This article was originally published in the Courier on 8th February 2014.
Big
Ballet: Thursday, Channel 4
Ja'mie:
Private School Girl: Thursday,
BBC3
Paul
Whitelaw
On the face of it, Big Ballet
is just another against-all-odds documentary in which a group of
unlikely protagonists must overcome obstacles and defy prejudice to
achieve a life-affirming goal. Choirmaster Gareth Malone has based his
entire TV career peddling variations on this theme. We've been here
countless times before.
And yet it gradually dawned on me
while watching episode one that this wasn't really a show about a
likeable troupe of overweight women who'd dreamed their whole lives
of becoming professional ballet dancers. Either by accident or
design, it is in fact a slyly subversive critique of the shallowness,
bitchiness and body fascism which runs rampant throughout modern
society. And all of it encapsulated within the pirouetting shape
of just one man: Wayne Sleep.
Ostensibly hired as the show's
standard-issue celebrity mentor figure, Sleep boldly flaunts
convention by refusing to display even the merest whiff of sincerity or
inspirational vigour. On the contrary, he seemed to find the very
concept of overweight dancers hilarious. But then he obviously finds
everything hilarious. He's just high on the joy of being Wayne Sleep.
With his dapper grey suit and
close-cropped white hair, he's like a cackling gangland businessman toying with his lackeys. His powers of snide condescension are devastating. During the audition
process, where over 200 ordinary men and women performed for his
approval, he sniffed, “They're having a go, which is the main
thing.” As empowering slogans go, that takes some beating.
Theoretically at least, the
diminutive Sleep empathises with the women because he too was
repeatedly told he'd never make it in ballet due to his physical
shortcomings. But after watching this it was obviously because no one
could stand being near him.
His bluntly unsentimental sidekick,
prima ballerina Monica Loughman, was just as bad. Liqourice-thin and
permanently scowling, she's an animated Disney villain come to
wretched life. They were like a pair of sniggering children as the men
– none of whom got through to the final 18 – auditioned in
unflattering leotards. “They all look like they could do with not
having beer for a year,” sneered Loughman. “I bet they'll have a
drink after this!” quipped Sleep. The card.
Their nastiness aside, the programme
itself is broadly sympathetic towards the plus-size dancers. Of
course, this being Channel 4, it let itself down at times. The
chortling use of Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy on the soundtrack felt
like a needless dig in the ribs, as did the pointed references to the
north, where the women – and by extension, the fat people – come
from. Hiring that nice Olivia Colman as narrator may have been an
attempt to soften the blow, but even she couldn't smooth out
references to the dancers' “ginormous performance”.
Sleep and Loughman would doubtless
regard the wanton unpleasantness of Australian comedian Chris
Lilley's Ja'mie: Private School Girl as wholly admirable.
A frustrating artist, Lilley is a
gifted actor who repeatedly undermines his talent with lazy, clumsy
material. Basing a whole mock-doc series around Ja'mie, the
insufferable rich bitch teenager he played previously in We Could
Be Heroes and Summer Heights High, feels like an act of
creative desperation.
Unlike some of his more rounded
characters, Ja'mie is little more than a one-dimensional monster.
Acutely well-observed, yes, but what's the point if she isn't actually
funny?
Like Ricky Gervais, his British counterpart in “ironic”
offensiveness, Lilley is a one-trick pony in dire need of new ideas.
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