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AE on Telly News (NEW CONCEPTS)
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Mick Harper
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The Prosecutors: Real Crime and Punishment (BBC-4)

"Sometimes I think members of the public think we make decisions off the top of our heads." Chief Crown Prosecutor

Well, madam, if that is a fair reflection of your knowledge of the general public it may be better if you did. As this bloke Keir Starmer was telling me in the pub, "If you can, prosecute; if you can't, join the Crown Prosecution Service. Another round of the same, and could you bring it over to our table? Have a half for yourself."
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Mick Harper
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COBRA (Sky One)

I recommended this last week so I feel a bit guilty explaining how, fifteen minutes into the second episode, the pacy crisis management and political skulduggery has given way to wall-to-wall soap opera. So I'm giving up on it too. Still, as the big budget Sky One winter offering, it is worth a parting sociological critique.

I accept that the Sky One demographic may well prefer soap operas to governmental dramas, I also accept they are easier to write and cheaper to film, but all the same one would think there's room for both. I'm even prepared to accept the latter with a dash of the former but not the other way round.

The weird thing is that nowadays 'drama conventions' seem to demand that the soap element has to hobble the characters. For instance, a prime minister with a drug drama in the family and a national crisis to deal with, might lead to exciting new insights into children, drugs, the NHS, the police, the brutalities of saving the many and not the few (or the one in this case) but no, I can tell, it will be husband-and-wife agonising, then rowing, then the wife looking desperately into the middle distance, then the prime minister falling into the arms of someone who understands the pressures of high office. She won't have any kids for a start.

One day it will just be a prime minister but not any time soon on one of the popular network channels. For them drama is always synonymous with angst. Living in a nation of cry-babies is so boring.
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Mick Harper
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Have you ever wondered which British crime dramas Walter is presenting in other European countries?
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Mick Harper
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The Trial of Christine Keeler (BBC-1)

This was pretty poor stiuff. May be overfamiliarity but mainly because trying to force Chritine Keeler into the feminist icon pint pot meant the whole story was fatally skewed from the off. Keeler was always the least interesting of the cast of characters in the Profumo Affair -- any prostitute (although that's not quite the right term) would have fitted the bill. Because of course this was the Profumo Affair (and to a lesser extent the Trial of Stephen Ward Affair) and the rest is a so-so account of the London demi-monde in the early nineteen-sixties. A world in any case swept away by the Swinging Sixties (as nicely captured right at the end). The true nature of the business was summed up just before the end credits

Public access to all the files concerning Stephen Ward remain restricted until 2046

Why so? First of all because Stephen Ward was an MI5 asset, second of all because MI5 was a KGB asset, and third of all because Prince Phillip is still alive.
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Mick Harper
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A new channel is delivered to us this week. Sky Comedy consists of, as far as I can see, American sit com reruns. Why can't I watch them? I don't mean 'Why don't I find them funny?' I mean 'Why do I find them painful to watch?'. But then that's true of British sit coms too, for the most part. The reason is illustrated by an institution that is leaving us -- the last series of Bojack Horseman begins on Netflix this week..

This is a funny and pungent satire on Hollywood celebrity culture which includes constant flashbacks to a sit com that Bojack used to star in (if you follow me). These are shown knowingly to be a constant reiteration of the basic technique of sit coms -- a laborious set-up followed by a punchline all delivered by people acting in character except they are all marionettes in the hands of scriptwriters coming up with punchlines etc etc.

How can anyone find anything so contrived funny? Unless it is 'knowng' as per The Young Ones. I take the same dim view of stand up comedy (apart from the 'knowing' Stuart Lee). Perhaps I just lack a sense of humour. Or I'm jealous. Or I am superior to it all. Some damned thing. It's not a funny old world.
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Mick Harper
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A few years ago an Armando Iannucci vehicle called Veep (i.e vice-president) was launched to great fanfares. I glowered because it was only available to Sky subscribers (I'm Virgin) and I'm not the sort of desperate housewife who buys box-sets. Today it popped up on Sky Comedy and I watched the first one. And all the other ones, all seven seasons of them at an hour a throw, have been added to my digibox without a by-or-leave. I'll just have to get up earlier and go to bed later.
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Mick Harper
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Due to having a life I am only now catching up with the current batch of Midsomer Murders (ITV-1). I thought I knew Midsomer pretty well -- I did a geology field trip there as an undergraduate -- but I confess this is the first time I have come across Swynton Magna. It sounds made up. But then most of the English countryside is.
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Mick Harper
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Oh my God, watching Midsomer Murders is already addling my brain. I can only hope that's a good thing.
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Grant



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That woman from Lewis was in Midsummer! I couldn't watch it.
If she'd appeared in Casualty I wouldn't have minded.
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Mick Harper
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You're kidding! Not that woman? I once saw Morse in a Holiday Inn and it fair put me off my breakfast. Hatty tells me that Midsomer Murders is filmed in a village near her but only because I'm always boasting to her about how many telly programmes are shot in Notting Hill. It's actually made in Romania. Cheaper and more authentic-looking.
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Chad


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I once spent three weeks at the Holiday Inn Bangalore... where I appeared as an (unpaid) extra in a Bollywood movie, being shot around the pool.

(I was the one lying on the sun lounger, with a pint of Kalyani Black Label and some book or other.)

P.S. It was the movie that was being shot, not me.
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Mick Harper
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A book? Impressive.
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Chad


In: Ramsbottom
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I was given it, as a stage prop.
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Mick Harper
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Silent Witness -- Cast News

The woman in the wheelchair is being written out preparatory to being spun off, if you'll excuse the term, for her own series. All the others are gradually being killed off by a nerve agent to create a gap in the schedules for this new series. I cannot say more because it is a firm rule of mine to stop watching any crime drama that uses the hoary old 'victim killed in a car crash brought on by something or other' plot device. Why? Because it is virtually impossible to kill someone by this means. It being so rare for the driver's incapacity (or the car's incapacity if the hoary old 'fiddling with the brakes' routine is used) to coincide with a curve in the road resulting in said car going off a cliff and turning somersaults in the approved manner.
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Grant



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I'm disappointed that no-one uses the hoary old cliche (are all cliches hoary?) of cars driving off a cliff and exploding. Sometimes they would explode before they hit the ground
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