Category: TV
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Just How Artificial Is Dragon’s Den?
Last night I was sitting at home tinkering with this blog (it will have its five-year overhaul soon), when my brother called me to say that there was someone from Virgin Radio on Dragons’ Den. I flipped on the TV and saw that the person being called “Christian” was Robin Banks, a DJ who used…
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The Wire Sans Commercials
I’ve just been watching an excellent episode of Dexter on the FX channel – at a slight delay via my Sky+. I let the playback run at the end and up popped a couple of things of interest. First, I see that Generation Kill is coming to FX in the UK soon which has got…
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Convention Season
In the US it’s convention season. That is to say that the Democrats and Republicans are holding their quadrennial events. In the UK we have party conferences, but really the two cannot be compared. In the UK we have access to all this malarkey on BBC Parliament which nightly shows two hours of live coverage…
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England Match Not On Terrestrial?
Well – as things stand, England’s World Cup qualifying games against Croatia and Andora will not have so much as highlights coverage on either BBC or ITV according to a piece in The Times. It comes down to the fact that while England’s home games were sold to ITV as part of a larger deal…
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Spooks: Code 9
So what is there to make of the latest Spooks spin-off Spooks: Code 9? The series is set in the a near future of 2013 after some kind of nuclear device has gone off in London. MI5 seems to have been decimated and now relies on pretty young twenty-somethings to join their ranks, recruiting from…
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Olympics on Digital TV
Once upon a time, the Olympics were broadcast on both ITV and the BBC. For a lot of the time, they’d show the same events, and if you were interested in a minority sport, you could probably forget it unless a Brit had a chance of a medal. Now coverage might be “limited” to the…
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What To Watch When There’s Nothing On
You’ve really got to try this out – it’s ace! It might be common knowledge in some circles but it was news to me, and I love it. You know how it is. It’s late evening and BBC1 has a film you’ve already seen or don’t want to see again. BBC2 is running News 24,…
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Hulu
For the most part Hulu is pretty useless for UK residents since it’s geo-locked to the US. We can’t watch re-runs of NBC, Fox and Comedy Central shows. But there does seem to be an exception – Dr Horrible is available on Hulu and doesn’t seem to be restricted to the US which is just…
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Countdown to Countdown
So Channel 4 has managed to get itself into a bit of a mess with its longest running series – Countdown. Just before the weekend, Des O’Connor announced that he was retiring from the show. And this was followed quickly by Carol Vorderman announcing that she too was leaving. Over the weekend it became clear…
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Misinterpreting Research Figures
If you read the right sort of newspapers, you couldn’t help but fail to notice that the fifth and final series of The Wire premiered on FX channel in the UK this week. Then this morning, the various media sites, including Mediaguardian publish the fact that “only” 38,000 people watched the show last night. More…
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Bonekickers
Victorian street somewhere. Indeed I recall once watching a now forgotten film in Bath’s Little Theatre which actually featured that very cinema! So it was exciting to learn of a major new BBC1 drama series set in and around Bath, using (an un-named) Bath University as a major location. What’s more, the drama comes from…
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Radio Sitcom
I see from today’s Broadcast that ITV2 has commissioned “FM” a 6 x 30 minute sitcom about a “neurotic indie DJ” who works at Skin FM. The sitcom will apparently feature real bands and current tracks which is quite an interesting idea – if you think about it, with the exception of trails, sports montages…
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TV Tonight
The Guardian’s blog has one of those impossible discussions at the moment about how terrible TV is these days. In terms of quanity there’s undoubtedly more dross to be found. But I can remember when we only had four channels – or even three – and there was still rubbish. But it was dull rubbish…