“They’re awful, they frighten me, they’re evil and wicked and dangerous!” – Nicky Gore, The Changes
A mate went to see Stewart Lee perform live recently, and we discussed how odd it is for him to be now considered a member of the comedy “old guard” when he is in fact the same age as me. We also discussed how he represents perhaps the last of a dying species – the ranter. Albeit a ranter with jokes, but a ranter nonetheless, who refuses to accept the myriad idiocies of the world and is going to say his piece, whether you like it or not. The other “comedians” I see these days are either trying to outshout each other on rigourously-scripted panel shows, or are prancing about before the cameras for the now-mandatory Xmas DVD release. I’m not going to name names, because I think the vast majority are complete twats, and it would take me too long.
Stewart Lee still has it though, and I recently stumbled across a clip of him discussing the changes in children’s TV during his lifetime, comparing the likes of 70’s programmes like Children of the Stones and The Changes with the likes of today’s Skins. Needless to say, the latter does not come out favourably in his assessment but he does explain his argument well. In the Children of the Stones, first broadcast in 1976, you had the bloke out of Blake’s 7 (Gareth Thomas) playing Professor Brake, an astrophycisist who brings his son Matthew to the village of Milbury, which sits inside a megalithic stone circle. The village seems to exist within it’s own pocket of space/time, where the same things appear to happen again and again, and the Prof and Matthew are there to investigate. Shown in 1977, on ITV, it’s now something of a cult classic, mainly because so many kids of that era were still tuned into Blue Peter. I remember it being an odd piece of work though, with an creepy atmosphere that pervaded throughout. They’d captured the same sense of unspecific dread you feel as a kid when you’re suddenly strayed outside of known territory. We see the events unfold through Matthew’s eyes, and feel his fear and increasing sense of disquiet as the adults begin to behave in ways he’s not familiar with.
The Changes, starts with a similar premise, except this time events aren’t contained within a village. Instead, the whole adult world has gone mad, responding to a strange noise coming from all forms of machinery by smashing anything that might be the source. Society breaks down as a result, many people flee the cities, and those left behind try to make some sense of it all. The main character is Nicky Gore, a teenager who’s been abandoned by her parents and left to survive alone in a post-apocalyptic Britain. Filmed around Bristol and Gloucestershire, the location team’s made the most of the eerie post-war landscapes and marching armies of sinister pylons, which carry the “bad wires” that Nicky fears.
Skins is also filmed in Bristol, but there the comparisons end. Skins has no sense of mystery, or awe. All it’s about a bunch of spoiled, narcissistic, and ignorant teenagers who’s lives revolve around texting, skinning up and copping off. The odd hoolie gets chucked in to provide a modicum of challenge and danger, but for the most part fuck all happens except for texting, skinning up and copping off. I’ve seen enough of it to know that it’s loathsome and that the minds behind its creation – that’s the Channel 4 writers and production teams – are globules of pink bubblegum floating in vats of liquid excreta. Stewart Lee makes the excellent observation that the appeal of programmes like The Changes and Children of the Stones was that the children watching would be drawn into the drama of Matthew and Nicky’s circumstances, both of whom were virtually the sole child characters in a world full of adults up to no good. Children feeling alone and frightened by the outside world bearing down on them, could take reassurance that there were other kids out there in much worse situations, and they were surviving. Lee suggests that feeling of fear is a truer reflection of what it’s like to be a teenager, whereas Skins seems to only increase the sense of alienation, in that if you’re not already part of that priveleged world of casual affluence, if you’re not as cool and as elegantly wasted as them, then you should fuck off.
Are the attitudes that inform Skins a reflection of the times we live in, or are they an exaggeration of the tabloid-stoked fears about rampaging teens and the imminent descent into total chaos? Lee says: “I’m really glad I’m not a teenager watching TV for teenagers now, because I think I’d feel really left out watching something like Skins. But there’s something really comforting for nerds and weirdoes about things like Children of the Stones and Changes, things that make you feel less alone, and that’s a really great thing that art can do, whereas something like Skins would make me, as a teenager, feel more alone.”
