Saturday Night Goint Out: Arcadia

Arcadia? What's that, you ask. Well, last night we went to see a BBC pilot being taped, and it is called "Arcadia", because it is a workplace based comedy set in an arcade video game store. I mean, the title makes a bit of sense, sort of, as "Aracdia" is also a metaphor for a place of simple, pastoral lives. You know, like a video game store. Or something.

The lead character, Tony, is a snivelling complainer, incontent in owning his own shop selling a product that he enjoys, and presumably successful enough to maintain two employees and a beachfront location, albeit in Clacton-on-Sea. He also seems to spend a lot of his time sexually harassing his female employee, offering her money to be "his girlfriend" and telling her that the next time she needs to whack something off, it should be him. He is a classy guy, utterly unsympathetic, and terminally stupid as he gets taken in by the embarrassingly stupid plot of the episode when it arrives.

The girl he is sexually harassing, Bug-Eyed Girl, is so memorable that despite spending over three hours watching them piece this show together, I have no idea what her real name is. Despite working in a video game store, she appears to not actually like video games unless they are cuddly girlie video games, and finds it a chore having to work for her slovenly, complaining boss. She has no deep product knowledge of video games and doesn't seem to want to pick any up. In what seemed to be the B-plot, she goes for a job interview at a vets, as she likes animals and plays all the vet video games. As part of her job interview, she has to masturbate a pit-bull, which makes zero sense as part of job interview. She feels horribly guilty at having a job interview behind Tony's back, despite the fact that he is an abhorrent person, and at the end of the episode, she gives him a kiss on the cheek, clearly indicating that she has serious Issues. Wanting to stay in a dysfunctional work situation and encouraging her line manager's obsessive behaviour towards her is clearly pretty fucked-up and self destructive.

The other employee is a nerd called Jeremy who comes to work dressed as video game characters. He has an addictive personality and has had "problems" with the game "Monkey Dong" which is not at all Donkey Kong. Despite Jeremy's awareness of his problems, and the efforts he is making to stay "clean", Tony encourages him to fall off the wagon and play in order to help Tony get some cash to pay off the plot device walking through the A-story. All in all, as the "wacky" character, Jeremy actually is pretty funny, which is the only time I am going to use the phrase "pretty funny" to describe the show.

There are two other "recurring" characters (presumably recurring, as it is a pilot after all) are Bug-Eyed Girl's sister who works in the cafe next door and has the personality of wet newspaper, and Cliff, a cyber-punk goth conspiracy theorist who speaks in a cod-American accent and looks exactly like the sort of tard that goes around in a long black leather trench coat and sunglasses. He is moderately amusing in an over the top kind of way. Cliff gets the C-story, as he is arranging a meet-up with a cyber-terrorist who turns out to be a little old lady! Hilarious! I had to go the hospital afterwards, my sides had split!

Anyway, the lead story was about this pram-faced chav named Moweena who claims to be preggers and Tony is the father. She says that her violent father says she either has to marry Tony or get £5000 off him to pay for prams and stuff, and as she refuses to marry Tony as he is a twat, he has to cough up the money by the end of the day or her dad is going to mess Tony up. Tony, of course, can't remember having sex with her as he had been drinking, but he believes her, as you do, despite her being like eight months pregnant and not making herself aware to him before, despite being the sort of person who clearly would. Additionally, he doesn't think to ask for a DNA test or anything like that, he just acquiesces immediately as he is a spineless cretin. Of course it turns out Moweena is not really pregnant - didn't see that one coming, did you! - and she had just stuffed a half inflated beach ball under her shirt and tried to extort money out of Tony because he is a twat. Oh the twists and turns! And yet everything still returned to the status quo by the end of the episode! Wow!

On the whole, the show may be slightly better than 'Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps', but it might just have been that seeing it being shot created a false sense of appreciation for 'Arcadia'. The pilot did have some genuinely funny lines, but on the whole the jokes fell fairly flat. On the plus side, most of the cast gave good performances, but even these weren't without problems underlining the flaws at the very heart of the concept. The actor playing Tony generally wanted to play things low key, keeping his performance pretty dry. The other two male characters, on the other hand, have very odd characters to play, and the actors play them very broadly, taking them to the top, having a look around, and considering just going all the way over. The conflicting tones of the performances rub against each other as the show tries to figure out which style of comedy best suits it. As a three camera sit-com, it just doesn't have the production or writing finesse to play these tones off each other the way some of the best single camera shows do - the American Office and Arrested Development both spring to mind, though they both do so in very different ways.

Additionally, the setting of the show is entirely pointless. Nothing plot related would have to be changed to relocate the sit-com out of a video game store and into virtually any other location. As a workplace based sitcom, the location of the workplace shouldn't be as meaningless as it is here.

Finally, the plot(s) are stupid, trite and beggar belief. It is the twenty-first century and the main plot was worn out in the seventies. The "humour", as it was, was supposed to be coming out of this "situation", but the situation was unbelievable. The show was just such a seen-it-all-several-times-before-and-didn't-think-it was-funny-then-either type show. I mean, pretending to be pregnant? Going for a job interview? Were the writers even trying?

OK, makers of "Arcadia", if this is the level you are aiming for, here are some other suggestions for plots should BBC3 be mad enough to take you to series (and the amount of episodes of 'Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps' they show every week tells me they are):

- Tony has to cut costs and has to fire Jeremy or Bug-Eyed Girl - and they have to compete for the job! Fortunately a last minute deus ex machina, say, oh I don't know, a tax rebate, will allow Tony to keep them both - with hilarious results!

- Tony is in the back office, and misunderstands a conversation Jeremy and Bug-Eyed girl are having. He thinks the two have become lovers and he feels left out - with hilarious results!

- Cliff has a falling out with his parents, so Tony allows him to sleep overnight in the shop - the same night burglars break in to steal the Play-Boxes that are just about to go on sale - with hilarious results!

- Bug-Eyed Girl realises that Tony has been sexually harassing her and that is against the law, so she quits and sues his ass off, winning ownership of the store - with hilarious results!

Contact me in the comments section if you are interested in hiring me to write up any of these scripts. Based on the pilot, I'm sure I can find a couple of hours to get them into production shape.

Oh, and a request to BBC3 - if and when you broadcast the pilot (yes Americans, pilots get broadcast here whether they go to series or not), please do so when Charlie Brooker is on the air, as I want to watch him piss all over the show.