Don’t know if this is going to be at all useful to anyone, but it’s a thing called 123 Web TV that you can use to search for web television services, such as 4oD and iPlayer (allegedly). I didn’t find it that great – it was more useful for telling me about services I didn’t know about than programmes that are online – but you mileage may vary.
On the Hour: free download
The Guardian is offering you the chance to download an episode of On The Hour, the radio precursor to The Day Today starring Chris Morris and Steven Coogan as Alan Partridge. But you can play it in this embedded player if you’d prefer. It’s very funny.
The full edition is finally to be released on CD, as part of a collection of five 30-minute episodes, a Christmas special and the original pilot episode by Warp Records on November 24.
UK TV
Review: Clone 1×1
In the UK: Mondays, 8.30pm, BBC3
The sitcom of the 90s was very definitely Friends. So it comes as something of a surprise for Adam Chase, one of the show’s producers, to be slumming it on BBC3 with Clone, a sci-fi sitcom about a mad government scientist who tries to create a super-soldier and ends up producing someone a bit ‘special’ instead.
Greater creative freedom and the chance to work out the kinks before pitching it to the US networks is the alleged excuse, and that’s fair enough. If some of the best writers of the US TV scene want to use British TV to experiment with ideas, I say let them.
The only proviso for that is that they’d better produce something funny. And Clone? Well, it’s very…
UK TV
Review: The Sarah Jane Adventures 2×8
Go on. Go to after the jump. If you don’t, I’ll make you and then I’ll turn blue. You won’t like me when I’m blue.
January at the BFI
Time for our regular round-up of tele events at the BFI. January has a bumper collection to pick from – prepare to bankrupt yourself:
- 11th/15th: Peckinpah on TV: episodes of Route 66 and Noon Wine directed by Sam Peckinpah
- 16th: Being Human episode one preview + Q&A with Russell Tovey, Toby Whitehouse and Matt Bouch. Woo hoo!
- 21st: The League of Gentlemen: Ten Years After – features three episodes of the series and the League themselves in conversation
- 25th: A CITV workshop, followed by screenings of episodes, including a new episode of Horrid Henry
There’s also a David Hare season dedicated to the playwright:
- 1st/23rd: Play for Today: Brassneck. The first surviving Hare TV play. Also includes a Late Show Face to Face with Hare
- 6th/25th: Knuckle. Adaptation for British TV of his stage play
- 11th/29th: The Absence of War: the third of Hare’s theatre trilogy looking at British institutions
- 13th: The Guardian interview with David Hare. Preceded by two Play for Today episodes: Licking Hitler and Dreams of Living
- 17th/21st: Heading Home
- 25th/27th: The Designated Mourner. A Wallace Shawn play directed by Hare for the BBC Films
Members’ priority postal booking opens 24 November
Members’ online and phone booking opens 1 December
Public booking opens 5 December
Although I don’t normally mention the film side of things, it’s worth noting there’s also a David Fincher season showing Alien3, Se7en, The Game, Fight Club, Panic Room and Zodiac. And February is going to feature a Live TV drama season – although it won’t be live now, of course.
As always, visit the BFI web site for more details