AE on Telly News (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Wile E. Coyote]

“Criminal Record” Apple

It's pretty difficult to review this. It's set in London. A desperate woman phones the police and reveals that she fears for her life, and also that her partner has killed before, the twist being that someone else is already banged up for that previous murder.

Two officers have different opinions on that one. Peter Capaldi thinks that the woman is wrong, as he was the investigating officer in the first case. Cush Jumbo believes the annonymous source. Good eh?

For 6 episodes it is really good, gripping, Line of Duty type fare.

Episode 7 marks a shift. The series is directed by Jim Loach, son of Ken, and if you admire Kes, Cathy Come Home at al, you are going to consider this change of tone as brilliant, worthy, hard hitting.

Wiley now faces a real quandary as he is really desperate to abandon after having watched 7 out of 8 episodes...........

[Mick Harper]

Can we have more exciting come-on's for series we can never watch for lack of the right streaming service. If it's the same one that is showing Arsenal vs PSG, the most important football match that will ever occur in my lifetime, it's a lose-double.

[Mick Harper]

The Dark Money Game (Sky Documentaries)

For those of you who like your corruption lathered on thick and gooey and at inordinate length, this is the one for you. I've just watched an Ohio nuclear power station that was going bust spend twenty million bribing Ohio legislators to give them a billion dollars so they can sell it on to some other mug.

Truly, it's epic over there. Compare that to us. We're just not in the big league with our pathetic brown envelopes with a coupla tenners inside. They write cheques full of noughts because the Supreme Court has ruled a billionaire can do anything he likes with his money and do it anonymously. If it's his opinion (whoever he is) that a nuclear power station should be subsidised, he can reward people who feel the same way, can't he? It's free speech and protected by the Constitution.

[Mick Harper]

London Particular BBC R4

This is very good, worth catching up on https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000q278 The only false note is that it says it was first broadcast on 1/5/25. Obviously, it's 'New Drama on Radio 4', so what? Well, I could have sworn I'd heard it before. The heroine would turn out to be, I predicted, a 'mudlark'--an archaeologist looking for gewgaws in the Thames at low tide.

That's hardly a likely prediction if I hadn't heard it before, is it? So they've made a mistake, right? Possibly. Probably. But it's about people in London undergoing inexplicable bouts of time travel. That's what's worrying me.

[Mick Harper]

Two Men On A Bike (Channel 4)

It's a well-traversed genre, two comics making a journey together wisecracking all the way. This one is David Baddiel and Hugh Dennis cycling along the Canal du Midi in southern France. It is quite diverting but I bring it to your attention for another, AE, reason.

[Wile E. Coyote]

U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday announced a 100% tariff on movies produced outside the country, saying the American movie industry was dying due to the incentives that other countries were offering to lure filmmakers. This includes Amercan filmamkers who often choose to shoot abroad. So a US block buster, filmed in the UK that previously costs $300 million, will now cost $600 million, so it simply won't be filmed here.

The outcome will be few foreign films shown in the US and, eventually, a lot more films made in the US using digital technology to recreate overseas locations. Maybe.

Trump has declared this another "National Emergency" so he won't need oversight or approval.

The Guardian had written a eulogy. So now Donald has mounted his steed, put on his stetson and ridden in to save them.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/apr/26/los-angeles-film-and-tv-production

Wiley predicts that Hollywood will mysteriously be lobbying Trump not to be saved despite the fact that virtually every blockbuster claims to make a loss.

Funny old world the movies.......

[Mick Harper]

I played my part going to and fro between the On Yer Bike dispatch riders' office in the West End to the film studios clustered around Pinewood. Sounds like I got out just in time. Which is not what they said about my dispatch riding.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Wiley had not realised you starred in Carry On Yer Bike. I love the bit where Neville Saddlesore rides into the lake, when he spies the girls sunbathing.

It only goes to show we have a golden age of film-making industry of our own. We don't actually need Hollywood money.

Bring on the trade war.

[Mick Harper]

We did once have a film trade war with the Americans. As the only major market that spoke the same language as Hollywood, developing a domestic film industry proved exceptionally difficult. Having governments wedded to free trade ruled out tariffs (q.v.).

So the British government obliged all cinemas to show at least one British-made film in any programme. 'The Quota Quickie.' That meant you paid your one-and-nine for

a newsreel (usually Pathe, British)
a cartoon (usually Loony Tunes, American)
a feature length film (had to be British)
the main feature (always Hollywood)

[Mick Harper]

I realise now why YouTube has that Skip in X number of seconds button. I, like you, thought they were doing us a favour. No, you are so intent on watching the countdown so you can skip, you end up subliminally listening to the ad. Quite cute.

[Mick Harper]

Madeleine McCann: The Unseen Evidence (Channel 4 )

[Wile E. Coyote]

Hollywood seemingly does not want to be saved by Trump's film tariffs.

[Mick Harper]

Poor old Wiley. He always gets hold of the wrong end of the stick and starts beating himself with it. He doesn't realise...

[Mick Harper]

When I'm watching/listening I keep a notebook handy because, at my age, memory is somewhat short-term. Coupla days ago I wrote down

[Mick Harper]

Got it!

When the KGB spy, George Blake, was serving his forty-two years in Wormwood Scrubs, some peaceniks banged up with him at the time agreed to help him escape. They needed some specialist equipment--I can't remember what nor can I imagine what it might have been--and one of them, who worked for the BBC, 'borrowed' it from the studio where they were filming Dr Who.

You get your money's worth with the AEL.