Author, performer, and director Ben Elton is a funny man with flashes of brilliance. One of the creative minds behind Black Adder, he also had a hand in writing Mr. Bean and many other popular comedy staples in his native England. Elton also wrote the not-brilliant but likeable (especially if you, say, have a crush on Hugh Laurie) movie Maybe Baby, based on his own novel Inconceivable.
So with all that, I expected something along the continuum of brilliant to amusing and likeable with Chart Throb. I didn't get it.
The book is a satire of Pop or American Idol that's too on-the-nose to have much bite. A romance and a vaguely sinister -- and ultimately ludicrous -- mystery are thrown in to the account of a full season of the fictional Chart Throb TV series, from choosing the contestants long before the show hits the air to picking a winner in front of a live audience.
Just when you start to think, oh, so Chart Throb producer and judge Calvin Simms is the Simon Cowell figure, the character mentions his likeness to Cowell. Just when you start to think, oh, so fellow judge Beryl's other show, The Blenheims, is a satire of The Osbournes, the character mentions that comparison. The former dissolute rocker, pseudo-earth mom transsexual character is even very much a combination of Ozzy and Sharon. Judge Rodney Root ("the other bloke") is the show's dead weight and butt of jokes. I'll leave it to you to decide what real-life TV personalities he might resemble.
Some of the book is narrated from the viewpoint of show researcher Emma, the only likable character who might have made us care about the goings on, except she's too peripheral and too clueless and too undefined to carry the weight of even this frothy read.
Article comments
1 - Natalie Bennett
This article has been selected for syndication to Advance.net , which is affiliated with newspapers around the United States, and to Boston.com. Nice work!