1. ‘Black Mirror: White Christmas’ kicks off the Christmas special season
‘Black Mirror’ began with two men (one of which was Jon Hamm) in a dilapidated old house in the middle of a freezing, barren wasteland. Against this eerie backdrop unfurled three increasingly dark Christmas narratives.
The show was set in a not-so-distant future dystopia, a non-specific point in which 30-year-olds are too young to recognise the word ‘Xerox,’ but where people apparently still drive Rovers. In this world, all modern fears about the prevalence and dependence on technology have been realised: humans have all installed microchips which control their perception of the world called ‘Z-eyes’; personalities have become indistinguishable from pieces of software, and the social media concept of ‘blocking’ has been draconically applied to real life interaction.
Unfortunately, the sharp social commentary that was not so subtlely woven into the show seemed somehow cheapened by the barrage of twists which occurred in the final 15 minutes. Rather than significantly adding to the plot, these served more to cheat the audience out of an understanding of the characters that had been had built up over the preceding hour, and what started out as an uncomfortably plausible nightmare vision of the future all went a bit ‘Flash Gordon’ by the end of the show.
Still, this was entertaining telly, thanks in no small part to that incredibly rare treat – a proper US actor appearing on British television. Hamm essentially played a futuristic Don Draper, but his mere presence in a show like this was enough to boost the quality rating. If even half of this year’s Christmas television is as watchable and thought-provoking as this, it’ll be one of the best festive TV seasons we’ve been treated to in a long while.
2. Sparks fly in ‘The Apprentice’ semi-final
This Wednesday saw the interviews episode of ‘The Apprentice’ – the one that everyone who has ever watched the show spends the entire series looking forward to.
Even after 10 years, this spectacle remains an absolutely delightful hour of television, as formerly cocky and arrogant men and super-confident power-women are broken into little more than whimpering babies by Lord Sugar’s sneering henchmen.
The lamb set up for this season’s slaughter was bouncy youngster Solomon Akhtar. After his CV and application form were cruelly built up as “an absolute pleasure” by Alan Sugar’s terrifying muse, Claude Littner at the start of his interview, he was verbally bludgeoned to death when his woeful business plan came under scrutiny.
Unsurprisingly by the end of the show, but against the odds of the series, the trigger was also pulled on this season’s most impressive candidate, Roisin Hogan. When it transpired that her business plan was seriously flawed, the big man was left with very little option.
The firing left something of a sour taste in the mouth. In earlier seasons of ‘The Apprentice,’ candidates won a job with Sugar rather than an investment, and were evaluated on the 12 week process as a whole. That’s no longer the case, and as a result, one of the most competent candidates ever unjustly fell at the last hurdle. The current format does beg the question that, with so much ultimately riding on the business plan, what the hell is the point of all the other rounds?
3. And the BBC award for dullest act of 2014 goes to…
“Coming up! George Ezra, Ed Sheeran and One Direction!”
Maybe it was because I listened to Noel Gallagher’s interview on Radio 4’s ‘Mastertapes’ the night before, but somehow I found it difficult to share Fern Cotton’s excitement over the line up for the BBC Music Awards, which aired last Thursday night.
In hissession, Gallagher bemoaned the current state of the British music scene, like he always does. But when his grumblings are juxtaposed with the evidence, it’s difficult not to agree with him.
The Awards were a celebration of blandness above anything else. Dreary acoustic ‘singer/songwriters’ followed manufactured boy bands and pretentious ‘dance-fusion’ combos, to a backing track of unbearable Radio 1 staples like Nick ‘Grimmy’ Grimshaw high-fiveing each other over the BBC’s apparently crucial contribution to music. It was pretty frustrating viewing.
Musicians really are an insipid bunch these days. Even the backstage shenanigans that were the highlight of the music award ceremonies of yesteryear seem to have evaporated into a mist of fad diets and selfies. Nowhere better was this portrayed than in Ellie Goulding’s summation of her own outrageous antics: apparently, she had ‘a nice little bean salad thing and a soup.’ Who said Rock ‘n’ Roll was dead?
4. Battle of the ego heavyweights on ‘Question Time’
‘Question Time’ is the most predictable program on television.
Every week, the panel goes like this: second rate Labour MP; second rate Tory MP; third rate Lib Dem MP; MP from a ‘minority’ party (usually UKIP, but sometimes Plaid Cymru, SNP or Green depending on location); a journalist/political commentator/academic; and a celeb (usually a comedian).
The show then runs as follows: the major party MPs (who have no real power anyway) answer questions so rigidly in accordance with their party lines that it becomes impossible to tell whether they are in fact human beings or just party campaign leaflets with a pulse. The minority MPs slag off the major parties and get raucous applause from the dozen or so nutters in the audience who have turned up specifically to support them.
The celeb spouts populist, ill-informed drivel on issues about which they know very little, and, if they’re a comedian, will work in a bit of new material. This usually gets the most applause. The political commentators and journalists usually start by trying to take the show seriously, but realise what a fatal error they have made about halfway through and give up.
This tired formula continued in last week’s episode, but with the two most egotistical men in Britain – Nigel Farage and Russell Brand – filling the ‘celeb’ and ‘minority party’ spots.
Brand and Farage are opposite sides of the same coin. It’s difficult to take either seriously, and both rely on broad, simplified and reactionary views of complex issues to push their ‘messages’. Neither could ever conceivably find any common ground, and neither possesses the expertise, empathy or self-awareness to ever seriously deconstruct or analyse the other’s position. This is why inviting them onto a debate show is fundamentally flawed.
They are two narcissistic, testosterone-fuelled bulls which the BBC loves to invite into its china-shop because verbal fisticuffs are good for ratings. Sure, this was entertaining TV in comparison to the usual snoozefest QT has become, but the pretence that this show is still a forum for serious and engaging political debate is an illusion. You might as well watch the ‘One Show.’
5. ‘Serial’ comes to a conclusion (kind of)
Serial, this year’s hottest podcast, concluded its first season this week, after 12 fascinating episodes and over a year of painstaking groundwork into the 1999 murder of 18-year-old Hae Min Lee in Baltimore. The show’s host Sarah Koenig achieved as close to a proper ending as was possible in regards to the innocence of Adnan Syed, who still maintains that he did not kill his ex-girlfriend.
You almost hear the doubt swirling in Koenig’s head, as she asked herself: “Did we just spend a year applying excessive scrutiny to a perfectly ordinary case?” She didn’t exactly draw a clear cut conclusion (“If you asked me to swear that Adnan Syed is innocent, I couldn’t do it”), but claimed that she would have felt legally obliged to aquit Syed as a juror. Looking back on the evidence brought to the table, it’s not the character witnessess or even the flimsiness of the prosecution that feel like the strongest weapons in Koenig’s armoury, but the absolute convinction of third-parties, such as the ex-homicide detective hired to review the investigation or the lawyers from the University of Virginia Law School’s innocence project clinic.
The finale may have fell a little short of the standard of the rest of the series (that was always going to be the case), but that shouldn’t detract from what has been a journalistic triumph throughout.
Connor Pierce & Alex Andrews
Filed under: Pop Culture
