TV Casualty

TV Casualty Casualty

2009-05-04T07:52:00.002+01:00

Just a quick note to anyone that still reads this thing that as of now TV Casualty will be going into hibernation. Having gotten over my yearly attempt at fiction (see Busan 2060) i'm back on the blogwagon, moving operations over to my new food blog at http://www.streetfoody.blogspot.com.

Hope to see you there (via google analytics of course!)

Busan 2060

2009-04-30T12:19:00.001+01:00

Jake Stetson stared blankly at the pile of reports on the table of his Jangsan studio apartment and sighed. Wearily, he opened the first book:

“Teacher is stupid and me is kill Teacher”

Typical, he thought, and was just about to score out the “is” when he remembered the most recent communiqué from the Ministry of Education; “Is,” it said, was now an acceptable marker for either past, present or future tense, (“I” had surrendered a long time ago.) Jake blithely wondered whether this particular entry was a confession or a threat but left the sentence untouched. Looking out the window onto the greying expanse of Jangsan Old Town, Jake allowed himself a rare moment’s contemplation. Where, he thought, did it all go wrong?

There’d been struggles in the past, but Jake had always thought the Foreigners had won. None of these were clearer in Jake’s mind than the push for citizenship that had galvanised the foreign community in the 20s and resulted in the Universal Franchise Act of 2028. Since then his stake in society had grown while his pay packet had shrunk; the “price of dignity” he’d once convinced a room full of foreigners in the run up to the Bill. Looking around the sparse studio apartment he’d rented for the past decade, he wondered now whether they’d gotten their moneys worth.

When he had arrived in Korea things had been different. In those days people still stared at you when you walked down the street, now Jake reckoned they just looked through you. Work back then had been a joke too. Before ME centralised Hagwon curriculum and management, foreign teachers could almost get away with murder. Gone were the days when a teacher could slump into class still reeking of the night before and fling a worksheet at the students. Now that everything was rigorously standardised, monitored and evaluated, it had gotten so you couldn’t blow your nose in a Hagwon without someone reporting it.

Oh but how he had ranted and raved back then! The pointing, the misunderstandings, the disorganisation – the slightest thing would set him off! Many times he felt like packing it all in and heading home to some sort of normality. But still Jake remained. The truth was, back then Jake felt like he was a pioneer with the world at his feet, a renegade who’d had had enough of society and checked out. He’d found a place where he could live like a king and under his own set of rules. Looking back, Jake realised he’d been something of an idealist.

“Use this place before it uses you” someone had once told him. At the time he’d dismissed it as cynical, but now the words kept coming back more and more. He’d spent the last four decades with his shoulder to a wheel that had been spinning in the opposite direction and his fire was gone. He was beginning to think he might just have wasted it on the wrong thing.

Jake’s eyes wandered over the smoggy Busan skyline. Since the time he’d lived there that same skyline had danced up and down like the bars on an old fashioned graphic equaliser, and still showed no signs of reaching any state of permanence. It was like the city itself was mocking his own entrenchment and Jake wasn’t sure he could live through another reinvention. Although he occasionally thought about going home, there was no guarantee he would get a job and it seemed pointless to return at a time when people were clambering over each other to get away. If the East was the “new West,” where did that leave someone like him?

Perhaps, Jake thought, it was time to teach somewhere new. Africa was opening up in ways he never could have imagined in his youth and seemed like the perfect place to recapture some of the frontier spirit. Sure, it might be a little hard at first but he had moved before and made it work, why shouldn’t he be able to do it again?

So, as he had done every couple of years for the last decade or so, Jake opened up a clean page in his notepad, swapped the reports for the heavy book on top of the wardrobe and opened it up at the first page.

Now, he thought, if I can only get my Chinese up to scratch.

Finishy

Mountain Goat

2009-03-02T15:06:00.002Z

Every so often the elements conspire to throw a meal at you that surpasses mere mastication and enters the realm of the truly memorable. Few and far between, these meals usually rely as much on location, company and conversation as they do on food, and can be elusive prey even for the ever-conscious food freak.

On Saturday however, the planets were definitely aligned as a few friends and I ventured into the mountains at the back of our apartment building, ostensibly to get some exercise, but really to do a little good old-fashioned Saturday afternoon eating and drinking. With this in mind our real goal for the day was a goat restaurant by one nestled by one of the old gates that used to guard a fortress from the Japanese, but now serve as a focal point for some of the many hiking trails that criss-cross the hills like ancient pig runs.

As anyone who has ever done any hiking in Korea will attest, it can be a somewhat different experience to the activity we have gotten used to in the West. Instead, hiking in Korea generally involves a lot of Soju, some food and plenty of good cheer, often accompanied by a soundtrack of jangly Korean pseudo-folk music from a backpack-mounted Ghetto Blaster. This colourful tribe of Teflon-suited hikies can get overexcited at the sight of a foreigner, making any hiking experience more like a visit to a geriatric nightclub than a quiet walk in the woods.

Our journey took us upwards through conifer and deciduous forest until Busan was only a distant hum below us, exposing a cityscape framed by the white sails of Gwangli bridge to the South and the sprawling tributaries and flatland of the _ river f to the North. As expected the hiking fraternity was out in force, by and large good natured and friendly, with the exception of one gentleman who saw fit to admonish a female member of our party for smoking a cigarette in public!

We forged ahead nevertheless and it was with creeping hunger and dwindling Soju that we finally arrived at the goat restaurant, a modest collection of bungalow-sized buildings housing a number of sparsely decorated private rooms. We settled into one of these and waited for our food to arrive.

This being Korea it didn’t take long and the table was soon crowded with several enticing banchan and accompanying condiments. Among these a salad of fresh crisp lettuce leaf dressed in a spicy chilli and garlic oil made rich pickings and a bowl of al-dente sweet potato also stood out. On this occasion the ubiquitous Kimchi was a touch too fermented for my taste, but was highly appreciated by a few of my companions. Elsewhere on the table a paejon (seafood pancake) was light and eggy, concealing springy pieces of octopus tentacle and reedy spring onions – the type of dish soy sauce was made for.

Before long however, the goat arrived and things began to get serious. Still smoking from the grill outside, the meat retained all the aroma and appearance of having just been seared to perfection, betraying just enough of the heat of the grill to be blackening and smoky in parts whilst remaining tender in all the right places. Cut up into bite-sized pieces it was excellent wrapped in sesame leaf and smeared with Samjung, (red chilli paste) but more often than not I found myself returning to eat it just as it was: musky, flavoursome, glorious and goaty. For refreshment a few bowls of mountain Dong Dong Ju, (a type of home brewed rice wine with a dry, almost savory taste) proved more than adequate and the perfect accompaniment.

By the time we’d finished it was dark and our hostess kindly called us a taxi. As we snaked our way back down the mountain towards the bright lights of Busan, I looked up at the stars and gave thanks to the Gods of good food, company and happiness. For it doesn’t get much better than this.

Kimchi

2009-01-28T12:34:00.004Z

Last weekend I turned a corner in my Korean food experience: I enjoyed Kimchi. I’ve been moving towards this for a while, but it took a Lunar New Year trip to Gwanju (“the rice bowl of Korea”) to seal my fate.

For the uninitiated, Kimchi is pickled cabbage made with chili and garlic that comes as part of the banchan or side dishes that complement every Korean meal. Around 1.5 million tones of the stuff is consumed here each year, and it forms an unavoidable part of the Korean diet.

Kimchi is more than a side dish however, it is the focus of some of the most bizarre national pride I’ve ever witnessed. I’m currently involved in a running argument with one of my classes who claim that Kimchi is a need as opposed to a want. When I counter that I managed to survive 25 years before I came to Korea they argue that that is because hey are Korean and I am Australian. At the more extreme end of the spectrum, when a girl posted a video on you tube in mentioning that she didn’t like Kimchi, she became the subject of a hate campaign that even a few nation newspapers weren’t above weighing in on.

So what’s the fuss all about? Pungent and fiery, Kimchi seems to leave most newcomers (including me) gagging for water and swearing away from the stuff. That said, there is something about it that creeps up on you. This might have to do with its omnipresence in virtually every eating establishment you care to visit – it's never further than a chopstick away and if your hungry the temptation is there to pick away at it - but the more Korean food I eat the more I become aware of its value as an ingredient: It adds fire to a bowl of soup and livens up a plate of fried rice to no end, and there are so many different varieties the chances are (as I did in Gwanju) sooner or later you’ll hit on one you like.

When I leave Korea for good I doubt I’ll miss Kimchi that much, but while I’m here I I can now at least enjoy the ride.

Ouchy!

2009-01-05T14:08:00.008Z

Last Tuesday night was my birthday, and to mark the occasion we shuffled and coughed our way through the freezing cold to the Novotel Ambassador Hotel on Haeundae Beach. The hotel does a legendary buffet, and having eaten there the week before in the company of our Director and Manager, we were determined to make this visit a little less restrained.

Straddling the seafront like a Neptunian colossus, the Ambassador does a fine trade as Haeundae’s premier Hotel complex and rocking up in my donkey jacket and trainers, I couldn’t help but feel the ominous onset of the Bums Rush. If being a foreigner in Korea means anything however, it’s your innate inapproachability - I probably could have set fire to the curtains and got away with nothing more than a tight grin and a bow. Luckily though, I was here to eat, and for 49 chun a pop (roughly 25 quid) including wine you can really get your moneys worth.

Meaty king crab legs, mussels, prawns, crayfish and a considerable array of raw fish and sushi made for an excellent appetiser, followed soon after by an attack on the mains counter. A number of home favorites were represented here, including beef stew, baked fish, and cauliflower cheese. Needless to say each item had a welcome place at my table and as if there wasn’t enough on our plates, we had a few lamb chops, steaks, and Bay Lobsters cooked to order.

The shellfish was excellent. Served cold (with the exception of the Bay Lobster) it was plain, fresh and delicious. The mains displayed a similar degree of competence, and although the cauliflower was a little overdone and some of the dishes could have been a degree or two warmer, they made for an outstanding midpoint nonetheless. It was in the cooked-to-order selection, however, that the chef’s skill was most obvious. The Bay Lobsters were plump and sweet, giving up a surprising amount of flesh from their squat tails. The lamb and steak meanwhile, were cooked with the kind of care and precision deserving of a quality piece of meat; slightly charred on the outside, yielding to a medium rare pink in the middle.

The only problem we experienced was with timing. We only managed to get a table at 8pm, two hours before closing, and while a more relaxed meal might have involved more of an eat – rest – eat regime, time constraints meant that a quicker pace was required and i unfortunately didn't manage dessert, preferring instead to go for another pass at the savories.

Korean food is great, but when you need an injection of western flavour, you can do a lot worse than the Ambassador.

Dog Day Afternoon

2008-12-08T13:14:00.000Z

On Saturday Sarah and I took advantage of a spectacular clear and crisp (and cold) afternoon to go explore a side of Korea we’d heard much about but had yet to see for ourselves. The practice of eating dog meat is one which has earned Korea a considerable amount of infamy in the West and with Busan’s largest dog market only four stops from our apartment, it was something we couldn’t resist seeing for ourselves.

Gupo market lies a short walk from Deokcheon subway station, the other side of the hill from our neighbourhood in an area we’ve up until recently left largely unexplored. This side of the mountain things seem to get a little less polished than the downtown and beachside areas, with the city gradually giving way to rice paddies and other agricultural land the further north you go. The market itself is a sprawling maze of alleyways and backstreets where everything from live frogs to house slippers fill the buckets, tanks and tables of the work-beaten market ajummas.

While our original plan had been to find something to eat before hitting the dog market, after only a few minutes walking the cawing of chickens heralded the onset of the livestock section and with it a heavy dose of culture shock. Rabbits, chickens, ducks, geese and black goats were all on offer but while the array of live animals was astounding, as we’d expected it was the dogs themselves that proved the most striking.

They were large, reasonably young looking animals, confined seven or eight to a cage and resembling a cross between a wolf and a labrador. They looked surprisingly domestic, and for the entire time we were there remained eerily silent. Behind the cages, dog carcasses lay either splayed and ready to be butchered or (more unrecognisably) hanging from hooks and laid out on meat counters.

Sarah and I were unsure about whether we’d actually eat dog soup, but after seeing the dogs we decided to pass. I don’t have any qualms per se about the practice, providing everything is done humanely (though by the looks of it this may not be the case,) but the truth is I like them too much to eat them myself. There is something dopey, faithful and reassuring about dogs and to turn on them like that would just seem like a betrayal

A few observations...

2008-12-03T11:15:00.005Z

I’ve been in the Hermit Kingdom for four months now (over 1% of my life) so I think I’m entitled to make a few spurious and unsubstantiated observations about its People and Culture.

First off, Korea is the most ethnically homogenous place I’ve ever been in my life. Apart from a handful of Indians, some Filipinos and of course the English teaching contingent, there are literally no non-Koreans here. This ethnic homogeneity (along with centuries getting bounced between China and Japan) as such has also engendered a fierce nationalism (and occasional racism) that seems to become apparent from about age seven upwards. My first experience of this was during the Summer Olympics, many of my students found it impossible that I could be supporting Ireland and Korea, preferring things to be more racially defined.

Japan is not in favour. One sure way of pissing off a bunch of Koreans is by telling them that Dodko is Japanese. This is a small group of rocks between Korea and Japan that the Japanese recently claimed was disputed territory in one of their school text books. While the rest of the world didn’t register, almost every man, woman and child in Korea became instantly incensed. This of course goes back to Japan’s raping of the peninsula over many years but the depth of feeling is pretty scary. Teenagers who should be lurking around ally ways smoking are instead pounding the street convincing the 0.0001% of Koreans who aren’t bothered. I was assailed in Seomyeon by one such youth and it’s not an exaggeration to say she was literally foaming at the mouth!

There is virtually no crime here (unless you count corruption) and Busan in particular is incredibly safe. This is why it is not uncommon to see power tools lying outside building sites that have been closed for the night and why Sarah and I recently saw a policeman sitting in another’s lap. As such, I fear some of my kindergarteners are going to take this place apart when they come of age but by that stage I’ll be long gone (from Korea.)

Appearance trumps everything. This is perhaps the strongest impression I have gathered in the last four months here and is the reason why the Hagwon system we are currently labouring under is so broken. Education is important, but the appearance of an education is more so. Korean kids spend the vast majority of their time in some educational establishment or other, often until late at night and during the weekend, but seem no more intelligent than the average British, Irish or North American. It is also the reason why in a few weeks time Sarah and I are set to grace the stage (again) to perform a “Christmas Dance” for the new mothers and children. This is not only demeaning, but is also apparently the benchmark by which all parents will judge our suitability to teach their little darlings. Throw in the fact that later in the year we are due to spend an entire month rehearsing a single class for the benefit of the parents and its not hard to feel like we are part of some gigantic propaganda machine. Goebbals would have been impressed.

Work is often a case of Quantity over Quality. Aside from 10 public holidays a year, the Koreans (in our school at least) can’t take any holidays. Hagwons are petrified that if they shut their doors for a full week the parents will send their kids elsewhere and for this reason school holidays are strictly restricted. Neither can they take personal holidays as no-one seems to have realised that with a little downtime productivity might just increase and even getting sick comes close to a fireable offence. Some of the Kindergarten teachers in our school stay long after we leave at 6:30, despite the fact that most of the under sevens leave at 2:30pm (what they actually do in these intervening hours is not immediately apparent.)

For all the reasons mentioned above, workers rights are non-existent and Confuscus has a lot to answer for. He may have scored a goal by advocating the use of chopsticks but the deference to authority here is frightening. I’m all in favour of giving up my seat to and old person on the subway but more often than not this “respect” seems to lead to downright exploitation. Old over young and rich over poor but I’m not trying to rewrite the Communist Manifesto or anything so I’ll leave it at that.

Koreans’ are by and large a warm and generous bunch. Often if standing on the bus with a few bags of shopping someone will wordlessly unburden your load, and the other day when I went to pick up my trousers from the tailors he refused payment, claiming it was only a small repair and I could pay next time. Things like this tend to brighten my day and the same behaviour in the UK would probably warrant a smack on the head.

That does it for my observations for now – I may very well return to this topic in another four months time and recant everything I’ve said but such is the nature of experience.

My Special Place

2008-11-17T13:36:00.009Z

Years down the line a psychiatrist may well ask me to visualise my special place and when he does, I’ll probably be thinking of Jagalchi Fish Market. Centered around a huge sail-like building in Busan Port that evokes the Sydney Opera House, Jagalchi is billed as the largest fish market in Korea, and its easy to see why. Covering an area roughly 5000 square metres, a staggering amount of sealife passes through this place seven days a week, and I like nothing better than to wander the aisles gaping the ocean’s harvest in all its weirdness.

As you would expect, the market plays host to an abundance of fresh fish, crabs and crustaceans (much of it live) ranging from the familiar to the downright freakish; Monster King Crabs clamber over each other in expansive tanks waiting for the drop of the sellers net, while four-foot long Octopi stare back at you with their black dead eyes. I recently saw a bucket of turtles here, paddling around happily unaware of their surroundings and have even heard that whale meat is available, though have yet to see any myself.

However, while its fun to watch, the best of Jagalchi is in the eating and in this respect a number of options are on offer. An as yet untried (but no less appealing) one is right inside the market itself, where anything you buy can be gutted, cleaned and cooked for a few chun and enjoyed in an upstairs eating section. In addition to this, dozens of restaurants, tents and eating places line the market fringes, all serving up the day’s catch at incredibly attractive prices.

I recently ducked into one of the latter on an overcast Saturday afternoon, enticed by the fish grilling outside and the busy trade within. After asking in bungled Korean for a bowl of jiggae (a spicy soup eaten with rice,) there soon arrived at my table a whole grilled fish (head eyes, fins and all) a bowl of jiggae and a bowl of rice. The fish turned out to be a happy accident, an abundance of flaky white flesh under crispy golden skin coming apart easily underneath my chopsticks. Delicious on its own, the bowl of dipping soy sauce that arrived with the banchan (side dishes) added an extra, previously untried dimension.

For its part the jiggae held its own; the rich spicy broth complemented with green onion, beansprouts and bits and pieces of sea creatures I don’t know the English for let alone the Korean. The biggest surprise however was the chocolate coloured tofu bobbing around amongst the seafood. This chunky, textured addition was nothing like the slimy, watery meat substitute defended so vigourously by vegetarians in the west, instead adding body and substance to the bowl.

After paying up (the whole thing came to less than £3) and leaving with a hearty “chal mokessayo!” I returned to the madness in search of the night’s dinner (a pair of Mud Crabs as it turned out) and gape a little more.

This is what Saturday afternoons were made for.

Bi Bim Bap - a loopa

2008-11-10T12:07:00.001Z

Part of the fun of Korean food is how easily the names can be punned into western song titles. I’ve passed many an idle hour smiling to myself about the likes of Kim-bop, Galbi there and my personal favourite, Getting jiggae with it. However, while puns are all very well, most of the fun remains in the eating of the stuff and this is no less true of the quiet man of Korean cuisine, Bi Bim Bap.

The perfect way to regain some of that strength after going ten rounds with the Kindergarteners, Bi Bim Bap dishes all follow a variation on a basic set-up of rice, julienned vegetables, a fried egg, dried sea weed and sesame seeds. If you opt to go dol sot (which I do, always) then the whole thing arrives in a sizzling bowl adding a bit of pizzazz to the whole arrangement. Into this tumultuous cauldron go a few spoonfuls of gloopy, firey chilli paste to taste, after which it’s ready to go.

With Bi Bim Bap you’ve gotta work for your supper, giving everything a good mix to evenly distributed the various parts. The result is a mighty fine bowl of food. The rice, a staple of the Korean diet is transformed by the chilli paste and sea weed, while the egg provides an indispensible protein fix. While I mostly eat this basic version of Bi Bim Bap at the diner beside our school at lunch times, we will occasionally go to a special Bi Bim Bap restaurant for dinner, where a number of variations are on offer. My personal favourite is an extra spicy concoction that includes a liberal amount of tender, shredded pork and a bowl of mussel soup on the side.

I originally dismissed this unprepossessing bowl of rice and vegetables as merely a healthier (and as such less interesting) alternative to whatever dead animal I was in the process of shovelling onto my plate, but I am fast finding out that, as with a lot of Korean Food, there is more, much more.

Crunch King

2008-11-01T08:37:00.002Z

Up until quite recently I thought the only crunch I was going to experience in Korea was the one that sits atop the gloriously chocolately “Crunch King,” (pictured) a Cornetto type ice-cream that tastes even better than it sounds.

However, things changed dramatically last month when I discovered I was thirty pounds down on my monthly cash transfer to my home account.

Since then the Won has been on a (mostly) downward spiral. My first remittance of 1 million won bought me a cool £500 sterling back in August but that same amount now is worth little more than £400. In fact, the currency is so volatile that if I check the exchange rate online before I leave for the bank I’m likely to get a different rate entirely once I get there.

The situation has gotten to the point where I’ve stopped sending back money entirely. Instead, I’ve decided either to keep the money in my Korean account in the hope that things won’t get much worse, or blow all my pay check on a Crunch Kings and electronics. A tough choice and if I know myself (which I think I do) the latter will prevail.

Still, at least Korea has President Lee Myung Bak to steer it through these troubled times, a man whose sole contribution to the global recession debate has been something along the lines of “we must not lose sight of free market economics.”

In this uncertain climate it looks like Sarah and I may have to put our planned trip of “five or sixth months or so” at the end of our contract on ice, having most definitely counted all our chickens before they hatched.

Choco

2008-10-18T02:24:00.000+01:00

I’ll never forget the first time I tried chocolate milk. It was New Years Eve 2001 and I was at a festival in the rainforest on Australia’s southern coast. I was on the tail end of a pretty serious bout of food poisoning that had seen the previous two days (one of which was my 19th birthday) either shivering in my tent or chained to one of the festival portaloos, and chocolate milk was the first thing I had ingested that hadn’t come straight out again in some shape or form.

Over the next weeks and months my friend Pete and I (who shared a similar love) became connoisseurs, tasting and grading every variety we encountered as we travelled from Melbourne to Perth in an ultimately fruitless search of work. For us, nothing else equalled the sensation of having just consumed a pint of cold, chocolatey liquid in less than ten seconds, and we started to really push the envelope, at one point drinking four or five a day.

When I returned to Ireland I searched for something of a similar calibre but always in vain. For a long time the only options were either small cartons of Mars or Nesquick “chocolate flavoured” drinks or a big chunky bottle of Yazoo chocolate milkshake, all with obscenely long shelf lives and nothing approaching the boxy aesthetics and cleansing freshness of the Australian varieties. Later, Iceland and Morrissons started to produce their own versions, albeit with tighter use-by dates, but for me these always tasted somewhat synthetic, and packaged in a plastic bottle, just plain wrong. My chocolate milk career had been cut short in its prime.

When I arrived in Korea, however, everything changed. Remarkably, for a country where dairy doesn’t do so well (non-processed cheese is a precious commodity and natural yogurt non-existent) they’ve somehow managed to hit chocolate milk bang square on the head. As in Australia there are numerous varieties, each with their subtleties of taste and individual characters, but after somewhat extensive testing I have settled on a favourite.

At 305ml Cocoa is the largest volume-wise out of those I’ve tried, but this bad boy has got more than just quantity going for it. Silky smooth and ice cold, Cocoa manages to avoid the sweet excesses of its contempories, while still delivering a cool, throat-coating hit. Moreish by nature, it is impossible to drink one of these slowly, and I usually dispense with mine in no more than a few gulps.

The last time I was in London a psychic told me, unsolicited, that I needed to live in a warm climate to be happy. I believed this for a while, now I just think I need access to a good chocolate milk.

Kingdom O'Sullivain

2008-10-09T14:04:00.001+01:00

I recently got my medical card from the Korean authorities and was surprised/amused to see this inventive mis-spelling of my name. While it would most likely be prudent to sort this out as soon as possible so as not to delay any organ or blood transfusions in the event that i get hit by a taxi, Kingdom O. Sullivain is just so much cooler than my real name.

Drama Festival

2008-09-30T13:56:00.004+01:00

Sarah and I have just enjoyed our Korean TV debut thanks to our participation in the school’s annual drama festival, the self-proclaimed jewel in the crown of the Kids Club Calendar and, for some, the reason behind weeks of hard work and stress.

Held every September, The Kids Club Drama Festival is as much an opportunity for the students to sing and dance in front of their parents as it is for the school to show off their foreign teachers. This year, the presence of a TV crew meant the stakes were particularly high, and the whole month of September was given over to ensuring everything ran smoothly.

The set up is simple; each student must perform a solo song and participate in a class play, as well as take part in a number of other performances designed to demonstrate their firm and improving grasp of the English Language. The fact that they have just spent a month not learning any new English whatsoever doesn’t really come in to it and is pretty indicative of the Hagwon system, where the appearance of learning is almost as important as the learning itself.

Anyway, due to the vagarities of casting or a low estimation of my abilities, I was put in three minor roles, with a total of approximately 8 lines. Sarah on the other hand was given four pretty hefty roles with lots of lines, including Snow White to my Prince – the source of a lot of amusement amongst old and young Koreans alike. Every morning for four weeks we would attend play practice and dutifully chip in our lines, while the Korean Kindegarten teachers slowly exploded with the stress of making 4 – 10 year olds act out a foreign language play with, if not coherence, at least some semblance of continuity.

As the day approached tensions ran high, particularly with regards to some uncertainty over whether we would actually get paid (to inquire about such things in Korea, as we found out, is tantamount to treason) for our efforts. Rehearsals weren’t going well, thanks in no small part to some pretty incoherent scripts, and I was starting to doubt whether it would be pulled off. Thanks to my pretty inconsequential role in things I was able to observe this maelstrom from an emotional distance, but others weren’t quite so lucky. With a huge amount of lines to learn, not to mention a number of song and dance routines, I think it’s fair to say that Sarah was feeling the pressure. After only two bungled rehearsals in the Stalinist Auditorium the stage was set – it was showtime! (sorry.)

The day itself was a bit of a mixed bag. Pissed off as we were about spending our precious Saturday working, the kids excitement was undeniably infectious and the backstage area had a good atmosphere as the teachers paraded their costumes and trundled out onto the stage. Sarah and I were in the first play of the day (Snow White) and I’m not ashamed to admit that it was with trembling legs that I stood in the wings awaiting my cue. When it came (a princely fanfare) I galloped onto the stage to rouse the poisoned Snow White with a concealed, though scandalous, kiss (the kids are still talking about it.) Contrary to my predictions, the day seemed to pass with relatively few hitches and everything appearing to come together, in typical Korean style, at the very last minute.

I’d taken the whole Drama Festival period with a heavy dose of scepticism, but as we were ushered onto stage to mime the final song with the kids (one which we had been given the words to the night before and had never even heard) I began to realise its importance. The mothers were all lined up at the front of the stage throwing their kids flowers, some of them weeping with the emotion of it all (drawing the attention away from the fact that none of us knew the song.). It struck me that this is something that both parents and children (and I) were likely to remember for years to come, and I felt pk to be a part of it.

Dangers and Annoyances

2008-09-18T09:41:00.002+01:00

As much as I like Korea there are aspects of this place that make me want to throw myself off suicide rock. One such annoyance is the inability to communicate or handle my own affairs, which makes me not only deaf and dumb but also almost entirely dependent on the kindness of colleagues and strangers.

Take for example last Thursday night, when instead of going to my weekly Korean lesson (I assure you, the irony is not lost) I was forced by prior arrangement with my manager to wait for the cable guy to come and connect our cable TV at 6pm. After waiting for the best part of an hour, imagine my excitement when the intercom unexpectedly rang just before 7.

I danced to the door excitedly but upon opening it was greeted with nothing but an empty hall. With time breathing down my neck, and fear beginning to creep its way into my bones, I ran to the intercom and braced myself for the usual struggle. As expected, the caller didn’t speak a word of English so it was with more frustration than Korean that I tried to intimate that he should come right up and connect my cable. Without any sign of comprehension however, the conversation somehow ended and the line went dead.

“Fuck” I said loudly. I could feel 30 cable TV channels slipping through my fingers and had by now broken into a desperate sweat. I ran out the door and jumped into to the lift in the vain hope that I could catch him outside. Finding no signs of anyone that looked like a cable TV man downstairs, however I ran to the building ajoshi’s hut to see if he could shed a light.

“Ca-be-le Tee-Vee?” I wheezed.

“Anniyo” he replied, and then, producing a large sack, “lice”

I tried to explain that no-one would be sending me a large sack of rice, but it seemed a lot easier to take the sack than to leave it. As such, heavily burdened and sweating even more, I ran back to the apartment lest the cable TV man had shown up in the interval (I am convinced most of my life’s mishaps are the result of the smallest and most unlikely margins of error.)

Needless to say the Cable man never showed. “Oh well,” I thought later that night nevertheless. “Ha ha, I may not have cable but at least I’ve got a new anecdote and a year’s supply of rice, oh Ko-re-a!”

The next day people came and took my rice from me. It’s been a week and I still don’t have cable. I wanted to ask my manager to chase it up but some money I was transferring didn’t end up in the right place and we had to sort that instead. Now the internet’s buggered and I need to get that fixed first. Oh Korea.

Bullets over Busan

2008-09-12T07:41:00.001+01:00

This post is really just an excuse to publish the adjoining picture of “Crack Shot” Hogg but as I’m here I may as well give a little back story and imply a few points about Korean health and safety while I’m at it.

Last Saturday, while trying to think of a way to pass a rainy day and blow away the cobwebs of a hangover, The Duchess, our visiting friends Laura and Ross and I settled on the idea of shooting some guns. We had it on good authority that this was both a fun and accessible pursuit in Busan, so it was with itchy fingers and a sense of intrepidation that we made our way to one of city’s indoor firing ranges.

The firing range was located on the second floor of a medium sized tower block just off Haeundae Beach, and after shaking off our brollies we immediately got down to business. A menu of sorts was quickly produced listing both prices and guns (50,000 for a Magnum with 10 bullets and 40, 000 for everything else) and after some careful consideration I decided to go Gangster-style with a Glock, while Ross chose a similar Automatic and the girls opted for a pair of beautiful silver Smith and Wesson Revolvers.

Within minutes we were led into the firing range and the guns were brought out. After one trial run and with the words “Are they really going to let me do this?” rolling about in my head, I then found myself raising the loaded gun and squeezing the trigger. The weapon jolted to one side like a kicking mule, sending a shockwave through my right arm and a spent shell pinging into the ceiling. I looked at the unblemished paper target and then at my guide, who winced a little, before raising the gun and firing again.

I missed the next shot, hit the one after that, missed, then hit the rest. All in all I did ok but I think I can safely assume I’m no marksman. Meanwhile however, unbeknownst to me, a few booths over a deadly talent was being born. The Duch, displaying the steadiness of hand and cold-hearted nerve I always suspected lurked beneath that warm and sunny exterior, was blasting seven shades of shit out of her own paper nemesis. When the smoke cleared she’d bagged an 83% accuracy rate, towering over my paltry 63% and a good 10% higher than the next best shot.

I can see why people like this kind of thing, there is definitely a sense of power involved with having a mini-explosive go off in your hand and the aesthetics are great. However, contrary to the predictions of some, I don’t think I’ll be turning into a gun nut. An Automatic once in a while and a 44 Magnum on my birthday should suffice. The Duchess I fear, may be a different story…

Street Food

2008-09-03T11:59:00.002+01:00

There are aspects of Korea that often make it appear to occupy a “third place” between the developed and developing world, and one of these is the prevalence of street food. While such food in the West is largely limited to a few after-hours burger vans or greasy hot-dogs stands, here it often seems like every intersection has something temptingly sizzling away for a couple of chun (1000 won) a piece.

One such culprit is paejon, a potato-based pancake laced with green onions and red chilli that can be found in the old shopping district of Nampodong, next to the “world famous” Jagalchi Fish Market. These start life as a thin doughy batter ladled onto a hotplate where they bubble away for a few minutes before being sliced up and served on a plastic covered plate. Eaten straight off the cart dipped in some of that wonderous dark soy sauce with sesame seeds and chilli, paegon is the perfect way to split up an afternoon spent scouring the markets for bargains without blowing your appetite.

Often found sharing a hotplate with paejon is fried mandu, a light dumpling filled with shredded pork and bean sprouts. These little beauties are a Korean staple and more or less annihilate any negative connotations the word dumpling might conjure up – substantial enough to feel like you’ve eaten but light enough to stop four of five from turning into an ordeal. Mandu can also be found bobbing around in a bowl of Ramyon (noodle soup) in any Korean diner, but I personally prefer them the street way – lip searingly hot and shoulder to shoulder with the proles.

Elsewhere, cups of dried octopus tentacles make an interesting but as yet untried option, while tubular rice cakes in a colon bypassing hot sauce are a Duchess favourite and the type of thing people say puts hairs on your chest. The same hot sauce also comes smeared all over pieces of skewered barbecued chicken (see picture) that are undisputedly good but impossible to eat without getting all over your face.

On the less appetising end of the spectrum, Bondegi (boiled silkworm larvae) make an exotic if gut-wrenching alternative. A hangover from poorer times, these slater–like critters smell and taste pretty much as shitty as you’d expect but seem to enjoy steady business along the beachfronts of the city. Also on the rather-not-rosta is battered sausage on a stick, which has the consistency of spam and wet cardboard and is a singularly greasy and unpleasant experience.
Silkworm and sausage aside, Korean street food has so far been an eye-opening experience.

Standing at a food cart on a busy Busan street enjoying a good, cheap plate of paegon or mandu I feel divorced from my former attitude towards food. I used to imagine one day visiting restaurants with price-tags higher than my council tax, but that isn’t food, its status, and I’d now much rather risk six months of diarrohea eating the backstreets of Asia than spend an hour getting fleeced in one of those gentrified hovels.

All good in the hood

2008-08-20T11:49:00.013+01:00

We’ve been in our new apartment for about two weeks now and I thought I’d share some of its mod cons:

We live on the tenth floor of an 18 storey block in Dong-bu Hyundai, Sajik-dong in an apartment - paid for and allocated by our school - which is thankfully somewhat more spacious than the typical studio deal dished out to most foreign teachers. We have been told that before us a family lived here, meaning it’s just about large enough to house our space hungry western asses, consisting of three bedrooms, a bathroom, a living room/kitchen and a balcony.

Our building is a pretty cheek to jowl living space. In Glasgow we’d go for weeks without knowing anyone else shared our tenement, but here we have constant reminders of the lives stacked above, below and either side of us. Cooking smells waft in and out like an over-familiar visitor, while the triumphs and torments of nightly recorder practice seep through the walls like rising damp. Last Wednesday evening, as Korea was soundly defeating America in Olympic Baseball, I muted the TV and to my surprise heard a loud cheer all around me. Baffled at first, it soon struck me that the cheers were coming from individual apartments.

Straddling a long, sweaty climb, the area itself is pretty much as far into the hills as you can go without living in a temple, meaning our location can be problematic. Only one bus comes up here, a little number 5 that powers up and down all day like an ajuma workhorse. The bus takes about 10 minutes to get to the subway, but to get to school we must take a taxi – an inexpensive mode of transport but one that landed us in some inconvenient places until our Korean improved. Dong-bu also boasts a few shops, a bakery, an expensive looking restaurant and what I think is a brothel; not exactly Seomyeon but enough to cater for the day-to-day needs of most residents.

Even further up the hill a path winds into the mountain, past a Buddhist temple – a striking but not unfamiliar sight in Busan – and up in amongst the trees. From here there are some pretty sweeping views of the city. Far to the south a suspension cable from the huge Gwangali bridge is just about visible behind one of the green topped mounds that poke above the surface of the city like islands, while farther away still the black line of the horizon marks the Sea of Japan from the sky. From here the city slowly tapers inland, wrapping its way around the bluffs and hills before hazily meandering out of sight to the north.

Despite the accessibility problems I’m growing found of our little neighbourhood. It’s nice to back on to the mountain, and be able to see both green and city from our modest balcony, and I’m pretty sure we’ll soon start to recognise some of our Korean neighbours who smile politely at the Waygooks in their midst. Although if given the choice, I’d definitely live somewhere more central, for now at least, Dong-bu will do.

Chalet Suisse

2008-08-10T05:22:00.002+01:00

One of the things I like about Korea is its seemingly endless capacity to surprise me. This was certainly true on Saturday night, when after a good (but by no means overwhelming) plate of Vietnamese rice noodles with seafood, a friend opted to spend the remainder of her farewell evening in the intimate and eccentric surroundings of Chalet Suisse a "Swiss Folk Music Cafe" in the Pusan National University district.

Skippered by the affable Mr Lee, and his grinning Setter/Spaniel “Clarinet,” Chalet Suisse transports its occaisonal patrons (numbering no more than about 10 at one time) from the scooters and blaring neon of the Busan street to the intimate confines of a swiss log cabin high in the Alps.

Upon entering the small space, the uniqueness of Chalet Suisse becomes clear. On one side of the room, a huge mural depicts a majestic Alpine scene of blue skies, rolling slopes and jagged peaks, while the remainder of the wall space is given over various items of Swiss culture and provenance; Male and female traditional folk costumes hang in dry cleaning bags on one wall, a cast iron leaf weaved with various wooden dolls and puppets straddles the door, while photos of a younger Mr Lee (presumably in Switzerland) hang proudly in the gaps.

Added to this is an orchestra of musical instruments. Covered shapes betraying the larger string instruments loaf in the corners, while a brigade of beautifully crafted and exotically shaped ukeles, banjos and the like hang pragmatically from a roof beam. As the evening progressed, Mr Lee produced and played a number of these instruments, accompanying yodelling songs with a Guitar, a Banjo and an Accordian, and at one point eliciting that I was from Ireland, playing “Danny Boy” on the Clarinet.

Chalet Suisse is undoubtedly a labour of love and appears to be more a place where Mr Lee can indulge his passion with friends than a business (after we ordered drinks he had to run out to the shop to buy them!) Going there renewed in me the sense that there is something special and uplifting in the human spirit’s capacity to find and cultivate a passion, even from the most remote and diverse of backgrounds, and I cannot but admire Mr Lee’s commitment and sincerity.

I aim on dropping by again when I’m next in PNU. Europe may be thousands of miles away, but at least Switzerland is only a couple of stops on the subway.

Galbi glorious Kalbi!

2008-08-05T10:47:00.007+01:00

On our first weekend in Busan, my cousin Steve and his girlfriend Vicky took us to a Galbi restaurant. Since then, the thing has kind of snowballed for me and the Duch, culminating in the infamous "day of two Galbis."

As you might have guessed, Galbi is damnably good, and a typical experience could be described as follows:

You arrive at the Galbi restaurant with your companions and are immediately hit by the distinctive sounds and smells of sizzling flesh. As you breathe in, the aroma permeates every cell in your body, turning your mouth into a swimming pool and pulling your belly up into your chest. By the time you reach your table you are about 100 times hungrier than when you were at the door, a situation exacerbated by the visual effect of Galbi being consumed heartily all around you.

You sit down at the table, and after a cursory glance at the menu the Korean amongst you orders for everyone. If there isn’t a Korean amongst you don’t worry – these restaurants basically serve one thing and God gave you fingers for a reason. After the order has been dispatched you attempt polite chat but it’s hard to concentrate. You pick at the Kimchi (fermented cabbage in chilli sauce) with your chopsticks and prod a few other side dishes distractedly.

Just as your stomach starts calling you names your server arrives with a big plate of chicken marinated in soy sauce, sesame oil, chilli and garlic (I think) and slides it into the smoking circular pan in the middle of the table. It instantly hisses into life, popping and spitting and catching as your server kneads the chicken around the pan expertly with two great big wooden spatulas. It cooks like this for 5 minutes or so, your server every so often returning to massage it until, with a final flourish, he sets the spatulas to one side and turns down the heat. It’s now ready to eat.

Delirious with excitement, you extend a pair of trembling chopsticks into the pan, pinch a piece of chicken and place it on a sesame leaf along with some thinly sliced onions from your bowl of soy sauce, and a dab of spicy bean paste. You then wrap up the whole neat little bundle and pop it in your mouth in one go, taking care to allow a dribble of soy sauce to run down your chin. The finely serated sesame leaf, lightly perfumed and almost sweet tasting competes ably with the deep, brooding heat and flavour of the chicken, which you find particularly tasty where it has charred and become semi-stuck to the pan.

This process is then repeated until about half the Galbi has been eaten, at which point rice is added to the pan followed by – if you are that way inclined (and I think you are) - cheese. The rice has the effect of turning the pan into a great big paella type thing, while the melting cheese, although admittedly an odd addition, binds the whole mixture together perfectly into lovely chopstick-friendly clumps.

An indeterminable amount of time passes, you rediscover your companions, then without quite knowing how you got there you find yourself at the till making patting motions appreciatively and paying another ludicrously small amount.

You love Korean food.

The job (including lunch)

2008-07-31T01:55:00.003+01:00

Korea isn’t all Galbi and beer it seems, with a substantial portion of my time taken up trying to impart knowledge to our future Asian masters. This, as with everything else in Korea, is conducted in a pantomime of hand gestures and a great deal of fecklessness.

Our day begins at about 9:10am, when we start the slow, sweaty trudge to school from our “love motel” (which is pretty much exactly how you imagine it.) On one side of the road, huge apartment complexes dominate the skyline, while on the other side, convenience stores and small enterprises jostle for space with small restaurants boasting large tanks of docile fish and slithering eels. Here and there workmen clamour over building sites industriously, while pavement-mounted scooters zoom past perilously close and taxi’s pore out of every intersection.

Every so often we hit a stench pocket, where the overwhelming smell of human waste hums in the air like a localised hell. The final stage of our walk takes us down a side street and past a neon cross topped church and into the pretty courtyard of our school, which is where the mayhem really begins.

Even before we’ve changed into our “inside shoes” we are typically assailed with lisping cries of “Danny teacher!” and “Sarah teacher!” from all directions. From here on in a tide of bobbing heads and exuberant greetings follow us up two flights of stairs to the tiny staff room, which we share with four other Waygooks and four Korean teachers. There is usually just enough time to hastily photocopy a few worksheets, gather our shit together and check the days’ schedule before scattering to our first classes at 9:40am.

The “morning” comprises of six periods; two 30 minute classes followed by a 20 minute break, another two 30 minute classes, an hour for lunch then another two thirty minute classes. For some reason I have been designated science teacher, so a good deal of my morning classes are spent fiddling about with ill-conceived science experiments while trying to silence a growing cacophony of “teacher help!” and issuing empty threats about the use of the Korean language. These experiments rarely demonstrate any scientific principles a seven year old could grasp and usually involve a lot of sellotape, swallowable parts and Korean-only instructions. It’s a race against the clock to make sure everyone has successfully constructed their experiment, packed up and if there’s time, learnt a few words of English in the 30 minutes allotted time slot. More than once a Korean teacher has had to wade in to help while I, red faced and sporting a child on each limb have uselessly appealed for calm. My other morning classes involve working from books or worksheets, and generally a lot of colouring in and some songs thrown in to waste a little time.

After the first four classes there is an hour lunch break which at 12 noon, is a little earlier than I’m used to but more than welcome after 2 hours with the Kindergarten terrors. There are four choices nearby for lunch; Paris Baguette, Tous les Jours, Camp and “The pasta place.” The first two are large chains that differ only in that Tous les Jours serves coffee. As you may guess by the names both serve a Korean take on French Patisserie - with varying degrees of success. If you have ever been in a quandary over whether to go sweet or savoury then go to one of these shops. Croissants come with a glaze of sugar and donuts which look normal on the outside, reveal a bean paste when bitten into. I’ve even heard tales of jelly and cheese sandwiches coming out of these places and though I’ve never experienced it myself, I don’t doubt it for a second. In some ways they get it right however; Mini bagel pizzas with sweet tomato sauce and a cheese and ham (and egg?) topping are perfect when you can’t look at a bowl of rice, while a coffee and (real) donut from Tous les jours is a great energy boost for the final classes. Camp on the other hand is the decidedly Korean lunch option, serving Kimbap (like Sushi rolls) Bi Bim Bap (an egg, rice, veg and chilli concoction favoured by the Duchess) spicy beef soup, Mandu (dumplings) and such-like. The service here is efficient and the food, as with most Korean restaurants, tastes good and is shamefully cheap. Forensic analysis of each dish should be expected sometime in the near future. Although I have yet to go to the “pasta place,” I’m sure the time will soon come when, more through curiosity than anything else, I will check it out.

The afternoon schedule consists of four 50 minute periods separated by 10 minute breaks. According to my schedule I should only be working three of these, but teacher shortages of late have often meant doing all four twice a week. These kids are at the elementary level, so the material is more advanced and some, though not all, can hold a decent conversation in English. The nature of these classes differs from that of the morning classes. The kids are generally (though not always) easier to control and the material a bit more challenging. I start a few of these classes by letting the kids sing a pop song. Most recently it has been “Ob-la-di-ob-la-da” by the Beatles and “You’re my inspiration” by some eighties power rock band but in future I get to choose. Youtube here we come! The rest of the class is taken up going through the assigned text book, some of which still have the original CDs (which makes things a lot easier,) but others that require a little creative improvisation.

At 6:20pm the school day finally ends and we set off in search of something to eat. Recent choices have included slices of tender barbecue pork, gloriously fatty and transformed into little morsels of piggy heaven when dipped in deep chilli sauce and wrapped in fragrant sesame leaves. But that’s a different story.

Shabu Shabu

2008-07-22T13:04:00.003+01:00

For me, Korean food started on Friday night. Up until then, my experience was moew or less limited to a few visits to Kokyoro, whatever it was Air Asiana served up somewhere over the Ukraine and a few so-so meals consumed in a haze of jetlag and apprehension. As such, baring some tasty deep fried mandu (pork dumplings) in the restaurant around the corner from my school one lunch time, my first five days or so in Korea were spent with the distinct feeling that i wasn't quite getting to the meat and potatoes of Korean cusine. Until I tried Shabu shabu that is, which had both.

Literally translated as Swish Swish, Shabu Shabu involves simmering meat and vegetables in a rich spicy broth, to be eaten with a variety of side dishes and a wonderfully intense dipping sauce (of which more later.) As with alot of Korean food it seems, ther is very much a DIY element to Shabu Shabu, the low tables of the restaurant coming equiped with gas burners on which on which dinner is cooked in large communal pots to be shared with one's companions.
The occaison was dinner with our newcolleagues, and after taking off our shoes and settling in cross-legged around the table, the burner was soon fired up and coaxing a large pot of broth and potatoes into life. Next to arrive were the vegetables; large plates of oyster mushrooms, whole bunches of parsely and crispy green beans literally singing with freshness. Not long after these sank into the maelstrom of the now bubbling broth came thje coup de grace; Wafer thin slices of blood red beef, translucent and marbled with rich white fat towered on serving platters in what seemed like ludricous proportions.

Within a few salivating minutes it was ready to eat. As expected, the broth was spicy and intense, a perfect home for the earth parsley and mushrooms that were every bit as fresh as they'd looked. The meat itself was plentiful, delicate and flavoursome, even more so when dipped in the small saucer of soy sauce with a smudge of dissolving wasabi on the side. The soy sauce here, i should say, is unlike anything i've ever had in the UK or elsewhere, with a flavour so intricate that i thought it must be something else entirely! As the broth bubbled down and the falvours deepened, gratin sized slices of potato appeared, by this stage al dente and infused with the cooking liquid. When these had gone, thick udon noodles arrived to flesh out the remaining broth and ensure a few more minutes happy slurping.

At the end of the meal, as i sat happy, converted and satisfied, a Canadian colleague observed that the swirling reds and lazy bubbles of the remaining broth was the closest thing you'd get to a drug trip in Korea. Fine by me

I blame the wire

2008-06-19T17:14:00.002+01:00

Hi, remember me? I used to blog regularly on this site until The Wire entered my life and effectively killed my TV consumption for four box sets.

Set in and around the projects and high-rises of Baltimore’s deprived South Side, HBO’s most thrilling export to date (and there’s been a few) for a time dominated my life and pushed all other TV to the margins. Thus, while Delia was getting intimate with tins of canned lamb, Neighbours was moving to channel 5, and Michael Sophocles was shitting all over Sir Alan in The Apprentice, I was more concerned about Omar’s next stick up and what was happening in Hamsterdam to give a shit. I realise this amounts to nothing less that a dereliction of duties and an affront to my flashing friend in the corner, but it’s just so good I’m afraid I couldn’t help myself.

But that’s only one half of the story. The truth is that after watching The Wire I began to get a little disillusioned with my attempts at pop cultural analysis and plaigirism so I tried to turn my hand at fiction. You can read the results at Dead bodies weigh heavier than broken hearts and Fikipedia and judge the results for yourself, but all I can say is it’s damn difficult!

Anyway, while I no longer technically own a TV, I’m still managing to cram quite a bit of viewing into my drying eye-holes through the wonders of i-player and other streaming video, so without further snivelling, allow me to embark on by overdue, over-stylised and over-compensating TV round up of the week.

Battlestar Galactica was recommended to me by several sources, none of whom were overt Sci-fi geeks, so I decided to give it a go. Armed with the 2hr + pilot and an open mind, I decided to let the DVD do the talking and wasn’t disappointed.

The show follows the fortunes of the last remaining humans from the 12 Gobol space colonies as they flee the Zylons, a deadly band of robots turned rebels, looking for the mythical 13^th colony - which happens to be our dear own Earth. As the opening sequence dramatically reminds us each week, some of these robots look and feel human (not to mention are pretty hot) making the task ahead even more deadly as the Zylons hide within the humans’ midst.

This is a sexed up version of a 70s show by the same name, and with a kick-ass premise like this makes for addictive viewing (I’m half way through season one.) While it tends to drift towards the cheesy side a little to often for comfort, and the script can lag in places, Battlestar Galactica nevertheless punches with the big boys when comes to plot, drama and suspense. Plus there’s four seasons, making my unemployment quite frankly a breeze!

Also on the radar this week was Kidulthood, a gritty drama about the lives of the deprived teenagers at a West London school (available on BBC i-player.) as they deal with the aftermath of a pupil’s suicide. Written by Noel Clarke, who also plays the terrifying school bully Sam, Kidulthood doesn’t hold back when portraying the sex, violence and drugs of Britain’s modern youth, and has frankly made me terrified of anyone under 18!

Although quite similar in some respects to Larry Clarke’s 1995 directorial debut Kids, Kidulthood manages to carve out a space of its own when it comes to shocking the viewer and offering nothing but unrelenting bleakness as it eulogises the fate of Thatcher’s last, unwanted children.

It makes for compelling viewing, and with the sequel Adulthood out in cinema’s tomorrow, you could do worse than give it a shot.

Behind the ion curtain

2008-01-29T21:17:00.000Z

As you may well be aware, this blog has a propensity to look westward across the Atlantic in its noble quest to source and dispatch TV wisdom to it’s small but discerning readership. With the Americans’ reputation for churning out shows such as the Soprano’s, Curb and The Wire, sorry Chavez, but cultural hegemony doesn’t always seem like such a bad thing.

Last week however, things were a little different. After having duped the Duchess into an Eastern escapade and bade a tearful “missing you already” to The Wire Series 1, I tossed the TV Guide and packed my bags as TV Casualty finally went Continental.

As any good guide book will tell you, the first thing you should do when you arriving in an unfamiliar country is channel surf your hotel box. Television can expose the best and worst aspects of a country, broadcasting everything from Olympic triumph to Regime change Through TV one can instantly access a rolling archive of the obsessions and intrigues that grip a nation’s collective consciousness at any given moment, and tap into the cultural life of a large swathe of its populous through the protective anonymity of a glass screen.

That said, you’re probably going to want to find an English speaking channel first to ease yourself into the culture shock. In this situation, BBC World is usually your best bet, merging as it does that familiar British presenting style with just enough extra international news to make you remember you’re on holiday. In its absence however Euronews should be more than enough to fill the gaping void. This isn’t because of the quality of journalism on show (Euronews somehow manages to cover Europe wide events with a level of scrutiny just below Newsround) rather it’s for the filler items in between news headlines.

One such filler is “No Comment,” where news footage is shown without narration, and little indication as to what is actually going on. While some of the footage is reasonably self-explanatory, some requires an altogether more creative approach from the viewer. Thus you can find yourself inventing all sorts of reasons why four men in grey suits should be walking into a building, and lets face it, whatever you make up is likely to be about 100 times less depressing than the truth.

Another filler item (and my personal favourite) is “Flashback,” in which a news story from exactly one year before is shown in surprising detail for Euronews, in doing so turning the whole concept of “news” on its head. Tuning into one of these bad boys can initially be incredibly exciting in a “Shit I knew this was going to happen!” way, but as the realisation dawns on you that you are neither psychic nor have you travelled back in time somehow, its actually quite interesting. Of course sometimes major events are reported that you have absolutely no recollection of, but I suppose its better late than never.

Having suitably reassured yourself that the English speaking world still exists, you may want to venture outside into new territories. On this occasion, I managed to stumble across Polska Nostrovia, a highly entertaining show in which Ladas and other Soviet era rust buckets are navigated around a variety of obstacles. This can range from contestants double parking on a yellow square to going hell for leather off road, mowing down cardboard cut outs of animals trying to cross the road, kind of like Top Gear meets The Animals of Farthing Wood. The fact that there is a language barrier doesn’t matter either, as the hilarity of bad driving is, of course, universal.

Other highlights include watching your favourite movies dubbed in German, which can range from being expertly done to absolutely ridiculous, as well as the ever popular music text in channels such as Viva.tv. Channels such as Viva serve not only to show that morons exist all over the world (witness XXX GUNTER IST SEXI XXX a few times and you’ll know what I mean) but also show that for all their enviable multi-lingual skills, lyrics written in English by Continental Europeans are all uniformly lame, alleviating somewhat that feeling of awkward ignorance implicit in travelling anywhere outside the English speaking world except possibly France.

With TV like this at your fingertips, it’s easy to see why people say travel broadens the mind.

Masterchef Goes Largish

2008-01-13T23:33:00.000Z

The hangover has barely faded and Masterchef 2008 is already breathing its garlicky breath down our necks. Tearing a hole straight through eight weeks of BBC 2’s 8:30 weeknight slot (barring Fridays) Masterchef Goes Large 2008 is once again serving up generous portions of tears, triumph, (and a lot of the same) over the coming weeks and months. Under the critical gaze of large faced double act x and y, a whole battalion of food weirdo’s will be sweating it out in the Masterchef kitchen, each vying for that prized place in the final and the chance to “change their lives forever” with a guaranteed job in a “top kitchen” (and if they’re really lucky a shot co-hosting the Wild Gourmets or some similar drivel.)

At first glance a number of things jar in the Masterchef goes large format. For a start, while some of the contestants are old enough and far enough into their (mis)chosen careers to really benefit from the fast track to job in cooking, the increasingly younger make-up of the contestants make a less convincing case for the whole “one chance to realise their dreams” foundation on which the show trades. If they want to cook so badly, one asks oneself, why not just get a job in a kitchen? It could be that I’m missing the point entirely, or that getting what you want without working for it is actually looks good on a CV these days, but I don’t tune in to Masterchef now without my sceptic gun cocked and with the safety off.

It’s also painfully repetitive, with much of the show looking like it’s been directed by a computer programme. Each day the same lines are trotted out by the voiceover. “Accountant Robert is risking it all with…” describes anything technical or offbeat, while “but will that be enough to impress the judges?” is generally reserved for more conventional efforts. The emotional state of the contestants is similarly portrayed with a few easily recognisable rules. Stress and pressure are denoted by the Prodigy, while Keane usually kick in at the end accompanied by a group hug to portray the bond forged by the group and good will towards the emotional winner. Personally I’d want to kick him or her in the shins but then again I am solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Yet despite these foibles, Masterchef draws me back, if intermittently, again and again. Chief among the reasons for this is the quality and thoughtfulness of the cooking on show. Most of the contestants display a genuine flair and passion for what they are doing, and the often inventive, risky and instinctual combinations (particularly in the first round) show approaches to food I might not usually consider. The earnestness of the contestants is another plus; many contestants look like their very life depends on the taster’s reaction to their laboriously crafted creations, and I can only admire the guts it must take to put themselves out there through their food. For these reasons, last years contest threw up some interesting finalists and made for a good season finish. This year some of those contestants have been invited back to undergo life-threatening 16 hour shifts in some top kitchens later in the series, so it’ll be interesting to see how this kink in the format works out.

Exploring a more sobering theme this week BBC 2 also kicked off the first in (another) series of films about the Iraq War with the badly titled The Boys of Baghdad High. This fly on the wall documentary follows the lives of four Iraqi friends as they try to maintain a normal life on the increasingly blood soaked streets of the Iraqi capital. Having been provided with video cameras the boys then recorded the various aspects of their day to day lives, be it singing along to a Britney Spears song or running the daily gauntlet to school and back. For dramatic effect, the friends were all from different religious backgrounds (though only two of them appeared to hang out with each other) giving a further twist to the tale.

Although The Boys of Baghdad High was rich in material and made for a unique on the ground insight of what is going on in Baghdad, the programme was badly let down by the editing. For some reason the four boy’s voices were dubbed into English (in wildly unfitting accents) while everyone elses were subtitled, affecting the fluidity of some of the scenes. In addition, the film was cut somewhat haphazardly, and seemed to be trying to manipulate the footage to show the boys everday life, i.e. hanging out or being nagged by their mothers, jarring with the stark realities of the war. This in itself isn’t necessarily bad, but instead of providing us with a stark contrast as the programme makers must have intended, it seemed to enforce a misplaced light-heartedness to some scenes when the truth was much grimmer. Although it did throw up the line “If Chemical Ali really wanted to destroy the north, he should have fired a rocket with Mohammed’s socks in it.”

There were some poignant moments, such as when two of the boys parted company as one relocated to the Kurdish north to escape the violence, as well as some truly terrifying footage of explosions and firefights, but somewhere in putting it all together the integrity was lost, and as such I doubt The Boys of Baghdad winning any awards for film making.

New Year Cheer

2008-01-03T23:04:00.000Z

It turns out something other than a black hung over smudge was lurking behind New Year’s Eve after all, with a new American President, worldwide recession, and series 5 of Shameless all pitching up to make 2008 as hopelessly defiled as every other year since 1982.

It’s not that I didn’t enjoy lolling about on the sofa in between bouts of galloping consumption (quite the opposite,) but the realisation that the New Year (difficult depressing and skint as it is) is like hitting the reset button on a stopwatch feels strangely liberating. Theres nothing quite like staring down the barrel of a brand spanking new 12 months in which to gush, bitch and abuse alliteration and brackets to the fullest before ending it all once again in a blazing fit of excess to lift the spirits. Frankly I find something comforting about the whole cyclical thing, and this no less applies to my visual entertainment.

But before I get ahead of myself dreaming of the new programmes, media events and rolling news coverage that will no doubt chop up and store 2008 in the memory banks until I’m at least 45, a respectful look back at the moments that defined Christmas in TV land is long overdue.

As promised, Eastenders cranked up the misery expertly as the Brannan dirty laundry tumbled out of the wash basket (and in the case of Tanya, straight down the stairs) in an explosive Christmas Day double header. Despite the fact that Good King Wenceles wasn’t played, it didn’t snow, and the pub was only half full, (proving I’m only right 99.9% of the time) it proved to be a tumultuous week in the square indeed. This was especially so as much of the action was played out in front of a huge photograph of Bradders and Stacey smiling with Max on their wedding day, and as if that wasn’t tragic enough, super straight “shop-your-own-son” shooter Kevin Wicks kicked it while driving a dodgy motor! If you ask me the Set and Irony departments of Eastenders deserve a raise (if they aren’t among the 6000 BBC employees getting fired this year that is.)

Also on the BBC Ricky Gervais broke his fall from glory slightly with the last ever episode of Extras offering a poignant end to this original if somewhat patchy series. A litany of cameos was laid on for the occasion, with only George Michael really getting into the self effacing spirit of the show as he cruised Hempstead Heath for chance encounters. Throughout both series Extras has shined when it has demanded self-parodying performances from its cameos, Daniel Radcliffe’s spoilt child and Orlando Bloom’s narcissist provided some truly hilarious viewing and gave me a new respect for both stars. However, when it demands little from its guests other that the same clipped and massaged media image we’re used to, such as the beatification of David Bowie in series two and Gordon Ramsay’s “tough guy” in the most recent episode, the show suffers, and Gervais appears like little more than the grubby little name droppers he plays so well. Despite this disappointment however, Extras ability to get under the skin of celebrity and fame while knocking out the jokes will make it a memorable feather in Gervaises bow.

As previously indicated much of my Christmas period was spent in the company of Arrested Development, a sort of serialised Royal Tenebaums with a lighter comedic touch and minus the sap. I only managed to blast my way through about two thirds of the 22 episode behemoth first series so I can’t say definitively, but this US effort was compulsive enough viewing to have me returning time and again. Following Michael Bluth as he tries to steer his wayward and numerous extended family through a tough patch after the incarceration of its criminal patriarch, Arrested Development is definitely character driven television. While the storylines can often be wafer thin and the voiceover grating, the well developed and original characterisation more than compensates. There is another two series of this, and while I’m not going to rush out and buy the box sets I’ll be on the look out for this one lurking around digital in the coming months and I recommend you do the same.

Finally, Shameless made it to the fourth series with a double helping via the old C4/E4 first look chestnut. I’ll reserve judgement for now, but the date for it’s return was certainly well placed, as watching Frank stumble around like a hobo made me feel (slightly) better about the previous night’s reverie.

TV Casualty's Christmas Crackers

2007-12-23T21:52:00.000Z

Christmas was designed for TV. The combination of debilitating meals, cold weather, time off work and a high family member per square metre ratio conspire to make silently vegging out in front of the box an extremely attractive option. And just as normal concepts of time go out the window (can you truthfully see anything but a hungover black smudge when you think of the 1st January?) so too does normal scheduling. For these two or three days of the year we are a captive audience and the listings positively twinkle with festive delights – if you know when and where to look. All too often however the pressure of buying presents, talking to people and the omni present box set mean that some of the best shows are neglected, only coming to light days or weeks later with a passing glance at the TV guide as the Duchess tosses it into the recycling.

Therefore to avoid tears before New Year’s TVC, being the essentially philanthropic enterprise it is, has assembled the very best of viewing in one tragically under visited website. This means that all you have to worry about it whether to drag the TV into the kitchen or bring the mountain to Mohammed.

Surrender your senses to TV Casualty good citizen as we play spot the pun and fly – snowman style – through the wild and varied digiscape of Christmas TV land.

Kicking off Christmas Eve Gordon Ramsay sticks one to the yanks in Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares USA (C4, 9PM) where we presumably get to see Gordon hawk his highly sellable mix of humiliation and inspiration to our American cousins. As we all know by now, Gordon doesn’t mince his words and demands his subjects eat a large slice of humble pie so it will be interesting to see how this plays out across the pond. Completing his monopoly of prime time Channel 4 we are also being given The Best of The F Word (C4, 10pm) followed, bizarrely, by Ramsay’s “favourite film” Sexy Beast. (C4, 11:10pm)

If you couldn’t give a stuffing about Gordon or think his favourite flick is a turkey (It isn't, though I can’t imagine him sitting still long enough to watch one film, never mind enough to justify a favourite film) then ITV 2 is the place to be as they run a double bill of petrol headed thrillers The Fast and the Furious (ITV2, 9pm) and 2 Fast 2 Furious (ITV2, 11pm.) It may surprise you to learn this but behind the rapier wit and sophisticated veneer of TVC beats the heart of a moron, so this potent mix of cars, girls and guns will make its presents felt...

If none of that does it for you then back to back episodes of Father Ted (More 4, 9pm) should ensure a warm rosy glow in the living room before you hightail it up the stairs so Santa can fill your stocking in peace. If that doesn’t satisfy, your dead and I can’t help you.

Moving into the big day EastEnders (BBC1, 6:20pm & 8pm) stands out as a deal breaker. Bradders and Stacey have been grinning out of the cover of every TV guide worth its salt for the last few weeks now to maximise the effect as Max and Stacey’s affair is exposed to a stunned Brannan Family Christmas via the under-rated medium of video. Aside from that it will snow, Good King Wenceles will be played by a brass band and everyone will end up in paper hats in the Vic – a traditional East End Christmas.

As EastEnders begins its second showing of the day Harry Hill’s Christmas TV Burp (ITV, 8pm) gets underway on ITV. I probably should leave this out considering it is “an irreverent look at the Christmas TV schedules” and will no doubt expose TVC for the imitative, third rate sloppy mess it is, but that would be unprofessional. The man is a genius and as soon as I loose my hair and get a few shirts with outsized collars I’m moving into TV. Watch this.

Film-wise The African Queen (C4, 6:10pm) ticks the “they don’t make ‘em like they used too” box as Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn star as the drunken sailor and prim missionary taking lumps out of each other in the Congo, and The Motorcycle Diaries (C4, 10:35pm) biopics a youthful Che Guevara as a trip around South America sows the seeds of revolution in his soul.

If you’re still left groping in the dark despite this, you can turkey fart your way through back to back Peep Show (E4 from 9pm) while The Sopranos (More 4, 12:40am) continues to storm its way through the back catalogue heedless of man or religion.

Break out the box sets on Boxing Day as the schedule looks pretty bereft, I’ll be working my way through Arrested Development. Highlights for the next five days of Christmas include the last ever series of Extras (Thursday 27th December BBC1, 9pm) which includes cameos from David Tenant, George Michael, Gordon Ramsay and Clive Owen (?,) the first episode of the new series of Shameless (New Years Day C4, 10:10pm) and Meet the Fokkers (Friday 28th December BBC 1, 8:30pm.)

Ignore this advice at your peril, and have a good Christmas.

Brannan vs Mitchell

2007-12-10T22:29:00.000Z

My devotion to Eastenders has recently been on an upward trend as events in the soap begin to take a promising turn for the wretched.

Not since the Krays Chinese Smiled their way round the ol’ East End in the 50’s and 60’s has London seen the likes of what is about to kick off in the otherwise quiet leafy suburb of Watford. Mark my words, it’s going to be a red Christmas in the square as the cobbles get an overdue taste of Mitchell blood.

All the evidence points to a full scale war; Jim has gone into hiding, most likely to direct operations from a heavily fortified compound safe from Mitchell bullets. Bradders, masking an icy intellect behind his ruddy faced hang-dog optimism has taken control of the Market, weeks after suspiciously quitting a high powered city job to “assist” the Market Inspector (whereabouts currently unknown.) Jack, the Brannans’ “man on the inside” has duped his way into a controlling share in a Mitchell enterprise, while the loose coalition between the Brannans and the Beales looks set to become official as Lauren and Peter prepare to enjoin the families in blood.

In contrast the Mitchell Family has never looked weaker. Having failed to produce an heir of any substance in Ben, Phil has taken it upon himself to provide the sole muscle of the operation. Attempts to recruit a Soldier in Jason have so far failed, and while Peggy, Ronnie and Roxy managed to face down the bailiffs as an impressive trio of no-nonsense broads, recent in-fighting is causing divisions that will take more than a few vodka shots to heal.

The gloves are off, and despite loose cannon Steven Beale threatening the entire plan with a premature blazing of Mitchell’s Motors (note Stacey earning her stripes,) things are falling into place that could see the historic seat of the Mitchells change hands before the New Year rings in…

While one world disintegrated, another was saved as Heroes reached its foregone, if no less dramatic finale last Thursday, opting to end things in the time honoured tradition of a double-bill.

Although we never really expected the creators to inflict September the 11^th times a thousand on New York, the finale to this highly watchable if a little trashy American export lived up to the hype, and avoided the misty eyed American patriotism that I always suspected lurked at its core.

I wont give too much away, as I know for many this show is a hang-over box set waiting to happen, but its suffice to say its worth sticking around, if only for the Evil Dead –like leader into season two which is no doubt mere months away.

Crapford

2007-12-04T21:01:00.000Z

The first few days after a dispatch are usually spent in blogger post coitus. I drift from Eastenders to the news then back, perk up for the Sopranos then float into bed for thirty minutes or so with Mario Puzo’s grinning Godfather and friends. I then slip into a deep slumber for a restful night dreaming of garrotings, two-tone wingtips and cannelloni.

Towards the end of the week however things begin to change. I get the itch, and realise I better watch something new soon or risk my reputation with dead air. This week however, the Greater Manchester Bender Weekender got in the way, and I arrived back on Sunday evening an emaciated, dehydrated, and very worried blogger indeed.

Despite the ticking clock however and in a move the great Don would have been proud of, I made a few key decisions and managed to consolidate my media consumption into a manageable 24 hour morsel, and in doing so stoked the fires once more for the informed, witty and ever reverential phenomena that you have come to love and hate as TV Casualty.

On Sunday night Mothers and Grans everywhere were no doubt boiling the kettle in anticipation of Cranford, the latest period drama to satiate the seemingly endless appetite among the British public for bonnets, bodices and bootstraps. Sunday night’s transmission was my second episode, and showed no change of pace as events lumbered on almost imperceptibly.

Set in a rural village in England, the storyline largely revolves around the goings-on and jolly hi-jinks associated with the arrival of a new young doctor in the town. When not giggling about the new doctor, the six or so women who make up the citizenship routinely go into fits about a new railway line and the Irish, who comprise an as yet unseen malevolent presence ready and waiting to corrupt everything they hold dear.

This episode saw Dame Judy Dench, (cast against type as strong, dignified and English) lose her sister then narrowly miss out on her last chance of happiness without shedding a single tear. Meanwhile, a rapscallion Scot with a twinkle in his eye causes good natured havoc, and the Lady of the Manor steps down from her perch to intervene in the wrongfully arrest of vagabond Jambo from Hollyoaks, in doing so saving him and his one hundred snivelling brat kids.

As you might of guessed, Cranford didn’t overly impress, and in a bid to redress the balance I opted to spend my day off in a dark room with strangers in search of something far more up my street.

Following the entwined fortunes of African-American Gangster Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) and the honest New York detective tasked with busting his smack ring (Russell Crowe) American Gangster puts a black perspective on the mafia power struggles that gripped New York in the 60’s and 70’s.

The action joins Lucas after his boss and mentor Bumpy Johnson dies, setting him out on the ambitious goal of flooding the streets of Harlem with cheap, good quality heroin from Vietnam. As his operation grows in size, so too do the difficulties involved with keeping the business safe from corrupt cops, rival gangsters and the investigation of Russell Crowe’s drug trafficking task force.

The film is a brave attempt to breathe new life into the genre at a point where my old friend the Soprano’s seems to have said all there is to say on the matter, which at times it succeeds in doing. However, a fatal flaw lies in the film’s apparent inability to adequately balance feelings of admiration and revulsion for the central character, the dichotomy on which all good gangster films make their bones. We never really get under the skin of Lucas, and he never gets under ours, with the end result that his fate becomes largely unimportant.

In addition, It is impossible not to draw comparisons between American Gangster and other mob movies. The poster, set in the black and white hues redolent of Scarface, practically begs it, while the title of the movie places it firmly within and up against the genre. This is a brave tactic and not one which always pays off, as the film balances familiar themes of fraternal betrayal (The Godfather,) police corruption (Serpico,) the dark side of the American dream (Scarface,) and the Irish (Cranford) with the business of telling the story at hand. One good thing to come out of the film however is the city itself, which takes centre stage as New York emerges as decaying and lawless city of bleached beauty and decrepit magnificence.

For fans of the gangster movies, American Gangster is a watchable if flawed addition to the genre, though less than avid viewers probably shouldn’t bother. Although the movie offers a different take on what has previously been dominated by Italian, and to a lesser extent Irish characters, it doesn’t say anything new or with enough eloquence to give it any stand alone appeal.

Ahh!

The MIGHTY Boosch

2007-11-27T22:34:00.001Z

Somewhere around the third shit of the day it hits you. Something is not quite right.

What had been a curious but not unwelcome opportunity to catch up on your reading starts to take on more sinister and worrying dimensions. Your brain automatically googles “food poisoning” and that last sausage flashes up instantly. This is a bad time for you boy, and its not about to get any better.

Unfortunately, the same can often be said for the world of film and television. Take the Godfather trilogy. After two masterpieces of epic importance and pop cultural gravitas, part three bombed like New Coke and to this day casts an icy shadow over its predecessors. Likewise, Peep Show began to loose a little of its edge on its third run and I won’t even get started on the third Sting album.

Others however, rightly recognise the simple beauty of the couplet. Spaced did, prudently calling it quits before money or ego stretched the formula. Similarly, Fawlty Towers earned its place in Sitcom royalty on the back of a mere 12 episodes. These shows recognised the old showbiz adage that you should always leave the crowd wanting more, instead of subjecting us to a dragged out and undignified death the wrong side of primetime. It would seem therefore, that as with many other things in life, when it comes to TV (especially good TV) three is often a crowd, and gooseberries can be real shits.

These were the fears with which I nervously awaited the third series of The Mighty Boosh. Having found little to fault and much to love in the first and second series, the cautious and essentially pessimistic side of my hexago-nature warned me not to hold my breath for more of the same. However, as Machiavelli so consistently points out, you don’t get anywhere in life without taking a few risks, and Victory was definitely on the side of Barrett and Fielding last week as The Mighty Boosh stormed back for another crack of the funny bones.

Set in a shop in Shoreditch, the first episode finds Vince and Howard home alone as Naboo and Bollo go on a stag weekend. As the episode progresses we soon find we are on familiar ground as the trademark creepy characters, inventive sets and kitsch elements combine with an increased budget to conjure a kaleidoscope of offbeat and irregular comedy. The songs are still in there, as are the moon cut-aways, while the chemistry of the two main characters maintains the balance and equality that marks and elevates all good double acts.

Although this isn’t simply a rehashing of the earlier efforts; In this series, for the first time as far as I can tell, TMB is starting to turn its considerable strength outward against elements outside its world. “Eels” veers into Nathan Barley territory as the show takes a few pops at the Shoreditch elite and Nu-Rave in equal measure, suggesting perhaps a reflex to the increasing popularity of the programme as it drifts to the mainstream. However, with appearances by Razorlight and The Horrors scheduled for later in the series, the satire is unlikely to hack all the way to the bone. No bad thing in my opinion, as going too far down this path would risk sacrificing some of the fun of the show.

As such, those suspicious belly rumblings must have just been nerves, as TMB looks set to score a hat trick with the third series. For now at least, I can take solace in the fact that greater men than I have dared and won once more.

Also, dont worry if you miss it on thursdays, as its repeated eight times during the week

Round up

2007-11-20T22:07:00.000Z

Eagle eyed readers will have noticed a distinct lack of new content over the last few weeks.

This is not, as my recent forays into the world of food writing might suggest, because I have sent my glowing friend in the corner to the naughty step. Rather, ever since I purchased my spanking new DVD Recorder, all traces of viewing diversity have all but gone out the window as the Soprano’s consolidates its vice-like grip on my life.

With all 86 episodes now being shown in a row by More 4 every weeknight after 12, prudence dictates I record each one, while compulsion makes damn sure I watch them. This all adds up to over 5 hours viewing per week, and with all the time it takes to hold down a job, eat, read (the Godfather, tackily,) watch the news and brush my teeth, there is very little room for anything else.

As such, after a brief flourish, democracy has once again yielded to autocracy, diversity overwhelmed by homogony, and freedom of choice brutally crushed by the all pervading influence and authority of Divine Right.

A few rogue elements have slipped through the net in recent days however, and it is with great personal risk and likely censure, that I bring you this week’s resumen de televisión, live from behind the ion curtain.

I’ve never been a huge fan of Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall. It’s not that I don’t like him, I’ve just never been particularly inspired by his pig-rearing, free-ranging grow your own or die approach to cookery, finding it a tad beyond my means. However, with River Cottage: Gone Fishing, we’ve made our peace. In the latest River Cottage offering Hugh takes his welly boots and straggly locks around Britain’s coastline in search of the best self caught seafood he can find. He then cooks it simply, and usually outdoors, before serving it up to old sea dogs and salt of the earth types who receive with all the gratitude they can muster for a double-barrelled land luber who just cost them a morning’s work. It’s a pretty simple formula, but proves interesting and educational, incidentally stomping all over The Wild Gourmets who tried a similar thing but failed miserably.

Also evading capture in service of the truth this week was Channel 4’s “contemporary re-telling of the story of the story of Exodus,” aptly titled of course, Exodus.

After being abandoned by his immigrant mother on a beach, Moses is adopted by evil right-wing leader Pharoah Mann, who brings him up in a world of wealth and privilege, albeit failing to impress any of his beliefs on his young son. After killing a soldier with one punch, Moses is exiled to dreamland, an old fairground complex turned internment camp that is home to criminals, refugees, and the dispossessed. There he quickly and quietly finds his old family, becomes a great leader, and leads his followers to the land of Milk and Honey.

At least I think this was the story, as I became increasingly less interested the more I watched Exodus, and infinitely more happy to amuse myself with facetious little musings on the inconsistencies of the premise.

I am usually a big fan of dystopian visions of the future, particularly when they involve some sort of authoritarian element, but Exodus unfortunately failed to float my boat. I admittedly should have sat through it until the end, if only to see how much the programme would deviate from the original story, but in a world of infinite media choices and unprecedented access to information, if you haven’t got me in the first 15 minutes, I’m not likely to stick around.

Also this week I tuned in excitedly to Kitchen Nightmares, which after a smashing first two episodes has dissolved into cynical rehashing of old stories, by way of Gordon “re-visiting” restaurants from previous series, and as such only needing to show about 25% new footage. I also went to see Planet Terror in the cinema, which proved gratuitous, vile, and thoroughly enjoyable.

Thali Night Fever

2007-11-07T21:44:00.000Z

All new experience lays slave to TV Casualty, and never more so on bonfire night as I buttoned up the flak jacket and made the short mission to Stravaigin on Gibson Street for their monthly Thali night.

The occasion being a friend’s birthday, the Establishment was playing host to a dinner of Last Supper proportions, albeit a damn sight tastier and free from all those nasty recriminations that made the original one a real downer.

Thali, for those who weren’t there, is a selection of regional Indian dishes served in tapas sized portions on a steel plate, and in this case with rice, a naan-like flat bread called missi roti and a shredded carrot salad called kosambri. There is a set menu, dispensing with all that choosing nonsense and Stravaigin also laid on a free bottle of Cobra for those wise souls who booked ahead.

Soon the large steel plates began to arrive at the table in waves, and after a quick lesson on the origins of each dish, the serious business of eating began.

The Rohu Kalia matched a light, slightly doughy batter with delicate pearly white fish that disintegrated after the gentlest inquiry. The rich and tangy gravy that accompanied teetered on the edge of being too sharp, but was brought back down with a low rounded heat from the chillis.

Also prominent was a Keralan goat bhuna which suffered a little from being mostly bone. While the shreds of meat that could be salvaged were undeniably tender, the goat lacked that unmistakable muskiness that sets it apart from lamb. Once again, however, the flavours in the sauce were so deep I almost got lost in them, redeeming the dish to no end.

Elsewhere on the plate wonderfully textured Rajasthani red lentils devoured my missi roti, and three deep fried banana and potato balls added a welcome sweetness despite being a touch heavy.

Stravaigin undeniably does a good Thali, and despite some sniffiness regarding numbers and deposits ill fitting for a half-empty Monday night, the service was welcoming and efficient. The portions were of good size and at £15 per head the meal was a good price and made splitting the bill a relatively bloodless affair.

Don't Stop Believing

2007-11-04T21:49:00.000Z

Less time spent fucking around in restaurants and more time in front of the goggle box this week as I said good bye to an old friend and welcomed home another.

The Soprano’s reached its bone shattering conclusion on Sunday night and while most of my friends were out partying at espookio, I was firmly planted indoors so as not to miss the most important television event of the decade. Having stuck my fingers in my ears, shouted gibberish and physically threatened anyone who brought up the subject of the finale in the proceeding weeks, I had effectively shielded myself from the ending and went into the programme as much a plaything of fate as Tony Soprano himself. If you value your faith in television and didn’t tune in on Sunday, I suggest you do the same and close this page immediately.

This series has been something of a slow, steady burner, with the drama cranked up by increment over the nine episodes. Tony’s daily struggles with work and family continue, but this time against a background of seething tension with Phil Leotardo’s New York crew, threatening the Soprano Family’s very survival. By the time we reach the last episode, a few key members of the crew have been killed or seriously injured, and we’re basically tuning in to see if Tony’s going to get whacked.

While usually unflinching in its graphic portrayal of murder and violence (the superb scene in the model train shop where Bobby is felled by a hail of gunfire comes to mind) the last scene of the Soprano’s avoids a similar blood lust pay out for Tony, and leaves things altogether a lot more complicated.

With Leotardo dispensed with, a measure of stability has returned to Tony’s life. AJ seems to be improving and been dissuaded from joining the army, and a tentative reconciliation with a senile Uncle Junior has been reached. Carlo Gervasi has turned informant, so possible jail time lies ahead for Tony, while the imminent threat of death seems to have subsided. However, this is last scene of the last episode of the last series, so we know better than to expect such a simple conclusion. In a stomach twisting sequence of shots, our suspicion and paranoia become fused with Tony’s as a number of shadowy potential assassins emerge amongst the diner’s clientele. Tony selects Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing on the jukebox and just as the tension becomes almost unbearable the action abruptly cuts to black, holding a few seconds before the credits roll silently.

I won’t get into the “was Tony shot” debate too much here, as the internet is already brimming with analysis and counter-analysis as fans split into rival factions. This debate is likely to go on indefinitely, but it’s suffice to say that as finales go, this was a ripper, with even the Duch peeking up from behind her facebook to check it out. For what it’s worth, I side with those who believe Tony was shot, with the cut to black reflecting the closing of the window we had into Tony’s world, the abruptness of death having been discussed in an earlier episode by Bobby and Tony. Others amass evidence to contrary, but I think the creators’ wanted us to fill in our own ending, so unless they start up again or make a film, I’ll stick with that one.

In reality TV, often the simplest premise works best. Big Brother was good the first couple of series, but starting going downhill as soon as the producers starting fucking with it too much, but with Kitchen Nightmares Gordon Ramsey knows why people tune in and stays pretty close to the formula.

In the first episode of the fourth series, the infamous browbeater was in Brighton, home of seafood restaurant Ruby Tates as well as lots of gay people, as Gordon keeps reminding us.

It’s a familiar story; Ex-actor restauranteur Allan is losing £1500 a week and the chefs are lazy and incompetent, serving up dead mussels and warm fruit de mer. In comes Gordon, and with a unique mix of ritual humiliation and inspirational leadership, sets about turning a damp squid into the catch of day. This is done by changing pretty much every aspect of the restaurant down to the name, so by the end of the episode it is basically an expensive fish and chip shop, though with a profit of over £3000 a week and climbing.

Despite the fact that you can see the formula a mile off, Kitchen Nightmares remains pretty good telly. The F-word can seem like its trying to be everything to everyone all at once, which can get a bit tiresome but this programme fortunately knows what it’s doing and does it. The put downs and “bollockings” were a little toned down in this episode, but it remains to be seen if that will remain the same throughout the series.

With my favourite anti-hero now sleeping with the fishes, I need another show to indulge my passive aggression.

Pintxo

2007-10-29T20:45:00.000Z

Oddly enough, I didn’t do a lot of TV watching this week, and the programmes I did watch were by in large old favourites so not much new to report there. I did go out to dinner however, so for the second time in its short life, TV Casualty goes foodie.

On paper Pintxo had me. Having perused the online menu and read a number of gushing reviews, my taste buds positively tingled all day Thursday as I dreamed about the upcoming Iberian feast. Letting my imagination run riot, I indulged in ramekins filled with new and exotic dishes, knowing smiles as I ordered the house speciality, then praise and admiration of companions for my choice as I sat back in my seat, satiated and looking ahead to when prudence might allow me to return.

Such was the anticipation that I advised everyone I met of my dinner plans at length, and had all but booked my birthday meal there before even setting foot in the door, so it was with childlike excitement that I got off the tube at Partick and made the short walk up Dumbarton Road.

Pintxo, (pronounced pin-cho) is the latest addition to Glasgow’s increasingly varied tapas scene, taking its name from the small £1 tapas that were purportedly for sale at the bar. Occupying a compact, understated space opposite the medical centre, the restaurant is heavily influenced by cooking from Spain’s Basque region, with the regions dishes featuring prominently on the expansive and tantalizing menu.

I had made an informed choice of Scallops with chorizo and the crisp baby squid with saffron and green apple alioli earlier in the day, leaving a space open for a wild card choice which I filled, wonderfully spontaneously I thought, with a “trio of gazpacho: andaluz, ajo blanco and pimiento.”

The scallops were the first to arrive, sat on top of wafer thin slices of chorizo and looking lonely on the plate with only a slice of lemon for company, and at a hefty £5.99, a touch underwhelming. Sweet and lightly seared just past the stage of gooeyness, the scallops were wonderfully fresh, although the flavour of the chorizo never really pushed through to give the dish the mild smoky heat the combination suggested.

Shortly after the crisp baby squid arrived, the small tentacles delicately fried and served in a bowl with an apple aloli dip on the side. Again, the freshness of the produce shone through giving the squid a deep, oceanic quality. The saffron and green apple alioli however, was little more than glorified mayonnaise, with little evidence of either apple or saffron.

A good 5 minutes after I had finished my other dishes the trio of gazpacho arrived, rather disconcertingly, in three plastic shot glasses on a crescent shaped plate. Mid way through the second shot I flaked, foregoing the last to a companion who then had similar difficulties.

Elsewhere on the table courgette stuffed with goat’s cheese proved greasy, bitter and inedible (actually) while coriander, red peppers and rioja did little to enrich a spongy slow cooked lamb dish. Redemption came, however, in the form of a chunky, perfectly cooked traditional Spanish tortilla, and encouraging noises were being made about some King Prawns with olive oil, garlic and chilli up table.

Overall, I left Pintxo in a mood closer to optimistic realism than brutal disappointment. While failing to live up to my frankly delusional expectations, the restaurant boasts some interesting variations on the standard tapas fare and comes as close to an authentic taste of the Basque country you’re likely to get in deepest darkest Partick. The three tapas for £8.95 lunch and early dinner option looks inviting, and I get the sense Pintxo might work better if approached in the Spanish style of tapas as an accompaniment as opposed to an end in itself.

I also learned to take restaurant reviews in future with a pintx of salt.

The Droogs of Society

2007-10-21T14:30:00.000+01:00

Every dog has its day and this week it was the turn of the TV bottom feeders to bark. Bolstered by morbid curiosity and a peculiarly bereft schedule, I’ve recently been trying to score in some of the less salubrious corners of digi-land and this is what i turned up.

Excess all areas: Rock Stars was a remarkable Sky Three docu-druggy-drama that retold the final highs and lows of rock stars Kurt Cobain and Jimi Hendrix with a unique mix of reconstruction, personal testimony and computer animation.

Interviews with close friends were cut with reconstructions of the errant rock stars eating out of bins, smashing up hotel rooms and generally making a nuisance of themselves before injecting, snorting or dropping their way into oblivion. At this point the graphics took over as the image dissolved into a representation of the stars insides, replete with heroin molecules attaching themselves to receptors inside their glowing exo-skeletans.

Terry Christian narrated in a cynical attempt to inject some cult cool into the travesty with the result that both Christian and the programme dropped a few notches more in my esteem. Towards the end I couldn’t even laugh at how shite it was, and had to turn off the TV before they showed Sid Vicious stabbing Nancy Spungen and telling people to fuck off a lot (although this might have been cool in retrospect.)

Over on More4, I’ve spent the last few weeks dipping into Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip to see whether it was something I could dig. As far as I can see this is little more than a shit programme about an even shiter programme.

Based around the lives and loves of a bunch of smart arse American media types as they quip their way through the production of what looks like one of the most boring programmes ever fictionally created, Studio (I’m doing that irritating thing people do when they try to make something sound better than it is by shortening the title) suffers a lot from its association with political cheeser The West Wing. Much of the programme is given over to proving that the actors can walk, talk and crack jokes at the same time, as well as demonstrating the quirkier sides of the characters’ personalities (which it becomes quickly clear is incidentally the only side of the characters’ personalities.)

I think there was a plot in there somewhere, and definitely something about snakes, but other than that the hour or so I spent watching this mush has pretty much been erased from my memory, heroes style, and that’s probably for the best.

As such Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip does provide something of a therapeutic function. In much the same way as high-powered executives like to submit to a dominatrix, watching this programme allows your brain to take a holiday from worrying about all your personality defects and making decisions such as whether to buy one of those new i-pods after all.

The rest of the week News 24 and BBC Parliament was pretty much the default option, as at least with it something exciting could happen. Sundays on the latter are taken over by C-Span, the American political channel and in my view, lengthy footage of the Senate’s ratification of the presidents Attorney General nominee trumps the Hollyoaks omnibus any day.

BBC Heaven

2007-10-15T23:26:00.000+01:00

I’ve been all over BBC this week like some sort of computer rash. First up was Charlie Brooker’s Screen Wipe (BBC 4) where I dully had the extent of my plagiarism chopped up into little pieces and laid out on a plate for me.

Non-stop media came under fire this week as Brooker dismantled rolling news coverage and shone a floodlight through each component, calmly exposing the absurdity at the centre of most “breaking news” coverage and round-the-clock reporting.

Packed with sharply observed witticisms and pointed analysis, Brooker’s Guardian Screen Burn Column translates well onto TV. Having only recently started watching this, I was a little concerned that the column wouldn’t flesh out well to a half hour TV programme, but Brooker succeeds admirably as the show becomes a whole different beast altogether. Emphasis is very much placed on the processes behind TV, as Brooker exposes the trickery and manipulation “behind the story” and coolly lacerates the genre.

While unfailing in its sardonic humour, Screen Wipe also manages to be educational and informative, aided no doubt by Brooker’s clear, matter-of-fact presenting style. Any criticism I make of this would likely be out of bitterness, as it feels like there is literally nothing I can ever think or say about TV again that this man won’t already have expressed, in an infinitely more humorous way, ten years previously.

Next up against the wall was this week’s surprise gem Please Vote for Me, (BBC4) a documentary charting the tears and tantrums of the first ever class elections in a primary school in the city of Wuhan, China.

Screened as part of the BBC Why Democracy? season, the film captured China’s first baby steps into the unfamiliar as the class was introduced to the new and volatile concept of democracy, creating a hotbed of political intrigue and rendering a race as hard and closely fought as the toughest General Election campaign.

On the ballot was the incumbent, Luo Lei, challenger Cheng Cheng and Xu Xiaofei, the only girl in the race and its first casualty as the boys increasingly dominated the debate. Bribery, trickery and backstabbing became par for course as the three battled it out, egged on by over-ambitious parents and determined to keep their eye on the main prize that offered respect, power and privilege.

The subsequent election campaign alternated between the hilarious and downright dirty. During Xu Xiaofei’s crucial election speech, Cheng Cheng orchestrated his classmates to shout her down, reducing her to tears and adding a sinister twist to the contest. It wasn’t long before the whole class was in the throes of anguish and despair as the effect of their ill treatment of Xu Xiaofei became apparent. The next day, Cheng Cheng told her it had all been arranged by Luo Lei, and then once again led the class in a round of intensive heckling as Luo Lei tried to set out his own vision for the class.

This being China, however, Luo Lei managed to fight his way back with some good old-fashioned corruption, taking the whole class for a trip on the city monorail (managed by his fathers police department) and giving out gifts in a bid to secure their votes.

In the end, the incumbent’s advantage proved too great to unseat Luo Lei, as the class cast their votes by secret ballot and chose him to remain their class prefect, to the bitter disappointment of his rivals.

Please Vote for Me was a rare and interesting piece of filmmaking from a country notorious for its suppression of artistic licence and freedom of speech. As the drama unfolded, local director Weijun Chun had captured what he described as a reflection of the “tough yet hopeful democratisation process in China” and created a snapshot of a rapidly changing country that is facing new challenges and threats in the increasingly globalised world.

As the action cut between the classroom antics and the behind-the-scenes political management of the candidates parents, events unfolded seamlessly and without the need voiceover as Chun stitched together a story of power, politics and intrigue while keeping his eye on the wider social implications.

If this does indeed reflect the first steps in the long and arduous process of democratisation in China, it promises to be one that will have its fair share of corruption, mishaps - and Machiavellian eight year olds.

Proof that advertising isn't always evil

2007-10-10T20:52:00.000+01:00

This recent cadburys ad featuring a Gorilla drumming to Phil Collin's "In the air tonight" almost makes me want to quit my job, ditch my friends and go over to the dark side (almost)

Plus i also really like Diary Milk.

TV-linking, smart thinking

2007-10-08T22:18:00.000+01:00

Who ever said familiarity breeds contempt obviously wasn't a fan of tv links.

This week I joined the TV revolution with a glut of TV links-facilitated binge viewing. The entire Nathan Barley back catalogue was devoured greedily, a few Sopranos were knocked back and a couple of dabs of the Twin Peaks series sneaked guiltily before I emerged out the other side bleary, confused and satiated.

Desperate to fill the Duchess-shaped gap left in my life while bird brain was on her revenge trip to London, I had turned to the internet and the on demand magic of TV Links for digital solace. It wasn’t long before I was consumed by the heady whirl of infinite viewing possibilities and power and before I knew it my four days off work had been pissed down the drain as a sea of junk and detritus lapped at the bottom of the couch, threatening to reclaim my prostate corpse at any moment.

Such was the intoxicating effect of TV Links that social interaction largely went out the window once again, and I managed instead to spend some serious me-time with some of the contemporary giants of the small screen. Now, let me dispense with self-indulgent rhetoric and get on with showing you my vision for the country – sorry I mean let me get on with this weeks TV round up.

When Nathan Barley was first on TV I was either too stupid to get it properly or too distracted to focus long enough to realise that this was possibly one of the most flawless and biting comedies to come out of Britain in the last few years. Penned by Charlie Brooker and Chris Morris, Nathan Barley takes few prisoners as it tears a hole in contemporary twenty-something culture and leaves little sacred in its wake. While I thought it was funny at first, I tellingly didn’t make it my absolute number 1 priority to watch every episode until my eyes bled and my brain started cooking in its thick skull with all the extra radiation.

Repent I did however and it was with great joy that I was able to enjoy a good couple of episodes of virgin territory. What makes this series so good, is the recognition of my own life in both the shambolic Dan Ashcroft as well as in parts of the title character and his idiotic mates. I defy anyone who has ever picked up a copy of Vice to claim they are completely spotless with regards to some of the behaviour Brooker and Morris satirise so unrelentingly, and this, perhaps above anything else, is what makes it so bleeding good.

Or maybe I’m just a moron.

Still on TV Links The Soprano’s, as ever, hit the mark (I’ve gushed enough about this programme in recent weeks so will leave it at that) and Twin Peaks was as delightfully unnerving as always, but i don't think i'll give up on the more traditional methods of viewing just yet...

TV links has an annoying tendency to stall and for the audio and vision to go out of sync is not uncommon. Whats more, unless you are in possesion of some top notch computer equipment such as Apple's front row package, watching TV on a laptop is compromised by your position in relation to the screen, making watching with a group unreasonable (unless you know them all very well and don't mind bunching up.) Additionally, if you are watching on your computer it means you can't go on the internet at the same time, a real crux to the media multi-tasking we've become accustomed to.

The old girl is safe yet.

The Mild Gourmets

2007-09-28T14:04:00.000+01:00

Once again work and Internet access conspired to throw a spanner in the creative works last week, meaning a delay in that rarest of creatures – a timely Sunday dispatch. However, as nothing is ever my fault, and no-one but me cares anyway, I’ve won’t bang on about this time, instead getting straight down to the nitty gritty.

Last week The Wild Gourmet’s flopped onto the screen like a used condom tossed casually aside in a grotty bedsit. Taking the current unfathomable foraging and freeganism craze to the nth degree, The Wild Gourmet’s saw well-heeled London-types Male Gourmet and Female Gourmet start their epic mission around Britain to “find it, kill it, cook it and eat it.” Not a bad premise, for a show, but when these two got going they made Indian Food Made Easy look like Escoffier.

Driving around Britain in their vegetable oil powered car, the duo hit Cornwall first, much to the bemusement of the local peasants. Male gourmet took us through his inventory of weapons first, telling us he always carried three kinds of knives, a shotgun, and at least two axes, before stalking off to engage in the supremely manly task of spearing a motionless flatfish in a stream.

Meanwhile back at camp, female gourmet endeared viewers with her squeamishness when putting a snail on a hook, protesting “I’ve never killed anything before!” Although she failed to catch anything, her killing confidence certainly got a boost, as we see her negotiating the slaughter of fourteen rabbits in exchange for a basket of fruit from a farmer later in the episode.

Having also failed the fishing expedition, male gourmet (with a severely dented ego) and female gourmet skipped off into the woods to forage their supper. Coming across some big mushrooms by a tree, the pair over-compensated their earlier losses and acted like they just hit the jackpot. Male gourmet seized on the opportunity to rebuild his bruised masculinity by referring to the mushrooms in meat-like terms, enthusing that they were “just like steaks” and that he was a man after all because picking a mushroom is much like killing an animal. Female gourmet used her bargaining skills to trade the mushrooms for some eggs and milk at a farm shop so that they could eat that night. There is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that if the cameras weren’t there, they would have been told to fuck off.

There was one redeemable feature in this episode however: When hunting wood pigeon a farmer produced an innovative and macabre device for attracting birds, which involved sliding two dead birds onto poles protruding from a wheel. By dint of human ingenuity and some Frankenstein man against nature themes, when the wheel turned the two corpses flapped their wings.

I am sure there is a metaphor in their somewhere…

Last week I also returned to Heroes, consuming a three-episode value meal in one sitting. Having practically bummed (I’ve been watching Nathan Barley) this series in an earlier entry, I was a little worried that I would return to find it a bit of a let down, and therefore loose all my TV credibility.

Fortunately I was not disappointed, as Heroes proved to be the crack-cocaine TV I thought it was. David Byrne look-alike bad dad is still confusing us with his bad/good dynamic, “The cheerleader” is still managing to attend practice at least once a day, (and never get changed afterwards) and the professional romantic sap is still irritating his political candidate brother with his “saving the world” speil.

Armed with a faster internet connection and www.tv-links.co.uk, it’s never been easier to score, and I’m in danger of developing a serious habit.

Fortnight foul up

2007-09-16T16:45:00.000+01:00

A few particularly nasty hangovers and long working hours conspired last week to knock my writing out of sync, so this will be my first TV round-up in a fortnight. I feel bad for letting it slip and i would like to take this opportunity to apologise to both of the people who read this blog.

While incapacitiated i did manage to fix at least one bloodshot eye on the dream screen at various points over the two weeks however, and with my mind never far away from the mealstrom of faux indignition and excessive italics that is TV Casualty, I made some quick-deposits in the memory banks and wrote a few post-dated critical cheques.

Nigella Express hit the screen last week as the food seductress clambered in and out of taxi's, entertained friends and did some important looking work, all while planning what to have for supper that evening (a generic term which seemed to mean anything from a full blown meal with family to pudding in bed, the nuances of which presumably only the seriously well heeled can discern.)

Week One's menu included crispy calimari and some sort of pudding, all made with mountains of butter, sugar, fat, and the decadent abandon Nigella has traded on throughout her career. In this series we have been invited into her swank London pad, (metaphorically of course) to see how lazily and easily we too can whip up spectacular food while labouring under the demands of Modern Life.

While i admire Nigella's "I'm not prepared to sacrifice one meal" philosophy and her aversion to the Cook yourself thin mob, I thought the show didn't really measure up in the cooking, where it mattered the most. The food looked inviting, but in the process Nigella doesn't really impart any transferable knowledge, rather demonstrating a sort of Cook by Numbers approach and focusing more on the inordinate pleasure she seems to take from sampling her own creations. This programme made me hungry, but it didn't particularly make me want to cook.

Another new arrival to TV land last week was the return of Kath & Kim, the Aussie fem-fest chick-com so beloved of my own dear Duchess. Focusing on the bogan-ey antics of the mother and daughter of the title, the fifth (?) series features a new addition to the cast as baby Eppony-Ray enters the fray.

The first episode cranks up the comedy potential as Kim's no-good dad returns onto the scene and ends up conning his guileless daughter out of several thousand dollars, causing her and put upon husband Brett to move into the Day-Knight love nest, making for overcrowding and ensuing hilarity.

Opinions on this show are divided (usually along gender lines) but i generally find Kath & Kim to be watchable, if a bit hit and miss. The posh shop assistants at Fountaingate are about as funny as cancer, and you get the sense that some of the jokes are a bit too laboured when a more subtle approach would have done the job better. Despite this, Kath & Kim boasts some good characters, and the Australian Suburban Limbo in which it is set provides a good backdrop with plenty of comic mileage.

Considering i live with an obsessive, Kath & Kim is going to be an unavoidable part of my life for some time, and thats not a bad thing at all.

Will he or won't he?

2007-09-15T17:59:00.000+01:00

Despite mainstream press speculation being uncharacteristically low key regarding the prospect of an October election, The Iron Fist has yet to rule one out, and there have been some interesting movements that suggest that Old Gordy isn't quite ready to show all his cards yet.

His appearence on the front page of the Guardian alongside Lady Thather on Thursday, days after telling the TUC to go fuck itself with regards to pay rises for the public sector, for example, suggests a serious play for the those vulnerable voters on the rebound from Cameron and craving stability. Add to this his "British jobs for British workers" speil and you have someone who is making all the right noises to capitalise on a still fragmented Tory party.

Similarily, his slight to the TUC speaks volumes in terms of timing. It would be a foolish move to start alienating the Union's so early on in his premiership if it didn't mean some immediate political capital. As it stands, he has appealed to the right while managing not to offend the Union's too much, or at least too repeatedly, so he can still claim to be one of the old boys when it comes to election time and make up the ground after he secures his mandate.

The other parties are also making some serious preperations, with the hiring of millionaire brat and PR dreamboat Zac Goldsmith as environment tsar (why is it always rich people who want to save the planet so much?) by the Tories and the release of some eye-catching policies by the Lib Dems suggesting no-one has dismissed the possibility of an Autumn fight just yet.

In the coming weeks, Brown will no doubt have one cunning eye on the Polls and the other on the Party Conferences, and most likely even he won't know for sure until the moment arrives.

DNA OK?

2007-09-06T23:20:00.000+01:00

I’m still buzzing from my glorious result on political compass and thought it was time to exercise some liberal outrage.

This week, my sights are set on Lord Judge Sedley, the noted “upholder of civil liberties on the bench” who caused a bit of a stir recently after claiming that the current DNA database was “indefensible” as it listed a higher proportion of ethnic minorities than whites. To remedy the situation, Sedley proposed, everyones DNA should go on file, which would not only redress the balance but would also mean there were less criminals on the street.

While Downing Street was quick to distance itself from Sedley’s comments, what has emerged is the extent to which current DNA collection procedures violate civil liberties, as well as Home Office plans to extend DNA collection to low-level offences such as speeding or littering. As the current database holds some 24,000 records of 10 – 17 year olds who have never been convicted of an offence, under the plans proposed it's not difficult to see the database, which currently holds around 5% of the UK population, expanding rapidly. What's more, it probably wouldn't be long until police started takind DNA samples at random checkpoints and from arbitrary searches, (no doubt under the guise of counterterrorism) none of which they would be obliged to destroy.

DNA identification is still very much in its infancy, but an enlarged database and more sophisticated methods of gathering samples could potentially be used to devasting effect, providing a unique profile of a persons movements and associations.

Combine this with ID Cards and CCTV Cameras and you have in place the apparatus of control Stalin would be envious of.

TV round up

2007-09-03T23:14:00.000+01:00

My ability to come up with snappy TV-related titles for my weekly round up has apparently burnt out after a depressingly short period of time, meaning I have had to put my creative switch on standby, retune my rapier wit and generally fuck about with the aerial. However, there is apparently more to life than cheap puns on cheap punk songs, so without further delay, I’ll get going on this week’s TV round up.

This week, a fellow aficionado turned me on to Tribe, (Tuesday, BB2: 9pm) which involves “explorer” Bruce Parry travelling to some of the remotest parts of the planet to spend time with and learn about some of its most isolated people and their customs.

From the blurb this seemed like another boys-own adventure in the style of Donal MacIntyre’s recent Edge of Existence or BBC Macho-fest Last Man Standing, as Parry travels to Siberia to spend time with the Nenets, a tribe of Reindeer herders that follow the animals’ massive migration movements throughout the year, yet as the episode progressed it was clear that Parry offered a little more to what is otherwise often an ethically questionable genre.

Suited and booted in his winter gear, the episode began with Parry being helicoptered into the Nenet’s camp to meet his adoptive family and spend his first night inside his host’s reindeer-skin chum. Over tea that night the head of the family expressed his misgivings about Parry’s ability to adapt to their difficult way of life, a fear than was borne out over the course of the program as he immersed himself in their annual migration south.

Playing like a sort of “Cowboys of the Tundra,” Tribe offered a fascinating insight into the Nenet’s way of life, accompanied by some stunning Arctic photography and lightened by the presence of likable goof Parry (at one point he instigates a fashion parade as he shows off his new Nenet clothing to his companions.) The programme gave an idea of the harshness of the tribesmen’s life, but also of its uniqueness and the fundamental freedom it gave the Nenet’s, all of whom had houses in town and many who had left their professions to return to this way of life. The tribes apparent warmth and respect for Parry also cushioned what might otherwise have seemed like an an exploitative “call of the wild” adventure holiday, as did Parry’s willingness to chip into the workload whenever possible and frustration when he felt he was holding them back.

Most of the rest of the week cruised through without anything significant to report, the usual diet of News, Eastenders and repeats of Hells Kitchen featuring prominently, not to mention a two day TV sojurn caused by my own wilderness adventure. Until, that is, I was knocked sideways with little warning by the return of The Sopranos, with the first episode of the final nine on Sunday night.

My relationship with the Sopranos has been consistent in its respect and admiration but rockier in its diligence. Having shared in the family obsession with the series while at school, we grew distant when I went to Australia and the relationship floundered when I went to university, exacerbated by the move to E4. Chance encounters and the occasional attempt at reunion have dominated the years since making for a patchy knowledge with gaping holes, the last series being the first in a while that I watched with any sort of consistency.

Now however, with the final nine in a good reliable time slot (Sunday, 10pm) and with access to E4, I am in a perfect position to follow the monumental series to the last, and I’m looking forward to the next eight Sundays.

The first episode of the last series opened with a police raid on the Soprano family home, followed by trip to Tony’s sister and husband Bobby Bacala’s lakeside cabin to relieve the tension. As Bobby and Tony floated in a boat in the lake in a scene reminiscent of the murder of Freddo in Godfather II, the tension starts to ratchet up culminating in a drunken brawl over a game of monopoly gone awry, with Bobby as the unhappy victor.

Tony’s revenge is swift, calculated and total, setting the tone for the series and reminding the viewer that The Sopranos constantly challenges by simultaneously inspiring feelings of identification, warmth and revulsion in its characters, never allowing for complacency or one-dimensional analysis.

As the various threads of the last series come together, this promises to be an explosive coup de grace for possibly the greatest drama to series to come out of America for a generation. I know I’ll be watching.

Power to the Papal

2007-08-31T21:39:00.000+01:00

As the lives of millions become increasingly dominated by the heavyweight fundamentalists, religious or otherwise, it looks like the Catholic Church is going to join the fracas and once again start throwing its weight around.

Having exercised a degree of damage control by largely staying clear of public life during the child abuse scandals of the last 20 years, the willingness of the church to influence public policy is in the resurgent, and in voting terms this means the awakening of a sleeping giant.

The influence of this new power base is being felt most keenly in the abortion debate. The church has always been steadfast in its pro-life stance but recent months have seen a sharpening of the rhetoric followed by the action to back it up. In June of this year Pope Benedict called on Catholics to sop donating money to Amnesty International after it made a change to its constitution to support abortion in cases where a woman’s health is in danger, or their Human Rights have been violated as in the case of incest or rape.

Closer to home Cardinal Keith O’Brien, head of the Catholic church in Scotland resigned his membership of Amnesty on Wednesday, and earlier this year likened abortion to “two Dunblane Massacres a day” urging voters not to support politicians who defend the “social evil” and just stopping short of advocating excommunication.

It is difficult to judge the outcome of the church’s renewed vigour on this issue. The church represents a sizable, and more importantly, organised bloc, and will certainly make its presence felt, yet the recent hard line stance does run the risk of alienating more liberal Catholics, not to mention the public at large. Additionally, recent threats to close its adoption agencies in Scotland if they are compelled to consider homosexual foster parents could have a similar effect, undoing the ecumenical and concilatory work of JP by plunging the church back into the dark ages.

It wil be interesting to see how Cameron reacts to this as his party drags him to the right by the scruff of the neck , but i wouldn't be surprised if this becomes a conservative issue at the next election.

Check me out!

2007-08-28T23:52:00.001+01:00

I take the political compass test every year or so and look what it turned up this time. I need to tone things down a bit! If you're unfamilar with the concept you answer 40 or so multiple choice questions ranging from abortion to the free market, and the computer plots you on the above graph where you can compare your position to the likes of Hitler, Milton Freidman and Ghandi. The makers recently plotted all of the US presidential hopefuls and they all seemed to cluster just above middle right. Take the test at www.politicalcompass.org. I'm off to throw bricks at CCTV Cameras...

Back behind the box where i belong

2007-08-27T23:11:00.000+01:00

Newly paupered from my stint in the Big Smoke, I found it surprisingly easy to slide back into the old work – food – TV – bed continuum last week, as I refocused by retina’s and jumped aboard H.M.S Blinky to sail through to the weekend abyss.

First port of call was Jamie at Home (Tuesdays C4, 8pm) to watch the naked chef go feral in the back garden of his Essex mansion. Looking like he had had a few too many turkey twizzlers, a slighty rotund Jamie Oliver once again tore, mushed, dolloped and lovely jublied his way through a series of recipes designed to get the best out of “Mother Nature.”

On the menu this week was Barbeque, and Jamie demonstrated some interesting variations on the craft smoking Langoustines and Razor Clams in an upturned Pirex bowl over a grill, and testing out an antique spit roast with a large hunk of dripping, blistering, mouth-watering pig.

This was no Lidl-burgers-on-a-disposable-in-the-park affair, and as wave after wave of sizzling, blackened meat came off the barbie and straight into Jamie’s jabbering mouth, I couldn’t help but feel like the little git was taunting me, the Glasgow anti-summer having all but extinguished any hopes of having even a primitive variation on this classic feast this year

Annoying as he often is however, Jamie Oliver does offer some practical advice and he has a way of making cooking seem like a less precise and more everyman affair than some of his contemporaries, and this series isn’t a bad stab at demonstrating this ethos. Gone is the crusading character of some of his earlier efforts, with a greater focus on the food than whatever social ill he is attempting to cook away on that particular week. Gone too, curiously, are people. Save from the occasional appearance of a bemused gardener, Jamie is largely alone, delivering his cooking tips to an unseen presence just off camera, (an irritating habit) devoid of the family party feel of some of his earlier shows.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing (I feel like I know Gordon Ramsey’s kids better than my cousins) but it does lend a slightly melancholic air to the cheeky chappy at times.

Later in the week BBC 2 proved a suitable place to drop anchor with the return of Saxondale, (Thursday BBC, 9:30pm) Steve Coogan’s character driven sitcom about an aging pest-control rocker coming to terms with suburban domestication. Reluctant as I am to give advice, I would like to offer a quick tip: Never attempt to watch the first episode of series two of Saxondale with three girls who have been drinking cider in the sun for a good part of the day. Lacerating my viewing pleasure with shrieks of “That’s _ out of _” every time a new character came on the screen, it was at times difficult to hear through the din and adequately assess Coogan’s latest offering to a degree which you, Dear Reader, should have come to expect by now.

As such, I’ll keep the champagne on ice and hold back the dogs for another week. A closing line did suggest that this could be a grower however; when a downcast Saxondale is roused from his misery by an invitation to party with the guys, his wife asks him what she should do with his dinner. “Put it by the microwave – I’ll heat it up lay-ter” he drawls as the van screeches away, holding a beer in one hand, and making a horn sign with the other. Amazing (possibly.)

The week ended ship shape with the announcement by Channel 4 that it would be freeing up around 29 hours of schedule in January by cancelling Celebrity Big Brother as well as cutting adrift some its more mindless pap to instigate a “creative renewal.”

The programmer plausibly cited the so-called Jade Goody race row and a reluctance of celebrities to appear on its show as a few of its reasons, and it will be interesting to see what they come up with to fill the gap. With most remotely intelligent programmes now farmed out to More 4 however, I wouldn’t be surprised if How clean is your Brat Camp topped the bill.

Die-Nasty: Keeping it in the family

2007-08-25T12:33:00.000+01:00

With the unopposed coronation of yet another Labour leader, family ties in the Brown cabal have never looked stronger. As Wendy Alexander takes her place alongside her brother Douglas in the inner circle, Labour’s upper reaches are starting to look a little incestuous.

Add this latest appointment to a cabinet which already includes the brothers Milliband and husband and wife team Yvette Cooper and Ed Balls, it could be argued that Brown is employing family ties to strengthen the unity of a Cabinet that is already packed with his former advisers and treasury stooges.

This isn’t a surprising move for a centralising control freak such as Brown, but if family relations are to become a lasting factor in the Governments of the future, does this have implications for the democratic process?

America has had its fair share of political dynasties, with the Kennedy’s and Bush’s (and now the Clinton’s) divvying up parts of the country along bloodlines at various points in its history. It is possible that sections of the electorate look to these families as the embodiment of certain values which become more than the sum of the individual candidate, perhaps displaying a tendency towards feudalism that hasn’t yet been completely erased from the human psyche. In a country like America where the President is also head of state, this can become even more pronounced.

This side of the Atlantic the phenomenon is less severe, perhaps because we have the royal family to benignly satisfy a repressed and irrational desire for subordination? Whatever the reason, as respect for the Royals wanes, and Prime Ministerial power becomes more Presidential, we may see a few more “Douglas’s” rising to prominence.

This in itself is not anti-democratic as such, but combined with an increasing reliance on cash to get anywhere near elected, we should keep our sceptics hats on regarding this one.

Foodie Casualty – Eating Casually – Greasy Cutlery

2007-08-21T08:40:00.000+01:00

I couldn’t think of a good pun on the title of this blog to describe my week long adventure into the world of food criticism so instead I’ve provided three bad ones, and I think it pretty much evens out.

Yes, last week I swapped my remote control for a set of chopsticks, a knife and fork, and an irrepressible appetite as I embarked on a food tour of London, gobbling anything reasonably priced enough to get in my way, and a few things more besides.

In the following report I’ve trimmed off the gristle, separated the wheat from the chaff (not because I’m intolerant mind, I find that whole thing bullshit) and glossed over the banal to give you the highs and lows of my big munching adventure. Observer Food Monthly, stick this in your bradley smoker and – uh - smoke it!

The week started off well with a Sunday night Vietnamese in one of the scores of such restaurants just beyond the City. After sinking a few overpriced ones in the trendy environs of Brick Lane, the brother and I set off on the short walk to the restaurant, one of his personal favourites and promising start to my food adventure.

A quick look at the monumental menu was made more confusing by the arrival of another, longer menu held together by paper clips and a few more less-overpriced ones, so I wisely threw caution to the dogs and let the waiter and my brother negotiate the order between them.

To start, we shared a large plate of crispy duck pancakes, followed quickly by my still sizzling order of curried goat with chilli and lemongrass with a side order of fried rice. The brother opted for the pork belly with noodles and before long we were no more than a blur of chopsticks, flying rice and soiled napkins. The enthusiasm with which the food was attacked was matched by the quality of what was on offer. The pancakes, as our waiter demonstrated, were to be wrapped up in crisp, fresh, perfectly shaped leaves of what I assumed to be a small Asian lettuce and dipped in an addictive chilli oil, making for a good starter that immediately dispensed with ceremony and set a good communal tone for the rest of the meal.

Delving into my Goat before it burned a hole through the plate, I found a tender aromatic meat that reminded me, not unpleasantly, of the smell of wet dog that worked well with the chilli and lemongrass. A practical query into what was happening on the other side of the table found a plate of similar quality, and we rolled out of the restaurant so contented I forgot the copy of Slip It In I had only that afternoon purchased for the Duchess.

Lunch and breakfast for the next few days came in the form of subsidised bacon rolls and main meals courtesy of H.M Government (I wasn’t in prison) as I spent my mornings musing over the weekly updated menus on the intranet at my temporary place of work, coming to the sound decisions of a herb marinated pork foccacia and parsley and parmesan crusted hake with a side of cabbage.

After a few post work drinks on Tuesday with a colleague, I headed back east to meet my brother again for a trip to the renowned Tas Firin. This place is legendary among my brother and his flatmates, and it didn’t disappoint. Going straight to main we both opted for the mixed kebabs. Large, tender chunks of chicken, lamb shish and lamb kofta cooked to perfection, nestled next to generous portions of rice and flat bread complimented by a fresh salad and red onion–type vinegarette to share. The meat almost melted in my mouth, and the large portions ensured another contented, if wet, journey home.

The next morning, inspired by website London Review of Breakfasts, I set off to start the day with a hearty full English. As my top two choices (Nicos and Fellici’s in Bethnal Green) were closed, I had to go freestyle and choose from the litany of greasy spoons on Bethnal Green road. While what I finally settled on didn’t exactly blow my morning apart, it was cheap, voluminous and greasy, perfect for setting me up for a day of pounding the streets and culture vulturey, carrying me straight through lunch and into Jamaican eaterie Banners in Crouch End to meet ex-Glasgow friends for dinner.

Jerk Swordfish with rice and peas was the clear choice, with the tangy, fruity jerk sauce going well with the white meaty swordfish. My only complaint was quantity-related, exasperated as I saw the piled high plates of the half jerk chicken with rice and peas at a neighbouring tables. However, by occasionally pausing between mouthfuls and grazing off ollys sweet potato chips I managed to (not?) make a meal out of it and pace myself through a leisurely course.

Next day was market day, and bright as a button mushroom I skipped breakfast and made the journey to borough market to harass market sellers into setting up their food stalls. First stop was a saliva inducing “three scallops with crispy bacon and stir-fry” stall. Served in a plastic tray with a slice of lemon and hunk of bread,

While the novelty of scallops on the street in central London was in itself worth the £4, the scallops themselves unfortunately didn’t really measure up. Smaller than I expected, they lacked the fresh sea-taste of those I’d bought only the week before in the Partick Farmers Market, but served with the bacon and a generous squeeze of lemon juice they made a good mid morning snack.

Next I hit the charcuterie stall, and considering the scallops a starter, decided to have a main course. Having never tried Casoulet before, the rich French stew particularly stood out, and I was soon digging into a tray of duck confit, sliced Toulouse sausage, white beans and a thick boullion. It was tasty, but unfortunately stone cold, and instead of taking it back I continued to eat. Which I will most likely regret for the rest of my life. I left the market feeling a little disheartened that my experience didn’t live up to my expectations, and half wishing I’d got up early to go to Billingham Fish Market instead.

The rest of the trip consisted of a few so-so fry ups, some disheartening Chinese in Camden, and a truly awful kebab, but I left London after the week nevertheless satisfied with my culinary trip.

Back to the box next week.

2007-08-16T09:34:00.000+01:00

No posting this week due to the fact that i'm eating my way round London and don't expect to watch much tv or think of things such as politics etc.

Will be posting a dispatch on my gastronomic adventures as soon as everything has digested.

Move over Raynor there's a new kid in town...

TV Party!

2007-08-13T12:48:00.000+01:00

bbSome monumental lifestyle changes were afoot this week as i commandeered my first working digibox, in one fell swoop expanding my channel range tenfold and consolidating my power. I won't forget in a hurry that first golden night when, giddy with excitement i left the side of a slumbering Duchess and after a quick and suprisingly uncomplicated set-up, devoured a Father Ted and double Curb, basking in the digital light that had entered my life.

By fated coincidence, however, i had spent earlier that night in the company of one of the old guard, BBC 2, and the ominously titled TV Junkie, the video diaries of American journalist Rick Kirkham chronicalling a decade or so of crack addiction and family disintegration.

Compiled from thousands of hours of footage, the programme presented a seamless and self shot account of Kirkham's battle with drugs and alcohol. Aside from a few background titles at the beginning and end, the video speaks for itself, allowing the viewer to piece together the story and draw their own conclusions.

At times, Kirkham uses the camera as if he's making a special report, leading to bizarre "I am now using a makeshift pipe to smoke the cocaine" type pieces-to-camera, and at other times he uses it as a confessional. At other moments it becomes clear that the camera is another addiction, as he keeps it rolling through some excrutiating moments.

I genuinely did not know where this was heading, and was somewhat surprised when it finished with him making an emotional speech to a group of whooping graduating students after six clean years. A cheeseball to the very end, his boys and ex-wife joined him on stage for a group hug.

TV Junkie was good, and at times harrowing tv, and although Kirkham never really inspires feelings of like or sympathy, you had to admire his courage for sharing his lowest points.

Still running high on my Monday night fix, i spent the next few days content with a Mighty Boosch DVD and a rare mid week trip to the cinema. I'd watched a few Mighty Boosch episodes when they were on TV but the DVD really helped fill in the gaps. Having been beseiged with references and quoted out of more than a few conversations, some vital viewing was necessary - if only to wind people up by finding (and loudly declaring) it to be shit.

Fortunately this wasn't to be as i found the Mighty Boosch to largely hit the mark with its fantastically original plots, characters and sets. The bits with the moon let it down slightly, but other parts, such as old gregs "Do ya love meh?" have entered into the dailylexicon of my existence.

Dragging myself away from DVD and digital delights, I actually left the house to see The Simpsons movie on Wednesday night, adding another medium to my seemingly endless capacity to stare quietly at a screen with my mouth open. Reports from the front line had been that the movie was ok, suprisingly funny but nothing amazing, and i found this to generally hold true.

The movie comes in at a higher level than the latest from the TV series, which having been dismal for some time is starting to improve slightly, but is lacking in alot of the intellectual weight of the earlier episodes.

In saying that, there are still alot of good jokes in there, and it explores some darker territory when dealing with Homers familial neglect and poor parenting. All in all, it is a good way to spend a few hours (though i did fade a little in the middle) and i would watch it again quite willingly.

$peculate to A££umulate…

2007-08-09T19:46:00.000+01:00

“In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women”

- Tony Montana

In the news in the last few months have been a number of stories regarding party funding and its relation to the democratic process. This issue is only likely to get even more exposure as the next General Election looms.

While the most recent item has involved the pulling of funds from David Cameron’s Tories by Sir William Cowie in protest to his “arrogant, Old Etonian” style of leadership, the most damaging event in recent months has undoubtedly been the cash for honours scandal, which saw the apparently coincidential awarding of peerages to every single labour donor/lender of over £1 million. While the trading of money for influence is as old as the hills, trends home an abroad seem to be suggesting that the money equals power relationship is continually being honed within the democratic process.

In the past, political parties could rely on party membership (and in the case of Labour the Trade Unions) for a sizable chunk of their kitty. However, in the face of declining party membership and voter identification (likely to be exacerbated as the major parties battle for the centre ground) party chiefs have been understandably scoping around for alternative forms of revenue. Whether this is in the form of the £4800 a-head dinner (£5000 is the declaration threshold) that caught out Tony Litt seemingly hedging his bets before the Ealing Southall by-election, or in the undignified Tory grapple for a sizable cut of millionaire eccentric Branislaw Kostic’s estate, winning and keeping power too often relies on the actions of a wealthy minority – and they’re going to want a return on their hard spent lolly at some stage.

If the experiences of our American cousins are anything to go by, the personal finances of candidates are also likely to come into play more and more in the future. Stateside, the general consensus is don’t even bother trying to make an even half-serious run at the Presidency unless you’ve got several million George Washington’s tucked away somewhere. What’s more, with the the costs of running a campaign rising steeply (the 2000 Bush campaign cost $95.5m, rising to a whopping $269.6m in 2004 – Kerry trailed at a modest $234.6m) candidate wealth is likely to become an even bigger factor. Already, Hilary Clinton’s war chest totals $177.2m, and no fewer than 10 of the 17 candidates are millionaires.

Back at home, a disproportionate number of MP’s have either hit the million mark, or have substantial assets to their name (Boris Johnson, Mohammed Sarwar and Lynne Featherstone spring to mind.) With no cap on personal expenditure in UK campaigns up until the last three weeks and the increasing cost and sophistication of election techniques, the common man might be priced out of politics sooner that we think.

Is this inevitable?

A recent inquiry into party funding and election expenditure in the UK by Sir Hayden Phillips proposed that apart from the small administration fee opposition parties currently receive, there should also be a substantial state subsidy, with parties getting 50p for every vote they received at the last election (a similar scheme already operates in Germany.) Along with spending limits and a cap on private donations, this might go some way to help sap the influence of the super rich. In reality, however, it would be hard to see the main parties pass laws that might curb their ability to raise money and extend their influence, so whether such proposals become a reality remains to be seen.

Until then it seems that the old Scar Face adage might just hold true

TV Party?

2007-08-05T15:07:00.000+01:00

Despite tuning the TV and normalizing the situation in the new flat, viewing was AGAIN unacceptably weak this week. I could blame this on books, the game cube and friends (the real kind – not the TV programme) but I know that the responsibility ultimately lies on my own shoulders and for this I apologise, dear reader.

While I never really built up any sort of consistency or pace, the week was punctuated by stolen moments and fleeting glances at the humming idiot in the corner, and I managed to snatch the following from its gaping jaws.

For some reason BBC thought it would be a good idea to screen a Dragon’s Den catch up on Wednesday and Thursday night. These episodes involved catching up with the winners and losers of last season and documenting their various (mis)fortunes, run along side interviews with the “Dragon’s.”

When Dragon’s Den started a few years back I enjoyed it. It was interesting to see the workings of entrepreneurship and gain an insight into the world of investment, marketing and business. However, in the last few years the show seems to have denigrated somewhat to become an uncomfortable exercise in ritual humiliation of the desperate by the powerful. This is owing in no small part to the success of The Apprentice and the bankable Sir Alan Sugar’s onslaught of put downs, jibes and ultimate dismissals painting a not altogether pleasant image of the viewing public as a jeering, bloodthirsty hoard.

What the producers of Dragon’s Den miss however, is that The Apprentice steadily builds up and exposes the contestants considerable personality defects, showing them up as greedy, ambitious and generally unprincipled shits who have bought into idea of the supremacy of wealth and power, making the viewer unsympathetic when that wealth and power turns against them full force in the wrath of Sir Alan. With Dragon’s Den, however, we aren’t given the chance to like or despise the contestant, making it unpleasant when they are rejected, and dull when they are not.

Moving briskly on, visual diversion later in the week came in the form of David Lynch’s prequel to Twin Peaks, the chilling Fire Walk With Me. (DVD) As with so many things in life, I was something of a Johnny-come-lately to the whole Twin Peaks franchise, so this was the first time I saw this movie, and I can say it has whetted my appetite for more.

For anyone familiar with the original film, Fire Walk With Me follows the series of events leading up to Laura Palmer’s death, ending with the discovery of her cellophane wrapped body at the lake shore (the first shot in Twin Peaks.) Lynch himself takes a role in this, as a cryptic hard of hearing FBI chief, with Kiefer Sutherland and Kyle MacLachan also making appearances.
Watching this film suprised me a little with its brutality. While Twin Peaks ambles along quite steadily, slowing drawing the viewer into the darker side of this quiet mountain town, Fire Walk With Me jars and jolts the viewer with scenes of prostitution, drug–use, rape and violent death almost from the beginning. It quickly becomes clear that Laura Palmer is no angel, and a cast of potential killers lines up to sharpen their knives amid the mysterious disappearance of the investigating agent in a previous murder. As with the first film Fire Walk With Me is visually mesmerising, exuding the Lynchian sepia-like style crossed with sexualised ultra-violence it shares with Blue Velvet.

Expect to read ramblings from the box set in the very near future.

Rounding the week off, Skateboarding documentary Dog Town and Z boys made adequate viewing for a sober Saturday night. The documentary follows the history of the infamous “Z-boy” skateboarding team from poverty-stricken southern Santa Monica as they swapped surf boards for skate boards, drained pools to skate in, then variously found their own paths to fame and fortune or otherwise. Played out as a sort of “punk-rock on four wheels” (emphasised by the unnecessary presence of Henry Rollins of Black Flag and Ian McKaye of Minor Threat and Fugazi in some of the interviews) Dog Town and Z-Boys nevertheless provided a good background to the former sub-culture turned international money spinner that is modern skateboarding.

Sensually, the film was enjoyable as old skating footage was spliced with present day interviews and a snarling Iggy pop soundtrack, set in the backdrop of a decaying California beach resort. However, while the Z-Boy team was undoubtedly talented, pioneering many of the sport’s moves and clearly blowing every other team out of the water with its trade mark slouched surfer style, the documentary did drag on a little as it descended into a round of back slapping and self-mythologizing.

Most of all, a lot of these guys reminded me of some of the skateboarders who used to hang around St Anne’s in Belfast before the council bulldozed it, with their aggressive localism, hierarchy’s and super-sized egos. One particular scene where a guy reminisces about throwing breeze blocks at outsiders especially springs to mind.

However, by and large the skating speaks for itself, and as one interviewee rightly points out, you have to be at least a bit of an asshole to be that good at something.

Later Losers.

A brief history of advertising...

2007-08-05T14:58:00.000+01:00

Essentially, the ethos of advertising can be summed up by the following:
Find something cool, sexy, funny or beautiful, throw a shit load of money at it, then sell it back to the kids. This is a given, and probably learnt on day one of a marketing “degree,” but some of the latest offerings on show suggest that someone hasn’t been reading their handbook.

I’m referring to the deluge of unbearable, twee, sick-to-stomach musack that has been accompanying a number of adverts in recent months, particularly those of major mobile phone companies. In the lastest instance, Andrew Shim of Shane Meadow's nostagia-fests A Room for Romeo Brass and This is England sings/speaks an annoying rhyme about running out of credit or something, but the custom stretches further back than that, with a song about a snapping turtle (?) springing to mind most readily, and sickeningly. (Feel free to nominate your own suggestions in the comment box)

I really do not understand this, this music cannot be appealing to anyone but possibly basket weaving Canadians, and no-one wants to speak to them anyway so why use it to sell phones? It has got to the stage where I have to turn the channel when one of these things comes on, forming product/vomit connections in my mind that even a lifetime of free minutes would have trouble extinguishing.

Still, at least this will keep their grubby paws away from anything decent for about 5 seconds,

Keep up the good work shitheads!

Watching me, watching you...

2007-08-02T13:45:00.000+01:00

In the news this week has been a call from a Teachers Union to ban video-sharing sites such as You Tube because of its use as a medium for the cyber bulling of teachers and pupils. While the proposition is unworkable, unconstitutional (if we had a constitution) draconian and laughable, it does raise some interesting points.

Although Government traditionally (and rightly) faces the greatest scrutiny with regards to the collation and misuse of information, increasingly it appears that corporations and individuals are turning more to the Internet as a tool to gleam information and exert influence.

In the scramble to connect to the latest social networking site de jour, more and more personal information about us is becoming available to anyone who takes the trouble to try and find it, and what’s more, much of this information is beyond our control. So wherein lie the dangers?

The recent Scottish Elections saw tabloid journalists trawl candidate’s profiles in an attempt to come up with “dirt,” finding it in the case of young candidate Stuart Douglas through pictures of him drunk on his MySpace profile, posted by friends. The ease and speed at which potentially damaging material can be sniffed out (not to mention the separate issue of the increasing influence of the Press as a moral compass) is alarming.

The media is not the only group getting in on the act: Criminals, employers, family members and potential partners can all go online and check up on a personal information and character. While one can control and tailor the content of their personal profile in sites such as Bebo and MySpace, information posted by others is harder, if not impossible to regulate, and a careless comment or inappropriate image might be all it takes to compromise privacy and security.

Of course there will be those who take the “nothing to hide, nothing to fear” line, but these people are generally fascistic in nature and their opinions should be ignored. Others among us will claim to be open books whose life stories are a free-for-alls, but I’m pretty sure that everyone everywhere has something they don’t want someone else to know about.

Banning sites such as You Tube, MySpace and Bebo is not the answer, but if the internet is to fulfil its potential as an open, social and fundamentally democratic medium, we must be careful that the Information Revolution does not turn into an Information Dictatorship.

View from the Arse End of the Week

2007-07-31T09:08:00.000+01:00

N.B. This entry should have gone online on Sunday, but immeasurable difficulties with our new Broadband connection has caused delays.

One of the central ironies of writing a TV related blog is that it leaves less time for actually watching TV. Combine this with me and the Duchess relocating to a new hate nest, TV viewing has been regrettably light this week.

With a mindful eye on the schedule, however, I managed to prioritise my workload, and was witness to the birth of televisual phenomenon Heroes, sneaking a couple of elicit after hours episodes of The Thick of It into the bargain.

Sweetened by a series of breathless reviews from my square eyed Comrades, I awaited the arrival of Heroes (BBC 2, Wednesday 9pm) with bated breath. This heavyweight offering from the other side of the Atlantic has been hyped as a sci-fi revolution of sorts, picking up where lost nose-dived and tipped as Spiderman without the spandex.

Going by episodes 1 & 2, I could be spending some serious downtime with this one over the next few months. The season opener begins on solid foundations as we are introduced to the central characters and given a taste of the action to come, and Heroes has plenty to play with. Making an appearance are a time travelling Japanese office worker, flying politico and his dead beat brother, an indestructible cheerleader, and future predicting junkie artist scum Isaac. There is also something weird about a reflection going on, and the pace is set by a pater-avenging Indian Doctor, while the cheerleader’s evil adoptive dad lurks ominously in the wings.

True to form, this is comic book TV, and expect faux philosophy, page turning plot-lines and a trash clash of good against evil as its bread and butter. Heroes does, however, give the impression that it offers something more than the standard American diet, and it will be interesting to see how the story develops and the characters interact. I have a feeling that the stars and stripes are going to creep in there somewhere, but even this could (possibly) be forgiven if it’s done right.

Occupying a 40 minute slot on BBC 2, Heroes is also mercifully devoid of big brand sponsors who can’t seem to resist offering mini-sketches which look like they were thought up by humourless advertising drones taking five in the chill out room of their open plan creative work spaces. It also means you can watch uninterrupted, and don’t need to spend 20 minutes of each episode as one of those little shit wipes target audience, reminding me why I should pay the TV license.

At the risk of turning this entry into a BBC love-fest, The Thick of It (DVD) is another good reason to pay your fees. Created by Armando Iannucci, this fly-on-the-wall political satire offers a scathing and irreverent take on the corridors of power.

I missed the series when it was on TV, and having recently splashed out on the box set (can it be called a box set if there are only two discs?) I’ve been savouring these babies slowly but surely. Set in the fictional Ministry for Social Affairs (“What the hell does that even mean?” muses Chris Langham’s character in one episode) the plot follows the daily mishaps of Minister Hugh Abbot as he lurches from one political crisis to another. There to help him along the way are ambitious aide Ollie, SpAd Glenn and pragmatic spoil sport Terri.

The lynch pin of this series is without doubt, however, the PM’s Scottish “Policy Enforcer” Malcolm Tucker, who browbeats, cajoles and profanitizes his way through Whitehall like a tornado in a razor blade factory. With a visceral hatred of the Press and penchant for ruining careers (“He’ll be copy and pasting Hollyoaks extras tits in the the Sport by tomorrow”) you have to wonder how much Alistair Campbell there is in Tucker. Sharp, ruthless, and endlessly creative in his put downs, he satirises the spin and power politics of present-day Government to a brutal degree.

That’s what I call a Hero.

Brown still bouncing as bottom falls out of Cameron Leadership

2007-07-26T19:10:00.000+01:00

After approximately one month in Number 10, Gordon Brown is enjoying an upsurge in popularity among voters, while David Cameron's support among conservatives wavers, according to the results of a new ICM poll.

The poll, conducted the weekend after the Ealing and Sedgefied by-elections, sees Browns approval among voters go up by 21%, compared to Cameron's approval going down by the same amount. Particularly telling are results which suggest that Cameron is losing support from within his own party, with 42% of voters saying they like the party but dislike Mr Cameron.

It has been a tough few months for the Tory leader; the Grammar Schools row, which led to the resignation of Shadow Europe Minister Graham Brady, undermined his authority, while a poor showing in Ealing and Sedgefield has done little to boost confidence among the rank and file. Most recently, the Leader has had to deflect allegations that he abandoned his flood-struck Witney constituency in favour of a trip to Africa to discuss development issues.

But are the latest poll figures that surprising?

Since taking control of the Conservative party in a virtual media coup in December 2005, Cameron's first battle was always to win over the traditional Conservative vote. While the past 18 months or so has generally seen the party increase in popularity, the new figures suggest that this support has been built on shaky foundations. Brown, on the other hand, assumed the leadership of his party unopposed, demonstrating a party unity that has reflected favourably in the polls.

What is more difficult to fathom, however, is Cameron's failure to catch Brown on the hop during the handover period. Brown's PMQ performances have been stuttering at best, and a deft orator such as Cameron (who could hold his own against the razor sharp Blair) should have had no trouble exploiting this more. However, with a substantial 49% of those polled seeing Brown as presiding over a real change of leadership style, this has not been the case.

It may be that Tory voters are beginning to see that party leadership is a matter of "different horses for different courses," and that what worked against Blair could have the opposite effect against his successer. Whether Brown will bounce all the way to an early election in October or May however, still remains to be seen.

I predict a re-bound.

Guardian Watch: Gestapo Tactics

2007-07-24T19:12:00.000+01:00

Anyone who has paid any attention to the news in the last few days will have undoubtedly come across reference to Sarah Helm's My family's ordeal in police probe article in Sunday's Observer.

In the article, Sarah Helm; journalist, author and wife to Tony Blair's former chief of staff Jonathan Powell, complains about the Assistant Commisioner John Yates Gestapo tactics while investigating the cash-for-honours allegations.

Describing the hell her family was put through in the last few months, Helm isolates an incident when police (legitimately) question Ruth Turner over her role in the affair, bemoaning how the police "Pick on a woman living alone, give her a scare and hope she'll slip up."

Am i the only one who finds this a little bit hypocritical?

Coming from an administration that has presided over the greastest assault on civil liberties in post-war years, knowingly allowed US extraordinary rendition flights through its territory and introduced more new offences than any government before it, Helm's charge would be laughable if wasn't so insulting to the thousands of people who are now feeling the sharp end of New Labour's New Britain.

The Labour leadership obviously couldn't resist bringing down some heat on Yates and is men, and in Helm they've found a relatively indirect way of doing it, free from the uncomfortable questions any formal legal proceedings might dredge up.

As a piece of journalism the article reads like it would be more at home in Pick Me Up than The Observer with Helm adopting an outraged, anecdotal tone to underline the concerned mother angle and maximise effect.

One positive aspect does come from the article however:

For those worried that The Observer has strayed from its leftist roots, this piece of pravda-esque reporting should no doubt put them a little more at ease. (ouch!)

Another week down the tubes...

2007-07-22T13:43:00.000+01:00

TV watching was for some reason relatively light this week - though i still managed to rack up a good couple of hours in front of the idiot box.

Here's what stood out:

After a disappointing first week, Indian Food Made Easy, (Monday, BBC 2, 8:30pm) once again failed to inspire. Terminally patronising presenter Anjum Anand this time took her mission to prove that "anyone can cook delicious Indian food" to her old unversity friend, the creepily intense and somewhat bemused Alex.

The action centred around Alex's FA Cup final party with the boys, for which Anjum devised "a chilli themed feast," and proceeded to lead Alex through its execution with exclamations of "its that easy" every five or so minutes.

After having watched in horror as Anjum added cheddar cheese to a tandoori marinade in Week One, (Indian Food Made Queasy) I never really had very high expectations for this one. The food looks ok, but Anjum seems to have a knack for making you feel like a scolded child for not cooking Indian food every waking moment of your life.

That said, i'll probably tune in next week for the chilli porn.

Coming straight after, Twentieth Century Battlefields (Monday, BBC 2: 9:00pm) brought some much needed quality programming to the screen with a tactical retelling of the Faulklands War. Father and son team Peter and Dan Snow present this fascinating series which retells shell by shell some of the most bitterly fought conflicts of the last one hundred years.

With a heavy focus on military tactics and strategy, the Snows cast aside moralising to deliver a forensic account how some of the most influential events in shaping our world played out, replete with archive footage and aided by computer generated diagrams. Twentieth Century Battlefields is an example of public service broadcasting as it should be.

Later in the week, the second episode of the oddly titled Cape Wrath (Tuesday, C4 10pm) did little to redeem to disappointment of the series opener. Despite a promising premise (Meadowlands is a town inhabited solely by people on witness protection) Cape Wrath unfortunately borrows from too many different elements (Lost, Desperate Housewives, Twin Peaks) to really pack a punch of its own.

The story centres around the dysfunctional antics of the Brogan family, Meadowlands newest arrivals and most troubled residents. Within hours of moving in, Mr Brogan has killed someone, Mrs Brogan starts making eyes at the local doctor (played by a Tim Henman lookalike) with kids, ice-queen Zoe and emo basket case Mark, getting in on the action elsewhere. Comic relief is provided suprisingly effectively however in the considerable form of Jezebel, the 16 Stone scouse "beauty" next door.

Idolised and revered by her neighbours for her unparalled beauty, the character offers a glimpse of originality which makes me suspect series could develop into something more than the sum of it parts. After the first two episodes, however, i don't think i'll be sticking around to see if the gamble pays off.

Rounding off the week, My Name is Earl (Thursday, C4, 10pm) proved once again that it knocks seven shades of shit out of every other American comedy currently running on terrestrial tv. It's not particularly edgy or advanced, but its great one liners "Do monkeys worry about their looks?" and slapstick storylines prove that in the age of The Office, Curb and Peep Show comedy doesn't always have to be an unnerving experience.

This season does rely a bit more on the trailer trash gags than the last, and the show does occaisonally veer into shmaltz but My Name is Earl remains one of the best reasons to shun social interaction on a Thursday night.

Stay tuned.

Stampedes at Harry Potter Book Launch.

2007-07-21T12:18:00.000+01:00

Forget class, race and religion, the country is being divided by new polarising forces: Those who were eagerly awaiting the fifth Harry Potter book at 12:01 am today, and those who were laughing at them.

Transcending traditional barriers of social status, intellect and taste, Harry Potter and the Marketing Dream is causing pitched battles in some unexpected quarters.

Never mind the media meatgrinder which has been manufacturing anticipation for months, some hitherto fellow travellers have been making strange noises which are starting to make me feel just a little bit queasy.

So what's the deal?

I can excuse the children (just about) as they don't know any better, but i have a hard time making sense of why fully grown people with jobs and everything are so willing to buy into this syndicated rubbish. The books may well be good, but can they really be that good?

I suspect its more down to blunt marketing, and the fear of having nothing to say at parties, that is driving this race to the bottom.

Most of all I feel sorry for the kids who are likely being denied the opportunity to discover the diverse and rare delights of childrens literature, as it is crowded out by the sequels, spin-offs, games and movies of the Rowling Regime.

This is a Liberal Democracy and theoretically people should be allowed to read what they want, but perhaps this is what was worrying de Tocqueville when he wrote about the Tyranny of the Majority.

Time for a good old fashioned book burning...

Jacqui Smith Shock Drug Revelations!

2007-07-19T14:24:00.000+01:00

I realise this may not be the most appropriate subject to open my TV- related blog on, but this will probably be on the box later anyway and i just couldn't resist!

The story centres around the stunning revelations by new Home Secretary Jacqui "who?" Smith that she smoked Cannibis "just a few times" during University, although she had "not particularly" enjoyed it.

Coming a day after Brown announced that she would head a review of UK Drugs Strategy, including Cannabis Laws, this revelation is no doubt an attempt to demonstrate Jacqui's human side, not to mention cover her arse when her cash-strapped former smoking buddies come a- knocking to the red tops.

Well Move over Howard Marks!

Jacqui commented:

"I think in some ways I have learnt my lesson and I have a responsibility as home secretary now to make sure we put in place the laws and the support and information to make sure we carry on bringing cannabis use down, which we are doing."

I am sure this will come as a great consolation to the thousands of ordinary citizen's who will likely be hauled before a judge if the Goverment gets its way and re-classifys Cannibis as a Class B drug.

Over the coming months expect the "10 x Stronger than the sixties" argument to be trotted out ad naseum as the goverment shapes up for another assault on freedom of choice. If weed was so weak in the past, maybe this is why Jacqui didn't enjoy it? For what ever reasons, her brush with addiction has left her in no two minds about the green menace.

On her actions Jacqui further commented:

"I did break the law... I was wrong... drugs are wrong."

So much for forward thinking policy...