Glam Metal Detectives

Page 3 of the Observer, Sunday 5th February 1995:

Pace of viewing speeds up for the short-attention generation
Channel surfing package zaps the sitcom

IT IS being billed as the first television comedy for the short-attention generation - a rapid-fire, 'channel-switching' skit on television at its most awful, writes Peter Beaumont.

Imagine Scooby Doo crossed with The Monkees, then intercut with fake advertisements and clips from bogus films - including one which recasts Michael Caine's Harry Palmer character from The Ipcress File as Sir Lancelot.

Glam Metal Detectives, the brainchild of Peter Richardson from the Comic Strip, begins on BBC2 on 23 February and is full on contradictions. It is at once tailored to the younger audience brought up on MTV and Def II, while at the same time operating as a critique of the way audiences consume television.

Mr Richardson sees the model as much in the comic book format as in television, 'Because the viewer understand how television works, you can tell a joke in three lines instead of spending a minute-and-a-half.'

Mr Richardson recognises that many viewers have 'the attention span of a flea' and admits that the 'zapper culture' of multi-channel TV has informed the show's format.

However, he also believes that 'channel surfing' is bad for television. 'What people miss out on flicking, say, from a film to a football match is the boring bits of the match. But it is those dull bits that build up the excitement and sense of expectation.'

Three years in the making, six months in the editing suite and with a cast new to television, Glam Metal Detectives (the name is taken from one of its spoof shows) abandons the traditional format of the sitcom or sketch to present three seven to eight-minutes 'programmes' between staccato bursts of bogus advertisements and game shows apparently randomly sampled by remote control.

The detectives of the title set the tone: they are a Seventies glam rock band who travel the world by bus, saving it from childishly simplistic crises, their passage around the world designated in best cartoon style by the audience's changing hats.

This is also the ultimate expression of post-modernism in television - a show entirely informed by ones that have gone before.

The Glams' world is one of televisual and filmic clichés: London is a world of singing chimney sweeps, à la Mary Poppins; the Australian audience wears hats with corks.

It is the process noted by Neil Postman, of New York University, in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death: that as visual images supersede the printed text as the main vehicle for ideas, so culture is defined by a shared recognition of certain types of TV and film images.

This change in viewing patterns and approach has in part been pioneered by MTV, which claims an audience among the most 'visually literate'. According to Brent Hansen, president/creative director for MTV Europe: 'Young people understand the way these ideas work. They want ideas, but not in a didactic fashion, and are much more aware of the choice available to them.'

Not all are happy, however, with the increasing pace of television and the temptation to chop and change. According to Professor Mallorry Wober, of Bournemouth University, a psychologist who teaches on a media course, the way that the pace of viewing has changed with the eradication of the pauses between programmes has created an audience that is no longer allowed to dwell on the ideas of what they have just watched. 'You go straight from one programme into an advert, a trailer or another programme and its impact disappears. There is a strong argument, I think, for a five-second gap to allow people to reflect on what they have seen.'

Rock with laughter

For the last 15 years Peter Richardson's main claim to fame has been his association with the Comic Strip films which he has written, directed and featured in, despite their identification in the public's eye with more famous colleagues like Mayall, Sayle and Saunders. Now Richardson stands at the crossroads of mega-culthood with 'The Glam Metal Detectives', a series that he has again devised, directed, co-written and acted in, These films, however, are this time devoid of the ultimately restrictive starry names.

'GMD' has all the ingredients to be a hit, particularly with the late-teen and student audience to which it most obviously speaks. Richardson says it's a 'TV comic', and bemoans the fact that it has taken over three years to develop and find its slot on BBC2's schedules.It's a pot-pourri of running sketches, waccy-baccy graphics, media piss-takes and a preposterous linking storyline which has a bunch of glam-rockers zooming around the world trying to save the planet's ecology through hit records. The group is constantly being attacked by evil media-genius Rolston Brocade (Mac McDonald) who in part two there is a bid to addict another to a canned drink called 'Splat!', which turns people into sex-crazed egomaniac at a burp.

But while 'GMD' forms the core of the series the remaining time is filled by group-writing projects of varying success: there's an amusing feature called 'Colin Corleone' about an undersized, unemployed south London nobody who lives his life as the Godfather; 'Betty's Mad Dash', which splendidly parodies 1920s escapade-flapper movies; 'Call Mickey', in which a parody black stud will, for example, roger your wife and take out the rubbish if you're too tired to do it yourself; and 'Bloodsports', in which pursuits like house repossession, bare-knuckle fighting and ram-raiding are treated as if they were events on 'Match Of The Day'. I've seen the first three episodes and the series is definitely a grower. The woman in particular excel, notably Doon MacKichan, who is already well known from her work with Steve Coogan and shines in a chat-show send-up called 'The Big Me'; and the stunning Sara Stockbridge (see Hotshots, page 5) whose genuine gift for comedy is more than matched by legs longer than the Eiffel Tower's. Unfortunately the males don't have the same high profile, although the drummer is played by the excellent Phil Cornwell who does the best Jimmy Hill impersonation on planet earth, and the guitarist-vocalist is Gary Beadle who doubles up as sex-machine Mickey. The funniest gags aren't always the most original - Mick Jagger as Hamlet had me throwing up on the carpet but may leave you cold. One to track. Definitely. Steve Grant

'The Glam Metal Detectives', 9pm, BBC2