Daft & dull Tut a king-size turkey
THE real King Tut was a sickly inbred with a club foot. US TV turned him into an action hero.
ITV’s Tutankhamun isn’t quite that dodgy. As Nicole Scherzinger might say, they’ve just smacked the story around and made it their banana.
So Howard Carter, the guy who discovered Tut’s long-lost Egyptian tomb, has become archaeology’s equivalent of a rule-breaking maverick detective.
He’s a posh loose cannon, so focused on his digs he can’t see how much Maggie the Yank digs him…until the smitten minx makes a whisky-fuelled pass at him on the eve of World War One.
Hmm. Tut’s burial chamber was the biggest find of the 20th Century. But Carter didn’t look like Max Irons. Maggie didn’t even exist.
His second love interest, Lord Carnarvon’s flame-haired daughter Evelyn, was 13 in 1914. And Carter himself was probably gay.
It’s Victoria and Lord M all over again! Does it matter? I think so.
TV can do what it likes with fictional characters, but with actual events there is a thin line between sexing up the story and completely rewriting history – as the Yanks did with U-571.
ITV have made a four-part series from a tale BBC’s Egypt told more convincingly in two. The result falls somewhere THE Apprentice sweets week started with Lord Sugar praising Willie Wonka, who was fictional… much like the business brains of his alleged “aspiring tycoons”.
Retail pricing strategy is just an abstract theory to these woeful Wonkas. They make up everything on the hoof.
They can’t negotiate, they struggle with calculators. Bow-tie Mukai even managed to talk down his own Email me at: garry.bushell@ dailystar.co.uk or write c/o Daily Star Sunday, 10 Lower Thames Street, London EC3R 6EN between dull and daft. The dialogue is either stilted or just there to join the dots. And the only laugh came when veteran bone-kicker Flinders Petrie burst out of a hole stark naked, sweating like Hillary on a lie detector.
It looked like a lost scene from Monty Python’s The Life Of Brian, or It Ain’t Half Hot, Mummy.
The series opened in 1905 with Carter chinning a French duke who had manhandled one of his team and losing his licence. Two years on, Carnarvon rocks up looking for Carter’s help.
Things aren’t good. Everyone agrees the Valley of Kings is “all dug out”, prices. He survived, but only because team leader Ollie was as wobbly as Mavis Riley.
The boldest candidate was Karthik who proudly shouted the brand name “Suck it and Sea,” in Brighton – the gay capital of the south coast – adding: “Who wants to suck it?” Let’s hope selfstyled Big K and headstrong Sof reach the interviews, if only to see them crash ’n burn like the Mars lander. until an ancient cup from Tut’s coronation convinces Carter the boy king’s tomb could be near.
“People lose things all the time,” agrees Evelyn.
Unfortunately, having started the dig, news breaks that “some idiot kid just shot the Archduke of Austria”. Tut. And to think ITV Brideshead…
THREE things that are more fun than Tutankhamun: 1) Steve Martin’s King Tut dance 2) Tasty Ska covers band TooT’n’Skamen. 3) King Tut from Batman. “Tutlings! Sic ’em!” once made GIFTY, right, The X Factor…SAS: Who Dares Wins… Evan Rachel Wood, Westworld…Black Mirror (Netflix). ANDREW Marr, left, and his “comedy” accents…Tutankhamun – ’king Tut all right… Married At First Sight – off at first glance… Him – hmm, humdrum. HOT not on TV: Carol Harrison’s brill Small Faces musical All Or Nothing. HONEY G’s smirk. Kim Fox’s driving disasters on EastEnders, a crashing bore. The Victorian Slum – just fancy dress and platitudes. The Missing, missing coherence. Clunking dialogue in TV dramas. Endless dull squabbling on TOWIE. HIP-HOP songs Honey G should sing: Ginster’s Paradise. Straight Outta Rampton. Welcome to the Terrordome. It Was a Good Day (Till I Turned Up)… SHARON Osbourne forgot Saara’s name twice on The X Factor. That’s nothing. Simon forgot one contender’s name for years – his first winner, Steve Brookstein.