Television
Cyber-age ciphers
James Delingpole
Until No developed his new obsession with Teletubbies (BBC2, weekdays), I thought I'd been lucky enough to breed one of those Roger-Scruton-type aberchil- dren who can't see the point of television because they're too busy building DNA structures from Lego or translating the backs of cereal packets into Latin and then into Greek. Apparently not, though, because he's hooked. He even knows their names and which one's which, which is more than I do.
And I suppose I don't mind too much, because it's quite interesting watching your offspring acquiring their very first taste of popular culture. Also, it's one of the few occasions when he's sufficiently distracted and immobile for me to snatch a surrepti- tious cuddle. But, having now watched Teletubbies from the point of view of a dot- ing parent, there are a couple of things that I'd like to complain about.
The first is: why the devil can't the wretched creatures get some elocution lessons? I know the programme-makers claim that the Teletubbies' inarticulacy is designed to reflect that of their youthful audience. But it's incredibly annoying when, say, your child has just learned to say `scooter' to then have it watch some giant purple foetus — which it values more high- ly than you as a role model — teaching it to pronounce the word 'pooter' instead.
The second is: I caught one Teletubby using the word 'pardon' and I don't like it one bit. From there, it's but a short step to the Tubby-toilet. Sadly, I fear we middle- class parents are stuffed in this respect. The Rat tells me that even at his reason- ably posh state boarding-school, you have to call loos 'toilets' and you get told off if you say 'what?' instead of 'pardon?'.
Right, that's quite enough emetic child- references for one column. On now to Attachments (BBC2, Tuesday) and why it bears partial responsibility for the sum total of human misery. I fear there's not enough space to develop this particular line fully, but my basic thesis is that just like glossy magazines and car adverts, it is designed to make its viewers feel more bor- ing, ugly, undersexed and out-of-touch than they really are.
For most of its first episode, it just about succeeded. The soundtrack was up-to-the- minute; the characters, even the geek who's supposed to be ugly, were all attractive and hiply-dressed; the setting (the world of Internet start-ups) was modish; the camera work was shaky; there was much shagging and drugging; and, perhaps most impor- tantly, the technical jargon was often incomprehensible. `Ah, yes,' we were all supposed to think as we stroked our chins. `This Life for the cyber generation.'
Except it isn't, because the moment you start analysing it, you begin to realise that it's all surface and no substance, that the characters (the black one, the lesbian one, the nerdy one, the naughty one, etc.) are ciphers and that, however hard it tries to dazzle you with urgent pacing and sudden dramatic revelations, the whole thing is based on the flimsiest of premises.
What it asks us to believe is that this thrusting young website called www.seethru.com is undoubtedly one of the grooviest, sexiest content sites (i.e. online magazines) ever to grace the web and that, if only those boring suits out there can learn to overcome their suitish prejudices and give it some start-up capital, it will soon become a runaway financial success.
What we actually see, unfortunately, is a bunch of spoilt, arrogant, incompetent tossers obstinately pursuing a hare-brained project which certainly doesn't deserve a single penny of funding because all it com- prises is a cheesy, sub-student-rag-week magazine that will never make money because content sites, most of all ones this useless, just don't. And if we can't share their faith in the project, why should we invest any emotional energy worrying about its prospects?
At the root of Attachments' problems, I suspect, is that it was commissioned at a time when e-commerce was thought to be desperately thrilling and trendy. Since then, unfortunately, we've all cottoned on to the fact that it's as deathly tedious as any other business, only with a higher chance of fail- ure, a greater need for brown-nosing investors and a larger proportion of talent- We picked this up from the old cinema they were demolishing.' less chancers. All of which makes its fran- tic attempts to pretend otherwise look duplicitous and dated. Pity. If only Attach- ments had been tweaked slightly so that it worked as cruel and hilarious satire on Noughties values, and if maybe it had been renamed something more apposite — like Wankers — I reckon it could have been brilliant.
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