3DTV

From the recent media coverage, I am forced to assume that I am the only person in the country who wasn't sent a preview tape of ITV's new impressions show, Headcases. As such, I had to watch it on my actual television, on the actual day it was on (although I was still allowed to skip the adverts).

Because you don't actually see the impressionists, this show is being compared to Spitting Image and 2DTV. ITV have said that the clever CGI methods used allow them to make new sketches very close to broadcast if need be (although this week it appears they chose not to). I'm not certain what it is about pointing a camera at Rory Bremner which makes this impossible but apparently he is a very busy man. To be honest, I don't see how it makes the slightest bit of difference if the show is live-action, CGI, animated, latex puppets, stop-motion, marionettes, sock-puppets, or shot with crap cameras in the dark so we can't see who's who, like that ridiculous impressions show a few years ago that used the Barenaked Ladies' Humour Of The Situation for its title music, this being the best part of the show.

I did quite like Headcases. I laughed in a few places. I liked the political stuff best, because I follow politics more than gossip and because I think there's a richer vein of humour there -- plus the opportunity to make a point (which Headcases did exactly once, possibly by accident). That said, the fact that David Cameron had essentially the same character device as princes William and Harry did mean that about half the show was given over to just one gag. I was impressed by the credits. The show had two pages of performers and one of writers, and most of the names I associate more with the BBC and Channel 4 than with ITV. One or two I associate with BBC Four. That's unnerving. It's the sort of thing that just cannot happen. It's like finding out Alan Titchmarsh has written raunchy novels, or seeing the Prime Minister on Football Focus, or something.

It was a fun diversion, and it got the tone about right. But I don't think it had clever enough writing to make me want to watch it every week. The risk with impression shows is that the writers develop their characters into something quite other than the person they're based on, and then they become just regular dodgy sketch shows. I'm not sure Headcases didn't do that before it started. I guess the test will be how well it manages to stay current and interesting in the coming weeks. (You know, because David And Victoria In America and Northern Rock Has No Money! are bost such up-to-date stories.)

Simon Says

I've just heard Simon Cowell say this:

And if Britain has no talent, it'll be the end of Britain's Got Talent

Really? And I suppose if they run out of casualty victims on Casualty, it'll be the end of Casualty.

How To Watch Torchwood

Thanks to the BBC's iPlayer service, the unmissable is now unmissable™. It's not always that simple, though, so here, based on my experience last week, is a guide to using the new service:

1. Set Torchwood to series record on your hard-disk TV recorder set-top-box. Use the BBC Three broadcast; it's almost a full week ahead, after all. This will suffice for almost the entire series.
   
2. You will have to remember to record the last two episodes manually, as these have randomly moved to a different day (presumably to get them out of the way before Doctor Who started up again) and the finale is not on BBC Three because this would be making life too easy for us. In any case, the series is now on two channels, on two days, at two times, with gaps of anywhere up to two weeks between episodes, so the series record feature can't be trusted with this.
3. Make sure you are not discouraged by the fact that the penultimate episode was a thoroughly missable (oddly, Firefox's spellchecker objects to "missable" but not to "unmissable") affair or the fact that the antipenultimate was shit. The finale is actually pretty good.
   
4. If you miss the finale, and the series record feature didn't work, you can download it from iPlayer. Go to the TV Replay menu on your HDR box and select "Torchwood".
5. Torchwood may, for no apparent reason, be absent from this menu. If this is the case then (a) you will have to use a PC, and (b) the associated episode of Torchwood Declassified is probably there.
6. Fire up your laptop. Go to the iPlayer website. Browse to Torchwood and click "download". The file should register as 500MB. Do not click "stream", as we want to watch this later, elsewhere, offline, as downloads permit us to do.
   
7. You are told that you must download some software. Do so.
8. You are told that you must restart Firefox. Do so.
9. You are told that you must update Media Player. Do so.
10. Browse to Torchwood again and click "download" again. Wait for a pleasingly short amount of time, partly because the file now registers as 250MB.
11. Shut down the laptop using hibernate mode to save time, and take it to your chosen viewing location. In my case, the train.
12. Reboot the laptop. The iPlayer software has crashed, so you'll need to restart that.
13. Browse to Torchwood, and click "play".
14. You will be told that you must download a license to play this file and cannot watch it without an internet connection. Start mentally composing an angry blog post.
15. Return home, safe in the knowledge that Torchwood is repeated on Tuesday evening.
16. Turn on the TV at the appointed time.
17. You will see a documentary about various inept conspiracy theories surrounding the death of Not-Actually-A-Princess Diana, which has replaced Torchwood at the last minute despite very obviously having taken quite a long time to research and make, because of the BBC's insipid obsession with showing every damn thing they have at the most 'relevant' moment possible, without considering at all how convenient or useful that is to anyone.
    

Nice job, BBC. You've made the unmissable very nearly unwatchable.

This Would be Liveblogging If We Didn't Have a Hard Disk TV Recorder

Kevin on the Apprentice just told Sir Alan Sugar,

The ciabattas sold like hot cakes!

Genius. Almost as good as Great British Menu the other day, when Jenny Bond, on a post-production voiceover, wondered how Angela Hartnett rated a meal out of ten, a musing which was followed by an apparently unrelated clip of Hartnett being critical of said meal, which itself was followed by Bond saying, "so, about two out of ten, then".

It's fantastic, watching the show and listening to Jenny Bond making stuff up to try to add layers of drama that don't even nearly exist. I never paid much attention to news about royalty, but if she ever had any credibility, it's long dead now. If she ever tells me how the Queen feels about something now, I think I shall assume she's made it up to add drama.

Having Worked Out How To Embed YouTube Videos, I Demonstrate My Mental Superiority Over All Sixteen Apprentice Candidates

Yes! The Apprentice is on again! Of course, in the first few weeks all the fun lies in poking fun at the inept attempts of the candidates to carry out even the most basic tasks. (In later weeks, all the fun lies in poking fun at the continued inept attempts of the candidates to carry out even the most basic tasks.)

Last week, they were challenged to run an industrial laundry. The men's team (Team Renaissance!) were disarmingly competent, especially after their woefully shoddy fishmongering skills in the first episode. The comedy came almost solely from the women's team (Team Alpha! Or something) who took incompetence to staggering new levels. While the men rang a proper laundry service to find out what they charge, the women decided to pluck a price point out of thin air and chose to charge a flat rate of £4.99 per item. Four pounds and ninety-nine pence per item of laundry. Their first task was to pitch for a contract from a hotel with a thousand sheets and pillowcases and towels to be washed, so they were looking to charge five thousand pounds. The hotel was unsurprisingly taken aback by this, expecting a price at least an order of magnitude lower.



To occupy my time, I have constructed a short list of proofs that they could have employed, without recourse to any actual research, to reach the realisation that this was not a plausible pricing strategy.

Some Proofs That £4.99 Per Item is Not a Sensible Price to Attempt to Charge a Hotel for Cleaning One Set of Laundry

1. Several of the items were pillowcases, and you must be able to buy a pillowcase for less than that. I mean, surely. At TK Maxx.
2. If the eight of them can earn £5,000 for less than one night's work, then they could do that for 200 nights a year and make one million pounds. Assuming you can rent and run the premises they were using for less than £100,000 (which obviously you can) this means the candidates can earn more than Alan Sugar is offering them just to clean sheets.
3. If a guest staying one night at a hotel generates one dirty sheet, two pillowcases and two towels, this would cost the hotel £25, which even in London is a fair proportion of what the hotel would be charging.
4. You can buy a lobster off Renaissance Fisheries for that price.

If anyone has their own proofs, please add them below.

Torchwood Reclassified

When you watch a show like Doctor Who or Torchwood, it feels very slick. Like a big-budget, American-style, cinematic job. It's a far cry from the old Red Dwarf II era, when the BBC would shy away from sci-fi because it was invariably both very cheap-looking and very expensive. (Ask Ben why they don't do it now.)

The BBC, of course, still don't have huge amounts of money to spend on these shows. That's why we have Brainbox Challenge. The reason these shows look so good is the huge amount of effort that goes into making them as good as they can be without spending a year and twenty million pounds on each one. And you don't really appreciate that until you watch the little documentaries they show afterwards. You get to see even little scenes you barely noticed in great detail, and even those have been painstakingly crafted by people who actually care about the show.

(A few weeks ago on one of these little documentaries, after Owen was shot in Torchwood, Russell T Davies said he'd had to be shot because it was important that the audience realise that "almost any of their heroes can die at almost any moment". This amused me, because of course Jack can't die at any moment, but now it's starting to annoy me, because months later Owen is still here, and in fact has been in it more since being killed than he was before, and this week was even strolling up and down not breathing saying, "these people should be dead. This is impossible," with no trace of irony.)

And so when I see all this effort poured into making a programme look and feel and sound as real and as gripping, as immersive and as good as it possibly possibly can, it just makes me sad that all that effort was wasted -- all because the plot of this week's Torchwood was such unadulterated crap.

For those that missed it (and I use the term "missed" generously), I shall summarise.

• The monster was a Creepy Travelling Circus Ringleader Guy and his friend, Pearl The Strange Sideshow Woman Who Needs A Lot Of Water For No Stated Reason.
• These two were trapped on a reel of film (somehow) and escaped (somehow) after sneaking it into a projector (somehow) and now they're running around Cardiff "stealing people's last breaths" (somehow and whatever that means) and sealing them in a silver flask (somehow). It is never explained what they are, where they came from or how they ended up trapped on videotape, much like those tiny green flies in The X-Files only infinitely less plausible.
  
• Their victims go into coma-like states. If their breath is returned they recover; if it is lost, they die.
• Eventually, Jack kills them by videotaping them, thus trapping them again (since obviously that is what would happen), and leaving the tape in his car until they turned into Freddie Mercury (or was that something else?). When Jack announces this plan, Ianto turns to him as if he's just said something really profound and says, in a state of total awe, "a film of a film..." as if someone who films a film has anything more deeply impressive than two films. That said, this would explain why the people at the cinema are so keen that I don't video the movies, and in any case it was nice to hear Ianto say something for a change. I was beginning to suspect he was just a particularly well-dressed extra. When (if) they finally do get rid of Owen properly, they won't need to draft in a new character -- just let Ianto speak sometimes.

I mean, come on. Torchwood is sci-fi. Everyone knows that. Look at Wikipedia:

Torchwood is a British science fiction drama television programme, created by Russell T Davies and stars John Barrowman and Eve Myles. [See, they don't think Ianto is a real character either.]

So why doesn't Peter J Hammond know that? He clearly wrote a fantasy episode -- and bad fantasy at that. I mean, the plot made no sense, and I object to that because when the setup and the crisis make no sense, there's no reason for the resolution to make any sense, and when the resolution isn't obliged to make any sense, there's no tension because I've no real sense that anyone's in any danger (least of all Jack or Owen), because they could easily be saved at any moment by even the most preposterous Deus Ex Machina, and so no situation is even close to the level of apparent hopelessness you need to build up to make the audience fear the worst. And not only that -- not only could Hammond have picked almost any random combination of words and pictures, bolted it onto the episode and called it a resolution -- but the resolution he eventually chose was both totally predictable and stupid.

Seriously, Torchwood. This won't do. Where's Steven Moffat when you need him? Well, let's check Wikipedia again, shall we?

Steven Moffat (born 1961 in Paisley, Scotland) is a British comedy/drama writer who has contributed to television series since the late 1980s. He is married to Sue Vertue, a television producer.

His best known works include Press Gang, Coupling and some episodes of the revival of Doctor Who. He is currently scripting a trilogy of Tintin films for directors Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson.

Er... okay then. (I was skeptical when I heard about Jekyll and can only assume he enjoys a challenge.)

But you know what? We don't need him. We just need someone who writes better plots than "an unspecified monster breaks out of a video and kills people in a needlessly impossible way until someone points a camera at him." (CCTV apparently doesn't count.) I could do that. You know what? I'll do it for free. Seriously. Me, Euan and Ben can each write an episode of Torchwood or Doctor Who, and the BBC can pick the ones they like, and if they like none of them, sod it; they've only lost a couple of hours' reading -- and they have a whole department just for that anyway. They get free scripts that are doubtless better than From The Rain, Last Of The Time Lords and Love And Monsters (because they'll make sense), and I get to impress slightly-geeky girls with my shiny new Doctor Who writing credit. Everybody wins, except perhaps the bad writers, and even they will at least have something decent to watch on TV as they sit at home all day without a job.

I mean, really it seems almost petty to rant at Torchwood for one bad episode (even if it was a really bad episode) when there are entire series that don't even get that good at their absolute peaks, but the point is that I can simply choose not to watch those series, whereas a bad episode of a good series not only wastes 45 minutes of my life, but it does so when I thought I would be watching something good. That's not fair.

Worried About Ray (Mears)

I was watching Dave this morning (the channel, not my neighbour), and among all the Top Gear repeats was one of Ray Mear's survival programs. In this enthralling episode, he was describing how a tribe in Africa pull out a type of poisonous vegetable, drain out all the cyanide and then eat it. He then had a taste. Then, he described how the fry larvae and consume them. He also had a little nibble. Num num num.

Something then concerned me. They didn't show any of the tribe eating these snacks. What if Ray Mears wasn't watching them prepare food, but watching them prepare wallpaper paste? And what would happen if they weren't frying the bugs to eat them, but frying them to sort out the bug infestation in their village? How annoyed would you be if you were trying to sort out an infestation problem in your house, and some hairy guy walked in and started eating the flies off the flypaper? I'd be very annoyed. Well, not annoyed. Concerned.

Prances With Wolves

The Writer's Strike, which as you should know crippled American TV to a point where NBC decided bringing back Gladiators was a good idea; had many effects on me. Most importantly it made me go cold turkey which made me quickly realise that I seem to depend more on new episodes of How I Met Your Mother than I do oxygen. It also made me actually watch some British television, watching Hollyoaks, Holby City and reality shows on BBC Three about whether fat amputee chavs can fight on bears with sticks and tutting, all the while criticising modern society when they fail to do so.

It was soon after I realised that TV in Britain is generally crap and so decided to give some classic shows a watch. Dusting off my old Seinfeld and Cheers DVDs and then stumbling upon a delightful old sitcom called Three's Company. A remake of an old British sitcom, Three's Company has the wacky premise of a MAN moving in with two WOMEN! Oh the potential for hijinks and hilarity! It's rife with sexism jokes, homophobic jokes and when they manage to fit it in, a cheeky one-liner about sex. It's classic 70's humour, the kind when the male chef talks to his female room-mate and says "The bun's are ready! Oh, I see you already have two of your own" followed by a minute of whooping from a studio audience filled with sugar.

Amidst a week-long marathon of bad puns and flared jeans, I found out that the new BBC Three (now with 75% more pink!) were to air a pilot about a werewolf, a vampire and a ghost living in a flat. It was with a 50/50 mix of excitement and dread that I thought of the prospect of it being done in the cheesy sitcom style, full of one-liners like "Oooh, no need to get so hairy, it's not a full moon y'know" or "What's for dinner? STEAK!". Even if it was actually supposed to be taken seriously, a straight up drama with this premise it just much too silly to be bother with.

So how in the hell, in the form of Being Human (click here to watch on the fantastic iPlayer), did they manage to make one of the most engaging hours of television I've seen on either side of the Atlantic for a long while?

It's style was perfect, no OTT levels of mass fast-paced cuts, needless angles and scenes that last less than 5 sentences. It's storyline was perfect for a pilot - setting up characters, who are played to perfection, and their relationships perfectly. The main, probably-season-long plot is introduced slowly at a point when you actually give a monkey about these characters, and more importantly it's a compelling cliffhanger that makes you want to carry on and see how it progresses. But most importantly, it somehow manages to take a ridiculous idea and make it seem so believable. They do seem like people that could be sitting in the same pub as you, even though they may be a supernatural being. The fact that it sounds incredibly silly typing that a show about a vampire, a ghost and a werewolf living together is realistic proves my point. And it's about time we have such a fictional show be so rooted in reality, with Heroes, Torchwood et al presenting such a stylised portrayal of the world.

I urge the BBC to pick this up for a full series; this episode fails as a one-off hour drama, but succeeds so well as the start of a compelling series. This is the new BBC Three, get rid of every documentary you make that has a swear word in it, and use that budget to commission this. And while you're at it, stop bringing back Two Pints of Lager. Thanks.

No Skin Off My Nose

I'm a student. Being a student, I often find myself hanging around with other students. It's something I cannot avoid. Try avoiding it, and you become an outcast. Try it if you want.

However, being a student with all my student mates often means I go to student parties. The last party I went to was a two-day bender of which an onion ended up in the toilet, and we watched Elf on TV. This is typical student life. However, it'd never make an episode of Skins (E4, Mondays 10pm)

Skins has recently entered its second series on E4. It's become so successful because of it's ability to 'handle the true side of teenage life'. I watched all of the first series because I wanted an opinion of it so when discussing it with aforementioned student friends, I could express a view instead of agreeing with everyone. My opinion turned out to be a negative one, and I was a bit disheartened when the series finished that I had spent many hours of my life watching a half-arsed drama. Kidnappings had occured, eating disorders were dealt with in a patronising way and the final dramatic scene involving a car accident also involved a song and dance number. I'm not kidding. Watch the last episode on 4od.

If you've never seen it, let me give you a run down of the characters.

Tony - a student who looks a bit like Adric from Doctor Who, but contains as much charisma as a pot of paint. Sleeps with anything he sees and likes to live his life like a retarded Casanova. Got in a car accident at the end of series one and is not a twat anymore. He's now a twat with no motor skills.

Michelle - Tony's on/off/on/off/on girlfriend. Loves Tony, despite him treating her like dirt. Will try anything pill-based. Since Tony's accident, she appears to be a slut. But is still in love with Tony, because that is her one character trait.

Sid - Tony's best mate. The most likeable of the lot. Obsessed with Michelle, sex and sex with Michelle. Does anything Tony says. Started having feelings for Cassie. Michelle once tried to have sex with him, but decided her feelings for Tony were too strong. Because she loves Tony. Because that is her one character trait.

Cassie - a girl with OCD and an eating disorder. She's kooky. That's literally it. For the second series, she's moved to Scotland where she's learnt the highland fling. THAT'S LITERALLY IT.

Maxxie - has two x's in his name. 'Nuff said. He's also gay. Tony made out with him once, much to the annoyance of Michelle. But she forgave him because she loves him because that is her one character trait.

Anwar - The "hilarious vigin" out of the gang. Maxxie's best mate. He's yet to have his own episode. I don't think the writer's have thought of a decent back story for him. Most likely to be the first one killed off.

And that was it. It was hard seeing these 2D characters move forward as a plot device, so I gave up. There truly was no reason to give the second series a watch. I had given my opinion that Skins went in my 'Apathy' pile, but I'm glad I did give this new series a chance. This Monday's episode was one of the best examples of TV drama I had seen in a good while. It was humourous, dramatic and even had Shane Ritchie as a perverted drama student. It also introduced us to Sketch, a never-before-seen character, and her obsession with Maxxie.

So, congratulations to Skins in being able to convince me to carry on watching it. Nothing like this has happened since the premiere of Torchwood's second series. Although, that's getting more rubbish by the week.

But the Film is a Saddening Bore/’Cause I Wrote it Ten Times Before

I really don't know what to think about Ashes To Ashes. Not least this is because I managed to miss the second episode. I'm sure my opinion is slightly coloured by the fact that Life On Mars is one of my all-time favourite songs and I never really rated Ashes To Ashes anything like as much.

The first thing that struck me about the opening episode was the singing. I still don't understand why the gunman was singing "I'm happy, hope you're happy" before she was shot, except that that's the message the action man is supposed to give. One can only assume that she has a tumor as well and she was out of it long before she woke up in 1981. That, or the gunman had watched Life On Mars and wanted to fuck with her head.

I was also slightly annoyed by the ending. Okay, you've set up the series. But after all the "how do you know my parents" routine, it's now impossible for that plotline to be resolved until the series ends, presumably either a month and a half or a year from now.

But all of the above notwithstanding, there is one thing about the show I absolutely loved:

Look, all right. Just relax. OK, 'Chris'? I know how this goes. Hunt's the bullish one, Ray's the misogynistic one, and you're the nervous one, blah blah blah. I don't care. I am going to stop Arthur Layton because that could be the mental trigger to get me out of here. OK?

It's just so pleasingly self-aware. Like in Voyager, when Tom Paris points out that every time they find what appears to be a way back to Earth, something goes unexpectedly wrong. Or in Trumpton when Captain Flack gets all excited when he thinks there's finally a real fire. The characters in TV shows should notice when similar things keep happening. Otherwise it just starts to look ridiculous.

The test of this show, I think, will be in how well it keeps Drake interested without getting her thinking that her 1981 world is real. If she thinks it's real, it'll just be Life On Mars again. If she doesn't care what happens to the imaginary people in her head then the whole show will descend into farce.

Actually, that would be much better. I hope she masters the art of lucid dreaming and learns to create any object she likes. It'd be like a gritty version of Penny Crayon, except with marginally more sensible clothes.