Lacking in focus, this fashion-shoot documentary is a garbled mess . . .
The most inane question any interviewer can ask is, ‘So, tell me about yourself.’ It’s worse than lazy, revealing a complete lack of interest, as bad as saying, ‘I haven’t bothered finding out the first thing about you.’
It’s the question that modelling agency director Zoe threw at newcomer Devon in the first part of the fashion- shoot series New Model Agency (Ch4). The lad was a bit nonplussed, as anyone would be: ‘I’m just a normal, plain, standard guy really,’ he said, uncertain what else he was supposed to reply.
But the show fails to answer its own question. From the start, it told us next to nothing about what the Zebedee agency is, what they’re trying to achieve, whether they have any interesting success stories and why we should bother with this documentary.
An opening segment in the firm’s Sheffield offices gave us no clue what the staff were actually doing. Chattering into phones, they could have been a sales team at an insurance brokerage, or fast fashion importers, or anything in between.
Nothing was explained, until we cut away to an ‘editorial shoot’, whatever that is — don’t ask me, because I gathered only that this was extremely, hugely, very important, even though the models weren’t actually getting paid.
One of them, a boy named Shem, was told he was looking sick. That left him confused — he couldn’t work out if it was an outdated Millennial slang compliment or a medical diagnosis.
Another, a girl called Jasroop, promised us that within five years her career would be so stellar that she’d be living in America — an endearingly naive ambition.
Gradually it became obvious that all Zebedee’s models were ‘different’, which is to say they looked exactly like models — high cheekbones, wide eyes, long limbs — but with some distinctive added feature. Shem was albino, Jasroop and Devon had vitiligo, while the latest signing on the books, Tia, was completely bald following the onset of alopecia in her teens.
What inspired Zebedee’s founders to specialise this way wasn’t explained. Perhaps there’s a moving story behind the birth of the agency, but if so, we didn’t hear it. I’m left with the nagging suspicion that someone has spotted a lucrative niche in the market, a way of making money out of being a little bit woke.
A caption at the start informed us that this series is made ‘in association with Marks and Spencer’, which must mean it’s been scrutinised, sieved and signed off by successive panels of executives in suits.
The result is a corporate video that probably makes sense if you already know this business and all the people involved. To an outsider, it was a garbled mess.
You don’t need to know the epic novel by James Clavell, or remember the original TV version with Richard Chamberlain and Toshiro Mifune, to be swept away by the spectacular historical adventure Shogun (Disney+).
A former Japanese prisoner-ofwar, Clavell wrote his 1,100-page bestseller half a century ago, and the storytelling is dated: heroes and villains are all men, women exist chiefly as love interest.
But the pace is tremendous, and the evocation of Japan in the age of warlords is magnificent, with costumes and sets that must have tested even Disney’s budget. One storm on the ocean is so vividly recreated, you could get seasick.
Cosmo Jarvis, a man with a touch of the Richard Burtons in his voice, plays english adventurer John Blackthorne, shipwrecked and taken prisoner by a local samurai chieftain.
It’s not for the squeamish — there’s a beheading, and a sailor is boiled alive. But if you love old-fashioned blockbusters, this busts all the blocks.