UHF

A comedy set at a small television station. George cannot hold down a job. He likes daydreaming and is dismissed from everything. His uncle wins a television station in a card game. The station is a wreck; no audience, old equipment, and a transmitter that barely works. George is put in charge. The first programmes are a disaster. Nobody watches and no advertising comes. Then there is an accident. Stanley, the janitor, ends up live on air, and the show he holds together suddenly draws attention. From there the film is a story of rising. The station puts out absurd programmes and the ratings explode. The programmes are the film's real material. A game show that gives fish as prizes, a children's slot where the host hands out power tools, an unrelated nature documentary and fake film trailers. There is a large station opposite. R. J. Fletcher does not want the small one rising and tries to buy it. What the narrative is interested in is not television but freedom: the station succeeds because it follows no rules, and the film does not turn that into an argument, it simply shows it. The structure is loose. The narrative repeatedly drops the plot and moves into sketches and parodies. The film has a box office story. It opened in the summer of 1989 and vanished among the large productions; it later became a cult item in the video era. Weird Al Yankovic, Michael Richards, Kevin McCarthy and Fran Drescher are in the cast. Jay Levey directed and co-wrote. Who it is for: anyone who likes 1980s parody comedy and satire about television. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a connected story; the film moves like a run of sketches and some of the jokes do not land.