“You boy! Why have you awakened me from my long slumber?”
“Hello Mr Baudrillard. Big fan here. I want to show you something.”
“Agh! What is this? My eyes are not accustomed to such garish light...”
“It’s called The Masked Singer (Saturday, Virgin Media One).”
Culchiecore, bonkbusters, murder, more murder and Nationwide: What I’ve seen on TV in 2024
Patrick Freyne: I am becoming a demotivational speaker – let’s all have an averagely productive December
Letters to the Editor, December 14th: On the Green effect, grief and the humble Brussels sprout
Wake up, people: Here’s what the mainstream media don’t want you to know about Christmas
“What... What exactly am I seeing?”
“It’s a television programme in which ‘celebrities’ sing and dance for an over-stimulated populace while dressed as animals or household objects. Then another panel of ‘celebrities’ guess their identities while being moved by their sweet song.”
“Please turn it off.”
“I can’t. I’ve lost the remote.”
“Is... is that a singing rhino in a cowboy costume?! Why am I sexually attracted to that jacket potato singing Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah? Does that jellyfish have human hands? What is Rita Ora?”
“Do you like it?”
“My eyes! They burn!”
“Wait... have I got this wrong? You thought that living in a grotesque hall of mirrors where the true nature of reality can’t be known was a good thing, right?”
[ Patrick Freyne: The Masked Singer is a bit like an Eyes Wide Shut partyOpens in new window ]
“Make it stop!”
“Hmm. Now that I think of it, I bought your books so people would think I was cool, but I don’t think I actually finished any of them.”
“Please return me to hell this instant.”
Broadcasting heavyweights
Unlike this ghostly simulacrum of Jean Baudrillard, I enjoy The Masked Singer. It’s an artefact of a culture that’s uploaded half of its brain to the cloud and now knows about “memes”. It makes me feel drunk.
The panel features onetime broadcasting heavyweights Davina McCall and Jonathan Ross, whose shrewd and wiley eyes have seen all that light entertainment has to offer. These multidimensional intelligences watch the proceedings cooly cushioned by a thick vapour of residual fame, wealth and prophylactic irony.
Physicists are baffled by the existence of Rita Ora. Her career just doesn’t make sense based on what we know about the universe. What was she originally famous for? Nobody knows
Mo Gilligan is also a present, a proxy for the audience in that he’s not that famous and makes the worst suggestions. Meanwhile toothy Joel Dommett hovers making appalling puns while wearing a blood red suit.
Inevitably Rita Ora is here. Physicists are baffled by the existence of Rita Ora. Her career just doesn’t make sense based on what we know about the universe. What was she originally famous for? Nobody knows. Now she is simultaneously on every television panel at once. I suspect she’s always been here and we just have to make our peace with that.
The guest judge is Stephen Mulhern. He’s prime time entertainment’s cheeky daytime TV shadow. He’s the antimatter reflection of Ant & Dec. Indeed, it’s possible that Ant & Dec combine to form Stephen Mulhern much like the Power Rangers or Voltron. His presence represents a destabilising incursion of daytime TV into the evening schedule. I like it.
The programme is made up of a series of performances in which famous people dance and sing while wearing outlandish costumes. These costumes blend the anthropomorphic charm of Richard Scarry’s drawings and Hieronymus Bosch’s paintings of hell.
It’s conceptually confusing. Some of the singers wear animal-themed costumes. “Otter” is wearing scuba gear, which sort of makes sense because “real” otters (thanks to Baudrillard I’m not convinced otters exist) enjoy larking about in the water. But “Rhino”, in a complete f**k-you to coherent worldbuilding, is wearing a little cowboy costume, speaks in a Wild West accent and performs surrounded by human-faced trees and muppet cows. This, like Rita Ora, is another of those things we just have to live with.
A note of warning: the level of fame achieved by the celebrities here is best summed up by the fact the producers are happy to keep them hidden in masks for months on end
It gets worse. “Knitting” is an unholy ball of wool who is being knit into a jumper by needles that pierce its very person. It has no eyes or no mouth, yet it can sing and, presumably, scream. “Knitting” gamely performs a song accompanied by a band made up of sheep. How do these sheep feel? I’m not sure how I’d feel if a clump of my hair came to life and decided it wanted to sing at Rita Ora. I’d probably adjust.
There’s more... Did the ancient bards predict that the deathless “Phoenix” would appear on Saturday night television singing It’s Not Unusual flanked by dancing women in bird-themed head-dresses? They did not. Yet it happens all the same.
‘Goosebumps’
The best singer is “Jellyfish” who has a huge jellyfish head and wears a Miss Havisham-style dress. She is flanked by glowing seafolk and belts out Heart’s power ballad Alone.
“How do I get you alone!” she sings, which is a terrifying query coming from a cursed human/jellyfish hybrid. But the judges have a capacity for fine feeling that eludes normal people.
“Beautiful,” says Jonathan Ross.
“Oh my God,” says Rita Ora looking visibly moved.
“Goosebumps,” says Stephen Mulhern, on the verge of tears.
Clues are given. Guesses are made. The public vote. Some “celebrities” are unmasked as the audience chant, terrifyingly: “Take it off! Take it off!” A note of warning: the level of fame achieved by the celebrities here is best summed up by the fact the producers are happy to keep them hidden in masks for months on end.
Not all the panellists have worked this out. This week Ben Stiller, Eric Clapton and Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson are all suggested as folk we might find sweating beneath masks. And I get into that spirit: “Pope Francis!” “Putin!” “Margaret Atwood!” “Tom Cruise, but 1980s Risky Business Tom Cruise!”, “Twink!”, I shout. A mask is removed. It’s Claire from Steps.
Satisfying conclusion
The incredibly tense and moving Happy Valley (Sunday, BBC1) came to a very satisfying conclusion this week. What made it work so well was not the core story of violence and family grief, but the irreverent perspectives, lovingly rendered mundanity and spiky character dynamics that orbit that story.
Happy Valley was never really about tough cops doing tough cop things. It was about the people who step up and hold families together through love and force of will
Over three seasons, Sally Wainwright didn’t produce one underwritten character or lazy line. She created a show in which a minor thug is given a wedding to worry about; in which regular people shamble their way towards terrible acts; and in which a sociopathic killer finds a sort of sad, twisted redemption.
Happy Valley was never really about tough cops doing tough cop things. It was about the people who step up and hold families together through love and force of will. It was about goodness, not evil. Towards the end, Sgt Catherine Cawood (the excellent Sarah Lancashire) asks what will happen to the children of a murdered woman. Her colleague says, pointedly, “There’s a grandmother.” It sits in the air for a moment, like a thesis statement for the whole show.
