ROBIN DUD

by Sarah and Mark

Hmmm, we were not too impressed by the first two episodes of Robin Hood. Let us count the ways…

1. Robin looks like a cross between that Hobbit in Lost and over-acting Chelski midfielder Joe Cole. Also he is a bit smug and lacking in charisma. And a razor.
   
   
2. His non comedy sidekick is very tiresome and has many non comedy schticks (ie going on about food and comfortableness, doing something wrong and then saying “I knew that was wrong actually”. This will not get tiresome over the course of the series – oh no of course not) At one point he has a bath and inexplicably starts crying – no doubt aware that he will never get the gay lovin’ off Robin Hood that he so clearly craves.
   
   
3. Alan A Dale has apparently invented hair styling wax – not bad for the 12th century. He could almost be a young Alun A Armstrong. Oh, he's his son.
   
   
4. There is a really stupid bit that is just thrown in as an excuse for a lame fight. Robin and Sidekick meet a cloth maker and his buxotic daughter – who is clearly as old as her so-called dad and who apparently has full access to the Boots No 7 make up counter. Daughter takes a shine to Robin and he is all “Oh no Goodwife Cleavagely, thine father will surely kick mine arse if we doth canoodle” but then he does it anyway and the father tries to kick his arse (ie they stand there waving swords at each other like majorettes until Robin does a backwards somersault off a roof – something that is apparently so awesome that we get to see it three times from different angles like a 1980s Jackie Chan film.
   
   
5. Maid Marian is not um conventionally attractive - despite the best efforts of Monsieur L'Oreal and his suffering rabbits - and is predictably feisty/moxiesome etc. She makes fun of Robin a bit as it is not at all a cliché to have two people who end up together starting off hating each other. PS Marian, Zhang Zi Yi called flrom the set of “Crouching Hero, Flying Daggers” asking for you to return her decorative stabby hairpin things.
   
   
6. In the end Robin decides to save a load of peasants from execution – a task that is made easier by the fact that the baddy soldiers all politely stand around for five minutes while Robin beats them up and does all his heroic things. Later on, they fail to shoot him and his pals with arrows, even though Robin etc are all on horseback and right next to them – they must go to the same “failing to hit a cows arse with a banjo” classes that Joe Cole’s Chelski team mate Frank Lampard has been attending lately. I keep expecting Monty Python dialogue to issue forth from a guard's lips at any moment. Or at least an argument about swallows.
   
   
7. Keith Allen's Sheriff of Nottingham is dastardly enough, I suppose, but no Basil Rathbone (or Alan Rickman). Guy of Gisbourne is a black leather clad hottie who appears to have invented the Drizabone.
   
   
8. They've kept all the "in the name of King Richard" nonsense. Honestly producers, King Richard did not give a monkey's fart about the plight of Nottingham's peasantry. He was much more interested in rogering his courtiers and raising taxes to go on another killing spree in Palestine.
   
   
9. Episode two introduced the rest of the Merry Men - bit of a miserable bunch, if truth be told. They rescue Robin (again) from the Sheriff's castle. This is pretty formulaic - every Robin Hood story ends up with Robin or some other Merry Person getting incarcerated and the others having to set them free. A departure may be if Little John or Alan A Armstrong said: "Oh sod it. I'm fed up with schlepping up to the castle every other night, getting my hose soaked in blood and ripping my doublet on some stupid guard's chain mail. And it's quiz night at the Tavern..."
   
   
10. Robert Webb has a straight-ish part in the Christian Slater role. I expect he'll have a 'dilemna' and betray Robin in some way or other, and then we'll find out that Robin is his secret half-brother. He nearly did get the chance to kill Robin this week by sneaking off and dressing up as a Sheriff guard and taking a swipe at the boy while he and the Sheriff were engaged in another Law and Order vs Freedom to dress like a hippy and live up a tree debate. Robin shoots him, but he's wearing a particularly hard breastplate or something and survives to trade insults ("Lavender boy"??) in the inevitable finale fight.
    

DR WHO

There was another two parter where the tardis lands on an alien planet, hovering on the edge of a black whole against like totally the entire laws of physics. Some humans had a base on it – staffed entirely by vaguely familiar actors like her out of Secrets and Lies and him out of Casualty etc. It turns out that the main boss from Doom or something I trapped in the centre of the planet and wants to escape – which it tries to do by possessing him form casualty and writing all over him with a felt tip pen. Also there are some squid faced alien slaves who are also handy for possessing type purposes. There is running around in a corridor! There is crawling down an air vent! There is implausible resolution where him from Casualty is sucked out of a hole in a space ship and everyone else is just fine etc and so on. This one starts out quite well and is properly spooky in parts but then goes a bit rubbish at the end. Also there is a bit where the boss from Doom tells Billie that she is going to DIE!!! Gasp – he must have read that bit in the Radio Times about her leaving at the end of the series.

After that there was an annoying jokey episode about a group of internet nerds who are obsessed with the Dr and meet up all the time – what can that possibly be all about? Main nerd is played by shifty looking Marc Warren out of Hustle and about three million other things. Peter Kay also pops up as an evil alien (with a northern accent – I wish they had rolled out the “lots of planets have a north” line again) who was designed by a nine year old and it kind of shows. Shifty Marc defeats the alien by snapping his magic stick – the Staff of Hasty Plot Resolution, as I like to call it. It turns out that Shifty Marc saw the doctor once when he was a kid and Dr Who was solving a Sapphire and Steel sounding 70s mystery. Hmm well lots of people seemed to like this one but I thought it was kind of irritating – also highly reminiscent of similar “jokey” episodes from X Files and Buffy. Next week looks like it might be good though – some kid traps people in crayon drawings or some such.

WELL I GIVE A MONKEY'S FART!

What a difference a week makes. BB has gone from unmissable to awful to unmissable again in about three days. It is like a roller coaster of emotions and Heat magazine hacks will be reduced to smoking puddles of hysteria by the time it is all over. Sensible Dawn, Raving Mentalist Shabhaz and Thick Lipped Posho George have all walked. The Teen muppets have paired off and become jealous at each other for said pairing off in record time. The group has split into “young breeders in love” versus “the rest” in record time too.

Grace (aka young margeret beckett) is now like the lead heather of bitchville. Imogen is just dull and whiny. Lisa is loud and annoying. Mikey is a dull blank cipher. Sezer has turned into a hateful little cockfarmer but will surely get the boot on Friday. I must have imagined it but did he say he is a Jeanette Winterson fan? Weird. Richard is kind of annoying. Lea is moany. Pete is a darling (I love it when he says “meow!” in his tourettes tic attacks) and Glyn is amusingly gauche. Nicki is pretty dreadful with her childish whining and hysterics (I CAN’T DRINK TAPWATER! I HAVE A MIGRAIINE! ETC!!) but is also pretty funny. Keep her in pls!

We also have two new housemates. Sam – who is kind of like a she-male version of Traci Bingham (super! awesome! etc) and Aishlene (sp???) - when I first heard about her I thought “Oh god, not another dull promotions girl stroke model” but she seems to be good value – hard as nails and with a keen Sezer bullshit detector.

Sezer, Richard and Lea are up for eviction and it seems as though Sezer is bound to go – I can’t wait to see his, Grace’s and Imogen’s faces when his name is called out. TV Gold! (why yes, I am counting my chickens etc…)

Dr Who Summary

I'm getting in there first with the Dr Who thing this week.

The Cyberpersons double-ep was pretty good - though I did wonder about this alternate universe where zeppelins roam the skies and the land is ruled by minor characters from sitcoms of the 70s and 80s. Rose showed signs of being a bit of a needy minx - especially when she discovers that Alternate Rose is a Yorkshire terrier. Lovely Mickey met Alternate Mickey. Alternate Mickey dies, and Lovely Mickey takes his place in the fight for freedom, alongside a really irritating children's TV presenter who turns out to be quite a good freedom fighter. Kudos to the casting folk for working in this nice little twist. The writing was a bit clunky in places, and David Tennant's wacky doctor schtick does wear thin over two episodes. He's still better than Christopher Eccleston's well-meaning social worker, but it's almost like he's trying too hard.

This week, Mark Gatiss writes and Maureen Lipman is a baddy! It's 1953 and everybody in Muswell Hill wants a telly to watch the Coronation. Only these tellies suck your face off and stick it inside a Bruce Naumann-style installation while Maureen yells "HUNGRY! HUNGREEEEE!" in her best BBC voice. Billie gets to wear pink patent heels and the Dr looks like a young Clint Eastwood in his quiff. I kind of lost interest when Maureen's minion manages to get past security at Alexandra Palace, but the Dr has to prove he's King of Belgium or something. But anyway, he reverses the polarity and everybody gets their faces back.

I did wonder about other things that might be different in the Cybermen alternate universe. Like, do they have Big Brother?

Mark was spot on about Shahbaz, who walked. We were both spot on about Dawn, who threatened to walk and was chucked out on some trumped-up charge that would have been laughed off if she hadn't a) worked out the premise of BB so early; and b)decided not to go along with it. Richard is a bit of a bully. And I was wrong wrong WRONG about Pete. He's lovely and he punctuates his sentences with "Wanker!"

The rest of them can be divided into The Beautiful People - leaping in and out of bed like Strict Baptist freshers on their first night away from home (believe me, I've heard stories...); and The Others. The Others interact politely with The Beautiful People, but all the camera action is whether or not Sezer will finally get into Imogen's pants; or will boring posho George get rid of self-obsessed Nikki or will Mikey...oh, you know something? I don't give a monkey's fart.

BIG BROTHER 7 – WHY GOD, WHY?
I missed the first half hour because the Little ‘Un wanted to watch Shrek 2, and Mr P insisted that BB never started on a Thursday, was I mad, or what etc…so straight into it with…

BONNIE
SARAH: Or “Bonn-uh”. She’s my Pre-selected Housemate, and I know absolutely nothing about her except that she’s small, Northern and slightly nondescript. The utterly crap 90s-tastic BB website (I mean, how far below the fold can you get?) says absolutely nothing about her or any of the housemates yet. Apparently she got booed, so maybe she said something bitchy in the auditions.

Sarah’s verdict: Bet she says “Whatev-uh” a lot. Two weeks at the most.

MARK: Something of a hard faced slappah with pencilled in eyebrows and comedy accent. She will never live down the whole thing of not being able to pronounce her own name properly ("Bon-hur?" "Bonno?" etc etc). seems a bit dull and quiet once she is in there.

PETER
SARAH: Saw him falling down the stairs. Apparently he has Tourette’s, but only in front of a camera. I will probably come to regret this crass and uncharitable comment in about a month’s time.

Sarah’s verdict: I dunno…possibly the Dark Horse. Possibly out by Sunday.

MARK: OMG it is hyperactive Lee Evans if you can imagine such a thing. Think it is a bit dodgy putting someone with a neurological condition in there but he'll probably get loads of sympathy votes and win the bastard.

GEORGE
SARAH: Posh boy who is probably The Hon Laird McTrooser Of That Ilk, or some such stupid title enjoyed by the Planted Post-Culloden Scottish Aristocracy. Is scared of transvestites and doesn’t like loud and lairy gay men. Has he ever watched this programme?

And if he’s so posh, why is he dressed like a regular of Yates Wine Lodge?

Sarah’s verdict: Possibly the producers thought they were getting a Bertie Wooster type, but initial impressions suggest Gussie Fink-Nottle. Five weeks.

MARK: Dull posho whose only claim to fame is that he once drunkenly groped Princess Beatrice, possibly. We can only hope that he will turn into a cockfarmer like Timmeh from a few years back but seems a bit quiet so far.

SHAHBAZ
SARAH: Please. Shut. Up. Well, he knits, which is a Good Thing. And he’d probably calm down after a damn good seeing-to. Which he won’t get.

MARK: Hysterical gaylord who runs around shreiking "OH MY GOD!!!" when any goddam thing happens and who keeps feeling people up and getting right up into their personal space. Reminds me totally of Graham Norton's character off
Father Ted. Will not last long, methinks.

LEA
SARAH: Apparently a “model and body artist”. That’s porn then. Face like leather; tits like footballs. Popbitch has been going mad on her porn star past, so I expect the tabs to follow soon.

MARK: 35? Shyeah right. One of those people who says "I'm happy the way I am and don't care what anyone thinks" when you just know she has so many issues re her appearance. Seems alright once she is in there though.

IMOGEN
SARAH: Nope…forgotten already. Oh, hang on, was she the ex-Miss Wales? Not exactly Catherine Zeta Jones, is she?

MARK: Quite pretty in a natural way but otherwise forgettable. One for the straight boys to look at.

MIKEY
SARAH: Pretty boy and apparently unreconstructed male chauvinist pig of a type that I thought belonged in a Museum of Shiteness (there’s probably one in Oslo) or farming cocks in the South African veld. I blame the parents.

Sarah’s verdict: I hope he dies in a vat of burning bras.

MARK: Vernon Kay looking modelly boy with big nose and generic indie boy hair. Inspires instant hate with his "Feminism is rubbish, where's my tea, mum?" type speech.

GLYN
SARAH: Apparently the sexiest lifeguard in North Wales. How many lifeguards are there in North Wales and were sheep automatically disqualified? He reminded me of Siadwel from Absolutely. Turned up in his Baywatch kit. Put it away, boy.

Sarah’s verdict: Cannon fodder

MARK: Apparently people used to throw rocks at him at school. Good. Has weird dead eyes and keeps getting his kit off, even though he looks like a plucked chicken. Goes into the house in a Baywatch type outfit - ha ha, I hope he doesn't get his suitcase for weeks.

DAWN
SARAH: Hates everything and everybody except exercise. Is a professional grumbler, apparently. I have friends a bit like her.

Sarah’s verdict: Has potential. She’s on my “like” list.

MARK: Ooo! An existentialist stroke nihilist! Class! Despite overdoing the grumpiness on her video, she seems nice and chatty in the house, but what the hell is an exercise scientist?? I also like her at first glance.

RICHARD
SARAH: Young Man! There’s no need to feel down…etc. Already being called “Brokeback Mountie” on certain BB threads. He seems like a lot of fun.

Sarah’s verdict: Possible winner.

MARK: Hurrah! A big strapping muscle queen! Seems affable and self confident, but isn't "sexual terrorist" just a pretentious term for "slag"? Also, what is up with the glove? Does he have a robot hand or something? I like him anyway.

GRACE
Perky, permatanned “Sloane Ranger” with her own flat (bought by parents) in Notting Hill. Wears cowboy boots. Almost interchangeable with Bonnuh or Imogen. I'm trying hard not to hate her.

Sarah’s verdict:. Too anonymous to survive

MARK:Generic blonde sloaney girl. I also try not to hate her re the flat but fail. Next!

LISA
SARAH: Loud. Chinese. Mancunian. Looks like a laugh if she turns the volume down.

Sarah’s verdict: Last ten, then she’s off.

MARK:Very loud and funny and seems likeable enough. Needs to stop saying "mint" though.

SEZER
SARAH:…a geezer, innee? Rough childhood, adolescent city trader approaching burnout and looking for a change of career.

Sarah’s verdict: Either a complete cock, or Mr Nice Guy. Haven’t decided yet.

MARK:Tiny turkish geezer with rubbish hair and fit body. Inspires hatred by saying "Sezer's Palace! Recognise!" before he goes in the house but will probably be good value in an horndog type way. Leaves other "straight alpha male" contenders like George and Mikey in the dust.

NIKKI
SARAH: The Chantelle-a-like. I find it impossible to hate her. Yet.

Sarah’s verdict: Possible winner, especially if she gets it on with Sezer.

MARK:Ugh, she is basically Shannon from Footballers Wives but without the incisive intellect. Inspires hatred by saying she wants to marry a footballer and calls buses "peasant wagons". Came 4th in Miss Hertfordshire once. Ha ha ha.

Anyway, you know that scene in Shrek 2 when the king walks into the dodgy bar to engage Puss's services? That's what the closing scene looked like. All you needed was Captain Hook playing Tom Waits karaoke on a broken piano to make it real.