Jade Goody's Death Bed - A Showbiz Extravaganza!

Before I launch into a tirade about the modern cult of celebrity, I must, of course, state that no matter what your opinion of Jade Goody is, the fact that a 27 year old woman is dying from cancer is no laughing matter. So with that out the way....

Celebrities getting cancer is of course no new thing, Patrick Swayze is currently battling the disease whilst Kylie Minogue had a well publicised battle with breast cancer a couple of years ago. The thing that's different in these cases is that these battles, by and large, have been private affairs: Kylie allowing a documentary crew to film her first tour after being given the all clear and Swayze giving the odd interview on television. But this is the first case, I suppose, of a reality TV star contracting cancer, and not just as any reality TV star; Jade Goody, perhaps the most succesful of them all. (Bigger than Jeremy Spake? Almost certainly.) As a result, what we have now is a very, VERY public battle with cancer, which, unfortunately Jade appears to have lost.

Not a day goes by just now where we're not kept informed about the reality stars condition, either via interviews in the tabloid press, statements from her publicist and resident anti-Christ Max Clifford or the documentary show currently airing on Living TV. On the one hand this has all served to raise awareness of the importance of getting a cervical smear test to catch Cervical Cancer sooner rather than later, which is no bad thing. On the other hand however, it has felt like a rather bizarre reality show in itself essentially sitting back and watching as a woman dies. Her diagnosis was relayed to her in the Indian Big Brother house, her treatment aired on Living Tv, I can't help but wonder where they're going to draw the line? Televised death bed confession?

Goody herself has said that it's all about earning enough money to secure the future of her sons, and that, with her reality show background this is the only way she knows. All well and good but there is a fine line between securing your childrens future and losing whatever dignity you have left. Fair enough, she has agreed to speak to the press etc, but there's no mistaking that the constant stream of photographs of her undergoing treatment, or shopping for a wedding dress in a wheelchair are invasive and uncomfortable. I just hope there's a moment of sanity before, in the last few days OK Magazine invite us to be shown around her hospice room. I can certainly imagine her tragic wedding to boyfriend Jack will be covered. It's all very sad, but for a woman who has had her dignity chipped away from her progressively since her first appearance on Big Brother (The stomach turning striptease right through to the race row that erupted two years ago.) to allow the general public to follow her last days on Earth so closely is something I'm not entirely comfortable with and it worries me what the next stage of this obsession with celebrity culture will be.

Like a Sexy Joe 90....

Joss Whedon is back! And I'll get this out the way quickly, I am a big fan of his work; Buffy the Vampire Slayer was and still is one of my absolute favourite television programmes of all time. The wit, the monsters, and Sarah Michelle Gellar made pubescent teen Krondas very happy indeed, and continued to do so as we all grew up. (Though the show never quite captured the same magic it had done in its earlier High School based years.) I was also a big fan of slightly more grown up spin-off Angel the sub-text of which rings truer now to me than it did then; 20-somethings trying to find their way in the world whilst fighting demons and averting the apocalypse. Whedon's best work is rooted in the juxtaposition between everyday angst and life threatening demon slaying.

In recent times he seems to have gone for more genre based ideas, the cruelly cancelled Firefly was a tremendous Blakes 7 style space opera that was cut down before it ever had a chance to make it big. And newest effort Dollhouse seems to be a genre show of a very different kind.
The best way to explain Dollhouse is a sexy Joe 90, Eliza Dushku plays Echo, an agent of the secretive Dollhouse who can be programmed to be your perfect date, assassin you name it. The opening episode finds her programmed to be a hostage negotiator who was kidnapped and sexually abused as a child. So far so pretty much every kidnap drama you've ever seen, which would be fine if they did something new with it, something they never quite pull off. My main worry for the show is that it'll become some sort of pick 'n' mix of overused crime and spy storylines...with more sexy dresses, hopefully.

That's not to say it's terrible, Whedon was forced to completely reshoot the pilot so I'll certainly be sticking with it, the character of Agent Dillon who's investigating the Dollhouse programme much to the annoyance of his bosses and Amy Acker's scarred medic are two interesting plotlines that I want to see develop.

It is perhaps Whedon's most accessible show since Buffy on account of the various different genres he'll be deploying throughout the series this may last longer than Firefly. However it is airing in Fox's Friday night death zone slot and I'm not entirely convinced it's good enough to perform well in a slot where better shows such as Wonderfalls haven't. I hope so, because it's great to have Whedon, Eliza Dushku, Amy Acker and Reed Diamond on our TV screens, I just can't help but feel I wish they were in a better, more assured programme. Fingers crossed!