No. I watched the first show on its original shitting and I couldn't believe how it had ever got as far as being written down in script form, let alone filmed and broadcast.
Oh well, at least there's something we agree on. But still, i'm sure you're a very angry person, so from now on you'll be sure to disagree with everything i say...
Oh no I won't...
Do you see? Clever, isn't it?
aaaaaahhhhhhh! Very clever.
i think you are good and joe is crap.
Go for it, peter ohanrphanhrorhndn.
I think you are Joe!
I've said it before and I'll say it again - THIS LIFE IS THE WORST THING EVER SCREENED ON TELEVISION. All these journos for The Guardian, Observer, Time Out - please wake up! It is overblown, misanthropic to the point of insanity, cliched, stereotypical, tediously pseudo-controversial - I can't remember watching anything on TV that has made me so furious. It compltely embodies all that is worst about the mentality of those responsible for commissioning television, and especially drama, at the moment. Although I would concede to Joe, that I have spoken to people who find its appaling-ness amusing. I wish I did.
> It is overblown, misanthropic to the point of insanity, cliched, stereotypical, tediously pseudo-controversial
You make it sound worth watching.
It's not though.
>I think you are Joe!
You thought right. But now i'm going, i'll be returning with another name to haunt your forum.
I've tried watching it a couple of times (for about 5 mins) the characters are just so instantly dislikeable i think.
Yes - it is extraordinary that someone wrote a drama series and thought that it would be a good idea if all the characters were absolute cunts. I've always had a sneaking suspicion though that Jenkins et al actually identifed with the characters (which is frightening enough) and thought the urban twentysomethings of the UK would like them too (which is terrifying) or even worse aspire to be like them. You can say what you like about Star Trek fans (and I'm sure everyone has) but at least they aspire to be like sensitive multicultural explorers on a quest for knowledge rather than tuning in to watch some bint slap another bint at a party.
I watched a repeat last night, it was the only episode I'd managed to watch in full the first time, and it actually seemed even worse. What you had, basically, was a shit BBC schools 'Scene' drama, remade with cacky camera angles to make it all edgy and realistic, in a completely dated 80s/early 90s kinda way.
hey next to TL 'Scene' seems pretty cool - do you remember the one where the football fan wouldn't paint his house the team colours like the rest of the street and gets totally ostracised? (actually this is the only episode of Scene I remember - perhaps the rest were rubbish)
'Scene' did plays about gay teenagers and runaway teenage mums, years before such things were permissible in the likes of Eastenders or even Brookside.
I think it has dated incredibly quickly. I remember it being OK, even good when it came out, but it just seems stilted and weird now.
Too many imitators maybe
Scene was fine - loads of them starred Phil Daniels, didn't they? And wasn't it called Television Club before that? (Very early '70s memory there)
I submitted a sketch to Radio 4 in 1997 - a parody of a This Life-type drama called Bloody Students. It was all about some yoghurt in a shared house fridge that had been pilfered - with much rowing as a consequence. It was rejected.
Watching an episode of This Life one night last week, I realised why. It was all about some yoghurt in a shared house fridge that had been pilfered - with much rowing as a consequence.
If only it HAD been a bit weird....
>Watching an episode of This Life one night last week, I realised why.
>
Um. Another reason: The sketch probably wasn't all that funny.
>I've tried watching it a couple of times (for about 5 mins) the characters are just so instantly dislikeable i think.
This was precisely my reaction when I first encountered series 1... a few weeks later I happened to sit opposite Daniela Nardini on a train from Preston to Manchester (she was making some ITV one-off drama with Michael Kitchen). Had a very pleasant chat (during which I gave the impression that I was an avid viewer of "This Life" without actually committing myself to an opinion of its worth) and vowed to give series 2 a shot (pathetic reasoning I realise - "Hey - that tedious caricature off the telly is actually a charming and intelligent woman in real life... best give the show another chance then")
Well, it was completely compelling. I've never in my life understood what people see in soaps, but this was a little window into that mindset. Totally unmissable. I know people who are scathingly dismissive towards virtually anything described as 'edgy' or 'hip' in the realms of TV and film, but even they were sucked in by "This Life".
It's still a superficially loathsome series, which somehow, by dint of the strength of writing and acting, became fantastically watchable and involving. But no, I haven't been tempted to indulge any of its imitators.
I've heard this 'Series 2 was alright' argument before and I just don't buy it. TL is more than superficially loathsome - it is loathsome at its very core. The characters are *so* unpleasant and the direction *so* ridiculously self-conscious - it is utterly devoid of any merit. I've also heard some people defend it as compulsively awful, but why waste time watching something awful? I hate to sound like a puritan - and I reject the idea that people copy what they see on TV, but I thought it promoted a completely self-centred, immoral, nasty, Tory ideology.
I don't blame it for the string of hopeless imitators (Metropolis anyone?) - there were crap drama shows before TL and will always be. What particularly stuck in the gullet was the way it was hailed as groundbreaking, and definitive of a generation in the broadsheets. I'm part of that generation and if my Grandkids look at This Life in forty years time and say 'Oh - so that's how Grandad used to live,' I shall be a very angry man.
Why that title, though? I have a theory that Amy Jenkins was crying herself to sleep one night listening to "Everybody Hurts" by REM (a good song, but essentially "All By Myself" by Eric Carmen/Celine Dion for anyone who's been through college), when she heard the line "If you think you've had too much of this life, well hang on...".
"I know!" she thought. "I'll write four or five episodes based on those two words, and everyone will remember me writing the whole thing." (Shame she didn't write a show called "Lester Bangs".)
Incidentally, how did Amelia "Corrers/Cracker/Blue Jam" Bullmore end up writing a few shows in Series 2? And were they any better than the others?
> What particularly stuck in the gullet was the way it was hailed as groundbreaking, and definitive of a generation in the broadsheets.
Precisely why I hate it so much - it made me fucking embarrassed to be young. I don't think I'll feel comfortable again until I hit my thirties. Bastards.
Oh, and I don't buy that "good acting/writing" excuse either - I have given it more than enough of a second chance (two episodes) and sorry, but the acting is basic and the dialogue just isn't believable.
>Precisely why I hate it so much - it made me fucking embarrassed to be young. I don't think I'll feel comfortable again until I hit my thirties. Bastards.
Well, that extension of what (I felt eventually) was a good drama series (with a few irksome visual pretensions) into 'a document of our times' was always bollocks. I thought back in '97 that it was 'important' because it was the most entertaining thing on the box every week, not because it reflected the lives of any of my friends. Hell, I enjoy Martin Amis novels, but I don't recognise any of the characters from *my* London life.
>Oh, and I don't buy that "good acting/writing" excuse either - I have given it more than enough of a second chance (two episodes) and sorry, but the acting is basic and the dialogue just isn't believable.
Well, we'll just have to agree to disagree on this. I had a similar conversation recently on the subject of Michael Winterbottom's film "Wonderland", which I thought was terrific and my friend felt was trite and unbelievable. Actually, I've been taping the series one repeats (my wife's American and moved here in summer '98 - she's keen to see what all the fuss is about); maybe I'll just see the flaws this time around...