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AE on Telly News (NEW CONCEPTS)
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Mick Harper
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You may not have it where you are but we have something called HD which stands for High Definition, often street-abbreviated to Hi-Def. This was quite cool to begin with but when we discovered it used up our digibox reserves at three time the rate of Old Def it was regarded as something of a plague.

So, you won't be asking now but may do in the future, what are we to make of UD which used to be a sort of milk but now stands for a picture definition that defies the normal senses i.e. it is sharper than real life. And in any case uses up digispace so fast that you'd end up having to watch it in real time which destroys the need for a digibox in the first place. In fact it may very well end up driving people out of the house just to experience real life, the new Old Def as it were. Yet another example of the human race going too fast for its own good.
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Mick Harper
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High Seas (Netflix)

On Wylie's advice I typed this into my Netflix search engine. First surprise: it put Episode Two up. This meant I had watched -- and finished watching -- Episode One. But it must have been long ago because a) it wasn't on my Carry On Watching list and b) I couldn't make head nor tail of it. So thanks, Wylie, for contributing to my a) I'll never get my digibox down to 99% at this rate list and b) my Worrying About Losing My Marbles list. The bad dubbing though adds to the air of doomed Borgesian realism.

Talking of which, and as a counter-recommendation though without dubbing, I offer Inspection, a Polish film about army officers on their way to Katyn. Not a barrel of laughs but not as gloomy as it sounds. Good in itself but also good for how Poles see a) Russians b) themselves and c) intellectuals everywhere. But most of all for d) how little we know of living through desperate times.
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Mick Harper
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The Watch (BBC-2)

We're ten minutes in and I know already this will be a colossally expensive failure. Why? Because they've made the elementary mistake of supposing that because Pratchett's books are labelled 'fantasy', they have to go all fantastical. As the man said, "No! No! No!" The whole point of the Discworld is that it is not fantastical, it is our familiar world but twisted.

Why have they made the mistake? Because they've been given too much money and if they didn't spend it all on being gloriously fantastic, the BBC hierarchy would want to know where all their money went. It's the easiest thing in the world, there are a thousand effects studios out there just vying for your co-production dollar. Plus the normal problem of all hyper-modern programme-makers trying to achieve naturalistic camera-movement -- you can't make out half of what anybody is saying. Which in a literary work like a Pratchett novel is saying quite a lot.

Why don't they just make me Vetinari and have done with it? I think he's a woman which is a nice touch since Vimes falls in love with 'him' later. I've no objection to messing with Pratchett, he's long gone, so long as they don't mess with the Discworld. That's all around us.
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Mick Harper
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As far as I know there haven't been any feature films of Discworld novels, which is a surprise in itself. Are they, does anyone know, big in America? There have been two expensive TV productions, The Hogfather and Going Postal, both on Sky, both pretty good, both made when the Master was still with us. And with it. I have listened to two BBC radio treatments, neither very ambitious, neither very good -- one quite bad on the same general area as The Watch. Which, by the way, is going out as 'Characters inspired by Sir Terry Pratchett' which is also odd since they usually get to this stage after they have rifled the whole of the back catalogue eg Morse and Dalziel & Pascoe.

All in all more evidence that the BBC is in terminal decline. Should it be broken up? Given a mercy killing? Made subscription only? Take ads? I am still reluctant. It is like the British monarchy -- not very good but better than the alternatives. But mainly because it (they) are terribly British, however terrible. I am terribly patriotic like that.
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Mick Harper
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It occurs to me that the BBC already knew they'd got a turkey because a) it's going out on BBC2 b) there's been no advance publicity build-up and (c) they are doing back-to-back episodes and the whole thing is available on the I-Player. Looking at the production values this may turn into a minor stink.

Both BBC and ITV have been scrambling like mad to come to terms with Netflix et al. The recent treatment of the Euros and the Olympics seems to indicate there is still some mileage in having 'national channels' but not much. That dreaded demographic 'the young' have already voted with their feet -- plus their mouse fingers. We'd better keep a weather eye out for them lest they start taking over.
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Wile E. Coyote


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I will give it a try, as the trailer looks bonkers.

Could it be that the Pratchett fanclub are trying to guard a large building against theft, so they can lean against it and shield themselves from the wind?

Let's see.
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Mick Harper
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I know what you mean. You're probably old enough to remember Dune. But the PFC is not a fan club in the ordinary sense. Or at any rate they're a very broad church of shrine-worshippers. True it started with ageing hippies like me but it's now populated by the most dreadful types. Hatty, my brother, people of that sort.
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Mick Harper
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I thought, with the Olympics and the Euros over, there would be less pressure on my digibox capacity but no such luck. With Covid winding down there's all the quality gear that's been snarled up in production and now flooding the airwaves. There's no alternative but to start applying some broad brush rules to decide who gets digiboxed and who doesn't. BBC drama series, that's always a big yes. Very innovatory, 'cutting edge with attitude' as we media professionals like to say, mustered as we are here at Edinburgh for the first time for absolutely ages, darling, plus the direct flights from Tuscany are completely deserted. It's heaven.

Especially BBC-2. The Boleyns: A Scandalous Family. I hope it's not a retread of the Durrells, that's not what we pay our licence fee for. But that's the great thing about these new huge capacity digiboxes. You never get to find out.
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Mick Harper
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CNN has suddenly disappeared from Virgin's roster of channels. Apparently it's going subscription -- which will certainly mean it will no longer be "where more Americans turn for their news than any other source" as it frequently boasts. Giving that claim up is a big step so I trust they find that Americans will pay for their broadcast news more than any other country would ever dream of doing.

More parochially this will be a great help in my daily struggle to keep beneath the 100% digibox event horizon but also that I will no longer be the world authority on all things American. Watching Judge Judy is necessary but not sufficient.
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Mick Harper
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Grantchester ITV-1

They must be desperate, I thought, if they're running old Grantchesters. But no, they are even more desperate, it's a new series. The sixth according to my digi-information. Can that really be true? Perhaps they sell it to New Zealand as News and Current Affairs. Anyway, despite the nausea I knew it was my duty to check out the first episode.

As soon as we had the threadbare plot device of (first minute) his doctor telling him he needed a holiday and (second minute) turning up at a holiday camp with motorbike but without wife, I knew thankfully this will be the last series. The only point of it -- and he actually reminded us of this via a G K Chesterton quote while the opening credits were rolling -- is that he's an ordinary vicar in an ordinary parish with an ordinary wife. Perhaps he wins the knobbly knees competition, perhaps he uncovers the murderous conspiracy that ensured he wasn't going to win the knobbly knees competition, I shall never know.

Talking of nobbly knees and the Church of England, I had difficulty in rising from a kneeling position on this the Lord's Day. Cleaning floors is a young man's game. It's all they're good for if you want my opinion, but few do.
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Mick Harper
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Vera ITV-1

It's back and gloomier than ever. I often wonder about the demographic -- BBC-2 maybe, but ITV-1? This one featured black people even though everyone knows there aren't any in the north-east (too sensible); some kind of desolate National Park filled with temporary shelters -- or 'the north-east', as we call it; and mentally ill people even though everyone is mentally ill in the north-east so it's going to be the devil of a job just sorting out the asylum-keepers. Which brings us to Ma Stanhope herself. It can't be the menopause, so what's making her so bad-tempered? Stuck in the north-east for another series of course, dummies.
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Grant



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I wonder what the North-East tourist board - if there is such a thing - thinks about Vera. They should show a nice sunny day with some seals or something
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Mick Harper
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A North-East tourist board? That's not a bad idea at all. You could put their names up on it with photos, a few financial details and where they are staying the night. Hence the locals would know where to stand around to best advantage. Not to beg, they are a proud people, but to offer their native handicrafts and so forth. Often made from hubcaps, Sir Roy Strong tells me.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Grant wrote:
I wonder what the North-East tourist board - if there is such a thing - thinks about Vera. They should show a nice sunny day with some seals or something


I like it, a chipper Vera dons a kimono and wide-brimmed straw hat and heads off to the beach for a plodge, only to discover an illegal seal cull.
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Mick Harper
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Endeavour ITV-1

Black mark #1: Endeavour (Shawn Evans) is directing the first episode. They normally only allow vanity-directing in later episodes so it must have been a condition of him taking part. Actors thinking they can direct is as short-sighted as producers allowing them to do so. Directing oneself is the hardest form of directing.
Black mark #2: It's a terrorist bomb. Are we supposed to believe Oxford City cops would be allowed to conduct such an investigation?
Black mark #3: Football is involved. Oxford Wanderers vs Cowley Town in the fifth round of the cup? Good grief, about as realistic as the Subbuteo figures shown briefly. They were cardboard in the sixties and standing at attention.
Black mark#4: All the old-stagers are back despite one of them having retired, one of them being killed and Anton Lesser being visibly at death's door.

And we're only two minutes in. Thank God one of us is watching.
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