Tuesday 26 March 2013

spark up! artsflash exclusive: iain slasher smith to audition for rustic reality tv show



as ever here at spark up! high-command, we strive to keep abreast of the news that no-one else will touch and ahead of the stories no-other-bugger even dreamt existed - and today we can reveal to the world the pithy pre-production details of a ground-breaking new soap-cum-sitcom which is set to take mainland british tv by storm...

...sources suggest that the proposed working-title for this forthcoming series is the would life - which, described in terms falling well within the mental-grasp even of an educationally-retarded conservative cabinet minister, is destined to be a revamped documentary-style version of that cherished seventies classic, the good life (but with a sadistic satirical twist), and will remorselessly track, nay stalk, the ups-and-downs of two resilient rural families, one an established brick of the english landed-gentry (inhabiting a two-million-quid tudor mansion in buckinghamshire), the other a household of immigrant romanian stock (resident in local-council-accommodation down the other end of the village), as they both face up to the identical fundamental problem of living, loving and surviving in 21st century bread-line britain without being permitted the luxury of any recourse to public funds whatsoever (whether this funding be via state benefits or government salary)...

...industry insiders are reporting that the rab c nesbitt team are rabidly bidding for the contract to play the reviled romanian clan, and that the family of an as-yet-unspecified government minister is being hotly tipped to fly the flag for the great british aristocracy, or so rumour has it...

...well, don't know about you guys...? but i'm sure rearing to get stuck into this one when it finally reaches our screens.


4 comments:

dave "the dachshund" cameron said...

phew, yes...iain duncan smith has plainly performed a remarkable political triple-whammy - he's already being pursued through the courts on account of bungling both the work programme and the bedroom-tax, and judging by his arrogant and immoral treatment of 'problem families' he'll soon be up before an international criminal-tribunal for crimes against humanity; isn't it about time he resigned to spend more time growing courgettes for betsy's pub?

spark up said...

readers may be wondering why i didn't keep this idea under my hat and develop it privately for commercial profit? well, although i would like to create something entertaining from this satirical scenario (and make some money from it), my primary motivation here is to pay back iain duncan smith for putting me through the unproductive sterilizing-process otherwise known as the work programme - however, it's also true to say that everything one expresses these days is purloined by hackers before it even reaches the internet or any other form of publisher, and so the idea of professional writing is pretty much redundant; the entertainment industry is seriously stitched-up by many an old-fashioned protection racket and thus only card-carrying celebrity members of certain gangs can hope to profit in this trade.

some fellow who looked uncannily like kwame kwei-armah was 'round my place the other day, trying to get me to type up something (for nothing) which resembled a rather dire and dour screenplay - you know, one of those gritty bouts of realism which has become so fashionable of late; unfortunately, these intellectually quarantined contemporary playwrights don't seem to understand that members of the paying public don't want to watch ordinary people doing and saying the ordinary boring things which we all do on a boringly ordinary daily basis - you see, like the common elizabethans of shakespeare's day (who were far better educated than us current brits), they want to see something performed with a dash of art and style; normal people really don't want to pay to see an actual turd mounted on a pedestal when they can look down in the bog-pan on any particular day of their choosing and get the same experience for free, they want to see an artistic depiction of a turd - believe me, you'll just have to trust me on this one; television dramas minder, the sweeney, and the professionals all exploited realism to great effect, but with bags, and gags, of style and art - series such as z-cars, the bill and law and order: uk have also all succeeded in entertaining us on a basic genre-level...

...and i'd love to include a soap-opera such as eastenders on the afore-mentioned list (sort-of on the par of one of those old-time knees-up 'round the piano interpolated by the odd public brawl), but i'm afraid i simply can't - eastenders is basically a mindlessly automated digital copy of reality, yet without any real emotion invested; if eastenders were produced in the spirit of home-grown entertainment it would be fine, but it's not, it's no fun - it's just the storyline that hooks people with all the subtlety of a bottle of gin.

returning to the classics of yesteryear, did you happen to catch that episode of minder, the one where arthur daley campaigns to become a local councillor - there's a homage to lenny bruce included in the action, and also a somewhat dodgy one to marlon brando (à la last tango in paris), great stuff...

...funnily enough, i never took to minder when it first came out in the eighties, but there's not much else on now, except colditz...

e9 elocution said...

@26 March 2013 06:00

that freema agyeman in law and order: uk is a very engaging actress - it's just i always find her vocal delivery a little half-hearted, a bit too real somehow...

...of course, in the series, maybe this weakness in her voice is actually an integrated emotional expression of her insecurity at being an ordinary girl precipitated into a high-powered legal environment - however, i tend to feel that this idiosyncrasy is more a trait betraying the real person, rather than a deliberate dramatic device...

...put it this way, i'm sure ms agyeman is not nearly half so emotionally retracted amongst her own friends...

...respect for going into tv drama rather than down the professionally lazier route of a regionally typecast soap-actress though.

isn't there a law against all this? said...

without being permitted the luxury of any recourse to public funds whatsoever (whether this funding be via state benefits or government salary)

you may have something there, spark up...if this conservative government is so vehemently against romanian immigrants receiving state funds, then why the bloody hell is count howard of coffins being shuffled back into cabinet to replace count kenny "fuck a fair and independent tribunal under the european convention on human rights" clarke? the pattern of stepping-stones to a fully-hedged police-state are now as plain as a pint of plasma in dracula's fridge: first we have clarke setting up secret courts and selling us down the styx along with his tissue-thin libertarian values, and then we get the chief spook, howard, fresh from the board of vampires at commercial spymasters, diligence europe, slipping silently into the previous secretary of state for justice's sweaty old dance-shoes.