Obviously, it is nearly Halloween. And I received an email from the BBC! To tell me about the ghostly and spooky shows and podcasts they have on offer. No direct email commission for a series without prompting, not this week.
After comedy, horror comes second or third for me (depending how sci-fi my mind is leaning) so I do love this time of year when people get their ghost on a little bit more. Horror is playing the same game with the audience that comedy does, setting up situations where you know what might happen, and then trying to surprise you. But I think that horror is easier, and more often sticks to tired tropes or lazy setups. There is as much spectacular horror as there is incredible comedy (i.e. when either operate at the highest levels) but I think the bar for achieving horror is lower, as long as a cat jumps out, or there’s loads of blood. Let me know if you disagree.
So, a couple of spooky things, and a couple of comedy things, one of which was horrifically bad. Enjoy!
- Paranormal: The Girl, the Ghost and the Gravestone Ep 1 (iPlayer) – As mentioned, this was “recommended” to me by the BBC iPlayer email I received, presumably only because I’ve watched other horror things. This is a documentary series, actually made in 2023, hosted by Sian Eleri, a Radio 1 DJ whose focus seems to be late night, low-fi and chill shows. I personally would struggle to listen to her show, not just because I’m the least Radio 1 person in the world (my natural musical habitat is a cardigan and overwrought musical numbers) but because the snippet we got of her presenting sounded a bit forced. And that word sort of sums up this show too. The opening is an ultra try-hard punt for ominous and terrifying, with shaky archive footage and the long booming whines of every film trailer released since Inception. Then the archive footage disclaimer made me laugh1. I often ask myself if I’m too “behind the curtain”, I know how people make TV shows, how to lead an audience through a story, I know some tricks of film-making and story. So am I too TV-production literate to enjoy things? Particularly things like this that so immediately seem false. Surely most of the viewing audience know that Sian didn’t send an email, while being filmed, to the psychologist she’s about to interview (he’s wearing the same jumper in the photo on his “website” as he wears in the interview itself). Or knocking on the door of the “most haunted house in North Wales”, hoping someone will be in, but it’s just a dog barking? This will be tightly budgeted, and the few minutes of shots of knocking on some neighbour’s doors and no-one being in is just filler. Speaking of which, who is her friend in a band who she speaks Welsh to? It felt so much like “if we have 90 seconds of Welsh language, we get an extra grant to add to the budget”. This is not cinema-verite, it’s not The Blair Witch Project, it’s a documentary being made to re-investigate a case from 20 or more years ago. Don’t make it seem like the Radio 1 DJ is doing the work of a team of researchers and producers, please. Admittedly, making a documentary into a story is a valid choice, and often a very engaging one, but it’s not done elegantly here. It doesn’t feel far from parody in this case, and this is for a younger BBC Three audience, so maybe some of this naffness is knowingly done? Trying to be disarming, then shocking with the real stuff? But if you’re going to spoof, go further. Admittedly the final five minutes or so are actually intriguing for what will come next (it’s a four part series, with another separate four parts about an alien encounter). There was some interesting “evidence” and a trailer for next time. I’m intrigued, but in a way that feels manipulated. But I suppose that’s all a ghost story is. I just prefer when it feels less tawdry and more earned.
- Generation Z (Channel 4) – This is a new series that has had a lot of press, focussed on a zombie outbreak in modern day in a small town, where the initial batch of walking dead are all of the baby boomer generation, and the modern youth have to step up and save the day. Various headlines I’ve read have claimed it to be about Brexit and generational trauma, but is it worth watching? It’s not a good sign when dialogue immediately pulls me out of watching something. The exposition machine (telling you who people are through the words they’re saying, rather than trusting you to pick it up through characterisation and caring about what is going on) was working incredibly hard in the first act; “I know you’ve been looked over in the past”, “Yeah, they both died”. And the cut to “Westminster” looked very cheaply shot in a bare room with some oddly coloured lighting to try to make it interesting. To be honest, lots of it looked quite cheap. And I imagine I’m only noticing that because I don’t care about the people I’m watching. The actors who bring either star power and prior knowledge or actually have charisma have it a bit easier, but the writing just wasn’t there for those actors I didn’t know. I’ll admit that conversational zombies is a good spin, getting to put their point of view across, despite their culinary preferences. And suddenly when it was daytime I was a bit more interested in the characters, giving them space to breathe and not be teenagers in yet another party/nightclub scene. But THEN the teenager being drawn in by right wing misogynist influencers on social media is a bit on the nose. My overall feeling watching this was off a pendulum swinging wildly from things that work and might be interesting to the most overwrought or clichéd characters and dialogue. I just don’t get it. Why are all these very talented people in a cheap looking zombie show on Channel 4? I had very high hopes for Ben Wheatley, the creator, writer and director of Generation Z, as my new Edgar Wright i.e. a director to obsess over. This was thanks to Sightseers and A Field in England, two of his earlier films that really spoke to my tastes, but then I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary in the Doctor Who episodes he directed (Peter Capaldi’s first two episodes, Deep Breath and Into the Dalek). The final blow was going to see his adaptation of High Rise in the cinema and came the closest I ever had to walking out of a cinema bored. I “got it” after 20 minutes and then it didn’t do anything. And I think that might be true of this show aswell. If anyone keeps going, or would care to debate the merits of Ben Wheatley or Generation Z with me, I’d be happy to engage!
- The Office (Australia) (Prime Video) – Oh my goodness, why? For the third time on this list of three, I do not understand why something exists. This is a remake of a remake2 eleven years late, with the only new thing being the country of origin, which had no impact on this episode. There was mention of Zoom calls and home working too, which feels tacked on. Did they find this script in a drawer that was stuck for ten years, and do a quick new draft post pandemic? It is offering nothing new, despite some gender swaps of key characters. It hews so closely to the existing characters in episode 1, that it feels like I’ve just put on a repeat of series 1 of the US Office, long before it found its own feet. Maybe I should give this a chance to establish itself as a unique proposition but I see no spark of performance or writing to suggest that is wise. Not a single laugh from me, because I’ve already watched it done better at least twice, and that wasn’t even in a show called “The Office”.
- Weird (Prime Video) – Thank goodness I watched something good. This is a fictional bio-pic of Weird Al3 that is utterly silly, takes some surprising turns into an alternate universe, and features Daniel Radcliffe really giving it his all as a perfectly pitched straight-man at the centre of a ridiculous film. The scene at the pool party made my comedy-nerd brain explode with a parade of noteworthy actors and comedy royalty playing famous figures from art and music and comedy. I was less on board with the action movie parody section, but it had to go somewhere, and it really committed to it. A wonderfully fun time.
It seems like this has been a pretty terrible week of new adventures in Televigion, Weird aside. On some further positive notes I have really enjoyed Agatha All Along episode 7 (cleverly tying things together, meaningful and heartfelt) and Mortimer and Whitehouse Gone Fishing episode 5 (dependable and warm), but there’s not much new to say compared to previous posts about those shows.
I never thought this would be the case, but because I’m actually getting some fiction writing done in the evenings, I also had to make specific time to watch these things that I did not enjoy. So if you have any recommendations to try again next week, please comment, email or message.
Please give my fiction writing a go too, to be found on Substack
Footnotes
- The photo here shows our family commitment to pumpkin spookiness. They may stay there until Christmas. Also, I hope there’s at least one ghost in the TV reflection, that would be a good ending to the post! ↩︎
- This is a remake of “The Office” from the US, which is a much more successful remake of the hugely successful “The Office” from the UK. There is nothing wrong with anyone attempting a remake of course, if they have something to say. ↩︎
- I really recommend reading that Wikipedia article, his life and achievements are way beyond what you might know about him from one or two very famous parody songs. ↩︎
Televigion 