Dispatches (TV Series) Russell Brand: In Plain Sight (2023) User Reviews

Branded in Public

[Lejink · 7/10 · 25 September 2023]

This programme has become arguably the most talked about on British television in 2023. Apparently over a year in the making, it graphically and explicitly outs well-known comedian-actor-presenter Russell Brand as a serial sexual predator going back some fifteen years, almost from the moment he got his big break on British TV.

I'm not of the generation and certainly not the type who ever appreciated Brand's aggressively laddish, sexist demeanour but I think I first became aware of just how popular he'd become when I saw that his silly-titled autobiography "My Booky Wook" topped the best-seller charts. Since his short-lived marriage to the singer Katie Perry and the Jonathon Ross / Andrew "Sachsgate" furore both brought him further tabloid headlines, he'd rather fallen off my personal radar and I also wasn't aware he'd moved on to more recently become an on-line wellness guru.

Over 90 minutes, this programme presented pretty damning evidence of his extreme sexual misconduct, using his position and indeed power to take advantage of a number of young women who came into his orbit. It doesn't matter if he'd been in a sexual relationship with that person in the past, he seemed to think he could force them into having sex with him against their will whenever it suited him and given his seemingly voracious appetite, this could have been anytime and anywhere..There's also an allegation that he groomed a 16 year old girl into having sex with him and becoming one of his "secret" girlfriends.

Past colleagues and media commentators are lined up to take him down with apparently no one, including Ross, Perry, his long-time co-presenter Matt Morgan or really any of his previous acquaintances, speaking up in his defence. The evidence is never actually presented to Brand in person as one might have expected and he's certainly given no right of reply in the programme itself.

Besides the testimony of the four women, the researchers have dug deep to find evidence of Brand actually bragging on camera about some of the acts of which he's accused, almost immediately after he allegedly committed them. There's also a creepily disturbing radio interview with the discredited Jimmy Savile not long before the latter's death.

Savile too of course hid in plain sight and indeed died before details of his own depravity became public knowledge, with the difference here being that the programme-makers have decided to go public and break the story, ironically just at the time Brand was venturing out on a stand-up tour of the U. K.

This may well be the latest example of trial-by-television of a prominent person in the public eye and there will be those who contend that everyone is innocent until proven guilty and that one must allow that there may be another side to some of the stories presented here. We have already seen this year a once-celebrated A-list Hollywood actor cleared of similar offences despite what seemed like a welter of evidence against him.

Like with this case, that too seemed like there was too much smoke for there not to be a fire, But smoke it was judged to be and the fact is, until any case against Brand goes to Court, as it surely must, we'll not know for sure how culpable he was and indeed is.

What I will say is that on the evidence of what was set out here, he better have a very good solicitor in his corner...

The definition of a hit piece

[Rob-O-Cop · 1/10 · 21 October 2023]

If there has ever been a perfect example of a pre-decided narrative hit piece this is it. This show will go down in history of the text book example of the genre.

Not a single word in this show lifted a finger to give us any insight into the wider person that Brand is. It was all, every single note of it, design to make him look as bad as possible, and worse frame him as inherently evil, and to be fair his stand up work and his writing didn't do him any favours. It helped them write their character assassination, and it is fair to say some of his comedy is off colour from a modern view, but evil?

The hypocritical aspect of this program is that it was made by an organisation that personally enabled and supported his character persona, hired him to be exactly who they're attacking him for being, along with all the other British media institutions who hired him and encouraged him to behave exactly as he did.

All of it happening in a time when that shock jock tactic aspect was de rigueur, and everywhere. So it's a bit rich to sit 15-20 years later and look back at the 'loaded magazine' days and judge it by 2023 standards, especially when these channels profited from it and actively paid him to be this character. But that's exactly the basis for this program, and it worked well. Cut out the punchline to a distasteful joke, play it with scary music and bad colour, and put it with an accusation. Direct hit.

The wider context is that present day Brand is now a controversial anti-war, anti-corruption, anti-capitalism, anti-establishment status quo challenging figure who has a huge audience, and is a skilled communicator, articulating challenging ideas that make a compliant public restless, and a lot less compliant. Brand has acknowledged and rejected his shady past and worked hard to become the opposite of the vacuous thrill seeker celebrity he was encouraged to be. He study politics and taught himself more about the issues he addresses.

So the person this show (I refuse to call it a documentary because it relies on a narrative they wrote and does nothing to present itself as impartial in anyway) is address is gone, not that you would know it from this show. They never mentioned anything about his growth as a person, his family, he charity efforts and going out of his way to help people, not a word.

And they purposefully went looking for people to illustrate this story, in that these women did not come to the production looking to air complaints against Brand. The production went out purposefully to recruit people for this hit piece, people who could deal the narrative they decided they wanted to administer on Brand, and they admit as much in the show. It says something that out of the many thousands of women Brand admits to have had relations with the production could only find 4-5 (one of whom complained "he didn't call me after") who were willing to speak and most of them would only do so with complete anonymity, with actors playing them for the screen. Ie the injured party we were watching and empathising with wasn't the actual person the production company had managed to persuade to give them ammunition for their narrative, it was an actor, sculpting lines to give a desired effect, I'm ready for my close up Mr DeMille

And the allegations as framed did sound bad, especially when framed against his dated tasteless comedy and with the moody music and lighting. He'd say a tasteless joke and they'd cut it against someone saying he did the thing he just said. This program must have almost assembled itself, or a less favorable reading might be this program stuck to a very basic narrative for maximum damage with out much effort and insight. By the numbers, by the play book.

The show said they had proof that what they were showing us was true, they had verified details but they never presented any evidence to us of this beyond their word. No interviews with crisis centers who verified X even had happened, it wasn't in the show. No law enforcement fronted to corroborate any allegation. The show just said it happened, and we were to take them at their word.

So it's obvious Brand has enemies, and people who find his humour distasteful and I count myself amongst them for some of his stuff. It can be puerile and unpleasant, just like other shock jock comedians like Howard Stern, their 20 year old antics don't stand up well in the 2023 world we live in, and without the context of the time they happened in and judged against our current back drop it was not a hard task to make Brand appear off colour, especially using the by the numbers/book smear campaign this production did.

But the 2023 Brand is miles away from that relic of the early 2000s not that you'd know it from this show. So much water has passed under the bridge that the real story of Brand is far far more complex than this one dimensional one objective show would have us believe.

Brands is currently a leading voice in an anti-corruption anti-war anti-establishment movement, with a large target on his back. An unfavorable reading of this show is that getting brand for those reasons rather than any deep consideration for real victims was exactly the aim of this program, and in the current trial by media world the program had the desired effect, and hammered his voice well away from any chance of appearing in mainstream public anytime soon, effectively silencing him.

I don't know if the 4-5 women they managed to dig up had real cases of harassment and abuse against Brand, they never presented any real evidence in cold hard proof to us, although proof and evidence isn't necessary to convict a target these days, and the show certainly made this a text book smear job, indistinguishable from the truth. The women never went to the police with their complaints, and there is ample reason to get Brand. That's the bigger story here, not that you'd know it from this one dimensional cliche.