First today, it’s Charlie and Lola – Lucky, Lucky Me. Lola is lucky today. She gets a sparkly bracelet in the breakfast cereal.
They also receive some money from the grandparents.
Next day, Lola is feeling less lucky. It’s raining, and there’s soup for lunch, not spaghetti. But at least they’re going to the cinema to see Batcat, which Lola has been looking forward to for absolutely ages.
I do like the reference to Christopher Reeve’s Superman, who does just this to stop a train derailing.
But the cinema is sold out.
Lola finds a shiny coin, and buys a comic, but they meet Marv, and sizzles the dog grabs the comic and drops it into a puddle.
The meet Lotta in the park where they’re giving out balloons to release.
Lola’s balloon gets all the way to China, and is returned by a boy called Shang Ming.
Media Centre Description: Children’s animation. Join Lola and Charlie, a brother and sister, as they deal with topics that affect their everyday lives. Lola is convinced she’s the luckiest person in the whole wide world, especially when Granny and Grandpa send her and Charlie the money to go and see the new Bat Cat film. Bat Cat is her favourite! Then things start to go wrong and Lola’s luck runs out. Or has it?
BBC Genome: BBC TWO Thursday 12 October 2006 08:30
The next recording opens with the end of Autumnwatch. There’s a look at the programmes across the BBC channels.
There’s a trail for Have I Got News For You. And a trail for the news series of The Catherine Tate Show.
Then, the next episode of Extras. The show is put under the scrutiny of the Late Review with Mark Lawson.
Germaine Greer: “Oh, for goodness sake, why me? Why do you make me watch this stuff? This was sexist, misogynistic, Neanderthal garbage, it was nothing but really nasty sub-Carry On innuendo. And it seems that this talentless Millman individual also wrote the, the script. Wrote?! It’s had a writer?”
Mark Kermode: “I think Germaine’s, being flattering about it. I thought it was absolutely horrible…”
There’s an awkward scene with a make up artist who gets the actors to sign a photo, but then complains that they can’t remember her name. She does it to Liza Tarbuck first, and then Andy, who makes a real meal of trying to get her to tell him her name.
Andy has a visitor, Steve Sherwood, “the coolest boy at school” and naturally, he’s a homphobic twat. “Andy Pandy, you little fat poofter.”
Darren asks Maggie out.
Andy tries chatting up a woman at the craft services table, but after tossing a bottle of sparkling water around a bit, when he opens it it starts fizzing, so obviously he puts it into his mouth. Because that’s what a real person would do.
Andy gets a call for a play with Sir Ian McKellen. He explains his process playing Gandalf in Lord of the Rings. “I imagined what it would be like to be a wizard and then I pretended and acted in that way, on the day… And how did I know what to say? The words were written down for me in a script. How did I know where to stand? People told me.”
Andy is keen to do a play, to restore some of his credibility. Sir Ian introduces him to his co-star in the play, Leslie, who is playing Andy’s character’s lover. Andy didn’t realise it was a gay play because I suppose he didn’t bother to read the script.
He complains about it to Darren who reassures him that “gay is all the rage. Those two guys from Brokeback Mountain. They’re not even gay and I was watching that and they were getting off with each other. They were so convincing that even though I was going “They’re not really queer,” I was still repulsed cos of how good they were.” At this point, I think they’ve given up being ironic about the homophobia, because this is pretty awful.
The day of the first performance comes around. Once again, the timescale of this show is uncertain. How long is the rehearsal period of a play? A few weeks? Was he also filming the sitcom? Steve Sherwood has come to see the play, along with some other school friends. “You remember these boys from school, don’t you? Nobby, Boss Hogg, Gut Rot.” Casting doing a lot of heavy lifting to save the other men having to have dialogue demonstrating their homophobia. Andy pathetically tries to dissuade them from watching.
When Andy’s BBC colleagues arrive, the gammons are typically “Why are you sorting the Village People out with tickets?”.
But then, Bunny arrives, from series one. He’s left his wife, tired of living a lie. “But now I’m able to go out and enjoy some serious cock, guilt-free. Yuma, yuma, yuma, yuma. Break a leg.”
Andy’s homophobia is stretched to breaking point when Sir Ian tells him that he and Leslie should kiss at the end of act two. Now, I know I’m complaining a lot about how they’re playing fast and loose with the reality of how showbiz actually works, but this really does stretch credulity. The idea that something like a kiss would be dropped in, with no rehearsal, on the first night is ludicrous. I don’t think you’d do it even if the performers were male and female. Andy would have been entirely justified in refusing point blank to consider it under these circumstances, but they have to turn the cringe screws right up.
Meanwhile, Darren is entertaining Maggie. On Andy’s first night. Which seems odd too. His flat seems nice, except the toilet is directly off the kitchen in the open plan room. “Yeah, just, erm, just waiting for the cistern to refill. There’s a, just left a bit of, erm… Didn’t, you know, flush away completely, so… annoying.” At least this scene is just social awkwardness.
Back at the play, Andy is trying to avoid kissing Leslie. Sir Ian is helping him along.
Andy just abandons the play, gives a quick synopsis of the last five minutes. Then they cut to Germaine Greer in the audience taking notes, which is a genuinely funny joke.
Media Centre Description: Sitcom about a former TV extra who gets his own BBC sitcom. In pursuit of credibility Andy takes a role in a play directed by Ian McKellen, a two-hander called A Month of Summers. If only his agent had told him it was about gay lovers.
BBC Genome: BBC TWO Thursday 12 October 2006 21:00
After this there’s a trail for That Mitchell and Webb Look and Mock The Week. Then a trail for the new series of The Catherine Tate Show.
There’s a brief Torchwood sting, then a trail for Robin Hood.
Then the recording finishes with the start of That Mitchell and Webb Look.
Which is the next recording, which starts just as Extras finishes. It starts with a very thinly veiled Weakest Link parody, Hole in the Ring.
Swim with a Great White Shark. “How do you know we’ll find a Great White Shark?” “Cause there’s one in the cage.”
The snooker commentators struggle when both of the players in the match are gay. But in this it’s handled a little better than Extras, as we learn later that one of them has come out as gay, and there’s a conversation about it.
The feral tribe of people living in a garden centre.
The man who pretends he wants to buy a few things from the corner shop, then just buys two tins of beer.
The couple casually discussing his infidelity and her wish to have children, when the thing really burning at the core of their dissatisfaction is that he left the fridge door open that one time. “I’ll never see that quiche again. And so much milk.”
Big Talk becomes Small Talk for Children in Need. “Zach Chancery, you are a hairdresser who first came to the public’s attention for having a name a bit like a font.” A joke that seems like it’s written just for me.
Robert needs David’s help writing his birthday card.
German Numberwang. Presented by David Mitchell because presumably he’s better at German than Robert Webb. I like the David Hasselhoff picture.
The toothpaste manufacturers looking for the next must have feature. This time, something to clean dirty tongues.
The recording cuts out before the programme finishes, so I can only assume I was recording something else at 10pm, probably Mock The Week, which I didn’t keep.
Media Centre Description: Comedy sketch show starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb. Includes a chance to swim with, and ultimately get eaten by, a very angry great white shark called Owen; the latest quiz show, The Hole In The Ring, where members of the public get insulted for no good reason; and a mysterious lost tribe living in the heart of a suburban garden centre.
BBC Genome: BBC TWO Thursday 12 October 2006 21:30
VHiStory 