Saturday, February 18, 2006

Leg Doctor

This is the reason multi-region DVD players are necessary; some shows will never, ever, ever be on television or video in North America and one of them is Chris Morris' 2000 series Jam.

Jam was an experiment in comedy that could only be broadcast nationally if it were made by someone who already had a reputation - I can't imagine anyone walking in off the street and pitching this idea to a network. It was an incredibly bleak sketch show that dared to find the humour in horrific situations; disease, death, madness, evil, and terrible loss - all served up with a straight face, which didn't really help you figure out how to deal with it; the message was further obscured by tricked-out visuals (including closed-circuit camera) and a wall-to-wall soundtrack of ambient music. If you watched it in the middle of the night you'd have trouble sleeping. In fact, Channel 4 aired a late-night version, further remixed, called Jaaaaaaam.

This is a comparatively mild skit from the program (it gets much much darker than this) but I think it captures the tone well. I think even if you enjoyed what the show is trying to do you would still have your guard up the whole time.

If you like it, go get a Malata multi-region player in Chinatown for 60 bucks and order the disc from eBay or amazon.co.uk. If you don't like it, I'm sure you're not alone.



Substrom has more 'Jam' clips on his YouTube page. I love YouTube and I hope no one crashes the party for a little while longer.

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