Television
Clean up your act, Courteney
Published 12 July 2007
American TV is in poor health, on the evidence of this dull and preachy drama
Dirt Five US
I sometimes wonder about the people who tell me how fantastic American TV drama is. A lot of the stuff they praise most makes me come out in a rash. The West Wing? Pass the bucket, Mr President. Also, guys, I would remind you that The Sopranos is over now. When was the last time you saw a good new American TV show? The other week, I tuned in to Channel 4's latest acquisition, Brothers and Sisters (Wednesdays, 10pm), which is about a liberal Californian family whose not-very-black sheep - played by Calista Flockhart - is a right-wing TV pundit. Uh-oh. In order to persuade him to watch it with me, I told my husband this was the new Thirtysomething - a series that, long ago, we both loved. After five minutes, he turned his face grimly towards mine and said: "This is not the new Thirtysomething. This is . . . awful." He slowly returned his icy gaze to Calista Flockhart. She was busy enjoying another group hug with her emotionally incontinent relatives.
So it's fair to say that I wasn't exactly slavering with excitement at the prospect of Dirt (9 July, 9pm, Five US), another new US import starring Courteney Cox as the editor of Drrt, a Hollywood scandal rag. Then again, how bad could it be? In hopeful moments, I saw it wittily satirising fame, like HBO's Entourage, which chronicles the rise of a film star and his parasitical boyhood gang. In pessimistic moments, I thought: at least the shoes will be great.
Besides, Dirt has a supposedly good pedigree. It is brought to us by FX, the cable channel which, thanks to hits such as The Shield and Nip/Tuck, is considered the heir to HBO. (Since the departure in May of HBO's chief executive Chris Albrecht, some commentators have begun to wonder about the network's prospects.) "Edgy" is the word people like to use in conjunction with FX.
Well, Dirt is not edgy. Nor is it funny, interesting, exciting or well-written. Great shoes? I didn't notice any. As for the acting, apart from the honourable exception of Ian Hart, to whom we'll return, I haven't seen anything this bad in a long while. In fact, I am going to give Courteney Cox, uncontested, my inaugural Teak Sideboard Prize for Screen Presence. She is so stiff - so absolutely devoid of expression - that I began to wonder whether the poor darling has some scary disease that petrifies her muscles. Every time she walked into a room, I looked at her feet, not to admire her Manolos, but to see if there were little wheels attached to them, the better to aid her movement about the set. Seriously. When her character picked up a hunky musician and took him to bed, I worried that he would get splinters.
Cox's character is called Lucy Spiller, and her sidekick, played by Hart, is a weaselly paparazzo called Don Konkey (see what they did with those names?).
Hart is a great actor and he tries hard to make Don, a "functioning" schizophrenic, seem real. The trouble is that he is marooned in a show that doesn't know which is worse: sleaze sheets and their grubby tactics, or actors who will secretly do anything to appear on their pages. The best approach would be to admit that they're two ferrets in a bag, and play the thing as black farce. But Dirt is executive-produced by Cox, who has had a few magazine covers herself. This is surely why the show comes off as so preachy and sanctimonious.
In episode one, a failing star sold a story about a pregnant star to Drrt in return for some good publicity. The pregnant star then killed herself. The failing star felt really guilty. So did Lucy. We know this because the last shot was of Cox, alone in bed, surrounded by magazines. I'm guessing that she was supposed to look agonised, but I couldn't honestly tell. Then again, even if her face had registered emotion, it would hardly have been convincing.
Moments earlier, she had paid a prostitute to shove a strap-on dildo up a basketball star's backside for the benefit of a hidden camera. The basketball star is a family guy, so I predict more moralising - and even less fun - in weeks to come.
Pick of the week . . .
The Thick of It Special
14 July, 10pm, BBC2
Award-winning political comedy returns to mark Tony Blair's exit.
How We Built Britain
15 July, 9pm, BBC1
Final episode of David Dimbleby's tour of British architecture.
Empire's Children
16 July, 9pm, Channel 4
David Steel in continuation of series on how imperialism shaped Britain.
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