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A friend of mine just finished the old version of Upstairs Downstairs and has gone far enough to say it is the greatest show he's even seen. So upon researching this and trying to verify the acclaim, I saw that Amazon reviewers and him jibed, but that the BFI TV 100 didn't even mention the series. Is the BFI TV 100 list terribly inaccurate and a bad guide of British TV shows? Is there some list that I could use to discover some great older British shows once I'm done with Upstairs Downstairs?
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Jan 2, 2011 17:18
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Abel Wingnut posted:A friend of mine just finished the old version of Upstairs Downstairs and has gone far enough to say it is the greatest show he's even seen. So upon researching this and trying to verify the acclaim, I saw that Amazon reviewers and him jibed, but that the BFI TV 100 didn't even mention the series. Is the BFI TV 100 list terribly inaccurate and a bad guide of British TV shows? Is there some list that I could use to discover some great older British shows once I'm done with Upstairs Downstairs? They also didn't pick All Creatures Great And Small. According to their site: quote:The bfi TV 100 was chosen by members of the TV industry throughout the UK. Each member was given a 'big list' of 650 titles in 6 genres to vote for, and spaces to write in their own choices of titles not already listed. There's certainly some... interesting decisions in those lists - we don't know how large a sample was taken, but since it's all from the TV industry, there could well be some unusual biases to people's selections based on their area of expertise. ed: Aunty, ITV and C4 comissioned a top 100 sitcoms poll a little while back. Kerbtree fucked around with this message at 19:08 on Jan 2, 2011 |
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Jan 2, 2011 19:00
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Abel Wingnut posted:A friend of mine just finished the old version of Upstairs Downstairs and has gone far enough to say it is the greatest show he's even seen. So upon researching this and trying to verify the acclaim, I saw that Amazon reviewers and him jibed, but that the BFI TV 100 didn't even mention the series. Is the BFI TV 100 list terribly inaccurate and a bad guide of British TV shows? Is there some list that I could use to discover some great older British shows once I'm done with Upstairs Downstairs? Both Upstairs Downstairs and All Creatures Great and Small were on the 650 longlist: http://www.bfi.org.uk/features/tv/100/biglist/ - under the Drama Series and Serials section. You might find a few more gems using that list as a starting point. 100 shows isn't really a lot when you consider how much output there's been, so there's going to be an awful lot of worthy shows completely omitted. I also think that Kerbtree is on the money - we've got no idea who was surveyed, or what their biases were.
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Jan 2, 2011 19:17
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There's a new BBC2 sitcom starting a week tomorrow. It's called Episodes (thus making it impossible to google). It's a BBC-Showtime co-production, set on the set of a fictional British Sitcom disastrously being remade in the US. It's written by one of the Friends creators (David Crane) and somebody who has a string of short-lived sitcoms (Jeffrey Klarik) and stars Matt LeBlanc. I can't help feel it might be a humongous train-wreck.
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Jan 2, 2011 19:45
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Pablo Bluth posted:There's a new BBC2 sitcom starting a week tomorrow. It's called Episodes (thus making it impossible to google). It's a BBC-Showtime co-production, set on the set of a fictional British Sitcom disastrously being remade in the US. It's written by one of the Friends creators (David Crane) and somebody who has a string of short-lived sitcoms (Jeffrey Klarik) and stars Matt LeBlanc. I can't help feel it might be a humongous train-wreck. Thanks for saving me a Google, I was sat across from someone reading about this on a train, so just saw promo pictures of Matt LeBlanc with Steve Mangan and Tamsin Greig. Worth noting that LeBlanc will be playing a caricature of himself (I don't really know what that entails, is that just Joey?) It's an interesting idea, what with so many UK shows and formats being attempted in the US, though maybe it's a bit late since the US Office actually became a success and has merit of it's own. The idea's good enough that I will probably give it a shot unless I see some really bad preview material for it.
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Jan 2, 2011 20:30
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I just found a trailer over at Showtime. http://www.sho.com/site/episodes/home.do
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Jan 2, 2011 20:52
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It could work. As long as they stay away from laugh tracks and play it as straight as possible. Just let the absurdity be absurd.
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Jan 2, 2011 20:58
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I'm just worried they make it too broad. But yeah the idea is a pretty good one, and it's surprising that it's not really been done yet.
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Jan 2, 2011 21:03
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I think that looks interesting actually, it's apparently only going for seven episodes at first and is only written by a couple of people so already the signs are that it's not going to be some typical American style sitcom
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Jan 2, 2011 21:44
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Yeah I saw the trailer a fair while back and think it looks like it could be good, Mangan and Greig are always good for a laugh and Matt LeBlanc actually looks like he could play the understated, naturalistic stuff pretty well.
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Jan 3, 2011 00:45
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Tried to watch Zen. Got bored and watched Bruce Parry instead.
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Jan 3, 2011 01:14
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Pablo Bluth posted:Tried to watch Zen. Got bored and watched Bruce Parry instead. I saw the advert and my mum and I just laughed. It just looked absurd.
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Jan 3, 2011 01:24
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I know it isn't TV but I can't be the only one disappointed in The Archers this evening. We were promised something that would "shake Ambridge to the core" and instead we got someone falling off a roof and a baby being born. Why did it have to be Nigel? 
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Jan 3, 2011 01:41
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Alan BStard posted:I know it isn't TV but I can't be the only one disappointed in The Archers this evening. We were promised something that would "shake Ambridge to the core" and instead we got someone falling off a roof and a baby being born. Yep. Very disappointing. Unless David falls off as well, I could live with that. And Helen needs to have some serious complications. Otherwise she'll probably eat the baby.
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Jan 3, 2011 01:44
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Ben Soosneb posted:Yep. Very disappointing. I listened to the last five minutes because radio 4 was on in the kitchen. It was very meagre. I speculated that maybe there was going to be a shooting, and the pregnant mum would get in the way somehow. Having an absurdly foreshadowed roof-fall was very underwhelming.
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Jan 3, 2011 01:55
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I mean if this had been a regular death it wouldn't have been so bad. But they had been ramping it up PR-wise as such a huge deal. They made the episode twice as long but totally blew it. Helen's baby scare happened so early on you never really expected anything to happen. They had any other potential trouble, such as Harry and Jazzer get written out with a throwaway line, and spent the entire time foreshadowing very heavily them going up to the roof. Wow, two people go up to the roof, one of them has been drinking, in the dark, with the wind blowing and one of them falls off, wow what a loving turn of events I never saw it coming. Plus gently caress them Nigel was my favourite character and Helen survives to be a terrible human being another day. Boo-urns.
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Jan 3, 2011 02:00
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Hustle is back on this week 
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Jan 3, 2011 02:04
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The Perfect Element posted:I saw the advert and my mum and I just laughed. It just looked absurd.
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Jan 3, 2011 02:08
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Alan BStard posted:I mean if this had been a regular death it wouldn't have been so bad. But they had been ramping it up PR-wise as such a huge deal. It's not as if the roof thing was only bought up today, they bought it up a few days ago. At the start I thought it was the writers having fun, throwing in some red herrings. For a while it looked like that's what they were going for with Tony's erratic driving to the hospital. But then that was all forgotten, and it actually just turned out to be the roof thing after all. Big disappointment.
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Jan 3, 2011 02:12
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I was hoping the depressed father guy would kill himself.
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Jan 3, 2011 02:15
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The Archers ? Are you loving kidding me ?
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Jan 3, 2011 02:54
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we've had hollyoaks and eastenders chat a number of times, the archers is no worse
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Jan 3, 2011 03:16
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It bloody well is.
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Jan 3, 2011 03:39
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They're all poo poo. 
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Jan 3, 2011 04:21
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Starting to get a morbid curiosity about this only way is essex show. Kinda want to watch an episode filled with these barely sentient humanoids but ill probably just feel really nasty after it.
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Jan 3, 2011 09:44
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Flayer posted:Zen was amazing, really good! Very stylishly shot, coolly paced and with an interesting and morally ambiguous hero who fit the theme well and didn't leave it feeling cheesy. Looking forward to next week.
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Jan 3, 2011 09:58
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OK, finished Ashes to Ashes, and, uh... that sure was... uh, something. The only thing I'm glad of is that I can safely disregard it completely when I rewatch Life on Mars. Because no matter what the writers say, A2A does not feel to me like an organic continuation of LoM. It feels more like someone else's "alternate" interpretation after the fact. I mean, the attempt was noble, but I reject the result. I don't like the light it casts LoM's ending in, for one thing. So I appreciate that the muddled plotting and tonal dissonance has made it very easy to disregard in this way. Nothing hangs together or makes any sense upon examination. Like them leaving their options open with the big huge hyped-up mystery about Sam being dead but the body never being found, also was Gene responsible? But Gene faked the death. BUT Sam is still dead anyway! So it turns out that Gene faked the death in order to help Sam and Annie "go somewhere," which was presumably heaven... But he helped Alex/Ray/Shaz/Chris get to heaven without needing to fake THEIR deaths, so...? It is pretty obvious that that isn't where they were driving at originally with that one, because it doesn't make any sense and ends up being totally inconsequential to the plot anyway, despite being relentlessly teased at for so long. I think it's pretty obvious that they didn't know whether they were going to be able to get John Simm back for an appearance, so they left the door open and kept on teasing heavily as if he would be back and as if this were the central mystery, but then they couldn't get him and just let that whole plotline fizzle. The literal Christian heaven/hell thing (really?) was just... hugely disappointing after the thought-provoking ambiguity of LoM's world. The only worthwhile thing about it was Daniel Mays tearing it up as Keats(the Devil). Basically I ended up completely agreeing with this earlier post: PriorMarcus posted:I really disliked Ashes to Ashes through out its run. The story telling is muddled and amateur and the ending is a massive cliche. They try to present their mythology in ways that outright contradict themselves and characters never act intelligently or realistically. It gets better, yes, but its always got the shadow of its beginning hanging around and the ghost of Life on Mars making you realise how poo poo and ill thought out it is. Sorry guys. I'm glad I checked it out, but I'm going to watch Life on Mars again and stick to my original perceptions, thanks. The LoM finale struck the perfect note of closure while still leaving you plenty to chew on, in a way that didn't feel like a cop-out. I'm pretty surprised the A2A finale was so well received.
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Jan 3, 2011 10:03
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Cichlid the Loach posted:
Having a gap of a few years between the two probably helped I think. Personally I saw Life on Mars as 'good' TV and Ashes to Ashes as 'bubblegum' TV - it was reasonably entertaining for a reasonable amount of time. Kinda like the difference between The Wire and Ugly Betty except it had the same characters in it. State of Play next?
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Jan 3, 2011 12:40
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LE0N posted:Starting to get a morbid curiosity about this only way is essex show. Kinda want to watch an episode filled with these barely sentient humanoids but ill probably just feel really nasty after it. Oh, you totally should. Only two types of people watch The Only Way Is Essex, those who want to be like the people involved and those who are glad they aren't the people involved. Presumably you're the second in which case it's perfect snark bait.
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Jan 3, 2011 12:49
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hookerbot 5000 posted:State of Play next? Yes, it's better than the film.
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Jan 3, 2011 13:36
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Just to make sure I'm not going insane and made up the entire thing, I'm pretty sure Sue Perkins did a huge presentation about the BBC and comedy in general following the huge "Sachsgate" scandal (I'm pretty sure this is what triggered it)? Does anyone have a link to it or am I a crazy person?
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Jan 3, 2011 14:02
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LE0N posted:Starting to get a morbid curiosity about this only way is essex show. Kinda want to watch an episode filled with these barely sentient humanoids but ill probably just feel really nasty after it. My girlfriend made me watch the christmas special, and I honestly couldn't believe that anyone would buy it as real. Do they? Are there people at home thinknig this is a fly on the wall thing? Or is it all some sort of meta joke thing? Seriously give it a try if you're curious. Seeing people try to act natural when they quite clearly can't act is pretty amusing. They're as twattish as you'd expect too.
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Jan 3, 2011 14:20
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I've just seen Come fly with me for the first time and quite enjoyed it - for the most part. What's everyone else's verdict around here?
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Jan 3, 2011 14:37
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Daimo posted:I've just seen Come fly with me for the first time and quite enjoyed it - for the most part. What's everyone else's verdict around here? Seems fairly divided as far as I can tell. I think some people are uncomfortable with the racial stereotyping and general crudity of it, and others think it's quite funny. Personally I fall into the latter camp, but then I only saw it on Christmas Day, and I haven't made any effort to see any more, so it wasn't that good.
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Jan 3, 2011 14:51
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Ddraig posted:Just to make sure I'm not going insane and made up the entire thing, I'm pretty sure Sue Perkins did a huge presentation about the BBC and comedy in general following the huge "Sachsgate" scandal (I'm pretty sure this is what triggered it)? Does anyone have a link to it or am I a crazy person? I seem to remember this too, and a little Googling reveals it was the annual RTS Huw Weldon Lecture. It was entitled "Wit's End? British Comedy at the Crossroads" and was broadcast early 2009. I can't find any video of it, but the full transcript is linked here: http://www.rts.org.uk/Events_det.asp?sec_id=3171&art_id=7462
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Jan 3, 2011 14:54
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MyChemicalImbalance posted:My girlfriend made me watch the christmas special, and I honestly couldn't believe that anyone would buy it as real. Do they? Are there people at home thinknig this is a fly on the wall thing? Or is it all some sort of meta joke thing?
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Jan 3, 2011 14:55
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Rapey Joe Stalin posted:The Archers ? Are you loving kidding me ? At the folks house, they were listening to it. I normally catch the odd episode after the 1830 comedy anyway. edit - Not watched CFWM, thought little Britain was poo poo, just don't find them funny. Didn't even like it on the radio. goatface fucked around with this message at 14:58 on Jan 3, 2011 |
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Jan 3, 2011 14:56
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Daimo posted:I've just seen Come fly with me for the first time and quite enjoyed it - for the most part. What's everyone else's verdict around here? I didn't find it funny or clever at all. I don't know how much further Lucas (and I guess Walliams, but I was never keen on him anyway) can sink. I'm not a big lefty curmudgeon or anything but it's beyond me how two well educated men can sit in makeup getting blacked up and not realise that maybe there's something a bit off about their sketches. Actually, yeah it's because they're paid a lot, but what a pair of wankers.
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Jan 3, 2011 16:01
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The Christmas episode was all right. The Dog is Dead scene was really funny, and there were a few other bits that made me laugh. I thought it was a one-off like That Peter Kay Thing though. It already felt like it'd run out of airport jokes by the second episode.
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Jan 3, 2011 16:17
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Bishy posted:The Eastenders green screen Tube thing, for anyone who missed it: e: That was exteamly low content wasnt it, Wall-E is on iPlayer if you got kids who havent seen that, its real a good movie, if I recall correctly I actually teared up at some point when I watched it first *cough*fag*cough* Graviton v2 fucked around with this message at 16:23 on Jan 3, 2011 |
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Jan 3, 2011 16:18
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