Month: April 2012

Question of the week: why does ITV make so many crime dramas?

10 April 2012 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

Have a look through the ITV schedules. Now I won’t make this easy for you by suggesting you look at ITV3’s schedules, where just tonight you can find Heartbeat, Murder She Wrote, Wycliffe, Taggart, Inspector Wexford, Numb3rs and The Blackheath Poisonings.

But take a look at ITV1’s schedules and see how many crime programmes you can spot. Possibly not many at the moment, with just Scott and Bailey on Mondays, but have a look at the number of dramas that ITV is currently airing in primetime and you’ll find that roughly 50% are crime dramas. Then have a think back at all the recent ITV1 dramas – Above Suspicion, Marple, Poirot, DCI Banks, Endeavour, Eternal Law, The Jury, Kidnap and Ransom, Law & Order: UK, Marchlands, Midsomer Murders, Vera, Whitechapel – and you’ll notice that pretty much all of ITV’s drama output, with a few Julian Fellowes-scripted exceptions, are crime dramas.

This week’s question is therefore:

Why?

Are ITV crime dramas really so good? Do ITV viewers want to watch nothing else but crime dramas? Do you watch ITV crime dramas? And can ITV really not make any other kind of drama?

Answers below or on your own blog, please

Sitting Tennant

Tuesday’s Sitting Tennant (week 15, 2012)

10 April 2012 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Sister Chastity's Sitting Tennant

What would drive a man to smoke that many cigarettes? Why, the knowledge that I’m not going to be around on Thursday or Friday so the next Sitting Tennant will be next Tuesday, of course. But 10 points to Sister Chastity for capturing the moment, anyway.

  1. Hebbie, Shilohforever, Sister Chastity: 15

Sitting Board of Winners 2012
January
Hebbie, Sister Chastity

February
Sister Chastity

March
Sister Chastity

Got a picture of David Tennant sitting, lying down or in some indeterminate state in between? Then leave a link to it below or email me and if it’s judged suitable and doesn’t obviously infringe copyright, it will appear in the Sitting Tennant gallery. Don’t forget to include your name in the filename so I don’t get mixed up about who sent it to me.

The best pic in the stash each week will appear on Tuesday and get ten points; the runners up will appear on Friday (one per person who sends one in) and get five points.

Each month, I’ll name the best picture provider and then at the end of the year, the overall champion will be announced for 2012!

Tuesday’s “Glee, New Girl and Raising Hope renewed, a Frasier reunion and Community hits low” news

10 April 2012 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Film

Trailers

  • Trailer for A Fantastic Fear of Everything with Simon Pegg
  • Trailer for Oliver Stone’s Savages

UK TV

US TV

US TV pilots

  • Bent‘s David Walton joins Bryan Greenberg comedy
  • John Amos and My Name is Earl‘s Ethan Suplee join Martin Lawrence pilot

Weird old title sequences: ITC shows (1950s)

5 April 2012 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

ITC – Lew Grade’s production company – dominated ITV schedules for the best part of two decades. Starting out in the 1950s, it wasn’t until the late 70s that ITC eventually closed its production business.

To list every single ITC show would take forever (or a quick link to Wikipedia and even that’s incomplete), so instead, I thought I’d give you a few of the best title sequences from the best shows that ITC came up with in the 1950s, including the iconic The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Adventures of Sir Lancelot (with William Russell from Doctor Who), The Buccaneers with Robert Shaw, Ivanhoe with Sir Roger Moore and The Invisible Man with… well, they never gave his name…

Now, in a lot of cases, ‘best’ ain’t saying much. They’re all of a muchness, quite brief and don’t have proper themes (since in most cases those used to run over the end credits). You’ll have to wait until I hit the 1960s before they start to get good. But they’re a little bit of history and just watching a sponsors logo will give you an idea of how much TV has changed in 60 years.