Tower of Telly #2 - Geordie Shore, WHY AYE!

  

Usually when you like a programme and recommend it to someone, they react quite positively and say they’ll check it out (even though they probably won’t). But sometimes no matter how much praise you lavish on a show, people make it abundantly clear there is no chance in Hell they are going to take you up on the suggestion.

This week saw the welcome (to some, me included) return of North-East comedy-drama Geordie Shore, WHY AYE! It’s not really a comedy-drama, however it is very funny, and there’s forever drama.

I can totally understand why people are instantly turned off by the idea of Geordie Shore; catching a few meat-headed moments while flicking channels or seeing some gratuitous drunken disgracefulness on a luridly edited advert, it’s easy to see why the majority would be keen to give it a wide birth; the same way if you’re finishing a pint in a pub just as a lairy stag or hen do fall in the door, a cacophony of screeching and bawdiness, you’re likely to opt to have the next pint elsewhere. However if you were part of the stag or hen do, then you’d probably be having a hell of a time with people you know and love. This, I feel, is the key to enjoying Geordie Shore. You’ve gotta go with it, stick with it and get to know the people and their individual personalities underneath all the shouting and shagging (admittedly, this ain’t always that easy)

Although it is oft bemoaned there is such a glut of these structured reality programmes these days, in actual reality very few of them have caught on. You can’t just stick a load of boozing, rich or beautiful youngsters together, film them and expect a hit, you’ve got to actually have likeable, watchable people on there; people you actually want to spend time with (from the safety of your settee obviously). You only have to watch a few conversations on Desperate Scousewives to know that you would never want to spend a second in their company, or one conversation on The Valleys to know they’re all thick as shit and not worth the slightest hint of attention. However I defy anyone to watch a few scenes with Charlotte on Geordie Shore and not think she seems like top quality company. She is completely egoless, totally shameless and ultimately very very funny. Holly, her best mate is also a brilliant, super likeable character with an undeniably great sense of humour and an impressive knack of coming up with morally dubious catchphrases. A few series ago she popularised the word “Cockfright”, describing the condition of a growing fear of the male member, during a rare period of celibacy. Then last series inspiring t-shirt slogans of “Sassy” – after Holly used it to describe herself as a mixture of being a ‘slut’ whilst simultaneously remaining ‘classy’.

I won’t try and list Marnie’s plus points, as there aren’t many. She’s incredibly attractive and probably a lovely girl when she’s not moronically falling heavily in love with any lump of muscle doing the sprinkler dance in her vicinity, as Charlotte helpfully notes, “I’ve had shits longer than Marnie would last in a relationship.”

The girls on Geordie Shore are very easy to get to like, (honourable mention to Vicki, who behaves unwisely when wasted but is instantly mortified upon waking up the day after and very good at describing her shame) the lads however, and ‘lads’ is definitely the word, are a lot harder to grow fond of. Gaz, alpha male, “In the new house there’s a gym as well as the shag pad, so I’ve got two places to work out.” Good one Gaz. He’s obsessed with ‘lad code’, meaning you can’t kiss a girl who your mate has previously had a thing with, which is beyond comprehension considering the level of incestuous relationship swapping on the programme. Ultimately though, he gets on with his Granddad and it’s hard not to think he’s alright.

Scotty T is the biggest mystery of all of them. On the face of things, the guy seems like a monumental cunt, the worst of everything associated with lad culture, constantly banging on about banging, bragging about shagging, nothing between the ears, brains in his biceps meathead, “Cocks washed, fannies fresh, let’s fucking do this” he declares as the group head out on what seems like the 50th night out of the episode. Scotty though, if you watch for long enough, has definite hidden depths. He frequently sees straight through the floods of bullshit flowing from Gaz’s mouth and is happy to call him out on it. Any love triangle or relationship drama and Scotty is always on hand to give a frank assessment of the scenario and always seems to hit the nail on the head. He never let’s Gaz’s ludicrous lad code get in the way of fairness when choosing sides in house arguments, in fact he barely chooses sides, just offers his opinion on how he sees the situation, much to Gaz’s chagrin as this is rarely in his favour. It’s also telling that the girls seem to gravitate toward him in times of uncertainty or supposed stress, as if his simplicity of character somehow serves as a reassuring presence; if Scotty’s alright, everything’s ok.

The other guys are lame and barely worth mentioning.

So Geordie Shore is back, and I’m glad about it. You may think, “Who cares about the relationships of these people?” but the answer is “no one does!” That’s not the point. It’s just a bunch of people having a great time, and it’s very funny. Watch it!

Another thing I enjoyed this week: Ice Rink on the Estate (terrible title) – Torvill and Dean trying to get a load of kids to perform an ice skating routine basically. Surprisingly moving scenes with Christopher Dean doing his best to instil belief into a talented, if heavily de-motivated (owing to constant family and home troubles) kid, who seems at risk of slipping through the net of life. Some say it’s all a bit patronising; I reckon Torvill and Dean’s hearts are in the right place.

Cheers y’all!

If you see any great programmes, or awful programmes, lemme know! And I shall endeavour to check em out.          

   

Tower of Telly #1 - Thunderbirds Are Go

Hey yo! As it has often been noted that I watch a slightly disgraceful amount of TV, I figured I should perhaps turn this obsession into something a little more productive. So WELCOME to ‘JIMBO AGOGO’S TOWER OF TELLY’. If I see something good or shit, I shall endeavour to tell you about it.

I’ve just got back from a week in Cornwall with the family, so man have I got a helluva lot of tv to catch up on! I like to keep the ‘My Shows’ section on my Tevo box hovering around the 50% mark; I feel uneasy if it gets much higher and am forced to either binge on my recorded programmes or do a bit of ruthless deleting. Thinking about it, I think I need to modify my ‘Royle Family’ series link, there seems to be a number of duplicated episodes on there, causing an unsightly clog. There’s only so many times I need to watch Nana following through after laughing with too much vigour.

Anyway, near the top of the list, through chronology rather than preference, is the brand spanking new version of ‘Thunderbirds’, now going with by slightly punchier title of ‘Thunderbirds are Go.’ I used to spend many hours of my childhood attempting to draw ‘Thunderbird 1’ while my brother was more of a ‘T2’ kinda guy. Personally I thought Scott (T1’s pilot) to be way cooler than boring Virgil (T2’s pilot, you getting the idea?), hence T1 being the one for me. Over the years, ‘Thunderbirds’ seems to have been bunged in with all the cult sci-fi programmes supposed nerds are in to. If you say you like ‘Thunderbirds’, you’re likely to receive a similar reaction as those professing to be ‘Doctor Who’ fans, or ‘Star Trek’ fanatics, like you must be a total loner who’s better versed in Vulcans than vaginas. However, I seem to remember ‘Thunderbirds’ being a lot cooler than that. The Tracey’s, they were a pretty cool bunch of guys! The ships all looked cool, Thunderbird 2 looks amazing, T4 goes underwater for gawd’s sake. Tracey Island, that looked pretty swish, even when made of egg boxes and bog roll by Anthea Turner.

The advert for the new series is pretty worrying; I’m not convinced at all. For starters, there’s not a marionette puppet in sight. The character’s are now all CGI. If you’ve seen what Fireman Sam looks like these days (CGI and really shit) then you’ll have some idea of where my concerns lay. I suppose it means they won’t have to do that lame thing anymore, where if a character was doing something with their hands, they’d have a close up with a real human hand performing the task, picking up a phone, writing a letter etc; it always looked terribly incongruous with the whole vibe.  Anyway, it gets started; some geezer and his son have lost control of their hot air balloon in a storm, pretty standard. After hollering for help, and spiralling further out of control, the magnificence of Thunderbird 2 emerges from the black swirling clouds and Virgil pops out to help. He grabs the son over to safety but the balloon rips off the basket, sending the dad plummeting to his death. Virgil gets on his intercom “Thunderbird 5, I need you NOW.” Then all of a sudden we’re punched inn  the eyes with the familiar close up of the number 5 and the original “FIVE..DAAAAA.. FOUR..DAAAAA.. THREE…DAAAAA…TWO..DAAAAA..ONE..rumble rumble rumble, flames….Thunderbird 1 rockets off.” It all gives you a good shiver of “YEH! This is still cool!” The theme tune sounds revamped but is ultimately exactly the same, big brass and all that. The soundtrack to the whole thing sounds pretty grandiose. It all sounds and LOOKS really good. My concerns about the CGI were definitely misplaced. They’ve done a kind of mix, where all the sets are real, with actual models. According to my brother these have been done by Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings team, so as you can imagine, it all looks pretty grand and atmospheric, I really like it. Puppets among all the vast scenery would probably have looked very naff, so you soon get used to the CGI guys, plus they’ve all been given a sheen that makes them actually look like the material of the old marionettes.

I remember the old Thunderbirds being very white in terms of race, with the only person with any diverse ethnicity being the bad guy “The Hood”, which would seem a bit dodge in 2015 (or 2060 as we’re apparently in on the show), so this is all sorted. Brains is now an Asian chap, complete with his old stammer. There’s a new spunky female character Kayo, who appears to be mixed race, driving new ship ‘Thunderbird Shadow’ (hang on…is that racist??) and The Hood now seems to be a white guy, still rocking eyebrows that’d put Cara Delevingne to shame.

It all seems to be pretty funny and knowing; when The Hood makes some slightly ludicrous demands (or he’ll activate a load of earthquakes) sounding like a cheesy villain from some bad movie, Scott immediately comments “You have to be joking, that list of demands is right out of a bad movie” ha! I like it.

For me, it ticks all the boxes any old fans would have wanted; whether it catches on remains to be seen. If I had any complaints I’d say it was about 15 minutes too long at a full hour. Not sure I can deal with that on a weekly basis, I feel like I’ve heard the “5,4,3,2,1 Thunderbirds are go!” countdown about 50 times by the end of the episode.

All in all, I’m very impressed. You might say it was FAB! Waheyyyyy geddit?

So that’s one down on my ‘My Shows’ section, plenty to go.  I can’t see myself catching up on 6 episodes of Masterchef; I might have to write that one off for this series. 6 hours of Greg Wallace being a creepy get is not the one. Why does he always turn into a total cunt the millisecond someone goes over time? I always find it very unneeded.

Something else I enjoyed this week – Caught up on episode 1 of the new series of ‘Inside No 9’ – though it was very very funny. Laugh out loud funny. Probably my fave episode of that yet.

See you soon