THE LINE OF BOOTY

I actually saw a preview tape of this “quality drama based on the Booker Award winning novel about gay life in the 80s” (tm every newspaper and BBC press release everywhere ever) (and which clashes with the Champions League final – doh), but don’t worry – I won’t spoil the plot for you, mainly because NOTHING ACTUALLY HAPPENS!!

This young bloke with rubbish hair and very blue eyes moves in with some posh tories (one of whom is the Borg Queen! Gasp! Assimilate! Etc!), shags a bloke and then basically stands around in corners smirking, while people say things to make you remember that it’s set in the ‘80s like “Gosh, what about that Falklands War then?” or “Have you heard about Ronald Reagan and his so-called Star Wars initiative? What’s that all about?” Most importantly of all, Play School presenter Floella Benjamin has a cameo role!! There’s no sign of Hamble or Big Ted though.

I did learn various fascinating facts about the 80s however, as follows:
- it took about 30 seconds to have gay sex in those days
- posh, rich tories were a bit racist. Who would have thought it!
- like, class issues.

I am thinking that perhaps the novel is too subtle and nuanced to turn into a three part telly drama (not that I’ve read it or anything) as what made it to the screen basically seems kind of pointless (a bit like a goddam Stephen Poliakoff play). It’s quite well done though and there is plenty of teh gay sex so I suppose I’ll be watching the rest of it.

SARAH WRITES: I've read the novel, and it is a nice, subtly nuanced portrait of the 80s. And Lead Bloke's hair is all wrong.

Dr Who Summary

Dr Who vs werewolves – this one was alright with a pretty good, scary werewolf (who turned out to be an alien who wanted to infect Queen Victoria with werewolf germs so the royal family would turn into alien werewolves themselves or something). The characters spent most of the time running round corridors screaming while the wolf went “Grrr”. In the end it turned out that Prince Albert had handily built a moon powered werewolf slaying laser in the back room. What are the chances etc. Pauline Collins was v good as Queen Victoria and there was a cool bit at the end when she said “get out of my sight, you freaks!” to the Dr and Billy. Fun but nonsensical.

Dr Who vs Giles-from-Buffy – I had high hopes for this one but it was all a bit annoying. Mickey summons the Dr and Billy to a suburban school where Giles-from-Buffy is headmaster and is up to evil shenanigans that are too boring and convoluted to explain. Basically he turns into a bat a lot and is making all the kids into call centre IT zombies or something. Sarah Jane – my fave assistant from kiddy days - is also onth ecase and appears with crappy robot dog K-9. There is lots of emo whining about how the Dr abandoned her, about how the Dr is sad when humans rot and die, about how Billy is jealous of all the Dr’s other birds. Etc etc etc. Just shut up the lot of you and smite some aliens please thanks. Disappointing.

Dr Who vs Clockwork Robots – Oh my god, this one was the most nonsensical so far. A spaceship in the future sends killer robots back through time to kill famous French lady Madame De Pompadour and steal her BRANE, solely because the ship is called the same thing and is so determined to repair itself that it would rather expend vast amounts of time and energy creating multiple time portals rather than just hauling ass to the nearest Kwik Fit. Oh whatever. The robots are quite creepy in the way that all killer dolls/shop dummies are creepy but the story is just nonsensical. - More emo whining as the time windows cover all of Madame De P’s lifespan and the Dr is sad to see her die. I am sensing a theme and I hope it doesn’t end up with Billy in rubbish old lady make up.

Coming soon – Cybermen! Gasp!

RUNWAY VS CATWALK

I have been watching both the US and UK versions of Project Runway/Catwalk – which is basically like the Apprentice but for highly strung fashion designers. Each week the designers have to do a task – mainly involving making a garment to certain specifications with limited time/budget and the one that is judged to be worse gets the boot. The major difference to Apprentice is that most of the tasks are individual, so there is much less scope for back biting/fear and loathing/amusing arguments etc.

The UK version was presented by Liz Hurley who was absolutely rubbish – the most stilted and awkward presenter I have seen for a long time. She would basically show up in a variety of glamorous outfits and read the description of the task off the autocue. Then she would disappear for the rest of the program, get changed, come back at the end and say that “fashion has no mercy!” and that someone was fired. Watching this show made me realise that Liz Hurley is basically Joan Collins for the New Millennium, only she hasn’t actually been in anything memorably bad like “The Stud” or whatever or anything epoch defining and kitsch like “Dynasty”. Poor Liz Hurley.

The US version is presented by ice madchen super model Heidi Klum, who is actually less stilted and wooden than Liz (who calls herself an actress). Heidi is ace because makes lots of evil faces and sounds like she actively despises the contestants half the time. The only thing that lets her down is that she does not have a quality catch phrase like Liz. Sort it out, Heidi!

The US contestants are also much more entertaining than the UK ones, who were mostly pretty wet and never slagged each other off even when the judges demanded they did. The US version has a couple of hilariously OTT queens, one of whom looks like a fat trucker wearing Bjork’s cast offs and the other who kind of looks like a male version of Grace Kelly and has gigantic hair. There is also this annoying bitchy/whiny woman with stripy hair whom I hate with the intensity of a thousand suns and an annoying bloke who keeps comparing women to sports cars, but I’ll let him off as he is the only vaguely good looking one. Whenever they do work in teams, the contestants don’t waste any time before they start slagging each other off and even when they don’t work together they accuse each other of stealing their scissors or knitting patterns or whatever and still manage to make each other cry. Next time they do it in the UK they def need to get some contestants who have actually watched reality TV and know how to carry on!

Most of the fun in the UK version came from the judges and mentors etc, especially evil orange dwarf Julian Macdonald who actually had the cheek to slag someone off for coming from Liverpool. Dude! You’re Welsh! Shut up! The UK final came down to the scouser girl and a slightly irritating gay boy with nice eyes who needed a haircut. The scouser girl won in the end – up yours Julian MacDonald!! The US version is still in full swing! Go He-Grace Kelly! In the meantime i'm off to make myself a glamorous garment made entirely of office supplies!

DOCTOR WHO
It’s back! With David Tennant instead of Mr Annoying Christopher Ecclestone – a vast improvement to be sure. This episode was fairly rubbish though. Doctor and Rose go into the future to a huge hospital that is run by lady cat nuns (???) who are experimenting on humans (animals testing drugs on humans –do you see what they did there) and must be stopped. Meanwhile, Cassandra (oblong flat skin lady from rubbish end of the world episode last series) is back and swaps minds with Rose – this gives Billy the opportunity to rub her tits and camp it up a lot. Somehow the experimental subjects escape and stomp around like pus ridden zombies, giving everyone instant death germs (which aren’t transmitted through the air, luckily for the plot) until the Doctor magically cures them all by luring one of them into a magic shower or something. Lame or what. Then there is some nonsense with Cassandra going back in time to “get closure” and some other portentous prophecy nonsense with that big head in a tank, also from rubbish end of world episode last series. The plot is all over the place and the sound levels are really annoying, with overbearing music and muffled dialogue. It all looks pretty good though.

Next week: Queen Victoria versus Werewolves! Fight!!! Also there is a bunch of kung fu monks doing Matrix style quarterstaff fighting for some reason. Hmmmm.

APPRENTICE: TWO FOR ONE OFFER (BUT ONLY IF YOU BUY FROM THE BLUE TEAM!!)
My lurve for this show has diminished slightly after a couple of average episodes. Also I am finally realising that it is not quite as good as the last series, though there’s still time I suppose….

Last week they had to sell second hand cars in “Britains Largest Car Supermarket in Slough” – which sounds like a whole new circle of hell to me but there you go. Shahh-run led one team, despite seeming to not exactly know what a car is, and Ansell led the other (btw I have decided that if Ansell ever took his scary glasses off then laser beams would shoot from his eyes like in X-Men. It is the only logical explanation). That hateful c*** Tulip bleated that “people often say I should be a used car salesman!” Yes but they were insulting you, you cretin!!

Team Shah-runn don’t seem to do very well as Shah-runn and Michelle don’t know what they are doing, Tuan is meek and quiet as always and Syed spends three hours boring a couple to death before they buy a car – probably just so they can get in it straight away and drive off, far away from Syed. He is then told off for lying during his sales pitch. Hate levels reaching critical! Alert! Alert!

Ansell’s team did rather better as Ruth turned out to be an excellent saleswoman. Samuel came up with some gay idea to wear coloured sashes or something, Ansell seemed a bit rubbish as PM though and Jo actually scared people away by running up to them and laughing like a mentalist. The latter two are both told off by an angry car supermarket man for leaving a car marked as sold when the sale fell through at the last minute and it was actually still available. This is apparently a big no no in the world of selling things! Who would have guessed (clue: everyone!)

Editing shenanigans lead us to think that Ansell had won. All of Shah-runs team members started practicing stabbing her in the back but then they win anyway by about £50 for selling more warranties and pots of Scotchgard. Nooooo!!! (Syed was still told off for having the business ethics of a rat though. Ha!) They won a dull prize (trapped on a party on one of those pleasure cruises on the Thames and had an inexplicable row about talking about each other behind each others backs or something. I don’t know. They all end up hating Michelle anyway.

Ansell took Samuel and Jo into the boardroom. Siralan said that the angry car supermarket man thought that Ansell was the rubbishest of them all (even worse than JO??) but that didn’t really come across on telly so who knows? He had a go at Samuel for being vaguely useless as usual but it was Jo that finally went!! Siralan said that he likes her but he could longer ignore the plain fact that she is crazy and rubbish. Jo begged to be kept on (oh shut up, please Jo! Where is your dignity?) but no such luck and she stomped off to the taxi and cries a bit while saying that she just tried to be herself. No comment. I can’t believe she even lasted that long, personally.

This week they each had to run a concession in Top Shop Oxford Circus and try and sell the most stylish-yet-affordable clothes. Michelle came over to Badger’s team as PM and Tuan led Team Cockfarmer. They had four lines to choose from and could only have two each. They also had chance to chat to some schoolgirls to see what was hot (Military jackets, apparently!)

They went off into teams and talked about what lines they wanted. All the cockfarmers ignore Shah-runn, even though she is supposed to be an expert in fashion (hmmm, she was also supposed to be an expert in advertising…) and then shout at her when she tells them to stop ignoring her. Ruth Badger slaps down Samuel when he tries to voice an opinion but otherwise the team gets on well. When they have to negotiate for their two lines, Badger walks all over Tuan and leaves him done up like a kipper. It was hilarious to watch.

They set up their little corners of the shop. Shah-runn has an amusing passive-aggressive strop and pretends not to have any ideas and to need constant supervision, but then snaps out of it and gets everything sorted out. Samuel comes up with more weak-as-a-kitten marketing ideas (trying to lure people into top shop with bottles of water, giving complimentary massages but not advertising them, etc) and Michelle goes into Sex and the City fantasyland and decides that she is going to spend the whole day in the dripping VIP Dungeon being a personal shopper. Oh that is just a terrible idea.

When the shop opens, they all have to wear clothes from Top Shop. Ansell wears a hilarious pink t-shirt/pink intifada neck scarf combo and Ruth puts on some lippy and does her hair up a bit and actually looks pretty in some shots. Samuel still looks like an engineering student though. They all run around selling stuff while Michelle spends like three hours in the VIP Lounge trying to get some French girls to buy loads of clothes. In the end they buy one skirt for £30. Doh. That dude who owns Topshop (a close personal friend of Siralan of course) comes round and offers to buy an outfit for £100 but Ruth can only grab £66 worth of clothes. Double doh. At lunchtime Michelle’s team are 25% behind Team Cockfarmer, so Ansell gets Michelle to get her arse in gear and stop messing round in the VIP Dungeon. There is a mass selling overdrive, with Tulip accosting women in the street in his typically hateful manner and Syed letching over some girl in the dressing room and making comical faces because it is the first time he has seen a real live woman’s naked skin. There are no editing shenanigans to make us guess who has won but it turns out to be Team Cockfarmer by about £100. Noooo! I hate that they keep on winning. They get packed off to a luxury hotel for the night and someone in Michelle’s team is going to be fired.

It is obviously going to be Michelle or Samuel. Michelle also brings Ruth in as she messed up with the boss bloke but otherwise didn’t do anything wrong. Michelle is bollocked for not spending enough time on the shop floor and Samuel is bollocked for not bothering to advertise the free massage thing. Samuel tries to defend himself by saying he wanted to pick other clothes lines and was ignored (Ruth goes into her ultra aggressive “Why are you being so aggressive? Yeah? Yeah? Yeah? Whatever bitch!” routine – this behaviour is the only reason I can see for people not liking her, to be honest. Badger to Win!!) Siralan says “as long as I’ve got a hole in my arse” at one point. Thanks Siralan. I did not ever want to have to think about the hole in your arse. It seems obvious to me that they would have won if Michelle had not wasted all her time in the Dungeon and Siralan agrees, but Samuel is still fired for being a bit useless. He puts on a hilariously awful flasher mac to get into the taxi (and is it just me or does his hair grow between being fired and getting in the cab?). Oh well, Samuel wasn’t hateful like some of the contestants I could mention (Syed! Tulip!) but I did say he was the new Raj and I was pretty much right.

Next week: Siralan shows up in the small hours of the morning like some kind of evil slumlord and shouts at the contestants while they are still in their pants! They have to “sell to trade”! Ruth thinks someone is a “wanker”! A tradesman thinks that one of the contestants is like a used car salesman (Syed? Tulip?)! Someone is fired! (Syed??? Tulip??? Pleeeaase!!!)