Given the number of expensive and highly publicised TV shows these days, a 1:40 long animated poem is probably the last thing you would expect to see on your small screen. And let me tell you – what a breath of fresh air.
“Apple”, by Dylan Owen, is an illustrated clip accompanied by the author’s words resonating in the background, and is the first of the Random Act series on Channel 4. The poem’s premise? A stomach-churning tale of a man who is saved by a seagull as he chokes on a chunk of apple lodged in his throat.
While it probably won’t be everybody’s cup of tea, even the most avid critic of this Random Act clip will have to admit that watching something a bit more educating than TOWIE is incredibly refreshing.
Just when you were about to lose your faith in humanity, or at least in today’s increasingly depressing TV, something as quirky as “Apple” is strangely up-lifting.
Owen is no Shakespeare when it comes to words but he should be praised for modernising poetry, which some would say is a lost art. The combination of illustrations and a poem used in “Apple” – a cross between art and an advert – brings poetry back to life in an excessively dumbed-down culture.
London Eye 