...Masterchef

Well they’ve gone and changed the format of Masterchef haven’t they? In the adverts people were standing on the cooking benches, which I assume was some attempt for them to be all like ‘Look! This series is different. We’re STANDING on the cooking benches! We’re really serious and that.’ Fine fine fine. All I could think was, ‘They’re standing on the cooking benches they’re going to cook on? Ew. They could have trodden in dog muck and be about to serve up Lobster thermidor with a side of dog turd.’

I digress… It turns out the new series is very similar to the last one, except that this time around John Torrode and Greg Wallace shout even louder than they did previously. I genuinely didn’t think that was possible. They shout at each other when they’re practically nose to nose. One can only imagine that all the shouting has led to irreparable hearing problems over the years, meaning they have to shout ever louder, and it’s a self perpetuating spiral of doom.

My favourite shout of this series HAS to be at the special new stage where the contestants cooked for former Masterchef contestants who are now chefs. They’re not masterchefs particularly, but they are chefs, so I suppose it’ll do, and if they called the programme ‘people who want to be chefs’ it might not have quite the same ring to it. Anyway, the shouting… John Torrode approaches ‘the pass’ (fancy term for where food gets handed to waiter) and bellows ‘WHERE’S MY FOOD?’ I’m surprised he didn’t preface it with ‘FEE-FI-FO-FUM!’ It would have been so much scarier.

That was one of Torrode’s finer solo moments. The highlights of Greg Wallace’s singular efforts are all around him eating. He basically makes love to a fork when it’s in his mouth. Ironically its enough to put you off your food/make you seek out an alternative eating implement to a fork to avoid the visual coming screaming back every time you’re trying to devour a chicken escalope.

Yes they’re fine on their own but it’s as a double act that these two really flourish, and Greg Wallace has come a long way since being described in early series as something about being a flavour and ingredients specialist. Let’s call a spade a spade: the man likes to eat. If it tastes good, so much the better. The chemistry (and shouting) between them is quite something. The other day John Torrode tried something one of the contestants had cooked and said ‘I’ll be interested to hear what Mr Wallace has to say about that’ – you mean apart from ‘nom nom nom.’ ? By this point he had eaten one of every dish being cooked. By my calculation that was twelve dishes. By the end he was barely bothering to chew or swallow, he was just doing pieces to camera with his mouth full. I’m surprised he hadn’t gone foetal in the corner or fallen into a caramel induced coma. But this man is committed to eating. It's where he gets his kicks. Case in point: he tastes a finer dish and cries ‘the dessert comes up and snogs you’. I can only imagine he’s inexperienced but someone should really tell him that that’s not what snogging is. Although to be fair to him maybe in his house it is – he probably lives with an entrecote of beef and is considering an affair with a spear of purple sprouting broccoli. The swine. 

I could go on but I’ve gone on too much already, so I’ll just say this: Tom to win.

...Marco Pierre White's ridiculous bow to the cash cow

Yes people, MPW, him of wearing tea towel on head and not being as good as Ramsay on Kitchen Nightmares fame has recently been seen without tea towel on head in adverts on the telly. First it was for Knorr (he must have the k-now-how), where he sat round a table with a load of women and told them all how brilliant weird jellified stock cubes really can be. As a brand ambassador he didn't work for me. I guess people think he's a good cook, but I happen to ASSUME he's a misogynistic, hateful weirdo, mainly because of the way he behaves as a human being and therefore watching him chow down and talk gravy with lots of middle ages mums doesn't convince me of anything at all, other than the fact that he's a douche bag who has totally reneged on the image of himself he put out there in favour of making lots of money. Why are brands giving him work? Tony Tobin may be low profile but he's always got a smile on his face AND he likes chicken that cooks in a bag (Colman's ad). 


So back to MPW...Those Knorr adverts were bad and unconvincing, but now old tea towel head and gone and outdone himself, and is making adverts about turkeys. Not just any old turkeys, but Bernard Matthews turkeys. The most famous turkeys of them all (have written word turkeys too many time, has lost all meaning)


What's wonderful about this advert is ... EVERYTHING! This is not your regular man eats piece of turkey and says 'Mmm what a lovely piece of turkey' advert. Oh no. This is an advert in which the clearly broke MPW sits down at a table, eats turkey, and talks about turkey. Who does he talk about it with? Martin Kemp. Now, I know what you're thinking. Martin Kemp off of Spandau Ballet? Steve off Eastenders? Can't be him, because that's the most random thing ever to have happened. But, dear reader, it's true. MPW and Steve off Eastenders are sitting at a table eating turkey and talking about it. It's so ludicrous I could howl. 


My favourite thing about the advert (and it's hard to pick just one thing) is the campaign it's sitting alongside: 'Marco talks turkey'. Brilliant. Just brilliant. Who thought of this? I need to meet them. I need to understand the inner workings of their tiny mind.


My second favourite thing is the bit where MPW slags off Steve off Eastenders' wife by telling him when turkey is dry it's never the turkey, it's always the cook, to which Steve off Eastenders asks 'are you having a go at my wife?'. Tread carefully MPW, Steve off Eastenders is a double 'ard bastard. If you're not careful you may be faced with a confrontation and will have no alternative but to take a fake sponge ashtray to his head to get him to pipe down. That would be a disaster. 


What really comes through from this advert is MPW's genuine love of turkey (not). Did you know that Marco is a very big fan of turkey, and always has been? Did you know that Marco thinks turkey is incredibly tender, but with great texture, and that he didn't mean to slag off Steve off Eastenders' wife? Well if you watch this advert, you will learn those things about him. Here are a few other things you will learn:
Steve off Eastenders prefers eating in restaurants to cooking at home  
MPW is not a good actor
Steve off Eastenders is not a good actor (you probably already knew that) 
MPW sans tea towel on head still looks like an utter douche. 

...Episodes

This was a programme I vowed to watch from the start, because it was an interesting and of-the-moment proposition: a programme that was being produced jointly by the US and the UK, to be broadcast simultaneously to US and UK audiences. I had to watch it. It’s an of-the-moment proposition because the world, as ever, is getting smaller, and programmes are crossing the pond in both directions with increasing frequency. Granted, we Brits have always loved American sitcoms, but the Americans have taken longer to warm to the fact that us Brits have got a GSOH. I think it might have partly been down to the fact that sarcasm and irony passed them by until about 2003 when they finally cottoned on and started watching The Office, then loved it, bought the idea, Americanised it (to the extent of putting the word ‘American’ in the title just so everyone’s really clear – America – yeah!), used a team of writers, and made about 17 series of it, completely bastardising the idea on the way. HOWEVER, the point is that they get us now… sort of.

The premise of Episodes is actually funny precisely because of the example of UK to US bastardisation that occurred with The Office; in Episodes an American network buys the rights to a successful UK sitcom, and then makes it something completely different, so much is lost in translation: hilarity ensues. Or does it? Well… I like Episodes. I think it’s interesting, it has good pace, the acting is (largely) very good, although it is definitely carried by Grieg, Mangan and Le Blanc. However, Episodes is not a ‘sitcom’ in the traditional mould. The laughs do not come thick and fast. There’s no slapstick, there’s not a whole heap of irony either. In fact the majority of the comedy seems to come from stereotyping. The English characters are well spoken, polite, slightly bumbling and superior, the American characters are self obsessed, weight obsessed, shallow, and two faced. When the two collide there are some issues, and when I’m watching it I can’t help thinking about which lines were written to appeal to the American audience, and which bits they’ll laugh at. (I think it’s mainly the bits where the English characters are being patronized).

Anyway, long story short (too late)… here’s my take on it:

Matt Le Blanc. His hair is grey now. It looks good. He plays himself very well. He’s almost impossibly sexy in this. I never saw it with Joey, maybe cos he was such a muppet, but here there’s something reeeeally hot about him in a ‘stop being such a misogynistic bastard by the way I know you have a massive penis’ kind of way. I’m drawn to him. Speaking of his massive penis, him and Beverley got it on – I actually DID NOT see that coming, which annoys me, because I pride myself on seeing things coming.

Speaking of seeing things coming, let’s just hit on something else that I could not let slide. Stephen. Mangan’s. Wanking. Face. It disturbed me. He didn’t look aroused, or excited, nor did he look upset or troubled (as you'd expect), he just looked plain glazed – dead behind the eyes even, and he really didn’t particularly look like he was enjoying himself! It made me wonder… Is this what men look like when they wank? Was he method acting? I need an answer to this one, for real, and also, I hope I never see that.

And whilst we’re on the subject of sex, I have to say that the other major thing that unsettles me about this show is this: All. The. Sex. Never has the phrase ‘no sex please, we’re British’ been so apt. Don’t get me wrong, I like sex as much as the next person, but its surplus to requirements here, and I can’t help feeling the fact that the lead characters keep having sex is the most American thing about this show. It seems to be crow barred in if you ask me, not to mention the fact that whilst Grieg and Mangan are attractive in their own ways, watching them fornicate is not exactly the kitchen scene from Indecent Proposal, and I for one could live without it.

I could go on and on, but I won’t. Overall I liked this programme, I felt the humour was subtle, and understated, (more than I could say for some of the performances) and I definitely wanted to know what happened in the end, which is more than I could say for some sitcoms (My Family anyone? Are they still going?). What I didn't like was Grieg's character being painted as a whiny shrew, which she was, and I didn't warm to her, which annoyed me because I like her and I know I do but I wanted to tell her to shut up a lot in this. Which is a shame...

ANYWAY, with Episodes the Anglo-American Special Relationship has finally come to our screens. It’s a bold and interesting move, and in spite of some teething problems I think it’s got legs... or teeth (mixing metaphors, what of it?). For the sake of television, and in the interest of… interest… I hope they get a second series. If anyone who makes My Family is reading. Please. Please please. Just can it. 

…Unrealistic things happen on television

So I know this could be a can of worms - most good TV is about suspending disbelief, and programme makers create a series of unlikely scenarios in order to draw us in. I mean imagine if My Family was based on a real family?! Actually that’s a bad example… a real family would be funnier to watch (and is, in The Family) but then so would a televised rectal exam… which brings me to Embarrassing Bodies – not megalolz funny, but ‘OMG did they just show that on TV?’ amusing, and definitely more interesting than watching Robert Lindsay prat about in a dentist’s coat. ANYTHING IS!

Anyway,  I’m not talking about Reality TV here, obv – with that the clue is in the title – its REAL (is it? Jennifer Lopez seems nice on American Idol, but that’s GOT to be fake. She’s got snippy diva written all over her face - which is from the block).

Ridiculous and unconvincing stuff happens on TV every day, and it makes it good. I love it as much as the next person…

Case in point: in Eastenders Ronnie SWAPPED her dead baby with Kat’s alive baby and no one noticed or has figured it out yet. I thought for sure she was rumbled when the nurse came round and was like ‘Errr, this baby was born with a club foot love, and now its gone’ but instead of becoming suspicious she just shrugged it off. Ummm, this is not Biblical times nursey! Miracles as tangible as that don’t happen every day, and in Walford they happen NEVER. Dr. Legg would never have let that slide.

Then there’s always Neighbours… But where to start, and I covered a lot of the ridiculousness a couple of weeks ago, but for anyone that missed it here’s the headlines:

1. Elastic homes that house dozens of people at once

2. Toadie’s ridiculous weight loss – specifically the fact that no one has mentioned it

3. Everything about Paul Robinson.

I’d like to add a new one - everything about Lynn Scully. She is an utterly baffling entity. For a start she’s next level manic. How she can be so breathy and actually manage to speak and walk without passing out indicates to me that she has a substantial talent that she’s not exploiting. She really should take up the saxophone. I used to play it, and my tiny lung capacity was an early hurdle. She could toot out Baker Street like a pro let me tell you.

However, the soaps are easy fodder. They have to be ridiculous, they’re on daily or almost as much, and storylines about putting the bins out, not being able to find the cat, and whether or not to call the plumber about the water mark on the ceiling would not be particularly compelling viewing.

But, humble reader, this week my major foible has been caused by a programme that is close to my heart: Brothers and Sisters. As soon as I saw the first advert for Brothers and Sisters five years ago I KNEW I was going to love it, and I was right. I loved it -- the cast, the relationships, the snappy dialogue, the cliffhanger storylines -- It was all in there. Now this programme has caused outburts of ‘THAT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN’ as much as the next, and over five years there have been too many to list here. However, in the past two weeks something SO outrageous, so unbelievable and unconvincingly STOOPID has happened that I feel I have to mention it. Here I go: Kitty called a plumber, and the plumber. Is. Fit. That’s right folks, the plumber is good looking, hot, dreamy, whatever you wanna call it. Its next level. And of ALL the unbelievable things that have happened in this programme (we’re talking long lost sisters who aren’t actually sisters who marry their fake brother who never was their brother to name but one storyline) this is the most RIDONCULOUS of all – it would NEVER happen. Anyone who has ever called a plumber, handyman, or tradesman of any description will know that outside of porn films (again, not so concerned with the believable) these men do not show up on your doorstep looking hot, single and ready to mingle. They show up wearing jogging bottoms round their crack, and leave muddy footprints in the bath. With all the stupid and unbelievable stuff that happens on TV, this has annoyed me the most. The baby swap thing I can live with, because none of that would EVER happen, ever, but the thing that annoys me most about this is how close to reality it is - in real life a sink WOULD break (the water mark on the ceiling thing is a current episode in my thrilling life), and a plumber WOULD be called…… but from there reality and the storyline in question follow different trajectories. They've already snogged, and now they're taking things slowly (cos her ex-politico husband died after going into a coma for a year following a car crash involving every member of her family - NORMAL stuff). As ever what's the most annoying thing of all? I want it to happen. I gasped when they kissed. Reader - I rewound for crying out loud! The truth is I really like Kitty. I'm glad her plumber is hot and a feasible relationship prospect. Next week I hope she fucks his brains out. 

Sky Atlantic

So…. Sky Atlantic, the most anticipated TV channel launch since Fiver (just me…?). A channel that promises to bring us telly addicts the very best in entertainment viewing from across the pond: The Sopranos FROM THE BEGINNING, Mad Men NOT FROM THE BEGINNING BUT FROM WHERE WE GOT UP TO ON BBC2, and then some new programmes that the American people are banging on about: Boardwalk Empire, Blue Bloods, something called Treme. I don’t know what that is or if it's even a word but in theory I am VERY excited.

I will make it my business to watch all the programmes on offer, but this week I’ve been busy and the three dimensional people have got in the way of me spending too much time with my favourite 2D peeps *shakes fist* (although I have found the time to catch up with Neighbours, natch, and for those who watch it: OMFG! Amezzing!) Anyway, ahem... Sky Atlantic, I've been very busy and I can’t review all of the potentially amazing programmes on offer because I haven’t watched them all. So... here’s what I have to say on the ones I do watch:

Mad Men: I’m sorry everyone, I am, but for me watching Mad Men is like eating a massive bowl of spag bol then trying to drive – it sends me to sleeeeeep! No more than 10 minutes after I whack on an episode am I out cold. It’s more effective than Nytol, and it doesn’t give me restless legs, which is a bonus actually…

Blue Bloods: Haven’t made it through a complete episode, but Tom Selleck? Quite old now, and I still would.

Boardwalk Empire: by all accounts people love it, they think it’s the best thing ever, its epic programming, its award-winning, its… boring…? Again, I’m sorry, but my enduring memory from the first episode was Steve Buscemi using the (I think under-used) expression ‘wet as a mermaid’s twat’, because I’m juvenile like that, and because he pronounced it ‘twot’ which made it funnier. The other good thing about it is that it has Henry-from-Dawson’s-Creek in it. Remember the one who went out with Jen and who’s mouth looked like a horse’s arse? His lips were pursed, pink, and ALWAYS wet. Well, in this programme he still looks about 17, and his lips are still always wet, which leads me to believe that the horse’s-arse-mouth condition is a facial quirk of the actor who plays him, and not that the script notes in Dawson’s Creek said ‘Henry is young, blonde, and has a mouth like a horse’s arse’. Glad we cleared that up. Apart from those two notable examples I did not find it memorable, and the fact that the first episode was an hour and a half was asking a lot!.That’s longer than the total viewing time of some entire British series for crying out loud! (Apart from My Family, which is either on episode 417 of series one, or has made 72 series… No one knows which, because no one cares, not even the people who make it. I think even Zoe Wannamaker is over it. I like to think that fucking weird thing she's done with her hair is a silent protest. There's no way someone would CHOOSE to wear their hair like that without an agenda)

Anyway, the bottom line is I just don’t think Boardwalk Empire is that engaging. For a start my housemate finds it so distinctly unmemorable that she has never referred to it as the same thing twice. So far we’ve had: Empire Boardwalk (easy mistake to make), Broadwalk Kingdom (again, not too far off), and my personal favourite Broadback Mountain (you can see where she got that from). To be honest, I like the sound of a programme called Broadback Mountain very much more. I would imagine that twats have no place at all in that programme, and that the mouth like a horse’s arse would come in very handy indeed... 

I know I've probably missed the point, and Boardwalk Empire is supposedly an EPIC. I mean the budget is clearly HUGE, which makes for an incredibly impressive set, fantastic art direction, and amazing costumes with stunning attention to detail. 

Blah. 

Blah. 

Blah. 

Who cares?? Think about this: Monica's apartment in Friends was clearly WAAAY out of her price range, it had a beam in the living room that disappeared after a couple of series, everyone spent all their time in a coffee house in spite having jobs to go to, and everyone always wore shoes inside the apartment the entire time! Attention to detail shmetail! I didn't care. Did you? No. We wanted Richard to want babies with Monica and when he didn't we wanted her to seek solace and ultimately find love in the arms of her best friend and neighbour Chandler. We wanted Ross and Rachel to get together, we didn't want them to split up or for him to get with Bonnie but we did want them to unrequitedly love each other in turn, have a one night stand, then a baby and then realise in the FINAL episode that they loved each other and wanted to be together f'rever! And we wanted Joey to sleep with loads of women and say stupid things. In order: they did, they did, and he did. (Phoebe was there too and I liked her for the record.)

I've digressed massively, my point is that TV doesn't have to be posh to be perfect. It just needs to be good. On that note I'm off to turn the dream that is Broadback Mountain into a televisual reality: someone get Henry-from-Dawson's-Creek on the phone. 

...Neighbours

I know what you’re thinking reader(s?) – Neighbours is gash. I can feeeeel you judging me, but in this instance you’re going to have to blame my mother (not to her face please, she’s small), for it was she who used to sit with me as a new-born baby, watching Neighbours - (that was when it was new to telly, so now you know how I old I am) – and this clearly caused some kind of brain infiltrating osmosis of Neighbours dependency to emerge.

Result? A niggling Neighbours habit, equal only to my dependencies on tea, chocolate, and the non-fizzy orange flavoured Lucozade. This Neighbours habit is a tricky thing, because unlike those lucky narc addicts, there is no Neighbours Anonymous for me to turn to, and part of me thinks people would actually be more willing to admit to actual heroin addiction than they would to a desire, want and NEED to watch a bunch of Australians prat about in an extremely limited number of locations in a pretendy Melbourne suburb.

In a lot of ways I hate Neighbours, but also I love it. Therein lies the rub. For a start, Neighbours is effing stupid, I know it, you know it, we all know it. Here are some things we all know:

We all know Karl didn’t even cheat on Susan with Sarah, but it still caused their marriage to break up. (They’re back together, natch)

We all know that the current Declan is NOT the original Declan. We know that for a while the part of Libby was played by a woman who was NOT Libby. And we know that the girl who now plays Summer is not the same hairy-faced child that left the street.

We all also know that no matter how nice Paul Robinson is being, he will revert to being a bastard when the storyline demands it. Paul has nearly not been a bastard a few times now, but despite losing a limb (and now mysteriously, a limp), having a brain tumour that made him a bastard (what is he a comic book villain? You’re not fooling anyone), and getting pushed off a roof by his own wife (now holding her hostage in their own marriage, duh!) he is still now and forever will be a horrible shit of a man. But, like Kelis, I won’t let you trick me twice (or thrice)… and when I say ‘you’ I mean the crack team of Neighbours writers.

Aaaand finally, we all know the houses on Ramsey Street are no where near big enough to accommodate the circa 14 people at a time that seem to be in residence… Teenager who’s parents would add nothing to the storyline with no where to live? Off to Karl and Susan’s with you! Extreeeemely tenuous long-forgotten 2^nd cousin twice removed of someone who was once in an episode 6 years ago for 14 minutes? Lynn Scully will offer you shelter. 

Oh…. And there is just one more elephant in the room that everyone knows, and NO ONE is talking about, something that is quite frankly more alarming and unbelievable than all of the above. Ironically it’s the only thing that’s actually real, and I am breaking the silence people:

Toadie has lost a SHITLOAD of weight.

Toadie once was the actual elephant in the room, and now (and seemingly overnight) the opposite is true. Toadie is now the opposite of an elephant in a room, and has become so thin, wan and withered that he looks like he might have a degenerative disease. And yet NO ONE, not his girlfriend, Sonia, not his pretendy ‘son’, Callum, none of his friends or… ahem… Neighbours have so much as mentioned it/batted an eyelid/mooted any concern about the degenerative disease thing.

I’m gonna guess (and hope, natch) that he doesn’t have a degenerative disease, and am going to assume that Toadie (supposedly he has a real life alter ego called Ryan Maloney, but whatevs) has actually worked really really hard to lose that weight – but do they mention it? Do they fuck! Too busy making up a storyline where Paul Robinson falls down a rabbit warren, has an imagined conversation with a talking human turd and comes out the other end a total bastard (probably).

All of the above and more is what makes me shout at the TV when Neighbours is on. I HATE how ridiculous it is, how some storylines are completely crow barred in (remember Poppy Rogers? Me neither…), how the writers insult my intelligence by parading an endless stream of nonsense in front of my face and asking me to buy into it, and most of all, I hate how I insist on sky plussing it every day, and watching it when I get home, as a priority, whilst eating my dinner. Fuck. 

...Eastenders

Eastenders is a soap that I wasn’t allowed to watch until I was thirteen because in my mother’s words ‘they don’t speak correctly, and you might pick something up’ – like what? AIDS? I think she thought that if I watched it enough I would start dropping my ‘t’s, telling everyone to ‘get outta my pub!’ and drinking shots of vodka out of wine glasses. Anyway, I waited until thirteen as instructed, and managed to side step those potential landmines - I do NOT drop my ‘t’s, I don’t have a pub, and don’t order people out of it, and I drink vodka shots out of the appropriate receptacle (flashing shot glass – nifty!)

I digress… so what I love about Eastenders is the way they crowbar storylines in to accommodate cast members’ illnesses/absences/stints on Strictly Come Dancing. This week the cast member who needs a swift exit is Bianca, aka Patsy Palmer, who I should inform you (in case you are BLIND) is pregnant. Who knew? Well, everyone. They’ve essentially made no attempt to cover it up, and they may as well have put a disclaimer across the screen for every scene she’s in that says ‘Viewer, please suspend your disbelief, thaaaaaanks’.

Blindness would literally be your only excuse for not noticing, because the Eastenders team has made nothing more than a token attempt at covering the bump. Apart from Bianca’s newfound penchant for carrying plastic bags in the most unnatural way, right in front of her stomach (well, I’m convinced). If anything she’s just drawing attention to it. Whilst we’re on the subject of botched cover-ups, a note to the Eastenders wardrobe department: a waterfall cardigan doesn’t do it either. She is ENORMOUS. From the side (and the front, and every angle) she looks, umm…. PREGNANT?!

They would have done better to invent a storyline where Bianca develops a proclivity for stealing things and sticking them up her jumper. Its no less ridiculous a notion than her sudden and largely unprovoked attack on Connor where she bonked him over the head, left him for dead, ran away, came back, and turned herself into the police. I imagine she’ll be locked away for approximately the length of her maternity cover. Just a guess…

I think the Eastenders wardrobe department must really love waterfall cardigans actually, because Carol is never in a scene without one. Each is a more drab and colourless article than the last, that clings to her, looking like the Cuppa Soup Hug in a Mug’s waster brother that fell into a downward spiral of drug addiction, ended up with a heroin habit, and woke up one morning to find itself draped, cold and alone over Carol’s shoulders, only to find itself strewn aside when she jumped into bed with a man-child half her age who reminds her of her dead son, to the extent she actually referred to him as Billy the other day. IMAGINE if she’d done that in bed?! One word: ewwwww.

What with that cry-for-help demonstration of weird imagined incest, and the recent baby-swap gate, it seems Eastenders really has no boundaries when it comes to making viewers shout ‘NOOOOO’ at their televisions. That. Is why. I love it.