Two pints of Lager, and an almighty number of painkillers please.

The other day I saw The Two Pints of Lager, Grownups and Coming of Age comic relief special. It was not good; although, it was probably as good as that sentence suggests. I know it's for charity but, surely, Africa isn't that hungry that they would wish this inflicted upon the British Public? We've already sat through enough Little Britain sketches, what more could they want? We've had to witness the indignity of Davina McCall dancing to FloRida!(and looking not unlike Barbara Castle experiencing a particularly potent crystal meth trip)Isn't that enough? She's 41 for fucks sake! And on top of that FloRioda is shit, so I'm not sure who she was trying to impress, but it certainly wasn't me. I'm sure if they allowed the Beneficiaries of Comic Relief to vet some of the sketches, most would sent back for making a mockery of their starvation. Also Comic Relief has been going for, like, a million years, and from what I can gather after watching the numerous appeals, is that it's done fuck all. Maybe we need a more effective method of giving aid, one that doesn't clog up the viewing schedule with Davina McCall. It's a thought. Anyway, I digress, The Two Pints special brought together the casts of 3 of BBC 3's premier comedy series, which most people probably didn't realise were different shows anyway, as the sets characters acting and scripts are all pretty much interchangeable. I think this whole exercise was designed just to inform people but they were separate shows as it is really difficult to tell which one you're watching and, just to confuse you further, two of them even have the same actress playing almost identical characters. The show starts with Janet (Sheridan Smith) getting excited about the local pub's comic relief fun night of fun, Gaz (Will Mellor) interjects that it won be as fun as "Gaz Wilkinson's fun night of bum"(snort) with the kind of comic timing you'd expect from someone who used to be in Hollyoaks. And there, was the shows high point. Soon everyone is lined up in the pub and we are informed that they represent a sizable proportion of BBC 3's 16 - 34 demographic, but then so do doggers, so it's not that impressive. Most of the jokes revolve around Sheridan Smith's (admittedly impressive) rack, with the characters constantly pointing out, over and over again, that she is rather well endowed. Now far be it from me to complain about people extolling the virtues of our fairer halves assets, indeed, when they are as impressive as Miss Smith's sweater bunnies I actively encourage it, but she was in The Royale Family, and performs regularly on the West End. The rest of the show is based on a fairly loose premises set around the pub quiz, with various rounds such as the bitch off and flirt off. I've never been to a pub quiz with rounds such as these and usually only have to tackle boring subjects such as general knowledge and films, but then I've never been to fictional pub in Runcorn, that combines three hugely unrealistic sitcoms. The various characters take part in the different rounds, although most of the characters are little more than glorified extras. The show ends with a song entitled "Stop thinking, start drinking" Which is good advice, although one wonders whether it may have been far more useful if placed at the beginning of the show. It's quite disconcerting when the creators of a show freely admit should be pissed to enjoy it, but in this case it's quite apt. And anyway, it's far more dignified to blame the disintegration of your brain cells on excessive drinking rather than watching this.

Skincest.

The new series of skins has started. Hooray. However, I decided to give it two weeks before throwing my opinion of it over the web, as, in true skins style, the opening episode is not really an episode, but more of an extended trailer, introducing the characters and brief snippets of their personalities that tantalisingly hint at the shenanigans we should be in for in the coming weeks.
We start episode 2 with the focus on Cook, the fun loving loudmouth who, at first glance, appears to be a chav version of Chris from the first two seasons. There’s a fairly obvious play on words you can form from his name: one that, no doubt, is in use on many Internet forums as we speak. Suffice to say, over the course of the episode Cook proves this nickname to be entirely accurate.
I posted last week that Skins series 3 would take one of two directions, and, unfortunately, it appears that Skins has decided not to bother itself with silly things like narrative and character, instead concentrating on fitting as many scenes that would look cool on youtube into one episode as possible, in the vain hope that viewers will send said clips to each other taking multi platform viewing to it’s inevitable moronic conclusion. Take Cook: When we first meet him he is, undeniably, a bellend. This is no bad thing, some of the finest characters in TV history are bellends; indeed, it would take a fool to argue that Tony series 1 was anything but. However, rather than reveal layers to the character, or to ground him through, if not situations, but at least actions that are believable, he simply acts like an even bigger bellend than you initially thought. The characterisation across the board is uniformly weak and the whole thing plays out like the Bash Street Kids have found their fathers secret stash- although nowhere near as entertaining as that sounds.
The dip in quality from, not just the first series, but the (poor) second series is noticeable. I can’t blame the actors who, for such a young group, do a fine job with what they are given. And the direction, as always with skins, is excellent, if a little too frenetically paced for my tastes. The problem lies with the script, which was truly dreadful. Not only did the dialogue lack all of the wit and candour of previous Skins episodes, but the episode must also rank as the least believable hour of fiction I’ve seen on T.V. And I’m including Seasame Street, Back to the Future and that episode of the news where O.J. got acquitted in that list. Nothing believable happened. Not once. For starters Cook was still alive at the end of the episode. He would have at least, received a harder beating from the supposed gangsters led by McKenzie Crook (I kid you not) Despite only being 17, Cook was not only able to take enough cocaine and drink enough alcohol to Kill Pete Doherty several times over, but then walk around sober as a judge, visit a brothel, punch a gangster, and maintain an erection! I know you’re at your sexual peek at that age, but the sight of McKenzie Crook spread eagle on a sexual torture rack would be enough to tip anyone over the edge. It was as if the writers simply wanked all their pre-pubescent fantasies of what being a teenager would be over the page, then handed it in to be filmed. Skins seems to be eschewing the larger audience it gained through knowing scripts and clever dialogue, and concentrating on the audience of 13-15 year olds who will live vicariously through its characters. I’m honest enough to admit that, when I was 14, skins would have appealed to me enormously; the idea of kids, only slightly older than me, living seemingly adult lives, but with no responsibilities, worries or recriminations, and only a lifetime orgy of sex and excess to contend themselves with, would have been enormously attractive. And I imagine it would be for today’s teenagers, if it wasn’t so insulting to their intelligence. Skins seems to be playing to a mythical audience of idiots, who only get excited when they see either a.) drugs b.) drink or c.) sex on the screen. The old skins would have been aware of this and played on these preconceptions. Unfortunately, any sense of self-reference and irreverence has been lost in order so Skins can appear to stay edgy and cool. Skins has been many things before but it’s never been stupid. Until now.

Shedding Skins.

The new series of Skins starts tonight and I await in a state of what can only be described as: apathy. It's not that I dislike Skins- quite the reverse in fact; I thought the first series of Skins was a brilliantly subversive drama and the finest piece of television aimed at Teenagers this century. It's just the second series was, well, awful. It really, really was. Where the first series took every cliche of "yoof" T.V and turned them on their heads, the second series reinforced every doubt and fear you had of what an E4 teenage drama would be, it was like As If all over again. The second series of Skins was, simply, dreadful. Where the first series managed to skillfully craft rounded, three-dimensional characters that took teen stereotypes and turned them on their head (quite literally in Tony's case), the second series took those characters and stripped them down into vapid, boring assortments of quirks and one-liners. The Series started to believe it's own hype and concentrated more on appearing edgy and cool and creating 'water cooler moments' for the playground (I'm not sure what the playground equivalent of a water cooler is these days, but, using Skins as my example, I assume it's some effortlessly cool Serbian drug dealer, whom the kids all gather around at break time to buy their mid-day Heroin kicks that they can all inexplicably afford in between their twice weekly flights to New York, all done without their parents even noticing.) I know the first Series had this problem to, but even at its most ridiculous and far fetched (Russia anyone?) the series was wonderfully grounded by the believable and human characters that elicited emotion and humour from the stories. By the second series they were less believable than the plot-lines, and had all become so horrible that the only like-able character left was Chris, who achieved this simply through the virtue of being dead. The promos for the new series don't fill me with hope, with the pikey looking cast seemingly even younger than the first lot, and a truly terrible promo- where said pikeys blow up a pub, Suggesting that Skins 3.0 is going to be reaching for the ever more niche teen audience rather than allowing itself to be an enjoyably guilty pleasure for people over the age of 16 like it used to be. Still, I'll be watching, even if it's just to marvel peculiar fashion sense of trendy London types that permeate society, and wondering just how long I'd last in a school where everyone looks like Nick Grimshaw.

Britains got the pop factor! Or AIDS, it's one or the other.

I don't like modern Britain. I don't like where we, as a nation, are headed. I don't like how all our best young people are crack addicts, and I don't like how all our best crack addicts are Amy Winehouse. What I really don't like is where the music scene is heading and I think everything thats wrong with it can be summed up in two words - The Kooks. I have to confess that when they first came around I quite liked them, I liked that song "Naive" I thought it was quite inoffensive and catchy, even though it was sung in a strained gurning vocal style with an accent that can only be described as Jawthern. I hummed along and thought to myself: "They seem like pleasent young men, I bet they're a bit of fun." Then I saw this:



Maybe they just caught them on a bad day, I thought, but low and behold a few years later- on the same program!- I saw this:



Now, in the above clip the impossible seems to have happend and Alex Zane is in a room with at least four people and is only the third biggest twat there. The two kooks sit there looking like stage school pete dohertys mumbling their way through the interview in their customary humourless style. After watching these clips it slowly dawned on me that Luke Pritchard is a tosspocket of mammoth proportions. Intrigued, I hunted down their album to see if their sparkling personalities translated to their music and lo and behold it was a huge shitcake. The moral of the story- music should not be made by jumped up stage school eductaed little bellends with no sense of their own ridiculousness.

God is a fan of misanthropic T.V critics-proof!

Charlie Brooker is a televisual prophet- I think we can all agree on that. I am in no doubt when machines form a cohesive A.I. and wage war on humans, and they will, that Charlie Brooker will be our leader in the fight against them. Him or Derren Brown anyway. But before then I think everyone should just enjoy the brilliance of the below clip. There's something amazingly subversive of how Charlie's Top Ten Cocks in Advertising appears at just the right time. It's almost as if god himself had a hand in it. That, or the producer thought the presenter was a dick. Either way, it's genius.

Dan in Real Life, is really boring.

I saw Dan in real life on DVD the other day and it astounded me, I would never have guessed how tolerant I was against boredom until I saw this film. It's not a brilliant appraisal when, because the remote control is out of reach, you consider blinding yourself rather than watch the last half an hour of a movie. I decided not to though. I felt that, in hindsight, I would have regretted the permanent loss of my sight no matter how much relief in gave me in the short term, sort of like having a really dangerous asphysixiation wank: no matter how much you may want it, it's best not to go down that road. The film stars Steve Carrell as Dan Burns, doing a passable impression of Charlie Brown, and Dane Cook, surprisingly believable as a human being(which is no mean feat) The film is a fairly contrived play where Dan falls for Mitch's (Cook) girlfriend, Marie, while the Burns family is on a vacation at their parent's beach house. The Burns family is weird. They appear to enjoy each others company and seem to fill their vacations with games and odd group aerobic sessions, when really they should fill them with bitterness, recrimination and drinking like the rest of us. After Dan falls for Marie, nothing happens. Literally. I actually paused the film by mistake and it took me ten minutes before I even noticed. The film is understated to the point where, as opposed to underplaying their roles, the cast just look bored, as if in between takes they were forced to watch rough edits of the finished film. The acting is o.k. and I didn't hate Dane Cook until I remembered he was Dane Cook, which took almost ten minutes, which is a triumph of sorts. It's obvious the film makers wanted to recreate a low key European vibe throughout the film and credit to them for resisting a more over the top approach that countless other American films(meet the parents) would have taken, a move which is especially difficult when you have Dane Cook in the film. It just feels they went too far the other way and, in trying to maintain an understated tone, they sapped the film, and characters, of any life or interest they may have had. It's not helped by a grating Sondre Lerche soundtrack and an interminably slow pace. So while it's not terrible, and it's intentions are good, it's just really, really, dull. Dan in real life? Dud in real life more like.

What they need is a bloody good war.

Kids today eh? They're rubbish aren't they? Well, yes quite frankly. When they're not listening to rap music and stabbing each other, they are trying to avoid working for a living by auditioning for numerous crap reality t.v. shows. What happened to the good old days? You remember Why Don't You and other such diamonds of the T.V schedule? Well I do too; what's missing? I'll tell you - role models. There aren't any any more, that's why we need this man back. Below are some of his numerous pearls of wisdom, with which to live your life. He's a bit like moses, but much, much more awesome - so when world peace is declared after everyone follows this advice, me and my friend Adam will accept your thanks graciously, as it's wrong to be smug.



I think we can all agree the advice given by Rammy is not only the best advice ever given to children, but a lesson we can all take something from as well.