NEWSFLASH !! Sam Brady the acerbic TV critic and columnist is back... as a blogger. Check out his latest writing ...
http://sambradyoracle.blogspot.com/
AS some of you have already guessed, some years ago I used to write under the pseudonym of Sam Brady as an acerbic TV critic for the old Oracle teletext service.
Sam's weekly blast of bile about the smug, politically correct, middle class blandies who ran (and still run) British telly, gained quite a cult following - particularly among students, as I recall.
At the start of my Sam Brady column, in the late 1980s, I remember warning readers not to be taken in by all the talk of a glorious flowering of creativity that the digital future of broadcasting was supposed to bring.
It seemed to me, even back then, that for TV ... More could only ever mean Less.
Digital TV would give us a huge choice of programmes to watch, the pundits would chirrup, excitedly.
Well, let me tell you what ought to be obvious ...choice is not actually what most people want.
People are fed up with choice. Dizzy and weary with choice.
What TV viewers want is quality - i.e. quality writing, quality entertainment, compelling drama, and programmes they can love.
What people want is what they used to have - namely, a necessarily limited quantity of programmes packed with specifically British cultural references.
They don't want endless US imports stripped nightly across the TV channels.
They are sick of the sight of chefs gabbing on. There is one particularly nauseous show at the moment where Nigel Slater sucks up to celebrities and cooks them the meals they had in their yesteryears.
The one he did on comedian / TV presenter Griff Rhys Jones recently nearly made me bring up my dinner.
And the public don't want to see a load of twenty and thirtysomethings acting like petulant children each night in the horror that is Big Brother.
Nor do they want any more horrible talent shows. The latest one, a ballroom dancing contest for children, makes me and lots of people feel queasy, frankly.
For it is surely sick and wrong to get youngsters all kitted out in sequins and spray-on suits and smiles, doing moves that would be embarrassing even if adults performed them.
I would add that I am perhaps not the average viewer. I rush home to watch Coronation Street, which is still very well written and good on characterisation.
But even the Street has been distorted by the desperate and doomed chasing of ratings by sensationalised storylines that goes on now in soaps of the multi-channel era.
As a reader of this blog, 'New Brighton Newbie', pointed out in a comment he posted recently, just look at what the scriptwriters have put Sarah Platt through, and she's still a teenager...
Sarah was knocked up at 14. Then she met a middle-aged bloke posing as a teenager through a chat room.
Her mother married a serial killer who tried to drown the whole family.
Sarah's bad lad boyfriend nearly killed her while out joy riding.
She later got engaged to Todd Grimshaw and fell pregnant with him only to find out he was gay.
Then she tried to marry his brother, Jason, only for him to leg it out the vestry window when they were all assembled in church for the wedding.
Now she is trying to persuade a vicar to allow them another church wedding.
*** A final few words, and an example of one of the very best programmes so far screened British Television - Early Doors, the philosophical sitcom set in a backstreet, working class pub. It made me laugh and it made me cry.
Everything about that show was hauntingly beautiful, even the theme tune by Roddy Frame.
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Sam Alabaster wrote...
Steve, remember you are Steve. Concentrate on that.Don't go back to being Sam. Remember what your life was like during the Brady years... the booze, the tantrums, the tiaras, the abduction by aliens.
REGAN REPLIES: Well, I quite enjoyed the tantrums.
Posted by: Sam Alabaster | August 7, 2007 11:53 AM