NEWS of a movement under the banner "One Direction" that was
gaining worldwide support might suggest a new religion or political
organisation. In fact, as Crazy about One Direction
(Channel 4, Thursday of last week) revealed, it is nothing more
than a monstrous fan club of teenage girls - followers of a boy
band that came third in The X Factor in 2010.
The band's failure to win made them seem even more desirable,
and the girls of Britain, first, and then the world, took to the
social-networking sites to create a tidal wave of support. One
member of the band, Harry Styles, acquired ten million followers on
Twitter.
Of course, fanatical fans have always been part of the pop
scene. The Beatles, the Bay City Rollers, Take That - screaming
teenage girls are part of the show. The difference here, as Daisy
Asquith revealed, is that both fans and the band are immersed in
the networking world of Twitter. The boys play on this, apparently
addressing the girls directly in their tweets: "Hiiiii! Cute, every
single one of you." And, in a million bedrooms, to cries of "OMG",
the message is not for the millions, but for Emma or Natasha or
Holly.
The girls' tweets are addressed to one or other of the five boys
in the band: "I'm so unhappy"; "Why won't you notice me? Shall I
kill myself?" Judging by the posters held up at personal
appearances, some go a lot further, with blatant invitations for
sex. One of the girls writes soft-porn stories about the band and
its fans; another sees her favourite singer as "connected to God",
and has a picture of him in godlike pose to confirm it.
Adults and boys are conspicuously absent from their lives.
"Boyfriends get in the way," one girl said firmly. But they are not
loners. This is a genuine and exclusive "club", based on obsessive
commitment.
Did the programme offer any hope of escape from this slavery to
an illusion, other than the simple one of growing up? Well, yes, in
a way. A group of girls had waited for two hours to wave to their
idols as they left a TV studio. In fact, they sped out with
screaming tyres, and disappeared. One girl looked at the camera,
her face stained with tears. "They don't care about us," she
sobbed. "They just want our money." It was a eureka moment.
A new comedy series on BBC1, especially at this time of the
year, is a welcome if unexpected sight. Big School (BBC1,
Friday) has a stellar cast - David Walliams, Catherine Tate, and
Frances de la Tour, to name but three - and the germ of a good
idea: the emotional byplay of a typical secondary school
staff-room.
The trouble is that anyone who has been inside a modern school
will know that it is nothing like this: a geriatric male teacher
long past retirement age, a French teacher who has never been to
France, and a PE teacher of such abysmal crudity that he would
never have survived his first OFSTED.
Comedy needs a recognisable setting in which the eccentricities
and absurdities of life are played out. That is the strength of
series such as Rev, Miranda, and Father
Ted. This was so ridiculous that it failed to be funny. In
school report terms: "Not good enough. Must try less."