I came home from work today to find my wonderful stepdaughter Lily on the Internet.   She was visiting  the Disney Channel website, and – as one of those unfortunate people burdened with a certain kind of political temperament – I found myself experiencing an involuntary muscle spasm somewhere in the region of my social conscience gland.  This soon passed, however:  I may be relatively new to this parenting malarkey, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned is that smart, 6 year-old girls like Lily have little time for humourless lectures on the evils of cultural imperialism.

Plenty of time for that, eh?

Anyhow, like most websites aimed at kids nowadays, the Disney Channel features a veritable platform of games and activities that are tied-into their various spin-offs and cash-ins.  Lily was playing on one such game, which was based on a House of Mouse property that I hadn’t heard of called Sonny With a Chance.  The game looked something like this:

Appropriately enough, it was one of those mouse-driven, point-and-click affairs.  I didn’t really pay much attention to it until Lily pointed-and-clicked at one of the on-screen characters and a little pop-up avatar appeared:

I did a quick double-take.  I adjusted my glasses.  I looked again:

My arm jerked out and I pointed a trembling forefinger at the computer screen, not unlike Donald Sutherland in the final scene from Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  I nearly choked on a mouthful of tea, which was somewhat surprising as I wasn’t actually drinking tea at the time.  “Ye Gods!” I cried, “I know that man!”

That man was this man:

His name is Maurice Levy, a character from the groundbreaking crime drama series The Wire.  Levy is a corrupt and unscrupulous lawyer who spends most of the five seasons of the show defending the indefensible, negotiating plea bargains and finding legal loopholes for his clientele of drug dealers, murderers and miscellaneous no-good shits.  He’s one of the most odious, obnoxious and amoral sleazeballs to ever to have graced a TV screen.  In PR terms alone he’s set the legal profession back by centuries, single-handedly undoing all the goodwill earned by the likes of Clarence Darrow, Michael Mansfield QC and the Marvel Comics’ superhero Daredevil.

To put it another way, he’s not the kind of person you expect to see on The Disney Channel.

Of course, it wasn’t really Maurice Levy who appeared on Sonny With a Chance or its mouse-driven, point-and-click game.  It was the actor Michael Kostroff who plays the character Maurice Levy in The Wire and the character Marshall Pike in Sonny With a Chance.   Actors, you see, do this sort of thing all the time.  We should be grown-up about this and remind ourselves that just because someone who portrayed a character in the greatest crime drama in the history of television subsequently appears in a sit-com geared towards the Hannah Montana demographic, it doesn’t necessarily mean there’s any sinister connection between the two shows.

After all, it’s not the same thing as Detective John Munch appearing in Sesame Street.

This evening’s Archive Hour on Radio 4 celebrated the 40^th anniversary of the seminal children’s TV show Sesame Street. The programme featured healthy dollops of insight about the visionary goals that underpinned the show and how the Children’s Television Workshop revolutionised children’s TV through the medium of animation, bad puns and felt glove puppets. The one thing that wasn’t discussed, however, was an aspect of the show that most media pundits are either blissfully unaware of or would prefer just to ignore. I’m talking, of course, about the way in which the seemingly benign and wholesome inner city world of Sesame Street is inextricably linked to the violent and seedy inner city world of modern American crime drama.

In 2006, Sesame Street featured the following (very funny) parody of the popular drama series, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit –

The green one with the shades was a Muppet simulacrum – a simuppetcrum, if you will -- of Detective John Munch, one of Law and Order’s most popular and enduring characters as played by the comedian-turned-actor Richard Belzer:

This wasn’t the first time -- or, for that matter, the last time -- that Sesame Street featured a parody of a popular cop show (cf Miami Mice from the 1980s, or the more recent RSI: Rhyme Scene Investigation). However, the appearance of the Munch character in this skit carried with it a certain troubling ontological resonance that would be lost on the typical pre-schooler, well-meaning parent or Radio 4 researcher.

Namely, that Detective Sergeant John Munch is a conduit of continuity, a notorious fictional floozy and the tart of TV crime drama.

Law and Order: Special Victims Unit wasn’t the first procedural cop show that Munch appeared in. Before that, he was a regular in the groundbreaking 90s series Homicide: Life on the Streets. During Homicide’s run, Munch made three guest appearances on the rival crime show Law and Order and, when Homicide was cancelled in 1999, he subsequently became a regular in Law and Order’s Special Victims Unit spin-off.

While actors do this sort of thing all the time, it’s pretty unusual behaviour for a fictional character. TV shows tend to exist in self-contained, self-referential worlds and Munch’s prime-time promiscuity helped to shatter this time-honoured illusion. It was a bit like EastEnders’ Phil Mitchell ordering a pint at the Rovers Return or Brookside’s Jimmy Corkhill becoming a regular on Skins. If it’s just the actor turning up in a different show then nobody really minds, but when fictional characters themselves start doing this sort of thing then it has troubling implications.

In the case of John Munch, it suggests that Homicide: Life on the Streets and Law and Order co-exist within the same fictional universe. That’s not such a big deal in and of itself as they’re both crime dramas. Thanks to the existence of the Munch simuppetcrum, however, we’re now faced with the troubling implication that both shows exist in the same fictional plane of existence as Sesame Street.

It gets worse. Not content with appearing in multiple crime dramas (including a brief appearance in a short-lived and largely-forgotten series called The Beat), fictional Detective John Munch has also branched out into other genres. He interrogated The Lone Gunmen in a 1997 episode of The X-Files and, more recently, had a cameo appearance in the cult comedy series Arrested Development.

So, thanks to John Munch – the metafictional mindfucker de jour – we now have to get our heads around a single, unified fictional universe in which the characters from Homicide, Law and Order, The X-Files and Arrested Development could theoretically interact not only with each other but with the denizens of Sesame Street.

What makes all of this even more unusual is the fact that Detective John Munch is based on a real person. The Homicide series (in which Munch first appeared) was based on a non-fiction book called Homicide: a Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon, who would later go on to create The Wire (which, in case you don’t already know, is officially the greatest crime drama in the history of television). Munch’s character was based on real-life Baltimore cop called Jay Landsman, and Simon would later go on to pay further tribute to Landsman by naming a character in The Wire after him. The real Jay Landsman – Jay Landsman Actual, I suppose – worked as an advisor on The Wire before eventually becoming a regular cast member on the show, playing a character called Lieutenant Dennis Mello (who, you guessed it, was named after another real-life Baltimore Cop).

In the penultimate episode of the final season, the comedian-turned-actor Richard Belzer made a cameo appearance in The Wire. The character he played was Detective John Munch.

This implies that even a programme that’s as highly-acclaimed as The Wire can still be absorbed into the single, unified fictional universe that centres around Detective John Munch. Furthermore, it suggests that the fictional inner city Baltimore of The Wire is just a mere Greyhound bus ride away from the fictional inner city New York of Sesame Street.

I guess it’s only a matter of time before simuppetcrums of McNulty, Stringer Bell and Omar are introduced to the world of Cookie Monster, Big Bird and Oscar.

In the Seinfeld episode The Frogger, the eponymous Jerry and his “short, stocky, slow-witted and bald” best friend George Costanza visit a soon-to-be closed down pizza parlour they used to frequent at high school.  They discover that the owner still has the old Frogger arcade game they used to play as kids, and the Frogger machine still displays George’s high score of 860,630 points.  George regards this as his greatest ever achievement, so resolves to buy the machine off the pizza parlour owner (“I’m never gonna have a child.  If I lose this Frogger high score, that’s it for me”).  Things, of course, don’t exactly go according to plan.

To add insult to injury, Pat Laffaye of Westport, Conneticut -- a real person, no less -- has recently beaten George’s fictional high score.

Poor old George Costanza -- nothing ever goes his way.   Oh well, at least he’s still the Lord of the Idiots.

(Thanks to Clare for the heads-up)

HBO have just released a teaser trailer for Treme, the new series from The Wire’s creator David Simon.  The show is set in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans and centres around a group of local musicians.  It stars Wire alumni Wendell Pierce and Clarke Peters  (who played Bunk Moreland and Lester Freamon in the Baltimore-set TV masterpiece) as well as the mighty John Goodman and -- somewhat bizarrely -- Elvis Costello.

Here’s the trailer:

Over the last couple of years Clare has become a big fan of the seminal 90s sitcom Seinfeld.  This, it must be said, is largely my fault.

I’m also a fan of Curb Your Enthusiasm, the mighty meta-cringecom from Seinfeld’s co-creator Larry David.  Despite my best efforts, however, Clare has somehow managed to remain immune to its toe-curling charms.

I think this picture from Curb’s season 7 finale may change her mind:

More here.

The satirical comedy The Thick of It -- the third series of which is currently being broadcast by the Beeb -- is officially my favourite TV programme of the year.  This is quite an achievement considering this household doesn’t watch TV anymore.

Isn’t the BBC iPlayer a wonderful thing?

The Thick of It is produced and directed by Armando Iannucci, who also produced and directed In The Loop, my favourite comedy feature film of 2009.  I am, as you might guess, a fan of Armando Iannucci.

This is nothing new.  I’ve been an admirer of Iannucci’s work since he co-created the seminal parody news programme The Day Today with the legendary Chris Morris (and, for that matter, it’s Radio 4 predecessor On The Hour).   I’m particularly fond, though, of his often overlooked late-90s satire show The Saturday Night Armistice, which he co-presented with Day Today alumni David Schneider and Peter Baynham.

This is my favourite moment from the show:

While I’m on the subject, I also heartily recommend Channel Four’s The Armando Iannucci Shows (2001).  It was a sketch-based series which included the following gem (appropriately entitled ‘Twats’):

You can pick up a DVD collecting all eight episodes of The Armando Iannucci Shows from many online outlets for less than a fiver.

I mention this on the offchance you’re stuck for something to buy a Brum-based Blogger this Christmas.

From The Hollywood Reporter:

TORONTO — “Jeopardy!” host Alex Trebek is set to moonlight on the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. as host of the reality competition series “Canada’s Next Prime Minister.”

Canadian-born Trebek, who got his start at the pubcaster, will share the stage March 18 with three former prime ministers as they field pitches from four would-be politicos before choosing a winner.

Last month, the CBC got into hot water after admitting to breaking contestant recruitment rules and contacting political organizations to invite former young political candidates to compete on the series.

The CBC has sold “Canada’s Next Prime Minister” as a format to the BBC.

Italics mine, as is the jaw on the carpet.

How bizarre.

The Seinfeld season 8 DVD boxset came through the post this morning. I’m a big fan of Seinfeld, and used to avidly watch it on BBC2 during the 90s, but I never saw much of the last two seasons due in no small part to erratic BBC scheduling. This evening Clare and I watched the first disc worth of episodes including season 8 opener – The Foundation – which I’d never seen before.

By way of a set-up, the fiancée of self-proclaimed ‘Lord of the Idiots’ George Costanza died at the end of season 7 in a rather tasteless manner. She’d accidentally poisoned herself after licking the toxic gum on a batch of cheap envelopes that were to be used for their wedding invites. Needless to say, George bought the envelopes.

Season 8 opens with her funeral, and – in light of this week’s sad news about Ricardo Montalbán – I was rather suprised to find that the fist episode contained numerous references to his finest hour, Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

It saddens me that we’re only a couple of weeks into 2009 and already I find myself writing about the death of one of my cinematic heroes.

Patrick McGoohan passed away after a short illness in his Los Angeles home yesterday. McGoohan, of course, will chiefly be remembered as the writer, co-creator, producer and star of the seminal, subversive and staggeringly brilliant 1960s TV show The Prisoner. As I’ve probably mentioned elsewhere, The Prisoner was, is and probably always will be one of my all-time favourite television shows and over the years I’ve watched the each of those 17 episodes – from Arrival through to Fall Out – more times than I care to admit.

In February last year Clare and I spent a lovely weekend in North Wales (which I wrote about here, here and here), and on the way back took a ridiculous detour so I could make my first, long-overdue pilgrimage to “the Village” itself, Portmeirion:

“In the popular imagination – well, in mine, at least – Portmeirion is the place where Patrick McGoohan’s famously numerophobic, former-government agent was sent to prison for a resignation he didn’t explain. As a huge fan of the cult 60s show The Prisoner, it was weird walking past all those odd buildings, so many of which have been hard-wired into my imagination since Channel 4 repeated the series in 1985. I was pleasantly surprised at how little The Village had changed in the 40-plus years since the show was originally made: Portmeirion’s Pantheon, for instance, was still recognisable as the green domed home to Number 2, while the stone boat on the shore still looked as mad and as incongruous as it did back then. Then again, it’s a boat. It’s made out of stone. How could it not look mad and incongruous?”

Like I said, I’m a fan.

Clare had never seen The Prisoner, and as we walked through Portmeirion’s Italianate grounds I told her all about the show. She couldn’t believe that somewhere as gorgeously ornate as this could serve as a fictional penitentiary and insisted on watching the series with me at the earliest opportunity. Now Clare’s a fan, too, and even little Lily seems to be getting in on the act. Instead of saying “Goodbye”, “So long”, “Auf Wiedersehen” or even “Adieu” she’s become rather partial to that weird and ubiquitous leave-taking phrase from the show, “Be seeing you.” She’s even mastered that weird salute – where the thumb and forefinger form a circle around the eye – that normally accompanies the phrase. It’s quite a thing to see.

But back to Patrick McGoohan. While he will forever be best known as The Prisoner’s Number 6, there was more to his illustrious stage, film and TV career than just that. In the 1950s, he so impressed another hero of mine, Orson Welles, with his stage presence that The Great Round One later admitted to feeling “intimidated“. In the 60s, besides The Prisoner, he also starred in one of the UK’s most successful TV exports, Danger Man (aka Secret Agent), became the highest paid actor in the UK and reportedly turned down the part of James Bond in Dr No on ethical grounds (or so the legend goes). We should also pause to consider the fact that he appeared not once, not twice, not even thrice but on four separate occasions as the murderer du jour in Columbo.

Some of the films he appeared in that deserve special mention include John Sturges‘ sublime Ice Station Zebra (1968), David Cronenberg’s Scanners (1981) and Don Siegal’s Escape From Alcatraz (1979). The last desrves special mention as he not only appeared alongside My Favourite Movie Icon of All Time, Mr Clinton Eastwood Jr, but he played Alcatraz Island’s sadistic prison warden. I always loved the irony of that.

Patrick McGoohan is survived by his wife of over 50 years Joan Drummond McGoohan and his his three daughters. My thoughts go out to his family and friends.