An archive of blog entries about UK TV programmes and production.
I love this guy’s mum’s comments:
“So they’re not really in space?” “No, mum, that wouldn’t be funny.”
“But they don’t know they’re not in space?” “No.”
“So which one is the actor?” “Charlie. That one there.”
“Does he know he’s an actor?”
There’s a whole world of Jean-Paul Sartre in there, struggling to get out.
I’ve not been watching Space Cadets much. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s rubbish. However, I’ve kept an occasional eye on it because of Charlie Skelton, one of the undercover moles sent to infiltrate the “space cadets”. Why? He runs a blog with my sister about cats.
Before he went in, Charlie left the world a Space Cadets drinking game. If you’re still actually watching the show by the final, I exhort you to try: it should relieve the pain.
Further to previous discussions about Christopher Robin being replaced in a new Winnie the Pooh series, Disney has released more details of their new, ‘improved’ Pooh tales. Here’s some more information that will cause a single, solitary tear to roll down your cheek:
The girl will be the star of the series as she moves next door to the beloved characters created by the English author about 80 years ago: Pooh, Tigger, Piglet, Eeyore, Kang (sic) and Roo, plus a new character, Lumpy, introduced in a recent Pooh movie.
Living together next door? No 100 Acre Wood? Kanga and Roo in their own little house? Where’s Owl/Wol? But wait. There’s worse
A 22-minute pilot was produced and tested worldwide in focus groups of preschoolers and parents, all to very positive feedback, the spokeswoman told Reuters.
Well, that’s all right then. Because the only important thing in the whole wide world is how well something tests in focus groups.
Coming soon from the Disney Channel:
All of these tested well with focus groups.
What to do? I’m inclined simply to let them make it. CGI isn’t cheap, so if it’s a flop, Disney will lose oodles of cash. After a series of commercial flops at the cinemas, they need revenue like they’ve never needed it before. Certainly, the originator of the idea – a soulless corporate drone without an ounce of poetry in them – will get the push. At the same time, animation studios in Korea will get big lumps of cash and South Korea’s general standard of living will improve (not that they’re totally strapped for cash of course), proving that globalisation has its benefits.
To ensure the failure of the show, not only must we refuse to watch it (not hard), we must make sure no one else watches it. But most important of all, we must write in protest to any broadcaster who picks it up. However, instead of complaining about the programme itself (thus getting ourselves a “crank” rating in the complaints department), far better to complain that it’s replacing another programme in the schedule: broadcasters appreciate ratings so if you say you’re a big fan of the dumped programme, they’re more likely to drop Pooh in favour of the programme you’re pretending to like.
So, nothing but pants on BBC4 for ages. Agreed? Then a Ghost Stories season. Wow. But just as soon as that finishes, a Sherlock Holmes season? Have they put Kool Aid in the water fountain? What’s happening? With weirdness like this, can we expect ITV1 to embark on a season of the plays of Sophocles starring Patsy Palmer and Robson Green?
BBC4’s odd, isn’t it? It’s basically 1980’s BBC2, pumping out the weird and wonderful – whatever the controller happens to find personally interesting, rather than what “common plebs” (in BBC parlance) might like.
This can be good. ITV is what you get if you become too distracted by the lowest common denominator: a channel of dizzyingly low ratings, given its former heights, populated by programmes whose quality threshold is nothing greater than “Will brain donors be able to cope with this as part of their post-op recuperation?”.
On the other hand, heading too far away from “what the majority wants” can also lead to “Etruscan Ballet” nights and seasons dedicated to the movies of the fisher people of the Indus Valley. You know, the sort of programmes a certain kind of Islington-based dinner party goer is proud the BBC produces, even though he never actually watches them.
BBC4 walks a thin tightrope between this zero-rating extreme of chattering class pointlessness and high quality programming. One moment, it’ll be producing fantastic stuff such as its live version of The Quatermass Experiment, the hysterical The Thick of It and biopics of authors such as George Orwell and John Wyndham; the next, it’ll be churning out worthy but unwatchable crud like African School (“Having a love life in Uganda is not easy. Teenagers face being expelled from school, and teachers struggle to afford to get married. Can love flourish despite the challenges?”).
This Christmas, however, imagine my joy that while BBC1 and ITV are gearing themselves up for Doctor Who on Ice and X-Factor Christmas Carols (will Louis Walsh come back? Wow, how dumb are you to even have to ask that question? Of course he will. Do you need to wonder, even for an attosecond, if all the ‘fights’ are orchestrated to gear up interest?), BBC 4 is gearing up for a season of ghost stories.
Oh yes. This is what we want. This is what our licence fees should have been going on all these years.
Now this isn’t just a season of “Things with the word ghost in the title”, although there is just a hint of that with Look Around You‘s ‘Ghosts’ episode – funny, rather than spine-tingling; surely, with its Sapphire and Steel-esque “Helvetica effect”, the pilot episode, ‘Calcium’, is far more terrifying?
No. We’re talking repeats of all the classic MR James ghost story adaptations from the 1970s, as well as a new adaptation of The View from a Hill. Then there’s the amazing The Signalman, adapted from Andrew Davies from Charles Dickens’ original short story.
This is worth sitting down for. This is worth missing Ant and Dec’s Celebrity ‘Risk’ Tournament for. The video recorder, unused since August, will be running three hours a day, every day. I’ll have to (shudder) buy some new blank tapes. I might even invest in a DVD recorder, even one of those cheapo ones from Asda, just to capture this last hurrah for quality programming in a format that has more than 90 days of future left in it.
I might, to sum it up, be watching British TV again. Now that’s odd.
So don’t delay. Don’t tarry. Don’t dawdle. Make a note in your diary, in pen, that it’s on. Let’s help BBC4 hit four-digit viewing figures. Let’s watch this Ghost Stories Season together. At the very least, it’ll be less frightening that way.
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