Category: TV
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Breaking The Code and Alan Turing
Today, had he lived, would have been Alan Turing’s 98th birthday. Last night at the BFI Southbank, there was a great double bill featuring the excellent TV version of Hugh Whitmore’s play about Turing – Breaking the Code. Regular readers will perhaps recall that I saw a theatrical production of this play back in November.…
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To Watch and Listen To Between the Football
A few things that caught my eye this week: By far the best World Cup package surrounding the games must have been the package that aired after the Italy v Paraguay game. It was all about the footballers of Robben Island. While they were locked up by the apartheid regime, football was one of the…
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Sky’s Freeview Strategy
Media Guardian is today reporting that Sky Sports News is coming off the Freeview platform. Up until now, Sky had effectively been using the channel as something to promote their premium sports services. That’s really why they never showed any action in full-screen. But now they’re pulling the service. I think they’ll get some very…
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Dropping The Ball
I know that a million and one other people have already talked about ITV’s nightmare last night (yes – I’m conveniently overlooking Robert Green’s one), but it really is worth saying a little more. ITV1’s HD channel managed to miss Gerard’s 4th minute goal by playing a sponsorship credit for Hyundai (not an advert), followed…
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Justified
This is a late heads up to look out for Justified on Five USA. Sorry – we’re three episodes in – but you can still start watching! The next showing of episode 3 is on Saturday at 9pm on Five USA, and you really should be watching. The good news is that you can still…
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BBC Destroying Its Own Drama Series
I’m absolutely appalled. Really, really, appalled. If I was Steven Moffat, I would be wanting words with Jay Hunt, the Controller of BBC One. I’ve just watched this week’s episode of Doctor Who – Time of Angels. It’s a follow-up to an episode written by Moffat in the last full series, Blink, featuring once again,…
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3D Football
Sky is trumpeting the fact that last weekend’s fixture between Man Utd and Blackburn Rovers (a 0-0 “thriller”) was watched by 200,000 viewers. A remarkable achievement based on average of 133 people per pub in the 1500 or so pubs that have the 3D TVs so far. These are obviously all pretty large pubs! But…
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What I’ve Been Listening To (And Watching)
There’s only one episode of Party to go, but listen in to part three before Wednesday. I’ll always listen or watch any programme based on the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and this week that meant listening to Archive on 4: Sculptress of Sound – The Lost World of Delia Derbyshire. In some respects it’s always Derbyshire…
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BBC Mobile Apps On Hold
Today comes news that the BBC has had to delay its mobile phone applications until the BBC Trust has taken a close look at what it’s doing. That obviously includes iPhone apps, but other operating systems are available, and the BBC was developing for them too. The announcement that the BBC was developing applications came…
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Advertising The Book Show on Sky Arts
Sky Arts has recently been running a pretty large-scale advertising campaign for The Book Show presented by – as all literary shows seemingly have to be by law – Mariella Frostrup. That’s fine. Sky Arts is a decent enough channel, even if you know it really exists so that Murdoch can argue for the closure…
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HBO – The Comeback
In some ways, HBO has never been away, but I think it’s fair to say that it’s on a bit of a roll at the moment. At the weekend, HBO started its massive new mini-series, The Pacific, coming from Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, which acts as a sequel of sorts to Band of Brothers.…
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Why Don’t We Get The BAFTAs Live?
I know that the easy answers are that: 1. the show runs for at least three hours and viewers would get bored, or 2. we can’t trust celebrities not to swear and there’s a suspcision that 3. but then the after-parties wouldn’t start until post 11pm and that would be terrible. But as things stand…
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Newswipe on the Iraq Inquiry
I love Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe. It’s simply one of the best things on TV anywhere. Anyway – this week they covered the ongoing Iraq Inquiry, and in particular coverage of Blair’s appearance at the Inquiry. Except, the programme couldn’t show any of the the Inquiry. This is because television programmes can’t show clips of Parliamentary…