Showing off
James Delingpole
God, I am so crap. It turned out that in the week when I said there was nothing on worth reviewing that there was absolutely tons of stuff I could have done, like the new series of Frasier, Sword Of Honour and the last two episodes of The Sopranos. And now I've missed my chance to talk about any of them.
Well, not quite. There's just a couple of things I've got to say. First, if Daphne's appalling brother (the one who makes Dick Van Dyke sound like an authentic cockney) ever appears again, then I think Britain will be well within her rights to nuke Seattle. Second — and I should be most interested to hear from any experienced hitmen on this score — wouldn't it have made more sense to shoot Pussy at the stern of the boat rather than down below (where blood would surely have stained the carpet and where stray bullets might easily have gone into the woodwork)?
If I had my finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist this week, I'm sure I would be reviewing Popstars (ITV. Saturday). Lodger — my lodger, who watches far too much television and knows about these things — says that it is genius (in a really tacky, lowrent way, obviously). But by the time I heard this, it was too late to get the tape, so I'm going to have to do The West Wing (Channel 4, Thursday) instead.
The West Wing — though you're bound to know this already since so many critics and previewers have been creaming their jeans over it — is the new multi-Emmywinning soap about the lives and loves of the White House team behind fictional Democrat US President Josiah Bartlet (Martin Sheen).
Since I've only seen the first episode, and since quite a few people whose opinion I respect seem to think it's a good thing, I suppose I ought to be careful before slagging it off. But instead I'm going to just pile in there and dismiss it as a heap of steaming poo, and then work out exactly why I hate it as we go along.
What riles me about The West Wing, I think, is its nauseating smugness. 'Look at me,' it smirks, 'Aren't I big and clever and sophisticated? Just see how many Emmies
I won.' All right, so the episode I saw didn't know it had won any Emmies, obviously, because it was a pilot. But you could tell it thought it deserved them.
How? Well, an early indicator was that smartarse tracking shot right at the beginning, where two of the main characters are wandering through the corridors and openplan offices of the White House having an impassioned and urgent conversation about something which we don't quite understand because it's all in medics res. And what we're supposed to think here is: Wow, almost without my noticing, I'm being shown the buzzing environment in which these characters operate! And goodness, I feel awfully flattered that so little is being explained to me because it implies I'm really intelligent! But what we actually think — me, anyway — is: This isn't the real world, this is ersatz, high-gloss, got-to-grab-theratings-in-the-first-30-seconds-or-we'redead world.
There's a similar it-took-12-magna-cumlaude-Yale-graduates-to-write-this-scriptyou-know approach to character exposition. You saw it. for example, where the Rob Lowe character gives a risibily bald account of his personal history not to, say, a passing reporter — too lame and obvious — but to a party of deeply uninterested schoolchildren. So not only do we get to learn about him. But we get to laugh at the same time!
And what about that toe-curling scene at the end where President Martin Sheen finally walks on and reveals what a jolly good fellow he is by delivering that crushing put-down to those horrid fundamentalist Christians? Was there ever a scene more contrived (the careful setting-up of one of the fundamentalists as a stone-faced hell-bitch; the gratuitous deployment of anti-anti-Semitism; the convenient introduction of this mythical organisation that just happens to have sent the president's daughter that nasty letter about her prochoice views) and dishonest, more cynically designed to make audiences congratulate themselves on how wise and liberal they are?
Which leads me to the most revolting thing of all about The West Wing: its tacit implication that only the brainless and the heartless could be anything other than Democrat. Do you remember those early days of the Clinton administration when we were encouraged to believe that it was made up of young, bright-eyed, bushytailed, lean, healthy visionaries who could all be guaranteed to do the Right Thing this time? Well, The West Wing still promulgates this sanctimonious drivel and it makes me puke.
Not everything makes me puke, though. The Mole (Channel 5, Friday) is very watchable and The Armstrong and Miller Show (Channel 4, Friday) is comedy genius. I particularly enjoyed the sketch in which the prime minister's adviser tries to enliven a G7 summit by drawing a penis on the PM's hand in indelible ink. You'd never get a team of 12 Yale graduates coming up with anything as clever as that.
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