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To-do list
Jan. 29th, 2009 11:59 am
1. Write sketch hilariously turning around concept of “fell off the back of a lorry”2. Submit sketch to Radio 4 satire-o-rama Week Ending, even though it hasn’t existed for about a decade
3. Retire on proceeds
Jan. 29th, 2009
1. Write sketch hilariously turning around concept of “fell off the back of a lorry”2. Submit sketch to Radio 4 satire-o-rama Week Ending, even though it hasn’t existed for about a decade
3. Retire on proceeds
Paedophiles whose computers have been confiscated but who have been allowed to keep their Freeview boxes are currently celebrating the return of E4’s Skins, whose new series marks a new zenith in the channel’s misanthropic campaign to disseminate its own self-loathing as widely as possible. Whoever you are, it despises you. Witness E4’s latest trailer, a diseased promo intended to signify a massive ironic distance from both the viewer and the channel’s own programming but which instead overshoots the runway so spectacularly that it feels like watching someone’s nervous breakdown from the inside:
Skins itself also seems to be trying to do its job ironically but failing. It helps to know that the show is written by the same people who churn out stuff like Shameless by the yard but retains a few people barely out of their teens to report on which tunes their contemporaries are probably downloading this month. It puts writing like this in context: it’s a middle-aged hack trying to write like a dumb 20 year-old and actually doing a worse job. The result is Grange Hill with brain damage; Hollyoaks slumped dribbling on a train with its cock out.
Meanwhile the children in the show continue to get prettier and more unfeasible. Some of the boys are at least allowed a degree of uncool nebbish charm, but God forbid that any of the girls should fall short of FHM’s strictest regulations on female glamour. All this impossible desirability will, of course, iron out any problems of self-image and self-esteem among the teenage audience the programme-makers are so desperate to attract.
Not pictured: your teenage years
I can’t even be bothered to slag the show off for being obsessed with sex—realistically, a programme that’s trying to deliver this many young viewers to advertisers doesn’t leave itself much room to manoeuvre on that front—but I remain unsettled by the degree of contempt it displays for the viewer, and even for the people actually appearing in it (see poster above). What happened to all the nice Vickys, Lucys, Katies and Emmas who I remember working in TV in the 1990s? Have they all become this jaded, or have they been replaced en masse by malevolent imbeciles? Is E4 evidence of what too much cocaine does for your view of the world? Just how degrading to everyone involved is the channel going to be in five years’ time? I can answer precisely none of these questions, but I suspect that on balance Skins is likely to do more far harm than good. And that watching it over the age of 28 should probably be one of the criteria for winding up on the sex offenders register.
Skins itself also seems to be trying to do its job ironically but failing. It helps to know that the show is written by the same people who churn out stuff like Shameless by the yard but retains a few people barely out of their teens to report on which tunes their contemporaries are probably downloading this month. It puts writing like this in context: it’s a middle-aged hack trying to write like a dumb 20 year-old and actually doing a worse job. The result is Grange Hill with brain damage; Hollyoaks slumped dribbling on a train with its cock out.
Meanwhile the children in the show continue to get prettier and more unfeasible. Some of the boys are at least allowed a degree of uncool nebbish charm, but God forbid that any of the girls should fall short of FHM’s strictest regulations on female glamour. All this impossible desirability will, of course, iron out any problems of self-image and self-esteem among the teenage audience the programme-makers are so desperate to attract.
Not pictured: your teenage years
I can’t even be bothered to slag the show off for being obsessed with sex—realistically, a programme that’s trying to deliver this many young viewers to advertisers doesn’t leave itself much room to manoeuvre on that front—but I remain unsettled by the degree of contempt it displays for the viewer, and even for the people actually appearing in it (see poster above). What happened to all the nice Vickys, Lucys, Katies and Emmas who I remember working in TV in the 1990s? Have they all become this jaded, or have they been replaced en masse by malevolent imbeciles? Is E4 evidence of what too much cocaine does for your view of the world? Just how degrading to everyone involved is the channel going to be in five years’ time? I can answer precisely none of these questions, but I suspect that on balance Skins is likely to do more far harm than good. And that watching it over the age of 28 should probably be one of the criteria for winding up on the sex offenders register.
(no subject)
Jan. 29th, 2009 01:18 pm
It may seem like a slightly odd headline, but Lambeth’s a tough area; traders round here have been actively encouraging knife crime. “You kids get in here with your knives and your loud music!” they yell at passing youths, with no thought to their own safety. They need telling.