British nostalgia site TV Cream has been a personal favourite of mine for years.  I’ve remained a fan because TV Cream has remained fairly consistent as a site.  The contributors are tastemakers, to be sure – TV Cream actually uses the term “The Wrong Kind of Nostalgia,” the site relying on comments of the “this is bag”/”this is ace” variety.  Still, TV Cream is not afraid to go obscure or esoteric, and that’s where TV Cream’s strengths have always been.

Parts of the site seem to have been spun off into books lately, TV Cream itself with a Virgin Books release and this article as The Ultimate Book of British Comics.  Written by TVC’s own Graham Kibble-White, the book acquits itself very well as an unofficial TVC tie-in.  While not perfect, The Ultimate Book of British Comics is a very good attempt at trying to sum up decades of British comic books.  It’s informative, entertaining and personal, and it touches on both the milestones and notable failures of the British comics scene.  Chris Claremont and Alan Moore, after all, had to launch their careers somewhere.

The Ultimate Book of British Comics isn’t an overly exhaustive look at British comics – by the author’s own admission, it’s targeting modern British comic books and not the story papers that they emerged from.  Old standbys like The Beano, Hotspur and The Dandy are included in The Ultimate Book of British Comics, but text-based papers are anathema to the book’s purpose.  The book also doesn’t list “adult” humour comics in the vein of Viz, mainly going after the more ambitious attempts at reaching the adult market.  Frankly, the exclusions make for a far more interesting book as ninety-eight comics are looked at in-depth and in a critical manner.

A lot can be learned from The Ultimate Book of British Comics.  Pat Mills of 2000 AD, Crisis and Toxic! fame got his start, for instance, involving himself in girls’ comics like Tammy, Jinty and Misty.  In fact, Mills comes across as being the latter-day British comics industry in and of himself, exploiting every niche he could.  Gory “boys’ comics” like the infamous Action, girls’ comics with more action and suffering, a comic book trying to shoehorn role-playing with Judge Dredd – all are given mention in The Ultimate Book of British Comics, enough that Mills’ name starts to become more repetitive with every comic he’s involved with.

It’s not all Pat Mills worship, though, as the main focus of The Ultimate Book of British Comics is on IPC Magazines’ and DC Thomson’s output.  Polystyle Publications and other companies also get a look-in, as does…well, Look-In.  A lot of the cornerstones of British comics, from Tank Girl and Judge Dredd to Dennis the Menace and Bananaman, are at least touched.  The Ultimate Book of British Comics is fun for reading about middling titles like the aforementioned RPG/2000 AD spinoff 2000 AD’s Diceman and Marvel UK’s non-reprint output like It’s Wicked!  Alan Grant, John Wagner, Dave Gibbons (a/k/a Tornado‘s “editor” Big E), Mark Millar and Neil Gaiman came from the British comics industry, and North Americans unfamiliar with the origins of such comics names would do well to read this book.  There’s a rich font of information within The Ultimate Book of British Comics.  There are a few contradictions and typos that are normal for the first edition of a book, but Graham Kibble-White’s overview is by and large well-researched.  The Ultimate Book of British Comics is not impartial, ohhh no, but Kibble-White knows how to keep his readers interested.

If there’s a sad note to The Ultimate Book of British Comics, it’s that there’s little of a British comic book industry these days.  Most comics either died or merged with other publications, as is the style in Britain.  Of the ninety-eight comic books listed in this book, only 2000 AD, The Beano, Commando, The Dandy and Judge Dredd Megazine continue to exist.  Doctor Who Weekly became Doctor Who Magazine, more a monthly paean to the world’s most famous Time Lord as opposed to being an actual comic.  Some comics didn’t even manage a year in print, while some shouldn’t have.  IPC Magazines’ successor Fleetway (itself now an Egmont UK company) sold 2000 AD and rights to its spinoffs to computer games concern Rebellion A/S in 1999.

As a Canadian who acknowledges how utterly weak the North American comics industry currently is, it’s easy to relate to Britain’s comics industry.  While comics aren’t dead, it’s sad to know that comic characters do better now through spinoff ventures than in the actual comic books they were spawned from.  Maybe that’s just as well – as much as DC Comics, Marvel, DC Thomson and Egmont keep their foot warm in the comics industry, that’s just not where the big money is anymore. The Ultimate Book of British Comics is as much a farewell to the British comics industry as it is a celebration of it.

I’m wondering why the hell The Bog Paper wasn’t included in the pages of The Ultimate Book of British Comics, by the way.  One of the few comics dealing exclusively in the field of feces and Graham Kibble-White neglects to talk about it?  The Bog Paper was a Marvel humour book, granted, so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised by its exclusion.  It’s not my nostalgia, after all.

Further Info
The Ultimate Book of British Comics
Allison & Busby, 2005
296 pages, 16 pages of illustrations

This article stiffed when it made its Blogcritics debut.  That’s the problem with writing for a big site like Blogcritics.org – the music version of MY List of Lists (the ‘my’ is in upper-case for a reason, which is totally lost on Blogcritics editors) did reasonably well despite me not having a good feeling about it.  I thought the television version would do just as well and it died on its ass.  You know what the article needed?  More insults directed at local Southern towns.  Anyhow, to those backwards hicks in Atlanta, Georgia, TBS IS GAY!  TURNER BROADCASTING SYSTEM?  MORE LIKE TURNER BUTTREAMING SYSTEM LOL AM I RITE

Great.  Now Robert Novak is going to e-punch me.

SHOW THAT HASN’T DEBUTED AND STILL LOOKS LIKE IT COULD DAMN NEAR SAVE NBC: Deal or No Deal‘s rules are a bit convoluted, to say the least.  Deal or No Deal looks like Endemol USA threw Jackpot, $ale of the Century and Let’s Make a Deal into a bran tub and added in some nonsense backstory whenever the need arose.  Still, the UK version of Deal or No Deal is killing all its competitors in the ratings.  Hell, even with Howie Mandel hosting, it looks like NBC just stumbled onto a winner.

Still…Howie Mandel?  Donny Osmond did well on Pyramid and Richard Karn made Family Feud watchable again, but this is just taking the piss.  No one thought Billie Piper could act, either.  It’s funny how second careers work.  I still would have preferred Peter Tomarken.

SHOW THAT’S DRAGGING NBC DOWN BY BEING ON WAY, WAY TOO LONG: Where should I start?  Is there a continual need for ER?  Has Will & Grace ever been funny?  What the hell happened to Saturday Night Live that it’s become more unwatchable than MadTV?  Why tease people by announcing that Jay Leno is going to stay on The Tonight Show until 2009 when Leno and Conan O’Brien are unfunny now?  (Oh, I’m sorry, did I step on a sacred cow?  I’ve tried to watch O’Brien recently, but the show just isn’t that funny to me.  Coked-Up Werewolf fans will now tell me how I’m homosexual.)  Should The West Wing even be on anymore, considering the creators abandoned the show a few years ago?  Kill a few of those Law & Orders, too.  Slash and burn, NBC, slash and burn.

COMEBACK THAT I CAN VOUCH FOR: The Simpsons.  I’m admittedly a fan, and others think the show has become death.  Still, no show on its seventeenth season should be doing as well as The Simpsons.  The show has finally become comfortable in its pacing as Al Jean seems to have perfected the show’s current formula – The Simpsons is more political, respectful of its past, and has rediscovered the joy of an Albert Brooks voiceover.  The Simpsons isn’t trying to be Family Guy redux like in the Mike Scully “era,” and the show has stopped trying way too hard to relive a past it can’t possibly duplicate.  Sure, The Simpsons makes a dumb continuity error or two these days (uh, Homer never went to college?  I guess Scratchy never finally killed Itchy, then), and it’ll never be what it was.  No show could ever be what The Simpsons was, but it looks like the writers are writing better scripts to justify Dan Castellaneta’s ridiculous salary.  Expand my brain, learning juice!

COMEBACK THAT DIED ON ITS ARSE: Family Guy has become this decade’s Ren & Stimpy.  It’s nice to see that Seth MacFarlane’s prodigal son returned to Fox, but lately MacFarlane’s been letting spitefulness run his product.  We get it, MacFarlane, Fox censored the show way too much.  That does not to any degree explain the inane feud Family Guy has with The Simpsons.  It doesn’t explain why random characters (usually Peter) are in a naked scene more often than absolutely necessary.  Hell, if Family Guy‘s going to show Brian having sex with a woman eventually, at least say that Brian’s father is the puppy mill owner or something.  Alternatively, how about not including any more allusions to bestiality and pedophilia ever again?  I’m not a prude, but do the staff writers think any off-colour joke they can get away with is automatically funny by the joke’s being?  Maybe I have FULL-BLOWN AIDS.

I still think Family Guy is funny (and I do watch American Dad regularly, so I really shouldn’t complain about anything Seth MacFarlane does), but the show has become louder, cruder and more surreal than Mike Scully’s run on The Simpsons.  MacFarlane has the talent, but he’s become John Kricfalusi redux in that he thinks louder, cruder and more sexually explicit is the way for Family Guy to go.  It isn’t, but does he know it?  Family Guy became a hit because of the show’s endearing randomness, but there’s a limit to how far it should go.

Ren & Stimpy Adult Party Cartoon proved to the world how much of a disturbed individual John Kricfalusi had become by 2003.  I don’t want to see Seth MacFarlane become another Kricfalusi.  The world doesn’t even need one Kricfalusi at this point.

LONG-RUNNING SHOW WITH THE BRIGHTEST FUTURE: The Doctor Who revival just recently found a home on American television, but CBC showed Doctor Who shortly after it debuted in the UK (no surprise, since CBC funds the show.)  Oh, “new” Doctor Who looked dire in development – Billie Piper acting, a Big Brother parody being the focus of one of the episodes, Russell T. Davies helming the metaphorical TARDIS.  It’s the weirdest thing, though – Billie Piper can act well, and the Big Brother parody turned out to be one of the strongest episodes of the series.  Give Russell T. Davies credit – he managed to revive Doctor Who successfully, which is really quite an accomplishment.

The show’s far from perfect.  Russell T. Davies shouldn’t be writing scripts for Doctor Who, bad satires on pop culture that his scripts are.  That Bad Wolf thing caught on among the limeys, though, didn’t it?  What an amazing show, the Slitheen notwithstanding.  I’m supposed to be scared of farting baby-headed aliens that explode when vinegar hits them?

RELATIVELY NEW SHOW THAT NEEDS TO DIE NOW: The War at Home is awful.  It isn’t that the show is worse than the other dysfunctional family sitcoms Fox is fond of airing.  It’s not funny, though, and it makes a terrible bridge between The Simpsons and Family Guy.  What’s the point of airing King of the Hill, which has somehow remained in first-run against all odds, at 7:30PM?  If King of the Hill hasn’t died in that time slot yet, there must be something to that show.  It’s kind of sad when The War at Home can’t be better than Malcolm in the Middle at its worst, but I’m sure The War at Home‘s weak ratings will assure the show’s quick death.

ASSORTED CLAPPED-OUT BANGERS: That 70′s Show has long since exhausted its supply of “Eric Foreman Kelso Bob Pinciotti makes smart ass remark/Red threatens to kick Bob’s ass/Fez thinks he’s a ladykiller” jokes, yet it goes on like the mutant version of Happy Days that it is.  I can’t even fathom why Kevin Spencer is still on the air recycling that one plotline of Kevin acting sociopathic and Kevin’s parents being dirtbags.  20/20‘s title should be changed to John Stossel and Elizabeth Vargas Give Myths and Lies a Break.  Survivor and The Amazing Race have had good runs, but their times have passed and so has the entire reality TV genre.

WORST NEW SHOW: Popcultured with Elvira Kurt is a Canadian show, so Americans are lucky not to see this.  Imagine a Talk Soup variant with a bad host.  Hal Sparks’ name is thrown around a lot, but there are some John Henson, Aisha Tyler and Greg Kinnear haters out there.  Now imagine the host being a female Canadian stand-up comic whose entire routine revolves around the fact that she’s a female Canadian stand-up comic, but she’s a lesbian so the routine is somehow “edgy.”  Visualize a cast and writing staff around her that yell “THIS IS BAG” and “THAT GUY FROM INXS IS A TOTAL PENIS” at random intervals.  Do you have that image in your head?  Somehow, Popcultured manages to be worse than even your imagination can conceive.  Isn’t Canadian television amazing?

BEST NEW SHOW: The Colbert Report by default.  I’m not fond of the show myself, but some think The Colbert Report is already better than The Daily Show.  It’s good to see Stephen Colbert put something on his resumé that isn’t “voiced an implied homosexual.”  He has a nose for hard news, alright!

UNINTENTIONALLY HILARIOUS SHOW OF THE YEAR: Friday Night Smackdown is the comedy program of the year.  See Undertaker appear in Randy Orton’s mirror…BUT HE’S NOT BEHIND ORTON!  EVIL!  See The Dicks rub baby oil on their chests!  Behold the greatness of The Boogeyman!  Behold the godliness of the Smackdown Juniors!  It’s like WWE executives are aware of how bad Smackdown is, and they’re making the show as deliberately surreal as possible.  That doesn’t mean the show’s any good, as Friday Night Smackdown is somehow worse than WCW Thunder at this point.  Yeah, I said it.

WHY BRAND EXTENSION DOESN’T GENERALLY WORK: ET Canada is a success for Global, but the world did not need a Canadian counterpart to thirty minutes of wasted space.  It just makes for sixty minutes of wasted space.  MTV Canada was made redundant by CHUM Limited’s purchase of Craig Media, but the channel pointlessly lives on as Razer.  Another MTV Canada might debut by next year, never mind that no one needed the first one to begin with.  The Apprentice: Martha Stewart proved that not every show helmed by Martha Stewart is going to be an unqualified success, but that’s probably because the show is mediocre.  My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss debuted in the wrong year.  As for MSNBC, what’s the point of throwing money at that channel?  Just merge it with CNBC and focus on putting out a credible news product, because MSNBC is never going to beat CNN or Fox News in the ratings.  I wonder why NBC Universal bothers keeping its America’s Talking variant afloat.

BEST TV TREND: There isn’t one this year.  Oh, the wags are going to say “well, the old guard of television news is finally gone.”  I can’t take network television news seriously when CBS is thinking of having Katie Couric host CBS Evening News.  Is someone taking the piss at CBS Corporation or did Dan Rather drive everyone there insane?  If CBS News is planning to throw money at any passing fancy, how about hiring Kenny Mayne?  He’s as good a choice as any.

WORST TV TREND: North American versions and/or ripoffs of British ‘programmes.’  The American version of The Office is rather mediocre – the cast is trying hard to make the show work, but Arrested Development tries harder.  Martin Short’s Jiminy Glick character seems like a ripoff both of Alan Partridge (not Ali G, that’s another can of orgasm) and Short’s own Brock Linahan.  Strictly Come Dancing did well as Dancing with the Stars and people like Wife Swap, but why can’t ABC show the original British programs instead of trying to Americanize them?  Finally, could someone explain the title Canadian Antiques Roadshow?  I can’t believe Canadians are that insular.  Then again, CBC does produce the program, so that might explain things.

By the way, I remember first seeing Hugh Laurie on Black Adder when I was seven or eight years old.  It’s hard to believe that he’s the title character of House, M.D.  It’s harder still to imagine how he puts up with that show becoming more outlandish every episode.  I’m waiting for Dr. House to contract ovarian cancer.

LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE CBC LOCKOUT: Absolutely none.  As soon as the lockout ended, it was back to the forced “diversity” and myopic Canadianism common to the MotherCorpse.  Not every Canadian is liberal-minded, and we don’t all like Sarah Slean and poorly-written lawyer shows.  CBC Television is the closest thing to broadcast vanilla at the moment.

REST IN PEACE: Arrested Development.  Fox promoted the show like hell, but the ratings never materialized.  No one will see a show both smart and stupid like this for a while.

Tobias Funke was too good for this world.  He is the world’s only analrapist, after all.

Last year I did something for what would become URBMN where I linked to every top-five list that Google News linked to, in an attempt to show that critics’ tastes aren’t as wide-ranging as one would normally be led to believe.  I found out that Pink Martini were set to take over the world (they probably have by now) and that Texarkana music fans are, by and large, idiots.  Still, this seemed like too much work for not enough notoriety.  I’m some nobody with an opinion, set tastes in music and a hankering to get my name out.  Yes, I’m like 98% of the people who have ever written a blog.  I’m well aware.

I’ve decided this year to come up with my own personal most/least-of lists for URBMN and Blogcritics, ones that I hope are more engaging than “Bloc Party made our white asses at The Stamford Circle Jerk dance all night” and “Kelly Clarkson’s ‘Since U Been Gone’ is an abortion set to music.”  Whether this is more successful as a series of articles than what I wrote last year is up for debate.  Best-of lists are fine and dandy, and I haven’t paid much attention to music lately to warrant talking about it like every other newspaper music critic.  To that end, here are some closeminded rants about what I don’t like about “teh radio” and such.  Enjoy!

THE BAHA MEN AWARD FOR POSSIBLE CAREER-NEGATING SINGLE: If Black Eyed Peas had come out with “My Humps” as their first-ever single, they would have been laughed off commercial radio.  People remember Thomas Dolby for “She Blinded Me With Science,” which is not representative of his work at all.  The Baha Men are actually a credible world-music band, but all anyone remembers them for is “Who Let the Dogs Out” – and they’ve been around for more than a quarter-century.  ”My Humps” is a godawful novelty song, pure and simple, one that could have killed Black Eyed Peas’ reputation had they not already written “Let’s Get Retarded.”  They’ve become the Hanna-Barbera of hip-hop.

“The song’s intentionally stupid,” some people might say at this point.  So is Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back,” but Sir Mix-A-Lot had the advantage of being over the top.  I’m supposed to take “My Humps” seriously as music.  There’s quite a difference between stupid and clever.

MOST ANNOYING SINGLE: Jason Mraz’ “Wordplay.”  Is that song supposed to be cute?  It’s the “One Week” of 2005.  I know Mraz is famous for his folk-rap songs, but “Wordplay” still seems like a novelty song that hit big on radio simply because it was a novelty song.  Mraz and Barenaked Ladies pretty much trade on the same “cute, clever” pop image, and I can’t escape either “One Week” or “Wordplay” when I’m listening to my local top 40 radio station.  I guess it doesn’t matter – Mraz sold thousands of albums on the strength of “Wordplay.”  That still doesn’t make the song not annoying.

SONG I GOT SICK OF EXPRESSLY DUE TO HEARING IT THOUSANDS OF TIMES AS PART OF A COMMERCIAL: Gorillaz’ “Feel Good Inc.”  I forget just what exactly the song was supposed to sell.  I was ambivalent about the song before I had to hear it ad nauseam as part of some marketing campaign for…I don’t know, I think it was shoes or something.  It’s always shoes.  Or something from The Gap.  I don’t take note of this stuff.  All I know is that commercial made me hate Gorillaz with a passion.

ARTIST THAT IS STRANGELY OMNIPRESENT DESPITE THE ARTIST’S LATEST ALBUM BEING RELEASED LAST YEAR: Green Day have really been inescapable as of late, haven’t they?  Grammy recognition for Best Rock Album, the fact that at least four songs off American Idiot seem to have charted, and critical adulation to boot.  The success of American Idiot all seems a little reflexive to me – an anti-Bush album?  The indie and punk crowds being, on the whole, left-leaning?  A band known for its supposed immaturity suddenly “coming of age?”  It’s still Green Day.  Their concerts feature a bunny dancing to Village People songs.  How mature could Green Day really be?

Green Day seem to be more popular lately than they were in 1994.  Fine, “Wake Me Up When September Ends” is a decent song, and I’d rather “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” chart than that godawful, Cancon-friendly crawl of emo clichés coming from Simple Plan.  Still, would some of the critics still love Green Day if the band sang about George W. Bush saving Iraq from tyranny?  Think about that for a second.

ARTIST THAT CAN’T POSSIBLY MEET THE HYPE: How about metalcore bands in general?  How many bands do we need that sound like Dillinger Escape Plan?  Shadows Fall and Lamb of God have major label deals and music publications like Exclaim! and Spin have long since trumpeted the virtues of this sort of music.  Look what happened to Cave In, though – their major-label debut didn’t sell near as many copies as RCA thought it would, and Cave In were punted off the RCA roster rather quickly afterwards.  I don’t know if I’m speaking out of jealousy or not – death metal and grindcore bands rarely if ever get major label deals (they never will, but that’s another issue altogether), but metalcore’s being groomed as the next budding mainstream fad?  It seems like a case of major labels trying to anticipate the next big thing.  If metalcore succeeds in the marketplace, the major labels will trumpet it as the evolution of metal.  If it fails, who cares?  Just throw metalcore in the rubbish bin next to Nashville Pussy and The Unband.

ARTIST THAT SEEMS TO MEET THE HYPE: Kaiser Chiefs are the real deal.  They’re the best thing to come out of the “new wave” revival bandwagon by dint of the band actually having a personality.  I’m not huge on what people are calling new wave these days – The Killers and Franz Ferdinand are better than a lot of what’s out there, but it’s not like self-consciously “weird” bands like Tubeway Army or Devo are suddenly breaking into the top 40 again.  ”New wave of new wave” seems like a contrived attempt to bring back an era of music that will never be duplicated – The Sex Pistols can only exist once, after all.  The Kaiser Chiefs could become legendary in their own time, or they could be the modern-day Dexy’s Midnight Runners.  The future’s wide open for them.

STUPID INDUSTRY PRACTICE: Sony BMG’s attempts at implementing Digital Rights Management.  That whole secretly installing what amounts to malware on one’s computer wasn’t good publicity for the monolith, was it?  Sony BMG then tried to put another, worse malware program past people, which is either ignorance or stubbornness on the company’s part.  What’s the point of implementing DRM when the solution to file-sharing is worse than file-sharing itself?  Didn’t Sony BMG executives realize how stupid this would make the company look?  More to the point, did the executives actually care?

SMART INDUSTRY PRACTICE: Warner Music Group finally admitting that the major music labels try to influence station managers and radio DJs (like the computerized playlists haven’t completely taken over by now) through some sort of financial incentive.  Sure, pay-for-play isn’t going to end now, and using the term “payola” just leads to wags making Alan Freed jokes and acting unsurprised about how the music industry sells itself.  Frankly, Sony BMG and WMG admitting to payola is redundant in the face of the Internet, Cubase and CDR/online-based labels.  At least more than one major label is at least trying to look above-board now, and that’s all that matters.  Frankly, I’m amazed that the music and radio industries haven’t merged with each other yet.

COMEBACK THAT EVERYONE SEEMS TO HAVE A HARD-ON FOR, BUT I CAN NEVER FOR THE LIFE OF ME UNDERSTAND: The Pixies.  I know they reunited last year, but their live DVD recently came out and they’re in the process of recording a new album.  Could somebody explain to me what is so great about this band?  This is why I stopped following indie rock around 1998 – I don’t have a problem with Frank Black, and from what I’ve heard of The Pixies I don’t have a problem with their music, but some fans call them THE MOST AMAZING BAND IN THE HISTORY OF FOREVER.  I can’t remember a reason for people liking The Pixies beyond “THEY’RE SO GODDAMN COOL, THEY ARE LIKE GODS AND IF YOU HATE ‘EM YOU’RE GAY” or “FRANK BLACK IS SUCH AN ASSHOLE ON STAGE!  HE’S DREAMY!”  They’re a late-1980s indie rock band that broke up before they outlasted themselves, not the second coming of God.  David Bowie and Kurt Cobain may like The Pixies.  Neither of them speak for me or my tastes and never will.

COMEBACK THAT I CAN ACTUALLY VOUCH FOR: Johnny Cash is quite popular among people lately, considering his death and the biopic about him that recently came out.  If it means one of the best country singers of the 20th century is coming back into vogue, then that can only be a good thing.  Cash was true to himself, and he was as truly “counterculture” in the 1960s as he was when he released American IV: The Man Comes Around in 2003.  It’s sort of sad that Johnny Cash’s popularity might be the highest it has been in decades two years after his death, but anyone who can cover a Nine Inch Nails song and actually make the cover better than the original deserves all the plaudits (s)he receives, posthumously or otherwise.  Cash is just too good to have something as transient as death keep him down.

ARTIST THAT CRITICS THINK IS THE DEATH OF MUSIC WHEN THE ARTIST ISN’T THAT BAD: American Idol’s Kelly Clarkson and J.D. Fortune off Rock Star: INXS.  So what if they won contests and had insta-fame thrust upon them?  Yeah, I’m sure no other aspiring musician secretly wants to have marketing campaigns behind them.  There are worse things in the music industry to worry about than those two figures of fun – you know, like DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT.  I guess things like DRM are too heady for light reading.  Er, I mean “Since U Been Gone” is an abortion set to music.  Yeah, that’s the ticket.

One of the highlights of the Gemini Awards on Global was when Ken Finkleman won a Gemini for Best Writing In A Comedy Series.  Having won five Geminis in various categories for various shows prior to tonight, Finkleman gave a speech that epitomizes how I feel about the Canadian television industry.

His speech was simply this: “The best thing about writing is you don’t have to thank anyone.”  Then he left.

Normally this wouldn’t bother me, but it came off as a flippant remark.  Finkleman stars, writes and is executive producer of The Newsroom.  His character on the show is that of an egotistical executive producer of a news program.

If Ken Finkleman’s character isn’t essentially his personality writ large, he did little to disprove it here.  It’s almost like Finkleman expected the award.  There were funnier programs than The Newsroom on Canadian television this year, but that’s the thing with the Geminis – he just didn’t seem to care.  If he doesn’t care, why should I?

Something else I could never figure out was when Trailer Park Boys won Best Ensemble Performance – the nomination clip littered with as many S-and-F-bombs as could be expected of the program.  ”Shit” is quite acceptable for prime-time audiences and has been in Canada for years, but “fuck” is not (well, not before 9:00 PM, anyway) and was censored for the audience.  Later on, Mary Walsh trudged through a rah-rah speech about the Canadian television industry, letting out a few F-bombs just because…well, because she could.  The speech was about as subtle as a hand grenade being delivered by a fist to the face.  Trailer Park Boys uses that language because it’s colloquial to the inhabitants of the show’s redneck setting.  Walsh just seemed like she was peppering her speech for the sheer hell of it.  Edge and reverence: two tastes that don’t go great together.

That’s the principal problem with the Gemini Awards.  The Geminis try to be a hipper version of the Emmy Awards – well, about as hip as one can go considering Luba Goy’s involvement.  The awards ceremony (or, more importantly, its closing gala as the awards are spread out over three days) came across as uneven and unbecoming of an anniversary gala.  The awards broadcast was produced by both Global and CBC, CBC having lost Gemini broadcast rights this year due to the CMG lockout.  It still felt like the CBC-oriented Gemini Awards, on another network.  How else to explain the involvement of Gavin Crawford, Sean Cullen, assorted members of the mutated husk that is modern-day Air Farce and Mary Walsh?  On top of that, Scott Thompson and technical problems also featured.  It’s like the purveyors of cornpone and the hipsters were thrown into a blender and expected to become something that didn’t taste off.

The Geminis are a train wreck.  There’s no way to say this aside from the direct way.  I had never watched a Gemini Awards ceremony before this one, and I might never again.  I can’t understand why Canadians need to ape the American model of awards ceremonies so slavishly.  The majority of Canadians probably wouldn’t know who Michael Riley and Cara Pifko are, which suggests why the Geminis don’t work in the CBC-centric awards ceremony format.  Marrying the American style with Canadian hand-wringing about a national identity makes for bad television.  It’s nice to see an awards ceremony being produced in part by someone other than the CBC (with a ridiculous 204 Gemini nominations, which is why the award’s credibility always comes into question.)  The Geminis still need retooling.  If this is the most prestigious awards ceremony for television in Canada, the Geminis need to look it.

Perhaps Global will be able to wrest full control of the Geminis from the CBC next year and make the Gemini Awards look as respected as CTV makes the Junos look.  Canadian television should be supported.  Bad awards ceremonies should not.