Telly Wrangling: Home Brew (Spooks, Merlin, Fresh Meat)

Greetings, gentle readers, and welcome to what I hope will be a regular instalment in the (let's admit, patchy) adventures of this blog. Amongst my many, many areas of expertise, I think we can all agree that mindless over-analytical witterings about T.V. is a particular strong point. Here I review a selection of the week's British telly, with some thoughts on the broadcast outings of our friends across the pond still to come.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.

Spooks, Series 10 Episode 3 (BBC, Saturday 1st October)

Imagine being told "have sex with this woman or everyone will die". Yeah, it's a hard life being in the secret service, eh? After a rather scrambled start to it'd final season, Spooks is back on form with a cracking episode that sees Handsome Dimitri finally step into the limelight. Actor Max Brown must be the only person not mourning the absence of Richard Armitage from our screens as it means he very nearly gets enough character development to stop me mentally referring to him as 'Handsome Dimitri'. Almost, but not quite. He is very handsome. This week sees him going undercover to seduce the sister of Anarchist Johnny and stop a potential dirty bomb threat aimed at a thinly veiled Rupert Murdoch caricature (current affairs, y'see?). The sister - let us call her Average-Looking Natalie - lights up as she spots her blind date for the evening, 'Ryan' the 'estate agent', and doesn't do much else except be awkwardly working class. The following 50 minutes were packed full of exactly the kind of low-tech thrills, spills and double crosses that prove Spooks still knows how to produce a pleasing, intelligent episode when it wants to.

Elsewhere, after the untimely demise of Poor Tariq (only to be reincarnated as a twattish musician on Channel 4's Fresh Meat - see below), Callum is finally proving his worth by investigating the death of the bromance that never was. Lara Pulver continues to put in a performance that can only be described as a "Poor Man's Ros", leading me to dub her character Grim Erin. Given that Pulver is also due to appear in Series 2 of the excellent Sherlock in the contentious role of Irene Adler, I hope she learns to emote a little by the end of the series. Having her plot-point - sorry, daughter - put in mortal danger by the end of the run should do it, as will surely happen.

Harry and Ruth continue to be the real stars of the show, sharing pained looks across the briefing table. But with Harry's film-noir-esque ex-lover and belligerent son (a kind of Russian spy version of Harry Enfield's Kevin) muddying the waters, it seems Ruth is in danger of being driven into the arms of the oily Home Secretary, both professionally and perhaps otherwise. Don't do it, Ruth. Harry may have less hair but he's the better man by far. Though for a show that slaughters its characters with such apparent glee, can there really be any hope of a happy ending for these two? Godspeed, you middle-aged Romeo and Juliet, godspeed.

Merlin, Series 4 Episodes 1 & 2: The Darkest Hour, Parts 1 and 2

Also making a welcome return to our screens is the BBC's 'not Doctor Who' show, Merlin. despite the fourth series' Dark and Edgy makeover (and increased budget, perhaps?) the silliness and heart of the show are still intact. We've been served up two surprisingly tight, well-written episodes with genuinely scary villains, the Dorocha (blue ghosty dementory thingies that screech unsettlingly), controlled by Bridget Jones' mum.

Bradley James continues to play Arthur with just the right hint of self-awareness, as is only right for a character who has failed to notice for four years that his BFF's eyes go strangely glowy every time his life is miraculously saved yet again. Plus, of course, those obligatory Arthur shirtless scenes, along with a rather loving shot of his arse in literally the opening minutes of the first episode. It's in his contract, I swear to god. Colin Morgan is still strong as the titular boy wizard and in the midst of all the angst, there was some of the bromantic bantering we all know and love: "Clotpole," says Arthur. "That's my word," says Merlin. Self-referential, see. Oh boys, you make me so happy.

Gwen (Angel Coulby) took a backseat to the boys' adventures in the first part, which I hope is not a sign of regular things to come, as she is by far the best actor on the show. However, my prayers for less Regulation to Love Interest, more Promotion to Blacksmithing and Dispensing of Wisdom were swiftly answered, with Part 2 providing a glimpse of those Once and Future Queenly powers. Essentially, she's being set up as a kind of people's princess, pseudo-medieval Diana, only with less designer outfits and more practical advice at her fingertips, like "don't remove the only protection that extremely vulnerable people have from screaming blue ghosts". And now apparently she's as much of a threat as Arthur to Morgana and Agravaine having regular smirking parties, so she's also in the firing line for more Scooby-Doo-style villain plots doomed to failure. Excellent, excellent, excellent.

However, the main focus really was on the newly christened Knights of the Round Table or, as I like to think of them, Princely Arthur and his Jukebox Knights, Camelot's No.1 Boyband. Obviously, you've got Arthur as frontman, with Gwaine as the cheeky Irish one, Elian the 'urban' one (one of two black people in Camelot and yes, they're related), Percival the Sweet One and Sir Leon, the long-suffering band manager. And, of course, the shock exit of Lancelot the Soulful Latino One. Dead for Real or Sleeping Lions? I'll be honest, I couldn't quite tell if that was a body they were giving a spuriously Viking-style funeral to (though if I listed every historical or mythological inaccuracy on this show, we'd never see sunrise) or just his sword and what have you - we last saw him striding manfully into a howling void of death in order to save his friends so will the veil spit him back out or has he gone down the Sirius Black route? Only time will tell. It would make sense if he's Dead for Real, given that the thing Lancelot is really famous for in the stories is bumping uglies on the sly with Guinevere and on the show the writers have really painted themselves into a corner with the Arthur/Gwen/Lancelot love triangle. Where we left it, Arthur and Gwen were happily ensconced in cosily forbidden domesticity with him looking angstily and nobly into the distance while she delivers reassuring speeches about what a great guy he is... aaaand that's still where we are. Basically. There's really no room for Lancelot in this scenario, given that Gwen won't even glance in the direction of his ridiculously defined jawline, so he's stuck staring moonily at her and suffering through the self-inflicted torture of keeping safe Princess Arthur. And looking wry every time Merlin does magic, of course. So the show can probably toddle along without him but then again - an Arthur legend with no Lancelot at all? It's like a sky without a rainbow every once in a while. A really good-looking, sexy rainbow.

Elsewhere, not much has changed. Eoin Macken's Gwaine is Irish and thus automatically comic relief, though with Lancelot out of the way, maybe he'll be enjoying some Dimitri-style time in the limelight. Percival and Elian's dialogue seems to be written with the idea that a show built around one bromance really needs another. I demand a spin-off: every week the unlikely pairing rescue more implausibly cute children from certain death while Percival models Camelot Gap's new chain mail range (conveniently short-sleeved to show off those rippling biceps) and Elian delivers cocky one-liners. Gwaine can come too as a kind of tall, handsome (one thing you can say about this show is that it panders to the female fans and those inclined to the gentlemen just as much as it indulges in male gaze, if not more) canary, wandering into the mine shafts of danger with nought but twinkly, Hibernian over-confidence to guard him.

It also seems like we've seen the last of Emilia Fox's sultry Morgause, sadly, as she makes way for new villain Agravaine, played with a double order of ham and cheese by Nathaniel Parker. The great thing about Morgause was that her hollow-eyed crack-addict intensity went some way towards balancing out Morgana's incessant smirking. Unfortunately, Agravaine seems to have a mean smirk of his own, in every sense, and I'm not sure my poor eyes can take much more of these mouth-acrobatics. On the plus side, maybe he'll teach her to do it properly now. Either that or she'll break her face trying.

Merlin. Long may its implausible plots, bewildering lack of character development and shameless fanservice reign.

Fresh Meat, Channel 4

And finally, let's round up with a quick note on Fresh Meat, Channel 4's new university comedy after their last effort Campus, which induced all kinds of confusing reactions amongst which laughter was strangely absent. I have many reasons to dislike Fresh Meat. Well, one. Namely that Channel 4 weren't the only ones to realise there hadn't been a decent uni house comedy since The Young Ones and I started writing one with a friend. And obviously, the BBC were going to be interested in this script by a couple of first time writers about thinly-veiled versions of themselves that was terribly middle-class and obviously there were going to make it and obviously it was going to be really successful and Rebecca Front was going to play my mum and we were going to win BAFTAs and I would use my acceptance speech to lobby for the role of the next companion in Doctor Who and obviously the only thing to stop that happening now is the appearance of Fresh Meat. Obviously

But, like the generous-hearted person I am, I decided to give these poor, misguided amateurs a chance and you know what? It's really good. As in, funny. As in, laugh out loud funny occasionally. Weirdly, for a show written by Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, most famous for the (I don't care what anyone says) still excellent Peep Show, it feels much more like an episode of Green Wing moved to a university campus, than Campus, which was actually supposed to be Green Wing moved to a university campus, did. I'm even managing to tolerate the presence of Jack Whitehall, or as I know him, Oh, That Tosser Again. You've got the standard will-they-won't-they couple, played harmlessly by a pretty blonde and the only normal looking one from The Inbetweeners, but that's not really where the interest lies. Apart from Jack Whitehall playing (shocker) a twattish public schoolboy, there's the brunette overachiever desperately trying to reinvent herself as edgy and laid-back (I'm not really at the names-learning stage yet), who in in the unenviable position of playing an extremely unlikable character very well (though her storyline has just got interesting). My favourites, though, are Stoic Howard, the student who never quite managed to move out of the house and standout performance, Vod, even if she is basically Superhans's estranged daughter.

...

And that's it for the first week of British telly-wrangling. Depending on how crushingly egotistical I'm feeling each week, the need to share my thoughts on the nation's favourite pastime (except for prostitution, obviously) will vary from programme to programme, but for now I'll say sayonara.

Can't believe Marianne didn't win Great British Bake-Off though. That Jo, with her four sons and inspirational story of breaking out of the kitchen (though admittedly she didn't so much break out as do a u-turn right back into the kitchen) and achieving her dream. What a bitch, eh?

Two Countries Separated by a Common Language: Campus v. Community

America, I'm sorry. I take back every snide comment I ever made about how your sit coms are formulaic, predictable, unrealistic, stuffed with jokes that wouldn't make a particularly uncritical five-year old laugh and just generally inferior to British comedy. In particular, I would like to apologise to NBC, whose comedic teat I have suckling at over the last few months. In a previous life I eschewed American TV because a) there's so damn much of it and b) 90% of it sucks. I hear good things about some show called The Wire occasionally but eh, whatever. In particular I shunned American comedy, mainly because E4 is packed to the gills with drek like Friends and Scrubs. Of course, Friends and Scrubs didn't necessarily start out as drek but with every repeat each episode gets incrementally shitter and I go and pop on a DVD of Black Books or Spaced instead, which, as we all know, never ever age or get boring.

But in recent times, I've decided to give the Americans a bit more of a chance. I mean, we did used to own them. And for a country largely descended from the people who cancelled Christmas, they sure know how to deliver on the laughs. You see, I'd been hurt by American TV and its ruthless cancellation rate before. It seemed like everything I loved was headed for the bin - first Studio 60, then Firefly (goddamn you Fox, how much more proof of your evil do we need?). Then I decided to check out Glee, since it didn't seem likely to go the same way. While I started off enjoying it, I now watch it through fingers permanently clamped over my eyes, as it descends further and further down the plughole of "Dude, Not OK" while still waving the banner of Happy Racial/Sexual/Gender equality, to see how much worse it can get. I've also let myself become suckered into How I Met Your Mother, which I guess is Friends for the new generation, in that it's a group of well-off white people who live in New York and have sex with each other. I do enjoy HIMYM and will continue to watch it (at first for Neil Patrick Harris, now for Jason Segel). Although I do think Ted, the series protagonist, is one of the most obnoxious fictional creations ever to be conceived by man and I hope he finds the mother of his children soon so he can stop inflicting himself on the unfortunate (fictional) women of (fictional) New York.

Then, since I enjoyed both Studio 60 and the little I'd seen of Tina Fey, I decided to investigate 30 Rock, and hallelujah. Heroines gained = 1 (Tina Fey). Inappropriate crushes developed = 1 (Alec Baldwin). Downright weird crushes developed = 1 (Jack McBrayer, seriously, if anyone can explain this one to me, I will reward you with shiny gold). So 30 Rock was the turning point, basically, and I watched all five seasons of it pretty much back to back like the pop culture obsessed freak I am. 30 Rock is witty, self-aware and sports a great female lead in the shape of the socially-dysfunctional, junk-food-cramming, snorty-laughing, crazy-awesome Liz Lemon at the head of a team of writers for a fictional sketch show on primetime TV. If you don't know it, it's well worth a watch (Try saying that with a mouthful of marbles. Thanks, I'm here all week).

Then came Community. After hearing it recommended by all and sundry from many reputable sources, I warily gave in to peer pressure. I'm generally wary of things recommended to me by other people. I find other people's opinions are often wrong. And before you jump in with "It's an opinion! It can't be wrong!", let's just remind ourselves that Titanic was once the highest grossing film of all time so yes, it can. Thank the Lord of Television (Rupert Murdoch?), not so with Community. I'm going to look at it alongside another recent sitcom watch of mine, Channel 4's Campus.

So, what's the deal? Well, both Community and Campus are set in universities that are not so much third-rate as fifty-seventh-rate and have an array of unsympathetic protagonists and some twisted love polyhedrons but that's pretty much where the similarities end. Community is American, set in the fictional Greendale Community College and largely centres around Jeff Winger (the pointy-nosed Joel McHale), a debarred lawyer who faked his college degree and attends community college to get himself a real one, but focuses just as much on the other members of his age-and-nationality-diverse study group:

Britta, a self-righteous blonde hipster with deep-seated insecurities,

Pierce, an ageing, occasionally racist and homophobic, moist towlette magnate,

Shirley, an African American Christian housewife with rage issues,

Annie, a nervy overachiever who had a breakdown in high school due to a pill addiction,

Troy, who doubles as both the Token Black Guy and The Jock, but really makes stupidity into an art form and has a beautiful and strange relationship with

Abed, an asian boy with Asperger's who views the world as a TV show, will make you laugh so much you hurt and makes the show very meta in places.

Its strengths come from the fact that, whilst it has a formula, it doesn't look like it has a formula. This is perhaps because a lot of episodes parody different movies or movie genres and the whole thing relies heavily on pop culture and meta tropes. By far the best episodes of its two season run have been the Mafia episode (with the group forming a Family to control the supply of chicken fingers from the canteen), the Zombie Apocalypse episode (when some budget 'taco meat' provided at a function turns out to be an army experiment that turns the college into...well, zombies) and the three paintballing episodes, Season 1 spoofing various war movies with a dash of 28 Days Later, then a two-parter in Season 2 that starts off as a Western and descends into Star Wars. Parodies (especially of Westerns and Star Wars) have been done until the cows come home, mooing "If I have to hear one more clever twist on 'Luke, I am your father', I'm going rabid" (yes, rabid cows), but what sets these ones apart is the combination of the characters acknowledging themselves playing out familiar tropes and taking it deadly seriously at the same time. My favourite performance of the series by far was Alison Brie's Annie taking on the roles of a hard-bitten loner cowgirl heroine ("She's kind of awesome today," comments Abed), then switching to Princess Leia in the second part of the Season 2 paintballing adventure with complete conviction.

I'm also impressed by the way they handle the soapy romantic entanglements that are a staple of any American sit com. In the Pilot, Jeff forms the study group to get close to the undeniably smokin' hot Britta (Gillian Jacobs) with Troy and Annie forming the show's Beta Couple (they went to the same school, he was popular, she had a pill addiction, you know the drill) but the show undeniably comes into its own halfway through the first season when these Will They Won't They couples start to drift apart and the group starts to have adventures as a whole. Expectations are nicely subverted: what at first appears to be a straight up case of Good-At-Heart-Sleezeball Jeff learning the error of his selfish ways while trying to seduce Smart-Rational-Guardian-Angel Britta is quickly exploded when we realise that Britta is just as selfish, very hypocritical and only just neurotically self-aware enough to get away with it. More importantly, Jeff and the other characters realise it too and constantly call her out on her behaviour. The show has got hold of a great thing, in that whenever a character is unsympathetic, it rarely goes unchallenged, making the illusion of reality much more convincing and locking out the possibility of bewildered head-shaking from fans trying to work out why He's still going after Her when She's clearly a Hideous Bitch. Plus, the possibility of some excitingly unconventional couples has started to emerge, keeping it all nice and fresh. I won't spoil it for you but suffice it to say that, unlike 30 Rock and HIMYM, I'm genuinely invested in it working out for these guys.

So what's wrong with it? Well, not much. The first time I watched it, I was just filled with complete joy. That particular brand of knee-trembling, hand-clapping glee that I associate with great television. There are no bad episodes - there are solid episodes and there are brilliant episodes - and, hallelujah praise be, it manages to avoid that morass of saccharine moralising that US sit coms feel obligated to plunge into at the end of every episode. Yes, it still gets sentimental, but it's never cloying. Take Dany Pudi's knockout performance as Abed. The show has a particular knack of wringing a tear out of Abed's experiments in connecting with his friends and his awareness that they worry about him (the stop motion Christmas special was a particular tear-jerker), but 90% of the time Abed is just happy and awesome and probably the best character on the show, if pushed to say. But really, they're all good. Not just the main seven but the formidable supporting cast, from deranged Chinese Spanish teacher Senor Chang, to Starburns (a guy whose sideburns are shaved into two large, hairy stars), to Dean Pelton, the college dean obsessed with a) making Greendale a 'real' university and b) increasingly, Jeff. The whole thing is a feast of witty self-awareness, insane comic creations, more TV and movie references than you can shake a USB stick at, perplexing emotional entanglements and satisfying pay-offs. And it's just really, really funny.

(Incidentally, it also manages to be something of an anti-Glee. In my opinion, the whole 'Acceptance and Diversity' message is done much more stylishly and effectively by Community, in which much of the humour revolves around race and gender relations but always comes back to the group holding fast together against the world because they're all intensely co-dependent. Unlike Glee, in which apparently regular characters are passed over for Fun Guest Stars like Gwyneth Paltrow and while it's Not Okay to bully Kurt because he's a delicate flower (surely it's doing more harm than good to present the show's main gay character as constantly crying about something), everyone can be mercilessly cruel to Rachel with no repercussions, even if she is awful.)

Campus, on the other hand, is a much more mixed bag. Set in the fictional Kirke University, the main story line is about lack of funding and how it's probably going to be shut down because it's terrible or something, I don't really know. Plot isn't really the point of Campus. It comes from the makers of Green Wing and let me just say here and now, Green Wing was and continues to be my favourite show of all time, comes top of every list and is much missed. Like Green Wing, Campus' brief seems to be to write mostly sketch material within the framework of a single setting and group of characters. Where Green Wing succeeded marvellously was in being an ensemble piece: every single character was well-drawn and every single performance made me laugh until my abs hurt at some point. Campus, whilst striving for the same ensemble feel, is much more varied in the quality of its performances and the quality of its comic creations.

It's hard not to view Campus as Green Wing's inferior cousin but so many of the characters have essentially been exported from the first show into the second. There's the Sue White Clone physics teacher, lacking the essential quality of being Michelle Gomez, the main Gawky Female Choosing Between Nice Guy and Rake love triangle that comes straight out of the Guy/Caroline/Mac dynamic, the monstrous Vice Chancellor of the university who is part-Statham, part-Joanna and part-Sue White and the put upon accountant stuck in a joyless relationship is ganked straight from one of Martin's story lines. Not to mention the admin girl object of his affections who could fit quite nicely alongside Kim and Naughty Rachel in the hospital office.

When I watched the first episode of Campus, I was appalled. The characters were unsympathetic, any plot Green Wing may have had seemed to have flown out the window here and it just wasn't funny. But, I reasoned, it took me a few episodes to get into Green Wing, so I decided to give it another chance, and I'm sort of glad I did. Let's be clear about this: I still don't think it's funny. But what has emerged in spades is these writers' ability to create love stories that rip my heart out through my rib cage and leave it bleeding on the living room floor. This was demonstrated admirably in Green Wing with the ongoing Mac/Caroline/Guy saga and its heart-rending ending (again, I won't spoil it but I wept). I was invested. Team Mac, since you ask. And whilst I can blatantly see that when it came to Campus the writers went, "Well, she ended up with that guy last time, let's make it the other one now", they've managed to pull the same trick again and make me desperately concerned to see how everything works out for them. It's not just me either: at least two other (admittedly female) friends have confessed to watching the show purely for this particular romance. What is up with this? At least we can congratulate the show on being genre-defying. There aren't many 'comedies' I would persist in watching despite not finding them funny. I also state freely that becoming over-invested in story lines (especially love stories) of shows where plot isn't really the point is something of a habit of mine. Sorry.

But this is where Campus and Community cross over. For me, the winning feature of US sit coms is their plot lines. Sure, sometimes it can get overly soapy and ridiculous but this is the main benefit of series that run for seven seasons with 25 episodes per season. We have a chance to get to know these characters and become involved in their lives. A lot of British series exist in a status quo that never changes and there's nothing wrong with this - some of the funniest shows of all time have consisted of two seasons of six half hour episodes set in the same place with the same characterisation (Fawlty Towers springs to mind). But I like characters and storylines. I like getting invested in things. And that's probably why Green Wing was such a favourite: two series of nine episodes at 45 minutes each, which is a crazy random amount for a British comedy, and the sense that real value was being placed on seeing how these characters interacted, not just how many one-liners they could spout. Campus is halfway there with this, with some of the characters falling into Green Wing territory and some of them stepping over the line into being too monstrously unbelievable to care about. Interestingly, Green Wing (and thus, I presume, Campus) was written like an American show, with a team of writers rather than just one or two. Maybe we need more of this US/UK fusion: British dryness and surreal...ness (surreality?) mating with American-length series and a chance to see how the characters develop and interact over a longer period of time.

So. Verdict. Between the two, Community comes out miles ahead. It's just funnier. But I'd still take British over American comedy if pushed; if nothing else, it's less likely to get cancelled halfway through a season. Really though, it all comes down to love. British comedies tend to be these hand crafted jewels, conceived by one person sitting alone in their room and laboured on like Jane Austen's little piece of ivory until perfect. American comedies are, more often than not, over-exec'ed juggernauts than slap a moral on the end of every episode to satisfy the network. Community is wonderful because it has real heart but, I fear, it is the exception rather than the rule. Check out Campus if you're into sappy love stories in bizarre settings but the happy medium between these two is, and always shall be, Green Wing. What a show. I wasn't even going to mention it.