The Mosquito, we learnt yesterday, is a high-pitched device, undetectable by the rest of the population, designed to disperse those under 20. I have always thought BBC Three very similar, except it is designed to repel anybody over 40. Indeed, under its new controller, Danny Cohen, it seems to want to further its policy of age apartheid by turning itself into “a fully joined-up multiplatform venture” aimed at “the habits and preferences of its key audience, 16 to 34s”. From yesterday the channel was simulcast on the net and you can upload videos on to its website (I thought that was what YouTube was for). The friendly Plasticine blobs that used to introduce programmes have gone in favour of plastic piping spelling out “three”.
Imagine my surprise then to find myself enjoying to an almost indecent degree Phoo Action, the first of a series of one-off dramas on the channel, and surely set to become a series. It was a sci-fi comic-book parody that in its zest and determination to work for both adults and children reminded me of the old Adam West Batman series. Apparently it hails from a comic strip by Jamie Hewlett, the co-creator of Tank Girl and Gorillaz, and first appeared in dearly departed magazine The Face. Who knew?
It is set in London in 2012 where the latest terrorist threat comes from a gang of mutants called the Freebies. The Freebies bump off the Queen and kidnap the Royal princes, mercilessly played as a couple of mindless hoorays. Enthroned instead is Jimmy Freebie, who looks like Zippy from Rainbow and has a habit of telling people to look him in the eye, which is hard since he doesn’t have one. As the American police chief Benjamin Benson (Carl Weathers), says: “It stinks like a dirty dog’s doughnut.”
Phoo’s heroes are a diminutive martial-arts fighter named Terry Phoo (Eddie Shin), possibly the incompetent offspring of the Pink Panther’s Cato, and a teenager from hell called Whitey (Jaime Winstone). She is like Toyah Wilcox without the finishing-school manners and although, as her name suggests, she is white, she is also the daughter of the extremely black Chief Benson. The dynamic duo are armed only with a Buddah’s loin cloth that transforms itself into a pair of hotpants from which Whitey pulls out anything she may need.
All expense has been spared on the sets and costumes. The mutants look as if they are wearing masks. But great care has been taken by the writers Mat Wakeham, Peter Martin and Jessica Hynes to cram jokes into every line and frame. The BBC news ticker, for example, rushes by too fast to read but if you pause it you discover gems such as: “Jackanory host indicted for perjury”, “Police probe causes minor injury” and, my favourite, “Stuff happens: people react.”
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In 2012 everything is just that bit cruder. So a cereal is Smak Crak Plop & Plop, and the BBC’s royal funeral coverage promises, “all the glamour, all the grief”. One thing is intact, however, royal sycophancy. Commentating on the investiture of Jimmy Freebie, the normally needlessly aggressive Glaswegian anchorman spews: “He has won our hearts. He has won our minds. He is one of us and he is now one of them.”
So there is me, at 50, lapping this up. And there, according to the press, is Lily Allen making such a hash recording her first BBC Three chat show that a third of the invited audience of cool young dudes walks out. Perhaps there is something wrong with this Mosquito’s settings. All I know is that there was more intelligence and flair in BBC Three’s Phoo Action than in the other channels’ flagships last night combined.
Horizon (BBC Two) had possibly its worst edition ever, a jokey analysis of how we make decisions, full of pop science and experiments conductedwithout peer review. Having found a mathematician who claimed he could make a formula for every decision, it warned us not to let our emotions cloud our judgment, but then asked us not to ignore our intuition because, wait for it, some scientist had proved we can see into the future.
Mind you, anyone could when it came to BBC One’s serial Mistresses, which came to a cloying close last night (except in Scotland) with many a sisterly hug and tear. I correctly predicted in this space six weeks ago almost every plot development. But then so did you.
OUT OF THE BOX
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Lily Allen’s chat show was not available before transmission so I must not prejudge it. I consider it unlikely, however, that it will fulfil one of the young lady’s ambitions, which is to interview the Queen. She would ask her about Diana, Princess of Wales, she says temptingly. So with Parky gone, Her Majesty will have to choose from Jonathan Ross, Lily Allen and Charlotte Church, whose disastrous chat show appears to be set for another run on C4 this summer.
Life is full of minor irritations and a colleague has just pointed me to another. Five does not do a full late-night news bulletin but does run a mini headline service to stop us flipping over. That’s fine except, I am told, it fools the nation’s Sky Plus recorders into thinking the programme it is recording is over. “So I get half the film every bloody time,” my friend says.