It’s that time of year again when pleasantries are dominated by the lines “doesn’t it get dark early now!” and “the summer’s gone quick hasn’t it!”. At what speed time would have to travel for it to feel like summer has gone at an expected rate I don’t know as I’m not a scientist; unfortunately Stephen Hawking is yet to answer my email on this but I’ll let you know when I can.
Anyway, the athletics world championships were broadcast this week, with Channel 4 doing the honours of ruining the coverage by showing adverts at the same rate a seven year old who’s learnt to cartwheel shows his mum. Channel 4 also decided it would be a good idea to get Ortis Deley, a man with no knowledge of athletics and an utter inability to express any strands of understanding he might have, and sit him next to Michael Johnson. The result was as expected: Ortis managed to find awkward pauses in places where David Brent wouldn’t dare look, creating an atmosphere of similar discomfort to when the Prince Phillip greets Barack Obama. Deley was hastily replaced by a trendy indie thing stolen from T4 who is so hip his facial hair is actually an underground band yet to be discovered.
Jonathan Ross has also returned to hopefully unclog the dribble filled pipes that make up ITV’s Saturday night schedule. ‘The Jonathan Ross show’ is essentially the same format as its predecessor except the four poofs have been replaced by a wall and the familiar red and violet of the old studio swapped for a sort of artificial daffodil yellow. Ross has lost none of his touch however; he asked the rather polite Lewis Hamilton the kind of slightly intrusive questions an annoying classmate would ask you immediately after finding out you have a girlfriend. Sarah Jessica Parker (whom I have humorously noticed looks similar to horse) was another of the show’s guests and provoked Ross to produce a masterclass in talking to someone about their latest, not at all formulaic Hollywood rom-com without accidentally mentioning its terribleness.
Prior to watching ‘The Jonathan Ross show’ I also accidentally caught the introduction to the X-factor, and, before rushing to pour bleach into my ear canals I noticed how the programme pointed out its ‘dominance’ over the UK top 40. The tone of this assertion was one of pride or even mild arrogance, which is strange, seeing as topping the charts in today’s pop scene is like winning a contest to see who can throw up the most loudly on a night out. I know it’s a cliché but how can Simon Cowell actually live with himself? Just food for thought.
Even if the x-factor is supposedly dominating the charts, most of the stars of ITV’s talent shows seem incapable of escaping the clutches of cheap Saturday night entertainment, almost as if they’ve struggled to maintain a career outside the confines of manufactured sob-story drama. But then this obviously doesn’t apply to the rather talented Leona Lewis who strangely appeared on the monstrously tacky ‘Red or Black?’ last night: it’s clearly either part of her contract or Leona just loves probability based Saturday night game shows (probably the former).
I should probably mention the loss of a truly special programme from Freeview’s screens that occurred this week. That’s right, Friends, the third most shown programme of all time (narrowly beaten by Top Gear on Dave and ‘the news’) came to an end on E4 after over four hundred years of broadcasting. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to miss knowing exactly what the punch line is going to be before a character makes a joke and then still laughing at it anyway. S’pose there’s always the box set.
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