ITV's Trinity - there are no words

http://www.itv.com/drama/contemporary/trinity/default.html

...

Trinity star Reggie Yates goes behind the scenes at Trinity - watch the video

Just watch the show. It's possibly the most preposterous thing I've ever seen. Impossible to quantify my thoughts right now.

oh god i went to school with two of the guys who wrote this shit

One thing I *will* say is that it plays on every stereotype imaginable - but inflates the stereotype to such grotesque degrees that the thing ends up resembling some terrible art-house movie. A friend (who sent me the link) described one party scene as 'initiation ceremony meets Eyes Wide Shut'. But...christ, it's an abomination of the most compellingly rancid kind. And given the 'next week' trailer at the end, it's going to become this huge, unwieldy conspiracy thriller, a sort of posh Hollyoaks meets fucking Swordfish mess of gargantuan and horrific proportions

Needless to say, this nightmare was clearly written by Oxbridge-educated morons whose superficial memories of the place have been indulged and retold from urban legend as glorious no-holds-barred jawdropping inanity with thunderingly, roaringly dull moral dichotomies and minature fables of class/race/sexuality/religion/etc

Fuck it - there are no words. Watch and weep. It has come to this. Try not to let the words 'new low' cross your mind every two minutes

(funny that when I was at Cambridge I thought 'cor wouldn't it be great if there was a TV show about a place like this' and now in my undergrad-disdaining currency I have witnessed the full and unmitigated horror of this reality)

Those ITV bastards won't let Americans watch online.

there was a bit about this on front row the other night while i was doing the dishes. Sounded foul.

were you in the Dandelion Club, lj?

ok just watched it, and oh god, it's so bad. it's exactly the kind of shit that you'd get if you combined our sixth form drama society's output with a humorous take on student life in varsity. which is pretty much what happened I suppose.

seriously cannot believe that an actual television channel paid money for this. it's only itv2, but all the same.

haha the Dandelion Club is like some horrendous conflation of the elitist-moneyed-exclusive Pitt Club/Bullingdon Club* (depending on which side of the fence you lived on, dahling) and *every sports society ever* with its horrendously contrived and appalling initiations/rites of passage.

*not a direct duality; Pitt has about 40 members, Bullingdon 8. Latter much more exclusive. There's something called the Gridirons at Oxford which is a more direct complement to the Pitt. All three are full of rapey cunts but they generally keep their dealings a *little* more discreet than our stiff young Dandelions.

Anyway no I fucking wasn't. I'm the poor darker-skinned kid from Lewisham, aren't I? Gotta know my place.

lol joe you did it! it's SO fucking bad isn't it? and kinda racist as well, not that this stands out as an objection amongst the maelstrom of WTF and abysmal acting. deus-ex-machina realisation (during suspiciously blissful post-coital glow when it was her first fucking time) 'you seduced me!' is probably the low-light

but in a way i am kinda looking forward to seeing just how bad this gets when the weird techno-conspiracy ghost madness kicks in

the ONLY good line was "you're a virgin?" "yes." "brilliant!" and even then it was only good because it was so unremittingly, completely beyond parody

So basically this is less about a shit ITV drama and more about Louis being butthurt at not being invited to a sports society.

loooool I was in a sports society! For football, surprisingly enough. Initiation was drinking until we vomited. Somewhat less noteworthy than the Marquis-De-Sade-approved goings-on here.

saw a trailer for this in a cinema in cambridge and was all wtf. am a bit disappointed it isn't actually set at the real trinity college.

As a lurid Footballers Wives type thing with posh students it might actually work, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't.

Article by one of the writers here:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/lifestyle/article-23744079-details/Class+war+is+back+in+a+new+TV+drama/article.do

Doesn't really make me want to tune in, tbh.

"My greatest teenage dream was Oxford and its university. Holed up in suburban Birmingham, I read Waugh and Beerbohm and imagined the time when I would exchange my provincial schoolfriends for the company of witty aesthetes and their charming female relatives."

"Harry Potter, the wizard who understands muggles, with well-born bien-pensant Ron and brainy, right-on Hermione at his side, was the ultimate Third Way hero. But what about now? Is 2009 ripe for the return of the varsity student drama? I can make a case, because wherever you look, class is back."

hahahaha omfg i knew this guy a little.

he was a good writer. not sure if i'm going to watch this show.

Goole - taking that quote out of the context of the piece kind of changes its meaning. The tone of the piece is more "class and nepotism are back but, erm, are we sure we want to do this?"

i might watch it, having read the piece. just to see.

(KQ is a bit vague, talking about 'suburban birmingham' hem hem. evelyn waugh only went to lancing after all.)

to be honest i'm miffed that my comprehensive and irreversible debunking of the brideshead myth in the evidently not very widely read movie magazine [films and filmmakers] has gone unheeded. but it was bollocks then, it was bollocks in 1981, and it's bollocks now. it's the product of the 1940s.

Matt - yeah, it was a cheap shot to take that out of context, should have cut straight after the bloody Harry Potter thing, that's the bit that had me rolling my eyes.

lol i also remember this dude from student journo days. i didn't like him i'm afraid. glad to see he's doing such great work!

"the three Rs are recreational sex, recreational drugs and random murder."

V. poor. See me later.

http://i.thisislondon.co.uk/i/pix/2009/09/trinity415.jpg

Does a certain type of British actor get trained to do this particular "I am thinking of deflowering someone" facial expression at drama school?

his bit about the genre of oxford novels and their decline is way more interesting than anything in the show. this is a load of bollocks too:

I went to Oxford in the late Nineties and, to my surprise, found it was no longer the turn of the 20th century there. Drinking clubs didn't dominate; there was no elitist posturing over the college hierarchy. New Labour were in and the posh boys had been driven underground, or else had reinvented themselves as campaigning student union types. Everything was ordinary, and everyone seemed to want it that way.

i think even the biggest new labour stan wouldn't try to pretend that it had wiped out class privilege by sept 97 when this guy would have started university.

hahahaha he went to rah central and tried to pretend that everyone was middle class haaaa...the truth is that nigh-on everyone was still aspirational rah, just a little modulated for discretionary purposes

Matt DC bang OTM hehe

Also, that line near the beginning about his aunt 'on a beach in Buenos Aires fucking the footman'? I thought he was referring to his own exploits there and was briefly dazzled by this almost terrifying display of pansexual posh-boy chutzpah

He's talking out of his arse. Unless New Labour sent squads of police in to round up the toffs during the summer of 97, then I'm pretty sure that drinking societies still thrived while he was there. There will always be ridiculous dinner-jacketed posh-boy behaviour at Oxbridge - it's just that you can ignore it if you want to. Don't know about "aspirational rah" to be honest.

well, from knowing a fair few oxford students in my time, and from the pixels, i can tell that a lot of people there have an upwardly-mobile social mindset, and seek an 'oxford experience' akin to brideshead or somesuch...the same is true of many at cambridge...drinking societies are by no means the preserve of the posh but the majority require one to 'act up'

Sure, I agree that they exist but they're still a small, if visible, minority - hardly "nigh-on everyone".

Those ITV bastards won't let Americans watch online.

thank your lucky stars and stripes

allow me a bit of dramatic license here! yeah fine, but my point stands: oxbridge fosters social attitudes that are by no means progressive, and are at worst deeply patronising. it's a more pervasive and mundane kind of elitism than the cartoon mania portrayed onscreen. and most people are IMPLICATED at some point or other

anyway, this show doesn't really seem to address such concerns in any way beyond 'completely superficial', and is not very deep down a scurrilous 'entertainment'

why/how is Reggie Yates an actor and a radio presenter?

i'm not sure which he should be focussing on

xpost But how are they IMPLICATED? The vast majority are earnest-to-dull hard workers from a variety of backgrounds who want nothing more than a good degree at the end of it. A minority are actively annoyed by old-fashioned upper-class elitism. Which leaves a tiny section of bona-fide toffs and, yes, a number of wannabes who buy into the hierarchy, but not an overwhelming amount. Maybe I'm missing the thread of your argument about patronising and non-progressive attitudes by just thinking in haw-hawing wanker terms, so feel free to clarify.

this is a load of bollocks too:

"I went to Oxford in the late Nineties and, to my surprise, found it was no longer the turn of the 20th century there. Drinking clubs didn't dominate; there was no elitist posturing over the college hierarchy. New Labour were in and the posh boys had been driven underground, or else had reinvented themselves as campaigning student union types. Everything was ordinary, and everyone seemed to want it that way."

i think even the biggest new labour stan wouldn't try to pretend that it had wiped out class privilege by sept 97 when this guy would have started university.

― joe, Tuesday, September 15, 2009 1:17 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

indeed. there are a few things here.

1) rhetorical surprise oxford was no longer as it was in beerbohm's day. really? they started letting ladies in in the 1960s, iirc. and grammar-school kids began to populate the place from the 1950s. and kids from the better sort of state school are still there today. only (except for the lack of women) it was probably (actually, almost definitely) more private-school-y in 1997 than in 1967. (owing to the abolition of grammar schools? idk.)

2) "Drinking clubs didn't dominate; there was no elitist posturing over the college hierarchy." when did drinking clubs *ever* dominate? why perpetuate this tourist stuff? the 1980s were a freaky time, and the boris johnson-era bullingdon seems to have been "a thing", up to a point. but look at the 1950s or '60s: being openly posh was very unhip. and all of this plays into the image of an unchanging blue-blooded aristocracy. i should read that david cannadine book one of these days. but don't get caught up on the clothes.

3) "New Labour were in and the posh boys had been driven underground, or else had reinvented themselves as campaigning student union types." this is a slightly confused bit. the oxford union (the debating society) was indeed a coven of deeply weird public schoolboys, who were a laughing stock among people who were exposed to them. but it's my impression that the union people were always like that.

i suppose the question is: in what sense were the posh boys ever "prominent" in the university before the late 1990s? KQ doesn't know and neither do i, but i'm fairly sure that if you look at the student press for the late 1980s,* it still won't be *massively* different than the decade after, despite bojo and d-cam.

*the era of lee & herring, boris johnson, and ed balls.

xpost

The vast majority are earnest-to-dull hard workers from a variety of backgrounds who want nothing more than a good degree at the end of it.

pretty much, yeah.

to focus on the bullingdon types, appalling inbred uncultured dicks though they may be, overlooks the fact that the real power elite that oxbridge fosters is a broader, more insidious thing.

the real power elite that oxbridge fosters is a broader, more insidious thing.

This is kinda what I mean. It's not an outright thundering roistering riot, AS DEPICTED IN THIS SHOW, it's a sort of tacit sense of entitlement, a 'way into the system'. That's what I mean by 'aspirational rah': the sense that one 'belongs' to this mythic power-base, and that one has somehow 'won' by attending this particular university. the idea that 'anyone can make it if they try hard enough' and thus the chip on the shoulder that they did so *on their sweet lonesome* (not always true) and thus deserve some sort of elevated status

...but again, I'm arguing from a position of melodrama, so I am probably exaggerating. Both Dorian and NRQ have made pretty convincing cases, and more importantly, they seem to have actually been there at the time.

No I think you're right that there are lots of holes in the halowed idea of meritocracy. The realities of class and privilege are so nuanced and multivalent that it's easier for a TV show to go rah rah, horny killer toffs.

Yeah exactly. The writers are seeing the 'rise' of 'posh' as something to be engaged with, whereas really they're creating a grotesque, completely unrealistic and pornographic exaggeration of what amounts to a very small part of a much larger social ill, one whose nuances are jettisoned amid sensationalism and *quite atrocious* acting

it was probably (actually, almost definitely) more private-school-y in 1997 than in 1967. (owing to the abolition of grammar schools? idk.)

haha, no. grammars didn't do much for social mobility really. i can only do 1970 and 2000, if that's close enough, but oxford was 43 per cent state school in 1970, about 52 per cent in 2000. the trend line is a bit variable but i think it'd be hard to make the case that you'd have had a better chance in the 60s or 70s.

oxford and cambridge are now where the other universities were in 1938 in terms of social mix.

rah rah, horny killer toffs.

*sets V+ box for next episode*

Butseriouslyfolks, who decided Trinity should be any more realistic than, say, Desperate Romantics or - well, why not? - Desperate Housewives?

I'm well up for this, although alarmed by a. ITV2, b. alleged "*quite atrocious* acting" and c. Reggie Yates.

- "pansexual posh-boy chutzpah"

This is good

have to bow to your superior stats there. i get the feeling there were more people in private education in 2000 than in 1970 too, though again without stats – but e.g. the grant-maintained schools that went private in that period represent some kind of change.

grammars didn't do much for social mobility really. is probably for another thread. obviously grammar schools didn't bring about any enormous shift in the structure of society. but they did change the composition of the elite to an extent, and definitely the outward character of oxbridge.

xpost

why do ITV get this while Channel 4 get Skins and Shameless (i hate those shows too but they appear leagues ahead of Trinity in quality generally)

i finally saw Skins and it was so unbelievably NORMAL tv drama! the posters made it look like it was going to be some kind of larry clarke style freakout.

it would seem there are words

yes but the sheer profusion words haven't really done it justice...the words are a vain attempt to recapture ghastly extremity, a show that doesn't just pander to the daily mail ITV crowd but blows coke up their noses and tickles their perineum while it's about it

i've actually rarely been so excited to trash something in my life...i thought television had lost me, but not so

so ur gonna watch all of this series just to trash it?

i get the feeling it's meant to be camp and button-pushing. not defending something i've not seen, but from the trailer it obviously wasn't meant to be "a realistic depiction of life at footlights college, oxbridge," but to pander to the public image "to an ironic excess" or some such thing.

xpost

Sounds great. Can I watch it online?

i get the feeling there were more people in private education in 2000 than in 1970 too, though again without stats

Around 8.5% of pupils were private in 1960, down to less than 5.5% by the late 70s, back up to 7.5% or so today.

yeah, true. well obviously it's not meant to be entirely realistic, but it does strain for grotesque elements of social realism which simply don't work, and collapse under the weight of their own thudding 'DO YOU SEE'...they're trying to riff on social issues at oxbridge circa 2009, as if things are totally different these days and in need of some vivid exposition

the ulterior motive, of course, is OTT outrage, and this dichotomy creates a programme which tries to do far too many things, does them all badly, and yet has enough bewildering style to validate the whole thing as some sort of inverse cultural beacon..i'll be watching it out of a genuine curiosity as to how spectacularly diabolical (meant in every sense) it can become

haha kate yes, follow the link in the opening post

it obviously wasn't meant to be "a realistic depiction of life at footlights college, oxbridge," but to pander to the public image "to an ironic excess" or some such thing.

nb this is exactly what I was getting at with my Desperate Romantics ref above.

The more I hear about this program the better it sounds. Floppy-haired rapey toff boys drinking and MURDERING their way around Oxbridge? They only way it could possibly get any better would be if they were vampires as well.

(I admit, I saw the description and thought of you!)

oh and everyone wears fucking mortarboards, especially if they're also wearing leather miniskirts

Trinity star Reggie Yates

^ 'nuff said?

Charles Dance, nuff said

i get the feeling there were more people in private education in 2000 than in 1970 too, though again without stats

Around 8.5% of pupils were private in 1960, down to less than 5.5% by the late 70s, back up to 7.5% or so today.

― Stevie T, Tuesday, September 15, 2009 3:51 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

maybe it was sweden. maybe it was teen pregnancy... i gotta read more...

It's going down again because they can't afford the school fees, :))))))))))))

http://wwwdelivery.superstock.com/WI/223/1614/PreviewComp/SuperStock_1614R-10043.jpg

it's clear enough that it's supposed to camp when you've seen it too. but the execution is so bad, it's just totally witless crap. if it had been to oxbridge what something like house of cards was to politics then it could have been fun. but look, just watch it and come crying to this thread when you realise i'm right.

Around 8.5% of pupils were private in 1960, down to less than 5.5% by the late 70s, back up to 7.5% or so today.

― Stevie T, Tuesday, 15 September 2009 15:51 (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

thanks, my stat machine was letting me down. more to do w/ economics of the 70s than grammars going private i would guess.

joe otm, although for those of us who enjoy keeping score, it's fun to count the ways (regarding bad execution)

haha totally invented Just For Kate, this :-)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1062940/I-obeying-orders---Schools-Secretary-Eddie-Balls-dressed-German-officer.html

well.

I think I love this programme.

Damn, I keep forgetting to watch it. It's clearly made for me.

You can see it on itv player. Or episode 2 (right now!) on the link at the top of the thread. I only caught up with it last night in itv2 - because I had avoided it because of this thread - but it's such a mad mess it had me hooked. The "star" Christian Cooke is acting in a totally new and barmy way - at one point he seemed to be doing Eddie Izzard's impression of James Mason.

Also contained the line "Have you ever come on a member of the royal family?" - I mean, what's not to love?

Cringetasic. I will be feeling incredibly guilty but I NEED to watch episode 2. Horrendously over-acted, really poor script, blatantly racist and sexist. No idea how this was commissioned.

..awaiting the last episode.. it's been fun.