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AE on Telly News (NEW CONCEPTS)
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Mick Harper
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Des ITV-1

Have I missed some bold new scheduling initiative? Des is the big ITV Autumn offering (safe serial killer serial with safe David Tennant safely exploring some new aspect of his thespianic range, i.e. his reign is over and his agent's having to scramble for parts). It's shown as per usual for an hour at nine o'clock. It is then repeated later the same evening in a fifty minute format. Do they cut out a murder or what? I haven't decided whether to watch or not. Prolly start, prolly stop. I'm so jaded.
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Boreades


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That reminds me, M'Lady Boreades is a serial watcher of serial killer series.

I wasn't bothered at first, then I noticed she's making copious notes, sharpening knives in the kitchen, doing DIY autopsies on our dead livestock, and looking at me in strange ways every time in come into the room.

Better safe than sorry.

I've told her "Des" is a film biography of Des Lynam and his best sporting moments on Match Of The Day.
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Mick Harper
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Bigamist, is she?
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Mick Harper
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The Secret History of Writing (BBC4)

An interesting first minute (I haven't seen any more). It is 'presented by' Lydia Wilson, 'written and directed' by David Sington, but given top billing is 'produced by' Hugh Sington. That's an actress, a comedy scriptwriter and a screenwiter/director. The history of writing is a fearsomely technical subject so for BBC4 to banish academics is a notable step. Whether it is a first step or a step in the right direction I will report on later.
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Mick Harper
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The Secret History of Writing (BBC4) Cont

Second minute: my bafflement increases. Lydia Wilson is not 'a personality', she is not eye candy, she is truly hopeless as a voice-over (it's not as easy as it sounds, sweetie pie), she is there in the ingenue's role to express joy and wonder and ask the experts the right question. And to give the correct response. Which I predict won't even once be, "Pull the other one, it's got St Columbanus's bells on." (q.v.)

So we start with an Australian aborigine in the guise of a culture that manages without writing.. "Meeting Bill, I was impressed by the richness and complexity of aborginal culture." You want to get out more, dear. "Probably handed down for tens of thousands of years." Or for the last fifty years. Doesn't anyone understand anything about oral transmission? There really isn't any way of telling. But I can tell you, in writing, that it is never knowingly undersold.

Oh well, duty obliges me to press on.
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Mick Harper
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All Creatures Great and Small (Channel 5)

Some medical man James Herriot turns out to be. Diana Rigg and Tricky-woo are side by side on the sofa and Herriot is only worried about the dog! I'm only watching it as a tribute to Ms Rigg. I think she's in every episode.
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Grant



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The Secret History of Writing
I was a bit worried about the aboriginal guy. He looked a bit mixed race to me. I wasn’t convinced when he started communing with the “ancestors.”
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Mick Harper
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Britain's Biggest Dig (BBC2)

What a grotesque waste. If you've got decent historical records, archaeology has absolutely nothing to add, except the occasional 'Gee-whiz'. They're digging up Britain between us and Brum for this new railway (which by the way they would never have started if they were starting now). Yes, you have to have archaeological surveys every inch of the way. Yes, you have to move bodies from cemeteries uncovered en route and stick 'em somewhere else. (Surrey, they said; somewhere with lower land values, I would have recommended.) But, no, you don't have to draft in an entire armoured corps of archaeologists; and no, you don't have to devote six hours of BBC2 primetime to describe it all.

There's an AE point though. Worthwhile archaeological sites are discovered either by happenstance or by following ancient clues. HS2 is a pre-ordained route that is the equivalent of happenstance times a thousand and we aren't finding any ancient clues. That's worth knowing. Unless the rest of the series doesn't deal entirely with modern cemeteries. I'll be watching like a hawk on fast forward.

PS Agreed 100% with you about the aborigine bloke, Grant, but as Harriet ('I did an anthropology course at uni') Verd said, "Certain groups can get away with saying anything and still be believed. It largely depends on the degree of white guilt locally." I'm having the same trouble with American aboriginals re Deserts.
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Mick Harper
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It may not be news to all of you but the telly hasn't been what it used to be before the Covidathon. What will be news to all of you is that the AEL has come up with a way to quantify the diminution in quality. The way this is done is to take a Guardian Pick of the Day as a baseline and compare it to each succeeding Pick of the Day and then it's put on some kind of graph. The details are still being worked out. It sounds complicated but you'll soon get the hang of it. As the scheme kicks off today, today's Pick of the Day will, luck of the draw, have to serve as the benchmark.

The Guardian's choice, Celebrity Karaoke Club, might seem unduly populist but here's the political twist. Every week, the one that gets the least votes drops out! Little wonder, with such an edgy format and the lack of job offers in these pinched times, there is, if not a stellar line-up, certainly a Bushtucker feel to what will, I'm sure, soon be a familiar cast of characters. The radio announcers Melvin Odoom and Roman Kemp will need no introduction, that's their day job; Scarlett Moffatt from Gogglebox will be able to double up on next week's Gogglebox reviewing herself; plus Courtney Act (a person not an act) and Baga Chipz, a person not a ... well, you get the idea. We are promised versions of the Spice Girls, Boyz II Men and, for the intellectuals, Spandau Ballet.

Tomorrow's Guardian Pick of the Day could be up a bit, could be down a bit. Details of how to register your opinion, which we value, also tomorrow.
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Grant



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Have you noticed that in terms of overall quality the gap between ITV and, say, Gold or W has decreased drastically in the last few years. Since Covid, there is often no gap at all. The only thing that keeps ITV going are old people who watch it out of habit. A bit like people who still buy newspapers. If it wasn't for the channel listing they would be dead already
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Mick Harper
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If it wasn't for the channel listing they would be dead already

I know I live for it.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Grant wrote:
Have you noticed that in terms of overall quality the gap between ITV and, say, Gold or W has decreased drastically in the last few years. Since Covid, there is often no gap at all. The only thing that keeps ITV going are old people who watch it out of habit. A bit like people who still buy newspapers. If it wasn't for the channel listing they would be dead already


Have you noticed that the BBC is always accused of chasing the global and yoof audience, yet the average age of the viewer is 60+. The BBC overwhelmingly caters for the elderly, yet consistently annoys them with their attempts to diversify. Ungrateful old buggers, won't let them sex up Antiques road show, Bargain hunt or Master-chef, you can't even float the idea of a rap version of Land and Hope or Glory. The most you can get is a bit of Fiona Bruce's knee. The young are of course not watching. Rather amusingly the old grouches are arguing that the Licence should be stopped. This will of course mean the end of the BBC and a targeting of more programmes aimed at the global yoof, not less.
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Mick Harper
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For those of you planning the perfect murder, here's a suggestion. Collect some marble chippings from any convenient cemetery. Prepare a tin bath of sulphuric acid. Assemble both in an upstairs room. Build a telephone 'annexe' downstairs which has a door which can be closed and locked from upstairs but cannot be unlocked from within. Construct a conduit through the floor from upstairs and into the annexe. All is ready.

Your victim arrives and you call down from upstairs, "I'll be with you in a jiffy." You then ring the phone in the telephone annexe. "Oh, could you answer that?" As soon as the victim does, the door swings shut and locks. Meanwhile you have put the marble chippings into the sulphuric bath hence producing carbon monoxide which (somehow, I'll have to leave that bit to your initiative) leaves the bath, goes down the conduit and kills the victim. Let me know how you get on in case there are wrinkles that need ironing out.

First used on The Mind of J G Reeder (Talking Pictures) which is highly recommended. Do not leave glass panes in the annexe door, they are there for televisual purposes only. In real life the victim (or indeed J G Reeder, standing thoughtfully on the other side of the door) might break them with a sharp blow from an elbow or other hard object and foil the plot.
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Mick Harper
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Illuminations : The Private Lives of Medieval Monarchs (PBS)

...and here we have an illustration of King Edgar holding up a book. [pause] Probably this book. Doctor Janina Ramirez

How does that work exactly, Janina? "Could you hold the book a bit lower, your majesty, while I pop round to draw it over your shoulder."
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Mick Harper
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This is a list of Anglo-Saxon names that's clearly been added to over the centuries -- Janina Ramirez

Does she not realise that this basically breaks the laws of physics? Watching this series is really quite heartbreaking as some hapless medivalist leads another across the greensward of (say) Winchester trilling, "Of course, over there is the Anglo-Saxon Minster, behind Athelstan's foundation which was burned down by...." One carbon test of one manuscript, one spade purposefully plunged into one square yard of the greensward, would reveal the truth. There's nothing there. It's looking into the abyss. The echoing sounds of human beings marching all alone. No, I'm beginning to frighten myself now.
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