Critical Mass: tell us about your TV choices

[pdr]

Aug 12, 2024 22:20:58 GMT suze said:

Aug 12, 2024 14:18:44 GMT tetsabb said:

Combover, Shirley?

Yes, that's a proper Bobby Charlton!  I shall chastise TGH for suggesting a wig.

He was right about Call My Bluff in general, though.  It hasn't aged especially well.

Joanna Lumley, aged 28 and with dark hair, still sounded like Joanna Lumley.  I don't really know what Frank Muir did, but I've heard of him, and I've just about heard of the actist Simon Williams (he's in The Archers) and of the late journaler and jazz musician Miles Kingston.  Mr Kington smoked on set; you could do that in those days, but Miss Lumley - a lifelong smoker - didn't.

Who Mary Peach and Patrick Campbell, Baron Glenavy were, I had to go to Wikipedia to find out.  Lord Campbell is not related to the actist of the early C20, Mrs Patrick Campbell, the woman who scandalised polite society by saying bloody on the West End stage.

A parlour game for posh people, and let's stick in a couple of random bits of Latin so that common folk won't understand.

A little harsh - it was a piece of its time and was watched by a lot of people. It's effectively STILL running, because the format was only slightly tweaked to produce Would I Lie To You (one of BBC's bigger revenue earners). We watched it avidly as a family, and when I was in the 3rd year (the last year before starting GSE courses - not sure what that is in educational newspeak) we used to do it as a class exercise in English lessons about every 4-6 weeks. I remember they were very popular, because the threat of cancelling the next one was often used to quell misbehaviour. More notable features of last night's programme were (a) a TV panel game featuring a man with a severe speech impediment, and (b) the sight of Miles Kington lighting up a cigar in the middle of the programme.

FWIW - Simon Williams played the son of the family in "Upstairs Downstairs", the 1960s version of Downton abbey (his character was injured in the Trenches and then got involved in bad investments in the wall street crash and topped himself because he'd lost money the servants had given him to invest. He made a career of playing "posh pretty boy cad" characters, and currently plays Justin Elliot on the Archers.

Joanna Lumly's appearance was significant because in 1974 it was the start of her move from being just a model and "eye candy" totty in movies to being allowed to be an actual person with brain.

Frank Muir was many things, but mostly behind the scenes. He was a prolific writer and producer of radio and television comedy through the 50s & 60s - often partnered with Dennis Norden. His appearances on screen were rareer, but he was a wit and raconteur of some note. 

PDR

[emily]

I am currently rewatching he upper hand

fun sitcom from the 90's, I love it

[suze]

The Quote function on this forum doesn't work especially well with nested quotes, so I won't use it but I shall go back briefly to Call My Bluff all the same.

In the modern era it is not rare to see a TV personage who uses a wheelchair.  I'm not sure precisely who he was, but the BBC team at the recent Olympics included a fellow who talked about boxing while having no arms.  In our youths we'd never have seen people with such disabilities on our screens; it has been claimed that the BBC didn't allow it.  I don't really like the word inclusivity, but perhaps a resident panelist on a game show who had a speech impediment was the 1974 equivalent of the armless commentator.

In fact, the thing that always strikes me about panel shows of that era is how amateurish they look compared with the shows of today.  That's not because the on-screen talent were rubbish; they weren't.  (That said, appearing on TV while in drink was more "allowed" in that era than this.)  It's more that shows were recorded in one take, so the umms and aahs stay in, and we see presentists looking at their watches to see how long there is left.  Had the technology which enabled the producer to - as Stephen Fry once put it - "come in my ear" not been invented yet?

Much as Robert Robinson was the presentist most associated with Call My Bluff, he was in fact the show's fourth presentist.  I know who Robin Ray was, because he came up before when a former member of this forum got Jenny and I watching an episode of Face The Music.  I also know who Bob "Blockbusters" Holness was; he was a South African actist who eventually took over from Mr Robinson.  But Joe Melia and Peter Wheeler?

[pdr]

Aug 13, 2024 9:41:31 GMT emily said:

I am currently rewatching he upper hand

fun sitcom from the 90's, I love it

I remember enjoying it when it was first broadcast. It was actually an american series called "Who's the boss" about a baseball player who retired injured and looked for a second career, which is why some of the plot didn't quite work because retired sport-stars are a different scenario in the UK.

And of course it gives us our second Archers link of the day because Kellie Bright (who played the teenage daughter in Upper Hand) went on to play Kate Aldridge in the Archers.

PDR

[barbados]

Frank Muir was primarily a writer, one of the group of comedy writers that included the likes of Dennis Norden, Barry Took, and Barry Cryer.
As with all writers of that particular vintage he was probably most famous for not writing, his Cadbury Fruit and Nut advert is what he is most famous “role”. He was the first to be famous for being famous, much in the way someone from big brother might be now, but he was a talented writer and raconteur

[tetsabb]

We watched 'The Sky at Night'
It featured Nicola Fox who is head of science at NASA. She was at Imperial College with Maggie Aderin-Pocock. Dame Maggie appears to have lost some weight, and looks much better for it.

[jenny]

Masterpiece Theatre (for which they use the British spelling of theatre) on PBS over here runs all British shows and currently they are allowing us to stream the brilliant series the BBC made of Wolf Hall. Fantastic production.

[celebaelin]

HotD Season 2 came to a close.  I had to spend some time on that phraseology because I wasn't happy with 'ended' (there was no element of an ending - merely of a set up for Season 3) and for similar reasons 'concluded' and 'finished' were unsatisfactory as well.

I wouldn't say the season as a whole was unsatisfactory as such but unsatisfying isn't too unfair.  It seemed to be getting somewhere at about mid-season and then simply took the foot off the gas and rolled to the Ep. 8 chequered flag without any major developments - OK; Aemond attempted to kill his brother and has become regent during the latter's convalescence; also there was the assassination of the infant heir (his name was Jaehearys Targaryen but he never had any dialogue or input to the storyline) to the sitting tennants of the Red Keep - Aemond's nephew through the aforermentioned now somewhat crispy king/usurper depending on your viewpoint.  That outcome was almost certainly due to incompetence on the part of the assassins with the intended target being Aemond - who had been responsible for the death of Rhaenyra's son Lucerys Velaryon (via an illegitimate union with Ser Harwin Strong rather than 'friend of Dorothy' Laenor Velaryon who was Rhaenera's first husband).  The author of this 'vile deed' was Daemon Targaryen, brother of King Viserys and both husband and uncle to Rhaenyra I - the claimant to the throne currently based at Dragonstone.  None of this materially affects the progress of the storyline except in as much as the death of Lucerys at the hands of Aemond in Season 1 was the ultimate trigger for the war which we are essentially not seeing take place because NOBODY IS BLOODY DOING ANYTHING.  While that's not exactly true nobody has done very much towards the prosecution of this war in Season 2 although Daemon has, finally, secured the support of the people of the Riverlands and so has a substantial force in place behind his effort to win Westeros for his niece/wife.  It is true that the Wars of the Roses took place over many decades with only spasmodic actions but I'd really prefer it if the fantasy TV series loosely based on English dynastic history did not itself take decades to be made and broadcast.  If there is such an overwhelming wish for accurate historical representation some degree of on-screen time compression would seem to be in order.

[efros]

Apparently CNN is launching an American version of HIGNFY in September. Not going to make any prejudgments...

[emily]

I started watching the new comedy on BBC1, daddy issues

not too impressed with it so far, but I don't hate it
we'll see how episode two is

there's something I want to see on BBC3 as well but I can't think of the name. kobra something

[celebaelin]

The Golden Cobra?

10pm, BBC Three Fridays

www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0021nvt/the-golden-cobra-series-1-1-all-good-here?seriesId=m0021r5d

[tetsabb]

Yesterday evening Sky Arts broadcast a recording of a popular singist from Noo Joizy, recorded in 2002 in Barcelona.
Bearing in mind the date, some of the songs from 'The Rising' pack an immense punch.
One of the pleasures of watching him is that the band members seem to be having so much fun, as well as the Boss himself, and, of course, tge audience.

I did wonder at tge end if he has ever gone off-stage thinking 'well, that was crap'
🤔

[jenny]

Aug 17, 2024 14:56:12 GMT celebaelin said:

The Golden Cobra?

10pm, BBC Three Fridays

www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0021nvt/the-golden-cobra-series-1-1-all-good-here?seriesId=m0021r5d

We've been watching that on Masterpiece Theatre, alongside Wolf Hall. Both excellent depictions of political machinations. 

[crissdee]

tetsabb. I very much get the impression that performing in front of an audience is what he most wants to do with his life, and the fact he can make gajillions of dollars doing so is just the icing on the cake. He would probably be just as happy performing for 25 people in a pub, as 250,000 people in a massive venue...

[tetsabb]

In his autobiography it suggests that after a tour he suffers from awful depressions. I can imagine that, after the highs experienced doing lots of such exhilarating shows, the return to 'normal' must be a hell of a comedown.

[crissdee]

For the last couple of months, I have been slowly working through Star Trek:TNG from the beginning, just one every few nights, and none when I was away with the cowboys, so tonight it was S03E16 "The Offspring". I can't say for sure what it was that particularly struck me, but I came to the conclusion that, despite the many, many plaudits he has received, Brent Spiner really does not get enough credit for his portrayal of Data. He really is a VERY remarkable and talented actor. One hesitates to say he brings the android character "to life", but he does a very good job of presenting his desire to be more human.

[suze]

As we often do if there's nothing much on, we watched an episode of The Chase which was actually broadcast several weeks ago.  (We've got twenty or so of them recorded for these occasions.)

It is not often that that show gives an answer which is just wrong, but this episode did.  The question was: "Which of these wartime Prime Ministers was the only one to go to university", with a choice of Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill, and Clement Attlee.

It is well known that Churchill didn't go to university.  Attlee did (Oxford), but he became Prime Minister on 26 July 1945, which was two months after VE Day.  VJ Day was still a few weeks in the future, but can he really be regarded as a wartime Prime Minister?  Was anyone in Britain of the day very interested in the Far Eastern theatre once Germany had surrendered?

That leaves Chamberlain.  He briefly attended Mason Science College - now known as the University of Birmingham - but by all accounts he showed little interest in his studies there, and he did not obtain a degree.  Whether he ever "went to university" is perhaps a question which does not admit of a one word answer.

The answer they wanted was Attlee.  I'd have said Chamberlain.  Until just now I didn't know of his undistinguished student career, but I did know that Attlee came after the War.  Paul Sinha said Chamberlain as well.  Not a very good question.

[crissdee]

I would imagine that the families of the hundreds of men on the Burma Railway were still deeply involved in the Far East Campaign and interested in its eventual end.....

[efros]

My Great UNcle Peter for one, and the rest of his family as he spent almost all of the war in Burma servicing RAF planes.

[tetsabb]

We watched a programme we had recorded about the Woodstock festival. The voices were all those of people who were there as attendees, production staff or a couple of performers.
It was so close to a complete disaster!
But the overriding message was of hope and optimism about how a large number of folk came together with no aggro or violence.
When it stopped the BBC News Channel was showing a Panorama about the recent riots, and tge activities of Tommy Robinson. Which was as charming and uplifting as you would expect.

Human beings are weird

[Leith]

I have recently been watching:

Season 4 of the Umbrella Academy. Disappointed with this one. I really enjoyed the offbeat humour and drama of the first couple of series. Season 3 was erratic but still entertaining. The final season just felt like the fun had gone out of it. It was mercifully short, though.

More positively, I discovered that two seasons of Fargo had passed me by in recent years, so have been catching up with season 4. This was very well done, I thought - the usual ensemble of striking characters, affecting subplots and steadily building tension and intrigue. Many great performances, especially from Chris Rock, who I don't think I've seen in a non-comedic role before.

[crissdee]

Jurassic Park, for possibly the tenth time, at least the fifth. I have heard it said that Sam Neill's role was originally offered to Harrison Ford, and I could totally imagine him in that role, but it may have been too much like Indiana Jones for him to want to do it.

[jenny]

Leith I thought the same about season 4 of Umbrella Academy when I started watching it, so I didn't bother past the first episode.

[Leith]

Aug 26, 2024 19:16:48 GMT jenny said:

Leith I thought the same about season 4 of Umbrella Academy when I started watching it, so I didn't bother past the first episode.

Wise choice - your memories of the rest will be better that way, I think

[jenny]

This looks like one to miss.

JRR Tolkien cautioned readers of The Lord of the Rings against interpreting his fantasy epic as an allegory for events in the real world. But he might well reconsider his stance on metaphor and art were he forced to sit through The Rings of Power, Prime Video’s half-baked prequel to LOTR that it’s hard to see as anything other than a warning against Hollywood hubris. Goofy, garish and casually disrespectful towards Tolkien’s writing, the series is a lesson in what happens when big corporations try to turn a beloved work into just another Marvel-style franchise.

Having shifted production from New Zealand to the UK – Surrey and Berkshire are stand-ins for Middle-earth – the show returns with a second season that takes up the story of the forging of the Rings of Power that would go on to cause such bother to Frodo and friends in The Lord of the Rings.

But it suffers from the same flaws that bedevilled series one. These include cheap-looking sets, cardboard dialogue (“seize him… he is Sauron!”), and bloodless battle scenes that, despite a reported £40 million per episode budget, resemble something from a mid-tier PlayStation game.

It is also hobbled by a charmless performance by Charlie Vickers as mega-baddie Sauron. At this phase of his career, Sauron was a Lucifer-like trickster known as “The Deceiver”. Alas, the only deception here is Vickers’s blond wig, which looks like it was acquired in a fancy dress closing-down sale by a harried intern working to an unrealistic deadline.

There are a few bright spots. Robert Aramayo’s Elrond bears a passing resemblance to the Tolkien character. Morfydd Clark, meanwhile, does her best as Galadriel. There are glimpses in her performance of Tolkien’s eerie elf queen – and of Cate Blanchett in Peter Jackson’s films.

The Rings of Power has mercifully dropped its earlier attempts at suggesting a forbidden attraction between Galadriel and Sauron. They’ve also largely ditched the controversial unkept Oirish hobbits from season one, who have been replaced with desert-dwelling halflings with West Country burrs.

But so much else goes off half-cocked. The central story of Sauron manipulating ace elf smith Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards) into forging the destructive Rings of Power lacks tension. The oversized elf ears are a constant distraction. The costumes look like something from a Dungeons and Dragons convention. How disheartening to see the distant past of Middle-earth – such a powerful framing device in Tolkien’s writing – robbed of its lustre and downgraded into sub-Game of Thrones hokum.

The Rings of Power carries the blessing of the Tolkien estate, and the author’s grandson, Simon, is credited as a consultant (presumably not on the wobbly elf ears). Despite that imprimatur, Tolkien diehards were hugely divided about the show when it first aired in 2022, and the new season makes a concerted effort to win them around.

There are laboured call-backs to the Jackson movies – accompanied by the disastrous introduction of the enigmatic Tom Bombadil, who pops up early in the adventures of Frodo and Sam. In Rings of Power, Rory Kinnear portrays him with a fruity rural accent and looks as if he’s on day release from an unaired Emmerdale spin-off. The season also brings back “The Stranger” (Daniel Weyman), a Gandalf-like sorcerer who has lost his memory and introduces another wizard, played by Ciarán Hinds and shamelessly cribbed from Christopher Lee’s Saruman from the Jackson films.

Were it anything other than a Lord of the Rings prequel, The Rings of Power would be passably entertaining and there’s no denying its naff charm. It has the creaky quality of a cheesy Eighties fantasy movie – think The Beastmaster on a blockbuster budget or Krull with better CGI. But as the series blunders through Tolkien’s meticulously crafted lore, fans of the source material may recall the author’s quote about the perils of showing too much of Middle-earth.

“Part of the attraction of [The Lord of the Rings] is, I think, due to the glimpses of a large history in the background: an attraction like that of viewing far off an unvisited island, or seeing the towers of a distant city gleaming in a sunlit mist,” Tolkien said. “To go there is to destroy the magic.” Amazon has gone there – and it’s destroyed the magic.

[pdr]

Actually I quite liked RoP. Not a major contribution to The Art, but still quite watchable.

On off-beat things - I was recently pointed to an unappreciated US TV movie which bombed when originally released and is now only available on youtube. Again, not a major [piece of art but quite thought provoking (it struck a chord with me). The film is "Fatherland" staring Rutger Haeur, Miranda Richardson, Michael Kitchen and many other familiar faces. It's based on a world in which Germany won WW2 by repulsing the D-Day landings and then nuking the UK, leading to an armistice with the USA byt a continuing low-level conflict with the USSR. The film is set 20 years after the end of the war with Germany trying to normalise relations with US president Kennedy [Joseph Kennedy, just for amusement] to get assistance to finally defeat the USSR. Germany had successfully hidden the holocaust, but a journalist (Miranda Richardson) starts to unravel it.

I can see why it had mixed reception, but it explores some interesting themes and I certainly didn't resent the couple of hours I spent watching it.

PDR

[celebaelin]

Sheesh Jenny!

Don't hold back now - tell us what you really think!

It's a shame to hear that such a hash has been made of a fantasy world so beloved by untold millions but from your quick assassination I can see how that might happen - thanks for the warning.

And now PDR has given me hope!  Approach with caution I suppose.

[efros]

Aug 30, 2024 11:35:20 GMT pdr said:

Actually I quite liked RoP. Not a major contribution to The Art, but still quite watchable.

On off-beat things - I was recently pointed to an unappreciated US TV movie which bombed when originally released and is now only available on youtube. Again, not a major [piece of art but quite thought provoking (it struck a chord with me). The film is "Fatherland" staring Rutger Haeur, Miranda Richardson, Michael Kitchen and many other familiar faces. It's based on a world in which Germany won WW2 by repulsing the D-Day landings and then nuking the UK, leading to an armistice with the USA byt a continuing low-level conflict with the USSR. The film is set 20 years after the end of the war with Germany trying to normalise relations with US president Kennedy [Joseph Kennedy, just for amusement] to get assistance to finally defeat the USSR. Germany had successfully hidden the holocaust, but a journalist (Miranda Richardson) starts to unravel it.

I can see why it had mixed reception, but it explores some interesting themes and I certainly didn't resent the couple of hours I spent watching it.

PDR

Adapted from the novel by Robert Harris which I encourage you to have a read of!

[jenny]

Cele - that was the Daily Telegraph review. I haven't actually watched it.

PDR - I also recommend the novel, Fatherland.

We've been watching James May's travel programmes - first one in Japan and second in Italy, and will definitely move on to the third one in India. I really enjoyed them - he's very funny and natural and I like the way it's "this is really a travel programme that we are in the process of making and the production team is making me do silly things but here's a bit I really like with fast cars and science stuff." Highly recommended.

[pdr]

Slow Horses - we just binge-watched season 1 in one sitting. I've always been a Gary Oldman fan, and he does it again! Well cast, good script and good balance between suspense/thriller and funnies.

Commended.

PDR