Patronizing Pleb Pleasers Who Need Punching - A Field Guide

[parma_violets]

Every now and then, in the modern media landscape, someone will stand up and say the unsayable - that reality shows aren't very good, and there are too many of them. Usually it's someone like Michael Parkinson, who can be easily dismissed as pining for the good old days of Mind Your Language and Churchill's People, but what happens when it's

Comments

[thermaland]

You are talking a lot of sense, mister.

Personally I can't watch "reality" TV. It causes me to, er, want to die. I don't understand people putting themselves through this of their own free will, and I don't understand people sitting there watching nothing much happening for hours on ends, spying on the sort of people we all go out of our way to avoid in real life. I'm told I'm a snob when I say this.

[parma_violets]

I thank you. *bows*

Being called a "snob" for disliking reality TV by people who earn more money in one day than I ever will in a lifetime is a very peculiar experience. Presumably the millions and millions of people who watched Culloden, The Singing Detective and I Claudius when they were first broadcast were also detestable snobs. After all, expecting television to move you, excite you and take you to a conclusion more challenging than someone saying "I can't believe it!" over and over again in front of Davina McCall? They must hate the working class...

[londonkds]

I agree with all this, but for a minute I was thinking you were talking about London E4 and bemused by your belief that everyone there is middle-class.

[parma_violets]

Heh. I don't know nearly enough about London to pull off such a joke. Bad television, on the other hand, remains a specialist subject.

[parma_violets]

It seems like every interview I read with him makes me groan a bit more. He seems absolutely passionate about defending things that most people agree on and don't really need defending.

My favourite was when he was called up on Rose calling the Doctor "gay" in 'Aliens of London' and he went on this astonishingly lengthy spiel of horseshit about how, as a dramatist, he needed to challenge the audience and sometimes you won't sympathize with the characters because as a dramatist he needs to reflect reality and blah blah blah... I just wanted to shake him and say "Russ, it was a cheap joke! Say it's funny if you want, say it's in character if you want, but trying to pretend it was the latter-day equivalent of Secret Army is just taking the piss!"

He reminds me increasingly of one of those American right-wing talk show hosts who, when they get called out for something they say, embark on a thousand-word rant about how Clinton got a blow-job and that absolves all right-wingers from any responsibility ever.

[baron_scarpia]

The funny thing about this is that Bad Wolf - scripted by one Russell T Davies - often plays as quite a condemnation of reality television. The bsaic premise of the episode centres around millions of couch potatoes happily watching victims self-destruct (quite literally). When the Doctor is ordered into Big Brother's diary room and says 'You have got to be joking', it feels very much like Doctor Who is making a challenge to the other programmes.

I am ashamed to say that Davies is a Cambridge graduate...

[cantabulous]

You jest of course. Cambridge and he wrote 'Century Falls'? The arse is falling out of my world.

[parma_violets]

And your trousers.

[parma_violets]

I always wondered about that, too, as well as what Eccleston might have felt when he played those scenes. Unlike Davies, Eccleston's political and cultural views aren't limited to the strictly fashionable, and I imagine that trashing the Big Brother house represented a pretty good day at the office for him.