Adam Buxton’s BUG is the show Channel Four’s RudeTube really wants to be.
It’s funny, cool and intelligent, with its own anarchic sensibility, not having to rely on cheap jokes and occasional nudity.
It’s no surprise that Sky Atlantic has snapped up the two-monthly night, which has been selling out at London’s BFI for the past couple of years, for a television run.
And a big part of that anarchic spirit comes from Buxton, or Dr Buckles, himself, who presented this compilation of BUG’s best bits, interspersed with hilarious comments from YouTube messageboards, and his own homemade vids.
The skill of the director is paramount in the show – with their name coming first ahead of the artist they’re working for, such as Jake Scott’s video for Paul Weller's new track Green, or Keith Loutit’s stunning video The City Of Samba, soundtracked by Jarbas Agnelli.
Dr Buckles ensured true talent was celebrated. The originality of the low-budget basement-filmed Rifle Burs, by rapper Gil McRipley, was held up as proof you don’t need to spend nine months and countless dollars to create a great music video – not that it hurt Gotye’s amazing stop-motion Easy Way Out.
Seeing both on the Duke Of York’s big screen underlined the directors’ skills on something that these days would only be seen in a tiny YouTube box.
Dr Buckles was an endearingly shambolic and ramshackle host, aided and abetted by a slightly temperamental laptop, which seized up on occasion, adding a further sense of chaos to the homemade feel of the night.
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