Dear Four Rooms

Dear Four Rooms, (Channel 4, Tuesdays @8pm)

Still to come in this letter:

• I’ll be mocking the style choices, personalities and mannerisms of the buyers
• I’ll cast doubt on whether they’d have reacted like that to the Hitler bust if cameras weren’t there
• and I’ll make some (hopefully) witty comments about the guy with the pink hair

Do you see what I’ve done there Four Rooms? I’ve taken a perfectly good letter that might have even been interesting and I’ve told you everything that’s in it. Do you think it works? I’m not so sure that it does, but just in case the previous, linear, method of letter writing that’s been sufficient for hundreds of years isn’t up to scratch I think I’ll keep doing it. I mean, who needs a narrative any more? Not in this day and age, people who watch – or indeed read – stuff simply don’t have the mental capacity to remember what’s happening or why they’re doing it so it’s absolutely imperative that you must keep reminding them. All the time. In fact, best do that now.

• This is a letter to Four Rooms. In Four Rooms people with stuff to sell go into Four Rooms. In those Four Rooms are three multi-zillionaire ponces and Sporty Spice (during her leather phase) who will each make an offer – the punter can either accept or reject the offer, but if they leave one of the Four Rooms they cannot go back, and that offer is gone forever. That’s what happens on Four Rooms, and this is a letter to Four Rooms.

Four Rooms is the first album by new 'supergroup' Rich Wankers feat. Mel C and three guys from mediocre 80's synth groups

You see left to their own devices people might have thought that they were watching a really shit version of ‘The Matrix’, featuring Sporty Spice as Trinity, Albert Finney as Morpheus, Christopher Biggins as a scarf wearing and unnecessarily threatening Oracle and a geography teacher in one of Jonathan Ross’s discarded suits as Agent Smith. I suppose Neo would have been Johnny ‘Pink Hair’ Fancy-Table (this might not be his real name). Thankfully every time I started thinking that I was indeed watching a Hollywood blockbuster I was swiftly snapped out of it by being told information I’d been fully furnished with not five minutes before – time and time and time again – and of course the obligatory mention of the name of the show…Five Sheds was it? Three Cupboards? Which reminds me.

• This is a letter to Four Rooms. In Four Rooms people with stuff to sell go into Four Rooms. In those Four Rooms are a collection of failed Bond villains, each less villainous than the one before, who will each make an offer – the punter can either accept or reject the offer, but if they leave one of the Four Rooms they cannot go back, and that offer is gone forever. It sounds like a great format and I really wanted it to work, but by making an hour long show out of ten 5 minute trailers you’ve ballsed it up and made it utterly unwatchable. That’s what’s happened on Four Rooms, and this is a letter to Four Rooms.

But still to come in this letter:

• I will question whether or not the dealers would have actually got quite excited by the Hitler bust if it weren’t for the cameras.
• I’ll ask why they took the one moment of genuine drama and ruined it by trailing it immediately before showing it.
• and I’ll ask if the entire production team previously worked on Dragons Den.

"You've stumbled into the wrong room my darling, now brace yourself 'cos this is gnna make your eyes water."

So, here’s a question for you, did your entire production team previously work on Dragons Den? I only ask because the incessant describing of what’s happened, is happening right in front of our very eyes (and we’d be able to pay attention to if you’d just shut up for a second) and what’s about to happen quite literally any second now is something that seems rather reminiscent of that. What they’ve done at ‘the den’ though that you failed miserably to do, is edit the footage in such a way as to make it still a bit of a surprise when stuff happens. They’ve played with timelines, used clever camera angles, used mis-direction. It’s all rather clever. What you’ve done, somewhat conversely, is shown us what’s about to happen (I’m talking specifically about Mr Fancy-Table rejecting a big cash offer) and then show it happening in the exact same way. No tension, no drama, no interest. No, “Wow, he’s being offered way more than he wanted, I wonder if he’ll take it.”  nope, none of that because we’ve already seen him reject it. Good move Four Rooms. I mean you already had so many ‘can’t tear myself away’ moments that you really didn’t need another one. Oh christ, nearly forgot…

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• This is a letter to Four Rooms. In Four Rooms people with stuff to sell go into Four Rooms. In those Four Rooms are three rich gits and a girl who looks suspiciously like a robot sent from the future to kill John Connor, who will each make an offer – the punter can either accept or reject the offer and you’ll know well in advance either way, but if they leave one of the Four Rooms they cannot go back, and that offer is gone forever. That’s pretty much all that happens on Four Rooms, and it’s made a very promising format dull and a chore to watch. This is a letter to Four Rooms.

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Finally, Hitler. I think it’s pretty much agreed that Hitler was a bad man. We all agreed on that? Good. He did, however, exist, and to anyone with even the slightest interest in modern history the partially destroyed bust of him brought in by Clive Dunn’s older brother was fascinating and certainly worth a damn sight more than the grand he walked out with. The dealers’ concerns over who might end up owning the piece are justified and honourable, but just how much of it was playing up for your cameras? You don’t get rich by having a massive conscience and all four of these ever so moral guardians of the fabric of what’s good and true are stinkingly, offensively and pant wettingly rich and so it’s fair to presume morality is a flexible term to them and that they’ve each – in the process of fixing a ‘fair’ price of course – shafted many a pensioner out of thousands of pounds to line their own pockets. They each knew they could make a lot of money from that piece shifting it on to a private (and legitimate, non-Nazi) collector, and I have little doubt that if the same negotiations were to take place in private the results would have been very different. I think it’s ended up at the right place in the Holocaust Museum, don’t get me wrong, but I didn’t buy the act for a moment and in the absence of entertainment – and there was a real absence – a touch of honesty wouldn’t have gone amiss.

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So, summing up, an hour long show is not a trailer. No individual section of an hour long show is a trailer – it’s a show. If you haven’t got enough material to make a show then don’t bother, and if you must underestimate, nay insult the intelligence of an audience tuning in – by choice – to a show about the buying and selling of antiques then don’t be surprised when they move to a different room. Like the kitchen to watch a potato bake, or the bathroom to watch their bath fill up, or their… you get the point.

Dragons' Den - a bit like Four Rooms, but well executed and entertaining

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You’ve taken a potentially great format and made it fragmented, dull and predictable. No, predictable’s the wrong word. You’ve told us exactly what’s about to happen and ruined it, like sitting next to an idiot at the cinema “Oh you’ll love this bit, he turns down the offer gets all smug and talks about being greedy” – I have a tendency to punch these people in the face. Please consider this a written face punch. Turn to the nearest person and ask them if they’ll punch you – don’t worry, you deserve it.

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So there’s only one thing left to say.

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• This was a letter to Four Rooms. In Four Rooms people with stuff to sell went into Four Rooms. In those Four Rooms are a low rent upper class UK version of the X-Men who will each make an offer – the punter can either accept or reject the offer, but if they leave one of the Four Rooms they cannot go back, and that offer is gone forever. That’s what happened on Four Rooms, and it was crap. This was a letter to Four Rooms.

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Bye

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R

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PS – I can’t wait for next weeks episode when two guys with a 4 tonne wall with a Banksy painting on it get offered £12,000, £40,000, £60,000 and £240,000 and probably still turn it down because they go for millions at auction.

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PPS – Do you see how I already know way too much about the next episode?

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PPPS – Seriously, learn the difference between TRAILER and EPISODE – you’ll be surprised.