Popworld
| Popworld | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Genre | Music |
| Presented by |
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| Country of origin | Gylias |
| Original language(s) | |
| No. of episodes | 565 |
| Release | |
| Original network | GTV2 |
| Original release | 11 March 1990 – 31 December 2000 |
| External links | |
| Website | |
Popworld is a Gylian popular music programme. It originally aired on Sundays from 11 March 1990 to 24 December 2000, on GTV2.
Presented by Simon Amberg and Olívia Miranda, Popworld was famed for its "chat show with music" format and its surreal humour, and became one of Gylias' most successful pop music programmes.
History
Popworld was commissioned by GTV2 in 1988. It spent two years in pre-production, first searching for the right presenters, and then recording several scratch episodes in order for Simon Amberg and Olívia Miranda to develop their chemistry and the show to find its voice.
It began airing on 11 March 1990, and quickly became a hit. It played a significant role in the second Gylian Invasion, its playful tone dovetailing well with the atmosphere of renewed national optimism of the 1990s. It also won a large foreign following, especially as its episodes were made available on Proton after its founding, and many foreign acts appeared on the show, particularly from Akashi, Delkora, and Allamunnika.
The programme ended on 31 December 2000, because Simon and Olívia wished to move on to other projects. The final episode doubled as a new year's special.
Production
Popworld was filmed in a studio in Mişeyáke, without a studio audience. Its set design was minimalist, with white furniture and understated decoration in a spacious room. One reviewer likened the predominantly white set design to "the vacuum-sealed interrogation room of a space station".
Various other locations were used for different segments, ranging from hotel rooms to parking lots and warehouses.
Presenters
Popworld was presented by Simon Amberg and Olívia Miranda. Their chemistry was crucial to the show's success, and they shaped its humorous, at times surreal tone.
The pair were hired based on their unusual auditions. Simon claimed to have been fired from a children's show for being "sarcastic and mean to children". Olívia, 16 years old at the time of her audition, joked that she was hired after candidly insulting several pop stars and managing to name all members of New Order, skills she obtained by "slagging off school for a couple of years and watching TV all the time".
On screen, they formed a popular double act, with Olívia's enthusiasm balancing out Simon's more sarcastic tendencies. The show's producer credited them with providing the atmosphere of "smart-alec class clowns sitting on a couch mocking television all day". During conventional interviews, they gained praise for steering conversations into a certain direction and then patiently letting guests chat until they said something unusual.
Popworld had few recurring segments, such as Richard and Trudy — Simon and Olívia interviewing guests disguised as talking horses — and The Big Ones — Simon asking the guest a series of increasingly surreal questions. More often, Simon and Olívia came up with one-off segments depending on the guest, which included framing an interview as a Gylian Police interrogation, conducting an interview on opposite sides of a parking lot via megaphones, pretending to be a psychiatrist with the guest as a patient, or publicity stunts such as crashing an awards show to offer cheese to attendees.
Musical guests
Popworld featured appearances from a range of contemporary and older artists, including Stella Star, Stereolab, Combustible Edison, Spiritualized, The Verve, The Stone Roses, Core, My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Curve, PJ Harvey, Republica, Asuka and the Mighty Invincibles, Elena Tessari, Air, The Orb, the Beastie Boys, Digital Underground, Snoop Dogg, Imani Coppola, Cibo Matto, and Beck.
The show was also popular among foreign acts, with appearances including Delkora's Deee-Lite, Annecy, Shakespears Sister, No Doubt, and The Tea Party, and Akashi's Shonen Knife and Mari Takeuchi. Several foreign guests would comment that they appreciated Popworld as a break from the drudgery of promotion due to its openly humorous slant. Much of its Delkoran audience came from that country's alternative scene, which saw the programme as a kindred spirit to the discontinued Snub TV.
Legacy
Popworld was a major hit during its lifetime, and had a significant influence at home and abroad. Together with The Week in Music, it was a flagship of GTV2's music coverage, the two airing together on mornings and evenings.
Surface wrote in 1995 that "Popworld is usually endearingly inclusive viewing: host and guest snicker along like best mates with the viewers in on the joke, too." The show reflected of Gylias' absence of conventional celebrity culture: numerous acts clambered for guest spots, regardless of the risk of ridicule, specifically because of its absence of conventional interviews.
For many viewers, Popworld was a sort of proving ground for incipient and established pop stars, with the most successful being the ones who could relax and play along with the jokes. Radix argued that the show "highlighted the gulf between what celebrities want from fame (non-critical adoration, respect) and what they actually get (automatic ridicule, talking horses)." Foreign viewers in particular perceived a populist, us-versus-them tone in some of these encounters and thus preferred the show's "courage" to more staid, access-dependent chat shows.
Gylias Review said in a 20th anniversary retrospective that "Popworld was funny, but at the same time oddly serious. No mainstream music show before or since has asked stars with such regularity: why are you here? Beyond the fact that you may or may not have a decent record out, what is your point?"
Rasa Ḑeşéy acknowledged working on Popworld as a formative experience for her filmmaking style, and said she learned from Simon and Olívia "how to relax people in an interview and poke them until they said something interesting".