(Just to prove I will do an occasionally non-twitter update, because it’s true that not everything fits into 140 characters).
We just got back in from seeing Charlie Brooker’s new show being recorded for Channel 4 at Television Centre. It’s a discussion/quiz show called “You Have Been Watching”, which pokes fun at TV from the UK and around the world. We went in a loosely-affiliated group of 11 people, and we’re all big fans of Brooker, and unsurprisingly, we all thought it was excellent stuff. I laughed until my cheeks hurt, which is an unusually welcome type of pain, all the more welcome because it was all free to attend. Easily the best thing about London - especially West London - is how easy it is to go to these things.
I will now dispense poorly-organised thoughts on what I saw:
The format is an odd departure for Brooker, far deeper into light-entertainment territory than he’s previously ventured. He was as funny as ever, and the guests - Rufus Hound, Jamelia, David Mitchell and Terry Christian had great chemistry and were all hilarious in their own ways. A really excellent mixture of styles, whether it was Jamelia’s honest, opinionated interjections, or Mitchell’s bitter, pedantic rants. Probably the best panel I’ve ever seen live, now that I think about it.
I’m not sure if this was supposed to be a broadcast pilot or not, but it did seem a little rough on occasion. For instance, there’s a heavy emphasis on the quiz element of the show that seemed a bit too forced. In many TV and Radio programmes, the “quiz” side of things seems practically stapled-on simply to give things a little structure so that you can say “oh yeah, it’s a quiz show about the received opinions of the middle class” when what they really want to say is “we just get together and take the piss out of Guardian readers for 30 minutes”. For whatever reason, a quiz is the excuse you need to get people together and make them tell jokes. Fair enough, I suppose.
That said, there’s a fair argument that some shows could quite easily drop the pretence altogether and be just as unmissable - indeed, Never Mind the Buzzcocks has pretty much done this, and Dave Gorman’s Genius is far more about the ideas and discussion than it is about who “wins” at the end. In the case of YHBW, though, the “quiz” elements seemed to substantially overshadow the “discussion” elements at times. In particular, there was a round about TV formats being sold around the world where the structure was loosest, and it resulted in some brilliant back-and-forths, including Mitchell’s excellent deconstruction of the title of “Strictly Come Dancing”.
Pitting the guests against one another gave the show a strangely old-fashioned feeling, and appears to be a deliberate reaction to the glut of fairly lazy panel-show clones cast from the HIGNFY mold that have turned up over the last few years. However, it seems that the panel format is much-copied simply because it works so well - here, there were a lot of times when guests were talking over one other, first because all their comments were initially directed at Brooker, and second, because it felt like anyone could interrupt at any point, rather than questions being directed at a specific person/team. Strangely, things were far less knowing and ironic than any of us expected - it was quite sincere about what it was doing, and as a result it’s hard to know whether this is Brooker trying to branch out to a more general audience instead of his usual comfort zone of smug, university-educated lefties like me, or whether he’s instead just out to resurrect a format he sees value in - one that’s going unused because it’s not trendy.
However, the single most niggling thing about You Have Been Watching was that the balance of the show just wasn’t skewed the right way. Even when the panel includes David Mitchell (who was exactly as brilliant live as I’ve always hoped) you can’t deny that Charlie Brooker is the funniest, smartest, most original personality on camera. He’s what people are going to want to see. Sitting in the presenter’s chair leaves him virtually relegated to the position of zookeeper, rounding up the guests rather than dispensing his insight. Even when he does analyse the TV on offer, he’s only got time to deliver pithy jabs, rather than the devastating combos we’ve come to expect. It just seems like a poor use of his talent, and it’s fair to say that we didn’t get quite the same level of wit, knowledge and enthusiasm from Brooker that can be seen in any episode of Screen Wipe.
Obviously, comparing a pilot recording to edited shows is hard to do, and a lot of my concerns all really boil down to “It’s not screen wipe”, which it was never intended to be. I fully accept that it’s my problem to deal with, much like how I had to deal with Simon Pegg being the relatable comedy-writer that brought me “Spaced” to being the lead in mediocre rom-coms that I don’t really care about. I’d be interested in seeing an edited version, to see how successfully they tighten it up, but I’m not entirely sure I’ll ever love it like I love Screen Wipe. I hope it’s successful, because the more successful Brooker is, the more we get to see of him, but for people like me, well, there’s always News Wipe coming soon.
And thus concludes my over-use of the word “format”. Hopefully that didn’t come across as being too relentlessly negative, but it’s gone half two and I’m too tired to revise it so that it sounds more upbeat. And hey, I made it all the way to the end without complaining that, for some godless reason, we almost didn’t get in despite queuing up first. Surely that was a mistake? We were in the first 25 people to queue, but were among the last let into the studio because of the colour of our stickers - was it a sticker-based administrative error, or do BBC recordings genuinely not reward you for turning up early? I always assumed it was first-come, first-served, so I’m quite baffled by what occurred. At least we did get in, though - judging from Twitter, lots of others were turned away!
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