This post originally appeared in VICE UKI recently learned that a production company has optioned the Twitter account @SoVeryBritish with the view to turning it into a TV series. Throw me in the sea and burn the land I come from. The twee Twitter-fication of Britain is complete. Death to the West.Evening plans: 1. Make tea 2. Get in bed 3. Biscuits
— VeryBritishProblems (@SoVeryBritish) November 4, 2014
Advertisement
If you're wondering how to turn the tweet: "Opening a window to let out a fly and ending up with 30 midges, three wasps, two bees and an owl" into a 30-minute TV show, get ready for a Venn diagram of hellish TV formats: producers are nominally planning to read out the tweets (the nadir of modern television is watching David Dimbleby trying to say "use the hashtag"), having talking head-style comedians comment on them, and then—for good measure—hidden camera TV, presumably of people apologizing at an umbrella or something."Right, whose turn is it to make the tea?" - Translation: It's certainly not my turn to make the tea
— VeryBritishProblems (@SoVeryBritish) October 10, 2014
Advertisement
Advertisement
Obviously, being optioned by an indie production company isn't actually "getting on" TV—as far as I can tell, from a number of half-remembered conversations with TV people, taking a show from "horrendously bad idea" to "horrendously bad actual TV show" is a complicated lottery that swivels on a thousand tiny decisions going in your favor and a certain amount of grace from the gods—but there seems something grimly inevitable about it, an executive with a ponytail saying, "Yeah, fuck it. Twitter will watch the first episode just to bitch about it. Can we get Robert Webb in to do a voiceover?"All I'm saying is this: if this triggers a tidal wave of Twitter-to-TV transitions, if @ScouseBirdProblems gets a Two Pints of Lager…-esque BBC Three sitcom, then I'm shitting in a Jiffy and sending it to Ofcom. This has to stop now.Follow Joel Golby on TwitterThe overwhelming sorrow of finding a cup of tea you forgot about
— VeryBritishProblems (@SoVeryBritish) September 22, 2013