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Watching Doctor Who last night reminded me of a bit in last week’s episode in which Martha, temporarily living in 1913, was told that it was ridiculous for a woman to study to be a (medical) doctor, and “particularly one of [her] colour”.

Or, if you like, a racist remark.

So if it’s okay for the BBC to screen a scripted racially loaded comment, why isn’t it okay for Channel 4 to broadcast an arguably racist incident?

If “reality” telly is supposed to show us what the real world is like — without it having been filtered through a team of scriptwriters, but within the constraints of showing a dozen brainless fools on a sofa — then unless they’re gong to show it red in tooth and claw then what’s the point?

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Keith Allen, for Channel 4 documentary Tourette de France, promises to find out what makes the programme’s subjects tic.

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I love watching Have I Got News For You for all sorts of reasons, but the obscure specialist publication has always especially tickled. Tonight’s was Miniature Donkey Talk.

It shows just how many weird and wonderful magazines there are to work on - all of them potential future places of employment (well, not Miniature Donkey Talk, it’s based in the US).

Here we run into a problem. Magazines by nature communicate with a very well-defined audience: they’re all specialised, to various degrees. This may mean mobility problems in moving between very different titles.

George Monbiot writes - and in some ways I agree with him, which is rare - that:

The advisers say that a career path like this is essential if you don’t want to fall into the “trap” of specialisation: that is to say, if you want to be flexible enough to respond to the changing demands of the employment market. But the truth is that by following the path they suggest, you are becoming a specialist: a specialist in the moronic recycling of what the rich and powerful deem to be news. And after a few years of that, you are good for very little else.

and advises choosing liberty over security in employment as well as in politics.

Given that I’ve come to this course - started my training - already having a specialisation, the Astrophysics degree, that might not be so easy.

Obviously science journalism isn’t my only option, and having a more analytical mindset than probably the majority of journalists can’t hurt in any role (and allowed me to spot that the figures didn’t add up in an exercise we did on writing a Trade and Industry story a few weeks ago), but it is the natural choice.

But what if the title I was working on went bellly-up? And there weren’t any jobs going on existing science magazines? There’d be two options: try to freelance, which I can’t imagine is ever easy[1], or move to another type of publication. But would Miniature Donkey Talk (to take a bizarre example) employ somebody who’d spent a long time working with highly technical copy?

Actually, morbid forecasts of redundancy aside, I don’t think I’d want to work on one type of publication or write on one subject area for a whole career. Variety is, after all, the spice of life. More to think about.

[1] Though this brings to mind a Wal Sakaluk quote: “Difficulty is not an obstacle, it is merely an attribute”.

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Though I did watch a bit of last night’s X-Factor, I can’t remember if the god-awful MacDonald brother are still in it. If they are, then it can’t possibly be on talent. There’s more chance of somebody buying Oranjeboom because they actually like it, and the best thing about Oranjeboom is you don’t have to piss it yourself.
Read Charlie Brooker’s Screenburn columns in the Guide with saturday’s Guardian for a criticism of the awful brothers much better than anything I could write here. Brooker puts their continued particpation down to Scots nationalism.

I would, for once, have to disagree. I think they’re beneficiaries of their name.

Ok, it’s spelled differently - but it sounds identical to a certain fast food chain whose advertising can be best described as “prolific”.

It is too hard a stretch to imagine that viewers hear “M(a)cDonald” and vote for them nearly automatically because they’ve conditioned for approval of the name - especially among the demographic that votes for X-Factor contestants[1]?

Maybe it’s time to anonymise the contestants.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _

1 I nearly wrote “proles” or “plebs”, but I’m not sure how acceptable it is to do so even ironically.

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Channel 4 clearly considers itself pretty edgy. It’s the home of Russel Brand, a man sacked from MTV after wearing an Osama bin Laden costume to work; it had the balls to broadcast the Brass Eye 2001 special, which the BBC admitted they’d never do; they broadcast Derren Brown playing Russian Roulette live.

So why, in an episode of Friends broadcast at 8.35pm are they completely cutting out Joey’s answer to Ross’s question “didn’t you read Lord of the Rings in high school?”, such a benignity as “No, I had sex in high school.”?

Are we really so afraid of upsetting people that E4 can’t allow Joey to say “sex” at half eight in the evening?

As part of the diploma course, we have guest lectures on online journalism. Last week’s was from tory blogger Iain Dale. When discussing it later, Dan said that for him the biggest plus point was the Dale was quite forthright with his opinions: he was quite willing to say things that people aren’t going to instantly agree with.

This shouldn’t be a bonus in the lecture, or in experiences generally; for people to say what they think without fear of reproach should be the norm. But those who hold the media reins are so terrified of causing offence that Joey can’t tell us he had sex in high school, Monica can’t tell her husband she’d bought him pornography and Ross and Monica’s mother can’t say “humped” before the watershed[1].

Despite my previous comments, by which I still stand, perhaps it’s small wonder that Muslims felt/feel victimised by cartoons of Mohammed, the veil debate and the Pope’s remarks when we live in world so shy of not only causing offence but also simple debate.

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British sitcoms tend to come in short series (6 episodes, on the BBC) and, in terms of a pre-planned overarching storyline, light on plot.

American sitcoms tend to run for much longer (20+ weeks) and get almost soap-like in the intricacies of plot and interaction between characters.

Why?

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This was nearly a post about the wrongs of banning the Welsh contestants from speaking in their own language on the show, after seeing a headline in one local newspaper (can’t remember which) yesterday that read: “Fury as Big Brother Bans Welsh”.

Then I thought I’d better check my facts, and revealed this:

“Housemates are free to talk in any established language of their choosing,” clarified the masterly voice.

“However, any discussion, in any language, that is deemed against the rules will result in Housemates being punished. Glyn, Big Brother is multi-lingual and is always listening.”

Tut tut, newspapers.

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I’ve only seen the first episode so far - not out of deliberate avoidance, just that I haven’t been in - but I refuse to believe that at least some of these people aren’t actors.

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Jonathan Freedland has a novel out. Freedland claimed in a post on Comment is Free that there are a lot of parallels between writing a novel and reporting the news. It’ll be interesting to see how his own worldview comes through in the story, particularly given that a novel could probably easily contain about a year’s worth of column material. When Richard Littlejohn tried his hand at fiction, it was quite simplistic: the baddies were asylum seekers.

More often than not, the protaganist simply stands in for the author. Bearing in mind the previous post, how does this work in comedy? Chris Morris claims to be an antipolemicist, only making a point if it’s funny, when talking about Brass Eye, but Nathan Barley exists purely as a damning indictment of “media twats”, with the weary Dan Ashcroft representing Morris’s point of view.

Freud reckoned that jokes stood alongside dreams and slips of the tongue in revealing the subconcious. Freud talked a lot of rubbish.

But look at this, from series four of Auf Wiedersehen Pet:

Government official type: “This is a sensitive post so we will be carrying out extensive background checks.”
Several members of the team look at Oz, expecting him to reveal his spell at Her Majesty’s pleasure.
Oz: “I’ll tell you this now, as it would’ve come out anyway. I’ve got a son what’s a poof.”

That isn’t a joke - not from the perspective of the character. But it is funny - to the audience.

So…

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It’s probably too small to see on the picture, but the really wee text at the bottom says: “Over 4 hours of deleted scenes, outtakes, interviews and extras”.

Kerr-ist.

Given how thoroughly awful the material that actually aired was I can’t imagine how dreadful the deleted scenes must be.

It went wrong long before then, with the downward spiral - the shark-jumping, if you like- beginning in series 7. It’s not hard, if you take the time to think about it, to see why.

There is a simple formula: comedy = truth + pain. For so long, through six series, that truth and pain were displayed by Lister and Rimmer’s mutual loathing. Even when an episode ostensibly centred around Kryten or the Cat, the majority of the jokes were based on Lister and Rimmer’s disagreements on how to handle the particular issue. When, during the second episode of series 7, Rimmer left to save the Universe as his alter ego Ace Rimmer - a man who would make the lovechild of James Bond and Joan of Arc look like a weenie - there is no conflict, and thus no source of gags. Attempts to replace Lister’s friction with Rimmer with his unrequited love for Kochanski were futile: any ‘conflict’ was almost entirely one-way.

The most popular episode from all eight series was, according to a fan poll, Back to Reality from series 5. It found the characters experiencing an hallucination which caused them to believe that their lives aboard Red Dwarf were an elaborate virtual reality computer simulation, and, more importantly, that their personalities were very different to what they believed. It was character comedy at its best, hence its popularity; it’s a shame that the writers failed to learn that lesson for later.

And that characterisation is key is a lesson that all comedy writers would benefit from, too. Look at any comedy series, and whatever other comedy techniques are employed, the ones with strongest characters are funniest.

Discuss.

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