Roman's Empire: Attack of The Killer Shit-Coms!!

Roman's Empire BBc2, Thursdays 9.30.

As those of youse who have the (mis) fortune to know me, not far down the list of my obessions after comics, sci-fi and movies (and, perversity, which goes without saying) is comedy, previous rants on shit-coms here. Because no one asked for it we somehow have a below-par Brittas Empire for the 21st Century in the form of BBC 2's 'new' 'sitcom' Roman’s Empire. Harry and Jack Williams, the writers, have a Web site here, they say:

There wasn't any money in the budget for a proper website, so this is the next best thing. It's run by us, the writers of the show, which is why it looks like it was developed in the '80s.

This show was a peer into the abyss where the lessons learned from genius like Father Ted and Peep Show go unnoticed. It was a look into a parallel dimension where these comic aspirations weren't there and where homage and stealing are one and the same. Oh, and if it wasn't bad enough, the titular character talks a bit like Swiss Toni.

It's obviously written by a film dweebs but a film dweeb of the most annoying sort, the kind who tell you about The Big Lebowski as if you've never seen it as if they are telling you something you don't know by quoting it badly at you.

First up the title, Roman's Empire a play on Roman Holiday (1953)? As his 'empire' is a holiday company. Is this a homage to the likes of The Good Life? where the title is a pun on the characters names, these things write themselves, I thought up this pitch it 3 seconds!:

The Golden's Years: Terry Thomas and Liz Smith play a bickering retired couple, The Goldens, and the spend their golden years together.

The opening sequence with explanations of characters to Pavement-esque/Violent Femmes' 'Blister in the Sun'-lite music is reminiscent of The Royal Tenenbaums. This sort of music that sounds like other music is beloved of ads, like when they use what sounds like Air's Sexy Boy or something but change just enough notes to avoid paying royalties, but this also the same amout of note changing that also causes nausea.

The show also seems to assume a potential audience is made up from complete morons and every character needs to be explained to them with a voice over from the main character, coupled with this sense of panic and that every character needs to be introduced within 3 minutes or people will turn over..to what? comedy wise Thursday evenings are always a bit of comedy dead zone. It's like The Charlotte Church Show or the new Graham Norton thing where every guest is introduced immediately because you might immediately turn over because Gwen Stafani and her dancing J-harem hasn't turned up within a minute.

Then there's the great cast Chris O' Dowd from the It Crowd, Nicholas Burns from Nathan Barley, and Mathew Horne from the Catherine Tate Show.
Things that stuck in my craw:

Embarrassingly out-of-date catchphrases: “Bosch!” is this a homage to a 1980s loadsamoney character or simply meant to be funny in his own right? .

A threatening talking baby ala Big Train . (at least it's voiced by Morwenna Banks but it was an almost shot for shot steal)

Speaking of theft, someone stealing a stapler like in Office Space

This was the worst: A character who wears a dressing gown, likes bowling and white Russians…need I say more.

A supposedly hilarious film within a film called The Squid (presumably so the line 'killermari' can be used), isn't poking at bad horror films the lowest crappest joke of all, it’s like when people come up to me when they know of my obsessions and go, ‘I love those old b-movies’, what does that phrase mean? you might as well say 'I really like…movies'. 'b-movie' is a financial rather than generic description.

Anyway, it's probably be a big success with people who don't like any of the film and comedy I watch. So why make these references, they only piss off the people who could be a potential hardcore audience.

Oh god, how does this shit get made? The BBC could of spent the money on a new Snuff Box. Thank god for Peep Show and more Star Stories but how much Balls of Steel, The Friday Night Project, 8 out of Ten Cats, The Charlotte Church Show, do we have to suffer to get the former gems.

Update: No improvements in episode 2, the first five minutes or so explains everything that's going on and includes a clip of 'The Squid' again this time with another 'witty' pun on the poster. Some the supposed funny moments include: one of the guys from Banzai threatening Roman with a sword, unfunny use of a (not the) 'N' word, a character faking his own death and Roman casually committing his daughter to a stereotypical mental home, Roman not knowing what Romania is for comic effect (despite buying land in Bulgaria)....what hilarity.

Ipod shuffle kerfulle broken cock dock....

Fecking hell, it's been a while, I missed all youse crazy kids! Seriously, I would pine as I would look at the blogger button, thinking, I want to but I musn't, I simply mustn't! because blogs lead to rants and rants lead to drunken madness and drunken madness leads to reduced PhD productivity.

But I'm in the midst of a bar work/writing extravaganza that will culminate in a paddy's day alcohol apocalypse, to quote a certain Fin, that requires periodic blog rants to prevent most of Norwich being blown asunder by Irish sci-fi geek gloop, kinda like The Stuff.

Anyway, I have joined the 'pod people' (it's an old joke, I know, but so many people make it that 'pod people' should refer to the people who say 'pod people' when referring to ipod listeners for their unoriginal hoomer, they've probably never even any Invasion of the Body Snatchers movies, not eve the Abel Ferrera one). and about a month and a bit ago I purchased a second generation ipod shuffle. It's well tiny you could seriously stick it up your hole and dance around naked to Peaches with it, I suppose, not that I would try such a thing.

I was all pleased at having an ipod, albeit a wee tiny entry level one, with was like a wee badge on my my lapel saying looking I'm hip (like Bickle is hip) and I have some apple stuff, I even took on of the apple stickers you get with a shuffle and stuck it to my laptop in an effort to make the thing work better through envy. About four weeks after buying the shuffle, I broke the dock and had to buy another one! The ipod shuffle (2nd Gen) dock is a tiny wee thing with about a foot and half long wire the a usb plug. If you have a laptop and you're like me, it goes walkabout pretty regularly from desk to bed, to watch Heroes online (and other stuff, probably pornotube, Heroes is great, but it's nothing any comics superhero fan hasn't seen before about a million times. It is more or less Unbreakable: The Series, but with more likeable and believable characters, and obviously writers who know more about comics and superheros that M. Night Shymalan, which wouldn't be hard "in the comics you know who the arch villain is going to be? He's the exact opposite of the hero!" yeah Mr. Glass, yeah Lex Luthor/Superman, Spider-Man/Green Goblin, Batman/Joker, yeah you're so right, exact opposite, wow Unbreakable is an amazing film, wow...thought provoking.

On one of these travels the dock got a wee bit bent, but enough for it's fragile wee self to get fucked. The moral of the tale is: I thought I was being a total idiot in breaking something so soon, but while shopping around for a replacement dock, I found many similar stories from the apple US and apple UK stores. Hooray! I'm not a fucking idiot there's loads of fucking idiots out there in hi-tech web-wank land! I especially like this review:

While the dock fits the ipod very nicely - if you are like me and not the tidiest of people this design is incredibly fragile. With the jack being at a right angle to the base it is very easy to bend the jack. I've just done this buy accidentally...stepping on the dock after it had fallen on the floor, upside down. If you're a tidy person - you'll have no issues :)


I love how this flies slam bang in the face of apple's 'I'm a Mac, He's a PC' ads, with the Peep Show lads over here and some guys who don't even have a sitcom over in the US (imagine not having you're own sitcom! we all have them over here). I mean if Jeremy from Peep Show had one of this piddly wee ipod docks, he would have stood on it within about a week and Super Hans would have snorted the remains immediately. Apple can't try and sell to flaky artist types and then expect them not to stand on wee bits of technology, can they? Well they probably can, cause only flaky artist types are stupid enough to shell out for a wee plug that costs almost half of the overall ipod!!. I just like that 'dock' has become common parlance, far removed from the practice of 'docking'. Peace out as the kids say.