Bubble UK & Eire Review: Newsbag

I have not set foot in the Emerald Isle since I lived in Dublin over a decade ago so I’m not up to date on the state of animation over there, I do remember they did good puppets, freaking hilarious puppets, hopefully the ‘toons are as funny.

As far as I can recall, Irish television’s attitude toward animation was and is much like that in the UK; cartoons are seen primarily as a kids medium and  adult series’ are treated with a mix of bewilderment and lassitude. The recent E4 funded British series Full English is a perfect example of adult animation in UK and Ireland: it happens, it isn’t that good and it mostly gets ignored: a five year old  with a sketchpad and some crayons old could have done a better job at promoting Full English than E4/Channel 4 did.

Irish network 3e are doing a marginally better job at promoting Newsbag, the new adult “animated sitcom” created by Pilgrim Hill director Gerrard Barrett , a quick Google search throws up a few results on sites and TV listing pages but the information within these results is woefully lacking.

Here’s what I do know, and most of this was gleaned from watching Newsbag. Created by Gerrard Barret and Icehouse Studios for 3e and directed by Maurice Joyce, Newsbag is a sitcom which follows the lives of Moss, Lenny and Gig as they try and remain professional whilst in the employ of an egomanical Kiwi (or maybe he’s Australian) plutocrat Eric Dundee. Together they are the team behind the titular online gossip site, Newsbag. The official blurb tells us:

“The trio pursue hot news trends such as the wave of Twitter-addiction spreading across the country, Barack Obama coming to Ireland, the spud shortage that brings Ireland closer to another famine, Lenny being afflicted with piles, Moss getting kidnapped by a gang of priests to become King of the Priests and more.”

Sounds interesting so far, a few themes I can relate to there, so I checked out the first episode of Newsbag, mostly to see just how much Eric Dundee was like our own tyrant boss, John Blabber.

 

There’s a phrase myself and my partner use when assesing homegrown animation series’, one that crops up time and time again and it cropped up again today when watching Newsbag: “it’s trying too hard”. Allow me to expound upon this damning statement: Firstly Gerrard Barrett describes Newsbag as a mix of “South Park and The I.T Crowd”. Whoah, don’t do that man, don’t compare yourself to one of the longest running and most unique animated shows to ever exist, nothing is like South Park except South Park so it’s unlikely you have the right to suggest your show is. Maybe don’t use the IT Crowd as an example either, aggrandising yourself by saying you could have been written by the likes of Graham Linehan doesn’t give you much room to breathe; you’d better be laugh out loud funny to come out with a statement like that and very few things genuinely are.

Lets forget Barrett made that comparison and instead judge Newsbag on it’s own merits. In this debut episode We’re introduced to the staff of  the Newsbag website via noob employee Moss, it’s his entrance into the office which elicits the first round of jokes, apparently Moss is fat ( I didn’t notice but maybe I’m not judgmental enough) and everyone who comes into contact with him wants him to know this. I rolled my eyes at this first round of abuse as it felt forced and contrived (geezer ain’t fat OK?) and hoped things would get better from herein.

As we meet the team we realise they are all fairly unlikeable in their own very different way; for example Gig is a geek but his geek speak is that which only total geeks like myself would understand, most people don’t know or care about servers and the like, maybe  having him fixing a computer or wearing a geeky tee would have outlined his personality better, anything else is just trying too hard.

We learn that President Obama is coming to Dublin as part of his state visit and the Newsbag crew are assigned to cover his speech, a big enough occurrence like a presidential visit need no embellishment and can carry an episode on its own surely? But no, there’s more; Gig has his Personal Attack app ( he’s a geek, he makes apps, lol) accepted by Crapple ( geddit?) but unfortunately he has yet to iron out all the bugs and it goes off during Obama’s speech. Hilarity ensues and the team somehow end up being Barrack’s nursemaid for the day. Any one of these events could have carried an episode, putting them all together with much more besides is just trying too hard.

The animation on Newsbag is quite poor, I’m guessing it’s purposefully stylised like this but it just looks unfinished. Considering Gerrard Barrett’s day job is working at animation powerhouse Brown Bag you can only look at Newsbag’s forced quirkiness and wonder what could have been. There’s four minute shorts made by students and amatuers on YouTube so polished and so clean that I don’t understand the need for this half arsed look from a professional series that most likely cost a few bob to make. It’s an attempt to be edgy and unique and guess what, its trying too hard.

The cultural differences between England and Eireland are huge, I was taken aback at how different a  small rock- separated by a few miles of sea, is in comparison to the UK. Because of this you may be thinking I’m missing out on much of the humour because I’m not Irish; I can assure this isn’t the case, there are plenty of hugely funny Irish writers and programmes, funny is universal and even if you don’t speak a word of a language you can still laugh at a humorous situation or set up. Unfortunately Newsbag takes it’s Irish-ness and rams it down your gaping maw, there are so many “yeh bollix” ‘s, “shite”‘s and very thick accents that even I, who lived in Dublin for over a year, struggled through the brogues at times. And, just as I’m getting used to the fact that, “hey it’s Irish, for Irish TV, what did I expect ?” we have a moment where Big Boss Eric Dundee calls Barrack Obama “the most powerful half-caste in the world”*. Sorry, what? He’s a what? You mean “black man” or “person of colour” surely? Or even better, he’s just “The President”. I would have assumed this sentence was included to show what a jerk Dundee is but it is far to early in the series to ascertain whether he was prone to casual racism or not and unfortunately this is how a great deal of Irish people still speak, so I knew in the bottom of my heart the programme makers genuinely saw no problem with this phrase.

So, Newsbag: not my cup of tea . This is purely my opinion, many might disagree,  so far Newsbag has trended on twitter in Eire and was pick of the week in  their version of Radio Times, the TV listing mag. I will watch again to see if it picks up, it can be saved for sure. Newsbag needs to concentrate on imminently likeable new guy Moss and slim down their scripts: find one good idea per episode and stick with it, don’t drown that idea  in lots of smaller, less funny ideas and  buzzwords like (Cr)apple & app just because you think it’ll make the show relateable to the younger crowd.

I’m delighted to see any up and coming animators get picked up by major TV stations in Britain and Eire, I want to encourage animators not put their work down, but unless Newsbag gets a lot less convoluted (and less racist) and a whole lot tighter and funnier then I won’t be tuning in too often, sorry guys.

Newsbag airs on Saturdays at 10-pm on Irish network 3e.

*Edit: It has since been pointed out to me by the shows creator, Gerard Barret, that the “half-caste line” was not featured in the final cut, it was changed to “the most powerful black white man in the world”. I, personally, do find this a bit racist still but obviously is not as bad as the original line. My apologies to Gerard and all involved but my original assessment of the show still stands. It, of course just my opinion, and I do encourage readers to check the show out for themselves and let us know what they think in our comments section. Vic.