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Weekend Top Ten #534

Top Ten Tom Cruise Films

So we return once again to the well of Listing an Actor’s Fillums. I quite like doing this, although I do wonder if it’s just going to show up glaring gaps in my film knowledge because I haven’t seen, say, Born on the Fourth of July. But anyway! Let’s plough on!

Tom Cruise, what a guy, eh? One of these genuinely larger-than-life actors, not just a movie star but a force of nature – the living manifestation of destiny, if you will. He’s legitimately good – Oscar-worthy – but he also has with him an aura of other-worldliness. Frankly, what he does seems not just impossible, but, like, implausible. He could make movies without jumping off things. He really could! It’s true! Adam Sandler manages it. But Cruise still does all these crazy things; he can’t fight like Iko Uwais or Donnie Yen – or even Keanu Reeves – but he still manages to pull off scenes that are just insane to behold. His films are events, and even if he’s making sequels to a beloved franchise, really the franchise is Tom Cruise Films.

So he’s a cool, charismatic leading man, with genuine acting chops, who somehow manages to always one-up himself in terms of a unwavering commitment to physically and mentally taxing stunt work (including, let’s not forget, flying jets for real in Top Gun: Maverick). But at the same time he tends to operate at this level of remove. We can’t fault him for his desire for privacy, but even setting aside specifics, he approaches everything with an almost messianic zeal and rictus grin that is, for some, off-putting. Whatever attributes he has – and to be clear, I like him a lot as an actor – he’s not really in that warm and fuzzy Tom Hanks zone, or even the nice-guy action hero mode of, say, Christ Hemsworth (I’m leaving that typo in because I have decided now that Jesus looks like this). He’s like this Hollywood monolith, immense and fascinating but also, in a funny way, alien and unrelatable. He does impossible things for odd reasons but they also, for the most part, turn out to be really, really great.

And here are my ten favourite films of his.

A Few Good Men (1992): oooh, an Aaron Sorkin film tops the list, big surprise David. But this really is an all-timer. A superb – superb – script, fantastically orchestrated by Rob Reiner at the height of his powers, a cast to die for, and Cruise at his best, channelling his two great attributes – cocky wankerism and earnest, soulful humanism – to weapons-grade effect.

The Mission: Impossible Franchise (1996-2024): gah, already I cheat. Yes, I don’t really see the point in splitting the franchise; there would probably be two or three separate films here otherwise. But Cruise’s performance as Ethan Hunt is probably the most iconic of his career, as he acts suave and cool whilst running up things or diving off them or clinging onto them. The variety of tones and styles and the increasingly bonkers stuntwork helps define a franchise that is going to be nearly thirty years old when Cruise finally bows out of it, and arguably has produced better films than Bond or Bourne. Oh, and for the record – with a re-watch sorely needed – I’d rank them Fallout, 1, Rogue, Ghost, 2, 3.

Rain Man (1988): arguably the hardest and most successful performance of his career, opposite Dustin Hoffman’s attention-sucking turn. Hoffman got all the plaudits back in the day, but Cruise’s slow-burn shift from, basically, entitled shit to empathetic and melancholy carer is beautifully, organically, realistically played out – and, I’d argue, has aged better.

Collateral (2004): Cruise has rarely played proper baddies (I’d love to see him in a Tarantino film), but he’s cool as ice here, with his salt-and-pepper do, coercing Jamie Foxx into driving him round an ice-cold pitch-black LA as he goes from kill to kill. A tense, gorgeous film, but a great performance from Cruise as the slick assassin.

Edge of Tomorrow (2014): cruise has an ease with charm and/or smarm, and often subverts it in interesting ways; such as the opening of this film, when he’s the slippery coward getting by on his flash and pomp. This gives way to earnest, hard-won heroism as the film progresses, but it’s a bold move; as is the trippy time-loop plot. Thoroughly underrated, this is probably the closest a Cruise film comes to “cult classic”.

Minority Report (2002): there’s a cold, aloof slickness to Spielberg’s direction in this one – lots of glass and lens flare and a desaturated palette – as Cruise’s grieving cop goes on the run. Cruise is very good at running, one of cinema’s all-time great runners, and he deploys that skill to fantastic effect here, managing to feel like the endangered everyman resorting to all manner of freaky sci-fi trickery to clear his name. Feels a little undersung, this one, despite its pedigree; those funky stun-guns deserve a lot of praise.

Magnolia (1999): a dense and complex ensemble of mixed emotions and varying degrees of tragedy, Cruise is shocking as the utterly hateful self-help guru preaching misogynistic bollocks to his crowds of arsehole followers. Yes, yes, we all remember his dialogue and all the swears, but it’s how his layers are gradually unpeeled by the plot that really hits home.

Jerry Maguire (1996): another case of Cruise undermining his own cool image, here as an agent in the midst of an existential crisis. He owns this film, carries it entirely, with a performance that is almost all outward bluster and internal angst, frantically struggling to keep above water. He utterly sells it, makes Jerry a compelling and convincing character, and I don’t care how cheesy it is, “you had me at hello” always makes me cry.

Tropic Thunder (2008): another shocking and surprising supporting turn from Cruise, here displaying comic chops we rarely see. His performance as an utterly awful mogul might have dated a bit, post-Weinstein, but it’s so completely out-there it has to be seen to be believed. In a film full of out-there stuff, it fits right in, and serves as an indication that Cruise has more range than he’s often given credit for.

Eyes Wide Shut (1999): a very strange and divisive film, I really love how Cruise’s intense, internalised doctor carries the narrative just by wandering round strange places, meeting strange people, and seeing some very strange things. It’s an entirely reactive performance with no show or bluster, very languid, almost serene; the calm centre in a storm of batshit intensity and soft porn shenanigans.

4 notes - Posted May 28, 2022

Weekend Top Ten #529

Top Ten Channel 4 Programmes

I’ve said this many times, but because I often like to tie these lists to things that are happening in the real world, or at least specific dates, it sometimes means that I shunt things around, or have a good idea but it has to get pushed back a bit to make room. So it was a couple of weeks ago, when The Powers That Be decided that for entirely partisan reasons, Channel 4 would be privatised. Like many others, I don’t think this is a good idea; Channel 4 has been home to some remarkable telly for the last thirty-odd years, and the way its funded and the way it develops programmes is not only special and unique, but it’s also specifically designed to foster and promote home-grown content (from the private sector, no less!). Quite simply, I can’t think of an economic or creative reason to privatise Channel 4, unless you stood to gain personally from its sale, or if you felt its exemplary news coverage would become more cowed and fearful under a corporate hand.

Hmmm.

Anyway, all this news has kind of blown over for a bit, as we focus once again on horrors abroad and righteous fury here at home. But it stuck with me, because I wanted to do something to celebrate, to praise Channel 4. For most of my life – certainly the bits where I think of me as me, which is to say from about the age of ten onwards – Channel 4 has been my favourite channel. It showed edgier stuff, funnier stuff; great home-grown comedies and quiz shows, awesome imported stuff. There was a while there where 6pm on a weeknight was almost guaranteed to give you some good stuff, and the whole “comedy from 9pm” thing on a Friday night was a reason to stay in when I was still too young to go out. They showed great films (hell, they made great films), they had interesting and provocative dramas, and – this is genuinely important – sometimes they were a bit rude.

More than just the quality of their programming, though, they shaped me, helped me foster my own identity. I very quickly gravitated towards Channel 4 and BBC2 as I entered my teens, finding interest and solace in the quirkier and edgier stuff they offered, away from the mainstream. Below you’ll find ten series that I adored, and that were hugely influential, and I’ll try to explain why; but beyond that, Channel 4 was a window to a wider world. I graduated from Roald Dahl to stuff like Michael Crichton and Stephen King almost overnight, I started reading Empire magazine, and I’d watch weird films on Channel 4, strange documentaries, programmes fronted by Jonathan Ross, who’d interview scabrous comedians I’d never heard of. It’s all wrapped up, for me, with discovering Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith, with hearing Jarvis Cocker and Nick Cave for the first time. Channel 4 was the gateway drug to adolescence, and I don’t know what that would be for kids nowadays. TikTok, presumably.

So here we go. Ten programmes from a fantastic channel. Oh, and by the way, they’ve got so much good stuff to choose from, that I’ve specifically isolated home-grown hits. Stuff commissioned (as far as I understand it) by Channel 4 themselves. Perhaps later I’ll do one about acquisitions and foreign imports, because the importance of watching US comedies on a Friday night can not be overstated. But that’s why Friends isn’t on the list.

Spaced (1999-2001): I came to this a little late, after it had wrapped up, but it immediately became an all-timer. Not just the way it nailed both late-nineties life (all videogames and X-Files posters), not just its depiction of early adulthood, and not just its hilarious scripts, full of clever wordplay, pop culture references, and great gags. It was the style of it all. There was ambition here exploding every which way, with young creatives who wanted to seize it all. it was unlike anything I’d seen on British TV, and in a way it still is; it’s sort of unsurprising that so many of its architects have gone on to be legitimate Hollywood talents, although it’ll always be weird for me to see Tim From Spaced stood next to Tom Cruise.

Vic Reeves Big Night Out (1990-91): “What’s at the end of the stick, Vic?!” Talk about stuff you’ve never seen before, this was a revelation. The most surreal, hilarious, and just plain daft comedy show imaginable; strange games, odd masks, glorious Teesside accents. I was immediately hooked on this weirdo done up like a fifties lounge singer and his strange compatriots, and I followed Vic and Bob avidly from that moment on. they might have refined the act in The Smell of… but its glorious, ramshackle origins were something to behold.

Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace (2004): another one I didn’t see till later (quite a bit later, as it was introduced to me when I was at CITV) but blimey, what a good ‘un. Like Spaced, it’s astounding how well it was put together, the pitch-perfect spoof of cheesy eighties TV, of horror movies, of pulp horror; but also just the comedy, the silliness, the gags. In a way it was straighter than Spaced but also more arch, more surreal; moments like the bicycle chase are seared in my brain, lines like “I know writers who use subtext, and they’re all cowards” still generate a giggle. And what a cast!

Father Ted (1995-98): not a revolutionary new format like Spaced or Darkplace, but as a traditional old-school sitcom, Father Ted was nigh-on perfect. Four perfectly cast leads, and – in Ted and Dougal – one of the great self-important buffoon/absolute colossal idiot double-acts of all time. With an Irish background, and having spent a lot of time over there, the various gags about parochialism, Irish culture, and Catholicism really hit home. Above all, though, it’s funny; it’s a bit surreal, it’s got a slightly nasty streak, but basically it’s hilarious. And for that I do have to give credit to Graham Linehan; his script, with Arthur Matthews, is genius, and makes his subsequent descent into batshit bigotry all the more upsetting.

Brass Eye (1997-2001): I’ve always loved fake news; or, rather, programmes that purported to be real. Here we have it done expertly, in a way I’d never seen before. The cod-seriousness, the sensational headlines, the stories that were only just too silly… but mostly it was the pranks and the stunts, the roping in of hapless celebrities, the “made up drug” of it all. It was genius, true, and it was done so damn well; but as a teenager, I adored it because I got the joke. I understood what it was doing and why, and that made me feel smart at an age when you like to feel you’ve gotten there under your own steam.

Whose Line is it Anyway? (1988-99): nothing fancy here, just comedy. Out-and-out, laugh-out-loud comedy. Four comedians given a premise, and away they go, improvising outrageous and hilarious flights of fancy. I loved this so much; I immediately became a huge fan of the likes of Mike McShane, Josie Lawrence, and Tony Slattery. More than that, I wanted to be on the show. It’s probably too much to say watching it gave me the acting bug, but the thought of improvising like that, of being that spontaneously funny, stuck with me. They could really bring this one back. I wish they would.

Black Books (2000-04): another delightfully surreal, skewed view of reality, and another one that’s a joy to revisit as we see the burgeoning careers of film and TV superstars. Dylan Moran’s Bernard Black is a wonderfully wicked creation, a mix of apathy, misanthropy, and wine. The supporting cast of Tamsin Grieg and Bill Bailey offer suitably different shades of sunshine and shadow, and the whole thing just falls together wonderfully. It’s bloody funny is what I mean.

The Big Breakfast (1992-2002): yeah, it’s not all sitcoms round ‘ere. I wondered which I liked best: the breakfast show or the evening show? This or TFI Friday? In the end I plumped for this, a revolution in TV formatting, a handheld whirligig of a wakeup call. Very bright, very loud, very fast, this was the perfect antidote to the smartly-dressed-people-sitting-down format that dominated breakfast telly (and still does, really); a kind of half-grown-up version of Live and Kicking, and much closer in tone to radio breakfast shows. And it had Zig and Zag, for god’s sake. What more do you want in a morning?

Eurotrash (1993-2004): ahem. Yeah, it was a bundle of smut, but it was done so entertainingly: German nudists given thick, matter-of-fact Brummie accents; stories about poop and saunas and folklore, or all three at once; Antoine de Caunes and Jean-Paul Gaultier (Gaultier for goodness’ sake!) trading camp bon-mots. It was so good-natured in its celebration of weirdness and muckiness, an eye-opener in more ways than one. It’s a friendly, warm embrace of a show, deliriously camp and resoundingly sex-positive, but also charming and quaint.

The Last Resort with Jonathan Ross (1987-88): if I’m honest, the show I most associate with pre-mainstream Wossy is Mondo Rosso, the fabulous BBC2 late-night series that dug into the weird filmland esoterica that he so adores. But it was here, in Ross’ debut, that I first appreciated (at far too young an age! I watched this when it first went out!) his humour, smarts, and cheek. Honestly, thirty years ago, he really was something new, a British spin on an American-style late-night host. He interviewed interesting people, told great jokes, and really was a modernised and youth-centric old-school presenter; Wogan for the Young Ones generation. I followed his early Channel 4 career before he jumped ship for the Beeb, eventually becoming Mr. Light Entertainment. I still prefer him when he veers into the tall grass to talk about something odd and random that he really loves, rather than when he’s interviewing Adele or whatever.

There you go, Channel 4. You may notice the focus on comedy and light entertainment here; I think that’s because the dramas, whilst I enjoyed them, came and went for me, even the really, really good ones; whereas the comedy just got sort of wedged in my brain, often watched over and over. So sorry about that, especially when you think about the great Russel T. Davies dramas. But anyway: Channel 4 is just great as it is, so let’s not cock it up.

4 notes - Posted April 23, 2022

Weekend Top Ten #557

Top Ten Tarantino Movies

In 1993 I started reading Empire magazine. I’d probably read it a little bit before then; my mum would pick it up occasionally and I’d have flicked through it (sidebar: several years ago I bought issue 1 of Empire off eBay and thought it seemed familiar; I mentioned this to my mum, and she said yes, in all likelihood she’d bought it in 1989 but hadn’t held onto it. I dread to think how warped my psyche would be if I’d been regularly reading it since the age of seven…). Anyway, in 1993 they put out an issue with Jurassic Park on the cover, and that was it; I was hooked. I’ve had every issue since and have subscribed for nearly twenty years now.

One of the things that happened when I started reading a film magazine every month – one that was, at its core, aimed at adults – was that I was exposed to the wider world of the film industry. The magazine, naturally, took for granted that its audience was familiar with certain concepts and characters from the world of film. Given the relatively irreverent nature of Empire, there was always a sense of fun and playfulness as they threw in references to Burt Reynolds, Satyajit Ray, and Richard E. Grant. It made me want to seek out new films and new experiences, and of course this all took place in my early adolescence, when I was increasingly fascinated by all kinds of things out there in the wider world.

One of the very first things I remember was discussion about the banning of Reservoir Dogs, and how best to source a bootleg VHS of the film. This was, most likely, my introduction to the works of Quentin Tarantino, and let me tell you, nothing will make a young boy more interested in a film than telling him that he’s not just allowed to watch it, but that it would be illegal to do so.

The years went on and the story of this nerd who worked in a video store and wrote fascinating and hilarious and violent scripts full of movie references, and who was now a lauded and respected filmmaker, absolutely lit a fire in me. Tarantino, Kevin Smith, Danny Boyle, even Bryan Singer (cough); these were young guys, who looked like I wanted to look and made filthy, funny movies with a cocky swagger to them. I wanted to be them, especially the likes of Quentin and Kevin who wrote their own movies. I had to write about my hero for a school project and I picked Tarantino, despite only having seen – at most – one film at that point, and being far too young for it anyway. He was probably the only filmmaker who ever rivelled Spielberg as being my number-one favourite, my go-to influence.

The years went by and the gaps between his films became longer. A certain outlandish eccentricity drifted into his direction; the scripts became, arguably, a little less quotable, a bit flabbier. After the blistering intensity of the stylised but mostly-grounded opening trilogy, his films became, quite often, wacky exercises in referencing and imagery and flights of fancy. Sometimes this works better than others. Mostly, though, the violence and grit that I loved so much in the nineties seemed excessive, gratuitous, and juvenile by the 2010s. We – the audience – became more attuned to what it took to put that violence on screen, how the actors were treated scene to scene, and exactly what Tarantino’s relationship with Harvey Weinstein was. It soured the experience a little bit, which wouldn’t have been so bad, but there were a couple of films there that, frankly, disappointed. Far from the do-no-wrong wunderkind, he’s as fallible as the rest, and as prone to egotistical grandstanding as many a director before him.

I can’t talk about Tarantino too objectively because – like Spielberg, or like The Transformers, or really like Empire magazine in general – he’s far too tied into my own psyche and development. And he made three films there in a five-year period that are just outstanding achievements, absolute masterpieces, showing a growing maturity and sense of screenwriting craft that – I’d argue – has been scant in the two decades since. He’s still one of my favourite filmmakers, one I’ll always want to see, one who always excites me; but now his films, like, say, Wes Anderson’s – are their own indefatigable thing. I think you’re either into him or you’re not, and whilst I still think he lets his writing run on a bit, and whilst I think his statements about violence – and his use of violence, for that matter – are nowhere near as profound as he thinks they are, especially given his own complicated history of treating female cast members on set, I think it’s fair to say that Quentin Tarantino will be remembered very fondly.

And, look. His films may be goofier and weirder, but that style was always there really, we just fooled ourselves into thinking he’d expand his flavours instead of doubling down. And once you sign up to the fact that all of his films take place in a parallel universe – where Django freed the slaves and Jewish soldiers killed Hitler – it all makes a lot more sense, and we can enjoy them as what they always were: alt-universe sci-fi movies. Sort of a pity he never did make his version of Star Trek, really.

Pulp Fiction (1994): building on the promise of Dogs, this sophomore film is a multi-layered, non-linear affair, juggling multiple characters across disparate yet interconnected storylines over a number of days. The witty intricacies of Tarantino’s dialogue are best displayed, from French fast food to Vietnamese prisons; it’s his most-quotable film. There are tremendous performances, with regular contributor Sam Jackson making his first appearance. But it’s the strength of confidence, of filmmaking rigour, of a cinematic force coming to full fruition, that lingers long after the stunning soundtrack has faded from our ears.

Reservoir Dogs (1992): one hell of a debut. A blistering, bloody affair, with a great ensemble of mostly non-stars and a taught, tight screenplay based mostly around one location. Drew attention – outside of its violence, which to be fair isn’t as strong as was made out; it’s just got a generally nasty atmosphere – because of its great script, of course, but to marshal such a cast in such limited circumstances – to make five guys in one warehouse seem consistently cinematic – showcased his directorial prowess too.

Jackie Brown (1997): an incredibly rare adaptation from Sir Quent, he nevertheless takes Elmore Leonard’s Rum Punch and makes it entirely his own, a Blacksploitation homage that’s neither gratuitous or foolish, centred on a quartet of aging characters despite Tarantino’s youth at the time. A mature, sensible film that’s also tremendous fun, despite an air of threat and melancholy, it promised a variety of tone from Tarantino that arguably never materialised. Was the first of his films to receive, I would say, genuine criticism despite it being absolutely bloody great.

Django Unchained (2012): ever since Tarantino cameoed in Pulp and unleashed a tirade of N-words, he’s had a complex relationship with race, heavily criticised by Spike Lee and defended by Jackson. After the affection shown in Jackie, he delivered this, his exploration of the slave trade and its place in the history of America. And it’s fantastic, very close to the master of his first three films; a dark, tense tour-de-force of brutality as Django goes on a quest for righteous vengeance. Utilising the tropes of classic B-Westerns – and, of course, the vast Django franchise – Tarantino threads the needle between exploitative cheese and intelligent discourse. Can’t believe Will Smith turned it down; biggest mistake he’s ever made.

Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood (2019): Tarantino’s most recent film feels like a love letter to cinema, and especially the era that seems to resonate throughout his work. Weaving in both real-life cinematic icons of the age – from Polanski to Bruce Lee – as well as one of its most notorious violent crimes feels entirely on-brand for Tarantino. What surprises is both the warmth and optimism of the story; whilst the central characters may be loveable idiots for the most part, they’re not the thieves and killers of prior films. Not since Jackie Brown have we celebrated niceness like this. And as a sprawling nostalgic epic, it’s sublime; it beautifully marries its own fictional story within the wider framework of cinematic history. In fact, I’d argue it would be right up there with the First Three if it weren’t for its misjudged, nasty, over-the-top edgelord finale, with some of the most brutal and gratuitous violence in Tarantino’s oeuvre. Tone it down, Quent; you’re not fifteen and we’re not impressed.

Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004): after the First Three, it felt like a long time before we got a new Tarantino, and he returned with the epic revenge saga of Kill Bill, something of a gearshift from what came before. And whilst most people prefer the first Volume (see below), it’s part 2 that I enjoy more. Less outrageously exuberant, it still boasts a couple of excellent – and grittier – fight scenes, but it’s got a bit more of the Tarantino wit and wordplay about it, especially in the final scenes with Thurman’s Bride and Carradine’s Bill.

Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003): so, yeah, Kill Bill is a much cartoonier affair than most Tarantinos; in fact, I think it’s canonically supposed to be an in-universe film. But with that comes some of the most outlandish action that ol’ QT has directed; most specifically a vivacious and violent assault as the Bride gets medieval on a roomful of sword-wielding assailants. It’s shallow and weird and maybe is the beginning of Tarantino running away with himself, but it’s damn good fun.

Inglourious Basterds (2009): this is a film of two halves. One half is an incredibly dark, tense affair, with Christoph Waltz’s eloquent but barbaric Nazi matching wits with vengeful cinema operator Mélanie Laurent. It’s serious, intense, full of Tarantinoid dialogue, and shot through with a love of cinema. The other half – about the titular Basterds and their quest – is looser, wackier, not quite as funny as it thinks it is. These two disparate entities collide at the end (and also, tonally at least, merge in the excellent bar scene featuring Michael Fassbender), a finale which is raucous and ridiculous and scary and, well, quite good fun really.

Death Proof (2007): weird and off-kilter, not necessarily in a good way, this feels like Tarantino in search of structure. The plot – serial killer Stuntman Mike offs people in his car – is fine; but we spend too long with not-altogether-interesting characters before they’re brutally murdered, and also too long, frankly, getting to know our trio of heroes. It has its highs – some insane car chases and stuntwork – and great performances, but frankly it’s a lot better when cut down as part of Grindhouse.

The Hateful Eight (2015): some people really go to bat for this, but I think it exemplifies the worst traits of Tarantino. It’s way too long, full of wordy but not very elegant monologues. None of the characters are likeable, but also they’re not really interesting or fun to be around. He fails to make the single location dynamic or tense in the way he did with Dogs. And it’s really nasty, mean-spiritedly so, with a rather unpleasant misogynistic streak. There are smatterings of fun to be had, and it’s got a stellar cast, but for me it’s long, excessive, and a bit boring.

You’ll note I didn’t really consider films he wrote but didn’t direct, like True Romance or Natural Born Killers. This is for three reasons: even excluding portmanteau Four Rooms, he’s made ten films as director, so I could do a full list regardless; it’s debatable how “Tarantino” his writing credits are, especially Killers, which I think was heavily reworked by Oliver Stone; and, well, it’s been ages since I saw them and didn’t feel it fair to judge (my memory of Romance is that it would sit just after Jackie Brown, if that helps). So there you go.

Now, Tarantino has said that he intends to make ten films and then retire, but he’s counting the two parts of Bill as one entity. So that means he’s got one film left in him. It doesn’t look like it’s Star Trek anymore, if that was ever genuinely on the cards; he’s spoken on and off in the past about doing a proper sequel to Kill Bill, but we’ll see where that goes (apparently he wants to get Maya Hawke to play the Bride’s daughter, who’d have seen that one?). Or maybe he’ll do something else entirely; a romcom or a musical or a Marvel movie. Hey, given how much he’s banging on about Peppa Pig recently, maybe he’ll make a kids’ film. That would be a hell of a way to end a career that began with ear-slicing and Madonna’s sex life.

6 notes - Posted November 5, 2022

Weekend Top Ten #520

Top Ten CBeebies Programmes

Ah, the wonders of timing. A couple of weeks ago, everyone was banging on about it being the twentieth anniversary of CBeebies, and I wanted to get in on that action. But, wouldn’t you know it, Valentine’s Day got in the way of relevance, and so we’re doing a birthday celebration a bit belatedly. Never mind. By the time you get to twenty, you should be able to wait a little bit.

I’ve thought about CBeebies a lot, and some version of this list – or one like it – has been percolating for quite a while. This is because I’ve worked in kids’ TV almost my entire adult life, and especially since my kids have been born, I’ve spent a lot of time working actually for the BBC, oftentimes making promos for CBeebies. So both personally – having small children who watch the channel – and professionally – making stuff for the channel – CBeebies has been a big part of my life in the past decade.

What’s given me pause, though, is the fact that I actually know some people who make programmes for CBeebies. I don’t wanna upset anybody! Especially, y’know, anybody who might want to give me a job. So what I’m going to say here is this is not a list of absolute quality; I’m not saying these are the best. But they’re the ones I’ve fallen in love with the most. That might be because I think the writing or production is genuinely sublime; it might be because we came across them at the right time in the right circumstances. Maybe my kids loved them! When your kids love stuff, really love it, you tend to soften on it, even if you weren’t very keen on it to begin with. This is brought to you by “I have totally come around on Minecraft YouTubers”.

Oh, and yes, there are omissions. That’s because, as my kids have gotten older, they’ve started watching, well, more Minecraft YouTubers than CBeebies shows. I’ve got friends with younger kids who go on about Bluey, which I’m sure – from the sounds of it – I would just flat-out love. But I’ve never seen it! My kids are too old, I guess. Or too into Avatar: The Last Airbender or whatever. Or – let’s be honest – they’re just playing Minecraft, or watching people play Minecraft.

So here we go: my Top Ten CBeebies shows; shows that mean a lot, one way or another.

Hey Duggee: is it the music, the artwork, the voiceover? The tone of wry whimsy combined with heartfelt preschool sentiment? Is it the genuine humour and excellent writing? Is it the raft of in-jokes and references, from The Life Aquatic to Apocalypse Now? Is it my minor role in making The Stick Songgo viral? All of this and more; the best children’s TV programme ever made.

In the Night Garden: simultaneously a very sweet and gentle imagery and music that lulls children into another world and, ultimately, to sleep, and also the most bonkers, batshit, balls-tripping stuff you’re likely to see. Nonsense songs! Size-changing vehicles! Dancing flowers! Symmetrical stone-stacking!

CBeebies Bedtime Stories: Jackanoryfor the 21st Century, the simple pleasure of somebody reading a story aloud will always work. The soft, relaxing presentation adds to the “bedtime” aspect, and a huge selection of impressive celebrity readers makes it an event programme for all ages. I mean, come on; everyone from Dolly Parton to Captain America is here.

Topsy and Tim: creating a kind of soap opera for nippers is a phenomenal idea, introducing them to ongoing narratives and stories about familial dynamics. There are all kinds of cool topics explored, from illness to bereavement, with a keen eye on its audience. The cute family and great performances help too. A common fixture round ours.

Show Me Show Me: I’m starting to think nobody is better at introducing the very young to the world of television that Chris Jarvis and Pui Fan Lee. Gentle, engaging, fun, and a perfect start to the day when your kids get you up too early.

Swashbuckle: the perfect kind of gameshow for young kids; really energetic silliness. But what lifts it up is the bevvy of terrific performances, from Gemma Hunt to the trio of pirates, telling incredibly silly and very funny stories amidst the slapstick, chaotic gameplay. Plus I got to go on set, so it gets extra points.

Our Family: there were a trio of programmes, all made – if I remember correctly – by the same North East production company, following the lives of the very young as they experience things anew. Our Family was one, but there was also a cooking programme and one dealing with “My First…” These were great windows into individual lives and shared experiences, and really sweet preschool documentaries.

Waffle the Wonder Dog: taking the Topsy and Tim preschool soap format but making it way sillier, we now have essentially a comedy-drama about a talking dog and his beleaguered family. Hijinks ensue, lessons are learned, and at the centre of it is a flat-out adorable dog.

My Petsaurus: here we have, perhaps, a lesser-known show, but one which was just huge in our house, albeit briefly. A short selection of shorts, it features a girl and her cute pet dinosaur. That’s it; a simple premise, really well executed. I’m a sucker for an interplay of animation and live-action, and this is a great example, with a really good young performance at its centre. Because my kids were into it a bit more, it’s just eased out the broadly similar Woolly and Tig, which is also brilliant.

Go Jetters: there’s a lot of chatter about Octonauts, which I’m not going to diss, but for my money you can’t beat Go Jetters. A preschool Thunderbirds with a globetrotting bent, where it succeeds for me is in the absolute disco swagger of all-knowing boss Ubercorn, and especially in the moustachioed grump Grandmaster Glitch. Two incredible performances from Tommie Earl Jenkins and Marc Silk.

See, I already feel really bad for having to miss out things like Balamory, Dinopaws, and the educational one-two punch of Alphablocks and Numberblocks. Basically, CBeebies is great.

I've made a very rare edit to this list (I hardly ever edit them after they're posted apart from to correct spelling and grammar mistakes!) because, like a massive idiot, I confused the titles Let's Play and Show Me Show Me - so in the very unlikely event that you were confused by me referring to Chris and Pui instead of Rebecca and Sid, that's why. Sorry to all involved! In fact, Let's Play itself was a very close-run thing, a fantastic show that my youngest especially loved.

13 notes - Posted February 19, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Weekend Top Ten #558

Top Ten “Weird Al” Yankovic Songs

In retrospect, I should have done this last week and the Tarantino list this week. But really, what is more Al than just randomly getting something very, very slightly off? Because there’s a fillum out and I want to celebrate. Weird: The Al Yankovic Story stars Harry Potter as “Weird Al” Yankovic in a hard-bitten biopic of drugs and excess that is only available on a streaming service you’ve never heard of that isn’t even accessible in the UK, and is both the true story of Yankovic’s rise to success and also completely made up. And as someone who’s been a huge Al fan for over twenty years, this is incredibly exciting, hilarious, and rather frustrating in equal measure. Anyway: to celebrate, here’s a list.

Yankovic is an incredibly gifted musician and performer, something that I think is often hidden by the fact that he’s most famous as a parodist. But it’s one thing to just change the words of a song to make a joke; it’s another to spend forty years adapting multiple genres and styles of music, as well as expertly recreating famous videos, as well as making parodic references to everything from Star Wars to Santa Claus. The breadth of his talent and musicality, to say nothing of how funny and effective he is as an overall writer and performer, is frankly astonishing; in his career he’s turned is hand to everything, from gangsta rap to piano ballads and all sorts in between, to say nothing of his legendary polka medleys of popular songs.

All this brings us to the list itself, which at the end of the day is just my favourite of his songs. And I tell ya, it was hard! This was one of the hardest ones I’ve done, I think! Like with all kinds of music, really, you veer towards different songs at different times, so how does one compare American Pie to Pretty Fly for a White Guy, the works of Billy Joel to the works of Coolio? So we just come to my basic criteria, which is: how much do I enjoy the song? How funny is it? And, if it is a parody, how well is it doing with the parodying? Because one of the things I love about Al is that, as well as homaging different styles of music or plots of films, he often peppers his songs with lyrics that reference so much stuff. It’s a delight unpacking them from a comedic standpoint. Sometimes it’s not even a reference, sometimes it’s just hilarious wordplay. So that’s all factored into my complex algorithm. And this is the result!

The Saga Begins (1999): whilst I was broadly familiar with his work, this is song that really made me a fan. I remember it being a news story on the Empire website, and trying to watch it on my flaky dial-up at the time – probably the first music video I ever watched online. And I still think it’s just hilarious. I think the funniest thing is that, unlike some other songs, it’s not really parodying Star Wars; it’s actually a fairly straight retelling of the events of The Phantom Menace, just sung to the tune of American Pie. But the lyrics are golden; “My, my, this here Anakin guy/Maybe Vader someday later now he’s just a small fry”. It’s so perfect that it’s not only damn funny, not only a beautiful love letter to Star Wars, but also it just works as a song. I’ve sung it so much I know all the words and it was actually a bedtime lullaby I sang to my kids. And however much I love some of his other songs, I can’t say that about The Night Santa Went Crazy.

Dare to Be Stupid (1985): is it possible that I love this one so much because it was the first Al song I heard? That it is, in fact, featured on the soundtrack to The Transformers: The Movie? Almost certainly yes, but I don’t care. I am not, in truth, very familiar with Devo, so the intricacies of its parody are mostly lost on me; I get that he’s doing a bit on their songs and the video is referencing them too, but for me it’s just a really catchy song full of terrific, hilarious lyrical gags and references. And it’s played when Hot Rod and Wreck-Gar are dancing on the planet of Junk.

Don’t Download This Song (2006): rather than lampooning a specific song, this is a satire on a genre, perfectly parodying the pretensions of those Band Aid-style charity singles by earnest celebrities. As well as skewering the style so succinctly, it also has a tremendous target for the early noughties – the downloading of “free” music from file-sharing sites. Whilst incredibly of its time, it’s full of on-point references, including Lars Ulrich’s famed disdain of downloaded music, as well as mocking celebrity excess. This is all incredibly hilarious for me as, after really getting into Al in 1999, it was finding more of his music via Napster when I was at university that really made me a huge fan of his back catalogue. And don’t worry – I’ve also bought it on CD, too.

Jurassic Park (1993): this song is probably unique in the annals of all parody songs by virtue of it being more sensible and making more sense than the song it’s a parody of. The genius realisation that “Jurassic Park” scans perfectly with “MacArthur Park” is just the start, as it runs through the events of the film in hilarious manner (“I admit it’s kinda eerie/But this proves my chaos theory”). Apparently the stop-motion video was approved by Spielberg himself! Nobody leaves a cake out in the rain, however.

White and Nerdy (2006): talk about your references, this is the motherlode; and, quite frankly, it speaks to me. A veritable spreadsheet full of nerdy ephemera, the hilarity obviously coming from the juxtaposition of edgy rap with, well, Al Yankovic, almost every geeky IP or pastime is namechecked: Star Trek, Wikipedia, D&D, bubble wrap… the exquisiteness of the lyrics and speed at which Al cycles through them means it requires multiple listens to catch all the gags. And it has perhaps my favourite of all his lyrics: “The only question I/Ever thought was hard/Was do I like Kirk/Or do I like Picard”.

Ode to a Superhero (2003): ah, now we’re back to the soft gentle ballads and another recounting of the events of a summer blockbuster. Somehow singing a song about Spider-Man to the tune of Piano Man is perfect; after all, both Peter Parker and Billy Joel are New York legends (one’s from Queens, the other’s from the Bronx). Like The Saga Begins, it’s funny not just because, well, singing about Spider-Man is funny, but also the specificity of the references; like Mary Jane preferring guys “who can kiss upside down in the rain” or Norman Osborn wearing a “dumb” mask but being “scarier without it on”.

It’s All About the Pentiums (1999): another fabulously fast-paced rap about something exquisitely geeky; except this time it’s honing in on millennium-era computing technology. It’s another example of playing spot-the-reference but one thing that I find increasingly delightful in this case is that it’s so fabulously outdated; references to Y2K, newsgroups, “a hundred gigabytes of RAM”, and even the very fact that it’s got “Pentium” in the name. I can’t help but feel that this one’s just gonna get funnier as it gets older.

Pretty Fly for a Rabbi (1999): again we see the comedy emerge from the collision between a fast-paced, hard-edged style of music (in this case, millennial American punk) and frankly ridiculous lyrics. It’s not just the silliness of something as benign as a rabbi being the focus of an edgy rock song; it’s also the incorporation of Yiddish and stereotypically Jewish turns of phrase into the lyrics. Partly responsible for my assumption that Yankovic himself was Jewish!

Amish Paradise (1996): an infamous Weird Al song in that, whereas usually the original songwriters are chuffed to have him parody them, this one actually pissed off Coolio (RIP). But it’s part of the genre of tough songs about silly shit, the gangsta rap ballad of inner-city life and crime transmogrified into the badassery of the Amish, raising barns and milking cows. Perhaps it’s a bit mean to the Amish, in retrospect; but “you know I’m a million times as humble as thou art” is still a cracking lyric.

Bedrock Anthem (1993): I don’t think I’ve really expressed enough just how on point his parodies are; how well he raps, how closely he mirrors the style of the homaged artists, even in videos. But this is exquisite; somehow Al even looks like a Red Hot Chilli Pepper. And it’s just bonkers; I mean, how on earth do you get The Flintstones from Under the Bridge? I’m guessing – and this is just a wild guess based on nowt – that it was doing the “Yabba-dabba-dabba-dabba-do now” to the chorus that spawned the rest of the song, but who really knows? And once again we have lyrics that give me such joy, especially the way he throws in – out of nowhere – references to Bedrock life, such as “got a baby elephant vacuum cleaner”. Joy!

Now whilst I am gutted I didn’t find room for Bob, Yoda, or Santa, I’m also a bit gutted that I never got round to one of his polkas. These are really impressive works, how he manages to translate such a wide variety of songs into a polka style, and then turn it into a big medley, bouncing from track to track and even from genre to genre within the same song. Seriously, the man’s a musical genius. Maybe that’s why only Daniel Radcliffe could play him; he’s used to playing wizards.

32 notes - Posted November 12, 2022

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