From The Observer, 18 February 2001 - SCREEN

Above, from left: Janet Munnery, Richard Thomas, Lore Lixenberg and Simon Munnery in Attention Scum.

The scum also rises
With his first TV outing, Fringe darling Simon Munnery has the mainstream in his sights, reports Stephanie Merritt

FOR MORE THAN 12 years Simon Munnery has been garnering a reputation as the comic's comic, admired and respected by contemporaries and critics alike, and beloved of audiences on the live comedy circuit, but always at a distance from the mainstream. His first TV series, Attention Scum, will ensure that his surreal brand of comedy will finally reach a large audience.
Attention Scum is the first television incarnation of Munnery's Nietzschean alter ego, the League Against Tedium, who travels the land in a modified transit van denouncing the mediocrity of the masses in pithy, gnomic aphorisms. The League began life in 1994 as part of a cabaret act, Cluub Zarathustra, went on to win acclaim at the Edinburgh Fringe and various London venues, and in 1999 was nominated for a Perrier Award. The television series is directed by Stewart Lee, who starred with partner Richard Herring in two BBC2 comedy series, Fist of Fun and This Morning With Richard Not Judy, and,also features accomplished comedians Johnny Vegas (Johnny Vegas Television Show) and Kevin Eldon (Jam, I'm Alan Partridge).

The show has retained - largely by necessity - the ad hoc feel of a fringe show. 'You have to remember that it was made for a quarter of the budget you'd get for a sketch show like The Fast Show,' says Lee. 'Most of it's shot in fields and car parks, and everyone joined in and worked for cheap rates, and did about three jobs. But we had a lot of fun making it.' In spite of the low production values, Attention Scum is being loudly trumpeted by those who have seen it, yet Munnery, described as 'one of the most innovative, intelligent and acclaimed comics in Britain', is less than delighted by all the praise.
'If you approach the show calmly, you might take to it, but if it's been hyped and hyped and looked forward to, it's bound to disappoint, and in fact it's quite good.

Poor, little, frightened show, it just wants to survive and be loved. Please, please; damn it with faint praise.' It's the first and probably only time I will ever be asked by the writer to say that a programme is not very good. 'But it is very good,' I protest. Sudden alarm registers behind the thick-rimmed glasses. 'No. Don't say that. Say it's quite good. Or - no, say, "Not as good as you'd expect, but nevertheless quite good." Or, better still, don't say anything at all.' I suggest that this approach may not work as an interview; he sighs and rearranges himself in the armchair. 'I'd much rather it had become a word-of-mouth thing, but then I suppose if no one knows it's on they won't watch it anyway.'
It's easy to see why a programme as provocative, unashamedly clever and delightfully absurd as Attention Scum might make the BBC nervous. The League stands atop his Heath Robinson vanship in his valanced, New Romantic shirt and towering hat, wielding a sword that conceals a camera which flashes warped and fluid close-ups of Munnery's curiously mobile face on to a large screen behind him. When not deriding his small and bemused al fresco audience, he offers them such deadpan insights as: 'Many are willing to suffer for their art. Few are willing to learn to draw', or 'Why do men die before their wives? Could it be because they want to?' ('I really hate it when critics quote my jokes,' says Munnery, with a warning frown. 'Especially if they get them wrong.,') Intercut with the live shows on the van are surreal graphic sequences, an operatic duo (Lore Lixenberg and Richard Thomas) whose arias are unexpectedly dark and violent, and '24 Hour News', read by a man who's been up for 24 hours (Johnny Vegas); there's a visible, if unacknowledged, Python legacy. Did Munnery ever worry that his material was too recherché for a television audience?

'What's a television audience then?' he asks defiantly, shaking off his laconic demeanour and sitting up for the first time. 'That's precisely what's wrong with television, this idea that you create a vision of an audience in your head, and then try to appease it.' Is that the mistake of the commissioning editors, I ask? 'I wouldn't know,' he says, diplomatically. 'I think you should just make what you want to make and hope someone likes it.' Which is a nice theory, but somewhat impractical in the new, streamlined BBC, in which experimental comedy is being slowly banished to the hinterland of cable and digital channels. This will probably be the last new comedy series made for the BBC on a budget of more than £60,000,' says Lee. He has just learned, before the first episode is even broadcast, that Attention Scum will not be recommissioned because it doesn't fit the new profile of BBC2. 'It's sad, because Simon's comedy is about great language and ideas, it's a timeless notion of wit. He has that epigrammatic style you feel could fit in and be appreciated at any time in history. Except, apparently, on BBC2 in the year 2001. 'In many ways Simon is a bit of a naive idealist.' says Lee, later. 'He wasn't really interested in doing television or being famous. We had to coax him and he only did it in the end because he wanted the van to do live tours. That's why it's a double shame that the BBC has decided to kill the series before it's even started, because it will make it difficult for him to go back to doing it as a live show.' So it is that Attention Scum begins its life as a one-off series, never to be recommissioned. Rarely does the viewer get to see the programmes that don't get made, but Attention Scum has fallen into this unique air-pocket between being commissioned and being cancelled; Munnery's off-beat, provocative comedy has all the potential to gain a huge cult following, and the programme's all-too-brief flowering will very likely increase its reputation. Watch it - you'll be witnessing the end of an era in British comedy. It's also very, sorry, quite good. LEFT: Munnery's Nietzschean alter ego, The League Against Tedium