It may be tied to the decline in our cinema-going, but we’re watching more TV at this point that any time I can remember. There have been occasions recently when our living-room Tivo has been unable to cope with the scheduling, as we try and record three programmes simultaneously – fortunately, there is also the bedroom DVR which can be used as a back-up. After jump, you’ll find the ten shows which have entertained us most reliably this year – unlike our 2008 listing, we’re just going in alphabetical order this time.

Note: there’s a couple of new shows in the fall season, Nikita and The Event, that have potential, but we haven’t seen enough episodes to be sure. They’ll qualify for next year’s listing (if I do one…).

Burn Notice (right). Now in its fourth season, it took a little while for the series to gain a hold – we might not have bothered, except for the presence of Bruce Campbell as a supporting character (we’ll cut anything with him in it some slack). Its tale of disenfranchised spy Michael Weston, stuck in Miami, didn’t initially seem to have much potential, and it wasn’t until the second season that the four central characters began to take hold. While largely a bunch of misfits, they are now gelling, and the stories are peppered with little nuggets of spycraft, explaining the tactics and procedures being used. The scripts do a good job of combining single-episode stories with the over-riding arc, but it’s the characters that make this addictive.

Caprica. I never watched Battlestar Galactica, so the prequel aspect of this show for that is entirely lost on me, yet that doesn’t impact my appreciation of the imagination on view. What I like is the all-encompassing nature of the universe it depicts, with some thought having gone into every aspect of the alien world from sports to gods – it’s recognizably humanoid, yet distinctly non-human. It does a good job of blending politics and religion, with the “terrorists” beliefs closer to those of Western civilization than those against whom they are fighting. Add in ruminations on what it means to be human, and this is more thought-provoking than I expected it to be. Of course, SyFy cancelled it this week. Bastards.

Dexter. Ok, we may not have liked Dexter’s wife Rita all that much, finding her increasingly whiny and controlling. That said, the end of season four packed an enormous wallop, and the ramifications of that shock are rumbling through the new series, with Dexter having to come to terms with several new roles as a father and mentor. Hall’s performance continues to help take a character who should, by all “normal” standards, be a villain and turn him into someone with whom the audience can sympathize, even as he does things far beyond the pale of acceptable behaviour. Inevitably, claims of copycat killers have already begun to surface…

Doctor Who. The news of the departure of David Tennant from the show was greeted with dismay in TC Towers. Who could ever replace, arguably, the finest Doctor ever? And replacement, Matt Smith, was only 26, barely an adult. Tennant signed off at the very start of 2010, in a heartrending episode, as his Doctor had the chance to say farewell before bowing out; we caught Smith’s debut when we were in Scotland in April and… Well, initially he seemed a bit of a young clone of Tennant, but as the series developed, he brought more of himself to the role. The results proved acceptable, even to hardened sceptics like ourselves, and occasionally magnificent, as in Vincent and the Doctor. Smith? He’ll do.

Fringe. Now into its third series and developing nicely, alternating episodes between the two worlds, with FBI agent Olivia Dunham now trapped on the other side, “infected” with the memories of the self from there, while said other Olivia operates undercover on our side.  This duality gives most of the other cast members a similar chance to stretch out a bit, playing two versions of the same character; most notably, Walter Bishop (John Noble), whose alter ego is radically different from the gentle, confused genius we’ve grown to love. Quite some way from the X-Files clone it initially appeared to be.

Haven (left). And similarly, this show has come quite some way from the Fringe clone it initially appeared to be. FBI agent, with a black boss, investigating interconnected paranormal occurrences known as the Pattern, sorry, Troubles? Hmm. Fortunately, the series has found its own path, with Audrey Parker trying to penetrate a close-knit community, and discover the truth about her own past as well. To be honest, perhaps too similar to SciFi, sorry, SyFy shows Eureka and Warehouse 13, but we don’t watch those, so who cares? Certainly, the last scene in the final ep wins “Rug-puller of 2010”, leaving us going, “Whaaaaat?”

The IT Crowd. Creator Graham Linehan has brought much the same quirky, slightly surreal quality to this show about “freaks and geeks,” as he did to Father Ted. But as someone who works in tech support, I can particularly relate [“Have you tried turning it off and on again,” is genuinely how we start troubleshooting customer’s server issues, though we usually put it in terms like, “Have you executed a power cycle?”]. At its best, the show has the same sense of delirious, snowballing chaos as Fawlty Towers, where the best intentions spiral off into unintended consequence

Modern Family. It’ll be ten years come Thanksgiving I’ve been out here, and I finally found an American sitcom that is actually enjoyable. Seinfeld, Friends, Arrrested Development, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia? All left me stone-cold. But the comedy here flows naturally from the characters, who are the disparate bunch of dysfunctional individuals that you find in any…well, modern family. If you can’t find someone in this show that’s a carbon-copy of someone you know, check your pulse. And no longer will Ty Burrell just be, “that jackass from the Dawn of the Dead remake.”

Spooks. PBS have been showing all the episodes (here known as Mi-5, presumably to avoid confusion with Ghost Hunters International), from its beginning, and we’ve grown totally hooked, to the point where “unofficial sources” have been used to obtain the latest series. It’s like 24 on crack, condensing an entire terrorist incident into a single hour, rather than over six months episodes. And having now also condensed so many series into a year, the high fatality rate for which the show is justly famous, makes it seem the average life-expectancy of an MI-5 operative is about four weeks. But who’d win if Adam Carter (below) and Jack Bauer had a fight?

24. And speaking of whom, we bid a fond farewell to Bauer, who finally exited our television screen approaching nine marvellous years after his first “Dammit!” We had our up and downs, didn’t we, Jack, and it’s probably right that the show departed, rather than lumbering on until Special Agent Bauer was pushing himself gamely about on a Zimmer frame. The final series was as solid as ever, with the usual mix of terrorists, slimy politicians, betrayals, Chloe’s furrowed brow and Jack’s not-so veiled threats. There’ll be a gap in our lives next winter that will be hard for any other show to fill.

Dir: Rudolph Cartier
Star: Peter Cushing, Yvonne Mitchell, André Morell, Donald Pleasence.

It’s hard to appreciate the impact the BBC adaptation of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four had on the country at the time. The first of the two broadcasts, in December 1954, triggered an enormous furor, with motions proposed in Parliament criticizing “the tendency, evident in recent British Broadcasting Corporation television programmes, notably on Sunday evenings, to pander to sexual and sadistic tastes.” When the performance was repeated the following week, needless to say, it got the biggest television audience in the country since the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. [Some things don’t change!]

That was not a repeat of the original screening, as both broadcasts were largely performed live, with some filmed inserts to allow for scenery, costume, etc. changes. Fortunately, the second showing was recorded; this being the days before video-tape (which would become available a couple of years late), the process basically involved filming a TV monitor, and the resulting picture quality leaves more than a little to be desired, especially when you start watching it. However, the brain adapts, and the grainy, ghostly quality of the images eventually ceases to matter.

It’s important to put the broadcast into the context of the time, in a post-war Great Britain, where rationing, such as of meat, had still been in place up until as little as six months previously. The Cold War was entering perhaps its chilliest phrase, following the death of Stalin in 1953, with the Korean War also fresh in everyone’s mind. Indeed, even the book itself was freshly-published rather than a cobwebby cornerstone of Eng. Lit. courses everywhere, having come out only five years previously.

What we have here, is a pretty straightforward retelling of the novel, with Winston Smith (Cushing) revolting against the authoritarian world of the Inner Party and its leader – who may or may not exist – Big Brother. He falls for another rebel, Julia (Mitchell) and seeks to join the underground resistance, of which Inner Party member O’Brien (Morell) is a member. Except (and I trust this hardly counts as a spoiler), O’Brien is no such thing, and Smith ends up arrested and undergoing tortures both mental and physical, culminating in his experience in Room 101, all with the aim of getting him to love Big Brother as he should.

The adaptation was written by Nigel Kneale, one of the most-renowned British genre scriptwriters of all time – in his field, easily as important as Dennis Potter, with his work including the Quatermass serials (as well as Quatermass and the Pit) and The Stone Tape. The film also lucks into a main star and a supporting actor who were little known at the time, but would go on to become horror icons of the highest order, in Cushing and Pleasence. The former is sublime, and his Smith is definitive in a way of which John Hurt could only dream, and goes alongside Cushing’s portrayals of Van Helsing, Baron Frankenstein and, arguably, Sherlock Holmes. Pleasence is his usual solid self as Syme, promoter of Newspeak, who is eventually “disappeared,” like one of the words he is striving to erase.

The supporting cast is not much less familiar. Morell gives a brilliant performance as O’Brien, delivering the film’s signature line with the perfect mix of deadpan menace and absolute certainty: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever.” He and Cushing would team up, in a more friendly way, in Hammer’s Hound of the Baskervilles, where Morell played Dr. Watson to Cushing’s Holmes. Also present are Wilford Brambell, who’d go on to renown as Steptoe, and antique shop owner Mr. Charrington is Leonard Sachs, who compered variety show The Good Old Days for thirty years.

A couple of things stand out about how this was made. The budget was reportedly just £3,249 – even allowing for inflation, it works out to less than £70,000 in today’s money. It’s an astonishingly low sum, especially considering things like the live orchestra which played the music during the performances. The special effects, depicting the bombarded city of London, though sparse, are certainly effective. Again, you have to bear in mind, this was shown barely a decade after Hitler’s V-2’s were falling on the nation’s capital. Depicting the resulting rubble would have had much the same emotional resonance for the audience here, as the Twin Towers falling does for today’s viewer.

The adaptation being performed live is also remarkable – something that was common at the time, but hardly ever happens for dramas nowadays – a 1958 Armchair Theatre performance, during which one of the actors died, didn’t help [One of the survivors said of that incident, “We could see him coming up towards us, but we saw him fall. We had no idea what had happened, but he certainly wasn’t coming our way. The actors started making up lines, ‘I’m sure if so-and-so were here he would say’…”] In the case of Nineteen Eight-Four, 22 sets were used and it’s almost impeccable. You can see what appears to be the shadow of a boom-mike early on, otherwise it seems near-perfect, and it’s hard to tell this isn’t a multiple-take production.

The black-and-white cinematography, though not a stylistic choice at the time, captures the grim, depressing reality of a hardcore totalitarian regime beautifully – the eighties version was originally intended to be shot in b/w too. As a necessary contrast to the soulless society depicted here, the performances, particularly Cushing and Mitchell, imbue things with humanity, and provide a tinge of hope, even as things go downhill for Smith, with relentless grimness – the moment where Smith sees his reflection in a mirror is not one easily forgotten. It’s a combination, when added to the mix of past and future, that makes it easy to tell why its reputation persists.

And it does: in 2000, it was ranked #73 in the BFI’s list of the greatest British TV shows of all time. It was the earliest program honoured, and put Nineteen Eighty-Four between Walking With Dinosaurs and The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. The film has only been shown three times on television since the original broadcast, most recently as part of the celebrations for Orwell’s centenary. However, the fifty-year copyright term on the show expired at the end of 2004, allowing it to enter the public domain, so it’s now available on Youtube. I’d certainly recommend checking it out.

Having not exactly been impressed with the original Japanese feature film, and even less enthusiastic about the pointless and uninteresting American remake thereof, it’s no surprise the DVDs of the TV series sat on the shelf for quite some time. They’d been acquired before we saw either movie, and the prospect of sitting through the equivalent of about five more feature films of the same kind of nonsense, didn’t exactly fill us with enthusiasm. However, when we eventually could be bothered to slap them in the player, we were pleasantly surprised – this Asahi television version, which came out a couple of years after Takashi Miike’s movie, is actually the best version of the bunch.

The story centers on Yumi (Rei Kikukawa), a magazine researcher, who becomes involved after witnessing the fiery death of a schoolgirl – apparently the victim recently received a voice-mail, apparently from herself, foretelling her own demise. Her investigative efforts get her banished to the basement at work, where she is sent to join the staff of Tokumei Watch, best described as her publisher’s version of the late, lamented Weekly World News. However, Detective Sendo (Ken Ishiguro), is also investigating the case, and it soon becomes clear that the schoolgirl is not the only victim of the apparent curse.

Initially, it seems that events are tied to an incident in the past, when a hiking trip went badly wrong. But the more our heroes dig into things, the more they uncover. Not the least of which, is that there also appears to be a tie to Yumi’s school, where her sister vanished ten years ago on Christmas Eve – and tradition dictates it’s time for another victim to disappear. Will the case allow Yumi to achieve closure? And why does there seem to be a lot of pressure on both her and Sendo to stop the investigation?

To some extent, this is a stretched-out version of the movie, and it uses some of the same elements. For example, as in the film, one victim gets doorstepped by a TV crew, who get her to agree to come to the studio at the time of her demise, for a “live exorcism.” That goes about as well as you would probably expect. But the extended room available here – the series runs ten 45-minute episodes – gives the makers the opportunity to develop the storyline and characters in greater detail, and that’s where the show really scores over its cinematic cousins.

For instance, the investigation does not proceed in an entirely linear fashion. There are dead-ends and red herrings, such as the hoax “one missed call” which succeeds in diverting attention for a while. The two main plot-threads, of the hiking trip and the school with a dark secret, proceed in parallel – some episodes, one takes precedence, while in others, both are developed. After about three or four parts, I was wondering how they could possibly keep things going, and it’s an impressive juggling by the script to keep both balls in the air until almost the end, revealing information at just the right pace to keep the interest level up for the entire time.

The characters are, more or less, pleasant to spend time with. I say “more or less,” because as things develop, it turns out one is more than a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic, though you wouldn’t know it on first impressions. Yumi has a good handle on the “plucky girl reporter” thing, and Sendo has endearing quirks: the ringtone on his phone is, I kid you not, a wailing police-siren. The staff of Tokumei Watch are also an amusing bunch of eccentric geeks and freaks, such as the magazine treasurer who insists everyone travel by public transport when on company business.

I am not entirely sure that everything makes complete sense, viewed from the end of the show. However, it’s churlish to look too closely at the plot of a show which is about cursed phone calls from the future. There don’t appear to be any major holes we could spot, and the journey provides a more than adequate number of creepy moments, which in the final analysis, is what matters. Fans of shows like Fringe or Haven could do a lot worse than tracking down this as a Japanese take on the genre.

“Spartacus depicts extreme sensuality, brutality and language that some viewers may find objectionable. The show is a historical portrayal of ancient Roman society and the intensity of the content is to suggest an authentic representation of that period.”
— Pre-screening warning

Yeah, “suggest” would be the key word. For, historically, there’s little known about the man – he falls into the same category of neo-legendary characters as Robin Hood or King Arthur. This allows artists to portray him pretty much how they want, without much chance of being proven wrong. Said creator Steven S. DeKnight, “We take the Spartacus legend, we turn it on its side, and we beat the crap out of it” and added, “While we may bend history, we try to never break it.  But I will always opt for what delivers the most dramatic impact over a strict adherence to historical fact.”

Hence the comparison of the title – a pretty loose description, but one that isn’t too far away from the truth. It’s set roughly around the same time, in the same part of the world, stars Lucy Lawless and also springs from the long-time collaboration between Rob Tapert and Sam Raimi, who produced this along with Joshua Donen. But the mythical and mystical aspects, of gods and monsters, are basically absent, in favour of a much more grounded approach. And the pre-broadcast warning is entirely justified: the blood flows in digital torrents, particularly during the gladiatorial battles, the nudity is copious, and the sex too, in just about every combination possible [though we need more lesbians…]

As you might have guessed, In centers on Spartacus (Andy Whitfield), a Thracian who leads a battalion of soldiers supposedly allied with the Romans. But when he ends up inciting a mutiny, he is condemned to die in the arena, and his wife becomes a slave. However, his execution ends up in the death of the four gladiators he faces, and he is sold to Batiatus (John Hannah), who runs one of the local troupes of arena performers, who sees possibilities in the new arrival. The rough edges are hewn to fine precision under the training of Doctore (Peter Mensah), but the rising fame of Spartacus makes him an enemy in current champion Crixus (Manu Bennett). Meanwhile, Batiatus and his wife Lucretia (Lawless) are angling to use Spartacus’s popularity to enhance their own standing with the local nobles, who currently despise the gladiator’s owner as beneath them.

It’s marvellously excessive soap-opera: perhaps its nearest cousin would be the WWE, with Hannah playing the role of Vince McMahon, manipulating those beneath him for his own ends, as they fight for the amusement of the masses. It’s really his show, perhaps more than Spartacus, with he and Lawless splendidly slimy and hedonistic, yet honourable on their own terms and deeply devoted to each other. It’s a bit of a shock to see the star of the Mummy films, or Four Weddings and a Funeral, dropping F-bombs and yelling “By Jupiter’s cock!” at people – though I feel life would be enhanced if we all used such colourful expletives in moments of stress. Similarly, Lawless shows a good deal more skin here than she ever did as Xena, and is wearing nicely into her forties.

In contrast, Whitfield is a little less memorable: the first episode is somewhat dull, until Batiatus shows up, and for the first half of the series, he is rather too single-minded, caring about nothing save being reunited with his wife. That’s how Batiatus gets him to agree to fight in the arena, by promising to re-unite Spartacus with his one true love. His master delivers – but in a twisted fashion that sets in motion the train of events which eventually hits the buffers in the final episode of the first season, with Spartacus’s rebellion kicking off in arterial fashion. I trust I am not spoiling this for anyone, since it’s historical fact. Whitfield does have his moments, not least when forced to battle his best-friend for the amusement of a teenage boy.

It is, however, the violence which really makes this stand out from the pack of historical TV series cluttering up the airwaves of late [hello, The Tudors]. It “glories in slaughter” (to borrow a quote from Dennis Healey about Mrs. T) in a way unmatched by any TV show I’ve ever seen, and only rarely reached by movies e.g. Shogun Assassin and Bad Taste, for my money going well past anything Eli Roth or other alleged “torture porn” directors have ever done. While it’s almost all CGI, the limb-lopping, blood-spatter and finishing moves worthy of Mortal Kombat (the game, of course) are done with deep affection and impressive style – why else bother having digital blood splashing on the camera lens?

Morally, you could certainly argue that there, the series is on dodgy ground. It portrays slaughter as entertainment, for our entertainment: the underlying feel is “Tsk, tsk – weren’t the Romans terrible people? Now, stay tuned, as we’re going to show you just how terrible they were…” But it’s just such unashamed fun to watch. Hannah and Lawless are superb, and it’s hard to see how the second series – commissioned before the first episode had even been screened – will be able to cope without one or perhaps both of them. Which as about as much as I can say without getting seriously spoilerish.

However, there may be bigger problems. Star Whitfield was diagnosed last month with Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a form of cancer. It was caught early, and the prognosis for recovery is good, but it has already delayed filming, with discussion being directed towards a possible prequel series instead. That would be a shame, and I hope the disease is just another in the line of enemies soundly-defeated by our Spartacus. There’s nothing else like it on TV, and we’ll miss our weekly dose of ultraviolence until it returns.

Regular readers will know that we’re big fans of conspiracy theories here at TC. While not necessarily believing them all – especially the all-encompassing, shape-shifting lizards from another dimension type ones – they’re like intellectual table-salt. They enhance the flavor of life, and help foster a sense of cynicism about the motives and actions of government and those in power, which is certainly extremely sensible. However, just as conspiracy theories cover the gamut from plausible to completely-loopy [though remarkably entertaining], so does coverage of them in the mainstream media range from sober, serious consideration of the possibilities to… Well, to Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura.

We should probably have got some kind of inkling from its location on Tru TV. The channel used to be known as Court TV, but changed its brand in 2008, now operating under the slogan, “Not reality. Actuality.” Going by shows such as Operation Repo, “actuality” appears to mean making stuff up and trying to give the impression it’s real.  Saying Tru TV does not have a good record for serious investigative journalism is like saying Michael Jackson had some deficiencies as a child-care provider.  But, hey, we’ll cut it some slack: after all, host Jesse Ventura remains one of the few people to crack the two-party system, during his spell as Governor of Minnesota. If there’s anyone capable of cutting through the BS, it’d be him.

Unfortunately,  any hope of a balanced look at the topics under investigation evaporates in the fiery heat of the near-hysterical approach to the subject matter. After the jump, we’ll bravely go through the entire series, episode by episode, and expose the deadly truth about Conspiracy Theory!!!! Ok, perhaps not, but after you’ve watched a few of these shows, the style does tend to rub off…

Witness the first episode, looking at the HAARP project in Alaska. This is something we’ve been talking about for a long time, having previously covered the topic in 2003 – Ventura, however, was clearly not paying attention, cheerfully admitting he’d never heard of it two weeks previously. Ok, everyone has to start somewhere, and while the qualifications of the ‘crack team of researchers’ in Ventura’s ‘war-room’ are never produced (they include June Sarpong, a crony of Tony Blair and owner of an MBE – hardly an establishment outsider), they do talk to the right people, notably Dr. Nick Begich.

Begich is not just one of the most knowledgeable people on the topic, he’s also one of the most level-headed: he carefully avoids making outrageous claims, just lays out the facts and how he interprets them. This is in sharp contrast with the tone here, which labels HAARP as a weapon for causing tsunamis, controlling minds or even, as Ventura breathlessly intones, “a death ray.” This reaches its epic apex just before a commercial break, when Begich’s harmless demonstration of piezo-electic transduction to play music inside the Governator’s head is breathlessly previewed as: “Coming up: HAARP invades Jesse Ventura’s brain!” I can just imagine poor Dr. Nick watching this nonsense unfold and slumping, embarrassed, ever-lower on his sofa. We were right there with him.

The series keeps trying to provoke conflict where none is present, such as sending Ventura to the gateway of the HAARP facility in remote Alaska. After a spot of hanging around, a bemused security guard, having drawn the short straw, is sent down to discuss things with the former Governor, and advises him to come back during one of the scheduled open days. Yes, this top secret, brain-frying, death-dealing facility has open days. Truly, the Cold War is over. Guess they ensure the tsunami-creating device is carefully hidden in a cupboard or something on those occasions.

In the second episode, Ventura took on the Kennedy assassination of our generation: 9/11, with particularly unimpressive results. The main theory being floated for it was the ‘false flag’ one, that it was concocted to provide a pretext for invasion – but the obvious question was never answered. If that’s that case, why make all the terrorists Saudis, if we wanted to invade Iraq and/or Afghanistan? That’d be like the Nazis staging the Gleiwitz incident, and dressing the “Polish” corpses in kilts and sporrans. The episode instead bangs away at the missing black boxes from the two Manhattan planes, speaking to a couple of people who say they saw them being recovered. Interesting, to be sure, but hardly prima facie evidence for US government involvement.

The next installment took on global warming: initially, this actually seemed like the most plausible and, as a result, effective one.  While scientific consensus tends to support the idea of man-made climate change, it’s by no means an absolute certainty – and, interestingly, those who are set to cash in on changes to counter this, include some of those who have been most prominent in pushing the idea, such as Al Gore. If they’d stopped there, the show would have been fine. Unfortunately, Ventura and his team then charged off in search of an over-arching plot, and the man in charge turned out to be determined to be billionaire Maurice Strong, a former top man in the UN (OMG! NWO! ZOG!) who now lives in… China (communist!). Needless to say, the team failed miserably to get any kind of interview with, or comment from, the man in question.

Roll on to part four, and the erosion of personal liberty and the growth of the surveillance culture is the topic. I’m beginning to detect a theme here: specifically, these are all reasonable, potentially important topics, covered in such a facile way as to make them ludicrous. There were any number of directions this could have gone, but after a couple of interesting anecdotes (such as the guy whose telephone call to his bank, led to a rapid visit from government representatives), the program derails into an investigation of Infragard. Wikipedia calls it, “a program run by the United States Federal government, which partners Federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies with private corporations, so that they can share intelligence information.” Really? That’s the biggest threat to personal freedom and liberty they could find? You gotta try harder, Jesse.

The hysteria certainly rose to previously unsurpassed levels as he investigated the Bilderberg Group and its members – who might be called “Bilderbergs” or “Bilderbergers,” there seemed to agreement at the point. Botox queen Sarpong pronounces gravely: “We’re proven they exist.” No shit, Einstein – what gave you the clue? Their Wikipedia page? As usual, the program charges off in the wrong direction, like a watchdog chasing after a passing car. There’s no mention, for example, that founder Prince Bernhard was a member of the honourary German Reiter SS Corps and also worked  for IG Farben, the company which owned the patent on Zyklon B.

Instead, it wheels out the usual talking heads like Daniel Estulin and Alex Jones, who have both made good career out of fomenting the more extreme claims about the Bilderbergers and – woohoo! – even David Icke. He goes on about “they” a great deal, in the context of world rulers – yet the program carefully omits that to Icke, “they” means shape-shifting reptilians from another dimension [or did, last time I needed a laugh and checked his website]. They straight-facedly promote the idea that the Bilderberg Group are planning the wholesale depopulation of the globe, leaping from there to the Georgia Guidestones, with their proclamation that 500 million is the right number for humanity. It’s the “A-> B -> C -> Z” school of conspiracism. We were, however, disappointed that there was no attempt by Ventura to “storm” a Bilderberg group meeting. That would have been fun.

Episode Six was on Manchurian Candidates – mind-control, as carried out by the US military. Now, there’s no denying the reality of things like Project Mkultra, which operated in the 1950’s and 1960’s, before – at least, officially – vanishing. And Jesse’s “crack team of researchers” have no problem wheeling out 40-year old documents which refer to such experiments. The issue is not whether such experiments took place. It’s whether they are ongoing. And there, the evidence presented is a lot more flimsy – and, as usual, draped in the kind of paranoid nonsense which makes the entire concept laughable to neutrals, and tremendously irritating to those who feel there may be something to it.

However, I was particularly amused by the efforts the show depicted them having to make, to track down alleged mind-control operative Robert Duncan O’Finioan, liaising with Dave Corso in the back of a van parked in a Las Vegas lot, before eventually meeting O’Finioan in a deserted garage. I guess it was just too much trouble to go to his website, where a helpful block says, “To contact Duncan O’Finioan regarding speaking engagements please send an e-mail to info@duncanofinioan.com” He says he has multiple implants, stuck in as part of the mind-control process. Oh, good: physical proof, the crack team of researchers will be all over tha… No: a couple of blurry shots, and that was it. It may be significant, that when you type Duncan O’Finioan into Google, the first completion it suggests is “Duncan O’Finioan fraud.”

Finally – and it’s probably for the best, as the coffee-table probably needed a break from us banging our heads off it – we had the season finale, with 2012. Again, the show took nuggets of truth (yes, the government does have a lot of secret underground facilities; no, you and I won’t be welcome in them if disaster strikes), and wrapped them in insanity such as 2012 and the Denver Airport murals – as they have a tendency to do, the conspiracy theorists only ever show part of them. Taken as a whole, the work by Leo Tanguma is a good deal less sinister.

A particular highlight of this episode was June Sarpong driving all the way into the middle of nowhere to be turned away at a gate. Her conclusion regarding these facilities is, and I quote: “A lot of them have landing strips. That would help get materials in and out. It would also be a way to fly people in.” Wow, what a stunning revelation: I’d never have thought that landing strips might be used for…landing. Great investigative work there, June. Now, go get another injection of Botox, why don’t you?

Not everyone is quite as down on the show as us. A friend, who is deeply embedded in conspiratorial circles, but is definitely short of the lunatic fringe – we’ll call him “Agent B”, simply to create an entirely artificial air of Something Sinister Going On – sent us his thoughts on the show

You must be able to tell, as I can, that the man does, at least, have conviction when it comes to the subjects he pursues on the show.  Further, his efforts far outweigh the lies, spin and utter distraction courtesy of mainstream media.  As a fellow conspiracy researcher and concerned citizen, I’m all for a show like this.  Yes, it sensationalizes just about every topic they investigate, but that is purely the fault of the network top brass.  When someone wants to do a show on so-called “fringy” topics, there is always a compromise between those who really want free reign to investigate and what the show producers and the network actually want aired.  I don’t like it any more than you do, but I say “exposure at all costs.”  It’s amazing that the show is even aired and that taboo topics like 9-11, HAARP, Mind Control and the ever-so secretive Bilderbergers are even broached.

Heck, I was approached by a movie and TV production company about three years ago.  It never happened, but the producers also wanted to create a weekly conspiracy show that would cover many of the same topics, but they wanted it to be even more edgier.  The main producer was actually interested in having me as the lead, but he introduced ideas like having me air some late night podcast in a dimly lit scenario to ardent listeners, some of whom would call in and be guests (maybe similar researchers and topics like on Ventura’s show).  I would also have to flit about from place to place in the cover of darkness for my own so-called safety in order to create a greater sense of paranoia and danger.

So, you can see that, even though they say they love a good conspiracy, the higher-ups are only interested in creating something that is entertaining for the most part, as well as profitable.  If the public happens to be educated or even empowered by the intellectual material, that’s a mere side effect.  I bring this up because Ventura’s show could have ended up being way cheesier.  He may not be the most charming or well spoken ex-Marine, but, at least, he investigates… period.

There’s certainly a lot of merit in that approach, but I’m afraid I can’t be quite as charitable. There is a psychological process – I forget it’s name – but it controls how people react when presented with information outside their sphere. If someone is neutral on a topic, and is given data that’s somewhat positive or negative, it will tend to pull them in that direction. But if the data is extreme, at either end, it will tend to push the recipient away. For instance, show a neutral person evidence of conspiracies like Iran-Contra, and they’ll think more favourably of the field. But lock them in a room with David Icke for eight hours and they’ll never speak to you again.

That’s why the show feels to me like disinformation. Not that Ventura is in on it, I should stress, but it takes interesting or even important subjects (such as government surveillance) and portrays them is such an outrageous and extreme way, that it’s difficult to see how any neutral viewer could leave with anything except a snigger. The series reminds me of the time the late, lamented Weekly World News had a story on the CIA pushing drugs in LA. It was so far off their usual stomping-ground of aliens and Bigfoot, that the real purpose was painfully obvious: discredit the story, by placing it next to Batboy.

These are topics that do not need hysterical presentation – there’s enough meat on topics like 9/11, that a straightforward presentation of the facts would be more effective in creating a groundswell of interest. Of course, as “Agent B” points out, sensationalism = ratings, and it’s possible that is what’s behind TruTV’s over-the-top approach. At best, the show may have encouraged some viewers to do their own research. However, for anyone with access to a Google search box, there was basically nothing in the show to justify the tagline, “Think you know it all? Think again!“