GSGC returns to our fancy modern flatscreens in an inauspiciously rubbish way, by means of no wifi in my hotel and a bit of fiddling with a USB stick the day after. For lack of anything better, your daring reviewer is watching a possibly-new episode of Grand Designs (More4, 9pm). Tonight's idiots wanting to build an inefficiently-costed house are a Sue Perkins-alike and a confused-looking bloke who are desperate to go live in a hobbit-hole underneath an old crumbling barn in the middle of a field.
Why bother with the barn bit and not just dig a big hole? I don't know either, but someone at the local council planning department thinks it's funny, because they've demanded our idiots leave the barn perfectly intact. What an awesome job that dude must have. It's like he knew they were going to be on Grand Designs and reckoned they could do with a bit more of a challenge. Perhaps he reasoned as I do, that the odds of anyone nowadays building a pretentious super-middle-class house in a field not being on some kind of telly programme are rapidly approaching zero, so he took a punt and is, as I type, sitting in his bedsit chuckling into his pot noodle at an irritating sabotage well done. I salute you, Mr Council Planning Department Man; you've done a narratively important thing. Hope the troubles with your wife blow over and you can move back in soon.
The reason we (and by 'we', I mean 'me'. Well, 'I', grammatically speaking) watch Grand Designs, in determined opposition to the reasons we watch most other telly, is in order to watch people succeed. Nobody cares who wins the Apprentice, we just tune in to watch shitbags be shitbags to each other, in an environment wher there aren't any non-shitbags around to get hit with the crossfire. Nobody likes the people who successfully pitch to Dragon's Den, they're all smug arseholes. But the ones who try to get 200k for a badger eyepatch factory: we'll watch those idiots all day. What awful people we are. By which I mean, what an awful person I am.
Except when I watch Grand Designs, and I have no idea why. By all the standards of the glowing box of judgement, I should be hoping this eco-hobbit hole falls down on the heads of these creatures who dare aspire to live in a nice house. I should be appalled that by the end they've gone and made a quite nice hole with a lovely view of some fields where they can sit and drink ice tea and say 'rah' with their friends. But I'm not. If I may sum up in my best Kevin McCloud impression, that's the real achievement of Grand Designs. Anyone can film some people building a house, but it takes a certain magic, a commitment to making you not hate people, a reminder that nice houses are nice no matter how irritatingly smug and privileged their builders, to make a Grand Design.
Tomorrow: GSGC watches something else, hopefully a bit more writing-worthy.
Showing posts with label more4. Show all posts
Showing posts with label more4. Show all posts
Tuesday, 28 September 2010
Monday, 26 March 2007
Great Goolies of Guatamala!
Well, folks, welcome to yet another episode of 'I just watched something on TV and like to delude myself that other people care.' Today's rant subject is possibly the best episode of Wife Swap USA (More4, 8pm) ever. And I mean ever.
With the UK's version of the show, you pretty much know what you're getting: common, poor types who like to spend money and get pissed swap with middle-class self-employed types who sit on their pile of cash so's they can be buried with it like an ancient Egyptian Pharoh. The rich types learn to loosen up a bit, the poor types learn that children aren't just a ticket for free dosh from the DSS, and everyone goes home happy.
Wife Swap USA, however, is a far more beautiful beast. This particular episode runs thusly: middle class family from the middle of some city or other who love to hang around the city and be all swank swap with a family of farming hicks who believe that cooking meat makes it less nutritous and therefore eat nothing but raw meat every five hours, brush their teeth with a mixture of butter and clay and believe that God wouldn't put anything on the Earth to harm us, therefore bacteria are good things and that they shouldn't clean anything at all, ever.
Some fine choice lines available: "your children are being brainwashed by the schooling system, so I'll be unschooling them" claims hick lady, pointing out that school is a waste of time, since you don't learn anything of any use. Nobody opted to point out that most people do, lesson one being "for fuck's sake, cook your meat, you cretin" followed by a swift burst of "Jesus, you force your children to live like the cavemen you clearly wish you are? What the hell? Seriously, how inbred are you?"
A week on the cooked food diet proves difficult for crazy hick lady, who claims that since she stopped brushing her teeth with butter, she's found it hard to concentrate without any cholesterol or fat on her brain. She's also shocked that these city slickers don't have any contingencies put aside for disasters, and insists that they stock up on a week's worth of emergency rations, just in case of giant tornadoes, nuclear war, or, of course, God bringing about the End of Days as punishment for us all refusing to acknowledge the humble e.coli baccilus as our brother and kin.
The worst bit is the way that these hick morons have actually managed to produce spawn whose digestive systems have adapted to a raw meat diet such that cooked food actually causes them to fall ill, whether psychosomatically or because their twisted parents have performed some form of genetic devolution, I don't know, but these are kids who actually have a use for their appendices. Science-tastic, and by which I mean, not science-tastic.
It's a shame, really that the producers couldn't find a similarly mental family to match them against, but, alas, all they've found is a group of city-bound residents whose only failure is a slight squeamishness about knowing where their food comes from. Deploreable, yes, but rare, alas no.
I forget what the point was; I'm not even sure that there was one. Except maybe that certain people are absolute morons who don't deserve the school education they've so kindly rejected, thus clearing a seat for someone else. If only the state could sterilise them and prevent their passing on their demented seed, we'd all be happy.
This rant was brought to you by the mood 'restless' and the state of unemployment. Accept no imitations. Unless they're good ones, in which case, what the hell, you're only young once.
With the UK's version of the show, you pretty much know what you're getting: common, poor types who like to spend money and get pissed swap with middle-class self-employed types who sit on their pile of cash so's they can be buried with it like an ancient Egyptian Pharoh. The rich types learn to loosen up a bit, the poor types learn that children aren't just a ticket for free dosh from the DSS, and everyone goes home happy.
Wife Swap USA, however, is a far more beautiful beast. This particular episode runs thusly: middle class family from the middle of some city or other who love to hang around the city and be all swank swap with a family of farming hicks who believe that cooking meat makes it less nutritous and therefore eat nothing but raw meat every five hours, brush their teeth with a mixture of butter and clay and believe that God wouldn't put anything on the Earth to harm us, therefore bacteria are good things and that they shouldn't clean anything at all, ever.
Some fine choice lines available: "your children are being brainwashed by the schooling system, so I'll be unschooling them" claims hick lady, pointing out that school is a waste of time, since you don't learn anything of any use. Nobody opted to point out that most people do, lesson one being "for fuck's sake, cook your meat, you cretin" followed by a swift burst of "Jesus, you force your children to live like the cavemen you clearly wish you are? What the hell? Seriously, how inbred are you?"
A week on the cooked food diet proves difficult for crazy hick lady, who claims that since she stopped brushing her teeth with butter, she's found it hard to concentrate without any cholesterol or fat on her brain. She's also shocked that these city slickers don't have any contingencies put aside for disasters, and insists that they stock up on a week's worth of emergency rations, just in case of giant tornadoes, nuclear war, or, of course, God bringing about the End of Days as punishment for us all refusing to acknowledge the humble e.coli baccilus as our brother and kin.
The worst bit is the way that these hick morons have actually managed to produce spawn whose digestive systems have adapted to a raw meat diet such that cooked food actually causes them to fall ill, whether psychosomatically or because their twisted parents have performed some form of genetic devolution, I don't know, but these are kids who actually have a use for their appendices. Science-tastic, and by which I mean, not science-tastic.
It's a shame, really that the producers couldn't find a similarly mental family to match them against, but, alas, all they've found is a group of city-bound residents whose only failure is a slight squeamishness about knowing where their food comes from. Deploreable, yes, but rare, alas no.
I forget what the point was; I'm not even sure that there was one. Except maybe that certain people are absolute morons who don't deserve the school education they've so kindly rejected, thus clearing a seat for someone else. If only the state could sterilise them and prevent their passing on their demented seed, we'd all be happy.
This rant was brought to you by the mood 'restless' and the state of unemployment. Accept no imitations. Unless they're good ones, in which case, what the hell, you're only young once.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)