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AE on Telly News (NEW CONCEPTS)
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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Wandavision: Disney

I actually loved the bit at the start where Wanda and Vision were trapped in the 1950s sitcom, but then each subsequent episode I enjoyed a little less.

My conclusion is that either this was a brilliantly subversive critique of how totally crap Marvel superheroes and most modern TV actually is or, well, you know, I am totally set in my ways.

Every Sha-la-la-la
Every Wo-o-wo-o
Still shines
Every shing-a-ling-a-ling
That they're startin' to sing's
So fine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfFvMMjJJKs

It's the latter.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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I'm more interested in your thought processes choosing Disney. This is turning out to be more and more important as we move into the pay-to-view era. For example, although I was awarded Sky Movies for free and would never have chosen to do so, I found

1. It is great for a couple of months
2. By then you will have watched all the movies you want to see
3. After that you (though not me) will be paying thirty quid a month (or whatever it is) for maybe one or two movies worth watching in that month.

Netflix is making valiant efforts to avoid this but, I fear, is failing.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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Mick Harper wrote:
I'm more interested in your thought processes choosing Disney.


Not me. My daughter. I do like "Only Murders in the Building" and "The Mandalorian" but that is it really.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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I'm more interested in why you chose to have children.
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Mick Harper
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Cuba's Sugar Trains (Netflix)

The usual cheerful chappie fronting the travelogue started off riding around in fifties Buicks extolling the vibrancy of Havana and telling us any problems Cuba might be experiencing was down to US sanctions. He then informed us that Cuba was pretty much the first country in the world to acquire a national rail network (in the 1830's, forsooth) because of the need to get the sugar crop out.

What the programme-makers hadn't bargained on was that US sanctions had been so savage that only one train a day runs on the main line, leaving Havana at six in the evening and arriving at its destination the following morning. Have you ever tried making a travelogue which consists of pointing a camera out of a train at night?
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Mick Harper
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Inside Japan's War (PBS)

I was quite interested to see the latest (2021) state of play in the American liberal establishment (PBS) view of the Pacific War, and came away mildly -- but only mildly -- shocked. The factual stuff could not be faulted and it was quite restrained in overall moralising, quite innovatory in dealing with internal Japanese politics and public opinion, but on the interpretative side, well...

1. No mention of America's role in starting the war by, essentially driving Japan into a position of either giving up everything it had gained in fifty years or fight. I do not say the policy was wrong but it needed saying.
2. No mention of Britain's part even though as many Japanese troops were in our theatre as were ranged against the Americans. I do not claim equality in practice but again it needed saying. We did get a mention though which is more than the Australians did despite being easily the best Allied troops.
3. No attempt at a critique of strategy by either side. It was all portrayed as an inevitable process.

The worst was saved for last...
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Mick Harper
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In the Unreliable History I claim the Japanese surrendered because of the Red Army victories in Manchuria. This campaign was not mentioned except

1. The Russians entered the war because 'they wanted Manchuria'. How did that turn out then?
2. They entered the war on the 9th August 'the day the Nagasaki bomb was dropped' and not because the Americans had demanded the Russians enter the war three months after VE-Day i.e. 9th August.
3. The Russians took 600,000 Japanese prisoners of whom 300,000 survived.

Then, after the surrender, came the most jaw-dropping application of current modish-think I've seen in a long time.

The Japanese government arranged for 30,000 Japanese women to be recruited from geisha establishments, nightclubs and brothels to be comfort-women to discourage American occupying troops raping respectable Japanese women but this did not stop sexual violence. Two marines entered a house and raped a mother and daughter only a few hours after they had landed. [And that was it for sexual violence.]

Even so, for a three hour moderately prestige pre-Ukraine production, it wasn't too bad.
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Mick Harper
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Hide and Seek (Channel 4)

Tonite. Yes, it's Walter Presents but it's Ukrainian. Imagine a world without a Ukrainian War. Can you spot a Ukrainian thriller series that would even get onto the desk before Walter's desk? Nor can I. Although it will be worth (begin) watching from that point of view alone.
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Mick Harper
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Leading Question of the Week
That Ellie off Countryfile wrote:
And do you ever get bored releasing swifts into the wild?

"I do as it happens, Ellie, but what can you do? Round here, it's either that or poaching."
"What about presenting twee BBC programmes about rural life?"
"There's some lines you do not cross, Ellie."
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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We recently watched the excellent Nightsky, (Amazon Prime), only to find Season 2 has now of course been cancelled. I have now resolved not to watch Outer Range (Amazon Prime) until they annouce that there will be a second seaon, and you actually know get to know what happens to the cliffhanger at end of first season. Because I, like others, are delaying, it means the viewing figures for Outer Range Season 1 will now be lower, which means that it is less likely Outer Range will have a second season.....Madness.
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Mick Harper
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I hope your daughter is not funding this plethora of platforms from the bank of mum and dad. On the question of second series, pre-series and spin-off series, the only one I got attached to was Better Call Saul (rather mysteriously hatched from Breaking Bad which I tried but did not join in the universal rejoicing about). Saul lasted several series before becoming formulaic and over-contrived.

And then there's the re-made series and the question of Van der Valk. Why this got a second series is only explicable by direct negotiation at Anglo-Dutch governmental level. "We'll arrange for a second series unless you support us over the Northern Ireland Protocol."
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Mick Harper
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The Capture BBC1

I was merely bored to death finding the lead is a young female martial arts DCI with an aggression problem but when this was swiftly followed by her impossibly handsome black sidekick being carefully portrayed with his impossibly beautiful white wife and his impossibly beautiful milk chocolatey children dotted around the breakfast bar behaving beautifully, I started to gag. I'm a big fan of the doctored surveillance genre but I just can't go on.

Somebody's got to call a halt to this absurdist counter-tokenism and if the mantle should fall on me, then so be it. Are you taking all this down? [My flat is festooned with bugs of every kind supplied by JICTAR.] I'll leave your people to clean up next time they're in to change the batteries. I prefer to look at my own vomit than the BBC's.
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Mick Harper
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My thirst for conspiracy thrillers led me cautiously back to The Capture. The 'sidekick' turned out to be a cabinet minister which made the casting even sillier. But, please note, black actors (of both genders) fall into two sub-stereotypes: the tough-looking one and the non-threatening-looking one. Our cabinet minister was of the latter kind and (natch) was shown to be omni-competent in all respects including his now-modish anti-China stand. I was able to sit through the derivative 'little kiddie wanders into Zoom-style-live-TV interview' scene without throwing up. As someone later commented, "They practice it at RADA, you know." "I'm surprised to hear little kiddies go to RADA."

Which brings us to the 'two men in suits having a snorter at the club telling the cabinet minister the facts of political life' scene. Since they were both dead white European males we can be sure they will be at the very least 'equivocal'. Which brings us to the 'termagant middle-aged woman senior policeman getting her comeuppance' scene. Yes, Cressida, you will live on in fiction longer than your time at the top did.

The thriller itself turned out to be (for the BBC) unexpectedly good.
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Mick Harper
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Countryfile celebrated the 150th anniversary of Vaughan Williams' birth so I have decided to commemorate it as well in my index

collectors
ancient 10 63 386
Barrois 228 230
Besterman 187 197 198
Carrands 231 247
coins 386
collectable 97 244
Cunningham 211
d’Argenville 173
Fleming 256-7
Franks 208 227 230
Granger 251-2
Jennings 252-5
Jones 285-7
Mathieu 225-6 230
Pepys 95 97 100
private 238 239 241 242 244 255-6 398
Rawlinson 103
Richardson 199
Vaughan 263 282-5
Williams 281-2 284
Wynne 263 283-4

Will I get any thanks? What do you think?
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Mick Harper
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The Great (Channel 4)

I had thought that this was Channel 4's one and only critical and popular success of the last decade but the fact that it was originally shown at 9 pm, then got shunted to 10 pm and is now at 11 pm suggests I was alone in thinking this. Though I did have some presentiments

M J Harper in his fine book Revisionist Historiography wrote:
The French were not alone in wanting to cast a retrospective cultural glow. The Russians and the Austrians were in the same position but were content to respectively re-brand Catherine the Great and Leopold II as towering figures of this Enlightenment everyone was talking about. The French, as can be their wont, went a great deal further by claiming they had invented the whole thing.
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