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Padje
Sep 10, 2003

I don't much care for the attitude of filthy money-lenders
Thought I'd cut through the swathe and mention for the uninitiated about the Red Riding Trilogy. I know a lot of people watched it when it initially screened, but our American cousins need to be made aware before the films are chopped up and re-edited into a super-cut for their cinema market.

3 films, 1973, 1980 and 1983 exploring different protagonists trying to uncover murders and police corruption in Scary Yorkshire, for journalistic, and other times more personal reasons. Film hero Paddy Considine and TV stalwart David Morrissey are the focus on the latter 2, with Boy A himself, Andrew Garfield, in control of the first, as the shag-around-town Lego-haired reporter - providing good experience for his new role as Spider-Man (in the film of the same name)

The users of this thread have helpfully collected the titles of every British sitcom of the last 30 years. The list follows in order to help Americans and young people learn how to alphabetise, but not actually get anything else worthwhile from it (like what they, as an individual, might like to watch). It is of no use to anyone other than You Bet contestants.

Sitcom
15 Storeys High
2 Point 4 Children
Absolutely Fabulous
'Allo 'Allo!
Birds Of A Feather
Blackadder
Black Books
Bottom
Catterick
Dad's Army
Extras
Father Ted
Fawlty Towers
Filthy Rich And Catflap
Friday Night Dinner
Game On
Getting On
Grandma's House
Green Wing
Hyperdrive
Lab Rats
Lead Balloon
Men Behaving Badly
Mongrels
Nathan Barley
Nighty Night
Not Going Out
Open All Hours
One Foot In The Grave
Only Fools and Horses
Peep Show
Red Dwarf
The Good Life
The Inbetweeners
The Increasingly Poor Decisions Of Todd Margaret
The IT Crowd
The Mighty Boosh
The Office
The Smoking Room
The Thick Of It
The Thin Blue Line
The Vicar Of Dibley
The Young Ones
Saxondale
Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em
Spaced

Black/Dark Comedy
Attention Scum
Garth Marenghi's Darkplace
Ideal
Monkey Dust
Night Night
Psychoville
Snuff Box
The League of Gentlemen

Chat Show/Spoof
Alan Partridge's Mid Morning Matters
Da Ali G Show
I'm Alan Partridge
Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge
Man to Man with Dean Learner
Room 101
The Mary Whitehouse Experience
TV Heaven Telly Hell

Quiz Show
Al Murrays Compete For The Meat
Have I Got news for you
Never Mind the Buzzcocks
QI
Shooting Stars
They Think It's All Over
We Need Answers
Would I Lie to you
You Have Been Watching

Sketch Show
Armstrong and Miller
Big Train
Bremner, Bird and Fortune
Bo Selecta
Cowards
Fist of Fun
Harry Enfields Television Programme
Harry and Paul
Jam
Little Britain
Smack the Pony
Spitting Image
That Mitchell and Webb Look
The Catherine Tate Show
The Fast Show
The Sketch Show
This Morning with Richard Not Judy
Time Trumpet

Mockumentary/Spoof
Bellamys People
Brass Eye
Come Fly With Me
Rich Hall's Fishing Show
Rich Hall's Cattle Drive
The Day Today

Review Show
Gameswipe
Newswipe
Screenwipe

Stand Up
Is It Bill Bailey?
Live At The Appollo
Frankie Boyles Tramadol Nights
Stewart Lees Comedy Vehicle

Radio/Podcasts
7 Day Sunday
99p Challenge
Adam and Joe 6 Music
Armando Ianucci's Charm Offensive
Armando Ianucci Shows
As It Occurs To Me
Collins and Herring
Down The Line
Heresy
I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue
In Excess
Just a Minute
Lee and Herring
Lionel Nimrods Inexplicable World
On The Hour
Richard Herrings Objective
Sarah Millicans Support Group
So Wrong Its Right
That Mitchell and Webb Sound
That Was Then This Is Now
The Goon Show
The News Quiz
The Now Show
The Sunday Format
Vic Reeves House Arrest
Would I Lie to You

Padje fucked around with this message at 14:01 on Jun 3, 2011

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EL BROMANCE
Jun 10, 2006

COWABUNGA DUDES!
🥷🐢😬



Using front page as a platform for my controversial opinion that I actually like Simon Amstell's acting in Grandma's House. Also, 'This is England '86' is the first UK drama I've looked forward to in years.

Padje
Sep 10, 2003

I don't much care for the attitude of filthy money-lenders
If it had occurred to me that the first page would be more significant than the rest I would've posted about Don't Tell The Bride

Alright, I will anyway. It's the BEST show. Another BBC3 9pm reality hit where people are forced to behave to some unwritten, or at least unshown, set of rules. A couple who probably never really planned on getting married are given £12000 and 3 weeks to spend/plan a wedding as long as the groom sequesters himself away and does everything along with his best man, leaving the bride in the dark until the big day itself. It doesn't sound too hard, although there are always the following roadblocks:

The Bride
Very rarely likes the dress chosen for her. The dresses are often very very nice and incredibly flattering, but nothing will ever match up to her imagination. If she chose the dress herself, she would've learned that months ago.

The Unwritten Rules
As mentioned before, other than the £12000/3 weeks bit, nothing else is made clear. The first few episodes I saw I couldn't believe the guy was wasting the 12K on paying for his mates to fly to European countries with him for the stag do. Surely everyone should pay for themselves? But 3 or 4 episodes into the series, with every groom doing the exact same thing, it's obvious anything related to the wedding HAS to be paid for out of the BBC money, otherwise they fail (how they fail is not made clear. It's a weird game show where the game show elements are completely hidden in production meetings with the 'contestants')

The Venue
3 weeks for cakes, dresses, stag dos is fine, but trying to book a nice place on short order means paying through the nose for it. This is where most of the money goes, and all plans of crazy transport (one guy planned on meeting his bride at the altar having had himself, and him only, lowered in by helicopter) have to take a backseat. A man last week printed his wedding invitations using a photocopier and A4 paper.

I recommend you watch it at least once to see the dopey grooms and unbearably entitled brides.

Tuesdays, 9pm, BBC3. Repeated the next day at 8pm.

Padje fucked around with this message at 12:59 on Sep 23, 2010

Akuma
Sep 11, 2001


I was fairly excited for This Is England 86 until they started showing actual bits from the show, at which point I realised it's probably going to be Shameless: 1986 and lost all interest in it.

The Perfect Element
Dec 5, 2005
"This is a bit of a... a poof song"

Akuma posted:

I was fairly excited for This Is England 86 until they started showing actual bits from the show, at which point I realised it's probably going to be Shameless: 1986 and lost all interest in it.

Some of the adverts do make it look disconcertingly wacky, but I have faith in the production team and director to make it awesome. Can't wait :)

Sion
Oct 16, 2004

"I'm the boss of space. That's plenty."
Man I was about to press post and put up a thread called : "[UK] The uniquely funded British TV discussion thread"


For those of us that aren't familiar with how British TV works a lot of the discussion in this thread will be about the 5 terrestrial networks.

BBC 1 and BBC 2 are the BBC channels that available to everyone in the country. These channels have produced shows like Little Britain, Life, Doctor Who, Screenwipe, Top Gear and Eastenders. The BBC is funded in a unique way in that to own a television in the UK you have to pay a TV licence. There is always some debate about if the licence fee is justifiable when looking at the quality of some of the programming that's put out ('SIGN ME UP FOR ANOTHER SERIES OF MY FAMILY/TWO PINTS OF LAGER RIGHT THIS INSTANT, AUNTIE!') or how it stacks up next to commercial networks. If you want to know more about the licence fee ask in this thread and you will get a huge wall of opinion unfettered by fact or logic.

ITV is a bit of a weird one in that it’s a purely commercial channel that changes how it’s presented around the country. In Scotland ITV is called STV. In Ireland it’s called UTV. England and Wales it’s called ITV. It produces Coronation Street (imagine Eastenders only with less sanity and more grime), The X Factor, Britain’s Got Talent, Dancing on Ice, Dancing on Ice with the stars, Dancing on Ice Extra, Dancing on Ice’s little brother and Primeval. Somehow ITV decided it would be a good idea to see if they could stretch their stunning list of shows over 4 channels that you can only subject yourself to through Digital TV. ITV shows don’t get good ratings and the show is bleeding money from the hip.

Channel 4 is the liberal darling of the British TV world. It produces deeply challenging drama like Hollyoaks and The Trial of Gary Glitter. It also has programmes that are intentionally hilarious like You Have Been Watching and The Inbetweeners. It has a film channel that is available on digital networks along with their more grown up channel that’s basically channel 4 only with more American imports like Without a Trace and The Daily Show. They also run a dedicated Entertainment channel called E4 which lets you watch Friends whenever you want! One thing Channel 4 does more than any other network is make lovely documentaries. Some of them (like the most recent documentaries on 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina) are outstanding and rather harrowing pieces of journalism but for every good documentary like that there’s three “the boy who’s skin fell off”, “Michael Jackson and Bubbles: The untold story” and “The Worlds Largest Breasts and Me”. It’s also where new Reality TV formats are tested on the public before being deployed around the globe. Channel 4 is currently running the last series of Big Brother and it’ll be interesting to see what they do with that time slot from now on.

Channel 5 is the latest entrant to the British terrestrial TV market. When they premiered they were a bright, colourful channel full of new fresh ideas. These new and fresh ideas were all really bad ideas so the head of the channel decided to go back to the most reliable F’s in the history of television: Football, Films and loving. Channel 5 showed a different film every night for a while and they also showed second division football. Also, whilst many of the people in this thread were growing up, showed softcore porn most evenings. The fortunes of the network didn’t really go that well with only a few stand out shows really cropping up every now and again. The one solid recommendation I can make from this network is ‘The Gadget Show’ which is a bit like Top Gear only with gadgets instead of cars and a smaller budget. Channel 5 have also seen fit to give the world Live From Studio Five. This counts as part of their public service news broadcasting. It’s a show that has a ‘running order Heat magazine would consider to be frighteningly lightweight.’

Akuma
Sep 11, 2001


There are two words that almost instantly help me decide that I don't want to watch a given documentary; "Cutting Edge."

FelixMeOneMoreTime
May 11, 2010

Sion posted:

It produces deeply challenging drama like Hollyoaks

It's hard to detect sarcasm over the internet, but you were joking, weren't you? Please say you were.

Flatscan
Mar 27, 2001

Outlaw Journalist

FelixMeOneMoreTime posted:

It's hard to detect sarcasm over the internet, but you were joking, weren't you? Please say you were.

He was. Either that or he needs to be euthanised for the good of us all.

Sion
Oct 16, 2004

"I'm the boss of space. That's plenty."
Hollyoaks is deeply, deeply challenging. It forces the viewer to question everything, even the very fabric of reality.

thehustler
Apr 17, 2004

I am very curious about this little crescendo
A license fee is not a unique thing to the UK in any way, but I am not sure whether the license fees in other countries go directly to their state broadcasters in the way it does here.

Remember, a lot of state broadcasters, even though they may receive money from taxation, also do show adverts.

HoldYourFire
Oct 16, 2006

What's the time? It's DEFCON 1!

Sion posted:

The Execution of Gary Glitter.

Fixed that for you :suicide:

Bape Culture
Sep 13, 2006

Did anyone watch the idiot abroad preview thing? I missed it so gonna catch it tonight on sky 2.

Nicola
Apr 26, 2007
Hi there
I just returned from living abroad and now have no idea what to watch. What is good? What is worth my time?! Are there any new dramas that I really shouldn't have missed?

Brown Moses
Feb 22, 2002

How long were you away for?

Brown Moses
Feb 22, 2002

Was that Karl Pilkington thing on Sky One last night?

Twoiism
Sep 10, 2008

Ever present.

thehustler posted:

A license fee is not a unique thing to the UK in any way, but I am not sure whether the license fees in other countries go directly to their state broadcasters in the way it does here.

Remember, a lot of state broadcasters, even though they may receive money from taxation, also do show adverts.

This pretty much explains Ireland, our licence fee goes straight to RTE, who despite having all that funding, still show advertisements :negative:

SeanBeansShako
Nov 20, 2009

Now the Drums beat up again,
For all true Soldier Gentlemen.

Sion posted:

Also, whilst many of the people in this thread were growing up, showed softcore porn most evenings.

Ah those were the days.

thehustler
Apr 17, 2004

I am very curious about this little crescendo
CBC too in Canada is taxation funded but shows adverts. Which reminds me. Hockey will be back on ESPN America soon gently caress yeah!

BizarroAzrael
Apr 6, 2006

"That must weigh heavily on your soul. Let me purge it for you."

HoldYourFire posted:

Fixed that for you :suicide:

Spoilers!

SeanBeansShako
Nov 20, 2009

Now the Drums beat up again,
For all true Soldier Gentlemen.
Also, somebody suggested whamming up a recent shows must watch list in the last page of the thread a few infamous British TV dickhead profiles so people don't think we'd be sincere about the death of Piers Morgan in anyway.

Paperhouse
Dec 31, 2008

I think
your hair
looks much
better
pushed
over to
one side

Sion posted:

Hollyoaks is deeply, deeply challenging. It forces the viewer to question everything, even the very fabric of reality.
I like the way that in the first couple of minutes of Hollyoaks they try to have this weird sort of arty, different opening for every episode. It's poo poo, pretty much every time, but I appreciate the effort.

also I've been wanting to watch Red Riding for ages, still not got round to it though. Maybe this week

shadok
Dec 12, 2004

You tried to destroy it once before, Commodore.
The result was a wrecked ship and a dead crew.
Fun Shoe

Sion posted:

The BBC is funded in a unique way in that to own a television in the UK you have to pay a TV licence.

Not only is the UK system not unique, but more countries in the world have television licenses than not, although a lot of them allow their state channels to advertise as well. Unusually, France is currently moving back to a ban on advertising on the state channels.

The "my license fee pays for this crap" is a near-universal lament.

Paperhouse
Dec 31, 2008

I think
your hair
looks much
better
pushed
over to
one side

Brown Moses posted:

Was that Karl Pilkington thing on Sky One last night?
going to guess yes because it is apparently on Sky2 later tonight at 11pm

e: it's actually a half hour preview show, not the actual thing

Paperhouse fucked around with this message at 16:12 on Sep 6, 2010

Flatscan
Mar 27, 2001

Outlaw Journalist

shadok posted:

Not only is the UK system not unique, but more countries in the world have television licenses than not, although a lot of them allow their state channels to advertise as well. Unusually, France is currently moving back to a ban on advertising on the state channels.

The "my license fee pays for this crap" is a near-universal lament.

Have you ever seen French TV? I'll take any amount of Dancing with Mice or whatever poo poo the BBC pumps out in primetime over that.

Trin Tragula
Apr 22, 2005

The one good thing Channel 5 ever did was the British version of The Mole, which was absolute genius but died after two years because no fucker watched it because it was on Channel 5 :argh:

(The presenter, Glenn Hugill, later took a light-entertainment Endemol format and, as executive producer, turned it into this. Can't think of a more deserving bloke to get the success.)

Junkenstein
Oct 22, 2003

Akuma posted:

I was fairly excited for This Is England 86 until they started showing actual bits from the show, at which point I realised it's probably going to be Shameless: 1986 and lost all interest in it.

This:

quote:

Meadows has said on his official site that what happens will change Lol forever and that it includes some of the most challenging scenes of his career.

makes me think it won't be a wacky Shameless-alike.

Some Strange Flea
Apr 9, 2010

AAA
Pillbug

Trin Tragula posted:

The one good thing Channel 5 ever did was the British version of The Mole, which was absolute genius but died after two years because no fucker watched it because it was on Channel 5 :argh:
drat straight. I remember being 9 or 10 and squinting at it with the family because this was back in the days before digital was commonplace and our old TV aerial barely picked up that bloody channel.

When it was canceled I spent the next few years in denial because there were contestant calls for Series Three drat it!

Ratjaculation
Aug 3, 2007

:parrot::parrot::parrot:



Channel 5 is a sister channel of Red Hot TV, only even worse.

It is amusing watching Dick Desmond constantly advertising Channel 5 in his poo poo rags

http://tabloid-watch.blogspot.com/2010/08/five-star.html

Bishy
May 2, 2003

Come on now Master Eugene

SeanBeansShako posted:

Ah those were the days.

The Jack Docherty Show followed by some Jerry Sadowitz. Good times.

Plus they're the only channel to really take a chance on the US sports - I used to fall asleep to baseball, basketball or hockey pretty much every night.

Paperhouse
Dec 31, 2008

I think
your hair
looks much
better
pushed
over to
one side
baseball generally sends me to sleep too

Graviton v2
Mar 2, 2007

by angerbeet

Paperhouse posted:

baseball generally sends me to sleep too
Our treasonous upstart cousins have a lot of silly bugger notions about sport old chap.

BizarroAzrael
Apr 6, 2006

"That must weigh heavily on your soul. Let me purge it for you."

Graviton v2 posted:

Our treasonous upstart cousins have a lot of silly bugger notions about sport old chap.

Baseball was invented in Britain.

QI told me so.

And QI is back on next week!

Graviton v2
Mar 2, 2007

by angerbeet

BizarroAzrael posted:

Baseball was invented in Britain.

QI told me so.

And QI is back on next week!
loving nice, the old ones have been on repeat so long now I thought they might have packed it in or maybe Stephen had a particually bad depressive episode.

Teddy Picker
Jun 30, 2007

Don't send me flowers when I'm dead. If you like me, send them while I'm alive.
Roger and Val Have Just Got In was surprisingly depressing, holy gently caress. 20 minutes of bumbling stuff as they've set up for the whole series and then the last 10 minutes were an onslaught of sad drama. Ouch.

Adrianics
Aug 15, 2006

Affirmative. Yes. Yo. Right on. My man.
This Boulevard Of Barbed Wire is an absolute ruddy mess so far. Don't bother fannying around with character development - Just make the boyfriend act like an utter cock literally the first time we spend any significant time with him! And the first time he meets the parents!

cloudchamber
Aug 6, 2010

You know what the Ukraine is? It's a sitting duck. A road apple, Newman. The Ukraine is weak. It's feeble. I think it's time to put the hurt on the Ukraine

Adrianics posted:

This Boulevard Of Barbed Wire is an absolute ruddy mess so far. Don't bother fannying around with character development - Just make the boyfriend act like an utter cock literally the first time we spend any significant time with him! And the first time he meets the parents!

You mean Boquet of Barbed Wire.

Adrianics
Aug 15, 2006

Affirmative. Yes. Yo. Right on. My man.

cloudchamber posted:

You mean Boquet of Barbed Wire.

Yes. But poo poo with its proper name is still poo poo.

meme
Oct 7, 2009

But it's a pretty good way to get someone to spend money on buying you an av and sig. Maybe I should be really obnoxious and get an upgrade myself

Moral of the story: be careful what you wish for.

You are welcome.
I'm sad the old thread has gone :(

Ah well. Looking forward to the next few months, some good TV to be viewed, Inbetweeners and QI I'm especially looking forward to.

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Adrianics
Aug 15, 2006

Affirmative. Yes. Yo. Right on. My man.
I wish some of our channels could be more up front about what American programmes they're showing - In particular I want to know when Sky One (they have exclusive rights to HBO programming, right?) is going to show Boardwalk Empire.

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