Charlie Brooker’s Screen Burn (24 page)

Quivering fool that I am, I’m petrified of heights – or, more specifically, tumbling off them. Perfectly rational really: if there’s one thing the human body wasn’t designed to do, it’s plummeting.

Benevolently enough, my anxiety also extends to cover other people. I can’t bear to watch builders standing on rooftops or window cleaners sitting on window ledges (it’s only a smudged window for God’s sake – get back inside and stop risking your life in the name of transparency). Rock climbers are the worst. In the suicidal stakes, clambering up a mountainside is an activity on a par with licking plug sockets or goading Mike Tyson with a brightly coloured stick (now there’s an idea for a televised sporting event).

All things considered, I was expecting to sit through the BBC’s new mountain rescue drama
Rockface
(BBC1) with one hand over my eyes and the other unscrewing a bottle of tranquillisers. Imagine my dismay when in this week’s episode (the first I’ve seen), no one topples off anything resembling a perilous drop. There’s no yawning-chasm action whatsoever: just a couple of kids trapped on a small rock in the middle of a disappointingly placid river, who get rescued in the most laidback way imaginable. Boo to that.

Presumably,
Rockface
is supposed to be ‘Casualty on a Cliffside’, but the setting seems a little too self-limiting. At least in
Casualty
there’s a certain random variety to the injuries – one minute you’re watching someone trying to prise the lid off a jam jar with a butter knife, and the next their arm’s dangling from a single tendon. Where, precisely, is the diversity going to spring from in
Rockface
? Once you’ve covered plunging rock climbers and mislaid hikers, what else can happen? Someone choking to death on a mint cake? After six weeks, it’s all going to seem as predictable as a programme called ‘Frisbee Retrieval Unit’ (‘OK, team, we’ve got a Frisbee lodged up a tree in the park – let’s be careful out there.’)
Rockface
’s answer seems to be to take the
Holby City
route and ramp up the soap opera element until the mountain-rescue element becomes almost incidental, so we get to see more of the team’s personal lives than is entirely healthy. Trouble is, not only are their personal lives altogether pedestrian (with nary a paedophile nor psychopath amongst them to spice things up), but since half the cast consists of vague celebrity lookalikes it’s easy to get confused. There’s one who looks like Robbie Williams, another who resembles Brad Pitt with dark hair, and a girl who could double for Sophie Ellis Bextor in a dimly lit nightclub. And the ones who couldn’t open supermarkets for a living just look weird: there’s a rugged bloke with fascinatingly tiny eyes (about the size of a bat’s), and a balding guy who looks a bit like a cheerful potato.

Still, maybe I’m missing the point: perhaps the real appeal of
Rockface
is supposed to lie in the glorious scenery – although if that’s the case they should just broadcast a still shot of
The Haywain 
instead and have done with it.

This week on BBC1: hardcore pornography! Hardcore BESTIAL pornography! And it’s all pre-watershed, where the kiddies can see it! Quelle horreur!

But don’t panic. We’re not talking about a special edition of
East-
Enders
where Phil falls off the wagon and violates a dog in the middle of the Square (although I’m lobbying hard for that storyline, ideally during this year’s Christmas Special). No. The raw sex in question occurs throughout
Weird Nature
(BBC1), which this week pokes a lens at the bizarre world of animal copulation.

Fascinating stuff, of course, unless like me you’ve been recently singled, in which case it’ll only serve as a ghastly reminder that there are wart-encrusted toads out there in the world enjoying more fulfilling sex lives than you.

It’s a cunning programme,
Weird Nature
. The producers have latched on to what viewers enjoy most about nature shows – namely, the ‘what the fuck?’ factor – and decided to provide nothing but. Consequently, there’s no breathy Attenborough commentary, lingering shots of majestic fjords or diagrammatic explanations of the way cormorants’ beaks work – just one juicy piece of oddness after another, accompanied by as little background information as possible. It’s the natural-history equivalent of binge snacking.

Human sexuality may be a garbled mish-mash of perversions (and I once read about a man who could only achieve orgasm by swinging a live chicken around so its panicked wings brushed the tip of his penis, so I know what I’m talking about), but we’ve got nothing on the average beastie.
Weird Nature
brings us a tiny rodent that literally shags itself to death, a female fish that turns itself into a male and a downright disturbing sequence in which a male praying mantis continues thrusting despite being decapitated mid-coitus (a tiny brain in his rear end keeps him going – look for a similar sequence in the next series of
Club Reps
).

Filthiest of all is the humble sea flare, which has a male front end and a female back end, thereby enabling unlimited orgies in which aroused passers-by latch on to whichever end is closest. They’re
even shown forming a snug sexual daisy chain at the bottom of the sea, each simultaneously humping the other like a pornographic synchronised-swimming team. So be humbled, fetish club regulars: next time you’re congratulating yourself on your latest bacchanalian sexual encounter, bear in mind there are tiny slug-like monsters who can effortlessly outdo you – and
they
don’t have to spend a fortune on clockwork bum machines in order to reach nirvana.

Anyway, back to the insanely addictive 24 (BBC2). Those of you who’ve missed it thus far have a chance to catch up tonight, when BBC2 screens the first four episodes back to back, prior to the fifth instalment on Sunday (helpful BBC scheduling for a quality US import – what the hell’s going on? Progress?).

It’s now 4–5 a. m., and finally someone actually goes to sleep (a minor character, admittedly, but at least it’s a vague nod in the direction of realism). For some reason, the Noble Senator seems to think he’ll be able to function on the most important day of his political career without enjoying a moment’s shut-eye the night before. Didn’t he see
Touch the Truck
? Assassination will be the least of his worries once sleep deprivation kicks in and he starts swatting invisible demons in the middle of a pre-election press conference.

Meanwhile Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) continues his ongoing quest to get himself sacked. In week one, he shot a superior in the leg with a tranquilliser gun, and then blackmailed him. In last Sunday’s episode, he thumped an FBI agent in the guts and got a police officer killed. Having thus torn up the rulebook, this week he proceeds to piss on the tattered remains by trying to organise a jailbreak.

 All this in the space of a few hours. By 7 p.m. he’ll be constructing a death ray and threatening to demolish what’s left of Manhattan.

Assuming you bothered to read my jabberings last week, apologies for the déjà vu, but I’m still hopelessly fixated with
24
(BBC2), the
‘real-time’ assassination drama that’s single-handedly transformed Kiefer Sutherland from a Droopy-alike brat pack also-ran into a sturdy action hero, and is currently the best populist drama on television by a good six-metre stretch.

Somehow, the relentless tick of the clock distracts you from pondering the show’s more ludicrous elements – at least while you’re watching it. After each episode I can’t help shaking my head in disbelief at what I’ve just witnessed, as though awakening from a distinctly implausible dream that seemed convincing at the time. Therefore, in a bid to retain my grip on reality, I’m compiling a list of the most absurd elements, which I present here as a public service.

1) Jack Bauer’s Anti-Terrorist HQ

What’s with this place? Frosted glass, chrome railings, tasteful lighting, glamorous employees draped in Armani – it looks more like the offices of a Hoxton-based fashion magazine than a top-secret quasi-military nerve centre. I keep checking the background, half-expecting to see Sophie Dahl eating a punnet of sushi, or someone in a pair of low-slung jeans slipping an imported DJ Shadow CD onto the office stereo. It doesn’t help that no one present, aside from Action Jack himself of course, appears to be doing any work whatsoever: look closely and you’ll see they’re simply wandering calmly hither and thither, occasionally stopping to shuffle bits of paper around or gawp at a monitor (doubtless in order to languidly check their Hotmail or log on to ‘Friends Reunited’). They’re supposed to be thwarting an assassination attempt, fer Chrissakes! They should be running around chain-smoking and barking orders at subordinates, or at the very least rolling their sleeves up and sweating like hillbillies.

Actually, there is one exception to the no-sweat-in-the-workplace rule and that’s …

2) Shifty Beppe Guy

You know the one: the patently sinister computer expert who’s banging Jack’s ex-mistress, and has a miniscule hint of black goatee beneath his bottom lip, like a Hitler moustache that’s accidentally slipped down his face. His job seems to consist solely of demanding 
to know ‘what’s going on’ every thirteen seconds, being outwardly confrontational with his boss (i.e. Jack), and peering suspiciously at anyone within a five-metre radius. He’s like a dark twenty-first-century ‘re-imagining’ of the McDonald’s Hamburglar, and as such it’s hard to comprehend why the hell they employed him in the first place.

3) Bill and Ted’s bogus kidnapping

Bill and Ted, who appear to have undergone a startling transformation of attitude during their years away from the limelight, have kidnapped Jack’s daughter at the behest of the terrorists. Quite why a ruthless cabal of ultra-organised killers would entrust such a hazardous scheme to a pair of loafing, nu-metal stoners has yet to be explained. Perhaps it’s a work-experience thing.

4) Mandy the oversexed, overkilling plane bomber

And while we’re on the subject of the terrorists, what the hell’s up with Mandy? Her task in episode one: to steal a photographer’s press pass. Does she break into his apartment and rifle through the drawers? Does she pick his pocket on the subway? No: she seduces him on a passenger jet, screws his brains out in the toilet, steals the pass, and then covers her tracks by blowing up the plane in mid-air and parachuting into the middle of the Mojave Desert. Perhaps I’m oversensitive, but to me that smacks of overkill. Never one to do anything by halves, she opened episode two by stripping naked in the desert and spices up episode three with a French kiss for her Alanis Morrisette girlfriend. By episode nine she’ll be doing that trick with the ping-pong balls. Probably as part of the assassination.

5) Jack’s car

Jack’s car is a thing of wonder. Not only is it capable of travelling to any location in under five minutes (pretty handy in a real-time show), it’s also positively laden with handy gizmos. This week he makes use of a fingerprint scanner which seems to have been installed
specifically
to identify thumbs he’s recently severed from dead assailants. It’s like the Innovations catalogue on wheels: next week, expect him to spend ten minutes operating a dashboard-mounted air de-ioniser before opening the boot to reveal a combination rotating tie rack/GPS satellite system.

I could go on, but space won’t permit me. Send your own 24 implausibilites in and I’ll add them to the roster. But hurry: the clock’s ticking.

He’s a toff. She’s a pleb. Together they’re a crime-fighting force to be reckoned with. I speak, of course, of Lynley and Havers, currently solving
The Inspector Lynley Mysteries
(BBC1).

It’s all creaky bunkum of the highest order, but curiously entertaining nonetheless. I can’t put my finger on precisely where the appeal lies, but it’s got something to do with Inspector Lynley himself – the least congenial law enforcement officer since Harvey Keitel in
Bad Lieutenant
.

Not only is he an absolute crashing posho (fourteenth in line to the throne, raised on a diet of fox chunks in pauper’s tears, etc., etc.), he’s also devoid of humour and physically incapable of performing any facial expression more complex than his standard three: 1) annoyed, 2) annoyed and frowning, 3)
very
annoyed and
really
frowning.

I’m not joking: his face never changes. Lynley seems to have taken the traditional British principle of maintaining a ‘stiff upper lip’ and applied it to his entire head. You could spend an afternoon flicking rice in his eyes and he wouldn’t blink or flinch once. He doubtless maintains the same rigid appearance even at the point of orgasm, although it’s as hard to envisage Lynley reaching a climax as it is to picture, say, Peter Sissons in a similar situation.

(Speaking of which, when are they going to give Peter Sissons his own detective series? Can you
possibly imagine
how great that would be? They could simply call it ‘Sissons’, cast Jenny Powell as his glamorous sidekick, and boom: instant ratings magic.)

Anyway, back to the Lynley Show. Two episodes in, and a pattern has already developed. Despite the fact that he’s a
Metropolitan
police officer, and should really be spending his time picking incriminating fibres from heroin-soaked cadavers in the capital’s gutters, each week Lynley is summoned to an archetypal British
location (last week a public school, this week a whopping-great mansion) deep in the glorious countryside. He must be part of the Met’s new Picturesque Murder Division. Having arrived in the middle of
The Haywain
to frown at a collection of absurdly shifty suspects (each with more skeletons in the cupboard than Ed Gein), he encounters an old friend who becomes enraged by his insistence on following basic procedure by questioning them. Meanwhile, common old Havers puffs along behind him, repeatedly bemoaning Lynley’s personal involvement in the case or making barbed comments about the class system, while failing to uncover the faintest shred of evidence herself. Midway through the investigation, a second victim buys the farm, right under the collective nose of the local police force. This annoys Lynley immensely, causing him to spend the rest of the episode frowning with added vigour. In fact it messes his face up completely – by the time the killer (easily identifiable as the character with the least amount of screen time) is unmasked, Lynley’s eyebrows are knitted together in a tangled snarl, like a man halfway through a werewolf transformation.