A legendary commentator? This is just a bloke shouting on telly
Jonathan Pearce, the ear-splitting commentator from Robot Wars (BBc2), has the most annoying voice on television. that’s not just my opinion — tony Soprano thought so, too.
In one episode of new Jersey gangster soap opera the Sopranos, the Mafia boss turns up to confront his toxic, big-mouthed sister and finds her doing the ironing while watching robot Wars. the maxvolume soundtrack is so irritating, tony can’t hear himself think.
It’s 12 years since the mechanical gladiators last went into battle, but the years have not mellowed Pearce’s vocal cords.
When he’s excited, which is all of the time, he makes an incoherent racket like a chainsaw going through plate metal. Since that’s what is happening in the arena as well, this is the only tV show that can give you a headache in stereo.
new presenter Dara o Briain didn’t seem to be affected, probably because he was wearing earplugs. ‘Let’s hand over,’ the voiceover announced at the start of the first death metal melee, ‘to legendary commentator Jonathan Pearce.’
that’s lazy and tiresome. If King arthur or robin hood were commentating, they’d be legendary. no ancient myths are recounted about Jonathan — he’s just a bloke who shouts on the telly.
Back in 1998, robot Wars was hosted by craig charles, the Scouse spaceman from red Dwarf. this time, amateur boffin Dara is joined by fellow Irish presenter angela Scanlon. angela wore a garage mechanic’s boiler suit. Dara must have misread the memo, because he appeared to be wearing a boiled suit. the jacket was stretched around him like a cosy over a teapot.
the robots have been upgraded. Some teams spent up to £25,000 on their radio-controlled brutes, fitting them with flails and hydraulic axes.
one monster had a spinning blade that tore into its rivals, the inventor boasted, ‘with nine times the force of a sniper’s bullet’.
another hit its opponents ‘like a washing machine thrown from the top of a tower block’.
this meant the arena, in a Glasgow studio, had to be enhanced, too, with screens of bulletproof glass to protect the audience.
But there was no upgrade for the show itself. tin hunks bashed each other like bumper cars on steroids, until one or both fell to bits. tongues of fire blurted from the floor for no reason. this show would love to have the sci-fi sheen of Star Wars, but it’s much more Blake’s 7.
to persuade us this was a new era of robot Wars, producers sent in former champion razer, a stainless steel scorpion. During the first battle, it careered into a hole in the ground and was disqualified. Slow-motion replays (of which there were many) seemed to show razer had backed into the pit on purpose. that robot took a dive! Is no sport free from malpractice today?
two ancient warriors were battering at each other, hammer and tongs, in the Stockholm crime series Beck (BBc4). arrogant, thuggish detective Gunvald Larsson (Mikael Persbrandt) has been secretly dating the daughter of his boss, Martin Beck (Peter haber). the interrogation scene in which Beck dragged the truth from Larsson would have been hilarious if it weren’t so menacing.
these subtitled stories are loosely based on the wonderful Sixties police novels by Swedish writers Per Wahloo and Maj Sjowall. But most of the characters, not to mention the wacky communist sub-plots, have been rewritten, and Beck is now much closer to henning Mankell’s creation, Kurt Wallander... brilliant but miserable.
an investigator handed Beck a thick file detailing assaults on women in the capital and warned: ‘It’s pretty depressing.’ Perhaps it did make him feel lower than ever, but how would anyone know? he looks so glum, the bags under his eyes are more like black bin liners.
as with the classic Wallander series (not the pale imitation with Kenneth Branagh, but the Swedish version starring Krister henriksson), these episodes are 90 minutes long — time enough to let the tension build, but short enough to pack a punch.
there’s nothing arty or clever: this is just solid crime drama.