One of the useful things about having teen and near-teenage kids is discovering what the vulgar masses watch. Last week, for example, during half-term, I got to see two hugely popular programmes which I would probably never have bothered watching on my own: Undercover Boss USA (Channel 4, Wednesday) and The X Factor (ITV, Saturday, Sunday).
Yes, I suppose it is a terrible indictment of my lackadaisical attitude that it has taken me till now to watch a full episode of the most talked about programme on TV. Thing is, though, I’ve been right all along. The X Factor just isn’t as good as University Challenge. Or The Simpsons. Or South Park. Or even, frankly, Downton Abbey. And if you already watch all of those, plus maybe the odd documentary, how are you possibly going to squeeze in the extra 15 hours a week you need to watch The X Factor?
No, it doesn’t really last 15 hours. But as with so much modern TV the kernel of interestingness which could have made for something possibly quite punchy and watchable is surrounded by several eons worth of padding. Probably, as budgets shrink, this tendency will become more pronounced. Soon, out of every hour-long documentary, fully three quarters will consist of the voiceover after the ad break bringing imaginary viewers who’ve just arrived up to date with what happened in the previous segment. Still, good news for Alzheimer’s sufferers, eh?
But the kids find The X Factor utterly enthralling. They like the human drama: the oh-so-shy Irish girl who suddenly comes to life as she takes the stage; the bizarro token comedy character Johnny Robinson, a skinny, speccy 45-year-old ex-drag queen on incapacity benefit who gives his all as if he’s going to win — which of course he won’t because the Irish girl will.
They also like all the choreographed rivalry between the acts and between the judges. Simon Cowell has gone, of course (well, I say ‘of course’ though — be proud, Speccie readers! — this will come as news to most of you, if indeed you know who Simon Cowell is), but his replacement Gary Barlow does an excellent job of playing the ruthless, unimpressed bastard. It’s a very necessary role. Talent-show audiences can be so mawkish they’ll applaud all manner of mediocrity. Barlow is there to remind you that gamely having a go just isn’t enough: if you want a multimillion-pound showbiz career (like, say, his one with Take That) you can’t base it on being only marginally less crap than your audience would have been if they’d tried it themselves.
God, it doesn’t half go on, though. Not just on Saturday but on Sunday too, which is really annoying when you’re desperate, absolutely desperate, for the kids to bugger off to their bedrooms so that you can have the sitting room to yourself. Fat chance of that happening while The X Factor’s on. It matters to them more than life itself. No way are they not watching to the bitter end.
Personally, I prefer Undercover Boss USA. Though every show is almost exactly the same — rich and powerful CEO goes incognito to experience what it’s like working at the bottom of his own company — the format is so satisfying you somehow don’t mind. Perhaps it’s because it shares something of that primal, mythopoeic appeal of Greek gods taking human form to stalk the earth, or of Henry V passing disguised among his men before Agincourt. It offers the appealing fantasy that, far from inhabiting a harsh and pitiless universe where no one gives a toss about the 99 per cent, we in fact live in a world where hard work and integrity will one day be rewarded by a beaming deus ex machina at company HQ bringing glad tidings of bonuses or a year’s free rent or a mega-dollar birthday extravaganza for our beloved kids.
Formula TV it may be but I can’t imagine it’s easy to do. The hardest bit (apart from those hair-raising moments where the boss’s fake moustache comes loose, jeopardising the whole venture) must surely be trying to find workers sufficiently saintly to fit in with the series’s comforting narrative arc. Sample workers: a lovely, warm, generous, dedicated black female TV aerial engineer, never happier than when missing a family reunion or climbing on to a roof in the midst of a thunderstorm to get the job done; an incredibly nice, charming, born-again Christian who, having served a prison sentence for killing the man who murdered his daughter, has now found redemption through hard work and helping underprivileged kids.
Now obviously such paragons do exist but, if you believe Undercover Boss USA, they’re the norm, just as game, kindly, considerate, generous bosses are also the norm. Maybe the world of US business really is that special. And I can’t pretend it isn’t very heartwarming, this constant running theme of nice people discovering how nice others are and rewarding them with more niceness. But at the risk of coming over all Simon Cowell, wouldn’t it be even nicer if, just for a change, we could have a bastard boss discovering what vile, lazy bastards his workers are — then whipping off his disguise at the end and smiling sadistically as they plead pitifully but unsuccessfully not to be sacked?
Comments