By GRAHAM REID
Funny how you can reduce some people to fits of laughter simply by saying, "A Flock of Seagulls."
Yes, 80s New Romantic bands were hard to take seriously at the time, even more so now.
It's likely that Spandau Ballet, Boy George, Sigue Sigue Sputnik and Ultra-vox could never have existed if it hadn't been for the fortuitous conjunction of fashion, the rise of pop videos, and earnest art schoolboys with synthesisers which allowed grown men to dress like psychopathic pirates set on spin cycle. Adam and the Ants, anyone?
Of course, with distance it's possible to get vaguely nostalgic for an era of teased-up hair, pancake makeup with black eyeliner and huge ruffled collars. Women's fashion was interesting, too.
Hunting Venus (8.30 tomorrow night on TV One) is a lightweight comedy with the Men Behaving Badly duo of Martin Clunes and Neil Morrissey. It takes us back to the 80s courtesy of a very thin storyline about a one-hit wonder New Romantic band getting together, very reluctantly, for a Jools Holland special on the period.
Clunes, who also directed this slight diversion, is Simon Delancey, who 15 years on from the Venus Hunters' sole skirmish with the pop charts — their single Starburst went into the top 30 — is a convincing conman who literally steals money from under old ladies' mattresses.
When he is recognised by the two former disaffected heads of their fan club Intravenus (there's the matter of an "administrative error" to the tune of £1127) they blackmail him into reforming the band for Holland's programme and vindicate their faith.
Needless to say, much has changed for the former members, not the least Charlie (Morrissey), who is now Charlotte.
Hunting Venus is mildly amusing and at the end there are cameos by Gary Numan (who has aged badly), the Human League, Simon LeBon and others of the era.
There is also Starburst, which begins: "I dreamed Venus was dying, we were choking on the fumes ..." It's all downhill from there into something about Uranus.
Yes, Hunting Venus has its moments, but what it is doing in the Montana Sunday Theatre slot is a mystery. It is hardly worthy of the position and will feel very long with ads padding this minor piece — I saw it on a plane a year ago and that seemed the right place — out to an unnecessary two hours.
Risible though the period may have been, it deserves something a little sharper than this.
<i>Tuned in:</i> Crimes of fashion
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