BBC’s 3 & 4 do irony

Irony. And not in an Alanis Morrissette kind of way.

It’s Tuesday the 9th of January and showing on BBC4 we have “Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe’ in which we take passing swipe at how bad US TV is, and on BBC3 we have ‘The Baby Borrowers’, in which teens borrow babies.

Brooker’s show is giving examples of US soaps with casts including mermaids and the Pope, and showing the ridiculousness of supposed dramas like ‘Sleeper Cell’. One TV exec. explained his theory that you could start a new channel showing excrement in a bowl. It’d have to be steaming so that there was a sense of movement that would catch the viewer’s eye, and some new-age music in the background. His theory goes that viewers would turn over after a few minutes, but the next day would come back. A little more intrigued each day, the amount of time they’d spend watching would gradually increase, and eventually you could show a telephone number where people could phone for a buck a time and guess whose celebrity pooh it was. Marvelous. He believed in it. The sad thing is, I think it would work. The even sadder thing is, I think I’d probably flick it on every now and again.

I kid you not, I then turn over to BBC3’s ‘Baby Borrowers’ and within minutes I am comfronted with a screen showing close-ups of baby excrement in its multi-coloured glory. The show’s pretence is that it’s a social experiment and an attempt to succeed where the government, schools and the churches have failed to reduce teen pregnancy. To me, it’s an appalling excuse to laugh at how useless a group of teens, pre-selected for their complete lack of competence in managing their lives, are at looking after someone else’s baby. SOMEONE ELSE’S BABY. Will people watch anything? I’m beginning to lose faith that people are watching this knowing that the teens were selected to make ‘good’ tv, and that someone has selected what highlights of the 4 week experiment to show in order to make ‘good’ tv. Remember people, this social engineering is only possible because of the unique way the BBC is funded…

I’m beginning to think the ‘steaming pooh’ channel may be one of the better options available. I’d pay for it as part of a cable package…