I am loving watching the repeats of "The Larry Sanders Show" which are on ITV4 at the moment. I have it on Sky+ and it's the right length of show to watch in a little break and especially in the later series. Hank Kingsley is for my money the greatest sitcom character of all time, though I worry that I like him so much because I am him. It's certainly all a window into the shallow and pathetic world of show business, yet somehow you love these ridiculous characters, mainly I suppose because their vulnerability is brilliantly handled.
But what slightly perturbs me is that the adverts during and before this show I love are all for dating text services, where men can find local women to talk to over the phone. The adverts are all full of pouting models, trying to look alluring and fun. It's degrading to them and to the viewer. Are they trying to say that the average Larry Sanders fan is a sex obsessed, lonely man, so desperate for any interaction with a female that he will pay for these exhorbitant text and phone services? I mean, yeah, the advertisers happened to hit paydirt with me, but surely the average Larry Sanders fan is a sophisticated and urbane kind of person, who won't be interested in this tawdry mild pornography.
I know it's mainly because the show is on late and night and advertising is cheap and I guess the phone lines figure that anyone awake at 2am is probably alone and lonely and desperate. But if that kind of person has satellite TV and felt like that, would they really be watching intellectual satire from the 1990s and not, for example, a "documentary" on Men and Motors about the porn industry, which seems to concentrate mainly on what happens in the films and less about how the filming process works.
And given that I am not watching the show at 2am, but over breakfast or afternoon coffee, it seems doubly inappropriate. How about some adverts for fine literature or classical music collections? Then at least I wouldn't feel all the guilt of the implication that I am interested in pornography, without any of the pleasure of actually watching pornography or the special kind of guilt that comes just after watching pornography.
Luckily I can fast forward through it all, but the fast images of lascivious women pouting and winking at me at 30 times normal speed, actually makes the whole thing seem more seedy and degrading than at the regular pace.
Leave Larry Sanders alone advertisers. And it's not like ITV to put lascivious filth on their screens is it. Talking of which the script of YCCYF is up in the downloads section now. Annoyingly I had to convert it into word, so it's not as readable as it should be, but it may be of interest to come of you and includes some scenes that got cut in rehearsal or in the edit, which you might enjoy.
Thanks to those of you who donated to the just giving page. You can still donate, though I can't guarantee that you'll get your name in the programme, though if you're quick you might do. Though you cannot now win the prize for top donation - a very impressive, goal-hanging £150, donated at about one minute to midnight by G McQue who will be getting my ripped T shirt and dirty trainers and who knows what other kind of detritus?!
You have all raised a huge amount of money which more than pays for the production costs of the programme, so thank you very much indeed from me and everyone at SCOPE (even if they still won't give me one of the parking permit badges, the ingrates!)
