Cristiano on Tech/Life Category: TV
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Ross, Brand, Clarkson and the Hypocrite British Audience
Nov
10
I don’t understand that part of the British audience that first complained about the Ross & Brand debacle and then complained about Clarkson in the first episode of the new Top Gear season.
WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!
Let me get it right, ok, the majority of people LOVE to watch idiots like Russell Brand because he is so outrageous and surreal. People make money because of the high viewing numbers of Friday Night with Jonathan Ross and Top Gear. So why are these guys suddenly to blame for what we, the UK viewing, have always encouraged them to do?
It’s like teaching a kid loads of bad habits and then slapping them in the face when you notice other parents are watching! Plus what I honestly don’t get is why Ross, Brand and Clarkson are to blame for all this.
IT WAS ALL RECORDED!
Yes, the radio show was pre recorded and so was Top Gear. Which means that the material went from hand to hand before anyone decided to put it on the air. Even worse: there were loads of people probably on location (studio directors, producers, god knows who) that could have told any of them: hey, are you sure this is wise?
I don’t want to discuss wether or not what they did was right, wrong, distasteful or unethical, because that’s not my point. My point is that the scape goats are far from the only ones to blame, and the biggest blame probably rests on the viewers who complained about it!
The IT Crowd
Oct
18
Melinda and I attended a live recording of an episode of the third season of The IT Crowd yesterday. We both love The IT Crowd and had been trying to get tickets for a recording ever since we moved to London.
For those of you that don’t know The IT Crowd, it’s a Channel 4 series about the IT support team at “Reynholm Industries” (a not so real company in central London). The tech part of the team consists of Roy and Moss, two typical geeks that are well overqualified for solving everyone’s idiotic computer problems. They are accompanied by Jen, a newbie that was apparently randomly assigned to lead the IT department even though she lacks the required tech nor managing skills. The show highlights geek culture very much from the geek perspective, with a very well though out set filled with little details like ORG posters, space invaders, and many iconic geek accessories. Although the show often makes fun of the socially inept geeks, it does balance this out very well with very well thought out geek jokes, often referring to quite obscure geek trivia.
One of their most iconic scenes is the following:
So yesterday we set out to see a recording of the third series of what we for now will call “The Episode with the Calendar”. We set out extra early at 3pm (doors would open at 6pm, with the recording starting at 7pm) and had a bit of a panic when we couldn’t get a cab at Uxbridge station. We eventually got some very nice seats at the front row on the left side, just good enough to get a good view of the set and the actors. Things got a bit “weird” though when we met our studio host, Ray Peacock.
You probably know that studios often hire comedians to warm up and entertain the audience before the recording, and in between the parts of the recording. You also probably know that comedians in general like to make fun of people on the first row. So here I was, sitting on the first row, and Ray had already made some fun about my lack of hair. He was telling some joke when he was interrupted by the floor manager and when we got back, he looked at me and I made a quick move along my head as if I had hair. This is when the “shit” hit the “fan”.
He decided to ask what my name was, so I said Cristiano. He laughed and asked what my real name was. So I said, “Cristiano”. All things got funnier and funnier, with him trying to donate me some hair, when he came up with the idea that everyone should add me on FaceBook. Someone then made the suggestion of making a FaceBook group about me, which led to Ray assigning some FaceBook group officers, etc, etc. So here I was, laughing my ass off while the joke that started out so innocent got totally out of hand. I in the mean time was hopping for Ray to ask me what I did for a living so that I could tell him I was a “FaceBook App Developer”. This would have got him rolling on the floor I think but unfortunately he never asked.
In the end though, when we got home, I ended up with about 15 people actually adding me as a friend, and an entire FaceBook group dedicated to me, with 84 members and counting. I also got the studio photographer to make a nice photo of us to remember it by. I must admit, Ray looks a lot scarier in real life than he does in this photo.
ITV’s “No Heroics”
Jul
19
This post has been cross posted on Melinda’s blog MissGeeky.com
Because Melinda’s family was in town this week, I was able to attend an exclusive screening of a new ITV sitcom No Heroics. Although there is no trailer or footage that I can actually show you, I can give you my thoughts on what is to become ITV2’s first ever sitcom.
The setup of No Heroics is simple – a group of British off-duty superheroes living their day-to-day life, which for supposed saviours of the world is actually rather normal, as they just can’t be arsed. Instead, this group of b-listers would rather get drunk in their local superheroes-only pub and commiserate at their lack of superiority.
The series follows the lives of a group of four superhero friends. First off there is The Hotness (Nicholas Burns), who controls heat but isn’t that much of a hottie in real life. His ex-girlfriend Electroclash (Claire Keelan), daughter of two famous A-list superheroes, but honestly not that much interested in saving the world as she is in getting a pack of cigarettes. Then there is She-Force (Rebekah Staton), the third strongest women in the world, with probably the lowest self esteem of all. And finally, my favorite, Timebomb (James Lance) is a homosexual Spanish retired superhero that can look 60 seconds into the future. They are supplemented by Excelsor (Patrick Baladi), a rival superhero with Superman-like powers who is a real prick and wouldn’t let a moment go by to humiliate The Hotness and flirt with Electroclash.
It is quite understandable where the idea behind No Heroics comes from. In a world where almost every super hero comic ever is being turned into a feature film, it is understandable for a TV station to hop onto that same bandwagon. Add to that the success of a series like Heroes and you got every TV studios executive hooked to the idea. Still, I feel that although I laughed my ass off due to some of the jokes, No Heroics is not all that it seems to be. To understand this one must understand that there is a good reason why some of the latest superhero productions have worked out so well. There is a great fan base for existing comic book heroes and their stories (which fans don’t like studios to mess with too much) and people love new, original, intelligently written newcomers like Heroes.
No Heroics though seems to be lacking on a few of these parts. To start off, as it is not based on any known characters there is no fan base, so to create one the writers need to compel the audience to bond with the characters. Classic ways of doing this would be something like an origin story, or a personal struggle with their super power responsibilities. None of this though seems to be in there as the writers have decided to stay away from the heroic part of the characters for most part and focus as much as possible on the heroes’ sex lives or need for cigarettes.
And this is probably the biggest problem I personally had with this show. Although this show seems to be written for (comic) geeks, most of the jokes seem to have been brought back to a nights-out-in-the-pub-humour-level of a 16-year old boy. Though occasionally funny, the amount of sex jokes in the two episodes that I saw were not really representative for the average comic book geek’s humour. Maybe I can explain this better when we look at a show like The IT Crowd which is obviously also written for (in this case IT) geeks. In this show, the characters are geeks, the situations they end up in are geeky, and the amount of geek culture references has not been limited to decorative items as is in No Heroics. As a result The IT Crowd is a much more representative kind of humour for the kind of people that might identify with the settings, than can be said for No Heroics.
That said, all this complaining might just go on the records as a personal whine by me as I have to admit that I have laughed loudly quite a few times, and the fact that I already picked my favorite hero of the show (Timebomb) can’t be ignored either. We have to see where the story goes and how in time the jokes and characters will grow in the hearts of the true comic book fanatics.
