Spe­cial Correspondents

Spe­cial Cor­re­spon­dents is a new film that’s been writ­ten and direct­ed by Ricky Ger­vais and is avail­able to view on Net­flix. We’d like to grab you by the grub­by col­lar and whisk you away, momen­tar­i­ly, on a Dick­en­sian rever­ie… Let’s imag­ine the life of this film in a time before the reign of the VOD giants, who have access to vast pots of pay­ola to pro­duce their own exclu­sive content.

As a child of the VHS gen­er­a­tion, it took a while for me to delin­eate between cream-of-the-crop stu­dio movies that had reached the rental shop fol­low­ing a gold­en run on the big screen, and fourth-rate cel­lu­loid swill that was pro­duced pure­ly as a way to fill out the shelves. These movies formed a mouldy wreath around the white hot block­busters, and in many ways it felt like their func­tion was sim­ply to repel you towards the big­ger, bet­ter titles. Like, you wouldn’t be sur­prised to dis­cov­er that they were just emp­ty box cov­ers – there wasn’t an actu­al film to go with artwork.

Spe­cial Cor­re­spon­dents is one of these movies, a prod­uct that exists pure­ly to make it look like the hal­lowed fra­ter­ni­ty of Hol­ly­wood film crafts­men have been keep­ing them­selves busy. Had this movie been pro­duced 20, 30 years ear­li­er, there’s no doubt it would have made a sor­ry bee-line for the sub­ur­ban rental shops. It’s a film that you would only ever end up rent­ing if all the copies of Star­gate were already on loan. This would be sat there, nes­tled mourn­ful­ly between Biodome and Bev­er­ly Hills Nin­ja, as an ​‘if-all-else-fails’ option.

After a while, the plas­tic coat­ing on the box would begin to dis­colour, bathed too long in the pierc­ing sum­mer sun­light. The glossy paper sleeve would start to rum­ple in the heat, and the gurn­ing faces of its stars – Ger­vais and Eric Bana – become con­tort­ed as if they were being refract­ed through a cheap cir­cus mir­ror. The young dude sat behind the counter would be asked, on occa­sion, ​‘what’s this one like?’, when some hap­less rube is look­ing to gam­ble away their Fri­day evening, safe in the knowl­edge there’s a triple-bill of taped-off-TV Baby­lon 5 on stand­by if things turn sour. The atten­dant will have to lie in the name of cap­i­tal­is­tic enter­prise, but will do so in a way which doesn’t dent his cinephile cre­do. He’ll give it a non-com­mit­tal thumbs up, but cou­pled with a facial expres­sion that reads, ​‘It’s a film that you can watch, but I can’t endorse it any fur­ther than that.’

You will return to the shop and slide the VHS back across the counter. He will look shame­faced, know­ing that he sold you a lemon in good con­science. You send him a bare­ly-masked scowl, the type you might reserve for a neigh­bour you once saw throw a bag of soiled nap­pies into your gar­den, but he didn’t clock you as he was doing it. He will cheer­ful­ly waive the £1.00 late fee.

Not many peo­ple will want to watch this movie, but that’s not a prob­lem. Dur­ing its swift fall from grace, oth­er films will have entered the fray to take its place, its medi­oc­rity dis­placed by anoth­er botch-job pre­tender. It will descend down the shelves to ankle-lev­el, essen­tial­ly pegged as a title that cus­tomers will have to come in specif­i­cal­ly look­ing for rather than one that the out­let will want them to stum­ble upon. The months go by and the shelves need replen­ish­ing, so maybe the three copies on rota­tion will be hacked back to just the one, for archiv­ing pur­pos­es only. The oth­ers will be sent to lan­guish in the ex-rental bin, where they might become an iron­ic christ­mas present, or picked up and re-used to tape Baby­lon 5 off the TV.