At a time when the term "genius" gets applied to pneumatic pop girlies and sullen blokes who play other people's records for a living, stand back and get a blast of the real thing: Chris Morris's Jam show on Channel 4 could be usefully sub-titled The Shock Of The New, such is its intelligence, audacity and sheer creative brilliance. Years ahead of the comedy timetable, iconoclastic and irreverent to the point of mild hysteria, and replete with full frontal satire (as it really should be done), it is a vertical shift in how "Comedy!" should be executed.
A series of discrete (but never discreet) sketches, Jam is backlit by swirling ambient tunes and punctuated by jerky camera and vocal work. All very spacey and ethereal and all very shocking when the content of the sketches becomes apparent. The Grand Guignol parade of perverts, mad doctors, evil eccentrics and patently disturbed people flits in and out of increasingly surreal situations.
Hailed as a "masterpiece" by some and "depraved and disgusting" by others, the quality of the television series comes as no surprise to us hardy Morris followers who tuned into BBC Radio 1 two years ago to listen to his radio series, Blue Jam (the forerunner of the TV show). At the time, Morris said he wanted "to create a certain atmosphere" on the radio and was doubtful that the programme could transfer to television, but thanks to Channel 4 operating a "hands off" policy on the brightest star in their firmament, Morris hasn't toned down or compromised the nature of his radio show for its television incarnation.
The gleefully enigmatic Morris has been setting new standards and breaking media rules ever since graduating from Bristol University (where he studied Zoology, oddly enough). Brought up a Catholic, he's the son of two doctors (which explains the amount of medically-based sketches in the show). He first appeared on the screen with Radio 4's spoof news series On The Hour, with Steve Coogan and Armando Ianucci.
He was then picked up by Channel 4, which gave him two years and a limitless budget to come up with a series called Brass Eye. The programme, a devastating critique of news values and celebrity stupidity, was postponed, amended, edited and generally messed about with, before it was eventually broadcast in 1997. While waiting for Channel 4 boss Michael Grade to move on, (he would only bring Jam to the station under a new director) Morris occupied himself writing a controversial series of articles for the Observer that parodied "confessional" journalism. He also helped in the production of the BBC series Big Train which was written by Irish writers, Mathews and Linehan.
Not part of the media-go-round, in real life Morris is tall, fogeyish in appearance and very shy. "He rarely gets recognised and has no airs and graces," says one of his friends. "There's nothing showbiz about him. He's really into music, and keeps up with current trends, going to gigs and all that, but people who meet him always think he's a bit nerdy, probably because of the way he dresses."
He is at pains to stress that he is not a "subversive prankster" who delights in shocking, saying in a recent interview that "If you make a joke in an area which is - for some reason - normally out of bounds then you might find something out, you might put your finger on something. But it's a matter of finding yourself in that area rather than setting out to look for trouble."
Of Jam he says that the mood of the show is everything: "It's designed to be hypnotic, so that it weaves itself in and you stay with it. Quite often the jokes are going off underground - normally you're given a cue to laugh at things but here there aren't any cues." Just genius.
A re-edited series of Jam is showing on Channel 4 on Saturdays after midnight