An archive of blog entries about UK TV programmes and production.
The ratings are in for Sunday night and Torchwood‘s third episode lost 40% of the audience for episodes one and two, only getting 1.5 million viewers. I say only, but that still makes it the most watched multichannel show of the evening.
There’s a great big sci-fi season coming to BBC4 in early November. As well as interviews with Iain M Banks and Terry Pratchett, there’s a dramatisation of John Wyndham’s Random Quest, a three-part documentary on UK sci-fi writers and all sorts of goodies from the archives (allegedly).
There’s also going to be a series called The Cult Of… that focuses on cult British sci-fi series: Blake’s 7, Adam Adamant, Doomwatch, Star Cops, The Survivors and Tripods. I can understand all those obsessions except Tripods – Star Cops and Doomwatch were brilliant, Blake’s 7 had its moments as did The Survivors, and Adam Adamant was fun. But Tripods? Lines from the books such as “And then they went into a village and stole some bread” turned into an entire episode? Dismal. Have you noticed that loving Doctor Who is no longer considered a cult pursuit by the Beeb, though? Interesting.
To coincide with the season, BBC4 will be opening up (from today) a web site called My Science Fiction Life, where you can deposit your memories of sci-fi shows and books, some of which might be used in a “new TV programme”. They don’t mention whether that’ll be The Cult Of… or not.
So here we are already: episode three. Must be time for a verdict.
In the UK: Sundays, Channel 4, 4.50pm
I ask you, what’s the point of blogging if no one tells you that Channel 4 is showing a programme that features
Wild Thing I Love You has been on Sundays for a couple of weeks now and not one person has mentioned it to me. How could you? Actually, you’re forgiven. There were no fluffy animals this week, just adders and lizards by some A-road, but it’s Pine Martens next week. Phew. Glad I caught that one in time.
The programme’s an odd combination of Time Team and nature documentary, with Bailey and a team of experts hurtling around the country trying to save endangered animals according to some arbitrary time limit.
Unfortunately, it’s not quite as fun as Time Team. Bailey is a slightly wooden host in comparison to Tony Robinson and surprisingly seems bored by his hosting duties. There’s also no real element of discovery or tension: you know they’re not going to show a bunch of adders/pine martens being squashed by JCBs so the animals will get saved. At least in Time Team, you don’t know what they’re going to discover or how quickly, but here, the only element of mystery was whether the adders they’d already located were going to like their new pit.
It’s more entertaining and educational than the new series of Horizon (shudder…), but a poor second to Time Team. Best watched for the occasional hint of furry beast, rather than because you need to know how to translocate a lizard safely.
Tickets may already have sold out, but if they haven’t and you’re not off to a fireworks display like me, there’s a couple of tele events at the NFT this Saturday that look interesting. Gerry Anderson, creator of Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, et al is going to talk about his days at ITC. To get you up to speed with ITC, preceding that will be a Gallop Through the Archives, with clips from various ITC shows, as well as a full episode of The Buccaneers. Both sound fun, so book if you can.
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