Digital TV Blog

Human Interest or Human Freakshow?

Sometimes, watching TV here amid the comforts of the 21st Century makes me feel like we’ve somehow slipped back in time to an age of Victorian values if recent late evening viewing is anything to go by. Producers in telly land have seemingly tapped into a hitherto uncharted audience demographic – freakshow and body horror enthusiasts.

The year zero of this televisual fixation can probably be traced to Channel 4’s Bodyshock series, which began in 2003 and has being going strong ever since; this year the series brought us The Girl with Eight Limbs: Goddess, about Lakshmi Tatama from India who was actually a one of a pair of conjoined twins, and I am the Elephant Man concerning Huang Chuncai from China, who had a 20 kilogram tumour growing out of his face.

Next was Bizarre ER on BBC Three, a documentary filmed on location in the A&E ward of Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, which showcased a series of wince-inducing testicle related injuries and golf ball attacks to the mouth. The tone was generally less sympathetic to those who were born with deformities, complete with ha-ha animated diagrams of the three most common types of testicular injury.

Channel 4 later struck back with a documentary called Living Doll: My Fake Baby, about women who keep ultra-realistic dolls in lieu of actually having real children. Perhaps sensing that it was being outdone in the bad taste stakes, last night Five waded in with Strangelove, a shocker which detailed the obsession of a pair of self-described “mechaphiles,” men who love their cars perhaps a bit too much.

What would Mary Whitehouse say? Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story (BBC Two) was a 90-minute piece on the self-appointed guardian of taste and decency, which took a look at her apparent humourous side, and portrayed her as a David versus the BBC’s Goliath - Maybe that was the joke. Chances are she would have denounced all of the above without having watched any of them beforehand.

They’ll be back

The pilot episode of successful Terminator spin-off serial The Sarah Connor Chronicles debuted on Virgin 1 last Friday, raising the bar for the channel’s viewing figures, drawing in 642,000 viewers on its initial broadcast, and a further 744,000 on the later +1 timeshift run, beating the 323,000 number of viewers who tuned in on the channel’s opening night.

The show is set directly after the events of the second Terminator movie, and sees Lena Headey and Thomas Dekker, playing the respective roles of Sarah and John Connor, on the run again after they realise that their previous efforts merely delayed the creation of Skynet and Judgement Day. The pilot episode features the appearance of a new T-888 assassin who tracks down John at his new school, and another protector filling the Arnie role this time in the form of a beautiful teenage girl.

The series, broadcasts in the States last month, has generally been well received by critics and audiences alike, and is a real coup for Virgin Media, who want Virgin 1 along with Living, to become a prime UK channel in the vein of Five, Sky One, and C4 etc.

In other movie spin-off news, Virgin also snapped up the broadcast rights to Blade: The Series, which, although only running for one season, attracted a cult following when it was shown in the US.

and E4 Skins up a second series

Today sees the first broadcast of institutional antipodean hit soap Neighbours on Five, after becoming a cornerstone of BBC1 viewing figures for more than 20 years. Luckily for those who had managed to timetable their weekdays around the 1.35 PM broadcast have only got to put themselves out by another ten minutes – the show will air at the new mid-day time of 1.45PM and will be rebroadcast again at the traditional 5.30 PM showing.

As of yet, five.tv isnt showing anything Ramsay Street related – the appropriate link on the site instead directs you to Neighbours.com You could always Sky+ it.

In other new soap broadcast news, if you’ve somehow missed the Channel 4’s blitzkrieg promotion, series 2 of Skins ballet dances its way onto digital screens on E4 tonight, and unlike Neighbours, the full pilot episode of the new series is already available to watch at e4.com/skins.