Thursday, 14th January 2010

2009: The Year TV Died

I’d been feeling this all year but it was brought to my attention most when, on Tuesday, I went on Wikipedia to find out who won this year’s Strictly Come Dancing and then went on YouTube to watch the finals. They were shit. The guy who won was still dancing even in his showdance like one of those male celebrities who is aware they need to lead but are equally aware that they have no idea how to dance, so they just rigidify their frame and glide across the floor in a non-good way, in a sort of robotic “if I can get to the other end of the audience it’ll all be okay” sort of way. My dance teachers had forewarned me that this year’s turnout was pretty crap, but I didn’t expect THIS. Of course, I haven’t been watching Strictly this year anyway, partly for this reason but mostly because of the unceremonious and of course ageist sacking of Arlene Philips, one of the country’s most widely renowned choreographers, in favour of 30 year old Alesha Dixon, who, yes, for a failed celebrity dances better than most (including Chris Hollins), but knows as much about Ballroom & Latin as a 30 year old failed celebrity. Who is now a successful celebrity. The situation was so dire that they had to bring in Darcy Bussell for God’s sake. Bref, the point is, everyone may cry, perhaps justifiably, that Strictly is supposed to be primarily an entertainment show, and yes, I used to be entertained by it, but I watched it for educational purposes, and I’m fairly sure there’s nothing that Alesha Dixon saying, “You really looked like you were involved with the steps” can teach me.

This all contributes to my vastly augmented hatred of reality TV shows from the past year. They’ve been on the rise for a decade, but this year we seem to have gone overboard. Every other new show is So You Think You Can [Insert Something They Can't Do Here]? (The most recent of which, incidentally, is to be judged by Arlene in the BBC’S attempt to prove they’re not outrageously sexist.) At least when the media — and, by extension, the world — was obsessed with Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston, they were obsessed with people with some talent. Now it’s about Cheryl Cole and Dannii Minogue, neither of whom have any, both of whom are yes, very pretty, but with rather annoying accents. Davina McCall and Simon Cowell between them dominate the world once ruled by Oprah Winfrey and George Clooney. I’m not singing the praises of Oprah Winfrey and George Clooney (though Oprah is a massive inspiration to thousands of women, blah blah blah, and George Clooney is fine), but at least they were famous for doing something, as opposed to standing around watching something. We’ve become fascinated by people just existing. Maybe that is fascinating. Maybe it’s even more worthwhile a project than wacky Coen brothers films or whatever. But it’s sure as hell less creative. And for those who cite SCD as being “an entertainment show”, I think it’s pretty hard to make a television programme entertaining without any creativity.

Within the last five or so years, a lot of American dramas have hit our screens. Now, I’m a sucker for American dramas, so be prepared for some bias here. But the arrival of Desperate Housewives, Numbers and Name Any Third One You Like signified an era in which yeah, we all wanted to escape and be sucked into a world where one baby can have three mothers and five fathers and two terminal illnesses, because the more incredible it was, the more normal our own lives seemed, but an era in which we also thought about people, instead of watching them. I remember in Year Eight we were studying Picasso and the Cubists and the disturbing way they drew faces, and our homework was to find a face, cut it up and reassemble it. I chose one of the Channel Five ads. Five’s decision to buy three hit American shows — Shark, House and Grey’s Anatomy — was probably their best ever. Of course, these have all been bought off by Rupert Murdoch now, but for a while there they had me going: I was channel hopping and happened to catch the first episode of the second season of Grey’s, staying on it because I had found the trailer intriguing. Thus was born a major obsession. House used to air right after Grey’s, so I ended up watching that too. When I chucked out all my school books after Results Day this summer, I found the cut-up picture. It was Chase. Three years ago, I’d had no idea who that was.

To go back to Murdoch, who has bought, one by one, every single one of my TV shows (with the exception of the disastrous Strictly, probably because he couldn’t repress a shudder at the thought of being responsible for Bruce Forsyth), maybe he’s the problem. Maybe the American drama hasn’t died in this country; there certainly seem to be a couple advertised every time I go to watch Sky at my sister’s (if House won’t come to me, I must come to House, which I’m sure he would turn into a wonderfully clever sexual joke). In which case, all he’s mercilessly left us proles with only 80 channels with is the soaps that came before the dramas, and the ridiculous So You Think You Cans that came after them. It’s a sad state of affairs, only slightly improved by the imminent pulling down of the figurative Big Brother statue which has, fittingly, towered over us all for the last decade.

It’s at times like this when I can understand how Max can bring himself to watch the Discovery Channel and programmes with titles such as What the Chartists Did For Us (…nothing). Until the return of real television, however, I can take comfort from DVDs (long live the box set!), for films are every bit as awesome as shows. This would be the cue for a long-winded post about the evolution of the film industry, but a) long, b) I have to finish up my Latin Lit for the day and c) I’m pretty sure I ramble about that sufficiently every time I come back from the cinema.