Teddy Paddalack
Saturday 25th June 2011 10:49am [Edited]
Everton
4,490 posts
Yes they do have a writers room and to date it has produced zilch.
Either 'Life Of Riley' is the best we have to offer these days or the Writers Room is not functioning properly.
I personally think that this Room is used to promote the notion that all is well and that the Beeb has its finger on the pulse, when the reality is most of the stuff we see being commissioned by the Beeb these days is merely a pastiche of all that has gone before with predictable casts and plots.
For years now the Beeb has dropped the ball and failed to engage current trends. I wouldn't be surprised if the people who gave Monty Python the nod, did so because they were on safe ground in that the team was ex-Footlights and predominantly Oxbridge.
The fact that they were ground breaking was probably more luck than inspiration on the commissioners' part.
The BBC is fixated with middle class comedy or working class comedy designed for the middle class. Panel shows and ice skating form the main stay whilst, whimsical little stage sets involving kids popping home from university as buck toothed vicars are kept in the drawing room away from the irate WI members in the lounge, is its comedy output!
I'm sorry but the BBC is so far away from the realities of life that it is now like that bubble in Westminster that calls itself a Government and opposition.
They all sit cocooned and cut off from reality and it is reflected in their every action.
Well both of them had better switch on or get left behind, the internet and Twitter etc are bringing down governments all over the world, so bringing down a TV channel can't be that hard.
Kids these days can get ten million hits on You Tube using the camera on their phone and just a natural approach to humour. It's clips now, but in two years it will be sitcoms and they will have international appeal due to them being realistic as well as funny.
The game started with hand-wound cameras and no sound, you had a man dressed as a tramp doing stupid things while a man in glasses walked along a half built sky scraper with his hands in his pockets (Jackass). The theatre promoters laughed and passed it off as a fancy, yet within ten years it had led everyone away from Vaudeville.
Over this side of the pond when the West End was run by Binky Beaumont and Noel Coward who kept a firm grip on what we saw, they lost out to film and TV.
Film and TV made by both the angry and the funny, fantastic writers emerged and Britain was back on top of its comedy, because it was on the ball.
From Mr Fiddler's Camp Site to Rigsby's view of the Urals and from blood donors to Fork Handle buyers, we had it all.
But now it is in decline, so either the Beeb switches on and reflects current trends and realistic humour or it will loose out to the people via the internet.
The Oxbridge writers and the old boys club has had its day, the Beeb either trawls the web and smells the coffee, or the funny clips and sketches you see in the critique section that are created by hard working writers and aimed at non existent commissioners, will eventually end up collaborating and become full blow internet sketch shows that get more viewers than the BBC's One, Two, Three & Four comedy output combined.
For far too long now TV has diluted its content and approach, they have the odd hit but they become lost between the Jams for Jerusalems and Nuclear families of mum, dad, boy, girl, having breakfast at the table and all wear wellies if it looks like rain.
It's crap, plain crap, it is the bland leading the bland it's either terribly polite or shite!
I am not for one minute suggesting we don't have the talent, we do and it's in abundance.
However unless you're Oxbridge or in the Old Boy network or are a stand-up with a predictable set, they simply won't touch you!
For me that's what's wrong with the Beeb, it has lost contact with its viewers' tastes and outlook and is utilising staid formats devised by middle class twits, and it shows.
Look at Channel 4, it had the balls to do 'Shameless' and in the first two series it was sharp, insightful and brilliant because it was a true account of a great writer's life.
Admittedly the man was already in the game, but he was writing to order, but once allowed to be realistic, he produced the goods big time.
By series 3 the writer Tony Abbot stands back, now C4 don't want a two series classic on their hands like Fawlty Towers.
So they hire the same type of Oxbridge crew that the Beeb use and despite there being a clear path laid down by a great writer they instead convert it and in doing so leave the comedy and pathos behind in their zest to have yet another show conform to stereotypes being surreal enough to make the middle class chuckle and feel secure in their semis.
It's a f**king crime, TV has been hijacked by non risk taking sterilised middle class ideals and concepts!
Good fellow! 
Spot on, sir.
There's the sad face.
