Christmas/New Year Telly

[Patrick Thistle]

Specials, films etc

The Tiger Who Came to Tea was pretty good. Robbie Williams sang a song in it.

[ChrisJ]

Fighting with my Family. (Netflix)
Gavin and Stacey.
Eight Days A Week.

Not a bad lineup if you need to capitalise on the weather and keep a family feel good vibe going.

[San Bernardhinault]

Fighting with my Family is great.

[Patrick Thistle]

Gavin and Stacey has me cracking up tonight. Nessa is one of the greatest comic creations ever.

Next year I'm just giving everyone taps.

[Snake Plissken]

I'll get round to watching Fighting with my Family but I guess they have understandably smoothed off some of the darker and weirder edges of Paige's life. (She was a great wrestler and helped change the perception of women's wrestling in the WWE.)

[steveeeeeeeee]

I don't think there are any Gavin and Stacey spoilers below, but just in case...

I'm always happy to watch Gavin and Stacey when it's on, but never make the effort to watch it in sequential order of catch up on missed episodes. Perhaps that's why I enjoyed last night's special so much, as the cliff-hangers didn't bother me and I found them to be well-timed and not overplayed. Sonia was a really good introduction, the scene in the front room where she's messaging as the other's try to fill space with conversation said a lot about the changes in family culture over the past decade as a result of social media. Subtlety is not something you associate with Gavin and Stacey, but there where several simple moments - Nessa singing the McGowan section being one.

And what Partick Thistle says about Nessa, she's just great. Love Alison Steadman too.

[Arturo]

I saw the last thirty minutes of a documentary about Michael Bond and Paddington on BBC2. Very good, and I'll watch the missing half later.

I've never got the fuss about Gavin and Stacey, plus cannot abide James Corden either. Sorry, not for me. Fighting with my Family is excellent though.

[Jah Womble]

Gavin and Stacey is the only tolerable feature of James Corden’s bafflingly-diverse career - which seemingly stretches his abilities thinner by the hour.

The Christmas special was a decent addition to the schedules, its overall warmth something of a welcome diversion from the lack of same elsewhere. The ending was verging on ‘Hollywood’, yes, but G&S is pretty much the only sitcom where one could legitimately do this and pull it off. (It didn’t really work in that Office special, tbh.) What’s more, it was pretty much the only show over the festive period that had appeal to the entire family, for that matter.

[ChrisJ]

Gavin and Stacey is the only tolerable feature of James Corden’s bafflingly-diverse career - which seemingly stretches his abilities thinner by the hour.

I generally subscribe to this but I do remind myself he was also good in The History Boys. Or at least, I don't recall him spoiling it.

[ursus arctos]

That could indicate that he is especially dependent on the quality of his material

[MsD]

"F*****"gate aside, I had a couple of problems with G&S.

SPOILER ALERT

Thought the funny parts were fine.

It's the hetero-normativeness of it. The Richard Curtis type set-up of having one attractive alpha couple, with a subplot of a couple of unattractive saddoes, who get together because no-one else wants them, and everyone knows being single is as good as being dead.

Most of all - Why the Chaffing Fuck would Ness propose to Smiffy, a man who's been disloyal and insulting to her for 12 years, seemingly disgusted by her appearance but willing to shag her once a month or whatever. I know we can get blinded by love, but she's had 12 years to watch him acting the cunt. Do better. Aim better. Don't send the message to young girls watching that the bloke who puts them down all the time is really a loving diamond in the rough. No, he's a cunt.

There's a strain of misogyny that pushes "negging" on women as a way to control them, by lowering their self-esteem, and even where this isn't adopted consciously as a tactic, it's widespread. I've seen so many men doing it to their wives. My eldest brother used to go on about his wife's huge "conk" and fat arse, she was stunning, and is now his ex-wife. I wish I could say she'd gone on to better things, but I think he destroyed her confidence too much.

We singles get this pushed onto us all the time, that we need to have a partner to make our lives worthwhile, and the ideal of the happy family is pushed onto us at Christmas, especially. At least EastEnders subverts that, by making the family a grotesque place where nobody sane would want to live.

Nessa, love, you'd be better off sitting on your finger.

[slackster]

I get the niggles about G&S mentioned above, but it was an oasis of enjoyment compared to Call The Midwife and misery-soap Eastenders that bookended it on BBC1 Xmas night. Ah, the delights of letting family visitors choose what they fancied watching...

[MsD]

EastEnders was even more ridiculous than ever. Everyone up the duff by the wrong person, as per. Mitchells going around shooting people, or getting other people to shoot them.

[ChrisJ]

"F*****"gate aside, I had a couple of problems with G&S.

Thought the funny parts were fine.

It's the hetero-normativeness of it. The Richard Curtis type set-up of having one attractive alpha couple, with a subplot of a couple of unattractive saddoes, who get together because no-one else wants them, and everyone knows being single is as good as being dead.

Most of all - Why the Chaffing Fuck would Ness propose to Smiffy, a man who's been disloyal and insulting to her for 12 years, seemingly disgusted by her appearance but willing to shag her once a month or whatever. I know we can get blinded by love, but she's had 12 years to watch him acting the cunt. Do better. Aim better. Don't send the message to young girls watching that the bloke who puts them down all the time is really a loving diamond in the rough. No, he's a cunt.

There's a strain of misogyny that pushes "negging" on women as a way to control them, by lowering their self-esteem, and even where this isn't adopted consciously as a tactic, it's widespread. I've seen so many men doing it to their wives. My eldest brother used to go on about his wife's huge "conk" and fat arse, she was stunning, and is now his ex-wife. I wish I could say she'd gone on to better things, but I think he destroyed her confidence too much.

We singles get this pushed onto us all the time, that we need to have a partner to make our lives worthwhile, and the ideal of the happy family is pushed onto us at Christmas, especially. At least EastEnders subverts that, by making the family a grotesque place where nobody sane would want to live.

Nessa, love, you'd be better off sitting on your finger.

I can see the hetero-normative complaint, though the set-up isn't unrealistic in itself. I'm puzzled by the bolded bits though. G&S may be attractive-ish, white, hetero, but I'm not sure I see them in the Curtis model.

Re: Smithy and Ness, I've maybe missed the bits where he's disloyal/disgusted by her appearance. I knew they didn't like each other but just thought it was owing to their inability to cope with their mutual attraction - feelings completely out of step with their normal modes of operation. Didn't Ness tell Smithy not to ring her after their initial encounter and then turn him down in favour of Dave Coaches? (I know she didn't follow through with that.)

Part of the humour for me seems to derive from the juxtaposition of very ordinary characters (Mick) with the unstable, erratic (Pam, Stacey) or magnificently, bizarrely, complex Ness whose purpose is always to wrong-foot you. I can see where you're coming from, and the final event (needed a spoiler alert IMO) may turn out to be a misstep, but I reckon I trust Ruth Jones' writing and characterisation.

[MsD]

MORE SPOILERS FOR ANYONE WHO HASN'T WATCHED GAVIN AND STACEY.

I've put a spoiler alert in my post, but I stand by my criticisms, particularly of the Smiffy/Ness relationship. I think it's toxic.

[DCI Harry Batt]

I'm going to post this here as well - I don't think it's possible or acceptable to ignore this when discussing G&S:

One particular faggot had had enough of faggot talk so he wrote somethingat 3am on Christmas Day.

So tonight- Christmas night, ffs- some of my family (which includes two faggots) watched the ‘Gavin and Stacey’ Christmas special. The Christmas special of the beloved sitcom, on BBC1, on Christmas Day, that decided to include the song, and the word, in a way that dared anyone to have a problem with it. ‘It’s a song! It’s a word!’ they winked as the character whose probable gay past has been a running joke for nearly a decade sang ‘faggot’ to families everywhere. It’s funny because he hates himself!

[MsD]

I skipped past the singing as soon as it started, it looked like a chance for the actors to show off to me.

It's not my call to make, as I'm not a gay man, but: as I've posted on here, I didn't have any issue with Kirsty / Shane using the word, in a non-homophobic context, 30 years ago. Now the song's gone mainstream (and Shane is fine with losing the word), it's no loss to just cut it out and it should be cut rather than used as a device in that manner.

[Jah Womble]

Yep, that felt unnecessary to me in the broader sense - and to flag it as they did was shameless goading. (But that’s Corden’s shtick - like naming the families after serial killers, he probably thinks he’s being incredibly edgy. It adds nothing to a very decent show, nor to its script.)

As for Nessa being on the end of Smithy’s caustic tongue, I’m not seeing that as an especially poisonous element to the narrative - after all, she’s clearly wittier and far darker than he could ever be. And would’ve been utterly unfazed by any of his snipes, because she knows she’s more powerful than he is.

I will concede that that made the proposal a little unwieldy for me. But I’ll go along with it, because I trust them to go somewhere with it.

[MsD]

It's not just the comments, it's the way, over the years, they've had her look hopefully at him, and he's snubbed her or let her down. He's not proud to be with her, he acts embarrassed or ashamed. That was set in the first episode where he was bitching about her size and age, then went on to have wild sex with her.

Maybe yes, that reflects lad culture, maybe they're looking at it in a critical and unflinching way. It doesn't feel like it. If we go back to the film "Marty", where everyone is teasing him for pulling a "dog", Marty very quickly decides that his misogynist mates can fuck off (and that was 1955). I remember having a damper put on many nights out by "lads" making derogatory remarks, and I'm far from a "dog" now, let alone 30-40 years ago. Still get them trying it now, but I seriously couldn't give a fuck whether anyone fancies me these days. When I was younger, the negging, the pretend-barking, brought me down.

If you're going to have that sort of laddish behaviour in a sitcom, show it for the wankery it is, otherwise I'm going to see it as part of the laddish culture.

However, Ruth Jones is smart enough to subvert it, so maybe she is going to break his heart, we'll see at some point, I guess.

[Jah Womble]

Dependent upon how they choose to exploit this new momentum, more than likely, I’d wager.

I personally suspect that the ‘laddishness’ of his unpleasant remarks/behaviour is closer to it, tbh - I mean, Smithy and the guys with whom he hangs out are/were an absolute shower of humanity. And despite the humour in the portrayal of their antics, there was little disguising that. (I mean, Smithy’s character commenting on somebody else’s size is surely intentionally ridiculous.)

[MsD]

You'd think, but then look at Trump and the way he grades women.

French and Saunders nailed it a while back so I HOPE that Corden gets it, Jones must, for sure.

We will see. I just don't think his character is lovable. He's cowardly as well as crass, and Ness is an interesting, funny woman, so pairing her with him is a let-down.

[Patrick Thistle]

I think Smithy is meant to be a dickhead but I don't think he's a totally irredeemable one. His thing with Nessa is that he's scared to admit that he likes her because a) she doesn't fit the stereotype of what shallow manchildren are supposed to like, and b) she's fucking terrifying. Nessa isn't just a woman, she's an earth goddess and she can destroy ordinary mortals, which she seems to do with frightening regularity. She is so outside of his suburban safe experience he has no idea how to handle that. The power dynamic in that final scene is that she allows him to know how she really thinks and she asks him the big question, subverting traditional power moves. She isn't dependent on him. Even if he says no, she still asked and he will have to live with his decision. She clearly can live with whatever he decides because she has lived with his indecision for 10 years. This is her telling him to stop being a child and fucking grow up - something he has already realised he needs to do except he is trying to be someone he isn't with Sonia.

When she tells him he doesn't need to be anyone else, that's not just about being weird quietly spoken Smithy with Sonia. It's about him being the toxic banter boy life and soul party monster that is just as much a disastrous front for the real Neil who has tried to be a father but hasn't yet been brave enough to be a man.

That's my take. I don't think it's what Corden and Jones were necessarily going for.

(But I agree that negging and toxic masculinity and the way men treat women are horrible and most of those men would think Smithy was a hero because he represents the kind of awful men they are.)

[MsD]

That's an interesting take.

[Patrick Thistle]

Yeah. I'm over-thinking it.

But sometimes these goddess tropes work their way through into pop culture. Wonder Woman is a good example of this. (Of course she is literally a goddess)

[MsD]

No, I really like it. I'm sometimes guilty of not seeing the vulnerable male perspective. I've quoted you on Facebook, hope you don't mind, it's a closed page.