James reviews The underdog: Josh must win on E4 and Mary Queen of Scots on BB2

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

There is a short intro podcast, which you can listen to if you like. But really it’s straightforward: you suggest upcoming Freeview programs and I review them. If no-one suggests anything, then I have a look and choose something myself.

Remember: send suggestions and comments to contact@ireviewfreeview.com or go to IReviewFreeview dot com.

In this episode, I will review:

1. The underdog: Josh must win on E4 and

2. Mary Queen of Scots on BB2

That’s what looks like a fun take off of a reality TV show and a dramatised documentary film about one of the more feisty and tragic characters in UK history.

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

an impressionist painting of Mary, queen of scots being filmed

So, here we go.

The underdog: Josh must win (s1 e5) on E4 Tuesday April 2nd 9:00pm

To my many avid listeners, it should be apparent this is the sort of program I’d loathe. It’s a parody reality show acting as a front to a celebrity game show.

So we have ‘a reality show!’ Yuck! ‘A celebrity game show!’ Double yuck with bells on. To me that’s like adding couscous to jugged hare and declaring the resultant disgusting mess as edible.

I only picked it because I thought the title interesting. Had I looked at the description, … well, God knows: it probably would have depended on the current level of my ‘time to step out of my comfort zone’ ometer.

I switched on, sat down and started taking notes. An immediate big plus was the narrator being Diane Morgan, who - rightly - seems to be the go-to voice for the querkyverse. But learning she was on it was it was pretty much as good as it got.

On the surface, there’s contestants in a Big Brother style house competing in an elimination game called ‘The Favourite.’ Slowly, they are getting voted out one at a time.

But all is not as it seems, for controlling the action is a small group of ‘celebrities’ (you should be able to see the air quotes even through your ears) who are trying to manipulate things so underdog Josh - a nerdy small chap with glasses - actually ends up winning. If they manage this, everyone - including the contestants (although they don’t know this) - gets some money.

Well, ostensibly, that’s what it’s all about, but there’s enough hints and tips to make you think it’s also possible there’s another level again where everyone is in fact acting, and it’s all been scripted, taking us humble viewers, on a dive through perceived reality, then through manipulated reality and possibly into real reality into oh, I dunno: let’s go full circle here: back to perceived reality.

Whatever: I haven’t done any research - there are limits - so I’m going to treat it as if the contestants are really contestants and believe they’re in an actual reality show and the celebrities manipulating them are real celebrities and believe they are in charge. Well, you have to start somewhere.

I suspect, if I make it to the very very end, all might be revealed. But don’t hold your breath.

This is episode 5, so I’ve picked it up with the game already established and some people have been evicted. Josh however is still there. They are a disparate bunch and include a keep-fit couple who bizarrely count as one contestant.

In this episode they have to compete in a talent show. We drop in on the celebs debating how to arrange it so Josh wins. They call in, as the person who will actually go into the house and act as a sort of referee, Denise Van Outen, which is a name I’ve actually heard of! Didn’t she used to be a TV weather girl and had an affair with a football manager? Not sure. But quite definitely she’s a celeb, so maybe the others are as well? I dunno. Although I said I’d take them all at face value, I’m beginning to have my doubts. One of them eats carrots and talks at the same time, for crying out loud.

Anyway, Denise (oo - first name terms already!) puts in an earpiece and - rather in the manner of a deep sea diver looking for pearls, goes into the house.

Her task is to convince everyone but Josh to pick inappropriate acts in the upcoming talent show. So a bearded chap with a good voice for a mournful ballad is persuaded to do something fast and upbeat while the keep fit couple are encouraged to bore all the viewers by talking about abs and deltoids when demonstrating their keep fit routine. A keep fit routine in a talent show?! Huh! You ain’t heard nothing yet.

So she sabotages them all. Except, of course, for Josh who - it turns out, is good at wrestling.

I’m seriously having my doubts. But that’s now, when I’m writing this down, after the event. Putting it all into words - black on white on electronic paper - sharpens the perception and gives you focus. Inconsistencies leap out and bash you on the bonce. To take one example, why should a chap with a good singing voice agree to sing a song he will only sing badly? And some of the ‘talents’ on show are plainly absurd: A keep fit routine? Or how about ‘being a beauty queen’? I mean Even in Butlins that’s probably not going to happen.

I mean, it can’t be for real. Can it?

But at the time, when watching, I just wanted to know what happens. My usual cynical, analytical mind bowed before the power of narrative, and - of course - the sight of people doing idiotic things.

Anyway Josh - having stripped off to reveal a snazzy wrestling leotard (where did that come from?) - wins the contest and is elected the favourite.

This means he can select two other contestants for the audience to vote on for eviction. He selects the keep fit couple and the girl who threw a few beauty queen poses.

At this point, the TV viewers are supposed to be phoning in their choice for eviction, but they don’t exist, it’s the celebs choice. Which rather begs the question: if they get to pick who gets evicted, then getting Josh to win must be a simple matter. But maybe I’ve missed something.

Anyway, they pick the keep fit couple for eviction.

They leave and, backstage, they’re let in on the secret: there’s no audience as such, it’s just the celebs playing minor gods. Not a Thor or a Zeus or an Odin, but maybe a God responsible for - oh, I dunno, acne. Or a saint? St. Pimple of the teenage face.

Bad skin or not, they all have a jolly good laugh about it. Ho Ho Ho!

And to finish, they try to spark a bit of interest in the next episode as Denise (oo - I’m still on first name terms) is replaced by another celeb I’ve never heard of.

Run credits, that’s a wrap.

Have I put it on series record? Yes, I have. My plan is to check it periodically and when it stops being recorded, just have a quick look at the final one. How fake was it? Were they all just acting? There might even be a cast list, you never know.

I have a strong, strong suspicion it’s all fake.

OK, so a quick Google would probably tell me, but I believe patience is a virtue: polish my halo: it’s nothing to do with not caring enough. So I’ll wait.

(Chuckles) I’ll probably forget anyway.

Now, in complete and utter contrast, let’s move to:

Mary Queen of Scots on BB2 Tuesday April 2nd 11:15pm

I’ve always liked history. What stories one can find! From the sublime to the ridiculous, the cruel to the kind, it’s all there. You just have to look.

And Mary, Queen of Scots, had a very, very interesting time. Full of men with beards plotting on misty mountains or in candlelit halls. There’s explosions, assassinations, marriages, escapes, the birth of a future king and a final beheading.

Who could want more.

By the way, I’ve just asked an AI chatbot ‘what age was Mary, Queen of Scots, when she died?’ Confusingly, one of the answers was (and this is absolutely genuine):

‘“She died aged 69, unmarried and childless”, which means she was 44 years old at the time of her death.’

Uh, really? With one stroke, AI overwrites history with garbage. Maybe there’s hope for mankind yet. Or not.

In this film, Mary is played by - and I have to take a stab at how it’s pronounced - Saoirse Ronan, a fine actor who’s appeared in many dumb films but in none did she start with a dafter hairstyle. The quiff to end all quiffs, rising like a halo from her forehead. She’s just come from France: they do things differently there. It might be historically accurate, but it so takes centre stage the first five minutes or so are rapidly forgotten.

And then she’s in the thick of it, a catholic ruler amongst the hairy protestants. In the sixteenth century, religion really mattered: you had John Knox with the mandatory beard and a hat like a dead vole ranting away against her and testosterone fuelled lords muttering in corners.

She tries to be conciliatory, to allow people to worship how they want, but Knox will have none of it and stalks out to ferment rebellion.

Also, in a converging storyline, we have queen Elizabeth the first of England, played by Margot Robbie before she evolved into Barbie in ‘Barbie’ perhaps the most rubbish film of last year. I would have walked out except I was in the middle of a row of ice-cream chomping ladies having a good time and, as I was wearing my third best pair of jeans, I didn’t want to get them smeared.

But Robbie does a good job as ‘Good Queen Bess’. She has a false nose sticking out like a carrion crow and when she gets the pox her whole face - nose included - seems to be dissolving. Afterwards, when she’s recovered, she’s so slathered in makeup to cover the scars, she looks like a cross between a ghost and a statue.

I bet that’s historically accurate as well. But they seem to have drawn the line at showing Elizabeth’s terrible teeth. Still, if you can’t have halitosis when you’re the queen, when can you?

Up in Scotland, Mary is busily discovering the joys of sex with the personable young soak Lord Darnley, who manages to stay just sober enough to stand upright for their wedding. The more he drinks, the worse he gets. He wants to be king. He wants Mary to obey. Understandably Mary - as fiesty a queen as they come - bans him from her bed. But he barges his way in, sends her ladies of the bedchamber packing and forcibly conceives James the sixth of Scotland and the first of England while the good ladies listen agog to the echoing ooos and ahhs and groans through the door.

(laugh) It’s all happening!

Down in England Elizabeth looks the other way as her chief advisor plots to remove Mary by fermenting a rebellion. He sends muskets! But Mary, looking very fetching in designer armour and riding a big horse, puts the rebellion down.

Darnley has been drinking and brooding and possibly becoming romantically attached to David Rizzio, Mary’s confidant and friend. A plot is proposed to get rid of him, which Darnley joins. They barrel into Mary’s private quarters and - in front of her - stab Rizzio to death.

Mary, to put it mildly, is not best pleased, and she and Darnley become even more estranged, but then, boom! He’s blown up! He manages to survive but - stumbling from the wreckage - he meets a couple of assassins and they strangle him to death.

Soon afterwards, Mary marries the earl of Bothwell, who was, I think, one of those dour chaps who arranged Darnley’s sudden exit. He might even have been one of the stranglers.

I have to confess, I’ve now rather lost track of who is on who’s side as it’s sometimes difficult - with the beards and murky light etc etc - to know who is who or indeed what is what and even where is where.

But clearly everything’s falling apart, so Mary abdicates, and her son James - at the tender age of hardly out of swaddling clothes - becomes James the sixth of Scotland.

Mary flees to England where she meets up with Elizabeth in a shepherd’s hut symbolically festooned with thin muslin sheeting. Mary has to fumble her way through these layers of concealment before actually seeing her rival queen face to face. It’s obviously a metaphor for something or other, but exactly what I’m not sure. Maybe her perpetual seeking after the truth? Dunno.

Although this meeting almost certainly didn’t happen (I did some research!) it’s pretty convincing and moving, if a little mushy.

Mary is then imprisoned for nineteen years before being implicated in a rebellion and condemned to death.

The end sequence is finely wrought. It cuts between Elizabeth signing the death warrant while an internal monologue expresses her profound sadness and sorrow, and Mary walking - almost serenely, to her execution. Both are lost in thought. Elizabeth lets out an anguish sob, almost breaks down and the internal voice ceases as a courtier says ‘Your Grace.’ Her face hardens, as if made of marble as she casts off emotion and becomes the queen of England once more. Mary too has stopped, maybe filled with fear. A voice prompts her: ‘your grace’ and she resumes her walk: her internal monologue begins, expressing her fears. Standing by the block, surrounded by the lords come to witness her death, she raises her arms, her ladies strip off the outer layers of her clothing and she is suddenly, dramatically revealed to be garbed in red: the colour of a catholic martyr. As she kneels down and places her head ready for the axe she thinks of her son and for a brief moment we see him, now grown into a young man wearing a large hat, sitting on the throne.

And the axe descends.

As you have probably realised, I found this very moving. Sometimes things catch you out and emotions sneak up when you’re least aware. Sad empathy is the thief of cynicism.

Hah: I’m not even sure what that means.

As I said: an amazing life, particularly when practically all the interesting stuff took place before she was imprisoned at the age of 25. The main body of the film, from when she landed in Scotland to her abdication and escape to England - the bit with two marriages, rebellions, assassinations, the birth of her son etc etc: well all of that happened in just over six years.

She did pack an awful lot in!

I enjoyed this film very much: Mary’s life and death was dramatic in the extreme, and although the film undoubtedly takes liberties, it does feel authentic. Plenty of tiny figures on horseback against majestic, misty, timeless Scottish mountains and looming, threatening castles.

The two leads are powerful and convincing, while the other characters are believable.

Sometimes the various plot strands became muddled and obscure and could have benefited from a diagram on one of those white boards so prevalent in modern police procedurals.

But this is a minor quibble and possibly owes more to my lack of attention than to the structure of the film.

All in all, if I gave stars, I’d give 4 out of 5. But then I don’t, so I won’t.

And that small paradoxical witticism concludes the reviews in this episode of ‘I Review Freeview.’

Don’t forget, contact me through the website Ireviewfreeview.com or email contact@ireviewfreeview.com.

Thank you for listening, and goodbye for now.