Rotten’s Search for Honesty Makes for Entertaining TV

You might wonder which would be more dangerous: giving Johnny Rotten a tank, or giving the ex-Sex Pistol punk prelate a TV show? With the premiere of “Rotten Television” on Sunday, VH1 gives him both.

Mr. Rotten (nee John Lydon) uses the tank to blow up a bunch of rock memorabilia in one of three main segments in the half-hour, the first of seven “specials” planned to run during 2000. And, in kind, he uses the show itself to blow up any hypocrisy in his sweeping sights. His level of curmudgeonliness makes Michael Moore look like Jay Leno.

But, like Moore, Rotten is a modern-day Diogenes, and his search for honesty is both righteous and highly entertaining. In many ways, he is Moore for the Boomer/Gen X crowd. Interstitial surrealist bits of war scenes (hey, the tank was already paid for) give the show a distinctive look and tone.

But the real wars happen in the verite chunks that are the show’s meat. Here’s Johnny getting tossed out of the studio while taping backstage at Roseanne’s talk show--with permission, he keeps telling people. Here’s Johnny mocking and baiting accused Hollywood madam Jody “Babydol” Gibson as he interviews her about her attempt to launch a singing career.

Sure, it might seem that the former punk provocateur has turned into an old crank, but he’s always been an old crank, even when he was young. What makes it more than just crankiness are the philosophical twists and signs of intelligent life usually missing from TV investigations. Rather than dismiss Babydol, as much as he tries, he ultimately comes to admire her for the totality of her artifice, much preferable over the sincerity with which most stars cloak themselves.

Among the latter he includes three rock stars who refused to be on the show--Ozzy Osbourne, Courtney Love and Neil Young--the latter savaged by Rotten in a wig and flannel shirt yowling Young’s lines about the punker himself from the 1979 ode “My My Hey Hey.”

But Rotten also pledges that he will give himself grief whenever he deserves it. So that must mean we can expect him at some point to chastise himself for refusing to do a planned interview with The Times--even using the same excuse he says Love used, that he was working on a film. More intriguing, though, is wondering what will happen when he turns his tank on his VH1 host, as seems inevitable, tearing apart the pumped-up drama of the cable channel’s “Behind the Music.” We can’t wait.

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* VH1’s “Rotten Television” can be seen Sunday at midnight. The network has rated it TV-14 (may be unsuitable for children younger than 14).