AE on Telly News (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Mick Harper]

If anyone wants to solve a true life TV crime mystery it's this

1. There's a daily two-hour NBC programme called Pro-Football Talk Live
2. Sky has the British rights for this and it's quite important to them because Sky Sports has a dedicated NFL channel which has to be filled every day even though there's no actual football played Jan - Sept.
3. That also means there's no competition for PFTL which duly goes out at 7 pm every evening -- prime time given that a lot of the audience is apparently young.
4. Except for no obvious reason it sometimes goes out at 5 pm. or late at night.
5. At other times,. e.g. tonight, it simply disappears though the scheduling shows it ought to be on. They are showing the twenty-seventh re-run of the Super Bowl instead.
6. Here's the mystery. Tomorrow, when it appears as scheduled, the presenters will apologise to "our Sky viewers in Great Britain and Ireland but we have no control over Sky decisions and they won't say why they shift it around or sometimes don't show it at all other than 'for scheduling reasons'. Please bombard Sky with your emails, not us, though we enjoy getting them if they're about anything else."

It may have something to do with the language used by the presenters because they frequently say things like 'that really pisses me off, even though viewers in Britain and Ireland won't hear me say so because it will be bleeped out' . Though it never is in my experience. So that's a double mystery: why are Sky so nervous about these minor infelicities and why won't they say whether it is the reason for the censorship, if that is the reason.

Whatever it is, Sky is prepared to sit out this ignominious situation (for a year or two now) rather than simply axe the show. I know the problem is trivial but the wider issues are not. If only I could work out what they are. Like I say, it's a mystery.

[Mick Harper]

[Grant]

The world of TV drama is crying out for a series about a black, gay, handicapped detective who is a complete bastard

[Mick Harper]

Haven't you forgotten Ironside?

[Mick Harper]

The Midwich Cuckoos (Sky)

A prime example of the problems that can arise from misapplied multiculturalism. I was brought up on John Wyndham novels (I still won't cross the M25 because of triffids). Also the film of the above, starring blond(e) blue-eyed children all born simultaneously in a typical English village. This is what gave it resonance, they were perfect and scary. Blond, blue-eyed people were not that numerous even in the all-white Britain of the fifties.

I'm two minutes into the Sky version and already I have been introduced to the central characters, a couple living in a fifties-style house but in the present day, black male/white female. Their child -- soon to be a 'cuckoo' -- has just showed up, a very white but not blonde girl. What am I meant to do with this? I understand the village has to have a multicultural mix, and I'm all right with that, but do I have to be disoriented in the first five minutes?

[Mick Harper]

Memo to aliens wanting to take over earth: always make sure Keeley Hawes is caught in the net.

I was worried the Midwich rescue operations were under the control of a middle aged white male but London has sent in a young black woman to take over.

[Mick Harper]

Would I watch a twelve-part series called The Secrets of the Tyne & Wear Metro? Not sure. But Geordies can watch a twelve-part series Secrets of the London Underground if they choose to.

[Mick Harper]

Combining my last three posts: Keeley Hawes turned up at Marylebone station (Bakerloo Line) to take the Chiltern Line to Midwich. It didn't say, and I can't find it on the map, whether Midwich is inside or outside the M25.

[Mick Harper]

The Falklands War BBC-4

I find it so difficult finding anything to watch now my brain has left this galaxy, it was a delight sitting down for an hour and half of uninterrupted viewing of this Ian Curteis play. It was only then that I noticed there was another half-hour tacked on, devoted to the song-and-dance that happened when it was first commissioned by the BBC. Which I witnessed at the time but had forgotten all about since.

Imagine my surprise when some BBC bigwigs explained that, having spent a million pounds on the project, they refused to show it for fifteen years on the grounds: "It just wasn't good enough to broadcast. Simple as that." Other people chipped in to say it was because the BBC couldn't bear to broadcast an hour and half of what was a very pro-Thatcherite account of the war.

The explanation is simple enough. If you hate Mrs Thatcher you will find a play bigging her up will never be 'good enough'. Though since it was (a) more than good enough and (b) light years ahead of 99% of the stuff you do broadcast, you have to (c) apply 'careful ignoral' by the bucketful to your own brain to arrive at this position.

[Mick Harper]

The People v J Edgar Hoover BBC R4

Literally hundreds of people have been asking, "What's happened to Emily Maitliss?" Well, I haven't got her. All was revealed now she has popped up presenting the above. Except she isn't presenting it, something she is very good at, but reading a script, which she isn't at all good at.

Why should she be? She's not a trained actress. Or actor, in the modern argot. So we have a first, a boring programme about J Edgar Hoover. Why has the producer inflicted this on us? It is because he is a BBC producer and therefore not trained for the job.

[Mick Harper]

Sherwood (BBC1)

This was given such a rave in the Guardian, I had forebodings. Sure enough it was because of the background of the Miners' Strike, which for British liberals is what The Battle of Congress is for American liberals. They can't get enough of it. But it was so distantly related I couldn't see why they were so all over a typically slow BBC policier. Lots of moody stares into the middle distance, suspects played by stalwarts, police out of central casting, whippets supplied by Whippets R Us of Donnie. That's Doncaster for tha' southern folk.

In the last five minutes, we found out the reason for the Guardian's enthusiasm. Police skullduggery. Redacted records. 1984.
"Orwell?" asked a young police person.
"Nay, lass, miner's strike," said top cop.
"Why aren't we mentioning Sherwood, given that the murder was committed by an arrow through the chest?"
'Nay, lass, we'll have none of that talk round here. We don't want London tabloids having a field day."
Death by sharp implement will be t'coroner's verdict, eh, hen?

Then I remembered, right at the start: 'based on a true story'. Based on a leftist conspiracy theory more like. Still, I like them. As long as they are laid on thick. I don't want truth getting in the way of a good story.

[Mick Harper]

I was trying to work out why I was having such difficulty watching Sherwood -- it has plenty of ingredients I like and is quite well done . Then three-quarters into episode two it dawned on me -- everyone is so irredeemably awful. I mean everyone. No eager junior cop, no comic local turn. Even the bit part people are pretty horrible. The characters we are clearly being signalled to regard as 'good' plotwise are bad personality-wise. It gets you down eventually.

Dahn, as they say oop there. "Don't flash that Met warrant card, detective sergeant, feelings are still raw oop here." And that's from the General Strike of 1926.

[Mick Harper]

Once Upon A Time In Londongrad (Sky Documentaries)

I watched this six part series back-to-back-to-back, it was that good. ("You said that when they were showing early episodes of Neighbours, Mick, but do go on.") Basically it's a Buzzfeed investigation of the suspicious 'suicides' of and connected to Russian oligarchs living in Britain. It all began with, and to a degree continued to be centred round, an English bloke called Scot Young who fell from the fourth floor of a West End flat and ended up impaled on some railings. Did he jump or was he pushed?

His somewhat mysterious girlfriend at the time (he had many) told the police he had rung her just before to tell her he was going to jump out of his fourth floor etc etc if she didn't come round immediately. The Met, not surprisingly, concluded it was therefore suicide. The six part series was, sort of, predicated on this not being the case so, I thought, looking at the five episodes to come, we shall be finding out all about this girlfriend. She was neither mentioned nor referred to again.

Nevertheless the series is well worth watching. Especially for the AE angle about what it takes for people to believe one thing and for the Met Police to believe another thing. I promise you, it is not all one way or the other.

[Mick Harper]

A Simple Favour (BBC-1 tonite)

This is billed as a comedy mystery thriller. A new genre on me. I remember with affection a comedy thriller called the Runaway Bus starring Frankie Howard and Petula Clarke which the BBC used to show in tandem with The African Queen, the only other film they had. I think it was a Desmond Tutu biopic but my memory may be playing me false there. It starred Humphrey Bogart which seems unlikely unless he was playing Hendrik Verwoerd.

[Mick Harper]

The Whistleblowers: Inside the UN BBC-2 tonite

It is hard to think of a more likely venue than the UN for producing whistle-blowing material. It is not subject to any outside scrutiny, all its employees are protected by diplomatic immunity (but without a country being responsible for them) and it is draped in the cloth of purest liberal gold. But don't bother with this programme tonight. We saw the two 'best' whistle-blowers on Newsnight and they were both as flaky as hell.

This doesn't mean they are not telling the truth -- flaky people are easy pickings -- but it does mean they make hopeless witnesses. If this is the best the BBC can come up with, the UN will career on as the bloated, corrupt, (nearly) useless body it has transmogrified into over the decades.

It is clearly past redemption but what to do about it is not even within my powers to say.