Two Come Along at Once

Good sitcoms that is. And one of them is ITV1(!). I am talking, of course, of ITV1's Moving Wallpaper and Channel 4's Free Agents, which ended last Friday after six episodes, although it felt like only five, perhaps the series was so good that I didn't want it to end. Sharon Horgan and Stephen Mangan did what they had to, but it was Matthew Holness as the wonderfully deadpan agent and Tony Head as the boss who is rarely more than a sentence of rude, lewd, inventive invective from a harassment suit who stole the show for me. Consider that

When the series was first broadcast, the Sunday Express attacked the show because of bad language, claiming that the word "Cunt" was used three times and "Fuck" 22 times. John Beyer from Mediawatch said: "The obscene language in this programme is appalling by any standard. It shows a disregard of public concern that is completely unacceptable from a public service broadcaster."

and most of those came out of Tony Head's mouth, this is definitely one for Dave to download in Seattle. Note also that there was nothing in Free Agents that couldn't be heard every night on the West End stage, so I don't really know why television is quite so squeamish in 2009. In fact, Free Agents felt like a play. There was a story arc, as there is Moving Wallpaper as well as Plus One, the show that preceded Free Agents in the ten o'clock Friday evening slot and which was also a product of the 2007 Channel 4 Comedy Showcase. Plus One did only run five episodes, although it seemed more like six. It certainly had its moments, but it was much more in the mode of farce than Free Agents. It also had a great deal of swearing, which in this case I did rather tiresome, partly because it wasn't delivered with the brio, panache and vim with which Tony Head delivered his filth-sodden expostulations and partly because it made me think of my own work and particularly 11SSAL, in which the characters do swear less and somewhat to their advantage in my opinion, but perhaps this is a generational thing and it was easier for me to relate to the thirty- and fifty-somethings in Free Agents than the twenty-somethings of Plus One. Whichever way, it would be easy to imagine a version of Free Agents on the stage or as film, perhaps under the working title of Bitter and Twisted, which would at least distance us from The 10%ers, especially as at times  it verges on dramedy (I don't think black comedy or dark comedy is quite the right description), which lends itself to the stage (see the works of Alan Ayckbourn). The fact that there must be have been a pilot is interesting as it might well be an extra on the recently released  DVD of Free Agents.

With Moving Wallpaper, we are firmly back in the mode of farce, but at least it is, for the most part, funny farce (not that Plus One wasn't funny at times), although there were sailing not exactly close to the edge, but somewhere way, way over it in last Friday's episode. This is 2009. Have the production (and, for God's sake, the actors!) never heard of transphobia? Or is that the respectable prejudice? I am surprised that there wasn't some comment on this on LJ. Whereas theatrical agencies might well be not that much unlike the one in Free Agents (but would the agents have their own offices?), I don't imagine that TV production companies are much like the one in Moving Wallpaper or that senior ITV executives are much like Raquel Cassidy('s character) - interestingly both she and Ben Miller started PhDs in science subjects at Cambridge).

Consider the Veolia vanity TV advert. Is the actress Lucy Liemann, Moving Wallpaper's Samantha Phillips, script editor? It sure as heck looks like her. Now, the ubiquitous Veolia (formerly Vivendi, formerly Compagnie Générale des Eaux - Stop! Stop! I can't get started on fascinating, but hardly relevant peregrinations into the history of companies right now) is a French company. Now, in the globalised world in which we live, it is common for companies to have global marketing campaigns (and anyway British adverts are often filmed abroad, although I do recall French adverts from the TV in Grenoble in 1995 that were clearly made by UK companies) and this is strongly suggested by their tagline: "The environment is an industrial challenge", which probably sounds a lot better in French ("L'environnement est un défi industriel" - indeed!) as well as the Euro-English voiceover. Well, we don't have to speculate. Or, if you prefer. Of course, this doesn't tell us whether it is Ms L or which city the ad was filmed in. Somewhere "Latin", I'd say. Madrid? Lisbon? Montevideo? Buenos Aires? One of you must recognise the parliament-type building shown. Often models turn out to be Czech or Brazilian, so if it is Ms L , it is good to see a British actress getting a global gig.

Comments

[Daveon]

But Paul, downloading is illegal :)

[John Bray]

Your comedy recommendations are usually good. I liked Free Agents, which rose above the cringeworthy boss insulting ad agency stuff, but I abandoned Moving Wallpaper, too full of nasty people and references to ITV1, which I too never watch

[John Bray]

PS Free Agents is on 4OnDemand for free

[PMC]

I do quite like MP, although I was disappointed by the transphobic episode, it's helped by Raquel Cassidy and Lucy Liemann, but I do like Ben Miller's rants. FA though is a thing of a much higher order and we can only hope for a second series.

[Celestial M Weasel]

Transphobia is the permitted phobia, it seems. See also The I.T. Crowd. Throw the transexual through the window, ho ho, how we laughed.

[PMC]

I'm curious to know "official" transphobia is, which is to say how engrained it is among mainstream feminists and queer theorists who produce the set texts in universities.