TV

Bikes on t’Telly

| Richard

Hmm. It seems that coverage of the Bennetts British Superbike Championship will be leaving ITV1 (and indeed ITV4) and will now be shown on Channel 4 as “a one-hour highlights programme on the Tuesday night after each event, with a repeat later in the week.”

We’ll ignore the satellite offering because there’s no way I’m paying Murdoch a load of money to watch his overpriced shite and stick some sort of chav accessory on the side of my house, thankyouverymuch.

So instead of live coverage of one race and highlights of the other, I’m reduced to watching an hour’s programme (with probably four ad. breaks as seems to be Channel 4’s wont these days) and no doubt it’ll be at stupid o’clock at night. Unless, that is, Channel 4 has learned from its frankly pathetic attempts at televising World Superbikes a couple of years ago which frankly killed it stone dead and drove despairing bikers towards Sky, whilst concentrating on ‘quality’ output like “Big Brother”, innit?

Meanwhile, the first two rounds of World Superbikes – four races – have been and gone unnoticed by me as there’s no terrestrial or Freeview coverage I’ve noticed.

Fortunately, the BBC are consolidating their broadcasting successes recently by showing MotoGP so that’s what I’ll be concentrating on watching again this year.

Sex with Richard

| Richard

The perfect gift … for Mothers’ Day.

I love the telly adverts. Anything like Mothers’ Day or Valentine’s Day brings out adverts for the crappiest albums imaginable … “the perfect gift for Mother’s Day”.

Bless ’em!

RIP Jeremy Beadle

| Richard

So Jeremy Beadle has died aged 59. No, it’s not a prank or hidden camera thing, he’s died from pneumonia.

Liking Jeremy Beadle was always a dirty little secret, but who could really not enjoy the schadenfreude you got from watching his shows?

And who knew that he is thought to have raised £100M for charities? RIP charitable prankster dude.

Armstrong & Miller

| Richard

One of the funniest shows on television at the moment is the Armstrong & Miller show on BBC1, showing again after a break of six or seven years and having moved from Channel 4.

The plain-speaking divorced Dad makes me laugh, but the highlight of the show has to be the two chav World War II pilots who are somewhat “shtreet” in the language they use:
Armstrong & Miller's Chav Pilots

Standard, isn’t it?

TV Highlights, w/c 12 November 2007

| Richard

One of the boys from the ZRXOC (Carl) featured briefly on that Trinny & Susannah thing the other night and I managed to capture a couple of clips. I’ve whacked them up onto YouTube:

CarlZRX Liquorice Lollipop »
CarlZRX Happy Shopper »

I also watched “The 55 Year Old Commando” last night: this featured a 55 year old bloke – durr! – doing the full training course to become a Royal Marines Commando … and passing. He had obviously got himself fit as a butcher’s dog beforehand, but he was an inspiration to old phartes like me (at 45½) who are trying to get fitter and ‘buff’. There’s a blog entry here with links to YouTube chunks.

The Sopranos – It’s Not Just Me Then…

| Richard

Despite appearances to the contrary, I’m not one for watching a lot of TV – I tend to latch onto certain series and watch them until they run out of fresh ideas (24 and Lost, for instance) or until they’re snapped up by satellite TV (24 and Lost, for instance).

The Sopranos was a series that I followed from a very early stage despite Channel 4’s dubious scheduling decisions early on (and indeed splitting the final season in two). The show’s finale was shown last night on E4, so if you don’t have satellite or Freeview, you should look away now as here be spoilers.

This is how the official Sopranos web site portrays the final scene:

“Tony is the first to arrive at Holsten’s for a family dinner. He sits in a booth and plays a song on the jukebox, watching the door. Carmela enters and joins him, asking about his meeting with Mink. He tells her Carlo’s gonna testify and she takes the news with a sigh. AJ arrives next, complaining about the more mundane tasks of his job but quotes old advice from his father: “Try to remember the times that were good.” Meanwhile, Meadow struggles to parallel park outside. Customers come and go – a shady looking guy who’s been sitting at the counter enters the restroom. Finally parking the car, Meadow runs inside to join her family, just in time for dinner.”

What actually happens is that just as Meadow is about to go in the screen goes black – I thought there was a technical fault with the network or my TV and that I’d missed something as a result but no, the end credits came up.

I was expecting that “shady looking guy” to emerge from the toilet with a gun and shoot Tony in an homage to The Godfather or for the family to die in a hail of bullets after the couple of black guys who’d also entered and wandered over held up the diner.

Either of those would have been a satisfactory ending. But no, this was worse than Dallas’ “and then I woke up” homework essay ending.

I see that the Wikipedia entry for the Sopranos currently states that:

“Immediately following the airing of the final episode, the HBO web site crashed from an excess of visitors. Media reports speculated that the surge consisted of viewers disappointed by the finale. [49]“

It’s worth following that superscript link as it takes you to reports of the apparent outrage at the lack of “visual closure”.

Too right. Lazy writing at its worst and a terrible way to end a wonderful drama series.

What a Pair of Tits!

| Richard

Last night I watched Louis Theroux’s documentary on plastic surgery.

No, the subject of this entry isn’t about the rather ample surgery receptionist Louis interviewed, but about the two middle aged men having their pecs enhanced with implants. As Louis pointed out, they did look like small women’s breasts. I wondered why someone would want to have their body enhanced to look more muscular and “manly” when in fact they were looking more like (bad) transsexuals…

This documentary followed Top Gear which included the three presenters heading off to Southern and Central Europe in search of some great roads and apparently being crap at it. Now this crapness element is getting a tad boring and over-played as it’s in every feature they run. If they’re that incompetent, sack them.

But whilst they were gadding about at 9 mpg they were accompanied by a helicopter for some nice aerial shots. No doubt all of this was paid for by the licence fee, etc. and yet when Louis Theroux wanted £2,500 for plastic surgery as part of his documentary, the BBC wouldn’t pay.

Deadliest Catch

| Richard

An unlikely television hit with me has been “Deadliest Catch“, a documentary surrounding the crews of a number of crabbing vessels in the Bering Sea that has been showing on Channel 4.

I always said I would do anything to provide home and board for me and my family and even now I sometimes work for a couple of days and nights on end without sleep, but my working conditions are nowhere near as hazardous or arduous as these guys’. That is real work.

Fascinating viewing. Well done to Channel 4 too for airing it at 8.00pm on Saturdays.