Joe Queenan identified in his classic book, America: Red Lobster, White Trash and the Blue Lagoon, the modern trend of really bad books (eg anything by Tom Clancy) quoting better books (eg anything by William Shakespeare) in their opening pages as a way to make themselves seem better by association.
I’m sure there’s an equivalent phenomenon in television, so does it say something about Knight Rider‘s quality levels that it’s outright quoting Torchwood (and Heroes) in the opening minutes of its Halloween episode?
Just a little note that Joost, those exciting Internet TV people, now have the first two series of Peep Show, as well as a few other Channel 4 shows like Shameless.
The good things about this is:
It’s completely free, unlike iTunes or DVDs
You don’t need to install any software any more, since it runs in any browser than can play Flash video
Basically, all you need is a broadband connection and a web browser. Yey.
PS When did they change the theme tune on Peep Show or is is a licensing problem that stops them from using the proper tune?
Someone I used to train in jiu jitsu with, but who’s been living in India for the last 14 months, has made a documentary, Road to the Future?. It examines the gap between the rich and the poor in the country in the context of media hype about ‘shining India’. It’s going to be on Current TV on Tuesday 11th November at 11pm, so I thought I’d give it a plug
Brand Spanking New
Our brand new weekly half hour show, where we showcase a selection of the weeks new short documentaries, whilst including more background on your stories, extra photos/footage, updates on your contributors progress and pretty much anything else you want to provide us with. It’s our chance to put your work in the limelight and tell the world it rocks!
India’s Economic Divide
In the glow of increasing prosperity and industry in India, Pamela Norwicka finds out what the varying implications are for the countries’ vast population.
Remember Ghostwatch? It was a BBC1 drama that went out on Halloween, 1992, and purported to be a live show, hosted by Michael Parkison, Sarah Greene, Mike Smith and Craig Charles, investigating ‘Britain’s most haunted house’.
It was originally intended to scare the nation crapless by not revealing it was a drama until the end, but the Beeb didn’t have quite enough guts for that and ended up adding warnings in the Radio Times, the standard drama idents, etc, so that it wouldn’t get shot down by Parliament, the Daily Mail, etc. Of course, there’d be no chance of it ever even thinking of making Ghostwatch now.
Ghostwatch was pretty terrifying to be honest, despite some duff acting and a slightly unconvincing ending, although Michael Parkinson proved to be surprisingly good as an actor (he talks about the experience in his biog). It was so terrifying, in fact, that
The Beeb ending up banning repeats of the show for a whole decade.
I heartily recommend it.
I won’t spoil it for you, particularly since you can buy it on DVD (or watch in on YouTube) to see for yourself, but one of the highlights of the show was the ghost, ‘Pipes’. He was more terrifying than your normal ghost because you never really saw him full on – you only spot him in reflections for fractions of a second and you never know when he’s going to appear – so much so, there are at least three appearances I didn’t spot despite repeated viewings.
Thankfully, there are helpful people in the world. You can see a guide to Pipes’ eight appearances here, and in the embedded YouTube vid below.
Or is there a ninth?
If you end up loving Ghostwatch, BTW, check out ‘Ghostwatch: Behind The Curtains’ – both the blog and the YouTube channel. They’re busy putting a documentary together with the support of Ghostwatch‘s writer Stephen Volk, who was also responsible for Afterlife. See if you can help.
