Charlie Brooker’s Screen Burn (23 page)

The young Lex Luthor is a far more interesting prospect – a slap-headed 19-year-old whose inexplicable baldness hasn’t yet turned him bitter and evil. Instead, his wilfully unpleasant father is the Darth Vader of the piece, simultaneously spoiling and corrupting his offspring.

Staying on a retro tip, Scrubs (Sky One) is a medical comedy splicing elements of
M*A*S*H
with the stylings of
Ally McBeal
. There are plenty of good lines, but the whole thing’s in constant danger of being undermined by the
McBeal
influence – an overreliance on quickfire ‘fantasy’ sequences and self-consciously kooky cartoon sound effects.

And for a black comedy, it’s not quite black enough – more dark grey with occasional neon flashes. Patients die left, right and centre, but the show tends to chicken out and turn mawkish at the very last moment.

Cuh. Americans.

This week, Channel 4 brings you the tales of two notorious sexual predators whose names have become synonymous with iniquity and manipulation. One was an uncontrollably demented holy man who exerted a dangerous level of influence over the Russian royal family and inadvertently sowed the seeds of revolution. The other recorded ‘Una Paloma Blanca’.

The latter is profiled in Jon Ronson’s
The Double Life of Jonathan
King
(C4). Anyone expecting a kooky Theroux-style stalkathon is likely to be disappointed, since the programme largely consists of sobering talking-head interviews with King’s former friends and victims, intercut with grimly comic archive clips illustrating the maestro’s oeuvre.

It transpires King used his celebrity status to dazzle a succession of under-age boys, befriending them, showering them with gifts, exhibiting interest in their opinions, and then, just as they began to trust their exciting altruistic chum, spoiled it all by bringing his erect penis into the equation.

Convicted sex offenders don’t tend to arouse much sympathy in the general public – particularly when they’re arrogant, unrepentant, ugly and rich – but King himself comes across as such a miserable wretch, it’s hard not to sense a small mouse of pity gnawing at the edges of your mind. An insecure misfit, who developed his
odious, grating persona specifically to provoke a reaction from an otherwise uninterested world, King’s crimes seem motivated more by crushing inferiority – coupled with a deeply misplaced craving for acceptance – than simple tabloid malevolence.

More disturbing is the fact that he got away with it for so long simply because he was famous – despised by huge swathes of the population, but famous nonetheless – and this pathetic glamour hypnotized his victims into returning.

One interviewee, whose relationship with King spanned 18 months, explains how exciting it felt to ride around in a Rolls Royce, accompanying a star.

‘But he was only Jonathan King,’ remarks Ronson.

‘He was the most famous person I knew,’ comes the poignant reply.

While wonky mouthed, troll-faced King had to deploy a rainbowcoloured wig and a string of novelty records to impress his prey, mad monk Rasputin had more natural advantages, namely piercing eyes and the apparent ability to heal ailments.

Like many people, my knowledge of Rasputin has to date been based solely on Boney M lyrics – I knew he was ‘Russia’s greatest love machine’, and ‘a cat that really was gone’, but little else.

Until now.
Masters of Darkness: Rasputin
(C4) is one of the most entertaining historical documentaries I have ever seen, partly because it deals with the nefarious deeds of an absolute shit, and partly because it’s brilliantly put together – a genuinely thrilling combination of informative talking-head opinions, archive footage and creepy reconstruction, liberally swathed with horror-movie sheen.

Rather than leaping head first into his most unhinged period, the programme carefully charts Rasputin’s evolution from childhood freak (apparently his parents were ‘disturbed by his ability to heal horses by touching them’ – try finding
that
in ‘Parenting for Dummies’) to influential lunatic, lending weight and momentum to what could have easily been a gaudy ho-ho at a shagging monk.

As it is, Rasputin’s shenanigans were fuelled by warped religious logic. Believing that redemption was the ultimate spiritual experience,
it followed that the only way to garner redemption was to commit sin first – and the bigger the sin, the bigger the redemption that came after. Spiritual bulimia, in other words.

Which is why, in his prime, Rasputin would have sex with anything. Toss a ham sandwich across the room and he’d fuck it twice before it hit the floor. Russian society, gripped by a craze for spiritual weirdness and convinced of his healing abilities, gave him free reign to indulge, even though he stank like a sink full of mouldy fur.

Just like Jonathan King, Rasputin got away with it because of the aura of celebrity surrounding him. Yet both cases took place some time ago – today, we’re more fame-obsessed than ever, so I’ve got no idea what insane acts of depravity our modern A-list stars get up to.

Although if
you
have, and you fancy drawing me an accurate picture (in crayon), send it in, care of the ‘Guide’. Most repulsive example wins a pack of bourbon creams and a shoe. Promise.

After his dissatisfying (and overlong) encounter with the Hamiltons, Bridget Jones pin-up Louis Theroux does himself no favours whatsoever in
When Louis Met Anne Widdecombe
(BBC2) pestering her about her virginity (or lack of it) in a downright unpleasant manner within the first few minutes. And when she objects – having consented to the documentary on the understanding that her sex life (or lack of it) would not be discussed – her gruff complaints to the offscreen producer are left in the edit, thereby making her appear guarded and unreasonable.

Theroux is at his best when pitching his blatant insincerity against that of an equally insincere subject – fighting fire with fire – but, unfortunately for him, Widdecombe doesn’t appear insincere in the slightest. A distant, stunted control freak with a face like a haunted cave in Poland who espouses depressing political views, maybe – but so are half of the pricks in the House of Commons. And aside from her ghost-train looks, Widdecombe has little that is strange or weird about her. The end result is an uncomfortably
sneery hour-long amble in the company of someone who doesn’t warrant the effort of a sneer in the first place.

Speaking of which, no advance tapes of
Being Victoria Beckham
(ITV1) are available, presumably on the basis that the programme’s content is so universe-poppingly mind-blowing, its release must be cautiously timed and controlled, lest epochs start shattering around our quaking ankles. Therefore, in a fit of nihilistic despair, I opted for
Michael Landy: The Man Who Destroyed Everything
(BBC2) instead. Landy hit the headlines in 2001 when he spent a fortnight systematically dismantling and shredding his every possession in a deserted C&A store in the middle of Oxford Street. Everything was torn apart and mangled, from the big (his Saab car) to the small (a pen he stole from a friend’s house). A detailed roster of all the destroyed items is all that remains – a list of 7,226 deceased belongings.

This documentary follows him in the weeks immediately afterwards, as he stumbles around, trying to make sense of his actions and gingerly making his first post-shredding purchases. There’s also background information on Landy himself, and comments from dealers, critics, relatives and artists.

Ah, artists. They’re always good value for money, and there’s plenty of them here. Hilariously, some cantankerous old auto-destructive artist named Gustav, actually wearing a beret and pointedly sitting with his back to the camera (because he ‘shuns all publicity’), explains that ‘Landy demonstrated the artist should not be the centre of attention’. He’s saying this to a crew making a documentary on artist Michael Landy, the man who destroyed everything, and you don’t get much more centre-of-attention that that.

So why did Landy do it? Take your pick: it was either a brilliant attack on consumerism or a brilliant piece of self-promotion. Either way, a brilliant spectacle, and an unexpectedly touching piece of television.

Finally, an aside: a few weeks ago, writing about the Jon Ronson documentary on Jonathan King, I foolishly – and to be honest, somewhat lazily – invited readers to send in crayon sketches of A-list celebrities engaged in hypothetical wanton exploits. The
response was disappointing. In fact, only one person bothered entering: Jonathan King himself.

Using prison notepaper, Belmarsh inmate FF8782 drew a stick man sitting at a desk, captioned ‘Charlie Brooker at word-processor (A-list star in act of modern depravity)’.

He’s a one.

‘I didn’t “get away with it” because of the aura of celebrity surrounding me,’ he writes, ‘I got away with it because I didn’t do it – a terribly boring explanation, although true.’

He also takes issue with my describing him as ‘ugly’ (‘very handsome, as your picture showed’) and ‘insecure’ (‘I don’t feel the slightest bit insecure – in fact, at the moment, rather too secure,’ before going on to mildly berate me for not describing him as an ‘easy target’ or the victim of ‘delusions, exaggerations, compensation [or] false allegations’.

Quite an amusing letter, as it goes, and had you received it you’d probably find it hard not to warm to him – unless, of course, you were one of the under-age kids he once waved his dick at. Ah well. What a wonderful world.

Jesus pole-vaulting Christ, you absolutely MUST watch
All About
Me
(BBC1). There are no words in the English language to adequately describe it, so I’ll have to invent one: flabbertrocious. That’s a combination of ‘flabbergasting’ and ‘atrocious’, and it’s as close as I can get to conveying the programme’s perverse car-crash appeal without resorting to wild gesticulations, donkey noises or daubing a six-foot illustration of a weeping swan on your living-room wall.

This is that most unlikely of things: a joint Jasper Carrott/Meera Syal vehicle, in which they play a multi-racial couple with children from previous marriages, one of whom is severely disabled. A surefire recipe for chuckles if ever there was one.

I’m extremely fond of tortoise-headed Jasper Carrott, largely on the basis of warm teenage memories of his stand-up routines – but
a versatile actor he ain’t, and his performance here single-handedly redefines awkwardness. He spends the entire half-hour looking about as comfortable as a horse trying to balance in the middle of a see-saw. Your heart goes out to him, and indeed to everyone else in the cast – thoroughly decent sorts who’ve found themselves unexpectedly shipwrecked on the rocks of Bumwipe Island.

Bad sitcoms are ten-a-penny, but
All About Me
transcends them all. It’s not just the shoddy jokes (half-hearted gags that lie around like dying soldiers on a battleground; sample exchange: ‘Does your son like football?’ ‘No – he supports Man United!’), but the inclusion of frankly astonishing ‘poignant’ interludes that render the programme unique. The final five minutes of this week’s episode – a belief-beggaring laugh-free sequence in which Jasper Carrott revisits his childhood home, has a flashback, and leaves in tears – constitute the most awesomely misjudged piece of television I’ve seen in years. As I said at the start, words can’t do it justice, and with every cell in my body I urge you to tune in and witness the mangle for yourself.

Speaking of incommunicable spectacle, after weeks of being urged by friends, I finally got round to catching
Club Reps
(ITV1), and – well, what is there to say? It’s like staring at footage of a football hooligan spinning round on a plastic sheet, dribbling and soiling themselves while ‘Sex Bomb’ plays in the background. I felt like dressing up as Travis Bickle and wandering onscreen to dispense a little smoking-barrel justice.

Why, precisely, are they filming these ugly, self-aggrandising, slack-jawed, leering, drunken, pointless buffoons? Answer: so we can all have a good cathartic sneer. And naturally, the cynical gambit works – but lest we forget, you could create an equally effective Bickle-baiting hatefest by training the cameras on the kind of snide, boneheaded, bellowing, drug-pumped, upper-middle-class scum who populate the media and consider this kind of programme a worthwhile addition to the tapestry of contemporary culture. Morons filming morons for the benefit of morons: it’s one big imbecilic circle-jerk.

Do I sound bad-tempered? It’s not all hatred and despair. Thank
the Lord for 24 (BBC2) – utterly preposterous and impossible to leave alone. The big gimmick actually works. Each episode takes place in ‘real time’, tracing the events of a single hour in one chaotic day, slowly building, in the style of a weekly Marshall-Cavendish part work, into one 24-hour, 24-episode whole. The sense of rising momentum and increasingly clammy claustrophobia has me hopelessly gripped, even though on reflection it all seems about as realistic as Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. I’m already looking forward to the end of the series, at which point some enterprising cable channel can run the entire shebang in its full, improbable 24-hour glory.

And Kiefer Sutherland: bloody hell, he’s good. His famously buttock-shaped cheeks have diminished in size, so it’s now possible to concentrate on what an assured performer he is without worrying whether his mouth is about to break wind. Mind you, I’m slightly worried about his character, a counter-terrorist troubleshooter who spends approximately 70 per cent of his screen time blabbing on his mobile to anyone who’ll listen.

He’s so cellphone-dependent, he’ll have to have spent the whole of episode eight recharging the damn thing – assuming, of course, he hasn’t been finished off by a microwave-induced brain tumour by then.