TV Offal
They say that restaurant critics make lousy
chefs...but do television critics make lousy television?
Victor Lewis-Smith is an established tv critic (for the
London Evening Standard) and occasional television
presenter; he writes for various newspapers and has
presented programmes and features including one-off
specials such as BBC2's TV Hell. His newspaper columns
don't just cover television but also nostalgia - so it's
only logical that he should also have a strong interest in
television nostalgia. Incidentally I'm informed by Andy
Emmerson that the strangely-shaped clock is taken from
early 1960s French TV.
TV Offal started life as a one-off pilot programme
shown on 31 October 1997. It's incredibly difficult to
summarise, but the Channel 4 press release has a good stab
at it: 'Having scoured the skips and bins of TV
broadcasting and plundered the graveyards of student
television stations, Victor has, in his own unique and
bizarre fashion, constructed an archive programme that
treats its material (celebrity and otherwise) with a savage
combination of satire and scatology. But, in his own words:
"It isn't another It'll be Alright on the Night, because
you can tell from what you see that it'll be anything but
alright on the night."'
From this you can possibly deduce that
TV
Offal pokes fun not just only at programmes but also at
programming formats and 'celebrities', as well as anything
else that maybe related to television culture such as test
cards and ident (station identification) sequences. Despite
the parodying tone, it becomes rapidly self-evident that
Victor himself actually enjoys these items of tv culture,
though it's equally obvious that he really means it when he
mocks celebrities such as Noel Edmonds or Vanessa Feltz.
The audio used in the link sequences is uniquely (for
television) done in the style of 1970s Radio 1
jingles.
It seemed that viewers and critics other than Victor
himself liked the pilot show, so Channel 4 went ahead with
commissioning a series of six half-hour programmes which
ran from May 22nd 1998, shown on Friday evenings at 11 pm.
Late night Channel 4 is not exactly viewing suitable for
children (as programmes such as
Eurotrash or
The
Word have graphically illustrated), so
TV Offal
was able to use this scheduling to its advantage in order
to show the sort of things that would make 'clean-up tv'
campaigner Mary Whitehouse reach for the
typewriter...
Much of the source material used by TV Offal comes
from a little-known (outside of the tv industry) phenomenon
known as 'Christmas tapes'. These are unofficial
compilations of tv material made by tv station staff in
their spare time which often comprised of a collection of
'outtakes' (presenters fluffing their lines, etc.) but also
may include clips specially recorded for the tape,
originally intended for the staff's own amusement only and
not for transmission; the clip showing the
Rainbow
(kids' tv show) team letting off steam with 'the bad
language' being a prime example. The excerpt used in the
pilot episode came from a Christmas 1978 tape produced by
Thames Television staff.
Every
TV Offal features one or two "Kamikaze
Karaoke" sketches, whereby some of the most famous
popular/classical music acts are seen performing, but their
voices substituted with singing that is off-key/has
different lyrics/etc., superimposed on the same or similar
musical backing. Guaranteed to bring the most egoistical
superstar crashing down to earth, singers and acts which
have been given the "This is what he sounds like to me"
treatment include Pavarotti, Michael Jackson, Elvis
Presley, Elton John, Bob Marley, Nigel Kennedy, Vanessa-Mae
and that Manchester foursome Oasis.
Probably the most controversial of
TV Offal's
regular features is the Gay Daleks: "They're camp! They
exterminate! Better watch your backs! It's the Gay Daleks!"
You either feel that the sketches are crude, tasteless and
offensive, or they're a splendid parody of both the Daleks
and of gay cultural stereotypes; late night Channel 4
viewers (on the whole) would interpret them as the latter
which is probably just as well given the content.
Apparently they were popular with the gay community, though
later attempts to produce a cartoon series based on the Gay
Daleks did not materialise due to a a lack of consent from
the Terry Nation estate.
Another semi-regular feature that straddles the
commercial break is "Assasination of the Week". This sketch
parodies the voyeurism that certain programmes are starting
to lapse into: before the commercial break an assasination
attempt is shown, and viewers are invited to guess "did
they live or are they worm-food?". After the break the rest
of the film is shown and the answer is given, though there
was a twist when the assasination of JFK was covered. Other
politicians featured included Imelda Marcos, the woman with
the very large shoe collection.
TV Offal often featured "The Pilots that Crashed";
one-off programmes that never got any further than the
pilot episode or shows that had a very limited run.
Controversially the show featured "The Development of the
Television Test Card" in show 2 which technically is not a
failed pilot programme; it was a one-off show (made in
1985) aimed at a specialist audience as reference material,
and it was never intended for general broadcast. But it
featured one of Victor's favourite subjects (as anyone
seeing any earlier material of his would testify) so he
couldn't possibly ignore it!
TV Offal regularly features clips from the archives
of student or hospital television stations, often featuring
celebrities either before they became famous or making a
guest appearence. Famous people featured included Michaela
Strachan, Phillippa Forrester, and Christopher Biggins. The
picture is taken from the ident used in 1969 of STOIC -
Student Television of Imperial College
(London).
A
TV Offal show wouldn't be complete without
one of Victor Lewis-Smith's "specialities", the wind-up
phone call. He calls a famous person or organisation
pretending to be someone else, with either hilarious or
deeply embarrassing results. "Victims" included Carlton
Television, the late Hughie Green and Mary Whitehouse.
However the alleged 'call' to Mary Whitehouse landed Victor
in a spot of bother...
The show is produced by Victor's own production
company, Associated-Rediffusion Television Ltd., which
happens also to be the name of the ITV contractor that
served London weekdays from 1955-1968. Victor bought the
rights many years ago when it was simply 'gathering dust',
and he even featured the voice of Redvers Kyle who was a
regular continuity announcer for A-R in the 1950s (amongst
others), in show 4. There will never be a video tape of the
TV Offal series sold commercially because the
producer (John Hayward-Warburton) found it difficult enough
gaining copyright clearance for many of the clips used
simply for television transmission.
So, to paraphrase the "Assassination of the Week" feature,
what happened next? The answer is the cleverly-titled
Ads Infinitum - two series of ten-minute programmes
shown on BBC2 (the first series in 1998), which (as the
title suggests) are all about television or cinema adverts.
And as for TV Offal itself, some compilation programmes
('the best of' or 'the worst of', depending on your point
of view...) were subsequently shown on Channel 4. These
days Victor Lewis-Smith is still involved with television
production and continues to be a newspaper TV critic and
columnist; recent productions include
Alchemists of
Sound for BBC Four and
You're Fayed! for Channel
4.
