YOU’RE RELEASED BUT YOUR CUSTODY CALLS [340]

The ubiquity and longevity of “Doctor Who” makes it impossible not to have a favourite Doctor, no matter how little of the show you have seen. Your choice will most likely the actor playing the role when you grew up, which makes mine, Jon Pertwee, an anomaly, being a Doctor of my parents’ generation.

I was six years old when the BBC cancelled its original run in 1989, its diehard fanbase still smaller than the audience for “Coronation Street”. The adventures continued in licensed and unlicensed novels, magazines, audio dramas and straight-to-video films, but save for Paul McGann’s turn in 1996’s unsuccessful pilot for a new series, “Doctor Who” existed in repeats only until 2005. 

BBC Two showed selected stories from 1992 to 1994, allowing me to watch and compare stories from each of the seven Doctors to that point. Jon Pertwee’s Doctor, who appeared for four years from 1970, and the first to appear in colour, may have stuck in my mind as his stories were shown the most, particularly when they were shown again from 1999 to 2000, and when BBC One showed 1973’s “Planet of the Daleks” to mark the show’s thirtieth anniversary in 1993.

But the nostalgia of my parents’ generation meant that I was watching “Doctor Who” alongside episodes of “Thunderbirds”, “Stingray”, “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” and “Star Trek” on BBC Two, while Channel 4 were making their way through “The Avengers”, “The Saint” and Adam West as “Batman”. All these shows had colourful characters and action-packed, thrilling stories, and I enjoyed them as much as those watching for the second time. Like “Doctor Who”, they lacked the budget, sophistication and special effects of new shows at the time like “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” and “Babylon 5”, but charm and goodwill kept them alive.

In becoming like the above shows, the ”Doctor Who” of 1970 was very different to its own previous series. Patrick Troughton’s Doctor had been forced into exile on present-day Earth, their TARDIS disabled, and their appearance forcibly changed – Troughton didn’t turn into Pertwee on-screen, as the latter hadn’t been hired yet. Under the name Dr John Smith, the Doctor is a scientific advisor for the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce (UNIT, not U.N.C.L.E.), a military version of the “Men in Black” that justified the continued appearance of extra-terrestrial beings in the show without having to change time or location. 

Dressed in a smoking jacket and cape, driver of various vehicles and master of “Venusian Aikido”, Pertwee’s Doctor is like an all-ages version of Jason King, the writer and playboy played by Peter Wyngarde in the ITV spy series “Department S” and “Jason King”. Episodes were more action-oriented by necessity, and perhaps also by budget, but out of this period came the Doctor’s “shadow”, the Master. 

Time and space travel were restored to the show in 1973, following a story where the first three Doctors all appeared on screen to save the Time Lords, in time for Tom Baker to whimsically take off into space the following year. As thrilling as the set-up of Pertwee’s run as the Doctor may have been, it was based on using exile as punishment, so a return to the original status quo was to be expected.

 

(Oddly enough, DC Comics had simultaneously completed a similar revamp to the “Wonder Woman” comic book, with writer and artist Mike Sekowsky placing the Amazons in another dimension, leaving Princess Diana powerless on Earth, and reinventing her as Diana Prince, an “Avengers” Emma Peel-type martial arts expert in spy and adventure plots. These changes were introduced in 1968, but were also reversed in 1973.)

 

It is true that I appear to like “Doctor Who” when it is least like itself, but it is also true that, for escapist drama, it had great company in the 1960s and 70s. As for science fiction, the end of “Doctor Who” overlapped with the beginning of “Red Dwarf”, a sitcom that suits my sensibilities even more closely.

WELCOME TO THE CHEAP SEATS [234]

Art: Tony (Twitter @vorratony)

With pandemic overturning routine, my listening habits have changed. Working at home, I started putting on a podcast in the background. Now furloughed, it continues to keep me company, but I don’t have to pause it to answer the phone – what is safe for work changes with where you’re working.

The “CheapShow” podcast [link], has been made by and starring Paul Gannon and Eli Silverman, respectively a radio producer and a club DJ / actor, since it began in 2015, stand-up comedian Ash Frith also appearing occasionally. Taken at face value, it is the celebratory mix of trash culture and body horror that pushes taste for the perfect laugh. Once the offended have stopped listening, the “economy comedy podcast” becomes a fun exploration of the charity shops, bargain bins, flea markets and car boot sales of Great Britain, bringing you intriguing, nostalgic and detestable items that fell through the cracks of popular culture – one man’s trash is literally another man’s treasure.

Once you have listened as much as I have – “CheapShow” is approaching two hundred episodes, at 60-90 minutes each, sometimes longer – it becomes a melange of banter, surreal world building, improvised sketches with characters created from out of nowhere, and a slamming together of language that would make Ludwig Wittgenstein think again, all supported by a strong fanbase helping to feed the show back into the culture through their own tie-in merchandise. “CheapShow” is “a chive-filled yoghurt poultice of destiny” like no other, having “blown the goose” years ago on being your standard podcast fare. 

In episode 16, from early 2016, in reply to a remark about eating a scab for research purposes, Eli delineated himself and Paul as characters: “I’m meant to be the disgusting little troll, and you’re meant to be the hapless twat.” This was back when “CheapShow” had more items per episode, and the two former stand-up comedians had not yet delved into the wider pool of scatological humour, even if the very first episode involved asking a guest to choose if they could live without their penis or their tongue. By episode 49 the following year, Paul expressed concerns that the show had become reductive through “the curse of nonsense,” after a sketch involving Hula Hoops, but he followed this by imagining a field of death involving zombie scarecrows and dogs, trained to eat chip fat, would attack Gary Glitter and Rolf Harris – a heated discussion over noodles, and a vinyl single about sex change chickens, also formed part of the same episode. Your average “CheapShow” episode should feel like its hosts are continually engaging in telling the “Aristocrats” joke, without either of them admitting they are keeping this going until they remember the punchline.

While “CheapShow” has its “economy comedy” concept, its execution answers a key question when creating new media: what it is an excuse for? The podcast Ricky Gervais did for “The Guardian” put his and Stephen Merchant’s names first, but was an excuse to introduce the funnier Karl Pilkington; “Cheers” is a sitcom set in a bar, but is an excuse to present one-act plays centred on character development, and “Leigh Spence is Dancing with the Gatekeepers” is a series of articles and videos about various subjects, but is an excuse for me to dive into something interesting and write about it. The concept of “CheapShow” is an excuse to spin a conversation into flights of fancy madness, but the concept still directs the podcast. In a time when anyone you’ve ever heard of has a podcast, you need more than your name in the title for anyone to truly care.

I came across “CheapShow” via the work of Stuart Ashen [whose YouTube channel I discussed here: link], and “Barshens,” the comedy show made with the cook Barry Lewis, on which Paul and Eli worked as producer and co-star respectively. “Barshens” is a great example of making “timeless” content on through comedy quizzes and games, and the only YouTube channel I have seen formally end, instead of just petering out. “CheapShow” segments that also appeared on “Barshens” included “The Price of Shite,” guessing the price of items bought in charity shops, and “Off Brand Brand Off,” a blind taste-test of own-brand or knock-off food items versus the originals, while the frequent playing of board games benefitted from the existence of “Gannon’s Golden Games.”

The first episode of “CheapShow” I heard was episode 140, featuring Ashen as a guest, but I was not prepared for the onslaught: the feature-film length allows for all avenues to be explored, from arguing over how to start a show, followed by a sojourn (or tranche) into the DJ Mike Read, and Paul telling Eli to “wait my hurry,” the latest in a long line of non-sequiturs that left the two “treading on thin water,” to use an earlier one. This was followed by tasting dill pickle-flavoured crisps, a smell-based board game, and a cursed story tape from a listener’s grandfather, known only as “Derek,” bringing the house down with the attempted revelation that a child was Irish – I matched the wall of laughter that followed that as yes, we all heard that. If something makes you laugh until you cry, you keep hold of it.

What I came to like the most was the hosts’ use of language, and their eye for the obscure and ephemeral. Sure, everyone likes noodles and “Ghostbusters,” but without “CheapShow,” I wouldn’t know about the Winkie badge, comedian Roy Jay (“Spook!”), Wendy Carlos’s demented version of “What’s New Pussycat,” the life of John Meggot, and the comedian Mike Reid’s bizarre song “Freezing Cold in 89 Twoso,” which took an Italian song of gibberish made to sound like English... and sang it in English. The “Silverman’s Platter” feature, drawing upon Eli’s collection of random vinyl, has been an education, filling in gaps in my knowledge, to the extent that I may have to start seeking out some of the songs they have played, especially as they may never appear on CD or to stream online.

But the language... I rarely swear, and only do so here where needed, but I don’t routinely try to bend language, creating new words from sounds, or bashing words together. Creating its own words to use alongside the established language is something I’ve seen work only in “CheapShow” and “Red Dwarf.” I have used some of Paul’s accidental uses of words here, but this is added to Eli’s use of sounds, like the sibilance of scribbles, scrubbles, scruffage, scrummage, spoff, spooge and spunk, and teaching Paul how to use the phrase “spoff my josh off” – this later became used in a mash-up of Rick Astley songs. Upon Eli’s commenting on his odd choice of words, Paul said “helipad.”  

Then there is the language that creates life. In the most recent episode at the time of writing (number 176, “Zoltan Sucks”), Eli said, “we don’t have a character called Regina, do we? There should be a character, and she should be called Regina Fatata.” This was dismissed by Paul as “the same collection of stupid sounds that come out of your mouth.” Like Inch Man and Storytime Granddad, the character was ill-advised this time around, but characters created on the spur of a choice of words, and driven by the attitude captured with those words, plays to Paul & Eli’s strengths in improvisation – characters like Squishy Jim, Madam Ladyplops, Bobby Bollocks, Richard Brandoff, Uncle Grumbly, Leaky Ken, Precum John, Teen Yeti and in-show knock-off Adolescent Sasquatch, not to mention Paul’s shadow, Jimmy Biscuits. My observation is that the less a character says their name to assert their existence, the longer they last. 

“CheapShow” displays confidence in letting characters, sketches and situations be created and played out during the show, with Paul & Eli periodically “step out of the podcast” to make sure their heads are together, things other productions would edit out in an attempt to sound more professional, or to remove what they hadn’t attended. This has added to the enjoyment of listening back through the mountain of previous episodes, recognising the moments when long-running features like “Silverman’s Platter” and “The Sauce Report” either found their names, or arose without warning, meanwhile witnessing how the show's animosity towards Noel Edmonds, something that doesn't need explanation, came from his legally distinguishable quiz show sitcom hybrid "Cheap Cheap Cheap."

“CheapShow” has also branched out from user-generated content, through the corporeal “Tales from the Shop Floor,” to sending items into the show, and into officially unofficial merchandise – “The Unofficial CheapShow Magazine” [link] has had nine issues so far, and T-shirts and stickers have been created out of various moments from the show [link] – slips of the tongue have become T-shirts to the extent that “That’s a T-shirt” has itself become a T-shirt. 

These are things that you expect far larger TV and radio shows to have, but I can’t think of any unofficial fan-created items that are endorsed and promoted as effectively official work – it must have happened to something from “The Simpsons,” as there has been enough of it.

For me, “CheapShow” is the “Goon Show” of podcasts: the content may be cheap, but when distinctiveness and originality is free, it’s worth a try – satisfaction will soonly come.

I’M NOT YOUR STEPPING STONE [197]

Many short-lived TV shows are filed under, “it was a good idea at the time,” but “New Monkees,” broadcast in 1987, can also be found under, “needs more work… a LOT more work.” A very short-lived show, lasting for only thirteen episodes (reduced from the intended twenty-two), one album and one single, it was never, to my knowledge, shown in the UK… although we did get “The Munsters Today” and “California Dreams” instead, lucky us.

“New Monkees” was borne out of the wave of nostalgia for the original “The Monkees” TV series, which reached its twentieth anniversary in 1986: MTV’s marathon showing of “Monkees” episodes on 23^rd February that year spurred a revival that kept the show on the air, drawing more attention to the band’s current 20th Anniversary tour. (Michael Nesmith was absent from the tour, but his media projects at the time, including a music video show for Nickelodeon in 1980, “PopClips,” gave him a claim to having invented MTV.)

Now that TV had caught up with the original show, with MTV, blue screen special effects, and a postmodernist mixing of styles, a remake of the show was begun, with a new band picked after auditioning over five thousand people. The group that appeared on screen were both actors and musicians from the start: Larry Saltis, Dino Kovas, Jared Chandler and Marty Ross, the last of which was already a musician with a band named The Wigs, before becoming a prolific composer for film and TV.

Having seen the first episode of “New Monkees” in a very soft-pictured, off-broadcast VHS copy posted to YouTube – the show has never been released on home video in any format – I can see it is as “Eighties” as “The Monkees” was “Sixties.” Bits of it play out like you are watching MTV, with the band name, song name and record company appearing in one corner of the screen when each song begins. There is an odd scene where the band talks about how they were inspired by The Monkees, but it feels like they were being interviewed for “Entertainment Tonight.” Old out-of-context black and white film clips are played for comic effect. The band lives in a giant pastel-coloured house that looks like a hi-fi system. They have a crusty English butler, and a computer that runs the house that is almost like Holly from “Red Dwarf,” but looks like the lips from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” then crossed with “Max Headroom.”

While the plot of the first episode was as inconsequential as the original show – it looked to be like they were trying to get rid of miniature clouds that were raining in the house (which is, by the way, a house they never seem to leave) – the main cause of the show feels like building a fanbase, then selling albums to it although, with only the first episode to go on, this may not have been how it eventually played out on screen. However, if the original Monkees borrowed from The Beatles, the New Monkees appeared to go with Mr. Mister and, even then, more like “Kyrie” than “Broken Wings.” You wonder why they used the name “Monkees,” except to achieve success through brand association – it would be like S Club 7 calling themselves The New Bay City Rollers.

As it turned out, the “Monkees” name sunk the whole “New Monkees” project, as it resulted in a court case with the original band, but by the time that was settled out of court, the nostalgia train had moved on for both bands. With little media available for the band, their subsequent appearances have been in nostalgic meet-and-greets from those that still remember their short run – their first live performance would not be until 2007, with another ten years later. Their latest concert, in February 2019, was held the Pig ‘n Whistle restaurant in Los Angeles, alongside original Monkee Micky Dolenz, enough water having flowed under the bridge. However, if another episode of “New Monkees” appears online, it may only be of historical interest, just like the nostalgia that gave birth to it.

BUT I’D RATHER STAY ON THE SOFA [184]

In his video review of the “Huge Screen ver. 2,” a cheap LCD game, Dr. Stuart Ashen wondered if he would have a good time playing it. “Yeah I know it’s not going to happen. Join me after the break.” The screen fades to black. A caption appears: “There are no advertisement breaks. This is the internet.” The previous shot fades back in: “Oh yeah, that was weird. Thought I was on television for a moment. Hmm, I’d probably know I was on television because I’d be being paid.”

This video was posted to YouTube on 25^th October 2010. Nine years and over 400,000 views later, I’m watching it on my television, preceded by an ad for the National Lottery. I only came across the “ashens” channel over a month ago – the first video I came across was the “Chicken in a Can,” a lunch / autopsy hybrid that included the bones and giblets. At that point, the channel had 774 videos available – diving into it is like deciding your next box set to watch will be “Coronation Street”.

I am beginning to think that “ashens” – subtitled “Comedy, Technology, Idiocy” - may well be the archetypal YouTube channel. It is almost as old as YouTube itself, and has evolved both with it and because of it – what must have started as a bit of fun became a career because the platform evolved to accommodate the more professional videos people have posted to it. YouTube is not social media, it is public access television, in the same way that Facebook and Twitter are really publishers.

Ashen’s first video on the channel was “The Truth About Open Source,” a skit made using action figures and computer effects, about why you should pay for licensed software. It is typical of the short, funny videos people first placed on YouTube, when people were testing it to see what worked there – not everyone can put up their day at the zoo. It was posted on 25^th February 2006, only two months after the platform officially launched, and nine months before it was bought by Google. Video resolution was only 320 x 240 pixels, and a ten-minute limit on video length was imposed to deter the pirated upload of TV shows, although you could post longer videos if you respected YouTube’s terms of service.

Widescreen was introduced in November 2008, prompting Ashen to post a video warning YouTube about the sides of the screen they were now exposing: “That’s where the monsters live... that one’s got a hat on.” By this point, the other type of videos he posted became more prominent, as they were elsewhere on the platform: show-and-tell reviews of products, mostly bad ones, framed against the stage of a brown sofa. His second video was the first of the “Pop Station” LCD game consoles, endlessly rehashing poor games with incoherently-translated instructions, but it would take two years for these occasional videos, co-existing with Noseybonk and other sketches, before it would gain the “Hello” opening title card they have used to this day.

I would not normally watch “unboxing” videos, but if you base these types of videos around obscure or poor technology, mundane or badly made “tat” from Poundland, and exotic or expired food and drink, there is much scope to apply dry wit and sarcasm to what you uncover. Because Ashen’s videos are usually unscripted, they usually also serve as their own “reaction” videos, a category of YouTube video that is also prevalent – I am aware that someone did a video reacting to the “chicken in a can” video, in the perfect example of media eating itself.

However, Ashen has continued to make space for comedy, adding an edge to the unscripted reviews. For example, a video that involved clearing a drawer of items to be reviewed contains a sketch about creating the dice that will determine the fate of the objects, loading their eventual destruction with great symbolism. One video was ended by sticking a cartoon frog into a corner while bizarre music played, because it can be done. One review, for a toy violin, was abandoned and re-recorded because Ashen broke down laughing at the poorly translated English on the box, explaining that master violin creators were “nicolas, Marty,” “Antonio Stella bottom tile,” and “ji plug pu – melon nai” – the two videos have a total of nearly two million views between them.

I am aware I haven’t mentioned the feature films yet – the science fiction fantasy comedy “Ashens and the Quest for the Game Child” (2013), and the upcoming “Ashens and the Polybius Heist”. You know you have done well when you can raise the money to make your own film, but when you can get Robert Llewellyn from “Red Dwarf,” and Warwick Davis from “Celebrity Squares,” you name must have some cachet. Oh, and the books: “Terrible Old Games You’ve Probably Never Heard Of,” and “Attack of the Flickering Skeletons: More Terrible Old Games You’ve Probably Never Heard Of.”

(...And how could I forget to mention “Chanticleer Hegemony,” a Pop Station LCD game that featured on a box, but not inside it, and was tracked down after five years, only to find it was literally a cockfighting game, because that was something someone made.)

As Ashen explained on the BBC’s “Newsnight” in 2015, when the word “unboxing” made it into the Oxford English Dictionary, the ultimate reason for doing these videos is because people want to watch them:

“I think when, in the past, when you wanted to buy a new product, you would be very led by advertising, the only things you could see would be in adverts, or perhaps in a very controlled environment, like a shop, whereas people like the raw honesty of just, here is a box, and here inside is what you will get if you buy it, and if we can make that entertaining while we show people it, it’s all good.”

This is the point where YouTube became a professional platform, as in people could begin earning a living from their work. The partner program that began in May 2007 currently pays revenue to channels with more than a thousand subscribers, and more than four thousand hours of time spent watching their videos within 12 months – the latter requirement was added in 2018, a consequence of both the increased number of channels with multiple subscribers, but also the increasing professional standard of the videos posted, as watching online video eats away at traditional television – any video scoring over 100,000 views within a week is already beating most television audiences on satellite and cable television in the UK, and anything over a million views is approaching BBC Two and Channel 4 primetime figures.

I am glad that the YouTube algorithm somehow suggested “ashens” to me, as I haven’t laughed so much in a long time – that can be put down mostly to the toy violin. What it has taught me is that if you think you have a video something that people find funny, put it out there, and make sure they know about it. I should try it myself - if a comic monologue can be wrenched from jelly beans, I could make a video explaining how Quorn could be made in more interesting shapes, then present a blue pyramid of the stuff.

However, to start a career on YouTube, I would need to start by posting at least ten videos, of ten minutes in length, that would get at least 2,400 views each year, with everyone watching to the end, with nearly half of them deciding to subscribe for future content – that is the minimum before I even see a penny from YouTube, unless I get sponsorship. Perhaps, I should make something for fun first.