DEADLINE: Six Impossible Things Before Bedtime #PGat35
IMPORTANT: This review contains SPOILERS. Massive great honking ones. If you haven’t ever seen Press Gang (Seriously?! Are you a KD?!!! What are you even doing here reading this, you fool?! Click right on over to Amazon, buy yourself the complete series boxset and remedy that situation immediately before you read any further…) #CommissionsEarned
So… There’s this kiddie newspaper, right? And they’ve been in the business for – what? – probably a couple of months, tops.
It’s been long enough to get the hang of chasing down stories, writing copy and doing layouts in seven days, but still nervously waiting for the critical judgement of their benefactor, Mr Matt Kerr, every week. And then one afternoon, Lynda Day passes through the looking glass, and into a world where time is all wibbly-wobbly, and where nothing is impossible…
Impossible Thing #1
You can write a whole newspaper, even a kiddie one, in just three hours.
Impossible Thing #2
Tommy Anderson is the World’s Most… Best… Famous… Anything. [I don’t actually care. It’s just lovely to see Jim Sweeney in Press Gang, and he does a brilliant job wrangling Colin. Follow him on Twitter (X).]
Impossible Thing #3
Frazz is 1, according to his badge. It’s a lovely costuming flourish (and can we assume he recently had a birthday…?) Frazz also appears to have a Bugs Bunny fixation.
It’s odd that Frazz is so resistant to Tiddler’s plan to report on next week’s football fixtures – under other circumstances it’s just the kind of off the wall thing he might come up with himself. You can tell how fabulous Tiddler is, because she spouts this mouthful of mathematical theory, and rather than making her look like a precocious brat channelling the worst of Wesley Crusher, it serves to underline how resourceful and smart she is. It’s a dumb idea, but she makes it sound like the theory is perfectly logical. Up against a ridiculous deadline, only a ridiculous solution is appropriate.
Impossible Thing #4
Mr Sullivan hates Nice Kenny™. This is not only impossible, but also not true! Even after Kenny calls him Mr Sewage. I do find it a weeny bit strange that Kenny has such anxiety talking to Mr Sullivan when he has to deal with Lynda every day.
Impossible Thing #4.5
Mr Sullivan has a date. With a lady.
Impossible Thing #5
Julie is channelling Sam-from-the-Future, and Sarah has a date. The latter isn’t actually impossible, it’s just extremely unusual.
Impossible Thing #5.5
Gary Morris is from Basingstoke, and not Mars. Because he clearly IS an alien with bizarre dress sense, a weird ponytail and a malfunctioning voice processor.
Impossible Thing #6
Sarah Jackson and Her Amazing Time-bending skills. Sarah leaves the Junior Gazette offices maybe 15 minutes before Lynda returns and drops the bombshell. She therefore has just over 3 hours to do the following: go home, get changed into the strangest dress ever, meet Gary Morris, wait for a bus, take a bus ride, walk towards party, argue with Spike, get to party, dance with Gary Morris at least once, have phone conversation with Kenny and Julie, lock herself in the toilet, write 1500 words on a single roll of green toilet paper (its a pollution story, remember…), revenge herself on aforementioned Gary Morris, get back to newsroom and then type up 1500 words from aforementioned toilet paper, which Lynda then presumably will want to read before it goes off to be printed… Have you ever tried to write anything on cushiony-soft toilet paper??!
(Otherwise, it’s all perfectly plausible.)
I once asked Da Boss if he had ever tried writing a 1500-word essay on toilet paper. He told me Press Gang wasn’t real, and suggested that perhaps I should get a life… 🙂
Press Gang @ 35 