5 TV Shows that would Improve Current Programming no end

A lot of my pals recently went to see that Famous and Fearless show, where celebrities (Three out of ten I recognised, so by ‘celebrity’ show standards it was a veritable smorgasbord of stellar names) try various daft sports and stunts. No-one, literally no-one watched it on TV; they all went to see it live. The reasoning was ‘it looked shit on TV, but the live one’s got to be better, right?’

Well, no. The TV version is pretty much the same deal, except there’s better camera angles, no waiting in line, no fat fuck directly in your line of vision and you can change channel whenever it gets too boring. Which is often.

I’m not saying everything’s better on TV. I’m nearly constantly bummed out over not getting to see Jets to Brazil before they disbanded, which is fair play because I genuinely love Jets to Brazil’s brand of pure audio Branston. Who can honestly say they give a flying fuck about a crappy stunt show where the most you can hope for is Jenny Frost getting in a car wreck and having to present the next series of Snog, Marry, Avoid? as a quadriplegic?

It’s a testimony to my loathing of any word the characters of Harry Potter utter that ‘snog’ just got called out by my spellchecker in 2011.

Anyway, back to today’s topic, TV. Rather, the dire state of current programming. Nearly everything seems to be in that queasy hinterland where it’s shit, but not shit enough to be entertaining. With this in mind, I’ve come up with a few new shows that people would appreciate more and/or would get me hauled in front of an international court and tried for war crimes.

1)Every Time I Dine. A reality/food/rockumentary crossover that follows Every Time I Die as they barbecue their way through various uncompromising locations (The Canadian backwoods, the Great Australian Desert, Glasgow). Yes, I pretty much only did it for the title. For added shits and giggles, they must first catch and kill whatever they’re eating, Ray Mears style. Gasp as the boys are forced to murder a hobo because they ran out of chicken! Not only would this show be the best thing MTV (Or Viva. Or I don’t give a shit what you call yourself) has ever screened, but it would clear up the age-old question—Andy Williams versus a fully grown grizzly bear, who’s harder? My money’s on Williams.

2)Avoid! Avoid! Avoid! A Snog, Marry, Avoid? spin-off. Instead of making-over (You will never, under any circumstance, catch me saying ‘make-under’. I just will not do it) slags and gothy freaks, they just get sat in a chair with a camera on their face while the public’s opinion of them is repeated in a dull monotone by a computer. At the end of the show, they’re led outside. Silence is maintained throughout the credits until a single gunshot rings out.

3)Geronimo. A show in which people jump from increasingly tall heights to win a cash prize. Last one alive is the winner, who is then thrown off so the network doesn’t have to pay. The cash then rolls over, making a greater incentive for next week’s lemmings. The fact that I imagine this one doing the best out of all my ideas says a lot about the state of the nation.

4)Your Sketch Shows are Bad and You Should Feel Bad. A Silent, thirty-second clip of me beating Matt Lucas and David Walliams with a golf club. Pure visual Branston.

5)Graduates. A hilarious mock-documentary, which plays like a hybrid of Spaced and The Office. The main character is Jimmy, who lives with a couple of other young professionals in a flat. He works in a generic office environment where it’s never actually made clear what he does. The action is fifty percent him with his young-guns-go-for-it pals doing young professional leisure activities, and fifty percent people in his office treating him like he’s a mental case. At the end of the series, he kills himself and it becomes apparent that he had no young professional flatmates and was, in fact, schizophrenic.

So, that’s how I’d improve television for the average pleb. While most of them are reality TV shows, I should point out that you could make TV better by lowering the quality until it’s so shitty and bleak it’s funny. That’s the stage we’re at. Although, it must be said that some of my shows would be excellent for getting rid of the kind of people who enjoy and/or go on reality TV, so maybe viewing figures would suffer. Culling the nation’s cunts would be worth it, though.

Holding out for a reality/snuff/genocide crossover,
Nick

Five Things I Learned Watching 'Come Dine With Me'

If you already know about Come Dine with Me, you may wanna skip the first two paragraphs.

Reality TV is the programming equivalent of being slapped in the face by an octogenarian ballbag. Similarly, cookery shows are a bit like RE lessons in school; anyone who gives a fuck knows it all already. So, what happens in the event of a crossover?

In a remarkable instance of two wrongs making a right, we’re given Come Dine with Me. The show in which random plebs compete for a grand by being two-faced about each other, passive-aggressive and generally unpleasant. All set to gloriously snarky narration by Dave Lamb. There’s even a celebrity version. What’s more, I’ve even heard of some of the celebrities in the celebrity version. Here’s five things I learned from watching it;

1)Picky eaters are everywhere. Seriously. Every goddamn week, one of them is gonna refuse to eat something. Rarely for a reason, as vegetarians are usually catered for. This is another example of why people should be exterminated for being annoying. Don’t like it? It’s fucking food. Eat it, enjoy the sustenance, then give the cook a low score. Don’t kick up fuss at the dinner table like a stupid motherfucker, because then everyone hates you.

2)‘Real people’ are every bit as vapid as celebrities. When Big Brother oozed into the national consciousness, Channel 4 realised they needed a selling point for that shitfest. It was touted as being ‘real lives of real people’ and therefore more interesting than celebrities. Hence, ‘reality TV’ instead of ‘retina-burningly shitty TV’. Anyway, as if Big Brother wasn’t enough proof, the contrast between the celebrity and civilian Come Dine with Me is simply that the celebrities are prettier. That’s it. So, the choice is watching a bunch of boring, shitty ugly people or a bunch of boring, shitty passably attractive people. No-brainer, innit?

3)Talentless camp men are the most annoying thing on the planet. I forgive Louis Spence and Gok Wan (among others), because they have talent (be those talents dancing, or lying to fat people) and they’re fucking awesome at what they do. However, when a dude with that ‘tude (sorry, couldn’t resist the rhyme) and no skill to back it up appears on TV, it sends me into fits of rage. But Nick, I hear you cry, he’s just being himself! Yeah? Well himself is a cunt and should work on not being so annoying. That might make up for his lack of redeeming features. Hell, if he wasn’t such a pain in the ass, he wouldn’t need redeeming features.

4)Keith Buckley improves everything. No, Keith hasn’t been on Celebrity Come Dine with Me, but wouldn’t it be brilliant? Just picture the BBQ scene from the Party Pooper DVD, only with three added confused people who used to be famous. Don’t you grin just thinking about that? I seriously think Keith would rule at it, too. The dude’s ferociously intelligent and talks about being an attentive host like it’s something to be ashamed of. Man, I want an ETIDine with Me (Every Time I Dine?) to air now. I’ll start petitioning them on Facebook.

5)Don’t leave your stuff lying around. Every freakin’ episode, someone’s underwear draw in ransacked and a discovery is made. Be it a dildo, sexy lingerie, or full-on bondage gear, it’s there in front of the watching nation. You’d think people would be prepared for that shit. Sure, maybe you have specialist tastes and need to advertise or else spend your life alone, but for fuck sake have some class. Lock up the really crazy stuff, just drop a few hints. Leave the power tools on display, but clean up a bit and hide your nephew’s corpse somewhere a snooping dinner guest won’t find it.

So, that’s five things I learned from C4’s greatest reality show (although it’s pretty much the only good one ever), Come Dine with Me, although I pretty much suspected number 4 anyway.

Party pooper extraordinaire,
Nick