Get the crying eagle jpegs ready.
# THIS is the last Bushell On The Box, at least for the forseeable future. I was leaving the People anyway and have had a couple of (derisory) offers to take the column elsewhere, but to be honest EastEnders going five nights a week has pushed me over the edge.
I’ve watched this pitiful, man-hating libel on Londoners for twenty years. That’s two whole decades of duff scripts, dismal twists, clueless character re-writes, moronic continuity cock-ups and misery. Enough!
Face it, TV isn’t for the likes of me any more, or any other working class male over fifty. Programme makers don’t care about us, so why should we care about them?
I still love some British telly. In particular, TV Burp, Al Murray’s Happy Hour, Life On Mars and Corrie’s comedy grotesques. But great shows are increasingly rare. I get the distinct feeling we’re witnessing The Strange Death of British TV and this sad decline is down to three things. 1) The blinkered pursuit of demographics 2) Bureaucracy and 3) The licence fee. Most modern shows are commissioned not on their merits but because of their imagined appeal to the desired target age, class or gender. It’s one of the reasons why BBC1 hasn’t originated a decent sitcom for more than a quarter of a century but keeps on pumping out dross such as Little Miss Jocelyn and All About Me, a show which ticked every box except: ‘Funny’.
BBC TV is telly by committee; over-regulated, institutionalised and utterly uninspiring. The Beeb isn’t based on commerce, so it has no need to deliver quality. Government-approved state featherbedding has stripped them of all internal energy. The only thing Corporation suits get passionate about is the licence fee; the antiquated tax on viewing that pays their salaries.
Why do they need it? To maintain their market share. Why does the share matter? To justify the licence fee...
The desire to plant their corporate flag in every conceivable area of broadcasting has propelled BBC execs to squander our money on a huge, expanding digital empire. It would have made far more sense in the multi-channel world to concentrate on getting the programmes right.
Majority tastes and opinions are anathema to the patronising, self-loathing middle class do-gooders who run the joint. (Life On Mars gloriously kicks holes in their PC preoccupations; inevitably it’s made by an indie).
C4, also subsidised by the public purse, is propped up by two shows, Deal Or No Deal and Big Brother, both imported from Holland. Little of C4’s current schedule could be described as radical or alternative. Its afternoons are entirely mainstream. Its yoof-obsessed comedy commissions are merely depressing, being increasingly brainless, witless and unwatchable.
Meanwhile, over at ITV the programme commissioners work by: 1) Switching on TV 2) Watching BBC shows and 3) Copying them, badly. They’ve nicked Dragon’s Den, The Apprentice, and Who Do You Think You Are. Primeval is their answer to Dr Who (with a zombie in the lead role). All you need to get a job there is a copy of the Radio Times and a photocopier. Soaps have colonised ITV prime-time like Japanese knot weed. Only their Saturday nights impress.
Ironically, the 21st Century has been a golden age for television; American TV that is. Subscription channel HBO has set the pace, producing a stream of pure-gold: The Sopranos, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Oz, The Wire, Six Feet Under, Chris Rock specials, Deadwood—shows so good they take your breath away. HBO set the bar high, and other US broadcasters have risen to the challenge with 24, The Shield, The West Wing, Law & Order, CSI, My Name Is Earl, Everybody Loves Raymond, Everybody Hates Chris, Lost, The Osbournes and more.
They give us brilliant nightly topical comedy shows too. Across the board, the Yanks deliver. Why? Because 1) US TV is based on commerce and 2) They’ve stopped thinking demographically. They’ve realised that quality is all that matters. Make decent shows and the viewers will come. Our lot commission shows aimed squarely at an audience who won’t be wathcing them cos they’re out clubbing or pubbing. A comedy like Only Fools & Horses would never be made now – blue-collar, middle aged men in a down-market setting, trading in mainstream humour…who’d watch that?
The best modern US TV hooks three generations of my family. Very few recent British TV shows have. Let’s see: Phoenix Nights (2001–2), The Office (2001–2), The Blue Planet (2001), Shameless (2004—), Life On Mars (2005—) and Early Doors (2003–4). (Ironically international smash The Office became a hit despite the Beeb. Their comedy boss Jon Plowman had to be talked in to making a pilot, thought Ricky Gervais was wrong for the lead and waited six months before deciding to make the series. The show was nearly pulled after the first episode transmitted after a thumbs-down from the BBC viewers’ panel…)
No current comedy makes me laugh louder and harder than Harry Hill’s TV Burp (2001- ), largely because it affectionately ridicules the mess British TV has become. Our home-grown telly grows increasingly camp, gormless and narrow. We have endless ‘choice’ of different versions of the same fashionable garbage. The whole set-up is a mess and there’s no sign of it getting any better. Television today is full of scrawny, self-satisfied graduates whose only discernable talent is sipping caramel macchinos while fiddling with their BlackBerries. They have nothing but contempt for their medium and their viewers. British TV is losing the capacity to excite us and enthral us. Great home-grown telly is going the way of space hoppers, Spangles and the Stylophone.
You can stick around and watch it deteriorate if you like. I’ve got better things to do.
# FOR scathing, honest and funny TV reviews, read Ally Ross in The Sun. For beautifully crafted observations, see Nancy Banks-Smith in the Guardian. No other TV critic is worth a light.“
I’m surprised he likes Nancy though. I thought he had no taste at all.
other US broadcasters have risen to the challenge with...Everybody Loves Raymond
Erm.
tragic. He should turn to political punditry. I get the impression he could give Richard Littlejohn a run for his repulsive money.
I think even a return to music would be better than that.
The Gonads released an album last year.
I think even a return to music would be better than that.
Surely we have enough Hilton apologists in music crit already?
my name is earl is worse than everybody loves raymond
I only know Gary Bushell’s name from a lyric by The Fall in I think ‘Stop Mithering’.
Life On Mars gloriously kicks holes in their PC preoccupations
Er...no it fucking doesn’t.
Did anyone see that programme where DNA experts were testing celebs (mostly right wing tossers) to find their dominant genes relating to ethnicity? Apparently Bushell came out something like 20% negro. Ha ha!
this is v OTM in places and awfully blinkered in others.
ELR is probably no better than My Family, for example.
UK TV companies could surely never produce shows like the American ones he eulogises (rightly) with their bigger budgets, bigger audience (and consequently marketing/commercial) potential, for another example.
FOR scathing, honest and funny TV reviews, read Ally Ross in The Sun. For beautifully crafted observations, see Nancy Banks-Smith in the Guardian. No other TV critic is worth a light.
What about Off The Telly website you technophobic bigot?!
This is pretty much like when Dave Lee Travis jacked in Radio One because it wasn’t like it was in the old days, isn’t it?
(also, he says re Only Fools and Horses that nobody would watch working class men trading in traditional humour these days, hang on, what’s on his list of things he actually does like, oh yeah, Early Doors, Phoenix Nights and Al Murray Pub Landlord. Yeah, they’re all Nathan Fucking Barley, aren’t they)
Yes, the man is an idiot. But he writes for the People—can you really expect anything better? Does anyone ever even see copies of the People for sale?
It’s always nice to find something contradictory in someone’s upbringing to their protestations like insulting graduates when you were educated at Oxbridge. Unfortunately, it just seems like Gary Bushell is an idiot, as I said already. I’ll say it again: he’s an idiot!
...
“Our home-grown telly grows increasingly camp...”
IDIOT!
Does anyone ever even see copies of the People for sale?
What an odd question
Well, he’s sort of right. More right than wrong. In this case anyway.
I see it for sale with all the other Sunday papers, maybe I just live somewhere with a big Eamonn Holmes fanbase
British TV does seem to suck the big one largely lately. It’s not coincidence that the only tele I’ve watched in the last three years has been DVDs of 24, downloaded episodes of Lost and Heroes, and occasional football.
Surely that should read Big Eamonn Holmes fanbase?
Telly’s always been 9/10ths crap, it’s just that your tolerance for crap gets less as you enter middle age. Then it goes right up again, apparently.
ten british shows i enjoy at the mo:
Dragon’s Den
Life On Mars
Football Focus
Top Gear
University Challenge
Question Time/This Week double-bill
Culture Show (good on everything except pop music)
TV Burp
Screen Wipe (when i remember to watch)
Ideal (well, a bit...)
Comedy Connections
Ideal (well, a bit...)
Yeah... this show is a _lot_ better than it has any right to be. It’s not actually, y’know, funny, but it works in a kinda Happiness downtempo comedy/drama way.
I simply don’t watch tele apart from about three hours a week of downloaded stuff at the moment, and maybe a film or two. Between listening to music, reading, playing Pro Evo, cooking, walking, I’ve just not got time.
i would never have watched it
had i not caught it by accident with expectations low enough to only be raised (xpost)
Does this mean Dave McCullough will be taking over his job?
Somewhere in there there is a good point being made, unfortunately it’s obscured by Bushell being a massive twat.
Biba Kopf on the weeks TV! xpost obv.
Dirty Den loved you! Dirty Den Died for you!
(I shuttup now)
the funny thing is you could write almost exactly the same article about BRITISH POP MUSICS
Who’s the Bushell of music criticism?
xpost
and print it in the Grauniad every week
Harris duh
Dirty Den is appearing in The Bill
Mike Baldwin is appearing in Holby City
MAAAAD WOOOORLD
David ‘Hep-cat’ Hepworth?
xp
I remember the golden age of TV in the 70s when every single programme was brilliant and nobody ever left the house for fear of missing a second of deathless genius.
Jesus actually returned to earth in 1974 to voice his approval of The Comedians, particularly the groundbreaking work Charlie thingy did to break down racial barriers in this country. However, the so-called “PC Lobby” have wiped that from the record books.
I don’t think I ever liked TV much.
# THIS is the last John Harris On Music column, at least for the foreseeable future. I was leaving the Guardian anyway and have had a couple of (derisory) offers to take the column elsewhere, but to be honest ILx going five nights a week has pushed me over the edge.
I’ve watched this pitiful, man-hating libel on music critics for five years. That’s two whole decades of duff scripts, dismal twists, clueless character re-writes, moronic continuity cock-ups and misery. Enough!
Face it, music criticism isn’t for the likes of me any more, or any other working class male over fifty. Music lovers don’t care about us, so why should we care about them?
I still love some British music. In particular, Oasis, Heavy Stereo, Bruce Springsteen and 18 Wheeler’s comedy grotesques. But great bands are increasingly rare. I get the distinct feeling we’re witnessing The Strange Death of British Music and this sad decline is down to three things. 1) The blinkered pursuit of demographics 2) Bureaucracy and 3) Black people. Most modern music is commissioned not on its merits but because of its imagined appeal to the desired target age, class or gender. It’s one of the reasons why EMI hasn’t originated a decent indie band for more than a quarter of a century but keeps on pumping out dross such as Coldplay and Radiohead, a band which ticked every box except: ‘Funny’.
British music is indie by committee; over-regulated, institutionalised and utterly uninspiring. Indie rock isn’t based on commerce, so it has no need to deliver quality. Government-approved state featherbedding has stripped them of all internal energy. The only thing Dublin Castle fisherman’s jumpes get passionate about is the licence fee; the antiquated tax on viewing that pays their bar bills.
Why do they need it? To maintain their market share. Why does the share matter? To justify their bar bill...
The desire to plant their corporate flag in every conceivable area of broadcasting has propelled indie execs to squander our money on a huge, expanding digital empire. It would have made far more sense in the multi-channel world to concentrate on getting the music right.
Majority tastes and opinions are anathema to the patronising, self-loathing middle class do-gooders who run the joint. (Oasis gloriously kicks holes in their PC preoccupations; inevitably it’s made by an indie).
Universal Music, also subsidised by the public purse, is propped up by two bands, Girls Aloud and Emma Bunton, both imported from Holland. Little of Universal’s current schedule could be described as radical or alternative. Its afternoons are entirely mainstream. Its yoof-obsessed comedy commissions are merely depressing, being increasingly brainless, witless and unwatchable.
Meanwhile, over at the Observer the music writing commissioners work by: 1) Switching on their computer 2) Watching blogs and 3) Copying them, badly. They’ve nicked Stylus, The Church Of Me and Woebot. Kitty Empire is their answer to Michelangelo Matos (with a zombie in the lead role). All you need to get a job there is a copy of Plan B and a photocopier. Lily Allen has colonised OMM prime-time like Japanese knot weed. Only her Saturday nights impress.
Ironically, the 21st Century has been a golden age for rock; indie rock that is. Subscription channel Rough Trade has set the pace, producing a stream of pure-gold: Carter USM, Arctic Monkeys, OzZy Osbourne, Dodgy, Menswear, Jarvis Cocker specials, Roy Wood—shows so good they take your breath away. The Camden Underworld set the bar high, and other indie venues have risen to the challenge with Frank & Walters, Bloc Party, Kasabian, Skunk Anansie, My Life Story, Birdland, Bradford, Gerry & the Pacemakers, Billy Cotton, JJ Barrie and more.
They give us brilliant nightly topical comedy indie too. Across the board, indie delivers. Why? Because 1) Indie is based on commerce and 2) They’ve stopped thinking demographically. They’ve realised that quality is all that matters. Make decent indie and the viewers will come. Our lot commission acts aimed squarely at an audience who won’t be wathcing them cos they’re out clubbing or pubbing. A comedy like the Manic Street Preachers would never be made now – blue-collar, middle aged men in a down-market setting, trading in mainstream humour…who’d watch that?
The best modern indie hooks three generations of my family. Very few recent British rock has. Let’s see: the Beatles (2001–2), the Jam (2001–2), The Style Council (2001), Jonathan Fire-Eater (2004—), the Pogues (2005—) and Billy J Kramer & the Dakotas (2003–4). (Ironically international smash The Beatles became a hit despite the Guardian. Their comedy boss Alexis Petridish had to be talked in to making a pilot, thought Mick Jagger was wrong for the lead and waited six months before deciding to make the records. The band was nearly pulled after the first single transmitted after a thumbs-down from the Guardian readers’ panel…)
No current comedy makes me laugh louder and harder than Oasis (2001- ), largely because it affectionately ridicules the mess British rock has become. Our home-grown rock grows increasingly camp, gormless and narrow. We have endless ‘choice’ of different versions of the same fashionable garbage. The whole set-up is a mess and there’s no sign of it getting any better. Rock today is full of scrawny, self-satisfied graduates whose only discernable talent is sipping caramel macchinos while fiddling with their BlackBerries. They have nothing but contempt for their medium and their viewers. British TV is losing the capacity to excite us and enthral us. Great home-grown rock is going the way of space hoppers, Spangles and Johnny Marr & the Healers.
You can stick around and watch it deteriorate if you like. I’ve got better things to do.
# FOR scathing, honest and funny music reviews, read Alexis Petridish in The Sun. For beautifully crafted observations, see Alexis Petridish in the Guardian. No other music critic is worth a light. I know which side my bread’s buttered.“
: D
Next up, the last ever blog by Marcello Carlin.
bushell is kinda otm in a lot of the piece, much as i hate to say it. i doubt he’s actually watched a single one of the american shows he’s praising, mind you.
They don’t seem his kind of thing, do they?
’six feet under’ is the real ‘yeah right’ show in the list.
Especially from someone who IIRC was swift to praise Up The Elephant And Round The Castle.
British version of The Wire starring Jim Davidson, stat.
British NCIS starring Julian Clary and Alan Carr because sailors, 1973, &c.
A comedy like the Manic Street Preachers would never be made now – blue-collar, middle aged men in a down-market setting, trading in mainstream humour…who’d watch that?
Hahaha!
re. the ’70s — fuck the sitcoms, the one-off plays is where things were at. bbc drama is almost without exception dross now.
I don’t think Bushell was ever complimentary about the likes of POTTY PERVERT POTTER.
the one-off plays is where things were at
Hugely OTM. Play for Today is something the Beeb has completely lost the ability/cojones to do.
Gosh. Well, we shall see.
it would be interesting to see... but stuff like that was fed by a theatrical climate i don’t think exists any more. but i’m a grumble-guts.
And that news piece is a year old.
Why did they stop making The Cops?
I suppose it had a good run, but if they can keep The Bill going forever...
If PFT (or similar) does come back, and has the same ratio of good to bad as I think / suspect / vaguely remember the previous run having, then it’ll be pilloried in places like this for being mostly rubbish, I fear.
yeah well, probably — although stuff like ‘life on mars’ gets a good hearing here, so maybe not! you can’t really revive it in its original state because no-one would watch it, the politics are ‘of their time’ occasionally. but i’m thinking of one-off dramas like ‘made in britain’, and there’s been literally nothing at that level in living memory. politically it’s *fairly* ambiguous.
I looked at this:
http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/445349/index.html
and the things I know which the writer mentions are pretty good, a few amazingly good, but compared to the volume of one-off dramas which were being produced, he’s not touting very many. I’m not saying they shouldn’t revive the form, but we certainly shouldn’t expect the format to throw up “Made In Britain”s more than, I dunno, once in a decade. And I’m not sure any of us have theh attention span to wait that long before writing off the whole enterprise.
Hasn’t the space for the one-off drama kind of bloated a little and turned into TV company funded feature films?
Also you appear to have forgotten all about “This Life +10”. Er, hold on.
Hasn’t the space for the one-off drama kind of bloated a little and turned into TV company funded feature films?
yeah this was basically what did it, when c4 launched and a bit later when the bbc got into movie production. with c4 it’s complex because a lot of their stuff was ‘limited release’ theatrically (and abroad). but ‘bloated’ is right for the latter-day stuff, which seems kind of middlebrow export dench stuff on the whole, ‘sylvia’ and ‘iris’; meantime channel 4 stopped making movies after ‘charlotte gray’ (i think).
And that news piece is a year old.
Yes, but it says:
The BBC’s head of drama, Jane Tranter, said it was “early days” for the project, which will not hit the screen until next year.
I can’t find anything to say it’s been scrapped (nor anything to say when we can expect more information).
the problem with the ‘glory days’ is, you can pick the things you like and extrapolate them so it seems like everything was like that. but im sure a little nostalgia, and received-nostalgia, won’t hurt
they dont make things like they used to and you wouldn’t like it if they did
they forgot penda’s fen
someone put penda’s fen up on uk nova then other week so i grabbed it.
I met a bloke in a pub once, while drunk, who said he was a writer and had written a Play for Today once and that he was doing one for the recommissioned series too. Or did he work for someone who’d written one in the past and now he’s doing one himself? I can’t remember, I was drunk. Anyway, the bloke I was drinking with was all stupid mad excited about it (he was less drunk). I shall REPORT BACK with FACTS once I contact said soberer person, and if I remember.
(this was between Christmas and New Year, btw, so if bloke in pub is to be believed, the revival is still a work in progress and hasn’t been scrapped. Or else it has and this dude’s writing a TV play for nothing and will have to hawk it to other TV companies or rewrite it for the stage or something. Can you tell I know *nothing* of how this works?)