Critique le critique

TV reviews are more difficult than they may at first seem. In the sense they are substantially straightforward. Also, almost every newspaper and magazine has a TV critic. To be noticed from the plethora of everyone commenting their opinion of the latest BBC documentary you have to be rather good.

Charlie Brooker is possibly the best TV reviewer currently around. He is thematic, insightful and funny at will. His writing has a rhythm which drives the reader through the item. Fundamentally his writing gives the belief that he is genuine in his feelings. In saying this, he has become so ubiquitous with his own television shows and television media appearances that he is the TV Reviewer equivalent of Ouroboros. He is in danger of being one panel show guest spot from eating his own feet.

I remember, too, in the free local community paper I used to read several years ago, in between adverts for local hardware shops and articles about local gardeners and their allotment chat, there was a tremendous TV reviewer. He was called David. He had this super knack for picking up on the little details and taking the review to strange new levels of narrative. The only example, unfortunately, that springs to my mind now was where he reviewed a 2nd round match of a snooker tournament. I remember him starting at the fact the camera close-up of Stephen Hendry revealed a short twitch in his eyes at the very moment of cuing. From this he wove in the idea that Hendry was an excitement eradicating Cy-Borg. The piece was far better than I have just described. Honest.

So, by the same coin, to be noticeably bad, you have to be really rather bad. Or even worse, a man named Sam.

I have been clicking on the Guardian’s TV reviewer’s page with all the dreaded fascination of a group of kids poking a severed girls arm found at the train tracks, with a couple of sticks.

If not for the reality of it being the opening of the Sixth Seal, I would have believed Car. D’gan was moonlighting from his own sector writing.

Take Sam’s latest review article [please, someone take it – ho, ho]. It is tantamount to a begging letter for like-ability. A prayer to be seen as knowing. An advert for adopting the N Korea media-model - 23 hours of watching our glorious leader on horseback and 1 hour of X-Factor: worst auditions (renamed: Look at the West! Look how they are Fugly! Do not look at Cheryl! That is an Order!).

This is exactly how it starts:

TV review: The Spice Trail. If you're Kate Humble, look away now. I'm going to be mean and horrid . . .(Sam Wollaston The Guardian, Friday 18 February 2011)
An email arrives, from a television person. He's made a film and wonders if I'll preview it. I don't do previews; this man clearly has no idea who I am, so I ignore him. Another email arrives, apologising – he meant review, not preview. So this time I reply. I'll certainly watch his film, but I can't promise I'll review it; it all depends on how good it is, what else is out that day etc. Unless, of course, he wants to send me money, in which case it not only gets into the paper, it can be guaranteed a favourable review, depending on the sum. If anyone else reading is thinking of doing this, the figure I quote for a positive write-up is "about £4", though to be honest, you may as well put a fiver in because it works out cheaper when you take into account the extra postage for the weight of the coins.

I am all for context, however, should the bribery part be true it casts considerable doubt as to all his "reviews". And it may well be true, by my reckoning, because I can't imagine it was there to be funny.
He goes on:

A couple of days later, a small package arrives: no money, but two small, brown lumps. Drugs! I'm beginning to like this guy. What kind of drugs though, and how does one take them? I'm not taking any chances. I grind up one lump (mmm, the smell rings a faint bell) and smoke it, then grind up the other lump and snort that one. And now my eyeballs are bleeding, and I'm having convulsions, I'm dehydrated and all over the place, but not in a good way. Not drugs then. Nutmeg. Oh, I see, because his film is The Spice Trail (BBC2). With Kate Humble.

Here he is mainly lying, of that we can be on fairly solid ground. Or clinically a moron. Crucially, he has gobbled up 261 words of his limit.

There isn't even any nutmeg in this first episode, it's pepper and cinnamon. Kate goes to India and gets involved, because you have to have a go now, when you're making television. She attempts to climb a bamboo pole, then tries out trampling on bunches of corn to separate them from their stalks. Oooh, can I have a go, let me try, oh I'm rubbish at it, and you're amazing, ha ha ha. You have to laugh a lot, and smile, and agree, and exaggerate all your facial expressions, play the clown a bit, when you're somewhere such as India, to show respect and make the locals like you. And you have to meet them halfway with the language. "Small, small," says Kate, when offered a peck of pickled pepper at dinner, making the internationally recognised sign for "just a bit".

I am sure Sam is trying to tell us something. Maybe it is he would make all attmepts in finding a mature way of getting his point accross and would not make a fool of himself doing something he is less skilled in. And that he is totally blind of the irony therefore of his first paragraph.

She goes to one of those races with big, long boats and lots of dudes with paddles and drumming where she gets very excited. Go guys! And she tells us a bit about the history of pepper, and where the expression "peppercorn rent" comes from.
Then Kate goes to Sri Lanka and does the same with cinnamon. Oooh, can I have a go, let me try, oh I'm rubbish at it, and you're amazing, ha ha ha. To be honest, I had no idea that cinnamon sticks were rolled up like that, by hand. But now I know, 'cos I've cinnamon TV. Geddit?

Nope.

It's quite interesting. I'm going to be mean and horrid about Kate Humble at this point, so if you are Kate Humble, look away now. She's just a teeny bit, how can I say this . . . unspicy. Brilliant on Springwatch, with all those other people. But an hour, on her own – by the end of it, I felt as if I'd been on holiday to south Asia with the head girl.
See, that's the kind of lukewarm review you get if you don't play by the rules. I bet the television guy wishes he'd sent me money now, or real drugs. Christ, my head still hurts.

No it doesn't. Or if it does - it's not because you sucked spice up through your eyes, but because of your displaced guilt about all what that was back there.

Don't forget Sam is paid for what just happened. Admittedly I don't know how much, perhaps not a lot if he really does accept £4-£5 bribes and will happily, crush, smoke and ingest anything he is sent in the post in the hope of a short high or swift death to escape his bread-line existence.

In the end, for me, just a bit forced humour, a risky stratagem to imply that money or drugs would have improved what Sam himself described as a lacklustre effort, inter-cut with (it seems two can play at drug wit) an anemic's lunge at describing what was on the telly, is not even close to passing mustard (and there is a spice one for free). He is a professional critic for a major newspaper and I am horrifyingly convinced he considers that this was acceptable output as such.

Ultimately, it could be that Sam and I have something in common after all this: we both could be doing with a little more Charlie.

Oh! I just got that "cinnamon TV" thing. Sweet Jesus.