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Music

Chance The Rapper and James Blake: The Sitcom

When Chance and James move in together it seemed like the perfect opportunity to pitch a sitcom.

There’s a moment, usually lasting no longer than 10 seconds, when you arrive home from work and envisage an evening spent reading the Foucault you didn’t quite get round to at uni, or watching the Tarkovsky boxset that may seduce the disinterested Visual Culture MA student you keep trying to smell at the Sainsbury’s self-checkout. Then you switch on the telly, and let any initiative you may have briefly held be melted away by comedy repeats on Freeview.

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The only problem is that sitcoms on Freeview have never been worse. With Friends stuck on Comedy Central, your only choice is between the miserably brain-dead misogyny of How I Met Your Mother and The Inbetweeners, or the even more miserable supposed feminism of Girls wannabes Some Girls and Drifters.

So, while I realise Chance The Rapper and James Blake probably moved into an LA pad together so they could make more inspired collaborations like the spectacular "Life Round Here", to me it seemed like the perfect opportunity to pitch a sitcom that will revive ITV2’s flagellated comedy department, with the kind of unlikely and interracial friendships that haven’t been seen since New Girl realised it needed a black character. The move will be the first time that 20 year-old Chance has lived away from his parents’ home. This means the house is likely to be a petri dish of frazzles found in wank socks and snap pots of baked beans spilt over snap-backs, and is definitely the type of thing that needs to be made into a TV show.

Here’s a brief treatment for any onlooking TV producers. Holla at me, I’ve already written several scripts.

EPISODE 1

When Chance was in the 4th grade, his mum chucked his “dirty” version of Kanye’s The College Dropout in the bin and didn’t let him have haribo cause of the additives. In a lunge of new-found freedom Chance’ll spend the first few hours in his new house running in circles and listening to rude things really really loudly, like “Thong Song” and the Blink-182 song with all the swear words.

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This will get James’s goat, because while he’s trying to seduce his Warpaint-wifey with a private reading of “A Burdock-Clawed My Gown” by Emily Dickinson, the plangency of his delivery is completely ruined by the muffled sound of Chance snickering at “she has dumps like a truck truck truck”, and looping it on James’ RC 20XL pedal. This introductory episode will help spell out to ITV2’s prawn mayo’n’porn audience that Chance and James are disparate souls, but both a million miles from home. There will be a split screen showing them both quietly bleating into their pillows, Chance clutching a framed picture of him and Childish Gambino on Tidal Wave at Thorpe Park and James clutching a printed out certificate from when he won an online chess game against RZA.

EPISODE 2

Like any sitcom that dominates the nether regions of Putlocker, Chance and James first bond halfway through episode 2, after Chance locks himself in the bathroom and cries because his blood sugar is low and he didn’t end up in the top five of the BBC Sound of 2014 poll. James consoles him, patting him and reminding him that he only came second - but did get to meet Clare Balding in the BBC lift.

Chance thinks that a pipette of acid might cheer him up. Knowing James wouldn’t really volunteer to spend the evening looking at Chance’s Magic Eye book and having a bath together, he instead slips the “electric kool-aid” or “mellow yellows” (depending which 8pm terminology the writers decide to go for) into his special fondue of deep-fried dairylea triangles dipped in mayonnaise. About half an hour later, when they start listening to Mercury Rev and playing with scissors and felt-tip pens on the sleeves of James’s EXTREMELY RARE 1-800-Dinosaur vinyls, James realises that tonight’s the night of the Mercury Prize. And they’ve only got 10 minutes to get there! Quick, better get on the tandem.

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At the ceremony, they make a right scene. James rubs the pulled pork on his belly and puts it in his navel, to feel close to the pig and its ancestors. When you watched the Newsnight post-win interview it may have come across like he was being impudent, but it was only because he felt the interviewer Steve Smith was not in the chakra’s navel.

EPISODE 3

Chance invites his new friends, Bieber and Twista, over to play some ten-pin bowling on the Wii. They try to get high by snorting nutmeg and smoking banana skins by putting them in the microwave, which combusts. Uh oh! James says he is not angry at Chance, just disappointed, and skulks off to his room. He has a dolorous Skype conversation with his girlfriend, and they improvise a song about his inability to heat up his be-good-to-yourself mushroom risotto, which then sashays into a version of “A Thousand Miles” by Vanessa Carlton cause they really miss each other. Clearly feeling bad about the whole microwave thing, Chance invites James to partake in their Wii and nutmeg sesh which momentarily cheers James up before he starts to take issues with the boys saying “chillax”, explaining to them that it is a “pocket fluff” definition and starts to pontificate about a conspiracy theory that the Spongebob Plankton’s Revenge game, in which Plankton has stolen the Krabby Patty formula, is actually an allegory for music piracy. He suggests that maybe they have a go on Brian Eno’s “Bloom” app instead. Did they know he worked with Brian Eno?

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They decide to have a housewarming party, and as Chance isn’t legally allowed to drink, he’s in charge of nibbles. But, because he’s a grown adult, owns his own house, and has drunk at loads of his friends Bar Mitzvahs, he tries to use James’s ID at the liquor store. For some reason this doesn’t work, and James has to come and bail him out at the police station. They end the episode as best friends.

EPISODE 4

Providing that the show isn’t canned after three episodes, the fourth installment would involve James Blake playing an intimate gig in a chapel for members of his subreddit. ITV don’t have the budget to shoot the sitcom in LA, and instead, at least for now, LA is in Loughton. Due to the acoustics of the pews, James spends his soundcheck testing each one with a tuning fork, while Chance runs around wearing the mitre and pretending to be Pope Francis. James soon establishes that the venue necessitates 92 seconds of silence between each verse, but Chance ruins it when, during a particularly potent silence in “Retrograde”, he burps really loudly.

When they get home, James sits at the end of Chance’s racecar bed and they start to talk about Chicago, Chance’s hometown. James correlates Chi-raq - as it’s sometimes known - with Enfield, the leafy hood where he was raised, because someone once stole his micro scooter. He tuts at Chance’s impetuous jabber about the Chicago juke scene because at the Enfield Ellenborough Table Tennis Club, a ping-pong volley took place that forged DJ Rashad’s sound.

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EPISODE 5

After realising that they’ve spent too long inside, Chance and James head out to the first joint-party as wingmen. Chance is trying to chirpse Sky Ferreira and it’s going really well, she’s impressed that he interned for Obama, and they’ve almost set a date to go to Wendy’s. Chance waxes lyrical about music and being called the next Kanye, and things are great. He’s got his arm around her, they’re feeding each other Wotsits and having a grand old time. But then, in act of mid-season sabotage, which threatens to scupper how far their friendship has come, James gets jealous. He sits down and tells Sky about the time that he went over to Kanye’s house and “had chicken and chips” and, did she know that he recorded with Brian Eno? She did, but he mentions it at least four more times while also shoehorning in something about the Kanye experience feeling “like a jury summons”. Sky realises that anyone who compares listening to tax evasion evidence to sitting on Yeezus’s laminated Versace sofa must be a total fun sponge, and leave the party. This upsets Chance, who leaves too, which although pleasing for James, because it means he can stay up talking to Bon Iver about logging and listening to “Emotions” by Destiny’s Child in peace, it’s also upsetting. He only wanted to get back at Chance for writing “Lauren LaFern” on his houseplant, and now, Chance is lost, unreachable by phone, email, or snapchat. This will be an ideal mid-season break cliff-hanger.

Follow Josie on Twitter: @JosieRaeT