Free Screen Burn by Charlie Brooker Page B

argument factory – a situation contrived to provoke irritation and confrontation. You could achieve similar results by locking the castaways in awarehouse in Bristol, making them wear hessian sacks and flicking rice in their ears. It might kill off the flirting, but by God there’d be some cracking rows. Plus it would be funnier than watching someone in a grass skirt munching a coconut.
    So why did they make
Shipwrecked 2
at all? Because too many people believe anything vaguely confrontational immediately equals ‘good television’. Yes, as any twinkle-eyed pop-culture spoonbrain will attest, it’s ‘good television’ to strand a bunch of wannabe loudmouths in the middle of nowhere and watch them squabble and bicker until your ears ring to bursting point with their bleatings. It doesn’t have to make you think, it doesn’t have to lift your spirits – it only has to keep you staring at the box in the corner of the room. Any old antagonistic crap will do, provided it’s nicely packaged and slung at your eyeballs.
    Thing is, it is entirely possible to make a youth-oriented reality show that entertains more than it infuriates, as proven by ongoing smash Popstars (ITV), which benefits heavily from skilful editing and a sprinkling of sympathetic participants, although ever since Darius got the shove any incentive to tune in has plummeted.
    Yes, Darius. Stop your protests: his fame is entirely deserved. He’d be the finest comic creation for ages, if it weren’t for the fact that he’s real. Last week’s interview in which he described his plan to dive headlong into the shallow world of fame and materialism ‘to see if I can change it (slow blink, loaded pause) and if I can’t … at least I’ll know I tried’ is unlikely to be topped as the laugh-outloud-moment of the year.
    It’s a crying shame he’s gone, but hooray: your suggestions for band names continue to flood in. Top ten from the mailbag this week: 10) Queens of the Stone Deaf, 9) Cliché and the Sunshine Brand, 8) Processed Cheese, 7) Ploy Division, 6) … And You Will Find Us In the Bargain Bin, 5) Boxfresh Gibbon Kidz, 4) Freebase Aspartame, 3) Dad Erector – but sitting pretty at the top of the pops, two suggestions culled from a genuine press release regarding official Popstars merchandise, which arrived alongside your fictional entries: ‘… Amongst the companies keen to exploit the band’s inevitable popularity is Character Options, who have beenappointed exclusive distributors of the Popstars dolls. Faceless dolls will be unveiled at the largest toy trade show of the year … the dolls will appear in their official outfits but remain faceless until the final band line-up is revealed.’
    Can’t argue with that: so at number 2) it’s Character Options, and at number 1) – in with a bullet! – Faceless Dolls.
    Pick a favourite: vote now.

‘You’re watching
Breakfast
’     [10 February]
     
    Never trust a morning person. Anyone who leaps out of bed with a smile on their face and a spring in their step is deranged. And breakfast television is aimed at these lunatics. It must be: who the hell else has time to watch TV in the morning? Most of us are still in bed, pawing blearily at the snooze button until it’s too late to procrastinate further and we have to head bogwards for the first and darkest piddle of the day.
    Here’s the ideal breakfast TV show, one that would work brilliantly on that 14-inch portable at the base of your bed: an abstract collage of soothing shapes and colours undulating in time to some muffled ambient throb, suddenly interrupted half an hour later by a maniac with a foghorn shrieking ‘LATE FOR WORK!’ at the top of his voice.
    But that isn’t on, so what are your options? Well, BBC1 has a rolling new programme called Breakfast . Not ‘Breakfast News’, or ‘Breakfast Report’, or ‘Breakfast Briefing’: just Breakfast – which means the presenters sometimes say, ‘Good morning, you’re