ITV is having problems. We all know that. It's share price is down the tubes, it's having to cut jobs, its ad revenues are in decline, it can't afford to do local news any more, its ratings are falling, it's even having to cancel Primeval.

It's having problems.

Over the last few days, I've been swanning around various people blogs (including Dan's and Joe's) and mailing lists, explaining to everyone who hates ITV - which is pretty much everyone - what its problems are and why they're not all its fault. I should have been doing proper work, I know, but all these years of trade journalism haven't been for nothing you know, and I do like the sound of my own typing.

Anyway, I thought I'd cobble together all the various postings, try to assemble them into some kind of coherent but occasionally self-contradictory mass, and let you muse on them - and argue the toss if necessary. Note, a lot of it's been off the top off my head, so don't quote me for truth or even accuracy on all the details: imagine them as broad sketch outlines of poor ITV's problems - and why it had to cancel Primeval.

Continue reading "The problems and dilemmas facing ITV"

Read other posts about: Primeval

As everyone's pretty much aware, Heroes turned into rubbish for volumes two and three and the most recent volume – four – has been a vast improvement and general return to season one levels of quality.

The reasons are long and complicated, but many cite the departure of producer Bryan Fuller, writer of Company Man during season one, to create Pushing Daisies as one of the causes of the quality drop.

The fact that Bryan Fuller's back now – anyone who saw Cold Snap might well agree that our Bryan certainly knows what he's doing when it comes to Heroes – and the quality's improved only seems to confirm the linking of Fuller and quality on Heroes.

But I have some worries, the chief of which is that all this praise might be going to his head and all the other writers are going to kill him.

I'll tell you for why. Our Bryan's been doing a lot of interviews of late, in which he's been dissing [spoilers for volumes four and five] the previous volumes. Fair dos, they did go a bit pear-shaped.

But our Bryan – who despite sitting in the writers' room for a bit during the early part of volume four only rejoined officially for episode 19, Shades of Grey – has been getting braver with every interview and bit of praise aimed at him and now has been dissing bits of the original plans volume four [mad numbers of spoilers but worth it], revealing what was originally going to happen before his second coming.

Then I started reading the Fugitives arc. I thought 'this is interesting, they're back in their real lives', but then it took another tumble down the rabbit hole of getting really dense and characters being angry

The characters' anger at their situations was such a barrier to entry for me, because I don't relate to pissed off people. I have to know there's something in that person that makes me want to root for them and care for them. I thought 'well, if people are angry, let's understand why they're angry so we can sympathise with them.'…

I came back for episode 19, so we started breaking that. When they were breaking that, Sylar's dad was going to be the ultimate evil, the devil essentially. I was like, 'didn't you guys just do that with Arthur Petrelli?' They agreed, so we took it in a different direction…

I'll put spoiler tags on this one, because although it's not really a spoiler (since there were clues on-screen) and Bryan Fuller has been going everywhere, telling everyone about it, even on the episode commentaries on the NBC web site so that people don't get annoyed when the pay-off is revealed, some people might not want to know yet:

When I came in, they were planning to kill Tracy off. She was gonna get shot in the back of the head! I was like, 'couldn't we have her go out in a way that is more dynamic, fun and open?' I guess I was trying not to have Ali Larter basically die in the same way she did in the second season - 'I'm a hero!' Then she dies. It felt redundant to have her go out the same way, so I was like 'let's not kill her, let's see how these events change this character and stay with her on the journey as opposed to just cutting it off…

Yes, basically, volume four was going to be shite as well until Bryan Fuller came back. More worrying, despite the departure of Jesse Alexander and Jeph Loeb from the show, this is how he characterised the writing room:

The good thing for me when I came back is that the pendulum was already swinging back the right way and everybody on the writing staff recognised the problems with the show and how far afield it had gotten from where it was. Often that writers' room is like alchemy - you have the person with the crazy ideas, the person with the funny ideas, the person who defends the characters at any cost. When I came back, it was a little bit like coming home from college and realising 'oh, mum and dad don't talk to each other any more, little sis is a cutter and little bro is hooked on meth'. The room was a completely different room. What was a cohesive group had become divided, so it was a matter of someone coming in and saying 'let's work together'.

Yes, Bryan Fuller is in fact Jesus and has brought people together and healed them. So I'm worried that Bryan has been a little less than tactful about his co-writers and they might get a bit mad with him; more than that, I'm worried that if he ends up leaving as a result or to do his own project again, the show will revert to pantsness, because even though the writers do know what they're doing to a certain extent, judging by the earlier episodes of volume four, they apparently need Bryan Fuller's leadership and insight to avoid colossal great plotting cock-ups.

What say you?

Read other posts about: Heroes

There are a couple of interesting things about the current season of 24:

1. It's good. No, really it is. After the last season which even the writers' were hating as they wrote, they've had a sit down, thought about what was wrong and fixed it. We've even had the "there's a second shooter" moment which has neatly divided the season into two parts to avoid plot fatigue. The launch of the second part was on Monday - and wasn't it exciting?
2. Jack Bauer is starting to become a real person.

Continue reading "Jack Bauer is a character no more"

Read other posts about: 24

Today's TV musing is about writers. Now it can't have escaped your notice but fiction doesn't emerge fully formed from the sea onto our TV screens – there are these people called writers who create all the words and deeds depicted in dramas, comedies and even some 'reality' TV shows.

No two writers are the same, of course, each usually having their own 'voice' – a way of writing dialogue, a way of developing and introducing characters, a way of plotting that is unique to them. But on a TV show, that isn't always a good thing.

On a serial or long-running show, sometimes you don't want individual writers' scripts to stand out from the others; you want them all more or less the same because you have ongoing character arcs, back story, established forms of behaviour for the protagonists and so on. If a writer's script stands out, it's probably because it's inconsistent with the other episodes, which you don't usually want.

On many TV shows, there is a special role specifically for making sure scripts all mesh together nicely. In the UK, that's the script editor; in the US, it's usually the 'show runners' or exec producers – who unlike their film counterparts are typically writers who have ascended the career ladder.

Of course, there can be problems when the script editor/exec producer also writes scripts, because there's no one there to check their work for consistency and because they typically give themselves more latitude than they do to other writers. It's not always the case: you'd be hard-pressed to work out which Lost scripts are by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, which Mad Men scripts are by Matthew Weiner.

But take The Unit, for example. One of the exec producers on that is David Mamet. Yes, the David Mamet – the award-winning playwright and screenwriter who wrote Glengarry Glen Ross, Speed-the-plow, The Verdict and Wag The Dog, to name but a few classics. Who's going to edit his stuff, let alone himself?

So whenever Mamet writes a script for The Unit, it's always massively at odds with all the other scripts and contains an overload of his usual obsessions (martial arts, con tricks, overly manly behaviour). Surprisingly, they're never as good as the scripts by the other producers, sister Lynn Mamet and Eric L Haney, on whose book the show was based.

Callan is another show that comes to mind. Creator James Mitchell resolutely refused to acknowledge there had been any character development in between his contributions to the four series, so whenever he wrote a script, every character immediately reverted back to the behaviours and relationships they'd exhibited in the original pilot play.

Yet there are some shows where different voices are tolerated and allowed. Take Doctor Who. Although show runner/exec producer Russell T Davies can rewrite up to 60% of a script created by one of the other writers, you can still usually tell when Gareth Roberts or Steven Moffat is writing the week's episode – or when it's one of his own. And that's actually a great delight.

So today's question: how much should individual writers' voices be heard on TV shows – does it depend on the type of show and is the reason it's tolerated on some shows because there are only a few decent writers on the show and we just notice when there are some good episodes for a change?

Read other posts about: Callan, Lost, Mad Men, The Unit

From the ITV web site

ITV is the biggest commercial television network in the UK, broadcasting the most talked about television and making a major contribution to the UK’s culture, economy and communities.

What is ITV for? This isn't just an idle question. We know what the BBC's for (sort of): it's for public service brodcasting and higher quality populist fare – that sort of thing. That's why we watch it. Channel 4's there for a brave stab at public service broadcasting, US imports and daft rubbish. Five is there for, well, that's actually a tricky question but US imports plus whatever else their Lucky 8 ball suggested that week, or what they could get away with making for crap-all budget.

But ITV's trickier. Not only is it contemplating giving back its terrestrial licence to get out of public service broadcasting, no one really has an idea of what it's for, apart from rubbish these days. It used simply to be an alternative to the BBC for the 'common man', designed to increase competition, improve standards and make programmes the Beeb wouldn't because it was too snooty. But now the Beeb makes some very good programmes, not all of them snooty, and ITV makes some very bad programmes – is the television of the 'common man' simply crap TV or should it be something better?

Okay, standards are improving, with a number of goodish shows making it on to our screens of late (eg The Fixer and Lost in Austen). But we all know roughly what BBC1, BBC2, BBC3 and BBC4 are for. Do you honestly know what ITV1, ITV2, ITV3 and ITV4 are doing with their lives? Here's the blurb:

ITV1: Britain's most popular commercial channel
ITV2: An exciting mix of talent, celebrity gossip and factual shows
ITV3: Delve into the archives with classic drama from the ITV vaults
ITV4: Challenging drama, cult films and premium sports events

Are you feeling any wiser? Do these feel like well thought out focuses? Does it help to realise this is all lies anyway (eg Secret Diary of a Call Girl on ITV2, US imports like Life and BBC shows like Lovejoy on ITV3, old ITC shows like Space: 1999 and manly documentaries on ITV4).

So if ITV's not there for public service broadcasting and doesn't produce good TV, does it have a purpose? Or is it simply just another broadcaster these days – just like Five? And if it's just like Five, are ultimately its ratings going to end up just like Five's unless it can think of a proper place for itself in the world?

Over to you…

Today's proper Today's Joanna Page is Russell T Davies's Mine All Mine. Stick around Who-ers and Torchwood-ers, this might be about a girl but there's something in it for you as well.

Just kidding. I am awful, aren't I?

Now Russell T Davies has been mentioned rather a lot on this blog and it's not always been positive - which is a little unfair. So I thought I'd first take a moment to give some well deserved praise and thanks to the great RTD.

• Thank you RTD for enlivening children's TV in the 80s and early 90s with shows such as Dark Season and Century Falls.
• Thank you RTD for writing for Touching Evil. While I didn't like the UK version of the show much, the US version, which used your scripts, remains one of my favourite shows of all time.
• Thank you RTD for rescuing us from stultifying conformity by increasing the range and number of gay characters on television, whether in shows you contributed to such as The Grand, or shows you created such as Bob & Rose, Torchwood and, of course, Queer as Folk. The effect can be seen as far afield as Footballers' Wives and Caerdydd
• Thank you RTD for casting David Tennant
• Thank you RTD for bringing back Doctor Who and revolutionising Saturday night television

Most of all though, thank you RTD for your “stealth Welsh” initiative.

The Welsh on television pre-RTD
It's hard to remember what television was like before Russell T Davies. For years, Welsh actors and characters either didn't get a look in or were there for comedy value. Back in the 70s, it was Pobol Y Cwm on BBC1, just before kids television started and that was about it. No, Ivor the Engine doesn't count.

Come the 80s, S4C started up and took Pobol Y Cwm with it. That left mainstream TV with Ruth Madoc in Hi-De-Hi, and the hysterical John Sparkes as Siadwell in Naked Video and in Absolutely. Catherine Zeta Jones's turn in The Darling Buds of May before her move to Hollywood helped up the Welsh profile a bit, but she never played any roles with her own accent - something that's been true for the vast majority of Welsh actors and actresses since. As for shows set and filmed in Wales, they were pretty few and far between - can you think of any?

Then along came Russell T Davies (joined by Julie Gardner later on) with his “stealth Welsh” initiative - his plan to “normalise” the Welsh accent as a feature of British TV shows, get Welsh people represented on-screen and to create a viable TV industry in Wales.

And he's doing it, too. There's Torchwood and Doctor Who filmed in Wales, with Welsh actors and Welsh characters; Gavin & Stacey does likewise, coming in those programmes' “Cool Cymru” wake. They're all some of the most popular programmes on their respective networks (BBC2, BBC1, BBC3).

There's a long way to go still and the scaling back of DW and Torchwood from 13 episodes plus specials to four and five episodes next year respectively, coupled with the impending end of Gavin & Stacey altogether, suggest it could all fall apart again. A certain Joanna Page, for example, has even remarked that's she's been to auditions, asked to do the role in her own accent, and been told "It's fine for you to have any regional accent apart from Welsh". But look how much he's achieved.

No wonder Cardiff is thinking of erecting a statue of the man.

But the first real strike in his “stealth Welsh” plan wasn't with the BBC - it was for ITV. Set in his home town of Swansea, Mine All Mine was a comedy drama starring Griff Rhys Jones as Max Vivaldi, a man who claimed to own the whole city, and a mostly Welsh cast able to use their own accents for once.

Now I really wanted to like this. Just about every possible checkbox was ticked for my liking it: Russell T Davies - check; Swansea - check; Joanna Page - check; Siwan Morris from Caerdydd - check; Griff Rhys Jones - check; Ruth Madoc - check; lots of Welsh people - check; etc.

Yet, even though rewatching it I liked it more than when I watched it the first time, it still wasn't what you could describe as “great”, unfortunately.

Continue reading "Today's Joanna Page: Mine All Mine"

Read other posts about: Caerdydd, Gavin and Stacey, Torchwood

This one was supposed to be easy. This was supposed to be brief: I said so, last time. You see – and there are going to be a lot of naval puns during this one, so brace yourself – Making Waves pretty much sunk without a trace.

After years in development hell and after being rescheduled four times, this ITV flagship drama emerged onto our screens in the summer of 2004, opposite Supernanny. Sort of Soldier, Soldier but featuring the Royal Navy (hence its nickname Sailor, Sailor), it depicted the arrival of a new captain – played by ex-EastEnders psycho, Scottish actor Alex Ferns – on board the fictional frigate HMS Suffolk, and his attempts to make it sea-ready, all to the backdrop of the relationships of the crew and various exciting naval events, such as piracy, illegal immigrants, smuggling and explosions.

With £5 million in budget and the might of legendary producer Ted Childs (Lewis, Inspector Morse, Soldier Soldier, Sharpe, Kavanagh QC) behind it, there were high expectations in some quarters, but after just three episodes, falling ratings meant it was cancelled. Despite there already being three more episodes in the can, ITV never repeated it or showed the remaining episodes.

There was a DVD of the show, but only ever 2,500 or so were pressed and they were mainly sold to the Navy. You can't get it from Amazon; you can't find it on eBay. And here's the only publicity still of our Joanna Page, who played new rating, Operating Mechanic Rosie Bowen, that appears to have survived online. 

So I thought this was going to be brief, since I couldn't really say much about it. As I said, easy.

But then I found out that someone had uploaded the whole series to YouTube, so meticulous journo that I am, I had to watch the whole thing – you can, too, if you hang around to the end of this entry.

And I have to say, despite a shaky start, it was actually really enjoyable (although typically, mainly during the cancelled episodes), has possibly one of the most exciting, hardware-based episodes of anything ever made for British TV – and more importantly for Today's Joanna Page, has her only outing so far as 'action heroine'.

In fact, I'm quite cross – angry even – that it was cancelled.

Continue reading "Today's Joanna Page: Making Waves"

Read other posts about: Gavin and Stacey, The Sandbaggers

WTF! Not just one but four Horatio Caines in a crime lab doing girly science stuff! What can be going on? He hasn't stepped foot in a lab full of chemicals in seven seasons - and CSI: Miami has only been on for six. How can this be? Well, it was continuity week this week and as well as bringing back a whole load of old plot threads and guest characters, they've clearly decided to remind us all that David Caruso can face other inanimate objects square on - and that Horatio's supposed to have a degree in chemistry or something normally only fit for liberal nerds, not real conservative American heroes.

Actually quite an interesting episode this week I thought, not just for that cartload of continuity, but for having the most obviously deconstructable feminist/anti-feminist sub-text featuring ex-Showgirls star Elizabeth Berkley.

Continue reading "CSI: Miami - Horatio meets his match"

Read other posts about: CSI

At first sight, this looks like a meme. And it is. Sort of. But it's also about something that's been concerning me of late: the youth of today. Ah, I must be getting old if I'm getting concerned about the youth of today – and using the phrase "the youth of today". It's a short step to the Daily Telegraph from here.

What's your favourite TV decade? In other words, which decade produced the television you love the most? Maybe it was the 60s with its escapism and gritty social realism, all rolled into one. Maybe it was the bleak 70s, or the action-packed 80s? It might even be the 90s, when US television really got into quality products for the first time.

But the second part of the question is slightly different: how did you get to see that TV?

I'm gambling that, to a certain extent, most people's favourite TV decade – if they have a favourite decade – will be the time in which they were growing up. If they were young in the 80s, they probably fondly remember 80s TV. And so on.

But there will be a few who will cite an earlier time, and probably a few who will say that the current programmes on TV are the best we've ever had. I'm very fond of 1960s and 1970s, even though I was either too young to have seen very much of it or I hadn't even been born yet – and there's a whole load of 1950s TV that's very good, too.

I grew up in the 80s when there were just four TV channels available to most people. Back then, network programmers had no problem with sticking old programmes and movies on at primetime. Channel 4 stuck The Addams Family, Car 54 Where Are You?, The Munsters, and The Abbott and Costello Show on at 5pm on weekdays, and The Avengers on at night. BBC2 was quite happy to repeat The Invaders, the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies, the Falcon and the Saint movies, and more at 6pm of an evening. ITV littered its daytime schedules with The Sandbaggers and Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) and stuck The Baron, The Champions and Thunderbirds on at the weekends. And BBC1 would trawl out Bonanza on a Sunday afternoon. That's how I got introduced to the TV classics of the past – as well as a few old bits of rubbish.

Nowadays, you can get all of this on DVD, of course, and with multi-channel TV, there are networks more or less dedicated to old faves: ITV4 is a haven for all those ITC shows (R&H (Deceased), Space: 1999, The Champions and The Prisoner are all on right now); there's the Bonanza Channel (or used to be at least) for anyone wanting to catch Lorne Greene before he boarded the original Battlestar Galactica; and BBC4 will occasionally dredge something up from the archives for a brief season (Steptoe and Son, recently, or Doctor Who, starting on the 5th April).

But not the terrestrial channels. More to the point, you have to go looking for this stuff: it's not right there in front of you when you turn on the TV. Which is all well and good, but how – and this is my big point – are the youth of today going to ever see any of their TV heritage and become interested in it? How will they ever experience the thrills of The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone or The Night Gallery? How will they know the joy of Mrs Peel and Steed's interplay, Carter and Regan's bad driving, or the simple happiness of life in Camberwick Green and Trumpton?

Obviously, learning French, reading classics of literature, and getting a fair understanding of physics, chemistry and biology so they can laugh at homeopaths, particularly French homeopaths, are far more important than tele. But whole lot of effort, expertise, creativity and passion went into creating these old shows, some of which are infinitely superior to their modern successors. Who wouldn't want the original Invaders over its remake, for example? Or, indeed, Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) - shame on you Vic and Bob. Some of the shows are historical documents in their own rights and are referenced in books and films of the time; some even changed society altogether. And I think it would be a shame to forget that heritage, just as it would be a shame to forget the literature of the 1960s, say.

Is it going to take parents forcing DVDs on their kids or locking every channel except the nostalgia channels to teach them TV history – not that that's a particularly good way to enthuse kids about anything? Now that MOMI's gone we no longer have the equivalent of New York's Paley Center so that's not an option. Worse still, are the youth of today just never going to be able to relate to old TV, any more than most people can relate to classics of Victorian literature? Should we just let ephemeral old TV disappear into the ether and live in the now?

What do you think?

Read other posts about: Battlestar Galactica, ITC shows, The Prisoner, The Sandbaggers

I started "Movies You Should Buy" (now called "Movies You Should Own" because I belatedly realise it rhymes with Alex Cox's old BBC2 film strand, Moviedrome) with The Satan Bug. Lovely "killer virus" movie that – probably the first. 

But there was a bigger and better "killer virus" film to come, one that marked the end of many of the trends The Satan Bug seemed to start – or at least coincide with.

The title of this movie, which you should definitely own, is now used by virus researchers whenever they want to put a name to their worst nightmare: a virus that they can't cure but is utterly contagious and can kill anything in a frighteningly short space of time. 

It's The Andromeda Strain and it's probably the best, clever-stupid "killer virus" movie ever made.

Here's the title sequence, complete with scary arse theme tune.

Continue reading "Movies you should own: The Andromeda Strain"

Read other posts about: 24