Brilliant TV - No Writers Or Actors Required

It started with a show called Driving School and a woman called Maureen who was a nightmare behind the wheel. The production team wired the car with mini cams and ever nuance of Maureen's inability to turn the steering wheel, brake, accelerate, change gear or understand the concept of a roundabout was captured on VT. Oh how we loved it. Oh how we clamoured for more. The docu-soap was born.

It was the bastard child of those two genres, documentary film making - which had a long and illustrious place in the British Television schedule, with many talented directors and producers illuminating corners of real life that hitherto had lain hidden - and soap opera, especially Corrie, which always boasted good writing and acting.

And the best thing about this new entertainment, factainment, fictionmentary, whatever you'd like to call it was...it was cheap. Drama costs gazillions, so do proper thoughtful documentaries - not as much as drama but still a hefty investment. What the docu-soap did was feed an appetite at a price the broadcasters could easily afford.

Stick a camera in an Airport, On a Cruise liner, up a gum tree. Watch the 'real people' doing 'real things' hilariously. They milked that cow until they couldn't squeeze another drop out of her - and then they milked her some more.

Oo, how some broadcasters rub their hands with glee at the thought of not having to go through that messy business with writers, that messy business with actors and performers. Real people are hot, they're what it's all about.

And now it holds sway as far as music and entertainment is concerned on TV. No need for the classy acts who spent so much time perfecting their skills, no room for real bands/singers/musicians. Get a window-cleaner in who's done some karaoke and can belt a passable rendition of 'Thriller'. Find some mad woman who can't hold a note and give her five minutes. Get some nutter on who thinks crap balloon animals is the future of entertainment. God forbid we use real talent.


Real people. We love 'em.

Actually I do. I love 'em for their real stories and their real heartache, their real ability to to extraordinary things and the real tragedy they suffer in their real lives. I am inspired by the tales they've told me, exhilarated by the things I've discovered about their families, amazed that people can laugh so much with so little to laugh about.

However...there are limits.

'Structured Reality' - which isn't reality at all but producers giving orange-tanned wannabees storylines to go and 'act out' in a 'real way',  has got more than a foot in the door. It has a leg, two silicone boobs and a fat ass into the room.

And now comes BBC 3's new pilot sketch show - which features people from all over the country 'playing themselves'. Wow. Set in a fictional town with real life characters this show uses no script...and will have no professional performers anywhere near it. It will have catch phrases and play up eccentricities yet it will have no structured script.

Nothing will be scripted.

If nothing is scripted can I tell you how that'll go - or can I leave you to imagine.

And something else. I hate the arrogance of producers who think they don't need writers/performers to make a comedy sketch show. Here's an idea - why bother with producers or camera people? We don't need professional sound or design. Mick and Jan and Col and Spike can put it all together using Derek's video recorder.

And even if the pilot - after much shooting and much editing - looks and feels okay. How are you going to sustain that? It's a gimmick. It's bollocks. It's the broadcasting world we live in where the stunt commission is readily available to any tosser who wants to re-invent the wheel. Fine, you want to make a square wheel, that's brilliant - but it won't roll.

Just because you know the alphabet doesn't make you a writer and just because you make Dave down the pub laugh doesn't make you a marketable performer.

But it might get you on the TV. 

Homeland

It seems that all the good series these days are loosely based on other series (trace that back and someone somewhere had an original idea). I've been enthralled by the US series Homeland which is loosely based on an Israeli series Hatufim - Abducted. Clare Danes was never better than she is here, playing  CIA officer Carrie Mathison, caught in the homecoming ballyhoo and headlights of US Marine, Nick Brody (Damian Lewis) freed from his Al Qaeda captors and back with his family after eight years. But is he an agent of dark terrorist forces or...

It's that 'or' that everything here hangs on and it's going to take the whole series to discover just where his allegiance now lies.The writing here is excellent, this is not just black and white, multiple shades of grey abound, we never feel we're ahead of the story, never feel 'Oh, I knew that was going to happen'. And that is so hard to achieve.

We're all too smart these days, even people who don't realise they're story smart are because we've all been brought up on so much television, so many films. The series that really make a mark are those that think twenty, thirty steps ahead, outwitting the audience, turning assumptions on their heads and making the whole experience that much more satisfying.

But not for everyone.

There are staple British series that seem to INSIST on hackneyed storylines, hackneyed characters and leak plot points to the press so their viewers can KNOW what will happen.

I don't get that.

Pick up any number of mags from the supermarket and there they are, future plots of soaps and continuing series. You hear people talking about what's going to happen in their favourite soaps. That's like writing a book and at the end of each chapter have a page where the author precises what's coming up in the next and the next.

It's one thing to tease, it's another to put so much information out there ahead of an episode that we come to it knowing where the story is going.

I don't watch soaps - though I did have a period when I wouldn't miss an episode of Corrie, back before issues took over, when the whole thing turned more on character than events.  I would have hated to know what was coming up. As I hate those NEXT TIME sequences at the end of some programmes today. Hit the off button before I can discover that the person who seemingly just died is in fact alive and well and in the next episode. Why do they do that?

I'm not reading anything about Homeland, nothing, nada, ziltch. I am enjoying the experience of watching a tightly written, thrilling story that plays out a chapter a week - it's such an old fashioned idea, wait for next week to find out - but it's something that works in favour of the building tension. The moment I get hit by a spoiler is the moment I dread and Homeland is far too good, too absorbing to spoil.