Joe Queenan identified in his classic book, America: Red Lobster, White Trash and the Blue Lagoon, the modern trend of really bad books (eg anything by Tom Clancy) quoting better books (eg anything by William Shakespeare) in their opening pages as a way to make themselves seem better by association.
I'm sure there's an equivalent phenomenon in television, so does it say something about Knight Rider's quality levels that it's outright quoting Torchwood (and Heroes) in the opening minutes of its Halloween episode?
You might have heard of Giles Coren. He's primarily a restaurant critic for The Times, but he's done a few TV programmes now: he was on the first series of The F-Word, had a film review show on Five and does those historicalSupersize Mes for BBC Four.
In the world of journalism, though, he's now best known for a series of abusive emails he's sent to various sub-editors who have edited his work, as well as to a fellow critic. How we've all laughed at Giles' outbursts – some have sided with him, wishing they'd written the emails themselves, while others have called him bad names and said he's a rubbish writer who needs editing anyway.
I mention this all because of an exciting new trend. Remember the Torchwood/Hitler crossover video (which you can now find over here)? Well, now someone's done it to Giles Coren, too (it'll have helped to have read his emails first):
Coren's response:
'I'm fluent in German, so watching it with subtitles is not quite as funny for me as for everybody else. There was a time when an Englishman could speak fluent French and German, but I suppose the YouTube generation spends its time doing this instead. It would be funny for me if it was in Russian.' But he went on to concede that he 'laughed a lot' at the video.
I think that tells you everything you need to know about him.
In the UK: Saturdays, BBC1, 7.30pm In the US: NBC, some time in the 2008-9 season. Probably
Ever since the return of Doctor Who made Saturday evenings viable viewing slots again, the onus has been on broadcasters not to fill their schedules with rubbish. ITV1 has tried to compete using shows like Primeval as well as a 1,001 singing and dancing shows; the Beeb, since you can't have Doctor Who all year round, has done likewise but also rolled an updating of Robin Hood into the mix, to not great success.
Now here comes its latest effort: Merlin. You remember Merlin, don't you? Son of a demon/dragon, lives his life backwards? Welsh wizard pal of King Arthur?
Ah. Apparently, most of that was wrong. Because we're in for a good dose of 'Welsh washing' here for a slightly less whimsical version of Harry Potter.
Wed 07 Jan: There was a competitor on the UK's Strongest Man on Bravo tonight called "Glenn Ross". Do you think there should have been a Glen Garry as well, just for symmetry?
Mon 05 Jan: For some reason, Gavin proposed to Stacey at London Victoria station mocked up to look like London Paddington. Why's that then?
Sun 04 Jan: Quote of the Day: "Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did except backwards and in high heels."
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