Shot on a budget of 30 pence per episode, Doctors tells the story of the most peculiar GP surgery in all the land. "The Mill", as the surgery is called, exists in what appears to be so kind of post-apocalyptic England - I say it's post-apocalyptic because I have never seen such a depopulated place as Letherbridge (the town/city where the programme is set) - the surgery receives a maximum of 2 patients per day (you don't need to make an appointment, just rock up and demand to see the doctor of your choice immediately), the university appears to have no students and, whenever they're in the towns only bar, no other customers or members of staff are ever visible. This lack of patients enables the doctors to go on mad missions every day, visiting their only patient's house and sorting out any problems that they may have. The programme is so unrealistic that one wonders why they bothered to base it around a GP surgery, something that most viewers would have plenty of experience of. Seriously, the plot lines are absolutely mental - I suspect that they are created by the producers scrawling words on pieces of card and swirling them around inside a tombola machine before picking a few out and using them to string together some semblance of a coherent story. For example, last Friday's episode was created by picking the words "angina", "Los Angeles", "Down's Sydrome" and "phone sex". Basically, it's mental and, as the TV in my work's reception is permanently set to BBC1, I'm forced to endure it 5 days a week.
Reviews
2 Reviews
Ben & Arthur
(2002)
What the...
24 April 2010
Warning: Spoilers
A friend showed me this last night and I think I'm mainly writing here as a means of therapy, a way to come to terms with what I saw. We watched it on Youtube and, even alongside all the thousands of videos of teenagers singing karaoke and cats riding around on vacuum cleaners, it must be one of the most dire things I have ever witnessed on that website. The fact that this has been sold on DVD, and that some poor, unfortunate souls have paid money for it, is deeply troubling.
The first 10 minutes are taken up with the name Sam Mraovich flashing up repeatedly over what appears to be an image of a sceptic tank - this is in many ways a metaphor for the rest of the film - absolute sewage, made all the worse by the fact that ever element of the production has been controlled by one strange, talentless oaf who even plays the lead character. Paradoxically, despite being possibly the most poorly made film in the history of the universe, Ben and Arthur is somehow extremely entertaining, and it has been a long while since I've laughed so much at anything. The plot is some nonsensical story about two guys who go off to somewhere in the US where gay marriage is legal and get wed - but one of them has a nutty, camp, wannabe Bond-style villain for a brother who happens to be part of some loony Christian sect that hates gays and loves violence. The film degenerates further and further into a great big farcical mess as the Christians kill off the gays and their friends, and the gays kill off the Christians, until it arrives at one of the oddest finales ever - the director/lead character (a vigorously unattractive man) gets naked, gets forcibly baptised and then starts pleading with the psycho-brother to have sex with him. Basically there is no real sense in trying to explain the plot, as it is just far too strange for words.
The acting is abysmal. Like, really, really, really bad. You hear "actors" blatantly mess up their lines and see them stare directly into the camera. The film is absolutely full of mistakes, too numerous to mention and the entire thing looks as if it was filmed on someone's mobile phone by a Parkinson's sufferer. I mean, surely it can't be too difficult to find someone capable of at least holding a camera vaguely still, can it? Then there's the music - the opening credits are accompanied by a plinky-plonky version of The Entertainer, whilst the rest of the score was created by a mentally-deficient chimp using a keyboard.
There is nothing good about this film, literally NOTHING - well, apart from the fact that a lot of it is unintentionally hilarious. Watching it will fill you with a deep sense of loathing and pity towards anybody who had anything to do with it's production, the fact that there are films ranked lower than this on here astounds me. It truly is the antithesis off all that is good in this world.
The first 10 minutes are taken up with the name Sam Mraovich flashing up repeatedly over what appears to be an image of a sceptic tank - this is in many ways a metaphor for the rest of the film - absolute sewage, made all the worse by the fact that ever element of the production has been controlled by one strange, talentless oaf who even plays the lead character. Paradoxically, despite being possibly the most poorly made film in the history of the universe, Ben and Arthur is somehow extremely entertaining, and it has been a long while since I've laughed so much at anything. The plot is some nonsensical story about two guys who go off to somewhere in the US where gay marriage is legal and get wed - but one of them has a nutty, camp, wannabe Bond-style villain for a brother who happens to be part of some loony Christian sect that hates gays and loves violence. The film degenerates further and further into a great big farcical mess as the Christians kill off the gays and their friends, and the gays kill off the Christians, until it arrives at one of the oddest finales ever - the director/lead character (a vigorously unattractive man) gets naked, gets forcibly baptised and then starts pleading with the psycho-brother to have sex with him. Basically there is no real sense in trying to explain the plot, as it is just far too strange for words.
The acting is abysmal. Like, really, really, really bad. You hear "actors" blatantly mess up their lines and see them stare directly into the camera. The film is absolutely full of mistakes, too numerous to mention and the entire thing looks as if it was filmed on someone's mobile phone by a Parkinson's sufferer. I mean, surely it can't be too difficult to find someone capable of at least holding a camera vaguely still, can it? Then there's the music - the opening credits are accompanied by a plinky-plonky version of The Entertainer, whilst the rest of the score was created by a mentally-deficient chimp using a keyboard.
There is nothing good about this film, literally NOTHING - well, apart from the fact that a lot of it is unintentionally hilarious. Watching it will fill you with a deep sense of loathing and pity towards anybody who had anything to do with it's production, the fact that there are films ranked lower than this on here astounds me. It truly is the antithesis off all that is good in this world.
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