Actually, I love a certain type of bad TV/film/literature/music. When you say "bad TV", you probably think of My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding or Take Me Out or my sister's latest favourite, some show with an awfully punning name that I can't remember where gay man have to sprint back into the closet for money by fooling a heterosexual woman into having feelings for them. I think it's called "Where Taste Goes to Die".* But these are artlessly bad telly. They know what they are. They make no pretensions to greatness, and thus are curiously humourless - despite their abundance of ribaldry and 70s era Brighton postcard naughtiness. I'm talking about the programmes that are preposterous. Absurd. Almost surreally bad. So much so that you're sure someone is wiping away tears of mirth behind the camera at the expense of the poor saps who actually pay the licence fee. If this was America, I'd say these are the programmes knocked out between the hours of the 11am cocaine break and 11.38am when it's time to take an early lunch and also more cocaine. Being Britain, it's more likely that these are the shows knocked out between a nice cup of tea and a biccy at 4.30 in the afternoon and weeping over your BA in Arts History at 5.15.
My criteria for detecting such shows (and films and books) is simple. If, at any point, I lean back in my chair, pull my (sometimes real, sometimes imaginary) glasses down my nose, chortle and say firmly "SILLY", it's a winner. Sometimes good shows have "SILLY" moments. Sometimes they have entire episodes of "SILLY". Being Human falls prey to this more than I'd like. Doctor Who too, especially in the Russell T Davies era. That episode with Agatha Christie and the giant wasp. I'd say that on paper they thought it sounded charming and off-beat but I've just typed it out here and it sounds like a parody of a Doctor Who episode. And a better parody than that Lenny Henry one with the Margaret Thatcher dalek. Saying that Maggie Thatcher is a life-destroying emotionless ooze encased inside a metal outer shell constructed by supremacist masters isn't satire, it's just fact.
Sorry, think I got some politics in your pop culture, there.
As I said, there's a difference between SILLY television/film/etc and downright bad stuff. There's the bad stuff like Take Me Out (upon my first viewing, I was reminded of a line from Jane Austen**: "Man has the advantage of choice, woman only the power of refusal." If the premise of your show aligns with the sexual politics of the late 18th century, you need to take a long hard look in the mirror). It's joyless. It's crass. It's (incoming snob alert) Lowest Common Denominator television. I'm aware that many watch Take Me Out et al because they find it hideously compelling, sort of like driving past a car crash on the motorway. I get this. I'm on board with this. And the game show format means you can catch the occasional episode here and there and not feel hideously guilty.
I differ in that I watch whole series that I think are badly written, acted and filmed. I follow the plot. I root for the characters. I decide it would be better if x happened to y instead of z. People are - understandably - puzzled by this. I don't advocate this relationship with the gogglebox: it's terribly unhealthy and please let us remember I am a terrible freak of nature and my mother should probably never have let me out of the attic. "But why?" People ask me. (In my head. Nobody actually cares about what I watch on TV.) "Why spend so much energy on shows you don't even like?"
Oh-ho, I say. Shows that are bad, yes. Shows I don't like? No, no, no. Merlin. The Tudors. Whitechapel. These are my crack. Silly, silly shows full of ridiculous dialogue, flimsy premises, unbelievable plot twists (yes, even in Merlin where they can explain things away with magic). And I love them. I love kicking back with a bottle of something cheap, a gal pal and iPlayer (or whatever) and roaring sniggery, joyful commentary at Rupert Penry-Jones pretending to have OCD because someone thought it would give his character on Whitechapel depth.
Whitechapel is especially dear to my heart, actually, because it started out pretty well. The first series operated on the premise that someone was imitating the Jack the Ripper murders with such exact detail and unstoppability that people started to think he'd come back to life. This worked. Jack the Ripper stands pretty tall in the Murderer's Hall of Fame. He's scary because he was never caught. There's a ton of theories about him. And the slight suggestion of the supernatural gave it a nice edge and saved it from being too...Red Riding-y, I guess. Then it got a second series. About the Krays. Yes, the Krays were famous people who did bad things who lived in Whitechapel. That's about as far as anything made sense. Copycat Krays...don't. The Krays did naughty murders because they were building a criminal empire. It was to a purpose. A bad purpose that we at Jane Shakespeare do not in any way condone, no matter how much I might casually drop into conversation my family's spurious connections with the Mafia, but a purpose nonetheless. So they spent an entire series avoiding asking the huge, glaring, obvious question:WHY? Why in heaven's name mimic the not-at-all-famous individual killings of two gangsters? As serial killers go, that's one spending a lot of time in the library. The third series is airing right now and they've basically run up against the wall that most of us saw coming a way back: there are no more crimes in Whitechapel to imitate. Instead, they've opted for a 'crime archive', run by Steve Pemberton, wherein is contained a record of crimes from the world over, many of which bear shocking and convenient resemblances to the crimes being committed in modern day Whitechapel. Hey. Psst. Rupert Penry-Jones. I'd start investigating the guy from The League of Gentlemen, if I were you.
They even have to spell this out in the first episode. "Are you saying it's another copycat?" asks RPJ handsomely (he does everything handsomely, he can't help it). "No," says Steve Pemberton, making sure the audience are paying attention, "but we can use reports of crimes that happened centuries ago or abroad in different social and cultural contexts to help solve ones happening specifically in a very small area of London today." Except that's preposterous and you're ridiculous and god I love this show. Every innovation they make is hilarious: they try and find RPJ a love interest and his initial (handsome) reaction is always along the lines of "Good God, a woman! Get it away! It might use its pheromones or wiles or breasts on me. I hear they have those." Whitechapel (as I said) is also a pretty small area of London, these days mostly populated by upper-middle-class hipsters who consider themselves daring for moving to East London and a handful of belligerent actual East End natives. Whitechapel on TV is a shadowy world of outrageous murders every week or so, Kensington Gore being slung around like it's going out of style, and a "community" of "locals" who are apparently something akin to the villagers in The Wicker Man as every week Salt-of-the-Earth Lady-Policeman reports back that "the word on the street" is that hapless innocents are being stalked by fell agents of darkness for Lucifer's own infernal damned purposes. And they always seem to remember murders that happened in the Victorian era. "It were a dark time," they shake their heads and say, staring traumatised into their builder's tea. Whitechapel: gotta love it.
It's not just crappy telly though. Films are not exempt. Again, I'm not talking obviously shite romantic-comedy-by-numbers bilge like New Year's Eve or whatever Jennifer Aniston is in now. I mean films that have ideas, dangerous ideas, that they wish to achieve. Take Thor. Since posting my review of it (here), where I was fairly "eh", if I recall, I have since watched it more times than any other superhero film I own. Including Iron Man, including The Dark Knight, including X-Men: First Class, all of which are legitimately good movies, which Thor is not. But it has Asgard! Shiny, shiny, camp Asgard! It has a rainbow bridge and a giant hammer and frost giants and I'm already laughing because it is so goddam gloriously ridiculously brilliantly SILLY that I enjoy it with a level of unholy glee good movies can't quite match. I even got over the whole Thor-isn't-really-my-type thing when I decided that Loki was really the main character but Kenneth Branagh didn't want to make Chris Hemsworth jealous. What? What?
The point is, you should try it. I'm not against crap TV, far from it. But there are degrees of crapness. Instead of watching My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding paint an entire culture in what can be generously described as broad brushstrokes, watch Primeval. It may be tosh of the highest order, but it's not exploiting anybody (except you, probably). Instead of popping on Twilight (which, by the way, doesn't count as enjoyably bad because the SILLY moments are outweighed by the THAT'S NOT OKAY moments), why not dig out Heart and Souls, a painfully 80s (despite being produced in 1993) comedy wherein Robert Downey Jr must help four dead people complete their unfinished business before his girlfriend dumps him? What I'm saying is that crap TV can be an innocent guilty pleasure. You too can sit for hours in front of Merlin's uncomfortable shirtless scenes, stuffing your mouth with popcorn and roaring indistinctly "SILLY". Live the dream, people. Live the dream.
*Apparently actually called Playing It Straight. I prefer my title.
** Yes, I'm aware of how pretentious that sounds. Come at me, bro.
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