This Toilet Just Won’t Flush

While we’ve been busy of late putting together the Tumbleweed Awards – don’t forget, you can vote for all the shows you loathe here – we’ve still managed to find time to check out the various other year’s best and worst lists that have started to pop up around the place. Well, clearly not that much time: we only just looked at this week’s Green Guide “Year in TV”  special, and it’s the usual quasi-hilarious mix of the creepy (the topless fight scene in Underbelly: Razor was listed in “Things to be grateful for about TV in 2011”, for fuck’s sake) and the just plain wrong (Gran from Angry Boys was one of the “Great TV Characters of 2011” – as they put it, “fierce, loving, so wrong but, oh, so right”.  You utter prats). Oh, and they liked The Jesters, so it wasn’t all bad.

As you’d expect from us and our long-standing burblings against various Age personalities, three things stood out: first, The Hamster Wheel was praised for its “ruthless pursuit of shoddy on-line journalism”. Well yes, but didn’t The Chaser name the Schembri Awards after Green Guide writer and notorious on-line bullshit artist Jim Schembri? Was this latest comment a swipe at Schembri by a fellow Green Guide writer, or actually written by Schembri (who did contribute to the Green Guide‘s “Year in TV” special) in an attempt to shore up his dubious “they were supporting me” claims? Just fire him already.

Second, Angry Boys was one of the top 10 shows of the year. Uh, okay, whatever. You might want to make a better claim for greatness than saying Gran “was a monster we couldn’t quite believe, yet couldn’t take our eyes from” then point out in the very next line that “audiences seemed unprepared to invest in all 12 episodes” though.

As for “the conclusion that several vocal critics arrived at – that [falling ratings] somehow turned the whole enterprise into a wasteful flop – is risable” – no, the endless knob and gay jokes made it a wasteful flop. And the pointless, laughless surfer character. And making “pissing on things” into a running gag. And trying to making  S.Mouse’s “Grandmother-fucker” into a real-life novelty hit. And S.Mouse in general. And not actually having any actual storylines for any of the characters despite running for twelve long weeks. And we could go on.

[In actually funny Angry Boys news, this article from the Telegraph about his US push is gold, especially this:

Mainstream press reviews for the series, including responses to blacked-up character S.Mouse, are expected in the coming weeks.

Regardless of the response, Lilley’s ability to make such strong inroads into the tough US market should be heralded as a brilliant achievement.

“Regardless of the response” you say. Wow, that almost sounds like you expect a racist shitstorm followed by a near total collapse in the ratings… kinda like what happened here. And we’re just going to herald as a “brilliant achievement” someone’s ability to sell shows to America now? The actual quality of the show itself doesn’t count?]

Finally, they couldn’t leave Laid out of it, could they? Of course it was one of their favourite shows of 2011 – Hardy worked for them for years! Not that they mentioned that, of course, despite sniping at other shows’ “bloated self-promotion”. How many positive reviews did the Green Guide give Laid again? Seven? Eight? Plus a cover story? For a show that only ran six weeks?

Oh well, at least this particular gush-job said that Laid was “refreshingly difficult to categorise” – because it sure as shit wasn’t funny – and that “season one ended on a brutal cliffhanger, so hurry up already”… except that the press release for Laid 2 (you know, the one everyone at the Green Guide received months ago) listed the new seasons cast and THE LOVE INTEREST FROM THE FIRST SERIES WHO HAD THE POTENTIALLY FATAL ROOT WITH ROO IS STILL IN IT. So, uh, he’s not dead. Unless he’s a fucking ghost, which is the kind of twee bullshit you’d expect from this series really.

Either way, the fact remains: why is the Green Guide talking up a “brutal cliffhanger” when they – or anyone who looks up Laid on IMDB – already knows how it pans out? Unless, you know, they’re just trying to drum up interest in a mate’s poorly rating show. Again.

Our seemingly pointless griping here is the story behind this year’s Tumbleweed Awards. When the mainstream media in this country is quick to praise obviously sub-standard programs for reasons clearly unrelated to the actual quality of the program itself, we need an award designed to point out that yes, you were right the first time:  much of this supposedly “much-loved” and “critically-acclaimed” comedy is just plain crap.