If you've never been turned on by the bouncing balls of the National Lottery, and you dismiss quizmasters and soap stars as laughably two-dimensional characters who wear glitz like dandruff, it's probably worth popping along to Rob McIndoe's stylishly sordid explorations of life among low-grade celebrities.
Little Englanders focuses on Laura (Kate Webster), a cynical young woman, who graduates from appearing in cheap porn films to bouncing around as a bimbette on a new quiz show. Here she meets Jenny (Bonny Ambrose), who, at 47, is disturbed to find that Alan, the man she has married, has the worrying habit of disappearing into the bathroom for a "dance with the one-eyed sailor" after watching the Lottery.
Remote Controlled focuses on the murkier world of sex, drugs, and murder. As Robert, an ageing soap star, Dan Armour, is a disturbing study in the poisoned slime of superficiality.
McIndoe clearly fancies himself as a modern-day Alan Bennett, whether in gleefully twee details like Alan's "retractable tape-measure", and his job "in charge of cooked and cold meats", or in damningly witty descriptions such as that of the hapless Chris (Derek Carlyle) in Remote Controlled at Tesco's watching "a man pay by Visa for a small box of Dairylea triangles".
He combines this with riskier comedy to provide a cleverly entertaining and occasionally stomach-churning analysis of media's seedier side.
Characterisation and theatricality are too often sacrificed to McIndoe's humour, but this evening has a bite that makes even Anne Robinson look tame.
Little Englanders
