This week I have been off work following an elbow injury at hapkido and typing left-handed is a real pain in the arse. Hence the up-until-now non-updated blog as left-handed keyboard work is a very, very, very slow process.
Normally any time off work would be a cause of major celebration and banners and bunting would be dripping from the house and filled champagne flutes and croissants made from unicorn tears would be given to guests. But with no right hand any major writing, playing pool and martial arts classes in my unexpected free time are total non-starters so it’s been radio, TV and DVDs to while away my recovery time. And this has been a real mixed bag…
On the plus side BBC radio is consistently good. The Bearded Ladies’ sketch show on Radio 4 is a quite smart affair and The Flight Of The Conchords, a sitcom on Radio 2 about a New Zealand folk outfit, is both kooky and funny. New sitcom Weak At The Top on Radio 4 is pretty funny too. On the DVD front I have also indulged myself with all three and a bit hours of Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai. Bliss…
But this attempt at filling my healing time with quality entertainment has also had its bleaker and less worthy moments…
Car Booty at dinner-time on BBC 1 remains relatively painless and is clearly a cheap schedule filler. The show involves members of the public trying to earn a few quid from flogging their unwanted tat on the premise of needing to raise cash for some noble cause or other – visiting long-lost relatives overseas, taking a carer out to a health spa, spending a weekend in a Thai brothel snorting cocaine… OK. I made the last one up but if you can ignore the inanely scripted banter such as ‘Can I have a rummage around in your downstairs? F’nar, f’nar…’ the show is relatively painless and an improvement on the Test Card. If only just…
But some shows are not so innocuous and the lowlight of my TV week remains The Jerry Springer Show on ITV. I thought Springer had gone from our schedules but this was the UK version of his US show and it was brilliant. Well I say brilliant but excruciatingly desperate would probably be nearer the mark and I was quite close to taking my entire week’s prescription of pain-killers when the remote control went missing half-way through.
The episode I saw was subtitled ‘Who’s lying? My husband or his pregnant mistress?’ and it featured a former married couple from Dorset named Melvin and Shirley and the with-child other woman called Catherine. Was Melvin a love rat? Would Shirley leave him? Was Catherine’s child his?
These questions could have been answered in two minutes but that wouldn’t make it very interesting telly so we had a procession of rows, name-calling, stopped-in-the-nick-of-time fights, people walking off stage… Imagine a colony of squabbling penguins squawking at each other in West Country accents at 4am in the morning when you’ve just got in from a heavy night out and you need sleep. This was worse and it was just relentlessly painful.
As was series two of Nighty Night which returned to the ever-excellent BBC 3 with Julia Davis as West Country beautician-cum-serial-killer Jill. It’s bleak stuff and the show continues to take black comedy into previously unchartered waters. The opening episode had an OAP having her pubic hair shaved, attempted bestiality and oral sex with a glass partition in-between. There was a murder too. It may sound sick but it was pretty funny. Relentlessly so in fact. Think Last Of The Summer Wine scripted by the Marquis De Sade and you're there.
If only Melvin and Shirley and Catherine came with jokes too…
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