Comment
ALLY ROSS
Piglets is meant to be edgy and provocative but it’s crude and makes ITV look pathetic and horribly dated
ITV's heinous new sitcom ashould leave everyone else asking a simple question...
SOMETHING terrible has happened to ITV recently.
It’s started to think it’s Channel 4, not just in terms of its left-of-centre coverage of current affairs, and relentlessly miserable dramas, but also now with the stuff it calls “comedy”.
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The latest example being a heinous new sitcom starring Sarah Parish and Mark Heap, about trainee police officers and called Piglets.
It’s a title which, true to C4 form, is meant to be edgy and provocative but in reality just makes ITV look a bit pathetic and horribly dated, as I don’t think anyone’s referred to police as “the pigs” since The Young Ones finished in 1984.
It’s also a sign the network’s got the joke wrong here as most people, outside of liberal London media circles, don’t tend to think the problem with the police is that they are all heavy-handed fascist animals.
Death of laughter
Recent high-profile incident aside, in fact it’s usually quite the opposite.
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They’re far more likely to believe Britain’s police forces are spineless, useless, virtue-signalling doormats who think the burden of solving real crimes gets in the way of the far more serious business of choreographing their Macarena routine for June’s Pride festival.
I’d suggest someone make a fly-on-the-wall mocku-mentary on this basis, but it’s already been done by BBC Scotland and is called Scot Squad, where the writers nailed the madness of modern policing in the space of one brilliant viral video as Jack Docherty’s Chief Commissioner Cameron was trapped in an apparently endless cycle of offence-giving and apologies.
Inevitably, there’s nothing in the same league as this scene on Piglets.
It’s the Thin Blue Joke, starting badly with Chief Superintendent Cunningham, the Mr Potato Head who runs the police training course, announcing: “You don’t want to get on the wrong side of me . . . ’cos I’m deaf in one ear”, then getting progressively worse.
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This is a verdict that won’t shock long-suffering viewers who know British television comedy is almost the last place on Earth you’d go to have a laugh these days.
The one curveball with Piglets, however, is that — aside from four suspicious “additional material” credits — it’s actually written by the same team who created Green Wing and Smack The Pony, two shows that were intermittently very funny and relatively big successes for (where else?) Channel 4 earlier this century.
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How then, in July 2024, have they managed to make me think I’m watching the death of laughter?
Simple. Green Wing and Smack The Pony had the advantage of being written before the woke revolution of 2014 when British TV decided that not only must comedy be funny, it also now had to be diverse and inclusive and avoid giving any offence.
It’s an almost impossible trick to pull off, as demon-strated by Piglets, where ITV is meticulously diverse and inclusive, to the point the show has a Muslim character, Afia, who can’t be the butt of any jokes, so she just hangs around the sitcom like a spectator, popping up occas-ionally to remind everyone she’s “Muslim”.
To compensate for this obvious issue and the woke accusations they know are coming, the writers have made Piglets excessively crude, a tactic that may work on late-night Channel 4 but it’s Kryptonite for a Saturday night ITV audience who, not unreasonably, demand jokes, punchlines and a decent pay-off to every episode.
Channel 4 ratings
The ultimate problem with having a Channel 4 agenda, Channel 4 script and Channel 4 swearing, though, is that you end up with Channel 4 ratings and just 938,000 people bothering to watch Piglets during Saturday night prime-time.
News that probably won’t bother the agenda-driven fools who run Britain’s biggest commercial channel and have all drunk the politically correct Kool Aid, but it should frighten their shareholders and leave everyone else asking a simple question.
If ITV is trying to turn itself into Channel 4, then what the hell is the barren, potless, clapped-out, right-on s**tshow that currently occupies that role trying to be?
Chris a hell of a guy
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LET us all hope and pray no one was deterred by the thought that BBC2’s unforgettable documentary Hell Jumper was a Gyles Brandreth biopic.
Because it’s actually the name they give to those reckless, drone-dodging heroes who evacuate old, lame and stubborn Ukrainians trapped in the no-man’s- land of the war with Russia.
Men like 28-year-old Chris Parry, a force of nature who could withstand all the horrors and curses of life, except boredom, and so, armed with nothing more than Google maps and a 4x4, he abandoned his comfortable home in Cornwall to save lives in “the grey areas” of Donetsk.
He did it with astonishing skill, bravery and patience as well, falling in love with a local woman called Olya in the process.
Until, on January 6, 2023, the odds that he knew were always 50/50 caught up with him on the road to Soledar and he was murdered by the Wagner Group, leaving viewers to wrestle with an almost impossible question.
At what point, if ever, does selfless heroism become heedless irresponsibility?
A conundrum I don’t feel remotely qualified or ready to answer.
All I can say, with some certainty, is that the only thing that came close to matching the eternal grief of his devoted parents was the everlasting gratitude of the 400 Ukrainians Chris Parry saved.
It’s quite a legacy.
(Hell Jumper is available to watch on the BBC iPlayer).
Unexpected morons in the bagging area
THE Weakest Link, Romesh Ranganathan: “In sport, The Wallabies is the nickname of the men’s national rugby union team of which country?”
Jade Jones: “Wales.”
Romesh: “In the Rupert Bear comic strip, Rupert’s friend Edward Trunk is what kind of animal?”
Rhona Martin: “A mole.”
Romesh: “In language, what four-letter word for 12 o’clock, in the middle of the day, reads the same forwards as backwards?”
Sally Gunnell: “Midday.”
And Romesh: “In maths, if a person pays £1 for an item costing 67 pence – how much change should they receive?”
Sally Gunnell: “66 pence.”
TV gold
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NOTHING, aside from BBC2’s brilliant Hell Jumper, deserved the description “TV Gold”, during the worst television week of the year, so far.
But I did like the simple way GMB’s Richard Madeley dismantled a blustering fool called Kristin Wolfe, from an organisation called Democrats Abroad, who’d reacted with fury to his suggestion Kamala Harris had been involved in covering up President Biden’s illness, on Monday.
“There was no cover-up.”
“So why’s he gone, then?”
“Well, that’s, you know, I think he read the, errrr, room, if you will. President Biden has always been up for listening to others and, you know, I think he . . . I, I, I. . . . I don’t know.”
Check-mate.
Random TV irritations
ALL those male England fans lying through their teeth when they say: “I think the next manager should be a woman”, just to look good on breakfast TV.
Amanda Abbington seriously comparing a dance contest to “fighting in the trenches”.
BBC News reporter Emma Vardy referring to the US Vice President as “Kamala” within hours of her being lined up as “Trump’s” election opponent.
And the full horror of Love Island’s talent contest, which climaxed with Iain Stirling asking: “What better way to end than with Mimii singing A Thousand Miles?”
Mimii singing a thousand miles away?
Lookalike of the week
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THIS week’s winner is Sky News anchor Kay Burley and The Joker.
Sent in by Nigel Warin, of Mildenhall, Suffolk.
Great sporting insights
MARK BUTCHER: “It’s another blot on his coffee book.”
Nick Dougherty: “He hit that so far right it went left.”
And Nasser Hussain: “It’s all about that one ball Bashir bowled. Both of them.”
(Compiled by Graham Wray)
DEAFENING silence of the week? QVC crawler Catherine Huntley, right, via satellite link to Australia: “I do love these hours with Dannii Minogue.
It’s always good to even say I’m working with Dannii Minogue, but she is one of us. She’s down to earth, a wonderful person.
“The only thing I regret is the fact you’re not over here.
“But that’s OK. One day you’re going to be over here and we’re going to hit the dance floor together . . . ”
Dannii? DANNII?
GREAT TV lies and delusions of the month. Channel 5 News, July 12, asparagus-flinging psychic Jemima Packington: “I see a K for Kane, an E for England. It’s coming home!” BBC News, Olympic preview, Monday, Charlotte Dujardin: “When the horse gets a little bit scared I can reassure him.”
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And The Price Of Perfection: Penis, Olivia Attwood: “You never really think about a penis ageing, do you?” Yet every time I see Martin Lewis’s dyed hair I think: “That tool’s knocking on a bit.”
INCIDENTALLY, if you’re struggling for something to watch and haven’t already seen it, try Daley: Olympic Superstar, on the BBC’s iPlayer – a fascinating documentary which loses absolutely nothing from Britain’s greatest-ever athlete saying: “I was 18 on my eighteenth birthday.”