This article was originally published in The Courier on 19th October 2013.
The
One and Only Cilla Black: Wednesday,
STV
Up
All Night: The Nightclub Toilet: Thursday,
Channel 4
Paul
Whitelaw
Viewers watching with a scorecard
were kept busy last week, when The One and Only Cilla Black
dutifully encompassed everything you'd expect from a brassy tribute
to this veteran entertainer. References to her friendship with The
Beatles? Check. A faux-nostalgic return to her humble Liverpool
roots? Check. Gushing pre-recorded tributes from celebrity chums who
couldn't be bothered turning up? Check, check, check.
Hosted by her friend Paul O'Grady, it
was officially a celebration of “our” Cilla's 50 years in the
biz. But beneath the sycophancy – the studio audience were in
raucous ovation mode throughout – it turned out to be an
inadvertent chronicle of her decline.
The wealth of archive footage
reminded us that Cilla was once a rather endearing personality. Her
original appeal lay in her fun, giggly, girl-next-door charm; she was
one of us on the inside, plucky, smart and unpretentious. It was as
contrived as any other showbiz persona, but it worked: this tribute
showed why she made such a smooth transition from pop star to TV
royalty. She was good.
And yet it also showed that somewhere
along the way she hardened into something far less likeable. Despite
being the queen of Saturday night throughout the '80s and '90s,
presiding over fondly-recalled behemoths such as Blind Date
and Surprise Surprise, she developed a visible undercurrent of
nastiness. Although handy with a waspish put-down, there was a
tangible element of genuine disdain to the way she treated the
harmless buffoons on Blind Date. For someone renowned as a
gregarious people person, she doesn't seem to like them very much.
Pairing her with O'Grady provided an
interesting study in contrasts. Like Cilla, he's an acerbic Scouser,
and yet he tempers his barbs with the kind of innate warmth that she
lost years ago. She couldn't even enjoy her own tribute without
looking slightly bored and ungrateful, like the Queen at the launch
of a planet named in her honour.
When she closed with an appallingly
sentimental, warbled ditty about her working-class childhood, the
audience rose to their feet as if they'd just witnessed Vera Lynn
flattening Hitler. All I saw was the Cilla brand at its most
transparently cynical. That's showbiz.
Brought to you by the sensitive
artisans behind the Big Fat Gypsy franchise, Up All Night:
The Nightclub Toilet was a similarly exploitative documentary in
which, under the disingenuous guise of social anthropology, human
beings were treated as objects of ridicule.
Filmed in a busy nightclub loo, it
was little more than a witless parade of drunk people having
staggeringly banal conversations. There was no drama, depth or
comedy, just yawning tedium. Oh, they tried to justify its existence
by paying lip service to the Nigerian toilet attendants who politely
endured well-meaning customers while earning a pittance. But the
tragedy of their situation – one man fled his homeland after losing
his family in unspecified circumstances – is anathema to shallow,
tawdry programmes such as this. It was too preoccupied with the
supposed hilarity of drunken banter to say anything meaningful about
the plight of immigrants.
And well done, Channel 4, on showing
an overweight woman struggling in a toilet cubicle, mere seconds
after she'd talked sincerely about her inferiority complex. Stay
classy, always.
No comments:
Post a Comment