John Walker's Electronic House

Mr Davies,

Doctor Who isn’t very important at all, really. It’s a television programme with a legacy of kitsch nonsense, recently revived to provide a moment’s entertainment at Saturday teatime. It’s trivial. In the end, it doesn’t matter. But it’s also capable of being something special.

The recently broadcast two-parter, Human Nature/The Family Of Blood, demonstrated this. The premise, from start to finish, was wholly silly – a man who travels through time putting his person into a watch that he then ensured the remaining human form would not consider of any consequence. Daft. Aliens chasing him through time, possessing humans, shooting green deathrays, animating scarecrows – all ridiculous. And yet, in its execution, it was something special. It told a story of love, of fear, of tragedy. At its heart it was the moving and horrific tale of a love doomed by death, but death made so much worse by the illusion of survival. The cold cruelty of the Doctor contrasted with the unconditional love of Mr Smith made his ghastly offer of letting Joan accompany him all the more chilling and upsetting.

It spoke bravely of the terror of war, and the depths of awfulness when children are forced to fight. Its ending at the memorial was bold and beautiful. It scared children, it moved adults. It was what television should aim for, wrapped up in the silliest of clothes.

It was written by Paul Cornell.

Looking back at the previous two series, Cornell once more stands out with Father’s Day – another remarkably emotional and evocative episode, made all the more impressive by using the dreadfully cast and constructed family Rose was surrounded by, and somehow making them tolerable, let alone engaging.

Mark Gatiss has written hugely entertaining episodes that tap into people’s memories of the classic series, while still appearing fresh.

Then there’s Steven Moffat’s episodes. In the first series his wonderful The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances two-parter was both terrifying and wildly fun. Then series 2’s The Girl In The Fireplace was a stunning piece of writing, containing an epic story in under forty-five minutes, and somehow surviving containing the hateful character of Mickey. I look forward greatly to his offering for this series, Blink, next week.

You have a great team of writers contributing to the series. And you have successfully relaunched a franchise that was previously too tired to work. Please, Mr Davies, concentrate on your godfathering of the series, focus on maintaining the thematic arcs of darkness and emptiness in the Doctor’s life, and please, stop writing for the programme.

Where you have succeeded, you have achieved a lot. You’ve created a space in the UK schedules where the fun of science fiction can be made accessible for a family audience while leaving room for genuine pathos. This is wonderful. The vast majority of episodes you have written for the last two years have taken all this opportunity, and wasted it. Nasty, flimsy outlines of ideas glumly inflated with special effects.

Please, look at what the recent two-parter achieves, and compare the results with your so many episodes this series. Look what your programme CAN be, when you work in the position for which you are so talented and accomplished. Let your programme BE that. We don’t need another soap opera. We don’t need endless attempts at contemporary references (in a time travel programme, for heavens sake). And we really don’t need a tourism commercial for Cardiff. (If we wanted that, we’d watch Torchwood, and then gouge out our eyes with rusty spanners). Step up, sit in your executive throne, continue your script editing maintenance, and give the writing task to the fantastically talented crew you have recruited.

Let Doctor Who rise above a trivial Saturday teatime filler, and let it be that little bit more of which it is so clearly capable.

Thank you,
John Walker

A Summer show tends to mean it wasn’t even good enough for a mid-season pick up, but they had the episodes, so they might as well show them. Traveler, from its first episode, seems surprisingly reasonable.

Three recent university graduates, at least two of them comfortably rich, the other a new lawyer, are on a Kerouac-inspired road trip, beginning in New York. Visiting an art museum, they agree to race from the top to the bottom on rollerblades. But what’s this, the guy filming them on his camcorder is looking a bit shifty. The front two race off and he lingers behind. A fire alarm goes off, the two on the blades are being chased by a security guard, and they slip out through the crowds. Outside they phone the third friend who asks if they got out, then apologises, then a bomb blows up the art museum.

So we’ve got ourselves a terrozritz situation, and some unlucky suspects. Immediately their faces are on the news, and the fear sets in. Oh noes, I thought – they’re going to refuse to ring the police for a spurious reason, aren’t they? And thus the set up begins, one shouting that they should call the police, the other saying they shouldn’t because of the… because of the monsters and you know mumble.

BUT! Shock, horror, first guy wins and immediately phones the FBI. He explains everything, explains about his friend, and asks for help! Goodness me. Then the twist arrives as the other guy’s dad tells him that it’s a set up, that they’ve got to get out of Manhattan and fast. They can’t trust the police, and they know it for sure. Justified running, rather than the tiresome: “If they’d only go and say something they’d be fine” nonsense that plagues so many of these ideas.

And so off they run, surrounded by conspiracies, discovering that their friend is not who he claims. Twists and turns, lots of the police shouting, “What’s your 20?”, and the runners being decently smart rather than useless morons.

It’s fairly rubbish still, with some of the most awful exposition I’ve ever seen. (One character informs the others what their jobs are one at a time). But maybe some hope? We’ll see.

You know what? Big Brother 2 was a really great social experiment. I watched it obsessively, more the live feed than the nightly broadcasts, including, I will confess, falling asleep to the image of their falling asleep. I do not boast this, and I don’t pretend to defend it. It gripped me for one summer, and I genuinely believe it was a very different programme back then.

BB2 was won by Brian – super-camp and very sweet young guy who I imagine is now selling the sort of jewelry that turns your skin green on a channel in the deepest depths of the cable swamplands. And I think he deserved it. Not for the reasons broadcast on the nightly episodes, but those constantly revealed in the live feed. While the newspapers fellated themselves into a mad twisted snake over Pa”Ya’know, I mean, sersiously”ul and Em”I like blinking I do”ma, the much more quiet Dean and Elizabeth (oddly painted by the edited show as deathly boring and deeply evil, respectively) made it their mission to help Brian change from the selfish little brat that entered into the rather lovely chap who deserved the win, and the TV work that followed. They literally created school time for him (at his request), where they would send him away to read a chapter of one of their books, then talk over what he’d read. He declared himself Catholic, but had never heard of Adam and Eve. Rather than being disgusted, Dean instead patiently taught him the history of his religion. They cared for him, and he transformed. Meanwhile Dean would strum melodically on his guitar, and when pestered by the housemates, sing some of his songs. (He was of course announced by the papers to be simply trying to promote a singing career by forcing his music on everyone).

Of course, a couple of things stand out rather oddly now. Books and instruments are now banned from the BB house. They made it “boring”, because people “would just sit around reading.” God forbid it. It’s imperative that instead they spend their days lying perfectly still in their competitive efforts to see who can grow the most threatening melanoma/atheroma. FAR more interesting! Of course, just to be safe it’s also been the policy to only allow in those very unlikely to know what a book is, let alone stare confused at the pictureless words inside.

For the last three years I’ve not even been able to bear the thought of watching a single minute of it. I’ve tended to read the BBC news stories during the launch week, have a scan of the profiles to be sure it’s everything I’ll hate, and then dig myself a bunker in the garden to avoid the Summer rays of gleaming headlines and asinine conversation. As Jesus nearly said, “Wherever two or three are gathered, bleating about Big Brother will be there.” This year I admit to having been intrigued. Not because it’s an “all women house”, but because those women appeared, from their descriptions, to have been chosen by their potential political conflicts. Yes, yes I was stupid and wrong.

For your pleasure I will now tell you why everyone involved is hateful, and why I shall be back in the bunker from now on.

Sam and Amanda are twins! Blonde twins! They like pink! They squeal! Perhaps these two things could be combined if someone were to slit their bellies open and spill them inside out. They like to speak at the same time, and simultaneously announced that they don’t like people who “speak in dictionary language.” Just actions people, just actions.

Lesley is in the WI, and is 60, and has serious hair and serious glasses. Watching her face became the only reason to continue putting up with the hour’s descent into the abhorrent, as each screeching halfwit entered the house and her spirit died a little more. It’s looking like it could be Britain’s first televised suicide.

Charley can’t spell her name. She also considers herself an It Girl, and has big earrings and the mutant mouthchild of Billie Piper and Julia Roberts. I imagine she’ll announce her friends call her “Chazzer” soon, and then I get carried away and imagine she’s run over by a combine harvester.

Tracey is possibly the most irritating human being of all time. Kudos to the producers for finding her. She’s a “mad quaver” or something, with PINK HAIR OMG! and a man’s set of chromosomes, which she uses for largin’ it. She is in fact a really badly programmed robot, malfunctioning horribly such that it can only sputter three phrases no matter how irrelevantly. “‘AVE IT!” she must shout at the post as it arrives through the letterbox in the morning, followed by getting the kettle “BUZZIN'” before “LARGIN’ IT” into the mug. “‘AVE IT TEABAG!” She collects carrier bags because, well, because she’s an idiot. She won’t break down impressively because the malfunctioning robot has taken over completely now. Instead she’ll go all dark and moody, and punch a door, and then all the others will cluck in worry and bump into the walls.

Chanelle is, as far as I can tell, the sort of name that only ever appears on Big Brother. Surely in the real world a child named such would be generously drowned to save it from her parents? Chanelle wants to be “rich, or famous, or a speech therapist in Spain.” She also wants to be Posh Spice, and has confused Planet Earth with a giant look-a-like contest. If anyone watches this (and I know you will be, James) could you alert me the moment she says a sentence that doesn’t include some form of the phrase, “People tell me I look a lot like Victoria Beckham”? Thanks.

Shabnam is apparently made of soggy tissues.

Emily conspiratorially informs us that “there’s a new music and it’s taking over our country. It’s called Indie.” Goodness me, whatever must this new sound be like? Will it catch on? Can you dance to it? Can you catch on fire? Reading about her she appeared interestingly right wing. In reality, she’s just going to vote Tory because Mummy and Daddy do. Annoucing, “Education, education, education” in her introductory video somewhat gave away her confusion over politics. But she hates stupid people. She’s rich and posh! Private school doesn’t seem to have held her back from investing her massive intellect into working as a waitress.

Laura was the crowd’s favourite because she’s fat and deeply stupid, and thus not a threat to the sorts of egos who give up a day to stand and scream as eleven people walk past them and go inside a building. Until a fatter and more stupid contestant came along after. My accurate prediction: She will spend the vast majority of her time in the house in tears, because that’s always got her the attention she needs before. She will refer to every other younger constestant as “Such a mean… sniffle… bitch” at some point.

Nicky wants to prove that being Indian doesn’t stop her from not being Indian. Or something. Possibly the only contestant with a life potentially containing some interest (she was living in Mother Theresa’s Indian orphanage at one point in her life), her vacuous demeanour suggests that we’ll only get to learn her favourite lipstick. Were we to watch. Which we won’t.

Carole is the result of some mad scientists’ seeing what would happen if they crossed the colour grey with a binbag full of wet clothes, and brought it to life. A massive 50-something bisexual (ie. divorced and so desperate) who dedicates her life to announcing her geographical location (east London, apparently) and saying “fuck” like a teacher trying to appear trendy during assembly. “I’m going to shake it something rotten. And they will be shaken shitless.” So much so she’s too busy to be employed at the moment, what with all her war protesting and all. War’s not nice, we learn. And if the others can’t cope with her, then, well, that’s their problem because she’s who she is, and that’s just the way it is. It’s funny how it’s only the most wretched people who feel the need to announce this, rather than reflecting on the fact that everyone they ever meet hates them, and therefore there might be something about themselves that could be questionable. No! Stop the thoughts! Swear some more – and I speculate here – and spell Tony Blair, “Tony BLIAR!!!”.

If anyone can think of a reason not to bolt the doors shut, turn off the cameras, and quietly forget about them, then, well, you should probably go in and join them.

Pirate Master starts tomorrow night!

Seriously, can life get any better? And best of all, the Australian host, Cameron Daddo, claims to be descended from pirates himself. The show’s created by Mark Burnett, and that is a Good Thing, whether you love Survivor or not. It means it will be filmed like a multi-million dollar movie, scored by a composer, and rock like a thousand bells.

“But this time, they’re also on hunt for a half-million dollars in gold coins buried on the island of Dominica. The winning team each week gets to elect a captain and split the loot. The losers swab the decks, eat gruel and cook steaks for the winners. Everyone gets to keep the money they find. But the ultimate winner gets an additional 500 grand and the title “Pirate Master.””

(Comment on the fire story, you bastards. Especially to comment on Kim’s excellent photography).

I wish I didn’t feel the need to write “spoiler warning”, but apparently even when I do some people still can’t help but read it anyway, and then complain that they spoiled it for themselves. I can’t imagine what would happen if I didn’t.

Helpfully titled “The Disaster Show”, Studio 60’s ‘comeback’ demonstrated every reason why it needed to be left to die. What a horrible mess.

So it’s the hilarious episode where everything goes wrong. Danny pisses off the prop guys so they walk out at the last moment, and the cue-card guys are in the same union. So the guest host, Allison Janney, is left with no monologue to deliver, and only Cal in her ear delivering unhelpful words. Cue the first reference to The West Wing. Nggghhh. So all the sketches go wrong, the props are spiked, and wouldjabelieveit – a bomb threat has been phoned in. Then Frank Spencer slips on a banana skin and lands on a skateboard and crashes into a cupboard full of ladies’ underwear! Oh, Sorkin, fuck off into outer space.

We never see Danny pissing off the prop guys. Danny, we’re told, is in the parking lot trying to negogiate with the prop guys. It’s already too late for that, as they’re taping live. So why he is doing this, rather than directing the programme he directs is left somewhat unexplained. As such he never appears. And Matt? The reason for his not appearing in a single scene? Because he’s “helping the cast write their lines on their hands.” Good grief, what? At least try. This seriously is the given reason for his absence on the floor for the entire shoot. Rather than it being the episode that emphasises the rest of the cast by taking the focus from the main characters (something Scrubs does well, but too often), it became an awkward muddle where the two characters were refered to constantly, were integral to the plot, and were apparently just nearby throughout, but somehow never got caught by the cameras.

Of course, this is the second half of the season, so it can’t be about making a TV show. It has to be about relationships. So we get Harriet neurotically announcing that people are allowed to go out with Matt, which I’m fairly certain was a storyline covered quite extensively at the beginning of the season. Plus there’s an extraordinarily out of character moment where she spitefully refers to one of the minor cast members as “rook” and is disgusted that he would be in the same room as her, let alone speak in her presence. She becomes instantly hateful, and I now hope for nothing but her miserable, grisly death in every coming episode. This is as nothing when compared with the constant annoyance of a story following Simon’s fruitful lovelife. He gets dumped right before he was taking a girlfriend to Hawaii, then trawls the green room for another last minute date, finds one, then guess what! The first girl wants to go back out with him again, and he says yes! Then the second girl gets cross and slaps Simon, then Lucy tells the first girl about the second girl, then Simon gets slapped again! Why, his crazy lovelife! Somehow this most cliched of ideas is stretched out over the hour, as if we’re supposed to be either intrigued or in stitches over the wacky muddle of his womanising ways.

But worst of all is the impossibility of the premise. Every second of the show is a failure, but apparently they’ll air it anyway. And of course the cast are all super-cool about it. Hey, this happens every couple of years! Except, no, it doesn’t. With no props, all the sketches failing midway and being cut off, no monologue, and a bomb threat on a building filled with the public, just maybe, maybe they’d cancel the show and put on a re-run. The idea that we’re asked to suspend disbelief to this extent so that we can have the slapstick adventures of a prop table that collapses when it’s touched, and an actress so stupid that she can’t tell if the shirt she’s wearing contains squibs, is insulting.

As ever, the depth of frustration is only made worse by some really fantastic moments of dialogue. Best of all would be Tom explaining to Janney who she should thank at the end of the show, receiving a curt “Thank you,” to which he immediately replies, “Yes, like that, but nicer.” But they are tiny flickers in a very dark room. No Matt or Danny, nor indeed Jordan, makes it a pointless exercise, worryingly revealing the paper-thin nature of the rest of Sorkin’s characters. Janney appearing does little to help, only reminding everyone that he used to write the West Wing (and even worse, the repeated references to the show). I hate that NBC were right, but they were so right. Studio 60 had nowhere to go, and it’s determined to prove it.

As television (by which I of course mean US television, because good GRIEF there’s nothing else out there) winds down for the summer, it’s time to look back at the season gone, and see quite how right and wrong I was. Of course, EVERYTHING below contains enormous spoilers, and if you don’t want to know, don’t read it.

Shark – CBS

With remarkable prescience I announced regarding the House With Lawyers nonsense, “I can see it working if they don’t overplay the teenage daughter crap.” So that was a show I stopped watching once the teenage daughter crap took over entirely. How on earth it’s managed a full run, let alone being picked up for another season, is a mystery. Perhaps reaching into the extremities of the banal is the secret to television longevity. Whatever, no one with any sense is watching it. Which would explain the successful ratings.

Jericho – CBS

What’s wrong with me? 22 episodes of this ridiculous rubbish I watched. And it wasn’t until episode 19 that it got… not quite “good”, but close. It’s not that I saw the potential that was eventually touched on – I just assumed it would remain as idiotic throughout. And yet I couldn’t stop. Each week they’d find new ways to melodramatise the inane, treating a burning school story as if they were the first programme on television to have ever shown fire, and how people put it out. Relationships broke down and new ones started without a human being alive caring less. Oh no! Eric broke up with April! Who was April again? Oh, April’s dead? She was the one married to Eric? And so on. Nevermind the show’s only star, Skeet, and his groundbreaking off-again-off-again relationships with at least three characters. There was the sheer joy of the programme entirely forgetting characters, and then later desperately trying to make up excuses for their absence. There was the complete astonishment as nothing happened for episodes, then a flurry of activity presumably over sweeps. And then, for the last four episodes, WAR! Hooray! And it was quite fun. Finally everyone stopped keeping tedious secrets from each other and guns went bang. But it was too late. Amazingly enough, taking the show off air for three months was more than audiences were willing to wait between episodes – the idiots. And now, in my most ridiculous move, I’m disappointed it’s been cancelled. I repeat, what’s wrong with me?

Six Degrees – ABC

ABC’s treatment of Six Degrees was deeply peculiar. I really liked this show, despite its not being about very much at all. I liked that the relationships between the six main characters were so quietly established, and that even after however many episodes it survived, they still didn’t know each other despite the many coincidences and links. I liked that it ambled with its mysteries, as gentle as they were, and made the relationships more important. But most of all, it contained really fantastic acting. However, by taking it off air for over four months, and then starting it up again with almost no promotion and no recap for confused viewers, it was of course doomed to failure. Only lasting one more episode on its return, the remaining few have disappeared. Oddly, for a show so quiet and unimposing, I’d like to see a DVD release with the missing few, just to see how far they got.

Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip – NBC

Well, it’s dead forever now. And I’ve come to the conclusion that it ought to be. I think finding out that the decision to move the emphasis to the whiny, tedious relationships, almost completely forgetting about the TV show they were supposed to be making, was Sorkin’s own. I’m sure there was studio pressure, but he stated firmly that it was always his intention. Which proves that he never had the faintest idea what to do with the programme he’d created. Despite excellent acting, a great premise, and the sort of fantastic banter Sorkin can’t help but write, I think the real brilliance of Studio 60 might have been performed in our own heads. What the show could have been, what the show should have been, was bubbling potential in our minds, and was never really delivered. There were lovely episodes, and great moments. It was my favourite programme before Christmas. But ultimately, it was being made by people who didn’t know what to do with it, and as such the failure was inevitable. The last few episodes will be shown from this week onward, and I’ll watch them enthusiastically. It was great. It really was. But it should be judged by the high standards it announced for itself, and as such, a second season was never a great idea.

Battlestar Galactica – SciFi Channel

Excellent bonkers ending, pissing everyone off by including a Bob Dylan song for no reason and then leaving everyone else to try and make up excuses. Five new Cylons, non of whom should have been, which will make for some fun, if rather desperate writing next season, and Starbuck! Hooray! Even the cast and crew were tricked into believing she was really dead. Which makes them great big twits, as it was fairly obvious she wouldn’t be. But seriously, they went crazy trying to convince everyone, with Katee Sackhoff (a name that sounds like a protest to fire the famous Baywatch star) even auditioning for parts in other shows. Loonies. Really great stuff, constantly entertaining, often moving, and featuring lots of exciting things blowing up in space. Amen.

Help Me Help You – NBC

So here I was really wrong. The fabulous pilot turned out to be a fluke, and I stopped watching only a couple of episodes before it was cancelled.

How I Met Your Mother – NBC EDITED

The premise, in case you’ve not seen this, is that thirty years in the future, a father is telling his teenage children the story of how he met their mother. 48 episodes in, and Ted and Robyn have finally broken up. The writers told wicked lies in interviews, saying they intended to keep them together for the foreseeable future, but the season finale did otherwise. And as nicely as possible. Marshall and Lily, the other couple, finally got married at the end of the second run, and the wedding got everything right. They seemed to tease the audience by setting up a typical sitcom wedding, with everything wackily going wrong, and then in a splendid bait and switch, turned it into a beautiful and romantic moment. Barney, played by Neil Patrick Harris, remains ideal, his character never softening, always resorting to being the bastard. In fact, the writers say they think he’s become a bit too nice of late, supporting Lily and Marshall’s marriage, and plan to drag him down again for season 3. Consistently funny, and impressively inventive with its format, it’s unquestionably the only decent multiple camera sitcom on TV at the moment. Muddling time, flashing forward, and being remarkably rude (apparently they watch Two And A Half Men very closely, and then if they get away with anything risque, the HIMYM writers protest that they should be able to too), it’s great every week.

Heroes – NBC (Big spoilers)

The unquestionable success of the year, Heroes has managed something very rare indeed. It’s a huge ratings hit, critical success, AND a really damned good programme. I learned why recently, after reading an interview with creator Tim Kring. It turns out he has no interest in science fiction or comic books at all. Instead, he knows the ingredients for making good television, saw a marketable opportunity, and then here’s the non-soulless part: hired people who do care about science fiction and comic books to write it. If Kring doesn’t get something they’ve written, or finds it too obscure, it’s nixed. It means they’re creating a proper superhero show that’s open to everyone. The writers are full on geeks, hiding comic references throughout that I don’t even want to get, but they’re there for those who do. Characters who were meant to be one-offs have proven hit successes and stayed on to become incredibly important players (like Claire’s dad) (I have no idea what happened with Zach, and don’t much care), showing a will to recognise their own strengths and weaknesses, and adapt.

I think the other reason for Heroes power as a series is the real danger that anyone could die at any time. Because they do. Big, exciting characters are constantly falling, or having their brains eaten. It’s unlike most superhero fiction where you feel patronised by the pretence that Superman might be in any real danger. Here they are, and likely as not, they’ll not survive. Keeping Silar alive at the end, I’ve decided, is a good idea, as he was too good a baddie to lose. Losing Peter and Nathan was a horrible shock. (I love Kring’s answer as to why Peter couldn’t just fly up on his own: “You know, theoretically you’re not supposed to be thinking about that.”) I’m especially intrigued to learn more about the Watchmen… I mean previous generation of the current heroes, and their past, and how they got to a place where they believed slaughtering millions of people was the only route to mankind’s salvation.

And unlike silly people, I think Origins is a great idea. Instead of breaking the show up into lumps (Heroes never really recovered from its second hiatus), there will be one mid-season break of six weeks, during which Heroes: Origins will show, featuring the emergence of six new characters, from whom viewers can choose which should survive to season 3. And yes, the public are idiots, but let’s hope that they pick six excellent choices so it doesn’t matter which gets through.

Round up

House has been mostly excellent, with only a couple of weak episodes (including last week’s, which should have been so much more). The real strength of the third season was taking House from a grumpy-but-brilliant physician, to a sociopathic bastard. Characters have even started to refer to him as “evil”. Gone are the extremely silly episodes of the past where he’s got some daft motivation for saving a patient, his only remaining interest being the opportunity to experiment, win an argument, or improve his own health. It’s dark, man. But it’s so good. My Name Is Earl remains too preachy, but somehow always funny. Scrubs’ best days are clearly in the past, but that doesn’t stop it being very entertaining most weeks. The Kim storyline was very awkwardly told, and not much of a season finale. And please, God, don’t let the continuing (as it’s been renewed for a seventh run) story be that JD and Kim stay together for the sake of the unborn baby. A loveless marriage at the centre of a sitcom may have worked for Married With Children – I don’t see it succeeding here. Bones is the same as it ever was – fun, silly, and gross. Love it. Doctor Who has been a ceaseless series of barely watchable shite. Please, someone fire RTD. And 30 Rock has been renewed, proving that there is no Television God.

Televised improv has only ever worked once. And then, it only worked a bit. Whose Line Is It Anyway is an interesting creature, beginning on Radio 4 as a faux intellectual nonsense, then transfering to Channel 4 with the same crew – Stephen Fry, John Sessions, etc, before wading through Tony Slattery and Sandy Toskvig and then finding its best fit with a near all-American cast. It was then natural for a US network to pick it up and start making it for themselves. However, it couldn’t go that smoothly, and naturally changes were made. Clive Anderson’s falsely befuddled nature, and quick-witted cruelty provided an excellent straight man for the hyperactive silliness on stage. Drew Carey’s desperation to be involved created a constant tension, peaking when he leapt from behind his desk to shout along with the rest. But worse, far worse, was the programme’s desperation for you to know that it wasn’t scripted. Yes – we know – it would be a lot funnier if it were.

It’s as if improvisation is some sort of mystical paranormal ability that the audience is deeply skeptical about. “They couldn’t possibly have made two words rhyme if they hadn’t had a team of writers working on it for weeks! This must be FAKE!”

Thank God You’re Here is an Australian import that NBC has no idea how to handle. It’s a simple improv game – take an actor or comedian, put them in a costume, and have them walk through a door into a scene they know nothing about. They have to cope with whatever the cast do or say until the klaxon sounds. It’s a good concept, and there’s no reason it shouldn’t work. Were it not for the desperation to boast that they have “no idea, you’ve no idea, no idea at all…” about what’s going to happen. Constant declarations of how “dangerous” it is, how it’s “an actor’s greatest fear”. As if not knowing what was going to happen next, or what everyone else was going to say, weren’t how real life works. The real pressure, the real fear for those participating, is to be funny.

This needy nature spreads to host Dave Allen Grier, who if given free reign can be fantastically funny. It’s the good old irony of having an excellent improviser constricted by trying to remember his awkward lines. Trying so hard to create an atmosphere of tightrope walking over rabid sharks, Grier generates an all-permeating insincerity that drags the potential of the show down with it. Co-hosting, and psuedo-judging the performances, is the lovely, cuddly Dave Foley. Far better, he cracks wise after each sketch, but then says that everyone was “hilarious”.

The show finishes with all four in one scene, which until the third episode was a completely unfunny disaster, suddenly made hilarious by the complete descent into crazed kissing leaving DAG clueless about what to do. Which is not a criticism, really. He can’t have been expecting Shannon Elizabeth to start smooching one of the regular male cast, only to be upstaged by George Takei doing the same, then upstaged once more by Dave Foley leaping from behind his desk, rushing the stage and kissing the man while Elizabeth began snogging Tom Green, and then eventually poor, confused DAG. (Shannon Elizabeth then realised her mistake and kissed Foley, remembering he was the judge).

Er, so impromptu orgies aside, it’s as hit and miss as improv always will be, and only enjoyable if you can swab the treacle of gushing bravado from your mind and enjoy each sketch alone. It’s interesting who copes well. The choice of guests has been intelligent so far, picking people with a decent background in either comedy or improv. Both Jennifer Coolidge and Jane Lynch from Christopher Guest’s improv film troop have appeared, as well as Jason Alexander, Brian Posehn, and Tom Green. However, oddly, none of them did particularly well. Coolidge resorted to her Best In Show character when asked to be a beauty queen, and copped out of most moments for genuine improvisation (but for one exellent moment – when asked what she would like to eradicate from Earth, she replied immediately, “dry ice”). Lynch was given a poor scenario, as a teenager rumbled for having a party by her parents. Posehn couldn’t cope at all, and it’s a real surprise they left his scenes in the show, with him standing still looking terrified, then giggling. Green and Alexander were both fine, but each resorted to type, Green shouting and climbing the sets, Alexander crowbarring in a reference to Seinfeld.

Far, far better, and perhaps unpredictably, were Bryan Cranston, Wayne Knight, Chelsea Handler, and Joel McHale. Knight was surprisingly quick, and constantly funny. Chelsea Handler was almost too confident, slick and rude, scaring the regular cast. McHale, who seems genetically designed to be hated, was really very funny as an Egyptologist, and controlled his scene impressively. But best so far has been Bryan Cranston (which is a bit of a shame, as he was the first to go in the first episode), who shedded any Malcom In The Middleness he might still have, and was absolutely hilarious. And not just because he too smooched every member of the cast.

So you end up with a hit to miss ratio unfortunately balanced the wrong way. When it hits, it’s great, but the rest of the time it’s flaying awkwardly, especially without the support of a confident host. (Which makes no sense – DAG on anyone else’s programme will take over completely, dominating normally to humourous ends). Bumpering the sketches are a couple of pre-taped scenes which are used to “warm up” the contestants the previous day. These are edited together well, each of the four taking part in the same scenario, one after the other, the funniest moments cut together to create a single run through of the scene, jumping between each actor’s take. This trims the lack of laughs out completely, and so far all six of these have been very funny. They, bizarrely, are the model for how television improv should be produced, but instead are used as throwaway moments between the over-hyped and less funny live sketches.

I almost don’t have the words.

I feel like if I write this badly, I’ll break it. Like I might break the spell, and it won’t exist any more.

This American Life has been a radio programme broadcast on Chicago Public Radio, and syndicated on public radio stations across America, for a decade. You can hear it here. Each week, as presenter Ira Glass would say, they choose a theme, and bring a variety of stories on that theme. It’s about the intricate details of people’s lives, the specifics that make them them, rather than you. It’s almost unique in not trying to identify with its listeners, but rather simply asks you to be interested in someone else.

A British reference point would be Home Truths, presented by the late, and missed, John Peel. Both programmes shared a gentleness that’s almost impossible to find anywhere else. And neither did this at the expense of honesty. Difficult, painful stories are as at home as amusing or uplifting tales. John Peel died, and, eventually, Radio 4 gave the programme the dignity to let it die with him. Fortunately Ira Glass is alive and well, and so This American Life continues.

Taking radio to television is a process that requires grace and intelligence. Or more often, reinvention. This American Life opts for the first option in an unparalleled fashion. It is radio with pictures. Really beautiful pictures.

Mimicking the radio programme’s format, an episode begins with a short interview or report, and then an introduction from Glass declaring the loose theme for that edition. On the television programme, he sits at a simple wooden desk with a microphone, perhaps on the side of a mountain, in the middle of the desert, or in an underground carpark. The Python reference seems quite deliberate, but simultaneously explains Glass’s role in the proceedings – a man separate from the events.

Perhaps a great testament to the programme is that it took me four episodes to realise that it was only half an hour long. The deliberate and composed pace provides so much precise detail that it feels as though it must be closer to an hour. To fit in three stories, each leaving you feeling intimate with the subjects, in such a short time is astonishing.

So far televised stories have included the farmer whose tame pet bull, Chance (so tame that it became a novelty, appearing on Letterman and the Superbowl half-time show), was dying, and was cloned as part of a Texas university research project. Or the 14 year old junior high student who has rationalised the futility of love, and sworn to never succumb to its “barbarian” ways. There was the politician who never lies, and the man who seeks bearded men in Utah to pose for photographs for his paintings of Biblical scenes. There was the photographer who stood and photographed while a woman was swept out to sea and drowned. Last week’s stunning edition dedicated an entire episode to the documentary a man in his twenties has made about his alcoholic parents, one a former pop star and now step-dad, the other his broken and conflicted mother.

What makes it so special is the respect with which the subjects are treated. It’s not naive or unquestioning, but rather documentary that asks the questions that are relevant, but knows when to be quiet and listen. Talking to Joe, the 14 year old who has sworn off love, TAL demonstrates a degree of respect that I have never seen television show a teenager. It doesn’t patronise him, or suggest that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. It shows his mother, Naomi, exasperated that she thinks he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. But it gives Joe a place to explain his thinking. When people are in ridiculous situations, Glass asks astonished questions. It’s an honest reaction, and it brings out more truth from the subject.

And the pictures. Perhaps driven by the fear of translating something they love to a medium they know is capable of brutally destroying radio, every shot is so beautifully constructed. The colour, the contrast, the juxtaposition, all breathtaking. You could pause it almost anywhere, print it out, and frame it. Ingeniously, the editing is frequently such that a person begins speaking long before you see them on screen. This degree of separation maintains the atmosphere of radio, where your imagination is still given room for creating images, despite those already present on screen.

Add in the superb music selection, and Ira Glass’s wonderful voice.

It’s deeply emotional, deeply intimate. It’s never naive, but prepared to listen. It maintains the profundity of the radio series, but is deservedly executed on a different medium. This is how good television can be.

The first episode of Firefly ensured one thing: You were going to watch every other episode in the series, even if you had to kill close relatives. The first episode of Drive ensures, well, nothing.

Sharing a writer, Tim Minear was responsible for some of Firefly’s greatest episodes, with perhaps even a mature edge over Whedon’s wonderful dialogue. And so, sometimes a show gets measured from zero expectations upward, and other times from high expectations downward. It’s his own fault for having been so good. He’s not this time out.

It’s not bad, however. The idiotic concept is thus: there’s a secret, illegal road race across America, in which some participants take part willingly, while others are forced into the game to save kidnapped loved ones. They must solve clues and race to locations, desperately trying to not come last. So, er, a bit like The Amazing Race then, but pretend.

The Amazing Race is one of my naughty treats. 11 teams of two INARACEAROUNDTHEWORLD. It’s excellent nonsense television, as pairs of dimbos all fight at airports to get better flights, then shout at the confused locals in various countries, trying to find a clue box and then complete the appropriate challenge. As a Big Concept show, it’s fantastically executed, exec produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, and overblown to match. It also features the best creator/producer name of all time: Bertram Van Munster. Yes, it’s reality TV (or “unscripted TV” as the Americans attempt to sell it), and yes it’s populated mostly by morons, but the sheer scale of the project (now in its 11th season) is just so immense that it gets away with it.

Drive’s not that immense. Poor old Drive. Death by comparison. Again, it’s not that bad. It’s just not good. You’re given a huge cast of thinly sketched characters and asked to care about them from the very start. But why? When someone comes last, and is therefore charged with killing another character, you don’t care about the consequences for her, and you certainly don’t care about her victim. There’s the father/daughter team with Minear’s attempt to write a Whedon teenager and missing really quite embarrassingly badly. There’s three girls who after starring in two episodes are still completely anonymous, but the show’s website informs us they were brought together by Hurricaine Katrina – eurgh. There’s, um, oh blimey, there has to be… No, I forget. And finally there’s Cap’n Mal, Nathon Fillion. He’s the only character there’s been any attempt to flesh out, his wife kidnapped and his participation in the race an unwilling one. But Minear’s choice to use former Firefly colleague might have been a bit of a mistake.

Fillion is perfect in Firefly. His cowboy behaviour, dubious morality and quick temper (and trigger finger) make him by far the most interesting captain of any spaceship. Smart, loyal, and a master thief, Fillion nails it. In Drive he’s given almost nothing to do but complain, and then presumably because Minear is confusing the unwitting victim and loyal husband with his former gunslinging character, he then suddenly displays the ability to kidnap and interrogate people. Er. Perhaps we’re supposed to believe that his wife’s predicament will drive him to do anything to save her. But instead you get this jumble of a character who is, so far, rather disturbingly unlikeable.

American TV has a rather bad relationship with filming driving. With cars normally hooked on the back of camera trucks, the actor has no reason to look at the road in front, and so in response, doesn’t. It’s so hard to concentrate on what’s being said, rather internally screaming, “LOOK AT THE ROAD! YOU’RE GOING TO DIE!” Programmes like Homicide have rather cleverly gotten around this by, well, having the actor be driving. And it’s madness that more shows aren’t doing this. Drive has created some rather fabulous CGI techniques that allow the camera to drift between cars on the same road, and fade seamlessly through windows. It looks awesome. It also means all the driving is shot on green screen, and so we’re in the worst territory of all for eyes-right driving fu. You’d think a programme about driving, y’know, called “Drive”, would work a bit harder to have the drivers act like they’re, what was it again, ah yes, driving.

So episode three is about now, and I think I’m going to watch it. But I’m not sure why. Perhaps loyalty to Minear, since I know he can write excellent dialogue, even if he hasn’t written a decent line in the first two episodes. I think he gets one more go.

I think people are going to somewhat miss the point of Painkiller Jane. There’s a simple trick to understanding it: Read the title.

Read it again.

One more time.

Ok, so now perhaps we can forget our worries about its not being Dostoyevsky and enjoy a bunch of nonsense that is enjoying being such? Episode 1 of anything science fiction always has a hard time – introduce the cast, then the special nature of that cast, then have them face a typical scenario, and then introduce a twist. It’s a lot to do in 43 minutes. And so while PJ has some awful moments of awkward exposition, and while it has a couple of, “Oh no, please don’t say… Oh! You said it!” scenes, it does a fine job of being daft scifi about super-elite cops fighting against the Neuros – genetically enhanced humans with paranormal abilities.

Most impressive is the use of colour. I’m sure ten thousand TV blogs are currently writing, “…looks like a music video…” and tsking loudly, as if this is inherently a bad thing. It’s the laziest of dismissals for any form of innovative filming, and, you know what? Sometimes music videos look really fantastic, and it can be a good thing to look like one. PJ’s use of colour is really very impressive, with the shades washing away subtly throughout scenes, sometimes leaving things entirely in black and white, other times letting colour bleed back in at dramatic moments. It’s a really nice technique, and makes a pleasant enough show keep your attention throughout. Plus it stars the T-X terminator.