Sam Wollaston in the Guardian

[Guest]

This guy is the worst TV critic I've ever read. He makes Charlie Catchpole look like Pauline Kael.

He's fucking abysmal. Who gave him that job? How could they ever have thought his stuff was any good?

He's not the nephew of the editor, or something, is he?

[Lucy Waterman]

Sam Wollaston in the Guardian

He really is fucking appalling. Totally pigshit-thick, with seemingly no understanding of drama or comedy whatsoever. The smugness with which he delivers his wildly incorrect generalisations and factual bloopers just make him come across as more wretched.

[Lucy Waterman]

Sam Wollaston in the Guardian

It was a depressing evening all round. The start of the eighth series of My Family, that's very depressing. There's another one coming, too, apparently. It's your fault, for watching it. If no one did, they wouldn't continue to make it. Stop it - it's lame, predictable, out-of-date, middle-of-the-road, middle-England, middle-piddle ... it's the central reservation of television. Watch Pulling instead. That's the fast lane, and the hard shoulder, all in one.

And you know what was really depressing about it? I caught myself chuckling on occasions. What the hell is going on? Maybe I'm old now.

So the show was funny, despite the ridiculous sneering pose you set yourself up with, Wollaston? Fool. Pulling couldn;t be shown before the watershed, either. Different strokes, as I've said ad nauseam.

[Jimmy Bignutz]

Sam Wollaston in the Guardian

He is a total cock, it's so depressing. On top of everything else, most of his reviews are just describing what happened in a programme, like a kid telling its parents about a school trip.

[Max Payne]

Sam Wollaston in the Guardian

That doesn't bother me so much. It's the smugness of a writer who wants to be bigger than the reviews he's writing that bugs me. Like we're beneath his contempt somehow.

[Tony C]

Sam Wollaston in the Guardian

"like a kid telling its parents about a school trip".

Not particularly bright kids, either.

The example of this bloke's work above put me in mind of some review writing that I was marking yesterday for my Year 8 class, and they are not a high ability set.

For a broadsheet to publish stuff like that is appalling.

[Taylor]

Sam Wollaston in the Guardian

It's mind-boggling that people like Wollaston get a living wage from The Guardian. A complete embarrassment. Exactly what are the criteria for hiring a writer on popular culture? If it's neither writing ability nor sound knowledge of their subject... then what?

And I'd bet you a hundred quid (if I had it) that if anyone on OTF submitted work to them, they'd get turned down. "Nah, we've already got Sam Wollaston doing the telly - and Caroline Sullivan doing pop."

[Guest]

Sam Wollaston in the Guardian

Titus: The Gorilla King (BBC2) is no longer the gorilla king. He's been deposed by his own son, and now lives in exile on another part of the mountain with a few loyal supporters. It's a cruel one, the world of the mountain gorilla. I don't like these creatures very much. If they're going to be given human names, and there's to be talk of "soap operas" and "family picnics", then their behaviour should be judged as a person's would be.

And frankly, it's not very nice. It's not only that they beat up their own ageing parents and kick them out of the family group. They're always fighting, scratching and cheating on each other, and murdering each other's babies. And they're ugly. What's to like about mountain gorillas?

Actually, I think the people who spend time with them are more interesting. Like this beardy bloke Ian, with the too-tight shorts. Is he the alpha male, the one who gets all the female researchers who come to the mountain? Or maybe silver-topped David is the one they go for. Perhaps it's a matriarchal society; this Martha lady looks as if she gets what she wants, and the whole thing did start with Dian Fossey, after all.

Yes, the cameras are definitely pointing the wrong way. Zoologists in the Mist, that's what we want.

You would have to wonder about the critical faculties of the G2 editor who let this toolbox loose on one of the flagship arts columns in the paper. I can only assume Wollaston is related to somebody much higher up. There's no way he got this gig because of his writing ability.

[WOM]

Sam Wollaston in the Guardian

I know we chatted about this one time before, but my big frustration is with album reviews that talk about virtually everything but the album. You often come away with absolutely no sense of whether it's a bit shit, a lot shit, or quite excellent. Or, the review reads like shit, and then it gets 4 1/2 stars.
I once emailed Jane Stevenson (Sun Media, Canada) after one of her typically cryptic reviews and asked "So, is it any good or not?" to which she replied "I thought that would have been quite clear from the review", which couldn't have been less clear if it were written in Swahili.

[Wyatt Earp]

Sam Wollaston in the Guardian

Clive James, much as I admire him in many ways, did TV reviewing in the UK no favours in the long term. He invented the idea that it should all be about apparently-casual banter, rather than, you know, reviewing. In James' case, the casualness was only apparent: deep down, he always took the medium very seriously. But the school of reviewing he founded has mostly had neither his erudition nor his underlying seriousness of purpose. So you end up with editors appointing bad sixth-form-magazine types like the execrable Wollaston.

[G-Man]

Sam Wollaston in the Guardian

I read Lucy Waterman's quote thinking it was a satire on what had already been flagged as poor writing. But, it seems, that is a verbatim quote from that guy's review. I'm flabbergasted the editor of the Guardian has not been fired for publishing a teenage moron's diary entry.

[Squid Ink]

Sam Wollaston in the Guardian

Also, when the declining fortunes of the print media are discussed, you rarely hear poor standards of writing held up as a reason. It's all about the internet consuming everything like a black hole. But one of the reasons I read the internet over a newspaper is because decent writers, who used to hold down jobs in the print media, have mostly vanished from newspapers and magazines. They are, however, writing online (well, most of them), so I go there to read them instead.

The problem with making this point is you'll immediately get someone jumping down your neck and accusing you of moaning about how things aren't as good as they used to be. But I still maintain that the print media would see a change in fortunes if they actually employed more writers who could, you know...write.

[Lucy Waterman]

Sam Wollaston in the Guardian

It worries me slightly that Sam Wollaston might come across this thread and think that the only reason people dislike him is due to aesthetics. It'd be very easy to shrug that off as subjective.

So, just to be clear, I'd like to point out that regardless of the quality of his writing style, Wollaston has NOTHING to say beyond the recapitulation of tedious received opinion, and his occasional attempts to offer broader insights about TV are marred by an incredible level of ignorance about the medium he purports to criticise.

[Hot Orange]

Sam Wollaston in the Guardian

Who is a good TV critic?

I always enjoy reading Kathryn Flett in the Observer but I can't pretend to be a connoisseur of the art.

[Lucy Waterman]

Sam Wollaston in the Guardian

Stephen Pile and Thomas Sutcliffe I used to enjoy. Nancy Banks-Smith is still shrewd on the Guardian.

[Guest]

Sam Wollaston in the Guardian

She's too odd for me. A lot of her work reads like it came out of a random sentence generator.

[Guest]

Sam Wollaston in the Guardian

Wollaston has NOTHING to say beyond the recapitulation of tedious received opinion, and his occasional attempts to offer broader insights about TV are marred by an incredible level of ignorance about the medium he purports to criticise.

The depressing thing is that, unless the person who commissions him really is staggeringly injudicious, his ignorance must be what's kept him in the job. They must have decided that, well, it's only the TV column, so let's do away with impressive insights, knowledgeable comparisons and amusing observations - they're a bit dated! - and instead get someone who writes in an easily digested, informal, almost stream of consciousness style, reminiscent of the casual conversations people have about TV if they watch it to pass the time, but don't really know anything about it or care about it as a medium. The result of this may look identical to a journalist who is simply inept and unprofessional. And Wollaston may in fact be trying to write conventional TV criticism and simply failing every single time. But my hunch is that, deliberately or not, he's producing just what his employers are actively seeking. (I don't think he really rehearses received wisdom - he gives the impression of not even knowing what the received wisdom on anything would be.)

This (discussed on OTF at the time) is probably the ultimate Wollaston column. Most critics would be embarrassed to admit in print that they knew nothing of the show they were reviewing - they'd think they must either catch up by watching the previous series, not own up and busk it, or not write the column at all - but Wollaston happily makes his ignorance the angle of the piece. Even that could work in the hands of a competent writer, but not here: his joke about literary categories doesn't work because his first two hilarious made-up genres quite obviously exist; and his layman's obervation that Battlestar has no "humanity" unfortunately manages to identify the very thing that Battlestar does have and that makes it so good. But look at the comments: amid the gush of people pointing out that the piece is amateurish nonsense are a few rejoicing that Wollaston has wound up the sci-fi nerds. I reckon his editors would agree with this and would think this column - catastrophically embarrassing as it should be to any professional journalist - is a job well done.

[G-Man]

Sam Wollaston in the Guardian

You might have a very good point here, The Horse. And, indeed, that would be even more depressing than just incomptence (not you having a point, of course, but the point you have).

It is a terrible indictment of British media when The Guardian feels a need to appeal to what amounts to low common denominator journalism.

[Wyatt Earp]

Sam Wollaston in the Guardian

They've been playing that game for years, G-Man, while at the same time, and paradoxically, maintaining their heavyweight opinion pages and developing a nice little line in scoops.

It's not "lowest common denominator" exactly, it's more an embarrassing attempt to be down with the kids in various ways, one way being to wear ones learning so lightly that it's just as if one hasn't got any.

[G-Man]

Sam Wollaston in the Guardian

Oh, do not I said "low common denominator", nit "lowest". There is a difference.

The Guardian has a partnership with, and previously co-owned, SA's Mail & Guardian weekly, which has a couple of pretty poor columnists, but nothing on the anti-thinking scale of that Wollaston clown, it seems. Hence my surprise.

[Guest]

Sam Wollaston in the Guardian

Most of their music reviewers are bollocks as well, especially that cloth-eared smartarse Petridis.

[Nico Rijnders]

Sam Wollaston in the Guardian

However much one might disagree with Alexis Petridis, he's clearly engaged and reasonably knowledgable about his subject, I don't think it's fair to lump him in with the likes of Wollaston or Caroline Sullivan. Sullivan used to do most of their music coverage and was truely clueless, now she just seems to do the odd review.

[Guest]

Sam Wollaston in the Guardian

Petridis once gave Discovery by Daft Punk two stars out of five and seemed to be under the impression it was some sort of Peter Frampton tribute record. That was a long time ago, but the review was so idiotic it stuck in my mind.

But yes, you're right, he does do his homework even if his taste in music is pretty dreadful.

[axel]

Sam Wollaston in the Guardian

She isn't a reviewer as such but I find Marina Hyde a funny and intelligent writer on the Guardian. She even tellsme things I didn't know which is surely a prerequisite of a newspaper.

I've only been reading the Guardian for ten years or so and there has been a definite decline in the quality of the 'arts' writing. On the other hand I think the sports and news items have improved.

[Tony C]

Sam Wollaston in the Guardian

Marina Hyde used to shag Boris Johnson so her sense of humour is unquestionable.