The Daily Cartoon

Did you watch the Oz and James wine show on BBC2 today? They obviously get on pretty well and it’s one of those programs where you think hang on, should the BBC licence fee really be funding an extended holiday in France? Oz got to see his brother and James admitted he was having a whizzo time. But the proof of the program is in the watching, and though like James I could complain I’ve learnt nothing about wine, I spend an interesting hour in the company of a couple of English eccentrics. So it can’t all be bad, though sending a complete wine novice to a high powered chateau for a tasting didn’t work on any level. A tentative thumbs up and we’ll see what happens when they enter Burgundy and drive up to Champagne.

Have you seen the Michael Richards/Kramer standup video? It brings up a whole host of issues that are as intriguing as they are controversial.

Many people have immediately branded Michael Richards a racist - on the surface can this be denied? - but let’s not prejudge the issue and let’s make a deeper analysis of the situation.

So we have a comic who has made racist remarks. Does that immediately make him a racist? Are there any facts in his defense at all, or none at all?

The fact that he is a comic - a performer - is relevant. He is trying to make people laugh, a well-known way of doing which is to make outrageous and unpalateable statements. It is a basic position of satire that people pretend to be what they are not. This goes right back to the Roman satirist Juvenal, which brings up the question - was this episode racist or bad satire?

Good satire makes people see themselves from another angle, makes them glimpse a truth that they have hidden. It usually does this through humor - but not always. Parodying views that the writer or performer doesn’t hold is the first tool of satire.

So - Kramer speaks racist words. We have seen that that is not a de facto sign of racism. However, satire needs a point, an aim, it needs to puncture views and help people see things from a different - better? - perspective.

Does Kramer do this? The answer is no.  Kramer has let the satirical arrow slip and become merely offensive. Does that make him racist?
Only he can know that.

Did you see spooks last week? It’s an hour of exciting TV and it is enjoyable, but I can’t help feel that I’m watching a cut price Jack Bauer running around - they’ve even got the split screens! It was ridiculous that one of the spies was chasing a baddie along a pavement, no one else around and he didn’t shoot at him to stop him escaping. Surely even in genteel England our spies have guns? I like to think they do anyway. Or are we being protecting by men saying please don’t do it, please don’t do it, I’ll be your best friend if you don’t blow up Birmingham? I know we’re wishy washy liberals in Europe, but that’s taking it too far.

I wonder when the next Jack Bauer extravaganza is out in the UK. My brain tells me it’s nonsense, but it’s very exciting, addictive nonsense.

Question -  What’s the most episodes of 24 you have watched back to back? Has anyone out there watched all 24 in a go?!

Caveat - I watch it in the gym with the sound down.  maybe the sound makes all the difference.

But I doubt it.  There’s a choice of people buying things at a car boot sale and then…selling them at another car boot sale. Or four women laughing at whatever one of their number has said and then petting a man who has been wheeled on to be interviewed.  Or a soap opera about a hospital. What is going on? Is there an assumption that people who watch TV during the day are brain dead?

Are you enjoying the BBC’s latest period drama Jane Eyre? At the start I thought Toby Stephens would be horribly miscast as Rochester, too young, too good looking, but it looks like genius now! His Rochester is gruff and suffering internally, almost more succesfully as there is little clear physical reason. But doesn’t he sound like Hugh Grant?! Jane Eyre herself is a great part for an actress and Ruth Wilson makes the most of it, able to project Jane’s unhappy childhood even through her attraction to Rochester

Second albums are always difficult, but this should have been left at one series and everyone could have smiled and said nice idea, conceptually elegant. But series two is - unfortunately - not cutting the mustard. The ’stars’ that humble themselves now have meaningless cameos. Stephen Merchant’s wide-eyed agent is out of some other more outre production. Andy’s workplace sitcom takes up too much of the 30 minutes show and his meetings with Maggie have to be contrived now that he is no longer an extra.

Where they stray into brilliance is the dissection of the British media and the way a ’story’ that never existed grew to fill daytime TV slots and radio phone ins.

>> Still better than much on TV, but losing focus and not utilising it’s great strength (the catching of big names to appear) to the full. If it is only designed to tell us that Ricky believes he would have made a much better Office if he’d had more control, it is a long winded way of doing it.