Whatever Happened To Saturday Night?

You’ve got to admit, there have been days when you wish the Large Hadron Collider at Cern had ripped the world a new arsehole when the boffins finally flipped the switch. I would have been perfectly happy for it to happen last week when I discovered Christmas cakes already on the damned supermarket shelves.

It’s a shame that yesterday’s quench is the only real foul up so far. If it had been far more spectacular and life threatening it may have spared us the BBC’s utterly piss poor excuse for a new Saturday night schedule. Now I know that coming off The Wire absolutely nothing is going to be as good, and I know that the early part of the evening’s schedule is designed for the “family audience”, but... are we talking a family of utter fucking retards here?

What the fuck was the point of Arsehole in the Wall? That would have made a great round back in the days of It’s a Knockout or the international Jeux Sans Frontières, but otherwise it was just a bunch of hopeless D-listers getting repeatedly knocked into a pool of water. If the contestants were the US Beach Volleyball team or if the water was replaced by a good meat gravy and there were ravenous dogs lined up along the pool’s edge, then that would be entertainment. Otherwise the entertainment value ran out pretty damn fast.

Just because the format has been sold around the world doesn’t mean that some empty suit at the BBC should have signed on the dotted line. That’s the same argument as: Well everyone else has genital herpes, why not? The fact that this fucked up nonsense originated in Japan shouldn’t have come as any real surprise. But it’s the kind of weird shit that Clive James used to take the piss of a quarter of a century ago.

Then we get Strictly Come Dancing. Even though the novelty is wearing thin, it looks like the show is soon going to take over the whole damn schedule. Although it’s entertaining to see narcissistic control-freak dickwads like Gary Rhodes having to keep a fixed grin while the judges tell him he’s utterly shit, dear old Brucie, with his feeble jokes and tired banter, really should be taken around the back and humanely put down.

That just leaves Merlin, slopped into the Doctor Who slot. Now, I love the Arthurian legends, but not when they’re awkwardly shoehorned into the Smallville format. Maybe it got better after the first couple of minutes, but I couldn’t be bothered to find out. Still, they did all look lovely and clean. I always thought that in those times you could tell the king because “He hasn't got shit all over him.” Maybe I shouldn’t take Monty Python and the Holy Grail too literally.

After all that I’d certainly vote for the tonne of liquid helium to be leaked through Television Centre. Until it happens I may have to go right back to the streets of Bodymore, Murdaland, for any satisfaction.