There was a point in the middle of Summer where I couldn’t afford the main subscription channels and had to rely on the old trusty BBC iPlayer and the advert riddled 4OD apps on my phone to keep my entertainment needs going. I watched quite a bit of stuff I’d already seen, including endless left on autoplay injections of 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, that pretty much ended up as white noise lulling me to sleep of an evening.
I find that apart from the odd movie or documentary here and there, I am a creature of habit on iPlayer and stick to a handful of much loved comedies and panel shows. The trouble is eventually you run out of stuff you haven’t seen and have to take a risk on something that isn’t quite you. For me there were two things that come to mind: Jack Whitehall’s Sporting Nation, in six weekly parts, and Peter Crouch’s S.O.S. (Save our Summer), in eight weekly parts. I wasn’t optimistic about either, but ended up taking in every minute of both, with little memory of either staying with me some 3 or 4 months later.
The former was one of my first encounters with the hollow emptiness of a lockdown studio, that had a weird loneliness about it, focussing as it did on Whitehall alone at a desk delivering odd autocued monologues with mixed levels of humour. The parts of it where he spoke were weirdly forced, but the sports archive footage montages that the show essentially revolved around were great. Each week focused on a different subject, ranging from the underdog, to famous rivalries, and the idea of heroes and villains. The fun of it was how it put sporting memories into a narrative that very much made sense of my own lifetime. It seemed almost custom made for a man my age who liked a bit of sport. Apart from the cricket references, I understood and agreed with almost every concept talked about. Very easy and disposable stuff, that just felt a touch cheap.
As was the least expected hit show of the Summer in the UK, an old school variety show that felt a bit like Noel’s House Party with social distancing. Ex footballing giant Peter Crouch hosted a loosely formatted chat show with co host Maya Jama (who I still have no idea why she is famous?), and Taskmaster’s Alex Horne providing the house band laughs. It was all very lively and colourful, forcing a cheesy grin into the lives of those who couldn’t be in the pub garden and had to swig their Saturday night beers in their armchairs. It was basically all of Crouchy’s pals coming in to talk about not very much, play some daft games, give away some prizes and have a musical guest on. It shouldn’t have worked. It should have been a car crash. But, I loved it.
It seemed to have one mission, to cheer you up and distract you from the doom and gloom of everyday lockdown, and it did that a treat. Something about the randomness and slightly shoddy set up was endearing and fun. The hosts were very likeable to spend time with, and the whole thing felt like you were just having a mess around and filming it. Nothing remotely high brow or inciteful was said or done, it was just a high jinx romp for an hour a week, just when everyone needed something exactly like it. Who knew it would be Peter Crouch to deliver it though!? At any other time of normality you wouldn’t go near this show for love or money, but it ended up being essential viewing and a marker in where we were all at during July and August.
Since then there have been several of my favourite regular shows having a go at keeping the ball rolling without an audience, either using chairs at an unnatural distance or using perspex to keep people separate. QI did three very odd episodes of the R season with no audience, making you realise how laughter is essential to things like that as a social experience – without it, everytime someone spoke it felt like someone had made far too much bluster about something that wasn’t that amusing.
Mock the Week was a similar experience, feeling hollow, but with the added effect of how obviously no one had gone through make-up before shooting, resulting in them all looking like absolute shit! It really was like the last survivors of the zombie apocalypse had come in to tell a few jokes. Same deal with Have I got News for You, which can feel uncomfortable at times anyway, but amplified horrifically with no ambient audience reaction and DIY haircuts. And then there is the new series of Graham Norton, which makes you realise how important huddling together on the sofa was for that show. It just feels so bland and forced with the guests so spread out.
Several others have tried different things with walls of people on a screen Zooming in as an audience, or having an audience of 20 people all spread out, with mixed results. I mean, I’d rather have that than no TV at all, in the same way I’d rather places stayed open safely rather than closing down altogether. It’s just all a bit… depressing, isn’t it?
Even the return of things like Bake off and Strictly Come Dancing (neither of which I watch) make everyone miss the little things you can’t do any more and wonder when it will all be back to “normal”. In one way it is fascinating how TV has had to respond to survive, and like everything else it will seem bizarre when we look back in better times on how it all had to be done.
The Wasteland 