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Archive: BBC Four

2005: Television

27 December 2005 23:15

Categories: Humour, Nostalgia, Reviews, Television

It’s not really been a golden year for television. A few good programmes, but nothing actually spectacular.

I don’t write about television on this blog as much as I might. I guess that’s because I’m not really a big television fanatic in general. But as with most people, a number of programmes do come to my attention throughout the year. So here’s where I’m going to write about them.

Check ‘below the fold’, as they say, for views on:

  • Freeview compression
  • +1 channels on Freeview
  • Quiz channels
  • Little Britain
  • Extras
  • Nathan Barley
  • Look Around You
  • The Mighty Boosh
  • Man Stroke Woman
  • Spoons
  • Space Cadets
  • The Comic Side of 7 Days
  • Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps
  • The Thick of It
  • Don’t Watch That, Watch This
  • The Late Edition
  • Broken News

Click for more »

5 comments

National spare room databases

31 October 2005 14:22

Categories: Current affairs, Politics, Television

Chris Applegate has a good post about Labour’s obsession with silly laws. So has Justin McKeating:

It’s politics by laughometer. If a policy floated in the media fails to get a laugh, it’s in. A policy that gets a raucous roar like the proposed drinking ban did yesterday goes on the fire along with frog-marching drunks to cashpoints, Hazel Blears’ Guantanamo boiler suits for those doing community service and her idea for a caste system. Some of these ideas have lifespans that make your average mayfly look like Methuselah.

It’s just like in The Thick of It when they are desperately trying to think up a new tinselly thing to justify calling a press conference.

A national spare room database?

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Britpop night on BBC Four

9 August 2005 02:10

Categories: Music, Nostalgia, Personal, Television

I was browing the rather excellent Radio Times website when I saw that BBC Four appear to be having a Britpop night on Tuesday the 16th of August.

One of the programmes in the schedule is a repeat of a one-off 1995 compilation programme, Britpop Now. I remember it very well. We were on holiday, staying at a friend’s house. I was a nine-year-old discovering and enjoying music for the first time just as the Britpop explosion was reaching its zenith.

The programme was presented by Damon Allbran (he says so himself in the introduction). I would like to say that it was a seminal programme for me, but looking back the only bands out of the list of performers that I ever bought albums of were Pulp, Blur (both of whom I already liked anyway) and Sleeper (which I think I listened to about twice in my life).

What is funny is that, ten years on, all of the featured bands would probably be thoroughly ashamed to even be associated with the Britpop label, let alone to have actively participated in a programme trumpeting the genre.

It will be very interesting to watch the evening’s programmes on BBC Four; to see what Britpop looks like with the benefit of ten years’ worth of hindsight.

21 comments

The Thick of It previewed

8 May 2005 17:18

Categories: DVD, Humour, Make My Vote Count, Politics, Television, UK General Election 2005

Armando Iannucci’s new programme, The Thick of It, is finally starting next Thursday on BBC Four. The Observer has a preview piece on it, and it sounds like it’s going to be one of the very best programmes of the year.

…Chris Morris, his friend and collaborator on The Day Today, says [it] ‘is one of the best things he’s ever done, if not the best thing’.

…

In the first of the series, a new unit, the Anti-Benefit Fraud Executive (ABFE) understatedly goes through several name changes in the course of the programme, becoming Scambusters, Snooper Force and Sponge Avengers. The idea that getting the name right has become the most important thing feels horribly realistic, as does a pervasive sense that politicians are making things up as they go along.

…

Someone says of the press secretary: ‘She’s not just thinking inside the box. She’s built a box inside the box and she’s thinking inside that box.’

…the naturalistic feel of The Thick of It gives the viewer a sense of eavesdropping on reality. The script is only 80 per cent written at the start of rehearsals and the cast is expected to improvise. They talk over each other, speak tentatively or not quite at the right level and, as the hand-held cameras swing around trying to catch them, you lose the old-fashioned sitcom sense of worked-up punchlines, the lack of contrived and pointed satirical moments giving the dialogue more bite.

Meanwhile, Iannucci has this to say about the election:

In the event, he pronounces himself satisfied with the polls: ‘Despite the immensely stupid electoral system that can allow massive changes in seats at very little change in the proportion of votes, the electorate turned out to be mightily sophisticated in getting precisely what it wanted, which was to keep Labour in power but with a very scared look on its face that we can all laugh at.’

Finally, why oh why oh why oh why oh why haven’t The Armando Iannucci Shows been released on DVD yet?

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TV on Trial: I choose the future

5 April 2005 11:24

Categories: Current affairs, Television

I’ve very much enjoyed BBC Four’s TV on Trial programmes. I didn’t manage to catch much of it last week, but I’ll be trying to watch as much as I can of this week’s repeats.

It is very interesting to see how television has evolved. The winning decade was the 1970s, which I can’t complain about too much. Most of the repeats seem to come from the 1970s, with few programmes from the 1980s or 1990s ever getting shown these days, on the major channels at least.

I must defend modern television though, especially since that pompous arsehole John Humphrys was arguing against it. Humphrys’ argument against modern television news was that a reporter’s pre-recorded report would be shown and would be immediately followed by a pointless two-way in which the reporter repeats much the same thing. But that’s exactly what happens on John Humphrys’ Today programme. Humphrys complained that reality television just put people into a gladiatorial arena and saw what happened. But if you want pointless gladiatorial conflicts you need look no further than the Today programme.

People are hyper-sensitive to television dumbing down, but I don’t think it happens nearly as much as people think. Following Humphrys’ complaint about modern television’s obsession with reality television, what did they show to celebrate the 1970s winning? They showed The Family, a programme that would not look out of place in today’s schedules, and the very first reality television programme.

Just imagine what people would say if we started with the situation that we have now and went back to the situation of the 1970s, with just the three channels. People would be upset about the disappearance of the many channels that are entirely dedicated to showing factual programming: many of the UKTV channels, UKTV History in particular; the (dozens of?) Discovery Channels.

News wouldn’t be on the television nearly as much, especially with the disappearance of 24 hour news channels. People would long for the days when BBC Four was around to show arts programming and documentaries. They would ask what happened to the cutting-edge comedy output of BBC Three (okay, forget about Two Pints… and that sentence with make sense).

Of course modern television has its downsides. The old-fashioned 10 O’Clock News is always more fulfilling than any bulletin on BBC News 24. But with News 24 you can get up-to-date with the news whenever it suits you; you can watch important news events as they happen. Thanks to interactive television you can even choose — to an extent at least — which news you want to watch.

The difference between the television of the future and the television of yesterday is choice. There is nothing wrong with having hundreds of channels. It’s not a sign that people are addicted to television — it just means that viewers are no longer force-fed whatever is shown on the BBC or ITV.

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