What’s really going on with Barely Legal Drivers?

So I got round to watching the second series of Barely Legal Drivers, which, for those of you who don’t know is  BBC 3 show, following 12 (2 per episode) newly qualified or out-of-practice young drivers. It follows the formula of such shows as Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents, in that the participants are told they are being filmed for some other show, while the cameras are there mainly to allow their parents access to parts of their childrens’ lives that they would not ordinarily see. To add to that, they also bring in former traffic copper Judith and (for this second series) a top driving instructor, to make the actual assessment of the participants’ driving skills.

On the surface this would appear to be a show about entertaining people with the wacky antics of young drivers and focussing on the typical British family and how the idea of how the parent/child relationship shifts once a child has access to something as important as a car.

However something far more sinister actually lies beneath the surface of this programme. It is propagated on the same notion as that of Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents. The notion that it is perfectly acceptable for parents to lie to and spy on their children.

Now you could say that the whole issue of national broadcast date being set for a programme no matter what the participants think it is means they’re asking for this information to be made public. But that would miss the point I’m trying to make.

Consider how disrespectful it is to their children to lie to them about what’s going on, spy on them and then bring in a couple of external examiners to tut at them. This is linked to an overriding attitude that permeates the older generation in the UK.

It used to be that young people could be framed as disrespectful and unappreciative (“I didn’t fight a war, so you could speak to me like that”). However the generation that relied on that viewpoint has all but died off and been replaced by a generation that literally didn’t fight a war. This generation can’t legitimately frame their youngers as disrespectful so instead settles for going with dangerous.

Case in point, programmes like Barely Legal Drivers completely ignore older drivers who are awful behind the wheel, and are only interested in waggling a finger to young drivers and saying that their very act of getting behind the wheel of the car is a horribly dangerous thing that we should all be afraid of.

For example, one of this years’ participants was denied a car, given his propensity for driving at between 75 and 78 miles per hour on the motorway. Kids and adults alike, I’m going to tell you a secret; EVERYONE drives at 80MPH on the motorway. Unless they’re really bored the Police won’t even stop you for driving at 80 (usually because that’s how fast they’re going themselves). This was even pretty much said in the episode itself, with participants father pointing out that he usually drives about 80 on the motorway, only to be slapped back by his wife, who pointed out that their son was too young to be driving at that speed. Of course she was fine with her husband driving at that speed. Judith even dolled out some advanced driving lessons for this based on his being 8 miles over the speed limit. A speed limit that no one Judith’s age (or any age for that matter) respects.

The hypocrisy of this act is at it’s most evident in the next episode when Judith chastises another young driver for hogging the middle lane of the motorway and holding other cars up, by getting there and only driving at 70MPH. Well that’s all very well Judith, but in order to not be holding up the cars behind her up she’d have to be driving faster than 70MPH, which according to you is guaranteed to kill everyone using the motorway at the time. Incidentally I wonder whether the BBC will be offering advanced driving courses to everyone it recorded using the motorway on the occasion of my first example. While they only had a creepy telemetry box in the participant’s car, the fact that he didn’t collide with any of the cars in front of him suggests they were travelling at the same speed as him.

 

If these lessons really are being given out in the spirit of safety on the UK roads, then I’d say the BBC has an obligation ensure every single driver in their programme that’s been recorded doing something wrong should be educated about their mistakes.

Oh and to close out this point, if he was speeding so much, how did the camera car following him keep up? I mean it’s not like the camera car was speeding too? That would mean there were actually three different types of hypocrisy at work here.

So what’s really going on with Barely Legal Drivers? Am I just reading too much in to what the show’s agenda is?

Or is this a show (like Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents) that’s designed to promote and dislike and distrust of the young?

TV that’s really going to suck.

Series 2 of The Musketeers.

For anyone who doesn’t know this series is a BBC production of the Alexander Dumas classic. Overall, I’d call it serviceable; it has the difficult task of matching adult themes, such as cut-throat political manoeuvring (with frequent assassinations)  and adolescent comedy. This means that it wasn’t really possible for the series to ever tackle the level of violence you’d expect from a programme about the King of France’s elite regiment. The only thing that stopped it from falling into the realms of awful was Peter Capaldi’s performance as The Cardinal. He did as all good antagonists should and made you really dislike him, balancing out the cheesy and clichéd parts of the main protagonists have to get through.

But then Capaldi went and landed what must be the best role in British television, the Twelfth Doctor. One thing that both Matt Smith and David Tennant have stressed in interviews and panels is that the role of the Doctor is liable to take over the entire life of the actor playing him. Capaldi it seems is no exception to this rule and has announced that he will not be able to meet the shooting schedule of both Who and Musketeers. So the Cardinal won’t be in the second series of The Musketeers. Without and strong antagonist the show won’t be able to compensate for the cheese and campness that it’s so fond of. Replacing Capaldi will not help either given the amount of loose ends they left attached to his character.

So yeah…that’s gonna suck.

Gotham.

"Before Batman there was Gotham."

A series about Gotham pre-Bat. Err not a good idea guys.

The primary thing that makes Batman so popular is (as though it needs to be said) BATMAN. From a story point, the only thing that anyone’s interested in watching Batman do stuff. Batman shows without Batman don’t work. Has anyone heard of “Birds of Prey”? Didn’t think so.

However, ironically, it appears the producers’ knowledge of this is what looks to make this show so bad. Rather than making a crime thriller set in Gotham, they are focussing on Bruce Wayne as a kid, just after his parents were murdered. Apparently the trailer for this show would have us believe that young Bruce met and discussed how he’s conquering fear with younger James Gordon.

Yeah, so first off they’re proposing to implicitly make Gordon seem even dumber than all before them have, as not only is he being played by Ryan from The OC, he will apparently one day become a lieutenant who can’t figure out who the vigilante with a seemingly endless supply of wealth and a desire to tackle low level crime is. Well James why don’t you start with the kid who you’re apparently quite close to now, with the endless supply of wealth, who used to regularly tell you about how he’s overcoming fear and has a vested interest in attacking low level crime.

And as if they don’t want to appear unconfident enough in their leading man’s ability to carry the show, they appear to have a pre-pubesant Selena Kyle hanging around. I’d say a production team that’s claiming to make a show about Gotham and not Batman isn’t doing a very good job if 90% of it’s characters are key players in Batman. You’re telling me a city that’s supposedly completely under the control of criminals by the time Bruce Wayne is 20, doesn’t have any other villains to offer than the ones that are popular in the established future events. I’m predicting that this will be the next Smallville; a cash-grab that relies solely on putting lots of pretty people on a screen while asking you to completely turn off your brain.

Skins: where did it all go wrong?

Just a warning, if you're not familiar with Skins, this one's gonna be pretty hard to follow.

To my mind, the first two series of Skins represent  some of the best British screen writing of the 21^st century. We had the first series that acknowledged that some young people take drugs and have unprotected sex and neither overdose nor get pregnant or riddled with STIs. It was a welcome change, as every other television program, at the time presented these as inevitabilities of anyone under the age of 20 socialising. The second series had a more focussed story based around original protagonist Tony, as he struggles to regain some part of his life, following a bus accident that left him brain damaged. This was a very effective story to have running for the whole series and the moment when the original Tony starts to surface again is very well executed.

So what went wrong? Why do I now hate this series?

The simple answer is that they got too ambitious. They should have stopped after two series. The third series, with new protagonist Effy got off to an alright start, but quickly revealed that it was uninspired and lacking in any new ideas. The love story of Naomi and Emily was good, but the way that they seemingly relied on a running of sub-plot of “Cook is irresistible to everyone” through being a moron and getting in fights was really stupid. The overall feedback that can be given for this series is a message to the writers of “come on, you can do better than this.”

The fourth series is where everything truly goes to pot. Opening with Effy and Freddy reuniting and Effy revealing that she’s been on holiday. Err shouldn’t she be in prison or on community service?…for splitting another girl’s head open with a rock. Oh wait no; she’s a popular character so she’s protected from consequences of her actions in the previous series. This is a product of another thing going wrong here. The writers let the real world popularity of the character get involved with the story. They didn’t want to risk Effy not being present, even though her presence makes no sense, simply because they were worried people would change channels if she wasn’t there.

They did exactly the same thing with Cook, but in a far worse way. It’s a far worse way, because things go so well before they do it.

Basically, towards the end of series 4, the consequences of Cook’s actions finally catch up with him, when he’s arrested for putting someone in the hospital and charged with GBH. After pleading not guilty (even though he blatantly is) he is released on bail, he is left with his mother, a previously unseen character who serves as the antagonist for the episode. And boy is she a good antagonist. She’s a selfish, childish and petty post-modern artist who seems to find a way to blame anything bad in her life on someone else, usually Cook. Through this, we start to get an idea of why Cook acts the way he does. We realise that he is a victim of someone who seemingly teaches her kids that there’s always someone else to blame for anything you do. We see Cook plead not guilty to a crime he very obviously committed and then we are shown why. He has been raised to believe that blame for his negative actions can always be attributed to someone else. It’s how his mother acts and it’s how he’s started acting. The episode ends with Cook changing his plea to guilty and apologising for wasting the court’s time. This is not him admitting defeat, this is Cook taking note of the damage his mother has done by acting the way she does and resolving to act differently to her. As a first step, he admits what he did and accepts that he’s to blame for it and deserves a to be punished. This is damn good character development. We now know where Cook came from, why he acts the way he does and we leave the episode with the knowledge that although he has been sent to a young offenders institution, he has moved forward and leant to accept responsibility for his actions.

So anyway in the next episode, we learn that he’s escaped from prison. Yeah well done guys; Cook leant his lesson and got sent down; now make sure he’s available for the next episode, as he’s a popular character. This move reversed all the character development that Cook went through; if he was just going to break out, why the hell did he plead guilty?

The worst part about this is that it could have been turned into another piece of good character development so easily. Cook bursts in and says he escaped, but we could have learnt later that he, after just a few weeks in prison he had psychological break down and he’s been released on licence. We could have had a reveal scene where one of the other characters notices that Cook’s wearing a leg tag and then points out that he’s been disappearing before a specific time every day, indicative of a curfew. Rather than reversing his character development, this would have helped it showing a vulnerable side to him and exposing the façade he operates under. He talks tough and gets into fights; but when things get real and scary and he gets thrown in prison, he can’t handle it, but he’s too proud to admit that so he’d rather his friends thought he escaped.

But no, he escaped and that’s that because why try to present an actual character when you can just have a collection of bad jokes and catch phrases?

But the thing that really sank Skins, the thing that really made me hate it was the laziness of the explanations throughout series four. Effy does weird things, why? Because she’s crazy. Cook does stupid things, why? Because he’s crazy. Freddy gets murdered by Effy’s therapist, why? Because he’s crazy.

They use the same excuse to justify everything that doesn’t make sense by saying that everyone is clinically insane or can go clinically insane when the plot requires it. That is utter rubbish and speaks to a lack of ideas. Should have quit while you were ahead guys.

Book Review: The Fault in Our Stars

So a confession to begin with; I haven’t read that many books recently. The reason that this is a confession and not so much a simple fact is that people like to think that reading a good old book makes you more intellectual. Following internet blogs and vlogs for your information and entertainment won’t cut it with the higher class of those who don’t need advanced technology to help them feel entertained.

But of course, in years gone by, I have read books through the night, Artemis Fowl and The Eternity Code and Harry Potter and Half Blood Prince caused me to sacrifice several hours of sleep. I remember feeling genuine edge-of-the-seat tension, when protagonist Artemis encountered a man who was capable of out-maneuvering him and genuine confusion when Snape Killed Dumbledore (this is not a spoiler; everyone in the world knows this).

But books of late seem to have lost their appeal. I began reading Game of Thrones, but then put the book somewhere I can’t remember and haven’t felt any desire to go looking for it. This wasn’t because I didn’t like the story or writing style, but mainly because I just couldn’t engage with any of the characters. Every time I read from the perspective of Ned Stark, I was aware that was reading about a fictitious man, I was consistently aware that he wasn’t real and couldn’t suspend my disbelief to the extent I could actually care about him.

I worried for a little while, that maybe my hobby of analytically dismantling various forms of entertainment had ruined my ability to enjoy a story that doesn’t have plethora of special effects and designated broadcasting slot.

 

Luckily for me, John Green has served to restore my interest in this reading for entertainment thing, with “The Fault in Our Stars”.

I understand that I’m relatively late to the party on this one, given how long this book has been out, but better late than never.

The main thing first off, that drew me to the book was the trailer for it’s film adaptation. I can’t say I have any particular connection to the plot, but it was the concept that drew me in.

To summarise, the protagonist of the story is Hazel, a terminally ill cancer sufferer. The story itself is a love story between her and the character Augustus Waters, a cancer survivor whom she meets at a support group.

Now that makes for an interesting starting point in itself; she’s terminally ill; she’s going to die and there’s no possible way of averting that. Most writers would try to be sensitive and follow the pre-established convention that all cancer suffers are bold heroes struggling and constantly fighting. Not only does Green go against this convention, he makes the opposing view part of his protagonist’s personality. In terms of things that writers in any form of entertainment, that’s a pretty ballsy thing to do. I mean, in series 5 of Doctor Who they had an episode with a C plot of how it’s alright and brave to be dyslexic; that’s how sensitive you have to be when writing for entertainment. I feel uncomfortable even now about the way I phrased that point, in case someone misreads it and assumes I’m attacking anyone with dyslexia. Anyone who writes anything for a living or for a hobby is automatically trained that you’re supposed to please everyone as much as possible, so treating terminal cancer as something that the central character has is a very interesting move.

It pays off very well, with Green penning a believable teenage girl, with her cancer coming up more as an everyday inconvenience to her than the defining part of her character.

Of course it’s not all great, some supporting characters lack personality and some are a bit plain and/or wet. Hazel’s father for example has a habit of crying a lot, which (while being noted by Hazel herself as annoying) gets a bit old in terms of how his character is put together.

I was originally going to point of that Augustus Waters (the love interest) is a bit pretentious, condescending and generally Edward Cullen-esque, but then characters in the book started calling him out on it and I realised that that part of his personality was Green’s way of making the point that someone who’s almost dies or been sick isn’t really any more qualified to discuss mortality and such than anyone else.

This book has been made into a film that is scheduled to be released this year. Before it comes out I thoroughly recommend reading this well told love story with an endlessly interesting and brave premise.