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Ignoring The Leveson Obvious
As stupid politics ruins a perfectly good, and vitally necessary libel reform bill, I again get back into the quagmire that is Leveson reforms. Her Majesty’s Press sitting there refusing to have any kind of legislation oversee them, while Leveson seems to have done his best to work around this issue. But it all feels…
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Mars Rover
Going through a stack of old papers, I found the above. It’s quite exciting suddenly remembering that you had your name inscribed on a chip that was built into the Mars Curiosity Rover, along with 1.2m other people, and that the Rover now sits on Mars, as indeed it has done since August 6 last…
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Some New TV Notes and Thoughts!
Why have one Meteor “quick turnaround” documentary tonight when you can have two? Yes, both BBC Two and Channel 4 have decided that there’s enough footage from Russian dashcams to fill an hour explaining to viewers what meteors are. Now I’ve seen neither of these programmes at time of writing, and I’m sure they’re both…
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RIP: My Local HMV
Today came the sad news that another batch of 37 HMVs are to close within the next few weeks. Included amongst them is my local HMV – a shop where, on and off, I’ve been shopping since 1980. Indeed, the first ever record I bought came from that branch of HMV. Yes, at some point…
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BBC Two HD
The BBC today announced that BBC Two HD will launch full time from March 26. It will replace the current BBC HD channel, retaining that channel’s EPG position on the major digital TV platforms. This isn’t a surprise – as part of the savings that the BBC’s Delivering Quality First (DQF) initiative instigated, the closure…
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Light Show
If you’re in London any time before 28 April, then you really should try to get along to Light Show at the Hayward Gallery. As the name implies, it’s all about light – lots of installations and exhibits based around light. Some are simple – trivial even – but many are remarkable. A certain part…
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House of Cards
Unless you’ve been keeping your head under a rock, you’ll know that a week or so ago, the streaming video service Netflix launched one of its first original series, with an adaptation of the 1990s BBC series House of Cards. It made all thirteen episodes available to watch in one go, and in the process…
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Black Mirror: Series 3 Proposal
I really enjoyed the first episode of Channel 4’s new run of The Twilight Zone Black Mirror. It was a well worked tale of future possibilities, played out wonderfully by Hayley Atwell and Domhnall Gleeson as loving couple suddenly separated by death. I watched the programme in near real time – starting about fifteen minutes…
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Awards Shows Need to be Live in 2013
As I type, guests for the BAFTA Film Awards are beginning to arrive at a soggy Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. Are they getting to the venue super early, since the awards themselves aren’t on for ages? No, it’s because we get recorded highlights of the BAFTA Film Awards on BBC One from 9pm.…
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Zero Dark Thirty
As this film came closer to being released I was having mixed opinions about it. There were those stories about how it had overemphasised the success of using torture to tell the CIA what they needed. Then there were stories that it somehow defended torture (a misreading surely). On the other hand, I’d heard that…
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Death on the Staircase: The Last Chance
Back in early 2005, BBC Four showed an extraordinary eight-part documentary series called Death on the Staircase. It was originally made for French television by Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, and covered a single murder case prosecution in extraordinary detail. Michael Peterson, an author, writer and sometime local politician, who lived in some comfort with his family…
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RAJAR Q4 2012
The first release of 2013 is actually the last data from 2012. In general, last quarter, radio listening had fallen a bit – a combination of the summer and the Olympics. Television did well, which in turn meant that radio suffered. Did listening bounce back in Q4? Yes it did. Overall, 90% of UK adults…
Podcasts, Radio, TV, Books, Cycling, Photography and More
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Yellowface/All The Lovers In The Night
Yellowface by R F Kuang I first came across R F Kuang with last year’s very enjoyable Babel, an alternate history of the British Empire told in a world where magic exists and is controlled by an elite group of individuals. Yellowface is very different, but no less enjoyable. It’s a book about books, and…
Hadrian’s Wall
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