Despite the presence of Joel Fry, not my favorite. This one leans pretty heavily into the “everybody at the table talks a lot without actually saying anything,” although it does still have some entertaining parts.
The BBC is going full steam ahead with their Less is More initiative, looking for places to reduce/combine programming. When it’s pointed out that the BBC has six different orchestras/bands, the executives float the idea of downsizing them, with the BBC Big Swing Band under particular consideration. Siobhan and her team have been asked to look at Jack’s reworking of On Your Bike, now called Cycle Shorts, to potentially use as a trailer for BBC Me. After an upgrade, Syncopatico’s autocaptioning software is spitting out some unfortunate errors.
There are times when the drivel in the executive meetings gets into a good groove and it’s a fun skewering of corporate nonsense. Other times, it starts to feel like that scene from Extras where all the characters on Andy’s sitcom are just sitting around saying their catchphrases at each other in turn—only here, the catchphrases are things like, “Yes, no, brilliant,” “The fact is…”, and “So that’s all good then.” That’s kind of what this episode is like for me. The characters are batting words across the table, each trying to avoid having to say a fully formed, coherent thought.
As such, when they start getting press about the rumors that the BBC Big Swing Band is getting axed, at that point, nobody knows whether or not it’s actually happening. One thing that does come through loud and clear? Anna is anti- all things Lucy. There’s a nasty moment during a meeting where Lucy is trying to get Simon to clarify something, and she softens it by saying, “I mean, I might be being stupid…” Instantly, Anna snaps off one of her go-to catch phrases: “Yes, exactly.” And the whole mess with the Big Swing Band kicks off when Lucy points out that her grandparents are avid listeners, which causes Anna to not not think they’re ripe for the chopping block.
As someone who used to interpret in a public school where teachers would turn on the god-awful auto-transcriptions on YouTube videos, the captioning subplot is a lot more successful for me. An engineer touts the upgrade’s 93% success rate, but it trips up the most on proper names, a la “President Tramp” building his wall along the border of “Max Sicko.” As one exec notes, proper names are arguably “the most important 7%” of the news, so this is a major problem. By the way, back in the pilot, there was a sight gag about Syncopatico’s atrocious captioning software, so I appreciate seeing it brought up here as an actual story.
Here are my picks for David Tennant’s best narration today:
- I like this description of what Jack has turned On Your Bike into with Cycle Shorts – “In many ways, it’s a perfect example of exactly the sort of selfie-centered content that will lie at the heart of the new channel and that may well be the model for how television will work in a world where no one watches it anymore.”
- The narrator explains that a famous musician has weighed in on the Big Swing Band rumors on Twitter, “...and worse still, a lot of people with opinions have already liked that.”
Our character of the week is Michael Chung, played by Will Sharpe. He’s a young Fun Media employee who’s been brought to London from the New York office. Michael has been painted as a whiz kid when it comes to marketing—in the season premiere, BBC Me was his brainchild. Whenever we see him, he stands silently while Siobhan’s team riffs on their ideas. But when someone asks him for his input, he lets loose with a robotic-sounding monologue, leaving the other characters aghast at his brilliance.
Adding another character into the scenes at Fun has meant less Karl. Although he never has that many lines, a good amount of humor with Siobhan’s team often comes from Karl’s offbeat responses. Here, as in episode 1, the usual pitch session is truncated to build up to Michael’s clincher. Karl/Joel Fry only gets a couple good moments here. My favorite comes when Coco is contemplating how to create a theme event for the BBC Me launch centered around Cycle Shorts:
COCO: “Yeah, so like, maybe you have it somewhere you can only get to by bike.”
KARL: “Yeah.”
BARNEY: “Okay, like where?”
COCO: “I dunno. Maybe more like…”
KARL: “Yeah, France.”
And both Barney and Coco turn to him with the most dumbfounded look. I’m the number-one Karl defender out here, but I’ve never claimed that he doesn’t say some truly wild things, and that’s part of why I love him!
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