Blogger’s opinion of variety television not low enough: “I’m as surprised as you are”

I need to catch a train in 15 minutes, so this is going to be brief.

I didn’t see this live, because the show had already become nauseatingly unwatchable long, long before this segment aired. For the uninitiated, Hey Hey It’s Saturday was a 1970’s style tonight show which somehow outlived its contemporaries and continued to prosper well into the 1990’s when everyone was supposed to know better. This makes a kind of sense when you factor in that it took Australia longer than most places to catch on to the idea of satellite / cable / digital TV, and as a result there were effectively only five channels until quite recently, only one of which had the resources to stage something like this. In an environment so starved for choice, a show like Hey Hey could comfortably drag its bloated, fossilised carcass on screen every week and be ensured of a healthy audience because watching it was just what people did.

Like The Benny Hill Show and The Two Ronnies, only twenty years out of date, the expectation was that people would be impressed by the mere presence of the stars and occasional showbiz guests, which led to complacency, which led to some truly shocking self-indulgent ineptitude. While trying to explain the show to a friend in the UK who’d never seen it, I found a clip on youtube for her, and she described it as “Fumble fumble bad joke fumble fumble bad joke awkward pause fumble”, which is exactly right. It was axed ten years ago, and with a singular exception the cast have done nothing but been “that person who used to be on Hey Hey” ever since. One even got a job introducing Benny Hill re-runs, ironically.

A week ago, it came back for two reunion specials. It was exactly the same, except on Wedenesday. Exactly the same; nobody involved seemed to notice that this wasn’t business as usual, it was a last, desperate chance to prove they have something worth showing us. They didn’t. Say what you want about Rove Live, but it’s still a fast-paced, slickly made piece of television with a host who’s acutely aware that he’s there for us, not the other way around. This wasn’t. This was like finding a VHS from 1989.

Hey Hey had a history of blackface acts. It wasn’t exactly The Black and White Minstrel Show, but they were still there long, long after they had any kind of contextual pseudo-excuse. Last night, we got another one. The audience found it hilarious and booed when they stopped performing.

It’s been defended as a “tribute” to the Jackson Five. It isn’t. There is no attempt made to look like the Jackon Five actually looked; these are minstrels with pitch-black skin and funny wigs. When they talk to each other, they sound like Amos & Andy. They go to great lengths to get a laugh out of Michael being (very) white and the others being (very) black. They four non-Michaels are indistinguishable from one another. These aren’t people, they’re golliwogs. The zany cartoonist even holds up a “Where’s Khamal?” card – Khamal being a black singer who they once threw flour on to make white during an appearance, and yes, I have this on tape – to underline what the act is really about. The fact Michael Jackson died recently isn’t the point, although you think that would have at least given them pause for thought. The point is that it’s an actual, no-holds-barred minstrel act performed on national television in prime time in 2009, and the audience think it’s hilarious.

Right now I hate the world and everything in it.