The Stage

TV review

Published Monday 16 August 2010 at 15:57 by Harry Venning

Hey, you! That’s right, you! The aspiring star of screen, stage and sound recording. Stop busting a gut attending performing arts schools, serving an apprenticeship in the chorus, honing your craft after hours or even rehearsing at all.

Simply film yourself dancing in your bedroom, post it on YouTube and become a celebrity with millions of admirers overnight. If it can happen to Rebecca Flint from the Isle of Man, it can happen to you.

Of course the celebrity status will be pretty much limited to Japan. Oh yes, it’s also quite important that you are a 14-year-old girl, preferably possessing big eyes, long limbs, a pointy chin and fluffy hair, all of which conform to the stereotype of beauty peddled in Anime comics and cartoons.

Beckii: Schoolgirl Superstar at 14 would have been a lot more disturbing if its subject weren’t so grounded, level-headed and just plain nice.

Beckii Cruel, as she’s known and adored as across Japan, is hard-working and professional during her trips to Tokyo, harbours no delusions about her talents, and is adult enough to recognise the moral dilemma of performing to an audience largely comprising middle-aged men, in a country where the sexualisation of underage girls is condoned, if not actively encouraged.

The reassuringly sensible Beckii is not about to let superstardom chew her up and spit her out, nor even get in the way of her GCSE’s.

Beckii’s dad, however, is another matter altogether. Quite apart from the tendency to refer to Beckii as “we”, it is painfully obvious that dad has been bitten, albeit vicariously, by the showbiz bug.

Moreover, he is impatient for internet interest to translate into hard cash. He talks in terms of ” windows of opportunity” and “£50,000 minimum compensation” for the detrimental effect Beckii’s career may have on her exam results.

Observing a great showbusiness tradition of dumping those who helped you on the way up, dad even cuts her Japanese manager out of the loop to court more celebrated record producers in London.

He wants fame bad, and I hate to think of the heartache he will endure if it doesn’t happen. Meanwhile Beckii seems content with the brand new bass guitar, sent from Japan by “her biggest fan” as a 15th birthday present.

As all right thinking people agree, Cheers is the greatest ensemble TV sitcom of all time. There have been several attempts to relocate its success in a British pub, the latest of which is Inn Mates, a pilot by John Warburton who is the first writer to have gone through the BBC’s College of Comedy and got a script on screen.

Whilst it falls way short of its illustrious American predecessor, Inn Mates is amiable and entertaining fun set in a red-brick modern monstrosity optimistically called The Friendship Inn.

It revolves around the disparate groups of characters that frequent or serve in it. These include two twentysomething couples with contrasting lifestyles, their sexually abandoned alcoholic single friend, the ruthless landlady and her wheelchair-using DJ, two dozy and doting community support police officers, and a gay man whose donated sperm has come back to haunt him in the form of a teenage biological son desperate to form a bond.

The various strands don’t really hang together, and Inn Mates feels slightly like several sitcoms sharing the same half hour. Of these the father/son scenario is by far the strongest, and could even go it alone as a spin-off.

It offers pathos, charm, wit, conflict and originality. Plus on-screen chemistry between Neil Morrissey, playing against type, and Joe Tracini, who is so good that I can almost forgive him Grown Ups.

• Beckii: Schoolgirl Superstar at 14, BBC3, Thursday, August 12, 9pm

• Inn Mates, BBC3, Monday, August 9, 10pm