tellymole.com

…why would you inflict such a fucking horrible TV programme on the nation?

It’s not often that I hate something within 30 seconds of watching it. But Fresh Ones’ BBC commission, ’Delicious Miss Dahl’ actually made me want to throw a brick through the TV, and one of her stupid little twee sash windows.

Floating around her faux-rustic designer kitchen, Dahl basically mimics a Nigella-esque food and literary wank-a-thon for the Laura Ashley brigade. I hated it so much that my hands are literally shaking with rage. I HATED this programme!

Now, some of my frustration with this self-indulgent, pretentious piece of shit is probably borne out of of the fact that I probably don’t fit into the target audience. Who is that, though? I can’t see who is actually going to have a use for the this programme. The recipes aren’t complex or original. We’re not seeing anything that anyone with half an ounce of cooking motivation hasn’t already done before. Chicken soup, bubble and squeak, some sort of salad thing. Yet, we’re treated to what seemed like about four hours of her unbelievably pompous babble on “how Winnie the Pooh is the embodiment of melancholy…” WHAT?? What the hell are you talking about? What the fuck do you even know about being melancholy anyway? Do you have a feeling of melancholy because you scratched your Maserati? Do you you feel a bit down because that rural health-food bistro had run out of your favorite elderflower juice? Fuck off. A few moments later, Dahl goes on to talk about how bubble-and-squeak from a ‘greasy spoon’ help to cure her first hangover… said with such a plum, I actually laughed. They don’t even have proper greasy spoons in Barnes or Oxfordshire villages, anyway. 

I don’t mind the floaty, lightweight composition of this programme so much. It’s shot well, it looks ‘nice’ (apart from the self-important links between recipes.. heavily-graded dirty frames shot through leaves, of Sophie, staring doe-eyed into space while loosly grasping a chunky, highly obscure piece of 19th century literature.)  It could be a good little programme. I can even put up with the fact that the thing is draped with a nauseating soundtrack.. exactly what I’d expect to find in a 30-something, middle-class woman’s CD rack - looking at the credits confirms that theme too.. a real floral estrogen-fest.

But I just can’t live with Dahl’s infuriating dialogue, though.  It’s pretencious, it’s sickly, it’s not patricularly helpful. I don’t care that she’s concocting a ‘bar room brawl’ of flavors or if she’s a ‘mushroom fiend’. That kind of talk actually offends me.

So this is a fairly short review of this programme, but as always - my main motivation for writing is when something really irritates me and I need to vent before doing some physical damage to my TV. To finish I’d like to put out a plea. Please. Do NOT re-commission this programme. If I ever accidentally stumble across it again, as I did today, it might actually ruin a decent chunk of my day. It’s that bad.

What I would like to see is a 1×60 of Sophie being force-fed McDonalds, made to live in a new-build studio flat in Thamesmead with a up-and-coming ‘grime’ MC called 8-Ball. She’d only be allowed to read Nuts magazine, wear clothes from New Look and drive an 11-year old Ford Fiesta. Working title, something like “Living Without Jus”.

TV’s a funny old place. It’s often quite disappointing for kids turning up into the industry to discover how gnarled and bitter the freelancing world is under that layer of sugary niceness that everyone puts on. The truth of it is, there’s hundreds of people in the industry that are consistently made miserable by the industries ways and are desperate to get the hell out of it. Don’t get me wrong, on the flip-side, there are thousands of us that are content with the way things are and are happy to put up with the down-sides.

Anyway, every now and then you’re given a stark reminder of how nasty things can get, ie the catalyst for this particular post. A couple of weeks ago I was given one such reminder when a friend of mine received one of those “I’m going to make sure you never work in this town again” emails from a disgruntled exec. who he hadn’t seen eye to eye with. I don’t want to go into too much detail, as it’d end up identifying the poor chap, but safe to say he didn’t deserve it. 

Every now and then I trick myself into thinking telly is a lovely place to be, a soft Tellytubby-esque grassy landscape where it’s safe to run around with no shoes on. Usually it’s while running around in this velvety-smooth grassy landscape, frolicking gaily without a care, that one usually ends up treading on a tetanus-ridden nine inch nail. That’s how I’m feeling today. I’m lying on the grass, prying a rusty old nail out of my blood-spattered foot while wondering why I tried to kid myself into thinking that telly was a lovely, harmless place to be.

Weak, melodramatic analogies aside - that’s the way TV makes me feel sometimes. You settle in to a nice run of getting back-to-back contracts, working with lovely MD’s, execs, etc and then a couple of times a year you meet some absolute c**t that poisons it all for you. Why do people feel the need to be so wanky? I remember going through a run of trying to find work as a runner (a few years back now) and after sending out hundreds of letters, finally securing myself a few weeks work experience at a couple of indies. My first stint at Leopard Films was a dream. Lovely people, not at all pretentious, very down to earth and I was made to feel immediately at home.

After a couple of weeks there, I went on to another indie during which time I’d landed myself an interview for an ‘internship’ at a third company. Wow! An internship!? Bloody brilliant! They were going to train me up to be a director, or a producer, or something impressive like that. Their website said so… “All of our interns get to work with celebrities and go on to be important people’.. or something like that. All I had to do was write down three proposals for programme ideas (which would be hoovered up by some lazy development prick, if half-good) and a begging letter telling them why I wanted to work in telly and why I’d be suitable. After a few weeks I’d been called for an interview. Walking in to that office nearly made me puke. The rumours were true! Telly WAS a pretencious, filthy place after all! The horror! Dozens of boys and girls with trendy haircuts busily scuttled around the office, not forgetting to keep that ‘pleasant demeanor’ plastered across their cutesy faces at all times. Seriously, everyone in this office was good-looking and gunning for next presenter’s opening. I was made to wait an extraordinarily long time for the big interview, by which time I’d already decided that I wanted to exit by the nearest 4th-story window. I was eventually greeted by one of the minions, and taken to a cold-looking corner office with a big conference table in it. Holy shit… my guard was really down after the friendly, informal nature of those other indies, what the hell was going to happen here? I was eventually met by one of the MD’s, Connie and later another important-looking person, Scott, who grilled me on why I wanted to be in telly for a few minutes and told me what a damn good opportunity it was to be in this interview before getting me to come up with some more programme ideas. I was given 10 minutes to scribble these down on a piece of A4 before being told ‘thanks’ and ushered out.

I never heard from that company again - but since sitting in that boardroom, being made to feel like an insignificant little urchin all those years ago - I’ve heard nothing but bad things about the place and some shockingly ‘TV prentencious’ tales about the people that run it. I’d put my feelings at the time down to naivety on my part, and nerves on the day - but so many dozens of people have reinforced my initial feelings when walking in to that office that it now remains the only production company in the world that I wouldn’t EVER consider working - purely because of who they are and what they represent. It’s funny that in a world where people are sometimes very wary of criticising a production company, for fear of never getting work there or because they’re worried about the sway the bigwigs there may have in TV circles…. this company always gets slated, usually putting a smile on my face, because I know I’m not alone.

Safe to say, if you’ve worked at this company, think you know who I’m talking about and don’t agree with me.. you’re probably also exactly the kind of person that this article is written about. ‘TV pretentious’, egotistical, two-faced, wanker(ette)… or you’ve been lucky and had a pleasant experience there.

Thankfully, the production companies that I want to work for aren’t so generously sprinkled with arseholes, which is lucky for me. You generally find there’s maybe one or two at a good-sized indie, sometimes none at all. But how is it that these narcissistic cretins are still in operation? Who’s employing them? Why are they still here? How can we destroy them? Well, hopefully at some point, they will die. But other than that, it takes a lot of bottle to step to someone who’s prepared to discredit you or try and make sure that ‘you’ll never work in this town again’ if you cross them. It’s hard to imagine that anybody in TV has enough power (certainly in the indie world) to invoke a blanket ban on rendering your services - and making such bold statements are just as likely to make them look like an idiot. However we’re always very careful about what we say about who, allowing ourselves to be swept along with the two-faced nature of TV. Be warned though, if there’s negative stuff to be said about you, it’ll generally happen behind your back, after they’ve smiled in your face. There also still remains networks of people who don’t actually really like each other, but recommend each other for work because they have a mutual fear of being slated themselves; a self-perpetuating little gang of wankers that are all about reputation, will refer to their TV programmes as ‘films’ and meet at TV industry functions to tongue each others anuses. Ah yes, the two-faced nature of TV takes on many guises. 

The comforting thoughts to take away are these: The people that sit you down in an office and make you feel small, talk to you like shit when the coffee isn’t good, or the research isn’t right, or the offline is running behind, or the budget is over…. those people could one day be coming to you to have a programme commissioned or be asking for a exec position when their indie goes under. But stay humble please…don’t turn in to one of them. 

The Mole