Dub Be Good To Me

Hello, you.

First of all, don't forget to send me your crappy MS Paint pictures for The (Haunted) Gallery. Details on the right hand side and down a bit. Neil Buchanan's ouija board is waiting.

Now, one thing's been getting on my nerves a tad. Dubbing, specifically, where an advert or TV programme overdubs somebody's voice with another. Not where it's necessary, for animated characters for example, but where it's shoehorned in for the sake of it. Watch any number of adverts to see it in action. Here's a clip from Big Train to show you what I mean (there may be an advert at the start of the clip...).

That's for comedy purposes, obviously. I hope you spotted what I mean.

Here's an example of what I mean in real terms:

Horrendous. What really irks me about things like this is that the companies making them seem more than happy to assume that we won't notice that all they've done is take an existing foreign advert, and put a suspect VO on it. Absolutely no disrespect meant to any other nation when I say this, but mannerisms are as intrinsic to a country as its language. I'm sure that French viewers must get annoyed when they have to watch a kid saying that he'd like to do a merde at Paul's.

Speaking of which:

At what point did this advert get approved?!

Here's another aspect of dubbing that I really hate. From what I can tell, it's a British advert (if not, it's bloody good syncing on the mother), so why the bloody hell have they dubbed the kid with a new voice? Did they regret their decision after casting? I suppose the director must be a perfectionist. Somebody should tell him.

As far as adverts are concerned, if the companies involved (product manufacturers and their advertising agencies) can't be bothered to make a new advert for individual territories, then I can't be bothered to buy their product. It's one of those cash-saving decisions that can isolate their target audience. I find it extremely demeaning to my intelligence. I don't know about you.

You may have noticed I have a fondness for kids TV. At the moment, it's rife with a relatively new form of dub-fascism. Some cartoons are making their way over to the UK from America and Canada, and having some, or all, of the voices redubbed into regional British accents. It's always the same ones, too... the Jane Horrocks-esque Northern Female, The Slightly Scouse Male, The Mockney Male And Female, and The Lilting Edinburgh Male And Female. The Officially Fucking Awful dirtgirlworld does it, as do a lot of shows on Playhouse Disney which I have to watch with my daughter. Franny's Feet, for example, redubs most, but not all, voices with Horribly Offensive Regional British Stereotype Accents. So George Buza, who was fantastic as Beast in the X-Men cartoon, has his voice replaced with Stereotypical Slightly Bumbling Northern Old Man. They never used to rip shows apart like that. Even the American SuperTed series retained Jon Pertwee, and although Derek Griffiths didn't return, they got somebody providing a decent impression of him.

The reasons for redubbing shows for foreign TV channels are fairly obvious, but misguided. I grew up watching both British and American shows, and was fully aware which was which. It never affected my accent, speech patterns or dignity. I never had much of that anyway, but that's beside the point. The problem with trying to shoehorn in regional UK accents is that you're cheapening the product, creating something new which is neither one thing nor the other. Some things which are clearly not British end up looking worse than the original. Higglytown Heroes, another truly dreadful Playhouse Disney show, replaces its entire US cast with truly awful UK voices. My Friends Tigger and Pooh replaces the American actress for the main character with a British one, but keeps everyone else the same. Bizarre.

One of the worst is Little Einsteins, a show on, guess what, Playhouse Disney. My kids were confused when a Disney DVD advertised the show, and they sounded American. The UK version has replaced the cast entirely with horrible little UK urchins, who sound like they should be bullied in school.

The UK and US versions of The Little Einsteins. Which one of them do you want to punch first?

Well, the US version isn't much better, but it suits it at least. The UK version sounds like a bunch of posh drama school brats. It's very obviously not a British show.

But we have a winner. I can't embed the video, so you'll have to follow the link. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00p1mkx/Waybuloo_Fireflies/ Go to the 11 minute mark.

Merchandise me til I fart. If your child wants one for Xmas, disown them by all means.

If you're outside the UK, you may not be able to see it, and I envy you for that. It's a British show, but they've dubbed all of the kids in a similar way to that Big Train clip. It angers me. It really does. It's not the absolute worst thing about the show. Maybe the second worst. The worst thing is the nasty little CGI merchandisable fuckers missing out pronouns and speaking in the third person. It's teaching kids to be the idiots the makers clearly think they are. The only thing that cheers me up about this is the thought of the parents' faces who tried pushing their children into this car crash. "My son was on TV earlier," they'd say. "Why did he sound like a 45-year-old heavy smoker?"

To me, this poor dubbing, be it in adverts, cartoons or live action programmes, is a sign that we, the audience, are cretins. We're not good enough for new product, so we get recycled crap with a new stamp of approval from a pen-pusher. The quality of TV has been going down gradually of late, and it seems on every level. These kids shows will never be remembered fondly like the stuff my generation, and the ones previous, used to watch. People laugh at badly dubbed porn and martial arts movies. Why should adverts and kids shows be any different? Kids are very discerning; they know when they're being fobbed off with poor quality stuff.

I'll be talking about adverts in more length on another occasion. In the meantime, I'll leave you with this gentleman, a blubbery signpost of when advertisers poorly misjudge the public. Bye.

Can someone dub Mrs Doyle onto this?