So, what have I watched? Well, we got home slightly sozzled from a luvvly Xmas day out at around 6pm, checked the Radio Times and saw that Dr Who was starting in 15 minutes. We put it on, B watched it, I was asleep by 6:30, only waking as the credits were rolling. After all, that's what these later series of DW are for surely? Quite why a ridiculously overhyped kids sci-fi programme is now poured over and picked to bits by legions of obsessives has long been a mystery to me, and I was a big fan up to when Pertwee left. I suppose I just grew out of it like you grow out of short trousers and simplistic pop music.
It has to be said that the Beeb wastes a good proportion of its drama budget on a franchise that spends half the time gazing adoringly at its own navel and the other half setting new world records at shark jumping. Still as long as it turns a profit for the Beeb then I'll carry on using it as a visual lullaby.
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Another programme getting well past its sell-by is Top Gear. I would bet that at least a third of the audience for this year's "special" were only there to see the well-publicised bust-up at the end, when Mr Potatohead and his mates were sent fleeing for their lives from southern Argentina. At the start of the second part of the Patagonia extravaganza, Clarkson, in a specially filmed prequel with May and Hammond sitting silently around the table with him like two not-so-wise monkeys said the production team were aware of the errant numberplate - H982 FKL - and that they couldn't simply change the plate before leaving the UK, and that it would be changed before the planned game of car football at the end. What a load of horseshit! Of course they could have changed it, by spending a few hundred quid at DVLA. Did they really think no-one would spot the provocative plate as it was driven for hundreds of miles through Argentina and Chile and that word would reach the excitable Argentinian veterans and their buddies of what was coming their way? Do they really expect anyone to believe that they weren't expecting trouble sending three British neanderthals to "make peace" with the locals at the home port of the General Belgrano, a place where Brits are loathed probably more than in anywhere else on the planet? Like everything else about this programme, the whole scenario was so obviously fixed, but they got far more than they bargained for, and you can only say it served them right.
There was only one part in the two hours that made me laugh as opposed to chuckle, when they jerry-built the final section of an unfinished bridge, and Clarkson turns to Hammond saying "Yes, but is it straight?" "Yes" replies the short one, quick as a flash - you got the impression it wasn't scripted too. Of course the dreary and humourless Guardianistas will be up on their high horses over that, I've no doubt. Clarkson is, despite his TV image, a highly intelligent bloke, and is only too aware of the controversy that he deliberately courts. He is possessed of a self-awareness and guile that we can only be thankful are way, way beyond the feeble mental grasp of the likes of Nigel Farrago, so be grateful for small mercies...unless Clarkson joins UKIP...bloody hell, that's a frightening prospect!
The glorious scenery and the concluding and frightening rock hurling scenes aside, it was all rather dull, and it was embarrassing watching the three of them churn up deserts and a pristine beach with their primordial gas-guzzling cars in areas where frankly cars shouldn't even be allowed. I think it's high time they called it a day. James May seems to have more about him than the other two, and it is disappointing to see him continually going along with Clarkson's irksome jingoism. He must love the dosh too much to care.
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A lot of football is played over the holiday season, but as Mr Martinez has turned my team into Wigan on crutches, I haven't watched a single Match of the Day. Hopefully that will change tonight, but I ain't counting my snapped ligaments.
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Charlie Booker's annual round-up has become something of a fixture for me. You think I can be acerbic? Well, Charlie is the master! His withering and dyspeptic style was perfect for summing up a bloody awful year that came packaged with austerity, atrocities, religious intolerance, bigotry, disease, war, political dislocation, extreme weather, a royal baby, and 40-year old sex crimes deflecting attention from the endless list of unpunished filching carried out by thieving bankers. Levity was provided by dumb prole parody characters Philomena Cunk and Barry Shitpeas, who I laugh at with an increasing uneasiness as every year the growing proportion of the wilfully ignorant in the general population moves closer and closer to the stupidity of the intellectually condemned duo. Oh, the joy!
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B and I ended the year watching "Queen + Adam Lambert" on the Beeb. Never heard of Lambert before, but he did a passable Freddie impersonation. Apparently he once came second in American Idol, but he can actually sing, so I won't hold that against him! During Bohemian Rhapsody they cut to a video of Freddie singing, and it was instantly noticeable that Lambert has nowhere near the power of Fred's voice, but Fred was unique and could have been an opera singer if he wanted. And, boy, didn't Queen have a vast number of hits?! It's only when a largish chunk of them were played end to end that I was reminded of that. Seems John Deacon is no longer with the band, so "Queen" are now Roger Taylor, who sounded and looked a bit knackered, and Brian May, who can still bang it out. Yep, quite enjoyable!
Have a great 2015, and may it bring you and yours all you wish for...and now, my 2014 TV wibble...
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This is Britain, so where TV is concerned there are no "seasons" here; winter is a season, a sequential TV show is a series! Harrumph...
Over the last year I watched - or more correctly, the TV's been on and I've intermittently looked up from a book/magazine/tablet - a few drama series, the best of which, and one that got my undivided attention, was Peaky Bloinders ("o" optional, for added Brummie affectations). As if the premise of setting The Sopranos in grime-filled industrial 1920s Birmingham wasn't enticing enough, the pin-sharp script, great visuals and marvellous soundtrack all combined to make for some rivetting viewing. Unusually these days the script made the female characters as strong and as malevolently flawed as the men. You won't find any female victims or martyrs in Bloindersland, for sure.
Speaking of which two well made if ultimately formulaic cop dramas centered on socipathic killers being sought by female head honcho cops - The Fall and Happy Valley - both relied on the usual misogynistic and stereotypical roles, where the women are either victims of brutal assault, or martyrs to violent men, or, as heads of drama these days seem to demand, preferably both.
Strangely the most violent of the two was written by a woman. Happy Valley looked like it started with Sally Wainwright staring at a blank Word document and writing in bold, font size 20, centered and caps lock on...
ALL MEN ARE BASTARDS!!
...and worked her way downhill from there. The show had a general downer on men, with all the male characters being weak at best, and this was compounded by far more vicious misogynistic violence than was strictly necessary to tell what was actually a well acted and a decent if familiar cop/psycho story. All in all, a ghastly and nasty piece of TV.
The Fall at least redeemed itself partly by making Gillian Anderson's misandrist steely eyed copper as calculating and cold as her sociopathic nemesis, and was the better of the two despite its telegraphed predictable ending.
Both those two I dipped in and out of, but two more series I paid full attention to were Fargo and Utopia. Fargo was the TV remake of the film, which I've never seen, so I can't say how it compares. Although it was a vehicle for Martin Freeman, who did a sterling job as the henpecked hubby who snapped, that being only the start of his decline, there can be no question that Billy Bob Thornton stole the show as the psychopathic Lorne Malvo. Rarely is comedy as dark as this.
The second series of Utopia arrived. For those not familiar, Utopia is a quite bonkers "us and them, us on the run" construct with the promise of possible armageddon, all fried in Leary's finest acid. Filmed like the director was trying to show the world as a synaethesia sufferer sees it, and allied to a very surreal script, it made for hyper-real and edgy TV - progressive TV, if you will!
Right, that's it...time for a hangover-absorbent lunch...
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