dousing the unfortunate cop with petrol he’d handed him a Lion bar and started kissing his legs. No, the reason it lodged in the collective unconscious was that half the cinema audience was thinking: ‘Oh! How awful! How vicious! Perhaps he’ll slice his nose off next! That’d be cool! Woo hoo!’

British TV was remarkably slow to pick up on the viewing public’s limitless appetite for cold-blooded spite, but following the success of
Big Brother, Popstars
and
The Weakest Link
– all three of
which relentlessly milk the sadogasmic thrill of watching everyday schmoes being shat on – they’ve suddenly grabbed hold of the concept of competitive cruelty with the delirious enthusiasm of an otherworldly Dobermann plunging its fangs into a choirboy’s throat.

Hence, possibly, the canine theme of the latest ‘cruel’ offering – Ulrika Jonsson’s
Dog Eat Dog
(BBC1), in which six contestants spend 24 hours getting to know one another on a mental and physical assault course, then attempt to exploit their new-found knowledge of one another’s weaknesses in order to get their hands on a cash prize of £10,000.

Trouble is, it simply isn’t dog-eat-dog enough. For one thing, Ulrika is about as menacing as a pastel sketch of a lonely duckling. She couldn’t appear nasty under any circumstances – if she approached you in a dark alleyway waving a hunting knife, you’d assume she was going to carve a smiley face on the wall. Even after she’d stabbed you with it.

Another letdown: the contestants themselves, who spend most of the time smiling and winking at each other like it’s all a big joke. For pity’s sake, this is supposed to be a fight to the death: they shouldn’t wink unless someone tosses a handful of powdered glass in their eye. Worse still, they’re allowed to perform a group hug at the end, without a stormtrooper stepping in to break it up with a truncheon. Pathetic.

Listen here, BBC: you can’t go building up our bloodlust, only to offer ice cream and free rides on the donkey instead of full-blown gladiatorial horror. It’s grossly irresponsible. You want to bring us ruthless gameshows? Then do it properly or you’ll have an uprising on your hands. Here are a few simple suggestions based on subtle modifications to existing programmes. They’re yours for the taking:

Neither of those fit the bill? OK, since
Dog Eat Dog
is a shameless genetic splicing of
The Weakest Link
and
The Krypton Factor
, why not blend two other successful programmes together to create a brand new sado-quiz – like, say, a cross between
It’s Only TV but I
Like It
and
Son of God
, in which a contestant is led up a hill and crucified, then asked to correctly identify a selection of popular theme tunes whistled by Phil Jupitus. Or a combination of the
Generation
Game
and the
Antiques Roadshow
in which Jim Davidson gets examined by experts and told that he’s worthless.