Tony Klinger

Just when you think it can get no worse on British television something comes along to restore your faith in it, and the world at large.

In Britain we have suffered this summer from some of the worst drama rubbish ever produced. I shall name the three chief culprits and then stand well back from the stink of their rotting, dead flesh. They are, in no order of merit, Spooks 9, Harley St. and Bonekickers.

Let us be fair, if the truth is told I have only managed to sit through complete episodes of Bonekickers, whereas the others totally defeated me with their inane stories, camp acting and scant regard for their viewers intelligence.

I don’t want to waste too much of your time with a story outline on any of these anal droppings but if you are a masochist then run, don’t walk to your TV when any of these are shown. You can imagine the story conference that generated such shows with Tarquin and Samantha deciding at some bar in Soho that if you got Bill and Jo for the show it would be a goer, and so STREET. We’ll hire Gerry for the script and he’ll sort it for us, no problem.

You have to believe that either they never read the resulting scripts and went straight to production, or they simply can’t read, or more likely, they can read, but don’t know what the heck they’re looking at!

The situations are not believable, the characters are paper thin cartoons, the way the characters talk to each other is totally false and ridiculous and all three shows are failed attempts at style over substance.

Like me, you’ve also probably been watching the Olympics. Did the opening ceremony disturb you a bit? I wrote about it a few blogs back and have since received reports back from people who were attending. One of them informed me that she had been driven past large walls especially built to hide poor neighborhoods from the sight of visitors. Now we have heard how the Chinese authorities used a very pretty 9 year old to mime the voice of a none too beautiful 7 year old at that opening ceremony. As we watched we had noticed the miming but had thought she must be miming to her own voice.

We also noticed that the symmetry of the fireworks over the city looked a little too perfect and between us we had said they’re using Computer Generated Images to achieve this effect. This is apparently the truth. Now we hear that the Chinese are possibly fielding illegible, under age competitors in the gymnastic competition. Why should that surprise anyone?

For us sport is about competition at its best, and money at its worst. In China it is about national destiny.

Now for the unknown and unscheduled bit of great television. It also came from the Olympics. There is a British woman weight lifter called Michaela Breeze . She isn’t a particularly brilliant or gifted weight lifter, she had no real prospect of winning a medal, she isn’t even hugely pretty. Michaela’s triumph is taking part at the greatest sports event ever mounted.

Michaela was Britain’s lone weightlifter at the Beijing Olympics and her competition ended in agony almost too painful to watch as she pulled up injured after completing her second snatch lift.

The pony-tailed 29-year-old Devon teacher converted her first and second attempts at 80kg and 85kg respectively, but reacted each time afterwards with a grimace, her right hand holding her back.
The competition announcer later declared that Breeze ‘has been injured’ and has missed her turn to complete her third snatch attempt.

The 2006 Commonwealth Games gold medallist lay face down on the floor while her coach gently massaged her back and rivals walked past for their turn at the platform.

Anyone who saw Breeze fight to stand upright against the agony of her injured back as she lifted her weights will remember her triumphant smile of defiance break through the tears of her pain as the crowd roared it sympathetic approval.

Maybe she didn’t win the battle for medals, but she won the war for our hearts, and in doing so reminded everyone what the Olympics and television should be about. In the end all we want are believable characters we can care about it battling through adversity. We know truth when we see it, and we all love nothing more.