James reviews Gilmore Girls on ITV2, Wheeler Dealers on Quest and Joker (2019) on ITV1

Hello, I’m James Brook, and welcome to the fortieth episode of ‘I Review Freeview.’ 

This is where I review Freeview programs. Go to IReviewFreeview.com to search, listen, or indeed read and/or comment on all my reviews, past and present. And it should be available in the usual places where you get your podcasts. If you’re curious about the future, see the ‘What’s up next’ section at the end, or look for the ‘what’s up next’ page. That’s IReviewFreeview - all one word - dot com. 

In this episode, I will review:

Gilmore Girls on ITV2, 

Wheeler Dealers on Quest and

Joker (2019) on ITV1

Ooops! I’ve done it again. I sat down with my notepad, preparing my ears to take a while to tune into an Irish accent, and promptly got confused as it all took place in America.

Yep, I’d mixed up ‘Gilmore Girls’ with ‘Derry girls’. Lawks a mercy Mrs Posselthwait, what will the sad old git get confused by next? 

Well, not with Wheeler Dealers, that’s for sure. Passionate experts looking at mechanical stuff has always appealed, and as for Joker, well, I read a review several years ago, and it sounded extremely tedious. Too much back story. Well, seeing at it home at least means I can go off and clean the sink or something while it burbles away in the background.    

By the way, the image for this episode was generated by a free AI image generator with the prompt:

A teenage girl and her glam Mum are driving an MGB Roadster while overhead is an exaggerated red grin.

Umm. I’m not convinced by the result, but the essential elements are there, as long as you ignore the fact that the girls are facing the wrong way, and it’s anyone’s guess what the steering wheel is attached to. But I’m running short of credits, so I can’t keep endlessly trying one image after another.

So, let’s plunge straight in.

Gilmore Girls (S1 E2: The Lorelais’ First Day at Chilton) on ITV2, Wednesday 9 October, 4:00pm

As mentioned, I wasn’t expecting this particular good-hearted, one step up from a soap opera dramady. (Ha-ha!) Dramady? Meaning ‘drama comedy’? Yep, apparently it’s a thing, and has probably been a thing for several years. I think it’s an excellent word, and properly describes ‘Gilmore Girls.’

Before ‘dramady’ entered my restricted universe, I would have called ‘Gilmore Girls’ a comedy of manners. It has witty dialogue, pokes fun at class pretensions and boasts some easily recognisable stock characters. Oscar Wilde it is not, but then Wilde - like Shakespeare and Shaw - is over-rated anyway.

It starts with mum Lorelai Gilmore getting up almost too late to take daughter Lorelei Gilmore to a posh school for her first day. Luckily, schoolgirl Lorelai answers to ‘Rory.’ Honestly, it’s not as confusing as it might sound.

But from now - mark this - I will call mum ‘Lorelai’ and daughter ‘Rory.’ I’m sure that’s what they do in the script.

So Lorelai (the mum, remember) - finding nothing much to wear  - ends up garbed in very short denim shorts and cowboy boots.

She rightly complains: ‘I look like that chick from the Dukes of Hazzard!’ 

Now, for a moment, let’s take a step back and analyse that line, for it neatly demonstrates the wit and charm of this show. On its own, ‘I look like that chick from the Dukes of Hazzard!’ appears to be nothing much more than a failed punchline. Something to throw away. The ending of a feeble joke, maybe.

But in context, as a part of a fast moving conversation between mother and teenage daughter, it fits perfectly. For this is not the real world. It’s as if someone has injected all the characters with a snappy wit serum. There are no real laugh-out-loud lines and it’s all casual and off the cuff, but the overall effect definitely sparkles.

And who doesn’t need a bit of sparkle in their life?  

Disappointingly, the school - ‘Chilton’ - is a seething mass of cliches. Name a trope and it’s there: a middle-aged school secretary with glasses and sour expression; avuncular, silver-haired headmaster with a slightly menacing little Van Dyke beard; the class queen bee with her clique (inevitably, they become Rory’s enemies); teenage boys talking furtively about her …(sigh) .. The vibe is almost English public school. Squint a bit and imagine a mini-Hogwarts packed with snobbery but completely devoid of magic, elves and broomsticks.

Obviously, the school is going to feature prominently in future episodes, and therefore needs to be defined quickly and efficiently. I understand that. But did it have to be done with such a clunky lack of originality?

I’ll take a small bet Rory pals up with the school nerd (glasses, few social skills, probably a stutter) and together they form a formidable team and/or the hateful class queen bee will turn out to be the daughter of the handsome guy trying to romance Lorelai.

But if we leave the school to fester in its lack of invention, ‘Gilmore Girls’ shapes up pretty well. 

Lorelai, now in more businesslike attire, is shown to be competent, witty and energetic. Her job - running a small Inn - is ideal for showcasing her managerial skills. And of course, it gives the writers the opportunity to bring in other oddball characters, among them a sous chef (who checks every single peach in a crate) and a head chef with a French accent so outrageous it’s probably fake.

A French chef? God, tropes appear everywhere, once you notice them.

In fact, off-centre people continually pop up, as if in a game of whack-a-quirkyperson, to be hit with one-liners. 

They act as a kind of dramatic structure in which the Gilmores exist, their very presence adding depth and colour. In many respects, this is the same technique that Dickens uses: think of all the memorable characters in - say - Oliver Twist: Fagin; Nancy; Bill Sykes; The Artful Dodger. After all, if you expertly populate a story with interesting people doing interesting stuff, you can’t go far wrong.

The other key character - the third Gilmore Girl if you like - is Emily. She’s Lorelai’s mum and therefore Rory’s grandmother. Emily has money and connections and uses them as a lever to be involved with the other two. This creates a somewhat hackneyed but still interesting dynamic. 

For Lorelai is fiercely independent. But for her daughter’s sake, she needs her mother’s money. For instance, Emily is paying to send Rory to that prestigious school. So Lorelai is constantly drawing demarcation lines - sometimes in concrete, but often in the sand, to be erased by Emily and her tide of dollar bills. 

The sparky, witty and sassy exchanges between all three Gilmore ‘girls’ are the key part of this drama, cleverly emphasising both the similarities and differences between their characters and generations but always and always, giving an undertow of family and love.

You just know, when push comes to shove, they’ll stick together like glue.

As must be obvious, I enjoyed this, but I’m not sure I’ll watch any more. Right at the start I described ‘Gilmore Girls’ as ‘one step up from a soap opera.’ It is very, very difficult to keep a series bubbly, funny and - well, sparkly. Just look at Big Bang Theory, for instance. So, it might be unfair, but I have the conviction that, if I saw more of ‘Gilmore Girls’, the soap operaness would become increasingly apparent and therefore grating. A descent I don’t particularly wish to observe.

So I’ll stop while I’m ahead. 

Moving on, with a brum-brum here and a brum-brum there:

Wheeler Dealers (S17 E20: MGB Roadster) on Quest, Wednesday 9 October, 6:00pm

In a previous episode of this podcast, I reviewed ‘find it, fix it, flog it’, in which a cheerful couple of chaps find other people’s rubbish, upscale it a bit and flog it on. ‘Wheeler Dealers’ is - sort of - much the same, only with used cars and considerably more money.

It could be called ‘find a car, fix a car, flog a car.’ 

But whatever it’s called, ‘Wheeler Dealers’ is a well tuned, precisely driven, adroitly steered and mechanically sound 60 minutes of TV engineering.

It seldom stalls, drives on the correct side and .. well (Ha!), I think I’ve run this analogy off the road and into the bushes, so let’s start again.

Meet Mike and Elvis. Mike is a car dealer, who looks like every crafty car dealer you ever regretted buying a car from. All he lacks is a coat with a fur collar, but then it’s Summer, so we’ll let him off.

Elvis has a garage stuffed with all the equipment a mechanically minded boy could ask for. He can talk knowledgeably about gear boxes, cam shafts, valves, wheels, facias, dashboards and  …. well, you name a bit of a car - any bit, however small - and Elvis will know exactly what you’re talking about and how to fix it. 

In this episode, as it’s the 60th anniversary of the MGB, they decide that’s the car they will renovate this time. 

For my sane listeners who are not into cars, the MGB was the 1960s sports car for people - like me - who couldn’t afford a Jaguar E-Type. As a matter of record, I couldn’t afford an MGB either. My car at the time was a 1952 split windscreen Morris Minor, bought for £50 from a furtive man needing a shave.

Anyway: Mike will find the MGB, Elvis will upgrade it, Mike will sell. If all goes well, they’ll be able to complete the deal when the MGB is celebrated at Silverstone race track, when all MGB enthusiasts will be there.

Mike tootles off to see a chap he knows who has a large garage stuffed to the gunnels with MGs. He takes a red one out for a spin.

Bowling along country A-roads, he confides: ‘you’ve got to listen out for things happening under your bum.‘

The asking price is 12k. After a quick - probably pre-agreed - haggle, Mike gets it for 11.

Elvis sets to work. With great seriousness, he explains the difficulties of swapping the current 4-speed gearbox with a 5-speed one. He shows us a table spread with the innards of his proposed new gearbox. He picks up a sprocket/cog thing. He points at missing teeth, a damaged ring. ‘That,’ he says, ‘would make the gears go crunch.’ 

Meantime, Mike has scooted off to see another old mate of his (is there anyone he doesn’t know?) who has a warehouse full of car spares. They load up a trolly.

Rapidly, the upgraded car is put back together. The walnut dashboard is scornfully cast asunder and a new steering wheel bolted on.

Mike and Elvis take a drive. Smiles are wide. I think, boy, they’re having a good time. If the secret of happiness is being paid to do something you love, then these two seem to have cracked it. I must admit, I’ve warmed to them. With the wind in his hair, Elvis looks boyish while Mike’s sunny side up enthusiasm is catching. I’m thinking, perhaps Mike would sell me a used car at a sensible price. But only after you’ve bartered him down. It’s all part of the game.

At Silverstone, they meet up with Neil, the potential buyer. Neil has cancelled an anniversary holiday in Scotland to see the car. He has also dragged his wife along: a cheerful(ish) lady, all things considered.

Surrounded by MGBs, he and Mike drive slowly around the race track, and shake hands at £15,000. Neil’s wife’s reaction is not recorded.

We are shown the supposed breakdown: 11 thousand for the car and roughly 2 for the parts. On the surface, that looks like a 2 thousand pound profit. But where’s the cost for labour and travel? Expert mechanics like Elvis certainly don’t come free, and I’m sure a savvy operator like Mike would want recompense for his time, and get a discount or two as well. After all, they’ll be on TV. Useful marketing.

I bet, if they racked up the true cost for an ordinary punter using an MG garage, that MGB would show zero - or negative - profit. 

Much the same financial slight-of-hand was used in ‘find it, fix it, flog it’, which cheerfully ignored labour, travel and storage costs. In fact, they didn’t even sell the stuff: they just took an estimate as the sold price. 

So, in that regard, Wheeler Dealers’, is marginally better.

But, once again, I am forgetting this is a TV program, where normal rules don’t apply. Accurately totting up sums is not what it’s about.

Your pleasure comes from spending an hour with a couple of likeable experts doing what they know best. A few paltry accounting niggles really aren’t relevant.

I don’t think there’s enough variety to put it on series record, but if it’s on, I might watch … possibly …

And now, I don’t think there’ll be many laughs in: 

Joker (2019) on ITV1, Thursday 10 October, 10:45pm

One of Batman’s more interesting foes, The Joker goes round in clown make up doing devious villainy with a slightly comic twist. He’ll threaten with a joke gun, then throw an actual bomb before escaping with a maniacal, over-cooked laugh.

I knew this film, Joker (2019) portrayed The Joker’s origin story. So I was expecting a turgid, predictable and facile coming of age, finding your destiny, fulfilling your twisted dream drama, complete with scenes of children dourly witnessing some formative, character defining event, possibly climaxing with a ‘young Joker vs young Batman’ battle, won by Batboy, leaving the Joker nursing his wounds and vowing revenge.

Or, to put it another way, yet one more plonking and uninteresting film from the people who bring you all those dull Superman and Batman snooze fests.

But it’s not like that. At all.

‘Joker’ is a remarkably well-crafted psychological thriller set in a murky, gritty, and menacing Gotham City. The cityscape is so convincingly depicted, it feels poised to erupt into vicious, self-sustaining mob riots. The atmosphere is thick with despair, and it’s hard to imagine any hope breaking through the gloom. I can’t recall a single scene bathed in sunlight. 

A fun film it is not, and so far removed from other super hero, super villain movies it’s on another planet. 

The central character is Arthur Fleck, played by Joaquin Phoenix. 

I’d previously seen him completely miscast in ‘Napoleon,’ a film so rubbish I walked out after an hour or so. But here, he is a revelation, giving a performance that rightly won him an Oscar. 

We see him first, garbed as a clown, on the sidewalk, holding a shop sign, trying, and failing, to attract customers.

A small gang of teenagers grab the sign and run off. Fleck pursues, stomping along in his big clown shoes.

The boys turn on him in an alleyway, kicking him, breaking his sign, leaving him in a crumpled heap.

And this pattern of humiliation and almost indifferent physical abuse occurs several times in the movie, each one pushing him, edging him further and further into paranoia. 

Of course, we know he turns into ‘the Joker’ so it’s not a case of ‘if he breaks’ but more ‘when will he break’, and when he does, what then? This is where the bleak, near nihilistic backdrop of the city is important: in such a setting, with menace and violence lurking around every corner, we know that when Fleck does crack, it will be sudden, extreme and very very nasty.

But we’ve got a long way to travel before then. And Fleck is always centre-stage, remorselessly pinning us into our seats, giving us no escape. Keeping the focus on him is astute: after a while you almost start thinking he’s not going mad, but the world around him is.

And he has a condition: real or imagined, we’re never quite sure. Randomly, he can break into uncontrolled giggles and laughter. He carries a little card, asking people to forgive him and explaining he can’t help it.  

He lives with his mother in a dingy flat in a rundown tenement house. Every time he returns, he checks to see if there’s any mail: there never is. His mother always asks as she is expecting a letter, containing offers of support, from the man she once worked for: Gotham industrialist Thomas Wayne. 

We pick up our ears: anyone with the slightest interest in Batmanology knows Batman’s real name is Bruce Wayne. So Thomas Wayne must be his father.

But the film - for the moment - does not follow this thread, although later, as Fleck learns more about his past, it unfolds into one of the dominant themes.

His mother is bedridden, and Fleck is the sole carer. There are some touching, intimate scenes between them, but, even then - when, for instance, he is giving her a bath and soaping her back - you feel he might suddenly, without warning, be violent. 

In the evenings, they watch TV. Fleck is obsessed with Murray Franklin, an urbane talk show host with his own show. Fleck fantasises about appearing on the show, and chatting to Franklin. Sometimes he acts this out. 

Gradually, but with increasing pace, events pile up. There is no respite. Fleck starts carrying a gun around, then loses his job when it clatters to the floor at a children’s party. He tries his hand at an open mic event for comedians, but ruins it by laughing uncontrollably.

His mother goes into hospital. His world is closing in on him, yet disintegrating at the same time. It’s a hard, hard watch. It’s one of the few films I’ve seen where sympathy for the main character has been so finely overlaid with a mounting sense of foreboding at what is to come.

Yet, when it does, there is little sense of catharsis or release of tension. ‘Joker’ is too multi-layered and complex for simple endings, and explores many more themes than might appear from this review. Its greatest strength lies in its consistent portrayal of a society and a protagonist both on the brink of collapse.

A superb film. Highly, highly recommended, if you can take it. After all, now I’ve watched it, you need to too!

And that total mis-saying of a common saying concludes the reviews for this episode of ‘I Review Freeview.’

Next time, I will review:

The Boss (S1 E2) on BBC2, Tuesday 15 October, 2:30pm

Lingo (S3 E45) on ITV1, Tuesday 15 October, 3:00pm and

Deal or No Deal (S1 E10) on ITV2, Tuesday 15 October, 2:00pm 

Right. I’m getting this down quickly and posting it out there ASAP! I’ve got a theme. Game shows. Maybe I felt like punishing myself. Or maybe creeping crinklydom has finally arrived and my brain has turned to custard. Who knows? Or maybe it’s been Angel Delight all along.

It started with Susan Calman: I noticed she is hosting ‘The Boss.’ I’ve been a fan for a while, so I thought, why not. Then, well, the idea of a theme occurred and, before you know it, here we are. I’ve never seen any of them before, and, mostly, game shows are not my thing, as listeners will attest.

But it has now been written! So, I have to make it so. Wish me luck.

As ever, you can contact me via email to contact@IReviewFreeview.com or through the website IReviewFreeview.com, or from where you normally get your podcasts. Let me know what you think and - of course - if you want me to cast my beady eye on a particular program: film, documentary, whatever, then tell me.

And if you want to know what I’ll be reviewing next time, click on the page ‘What’s up next.’ 

Thank you for listening, and goodbye for now.