Bodyguard: A Lifeline for Introverts with Nothing to Say

There were lots of things I liked about the BBC's Bodyguard.

I liked that it presented a woman above the age of 23 as desirable (admittedly she was blown to pieces twenty minutes later, but it's a start). I liked, too, how Richard Madden was so good that he made every other actor look like a member of the public who'd won a competition. But what I liked most about Bodyguard was its popularity. With almost eight million tuning in each week, the show was undeniably 'event TV': where lots of people watch something the moment it’s broadcast. 

I find event TV rather exciting. It doesn’t really matter if I’m enjoying the programme - knowing millions of others are watching the exact same thing gives me a tingly feeling, probably similar to when British nationalists see the white cliffs, or people, of Dover. 

Event TV: like pins and needles times-two, or falling in love divided by a thousand.

However, over the last decade, it’s become increasingly rare for the whole nation to be watching the same thing at the same time. We’ve drifted away from the telly and towards ‘devices’, which offer a frankly ridiculous amount of content that we’re unlikely to be watching simultaneously. They’re addictive, too. Nowadays if I were to experience a tingling sensation I’d probably just assume my phone was vibrating and grab at my pockets in a ferrel panic, like a military general who’s suddenly realised he’s misplaced the nuclear codes.

With the rise of ‘content’ and the fall of event TV, we’ve started to share less and less as a culture. Upsettingly, this has meant there are far fewer reliable topics of conversation. Back in the day you could mutter something generic about The X Factor (“None of them can sing anyway”; “Why does Louis always get the groups?”; “I hope the giant flying X from the intro sequence never becomes a reality”) and there was a 90% chance people would know what you were talking about. It was a conversational cheat code – a free pass to communicating with another human being without screaming or being sick, which as an introvert is my default response.

Sure-fire conversational gold.

But these days I don’t have time to watch The X Factor, because apparently ‘this video of boiling industrial glue being poured into a duck’s eyes is the most satisfying thing ever’, which means I’ll be watching that instead. Of course, it’s not clear whether they mean satisfying for the viewer or for the duck, but seeing how stressed it’s made me, I can only assume it’s the duck.

Unfortunately, I can’t talk to anyone about the duck video because no-one I know has seen it. They’ve all been made anxious by some other ‘most satisfying thing ever’ video. The world’s first sentient lemon being sliced in half with a bin lid; a cow’s eyes being sewn shut with strawberry lace. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that, at the behest of an algorithm, we’ve all been shown something completely different.

Admittedly I could try and talk about what I’ve seen on Netflix, but there’s a high chance I’ll give away some sort of spoiler and be instantly glassed. And that’s if my friends and I are watching the same series. Like Facebook, Netflix tries to show you content based on your online activity, usually through oddly-worded, highly-specific recommendations. Apparently I’m into ‘irreverent British dramas with a strong female lead and at least two anthropomorphic bears who hug at some point between the twenty and forty minute mark’. Who knows what my friends are seeing?

I mean what are they going to talk about over dinner?

Because of this, over the past few years I’ve resorted to increasingly broad topics of conversation in my attempts to communicate (“So many colours these days”; “What’s the deal with concepts?”), and, if I’m honest, it’s been stressful. I’ve often wondered whether I should just scream and be sick. At least if the other person is an introvert it’ll give us some common ground. 

Bodyguard, though, made things simple again. For the last six weeks, group conversations could be dealt with just by getting someone to stand on a chair in the middle of the room and announce that it was “very brave to kill off a major character in episode 3”. It was the “Shane really struggled with rock week” of 2018. A powerful, unifying statement, up there with “change we need” (Obama, B. 2008)  and “yes we can” (The Builder, B. 2001). In essence, Bodyguard provided the kind of social cohesion David Cameron was aiming for with his ‘big society’, except no-one had to go round washing swans or pushing hoodies into combine harvesters, which is I think what he had in mind.

 

How I feel when I have to talk to someone.

The sad news is, Bodyguard’s international rights have been sold to Netflix, and there are concerns that a potential second series may be shown on the streaming service rather than the BBC. However, it's been suggested the deal won't go that far, as writer Jed Mercurio supports the BBC like a hyper-competitive dad at a sports day (not his exact words). 

This means, despite Netflix's all-consuming growth, Bodyguard 2 may still be event TV. And wouldn't that just be the most satisfying thing ever?

 

 Adrian 

From Friends to Upstart Crow - What Went Wrong with the Studio Sitcom?

I’m not great at watching comedy these days. I’m trying to become a comedy writer myself, so often if something’s funny I just burst into tears or start frothing at the mouth out of jealousy. If a show is truly exquisite I might even kick stuff over. After an episode of Brass Eye you’d be forgiven for thinking a feral boar has run amok in my living room, giving me rabies in the process.

Fortunately, this wasn’t a problem when I sat down to watch series three of Upstart Crow - BBC Two’s Shakespearian sitcom starring David Mitchell. It’s a clumsy, dated affair that feels like a bad Mitchell and Webb sketch drawn out over half an hour.

I miss Peep Show.

It also assumes knowledge of Shakespeare, and the first episode is rife with nudge-wink references to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. These feel a bit snobbish, but any intellectual superiority is dramatically undermined by the show’s obsession with bum, willy and poo jokes. The humour is so staggeringly childish that Bottom at one point says the word ‘turd’ and it brings the house down. 

It’s a weird experience, feeling looked down upon by something with the maturity of a Tweenie. In fact the bizarre mishmash of high and low-brow makes Upstart Crow a bit of a roller coaster. One minute you feel stupid for not knowing what kind of socks Othello wore, the next minute you’re watching a man in a wig produce an extended metaphor on ejaculation. It’s like if my most condescending Cambridge professors had delivered their lectures in clown suits, punctuating every sentence by collapsing onto a whoopee cushion.  

Despite the quality of jokes, the studio audience provide the kind of disproportionate laughs you'd expect terrified North Korean officials to give Kim Jong-un if he started quipping about a new execution method. Who are they, I wonder? How tough are their lives that Liza Tarbuck shouting ‘fanny’ is the highlight of their week?

This was my expression too.

Now, I'm aware that Upstart Crow isn't really aimed at me. It’s not aimed at anyone my age. In fact, I think broadcasters have decided that young people don’t want studio sitcoms (those filmed in front of an audience) at all.

Why? Maybe they think we’re so isolated and anxious that we’d assume the sound of the audience laughing was inside our own heads and have a nervous breakdown. To be honest if you’re going to commission shows on the basis of millennials not having nervous breakdowns you’re fighting a losing battle, but the channels persist.

Look at the BBC studio sitcoms that have been commissioned in the last few years: Upstart Crow, Mrs Brown’s Boys, Still Open All Hours, Porridge, Count Arthur Strong, The Bigley Sisters, Cruisers, All The Way To Limbo. I made the last three up. But you didn’t notice. You don’t watch any of them. They’re for old people. They’re nostalgic non-coms aimed at soothing the 20% of the population in partial comas. 

May as well be real.

And of course, BBC Three, the ‘youth’ channel, hasn’t commissioned anything with a studio audience in about eight years, and is basically just PSHE-themed animated gifs. The message is clear. Young people don’t want studio sitcoms. They want Jack Whitehall and 3-minute documentaries about skin disease.

Sadly, all this is wrong. Young people do want studio sitcoms, and I’ve got the proof to prove it (should be a valid expression IMO). You see it was recently announced that the most popular show on Netflix is Friends, a studio sitcom. In fact it’s not just the most popular show on Netflix, it’s the most popular show across all streaming services. While I’m not going to argue that streaming is the preserve of young people, I feel like the kind of people who watch Upstart Crow probably don’t own an Amazon Fire Stick. In fact if you told them about the Amazon Fire Stick they’d probably panic and say something politically incorrect about ‘tribes’.
 

Weirdly the best picture I could find.

Friends’ online popularity shows us that young people aren’t opposed to comedy with a laugh track. We don’t kick off because it’s filmed in front of some excitable mums who whoop at anything that moves, nor because it’s longer than twenty seconds and doesn’t have a clickbait title (“These New Yorkers went to the same café every day for ten years and the internet can’t handle it”). Execute a studio sitcom with the warmth, joy and sheer quality of Friends and we’ll happily use it as comfort food fifteen years after it’s finished.

Obviously I’ll be too busy punching furniture and shouting ‘it’s not fair’ to watch it properly, but that’s the biggest compliment I can give.