TV Shows They Should Make...
OK, having apparently escaped the Spin Cycle of Fate, let's try and do that post I'd planned, or at the very least part of it! Now, I know that Steven Spielberg was lukewarm about that I Was a Teenage Pope movie idea I pitched him a few posts back, but I'm not going to let that deter me from trying to break into moving pictures. However, I will concede that maybe I was a little over ambitious in thinking that I could wade straight into the Hollywood deep end and pitch to a top producer like that. So, I've decided to scale back a bit and aim lower - TV, in fact. I have a plethora of great ideas for TV shows, and even if the BBC, ITV or Channel Four turn them down, there's always Channel Five or Sky. Failing that, I can always try the independent production companies who supply dross to the likes of E4, Bravo and Living TV.
Bearing in mind the dearth of decent sitcoms about, and the critical acclaim heaped upon edgy, off beat stuff like Extras and Lead Balloon, for instance, I thought I'd start off with some comedy concepts which combine traditional sitcom structures with daring, on the edge, subject matter. I've long believed that there's a great sitcom to be made about concentration camps - I mean, they've done it with films like Life is Beautiful and The Day The Clown Cried, (OK, so that last one was never actually released, but that was because it was a Jerry Lewis film, rather than because of its subject matter), so why not TV? I was thinking of something along the lines of hoary old BBC holiday camp comedy Hi Di Hi, but set in Belsen. Heil Di Heil, perhaps. The whole thing could centre around the zany antics of roly poly camp host Ted Goering, and his attempts to conceal his money making scams (like stealing the inmates gold teeth and selling the soap their melted down into on the black market) from the straight laced new camp commandant. All the while he has to keep coming up with new entertainments for the inmates, so as to keep them occupied before they're exterminated. Things like the 'Knobbly Knees Contest' - anyone found in possession of knobbly knees is immediately shot as being non-Aryan. I really think it could be a winner, using good old belly laughs to explore man's inhumanity to man.
Another approach could be My Mother The Lampshade, set in post-war Germany, where a young Jewish man finds that his light fittings are made of his late mother's skin. Her spirit hilariously haunts him, interfering in his romantic liaisons and nagging him to track down the rest of his family who perished in the camps and are now variously employed as book covers, imitation leather sofas and hat stands. Slightly less of a knockabout comedy, more a semi-tragic examination of parent-child relationships, in the mould of Steptoe and Son, or That's My Boy. The most obvious suggestion would be a revival of classic 1970s race 'comedy' Love Thy Neighbour, set in the 1960s East End, in which Hitler and Eva Braun are found to be living (under assumed identities), next door to a nice middle class Jewish couple. Cue lots of hilarious (but obviously harmless) culture clash comedy. In a surprise twist, you could have the warring neighbours united in their opposition to the wave of Bangladeshi immigrants moving into their street. Side splitting.
Still, even if none of the TV companies bite on any of those, I've got plenty more ideas up my sleeve...
Bearing in mind the dearth of decent sitcoms about, and the critical acclaim heaped upon edgy, off beat stuff like Extras and Lead Balloon, for instance, I thought I'd start off with some comedy concepts which combine traditional sitcom structures with daring, on the edge, subject matter. I've long believed that there's a great sitcom to be made about concentration camps - I mean, they've done it with films like Life is Beautiful and The Day The Clown Cried, (OK, so that last one was never actually released, but that was because it was a Jerry Lewis film, rather than because of its subject matter), so why not TV? I was thinking of something along the lines of hoary old BBC holiday camp comedy Hi Di Hi, but set in Belsen. Heil Di Heil, perhaps. The whole thing could centre around the zany antics of roly poly camp host Ted Goering, and his attempts to conceal his money making scams (like stealing the inmates gold teeth and selling the soap their melted down into on the black market) from the straight laced new camp commandant. All the while he has to keep coming up with new entertainments for the inmates, so as to keep them occupied before they're exterminated. Things like the 'Knobbly Knees Contest' - anyone found in possession of knobbly knees is immediately shot as being non-Aryan. I really think it could be a winner, using good old belly laughs to explore man's inhumanity to man.
Another approach could be My Mother The Lampshade, set in post-war Germany, where a young Jewish man finds that his light fittings are made of his late mother's skin. Her spirit hilariously haunts him, interfering in his romantic liaisons and nagging him to track down the rest of his family who perished in the camps and are now variously employed as book covers, imitation leather sofas and hat stands. Slightly less of a knockabout comedy, more a semi-tragic examination of parent-child relationships, in the mould of Steptoe and Son, or That's My Boy. The most obvious suggestion would be a revival of classic 1970s race 'comedy' Love Thy Neighbour, set in the 1960s East End, in which Hitler and Eva Braun are found to be living (under assumed identities), next door to a nice middle class Jewish couple. Cue lots of hilarious (but obviously harmless) culture clash comedy. In a surprise twist, you could have the warring neighbours united in their opposition to the wave of Bangladeshi immigrants moving into their street. Side splitting.
Still, even if none of the TV companies bite on any of those, I've got plenty more ideas up my sleeve...
Labels: TV Shows They Should Make
posted by Doc Sleaze at
10:35 pm
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