I knew it. I knew this was going to happen. I knew it wasn’t just paranoia.
I’ve been spotted. By Adam Buxton, no less.
Not an Adam Buxton. The Adam Buxton.
Adam’s taken exception to my review of the first pilot episode of Charlie Brooker’s Screen Wipe, which aired on BBC4 earlier this year, saying “most of Rob’s points are I believe, utter bollocks”, although most of his problems seem to be with my take on Robert Popper’s segment on Star Quality.
I hate Internet fights. Even the slightest hint of conflict gives me sleepless nights. Don’t believe me? I was over on the Struggling Author’s blog at 1am this morning, leaving comments about in-flight security, and I had to be up at six to go jogging with my brother-in-law. Today, coffee is my friend.
I haven’t been so mortified since Danny Wallace found out I didn’t like the sound of his new game show. Maybe I’ll hide behind Scott, since he seems to be able to take on irate television people with the courage of 40 men.
Anyway, to ensure pan-web peace, I’ve sent Adam an email to let him know that actually, I like the new series of Screen Wipe very much, to congratulate him on his new series and to point out the general ‘Brooker love‘ round here.
But just to answer (for which read ‘clarify my initial review and add in a bit more background’. Don’t read it as ‘let’s have a real fight’. Please.) some of Adam’s points, which is going to take a little time…
“Rob appears to be narked by what he considers Robert Popper’s ‘Z-list’ celebrity status.”
What I object to is list shows trawling up self-promoting Z-list celebs without any real passion for, or sometimes even knowledge of, the show they’re supposed to be praising, as though somehow the mere fact of their presence should be justification for watching the show. A Z-list celeb such as Paul Morley, who deserves to be A-list I reckon, is always welcome, since his comments are invariably intelligent and interesting. There’s a reason for him to be there, as much as any expert on a subject. Kate Thornton in front of an autocue someone else has written? Not so much.
Equally, I would happily watch (and have done so on many previous occasions) anyone extolling the virtues of Fingerbobs, The Star Lost or any other old TV show if they can be interesting about it, whether they’re Z-list or no-list. I’m the guy who spent four hours last Thursday happily crafting an article on why everyone should watch repeats of The Champions on ITV4; I’ve run video marathons (you say parties, I say video marathons) to try to gain converts to the show; my blessed wife sat through about 20 episodes of them as a birthday treat to me last year, before eventually confessing “They’re not very good, are they?” I have whole categories of my blog dedicated to classic TV and shows that were really very good, but were cancelled before their time.
I understand the love of old TV shows. I admire anyone else who has passion for something and can be eloquent about it. I think many other people do, too, hence the general love of Johnny Vegas’ confession on Room 101 to his over-indulgence in his virtual pub.
Now, fair dos, Popper is a big fan of Star Quality. My bad. The trouble was I didn’t see any of that passion or breadth of knowledge in his segment, or at least as far as my hazy memory recalls. What we got was a general introduction to what Star Quality was, followed more or less by a narration of various clips from a single episode. For all the indications there were in Popper’s segment, it felt as though he’d only seen one episode recently and he was relying on hazy memories for the rest of it. I was wrong. Mea culpa. Sorry Robert (or Mr Popper if you prefer).
If that segment had included scenes from one of Popper’s parties, have him reel off quotes from the best bits of various episodes, or explained at length why Star Quality absolutely had to be released on DVD tomorrow, I’d have been happy. I’d have loved to have heard his “complex philosophical theories about the implications of the Star Quality set design”. I really would. I’ve sat through all whole articles on the gender coding of the spaceship designs in Star Maidens. I can take it.
If that had been the segment, I’d have known more about Popper, whose work on Look Around You I much admire (it’s one of the few comedy DVDs I own), and I’d potentially have a whole new TV show to learn about.
But I didn’t get that. I didn’t come out of that segment with anything more than the fact that there was a show called Star Quality, which I could see wasn’t very good. I didn’t learn anything about Popper; I didn’t get an idea of why I should want to watch any more episodes of Star Quality; I didn’t get an idea of why Popper likes the show so much; I didn’t get an idea of Star Quality‘s historical place in game show history and its influence or lack thereof; I’m sorry to have had to say so, because I’d have loved to have praised it, but it wasn’t entertaining. And since I can’t go out and watch any episodes tomorrow because I’m not in the much-coveted position of being able to access the TV archives (ah, how I would have loved to have had that in my pre-multi-channel formative years), I can’t go ferret them out to find out the reasons for myself.
So I really didn’t see the point of that particular segment of the show, unlike Adam’s own (highly entertaining) critique of The Mint, say. Whether that’s because Star Quality is a hard sell as a show, Popper needed more time or the segment needed more focus, I’ll leave to others to say: I think they all could be reasons why the segment didn’t work. To me, the segment was bizarre, since Popper was the only other person to appear on Screen Wipe and all he did, as far as I could see, was turn up, reveal there was a show called Star Quality, tell us that it wasn’t very good, before disappearing again. It was practically a modern day version of the ‘The Potter’s Wheel’ that popped up as an interlude on the Beeb during the 50s.
Maybe I’m remembering the segment wrongly, but that’s what I came out of it remembering and that’s why I wrote what I did.
As for Adam’s other point: “What’s the problem with variety? It’s nice to add another voice to the mix isn’t it?”
Yes, it is. I have no problems with variety. Variety is good. I’m a Sagittarius. Variety is my spice, even though I don’t believe a word of astrology. But a show that had a different theme every other frame would be varied; it just wouldn’t be very good. Arguments need time to develop or else they don’t linger in the memory and are therefore throwaway..
Although it’s proving my own point and you only have my word for it, I genuinely cannot remember a single second from the other two shows of the first series of Screen Wipe, simply because, I suspect, the arguments made by Brooker were too short to have an impact. Clearly, since I can’t remember them, I can’t say that for sure. The second series? I can pretty much remember all the longer bits: they make me laugh out loud at inconvenient moments. Fortunately, I work from home so nobody spots this.
As for Adam’s closing remark, “it’s so exasperating when a show with as much real passion and enthusiasm as Screen Wipe gets dismissed as muddled and hypocritical when so many TV shows celebrated by critics or embraced by the public are such a cynical pile of old shit”, I couldn’t agree more. I’d have loved to have hyped it as much as possible. I was so looking forward to it. But it was muddled and (inadvertently) hypocritical, and it wouldn’t have been honest of me to say otherwise. Hopefully, I’ve not embraced any shows that are a cynical pile of old shit in my reviews though.
In retrospect, I feel reasonably justified: series two was so much better than the first and that was mainly because all the things I thought were wrong with it got fixed. Whether that’s because Brooker read my criticisms, which I hoped were generally constructive, took them on board and made the show better as a result (stupendously unlikely); or he came to the same conclusions independently and fixed them off his own bat (far, far more likely), I don’t know. Whichever it was, since the changes got made, Brooker clearly agreed with my comments to some degree, whether he knew I’d made them as well or not.
So sorry again to Robert Popper. If by some miracle he reads this (which might not be as unlikely as it sounds, it turns out…), get in touch send me an essay about Star Quality and some episode copies – hell, come round and give me that seminar – and I’ll gladly read, watch or listen. Sorry to Adam for aggrieving you (and I hope you don’t mind about my uploading that Ken Korda clip – I was using it to illustrate a point and because I liked it. If I’d hated it, I have put a comment on it like I did with Angela’s Eyes). And thank you, the rest of you, for putting up with this extended peace offering.
