JAM
Kevin Eldon, Mark Heap, Amelia Bullmore, Julia Davis and David Cann
Written and Directed by Chris Morris (with Peter Baynham)
Talkback/Channel Four Television
When I was a small boy - not that I was ever particularly small, you understand, but when I was a lot younger - I was afraid of the television. The television, you see, held monsters. Creeping bearded loons with wide, staring eyes, who seemed to be able to see through the camera into my living room. Electric blue lions in glam rock boots. Zippy. Each of these creatures tapped into a primal feeling of being disconnected from the world. It wasn't so bad during the day, but many's the night that I would wake up with The Fear.
If I had been given Jam to watch as a boy, I probably wouldn't have made it through primary school.
The televisual incarnation of the ambient radio series Blue Jam, with most of the music taken out, Jam is Chris Morris' attempt at a comedy sketch show.
The thing is, there's a couple of things wrong with that statement. Firstly, while the skits are of the conventional style - a situation is presented, a thing happens, people react, and we move on - there are few recurring characters, and no connecting device other than Morris himself, who contributes a druidic, Lewis Carroll-esque introduction to each show.
Secondly, while much of Jam is laugh-out-loud funny, from the sight of a hysterical bag lady singing "Loving You," while being spanked with a space hopper by a weeping man in a leather thong, to the slapstick hilarity of watching two men shoot each other up the arse with revolvers, there is much in Jam that will shock, disgust, or upset you. And by upset, I mean, "make you cry your eyes out."
It makes me laugh like a drain, of course. But there you go.
Morris' humour is black as midnight. He (and writing partner Peter Baynham) pushes buttons that few comedians go near, except in their own heads. It is, perhaps, his willingness to go to the darkest corners of our minds and hearts that makes Morris so funny.
Morris plays with the visuals, as much as he plays with the viewer: stretching and distorting the picture, running it through odd image filters to bring out individual colours, playing with lighting, and utilising CCTV technology, Morris builds a world that's recognizably ours, only slightly (and disturbingly) skewed. The performers make the most of the scripts, too, bringing out every disturbing nuance, and lending a terrifying reality to proceedings.
There's a concussed, dreamlike quality to Jam: a sense that the world is going one way while you desperately want to go another. It might make you think that you've eaten a bad cod and slipped into a delirium without realising it. And that's the best (and worst) thing about Jam: it pokes and prods at areas of the psyche that only come out in the dead of night, in one of those dreams that you can't quite wake up from.
If you've the stomach for it, then Jam is the show for you. And for the insomniacs amongst you - especially the ones with a penchant for late night drinking sessions and substance abuse (not that we at Robot Fist condone such things) - the DVD comes in two flavours: Jam (the regular edition of the show) and the far more surreal Jaaaam.
Jaaaam features the same material as the regular edition of the show. However, Morris' imagefriggery is given free reign, with the effect of making Jaaaam even more surreal than Jam. Often, Morris removes the original footage altogether, replacing it with footage of the original sketch being shown on a television screen, shot with a video camera. In one notable scene, the picture is both reduced to static images, run through a series of image filters, in order to reduce it to cartoonish, angular shapes, dancing across the screen. If you have the patience for it, it's a fascinating piece of art, as well as being painfully funny.
Jam is not for everyone. I'll cop to that right now. But to those of us who are unafraid to face those darker emotional nooks and crannies, it's better than a hundred Frankensteins.
Even if it means I have to sleep with the light on�
Review text (C) Matthew Craig
Originally published in the pop culture magazine Robot Fist