Small Screen Surfin'
Created | Updated Jul 22, 2004
Welcome my friends to the show that never ends-- Wait no, that was The Generation Game
which isn't actually shown anymore... erm... anyway *cough* This week we two programmes where the
people involved pretend to be someone else. First up:
Spy (Thursday at 10:30pm, BBC THREE) is a programme in which volunteers find out what
it's like to be a spy in the abandoned Strand underground station taught by a former CIA, former
MI6 and Woman-Wearing-Disguise-Cause-She's-Still-Working1. The students are given aliases which they are informed they
must use at all times. As soon as they arrive some immediately give their real names. Not a very good
start...
Interesting programme if you're looking to see how spying works especially in the 'role-plays'
where tutees are expected to, say, take a photograph of a health notice in the kitchen basement of a
restaurant. The situations are very real when the restaurant does not know they're coming. Not quite
the same when the group are kidnapped and interrogated for 4 hours in the middle of the night after
being woken from their sleep in their bugged safe houses... More often the spies are playing with
rules where no-one else knows it's a game. This makes the programme quite unique over something like
Bad Lads' Army, where the outsiders know that they're not really 1950s recruits but in
Spy everyone but the teachers are aware that these people are supposed to be
spies2.
More about Spy on the BBC website here
On the other side of the pond we have Next Action Hero from Joel Silver, the guy that
did something or other on The Matrix and Die Hard. Ask Awix, it's his job to know
these kinds of things not mine... *cough*...
Next Action Hero is a show very much in the same vain as Pop Idol. A group of
contestants get together but this time they want to be Hollywood Action Heroes. Cue judge panel,
cue eliminations and cue backstabbing galore. I certainly hate Pop Idol for its tweenager
baiting personality but I like Next Action Hero although I have a lot more respect for
movies than pop music. A screenplay and off the contestants go, acting a scene with their contestant
partner. Entertaining, but don't get me wrong, Next Action Hero comes across just as shallow
and money-grabbing as the likes of Pop Idol. Especially when being a New York fire fighter
is a plus...
Keep Surfin'!!
