New Room 101
Feb. 22nd, 2012 02:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
r_scribblesI know I hardly ever do proper reviews, these days, but the new Room 101 has wound me up enough to warrant one.
Telly Review – New Room 101
Remember Room 101? With that Nick Hancock, before or after his stint as an Estate Agent, I can’t remember, and then that there Paul Merton, being surprisingly tall? Where they’d have a comedian on or at least somebody who was generally pretty funny and interesting and there’d be about 4 or 5 suggestions to go in to Room 101, and some of them would be things we can all relate to, and some of them would be a more personal source of self-deprecating humour from the guest, and some others would just be sublimely silly and the whole thing would just be good fun? Not the sort of thing you’d set your video for unless you were a big fan of the guest, but a nice enough way to spend half an hour.
And then, like so many things from the 90s, it went away. But then! Like so many things from the 90s again, it came back! And now it was slightly different! And also, completely awful!
It’s not the new format of the new Room 101 that bugs me so much, or indeed the new host – when he’s not blathering on about dreary old football, I quite like that there Frank Skinner, and presiding over the new Room 101 he comes across as glimmering sunbeam of empathy, enthusiasm and humour shining across the dark, barren wastelands of what remain of his guests’ souls.
Which brings me to thing that’s annoyed me about New Room 101 so very much that I’ve actually bothered to sit down & write more than 140 characters about it, which is unheard of with me nowadays.
I’m not sure why, in getting in a loose panel of 3 guests instead of just one, the people behind Room 101 seemed to think they could work around only one or fewer of said people actually being funny. I watched the first couple of episodes, where Robert Webb & Sarah Millican at least got into the swing of things, staving off sweeping statements about SciFi and homework with funny little bits about going bald & ‘bonny cats’ who refuse to be stroked by strangers, came across as amusing and likable and chose topics that people could relate to. They’re professional comedians – of course they’re going to be good at that. Of course they got that the point of the programme was to actually amuse other people. And that was what I used to like about the old Room 101.
Unfortunately, almost all the other guests I’ve seen so far have either been too out of their depth to say much at all, or seemed to think that the point of the show was to highlight, without humour or irony, what horrible little bubbles of privileged, blinkered self-interest they live in. Why are there barely any actual comedians booked on to what presents itself as a comedy panel show? Most of the guests aren’t even proper celebrities, which rankles me even more that their hate lists have been pulled from a world that exists quite so far up their own arseholes.
Thanks to That Twitter, I’m sort-of Internet Pals with a small handful of lesser celebs, so I know that they’re not all this dickish. If I were a D Lister, I’d be absolutely furious watching Room 101 about fellow D Listers making the rest of us look like a right old bunch of bellends. Gaby Logan hated not being kowtowed to by Sales Assistants, complained that there was no pride in the job & that it was seen as a stopgap, not a career, without mentioning the shitty awful pay and horrible shifts worked by these people, then unwittingly highlighted this by saying she’d pulled a Pretty Woman in one shop, cried ‘biiiig mistake’, dumped her would-be purchases on the counter & walked out – even though the point of that scene in the film was that the snooty Sales Assistant got a commission and therefore would have given a rat’s ass. Alistair McGowan put in kids, because apparently their parents pay too much attention to them and talk about them too much. As opposed to celebrities, who never demand attention from anybody.
Chris Packham (Chris Packham? Really?) had similar issues with parents loving their children and being proud of them in any way, and related what he seemed to think was an hilarious anecdote about going to a friend’s house, seeing a picture on his friend’s fridge that said friend’s kid had drawn, taking it off, ripping it up and throwing it in the bin. Once, back in my office work days, a co worker regaled us with a story about his friend throwing a milkshake at a passing harmless old lady in similar ‘ooh, this is a bit naughty, but it’s actually really funny’ tones. The growing unease as that story progressed was just as toe-curling as the feeling coming off the audience as the Badger Botherer completed his jolly tale of being the world’s most cuntish houseguest.
The last straw for me was the latest of the mix-and-match token women off Dragon’s Den, apparently. I don’t watch it but it does feel like they get through more Lady Dragons than Shrek’s Donkey on a stag weekend. Anyway, I’d never seen her before but she looked & sounded like Lily Savage’s more miserable little sister and started off talking about putting her little rat-dogs in Chanel macs or something, as if anybody who didn’t think that was an amazing idea was some sort of seal raping animal hater. Then she got on to the smoking ban, and her argument against it was ‘you go to a function at [insert swanky celebrity bar here] and then you all have to go out to have a fag, in your Pierre La Frou suits and Bibbidy Von Dibbidi designer dresses, and it makes us all look like cheap whores!’
Isn’t it funny when that happens, eh? Oh, don’t you just hate it when that happens to you, eh? Eh? Cor, she’s saying what we’re all thinking, there. Yeah, I hate having to step outside my celeb bubble in my overpriced frock so that I don’t blow fag ash over the unappreciative staff, too. Observational comedy. Brilliant stuff.
Reader, I switched off. I think it’s already abundantly clear from celebrity opinion columns, blogs & That Twitter that minor famouses having to breathe the same air as normal’s is, like, a huge burden, yeah. It doesn’t really need going over again. And again. And again. So let’s just put that into Room 101 and have done with the whole rest of the series. And then maybe get some funny people on again, next time?
Telly Review – New Room 101
Remember Room 101? With that Nick Hancock, before or after his stint as an Estate Agent, I can’t remember, and then that there Paul Merton, being surprisingly tall? Where they’d have a comedian on or at least somebody who was generally pretty funny and interesting and there’d be about 4 or 5 suggestions to go in to Room 101, and some of them would be things we can all relate to, and some of them would be a more personal source of self-deprecating humour from the guest, and some others would just be sublimely silly and the whole thing would just be good fun? Not the sort of thing you’d set your video for unless you were a big fan of the guest, but a nice enough way to spend half an hour.
And then, like so many things from the 90s, it went away. But then! Like so many things from the 90s again, it came back! And now it was slightly different! And also, completely awful!
It’s not the new format of the new Room 101 that bugs me so much, or indeed the new host – when he’s not blathering on about dreary old football, I quite like that there Frank Skinner, and presiding over the new Room 101 he comes across as glimmering sunbeam of empathy, enthusiasm and humour shining across the dark, barren wastelands of what remain of his guests’ souls.
Which brings me to thing that’s annoyed me about New Room 101 so very much that I’ve actually bothered to sit down & write more than 140 characters about it, which is unheard of with me nowadays.
I’m not sure why, in getting in a loose panel of 3 guests instead of just one, the people behind Room 101 seemed to think they could work around only one or fewer of said people actually being funny. I watched the first couple of episodes, where Robert Webb & Sarah Millican at least got into the swing of things, staving off sweeping statements about SciFi and homework with funny little bits about going bald & ‘bonny cats’ who refuse to be stroked by strangers, came across as amusing and likable and chose topics that people could relate to. They’re professional comedians – of course they’re going to be good at that. Of course they got that the point of the programme was to actually amuse other people. And that was what I used to like about the old Room 101.
Unfortunately, almost all the other guests I’ve seen so far have either been too out of their depth to say much at all, or seemed to think that the point of the show was to highlight, without humour or irony, what horrible little bubbles of privileged, blinkered self-interest they live in. Why are there barely any actual comedians booked on to what presents itself as a comedy panel show? Most of the guests aren’t even proper celebrities, which rankles me even more that their hate lists have been pulled from a world that exists quite so far up their own arseholes.
Thanks to That Twitter, I’m sort-of Internet Pals with a small handful of lesser celebs, so I know that they’re not all this dickish. If I were a D Lister, I’d be absolutely furious watching Room 101 about fellow D Listers making the rest of us look like a right old bunch of bellends. Gaby Logan hated not being kowtowed to by Sales Assistants, complained that there was no pride in the job & that it was seen as a stopgap, not a career, without mentioning the shitty awful pay and horrible shifts worked by these people, then unwittingly highlighted this by saying she’d pulled a Pretty Woman in one shop, cried ‘biiiig mistake’, dumped her would-be purchases on the counter & walked out – even though the point of that scene in the film was that the snooty Sales Assistant got a commission and therefore would have given a rat’s ass. Alistair McGowan put in kids, because apparently their parents pay too much attention to them and talk about them too much. As opposed to celebrities, who never demand attention from anybody.
Chris Packham (Chris Packham? Really?) had similar issues with parents loving their children and being proud of them in any way, and related what he seemed to think was an hilarious anecdote about going to a friend’s house, seeing a picture on his friend’s fridge that said friend’s kid had drawn, taking it off, ripping it up and throwing it in the bin. Once, back in my office work days, a co worker regaled us with a story about his friend throwing a milkshake at a passing harmless old lady in similar ‘ooh, this is a bit naughty, but it’s actually really funny’ tones. The growing unease as that story progressed was just as toe-curling as the feeling coming off the audience as the Badger Botherer completed his jolly tale of being the world’s most cuntish houseguest.
The last straw for me was the latest of the mix-and-match token women off Dragon’s Den, apparently. I don’t watch it but it does feel like they get through more Lady Dragons than Shrek’s Donkey on a stag weekend. Anyway, I’d never seen her before but she looked & sounded like Lily Savage’s more miserable little sister and started off talking about putting her little rat-dogs in Chanel macs or something, as if anybody who didn’t think that was an amazing idea was some sort of seal raping animal hater. Then she got on to the smoking ban, and her argument against it was ‘you go to a function at [insert swanky celebrity bar here] and then you all have to go out to have a fag, in your Pierre La Frou suits and Bibbidy Von Dibbidi designer dresses, and it makes us all look like cheap whores!’
Isn’t it funny when that happens, eh? Oh, don’t you just hate it when that happens to you, eh? Eh? Cor, she’s saying what we’re all thinking, there. Yeah, I hate having to step outside my celeb bubble in my overpriced frock so that I don’t blow fag ash over the unappreciative staff, too. Observational comedy. Brilliant stuff.
Reader, I switched off. I think it’s already abundantly clear from celebrity opinion columns, blogs & That Twitter that minor famouses having to breathe the same air as normal’s is, like, a huge burden, yeah. It doesn’t really need going over again. And again. And again. So let’s just put that into Room 101 and have done with the whole rest of the series. And then maybe get some funny people on again, next time?
