I could listen to Charlie Brooker just describing people, and nothing else, for the rest of my days and be entirely happy. Good god, the man has a gift.
Oooh snap, you sure told it to me straight up on a whole wheat bun with a slice of salami. But for real, I never thought of "thinkin" for myself because that would first require me to think that thought, which as you have so vehemently pointed out is not something I was previously capable of. I think I will sit down, have a large glass of instant decaffeinated coffee (Sanka of course), and ponder your most valuable recommendations on how one should conduct one's life.
Look at you coming back with a side of sarsaparilla.“[A] quotation is a handy thing to have about, saving one the trouble of thinking for oneself, always a laborious business." - A.A. Milne
That bloke at the end has it spot on. Why watch Brooker's witty and thought provoking observations on modern media when we could be watching him spinning a roulette wheel for the benefit of desperate lowlifes in a graveyard slot?
Unintentional mild hilarity is that one of the players' names scrolling down the right is "nathan". I can almost picture Barley in his 'chic' converted warehouse flat in Westbourne Grove in the wee hours, after the society girl he brought home for the evening threw up on his retro Masters Of The Universe duvet and passed out...
Last Of The Summer Wine was a beautiful show. And its beauty only improves with age. It captured a world forever lost now. Maybe it never really existed entirely how the show depicted it, but what it does depict is certainly a thing of the past which will never again be.
What I like about pretty much all of Brooker's shows is that they're ultimately just creative ways of encouraging humanity to accept their imperfections and enjoy life instead of allowing mindless TV execs and tech companies to make them feel like they're in some stupid competition to become the best human being imaginable in whatever category they can think of; even all of the doomsayer shit, regardless of who is making it, is basically turning its viewers into competitors in a competition to see who can be the best at being scared shitless. This is also why in the rare situations where Charlie or one of his mates does compliment a show (and not in a comedically ironic way) it tends to be a show that's written incredibly well and/or has a certain degree of realism to it. Or in the case of something like Last of the Summer Wine, aligns with the goal of accepting imperfections and generally just enjoying life.
He couldn't be more right about (almost) everything he says. The man should be listened to by the networks, since everything he says about the garbage on TV these days is dead on! I don't live in the UK, but I do live in the US, which is much much worse when it comes to garbage television & ruining everything on it. I mean...we created the fucking Kardashians (very similar in physical appearance & disgusting-ness to the Cardassians, as well)....nobody should ever forgive whoever did that atrocity. We are continually rewarding idiots & the rich assholes who waste money frivolously on shit just because it's shiny or expensive, not because it's even unique or looks good. 99.9% of the time I've ever seen something ridiculously expensive, it was the most boring, ugly & non-unique thing ever. Then take into account these douchebags don't care about the fact the materials and labor cost almost nothing to the manufacturer, and if you think you're paying for "quality", you're mistaken. Simply put, you're paying for the price tag. That's the only thing that makes you think it's worth that & you should buy it. Mindless fucks. Lets stop giving these fucktards TV shows & allowing them to get richer & waste money on useless shit when there are fucking STARVING people and people who can't afford a place to live or basic necessities, it's just fucked. You don't reward bad behavior, and there's too many reasons to list why.
Oh and I forgot to mention the best part, David fucking Firth was a part of making this wonderful show. That is beyond awesome. Don't know of any other shows that can boast such a thing. David Firth rules.
There was actually a fantastic sapphire and steel audio series from a company called big finish , sadly I available now but the second one in the series is truly chilling.
How can that bloke at the end call Charlie Broker talentless? I'd love to see him come up with something as brilliant as Black Mirror.... I'd be surprised if he could write his own address!!
Ah come on, loads of us liked Linkin Park for a few years and thought it made us better than all those regular people listening to the stuff on Smash Hits but the jokes he made were fair enough really.
Oh yeah, I remember Saphire and Steel! in Australia they showed all the Doctor Whos when I was little, when they finished with that we'd watch Saphire and Steel with Dad!
It's a little like a child bringing you flowers it's just picked from your own garden. The flowers (jokes) are half dead and you've seen them all before a thousand times. It's not particularly well arranged, and you've lost something you've worked for. But it's sweet and harmless, and still nice to look at from time to time.
Im assuming that the roulette bloke at the end has had his sense of irony surgically removed along with what mediocre amount of talent he may have had.
Maybe but remember despite how shit his channel is the hosts basically have normal 8 hour shifts which they have to fill with anything. When one of the runners mentioned he'd been indirectly mocked he probably thought "thank Christ, that'll kill 15 minutes". I remember turning on one of those channels at 4am (yeah), a crew member fell over and the host started riffing on their history of minor accidents - slips in the shower, torn muscles, broken arms etc. for about half an hour. That guy might be a tit but he is also in the televisual equivalent of hell.
I watched CrimeWatch for the first time when I was 14. There was a reconstruction of a Woman opening the door in the morning and getting bent over and stabbed in the back. Not traumatising at all.
Only as an adult I've realised how unique my experience growing up was; my parents and a lot of their friends worked in the entertainment/advertising industry, so I've been aware of how tv was made and edited and how it all worked. I showed this how to my mom, and she said; "It's an okay show, but isn't everything he says totally obvious and what everyone should know anyway by using their common sense." Which I kinda agree, but I guess most people don't really think much about it.
I think the guy at the end was in the first ever episode, when he takes the piss out of phone in shows, and there's some woman there talking about joining the army, so my guess is someone on the show found out and they decided to try and get one over on him, failing miserably of course
Well his point is that they are marketed as subversive, but clearly cannot actually subversive as they are/ were (?) signed to a major label, had very expensive videos and were MTV darlings. I think that he made a good point that would be hard pushed to dispute.
Anthea Turner - Sees pickled onions: "Who leaves jam jars on a table". Did she think the giant white lumps in vinegar were mold or something? Who did she screw to get that job? O_o
