Wednesday, May 05, 2004

...cutting it...

...is the laziest pile of crap on TV at the moment.

I imagine the writing process went a little bit like this:

"So what's it going to be about?"
"...well...what's doing well on channel 4 at the moment? They must have something we can rip off for the mainstream..."
"The Salon"
"Brilliant! Pure lowest common denominator shite."
"So who shall we have in it..."
"Well, since Footballers' Wives is doing so well, and girl power's hot but not virgo intacta, the main character will have to be a complete slag of a white woman. That'll get teenage girls and black men watching for a start. Then sprinkle in a few big-titted...say...Manchester lasses to get your average white-man-in-the-street tuning in."
"Yeah, and a bleach-blonde poof hairdresser mincing about -"
"- yeah, gay is sooo the new bisexual. That'll wow the cool crowd for sure."
"Especially with all the trendy barnets and tight clothes you get in an upmarket hair salon."
"Exactly, but better than that we can shoot it on 35mm film and have all the dowdy Changing Rooms fixated housewives dampening their knickers in delight at the vibrant and glossy interior-designed sets."
"And the plot'll be pure sex?"
"Oh for sure. What do you reckon? Incest?"
"No - incest's so passe. Even Brookside did that years ago. Like the idea, though."
"OK, then we'll do the oldskool BBC thing and stop just short of the taboo, but make what we do include so filthy that it's obvious we could have done it if we wanted. It'll be, like, really post modern and cool. The Guardian'll love it."
"Well if the Guardian love it..."
"Exactly. Can't miss."
"OK, so what counts as just stopping short."
"Got any shrooms?"
"Sure. Tuck in"
"Cheers."
"What's on the telly tonight?"
"Holby City. Cool."
"Yeah, stick it on..."

[.........]

"Wow, that was stunning!"
"Inspirational!"
"So, what about the sex?"
"Oh, yeah. OK, how's this? The white slag's up the spout and so's her 20-year-old daughter, and both by the same bloke."
"...who could be the mother's ex-husband-who-she's-still-in-love-with and the daughter's current husband..."
"I like where you're going with this..."
"...and the slag's current husband could be the daughter's father who she didn't meet until recentlybecause she was adopted and he moved miles away..."
"...and then came back with his beautiful new wife and ended up screwing the mother again..."
"..but had a vasectomy years ago so he knows it can't be his baby..."
"...but the twist is that he's cool with that!"
"Marvellous."
"Yeah and it's so complicated and up its own cathode-rayhole that we can get three episodes out just by sharing out the explository dialogue."
"So that we don't have to do any character development until after "Closer" and "Heat" have told the world what the celebrity-obsessed gutter-trash who'll be watching want the characters to be like!"
"Brilliant!"
"Sherry?"
"Oh, I think so, sherry."
"One lump or two?"