No. 46 Britannia High - A Distinct Lack of Televisual Creativity

The Not What it Used to Be TV critic, Jeff Mann, braves new show Britannia High and quickly wishes he hadn’t:

It would seem that creativity has rolled out the off-white rag, hoisted it from the highest flagpole, and died ceremoniously on its arse. As far as British TV is concerned anyway.

Anyone who’s brave enough to have read any of this nonsense once and then without so much as a ransom note written in their first-born’s blood, returned to read it again, will probably know that I’ve railed against the saturation of village idiot television on more than one instance in the past.

But last weekend, finding myself once again confined to barracks with a cold, the likes of which has not been seen in mainland Britain since the glory days of the Black Death, I was unfortunate enough to witness some of the tripe first-hand. Force-fed intravenously to me via the life-support machine in the corner of the living room.

Now I would like both myself and those of you taking time out from your busy schedules to read this, to think that I was the cut of chap that would wilfully put himself through all the excruciating crap that pollutes the airwaves so that you don’t have to. Unfortunately I’m not. I lack the necessary cast-iron stomach for the untreated sewage-water that is The X Factor, Hole in the Wall, Little Britain USA, or anything else of their decidedly dodgy ilk – in fact, my views on The X Factor, Britain’s Got Talent, and Simon Cowell in general, have been well-documented on previous occasion.

But before I’m detained on suspicion of leading you up the garden path, there was something last weekend that managed to steal two minutes of my life that I’ll never get back. I refer to the heavily publicised Britannia High, upon which I drunkenly stumbled last Sunday evening.

I say two minutes because that was all I could endure before my blood ran cold and I came very close to slipping into a terminal coma from whence there is sadly no return.

Even so, that two minutes is probably two minutes more than the 27,000 bandwagon-jumping puritans who found themselves suddenly outraged enough to complain to the BBC about Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross’s childish antics, heard of that now infamous broadcast.

Britannia High is apparently the brain(?)child of Arlene Phillips. For those who don’t know her, she’s the judge on Strictly Come Dancing whose face suggests she might’ve been caught sipping from a car battery just as the the wind changed.

The two minutes snatched from me were not enough to establish a storyline, or even if there was one, but the wafer-thin premise seemed to have staggered bloody and broken from an otherwise fatal car crash between Fame and the equally horrendous S Club 7, ticking all the demographic checkboxes on the way. It was what Hollyoaks would be like if they started to throw in song and dance routines, but obviously with a lower mortality rate.

Which is a pity, because the only way you’d get me to give up another two minutes of my already borrowed time for this, is if the producers phoned me in person and divulged the details of the exact moment when the entire cast would get wiped out in some unnecessarily gratuitous death scene.

So with no notion of a plot, it’s down to me to make an unqualified guess. Let me rip: This programme is about a bunch of ‘kids’ at a London theatre school, who’re prone to breaking into clinically produced and choreographed song and dance routines at the drop of a trilby. That’s all that really needs saying, just so long as you’re prepared for laughs, and maybe a few tears, as well as some good old-fashioned soul-searching as we follow the plucky students on their journey through Britannia High. Each week a new challenge will be faced head on and the gang will come out at the other end, a lot stronger for it. Original music by Gary Barlow and featuring performances by Girls Aloud, Boyzone, Matt Willis(?) and Gemma Bissix(??).

Quite. And if that isn’t enough to make those of us who still have ready access to sharp objects switch off our TV sets, then I really don’t know what is.

What really offends Jeffman about the trickling stream of toxic slurry that’s dripping into his home on a regular basis is the complete lack of originality or creativity behind it. It’s nothing more than another cynically targeted stab at pandering to the lowest common denominator in a bid to flog crap CDs and other assorted shabby merchandise to a public numbed into submission by a constant bombardment to the frontal lobe of marketing men’s wank fantasies. The sort that are populated by identikit ideals of how pre and post-pubescent teenage girls and boys should look.

Go straight from modelling school, bypass acting school, do not collect £200.

It is obviously the inexplicable success of Disney’s recent High School Musical franchise that has spawned this tripe. Envisage a meeting of vacant minds around a table that cost more than most earn in half a year:

“Hey, I know. That High School Musical is all the rage with the kids. How about we do our own version and set it right here, in England. We can throw in bits of Fame and any other show that’s got a team of moppets singing and dancing as though their life depended on it. We’ve got a ratings winner on our hands. Think of all the grotty, soulless tat we can sell off the back of that.”

“Done! Be away and make it.”

“What about a script?”

“What? We don’t need scripts. Do you really think the idiots watching this shit take any notice of what’s being said? Just make sure you fill it with bright colours, a few flashing lights, and lots of movement… Oh and some barely legal girls hinting that they might flash a bit of tit somewhere down the line. Just get it made. I’ll handle the more pressing matter of merchandising.”

Well done, Arlene.

It’s this all-too-ready attitude to the recycling of crap and reforming it into Turkey Twizzler television that means I can barely bring myself to watch it anymore – thankfully I’m usually too drunk to focus on the screen.

But more importantly it means that the creativity has been drained from modern-day television, with those holding the purse-strings unwilling to take a chance on anything that diverts from the tried and tested formula.

What does get through is often doomed to sink without trace beneath the churning excrement the likes of Jeremy Kyle, Simon Cowell, Gok Wan and all the other cancerous by-products riding the ‘reality-whore-z-list-celebrity-you-should-look-like-me’ gravy train, shove two fingers down their throats on a daily basis to regurgitate violently upon our heads.

Television is as good as destroyed, just like all the other mediums that the spiv marketing men have gotten their stinking, lecherous, slime-oozing claws into. Just another shallow victory in the quest of those hollow, bankrupted souls who want to wipe creativity, originality, and anything else that’s not guaranteed to turn their selfish, corpulent selves a shilling, off the face of this earth.

But amidst all this pessimism there is the occasional ray of light on the horizon.

Spooks is quality entertainment, although I don’t watch it myself. But from what I can gauge from when ‘er indoors has it on, it’s well made, gripping entertainment with characters that are at least fleshed out to a certain extent before they’re killed off.

In these modern times, the discerning connoisseur can also throw in (as I have on previous occasion), Doctor Who, Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe, The Mighty Boosh, Family Guy, and one or two others as fighting the last stand of creativity in TV land.

I’m particularly looking forwards to watching zombie drama Dead Set (what do you mean I’ve missed it?), which I’ve got stored away ready to fire up at the next opportune moment. Charlie Brooker always provides quality, thought-provoking, and original entertainment, whether it’s on TV or in his online Guardian column.

Britannia High, meanwhile, should be taken around the back and put out of its (and our) misery.

Jeff Mann will be unavailable for comment during the next 24 hours due to a prior engagement with a barmaid’s apron.

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