Free Screen Burn by Charlie Brooker Page A

cover version of the theme from Cagney and Lacey .
    To these weary eyes, most of the kids look identical to one another but that’s probably got more to do with my age than their faces, which seem to blur into one creaseless, eyebag-free wash of young flesh after 10 minutes. Nevertheless, a few stand out, traditional Grange Hill archetypes: the evil one (who’s selling cigarettes to the little kids), the pair of scheming loveable chancers (this week trying their hand at busking), the ‘weird’ kid (apparently autistic), the male and female heart-throbs (you never get over your first Grange Hill crush), and the kids with the problems at home (a boy with a dad in prison, and two girls whose parents are splitting up).
    Some other traditions hold firm: the teachers are just quirky enough to appear eccentric without being sinister, and the sixth-form teens remain the most crashingly tedious, self-righteous shop-window dummies on earth.
    The changes, then – starting with the pace, which has been upped considerably (lots of short, snappy scenes), and the camerawork, which is more stylised and energetic than ever before. Almost every sequence seems to end with a visual punchline: a sudden jump to an overhead shot, or an arrangement of pupils so symmetrical you could be forgiven for thinking you’d stumbled across an unreleased Peter Greenaway film (albeit one far less tedious and with at least 86 per cent less Philip Glass).
    It works. It draws you in and keeps you entertained. It’s nowhere near as patronising as, say, Casualty , and it treats its audience with 16 million times more respect than any ITV drama starring Ross Kemp (a man who always looks like he’s trying to win a staring competition with a couple of knotholes). Best of all, it simply doesn’t have time for any of the self-obsessed, navel-gazing designer angst of ‘youth’ favourites such as Dawson’s Creek . Long may it reign.
    Last week’s request for names for the final Popstars band drew an encouraging response. So far, printable highlights include: 1) Enter-painment, 2) Dry Dream, 3) Vacant Lot, 4) Orchestrated Plebian Wonder Machine, 5) Stairs, 6) The Flipchart Demographics, and my favorite to date: 7) Nigel.

Faceless Dolls     [2 February]
     
    Shipwrecked 2
(C4) marks a turning point for reality television: the point where outright boredom smothers any voyeuristic appeal.
    Here’s the premise: take seventeen youngsters, maroon them on a desert island for ten weeks, then stand well back and see what they do.
    And here’s what happens: they flirt and argue.
    The viewer is expected to find this mesmerising. Why? What’s the big deal? Strand seventeen youngsters at a bus stop for ten minutes and they’ll flirt and argue just as much. Why bother zipping them halfway round the world – especially when they’re essentially as bland as a bunch of bathmats?
    Answer: because it’s a good excuse to film them frolicking about in swimwear. Most of the castaways appear to have been chosen on the strength of their looks, giving the entire exercise the feel of a strange feral edition of Hollyoaks , albeit one with fewer sympathetic characters – on the whole the boys are the most irksome: a blend of bratty I’m-the-leader public-school types, and unapologetic lads whose idea of a civilised afternoon probably revolves around scrawling comedy dicks in the margins of ‘Bum Hair Monthly’.
    Still, they’re young; they’re allowed to be dumb. Perhaps it’s just a phase they’re going through. Shipwrecked may be irritating, but it isn’t their fault.
    So what’s the problem? Isn’t it interesting to see how they cope with the harsh realities of survivalism? Somehow, no. Well, surely you godda admit it’s kinda fascinating seeing the group dynamic crumble as island life gets tougher, right? Once again, the answer is no: they just come across as a group of bickering idiots – and the programme’s to blame. It’s deliberately structured like an