What a lot of rubbish
James Delingpole
My resolution this year is to be much more careful about how I whore myself. In future, I shall try to make all the pieces I write as totally me as possible a) because it's easier and b) because whenever I catch myself trying to do the sort of diligent, generic journalism that I think commissioning editors are after I hate myself and want to die. (But obviously I'm still open to offers, Sunday Times and Associated Newspapers, if you pay me Martin Amis rates.) Now I did have a few nasty moments over Christmas as I tried to be a diligent, generic journalist and watch a few preview tapes of programmes that were actually on this week. But the ones I got were too boring or rubbishy or hadn't yet had their proper voice-over added and suddenly I realised, 'What the hell am I doing? It's quite monstrous that I should be working at all at this time of year, let alone for the Third World Nike worker wages the Speccer pays its contributors. I'll just talk about whatever I want.'
What I want to talk about, mainly, is just how amazingly crap Christmas TV is. Why I should be surprised by this I don't know. But every year, like the Irishman who loses £50 on the Grand National and then another £100 on the action replay, I manage to talk myself into thinking that this time it's going to be different.
It never is though, as I was reminded by The Royle Family At Christmas (BBC 1, Christmas Day). It seems a virtually inviolable rule of TV comedy, this: for the rest of the year you can be as subtle and brilliant as you like; but come Christmas you must be sure to explain every joke and to be as heavy-handed, cloyingly sentimental and crassly unfunny as possible.
Nor was I less underwhelmed by BBC 2's The Count Of Monte Cristo which managed to make possibly the greatest plot ever seem weary, stilted and dull. Partly, I blame Gerard Depardieu, who just emailed in his performance. Mainly I blame the French, who seem to think TV is just an extension of the theatre.
Then, of course, there was Titanic (Christmas Day, BBC 1). I know that, at the time, there was a minor furore over its historical inaccuracies — as the actual ship went down monocled English officers in black tie didn't really go round with Purdeys shooting anyone whom they suspected of having an Irish accent, for example — but I still don't feel that any of us was sufficiently warned as to what imperial bollocks the film is.
What I particularly enjoyed was the way Hollywood had decided that the true story of a huge unsinkable ship hitting an iceberg and going down, amid scenes of great stoicism, with hundreds and hundreds of lives was just too boring. Hence, for example, the scene at the end where Kate Winslet goes up and down lifts in the flooded ship, wading through mysteriously uncold water, in order to rescue her bloke who — as often happens on stricken vessels — has been chained to a pillar by a cackling villain. It was also instructive to learn that pencil drawings on paper can be immaculately preserved when kept in salt water for 90 years. (Adam and Joe did it so much better, as did Beryl Bainbridge.)
It was largely to avoid watching such toss, that we recently subscribed to Film Four. So far, though, this has only resulted in extra misery. The one film we actually managed to see — Human Traffic — promised to be quite an honest portrait of clubbing and drugging but was let down by characterisation so lame and a never-to-beforgotten scene so toe-curlingly embarrassing (the national anthem one, in case any of you have seen it) that it makes Titanic look like Citizen Kane. Apart from that, though, all I've managed to do is make lots of videos — really hard and time consuming, because unlike every other channel Film Four doesn't have VideoPlus — of arty French films I'll probably never be in the mood for watching.
I can't quite work out what was wrong with The Last Fast Show Ever (BBC 2) — sketches too long? Format and catchphrases too passé? — but its shortcomings were thrown cruelly into perspective by the deranged genius of The League Of Gentlemen (BBC 2, last Wednesday). Almost everyone in TLOG is so sinister, creepy or despicable that sometimes you have to be quite strict with yourself before you can persuade yourself to watch it. I've never yet regretted it, though, especially not with the Christmas special, which broke all the rules about Christmas specials and turned out to be a masterpiece. The funny bits were really funny — Herr Lipp (bursting into his young guest's bedroom late at night): 'Good. You are still erect.'; the tale of the Maharaja's monkey whose penis was burnt off with verucca acid while buggering an elephant — and the scary bits (blond choirboy vampires, Papa Lazarou the evil Father Christmas) were really scary.
Should you wish to agree with me about anything I've said I'm at jamesdedircon.co.uk.
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