Category: TV
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The Prisoner – Free In Places
Good news – in the lead up to the ITV/AMC remake of The Prisoner appearing on our screens later this year, AMC is making the original series available to stream, free of charge, on their website. Bad news – it’s only available in the US. ITV doesn’t seem to have done the same deal (Although…
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The Diary of Anne Frank
BBC1 is stripping The Diary of Anne Frank at 7pm this week in place of The One Show, and I must say that after yesterday’s lambasting of poor TV, this is a refreshing change. It’s fabulous. Ellie Kendrick plays Anne herself, and is wonderfully naturalistic in her performance. After a few exterior scenes to convey…
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Some Recent TV
If there’s one thing clear in recent times, it’s that ITV really needs to up its drama quotient. So I watched Demons at the weekend – effectively ITV’s sister programme to Primeval, and competing with the BBC’s Doctor Who, Merlin and Robin Hood. I don’t know when that latter programme is due to return, but…
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Surviving Gaza
Wow. Channel 4 has an interesting and incredibly timely programme on next Monday. I assume it’ll detail how to survive on the Gaza Strip when you’re being bombed daily by the Israelis. Wait a minute… My mistake. It’s actually called “Surviving Gazza“, and is about the famously off-the-rails footballer. Of course this is scheduled after…
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Fears Grow For Doctor Who
As seen on a London Evening Standard billboard today. Perhaps they’ve had a preview of the Christmas special? They do know that he’s a fictional character don’t they?
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Voting Fun
If Strictly adopted the US voting system as I’d advocated, then it’s incredibly unlikely this weekend’s incident would have occurred. This isn’t, of course, important. Votes placed will still go to viewers’ favourite dancers. So everyone who’s saved the BBC or Ofcom’s phone numbers on speed dial to complain at the drop of a hat…
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Media Talk on The Guardian
Matt Wells had something of a moan this week about what he called an advert for DAB that he’d heard on the BBC this week. He saw it as a straight ad for BBC viewers and listeners to go out and buy a DAB digital radio. A couple of things Matt: The BBC did exactly…
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Recent TV Bits
So a few interesting things are going on in television at the moment. I’m going to come back to Kangaroo because I think it deserves a bit more detail. But I’m not exactly impressed by Five’s recent hiring of Richard Woolfe from Sky One. But then Dawn Airey herself fills me with dread a bit.…
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Televised Sport Update
Last week, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) decided that it wouldn’t award the EBU the rights to the 2014 winter Olympics and the 2016 summer games. In the past the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) has collectively bought the rights to the Olympics for the past fifty years. All the public service broadcasters chip in and…
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Little Dorrit Scheduling
BBC One took an appalling decision this week. They cancelled an episode of Little Dorrit to show a “fast-turnaround” episode of Panorama. Thousands of viewers have rightly complained. Now I have no problem with current affairs programming taking precedence over drama, soaps or comedy, but there were two major problems this time around. 1. They’re…
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TV Remakes
We seem to be going through a significant period of remakes at the moment. Actually, that’s a little unfair as television has always remade successful programmes. How many Agatha Christies or Robin Hoods have we had over the years? And when isn’t there another Austen, Dickens or Hardy production on the cards? But recently we’ve…
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24: Redemption
For whatever reason, I’ve recently ended up on a few PR companies’ lists for “Bloggers’” events. I’ve been invited to a few film screenings here and there – although I’ve not been able to make disappointing number of them. That’s more the shame because screenings tend to take place in and around the West End,…
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Local News
This morning, the BBC Trust rejected plans for a local BBC video news service. Concurrently, Ofcom published the results of its Market Impact Assessment and concluded that the plans would have had a significant negative impact on commercial news providers. The BBC proposal would have seen it producing more localised news which would be delivered…