There’s a little-known category of film and TV shows called “wouldn’t it be cool”.
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It’s little-known because it’s really only me who uses it.
It’s designed to describe those shows created by people with no apparent idea how to actually tell a story.
Instead of working on a proper script, it’s like they’ve sat around a table and gone “hey, wouldn’t it be cool if we did this?” and “hey it’d be cool if this happened next”.
It’s the way a bunch of kids would approach making a TV series – style over substance.
One common factor in the “wouldn’t it be cool” genre is that at least one of the creators is an actor appearing in a lead role.
They’re more interested in getting to do cool stuff on screen rather than creating a decent story.
That’s the vibe oozing out of the new UK series Bulletproof (Fox showcase, Wednesdays, 7.30pm).
It stars Noel Clarke and Ashley Waters as detectives and best friends Bish and Pike, respectively.
It’s no surprise that the pair also created the show, because superficiality abounds in Bulletproof.
The pair get to wear trendy clothes, inexplicably get to drive expensive cars around and exchange what they think is witty banter.
Also, kit doesn’t help a series when you laugh out loud at its stupidity.
That’s what I did in the first episode where airbags in one of those expensive cars they were driving went off after a car chase – even though they didn’t actually hit anything.
Why? Because Clarke and Waters obviously thought “wouldn’t it be cool if this happened”.
It’s hard to work out just what the pair want this show to be.
As a cop-action film it’s really dull and formulaic – every episode I watched involved a car chase and a bunch of bad guys shooting off machine guns.
As a buddy cop comedy series it really doesn’t work at all, largely because of the poor acting of the two charisma-free leads – they feel like they’re posing rather than actually actually acting.
Wouldn't it be cool if they didn’t bother making this show?