What are you watching?

[Nearly Sane]

4 hours of Joan Armatrading tonight on BBC4 from 10pm


https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0008rm4

[SteveH]

60s versions of The War of the Roses plays.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001r3hj

Thanks for the tip-off. I've saved Dick 3 to watch when I've got 2 1/2 hours to spare.

[Nearly Sane]

Thanks for the tip-off. I've saved Dick 3 to watch when I've got 2 1/2 hours to spare.

So it's parked for now. Well he is used to it.

[Nearly Sane]

And they are reshowing the 2012 versions

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07bqgjn

[Nearly Sane]

This was enjoyable as a podcast, be interesting to see if Uncanny translates to TV.


https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001rckl

[Nearly Sane]

And they are reshowing the 2012 versions

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07bqgjn

It is part of this season to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the First Folio.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2023/shakespeare-first-folio-400-anniversary-pan-bbc-season

[Nearly Sane]

And as part of the 60th anniversary for Doctor Who, all the available classic episodes being put on iPlayer.


https://www.gamesradar.com/doctor-who-60-year-anniversary-800-episode-archive/

[Nearly Sane]

Not so much watching as encountering when I switch on the TV for Strictly is Picture Slam. In contrast to many quiz shows now which seem utterly baffling with random rules and rounds, this is say what's in the picture. It's like Catchphrase without the Catchphrase part. It is quite the most boring quiz I have ever encountered.


https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001qpqh

[SteveH]

Quelle merde! I'm allergic to Alan Carr anyway.

I'm watching 'Our World War' on iplayer, three hour-long dramas. The first was about the battle of Mons in August 1914, the first battle of the war, and the second about the Somme in 1916, with one soldier horrified to find that he has been ordered to take part in a firing squad to shoot another soldier he knows for desertion, though he knows that he had got lost, not deserted. Some gruesome scenes in a casualty clearing station, and some annoying anachronisms: one soldier saying to a nurse that something was a "piece of piss", which I think was doubly anachronistic: firstly, I don't think that expression had been coined then, and secondly, he wouldn't have said it to, or in front of, a woman in 1916. Young, working-class men were doubtless as foul-mouthed then as now amongst themselves, but they were more courteous to women. Later, someone calls someone else a Wally, another term I don't think existed then*. It was popularised by OFAH in the 80s.
One more episode to go.

*Thought so. From Bing:

“Wally” is a British English expression referring to a “silly or inept person” 1. It is thought to have originated at a pop festival in the late 1960s or early 1970s; many sources suggest the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival  On hearing the name “Wally” being announced many times over a loudspeaker, the crowd took it up as a chant, and random shouts of “Wally” were subsequently heard at rock concerts all over Britain. It was still being called out at the 1979 Led Zeppelin Knebworth Concerts In 1974, a group of new age travellers were encamped near Stonehenge, and to help hinder the process of eviction by the landowners, all gave their name as Wally of Wessex, “Wally being a conveniently anonymous umbrella for vulnerable individuals”

[Nearly Sane]

Surely any drama now will be anachronistic and it may help it have impact if it is understandable in today's language rather than doomed attempts at authenticity?

[SteveH]

I've just signed up to Netflix, so that I can watch 'Bodies', which I read a review of in the Guardian online: it's a time-travelling who-dun-it police drama (yes, another one) set in London in four different times - late-Victorian, 1940s, the present and the near future - with four different detectives investigating the murder of the same person, killed in the same way and found in the same place in each time. It goes up later today.
In the meantime, I've just watched the first episode of the Yank version of 'The Office', largely a word-for-word re-run of the British version. It's set in Scranton, about which I know nothing, but presumably it has the same reputation in the US for boringness as Slough in the UK.

[Nearly Sane]

I've just signed up to Netflix, so that I can watch 'Bodies', which I read a review of in the Guardian online: it's a time-travelling who-dun-it police drama (yes, another one) set in London in four different times - late-Victorian, 1940s, the present and the near future - with four different detectives investigating the murder of the same person, killed in the same way and found in the same place in each time. It goes up later today.
....

Be interested what you think - the premise is stuck between intriguing and too clever for own good in my mind

[SteveH]

I've just watched episode one. Fascinating. Some gruesome scenes in a police morgue in 1891, and at the end it goes to 2053, and ends with a shock. Certainly makes me want to carry on watching.

[SteveH]

Now that I've got Netflix, I've started watching 'The Crown' from the beginning, a few years late. John Lithgow, Yank though he is, is brilliant as Churchill, and Matt Smith, deeply irritating as he was as the 11th Doctor, is good as the newly-created Duke of Edinburgh, and does actually bear a passing resemblance to the young D of E, which is more than can be said for most of the actors.

[Outrider]

I've just signed up to Netflix, so that I can watch 'Bodies', which I read a review of in the Guardian online: it's a time-travelling who-dun-it police drama (yes, another one) set in London in four different times - late-Victorian, 1940s, the present and the near future - with four different detectives investigating the murder of the same person, killed in the same way and found in the same place in each time. It goes up later today.
In the meantime, I've just watched the first episode of the Yank version of 'The Office', largely a word-for-word re-run of the British version. It's set in Scranton, about which I know nothing, but presumably it has the same reputation in the US for boringness as Slough in the UK.

Mrs O. and I watched the first three episodes yesterday, and we're planning to watch the rest this weekend. Looks good so far.

O.

[SteveH]

Now that I've got Netflix, I've started watching 'The Crown' from the beginning, a few years late. John Lithgow, Yank though he is, is brilliant as Churchill, and Matt Smith, deeply irritating as he was as the 11th Doctor, is good as the newly-created Duke of Edinburgh, and does actually bear a passing resemblance to the young D of E, which is more than can be said for most of the actors.

Just watched episode 3, about George VI's funeral. Alex Jennings and Greg Wise bear remarkable physical resemblances to the Duke of Windsor and Lord Mountbatten respectively.

[SteveH]

I'm now up to 1957 in 'The Crown', and the scandal (as it was then - no-one'd give a monkey's nowadays) if the D of E's private Secretary getting divorced. Eden has been forced to resign as PM after the Suez fiasco, defenestrated by MacMillan, who is depicted as a bit of a snake. I didn't know until now that Philip didn't become Prince Philip until 1957, when he was created a Prince by Liz.

[Nearly Sane]

This was enjoyable as a podcast, be interesting to see if Uncanny translates to TV.


https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001rckl

Watched the first one. Enjoyed it. Think it works better on radio.

[Dicky Underpants]

So it's parked for now. Well he is used to it.

Groan

[Nearly Sane]

Rewatched Mark Kermode's programme that he made at the 25th anniversary of The Exorcist, as the latest one in the series has been released for the 50th anniversary. It's an excellent documentary, and seems amazing that Ellen Burstyn is still alive and appeared in the latest film - which Kermode dislikes.

I'm a couple of years younger than Kermode but am old enough to remember the hype, and that for 3 weeks in Greenock they didn't manage to complete the last showing on a Wednesday. Then, of course, there was the midnight showing in London that I went to where I saw the Devil for the 2nd time in my life.

I don't like the film as much as Kermode, not sure that's possible, but it stands up in the main, and it's a good documentary.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p07r5pwq/the-fear-of-god-twentyfive-years-of-the-exorcist

[Nearly Sane]

Mrs O. and I watched the first three episodes yesterday, and we're planning to watch the rest this weekend. Looks good so far.

O.

Watched 2 episodes so far. Not convinced but the end of the second episode was probably the best bit.

[SteveH]

Up to season three of 'The Crown'. We're now well into events and people that I remember from then: the 1964 ad 70 general elections, the Aberfan tragedy, the moon landing, the miners' strike, the death of the Duke of Windsor, etc. There was a wholesale change of cast after season two, which means that Princess Margaret appears to have shrunk, or the Queen grown, since Vanessa Kirby is half a head taller than Claire Foy, but Helena Bonham-Carter is an inch or so shorter than Olivia Colman. Alex Jennings, in series 1 and 2, bore a passing resemblance to the Duke of Windsor, but Derek Jacobi looks nothing like the elderly Duke (but then, DJ looks nothing like anyone else, really, as he has a fairly unusual face).

[Nearly Sane]

Watched the first one. Enjoyed it. Think it works better on radio.

Now watched the 3 in the tv series. The third one is the mist interesting. Some of the tweaks from the radio work quite well with the 'expereiments', while not always strictly relevant, a good addition. It's not as uncanny somehow.

[Outrider]

Watched 2 episodes so far. Not convinced but the end of the second episode was probably the best bit.

We enjoyed it - the chain of cause and effect to result in the changes at the end was a little happenstance, but... B+, I'd say.

Finally on to 'The Good Place', now, first season was great, now to see if they can keep up the standard for the 2nd.

O.

[Nearly Sane]

We enjoyed it - the chain of cause and effect to result in the changes at the end was a little happenstance, but... B+, I'd say.

Finally on to 'The Good Place', now, first season was great, now to see if they can keep up the standard for the 2nd.

O.

I'd say the second season is forking better than the first.