Kangaroo Court of Love: "Peep Show" 8.6

TX: Channel 4, 24/12/2012

'Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals; love, an abject intercourse between tyrants and slaves.'
- Oliver Goldsmith, The Good-Natured Man (1768)

To follow that 'Celtic Tiger' of a comedy (Mrs Brown's Boys), we thought we would watch a slightly different sort of sitcom, also broadcast around this Christmas period. If MBB takes a condescending view of its audience's intelligence, then Peep Show probes the absurd human frailties of its protagonists for the amusement of a no doubt smaller audience. There are aspects of Usborne and Corrigan in most of us 'young men'; MBB's figurines are barely human.

David: Anyway, this should be a pleasing antidote to that. 

Tom: Episode 6. Not a bad series so far... 

David: Better than Series 7, anyway. No reason why this can't go on until one of them croaks it. 

Tom: Super Hans is a great character; I would've liked to see a bit more of him in this series really. 

David: "Coaster? Fuck's sake, Jez, I'm not an animal!"

Tom: "There are quite a few snakes in your room". 

David: Has Dobby got a black eye? 

David: "Five-a-side? That's where all the men go to laugh at us". 

Tom: Mark's masculinity issues coming out there... 

David: Further disappointment for Mark. 

David: This ongoing saga relies upon M + J's constant unhappiness. 

David: "Very much the on methadone, living in a halfway house type of woman". 

David: Very reflective of the 'indefinite teenage years' thing that's being imposed on those of us who are unable to achieve the tools needed to 'grow up'. 

Tom: "'Jason's van'. That sounds like the sort of bullshit I'd come up with".   

David: Jeremy is now a 40 year old teenager. 

Tom: "I'll watch her squirm"... an altruistic view of relationships there from Corrigan! Or, a realistic depiction of love with its jealousies and insecurities...? 

Tom: Mark playing 5-a-side footer... bound to elicit a few chuckles. 

David: "Did you see the game the other night? The big... fixture?" 

David: "Take him out" / "WHAT?!!" 

David: Dobby is quite intimidating here!   

Tom: This show's characters ring true as imperfect people who aren't merely looking to gain laughs from saying "fuck"...  

David: Meanwhile, Mrs Brown's Boys says nothing about society other than that there are masses of people who find a swearing old woman and jokes from 1972 hysterical...  

Tom: "Sure, the massive apple..." 

Tom: This series seems to have a sustained story-line which runs all the way through the six episodes. I don't think many of its previous series' had that. There seem to be fewer 'different' episodes, like the musical festival one or the jury service. Or the Christmas special with Mark's family last year - I really liked that one. And the jury service one with the mentalist woman defendant from Sunderland. Unsure whether it's a good thing or a bad thing that there are fewer excursions or digressions... 

David: [amid the advert break] Why's Kevin Bacon pretending to give a toss about British popular culture?

Tom: Aye, Bacon is a beaming irritant.

David: Series 9 of Peep Show is already commissioned; there seem to be infinite things that they can do with the two hapless ones. 

David: It must be quite cathartic for the writers to put them through whole new trends of misery; there are always twelve more months of cultural references to slip in effortlessly, too.  

Tom: Yes, it is a reliable formula.   

Tom: "Depressing lingerie outlet in Reading"...   

Tom: Ah, the old El Dude brothers routine, ever invoked in times of crisis. I like how have they slipped in subtle references in this eighth series, such as to Super Hans' curious fixation with The Barchester Chronicles - when Jez's stuff is being cleared out.


 
David: They seem to have an endless supply of embarrassing situations. 

Tom: The thoughts-aloud voice-overs have always been crucial to its success. Just wouldn't work as well without them.    

David: "I'm sorry... what the FUCKING HELL are you talking about?" The key to it is hearing their real thoughts in conjunction with the often manipulative words they say.

Tom: Jez stuck on the train!   

Tom: Speaking his mind finally - rarely a good idea!   
  
Tom: "How can I do that when there's no such thing as elbow grease!" Great line there from Jez. 

David: 10/10 dialogue - the situations often seem less important than the dialogue. 

Tom: "An honourable man" again! Reference back to his flat housing committee election campaign. 

David: "THAT'S your punishment of last recourse: FREE TRAVEL?!" So inappropriately pompous. 

David: It's been fun watching Mark being relegated to a series of humbling jobs.

Tom: Yes, and in episode 6.1 (TX: 18/09/2009) you had a rare instance of British television responding to the economic crisis, when JLB go bust. 

Tom: It's also been good to have the vocation of life-coaching relentlessly mocked in this series.  

Tom: "This kangaroo court of love". 

David: Editing process must be horrendous.   

Tom: Mark inevitably ends up the one who is squirming...   

David: Jeremy is a lovable moral vacuum. 

David: "Now, time to stigmatize the mentally ill".   

David: Hilariously immature. No more mature than in 2003! 

David: Electric fence!   

Tom: "Will you two stop electrocuting each other?"

David: "Will you two stop electrocuting each other?!"
 

'Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals'

David: "If you don't throw that rock at me, I'm going to hit you with this stick".

David: How did she have time to text that?!  

Tom: Indeed...
  
David: "You FUCKED it, not me!" 

David: "Why does it say here that I'm 80% gay?!" 

David: "DOBBY!!!" 

David: Excellence.  

Tom: Yes, a pretty good series closer.   

David: Perfect antidote to Mrs Brown's Arse.   

Tom: Exactly.   

David: Other current comedy series' close to that standard? I'll say Him and Her, Getting On and, to a lesser extent, Friday Night Dinner. But not a lot else!   

Tom: Maybe could have had more Johnson involvement (following his great cameo in 8.1), but it was a well crafted series revolving around the inevitable love triangle. Dobby has been a necessary character for the programme... to throw the 'brothers' into relief.  

David: I'm certainly looking forward to the sadistic events that series 9 will hopefully have to offer. Once again, it seems that we've reached the end too quickly - I suppose there were episodes on consecutive nights, though. This series didn't run alongside when it was being shown however, unlike last series which seemed to be set around the same time of year.   

Tom: Interesting to think how they'll take it from here...   

David: Looks like Dobby may not return.

'The beloved object is successively the malady and the remedy that suspends and aggravates it.'  
- Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past (Cities of the Plain) (1921-2)     

Tom: Good to have them in open warfare there at the end over her... 

David: I'm sure there will be one or two different women ready to play with their infantile heartstrings. 

David: First time they've competed for the same woman though... 

Tom: Or Sarah, Mark's sister with the fringe and Fifty Shades-inspired bedroom practices...   

David: I would have liked to have seen more of Mark's older woman from his course; she was nice, but then Peep Show wouldn't allow for it to have gone well.

Old Woman Swears: "Mrs Brown's Boys"

'Mammy Christmas' (part 1 of 2)

TX: 29/12/2012, BBC 1


'The number of those who undergo the fatigue of judging for themselves is very small indeed'  
- Sheridan, The Critic (1781)

After too long, us Messrs Lichfield and May return to some TV blogging, whilst simultaneously watching the goggle box. One is not entitled to an opinion on a book, a film or TV series if you've not read or seen it; thus, we trust you will appreciate an undertaking of truly fatiguing proportions.

Tom: Here we go...

Tom: A back-to-back two-parter? Why?

David: I even hate the title sequence.


 
Tom: That's an inept title sequence, aye.

Tom: [recalling the announcer's words about not having to listen to Slade any longer] Better hearing from Slade than this.
 
David: This is some cringe-worthy shit.
 
Tom: There’s laughter…
 
David: Tackiest sitcom ever. 

Tom: 'Mammy Christmas'. Up a tree, tee-hee.



David: Old woman swears. Ho ho ho.

Tom: “Wek up yerbastud!”

Tom: Seemingly, speaking in an Irish accent is in itself a guarantee of 'humour'.

Tom: “Bono, my grandson”. Ha, very amusing.

David: I can guarantee I won't be laughing once.

Tom: On the “feck”-count we so far haven't any score. I reckon that'll change.

David: Three “bastard”s though.

David: No camp stereotypes here…



David: He's a hairdresser.

David: [following inordinate studio audience snickering] These jokes don't merit that level of uncontrollable laughter.



Tom: Winnie... She embodies that certain sort of irritating, 1970s/80s sitcom busybody with infuriatingly perky body language shit.

David: Even the transitions between scenes are cheap.



Tom: Hilarity ensues here.

David: Production values of a scotch egg.

Tom: Some idiot dressed as a chicken.

Tom: Ah, there had to be a priest here…

Tom: And now there’s a second one. Oddly, they seem to like rubbing in the fact that this isn't Father Ted.

David: Oh, looks like it’s Shelley-off-Corrie's mum.

Tom: The studio audience seem to react to the line “Who the fuck are you?” with utter, unabashed hilarity.

David: I'm sure we've had no “fecks” but two “fuck”s.

David: Pointlessly crude.

David: Can't we write some toss like this and set ourselves up financially for life? I thought we were past one-dimensional stereotypes in comedy?

David: Five “fucks”?

Tom: Six.

Tom: This is as irritating as anything...

David: The Scouting for Girls of sitcoms.


 
Tom: Now this is comedy... for people who are either without a brain. I say that in sorrow rather than anger - the level of this is depressing.
 
David: Or the Mumford and Sons of Irish comedy.
 
Tom: [following some inexplicably inane moment] Did we need that?

David: At least Last of the Summer Wine was charmingly unfunny.

Tom: [Sighs] 'Funny' religion stuff and Richard Branson 'gag'.

David: It's offensive in a completely different manner than it seems was intended.

Tom: “Winnie, it was a joke!!” If these are jokes than Silvio Berlusconi is an honourable man.

Tom: Forced laughter there from the characters themselves.



David: It's not even close to guilty pleasure status.

Tom: No pleasure in this. “Fuck no”, to quote Mrs Brown herself there.

David: Lazy, clichéd, embarrassing, boring, outdated, nonsensical, unimaginative, cheap, brainless toss.

Tom: He-he, cream over his chin forms a Santa Claus-esque beard; that's fecking inspired!

David: A cunt dressed as a cabbage.



Hey, characterization! No wait, I don't recall a single thing to like about these 'people'...

Tom: “The poor little mites”.

Tom: They think that that’s funny, seemingly – the use of the word “Panini”.

Tom: No character comedy here, other than in the broadest sense...

David: It's outrageous that this sort of shit's getting commissioned in 2012. It's like the last thirty years of comedy never happened: the only concession to alternative comedy being over-use of the word “fuck”.

Tom: Such gurning fool faces.

Tom: “FECK” #1!

Tom: “The bucking biscuits” – Stanley Unwin-esque quality wordplay there.

David: Gives the cheesiest of 1970s sitcoms a bad name. At least they had to be relatively clever about sneaking sexual references in.

Tom: And the two old biddies are under the table again.



Tom: And, surprisingly enough, there is some headbanging.

David: Has anyone fallen over yet?

Tom: This is epically tiresome.

Tom: Ah, “feck” again there.



Tom: And Fiona Phillips as the daughter.



David: It's an old woman swearing. It's an old woman swearing. IT'S AN OLD WOMAN SWEARING. That's the entire premise of the show.
Tom: Fiona subject to yet another cream drenching.

Tom: “Bono”. FUCK OFF.

David: If I was Irish I'd be personally offended by this dreck.

Tom: 'Awww...' There are sighs from the studio audience.

Tom: There's a tacked-on left-turn into sentimentality that just doesn't wash...

David: Utterly charmless.

David: Are you sure this isn't an hour?



Tom: Fairy tales and the kids... They think they can imbue this with charm at the end? After the sheer grim gormlessness of the rest of it?

Tom: Pan-pipe shite on the soundtrack. Sir Cliff Richard would be proud.

Tom: Mrs B Looks to the camera – and, yep, US, THE AUDIENCE BACK HOME.

Tom: “Goodnight Bono”…

David: Why should sitcoms for the masses have to be this toss? It's no Only Fools and Horses!



Tom: That was teeth-grinding, unremitting, desultory codswallop of the basest type.

David: That was one of the unfunniest, steaming piles of excrement I've ever sat through.

Tom: Then featuring an 'amusing' little cartoon Agnes on the end titles.

David: NO REDEEMING FEATURES.

Tom: From a country that produced W.B. Yeats and Father Ted, that was unforgivable. It made So Haunt Me look like Fawlty Towers.

David: It's bad enough living through this political and social horror without all the culture going to shit too.

Tom: What is the BBC thinking? Putting this in prime-time...

David: Was massive in Ireland for various series first, worryingly.

David: Why would a country enjoy being stereotyped like that?!

Tom: The only benefit is that we're allowed not to watch the second episode...
 
David: I literally would pay not to.

Tom: I think an hour of that would turn Kriss Akabusi into a subdued depressive.

ADDENDUM. While sourcing the screen-shots above, I struggled to access the BBC iPlayer broadcast due to some automatically imposed 'Parential Guidance' control. A Quality Control quarantine might be more advisable.

10 O'Clock Live (Channel 4, 15/02/2012)

I reviewed this solo last year; let's see what two of us make of it this time around... (TM)


David Lichfield:

There’s been a long lineage of regular satirical programming on British TV that stretches back through iconic shows such as Brass Eye, Have I Got News For You to the 1960s and That Was The Week That Was. Ten O’ Clock Live, which has recently returned for a second series, is television’s latest attempt to weld current affairs and comedy together. Many said that the first series was an inconsistent affair, with the output of Charlie Brooker, Jimmy Carr, David Mitchell and Lauren Laverne not hanging together entirely coherently. For me, the show was certainly too long and could have benefitted from a more robust editing process. With the Guardian-friendly image of both Channel 4 and the show’s presenters, you could easily accuse 10 O Clock Live of political bias. But then again, right-wingers aren’t known for their riotous and sharp sense of humour, and where’s the fun in pro-establishment comedy?

Frankly, 10 O Clock Live remains something of a mess, with the key highlight remaining Brooker’s own short segment. During the last series, his venom and acerbic wit were largely the only parts of the show that demanded the attention, and because they are placed so early on into the show, it’s still easy to feel your attentions wander as we move from this segment into the largely unfunny Jimmy Carr sketch carried out in full costume complete with equally mirthless accent. When Carr drops the comedy, he can actually be an engaging political debater (he has a degree in political science) but the show goes for the humorous angle too often, particularly when an interesting debate is taking place, presumably just to fulfil the ‘comedy’ aspect of the programme.

10 O Clock Live still feels somewhat confused, and the employment of four presenters with similar political views but somewhat clashing styles makes the show feel rather cluttered. Mitchell’s interviews with important political and social figures can seem rushed, and the presence of an audience somewhat distracting, whilst it’s still difficult to see Lauren Laverne as something other than a music presenter. However, she does perform a pivotal role in keeping things flowing tightly. The show ultimately could benefit from dropping Jimmy Carr’s pantomime monologues and the other sketches that it incorporates into it, emphasising the serious nature of Mitchell’s interviews and trying to move away from the whole area of people talking over each other. Otherwise, I’ll continue to stick the kettle on after crown jewel-type moments like this.

Tom May:

10 O’Clock Live remains a welcome if imperfect stab at topical satire, two weeks into its second series. The rapport between the four seems a bit more natural than in series one; their personalities are coming into clearer focus. Carr is much more effective during the roundtable discussions, displaying a quick wit that belies the often tiresomely predictable ‘shock’ tactics of his solo gags to camera. There was an interesting moment when Brooker got angry at him for a “gross misrepresentation of a fine computer game” as being all about “shooting prostitutes”.

Laverne had the easy target of Republican primary candidates and couldn’t fail to elicit laughs via Gingrich’s “delightful, whimsical ideas”, Romney’s post-death conversion of his father to Mormonism and Santorum’s backhanded compliment to gays, claiming “it’s not man on child, man on dog, y’ know”. American provincialism was easily parodied with attacks on Romney running thus: “Just like John Kerry he speaks French too...”  “You sick bastard”, as Lauren said! She could have been more outspoken regarding The Sun’s page 3 girls though; Carr alluded to her dislike, yet she said nothing: missed opportunity for some arse-kicking feminism.

There is such idiocy out there in the media that there should never be a lack of material for programmes like this; e.g. the Aaron Ramsay ‘correlation’: every time he scores a goal, a celebrity dies. Plus, there was lucid highlighting of the ludicrous terminology deployed by the tabloids – ‘boasted’, ‘claimed’; absurdity in the thought of anyone uttering “performed a lewd sex act” in speech!

The guests were not overly memorable; a bland Times journo Hugo Rifkind and the gargantuan ego that is George Galloway, talking smugly about the “delectable” – eugh, what a word! – Argentine PM Cristina Fernández. Mitchell justly pulled him up on this. It is frustrating that Galloway’s message is largely agreeable, but you resent the messenger; he spoke sense concerning Argentina’s greater democracy compared with its days as a fascist junta and counselled against the absurd aggressively rhetoric harking back to the Falklands War. Yet his credibility is undermined by his simplistic, black-and-white stance on the Israel-Palestine problem.

The highlight was undoubtedly Brooker’s poem about The Sun, a withering – and often rhyming – roll-call of the vast variety of people who have reason for grievance against that sordid rag. It echoed Jimmy’s famous ‘forces of anarchy’ rant in David Nobbs’s The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. The paper's stance, going after anyone to sell papers, is reprehensible and has coarsened and soured public life in the UK in the forty-three years since Murdoch’s takeover. He also rebuked David Cameron – with his soft-soap ‘interview’ in Now magazine coming in for suitable ire.

Overall, it was not quite as funny or satirically dexterous as last week’s edition.  However, it is at least a satirical programme that can address important issues; though Carr’s skit on the NHS could have been more mordantly funny considering how high the stakes are.

Saints and Scroungers (BBC1, 16/01/2012)

"Where they belong..."

David: Hello.
David: Trying to get comfortable, whilst enjoying the only source of heat in the house (gas fire)
Tom: Hi. Okay, nearly ready to go - time to switch over from what seems to be a fairly mediocre Griff Rhys Jones sketch show...!
Tom: Okay, some sort of countdown?
David: OK 5...

Tom: 4
David: 3
Tom: 2
David: 1, go
Tom: Yep
David: Oh fuck off about “the taxpayer” already.
Tom: Irritatingly perky-businesslike theme music.
Tom: So, who is the Rugby player-jerseyed, slap-headed host?
David: Dominic Littlewood. He always presents tabloid shit like this.

David: Consumer champion, apparently.
Tom: “They are our saints.”
David: Black and white world.
Tom: This gent, dispensing some sort of vigilante justice in typical tabloid TV style.
David: Ironically viewed in the majority by people on the dole.
Tom: “Earning an honest living”. In what context, Dominic? “Get rich at other people's expense”...
Tom: The standard £53 a week for a single person doesn't really seem like “getting rich” to me. (Of course, this is justifiably assuming that the programme is implicating the average benefits recipient in these crimes)
David: Sounds like good business-sense; their only crime was being caught.
David: I THINK I'm joking.
David: Oh fuck off you judgemental autocue-reading, self-righteous CUNT.
Tom: Those "alarm bells", they start to ring.

David: He's a bit wooden.
David: “Hatched a plot”, “Shady means”.
Tom: I don't believe in the veracity of this, oddly... the conventions of the show are just so ludicrous; it is tough to imagine Courtney Campbell as a reality.

The Guthrie Clan! 

David: “Clan”?!
Tom: “CLAAAN”.
Tom: Terrible fucking incidental music as ever with these shows...
Tom: A low-key, Tesco's X-Files (the background music)
David: They're only bitter because they let it go on for so long without noticing.
Tom: “Than ahve ahd 'ot dinners!”
David: What's this, The Usual Suspects?
David: The smugness is unbearable.
Tom: Roll up, roll up! And round up yer Ricardo Guthries. Littlewood is intolerably smug, this would-be hard man peering about righteously, hands on hips.

Tom: “Robbing the system blind” - why blind?
David: 'Greedier'?
David: Fair enough, these are isolated incidents, but the underlying message is: 'We know you're all up to something'.
Tom: Yes, the assumption is to implicate a far greater number of people.
David: Coming from that most-respected and skilled profession, the daytime TV presenter
David: WTF is being blurred there?
Tom: Why the blurry screen?

David: The semi-detached house is innocent.
Tom: Ha-ha, ridiculous!
Tom: There might just have been some random gent on a bike, in the distance there.
Tom: “These GUTHRIES”. Not just “These Guthries”.
David: Approximately 0.00000001% of all fraud
Tom: Yes, indeed - a tiny percentage compared to corporate fraud and, of course, the bank bailout on our behalf.
David: I haven't heard “designer clothes” for a while.
David: The 'saints' segment is even more condescending.
Tom: Ah... those saints! Such lovely people down at The Dell.
David: The saints are coming.
Tom: Heart strings, dog stroking.

ENTER: THE SAINT. 

Tom: “So, you're true Londoner.”
David: Well, I wasn't going to mention it... [His disability] Didn't bother our Dom though!
Tom: Making a laboured point about it all, aye.
David: Prying bastard.
Tom: Interesting how little interest he took in the life history and characters of “these Guthries”. Condemn or pry, seems to be the dichotomy according to whether they have been deemed saint or sinner.
David: I forgot 100% of people were exclusively “good” or “bad”.
Tom: It is a childish view of human nature, this...
David: And it is licence-fee payers’ money that pays for this bullshit.
David: A true saint.
Tom: This person seems affable enough but then why should be held up like this on TV...?
Tom: His 'barriers'...? Ill-defined.
David: Why are no disabled people ever in the 'scroungers' camp?
Tom: Yes, but she [concerned woman] doesn't seem to understand how the economy works. IT'S NOT FAIR.
David: Plenty of able-bodied people have just as little luck.
Tom: “Finally, just when it seemed...” Cliched linguistic formulation from Dominic, in his voice-over there
David: “Light at the end of the tunnel”.
Tom: Little devil horns for the Scrounger in the title lettering. Utterly silly, but I suppose summarising the simple moral stance.
Tom: “Put under surveillance” - our genius host.
Tom: “The devious world of the scrounger”. Oh really? I was holding out for The Strange World of Gurney Slade, myself...
David: “Smile, you're on camera”
David: This is making me want to throw the laptop out in the street.
Tom: Scary... Come and 'ave a go if you think you're bald enough.
David: “The claimants they love to scapegoat”, more like.
Tom: Martial arts buffoonery from him now? [Littlewood inexplicably attired in judo gear]
David: “The poor people they love to harass”
Tom: Reconstruction of a woman crawling on the floor – absurd stuff...
David: Who decides on a career path that leads to the coveted position of DWP Fraud Investigator?
David: The ultimate job’s-worth.
Tom: “An anonymous caller”; now they're the "champ"!
David: The anonymous caller has some balls.
David: And certainly wasn't thinking of any sort of fiscal reward.
Tom: Well, they've got Littlewood on side, as some sort of Grant Mitchell enforcer.
David: Gorgeous complete invasion of privacy.
Tom: A doctor studying video footage constitutes a medical? There's not exactly a scientific method there.
Tom: Obviously, I don't want to prejudge the case (!), but the smugness of the programme’s tone is something to behold.
David: Dom starting to rival Kyle for odiousness.
Tom: More on the Guthries, apparently. Later.
Tom: Sensitive. Piano. Music (Sick-bucket, sadly out of reach).
Tom: “David's very own saint”.
David: Stop saying “saint”!!!!
David: This is lowest-common-denominato​r drivel, isn't it?
Tom: “Damien”? Thought the no-nonsense Estuary tones spoke the moniker “David”...?
David: “Damien”, ironic name for a saint!
David: I wonder if a “saint” is better than a “hero”.
Tom: That’s a tough call for the world of daytime television...
David: I thought the BBC were supposed to be impartial and above this?
Tom: Damien: “Nice hard work 'n' that”. Has he been fed those words?
David: He's had his arse exploited.
Tom: Being fed words by the host, again, there... Littlewood’s interview skills are definitely on a par with Frost in the 1960s!
David: Underlying message: Disabled people should go to work.
Tom: The significant travel issue for a lot of people (not just disabled) is briefly flagged up but NOT explored at all...
David: Acknowledged in passing.
Tom: I've stayed near Finchley Road several times recently - nice part of London. (Irrelevant aside!)
David: Don't worry, there's shite all of note to comment upon that we haven't already.
Tom: The slap-head gives his earnest “Congratulations!” to Damien upon getting a job – after the fact.
Tom: Two years after the fact.
David: Wrapped up in the usual, unlikely, fairy-tale style
Tom: It is repetitive and now utterly saccharine.
David: Bet he wasn't expecting that, certainly not with the camera crew that surrounded him.
Tom: “Mate”, and sundry blokeish uses thereof.

David: Now, Dom's turn to get a proper job.
David: “I liked the way he pronounced 'Guthrie's”.
Tom: Indeed, ha-ha. Who is he anyway? Ex-Rugby player, perhaps?
David: I saw him on The One Show first, but he's also presented things like Don't Get Done, Get Dom and Cowboy Builders on Channel Five, with that well-known consumer champion Melinda Messenger!
David: “Kingpin”!

"Kingpin" Riccardo Gardner 

Tom: “Family members”.
Tom: "A minefield of misinformation and multiple identities": a militant milking of the alliteration there.
David: "Empire".
Tom: “Property Empire”, aye... Awww, they were only fulfilling Phil 'n' Kirstie's dream!
Tom: Why the blurring of the left part of the screen again...?

David: The anonymous house is back!
Tom: “Iwl-go'en gains!”
Tom: Criminal empire or property empire? They cannot quite seem to decide.
David: ”Little scam”? I thought this was supposed to be an earth-shattering pyramid of illegality!
David: Why do all job’s-worths look and sound the same?

"We've never dealt with anything this big before at Barnet council... The Niceday box-file just isn't sufficient" 

Tom: The lexis used in this programme is often contradictory in the extreme... and yes, the seizers of evidence are incredibly bland.
Tom: “Was there no END to the Guthries' greed...? Apparently not”.
David: How lavish?
David: Cunting Nora!
Tom: “The Kingpin ’imself, Ricardo Guthrie!” This could be the melodrama of a WWF bout or soap-land East End punch-up.
David: “We're paying for it”?!!! You do fuck all, Dom!
Tom: He is portrayed as a moral majority arbiter, on behalf of us all apparently.
David: Autocue readers, the cunting lot of them.
David: Father Todd Unctious.
David: Father Curly Wurly.
Tom: Why do they have this type on the screen? The words are perfectly audible.
David: To make the words hit home with venom.
David: It's like John Stape all over again...
David: It never seems to be the end!
Tom: RECONSTRUCTION. Evil looking gangster types.

David: He really does find punishment rather moreish.
David: I'm just waiting to hear something like “justice is a dish best served cold” etc.
Tom: One of the Guthrie clan will get “160 hours unpaid work” – less than some on the government's "Work Programme" may face!

David: Public purse!
David: CUNT!
Tom: Indeed.
David: Great graphics.
Tom: Unsure how to describe those graphics, but basic – any old font on Word'll do – just about sums it up.
David: I enjoyed that, perversely.
David: Wouldn't want to watch it on my own like.
Tom: No, nor me.

The law is in my hands!

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS:

TOM: The latest UK unemployment figures show a rise to 2.69million (8.4%). This is the highest actual figure of those out of work since August 1994: the month before I started at comprehensive school. In many areas, the ratio of applicants to jobs available is astronomical. Yet the practical difficulties of the jobless are barely acknowledged by government or the media; Iain Duncan-Smith’s welfare reforms, involving unreliable re-classification of disability claimants, seem ill-fitted to real lives and the economy.

Our establishment increasingly undermines the concept of universal social provision, preferring the Victorian moral distinctions of ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving poor’. As Mr Doolittle characterizes it in Shaw's Pygmalion (1912): "'You're undeserving; so you can't have it.' But my needs is as great as the most deserving widow's that ever got money out of six different charities in one week for the death of the same husband. I don't need less than a deserving man: I need more. [...] Well, they charge me just the same for everything as they charge the deserving. What is middle class morality? Just an excuse for never giving me anything." As Colin Kidd argued in the LRB just over two years ago: 'Cameron risks reviving the distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor, which was hard enough to take when uttered by Conservatives who had risen from the lower middle class, like Thatcher herself or Norman Tebbit, but is impossible to swallow from Cameron and other graduates of Oxford’s Bullingdon Club, who carry out acts of vandalism dressed in bow tie and tails.'

The IDS plans to reform our benefits system are being implemented with unseemly haste, with little consultation, while the plans to reform banking are kicked into the long-grass, our hard-pressed bankers given a five-year period to adjust. Cait Reilly, who has had the startling audacity to kick up a fuss about the small matter of being compelled to work full-time - without pay or prospects - for her meagre £54-per-week benefit, is attacked by a petty, mean-spirited, right-wing journalist. The likes of Moir and IDS seem unable or unwilling to explain quite how such reforms might help rather than hinder such people in finding paid work.

As television, Saints and Scroungers is the sort of hackneyed hogwash that should have been long consigned to widespread ridicule by the satire of The Day Today and Brass Eye. Instead, it continues to hold sway with a significant body of mainstream opinion. Its televisual aesthetics are dire: uniformly drab graphics and fonts; laughable reconstructions; the music a form of pathetic fallacy banally shepherding the audience's emotions. In the title, sequence giant letter-S's stalk the landscape like Orwellian censors.

Presenter Littlewood is noted for such feats as 'teaching a vicar how to be a successful salesman in just one month'. His Wikipedia entry baldly states that 'his personality earned him an opportunity in television', which is as blunt an indication of the state of the nation and its broadcasting as any. As with other tabloid-TV straw men, he is presented as a one-man legal system: taking pugnacious umbrage at those deemed ‘guilty’ while showing paternalistic bonhomie towards those saintly folk assessed as ‘innocent’.

There is an irresponsibly limited view of life: giving viewers an excuse to maintain their black-and-white views of society. For this BBC1 show, depicting the complex real lives of typical Britons would probably blur its simplistic concept of responsibility. Extreme cases become the norm in the world as presented – on a grueling, daily (!) basis – by Saints and Scroungers.

DAVID: To summarise, ‘Saints and Scroungers’ is a deeply unpleasant form of ‘divide and rule’ television that serves no non-cynical purpose whatsoever. Despite its supposed intention of merely exposing those who are deemed to be playing the system to their own advantage and garnering praise for those assisting those who enable individuals who are hindered by disability and other obstacles to claim what is rightfully theirs, the implication that what is essentially a safety net is constantly abused and vulnerable to corruption never goes away and it is this school of thought that is exaggerated out of all proportion, leaving a bad taste of guilt in the mouths of those who are able-bodied yet find themselves, through no fault of their own, to be out of work. Unemployment is a soul-destroying scenario at the best of times, and negative, self-satisfied television such as this does nothing to help those stuck in a rut feel optimistic about their chances of escaping their plight. The idea that we live in a meritocracy, where unless severe disability has hindered your prospects, your outlook is completely equal to the effort you have put in is indisputable codswallop, and from the point of view of someone exposed to this utterly depressing form of programming does nothing to help the emotional state of the fiscally desperate whatsoever. Saints And Scroungers is an utterly blinkered piece of televisual output that does nothing to address the economic obstacles that force the majority of people into unemployment, and is delivered with a sense of moral outrage and self-satisfied smugness that is completely out of place on the supposedly impartial BBC. The celestial level of prestige that is afforded to those who do direct the physically-unfortunate to what they are entitled to is totally absurd in that they are merely being paid to do a job, and the division of the individuals that play a part in the welfare system into simple categories of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ is something a toddler would find reductive and simplistic, What the BBC is trying to achieve by commissioning dross like this is questionable, but as a programme that does nothing to add positivity to the world when you scratch under the surface, you’d be far better off tuning to cBeebies when you’re looking for vivid hope and optimism to inspire your day’s fruitful activity. Certainly, the fraudulent claims that colour the ‘scroungers’ element of the programme are outrageous, but this is because they are isolated incidents rather than the norm, and the programme only serves to fuel the urban myth that the majority of people on benefits are workshy subhuman scum that belong in a cell somewhere, by so closely associating the concept of the welfare system with fraud, when 99% of the time, any dishonesty involves nothing more than petty sums of cash and a sense of desperation centred around keeping roofs over heads and food in cupboards.