Notes from a Small Screen: extracts

Here are some sample extracts from my book, Notes from a Small Screen: Watching British Television, 2015-23.

29.1.15 Midsomer Murders (ITV)

Forget Russian roulette: in the famously hazardous county of Midsomer, even standard roulette is deadly. That much was obvious from the opening moments of this typically deranged start to a new run of the pastoral slasher-fest, when an artist took delivery of a booby-trapped roulette wheel and ended up losing a lot more than her shirt.

But that was a positively dignified way to go compared to her husband, who was squashed to death in his own printing press, complete with a page of text stamped across his corpse. (You could tell he was going to be the next to go – he had it written all over him. No? Please yourself.)

The murders, it turned out, were all copied from a lurid crime potboiler written by deceased local author George Summersbee. ‘She was electrocuted in a manner identical to the plot of one of your father’s books,’ DCI Barnaby (Neil Dudgeon) told the victim’s grieving friend, played by Georgia Taylor. There is surely nothing at RADA that teaches you how to react to a line like that.

Then the author’s unpublished final manuscript – the star attraction at the Luxton Deeping Crime Festival – was stolen. ‘But…’ sputtered the print shop owner, shortly before becoming a stiff letter himself, ‘without the manuscript, we can’t publish!’ Say what you like, he certainly knew the print trade.

But wait, there was another shocking twist: ‘George Summersbee is alive and well and living in Midsomer!’ announced Barnaby – the shocking twist, of course, being anyone being alive in Midsomer. (Don’t worry, he was dead again within 10 minutes.)

In one scene, characters were seen rolling their eyes at Summersbee’s hokey, nonsensical plots. Deliciously subversive, or just a ruddy cheek? Who knows – as ever with Midsomer, you’re never quite sure to what extent it’s meant to be a parody, and who is supposed to be in on the joke.

Still, it’s good fun, in a daft sort of way – like a game of Cluedo, but without the depth or character motivation. And at least DCI Barnaby isn’t lumbered with the clichéd personality flaws we usually get in cop shows – like a drink problem or a gambling addiction or a dark secret in his past.

Though maybe that’s because, to have flaws, you need a personality to start with.

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6.8.15 Great British Menu (BBC Two)

It’s series 10 of Great British Menu and, like every other cookery show on TV, the chefs are still taking themselves absurdly seriously.

At the start of this week’s opening Scottish heat, Michelin-starred Michael Smith squared up to the three contestants and told them: ‘I know what it takes to get a dish to the banquet. So get in that kitchen, and get cooking!’ In his head, he probably sounded like an Army drill sergeant, except instead of readying his troops for combat, he was preparing them to cook dinner for the Women’s Institute.

The contestants were pretty pumped, too. ‘I didn’t come here to lose!’ declared Jak, the show’s reigning Scottish champion. Think Braveheart, if Braveheart had been armed with a melon-baller instead of a broadsword.

Jak kicked off the series with her starter, which, after a dramatic build-up, she revealed was going to be called ‘soup and a sandwich’. Oh. I won’t lie, I was expecting something a little more sophisticated. What were the others going to make? Toast? Coco Pops? Of course, it didn’t actually look like soup and a sandwich. It looked like a steak and kidney pudding. In soup.

Fellow hopeful Graham’s take on this year’s theme – 100 years of the WI – was a savoury Victoria sponge, which is just wrong on every conceivable level, while third contestant Jimmy made a chicken broth congee, served in a knitted scarf. Yes, really.

For Wednesday’s main course, Graham made a ‘carrot cake’ out of venison meatloaf, prompting Michael to tell him in no uncertain terms that his popular-cakes-made-from-grossly-inappropriate-ingredients shtick was getting old now. Jak, meanwhile, served up a damson-glazed leg of venison in a gramophone. An actual, working gramophone. You can’t do that with Spotify, can you?

At the end of each episode, Michael returned to the kitchen to deliver his verdict on the dishes with the grim sense of purpose you might expect from a surgeon coming out of theatre to talk to the waiting family. It’s all quite ridiculous, really, but I fear I may already be hooked. If nothing else, it’s given me some cracking recipe ideas. Soup in a sock, anyone?

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13.7.17 In the Dark (BBC One)

Recently, I re-watched The Beiderbecke Affair, Alan Plater’s 80s comedy drama about… nothing much, really. Plater was famous for including as little plot in his scripts as he thought he could get away with, and in The Beiderbecke Affair, Trevor Bolam being sent the wrong mail order LPs is about as high-jeopardy as it gets. It is absolutely joyous.

I thought about this, a touch wistfully, while watching the first episode of In The Dark. Adapted from Mark Billingham’s bestselling thriller, it stars MyAnna Buring as Helen Weeks, a pregnant DI who returns to her rain-lashed hometown in rural Derbyshire to investigate the disappearance of two schoolgirls.

No-one asked Helen to do this – she works in Manchester – but she did it anyway, because… well, she’s like that. ‘No stepping on anyone’s toes, understand?’ warned her guv’nor. But Helen did not understand. If Helen sees a toe, she will step on it, because… well, she’s like that. A bit of a maverick. And not only a maverick, but a maverick haunted by a dark secret from her past. Well duh.

It wasn’t long before a girl’s body was discovered in some woodland. As Helen ducked under the police tape, a SOCO guy in a hairnet emerged from his pop-up mortuary to demonstrate his iron stomach and mordant wit. Such is the grammar of modern TV drama. (Though I’ll admit Helen squatting down by a tree for a wee was new. I certainly don’t remember Lewis ever doing that.) Meanwhile her boyfriend (Ben Batt) warned her she was getting ‘too close to this’. I’d have been disappointed if he hadn’t, frankly.

There’s nothing much wrong with In the Dark. It’s a solid thriller, with a strong cast, led by the excellent Buring. But I do wonder how many times TV execs can keep commissioning variations on the same show, and would like to know if it might be possible to have fewer stories about young women being found dead in the woods, and more about people being sent the wrong records in the post.

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29.11.18 Vic and Bob’s Big Night Out  (BBC Four)

The 60s had The Goons, the 70s Monty Python and the 80s The Young Ones. But my generation’s comedy awakening arrived in 1990 with the launch of Vic Reeves’ Big Night Out – a gloriously surreal, slapstick cabaret that left us helpless with laughter while our baffled parents struggled to see what was so funny about the idea of, say, Isambard Kingdom Brunel saddling up an Alsatian or Spandau Ballet hang gliding over a tar factory.

And now, nearly 30 years on, it’s back, in a format barely unchanged from the original, save for Vic’s long time comedy wingman Bob Mortimer now sharing star billing.

Any notions that the pair might have matured with age were instantly dismissed as they launched into their trademark whimsical, Dadaist flights of fancy (‘Keira Knightley’s going to come on and cover a bell in crab paste’) punctuated by sudden bursts of Tom and Jerry-style cartoon violence. 

I can’t really explain why the sight of two men whacking each other in the face with frying pans and indulging in erotic corned beef-eating while wearing a selection of silly hats and moustaches is funny, any more than I could explain it to my mum and dad. I suspect it wouldn’t be funny if anyone else did it. But Vic and Bob, like their great hero Eric Morecambe, just have funny bones.

It’s hit and miss stuff, to be honest, but then it always was. In fact there are times when Vic and Bob clearly can’t believe they’re being paid actual money to muck about like overgrown schoolboys while trying (and failing) not to laugh at their own jokes. The fact they’re both now knocking on the door of 60 just makes it all the more ridiculous.

Then again, watching Novelty Island – the paddock-based talent contest in which Vic’s pompous arch-rival Graham Lister performed a dismal ventriloquism act with Beaky the Cardboard Owl while being judged by three pairs of Jeff Goldblum’s underpants on an ironing board – I couldn’t help wondering if it was really all that different from Britain’s Got Talent. Maybe we all live in Vic and Bob’s world now.

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24.10.19 Still Open All Hours (BBC One)

It may still be Arkwright’s name over the shop, but David Jason has now been behind the counter of this sitcom spin-off longer than Ronnie Barker served in the original.

What hasn’t changed, though, is the man behind the typewriter. In a way, you have to admire the 89-year-old Roy Clarke’s stubborn refusal to get with the times. Because, make no mistake, this is a script that would have slotted seamlessly into the original run of OAH 40 years ago – or, indeed, into any of Clarke’s 295 episodes of Last of the Summer Wine.

For one thing, the story hinged upon the comic potential of a mangle (that’s right, a mangle – in 2019!) in which Jason’s penny-pinching Granville saw several opportunities for his latest business hustle. Hence a gag in which he put some kippers through the mangle, followed by a gag in which he put a pizza through the mangle. Then, lest we think there was only one type of joke to be extracted from said mangle, there was a bit where someone dropped it on Johnny Vegas’ foot.

Clarke’s is also a world in which the comedy battleaxe is alive and well, with Stephanie Cole taking up the Nurse Gladys / Nora Batty reigns as Mrs Featherstone, here seen smothering Granville’s face in her significant bosom. (Cue joke about muffins.)

Our miserly hero eventually hit on the idea of turning his mangle into a steam-powered trouser press, leading to absolute scenes in which three men were forced to protect their modesty behind the shop counter. That’s an actual dropped trouser gag in – I say again – 2019.

With its mix of crackpot inventions and strangely timeless northern milieu of cobbled streets and back-to-back terraces, Still Open All Hours often resembles a live action version of Wallace & Gromit, minus the dazzling wit. Really, though, it’s hard to knock a man who’s been bringing pleasure to millions for almost half a century. And you can’t say he doesn’t know his audience: this week’s episode climaxed with Tim Healy careering down a hill on that steam-powered mangle-cum-trouser-press, which might just be the most Roy Clarke thing ever.

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28.11.19 Michael McIntyre’s Big Show (BBC One)

I like Michael McIntyre. Is that a terrible admission? I suspect it’s a deeply unfashionable one, at the very least. I also like Peter Kay, and Miranda. Maybe it’s an age thing (though I draw the line at Mrs Brown’s Boys).

That said, my kids love him, too. Perhaps it’s just the millennials in between – let’s call them Generation Fleabag – who don’t. I’m guessing they don’t find his routines about how long it takes small children to put their shoes on in the morning sufficiently illuminating about the human condition. But I think it’s funny because… well, my kids take ages to put their shoes on in the morning.

Anyway, here we are at series five of MM’s Big Show, and the Beeb must be mightily relieved because, Strictly aside, they’ve been struggling to find a hit Saturday night shiny floor show for years. Possibly since Noel Edmonds sold up and left Crinkly Bottom, leaving Ant and Dec to clean up on ITV with their gazillion-award-winning Saturday Night Takeaway.

Like Ant and Dec and Noel, the Big Show – recorded live at the London Palladium – leans heavily on Ordinary Members of the Public (OMOTP) for its content. This week, for example, they secretly filmed people doing terrible ABBA karaoke covers, then got Björn from ABBA to judge them. You get the idea.

There are celebs too, of course. In Saturday’s Send To All, McIntyre sent a comedy text to all the contacts in Bear Grylls’ phone. ‘My son’s quite inspired by you,’ he told him. ‘He runs around on an island, trying to survive. It’s called Fortnite.’

I laughed, because it’s relatable. Though probably not to Bear Grylls, whose kids don’t play Fortnite. They’re outside running around on Bear’s actual private island.

The best bit, though, is always The Unexpected Star of the Show, in which an ordinary but very talented MOTP (this week it was garage worker Lauren) unwittingly stumbles onto the Palladium stage and is then made to close the show with a song, while their mams and grans cry in the audience. I sometimes cry too.

Like I say, it’s probably an age thing.

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14.1.21 Pooch Perfect (BBC One)

Look, I’m not saying it’s been a difficult year for the creative industries but, as we stagger into 2021, it brings me no pleasure to note that one of our finest actors – the Bafta and double Olivier Award-winning Sheridan Smith – has been reduced to presenting a dog grooming version of the Bake Off. Not that Smith herself seems especially worried, to be fair: on the contrary, she’s such a self-confessed “crazy dog lady” I suspect she’d happily have taken this over, say, Uncle Vanya at the Old Vic any day of the week.

Anyway, it all happens at a “luxury spa” in a big country house, where 16 of the nation’s best pet groomers compete to be crowned (inevitably) top dog by helping a pack of hounds go “from fluffy to flawless”. Meanwhile Shezza goofs around with her canine co-host Stanley, doing Noel’n’Matt-style comedy time checks by, for example, dressing as a shepherd and sitting on a jam sandwich. Hmmm.

The big problem here is that it’s not remotely televisual. It is literally just people cutting hair. Whereas on Bake Off you start with a bench full of ingredients and end up with a cake, in Pooch Perfect you start off with a dog and end up with a slightly different-looking dog. Short of accidentally chopping off its tail, there is zero jeopardy, and precious little room for creative expression.

Also, it’s a tiny bit… weird. “You’re supposed to have them at an angle so you can see the bum,” said contestant Kara, clipping away at the business end of a Shih Tzu, as Shezza’s voiceover explained how the cut should “flatter the anatomy”.

Can this be right – that we’re supposed to notice, and admire, dogs’ bottoms?

Despite the comically low stakes, there were tears from those who made it through to the next round (there’s eight hours of this), but it’s hard to see how it’s supposed to keep the rest of us hooked – unless you just really like looking at dogs. Which a lot of people do, I guess.

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18.3.21 Grace (ITV)

A Touch of Cloth fans rejoice! No, Charlie Brooker’s scalpel-sharp detective spoof hasn’t been resurrected – but ITV’s latest crime drama is as close to a new series as you could wish for. The only problem is, I don’t think it’s meant to be funny.

Though in theory it’s been adapted by Morse/Lewis/Endeavour veteran Russell Lewis from Peter James’ bestselling novels, Grace actually appears to have been assembled from the carpet sweepings of every other hackneyed police procedural ever made (of which there are many).

This first film is based on James’s book Dead Simple (all crime thrillers are called Dead Something, it’s the law), while the series is named in honour of its leading man, John Simm’s DS Roy Grace, one of those detectives whose surname handily doubles as a sort of vague mood music for the entire show – like being called Inspector Regret or Constable Trauma.

Naturally, Brighton-based Grace is a Maverick Cop, whose Unconventional Methods include consulting a psychic medium (yes, really). This, inevitably, brings him into conflict with his superiors, who keep threatening, as Captain Dobey used to tell Starsky and Hutch, to bust him back to traffic duty.

Grace is also haunted – literally, it seems – by the ghost of his missing, presumed dead wife, because heaven forfend a Maverick Cop should have a not missing, not presumed dead wife.

And yet, for all these tics, he’s a curiously blank slate, going robotically through the motions in a manner that makes Inspector Banks look dangerously charismatic by comparison.

The actual plot began with a groom being nailed inside a coffin and buried underground for stag-do LOLs, followed by a series of tastelessly casual and off-hand murders, one of which resulted in Simm donning a hazmat suit to examine a body in the woods, if you want to update your crashing cliché spreadsheets.

The irony is ITV pulled the finale of the superior McDonald and Dodds in order to give this nonsense a head start on next week’s Line of Duty launch.

Which is a shame because, like A Touch of Cloth, at least McDonald and Dodds knows it’s ridiculous.