1. Friends
This… is probably going to sound intensely analytical for what is essentially a “harmless comedy programme”, but then, were this a show that no-one admits to liking – ala Fresh Prince of Bel Air – then I could write it off and not harbour such criticism of it. As it stands, seeing as how it’s revered quite often in magazines (that Empire Top 50 TV shows list I talked about… hmm, months ago now) and online and just by people I know in day-to-day life (um, to be fair, not anymore)...

Okay. The problem with Friends is that TV is about escapism. Well, no, that’s a stupid thing to say so narrow-mindedly. In fact, anyone who says TV is only about escapism is a complete lunatic, because that’d remove the news and documentaries from our screens in the first place. Let’s hone that more into entertainment is about escapism, whether that be TV, film or book.

And yet… well, not exactly, because a lot of audiences don’t like TV shows bullshitting us; sci-fi is less respected than, say, CSI-type-crime drama because the latter is more grounded and real. Effectively. So really, the most you can say is that TV is about fiction, about the us-but-not-quite-us and the not-at-all-us. The entertainment side of things, anyway.

Goddammit, I’m confusing already.

The gist of this is that… well, where that falls down is the link between reality in, you know, real life, and reality on TV. It’s a curious balance because, on the one hand, executives will tell you that characters need to be sympathetic and – here’s the key thing – that the audiences need to identify with them. Since I just said sympathy, we can basically take “identify” to mean empathise; a sense of “Yeah, I’ve been there.” But then, were the TV show about, say, what leads a serial killer to do what they do, from their perspective (mostly), then immediately you could lose a chunk of the audience. Because it’s too real, too believable, and too… scary.

Cracker is a prime example of this; most episodes make the killer sympathetic in some way, which is the whole point of the programme. The killers are just like us. The police are just like us. Shows like that are about potential rather than shoving a metaphorical window to our lives and saying, “Hey look, it’s you! Only portrayed by Jennifer Aniston.”

I immediately have a problem with making characters, you know, “identifiable” because… well, it feels like bullshitting. If a character reminds you of your life absolutely, then what’s the point of watching? Just live out your own incredibly similar life. The whole point of TV is surely to show us things we haven’t seen before, to educate and stimulate us. It sounds twee when I say it like that, but goddammit, it’s true.

Ah. But what about comedy?

Comedy immediately throws in different rules. Take Shaun of the Dead; were that a serious zombie film, and the guy was a Retravision employee with a baseball bat who was well ‘ard, it’d seem ridiculous. As it stands, played as comedy, it seems… ridiculous. But a different kind of ridiculous. The former just feels too unrealistic and silly; the latter points out that it’s unrealistic and silly, and that’s what makes it funny.

So if comedy plays by different rules, then it’s far more viable to include “normal average people”, isn’t it?

Yes, absolutely.

But – getting to it at last – Friends doesn’t do that.

The problem with the series is simple; it’s supposed to be about normal, average people (with the exception of Phoebe, naturally), and yet… I’ve said this before in my Favourite Title Sequences thing, but yes, the title sequence sums up what I dislike greatly about the series. They’re all dressed up, all grinning, all perfect, all… rich, effectively. I’m not saying they have to live in utmost poverty, but if you’re going to show the hardship of characters in a comedic light, then you make that hurt. Tragedy is comedy played differently. It’s even more vital sometimes to show how much the world can hurt.

But that’s the thing; I’ve never seen them get into any massive trouble. They’ve not even got dirty, for fuck’s sake. It’s all clean, all wholesome, all… ugh. I mean, the Aniston-Ryder kiss was flagged up as this massive thing (oh, don’t get me started on horrible lesbianism-to-get-ratings incidents… though I might later anyway), and effectively it’s a minor kiss that not only goes nowhere, but, irritatingly, is… yeah. It’s completely missable. I didn’t honestly bat an eyelid, and yet I was supposed to, and I find that really, really annoying.

The biggest irony of the whole show is that Phoebe is portrayed as the whacky, kooky one – yet she’s far more real and normal than any of the others. “Normal” in the sense of “living breathing human being” rather than “average and mundane”; the latter, of course, being exactly what the others are, but souped up and prettier and not actually facing any problems at all. Seeing as we know everything will be resolved by the end anyway – such is the nature of a comedy like that – it’s not like any potential hardship they even receive could ever be taken seriously. It’s like expecting the murderer to never be revealed in a whodunnit.

Of course, the last defence – and, fair enough, for some people the most important – is whether the show’s funny at all. Which is far more subjective than anything I’ve said so far. But there we leave it; I’ve never even smiled when watching it. Practically unable to get past the above complaints, I’ve always managed to pay attention anyway and yet still not find a single thing in it funny.

2. Star Trek
I hate to bring up the age-old argument, but Friends sort of illustrated my point in my Shaun of the Dead comparison; mostly, the biggest American iconic shows and films (with the thank-god exception of The Simpsons, to name but one) tend to… well, they don’t like losers, and they don’t really like role models rebelling against authority.

Obviously that’s a hugely sweeping statement to make, and there’s certainly many instances to the contrary; Futurama and The Simpsons easily spring to mind, as does South Park… but then, they’re comedies. They’re more at liberty to portray dickheads and idiots as… not role models, but the main sympathetic characters, the ones we’re, in a sense, meant to be “rooting for”.

Now. Obviously I can’t go too far into this without mentioning Doctor Who, but here’s why (well, one of the reasons) I’ve always preferred that to Star Trek; the main character is on the run for the fun of it, without meaning to harm anybody of course, and does good things because he feels like helping people. In Star Trek, they’re representatives of the Federation. To bring that home, it’d be like if Doctor Who was actually about the officials who go off and look at alien planets and report back to Gallifrey, rather than about a fairly-normal-yet-mysterious bloke who runs off for the hell of it and has a laugh and a cry and everything in between.

No? I should shutup about Doctor Who? Okay, then let’s return to the States and select, instead, Firefly. I wouldn’t consider myself a fan of that show, but certainly I liked it (having seen, and in fact I own, all of it). Fair enough, the main characters are all pretty darn attractive in their own way (um, except maybe the Priest? I’d hope…), but none of them are affiliated with any big corporations. They’re all on the run (except one), they’re all normal, and they’re all anti-authority. Consider: the most dressed up and glamorous of the lot is a prostitute. That’s her job description anyway, it requires her to dress like that, but it’s still a leap. If she’s the most glamorous, what are the others like?

That’s the biggest problem I have with Star Trek, anyway. And then, factor in the fact that they’re stuck on the same bloody ship all the time (not to comedic effect either, ala Red Dwarf) and, indeed, the series created the holodeck purely to break up the monotony. Then factor in the fact that it’s full of self-important, techno-babble laden and, ultimately, pretentious dialogue.

Look, I’m sure it’s got its virtues. But I can’t get past those. Prejudiced, moi? Probably.

3. Law and Order, CSI, et al
This one’s far more subjective, mainly because I honestly haven’t seen enough of those shows to really judge properly. For instance, I could say that CSI is full of silly scientific technobabble and characters talking really weirdly and listing facts for the hell of it – and also that its title sequence is bizarrely wrong, which is even more bizarre considering I’ve never heard anyone say anything negative about it – but really, um… okay, I just did, but hey.

It’s just that… it depends hugely on what I get out of crime shows. I hate to pigeonhole myself too much but, a year back at least, if you’d seen what my collection of DVDs usually entailed, then I seemed to be a crime fan. I was raving about Wire in the Blood and Cracker. I watched Jonathan Creek regularly. I…

…well, that’s where we hit the rub of it. Barring the fact that all three are very different in, at the very least, tone… it’s also a point to be made that all three shows lie in the potential, in the abstract.

Jonathan Creek, certainly. I’ve seen people criticise it for being about trickery that no murderer would bother to pull off in real life anyway, and that’s true. But that’s not a bad thing. Blatantly, it’s not real life; it has to be believable, that it could happen. That’s all I need and I’m sold. Give me something clever over something cliched, I thank you very much.

Cracker and Wire in the Blood… well, they’re not nearly as reliant on the abstract. Both of them, indeed, feel very real and very gritty (more so Cracker). And yet… look at CSI and its offshoots. CSI, CSI: New York, CSI: Miami. The titles of the latter two are screaming out at where they’re set. They’re set on the streets, they’re far more realistic.

Cracker is supposedly set in Manchester, and Wire in the Blood in Bradfield – though both have taken field trips too. This is more important than you’d think because, well, realistically those two places are only there to give us a sense of the real world. Where both series are really set is in the minds of the killers.

It’s been said that Jimmy McGovern was very thorough in making sure he presented police protocol accurately, and fair play, that does sound like they were going for the realistic approach. But despite being gritty and realistic, it’s also not really. It’s played as character drama and, more importantly, it’s concerned hugely with the way people view the world. Manchester looks completely different to Albie Kinsella than it does to whatever-John-Simm’s-character-is-called, because they look at the people who live there rather than the location. They’re obsessed with social problems (as is the show), and they’re obsessed with finding their own place within that.

So just as Law and Order is set for half of its length in a courtroom, it’s fair to say that half of Cracker is set in an interview room, determining why the killer did it – plus the scenes where the audience is shown more reasons why than the police. Wire in the Blood makes this even more obvious with modern technology, flitting between peoples’ minds with occasional spouts of surrealism.

I just made the point above, though, about Law and Order. Blatantly, if you enjoy court cases, then it’s for you. But again, the problem for me is getting too close to reality. I don’t mean violence or “gratuitousness”, christ no. I very simply mean the dull nature of how things happen.

And here it is in short: CSI expects us to think that these are real cases, that really people do get caught like this, that forensics are always the answer and – this is the problem – that cases get wrapped up very quickly. And that’s where the bullshit lies. It’s crossed the line between fiction and reality and stumbled while doing so because the show’s not in realtime. Otherwise it’d be… well, a reality TV show about an ongoing trial. I dunno, it’d be the OJ Simpson trial for some petty theft.

4. Marple, Poirot, et al
Um, basically any televised adaptation of Christie, really.

I’m going to start talking in sweeping statements here again, but here’s the thing. Let’s bring back Jonathan Creek and – oh, we’ll just settle for Cracker this time (since Wire in the Blood shares so many of its themes and outlook) – for another run.

Neither of those are whodunnit. No, hang on, I know that sometimes the killer isn’t revealed until near the end – though come to think of it, Cracker did this twice, and both were in its first season. But certainly, Jonathan Creek isn’t afraid to throw its audience off from who the murderer was. Even in the episode where Jonathan knows who did it right from the start (‘The Scented Room’, and actually it’s not a murder…!), he neglects to tell the audience. The reason being… well, what’d be the point? The police would charge in and grab the person, and Jonathan would spend the rest of his time in his windmill mulling over how the guy did it even though that’s now irrelevant. No, the killer (or rather criminal, or in fact – ala ‘The Curious Tale of Spring-Heeled Jack’ – perpetrator at worst) has to be kept at arm’s length, or otherwise there’s no real reason to solve it. It’s just that motive isn’t really the biggest factor here.

It is, effectively, a howdunnit. Jonathan’s the guy who works out magic tricks, after all. It’s all about discovering how someone could do something impossible, rather than discovering who did it, or even why.

…and yes, that’s where we come to Cracker which is, indeed, very much whydunnit. As I said, normally the criminal is shown right from the off, and we see their descent into crime. And yet, we never get inside their head until later, which is what’s fascinating; seeing the meaning behind the events we just saw.

I’ve made that point in the CSI rant though, so; Marple and Poirot. Now, no offence meant to Christie at all, but whodunnits simply don’t interest me. The whole “murder mystery” thing is something so desensitised by TV these days anyway that you can’t help but think of them as a romp. Even though – and this is sort of the problem – they’re about murder. Even Jonathan Creek, which is deliberately part-comedy (it has Bill Bailey in Series Four as a regular, for god’s sake), takes its murders deadly seriously. No, not just that; it’s not just the direction and tone that takes it seriously, but the characters. Whereas, though Poirot can be well-directed and can very much establish how disgusting a thing murder can be – though it rarely becomes worse than blood, to be honest – it’s impossible to imagine the characters taking it seriously. An “oh, frightful business!” here and a “so who do you think did it, Mr Poirot?” there. More to the point, they inevitably end up spending all of their time together anyway even though there’s a bloody murderer in their midst, and that’s just profoundly stupid. Fair enough, it’s more believable if they’re in a fairly enclosed environment like the Orient Express or a boat on the Nile – though in the former’s case, there’s no way the train wouldn’t be stopped and the passengers would disembark, surely? Otherwise, I haven’t seen such brutal disregard for passengers’ well-being since Thomas the Tank Engine – but there’s only so many of them you can do, just like there’s only so many “base under siege” stories that Doctor Who can do.

Oops, I’ve mentioned the DW word(s). Okay, wrapping up; it’s just something that feels silly to me. It’s the opposite of the problem with CSI. And yes, it is a fairly hard balance to maintain, all things said.

5. Australian Idol et al
That “et al” meaning the overseas ones. Orin other words, American Idol (it’s the only other one we get, isn’t it?).

First of all; god, far too much money is spent on this stuff. Jesus, it’s excessive.

But I should say that I’ve defended the right for shows like Big Brother and Australian Idol to exist before. I mean, in the right frame of mind they can be enjoyable (well, Australian Idol to see the deludedly-bad performances from utter bitches. Well, only when Simon Cowell is around, so that excludes the Australian version of Idol then. Ah well). Like, they’re fascinating on one level, and it’s also a relief to see the music industry come clean and tell us exactly how it is.

Yes, we do want you pampered, yet with a slight streak of “individuality”. Mainstream and individual? That’s the way! Manufactured yet “normal”? Absolutely!

It is, after all, called “idol”. There’s no more obvious way of saying what they’re turning these normal people into. Gods, effectively.

But of course, Dr Frankenstein, Man was not meant to play God…

…sorry, what? Oh, right, yes. Um.

Okay, anyway. All very interesting, and nice that the music industry is, as I said, so clean and open about it. So honest.

And yet we’re supposed to congratulate them for what they do. And that’s the problem.

If the whole point of Big Brother was to point at the people on it and strip away and show their horrible attitudes and bigoted, vile, self-centred insides, and then to show us that that was wrong of them, then I’d be happy enough with it. I mean, getting Corey what’s-his-name isn’t technically a bad idea. After all, he’s been the face of how-bad-my-generation-is in Australia for a while now (stupid arsehole. Way to fucking set us back a few steps), so throwing him under the spotlight and practically demanding him to account for himself would be satisfying and would show others like him how wrong they can be. That’s what it should have achieved. But of course, it was just done for a ratings pull. And, nauseatingly, this was denied as a reason, and instead the Big Brother execs said they wanted to show the nice side of Corey.

Are you fucking kidding me? The nice side? I’m all for people being able to show all of their colours rather than just their darkest shades*, but effectively they’re trying to absolve him completely and show him off as a role model. That’s sickeningly, hideously wrong. It’d be like if Gretel Kileen suddenly became the role model for girls in how they should look.

Oh wait…!

(I’m actually now being unfair. After all, I’ve never met a single person, girl or boy, who likes Gretel Kileen or thinks she’s attractive. Scratch that; I met one guy who did, and when he said that, he was reviled**. So it’s fair to assume that Gretel isn’t exactly the most well-respected of individuals)

*Well, he did wear sunglasses a lot.

**After all, it’s far more normal to find someone like, say, Paula Abdul attractive, am I right? Am I? …fuck you. Fuck you all. :@ !!

…oops, I’ve strayed from Australian Idol to Big Brother. Well, they are to be discussed in tandem, anyway.

Anyway, the point is that there shouldn’t be a reward on the other side; half the time, these people don’t deserve the money, and they certainly don’t deserve the fame. You could say this of actual celebrities ala Paris Hilton, of course, but it’s not going to help by bringing more in.

And the winners of Australian Idol have, so far, been utter ponces. We only need to look at the first year; Shannon Noll, nice bloke though he seems to be outside of his music persona (I say that honestly, too), seems to have gotten it into his head that he’s “cool”. Which he isn’t. Apart from anything else, “cool” has to involve popularity, surely, and though many people obviously bought his music, no-one really admitted to liking it. It’s a weird limbo that also enshrouds the actual programme; you rarely meet anyone who apparently likes it, and yet someone does those votes. Hmm.

Then there’s Guy Sebastian, who decided he was the king of soul and collaborated with all of these big name artists. Did he deserve to? No. He got through by winning a reality TV show, let’s face it; not because his actual albums are revered master works. Not by anyone.

Also, Anthony Callea’s a dick.

I won’t even bother going into the Casey Donovan fuck-up – say goodbye to the only interesting winner you’ve had, Idol! – because Dicko already bloody went and did it for me. Yep, the judge of the show.

Speaking of the judges… apart from the fact that Mark Holden is a useless presence who grates on the nerves… actually, hang on. To be fair, you know, he’s actually sold a record or two (I’m understating, naturally). As has Marcia Hines. Dislike their music all you want, or them as people, but at least they’re technically qualified to know what the hell they’re talking about.

But then…

…fucking Kyle Sandilands. Fucking stupid fucking arsehole.

Sorry, I just thought I had to talk in a language he’d understand so I could communicate my opinion of him. For those who want something more – and fair enough, too – this is the guy who condoned physical violence not just to Frenzal Rhomb, but in front of Andrew Denton’s face. Physical violence as a way of winning an argument as opposed to, you know, arguing.

Obviously this is horrid and vile and…

…wait, hang on.

*throws away morals for a second*

God, I pledge to the Idol contestants; next time he says one of you is too fat, gang up on him and beat him to a pulp until he lies bleeding and dying. It’d be so satisfying and poetic, especially if Mark Holden leapt up from his seat and yelled, “K.O.!”

*returns to normality*

In short, I hate everything they stand for. Simple as that.