Television
Stressed out
James Delingpole
Apart from The Adam and Joe Show, the best thing I've seen on television this week is Tomb Raider. As the sadder among you will be aware, this is not an exciting new archaeological series presented by Tony Robinson, but a Sony Playstation video game in which you manipulate a scantily-clad uberbabc called Lara Croft through a series of underground mazes in search of hidden treasure.
On the way, you encounter vampire bats, wolves, lions, bears and giant tyrannosaurs which you must shoot before they kill you. And in order to complete each level, you must solve a number of ever more complex puzzles: how to find the missing exit keys without being crushed by the giant hammer of Thor, drowned in the temple of Nep- tune, or squished by the Indiana Jones- style boulder which guards the corridor leading to the shrine of Atlas. And so on.
I would go on but I'm not sure I'm really allowed to review video games here. Suffice to say that Lara Croft is one of the greatest British inventions of the last decade and one in the eye for the American computer- game software industry which would give its right testicle to devise a character half so cool and sexy.
If only I could speak so highly of Britain's latest animated hero, a 40-year- old office worker called Eric Feeble. Sadly, his surname is precisely the mot juste to describe the new cartoon sitcom for grown- ups in which he appears, Stressed Eric (BBC 2, Monday).
The series' principal — indeed its only — joke is that Eric is very, very stressed. His wife has run off with a Buddhist; his daugh- ter is prone to hideous allergies; his young son is a moron; his au pair is a drunk; and he is useless at his job. In the opening episode, he left some important paperwork at home, spent all day retyping it only to have it thrown away by a cleaner; then he nearly missed his son's nativity play. It ended with Eric feeling so stressed that the throbbing vein on his temple wrapped itself around his neck and strangled him. Boom, boom.
As John Diamond observed, it's hard to think of a Simpsons episode that could be accurately summed up in so few words. Stressed Eric appears determined to stretch such few good ideas as it has for as long as humanly possible. The scene, for example, where Eric's attempts to buy a rail ticket are frustrated by the dumb German backpacker in front of him was funny for the first minute. Agonising, thereafter.
According to his creator Carl Gorham, `Stressed Eric isn't a satire. At heart it's a British sitcom but animated.' Is he acknowledging that its characters are cliched and its humour prehistoric (bosses With big fat cigars, Eric leaving for work and — get this — forgetting to put on his trousers)? Or is he simply trying to distance it from comparisons to King of the Hill and The Simpsons? Sure, unlike King of the Hill, Stressed Eric is not written over many weeks by teams of highly trained killer graduates nor does it have a budget of $1 million per episode. But that never stopped Men Behaving Badly or Father Ted being funny, did it? No. I fear that Stressed Eric's problems are more fundamental than that. Put simply — and the emetic Crapston Villas had exactly the Same problem — the characters are all so nl-drawn, implausible or unsympathetic that you don't give a damn what happens to them.
This mood of overweening bleakness somehow redolent of the Guardian 'sod- section, soiled nappies and PTA meet- ings — is a phenomenon peculiar to British animated comedy. In American cartoon sit- e°ms, no matter how dumb (Homer Simp- son), obstreperous (Bart, Hank Hill's red- neck chum) or loathsome (Beavis and Butthead) the characters, they never quite lose the viewer's sympathy. Either they are redeemed by their essential goodness or they're simply so horrible you can't help rejoicing in their evil.
The notorious American sitcom South Park (currently on Sky, due for broadcast on Channel 4 in July) probably fits into the latter category. The characters — eight- year-old school kids mainly — are warped, trashy and so badly animated (blobs with anoraks, hats and big eyes) that on first viewing you might be tempted to wonder why you're watching such rubbish. But the scepticism doesn't last.
In the episode I saw, a fat character called Cartman was visited by aliens and examined by a very large anal probe, which caused him to fart fire and, later, a satellite dish. `Cartman! There's an 80-ft satellite dish sticking out of your ass!' one of his observant chums exclaimed. The aliens concluded that cows were the most intelli- gent creatures on earth and told them so in moo language (translated with subtitles). `Why did you turn some of us inside out?' one of the cows asked. 'Oh, that was Carl's fault,' an alien replied. 'He's new.'
Now, doesn't that sound a lot cleverer and funnier than a half-hour cartoon about a man getting stressed on his way to the office?
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