Category: TV

I’ve just been trying ABC’s new streaming service. It requires Flash 8, and the video quality is pretty good – significantly better than Youtube or Google Video, but then it’s being encoded at a much better rate. Currently there are just a handful of major ABC shows available including Lost, Desperate Housewives, and Commander in…

So Peter Jones (not the deparment store) has signed for ITV to present two shows for them, one of which is supposed to be a version of American Inventor. Of course, Jones has already signed on for another series of Dragon’s Den. What a busy man. How does he get time to run his companies?…

As television commoditisation increases evermore, there’s much discussion at the moment about BBC1’s weak Wednesday nights. Davina’s chat show has been lambasted, and the lack of a drama series at 9pm means that even Paul McCartney on the fur trade doesn’t get as many as 2 million. ITV are putting out a stream of dramas…

I’m loving access to the BBC’s Experimental Archive. Find out when all those programmes you remember were first broadcast nice and easily (and yes, I know that Bird of Prey has just been released on DVD. I’d completely forgotten until ten minutes ago that it was coming out. Now I have to rush off to…

One of the few strengths of Channel Five when it launched was its coverage of US sport. If you were a night owl, there was something to watch, with live baseball, ice hockey (at least before they all went on strike for a year or so) and basketball. There were various random other sports bought…

Maybe I’m just getting grumpier in my old age, but is The Guardian’s TV reviewer, Sam Wollaston, getting worse. Read today’s review. Now I didn’t see any of the reviewed programmes – wild horses couldn’t make me watch something called “Extraordinary People: Identical Quads”. Similarly anything called “The Real…” immediately drops off my radar as…

It was very strange to see the credits at the end of Sharpe last night. This quintissentially ITV show (that I only ever caught up with on DVD) has returned for one-off seven or eight years after it last graced our screens. It’s a sign of the times that whereas before Sharpe was always made…

So ITV Play has launched today, and you can watch it online! Seemingly, there’s no end to these channels, and I’d expect that at least one other channel on Freeview is likely to convert fully to this format – FTN is practically there already with only four hours a day of non-quiz programming. Even repeats…

As we get closer and closer to the next TV deal for football, it’s interesting to read this story from today’s Times about the price that ITV or the BBC would have to pay should they bid for one of the six packages that have to be offered seperately. Of those six packages, no single…

Mark Burnett is a man who not many will have heard of in the UK, unless they follow the TV industry that is. He’s the producer of such US hits as Survivor and The Apprentice (Broadcast also lists The Contender as a US “hit”. It was made in the US, but with the best will…

Filming’s just started on the BBC’s new version of Robin Hood – there’s a press release about it here. This version is written by Dominic Minghella, brother of Anthony. I was a big fan of the Michael Praed/Jason Connery series back in the eighties, and with all the growing coverage of his Alex Rider books…

Green Wing is another of those comedies that really has just sailed past me. I suppose The Mighty Boosh would be another recent equivalent. The first series of Green Wing, recently repeated in the run-up to the debut of the second series last Friday, ran around 60 mins per episode including ads. While I wasn’t…