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Silly lady/men news scowl
Jan. 23rd, 2011 04:50 pmComedy and current affairs interviews don't sit well together. It's better to let someone like Paxman behave like a spewing arse to politicians under the supposed umbrella of serious programming than letting comedians at them. This is what I feel I will learn from Channel 4's 10'O Clock Live. It's not like they could have a better cast of near-middle aged smartarses for it either, with David Mitchell, Jimmy Carr, Lauren Laverne and Charlie Brooker. It's easy to say that the Americans' Daily Show or Colbert Report provide evidence contrary to my position that these things are always a bit shit, as both have had years of success, but are they really that good anyway? There's grounds for saying they're more successful than 10 O'Clock Live was in this first outing, but the format means the programme's effectiveness is always at the mercy of what's been happening, and so this show might be great next week too. I was pleased to see them have a geo-engineering proponent on, and that Carr went immediately towards Bond villain with his questioning of it. Geo-engineering should be more widely known, not least because it is based on Dr Evil-style applications of technology.
I'd watch it again, but the format doesn't allow the interviews enough time to bite before they have to give up and have an advert. The problem there would be alleviated by making the interviews longer, but with four presenters to balance in a 48 minute running time this is going to mean significantly reducing the contributions of some or all of them. I sort of feel like you need to give David Mitchell more time for him to work out as an interviewer. His persona is that of a reasonable and intelligent man prone to explosive tirades of relentless logic when faced with fatuous stupidity, but by nature he excels as a ranter, not a debater, and he never got up to speed. He's just too damn nice when constrained by the format of a few minute interview.
Their to-camera stuff was fine at least, particularly Brooker and Mitchell, who are transparently the talent in that bunch. My love of Brooker is largely founded on a shared affinity for stupid word play, incredulity at other people's emotions and the things about which they feel them and a general sense that the media is a corpulent soul vampire feeding directly on our egos and draining us of a sense of proportion regarding world events. The problem with him being on this programme is that Babybel portions of Brooker are not going to work out as well as when he's constructed an entire, hermetic programme with which to put across his material (there's a cheese-metaphor here ripe for extending which I'm not going to do).
Still, Brooker has a BBC Two show this Tuesday entitled How TV Ruined Your Life. I can stand firmly behind this title.
I'd watch it again, but the format doesn't allow the interviews enough time to bite before they have to give up and have an advert. The problem there would be alleviated by making the interviews longer, but with four presenters to balance in a 48 minute running time this is going to mean significantly reducing the contributions of some or all of them. I sort of feel like you need to give David Mitchell more time for him to work out as an interviewer. His persona is that of a reasonable and intelligent man prone to explosive tirades of relentless logic when faced with fatuous stupidity, but by nature he excels as a ranter, not a debater, and he never got up to speed. He's just too damn nice when constrained by the format of a few minute interview.
Their to-camera stuff was fine at least, particularly Brooker and Mitchell, who are transparently the talent in that bunch. My love of Brooker is largely founded on a shared affinity for stupid word play, incredulity at other people's emotions and the things about which they feel them and a general sense that the media is a corpulent soul vampire feeding directly on our egos and draining us of a sense of proportion regarding world events. The problem with him being on this programme is that Babybel portions of Brooker are not going to work out as well as when he's constructed an entire, hermetic programme with which to put across his material (there's a cheese-metaphor here ripe for extending which I'm not going to do).
Still, Brooker has a BBC Two show this Tuesday entitled How TV Ruined Your Life. I can stand firmly behind this title.
