Good Morrow Good People, and welcome to another edition of TTWTWB! We’ve a lot of things to discuss this week, but before we get into that we have the small matter of our theme for the week, from the old faithful of songs that is the closing montage of Holby City. Please ignore the title rendered controversial by sparkly vampires, and just back in the acoustic melodic glory of Dawn Landes’ Twilight.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xd9Twbgd84[/youtube]
Now normally here I would segue into a Soap Opera related feature, but I feel this would be doing you all a disservice as I’d largely be repeating myself, so I’ll keep it brief. Eastenders continues it’s dissent into vile, Hollyoaks style mush, as characterised this week by a truly abysmal and deeply out of place vibrator joke. Worse than that, Eastenders Producers didn’t extend the same consideration for those people effected by the recent murders in Bradford that Coronation Street extended to those effected in Cumbria, when they showed Lucas murdering a young girl.
Coronation Street at least vindicated itself somewhat by having Gail be found not guilty in court and the awful Tracey getting something of a comeuppance, but tainted that with the absurd melodrama of the hostage situation. The whole recent run with Tony Gordon’s escape from prison should just be entitled ‘How to ruin a year’s worth of interesting writing with one enormous retcon’. They almost, ALMOST managed to salvage something with the presence of Maria and Tony softening when shown pictures of baby Liam, but the chase and explosion were the stuff of bad Vin Diesel movies. At least the reported aftermath of Carla being accused of murdering Tony appears to have been averted, and Roy and Hayley have been reunited.
There was one other Soap issue I wanted to discuss which is the replacing of the actors who Lucy Beale and Ben Mitchell in Eastenders. Melissa Suffield who plays Lucy has been fired due to ‘unruly behaviour’, while Charlie Jones has been let go due to an utter inability to act (I hope nobody ever tried the Digital Spy drinking game where you had to drink every time Ben was spotted ‘whimpering on the stairs’. Alcohol poisoning would be just an episode away!) Ben will at least be replaced after the character has some time off the screen, whereas Brian Kirkwood’s reign of ineptitude continues with the news that Lucy will simply be played by a different actress with no transitional period; it’ll just be a different girl in the role with no other explanation.
Most worryingly of all is the fact that we’ve been promised that Ben’s storyline to remove him will be ‘very dramatic and will have repercussions all Summer’. Oh joy, excuse me while I go and weep into my pillow.
Emmerdale also teeters on the brink of losing it’s way, with the current Nathan/David blackmail storyline. At least they didn’t go the obvious route, which has been Emmerdale‘s reason for it’s top quality, and with Paddy and Marlon getting more TV time, at the very least I’ll be kept happy by that. They also appear to be building to a much needed comeuppance for Viv, I just hope it sticks this time, and she doesn’t revert to type as they have done with Val on so many occasions before.
Elsewhere, congratulations are due to Spelbound who won Britain’s Got Talent with this amazing performance.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Jv_umOY1z4[/youtube]
Whereas I was rooting for Paul Burling on the night, and expecting Keiran Gaffney to win it, Spelbound absolutely deserved it due to their consumate skill and excellent routines. It’ll be interesting to see what the future holds for them.
With World Cup fever underway it would be remiss of me not to mention the fact the coverage kicked off today, and in honour of this I’m creating the one time only ‘you choose’ section. For some the World Cup will be a massive highlight and they will be rapt for the next two weeks. For others, it’s a dirge that serves only to ruin your local pub and do terrible things to the schedules for the duration. It’s bound to get huge ratings, and the build for this tournament seems to be much more intense than the last few, maybe since France 1998, so if you’re going to watch it enjoy, if not, take solice in the fact it’s only on 2 channels, and resort to DVDs.
With the schedules ravaged by the Footy, it’s unsuprising we only have one highlight and one lowlight this week, but nonetheless, let us dive in!
Our highlight for the week is the UK debut of the US version of Who Do You Think You Are? It’s difficult to pigeonhole this show into a particular genre, but it’s always hugely entertaining and shows us a human side to the celebrities involved. If you’ve never watched it before, I can’t recommend it enough, and if you’re already a fan you know what to expect. To reference the World Cup again, if you’re watching the events in South Africa then this will be a good ‘downtime’ show for winding down after a match, and if you’re anti-soccer, then enjoy being able to lose yourself in something with a strong identity of it’s own!
Our lowlight for this week, James Corden’s World Cup Live has no such cross appeal. As far as I’ve been able to ascertain, the only reason Corden has been given this vehicle (and got a World Cup song out) is rooted in the fact he did a single (albeit very funny) sketch with some England players for Sports Relief a few years ago. Corden isn’t as funny as he is billed, and the show looks like the Heat magazine approach has reached sporting events now, with terrible guest quality. This is really going to be inane, puerile and derivative.
But that’s me for the week! Keep your eyes peeled for another edition of Game Show Garbage on Sunday, send any feedback to chris@multimediamouth.com or in the comments below and whatever you’re doing, remember to always stay safe.
