Friday 26 October 2007

This Charmless Beeb (or Biche takes a metaphor too far)


Now they say BBC 3 is the televisual equivalent of your boyfriend making you pasta for dinner - it's cheap, a mix of bland and tasteless and you will only eat it when you really can't be bothered to interfere or suggest something else. But for all the disparagment and sneaky bitching to your friends, you realise that there is a certain charm in its homemadeness and that mixed in with the overcooked penne and raw mushrooms there is hope of a better tomorrow - the onions at least were nicely fried and in only half a bottle of oil this time. 'What the hell?' you think, 'I'll stick with it. By next month he might try something more risky and perhaps foreign. An Old El Paso Fajita kit perhaps.'


But yes, BBC3. So much potential, but potential doesn't always pique your interest or allow your bowels to move for two days. So here I suggest my tips for making BBC3 good:

1) Line up the cast of 'Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps' and shoot them. Erase all the tapes, burn all the evidence and then bury it all in the wastelands outside Elstree, which I think that would be Stanmore. Okay, so we can never truly forget, and if we go on holiday to the Rhineland we will have to endure crackpot Bett und Fruhstuck owners swaggering around like Mancs going 'Eh Deneeese get meh kecks will ya oh Jonneh you knobend' but we will merely stare down at our gekochtes Ei with the quiet dignity of those who know there is no point dwelling on our shameful past, but that we look on towards greater things.

2) Fire this Charmless Bellend. For those who don't know (it's not hard, he's so personalityless he often gets upstaged by soft furnishings or the little red light on the bottom of your telly that indicates that it is on) this is Benjamin Fry. He is a 'psychological coach' who gets wheeled out on such magnus opiae as 'Spendaholics' and 'Freaky Eater: Addicted to Spaghetti Hoops' to walk around in a big coat talking to a fat bossy woman about whatever working class oik (and it always is) is being subjected to wanton analysis that week. He then murmurs at aforementioned oik lots of difficult questions like 'so what do you like about Spaghetti Hoops?' before nodding his big luminous head like one of those sunlight activated 'ornaments' you get in Clinton Cards and are found soully on the dashboards of 16 year old girls.
Now I quite like programmes where I can pick up lots of stupid little tips that I think will tremendously benefit my life but that do not in any way shape or form(make a healthy burger bun out a lettuce leaf/don't piss away money on expensive pesto etc) but this vapid nodding gonk makes 'fun factz!' about stuff seem about as interminable and useful as the lord's prayer said through a balaclava. And yet dispite this irrifutable fact he has been on two (and counting!) 'documentary' series for the beleagured channel.

3) Don't Lie! Now we all like our telly to be Glasnost these days, death to nodding shots, death to editing the Queen, death to the Blue Peter cat etc, but BBC 3 wantonly flouts this 'nu truth' with great titles that do not follow through. I will hold my hands up and say yes! 'Addicted to Cheese' and 'Addicted to Spaghetti Hoops' were kinda good in their 'look at the freaky oik' way, but 'Addicted to Chicken'?? That was just a fat girl who occasionally had some wings in between all the pizza, pie, chips and unreformed lard she ate. 'The Real Hustle'? They give them their money back at the end! 'Sex with Mum and Dad'? LIES!!!1!!!

4) Bring back good comedy like 'The Mighty Boosh' and 'The Smoking Room'. Bring back which ever great person commissioned them. Fire the bellend who obviously thought there was a dearth of shite poor sketch shows that further purpogate the myth that women can't be funny and commissioned Touch Me I'm Karen Taylor AND Little Miss Josslyn.

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