Screen Burn by Charlie Brooker Page B
Authors: Charlie Brooker
Tags: General, Biography & Autobiography, Entertainment & Performing Arts, Performing Arts, Television, Television programs, Television personalities
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is a quiz show in which authentic dimwits have their efforts mercilessly pilloried – a version of Family Fortunes in which millions of viewers can phone a special number to collectively heckle the idiocy of everyone participating, with the resulting cacophonic abuse relayed live in the studio. Or maybe just an edition of Wheel of Fortune where John Leslie finally snaps and cracks a simpleton in the face with a broom.
After months of smirking foreplay, life-wrecking pub quiz Who Wants to Be a Millionaire
?
finally achieved climax, awarding its maximum payout to an upper-class woman who everyone agreed didn’t really deserve it (she’s already spent the proceeds on a mechanised android horse that fires chillum-seeking missiles at hunt saboteurs and a pair of solid-gold wellies for the next CountrysideMarch). Of course, now the magic figure’s actually been handed over, the stakes no longer seem so unattainably impressive. Don’t be surprised if it transforms into ‘Who Wants to Win Two Million Pounds and Some Shoes and a Kite?’
And now, a quick break for a word about adverts, and in particular the Year’s Most Baffling Commercial: the AA insurance ad, in which a woman who has organised a policy via the AA website bickers with her petty, sulking husband. There’s no punchline and no love-you-really resolution; either I’m missing something, or it’s actively intended to make you associate AA insurance with loveless, sniping relationships. Still, at least neither of them tries to scare the viewer into obeying, unlike the terrifying angry money-throwing man in the Direct Line Home Insurance commercials, who’ll make an excellent alternative Bond villain one day.
Irritating phenomenon of the year was, of course, the Budweiser ‘whassup’ ads; the initial, mildly amusing lo-fi opening ‘episode’ soon turned out to be merely the opening salvo in a cynical pre-mapped campaign designed to bully its catchphrase into the mouths and minds of imbeciles nationwide.
If you – yes, you – greeted a friend with ‘whassup’ just once – yes, once – then congratulations: you’re an inexcusable dunce. Please make the most of the festive season by drinking yourself to death (but don’t pick Budweiser; it’ll make you fat and take far too long).
Welcome back to part two. Now, if there’s a particular genre that really took off during 2000, it’s the iconic retrospective clip show. All year long the schedules heaved beneath the collective weight of thousands of tiny footage blips jostling for position alongside patronising soundbites from Paul Ross (shtick: blokey enthusiasm), Stuart Maconie (shtick: sarcastic nit-picker), Phil Jupitus (shtick: scripted one-liners) and if you were really unlucky, ‘entertainment journalist’ Rick Sky (shtick: looking like he’d been shaken awake in a shop doorway and ordered to enter a Malcolm McLaren lookalike competition).
What with I Love the Seventies (BBC2), 100 Greatest Moments from TV Hell (C4), It Shouldn’t Happen to a Chat Show Host (ITV), The TV Years (Sky One), Top Ten (C4), the completely useless Smash (ITV) and countless theme-night ‘celebrations’ of everything from David Frost to Morphy Richards (probably), trying to watch a single channel felt more like flicking through 600 variations on UK Gold in a green room full of sneering B-list celebrities, rendered even more depressing by the knowledge that in 20 years’ time you’ll be tuning into watch Ant and Dec’s sniggering offspring introduce archive footage of Paul Ross discussing archive footage of fingerbobs .
So was there anything worth watching? Of course there was, notable examples being Black Books, The Sopranos, Jam, Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends and, of course, Renegade , the abysmal 80s throwback action series which looks like a cross between a Patrick Swayze movie and a Jon Bon Jovi video and goes out on ITV at about 3 a.m. or whenever you’re least expecting it.
Now, let’s wave goodbye
After months of smirking foreplay, life-wrecking pub quiz Who Wants to Be a Millionaire
?
finally achieved climax, awarding its maximum payout to an upper-class woman who everyone agreed didn’t really deserve it (she’s already spent the proceeds on a mechanised android horse that fires chillum-seeking missiles at hunt saboteurs and a pair of solid-gold wellies for the next CountrysideMarch). Of course, now the magic figure’s actually been handed over, the stakes no longer seem so unattainably impressive. Don’t be surprised if it transforms into ‘Who Wants to Win Two Million Pounds and Some Shoes and a Kite?’
And now, a quick break for a word about adverts, and in particular the Year’s Most Baffling Commercial: the AA insurance ad, in which a woman who has organised a policy via the AA website bickers with her petty, sulking husband. There’s no punchline and no love-you-really resolution; either I’m missing something, or it’s actively intended to make you associate AA insurance with loveless, sniping relationships. Still, at least neither of them tries to scare the viewer into obeying, unlike the terrifying angry money-throwing man in the Direct Line Home Insurance commercials, who’ll make an excellent alternative Bond villain one day.
Irritating phenomenon of the year was, of course, the Budweiser ‘whassup’ ads; the initial, mildly amusing lo-fi opening ‘episode’ soon turned out to be merely the opening salvo in a cynical pre-mapped campaign designed to bully its catchphrase into the mouths and minds of imbeciles nationwide.
If you – yes, you – greeted a friend with ‘whassup’ just once – yes, once – then congratulations: you’re an inexcusable dunce. Please make the most of the festive season by drinking yourself to death (but don’t pick Budweiser; it’ll make you fat and take far too long).
Welcome back to part two. Now, if there’s a particular genre that really took off during 2000, it’s the iconic retrospective clip show. All year long the schedules heaved beneath the collective weight of thousands of tiny footage blips jostling for position alongside patronising soundbites from Paul Ross (shtick: blokey enthusiasm), Stuart Maconie (shtick: sarcastic nit-picker), Phil Jupitus (shtick: scripted one-liners) and if you were really unlucky, ‘entertainment journalist’ Rick Sky (shtick: looking like he’d been shaken awake in a shop doorway and ordered to enter a Malcolm McLaren lookalike competition).
What with I Love the Seventies (BBC2), 100 Greatest Moments from TV Hell (C4), It Shouldn’t Happen to a Chat Show Host (ITV), The TV Years (Sky One), Top Ten (C4), the completely useless Smash (ITV) and countless theme-night ‘celebrations’ of everything from David Frost to Morphy Richards (probably), trying to watch a single channel felt more like flicking through 600 variations on UK Gold in a green room full of sneering B-list celebrities, rendered even more depressing by the knowledge that in 20 years’ time you’ll be tuning into watch Ant and Dec’s sniggering offspring introduce archive footage of Paul Ross discussing archive footage of fingerbobs .
So was there anything worth watching? Of course there was, notable examples being Black Books, The Sopranos, Jam, Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends and, of course, Renegade , the abysmal 80s throwback action series which looks like a cross between a Patrick Swayze movie and a Jon Bon Jovi video and goes out on ITV at about 3 a.m. or whenever you’re least expecting it.
Now, let’s wave goodbye
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