YesterDay Today

It's wonderful that Chris Morris has returned to our screens creating the brilliant parody history doc, History of Now: The Story of the Noughties. With a nosebleed of flashy graphics which interrupt the flow of the talking heads with a splat of neon jargon wobbling over the shoulder of a few dodgy professors and pundits, this is a great spoof of BBC3 documentaries and online web tutorials.

The obvious heir to The Day Today, this hilarious mockumentary series imagines a cultural doc directed by Nathan Barley, where the big issues of the decade are boiled down into meaningless soundbites about football, stag nights and the O2. Getting clueless celebs such as Andrew Marr and Will Self to earnestly contribute, as Paul Daniels and Noel Edmonds did to Brass Eye, made it look for all the world like a serious attempt to debate the history of the last decade, but the hilariously superficial angles the series has taken, debating such burning issues as second homes in Dubai, posh bakers and eastern European nannies, utterly undermines them.

Getting witless comedyslut Robert Webb to do his curlingly contemptuous and patronising narration added the final flourish to this outrageous spoof. His sneering, voice-of-cunt commentary was designed to tell us what we'd thought and how things were, but warped out of shape to such an outrageous extent that the last decade is rendered utterly unrecognisable, in the same way that government PR represents reality through a trail of surreal falsehoods and mangled statistics.

Cracking comedy start to the year, possibly a bit broad and unrealistic, but funny all the same, if cringingly embarrassing at times. Of course, there's no mention of Morris in the credits, and it's been trailed and put out as a completely straight doc, but we can all see it for what it is. Can't we?

Anti-omnishambles

This series of The Thick of It has been amazing. Way beyond what we have come to expect from a political comedy in the last twenty years. There are the beautiful characters and performances (Rebecca Front being mad and angry has been a revelation, Chris Addison's Ollie is a detailed study in annoying, James Smith plays Glenn Cullen with the battered dignity of a knackered old satchel and Joanna Scanlan is quietly worrying as disinterested Terri). The storylines are inspired (party conference speech ruined by loudmouthed grieving widow on Twitter, Radio 5 Live interviews derailed by phone-in revelations, etc) and each one showcases another desperately shallow and botched attempt at professional politics in Britain today.

Malcolm Tucker is the obvious giant of the show, a creature so monstrous and yet thoroughly understandable that you can't quite hate him. The amazing meltdown scene with Terri where she tells him he's wrong and he actually demonstrates some kind of self-knowledge, seeing himself for what he is to her shallow bafflement, is a truly standout scene, for my money the best in a wonderful series. We have been spoiled with eight weeks of artfully wrought political suicide and a portrait of life inside a dying government that in years to come will be taken as fact.

The insults are marvellous, my favourite being 'omnishambles' (almost as good as Tucker calling Toby in the film In the Loop 'Love Actually'). It's this level of inspired detail on top of the immense amount of research and across the board perfect performances that makes The Thick of It the best comedy on TV since Spaced. And we are living in an era of good sitcoms, it's a miracle. Outnumbered is a national treasure, The IT Crowd and The Inbetweeners are a new genre of nerdcom, people love Peep Show though I can't watch it because it makes my flesh crawl too much, and Gavin and Stacey is heartwarming and gorgeous in a way that old sitcoms used be – entirely because of the peripheral characters. Thank god the old cliche about Britain being shit at sitcoms has passed, and we can move on from Americanised trash like My Family. Watching something as good as The Thick of It makes you realise just how inspiring, truthful and funny a good comedy can be.

Staring into the middle distance

The only sport I enjoy watching on TV is athletics - always have done, whether it's gripping 10,000 metre duels or mind-boggling feats of the jumpers and vaulters. This week has been a real treat. The World Championships in Berlin have been great and the BBC coverage is, as usual, terrific. Partcularly interesting coverage of 18 year old South African 800 metre runner and gold medalist Caster Semenya. The BBC have reported it as an ongoing story throughout these championships, as have all of the news channels that never touch athletics as a story. The difference is, the BBC coverage has been very thorough, fair and analytical - surprisingly so for sports coverage which isn't always the most subtle of beasts.

The BBC athletics panel have been quite brilliant, showing a measured and sympathetic side that pundits don't usually demonstrate. Denise Lewis has been a revelation, furious and compassionate in equal measure against the taxi-driving mentality of most sports coverage and officialdom and for the athlete whose reputation was unnecesarily thrown into dispute hour before she ran rather than out of competition when it would have been much easier for a teenager to deal with. 'In this case we have a girl who has possibly been born with a hormone imbalance, and it's not unheard of that girls of her age have have conflicting hormones. But this society is so lead by what is visually and aesthetically acceptable - stereotypes.' And Colin Jackson wanted to know, 'who's going to apologise to her for all of the rumour and speculation? I hope she just has the heart and desire to stay in this sport which has treated her so badly when she's been so successful.' This story has been a miserable episode in athletics mismanagement, but at least good people are covering this story amid the general media hysteria.

Desperate, that's for sure...

Please welcome Guest Shouter Alex Young, whose marvellous blog I Shall Wear Purple is linked in the sidebar bit, you know, next to this piece, JUST SHUT UP AND GET ON WITH IT:

My favourite guilty pleasure at the moment has to be the BBC's attempt at reducing high art to the lowest common denominator with Desperate Romantics. Despite the fact that most people now view the Pre-Raphaelites as a big bunch of wets with a fondness for foliage and a giant thing for gingers, at the time, they were as scandalous as the YBAs, with saucy sex lives to match.

But of course today's audiences couldn't possibly be expected to find blokes opaquely challenging the morals of the day via the medium of lilies, irises and pansies at all intriguing. I suspect that the book this was based on was being read by a producer who was watching the DVD of David Tennant's Casanova at the same time. The result is a costume drama for the Facebook generation, involving good looking, kind of familiar actors, a lot of running around, rapid editing and bonkers music.

The soundtrack is the sort of hectic, hurdy-gurdy, twiddly, tinkly circus music that makes it feel as though the whole programme is winking at you like an epileptic with a tic for an hour. Rossetti seems to have unearthed Sylvester McCoy's entirely unlamented costume from his stint as Doctor Who in the 80s. Poor Aidan Turner (who's very good, and totally fanciable in Being Human), appears to have been told to play Dante Gabriel as if he were Robbie Williams in his Take That days: superficially good looking and charming, but increasingly riven with jealousy as he realises that his talent is a very mediocre one indeed when viewed along the same bit of wall as Millais' (the Pre-Raphs' equivalent of Gary Barlow). In short, he's a desperately irritating twat, who spends most of his time hanging out in suspiciously clean and smoke-free taverns, blagging booze off his hapless mate.

Naturally, Lizzie Siddal proves that the world of modelling hasn't changed much since the 1850s by promptly falling for him. Lizzie has been cast as the original supermodel, cannily refusing to get out of bed and back into a bath for less than £30. The girls' part in Desperate Romantics is largely to take part in top notch reality show The Victorians' Next Top Model. They valiantly hold chronically uncomfortable poses, are asked to convey a variety of conflicting emotions that would give ANTM's Mr Jay a run for his money, solely via the medium of their hair and an upturned gaze and prove that in order to create great art and lasting fame as a model you have to really suffer. I suspect Lizzie was less than thrilled to discover that the gig which was billed as 'frolicking around in a hot tub' actually translated into, 'pretending to drown in a bath heated by guttering candles for 10 days'.

She manages to go one better than Kate Moss, Claudia Schiffer and Linda Evangelista by nearly dying of pneumonia. This at least means that the RA snobs can stop thinking of her as one up from a prostitute for five minutes, while they ask her what she thinks of the resulting Ophelia. No such luck for Holman Hunt's model Annie Miller, who clearly is a whore because she's got really violently curly hair. Oh, and she's doing Holman Hunt and you'd have to be paid to do that. Even the BBC have painted him as a delusional, slack-jawed twonk.

I keep expecting Ruskin to end each episode faced with a brace of hopeful girls as he declares, 'I only have one portrait in my hands...'

The titian stunners will presumably soon have competition in the shape of gorgeous pouting brunette Jane Morris, and of course the Brotherhood will be racked by scandal when mild mannered Mr Millais does a bunk with desperate housewife Effie Ruskin. Was Ruskin really hiding in the closet with a pencil-drawn porn stash? It's as likely as the RA letting prostitutes stand proudly in front of the paintings they'd modelled for at private views, I suppose.

Still, I await next week's episode, complete with dream sequences, bonking and random casting (Mark Heap as Charles Dickens? I guess Simon Callow was too expensive or gave the script more than a cursory once over...) with eager anticipation. And I might do double culture this week by going to see the Waterhouse exhibition at the RA. I'll put some curlers in and see if any thrusting young artists want to depict me as an obscure Shakespearean heroine or a fallen woman. I don't get out of the bath for less than a tenner, mind. 

Needs to mature

Sarky cuties Sue Perkins and Giles Coren took a colourful gallop through medieval dining in the latest in their fun but slightly inchoherent series Supersizers. In the pointless medical at the beginning, moody Sue is diagnosed as melancholic, and famously easy to rile Giles is diagnosed as choleric. Sub-editors round the country may have high-fived at that point.

Still, no-one could accuse them of not getting stuck in. Sue munches on a whole lemon. They try falconry. Sue's sugary pilchards end up in the fire, she decides that all of the food has made her sad and has to brush her teeth with a twig. Sue whips Giles's knackers with a leather strap while he's praying. Martin, the chef, has to try all their food before they eat it ('Martin, are you dead yet?' asks Sue), before doing a cut and shut with a piglet and a cockerel to create a cockatrice, a mythical beast I was obsessed with as a kid.

Lots of interesting facts and mangled history: animals have anglo saxon names, and meat has norman names because after the invasion anglo saxons couldn't afford to eat it. Sue goes in search of the truth behind the damsel in distress, but disappoints a Rapunzel-hunting Giles with her assymetric bob. Giles has a go at jousting despite being scared of horses, then goes on a crusade through the restaurants of the Edgware Road, where he gets his reward in pepper. They do the Canterbury Tales on a National Express coach.

The thing I'm never that fussed about in these shows is the food. I could watch Sue talk about more or less anything, she's fantastically entertaining. As a matter of fact I used to work with Sue in Sherratt and Hughes bookshop in Croydon Whitgift Centre in the late 80s, and she was absolutely as she appears on Supersizers - quick-witted, absurd and very dry. She's going to develop into a classic English eccentric. And Giles, well, he's so pretty I could watch him do anything and quietly swoon. His dad was ace, and let's hope Coren junior follows in his footsteps and blossoms into a wizened old wit. They're pretty wee things now, but I have a feeling that it's not till they're old that they're going to really make sense.

Stop me if you think you've heard this one before

Chris Packham: not just the Billy Idol-haired dreamboat of my youth, not just Bill Oddie's eminently superior replacement on Springwatch, but evidently a man of great wit, ingenuity and guile. Fifteen minutes with him, I wouldn't say no.

The inspirational teacher

Some people are lucky enough to have had an inspirational teacher at school. Mine was Carol Kay. She was my English teacher for my O levels, and introduced me to the works of Oscar Wilde, the First World War poets, Jane Austen and Shakespeare. At Addington High, a very rough comprehensive (second worst in Croydon, I think it's being closed now for failing) there weren't many kids who were interested in learning, but I was the swot of all swots, encouraged by the miraculous English department to care about books and words rather than football and knives. We remained really good friends after I left: I exceeded expectations by not getting anyone pregnant by the age of 14 or ending up driving a white van and she went on to run a few big schools and set up a massive education business alliance scheme in Southwark. When she died last year Gordon Brown wrote a tribute to her work which was read out at her funeral. Carol Kay was pretty damned extraordinary.

Mary Portas reminds me of Carol Kay. She sounds a lot like her, she shares the same dry wit and blunt ability to say anything to anyone without fear. When I hear Mary Portas wander into some terrible boutique in Doncaster and berate the manager with a gesticulatory 'And I looked in the window and I thought, this is bloody rubbish' I can hear Carol talking about teachers who get up there and 'do a Shirley Bassey: they do the teaching but no-one cares if anyone's doing any learning'. Mary Portas is inspirational. Unlike those empty experts like billionairess Kirsty Allsopp or disgustingly cynical George Clarke who waft in and out with no hard nosed sense of the realities of life, Mary Portas gets people to make difficult decisions, doesn't soft soap them and isn't all about the cheesy 'Kevin McCloud moment' (you know, that excruciating bit at the end where he comes out of a house he's slagged off from beginning to end and starts eulogising like he's turned into Dylan Thomas).

This series has taken her out of her comfort zone of hard-nosed business and had dumped her into the woolly world of the charity shop: Save the Children in Orpington to be precise. The big problem Mary Portas seems to be having with charity shops is that people apparently don't go into them because they're untrendy. I don't understand this. I love charity shops, half of the stuff in my flat is second hand, but then I'm a mid-century modernist and if it's got sputnik legs or leather elbow patches then I want it and I WILL HAVE IT. And I'm constantly lugging carrier bags of books down to my local Red Cross shop. What kind of nutter doesn't love a good rummage in a charity shop?

There's some cracking moments. On a training day, Lila, the shop's resident joker takes to the stage to sell the features and benefits of, well, no-one was quite sure what it was. 'What is it? It looks like a dildo. You know, I've always wanted one of these. I've wanted one for twelve long years...' A room full of elderly ladies are crying with laughter into their winter knitwear.

Mild mannered Graham, who hasn't worked since being made redundant as a football coach two years before has applied for the shop manager position, but he takes 'hands off' to a whole new level. Mary goes at him as if he's a top flight manager over a rather poor Christmas window display, and before she knows it the area manager has come down on her like a ton of bricks. She's pitched it all wrong, he's upset, she's upset, the whole thing's a fuck-up. But she doesn't give up, though god knows she must be tempted.

The design consultant from Conran in her cape showing the extremely old ladies of Orpington Save the Children refit mood boards of 'drama and colours' was one of the funniest things I've seen on TV for ages. But then it all falls apart again. Old ladies understandably start resigning over the cost of the refit, and when it's done they find the shop cold, dark and drab. Brenda hates the orange shelves. Mary is depressed that she hasn't brought the staff with her. And head office expect big numbers back. Then they make a grand in two hours. Maybe this superbusinessbrain is on to something...

In a nearby shop she chats to another manager who, after saying she never has anything designer to sell came across a £1000 Jimmy Choo bag in her stockroom, and sold it for £200 to a woman who 'just had to have it' (oh god, it's me a with a £10 melamine coffee table), which leads Mary to declare, 'I hate saying I'm right, but I so often am.' And you know what, she is. This is the best business programme on telly since John Harvey Jones created the genre. Looking at the state of the cabinet and the inability of anyone to make decisions it's inspiring to see Mary passionately arguing about a nearly bankrupt country and business in crisis. At least she seems to care. It's a shame she's taken on charity shops where her energy and passion a little misplaced. She should be in Westminster. Fuck Gordon Brown, it should have been Carol Kay for PM, but I'd settle for Mary Portas.

TV loves itself

How Britain Got the Gardening Bug used some fantastic old film footage of gardens from the second half of the twentieth century. All those glorious, grainy shots of grow bags being hauled off the back of flat bed trucks, small villages in ludicrous bloom and people having sad little barbies in their back gardens really cheered me up. Shame that each decade was introduced with tedious cliched footage: the eighties filofax, champagne, red braces montage, for example, was so far removed from real life it undermined the rest of the documentary. Exactly how accurate were they being about garden history when they mangled social history so badly?

Slightly random collection of guests: Penelope Keith, Lawrence Llewelyn Bowen, Nigel Slater and Germaine Greer ('I would shoot down hanging baskets') and all the gardening establishment. The usual talking head bullshit: Did pampas grass mean you were swingers? No, shut up, James Double-Barrelled whatever your bloody name is. And shut up the woman who wanted to go at the lovely pampas grass with a pickaxe and bonfire. Gnomes. Topiary. Dwarf conifers. Yes, the weight of cliched soundbite snobbery came down heavily on all of them.

There was some gorgeous old 70s Gardeners' World, with giant vegetables and a couple of old blokes admiring the length and girth of the shaft of an engorged leek. As one of the old geezers said to the other as he handed him a trophy, 'that exhibit of celery I shall remember for the rest of my life'. But half way through the documentary it stopped being about real gardens and became a clip show of Don, Titchmarsh and Gavin.

Love Geoff Hamilton. But James Wanker-Cockspurt claimed that it is almost impossible to hate Alan Titchmarsh. The 'almost' is key here. Oh god, I fancied Dermot Gavin at one point. Now I'd happily feed him into a composter, the arrogant prick. But as the real garden footage disappeared from the documentary so did any of the non garden mafia talking talking heads and any reason to carry on watching. Such a shame. It was a good demonstration of how TV has stopped being the observer and has become the story, in the same way that viewers have become the stars in the last decade. There was a great little documentary trying to get out here, but by the end it was just another excuse for otherwise unemployable media types to namecheck each-other and smile ruefully at their badboy reputations. I'd have much rather seen interviews with some old geezers and their giant marrows.

There’s only one way to find out

Here's a post from Special Guest Shouter James Bainbridge (JRWB)...

Television has had a long love affair with the concept of making people live as things that they’re not: Iron Age roundhouse dwellers; the Victorian upper class; Second World War evacuees. Because TV is older than any of us, it’s grown a bit obsessed with seeing how us cosseted modern folk would cope with rationing. It wants to see how we’d get on with woad. Wants to stick cameras on us, and film us crawling up chimneys, weeping because it’s confiscated our iPod.

Like most things, these mongrel forms of Big Brother meets historical reenactment, vary in quality. One of the most surprisingly fascinating pieces of television for me this year was BBC2’s The Victorian Farm; a programme that by all reckoning should have been painfully and sentimentally dull. Yet through the casting of some quite ordinary-seeming agricultural historians to undertake the pretend time-travel, through the unflinching respect with which they ate offal and ploughed with horses – what emerged was a very likeable, educational treat. Television should be commended for showing us the constantly cheerful historian Ruth Goodman demonstrating how she constructed her sanitary protection out of moss.

It was with such optimism that I tuned in to watch last night’s My Life as an Animal (BBC3). I like things in which ordinary modern folk live as things that they’re not. That’s what I like. I liked seeing that Ruth Goodman stitching braces by gaslight, I’d like this. Surely.

The programme, which claims to try to answer the question “do we truly understand animals?” suggests that “there’s really only one way to find out.” By that it means it will take two ordinary modern folk and through a series of dangerous and humiliating rituals (eating from buckets, drinking from troughs, sleeping in fields) make them “live as an animal” for four days.

I’m no animal psychologist, but I can’t help thinking that there might be other ways. In fact, having watched last night’s programme – in which two people were kicked and bitten by horses, fighting for raw vegetables with their teeth – I left feeling I understood less how people might resemble horses, and more how television could resemble the cruel inventiveness of a war crime.

Hardy boys and girls

Geoff Hamilton was the reliably boring king of Gardener's World right up until his death in 1996. Useless co-presenters would come and go but Geoff would always be there, repotting seedlings and banging on about the virtues of going organic. I like Gardener's World. I don't have a garden and treat my local garden centre like a park. I look at my window boxes and wonder if the TV advice about soil ph and the care and mainenance of fruit trees might come in handy. It doesn't.

But since Hamilton's death there seems to be a new set of presenters every week, pretending to be chummy with each-other while eyeing their contracts nervously, knowing that these days they have the same kind of longevity as a greenfly. Here's the affable, laid-back one who'll plan a big garden for them to work on from scratch. There's the dumpy work-experience girl who wants to try doing things in a different way, because gardening's not just for you squares, daddio. And here's the eccentric boffin who does the science bit and gives us a chance to go for a wee without missing anything.

They probably have names, but there's no point remembering them. They'll all be in the composter come Autumn and the producers will have gone and got a completely new set again next year.