Is the world crazy or am I?

*Disclaimer: If you haven’t already guessed David is not a very positive person. He is not able to just sit back and enjoy things and finds ways of needling criticism out of even the nicer elements of the world. He has come to terms with this and admits this is curse and not a blessing. If the following offends you please don’t read it.* I found myself watching Surprise Surprise the other day - another sign that ITV has given up on innovation entirely and is desperately trying to turn back to more prosperous times in the early 90s (funnily enough when advertising revenues for TV had no competition from the internet). For those of you who have never sat down to watch it before, it’s very simple TV. Unsuspecting do-gooding members of the audience are taken by ‘surprise’ and rewarded for their positive work in the community. It’s got a nicey wicey tone, is presented by the cuddly auntie-like Holly Willoby (I’ve been giving her a lot of stick in the last couple of posts, it’s not inte...

You may remember I threw a bit of a hissy fit the last time a new episode of Red Dwarf hit our screens. Back to Earth was nothing less than self-indulgent meta-humour, although its greatest crime was that it really wasn’t that funny. Thankfully, the newly revived series Red Dwarf X has been a relative breath of fresh air. The boys from the Dwarf are back and, despite the odd wrinkle, it’s as if they’ve never been away. Much of the first episode Trojan felt right and on form. Rimmer is as dorky (his new life slogan is "Hey ho pip and dandy!"),  weasley and resentful as ever, to the point that he even crashes his holographic hard drive due to a huge bitterness data jam. Lister is still meandering pointlessly through life, filling it with whatever distractions he can – in this case spending a majority of the episode impatiently on hold to a phone-in shopping channel. Kryten still appears to be on 24 hour wipe alert and The Cat is still screeching around the ship and ge...

As many of you have noticed there is a new kid on the block when it comes to talking dogs. Joining the hallowed prestige, alongside the likes of Scooby Doo and Goofy, is Alan the Walls Sausages dog. "Alwight! I'm here to save you blokes from yourselves." Alan is best described as a cross between Droopy and Mike Skinner from the Streets. He brings an interesting, if blunt, message that men love sausages to the point of emotional speechlessness. Our new friend takes on the tricky role of expressing male emotions when sausages are served for dinner. As the blokey receivers of the meaty feast puff their faces up with tears and joy, Alan springs into action and saves the day with a rap .   I suppose it is at the other end of the emotional scale to when men become hyperactive with joy when confronted with a room full of beer . Sausages are obviously associated with more stoic male emotions (possibly proving a lot of extreme feminist theories true in the process). ...

The boys often compete against each other. This battle is to see who can be the biggest windswept douche I really didn’t know what to think about the Fabulous Baker Brothers. At first I was a little dismayed that here was yet another cooking show; one that no one asked for and worse, one that didn’t bring anything new or exciting to the table. We’ve seen it all before, a chef or two hovering around a perfectionist’s cavernous kitchen that you could never in your life afford. That’s right look at the beautiful and fashionable kitchen and weep. Look at the delicious food they’re making in it! You could never cook that, unless of course you watch every week, check the website, buy the book and then maybe after a couple of decades you could make something minutely close to this. You really are rubbish without this show! So, what is (or should that be ‘are’) the Fabulous Baker Brothers. The first impression is that the females of Britain now have their own Nigella Lawson-style food ...

The final Simpsons episode ever was more cataclysmic than many were expecting 2011 has been a very surreal year with riots, royal weddings, major celebrity deaths and phone hacking filling the headlines. But with 2011 now in its dying days what can we expect from the next 12 months? Here are the things I am hoping will happen next year: A member of the Royal Family gets a pie in the face during the Diamond Jubilee: You might infer from this that I am anti-royal. That’s not quite true, I consider myself more of an agnostic when it comes to the royal family. I’m not a flag waving patriot, nor am I an angry David Icke-like person who claims that they are actually lizard people stealing all our taxes. Despite not wishing the family ill I still think it would be quite funny to see one of them getting a pie in the face as it would lend a bit of fun to an otherwise somber and stuffy event. Heston’s Cannibal Feast: Heston Blumenthal is known for cooking up the wackiest feasts, b...

Heeey Kids! It's time to meet your new best pals. Presenters come in all shapes and sizes and act in many different ways, from the doddering decrepit old-time entertainment provided by Bruce Forsythe, to the obnoxious red faced ranting of Adam Bolton on Sky News. Then you get T4 presenters, who are a weird bunch. As I’ve probably made clear from my past scribbles I don’t really like them. I find them loud annoying and in-your-face (which to be fair, is probably part of their job description). But they persist year after year, coming in as fresh-faced failed radio presenters or models heavily draped in Top Shop’s latest rags, until they are metaphorically euthanized from the line-up at age 24 like an old incontinent farm hound, with an uncertain future of bit-part presenting jobs like the X-tra Factor or popular entertainment oblivion. After all look what happened to Alex Zane after he was put out to pasture. Now he struts around an empty studio, in a suit that is far too sm...

The Apprentice has burst back onto TV again at its normal time of year – with none of this conflict of interest because Lord Sugar is in the government kerfuffle- and welcomes another shower of business bastards onto our screens; all blustering and purring about how they are unstoppable selling machines and that they will declare war on low profit margins. Things are the same as ever. This year amongst the contestants: we have an automaton who works 24/7 without switching off and I am sure will kill us all once Skynet orders the termination of humanity, a nutty inventor , a sexual harassment prosecution waiting to happen , as well as a woman who claims to have been taught to achieve a higher purpose personally by the Dali Lama. There were also the usual droves of interchangeable, deluded middle managers with career achievements as realistic sounding as a child telling you he will be a ninja astronaut when he grows up. This year there is a bit of a twist in the format of the game...

Somehow, beyond all logical explanation, I found myself watching Lily Allen: From Riches to Rags last night. I don't normally punish myself in this way but somehow it just happened. Now I will say before I begin that I was never a fan of Lily Allen’s music. Her mockney tones – put on despite a privileged upbringing in the well to do Chelsea and Kensington area - and whiney lyrics, which had all the wit and maturity of a group of eight year old girls discussing gender politics in a treehouse with a “no boys allowed” sign on the door, alienated me from her songs, even though a few had at least a half decent tune. Anyway, Ms ‘Knees-up-mother braaan’ Allen has thrown in the towel with the music trade and has decided to become a fashion retail owner, with her Lucy in Disguise brand. The idea is to loan out vintage dresses to shoppers unable to afford such designs. Seems like a good idea – in a kind of Jamie Oliver class/disadvantage campaign way – although there are several downside...

Masterchef, the food porn inspiration-fest, is back with a new series on BBC One this week. Despite previously complaining on this blog about the over-saturation of cooking themed shows on TV at the moment, I still have a soft spot for Masterchef. Since its resurrection six years ago, the programme has gone from strength to strength, but now the BBC has decided that the format needs a further upgrade. The result of this is a bigger, flasher new studio with all sorts of bells and nobs on. This looks a bit like a giant, cold kitchen-themed night club – which is quite fitting considering the heavy use of dance-style music over the credits and some of the cooking segments – although lacks a lot of the charm and familiarity of the old set, despite the fact that that too looked like a giant cold kitchen-themed night club. Now instead of a claustrophobic backroom scene where judges John Torode and Gregg Wallace shovel ready-made food into their slobbering jaws, the contestants are ...

 I found myself watching a strange programme on BBC Two this week called One Man and His Camper Van , which follows Martin Dorey chomping his way around the UK in a moving metal tent. Firstly who is Martin Dorey? According to a quick scan of the web, he is a “foodie” and is said to also enjoy surfing, writing, shrimping and camper van-ing. He has also had a book called The Camper Van Cookbook published, which would explain why this concept has made it onto TV. If it is simple enough to get a cook book published - so long as it has a niche – then I may as well press ahead with my concept for The Bus Top Deck Cook Book , where I can teach readers how to cook sumptuous dishes whilst commuting on the top deck of the bus. Foodie for Thought Now the term “foodie” sets alarm bells ringing for me, as it’s similar to saying “I’m not a chef, I’m a foodie”, which in itself is similar to saying “I’m not a policeman, I’m a justice instructor” – or a PCSO. It also conjures up images o...

“The children are our future” so the saying goes. Kids and teens have been pretty hard done by over the years; be it from the fear spread by media such as Reefer Madness in the 1930s, any teenage rebellion movie in the 1950s, or more recently, Waterloo Road. Indeed, on-screen portrayals of adolescents are often just hate-inducing. It is troubling to find that such a grim world view of the big and small screen can have an influence on a persons perception of the tykes, to the point where you feel vindicated to trip-up the next pubescent chap or chappette that you see in the street. It’s not fair or nice and you can’t help but feel manipulated by a cackling writer somewhere, who is idly writing another gormless, unsympathetic teen character into a script somewhere. Here are a few current TV programmes that will turn you into a bitterly vengeful teen-hater: The Season: One of the BBC’s latest attempts at ‘getting down with the kids’, can be found on BBC Switch (a kind of CBBC for...

Adverts, we can’t escape the bloody things. Every 15 minutes on TV they appear without fail, popping up on a website whilst we’re in the middle of web browsing, and leering at us jealously from billboards as we drive past them. Adverts can be entertaining, sad, funny or even just downright scary. It’s the last of these things I’m going to have a look at today as I look at a collection of ads which are disturbingly strange or unpleasant. Kinder Surprise – Humpty Dumpty   Nowhere in the original Humpty Dumpty Nursery rhyme do I remember anyone saying Mr Dumpty would talk in terrifying, satanic tongues. I mean give the guy a break, he’s already an egg; why make him even more freakish? Unfortunately that is exactly what the makers have done, as they’ve given Humpty a scary looking face before he’s even managed to open his mouth. Also why is the fact he’s eating one of his kind, and that he jumps off the wall unperterbed not addressed properly? My theory is that he’s come to ...

It’s no exaggeration to say that TV exists in a world of its own. But what happens when that world contains another world? Sometimes things can get very existentially confusing, although sometimes the result can be comedy gold. Today we look at some of the best TV shows within shows, to see what happens when TV becomes too reflexive for its own good. Children of Castor (As seen in Cruise of the Gods) "What's the point in being human, if we lose the ability to be humane?" Do you remember that weird cult series from the eighties, which had kids battling monsters in a post nuclear-apocalyptic world? You know the one with the cheesy lines and the incomprehensible plot? Well this is the ultimate parody of dystopian nineteen-eighties sci-fi. Also I am a particular fan of the opening sequence containing a doomed man screaming “I’m changing! I’M CHANGING!” due to the nuclear apocalypse described in the back-story. Albi the Racist Dragon (As seen in Flight of the Concho...

When I was young children’s TV occasionally dealt with the theme of children getting revenge on their parents. The gunge-happy Get Your Own Back was probably the most memorable, where disgusting brats who felt their parents had irreversibly wronged them - for trivial crimes like wearing a Wallace and Gromit tie to work - could deal sticky gungy punishment upon their birthgivers, whilst host Dave Benson Phillips ran around with his arms flailing, and screaming like a banshee. Well this is the twenty-first century and children today have tired of gunge, (aside from a brief revival during the dark times of Dick and Dom in Da Bungalow) so instead the spoilt gnomes have decided to ruin the family holiday instead of dunking their parents in gruel. Gimme A Break, fronted by Jake Humphry, is the result. The format works like this: The kids moan about what they don’t like about family holidays, so get to pick the rules for the next one. Not only that, but they also get to chose the dest...

T Mobile have been playing catch up to the highly successful Orange Wednesday two for one cinema promotion by teaming up with flagging video rental chain Blockbuster. The result has been a TV ad campaign where idiots from the public get to make their own (cheap budget) ad, advertising the sort of theme night they would host for their film night. Now T-Mobile has a long and proud history of making some really grating adverts; the flash-mob dance in Liverpool Street being a shining example of this whimsical communal bullshit. So in that way these ads are a continuation of the brand’s tradition. The people in the clips are eye-poppingly annoying, especially as they don’t look like the types that would have friends, and would sit at home alone acting out scenes from their favourite films with puppets made of their own faeces. Don’t believe me? Then watch this 101 lesson in psychotic behaviour . The woman is having a conversation with a home-made mannequin with a balloon head – and whic...

Good News! Top Gear is back! Everyone’s favourite car magazine show, hosted by three bickering children in the guise of middle aged men. This time we are faced with a new dawn as Top Gear becomes ‘more serious.’ A fact that the presenters repeated – probably to remind themselves, let alone us – that they have toned down the excessive sillyness that’s been seen in the recent series. Now don’t get me wrong as there is a lot to love about the OTT antics of Hammond, May and Clarkson, such as: · A chance to see men live out their craziest fantasies involving cars – like for instance car darts, racing a car against a train, build-your-own- stretch limos and, of course, the Reliant Robin Space Shuttle. · It’s like what Heston Blumenthal’s trying to do to food, but a lot more fun! · The director get’s to indulge in videographic opulence, as he throws about every artistic visual trick in presenting the actual car reviews, resulting in stylish and atmospheric li...

Being an unemployed drain on the state as I am at the moment; I have found myself watching more and more daytime TV. It’s not a fact I’m proud of, but they say the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. Anyway, the sudden re-exposure to midday television has made me aware that there are rather a lot of online bingo adverts on during this time. Bingo in general is a game that confuses and infuriates me. Firstly the name conjures up unpleasant illusions of ‘bingo wings’ (the fatty rolls you get under your upper arms due to age or, more likely, being too fat) or annoying songs about illiterate dog owners . As for the game itself that just makes me think of a group of cackling, demented elderly women, sitting in a tacky dilapidated hall, staring blankly at their game cards whilst a fat bald man in a sparkly suit jacket reads off numbers in an annoying rhyming slang. As you can tell I’m not a big fan of the game. But now the old images of shabby old halls and overweight...

I guess it’s indicative of the fact that I am a bitter, twisted little man with a blackened soul, but I don’t like Glee. Yes true, it is the latest big thing on TV and is sweeping across the public consciousness like a cancer, but it’s something I just don’t get. I just see it as another sign that I’m a cynical bastard unable to appreciate things which are happy and joyous, but then that’s what working in media will do for you. Glee from what I can tell is an all singing, all dancing version of High School Musical, but is in episodic format. It’s the epitome of comfort food television, as it indulges people who watch it with sickly sweet kids, simple villains, and pop songs galore to bludgeon them into twee oblivion. The only thing worse would be if Taylor Swift and N*sync formed an alliance. I have never made it through an entire episode, mainly because the precocious bastards keep singing all the time. “You’ve missed the point!” you may cry, but that is the biggest flaw in the...