"A particular letdown" Daily Mirror.
"The least funny new comedy in recent memory" Daily Telegraph.
"Even Sirs Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi can't rescue Vicious, ITV's feeble, old-fashioned comedy" The Guardian.
"The only laughter it provokes is canned" The Independent.
The Times was so-so; "It's not really to my particular taste."
The main problem these reviewers had with Vicious was they didn't think it was funny.*
Crap gags, overacting worthy of panto, and annoying canned/idiots' laughter were the most common gripes.
None didn't like Vicious because the lead characters were old, but several thought the programme was rather old-fashioned.
No-one had any problem that it was a gay sitcom - or, if you prefer that it was a sitcom that just happened to be gay - just that it wasn't a very good one.
And none thought it problematic that the "vicious old queens" were somewhat stereotypical - though this was a popular saw with some gaybores on Twitter.
And besides, an ITV prime time sitcom probably isn't the best place to go looking if you want some of EM Forster's "well-rounded characters".
In a Guardian online article about how Vicious shows how TV has changed since the 70s - when "the only regular TV appearance of a male homosexual [was] flouncing Mr Humphries in Are You Being Served?" - Ben Summerskill claimed that "some autopilot activists have been outraged at its caricatures."
Have they?
Who Christopher Biggins!?
You could say it's a sign of the times that Vicious was not pre/judged on it being gay, be it with bigoted sneers or wanky liberal cheers, but on whether it made for good television.
And the verdict is clearly it wasn't.
Make of that what you will.
PS Screen shots from BBC News and Wednesday's Daily Star.
It's unusual for the media to review the reviews - perhaps they thought the response to Vicious was newsworthy in itself?
Update: And from the Daily Mail message boards...
Just the first two posts from the top of the page, so please don't accuse me of bias and that.
The author, Philip Hensher, also valiantly fights against those who said Vicious had stereotypical gay characters.
Although - again - only Christopher Biggins appears to have made this a criticism of the programme in the mainstream media.
Maybe it's a "thing" for dinner party queens?
Fight the non-existent power!
Posts
So the blogger that spends most of his time showing how the media is unrepresentative of gay people or can't be trusted, uses their reviews to bolster his own dislike of the show that he himself hasn't actually watched.
ReplyDeleteIrony dies...
PS - I genuinely can't even begin to understand why you feel such a desperate need to trash it even though you haven't seen it. Do you think your peculiar attitude in this regard might also explain some of the negativity shown towards it by your beloved media?
See replies below.
DeleteBut again, this post is called 'What The Papers Said', and is about what the papers said about Vicious.
Why are you not slagging The Job Lot off, which seems like ideal Tory right fodder?
ReplyDeleteInstead, you seem to be expending an awful amount of time and energy trying to trash Vicious without having seen it.
I think you're probably representative of a lot of the negativity against it.
How depressing that The Job Lot gets a pass with the people you cite (and seem to agree with), while Vicious is attacked.
I wonder if any of them actually watched either...
I haven't said much about The Job Lot as it's not a gay-themed show.
DeleteSo the only interest here is it features Russell Tovey, whose doable - and a gayer playing straight (again) which I've covered to a lot in other posts already.
I haven't given it a pass - I haven't commented on its content, themes, etc etc
"And the verdict is clearly it wasn't."
ReplyDeleteNot from reading twitter last night.
The verdict seemed to be 50/50. And there WAS an awful amount of "it's stereotypical" or "it's putting gay rights back" comments, amongst much of the anti ones too.
Why are you trying to misrepresent the reaction it got??
I like the way the Telegraph critic basically says at the end "Of course, it's all subjective but I didn't think it was funny so why should anyone else?"
Well, I found it funny and an awful lot of people on twitter last night seemed to find it funny, too.
I know for a fact that at least one of the people going out of their way to trash it never actually watched it...
I haven't written much about Twitter reaction here except one line that said some gay men said they thought it was stereotypical.
DeleteAlso, why is the fact the Mail reviewer loved it any more significant than the fact the ones in the right-wing Telegraph and The Independent (both of which you've slagged off in the past for their coverage of gay issues) didn't like it?
ReplyDeleteI posted the review in the Scotsman on here the other day, which was very complimentary.
Funny how you didn't bother with that one.
I wonder how many other positive reviews you ignored?
(not that I expect any replies)
Your biased reporting on this would be shitty even if you'd actually seen it first.
As it is, it's both shitty and quite bizarre...
The post is called 'What The Papers Said' and is about what all the national ' reviews said about Vicious - with links so you can check what they said in full, and I haven't been selective in my quotations.
DeleteI don't see how that is biased reporting.
That's incredibly disingenuous.
DeleteYou've singled out the Mail's praise as significant because it's a right wing paper, when you don't seem to place any significance in another right wing paper's (the Telegraph) criticism.
You dismiss Ben Summerskill's point about some of the "steretypes" criticism as being false, when there was a lot of such criticism online last night.
This post is not about "what the papers say" - it's a selective grouping used to illustrate both your dismissal of Summerskill's point and your odd dislike of the show, even though you haven't seen it.
Anyway, whatever.
I really liked it and thought it had great qualities that deserve defending and celebrating, instead of cheap and easy dismissals or trashing, which I think is a bit shitty, but you're not in the minority amongst wanker TV critics online, it seems. Patrick Strudwick seemed to think the same as you and he even seems to have watched it...
I singled out the Mail as it was the only national newspaper whose review was enthusiastic - and said "make of that what you will".
DeleteSummerskill's quote came after how I mentioned Twitter comments/complaints about stereotyping.
I haven't seen Smugtwit's tweets as he blocked me long ago - bar one someone forwarded for the LOLZ! where he complained about its portrayal of stereotypes.
Bollocks. This is what you said on twitter...
Delete"Says something that the only good review for #Vicious is in the Daily Mail."
What does it say?
Why does that say something when another right wing paper that was even more anti-gay marriage, hated it?
And it wasn't "the only good review", as you well know.
And you felt the need to tweet this without having seen it yourself.
This is bullshit.
And you who spend so much time and energy writing about biased and misrepresentative reporting.
My account was hacked!
DeleteBack off BK. Mr Burn gives up his own time to keep us entertained with snarky comments about the media gays. No one is forcing you to read it though.
ReplyDeleteAt last, some sense!
DeleteWell I watched Vicious tonight and it was dreadful. Lame jokes, amateur acting from McKellen and Jacobi and it just didn't hang together.
ReplyDeleteA celebration of anything it certainly wasn't and I reckon BK is living in a different universe. Perhaps BK should appear in the next episode, ranting like the rest of them.
Vicious is now in intensive care and there's little hope.
The title says it all and that will be the overall outcome of the series. And unless I am completely out of it, there won't be another.
I heard they'd already commissioned a Christmas special!
DeletePS Viewing figures were said to be strong, be interested to see what they are next week.
The different universe I seem to be living in is one where humour isn't apparently objective.
Delete"Amateur acting"?
Well, there's someone who clearly knows what he's talking about.
The crap you've pulled with this, Fagburn, is precisely the kind of shitty underhand journalism I thought this blog was against.
DeleteIf you're going to go out of your way to shit on other people's work, the least you could do is have the fucking decency to watch it first.
Fuck this blog.
Don't like it, don't read it.
DeleteLike television, change the channel. Simple innit.
I hope BK doesn't!
Deletex
What a Vicious person. He is surreal.
ReplyDeleteSend him to ITV.
Anyone made the obvious comment bout two queens bitching ad nauseum yet?
ReplyDeleteI noticed that two gay men were disputing about something, but I am not of the mind-set automatically to think of this as a matter of two queens bitching.
Delete