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| TV,
Jerry Carpenter,
15 January 2001 |
Rating: F2
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Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a review of the immortal ‘Top of the Tops’ – slagging that off would be like stabbing the Queen Mum in the eye with a compass. No this is ‘Top of the Pops PLUS’, and attempt by da Beeb to squeeze more pips out of their pop portfolio. We’ve already got ‘TOTP2’, where Steve Wright rambles sarcastically over archive footage of past performers on the show interspersed with bits from the current show – which oddly he holds back from being cruel about. And we’ve had the Andy Peters produced ‘Ozone’, which against all odds actually became pretty cool – if only because presenters Jamie Theakston and Jayne Middlemass were cooler than the pop stars they were interviewing which made the interviews more edgy than the usual press-junket sofa chat.
But ‘The Ozone’ isn’t on anymore, so da Beeb have been forced to try and replicate their previous success and they’ve come up with ‘TOTP Plus’. The formula is the same as so many other pop shows around, a colourful mix of videos, studio performances from the original show on Thursday, interviews, and phone competitions all circling around three ‘hip’ presenters lounging round a jolly studio set. It’s these three bubble-eyed twenty-somethings that are the initial problem. It’s easy to kick kids TV presenters for being vacuous and moronic, and that’s not particularly fair, because that’s the character-type that kids respond best to. But with so many of these bubble heads in operation on so many channels, it’s really required that individuals have something to separate them from the general morass – a weird squeaky voice, a fondness for outrageous haircuts, even a moustache would do the job. But this lot have definitely been pulled from the 3rd generation TV cloning tanks, with nothing to offer but cheery gormlessness.
There’s a look which as yet has no official name, it’s could be best described as a mix of the traditional thousand yard stare and rabbit-caught-in-the-headlights, and this look crosses the faces of the three presenters of this show on a regular basis. It’s like they don’t have their hearts in it, and they’d rather be in bed. If they went the whole hog, and did the who-gives-a-shit John Peel thing, then this could be funny. But the need to project pop-fueled enthusiasm in every second is going to grind these people into the ground. Pity these poor souls.
Oh yeah, the other problems. Well they do interviews which could’ve been scripted by the record companies, then repeat this banal footage later in the programme and pass it off as ‘hot pop news’. They show far too much of individual bands at the expense of showing a good spread of stuff – this week we had a Sharleen Spiteri ( and I don’t care if I spelt that wrong ) interview, then her video, then some more clips of other videos, and then her performing on TOTP. Almost twenty minutes of ‘Texas’ ?, that is NOT cool my friend. And that pretty much sums up this turgid Sunday afternoon experience.
BBC2 Sundays 12-1pm
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