TV Offal was a short-running TV programme written and presented by Victor Lewis-Smith and aired on Channel 4 in 1998.
Essentially presented as a Clip Show, TV Offal is notable for its recurring sketches and pitch-black humour which often veered into the scatological, if not the outright libellous on a number of occasions; Lewis-Smith not mincing any words, with vicious insults directed at any number of then-popular figures.
TV Offal was a direct inspiration for Screenwipe as presented by Charlie Brooker, something Brooker tacitly acknowledged in the programme - however whereas Screenwipe was a programme that was chiefly motivated by Brooker's love of good television, TV Offal is motivated by Lewis-Smith's hatred of most television (and in fact most things that exist). It has never been repeated, but episodes are available on YouTube
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Regular segments of the show:
- Kamikaze Karaoke - in which Lewis-Smith depicts how musicians "sound to him", usually rendered with deliberately extremely poor singing in a mocking voice
- Honest Obituary - a mock news obituary for a living television personality or cultural figure, typically laced with extremely harsh criticism of said figure and an embarrassing cause for death
- Crappy Logo of the Week - poorly-made idents, often for low-budget student or hospital television stations
- Assassination of the Week - a "game" played around breaks, in which the lead up to an attempted assassination of a political figure is shown and the audience is invited to guess whether they are "worm food" (i.e. the assassination was successful).
This show provides examples of:
- Accentuate the Negative: Quite possibly the purest example that exists, in that there is absolutely nothing positive.
- Author Filibuster: Nothing but.
- Black Comedy: This is a programme in which viewers are invited to guess whether assassination attempts are successful or not, and "obituaries" are produced for living celebrities which are directly hostile to them and in most cases insinuate that their supposed death was welcomed by the country as a whole, amongst much else.
- Caustic Critic: Arguably the most caustic critic to ever appear on British television, Lewis-Smith is borderline sociopathic in his treatment of television presenters and celebrities, making absolutely no attempt to be anything other than savage to them at any given moment. He doesn't praise a single thing in the entire series except sarcastically.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Everyone in the Honest Obituaries:
- Vanessa Feltz dies of an enormous "diarrhoea blowback".
- Jeremy Clarkson dies in an apparently rather gnarly pileup caused by his inability to pay attention to the road in front of him.
- The Two Fat Ladies died after a BDSM session gone wrong that involved "bondage masks and satsumas".
- Andrew Lloyd Webber died of malaria after being "bitten on the arsehole by a tsetse fly that had mistaken it for his face".
- Noel Edmonds "spontaneously oleaginated", becoming an oil slick that accidentally gets released into the ocean.
- Medium Awareness: The "Sackfuls", who have supposedly written a letter to the show, which is read out by a ten year old - something they are somehow aware of while writing the letter. They immediately follow this by noting that they are "chiefly here as a linking device" (which they are).
- Our Lawyers Advised This Trope: "And now we must stop 'cause our lawyer says that Chris/Esther/Loyd/etc will sue."
- Running Gag: In the Honest Obituary segments: "Some say that they were [series of strong and harsh criticisms, usually based on the subject's worthlessness as an individual and general repulsiveness]... their critics were less kind."
- Sarcasm Mode: Often.
- Sophisticated as Hell: Lewis-Smith delivers most of his speech - including his most direct and blunt criticisms - in the style of a Received Pronunciation-aping radio presenter. The "Honest Obituaries" in particular are delivered in the style of serious television new articles.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: From the Honest Obituary for Andrew Lloyd Webber, it's claimed that Lloyd-Webber's works' (alleged) similarity to other composers' pieces is not due to plagiarism, but instead due to dead composers using time travel to steal Lloyd-Webber's work.
- Take That!: It's probably easier to point out the bits that aren't extremely direct and harsh criticisms of someone.
- Take That Me: After a long segment mocking a poorly-made and utterly incoherent Nigerian courtroom drama, Lewis-Smith launches into a rant against his own programme because of the Stereotypes involved, saying that his commentary was a poor attempt at satire aimed at a country that his own had kept down via resource extraction, and describing himself as "Bernard Manning with O-Levels".
- The first episode ends with Lewis-Smith saying that he's "sounded very smug while doing third-rate gags".
