Tattoos, Simon Cowell and Having my Day in Court with Judge Alex

The first time I was in a courtroom was as a witness for the police in the UK, when they had decided my complaint against a taxi driver warranted a case for "rude and aggressive behaviour".

The Appeals Court (he didn't turn up for the first trial - ok, a tad melodramatic, I admit) put the problem down to there not being "enough charisma" between us. How much charisma do you need to go from Wardour Street to Brewer Street (less than a mile) behind a pane of glass, I asked the dumbfounded police afterwards.

The second time was in LA in 2011, when I successfully sued my landlady for non-return of a huge chunk of my deposit. Everything I put into practice I learned from watching just one TV show: Judge Alex (follow @judgealexferrer on Twitter). And so, today, I found myself in court for the third time: not in the handcuffs (alas) I fantasised about when I first saw the TV show, and not, thankfully, with my being sued for being his stalker.

I was there as a member of the audience, and not since I saw Simon Cowell's enormous Winnebago (no, that is not a euphemism) on the set of American Idol a few years back, have I been so excited.

In fact, so excited have I been about knowing both men, I nearly got their names tattooed - one on each shoulder - when I was in Venice Beach a few weeks back.

Alcohol had been consumed. Sobriety had been resumed when I settled for an engraved ingot with WWSD (What Would Simon Do) on it (sorry, Judge, even semi-stalkers have their pecking order).

So, here I am on the set and I am asked where I would like to sit - on or off camera. Anyone who knows me would know they could have just plonked me on the Judge's bench at the outset and downgraded me from there.

In fact, anyone who knows me will be surprised to learn that I was not fully robed, gavel in hand, shouting "Action!" with the poor Judge locked in a cupboard elsewhere on the studio lot.

So, I am seated second from the left in the front row, and the first person to talk to me is an actor. So is the second. And the third. And the . . . You get my drift. They join lists that provide audiences for studio shows such as Judge Alex and get paid by the day. I suggest a sum and am told that yes, I am fairly accurate for days like this. When I arrive, the team is already on show five, and there are three more to go. They record 130 shows in a little over three months and the five blocks of three day taping are clearly the most intense.

"They get paid more than we do," says RAN 1 (the Resentful Actor Number 1 on my left, who has been to every show today), nodding towards the hallowed ground beyond the wooden barrier where he is penned. "When I was a litigator . . . " he begins. I decide not to point out that he has never been, will never be, a litigator. I also hesitate to point out that he will never be an actor, either, but hold my tongue. (When I returned to see my second show, he was shunted off to "Standing room". Quite right).

Behind me sits RAN 2. She's a nurse. Not a real one, of course. She has been a "background actor" in several hospital dramas, but is ready to move centre stage.

"Do a monologue - NOW!" shouts RAN 1, a little frighteningly. She stumbles. I think of reciting Henry V's speech from the Battle of Agincourt, but in the millisecond I take for breath, RAN 1 is already off. "I'm a Shakespearean actor really . . . "

There is a very handsome younger man behind him who has played a detective (albeit a "background detective"). He has the kind of look that gives me the feeling that he might just make it, and he comes to these shows to network. He claims they have been very useful.

Oh, Hollywood, I love you. The hope.

The tension is building and the courtroom bailiff Mason is on the set. Very cute. Great smile. Great presence. And his gun is in my eye line. I don't known what it is about men in uniforms and outfits, but take Judge Alex Ferrer . . . Ex-pilot, cop, judge - oh, your honour, please avoid the medical profession; a white coat might prove the final, fatal straw. Even as I write that sentence, I am fantasising about your stethoscope.

The studio, on Bronson in Hollywood, is all very relaxed ("Remember my name!" whispers RAN 1) until the announcement of "The Honorable (US spelling!) Judge Alex Ferrer", which, unlike when you watch on TV, has a slight air of "Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome your host. . ." about it.

Then he's there. And everything changes. It's like the Second Coming, albeit one a lot more clean-shaven than the first. The cliches of tall, dark and handsome are even more apparent under the studio lights, and from my seat I get a great view.

At least, I did, until the second case, when a very wide defendant blocked my view of Judge Alex completely. Talk about a total eclipse of the Son (geddit? Oh, go back few sentences). I so wanted her to lose. She did.

The third case even had a star guest in singer Freda Payne (most famous for the 1970 hit Band of Gold), which was very exciting. I thought the Judge got a little too overwhelmed at her presence, but by then I was backstage with the producers and out of striking distance of my love rival.

The producers were loving it. I've seen a lot of shows and know a lot of crews and I have never seen one as united and enjoying their work as this one. They laughed, they shared comments, they even clapped when the audience clapped. And they cared. They absolutely cared.

"I really hope she wins," said one, turning to his co-workers. And I could tell he wanted her to. It's drama, after all, and we care about the ending (she did, by the way, and the cheering backstage was heartfelt).

The cases come from all over the US, and Judge Alex (unlike other TV courtroom judges) conducts considerable research into each state's individual laws. With stringers in around 25 states trawling court records, the team also has to weed out people just looking for a free trip to Hollywood. At the studio, the rest room door jammed my finger twice. I told Supervising Producer James that I might sue. He jokingly suggested I could be a case on the final run of taping; even be "the last show".

Oh, James, you really don't know me, do you? I am already shopping for my outfit.

It is not just the research or the good looks (did I mention those?) that make this show easily the best of the US courtroom reality shows - and one of the best shows on TV. The Judge's intelligence, charisma and brilliant lateral thinking are second to none. It comes across on TV, but even more so in the studio where, of the 40 or so minutes taped, by the time you add promos, ads, et al, roughly just 14 will make it to screen. And, having seen the live show, I cannot heap enough praise on the seamless, incredible job they do in the editing suite.

Judge Alex doesn't so much listen to the evidence, it's as if he's breathing it in, and you can see from the initial slight smile, the information being gathered, formulated, and finally delivered in one-liners that are as funny as those from any comedian. I swear I have never laughed aloud so much at anyone on TV. Ever.

And this from a woman who has been watching and reviewing the genre for about 90 hours a week for three decades.

Judge Alex's years as a cop, lawyer and judge seem to be embedded in his DNA and, having had some of the worst criminals before him (the forthcoming movie Pain and Gain is based on one of his most famous cases - the Judge was asked to appear in it but would not renege on a school engagement to which he was already committed), he has seen the lot.

Now, he's clearly having fun, but his ability to combine the minutiae of law with such immense humour is truly breathtaking - as is his incredible energy in being able to perform so eloquently and brilliantly for so many hours under those lights.

And then there are those hands: long, elegant fingers that seem to massage the arguments as the Judge declares “Here’s where we’re at”, before delivering his verdict. Alex Scissorhands.

You'll be hearing more about the show and the Judge when I post the interview I conducted recently with him in Miami, but just in case you're hoping for that Jane Eyre happy ending, I'll put you out of your misery now.

Reader, I didn't marry him.

Matt Bomer a Christian Shock!

Is Matt Bomer too openly a Federal Agent and professional conman to play Christian Grey in the movie version of the book Fifty Shades of Grey?

    

Of course he is. Anyone who watches White Collar knows the reality, and the idea that he could put his day job on hold to pretend to be someone he is clearly not is, of course, ludicrous.

    

I have to be honest, upon hearing that he was being considered for Christian, I was shocked. How can you have a man wearing an ankle tag, stripping off and slapping a woman around? Anastasia would be bound to notice and comment upon it – “Hey, I can’t wait to get those handcuffs on and have you beat me black and blue, but what’s with the leg jewellery?” Talk about putting a dampener on the proceedings.

   

Heck, it’s like a man who can’t walk on water being asked to play Jesus. 

If I were writing a film about the Son of God, I would insist that the casting director check out the individual’s credentials for the role. After the walking on water bit was established, I would insist that he fulfil other criteria essential to convince us that he is Jesus. 

Was he born in a stable? Was his mother a virgin? Can he turn water into wine and wine into blood? Can he transform a couple of sardines and a baguette into a feast for 5000? Can he persuade a dozen fishermen to leave their families and go on a road trip? Most important of all, can he rise from the dead? 

Unless the actor’s life completely resonated with the character I had written, he would not get the part.

    

Robert Powell would never have landed the part of Jesus had he not displayed all these qualities at the audition, and the fact that he is still with us is evidence that he really did rise from the dead. Rumours of a Second Coming have, however, been greatly exaggerated.

    

Similarly, Daniel Radcliffe had obviously served a long apprenticeship as a wizard before he landed the role of Harry Potter. How else could he have mastered all those tricks? And if bicycles were not really able to fly, what would be the point of watching ET?

    

The importance of art mimicking life to the letter provides a particularly pertinent point when it comes to casting gay men as straight and vice versa. Could David Hyde Pierce have delivered so convincing and hilarious a performance, lusting after Daphne in Frasier, if he were gay? Of course not. It was clearly something that only a full-blooded heterosexual hunk could have mustered.

    

Would How I Met Your Mother be remotely funny if it contained gay people purporting to be straight, all in the name of entertainment? How ridiculous would that be?  

   

If people start pretending to be people they are not, where does that leave us as a society? It’s like telling someone they have licence to be a chameleon, casting a spell over the lives of others to help them suspend their disbelief. What sort of a world would it be, if everyone went around kicking reality in the teeth?

    

Before long, you would have special schools set up to teach people the art of this deception. People might start paying to go and see it, even. They might start giving out awards for some people doing it better than others.

    

So, Mr Bomer, I find it inconceivable that, having returned to New York to continue your work with the Feds, you could convince me that you spend your days in a basement, constructing wooden crucifixes on which to fix women with ropes and chains.

    

That is a job for a man with psycho tendencies. Someone who might conjure up the image of a hungry rodent in a woman’s vagina, feasting on her sexual organs to induce a slow death, for example. But you would have to ask Bret Easton Ellis about that.

  

If this deception thing ever takes off – stranger things have happened - I have no doubt you could pull off the part of Christian Grey brilliantly, and I would pay good money to see it. 

In the meantime, back in the real world, look after Peter. He’s a good friend.

     

  

    

   

Dallas, Dallas, Wherefore Art Thou, Dallas?

You know you’re old when the oil barons are getting younger. 

The remake of Dallas has brought us a new breed of Texan magnates who look barely out of their Lego and I don’t like them one little bit.

    

At best, Bobby’s son Christopher is Thunderbirds’ Scott Tracy after a day at the spa; at worst, Norman Bates after a week of bad bookings. JR’s son Christopher has a walrus sitting on his face and is about as sexy as . . . well, a walrus sitting on your face.

   

 John Ross’s and Christopher’s fathers, who were once such magnetic personalities, are no longer appealing, either. JR’s eyebrows look as if they need their own Visa to enter the country, and Bobby looks as if he has had the kind of eye-lift that turns people Chinese overnight; in fact, his eyes appear to have been eaten by his forehead. Lucy looks as if she has spent 20 years eating all the pies she never got to consume when the wind swept the food away every morning on the breakfast terrace, and all the allegedly glamorous women make a Stepford Wife look like Personality of the Millennium.

    

I so, so wanted to like it; but it is bad. So, so bad. Lame writing, lame acting, and a lame Bobby, who keeps clutching his leg in pain, as the cancer he is trying to keep secret takes hold. Sue Ellen appears to be the only character who has survived the fallout. And Linda Gray still brilliantly plays it for the laugh it always was.

  

 I first watched Dallas when it was broadcast in the UK on BBC2 in the afternoon; I think I was probably its first UK fan. Although I did not know the term soap opera when growing up, I knew it must be something very, very naughty, because my parents always sent me to my room when Peyton Place was on.

    

Never having watched Coronation Street, I took to Dallas because of the shoulder pads, the pools, the glamour. It was a world so far removed from my own in South Wales, I could fantasise about riches, fine clothes, magnificent dinners, and take joy in the knowledge that for every material wealth these people had, they were still miserable as hell. That made me happy. Being poor. With no fine clothes. And, in a bad week, rather hungry.

   

 I specially liked Dallas’s annual Oil Barons Ball, where the oil magnates would gather to celebrate the industry but end up fighting and/or murdering each other. WestStar oil head honcho Jeremy Wendell always featured heavily on these occasions, though I swear he never washed his shirt from one year to the next.

    

Dallas lost its credibility with the “death” of Bobby, quickly resurrected and made the subject of wife Pam’s dream, when the ratings plummeted following the departure of Patrick Duffy, who played him.

   

 The biggest problem was that the sister show, Knot’s Landing, was still in production and had a lot of episodes in the can; so Bobby’s brother Gary continued to grieve on one channel, telling everyone how momma had never been the same since Bobby’s death, and nobody ever bothered to tell him that an entire year had all been in his head.

    

But it was the ludicrousness – the complete lack of believability – that, strangely, made it work. The new mob are playing it as if they have landed parts in Henry V, and they are about as menacing as a dead mouse in a Camembert.

    

After two episodes, I’ve already wiped it from my “series record”; life really is too short. 

And I really, really don’t want to watch Bobby dying from cancer – well, not unless he emerges wet and glistening and we discover that it was Christopher’s dream after all.   

    

Marc's Cherry On The Cake 3/25/12

Nicollette Sheridan’s Edie Britt did not stick out like a sore thumb on Desperate Housewives; it was more of a sore torso.

The final series of what has, for me, been one of the most brilliant TV dramas ever, is ending with more than a touch of controversy (and I don’t just mean Mike’s inability to buy a change of shirt). Nicollette Sheridan has been in court, suing the show’s creator, Marc Cherry. She claims that he got rid of her for reasons other than those he claimed (you will have to read up on this elsewhere; I don’t want to enter the legal minefield), and it’s allegedly all heading back to court.

Obviously, I know nothing of any of this, other than what I have read about the court proceedings, but as a TV critic, I was always 100% behind Sheridan’s departure – in fact, as passionately as I was against her arrival in the first place. To me, her character never worked; she just sort of landed on Wisteria Lane with about as much at-home-ness as ET arriving to address the Senate.

It wasn’t just that she was new. The central four – Gabby (Eva Longoria), Bree (Marcia Cross), Susan (Teri Hatcher), Lynette (Felicity Huffman) – have made relationships with several newcomers, including, among my favourites, the character of Katherine, played by the sensational Dana Delaney (now the star of Body of Proof).

I could just never get to grips with who Edie was supposed to be. She was a vamp, certainly, yet without the charm of vampishness that Vanessa Williams has brought to the part of Renee – who, despite outward appearances, still has layers that often expose her vulnerability. By comparison with both Renee and the foursome, Edie was . . . well, very one-dimensional and predictable.

I’ve been pondering these matters today as I’ve sat indoors, despite it being a beautiful sunny day outside, catching up with the series – the eighth, which will be its last. If you’re in the UK and watching Channel 4, don’t read on if you don’t want to know what’s coming up (even though some papers have already ruined the surprise).

I’ve been weeping uncontrollably at Mike’s funeral, as characters’ flashbacks of him steer them in different directions in their lives. If you are still reading, you would be well advised to stock up on Kleenex as you prepare to say goodbye to this wonderful character – and Hatcher delivers her best performance ever.

Yes, yes, I know that it will be the end for everyone soon, and I have stocked up on tissues for that day, too (anyone on for a DH end-of-life party, by the way?); but Mike’s death took me by surprise.

I don’t know how I’m going to live without the show. Eva Longoria’s beauty and Gabby’s hilarious selfishness; evil Orson and his determination to destroy Bree, the wife who spurned him; the gorgeous Tom, who has yet to realise that Lynette and he belong together; Susan as grandmother, supporting her daughter as she prepares to become a mother – I have loved every minute (even the daft bits).

It’s a shame for everyone that it’s ending on such a sour note and in court; but for some of us, Ms Sheridan’s exit really was the Cherry on the cake – literally and metaphorically.

Escape From Alcatraz (The TV Show) 3/13/12

Alcatraz.

It’s one of those words that sends a shiver down your spine.

It’s that movie you vaguely remember about a bunch of blokes who swam away from the horrible guards on a rock in the middle of an ocean no one had ever heard of.

Well, it seemed like that when I was growing up in Wales at the time. But then the biggest excitement our parents allowed us in Newport was a Cadbury’s flake sticking out of a Mr Whippy cone of a Sunday afternoon.

I saw Alcatraz "The Rock" last year. I was living in LA at the time and, as everyone told me how much I would prefer San Francisco, decided to head up there for the weekend.

I hated it. If I tell you that Alcatraz was the highlight of my SF week-end, that will give you an indication of quite how much I loathed it. And I didn’t even get to Alcatraz. Just the view of it was enough to make me feel better after the horrors of SF.

No restaurants serving after 9pm, an attitude to women dining alone that was positively prehistoric, and by far the scruffiest, dirtiest place I had ever been in the US.

Apart from that, I loved it. Ha!

But I will go back. If only to visit Alcatraz. Which is more than I can say of the TV drama. That, I hope never to visit again.

It promised so much. Big hype, big sets, dramatic music . . . but ultimately never delivered. A better example of style over substance it would be hard to find, and in the absence of a decent script (barely any script, come to that), it relied on stereotypes against a glossy background (grey, of course – apparently, it’s the new black, amongst people who know about such things).

So, we had the unshaven hunk with a mysterious air; closely followed by the petite, pretty, blonde, female cop, whose partner had (of course!) been killed; and then the proverbial Fat Bloke who, quelle surprise, got on rather well with said blonde, when she declared that she wanted him to be her new sidekick.

He could hardly contain himself (actually, that’s a lie: he looks as if he could contain not only himself but at least three families of refugees and a multi- storey car park). I predict his sad demise round about episode eight, series two, all providing the doughnuts and the Big Macs don’t get to him first.

Then there was the proverbial Bad Guy, who turned out to be running what appeared to be a cryogenics spaceship and . . .

To be honest, this IKEA showroom killed it for me at the end of the episode, because by then I really didn’t know where I was and, more importantly, didn’t know whose side I was supposed to be on.

For me, it’s important to know for whom you are rooting at the very beginning of a show, and Alcatraz didn’t have a clue. The hunk who drew us in turned out to be a nutcase and, worse, a nutcase convict from another era.

They missed a trick here and they should never have made him a killer in the pilot episode. There was just too much happening and they over-egged the pudding to such a degree that we had – and still do not have – any idea who the hero is.

Any show, TV or film, must address the fundamental question that any viewer or cinema-goer asks before their seat is even warm: whose side am I on?

After episode one of Alcatraz, I’m on the side of . . . well, any side that isn’t the channel it’s on.

Not only is it the poor man's Lost; it's the poor man's Lost behind bars.

A sad case of not getting my Rock off.

Or this jailhouse not rocking.

Ashton vs Charlie: There's A New Trunk On The Block 9/21/11

Why would anyone subject themselves to a bunch of showbiz (mostly) B listers abusing them not only in front of a studio audience but viewers at home?

The “celebrity roast” is bear pit television in LA. A celebrity – invariably one who has a dubious moral record – sits in a chair, while the “roast master” introduces the other celebrities, who in turn get up to deliver a comic monologue denouncing the star’s shortcomings.

For the less practised, the struggle to read an autocue full of jokes that have been written for them is embarrassing to watch; other performers display genius both in terms of material and presentation.

Last night, Comedy Central aired the Charlie Sheen Roast, just an hour after Charlie’s replacement, Aston Kutcher, made his debut on Two and a Half Men, from which Charlie was sacked.

Kutcher’s entrance was in wet clothes, from which he quickly excavated himself and bared all – alas, this was hidden from the viewers sitting at home, but we nevertheless learned in the storyline that he is allegedly hung like an elephant.

Or maybe that’s just his character.

Anyway, CBS will have been rubbing their own trunks with glee when the viewing figures came in – 28 million.

The roast made less easy viewing. The brilliant Seth MacFarlane was roast master and was a good sport about taking jokes against himself too, even though they were pretty lame ones referring to the possibility that he might be gay but unwilling to come out of the closet. Who cares.

Mike Tyson delivered his speech with enormous energy and charm and looked in danger of expiring with the hilarity of the whole night, especially jokes in relation to his facial tattoo. Jeffrey Ross was the fantastic old pro he always is, even though a little bizarrely dressed as Colonel Gadhafi, and William Shatner was the star we know him to be.

And then there were some other people of whom I had never heard – which seemed to be the case for Charlie and Seth, too.

There were some very funny jokes, with many references to Charlie’s drug and alcohol problems and his psychological meltdown that followed his sacking from TAAHM. This was as sad as it was amusing, with the star later admitting that he hadn’t realised how screwed up he was until that night.

His own speech was a polished masterpiece and also rather moving, in the obvious realisation that here is a man who has been through hell and come through. Probably.

What left a far less pleasant taste in the mouth were the references to the women Charlie has physically abused, and quite why people were able to laugh so loudly at the idea of bleeding women cowering in corners and having things violently thrown at them is beyond me.

The bigger mystery was why one of them – ex-wife Brooke Mueller – was sitting in the audience, laughing uproariously along with everyone else.

But then I remembered that I recently made a “joke” on Facebook about the UK show, Red or Black, when the first winner of £1million was revealed to have served time for beating up his ex-girlfriend. Would the show now be called Black or Blue, I questioned. Most people thought it hilarious, but there were a couple of voices of dissension.

Was my comment any less offensive than the ones I felt uncomfortable with last night?

I think there’s a difference. My comment was a linguistic joke making fun of the show’s title in the light of their having failed to do their research properly; the Sheen event seemed to carry the message that if you’re a big enough and rich enough celebrity, you can do what the hell you like, including beating up women, and everyone will love you even more for it.

I enjoy the roasts, although can’t for the life of me think why anyone would subject themselves to the experience. Maybe it’s a way of drawing a line under the past: a way of saying “That was then, this is now” – and moving on, having learned valuable lessons.

Sheen was brilliant in TAAHM and he will go on to do other great work; I also hope that he has beaten his demons and emerged a stronger and nicer person.

But Kutcher will do well as his replacement. You know that phrase people say when nobody’s talking about “the elephant in the room”?

With Kutcher’s naked debut, now they’re talking ONLY about the elephant in the room.

Collared By The White Collar Audience 7/7/11

Where have White Collar’s opening titles gone?

Where is the energetic music and cheeky grins of Neil and Peter?

I am in mourning.

White Collar (USA Network) is one of my favourite shows on television. The chemistry between Matt Bomer (ex-con Neil) and FBI agent Peter (Tim DeKay) makes them one of the best double acts in the history of crime drama. With the exception of some of the external shots (allegedly New York, but which High Definition turns into something resembling your old kitchen), it looks, sounds and feels fantastic.

But I am in mourning for the old titles.

What they did was set up the very spirit of the show and the relationship between, and characters of, Neil and Peter. The new music is dull and creates no sense of tension of the drama to come. The boxes featuring the characters are a throwback to Sixties titles but have been given a modern twist that is out of kilter with the almost quaint elements that follow. They don’t work because they convey a sense of disconnectedness between the various elements of the show.

If I had never seen White Collar, I would have no idea as to what I might be about to see and, in the time it took me to work it out, I would be reaching for the remote.

So many fans have complained about the new sequence that USA executives have decided to let viewers decide on whether the show should revert to the old sequence and music. Voting opens tomorrow afternoon (Friday 8th July); the choice will take effect in two weeks and continue all season.

It is a brilliant piece of marketing and one that would be inconceivable in the UK, where viewers’ opinions are less respected than they are here. I recall when Dallas replaced Barbara Bel Geddes as Miss Ellie, such was the outcry against her successor, Donna Reed, that Ms Geddes was reinstated. Likewise, the outcry when the show killed off Bobby Ewing (Patrick Duffy) and resurrected him as having been part of wife Pamela’s dream. Unfortunately, over on the sister show, Knot’s Landing, they continued to mourn him long after Pamela (Victoria Principal) had woken up.

I am very admiring of a network that listens to viewers who, are, essentially, paying the wages of everyone in the organisation. Executive producer Jeff Eastin is a keen Twitterer, and his updates about the show, its characters and plots, also help to engage the audience. If I have to record White Collar, I can’t go on Twitter until I have watched it, such is the enthusiasm of followers who cannot help but give away the plot.

I’m as involved as anyone in this latest off screen drama and will be casting my vote tomorrow – in favour of the old sequence, old music (versus new sequence, new music – you can’t mix and match). I’ll also be trying to catch another criminal on the White Collar website and drooling over the wonderful Mr DeKay and pretty Mr Bomer.

And here’s my prediction for the vote: overwhelmingly in favour of the old titles and music.

Watch this space.