Reviews

Ah, groovy, funky BBC3. The modern face of hip'n'trendy youth orientated TV. The channel which brought us comedy greats like "Little Miss Jocelyn" and quality adult drama like "Torchwood" (note: irony), has excelled itself with this slice of pure, undiluted and shameless awfulness.

It's as if all those painfully boring and self obsessed morons you shared a GCSE drama class with got hold of a video camera and without any quality control or know how, vomited their pathetic attempts at humour into your face. They thought it was funny. Their cronies thought it was funny. Their parents all thought it was funny. You were left with their decidedly unfunny vomit dripping from your face, wondering just how in the name of hell they were allowed to get away with such an affront. And all they do is prance about in front of you, unaware that they're about as funny as dead waterfowl, chanting one of their ever-so-funny catchphrases, so pleased with themselves.

It's incredible that a show like this survived long enough to make it to the screen. It survived the pitch, and then all the things that happen to a new show, god knows how many people at different levels in the BBC giving it the nod, and finally it gets to spew forth from the TV set, taking up airspace that would be more useful if it was devoted to a looped tape of a crying Keith Chegwin buggering a kangaroo. There are bacteria living on the inside of active volcanoes who are less tenacious than this show.

Seriously, BBC3, what's the deal? Do you think we're stupid? ARE we stupid? If we weren't stupid, surely awful trash like this wouldn't get past the pitch stage. What the hell is going on?

...I mean, Nick Frost is hilarious. He stole the show in Spaced and Shaun Of The Dead, and otherwise run-of-the-mill shows like Man Stroke Woman are lifted out of the mire of mediocrity by his mere presence. So why isn't he funny in Hyperdrive? Why aren't ANY of them funny? Kevin Eldon, for God's sake! The Actor Kevin Eldon, the false Rod Hull, Simon Quintlack - Master Of Hobbies for those of us old enough to remember Fist Of Fun. Why isn't he funny in Hyperdrive? What the hell is going on? Massive waste of time. But as with most awful shows these days, the BBC will commission two full series before they get the message. I'm pleased to hear someone has had the courage of their convictions and pulled the plug on the third series. If only they'd do the same with Torchwood.

Well, I thought it was amazing.

Looking up and down this board, I see that Cloverfield has really split the vote. Most of the comments seem to say that the movie was 'derivative' (of course it was, but that was besides the point. It wasn't about the b-movie monster, it was about how people would genuinely react to the b- movie monster) and 'didn't live up to the hype'. Well, I haven't been following the hype of this movie, in fact the only bit of promotion I saw was the trailer before Transformers, so I went in with virtually no preconceptions. Perhaps one of the problems lies in the ability of hype to whip fanboys into a frenzy to a point that they already have a version of the movie in their heads when they go into a theatre, and are naturally frustrated when the real movie is different to theirs...

But I was utterly blown away.

I've watched so many films in my life, and haven't been scared or bothered in any way by a film since I was 12. I think this is because, as a filmgoing public, we are used to all the set ups, all the knock downs. Every camera angle, music cue, every way a scene plays out. we're utterly fluent in the language of cinema, to such a point that we are never going to be affected by it on anything more than a superficial level. This movie throws that all out of the window - in a good way. No music. No set-ups. No cheap scares. Nothing in this movie tells you you're watching a movie. You're completely disorientated from start to finish, completely uncomfortable and on edge. And that is a hell of an achievement in today's de-sensitised movie environment. While I didn't jump once, like some of the people I was sitting with, I did find myself clutching the chair arms at various points.

And of course it's derivative. EVERY monster movie cliché is in there, and so it should be. The monster destroys landmarks. The military fight the monster. News reports advancing the plot. But it's delivered with such style and such punch that you can't help but be awed. You're seeing these events on an ant's eye level. There are no sweeping special effects shots of the White House being demolished by aliens, no aerial shots of buildings being destroyed - instead we get distant, unidentifiable bangs, fires obscured by the cityscape, an enormous leg moving behind a skyscraper - and a distant object which comes hurtling through the air, finally landing amidst chaos in a street, revealing itself to be the head of the statue of liberty.

This personal touch goes deeper - characters disappear from the story, and we (the audience) don't know their fate because the main characters don't.

The effects, with one or two exceptions (the money shot of the monster at the end springs to mind), are seamlessly integrated. A lifelong "effects spotter", I found myself not even noticing when something that MUST have been CGI was on screen (the leaning skyscraper completely passed me by - I only thought 'wow, that wasn't real' later).

And people are going to pick on the film because it doesn't tick all the boxes. You don't know why the monster's here, or what it wants. We don't find out what happened to the girl in the helicopter, or what really happens when one of the little things bites you. The monster could still be out there for all we know. But all of this ambiguity just adds to the realism, the disorientation and the hysteria. You want everything wrapped up in a nice little package? Go and watch one of those awful American J-horror remakes like The Ring, where they took all the ambiguity of the original and ruined the movie by "explaining everything". I want a bit of mystery. Remember, this is a very personal ant's eye view of the attack. The guy behind the camera didn't know all that stuff, so why should we?

I hate it when people tell me I didn't 'get' something, be it a movie, book or whatever. I find it intensely patronising, so I won't say the same to the droves of reviewers here who seem to have missed the utter genius at work in this movie. All I will say is let the hype die down and then go back and give it an objective look. You will be impressed.

After succumbing to the ram-it-down-your-throat hype campaign for this show, I thought I'd give it a whirl after tonight's episode of "Never Mind The Buzzcocks" had faded off the screen. And I can honestly say that instead of sitting on my couch with an expression of bemused disgust on my face for thirty minutes, I wish I had simply stood up and head-butted the wall until my face bled.

This is quite simply the worst programme I have ever seen masquerading as television comedy. Ever. Including that god awful one with Jasper Carrot where his kid's in a wheelchair or something. Watching "Little Miss Jocelyn" is like being hit in the face with a massive fish with the word "stupid" carved into its flank.

It beggars belief how such a show even got commissioned, let alone made it past BBC executives, producers, script meetings, rewrites and all of the normal processes every TV show goes through, only to end up as this steaming pile of pig's offal. The only conclusion I can draw is that those in charge of our entertainment industry - get ready for the irony - really don't have the first clue about entertainment.

But hey, I could sit here and bitch all day. let's go through the show. I watched. She did a cheap, "Last Of The Summer Wine"-esquire wheelchair out of control sketch. The audience whooped. I was silent but carried on watching. She dressed as a man in a fat suit. The audience howled. I was silent and carried on watching. She screamed repeatedly like a distressed boar for the entire duration of a sketch. The audience loved it, seemingly unaware of the Stupid Fish continuing its terrific facial barrage. Televisual root canal work. I carried on watching. A sketch with absolutely no direction - which appeared to be about some fitness fanatics or something - meandered on for about ten minutes. The audience seemed to like this as well, but by that time there was no doubt in my mind that they were being held at gunpoint. A small whimper escaped as I realised I had lost the use of my legs.

I implore anyone who hasn't seen this show to give it a watch. You'll see just how bad television comedy can be. And a note to the BBC - There are tonnes of perfectly talented ethnic minority comedians out there. Don't give a show to the first one who comes along just to fill your quota.

Well, where to start? I was over the moon when this show was announced. An adult Sci Fi show from Russel T Davies? The man who brought us the excellent 'Second Coming'? Starring Captain Jack, the roguish space anti-hero from Doctor Who? I honestly can't see how this can fail. Oh, how wrong I was...

I'll start with the good points:

1. The costumes are nice. Jack's jacket is great.

2. The title music's pretty good.

3. That's it.

And the bad (deep breath):

1. There are no plots, just a series of unconnected events. Resolutions don't make sense, there are frequent leaps in logic and the show continually violates its own frame of reference.

2. Weak characters. The characters behave inconsistently from week to week, merely to service the requirements of the script and not act like real people. There is no narrative through-line.

3. The incidental music is intrusive and annoying.

4. Appalling direction. Ianto's grieving over the body of the Cyberwoman was one of the most unintentionally funny sequences I've ever seen on television - along with the Goldfrapp montage in the sex alien episode. Hilarious.

5. Terrible acting. Across the board. Even John Barrowman doesn't seem to know what he's doing.

6. Spectacle over story - all to often we are distracted by a giant monster, some cheap titillation or the crew arguing (again) to distract from the fact that there really is nothing to see here.

7. The 'Adult' content. Now, shows like Battlestar Galactica (the new one...) manage to come across as adult through intelligent, layered scripts, which, if the need arises, include sex, violence and the rest...Torchwood seems to have stapled these excesses onto some rejected 'Doctor Who' scripts. And it shows. Crushingly badly judged.

If you went to the jungle and caught yourself a senile monkey, banged its head against a tree five times and then sat it down in front of a typewriter, it would still produce something better than Torchwood. That is all.