Ethical News Reporting

"If you don't want to propagate more mass murders...

Don't start the story with sirens blaring.

Don't have photographs of the killer.

Don't make this 24/7 coverage.

Do everything you can not to make the body count the lead story.

Not to make the killer some kind of anti-hero.

Do localise this story to the affected community and as boring as possible in every other market." - from Newswipe by Charlie Brooker.

Television Review - Survivors 8*

I bought a Netflix subscription, it seems a very reasonable cost at £6 a month, and although I haven't managed to make full use of it during high season at work I have managed to watch the re-makes of the cult 1970's series Survivors.  The BBC made two 6 episode series of this post-apocalyptic drama starring Julie Graham, Max Beesley, Philip Rhys, Paterson Joseph, Zoe Tapper, Chahak Patel and Robyn Addison.

I have a bit of thing for apocalypse and end of the civilised world scenarios.  Survivors follows the tribulations of a group of people thrown together in the aftermath of a devastating global flu virus.  The characterisation was good, Julie Graham and Max Beesley in particular turning in very credible performances.  Beesley as the distrusting convicted killer whose first answer to most problems is violence was a world away from his run as likeable wide boy Charlie Edwards in Hotel Babylon.

The two series had just enough time to develop most of the main characters well, and to advance the plot beyond the end of the world survival scenario into a darker battle to halt a second virus outbreak tied in with a sinister and secretive research unit.  The last episode of series 2 tied up a couple of long running plot threads and also paved the way for a third series, which the BBC have promptly cancelled.  A shame, I thought Survivors was well made, mostly believable and well acted.

TV Review - Dead Set 9*

This is by the way of being a double review, as well as watching the excellent Channel 4 mini-series Dead Set I viewed it via a free month's introductory subscription to Netflix.  I don't watch much television, and I hardly ever get to the cinema, largely due to being at work when anything worth watching is on.  The Netflix advantage of being able to watch programmes on my laptop without being tied to recordings on the Sky box at home seems like a good idea.

So far I have seen a selection of films; The Devil Came On Horseback - a harrowing documentary about the Janjaweed in the Sudan, The Woodsman - Kevin Bacon stars as a convicted paedophile struggling to adjust on his release from prison, Black Sheep - horror and laughs as flesh eating mutant sheep run riot in New Zealand, Ghost World - a nicely quirky and offbeat drama where Thora Birch's high school drop out becomes increasingly infatuated with oddball Steve Buscemi, and Dead Set.  Netflix is currently priced at £6 a month, rather less than a single visit to the cinema and pretty good value.

Jaime Winston as Kelly in Dead Set

Charlie Brooker wrote the script for Dead Set and set the tone for the rather extreme gore fest when he said "There's no point making a 15-certificate zombie flick. Money shots, that's what you want. And that's what you'll get. I sincerely hope some of you vomit."  Dead Set is violent and gory, incredibly so, from smashing a zombie skull in with a fire extinguisher to seeing Davina McCall getting her throat ripped out, it's a full on bloodbath all the way.

There are two sorts of accepted zombies now, the stumbling and slow Dawn Of The Deaders, and the much more terrifying running, screaming, tireless 28 Days Later monsters, Brooker has opted for the latter. The relentless zombie horde, which appear with no explanation, are truly scary in their unstoppable quest for fresh flesh.

Although the scripting for Dead Set is mostly very high quality, there are one or two moments that let the series down a little.  The incident with the armed policemen felt like a pointless and arbitrary caricature of the police, Kathleen MacDermott's endlessly stupid character Pippa became a bit wearing, and Andy Nyman's portrayal of Big Brother director Patrick was a little over the top in places.  On the positive side though, Jaime Winston as Kelly was great throughout and Liz May Brice, Riz Ahmed and Warren Brown provided very believable supporting roles.

The action comes thick, fast and gore drenched, Brooker inverts the whole ethos of Big Brother from having (to the contestant's minds) the whole world looking in they become an island amidst the horror, looking out for salvation. Brooker has his characters muse on the fickle nature of talent free fame, sometimes in darkly comic style and as the zombie horde closes in on the Big Brother house we are reminded that even with the world reversed in the throes of a zombie holocaust the Big Brother contestants are in demand not because they offer anything special, singular, intellectually stimulating or creatively exciting, but just because they are alive.  Fresh flesh for zombies or fresh faces for the easily amused watching public, Dead Set neatly underlines the nature of these forgettable and fleeting celebrities.

Anna Torv's Fringe

The rather lovely Anna Torv who plays Olivia Dunham in the sci-fi series Fringe.

Our Cities Alight

I thought the world might be ending in 1981, in the depths of the Cold War our cities suddenly caught alight. Brixton, Toxteth, Handsworth, Chapeltown and Moss Side were ablaze both literally, and with anger fuelled by long term social deprivation and resentment at police stop and search powers directed at young black men. It was a troubled year, Bobby Sands starved himself to death and more riots took place on the streets of Belfast, US President Ronald Reagun was wounded in an assassination attempt and a man fired shots, which later proved to be blanks, at the Queen.

I remember keeping a scrapbook at the time, I was slightly obsessed with the rioting, I cut out out reports and pictures from the papers and built up a dossier of violence and disorder, photographs of disaffected youths throwing missiles, of wounded policemen being sheltered by comrades, of shops and workplaces and homes burning.  I could not understand then why people were destroying the amenities in their own neighbourhoods, if this was the only protest they felt they could make, why did they torch their own community centres.

The riots that have exploded across London, and which are spreading through our larger cities, have taken a different hue. The original riot seems to have been triggered by the police shooting of a man, reports are now contradicting the first story that Mark Duggan fired first and wounded a police officer, it is now being said that all the shots were fired by the Police.  Tensions boiled over and Tottenham suffered more for it.

Some activists in Tottenham are claiming that last month there was an entirely peaceful march to Tottenham police station, which it is claimed around 2,000 people took part in and was almost completely ignored by the media. Protesters/rioters in Tottenham interviewed by NBC pointed out that if 20 black kids smash up a branch of William Hill and burn a sports car, they can bring the world's media to their doorstep.

The more extensive riots that have taken place though have no political or activist connection with the first events in Tottenham. Television reports carry footage of largely young people bent on a bit of window breaking and looting, organised, it is claimed, on the Blackberry Messenger closed system. This is vandalism and theft on a large scale and nothing more. It may well be that the people involved in these events are at the poorest end of the social spectrum, but these riots are not anti-police or against authority, it's just a bunch of kids out to cause mayhem and steal some trainers.

Last night Sky News were warming their hands over the footage of a huge blaze consuming a furniture store in Croyden, and taking with it the jobs and livelihoods of the families that worked there.  As buildings burn in Tottenham and Croyden, ordinary working class families have lost everything, their jobs, homes and all their possessions bar the clothes they are wearing. Sky repeated that footage late into last night, I must have seen the same group of three kids run past the burning building 15 times.

Whatever your situation in life, you still have choices, and if you are poor and excluded then looting a couple of pairs of Adidas trainers from JD Sports isn't really going to improve your social situation.  We live in a technological age where you can choose to use your mobile device to organise a mob of your wrong thinking friends to firebomb Currys, or you can use it to inform and educate yourself.

"I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent." - Mohandas Gandhi

Television