The reviews make more fascinating reading than the programme itself.
In a darkened country house in Ireland, a group of people are gathered round a table, staring at a hat.
It's not just any hat, though. It's a hat with residuality, according to Derek Acorah.
It's both a happy hat, and a sad hat, he reckoned, because it's Michael Jackson's old hat.
"Would you like to touch it?" he asked the four Jacko devotees beside him.
And they did. "I can't believe that's his hat," said one.
"It's amazing."
Yup. Incredible. But not quite as incredible as trying to speak to the recently dead on live telly (Michael Jackson: The Live Seance, 10pm, Friday, Sky One).
Sorry, did I say incredible? I meant gobsmackingly crass. I'm always mixing them up.
The hat was there to help summon Jacko's spirit. The hat, and the setting. The whole thing was staged in the house Michael rented to write his last album. The owner said he'd had the bedroom overlooking the playground.
And the fans' passion would help bring him back too, said Derek. Well, they certainly were passionate. Though some might say unhinged.
Anyway it all worked, this mix of residuality and passion. Or at least it did if you believe Acorah, a man thrown off Most Haunted for being possessed by a fictional character made up by one of the crew .
"He's with me," announced Derek, and one fan looked like she was about to levitate with joy.
They must have been quite chuffed in the production room too. In 2005, the late King of Pop couldn't even turn up on time for his trial.
How obliging of him to be punctual for Sky One.
So what did Jacko have to say?
Well, he wanted to be buried alongside Marilyn Monroe, apparently. And he's hanging out with his grandparents. He wanted to someone to say hello to Quincy Jones ("hello Quincy," said one of the fans, hesitantly), and he wished the tabloids would stop being spiteful.
"These journalists they all make lies up, lies up, lies," spat Derek. It wasn't exactly clear if he was being Jacko or himself at that point.
And then it was the fans' chance to speak.
So what did they ask, given a direct link to their idol?
A probing question about the nature of the afterlife, perhaps? Or something that would clear away the mystery surrounding Jackson's death?
No. "Do you realise how much I love you?" asked one chap, between fits of sobs.
"We'll make sure he's okay," promised host June Sarpong. Hmmm.
Easier said than done, June.
And that was pretty much that. Jacko-Derek had a bit of advice for one of the fans who worked as a tribute act ("you're 80% there, he wants you to get to 90%") and then he was gone, unceremoniously shooed backed into the never-neverland because Sky had scheduled Beverly Hills Cop III at 11pm.
The review from The Leicester Mercury raised this comment from an American fan:
"Please let this poor, gentle soul rest in peace. This kind of lunacy makes me sick because its just one more example of an attention seeking nut using MJs' memory. Knock it off! "
The Guardian wrote:
Michael Jackson: The Live Seance was car crash TV in the worst senseDerek Acorah show was in such bad taste that it couldn't be seen as entertainment on any discernible level
If you were watching Sky One on Saturday night, count yourself lucky - you saw what will easily be remembered as the worst single hour of television produced in 2009. Worse than Babestation. Worse than Channel Five's SuperCasino. Worse than any individual episode of Hotel Babylon. I'm talking, of course, about Michael Jackson: The Live Seance.
I was watching because I thought it'd be funny - a car crash of a show with the added bonus of a slimy-looking medium rolling his eyeballs around inside his bright orange skull and reciting the lyrics to Heal the World in a silly high-pitched voice.Turns out it was a car crash. But it was one of those actual car crashes where real people get hurt and you're not sure that everyone's going to make it out OK and you end up feel like a bit of bastard for even wanting to watch it in the first place.
This is how Michael Jackson: The Live Seance worked. Derek Acorah - he of Most Haunted and Derek Acorah's Ghost Towns fame - rounded up a group of Michael Jackson fans and took them to a house in Ireland that Jackson had stayed in a few years ago. Once there, he spent 20 minutes doing what he does best: trying to convince everyone that he was being inhabited by the ghost of a dead megastar.
And he was certainly very convincing. Because if you were Michael Jackson and you'd just been gifted an unexpected conduit into the world of the living for the first time since your death, you wouldn't use it as an opportunity to pass on some personal messages to your grieving children, would you? No, the first thing you'd do would be to give a shout out to your man Quincy Jones. Then you'd mutter darkly about journalists before mumbling endless variations of the word "love" a lot too. That definitely sounds like something that Michael Jackson would do. Can't see anything wrong with that.
Derek Acorah's shtick is offensive at the best of times, but the sight of him sitting at a table with four fans - including two who were literally dressed up as Michael Jackson and one who appeared to be on the brink of emotional meltdown throughout the seance - and doing his best to goad them all into crying on live television left an especially bad taste in the mouth. Acorah's manipulation of the vulnerable was in such bad taste that it couldn't be seen as entertainment on any discernible level. It was depressing. That's all it was.
In the coming years, Michael Jackson will be endlessly repackaged and commoditised by people with all kinds of vested financial interests, but I'll be staggered if anything even comes close to Michael Jackson: The Live Seance. That's unless Sky One secures the broadcast rights to Michael Jackson: The Live Corpse-Defiling any time soon. It wouldn't be that much of a leap.
It seems the show went down like a lead balloon, which is hardly surprising given the calibre of the 'medium'.
Articles copyright to their respective authors and publications
No comments:
Post a Comment