Video: Bag Boy
In a more conventional version of this sitcom’s small-town convenience-store scenario, Bag Boy would be a teen. But awkward incongruity is the calling card here: this Bag Boy is a middle-aged man played by Steve Brule, himself a comedy construct spun off from Tim And Eric’s Awesome Show and realised with grotesque relish by John C Reilly. It’s all absurdly meta, exploring the line between deliberately strange, deliberately terrible, accidentally terrible, accidentally brilliant and just plain odd. Less a show, more a macabre joke about TV as lazily formatted, creeped-out nightmare.
Radio: 6 Music Festival
BBC 6 Music decamped to Tyneside for its recent festival and it looks to have been a lively affair. The iPlayer hosts highlights of shows from refined noise brutalists Mogwai, urbane New Yorkers around town Interpol, fiery poet Kate Tempest, perennial party-starters Hot Chip, ironically anaemic kings of the East Sussex delta Royal Blood, and many more. BBC 6 Music should get out more often.
Film: Andrew Bird: Echolocations
This short film by Tyler Manson is a typical offering from this attractively stark, almost painfully tasteful arts and culture website. Musician Bird treks through a beautiful canyon in search of an acoustically sympathetic location for performance before busting out his violin and letting rip as he strolls through the sunshine and shadows. It’s equal parts opaque and irresistible. Elsewhere, look out for mini-docs on artists Daniel Libeskind and Tadashi Kawamata and enigmatic experiments in short fiction, too.
TV: Being Bipolar
Cure or a chemical solution? It’s the burning question in discussions of mental-health treatment, and it’s explored again in this fine documentary fronted by Philippa Perry. Hackles might rise at the psychotherapist questioning the efficacy of psychiatric drugs, but at the very least Perry’s nuanced approach shows the dialogue is worth having.
TV: Comedy Blaps
Another season of these comedy shorts, which work as enjoyable curios in their own right while presumably enabling C4 to test the water before commissioning any full series. The pick of this latest bunch are a series of skits by Edinburgh award-nominated Aussie comic Sam Simmons in his Wallstud incarnation. Also look out for The Art Of Foley, starring Rich Hardisty and Andy Needle as Roger and Roger, a pair of struggling sound-effects artists.
