Keith Brown (From the Theatre Desk) Reviews Some Television

Ha! They call this a theatre? Wankers.

Despite what the News, News, News, News editor seems to think, television and theatre are not 'basically the same thing'. Theatre is like the Flying Scotsman to television's Schienenzeppelin (Google it), Tarrant to TV's Clarkson, or the 19th century to TV's 20th. It may steal our beloved stage actors from time to time, Timothy West was in EastEnders for 9 months and eviscerated the other cast members with his mammoth classical acting chops, but the entire essence of theatre as an art form is drastically different to TV's. Of course, you, my readers, will know that I, as one of the UK's leading theatre critics, scholars, academics, authorities, exegetes, wizards, if you will, have a considerable amount of bias when it comes to deciding which side to pick in the debate between TV and theatre even though this is not a debate between TV and theatre and the editor explicitly told me to stay on topic.  

It was a welcome relief to see that TV is still..well.. a thing. I hadn't watched it since April last year. I was watching the coronavirus daily briefings everyday, almost religiously, and started dreaming that I was the naked lady strewn in white satin sheets in Gustave Courbet's 'La Sommeil', but Chris Whitty was the other woman embracing me, our legs were entwined and his supple breasts rested on my stomach, it was strangely comforting and this is what concerned me. I gather most British people were having these quasi-erotic, lascivious dreams about Whitty and Vallance around this time.  Americans must've had the same for Anthony Fauci or, for Republicans, Mike Pence. It's only natural, they provided answers and we all needed a saviour to provide us information at some point last year. 

I think it's brave of me to admit I had these dreams about Whitty. Phwoooooar!

This alternated with another dream where I was being eaten alive as a baby by Boris Johnson as Cronus, like in Francisco Goya's 'Saturn Devouring His Son', this is when I decided to stop watching TV and let the Internet fill my gaping addiction slot. 

But alas, there are several new shows to get through, so, without further ado, i'm Keith Brown (from the theatre desk), take my hand, and let me be your Whitty: 

Heartbreak Isle (ITV, Thursday, 19:45)

It's a well-established fact that when your heart is broken, you lie on the floor like a drawn outline of the body at a murder scene.

I've never seen Love Island, but even I can see that this is a blatant rip-off. 

OK, so the premise of this show is nearly identical to Love Island, but instead of contestants having to couple up with someone to escape eviction, they instead need to break as many hearts as possible. Whoever destroys someone in the most brutal and sociopathic way wins. The rules are totally incomprehensible and lacking in any sort of nuance. Keith Lemon presents and is his usual cluster headache-inducing self. 

The show rewards predatory behaviour and endless deceit. It's a truly abysmal and horrific concept, and I only sort of liked watching it. The episode I watched featured Chris, an IT manager from Chester, and Chantelle, a beautician from Rotherham. Chris initiated the relationship with a lot of enthusiasm. Chantelle was quickly smitten by his boyish charm and steampunk sensibilities. 

But when Chantelle chose to open up to Chris about how she felt, Chris revealed he was only chasing after Chantelle to be closer to her friend Maurice, a French male model and pastry chef. Maurice himself was still reeling from an unexpected Snapchat dumping by Natalie, a Liberian fortune teller.  Chantelle experiences 'moderate' heartbreak on the heartbreak-ometer (the device used to measure the magnitude of the heartbreak), but Chris has done enough to fend off eviction. Chantelle is then evicted by the public in a vote. According to a YouGov poll, the public didn't like her 'manic, unfettered stoicism', it's unclear what this means.   

The heartbreak-ometer, in case you were wondering, was invented by pop singer Adele. She created five different settings: 'it'll pass', 'moderate', 'I need to re-evaluate my life', 'I must record a new album of break-up songs' and the most severe heartbreak of all, 'O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain'. 

You'd think this show would have spawned a flurry of complaints to Ofcom and ITV, but no. Apparently watching the show allows people to face up to pain they've experienced in their own lives. It has a seemingly cathartic effect. This surprised me, I must say. I'd read about the suicides linked with  Love Island and assumed this show would be no different, or even worst.

It makes sense when one thinks about it though. Heartbreak Isle is honest about what it is. It's self-aware. Love Island on the other hand is a plastic shitshow which rewards bottomless shallowness and feeds people's worst impulses for self-criticism and self-hatred. It will distort your perception of a healthy body, a healthy life, and it will sink it's teeth into you. 

In fact, Heartbreak Isle, in it's own way, does us a service. It brings love's pain kicking and screaming to the surface for all to see, whereas Love Island twists it and buries it, allowing it to fester and ultimately kill you. Maybe the creators of this show didn't create it to piggyback on Love Island's success, maybe they created it to hold a mirror up to a capitalistic, brutal, human-baiting show that basically amounts to broadcast-able psychological torture porn.

Covidiots (BBC, Tuesday, 18:40)

Great British Bake Off presenter Prue Leith. She's a Tory, phwoa.. oh. 

How does one create a hidden camera prank show for COVID times? This is how. Covidiots invites celebrities (this week it was Danny Dyer, Romesh Ranganathan & Prue Leith) to undertake a series of risky and dangerous challenges which put the public at serious risk. These challenges usually involve covertly licking people on park benches, standing and breathing near elderly pensioners, or coughing into a giant fan mounted on the top of a 4x4 then driving around and spreading their droplets around the town centre dressed in camouflage.

One scene showed Prue Leith spit into a specially-designed 'COVID grenade' then throw it into a local Londis and watch it explode her toxic enzymes into every Tom, Dick and Harry who was unfortunate enough to be shopping there. 

In another scene, Dyer sets off a fire alarm in a Gap clothing store, then quickly gets into his COVID fan truck before a swarm of frightened people leave via the fire exit. He then proceeds to drive alongside the gaggle of people, blowing his giant, corona fan in their helpless, screaming faces, all the while laughing and firing an AK-47 into the sky. Ranganathan assisted by driving up on a quad bike and slapping the hoard of petrified Gap shoppers with a giant synthetic tongue laced with a shit tonne of COVID.  

Still, I enjoyed watching this, and judging by the lack of complaints, the great British public did too. This is apparently what we pay our license fee for now, watching Prue Leith lick a bunch of cereal boxes in the hope that someone will pick it up and catch the virus. Funnily enough, in this case, someone did, Romesh Ranganathan. He decided to lick every single box of Cheerios that Leith had not 15 minutes before graced her tongue with. Karma's a bitch.

It's clear that these long lockdowns have made people into immoral zombies, baying for blood. People have reverted back to the Colosseum days where entertainment involved actual human sacrifice and endless bloodshed. Still, as referenced in the previous review, shows like this aren't really any worst than your Love Islands or your Big Brothers. 

Next week, it'll be the turn of three new celebrities to find creative ways to spread the virus to an unsuspecting public (footballer Jimmy Bullard, former Home Secretary Alan Johnson & rapper Tinie Tempah). I'll be back to watch, i'll admit it. I know you'll be back too. Does that mean we're all savages? 

Panopticon (Channel 4, Sunday, 20:00)

 

Reminiscent of Shakespeare's Globe, one might say. Phwoaaaaaaar!

Oh, Channel 4, you're so daring. 

So to understand Panopticon, a new Sunday night reality show, one needs to know the work of 18th century English philosopher and social reformer Jeremy Bentham. Bentham is regarded as a key thinker in utilitarianism, a loosely connected family of theories that espouse widespread social utility, welfarism, freedom of expression, animal rights etc. The whole shabang. He wrote extensively on these theories and is currently ensconced in a glass cabinet in University College, London, frightening the living shit out of squeamish undergraduates. 

Bentham sitting dignified and at peace within University College, London. Phwoaaaaaar!

The show's name refers to an idea Bentham had relating to prison reform. He proposed a new type of circular prison building, with the prisoner's cells arranged around the outer wall, with a watch tower stationed in the centre. From this central tower, the inspectors would be able to look into the cells and converse with the prisoners via 'conversation tubes'. The prisoners would never be able to see the prison staff.

Bentham theorized that the knowledge of always being observed would drastically alter the criminal's behaviour, and further their rehabilitation. 

"Morals reformed-health preserved-industry invigorated-instruction diffused-public burthens lightened-economy seated, as it were, upon a rock-the gordian knot of the poor-laws not cut, but untied-all by a simple idea in architecture!"

It's an interesting concept and has been debated extensively by reformers to the present day. But you get the jist of it. Circle building, conversation tubes, always being watched, social experiments, great fuel for some thought-provoking telly, huh? 

WRONG!

It's shit. contestants serve as prisoners in the makeshift panopticon building. They are being watched, unknowingly, 24/7 by prison inspectors in the central tower. These inspectors are made up of retired prison wardens and criminal justice activists. Their theories differ wildly as to how the contestants will respond to certain tasks and stimuli fed to them via the conversation tubes. The goal for the prison wardens is to coerce the contestants into believing certain facts and creating complete division between all 32 cells among the prison populace, who are able to communicate only with the cell next to them. 

The contestant's goal is to sort fact from fiction and somehow form a united front and organize themselves efficiently in order to ascertain which nuggets of information are true. 

In theory, this sounds like an interesting show, but it's just so convoluted, so dense and unwieldy. The central themes of the show are very stimulating and ask some very potent questions, "how does one separate fact from fiction?", "How can people organize effectively to challenge higher powers?", "How does manufactured division stifle people's ability to improve?" All very valid questions, but this is not reality show material. Between shots of the wardens speaking through microphones, and the contestants attempting to communicate with each other whilst moaning about their toilets, the show just doesn't live up to it's initial promise. 

One scene saw Adam, a farmer from Suffolk, attempt to experiment with a new method for passing along information to his fellow contestants. The prison wardens have fed him some false information about the number of hours they've been in their cells. Remember, the contestants have to somehow coordinate themselves via crafty and ingenious methods to present a united response. Adam thinks Chinese whispers is the answer. "This here (sic) lil' (sic) nugget is a lie. I have a perfect sense of time, I does (sic), we've been here 12 hour (sic), nun' (sic) more, nun' (sic) less". 

Adam believes if he somehow passes on information by whispering to his neighbouring cell mate, it'll escape the surveillance of the wardens, who won't be able to influence the other cell mates with differing information anymore. 

They haven't thought this through. It makes no sense and it makes for some tedious television. 

"Ah, who's been a silly billy?" Seriously, you can imagine him saying this to a prisoner.

The show is narrated by Ray Winstone to give it some 'edge', but that 'edge' is completely squandered when Gyles Brandreth shows up as the show's presenter. He is not a great fit for a show like this. At one point he literally goes up to the bars and says to a contestant, "Ah, who's been a silly billy?" I mean, for fuck's sake. Also, when he's talking with the wardens up in the central tower, he keeps interrupting them to look at the camera and talk about the history of English borstals. Apparently Dermot O' Leary and Sandi Toksvig turned the gig down. At least Toksvig would have actually listened to the contestants rather than correct their grammar every few seconds like Brandreth did. 

Undercover: Attenborough at Exxon Mobil (BBC, Saturday, 19:43)

Utter bastards

Just like 'Panopticon', this new series sounds exciting in theory, but the reality is duller than watching paint dry in a room with Theresa May playing a triangle.

The series places various left-leaning public figures undercover into conservative and capitalistic institutions, with the express goal of tearing down said institutions from within. This week it's naturalist, broadcaster and intergalactic treasure David Attenborough burrowing his way into a highly lucrative position with American oil and gas corporation Exxon Mobil. 

The show opens with Attenborough presenting a montage explaining who Exxon are, why they're massive arseholes, and why he wants to obliterate and defenestrate them and their children. I came into this programme thinking Attenborough was a calm, good-natured gentleman who only wished to educate and inform, apparently he's become jaded in his old age and now seeks to mercilessly annihilate all the rich bastards who are destroying the environment. 

It then proceeds to show Attenborough under-going an extensive prosthetic makeover to disguise himself before starting his new job as an Exxon Mobil social media spokesman. He's fitted with a luscious strawberry-coloured wig, his eyes are made to appear drooped and full of melancholic dread, and he's given mutton chops and rounded spectacles. Quite why Exxon would employ this interviewee as their social media spokesman is beyond me. 

With the stage set for destruction, Attenborough attends his first Exxon board meeting. The other employees are told the cameras are filming for a corporate documentary, made to help Exxon's image. Attenborough right away suggests a new social media strategy to increase Exxon's positive publicity, but is really meant to harm and degrade them.

He suggests gathering a group of Nuns, African children, paraolympians and Albino grandmas and filming them being shown round an oil rig smiling and laughing and drinking Pepsi. Attenborough tells the company's executives that such a promotional film will help foster Exxon's image as a friendly, open, caring, forward-thinking institution. "You could even show the nuns jumping and splashing about in a pool of oil whilst some Sudanese children fire Nerf guns at them". 

A young David Attenborough. Phwoaaaaaaar!

Now, most people would suggest an idea like this and be fired on the spot, but Attenborough, being 94 years old and wiser than a baked Noam Chomsky in the Bodleian library, is able to get away with it. 

The board gives Attenborough's idea the green light, and sit back and watch as the doomed promotional film causes an international outcry and PR disaster for Exxon. 

The executives choose to back Attenborough (who's disguised as 'Abraham Cambridge') because whilst the PR disaster was happening, he managed to steal some highly confidential and explosive information about the corporation, and threatens to release it if he's fired. 

The rest of the programme sees Attenborough slowly chip away at the company's credibility via social media, producing scandal after scandal, and forcing the executives to make stock market decisions to the detriment of the company and the oil and gas industry as a whole. 

A lot of the programme is explosive and pretty enthralling, but these moments are all too fleeting. The last half hour is literally Attenborough holding a gun to an executive's head whilst he sits and watches Bloomberg markets on his laptop. He hopes to see the company collapse in real time and the BBC clearly think this is an acceptable way to fill the dead air time. Instead of being the nail-biting, tense countdown they were hoping for, it just turns out to be a massive anti-climax as the company goes into liquidation and causes unprecedented tremors in the global financial markets. 

Attenborough closes the programme with a monologue about climate change and environmental disasters caused by companies like Exxon. He's right about it all, but as a result of this programme, the US government has bailed Exxon out, in many ways making them a far stronger and more impenetrable institution. Perhaps the US government itself will be the next institution to be ransacked by revolutionary impostors. 

It certainly isn't on the list of episodes of the shows we can expect in the coming weeks. Next week will see Greta Thunberg disguise herself as a buxom blonde and go undercover at the Trump organization, hoping to slip some arsenic into Eric's morning camomile. Jane Fonda will attempt to infiltrate UKIP playing a sewer-mouthed alcoholic Tyneside fascist and Gary Lineker will take a crack at freemasonry disguised as a balding, obese carpet salesman. I look forward to those. 

BBC News: Anywhere But Britain (BBC, Tuesday, 18:00)

This is actually Bacari Biai, don't worry.

So apparently the BBC think that the news in Britain is too Britain-centric, so they've decided to set themselves a challenge to present news coverage for all 196 countries for one week each. 

The task, which will end with Zimbabwe's news week on 9th November 2024, has been described as a mammoth-undertaking by the BBC's new Director-General, Tim Davie. "We conducted several focus groups and found that people know more about what's happening half way around the world than in their own country. We believe the British people naturally look outward and are inquisitive about what happens in the world."

Just to make it clear, this programme is not going to be shown alongside the usual BBC news. This will replace it. The organization will not report on events in this country till late 2024, even on their 24-hour news channel. Some conservative commentators have claimed this was 'inevitable'. Lord Perrer-Striker, a former Tory minister for blue bins, argues the BBC has had nothing but contempt for the British way of life for years. "I'm not surprised at all, the BBC no longer represents British interests, it cares more about what happens in Guinea-fucking-Bissau than what happens in Stoke-on-Trent."

The BBC have responded by announcing Guinea-Bissau as the first nation to be covered for a week, just to rile up the disgruntled Lord. The first programme has already caused controversy over the title, 'Anywhere But Britain: GB News', with 'GB' standing for Guinea-Bissau. GB News is an upcoming 24-hour right-wing news show, destined to become the UK's Fox News. Confusion between the two will lead right-wingers to become well-informed in Bissau-Guinean political affairs by mistake. Twitter will be abuzz with opinions about the country's new National Director of Interpol, Bacari Biai and what it means for his ousted predecessor Melancio Correia, who is being accused by former Prime Minister Domingos Simoes of attempting to issue an international arrest warrant outside legal boundaries. Spicy stuff. 

I, for one, look forward to this new approach to global news. At least it will mean Boris Johnson won't be given any air time on the BBC. Instead we'll get used to getting used to a country for one week only, then moving on to a completely different country (in alphabetical order, apart from Guinea-Bissau), in an entirely different part of the world. The country will be split down the middle on Honduran gun policy, toxic and spiteful discourse will put a strain on relationships, then be immediately mollified after the coverage of Honduras ends and moves on to Hungary the next week. Political anger, manufactured and encouraged by both sides, will ebb and flow as the weeks go on. The country will get used to crisis after crisis, country after country, continent after continent. Andrew Neil will provoke dinner table conversation about Omani Minister of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion Qais Mohammed Al Yousef's qualifications for the job. 

So, that's telly for you. 

Auditorium of the Old Vic, Waterloo, London. Phwoaaaaaaar!

I would happily burn every single TV in the world if it meant getting theatre back. I miss everything about it. I miss the audience laughing at the wrong moments in a scene that's supposed to be serious and sombre. I miss the cast giving a speech to the audience after the curtain call asking for donations to a charity, then feeling guilty for not carrying any spare change. I miss being spat on by actors as they launch into an astoundingly intense Shakespearean monologue about bone-deep guilt. I miss buying a programme at the interval and smelling it, that smell is like cocaine to me, though I save that for when I see a butchered production of Chekhov. I miss it with an intensity no TV show could ever match up to. And I think I speak for all theatre lovers when I say i'm deeply unsettled, uninspired and unstimulated without theatre in my life. So yes, fetch me the propane, let's burn us some flat screens.