30/03/2014 The Review Show

On this month's Review Show, Harry Hill's take on Simon Cowell.

Urinetown - a musical about romance and revolution.

Dostoyevsky directed by an IT Crowd star.

Nurses plunged into the horrors of World War I.

Taking offence - the new culture wars.

And from apps to drones - the year's best designs.

All that, plus music in our studio from Ben Watt and Bernard Butler.

Joining me for this final edition of The Review Show

are three dedicated regulars

who've sampled some of the best our culture has to offer

and, let's be honest, some real turkeys over the years!

Journalist and broadcaster Sarfraz Manzoor,

writer and Professor of American Literature Sarah Churchwell

and writer and critic, Paul Morley.

We begin with Simon Cowell and a urinal

as seen in two new comic musicals.

Harry Hill's parody of The X Factor

and the charmingly titled Urinetown,

which won a trio of Tony Awards on Broadway back in 2002,

and which has finally splashed onto the London stage.

# This is Urinetown!

# One rest room here at Urinetown!

# It's unisex at Urinetown! #

The musical is set in a dystopian city

in which there's been an environmental catastrophe.

It's ravaged with drought,

and it's led to social and political collapse.

One man who is exploiting the poor,

owns all of the public toilets.

Private toilets have become unthinkable in this drought,

and everyone must now pay to pee.

# You have to run, run-a, run-a, run, run-a, run!

# Hallelujah!

I suppose that the musical, of all genres, is, you could argue,

the most manipulative of theatre modes.

There's the high energy gospel number

which you are meant to applaud

for as long as you can

and it stops the show,

and they're kind of like...

They're tropes - musical theatre tropes.

They're motifs repeated through many different musicals.

And the production partly embraces those

and sends them up, at the same time.

It probably does actually penetrate further,

maybe, than a kind of

worthy, very cerebral, traditional play might.

I've seen a couple of people wander out.

I've never been quite sure if that's because they need a wee,

-or they just hated it.

-No, they always come back in!

"Please welcome your host - Liam O'Deary!"

Your Saturday night starts right here!

Meanwhile there's a different kind of piss-taking

with Harry Hill's parody of the X Factor, I Can't Sing!

Backed by Simon Cowell himself

the musical is directed by Sean Foley

and stars Olivier Award-winning actor Nigel Harman

as the high-waisted music mogul.

# When you make a wish it happens

# You got to wish it Really wish it. #

Harry Hill brings us a typically eccentric cast

of X Factor contestants,

while the central plot line follows the love story

of student Chenice and songwriting plumber Max,

who persuades her to audition for the show.

# I can't sing

# I can't sing

# I can just hear the crowd call out for less

# Flat as a pancake in a trouser press... #

So, I've always rather enjoyed the whimsicality of Harry Hill,

the surreal nature, and we did get some of that on stage -

I mean, the talking dog, for example?

Yeah, and the hunchback.

I, erm... You say it's a parody, in a way it's partly a parody

and a sort of tribute, as well, to the X Factor.

So there is a bit of tension, it's not a straight-blown satire.

But I did actually like a lot of it.

I was initially thinking it would be quite difficult to watch

and I thought some of the targets were simple and very easy.

But Harry Hill's absurdity and some of the bonkers nature of it,

and the fact that he's paying tribute and parodying a format

that has been exported all over the world,

but I can't imagine this working anywhere apart from Britain.

So it was that very Britishness of it that, in the end, I really liked.

Did you enjoy the absurd...?

I think the phrase is "Backed by the mogul himself."

I mean, the thing itself, in the real world,

and some of us are still in the real world,

is about as elegant and tasteful

as Love Thy Neighbour and On The Buses from the '70s.

It's still got that atmosphere about it.

I think Harry Hill's wife must have been kidnapped -

cos it gives the patina of Harry Hill being involved,

but they didn't know how to deal with

the Harry Hill whimsy a lot of the time.

And what's remarkable is,

it's another aspect of Simon Cowell's extraordinary technique

that you cannot criticise this, because he puts up the barrier,

the force field, that he's criticising himself, himself.

But I suppose the thing about Simon Cowell is,

in a way he parodies himself on the X Factor.

He's a pantomime villain, really.

Well, yeah. But that's part of the problem with the show.

I disagree that it's impossible to criticise him

because he criticises himself first.

There's a lot to criticise here.

You can do it, Sarah, but he puts the force field around him.

I understand, but I think you can break that quite easily,

because, in fact, they miss so many of the targets.

And, actually, I think there's a misconception

at the heart of the show.

What it's doing is... It can't decide whether

it's making fun of Simon Cowell or the contestants.

The show already makes fun of the contestants.

To then mock the contestants is actually really uncomfortable.

I actually found the whole thing a really unpleasant experience.

Not only not funny, but really meretricious and grim.

The idea that we sit there and laugh at these people,

when we're already encouraged to laugh at them on the programme,

and, also, to Saf's point - I think this is important -

not only will it not transport out of Britain, AT ALL,

the idea that anybody outside of the country

would even UNDERSTAND most of the jokes is ridiculous.

It might not make it outside London!

But it also is going to date in about 30 seconds - it's already dated.

It treats the X Factor as if it matters,

and people are ceasing to watch it.

And Dermot O'Leary as a target?

-Yeah. But I think you may be taking it a bit too seriously.

-No!

Don't fall for the dark side, Saf!

No, that's a cheap argument!

-But the guy who plays...

-Hang on, let him finish.

The guy who plays Liam O'Deary, he nails that brilliantly!

But it's not Liam O'DREARY,

it's Liam O'Deary - they can't even do that right.

ALL SPEAK AT ONCE

And how big is "Nailing Dermot O'Leary"?

But hang on, hang on...

If you think of it, not as satire, but as panto at the Palladium

it's actually quite entertaining.

That's disgusting and degrading

of 100 years of extraordinary entertainment at the Palladium.

Cowell brings everything down in a big chaos of ruins

and he's now done it to the London Palladium.

I think you're right in the sense that the targets...

Just right, Saf. Just right.

The Cheryl Cole character is a bit of a parody.

Not just "A bit of a parody" - it's not funny!

What do you mean Cheryl Cole? A Geordie character called Geordie?

-That's the level of the wit.

-Exactly. That's not witty.

The hunchback singing in the style of Eminem is kind of funny.

Maybe a little.

I basically felt, most of the time, I'm not taking it seriously, at all,

I was watching something that was written by very clever sixth formers.

It was nothing like funny enough.

The jokes were so obvious,

the targets were so broad...

You know, you do have to take it a little seriously, Saf,

because this is the reduction, the removal,

and the wiping out of all levels of discernment and discrimination.

What, you mean the programme, or...?

The sensibility, the banality.

-All of that.

-There's a synergy between the two of them.

It's like the '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s, Noughties never happened.

It's a weird combination that Cowell manages to pull off

of a weird '50s version of music hall,

but exploiting the technology to make his enormous amount of cash.

And then he goes out and somehow arranges a musical,

that makes it an extraordinary thing, that he makes a load of cash,

as if somehow turning him into an alien,

and I'm giving the ending away, somehow makes it OK.

I think you should take it seriously.

It's representative of the removal of critical dimension.

I think the target of the production misses

by having a go at Cowell, having a go at the contestants,

and not having a go at the audience...

-They DON'T have a go at Cowell.

-..for watching it. They do sort of.

-They don't have a go at Cowell!

-ALL SPEAK AT ONCE

Or the culture, the whole idea

of "What are we trying to achieve through this?"

But that's why I'm saying it's as much a celebration as a parody.

-Absolutely.

-More than a celebration, it's like an affirmation.

-Exactly.

-"I can have a musical written about me."

-It's a religious experience!

Supposed to be.

"I've backed it, I've supported it, arranged it, I'm in it.

"I am the whole hero of it" - unbelievable narcissism!

-I did laugh, I'm sorry.

-I can't believe it!

-I did laugh at various moments.

-Then I hit you. I remember it well.

OK, let's move on from something that was a parody of the X Factor

to a musical that was actually a parody

of the genre of musicals themselves.

What did you think of Urinetown?

I have to say, I read a lot about Urinetown when it came out

on Broadway over 10 years ago now.

And it got somewhat mixed reviews,

so I wasn't sure what to make of it.

And of course that title is very off-putting. Erm...

-Did you think so? I thought it was rather enticing!

-Not for me.

Anyway, but, so... DON'T let the title put you off.

It's one of the best things I've seen in a REALLY long time.

And, actually, not having seen the Broadway production,

from what I've read, I think Jamie Lloyd's production...

I think that brought a really welcome darkness and edginess to it.

They've found in the show, in the book,

they brought out in their production

the strains of Kurt Weil,

and of, particularly, Sondheim's Sweeney Todd,

that are in the music, and they've actually made that part of the production.

So the show is willing to both be a musical send-up of musicals,

and also a dark exploration, a dark satire,

of the dystopian things that were talked about...

-And dealing with some pretty dark themes.

-Very serious issues.

I think you're right that the title is misleadingly perky

compared to the content.

But I liked the fact that it mixed that jauntiness of the music

with a very cynical heart.

The other thing I thought it shared

with I Can't Sing! is that the performances were really...

I think Jenna Russell, as Pennywise, was absolutely fantastic.

And also, I thought it was an amazing set.

-It had this kind of circular urinal structure.

-Absolutely.

It's interesting that I Can't Sing! clearly is aware of this as well,

because it tried to incorporate some of that kind of meta-level

in its own sense of itself.

And that is interesting, because in Urinetown,

it's all very well mocking and parodying the excesses

of a musical and the cliches and the tropes, as we just discussed.

And yet in the end, as much as you mock them, you are relying on them

for the ultimate emotional power of the musical.

But isn't that good? You're having your cake and eating it.

-You have to be very careful that you pull it off.

-They did pull it off.

Well...yeah, kind of.

But, you know, that is the difference

between one and the other,

that this one pulled it off, because it's basically saying

these are cliches, this is ridiculous,

the whole idea is ridiculous,

and yet the best bits of it use those cliches to really lift you up.

What I thought was interesting

was that it subverted the genre of the musical,

but also subverted what we thought was going to happen with the plot.

You start off with rather simplistic politics about evil capitalism,

without giving too much away,

but then that is subverted and I thought that was clever.

That's why, in comparison of the two, Saf,

and I'll bring it back to the first one which we mentioned,

it's the difference between the two in terms of one being grown-up

and intelligent and ingenious and the other being crude and ugly.

But isn't it partly that both of them

confirm your prejudices in different ways?

I guess your mindset would be more sympathetic

to some of the ideology in Urinetown

and therefore, you're more sympathetic.

You're probably not somebody who watches X Factor

and therefore, you have an ingrained hostility towards it anyway.

It isn't just about the content, it's about the execution.

There is no comparison in the execution of the two.

We haven't yet talked about the music.

The music in X Factor is utter... The music in Urinetown is fantastic.

Yes, it's sending up the cliches, but it's also reinvigorating them.

It's bringing it back to life.

If it really wants to be...

Again, this critical language, as we now know, is dead.

But if it truly wants to be five stars instead of 4.75 stars,

for me, it needed that last little bit more

of being genuinely original, rather than a very good parody.

To pick up what Martha said, I like the fact

that it didn't completely play to your liberal prejudices

about what you thought the story was going to be like.

Absolutely. You called it cynical, and quite rightly.

It has a couple of very surprising moments.

I've seen a lot of musicals in my time and I love musicals

and I very much enjoyed those quotations... It's picking up all the great traditions.

But it doesn't just subvert... It subverts all kinds of things,

without giving too much away,

and there is one moment in particular that is really surprising,

and it is fresh and innovative.

Is that the only way it can sustain itself, though,

ultimately, this far in,

by having that sheen of self-deprecation?

Saf, do you think it beckons

a different kind of era for musicals

on the stage in this country, in the sense that The Book Of Mormon

was a very satirical musical and very different

and is doing very well?

Perhaps that is a different way of moving away

from just the jukebox musicals that we've seen so many of.

It's interesting about how this idea of both I Can't Sing!

and Urinetown have that sort of knowing element.

You wonder whether that's now because they have to assume

that the audiences are so familiar with all those tropes

that there has to be some aspect of it.

But the thing you mentioned about this idea of co-opting,

owning the joke in some ways,

whether it's Cowell funding I Can't Sing!

or the Mormons actually using The Book Of Mormon

as a recruiting thing, that is also interesting.

The distance between who we mock and who owns the joke has changed.

Cowell doesn't want to so much own the joke as own the culture.

What has happened in that world is that once upon a time,

it was very nice that they all made their money and they had hits,

but they did not own the cultural world.

Now they want to own that world as well,

which goes back to the fact that critics are being wiped out.

That is why it's important, in a way. Cowell makes lots of money.

He manipulates an audience.

It's wonderful in the sense of what he does,

but he also wants credibility.

And he will look to The Book Of Mormon and Urinetown to get that.

They want both. They want the money and the credibility.

But Urinetown is our hope. There are pockets of resistance.

Well, throw it in Cowell's face!

On that note, the rather odd idea that Urinetown is our hope,

let me tell you that it's on at the St James Theatre in London.

I Can't Sing! is on at the Palladium.

Now, from Angels to Call The Midwife,

nurses have an understanding allure for dramatists.

After all, you have got attractive young women

grappling with life and death.

The Crimson Field, a new prime-time drama for BBC One

which stars Hermione Norris and Oona Chaplin,

tells a rather bleak story

of volunteers coming to the trenches of Northern France.

It's just one element of a wide-ranging BBC season

of programming to mark the centenary of the First World War.

In Britain's Great War,

Jeremy Paxman explored the history of this most brutal of conflicts.

It was August 4th, 1914.

The clock was ticking to catastrophe.

The fact-based drama 37 Days took us behind diplomatic doors,

chronicling the countdown

to one of the darkest chapters in European history.

And now, World War I, the nurses' tale.

Set in a field hospital in Northern France,

Sarah Phelps' drama, The Crimson Field,

follows a crop of volunteer nurses

who arrive from Britain to ease the suffering of wounded soldiers,

and who are faced with spartan living conditions.

The rules are clear.

No scent, powder or paint is to be worn.

No fancy stockings, boots, shoes, belts. No trivialities.

Nothing that might invite, provoke or inflame masculine attention.

But perhaps, Marshall, you are a trivial young lady

and masculine attention is what you're hoping for.

It was only a splash of rosewater, Matron.

Matron, we all understand the rules, and will abide by them utterly.

Nursing the men to the very best of our ability

is what we are ready to do.

I'll be the judge of that.

The nurses have arrived at the hospital with little training,

and are forced to adapt quickly

to the horrific realities of the front line,

where their patients' injuries are psychological as well as physical.

HE SOBS

And, Sarah, although we saw the agony of a male officer there

this is nonetheless a story

-very much from a female perspective.

-It is.

And I really enjoyed it, more than I thought I would.

I mean, it's a soap opera

and I don't think we should treat it as much more than that.

But it's a pretty intelligent soap opera, and I found it engaging.

One of the things I liked about it

was that it managed to be sympathetic to these women

from a more or less 21st century perspective

in terms of being interested in the kinds of struggles

that we would find interesting and engaging,

but without falling back on anachronism.

So the women are actually reasonably representative

of the actual experiences of women.

It's not as with some programmes,

where you have women who are basically 21st century women

who get parachuted in,

Doctor Who-style, back into a story, and have all of those attitudes.

There is a bit of that, of course, but for the most part,

I think they are actually pretty accurately done,

and the men are also well rounded.

There isn't a sense that this is a kind of woman-centred drama

where the men are cardboard characters.

As I say, it's a soap opera

set on the battlefields of the First World War.

The soap opera, for me, was too overwhelming.

Again, this looked like it was something out of the '70s.

There was no sense of what is going on

in great television around the world at the moment.

If you're going to treat this subject seriously, as you should,

I would really want that to be involved.

Every character is a cliche, every situation is a cliche.

The music is extraordinarily manipulative.

It's empty, it's airless, it's too antiseptic.

So ultimately, I got more and more annoyed with it.

I don't think I'll be sticking with it at all.

I suppose one of the attempted complexities was the way

we were shown the nurses dealing with the front line,

but we also get a sense of the chasm at the home front as well.

So when one patient's wife visits him,

we see this terrible difference

between the hell that the men have gone through

and the inability of the families to connect in any way with that.

You do, but I would go along more with Paul.

-It felt too sedate for me.

-Didn't feel like hell.

I'm surprised you found it engaging.

I fell asleep the first time I watched it

and I was watching in the afternoon,

so there was no reason for me to go to sleep at all.

I found the characters quite cliched.

The idea of the tyrannical matron...

Nurse Ratched!

..the guy who is a captain or whatever,

he's a bit of a charmer and he's going to try and get the woman.

And I thought the music was not just manipulative,

it was just coated in strings, every scene.

-Somebody has got to wake up to that.

-I thought the compromises they made,

for a territory that is very interesting

and I did not know much about,

but the compromises they have made to make it something

that would work on a Sunday evening on BBC One were too great for me.

The parachuting thing is interesting, though,

because this felt like an interesting dynamic between people,

but the fact that it was World War I was almost irrelevant.

It was just a convenient set of circumstances.

It was the theatre, the stage.

We never felt that we were embedded in that history and that moment.

This is a post-watershed drama,

and particularly in the second episode, it gets quite dark.

I think it does get dark. I take your point,

and certainly if you compare it to the really great prestige drama

that is coming out of HBO and America...

-Which we should.

-..it doesn't stand up to that.

It's a weird thing about British television.

It seems to be rooted in its theatre.

It had a lot of money thrown at it.

But I think Martha's point is also right. I think it is finding its way.

The first episode is just set-up.

The second episode, the violence is starting to come in.

There is a sense in which we are actually seeing,

we don't want to give anything away,

but there is a character who self-harms.

So they are starting... It is a soap opera.

It's a whisper away from French And Saunders.

If you put it next to...

I am among those who thought Downton Abbey was massively overrated,

just so silly, cotton candy.

If you put it next to that, it starts to look like

at least it has the courage of its historical convictions.

-It understands its own context.

-Not a good comparison, though, is it?

I had low expectations, I grant you!

On the question of historical convictions,

I suppose what it's prefiguring is the immense social change

that is about to happen after the war to women's lives.

Yeah - we were about to move on to the fact the BBC are going to do this for four years.

-LAUGHTER

-That's what I find really strange -

the idea that this is embedded in a big four-year theme.

Do we call it a celebration? What do we call it? Anniversary?

I'm slightly concerned about that, personally, cos I just find that...

The BBC, with the best of intentions, as usual,

seem to have made...a complete cock-up.

The idea we will live through this for four years...

In two years' time, what is...? Are we celebrating?

Nobody is talking about it as a celebration.

What are they talking about it as?

It's a hugely ambitious season of programming,

covering historical documentaries from different perspectives,

-schools' programmes, online...

-For four years?

I wouldn't criticise that. What I find quite interesting is...

One of the best programmes, I think, has been The Great War,

the Great War interviews, which is these interviews from the 1960s.

That series was a 26-part series.

It just struck me about what event programming is like now -

for event programming, it'll either be something like The X Factor

or we're going to have to throw 2,500 hours at something.

Whereas, in the past, you could have done 26 hours on something.

I can't imagine now being to able to do a 26-part series

on something like this.

It seems to me the nature of what we do for event programming...

Four years seems to compensate for making great television.

It's not about making it a series of occasions.

It's about... One thing that had been brilliant would have done it.

One thing that would have been brilliant.

If you look at the First World War,

and it is so many aspects that continue to alter...

I mean, if you look, for example,

at the Ukrainian crisis at the moment

and the way we've taken peace in Europe for granted for so long,

we look back at some of the historical documentaries -

doesn't it give us an insight into our own age?

I'm not presupposing one way or the other whether the four years...

I think it'll be all in the execution.

It will entirely depend on whether the programmes can continue to deepen

and, exactly, make those kinds of connections, to draw out context...

But if...if it's four years of The Crimson Field, you know,

maybe not so much.

It needs to be much more metaphorical.

Are we going to do this is 2045? 2039-2045?

It's such a bizarre set-up.

I have to say, I find it really strange.

We'll have to wait and see what's yet on offer -

you've not liked it so far, but there's more to come.

The Crimson Field is on BBC One from next Sunday.

Do stay tuned to BBC Four tonight for The Poet Who Loved The War -

a documentary about Ivor Gurney that's coming up next at 9 o'clock.

Now, you may well know him best as Moss,

the geeky genius in The IT Crowd,

but Richard Ayoade is carving out a career

as one of Britain's most promising film-makers.

His debut feature, the quirky coming-of-age story Submarine,

was widely praised.

Now comes The Double,

starring Jesse Eisenberg from The Social Network.

It's an adaptation of an early work by Dostoevsky,

the disturbing tale of an office worker

whose life unravels when a doppelganger walks into his life.

Eisenberg plays both of the film's central roles.

First, he's Simon James, a meek office worker

who's disparaged by his own mother and undervalued by his colleagues.

-Say, "Hello, Melanie."

-Hello, Melanie.

-Stanley here is going to be your mentor.

-Yes. What?

An hour a day, at your discretion.

-She's a good girl, but no head for figures.

-Yeah.

Alienated at work and painfully awkward,

Simon's one ray of light is the object of his unrequited love -

photocopy girl Hannah, played by Mia Wasikowska.

Hi.

Simon's life is turned upside down with the arrival of James Simon,

a man who, in all physical respects, is his exact double -

a fact that no-one, apart from Simon, seems to notice.

Did he remind you of anyone?

Who did you have in mind?

Me...for instance.

While he's identical in appearance,

James's personality and manner couldn't be more different.

-Anything else?

-No, that's it.

-Are you sure?

Just give me the damn food.

What? I'm hungry.

No, it's just...I don't know, I would have never done that.

You don't like eggs?

No, I mean, I just...don't think I'd feel comfortable

talking to someone like that.

She's a waitress - if you don't tell her what you actually want, how can she do her job?

The newcomer's instant popularity and incursion into his life

sends Simon to the brink of his own sanity.

-I want you to stop seeing Hannah.

-What else?

I want you to tell Papadopoulos I've been doing all your work for you.

This man...is a fraud.

Ayoade's darkly comic film

has shades of Terry Gilliam and David Lynch,

but it's clear that he hasn't forgotten his British roots,

with former IT Crowd colleague Chris O'Dowd and Chris Morris

making cameo appearances.

-You don't exist any more.

-Excuse me?

-You're no longer in the system.

Well, put me back in the system.

-I can't put you back in the system.

-Why?

You don't exist - I can't put someone who doesn't exist in the system.

So, that's it?

That's it. I'll leave you to make your own arrangements.

So, Paul, we've got a flavour of the film there -

do you think Richard Ayoade is an interesting film-maker?

It reminded me a little bit of when newcomers make a demonstration tape

of...of how good they might be as a film-maker, a kind of exercise.

And as a 12-minute piece, I think it would have been quite interesting.

But what I find strange, ultimately,

is that to demonstrate a strange situation, you are so derivative.

You can't get away from the fact

that it's very beautifully done and elegantly done,

but there's so much of the Gilliam, Cronenberg, Coen, Lynch, Hitchcock

that it is, ultimately, familiar.

So if you're trying to create a strange world

and a strange set of circumstances, this Kafka-esque thing -

The Trial, Orson Welles, obviously, as well -

it seems, again, paradoxical

that what you're actually giving us is the familiar.

So as much as I enjoyed it as a ten-minute demo tape

of the possibility that he will become a great director,

the fact that it lacked originality was, ultimately, its worst point.

You could say that the fusion of all these different influences

did give it its very strong visual style.

It does have a very strong style and a very strong mood -

it sustains a very strong, kind of ambient creepiness.

It does it very well.

But within about three minutes, you're thinking about Brazil - it's hard not to be.

I agree with Paul - ultimately, it's derivative.

For me, I had less of a problem with that, because -

and we seem to be dealing very much in the post-modern this week -

I mean, it's kind of a meta-language, it's pastiche,

in the way we've been talking about.

I don't have a problem with that.

My problem was that it was ultimately one note, and it was one joke,

and it wanted that mood to carry everything.

And I think that it just... It got flat, after a while.

It's sustained, but it doesn't actually go anywhere.

And I think the other issue, for me, with it

is the problem of trying to film that sort of story -

The Double or, in the English tradition, say,

The Turn Of The Screw -

where the complexity of the story actually depends on,

when we read it, being inside somebody's consciousness

and not knowing about the external reality of what they're looking at.

When you film it, by definition, it becomes empirically true,

and that actually messes with the doubt

which is at the heart of the joy of the literary experiment.

Because in the literary experiment, you're not certain

if the other person is actually there...

Imagining it or dreaming it or projecting it -

but when we're sitting there as the audience,

seeing that there's another person there,

it changes the nature of the game.

Suddenly, there is a double.

It's interesting - you mentioned this idea of it being a ten-minute film or whatever, a showcase,

but it seemed to be a showcase more for the set design

and the production design and the colour grading

as opposed to the writing or directing.

What I found was actually, at the heart of it,

this existential thing about a person who believes

that there is a better version of themselves

that they can't reach, that felt like it was drowned

by being overly mannered and being overly styled.

So there was an emotional pain or connection that you just didn't feel

because you were admiring the composition of the shots too much.

I thought that whole idea of the doppelganger

was quite intriguing -

the idea of projecting onto another persona,

a stronger version of yourself, actually destroys you.

It's a very familiar road to go down, though - that's the problem,

unless you can introduce something

genuinely original to make it slightly chilling.

It did make me think more and more, as I was watching,

that I'm about to be replaced by Phil Tufnell.

I have to say that. I was slightly chilled by that,

because there was a grain of truth in that.

-I'd like to see that as a film.

-That's more original than this.

I mean, the idea of projecting onto a stronger version of yourself -

that's Fight Club.

I mean... It is... The Double is from 1846, I think,

is when Dostoevsky writes it.

And then we have Jekyll and Hyde, and all of the kind of, you know,

further avatars of it.

It's not a new idea. It doesn't need to be...

It's in most films, oddly.

Which is fine - it's actually a really important trope,

something we come back to,

but it seems to think it's original in a way that it isn't.

Was it the coldness, the detachment, that was the problem?

I found it was just too chilly -

it seemed that the work had been done in creating

this weird set which sort of looked both futuristic and retro

rather than making the characters complex.

I find him quite a chilly and cold kind of director and writer.

It feels like somebody who basically...

You mentioned the showcase -

it's also somebody who seems to want to advertise his influences,

whether literary or whether it's the slightly offbeat music choices.

But you lose the heart because you show too much of your brain.

That's interesting too, cos it's part of the modern world,

and in a way, because there's a kind of cultural amnesia,

there is a world now when you can do something like this

and play to people who aren't aware of all these references

and respond to it as an original work.

That's when it starts to become really interesting.

On one hand, you say, "If someone came along now

"and was just copying Picasso, or was just copying Shostakovich,

"then we'd all go, 'You can't do that.'"

Somehow, in this world, you can copy directly

and we're supposed to go, "Yes, but lots of young people don't know where it's come from."

You say "copy", but Sarah would say that it's referencing.

Yeah, but it's more than that.

What about Jesse Eisenberg, then? He's required to...

It's a challenging thing for an actor to play two different...

Oh, they love it. They LOVE it!

-They do.

-That's all they want to do, for goodness' sake!

-Narcissism doubled.

-God, can you imagine?

Show me one actress or actor that wouldn't or couldn't do it.

I think he does a good job with it.

I personally think that he's a little bit miscast,

only in the sense that -

and it goes back to Saf's point about the distance of it,

which I agree with - you have this very strong, stylised feel

to the whole visual aesthetic, but he...

I, personally, don't find him compelling.

He doesn't have enough charisma to carry me forward.

Technically, he does it very well, he's a good actor,

but I think you need somebody with more star quality,

who's going to bring this to life.

But the main character, Simon James, couldn't have star quality by his very nature,

-cos he was a neurotic...

-James Simon can, so...

I suppose it's about somebody who can show that they're in pain

as a result of being that tortured. I don't think he conveyed that.

It would be truly creepy if they'd got Simon Cowell to do it.

LAUGHTER

-Simon Cowell, interesting...

-Cowell Simon.

Cowell Simon - very good, Saf.

Well, The Double is in cinemas from Friday.

Songwriter and musician Ben Watt

has spent much of the last three decades

writing and performing with his partner, Tracey Thorn,

in Everything But The Girl.

This year, he's concentrating on his own projects.

He recently published Romany And Tom,

a memoir of his parents, which has garnered glowing reviews.

And now, over 30 years since his first solo album,

he's about to release another.

Here's Ben Watt with Bernard Butler and the title track, Hendra.

MUSIC: "Hendra" by Ben Watt

# These rooms are cold but heavenly

# And the sun is shining

# You know what they say about silver and lining

# Oh, Hendra

# Oh, Hendra

# I would walk this way again

# Cos you make me feel as right as rain

# I wish I'd studied harder now

# Made something of myself

# But instead I'm just a shopkeeper

# But I mustn't blame myself

# Oh, Hendra

# Oh, Hendra

# There's still so much to gain

# You make me feel as right as rain

# All the self-help books

# Like the Dance With Life

# Like the Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway

# Sometimes I have them right here in my hand

# And think it's easier for you to see

# But I must allow these feelings and just let them fall

# But sometimes I turn the radio up so loud just to drown them all

# Oh, Hendra

# Oh, Hendra

# Where love is plain

# You make me feel as right as rain

# As right, not as wrong, as rain. #

And there will be more from Ben Watt and Bernard Butler

later on tonight's show.

What makes you take offence? The use of the N-word?

A cartoon mocking the prophet Muhammad?

A joke about rape?

A new book about those controversial issues

argues that modern sensitivities are now so out-of-control

that freedom of speech itself is under threat

from left and right alike.

On Offence by Richard King ranges over the protests

that erupted over The Satanic Verses,

threats to burn the Koran,

political correctness in schools and cultural relativism.

King argues that the politics of offence is poisoning public debate.

"Everywhere one looks, offence is being taken -

"sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for bad ones,

"but nearly always in a way that implies that offence

"is something regrettable in itself.

"Respect and offence are fast becoming the 'good cop, bad cop'

"of a new mood of censoriousness, of self-pity and self-righteousness."

My argument is that the claim to find something hurtful or offensive

should be the beginning of the debate and not the end of it.

It seems to me that, recently,

the taking of offence and the attempt to whip up offence

is really an attempt

to close down debate.

It's a book that argues for more argument, not less.

The modern obsession with hurt feelings

makes something that was once implicit explicit

and, in so doing, invites us, quite shamelessly,

to put our intellects on hold and our feelings on speaker.

Offence is nothing new - when I was growing up in the UK,

people took offence all the time,

but it tended to be about things like denigrations of respectability

and religion and nudity and blasphemy,

bad language, that kind of stuff.

# Let there be light... #

These were the things that shrivelled the nostrils of public opinion.

But what happened in the late '80s and 1990s was that

the taking of offence began to be...consciously politicised.

Political correctness is partly to blame,

and what you have now is a very strange situation

whereby even the very powerful find it expedient, politically expedient,

to parade their hurt feelings.

Having internalised the old slogan of the counter-culture,

"The personal is political",

we now behave as if the opposite is true -

that the political is merely personal.

Identifying with causes rather than committing ourselves to them

and mistaking our feelings for political insights,

we demand not only the right to take offence,

but also the right not to be offended.

In order to have a civil society, you need to have the debate -

you need to agree to disagree

and you need to agree on rules on how to disagree.

Freedom of speech is meaningless

unless it includes the freedom to offend.

Sarah, do you think there is a problem around taking offence?

Absolutely - I've thought so for a long time.

I really welcomed this project.

It's something I've been hoping someone would do,

sit down and try to anatomise what's happened to political discourse,

the way that talking about taking offence shuts down everything,

and what has seemed to me, for a long time,

the idea that people basically say, "You hurt my feelings"

and that that's supposed to somehow stop the debate.

People's feelings get hurt all the time

and if you put it in those terms, you realise how childish it is -

the whole thing is very infantilising in a lot of ways,

it's seemed to me, for a long time.

And everybody starts to walk on eggshells,

this fear of offending somebody else.

That's not to say that we should have permission to offend

left, right and centre, but that we need to have something

that's more nimble, a more finessed position on all of this.

So I think his basic postulate is right.

I'm not sure I agree with all the conclusions that he draws

and with all of his analysis, but I think the premise is correct.

That there's a risk of debate being stifled

-because of people's sensitivities.

-And it's shutting down free speech.

I think there's space for a book that looks at that.

I don't think this is the book.

I think part of the problem is

he chooses a lot of different kinds of offence -

starts with the pastor trying to burn the Koran,

then goes to Mark Twain's use of the N-word,

whether that should be acceptable,

then goes to the Tea Party.

I'm not sure he comes up with a unifying idea

that links all those things.

And I also think there's somebody...

When you read someone like Hitchens or Nick Cohen or a polemicist

and think, "They're angry about what they're saying

"and they're just going for it",

he doesn't actually sound like he's that offended by offence, actually,

which makes me wonder why he's written the book.

There's a sense of it being written by somebody

who's watched a couple of YouTube videos, read a few articles -

it doesn't feel lived.

That makes me wonder how much he actually believes it.

Though it is... It does have a certainly topicality, doesn't it?

If we look at what's been happening on Twitter

and various hate campaigns against different people.

It's very twee and it's been organised around him, almost,

in terms of the cover as well, with the "F Off",

which is, oddly, possibly the most offensive thing

about the book, which isn't that offensive,

and shows you what the book's like. It's very polite.

I think, also, what we're circling is often not the opinions

or the attitudes or the offenders,

it's the amplification of everything at the moment,

and this book kind of, occasionally, gets close to that,

or is very awkward with it and uncomfortable about dealing with what's happening,

cos obviously, what we're really talking about

is the instant amplification of opinion that undercuts

the idea that there could be a sophisticated debate,

because everyone's responding too quickly and not allowing

the delicacy of an idea or theory of an argument to really develop.

But doesn't he talk about...?

He said the Danish cartoons, and suddenly that spread so quickly...

But again, I think, absolutely, there's no heroic, iconic...

It's melancholy, in a sense, because it becomes part of the problem,

that this kind of book is dying out precisely because of the problem.

He touches on a lot of issues and, I think,

he superficially glances towards them.

His accounts of how things developed

and his attempts to historicise them are mostly wrong-headed.

They're often inaccurate,

they're often...certainly crude and reductive.

He tries to cover a lot of ground

and I think he ends up gesturing towards these ideas,

and I agree, he raises several important issues

that, actually, he can't quite make sense of.

One of the most interesting sections of the book

was when he talks about the dynamic

between the cultural sensitivities of the left becoming paramount

and, therefore, the right then rises and sees themselves as victim

to respond to that, so you get a kind of ratcheting up of events.

So you get commentators on Fox News thinking that to be a white male

is now the most persecuted thing in the world.

And the war against Christmas.

And how PC is, in some ways, a mirror of all the values

that it was initially trying to oppose.

I think that I agree with you in that the other thing I found difficult about it

was that he seems to have...

He has a slightly superior, snooty attitude towards things.

-That the rest of us...

-He has this quote where he says

"History can be used to bolster the self-esteem of the weak",

talking about Afrocentrism, etc.

But this suggests that history is somehow objective

and some people are using it...but it's not.

Actually, if you have a fuller sense of history -

for example, if you go back to the First World War,

if you show the role that people from outside Britain played,

the colonies, etcetera, is that boosting the self-esteem of the weak,

or is that just telling you a fuller story?

I think this had a slightly...

There's also the very delicate moment of people like this,

the academic - I'm not allowed to say the critic any more, am I?

Those that were used to only being the voice

that tried to direct the narrative and direct the argument

have been replaced by just everybody, in a way, for better or worse.

And in a sense, there's a sense...

For me, what came across is that's like a powerlessness -

he's powerless, because these kind of books that want to put...

He quotes loads of books and calls them famous,

but they're only famous in a very small area of the world.

For me, this kind of book, what it needs to do to take the argument on

is not root itself in 20th century language and 20th century divisions

but create and generate new possibilities.

I think that's right.

There's quite an interesting attack on cultural relativism.

Again, not necessarily new, but...

Not new at all, and I think that's a problem.

There are a fair number of straw men here, actually,

and I think, in some ways, the PC thing is dated in important ways.

For him to hook onto that and onto the '90s culture wars,

that's not really what's being debated any more.

I think what he needed to do was, actually,

to go back to the point Saf made a moment ago

and in regards to the left and the right rising up against each other,

that there's a politics of victimhood that he keeps invoking

and never actually comes to grips with

and for me, that's part...

There are various sorts of issues that are totally unexamined, here,

questions that are begged throughout the book.

Why has "victim" become a status?

It goes to what you said about history.

50 years ago, you didn't fight over who was the victim,

you fought over who was the victor.

Now, we fight over who's the victim. Something has changed, but he's not getting at it.

Two other things. One I was going to say

is I think Mary Beard's lecture and piece in the London Review Of Books

about the language used around women

digs deeper into this sort of subject than this book does.

The second thing is, I don't think he looks at -

for example, with the Muhammad cartoons,

you can look at the obvious thing and go,

-"My God, why are Muslims going crazy?"

-Which is what he does.

But you've got to ask, "Why has a particular strain of Islam grown

"that is intolerant,

"when, in the past, there were more tolerant strains?"

Why is that we've got to this position now,

where that voice is the loudest voice?

That is a more complex issue that just treating it

-in terms of what you're seeing now.

-What would your answer to that be?

I think it's to do with money,

probably to do with money from Saudi Arabia that's come into help

fund the Wahhabi religion...sect, rather than other kinds of sect.

I think it's to do with politics and power.

Power - he hardly ever uses the word "power"

and the whole thing is about power.

Terrible thing is, though, I feel, at a time like this,

is when we knock a book like this,

there's less space for a book like this, better written,

-better made, to appear.

-I'm not going to knock it.

But it's a terrible situation we find ourselves in -

on one hand, we're applying this, but the world is like this,

and what's being squeezed out...

But it's almost like what he's actually saying...

His opening thing is, basically, that offence is...

We should have a debate about it,

but what he doesn't do is take on the hard questions.

Are you allowed to use the N-word generally? Is that what he says? Or what to do about the burka?

He doesn't tackle tough issues.

You can give him credit for it being a very good talking point for us.

Richard King's book On Offence is out now.

Talking lampposts, geek shoes for cyclists,

a floating school -

some amazing inventions on display at the Design Museum.

The exhibition of Designs Of The Year

showcases cutting-edge innovation

from the worlds of architecture, fashion,

furniture and digital design.

Last year's award winners included the UK Government's own website

and a folding wheel

and this year's inventions are just as ingenious.

Here's our guide to this survey

of the finest fruitions of form and function.

I think what Designs Of The Year does is it shows the whole diversity

of design, from design that saves lives,

design that makes us safe,

and also design that improves the quality of life.

You can either show things by their category,

with architecture or graphics,

but we've chosen here to show it by theme.

So in the exhibition, we hope that it reflects the fact that, in life,

you might be driving along in a car that keeps you safe

but also wearing a pair of shoes that makes you smile

and we hope the exhibition has that layered effect that reflects life.

It's both an exhibition and an awards,

and we have a panel of judges who have expertise

in all the different categories who will, next week, sit together

and go through the designs

and come up with a winner of each category

and then an overall winner of Design Of The Year.

And yes, it's their difficult job

to choose between a car and a dress, housing and an art gallery.

Design can solve problems, it can make our lives better

and it can make our lives more enjoyable.

Saf, what I've found hugely enjoyable about this exhibition

was it was just so optimistic -

these are people working away to improve other people's lives.

I agree - I think it's quite sweet, actually,

that the very last item of the very last programme is something

which is hopeful and optimistic about the future, which I just love.

I also really like the fact that,

rather than it being about just one person, you know -

there's another room in the Design Museum

which is in tribute to Paul Smith -

this is about lots and lots of people, from all over the world,

who are all never heard of, who are all doing different things.

And they're looking at preoccupations

we have with the present,

whether it's the environment, or crowd sourcing of technology,

and they're finding solutions which don't seem completely far-fetched,

but just seem like they're moving us forward just a little bit further.

I absolutely loved it.

So imaginative, the idea of a floating school,

to deal with a region

where there was water rising -

which may even become necessary here -

down to little bottle tops which have been

turned into a children's toy.

It's the extremes of one thing, a city itself to -

yeah, absolutely - a small thing, games that never end,

keyboards that don't have keys, beautiful churches,

new ways of burying people...

You realise that a lot of designers, in a way,

are philosophers.

They have a philosophical kind of quality to what they do, they're so important.

And great design prepares us for new ideas.

I think it's absolutely key.

When you go and see these 76 pieces that have been nominated -

and that will be out of many, many other things -

you realise, "Yes, this is where the optimism is.

"This is where the future is still being formed in people's minds."

We have this kind of slightly jaundiced thing,

at the moment, that there is no such thing as "the future" anymore.

This exhibition shows you absolutely there is,

and these people are thinking about it.

-It changed my idea of what designers really are.

-Me, too.

I walked in there with my heart slightly sinking,

partly thinking, "What do I know about design?

"How am I possibly going to be able to judge this?"

But anybody could go in there and respond to it,

because it's exactly as you were saying - it's everyday objects,

all the way up to schools and museums.

It's the things that we all use in our lives.

And what is remarkable about going through these 76 items is that

almost every one of them has a really strong ethical component.

You start to realise that people are thinking very, very carefully

about how to make the world a better place,

not just making gadgets that are more fun. They're partly doing that...

Another thing, which I think is right,

there's also an aspect of play about it.

There's a lot of playfulness.

The bottle caps which have been turned

into this Lego-style building things...

Whether it's about lampshades, whether it's about learning Chinese,

using these kind of picture things...

There's a really lovely non-arrogance

and playful aspect to a lot of it, which I found lovely as well.

In many senses, the designer is at the cutting edge

of the commercial compromise,

but still trying to bring in a moral dimension,

cos what they try to do is bring in something new

and the newness of an idea is so delicate,

it cannot be punished and torn apart by instant,

amplified response, because it takes time to develop.

You see that with these kind of designs.

It's interesting that the world thinks it's caught up with design,

because it's caught up with the '70s and the '80s,

so we've got a lot of that around us,

but this shows us design is still moving forward.

And it's implicitly educational, which is one of the things I loved about it -

you get an education yourself, not just in design,

but in all the kinds of questions that people have to think about

as we move through society.

There is this wonderful Japanese design

for children going through chemotherapy,

a new way for them to be with their families,

-and you realise...

-Lovely.

-Wonderful.

And you realise how many problems we're facing as a society

and how much design is a way of addressing that and educating us

in order to ask the right questions,

to think about what we do with families where children are sick.

Get used to a new idea, a new design.

A syringe which goes red when you've used it once...

One interesting thing, it was one of those moments

where you actually feel hopeful when you go to the gift shop,

-cos you go in and some of the things you've seen in the exhibition...

-..are there.

I did all of my Christmas shopping, I absolutely did!

This is not completely pie in the sky - some of it...

-Not exploitation?

-No, but it's not just pie in the sky.

A lot of it is crowd sourced too.

This stuff is actually being used and being made.

And being made ethically, so a lot of it is crowd sourced...

It's also wonderful to see in the technological world -

we're now used to Apple and Samsung

and all these, sort of, dreadful, tyrannical companies -

to see this other version of a mobile phone...

Called the Fairphone, wasn't it?

Yeah, the phone that could last forever -

much more intelligent, sensitive, poetic.

We think that an Apple is the definitive version

of that thing - no, it isn't.

It's the compromised, commercial version of it.

There was something poetic -

Citymapper was one of the things that was being done.

-This is an app.

-An app, and I got to the Design Museum using Citymapper,

so I just thought...

I love the cemetery as well, that they pointed out,

very clearly, that when things end, it isn't the end,

it's just another part of the life cycle.

And Sarah, what do you think about the way...?

Laughing at Paul's metaphor.

I think we got the metaphor.

What do we think about the way the exhibition itself was organised?

Was it interactive enough for you?

Not necessarily - that would be my only quibble.

I really enjoyed it,

so I don't particularly want to be captious about it,

but I'm not convinced organising it thematically

was particularly useful.

I'm not sure it opened things up as well as it might have.

One the other hand, most of these objects do speak for themselves,

and when you get the little description that tells you

what it's about, it kind of doesn't matter what its context is,

because it's an idea that, you know, speaks for itself.

It's quite cute, some of the signs that say, "Please DO touch", which is quite nice.

It was the weakest form of it, of the design in the Design exhibition,

but I think - and they're moving soon, in 2015, to South Kensington,

and I think that's deserved -

you have to walk 15 minutes from London Bridge Station to get there,

it's a bit on the edge of things.

I think the Design Museum should really be in the middle of things,

because I think design is possibly, at the moment,

the key thing in the way that we are thinking these things.

Sarah, you mentioned crowd sourcing,

and so many of these were crowd sourced,

which must mean there's good financial backing

to many of these ideas.

That people are getting excited about it,

there's a feeling of populism with a lot of it -

and they're affordable.

When I say I did my Christmas shopping,

A - I'm not kidding and B - I didn't break the bank.

Yet there was the sense I was buying interesting things

and helping people who are trying to solve problems.

Just to bring it back to where we started,

it's nice that, this time,

crowd sourcing is being used positively -

we're not voting for a winner, but for a solution.

-It wasn't I Can't Sing! It was I Can Design.

-Very good.

Nicely wrapped up. Well, those gadgets and inventions are on show

until August at the Design Museum in London.

That's just about it for this last edition of The Review Show.

Thanks to this month's guests - in fact, to all the panellists

over the past 20 years for their bouquets and brickbats

and to you, of course, for following this show in its many incarnations.

So it's goodbye from me and from Kirsty, too.

To play us out, another track from Ben Watt and Bernard Butler -

from Ben's new album, this is The Levels.

MUSIC: "The Levels" by Ben Watt

# The estate agent's been over

# I've resurfaced the driveway

# I was selling flowers out on the pavement

# Made it nice round the place

# I'm up for selling the business

# My heart isn't in it

# Without your face over the counter

# Without your face

# Some nights I drive out on The Levels

# Through the village past the church where we got married

# I can see for miles

# Out there is the future

# What's there standing in my way?

# Right now it is my past

# And it's not moving forward

# Some nights I'm out there on The Levels

# And the ditches and the fields are flooded by the rivers

# I can see for miles

# And I know it is only daylight

# That we all walk through

# And everyone has wounds that heal with time

# I'll get over mine

# Some nights, I'm out there on The Levels

# And we are talking like we used to

# But it's me who does the talking

# And I'll be out there for a while

# I can see for miles. #