Harry's Blog

I've written before about some of modern television's mad new techniques to stretch half an hour into an hour slot. Shows like Location Location do this a lot and I ranted about it here.

But there's an even more annoying technique starting to appear over here. As ever this is a US invention, where if you're lucky you may get 20 minutes' content in an hour of TV.

This new method is already being used on the infuriatingly stupid Masterchef, but you can see it on plenty of US imports over here such as Supernanny USA.

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Okay Justin, we get it, you like to dress up as women. That's completely okay, you do what you like.

But you don't have to make a Cbeebies show about it surely?

I've made it pretty clear in the past how I feel about the increasing dumbing down of the once great BBC News presentation - the silly pointless live linkups etc.

One other thing that's getting on my goat is the way the news deals with people who wish to retain their anonymity. Often these people are filmed from behind, in shadow or without the camera pointing anywhere near their head.

So far so good. But what's really odd and rather irritating is how these people are given a name. For some reason, "This man, who wishes to remain anonymous told us..." isn't good enough.

Instead the reporter usually says something like, "We spoke to Dave...not his real name...about his experience..."

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Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q80wfAzeRKA

Now this is one great sports video.

Come on dads you've seen plenty of Cbeebies.

So the question is...

...Nina or Sarah Jane?

Children's television has always been a harbour for the weird. For example my generation got spaced out stuff like Jamie and the Magic Torch and Chorlton and the Wheelies.

One of the oddest shows on CBeebies at the moment is Numberjacks. It really is weird. The programme is a maths education show, but that doesn't really cover the weirdness.

How weird? Well the heroes are numbers which live in a space age bunker hidden within a sofa. They venture into the world to face spooky maths-based paranormal events.

The only thing I can compare it too is Sapphire and Steel from the eighties and that wasn't even a kids' show. Numberjacks just seems to be a kiddie version of that weird David McCallum/Joanna Lumley sci-fi.

Except much shitter.

I read on El Reg today that the BBC has actually received complaints about the Cbeebies presenter Cerrie Burnell.

Why?

Because Cerrie was born without the lower half of her right arm and some precious parents believed this upset their kids.

Which is stupid because kids are strange fickle things. My son is currently terrified, and I really do mean terrified, of the pop-up tractor in a book I bought him yesterday. I haven't written a complaint to the publisher.

I think the parents complaining about Cerrie Burnell really should be ashamed of themselves. They have an ideal opportunity of discussing the subject of disability with their children and instead sought to complain about the girl's appearance.

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After fixing last week's semi-final to ensure housewives' favourite Tom stayed in the competition it was obvious who was going to win the final.

There was no need for another two hours of nonsense last night. The die was already cast and it wouldn't have mattered how well any of the participants danced.

The popularity show masquerading as a dance competition Strictly Come Dancing fixed the voting system so there could be only one possible winner. Ladies of a certain age could celebrate, meanwhile the BBC loses more respect in yet another vote rigging disaster.

Update: Seems the BBC has had to fiddle the voting for the Strictly Christmas Special too.

We switched on BBC HD this evening to watch the Beeb's new drama serial Survivors, a remake of the 1970s show where humanity¹ is wiped out by a deadly plague.

I've just read one person's opinion of it being like a Doctors² apocalypse special. Which neatly sums up the awfulness of the 90 minutes we've just sat through.

It really is daytime soap am-dram meets 28 Days Later. Except for the zombies. Nothing that interesting happened. Nicely ethnicly diverse though...well done...add an eight inch cook³ and some special children and it would have ticked enough boxes to get on Cbeebies.

The best bits were high-definition aerial shots. But these are probably just offcuts from Andrew Marr's Britain From the Air. The BBC hasn't quite sussed out how to make the best use of HD yet, so it tends to fall back on filming things from a long way away. And HDing up rubbish like Last of the Summer Wine and After You've Gone.

But I digress...there will be five more episodes of this dreary and rather unfulfilling show. You've got to admire the ability of writers and a director who can take such a brilliant concept for a TV show and somehow get 90 minutes of very dull television out of it.

Nearly everyone in the world is dead. There are so many possibilities. And so what do you think the trail for next week's episode looked like? Was it a retard ridden by a dwarf fighting Mel Gibson for the pleasure of Tina Turner? No viewers, tune in next-week for the next exciting episode of Survivors, featuring the battle of Netto.

_{¹Or at least the humanity that lives within a few miles of Manchester, thanks to the way the BBC is funded.
²Like Holby City, but on during the day, and shitter. If you can imagine that.
³No sniggering at the back now, cook I wrote cook.}

It seems the judges, producers and contestants involved in BBC One's Strictly Come Dancing are suffering delusions of grandeur. They would have you believe that the Saturday evening entertainment show is actually a serious dance competition¹.

The fuss over John Sergeant's poor showing by the judges standards - but not the viewing audience - is utterly ridiculous. Strictly is an entertainment show and Sergeant was entertaining the crowd. The viewers - the ultimate deciders of whether they are entertained or not - clearly love the man.

But the laughably stuffy judges and so-called professionals are up in arms about other celebs being hoofed off the show instead of loveable old John. And now it seems poor Sergeant has been pressured into quitting the show. So one of the most popular members of an entertainment show's cast has been forced to quit. Well done BBC.

Strictly is purely light entertainment. Nothing more, nothing less. It's a hugely popular show with high production values that has millions of fans. That's everything it is. It should not be ashamed of it. It's not really my cup of tea but that's not really important, I'm not the show's obvious audience. But what matters is that the members of the judging panel and the professional dancers need to get a grip and realise the reality of the programme they are involved in.

It's just a bit of fun.

_{¹Which in itself would hardly be the Nobel prize or the World Cup would it?}

My beloved wife has set me a rather difficult task, I'm supposed to be writing this blog post without using any nasty words. So I'll try. Maybe I'll have to make up some new ones.

Our children do get to watch a little bit of TV and one of their favourite shows is Big Cook Little Cook. Now we can cope with a lot of Cbeebies; the Night Garden is great, we enjoy Space Pirates and wifey thinks Bob the Builder's Big Fish, Little Fish, Cardboard Box song to be a work of genius.

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Why do people tune in to Top Gear? For an in-depth review of the latest family economy runabout?

No. Most of us tune in on a Sunday evening to watch three grown men cocking around for an hour like children in a toy shop. We love their silly and often dangerous behaviour and of course the nonsense they spout.

But it seems that some people tune in especially to be offended. I can think of no other reasons why 200 people have complained about a Clarkson joke from Sunday's episode.

What did they think they would get while watching Clarkson?

Unlike the talent vacuum Russell Brand, Clarkson did not invade the privacy of an elderly man. He just made a joke on a show that people tuned in to watch.

Have you noticed something very wrong with many of Channel Four's output over the last few years?

My beef is in the way many of its home-grown reality shows are edited.

Channel Four seems to think we all suffer from ADD or that we couldn't possible join Supernanny or Location Location Location and understand what is going on - even though every episode is pretty much the same.

Each show begins with what is essentially a trailer for the show you're about to watch. You would thing that given we've sat through the credits we know what we're going to get anyway.

If we're lucky we then get ten minutes of the show. But before the break we then get a trailer for the next part of the programme. Now it's time to sit through some commercials for overpriced moisturisers, price comparison websites and other tat.

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If sitting through endless versions of "you don't look fat in that" via Trinny, Suzannah and that ladyboy weren't enough the ad-breaks during these shows are getting even worse.

You can't move these days for adverts for price comparison websites, with the occasional Direct Line ad saying "you won't find our prices on comparison websites".

Yes these comparison sites are handy, but good lord how may of them do we need? Each advert featuring a gormless looking couple who seemingly can't find their collective arse with both hands and instead need to be walked through life by some grinning idiot with a catchy jingle.

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