Michael Jackson: made a surprise appearance on Sky One last week

What times we live in! Within a week I got to see Michael Jackson speaking from beyond the grave and the execution of glam-rock reprobate Gary Glitter. It was a veritable smorgasbord of celebrity deathsploitation!


Let's start with Michael Jackson: The Live Seance. As I often say at funerals, no one is truly dead when you can roll your eyes up into your head and do a funny impression of their voice. And this is exactly what bouffanted charlatan Derek Acorah did for four vulnerable and grieving Michael Jackson fans on Sky One last week.


Enabling this exploitative behaviour was soulless wretch June Sarpong, David Gest (a parasite removed from the King of Pop's colon), and a weaselly parapsychologist called Matthew, who was there to make sure everyone had what they needed, like a paranormal Mrs Doyle.


Gest was there to assert that Michael himself would have approved of such spiritual paparazzi-ing beyond the grave. "He dealt with spiritual issues in his songs," he said. "In the song 'Ghost', for example, and in..." There was a long pause as Gest tried to think of another song. "Thriller," said Gest eventually, as a tumbleweed rolled through the studio.


Matthew was to give the illusion that the programme makers actually cared about the participants in the seance, who were, for the most part, vulnerable outsiders. "When I do my Michael Jackson tribute act, I'm not me, I'm a totally different person," said Darren Lee Hughes earnestly, dressed like Bad-era Jackson. He needed a hug and for someone to tell him it was all okay. Instead, Darren was exposed to the manipulative, crazy Acorah.


Acorah is a man even The Living Channel's Most Haunted has declared a faker (its 'parapsychologist' Ciaran O'Keefe exposed him on one episode). "My spirit guide Sam has told me that Michael is in close proximity," he told the highly-strung fans, some of whom were already on the brink of tears. He went on to say something about spiritual protection and higher powers, before showing them Michael Jackson's hat.


And then he went into this strange trance that, to all intents and purposes, mimicked the symptoms of stroke; he began waffling about migraines and bright lights and his sentences lost all syntax. Suddenly "Michael" was in the room. "Will someone say hello to Quincy Jones for me?" said Acorah in a wavering accent. And that was the last sensible thing he said. There was a weird bit about "lying with Marilyn" and something about a racecourse, which made one of the fans nod knowingly. Oddly, Michael had also picked up some 19th-century affectations whilst in the spirit world, peppering his sentences with conjunction-less phrases like "it is of no consequence!" and "it is paramount to me to receive love!"


The séance participants were convinced, however, and some of them, upsettingly, began to cry, which is the money-shot for a certain kind of reflection-less television producer. For less damaged people with a passing interest in pop culture, it was clear that Acorah had, at best, managed to contact a bad Michael Jackson impersonator, and, at worst, a minor character from a Merchant Ivory film. After a troubled, tabloid-hounded life, the real Michael Jackson would almost certainly have responded to Acorah's invasion of his post-life privacy with an anguished cry of "for the love of Jesus, Acorah, leave me alone!".


As one of the few people advocating the execution of Gary Glitter before the world found out about his crimes (I feel the same way about John and Edward), even I found the premise of The Execution of Gary Glitter too ridiculous for words. In an alternative version of Britain, the death penalty has been reinstated, the extradition laws are changed, non-fatal predatory sex crimes committed in another country are now punishable by death, and Gary Glitter, the leader of the gang, is on trial for his life. Channel 4 is pretending that this is a serious piece of drama designed to stimulate debate about the death penalty. It is, in fact a celeb-obsessed, exploitation snuff-drama which trivialises child abuse, glorifies public anger, undermines the justice system and makes overpaid television executives wee with excitement.


They tried to give some verisimilitude to proceedings by featuring talking-head interviews with 'real' people like journalists Miranda Sawyer and Gary Bushell and Tory politician Anne Widdecombe, but this just made it seem like a 'Remember The 1990s' nostalgia show. What they did not do, of course, was look at crime statistics before and after the abolition of the death penalty in 1969, or rehearse any of the arguments for or against state-killing as a deterrent or punishment. It was just a tawdry tabloid pantomime about 'evil paedo Gary Glitter' and it was very boring.


Dramatically, Glitter was far too obviously evil. If every paedophile went around darting his eyes, rubbing his hands, scuttling like Gollum and being unbelievably rude to everyone, there wouldn't really be a problem; we'd have them all in nets by tea-time. But real life is complex. Some of the most evil people in the world are very pleasant and some ignorant slavering bastards are secret saints. That's far more interesting dramatically.


Now, the real-life Glitter didn't help his image when he grew that outrageously satanic goatee, but if I was his fictional lawyer I'd probably have advised against the additional fangs, cape and tail he sported in this programme. I find it very hard to believe that the real Glitter would tell a court that little girls were asking for it, even if that's what he believed.


Glitter was so unlikeable he clearly wasn't intended for our pity, and since there were no other characters to speak of, the whole hour-and-a-half was just an exercise in hate and schadenfreude ("Wanna be in my gang, son," says a gruff lecherous voice as he's led into prison). Then, since the programme was called The Execution of... there wasn't even any tension or doubt about the outcome. If they'd called the programme "See the world as a Daily Mail reader sees it!" it would have made more sense, but as it was it was the weirdest, most pointless bit of television I've seen since, well, Michael Jackson: The Live Seance.


In a week filled with car-crash TV, UTV's big five-night state-of-the-nation drama concerned itself with the before-and-aftermath of a car crash which conveniently brought together dramatically disparate elements of the British population. Like many recent British dramas it under-used a stellar cast, over-used an oppressively familiar string 'n' electronica soundtrack, and fetishised grey urban landscapes, banal conversations, and dull English lives.


But wait! These moribund existences all disguise dark secrets which unravel as Douglas Henshall (who also has a secret) investigates.


And then it's still boring for about two episodes.


But then it gets a bit better (around episode three) as strong acting performances begin transcending the clichés. Its main problem really was its title. I know they couldn't call it Crash because there's already a film with that title. But calling it Collision? That's just a step up from naming it 'Spillage' or 'Annoying Traffic Incident'.


pfreyne@tribune.ie