For anyone wondering where the Devil has got to these days, I found him. He is on a talk show on a cable TV channel numbered so high that most God-fearing folks would never reach it. How very Devilly of him. And he has taken on the form of an annoying after dinner coffee wit. An annoying after dinner coffee wit, with big ears. That’s Classic Devil Shenanigans.
To explain: I was at a friends’ place and he went to check on his toddler upstairs. He left me the remote to his cable TV.
Not knowing how to properly work the futuristically sleek device, I began Neanderthal jabbing the + button. BBC1 then BBC2 and on: ITV4 and still I went on: 5-Star then Music Channels then Shopping Channels then Parliamentary Channels: on and on: News channels and Animal Documentary channels whirred past my senses – always on further, higher, faster, more lurid [My god, it’s full of stars] until I came to a slamming halt.
I had climbed to a channel called Controversial TV. A bold screen ident read:
Controversial TV takes no responsibility for the views expressed through its programming. These are solely the personal views of those being filmed and not a representation of the broadcaster.
For a channel that has a warning as enthralling as this, it turns out to be woefully cheap television to the point of almost certainly being transmitted out from the inner rim of the Euro Central Bank Zone sinkhole. Their premise is that they film people who talk and discuss without your “mainstream” censorship and with the minimum of distraction for the viewer – programming without boundaries – the reality is more that they film people without any editorial control or production costs – programming without budget.
My friend returned to find me watching two elderly women being single lock-cam filmed taking formal English afternoon tea together (in what I could only surmise was one of the elderly women’s sitting rooms) and discussing their place in the Universe and the ever smoothing life lines on their thin skinned palms, all over the gentle sound of bone china against bone china and intermittent soft bites through French fancies.
“What are you watching?” he rightly questioned.
Just exactly what is on the screen. It is nothing more and nothing less. And because of that, it is rubbish. It is a programme where you can simulate being in a waiting room without needing to have the excitement of an appointment for anything. Or perhaps one of those reverse snuff movies that Ken Loach is so fond of making, in where the people on screen live through such depressingly stark real life scenes that you kill yourself.
But, I said, look at the blurb of what is coming on next…
[For those who can’t read this too clearly here it is again – in truth it is worth just reading it again anyway]
"In a sound byte society Red Zone provides an alternative. Celebrity guests have to spontaneously react to surprise issues chosen at random, with no rules except those of civilised debate."What a concept that is! Although, giving it a little thought, the conventions of civilised debate do usually have rather a lot of rules attached. No matter – this just has to be ace TV, right?
That the Celebrities on this episode of the Red Zone were Lawrie McMenemy, Derek Laud, some maturing eye candy for the older gent called Chelsea (a writer, model, actress, speaker and entrepreneur – allegedly) that I – tellingly – cannot even find a Google hit for and Gary Bushell only seemed to make the concept, in my mind, better.
The 4 celebrities are sat on 2 plush red leather sofas around a coffee table with wine and cigars on. The host sits between the two sofas on a large single plush red leather chair (symbolising his “chairing” of the debate, cleverly). 6 Cameramen (despite being in dressed in black are disorientatingly visible in the unlit murk) shuffle around, undulating their cameras behind them. It gives the impression of being filmed in a warehouse. Quite possibly because it is.
The host introduces the guests with a couple of what I am sure are very witty dry remarks with a delivery the consistency of Dulux paint (example: “He was asked to run the England 2018 World Cup bid, but he couldn’t run fast enough. Welcome, Lawrie McMenemy”) and quickly gets down to business, asking one celebrity to pick a “Devil” card. They then get to discuss the topic on the card which the host reveals in his one-coat, gloss finish tone “without the limit of time”. That doesn’t even make any sense. Unless this is purgatory. Then it makes perfect sense.
The topic was “Social care”. Oh it’s controversial alright. The guests are invited to smoke cigars and drink red wine as the debate rages – civilly so, naturally. And the debate did feature such forthright views such as Chelsea: “I want to state that I have no opinions on anything involving politics and have never voted”. McMenemy: “The problems today in this country is all coming from that Internet”. Bushell: “We have lost our way in this country – we should look to be going back to how things were dealt with in the 50s and 60s when times were better” [and we had the fu**ing Krays? you hairy fu**ing moron!]. And Chelsea again: “I think that healthcare in Brit-.” [No, I don't believe you get to say things now – please always refer to your first statement].
All the time the host sits back, smoking from a calabash pipe of all things! The host’s role –I gathered – was to add in counter points, stir proceedings, and argue against statements using proven facts. At points he did try to add in angles of argument. However, he was rendered mostly mute against the powerful rhetoric skill flowing from his guests. His factual words simply hovered above in the tobacco smoke.
At some point – any point – I was hoping he would lower his pipe and interject with a more controversial “surprise” issue. You know: perhaps in keeping with the synopsis given of the show?
“Yes Social care is good and bad – but what would it take for any of you to eat a priest?”
But nothing. He sits back, his red shirt crumpling at his gut-riff, puffing on his “character insinuating” pipe. The plastic chandelier above them didn’t even come crashing down on the infernal Bushell. It didn’t come down on any of them.
In the entire hour, [yes, I watched this at a friends house for an hour – a lesson there, I am sure you will agree, for all my friends] the most provocative the host gets is when he says to Derek, after he makes an error in blaming European policy for a UK legislative held power (the scruple-less cad!): “You are the lower intestine of the Conservative Party or something” to which Derek takes umbrage at this inexplicable [though very dry and witty I am assured] statement and immediately retorts, with equally ludicrous blustering through the fog of his large stoggie: “Sir! I am alive. I: Am: Alive!”
Is this really the pinnacle of civilised debate and conversation?
My Friend’s wife walked through to the room. “What are you both watching?” she astutely asked.
My friend explained that he had left me for just 5 minutes with sport on TV and when he came back he found me watching this channel. Now we were both watching it.
“This is dreadful” she accurately summarised – simultaneously increasing the quality of intelligent talk in the room, “It is mocking our HD TV”. And it was.
The host goes ever-so-predictably back on his first elaborate construct and drew things to a close with a verbal brush gloop stroked: “Now, I am afraid we have run out of time for this debate. I want to say thanks for joining us this evening and I want to thank my guests for their, stimulating, conversation”. The show ends with a close up of Chelsea hurriedly finishing off her (and possibly the others) wine glass dregs, then fades to an animated silhouette of the pipe smoking host which morphs into the silhouette of the Devil!
Ah-ha! The host was the Devil! The Undying Shrew! I bloomin’ knew it!
Hmm... I would have bet on there being more sodomy with a show hosted by the Devil. You live and learn.
Before we could grapple with the enormity of that, the next programme was introduced: Eerie Investigations.
Synopsis: Karen meets Peter who tells her about his main interest and much more.
Well, it seems we weren’t going to change the channel just yet with content lined up like that.
The programme opens as if setting up a gallows humorist skit. Karen is standing in the cold middle of night [so cold even her microphone has a little matching hat on] in a single streetlight lit London back alley, she is introducing the show while beside her is a man, around 10” taller, dressed in clothes typical for a cold night out – long black coat, black gloves, black hat and a cane. He’s looking at her, side-on, a couple of feet from her.
Or, ambiguously, a man, dressed in a long black blood spatter shielding Mack to be dumped in a skip later, black murderer’s gloves to be dumped in a skip later, black hat to offer a prosaic disguise during a murder to be dumped in a skip later, and stabbing stick to be dumped in a skip later was staring at a lady, around 10” shorter, to be dumped in a skip later. She hasn’t even seen him creeping up, and he’s right close now.
It was hard to tell.
She turns to him: “So, Peter, what are you?”
“I am a Ripperologist, Karen” Ambiguity solved!
[By the way – Karen’s bio on the programme is this: Karen is a qualified science laboratory technician, and has worked as a lab tech assistant. She is also a trained medium and psychic artist. Noted that it doesn’t say nothing about being a TV presenter, but then again she might have a talent for it...]
Karen is a terrible TV presenter. And possibly worse interviewer. Peter talks in monotone about one of the most sensationalist crime stories in the world – turning it into the most mundane sensationalist crime stories in the world. “Of course, as she was getting murdered, she must have thought ‘oh, if only I hadn’t spent my room money on that 2nd glass of gin’ and then – she of course died”
As Karen cranes up at him trying to look interested, “Back then, they wouldn’t have had that CCTV up there, would they?” she asks pointing to a CCTV camera bolted above a backdoor to a club.
“No – they had nothing like that anywhere” he informs Karen and us “remember this was 1800’s, when murderers could often continue operating because of the lack of evidence that we see routinely found on the CSI series’ of today” he droned on, referencing a make-believe show with non-real concept technologies as he went.
My friend’s wife gesticulated to the screen: “This woman is awful. Butcher her!” Now three of us were sitting watching it.
Turns out Peter didn’t tell us “much more” or carry out a ripper-lite murder. He basically stuck to the Ripper story.
So then. Controversial TV: bit of an anti-climax in the end.
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