Things that only happen on TV

People don't know who's calling their mobiles

Nobody says goodbye when they've been on the phone

People never finish a drink or meal
Falling over whilst putting on trousers
Ordering 'a pint' and not being asked 'of what?'
Sniffing the clothes of a person you miss
Hugging someone whilst looking traumatised over their shoulder
Hearing something dramatic over a baby monitor

The Glee Project

I have never watched an episode of Glee, and don't really have any desire to, but apparently not content with just one programme dedicated to jazz hands and lipstick, there is now a show called 'The Glee Project' being advertised relentlessly on Sky. From the outset I was annoyed because the first ad featured a woman proclaiming something unlikely about 'the phenomenom' of Glee, but the more recent version seems to be advertising a show which is essentially about making teenagers cry. For whatever crack-pot psychological reason the show's makers have constructed between themselves, this week's episode seems to be an exercise designed purely to make these kids break down for the cameras. I'm not saying that they don't deserve it (after all, anyone putting themselves in the firing line for this kind of show should be well aware of what they are letting themselves in for) but forcing a girl to stand at the bottom of an escalator wearing a sign saying 'Anorexic' seems to be a woefully poor way of dealing with a teenager's eating disorder, whether that be real or perceived.

Presumably the makers of the show will claim that the exercise will make the participants stronger (although how a fat person wearing a sign saying fat is in any way enlightening is beyond me - some of the contestants are quite obviously wearing their 'weaknesses' on their sleeves), but whether they have actually considered the fact that surely being able to sing and act is more important than any perceived benefits of taunting them with their own insecurities until they burst into tears is another matter. It does seem as though this task is not far short of confirming their beliefs that their perceptions of themselves are something to be ashamed of and for others to judge them upon - the perfect way to nurture youngsters through their difficult teenage years.

Beyonce's Dressage

We've just been watching the coverage of Beyonce at Glastonbury, and I was surprised at how much she and her backing dancers looked like they were doing some weird kind of human dressage. Perhaps it was the combination of impractical shoes and potentially crotch revealing leotards that made them wary of taking steps that were too large, but whatever their reasons the overall effect was pretty peculiar. I was, however, impressed at her knee sliding action which, contrary to my personal experience, didn't seem to end up in scabby blisters and bruised kneecaps.

Chick fix

I just saw an advert for this show which is soon to be aired on Living TV. The trailer included tantalising shots of women about to confess their deepest, darkest secrets to one another interspersed with the same women sitting in front of mirrors, their hair full of curlers and a band of brush wielding, dress draping beauty professionals on hand to do the 'real' work.

It sounds to me like another depressingly shallow comment on how women just need a glass of wine and a new pair of shoes to overcome any hurdle in their lives. Even in the show's description, where you would at least have thought the makers might try to hide their contempt for women, they cannot help but suggest that psychological help and support from close friends is equally likely to be successful as shopping. I am assuming that the main purpose of the show is to get tantalising details of the women's sex lives, personal problems and emotional frailties and broadcast them to an eagerly waiting nation to pore over before trying to distract them from the fact that their personal relationships will inevitably suffer as a result of their revelations by giving them a 'new look'. I'm almost sure I won't be able to bring myself to watch this show, but I hope that at least the adverts get a little less obnoxious as the series continues.

Meta Television

The on-screen guide for our TV is organized into half hour segments, meaning that if a show's title is too long, it merges into the next one. The resulting hybrid shows often sound a lot better than what's really on and failure to pay close attention has resulted in disappointment on more than one occasion. Some of my favourites are:

Dickins, George and Heartbeat

European Coke Soldiers

Antiques Enemy

It's me or the Airline

Johnny Cash in the Attic
My name is Filth

Liza and Huey's Pet Crash Test

Perry Mason: Mega Piranha

Hitler's Home Shopping

The Good Life

When I was growing up, a combination of constant Radio 4 and a limit on what we were allowed to watch on television left me with a peculiar lack of exposure to pop culture and the 'in' things in entertainment, but has left me with a lasting affection for certain shows which were probably incongruous with my age and other interests.

While the sound of the shipping forecast makes me feel like I've been hypnotised and Allen Bennet's voice reminds me strongly of times spent in the airing cupboard recording my own books on tape, The Good Life still holds a vaguely titillating thrill for me which is at once comforting and risque. As a child, I was allowed to watch The Good Life because it was a relatively harmless comedy, but as a programme clearly written for adults (what else could possibly explain the fervour with which Felicity Kendal's bum has been admired ever since it was first seen in dirty work trousers?) it also contained occasional oblique references to adult themes. Off the cuff remarks about the pill, the state of other people's marriages and vague references to extra marital affection still make my inner child say 'Ummmm!', and I think the fact that both couples were child free made for an exciting departure from the lives of my parents and their friends, all of which seemed very glamorous and exotic when I was younger.

Whenever I see repeats of the Good Life I find myself compelled to watch, enjoying the magnificent outfits sported by Margot, the reassuring contentment of Tom and Barbara and the exemplary use of the word 'bombastic' by Margot when being shaken by the elbows. As feel-good comedies go, The Good Life really does the job and I only hope they continue to show it on UK Gold forever.

What's going on

Recently we have noticed a spate of peculiar programming, partly because it's Christmas so we've had more spare time, but mostly because the Boy Wonder is ill and we haven't really left the house for a fortnight. This has lead to the discovery of some of the weirdest programming we have even come across, and some of the highlights have been:

Liza Tarbuck and Huey Morgan in 'Liza and Huey's Pet Nation', where this pair who clearly are unlikely to have met under normal circumstances host a sort of clip/talk show about animals. For some reason.

Celebrity Parents SOS , which we only discovered this afternoon, featured Jonathan Ross's mum and Vinnie Jones's dad helping a couple to sort out their house, tidy up the garden and learn basic car maintenance. I'm reliably informed by the listings that this show will also include Jeremy Clarkson's mum, Sarah Beeny's dad, Charlotte Church's stepdad and Ben Fogle's mum, coming to the rescue of feckless people without the wit to solve their own problems nor the money to call in a professional - who came up with this?!

Pineapple Dance Studios, in which Louis Spence prances around being entertainingly camp whilst the tragic Spinal Tap-esque Andrew Stone deludes himself about his potential pop career and sexuality for the amusement of the viewing public all with peculiar staged dance routines carrying on in the background and increasingly unlikely scenarios in which the other members of the 'cast' are required to perform peculiar activities for 'publicity' etc.

Unfortunate juxtaposition in TV scheduling

For some reason, the folks at NOLA 38 have decided that an appropriate show to follow 'Reno 911' at 4.30 in the morning is 'Cops'. This means that if you kind of half watch the TV when drunk before bed, you get about half way through 'Cops' before thinking 'That's odd - this is hardly funny at all, and that one guy in the really short shorts has hardly even been in this episode. And it's a lot more gritty than normal, what's that all about?' before realising that the junky being cuffed is actually genuinely threatening the police with an attack with an infected needle, and you probably aren't going to see the sassy black one with all the junk in her trunk any time soon. I can only assume that somebody was actively encouraging this mindset when they came up with the idea of putting these two shows back to back, otherwise it's a desperately inappropriate oversight which, if we are anything to go by, has lead to a lot of late night confusion and disappointment.

Crazy TV land

Why is it that on television, the continuity people never seem to notice flaws in weather conditions? I frequently see loads of guys in suits, clearly quite comfortable as they have kept their jackets on, talking to women in skimpy vests or sleeveless tops who 'clearly' aren't as cold as you would think...

What is with these 'reality' shows

The first time I saw Run's House, the 'reality' TV show about Rev Run and the antics of his hilarious family, I was understandably intrigued to see how life would play out when you spend your whole time with a full sized clock around your neck. Then I watched it, and realised that it was scripted, and poorly at that, making the whole premise pointless and resulting in some of the most ridiculously poor television I've ever seen.

Since then, our nocturnal lifestyle has lead to us watching TV at odd hours of the day or night, which has limited our viewing to some extent and resulted in us watching 'The Hills', the most entertaining element of which is the anger it inspires in the Boy Wonder who without fail declares all those involved to be hateful and gets genuinely agitated about their continued existence. I think the fact that every turgid, over emotional scene is played out in this weird fake reality but with peculiar camera angles, inane whiny conversation and utterly vacuous situations engineered apparently to entertain people who have yet to become bored of the pathetic teenage antics of people with nothing better to worry about than how they look and whether they can steal their friend's boyfriend without looking like a bitch on television. I find it amusingly crap, but it is worth it for the rage that 'The Hills' inspires in the Boy Wonder - watching him fume in fury at the fact that these people continue to occupy space on the planet is hilarious.

Dungeon Master - the film

This film doesn't seem to have anything to do with the game, except perhaps having been written by avid fans given the essential lack of believable dialogue and ridiculous premise, but in the game's defence, the film is somehow less comprehensible and more disturbing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dungeonmaster

To read the Wikipedia entry, you'd think that the 'seven distinct story elements' within the film would be noticeable, whereas the reality is that there are seven almost identical 'trials' that the protagonist has to endure, each of which he overcomes by using his apparently multi-purpose, wrist mounted laser-shooting computer. Even the author of the Wiki on this clearly gave up trying to paint the plot as anything other than fairly lame as no sooner have they alluded to the riddles they must figure out than they point out the surprising versatility of X-CaliBR8 in putting an end to each obstacle as it appears.

It's mental - I can't quite work out whether the poorness of the dialogue is due to the makers' belief that they had such whizz bang special effects, or whether it's just because the whole thing was made by a bunch of super geeks who realised that not having had a girlfriend between them made them uniquely unqualified to write anything believable for the couple to say to one another, but either way this film is actually bad enough to be funny, making it yet another bonus late night find on crazy American TV.

The Outer Limits

3am in New Orleans can only mean one thing - The Outer Limits on NOLA 38. It's a hugely compelling show, with the opening credits being particularly appealing as you are warned that both the horizontal and vertical elements of your television picture are being controlled, and night after night we have come in from a gig, settled on the sofa for some wind down beers and flicked on the Outer Limits to freak us out before bed.

It's a little like 'Tales of the Unexpected', except that where those stories are sometimes confusing throughout only to have the whole point of the mystery revealed in the twist at the end, the Outer Limits is almost the opposite in that the storylines are often compelling until the last five minutes where the ending reveals a surprising lack of plot development and a strange petering out of all the storylines which appeared throughout to have potential to at least provide a slightly unexpected ending. Not that it stops us of course, because occasionally there is something in an episode which makes it worth watching regardless of how everything pans out, like this guy, from an episode called 'Mutant':

(Image from http://i.ytimg.com/vi/k7Ak2DdRCto/0.jpg)

Currently, we're watching one about a bee who's turned into a woman for some as yet undisclosed purpose (I suspect to stop the scientist who can talk to bees from making the most effective insecticide ever) and which will no doubt end with a bit of a whimper, but strangely be no less compelling for that.

ETA Indeed, the purpose of the bee girl was never fully revealed - she turned up at the entomologist's lab, pissed off his wife before killing her (using bees of course) and then tried to get him to marry her at which point he threw her out of the window. Not quite sure what the point was, but enjoying it nonetheless.

One Hour Photo

I know that I don't really like films that much, but this one came on TV at a time when there wasn't much else on, and I was drawn in. And then it finished and I realised how truly lame it was - there didn't seem to be much in the way of 'psychological thrill' except for the rather obvious 'twist' of him having been abused by his father. I think I was overwhelmed by the fact that Robin Williams was not being annoying, and lulled into a false sense of enjoyment which did not last beyond the denouement, fizzling out and making me realise that actually the overly dramatic man telling us that 'One Hour Photo will be back shortly' was by far the most enjoyable element of the whole film.

They do things differently here (4)

Watching a programme called 'Doctors' which is essentially a guy in scrubs, a guy in a lab coat and a guy in a suit recommending plastic surgery for people who have e-mailed in, cackhandedly demonstrating exactly what's involved in sucking out armpit fat on a mannequin and injecting a woman with 'lip-filler' in front of a grimacing studio audience. It's essentially an hour long advert for plastic surgery where they 'discuss' the various benefits of different types of surgery and tell women that their whole lives would be different if they were thinner.

The topic after the break is about a new set of scales which Tweets her weight to all her followers - an otherwise happy, healthy looking woman suddenly starts Tweeting depressing slimming mantras like 'a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips' and lists of foods she's not eating instead of anything of any interest or merit, whilst claiming that she loved the scales. Her gift for allowing them to broadcast details of her weight - a free subscription to one of those weird food systems where they deliver every meal to you so you're not supposed to need to keep any food in the house.

The Boy Wonder's currently singing a song he's made up called 'We are plastic surgeons' and making me wonder whether 10 minutes of it has been enough to desensitise him to the horror of what they're doing.

Soap opera predictability

Signs that two people are about to get it together:

1. Playing with water

2. Hating each other at first sight

Signs that someone's going to develop an alcohol problem

1. Being seen drinking once

Signs that someone's about to fall pregnant

1. Having their first sexual encounter

2. People talking about pregnancy at all

3. Someone joking about their weight

4. Anyone feeling ill who isn't already involved in a drawn-out set up for some other illness

The advertising jingle

Tragically, in the UK, the advertising jingle seems to have suffered a demise - there are occasional forays into the world of musical ads, but they are often pastiches of the traditional jingle, and whilst they are sometimes funny, they don't really have the charm that the classic jingles of my childhood had.

The US however, seems to have an non ironic love of the advertising jingle which is very appealing. One my current favourites is 'Never paint your house again' which is an ad for a ceramic house covering which will apparently last forever but the innovative nature of the substance is completely belied by the weird 80s rising jingle which sound like a child made it up in two seconds, which makes is surprisingly charming.

There's a spectacular one for a bartending school (which is a concept I enjoy anyway) which is a sung list of a load of different cocktails - who can resist a jingle about a Fuzzy Navel?

I also just heard one for a cheque cashing service which had a high octane female lead vocal jingle which sounded more like something for a fast food restaurant than a service which allows people to slip gradually behind their incomes over a course of months - "The only original, uniquely individual, One-stop money shop - check into cash".

Dog the Bounty Hunter

This is a show which I was vaguely aware of, but have had no access to since we ditched all our paid TV. When it was featured on Charlie Brooker's excellent show 'You Have Been Watching' I relived all the slightly conflicted feelings I had previously had about it. On the one hand, there is a sense of justice being done where we can see it as they round up bail jumpers on television rather than behind closed doors with pixellated faces, the similarities to 'The Fall Guy' cannot be over looked, and in fairness, Dog himself does seem to be pretty proportionate when apprehending people. On the other hand, there is the salaciousness of watching someone being cornered and brought to justice, the slightly dubious nature of the whole bounty hunting industry in the US and allegations of racism against Dog himself. So, rife with internal conflict, I came up with possibly the best adaptation to an existing show ever - screen it live! That way, the show would take on an interesting bent as criminals are tempted to tune in to check that they don't recognise the outside of their own front door, but knowing at the same time that if they do try to escape, they will miss the opportunity to feature on the show. Either I am a genius, or I have devised a way of tackily exploiting the legal system for entertainment even more than the show's makers were already doing - I used to believe the two were mutually exclusive, but I am coming to realise that might not be so...

Grange Hill

When I was a kid, I wasn't allowed to watch Grange Hill by my mother in case it made me too scared to go to secondary school. I remember thinking that secondary school must be really dramatic if it was anything like the illicitly watched snippets I saw at people's houses. Despite the fact I think I had already gained an understanding of how TV and real life weren't necessarily identical, my Mum wanted to ensure that secondary school was something to be embraced. I was also specifically forbidden from watching The Bill, which presumably was either to make sure I wasn't too scared of the police to commit crimes, or to protect me from the overexcitement of people shouting at each other woodenly about crimes which always turn out to be intricately interconnected with one another and fortunately reach complete resolution by the end of the episode (unless it's a two parter where you can guarantee a cliffhanging volte-face at the end of the first half). I assume I will probably impose arbitrary rules on our future children's viewing habits, but I like to believe that I will at least embrace the arbritraryness and pick forbidden programmes based on the font of the titles, the name of the lead character or something equally fatuous.

When I was on Trisha, and instead of being about committment, it was about Porn...

Being asked to be on Trisha was one of the most exciting things ever to happen to me near the bus station in town. I flatter myself that I was so stunning that they couldn't let me walk past without securing my TV debut, but the truth was that at the time I was with my housemate and he had a shaved head with a tiny blue tuft of hair at the front, which they clearly thought would look 'edgy and exciting' on television. And I was there as well, so they let me come along. Either way, we were told to meet at the very same bus station at some ridiculous time in the morning to be bussed to Norwich to be on Trisha (this was in the old days before she started using her surname and getting dropped from TV schedules left, right and centre). Apart from a mustard factory there isn't a huge amount to do in Norwich from what we could see, but it didn't matter because we were going to the TV studio to be in the audience on Trisha. When we got there we were shown into a room with some other people and a very serious-looking studio person came in. We had been told that the programme they were due to record today was about people with serious commitment problems, but she came in to break the news that the commitment problems were obviously a lot more serious than even the highly qualified mental health professionals on Trisha had realised as nobody from that show had turned up. Instead, she was sorry to tell us, the show would be about porn! Rarely has a formal announcement been so amusing, and Big Gay Housemate and I were chuffed to be involved. We wandered in to the studio to be greeted with a stripper, a woman who was still making porn at 8 months pregnant and a hooker who was paying her way through university. It was quite interesting in fact - I couldn't decide whether we were lucky to have a better quality of guests and/or audience than normal, or whether selective editing really can make anyone look like a complete spanner, but there wasn't really much of the shrieking 'You don't know me, you can't say anything' that was a feature of the show every other time I saw it. The only real problem was that there wasn't really much to say to these people - the stripper had all the stereotypical women all hot under the collar, and seemed like a genuinely friendly and pleasant guy, the woman who was pregnant was saving to take a break when her baby was born, and the hooker was so well spoken and matter-of-fact about her position that it was pretty hard to get riled. The pregnant woman came in for most of the stick, but I suspect that secretly most people were thinking (much like myself) that they had never realised there was a market for pregnant lady porn, and contemplating the high model turn-over there must be in such an industry. We were asked to make sure we always had our hands in the air to look like we were bursting with questions, which was fine until a slightly flushed looking Trisha came over to me and I asked the hooker an ill-thought-out question about having a career to 'fall back on' which I would have still said had I realised the pun, but would have been better prepared for the sniggers. The worst part about the whole experience was that they didn't tell us when the episode was going to be aired, and as a non-fanatic watcher of the show, the chances of me seeing it were minimal. However, this was while I was still working at the pub, so whilst I was prepared for a few people to ask me about it, I was distinctly not ready for the crazy lady who came in a few months after it was originally aired, pointed her finger at me like something out of 'Tales from the Crypt' and said 'It was you - you were at my house at 3 o'clock this morning. It really freaked me out - I thought I was still at the pub'. That was when I found out that the episode had been repeated in the grave-yard slot as well, and I spent an entertaing couple of hours trying to convince her that there was no reason to be worried, that I was actually on her TV and not in her head, and that although it seemed unlikely that I was in the audience on Trisha as opposed to another hallucination, on this occasion she could rely on her recollection of events without considering upping her dosage.

Jason King

This show rocks - I'm not sure if you can make a show which combines a 70s dandy working in espionage and detection against his will, with a high quota of 70s-pointy-boobed attractive young women without hitting on a classic, but either way, it certainly didn't happen in this case! There is nothing bad about Jason King, from the way he wakes up and has to have a stiff drink before answering the door to his inappropriate ways of seducing women young enough to be his daughters. In fact, the only criticism that I can level is that my sudden decision to buy the Jason King box-set for the Boy Wonder for Valentine's day lead me to discover that it would cost me a whopping £40 which seems a little excessive. It's not that I don't think Jason King is worth it, just that I can't justify its purchase given that the Boy Wonder and I take a 'can't really be arsed' approach to Valentine's day. I did, however discover that Jason King is spin-off from another show called 'Department S', which also sounds great, but unfortunately also costs a prohibitive amount. I can't imagine what they managed to cram into 'Department S' that required the spin-off of Jason King - every episode of Jason King that I have ever seen has had a healthy dose of innuendo, inappropriate behaviour towards colleagues of the opposite sex and a wide range of condescending comments for use when talking to anyone who doesn't fully understand the nature of the extravaganza of espionage around which the story revolves. If Jason King was just one man in a show with other characters of similar calibre, I fear that watching a whole episode could have a lasting impact on our health, safety and expectations of those we meet in real life, leading to inevitable disappointment when they turn out not to have fictional alter egos or say things like 'It's a bit too early for coffee - I'll have a scotch'. Whilst I know people with dangerous drinking habits, people who have done very little of what they are paid to do for a living and people who have charmed their way out of trouble, I don't know anyone whose sartorial style is so uniquely 'of-the-moment' that I can imagine anyone wanting to replicate it for the star of their box office film.