Behind the ion curtain

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

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

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.