Recommended Television Programmes

[Maclintick]

I really tried to like 'I Know Where I'm Going', but my boat remained resolutely unfloated, I'm afraid.

Surprisingly, LMcD, none of the usual suspects have risen to the bait of your maritime metaphor, but I'll batten down the hatches, and attempt to plot a parallel course, if you get my drift. It's not a hard and fast rule, but one mainstay of the P&P franchise is that the romantic leads rarely remain on an even keel for long, and are summarily upended into a maelstrom of heightened passions, a whirlpool of emotions, whereupon in the course of the films they either end up safely anchored (I Know Where I'm Going, A matter of Life and Death) are left high and dry or all at sea (Blimp), or are sucked into the deep (Black Narcissus, Red Shoes, )
-- enough nautical metaphors, ed...

Don't get me wrong, IKWIG is a sweet, charming tartan rug of a film, which passes a pleasant hour-and-a-half, but if I'm honest the love interest here doesn't exactly set the screen alight. Roger Livesey's performance, in contrast to Blimp or A Matter of Life and Death, strikes me as phoned-in on one of those bakelite jobbies beloved of the Tobermory coastguard, and Dame Wendy, illustrious stage actress that she was, a shoe-in for strong and decisive female rôles, doesn't have enough of the screen siren about her to set this audience member's pulse racing. Maybe the B&W photography is to blame, and that the radiance of her undoubted stage presence, so admired by GBS, needs Technicolor to fan the flames, as it were.

[gradus]

I was hooked by the charm of the film and I thought the performances delightful. Lovely to see so many fine actors in their early years.

[Pulcinella]

We watched the first episode of After the party last night: it took a while to get used to the accent but it bodes well as a gripping series, and it got good reviews.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_...rty_(TV_series)

[Dave2002]

Just fiddling [ha...] around with various things, including the living room TV - and found a new version of the film Red Shoes - which dates from the late 1940s. Looks good.

I might start watching the whole thing later on via the iPlayer. Some of the scenes of Covent Garden and Paris are interesting - to see how they may have looked once.

[Serial_Apologist]

Just fiddling [ha...] around with various things, including the living room TV - and found a new version of the film Red Shoes - which dates from the late 1940s. Looks good.

I might start watching the whole thing later on via the iPlayer. Some of the scenes of Covent Garden and Paris are interesting - to see how they may have looked once.

I love the film for its proto-psychedelic sequence, which was quite remarkable and prophetic for its date. Where it has never stood up for me is in the music, stylistically about 40 years behind its time.

[smittims]

I just love the way Anton Walbrook says 'Ze redshuuuuus...'

[eighthobstruction]

..

Don't get me wrong, IKWIG is a sweet, charming tartan rug of a film, which passes a pleasant hour-and-a-half, but if I'm honest the love interest here doesn't exactly set the screen alight. Roger Livesey's performance, in contrast to Blimp or A Matter of Life and Death, strikes me as phoned-in on one of those bakelite jobbies beloved of the Tobermory coastguard, and Dame Wendy, illustrious stage actress that she was, a shoe-in for strong and decisive female rôles, doesn't have enough of the screen siren about her to set this audience member's pulse racing. Maybe the B&W photography is to blame, and that the radiance of her undoubted stage presence, so admired by GBS, needs Technicolor to fan the flames, as it were.

....personally I'm rather glad it wasn't the projected Debirah Kerr and James Mason....RL and WH are perfect for me, making it more touchingly about ordinary looking people (like me)....

AMAZING that Livsey never set foot in Scotland - a double was used....Livesy did all his scenes in Denham Studios....

[LMcD]

Moonflower Murders (BBC1/iPlayer) would be a wonderfully entertaining fresh take on the murder mystery genre even without the wonderful Lesley Manville.

[Serial_Apologist]

I watched episode 1 of BBC1's The Listeners drama about a school teacher who becomes obsessed with a low frequency ubiquitous pulsing hum which she, alone, can hear, until one of her charges admits secretly to having the same experience - all very hush-hush for some strange and even more inexplicable reason. Frankly, I am intrigued as to what this is all about, and will continue watching unless the plot then has teacher and pupil involved in an illicit intimate cliché.

On tomorrow night and the following two Tuesdays.

[Serial_Apologist]

Lat night's Why We Can't Stop Eating documentary on BBC2 was unquestionably the most important documentary to have been presented on the telly for any number of years, more important, if possible, even than those we have been seeing on plastics polluting the oceans. It dealt with the ineluctable pressures exerted by the multinational food manufacturing and processing industry on populations worldwide through deliberate taste and price exploitation luring consumers away from natural foods, and is responsible for so many of our ills from obesity to diabetes and cancer. Chris van Tulleken, a truly excellent presenter, lays out the issues one by one, making up for a damning indictment of the unaccountqble business forces not only involved and making gynormous profits but, using rogue scientists in seeking to back their justifications, doubling down to oppose legal methods to change course.

This should be shown in schools and town squares, and I urge all to watch it - but more than that governments must be made to intervene and utterly change the malign course of food production and advertising.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0025gqs

[smittims]

I draw a a parallel between the increase of sugar in foods and the increase of 'feelgood' broadcasting, such as the smoochy-cosy music that is taking over Radio 3 . It's a spin-off of capitalism: keep the suckers spending ,and stop thinking about the state of the world. There's always been obesity and hunger on different parts of the world at the same time, but never I think, so much as now.

[LMcD]

I feel better since I stopped watching TV news broadcasts, but I don't know whether that's contributed to the welcome news (yes, I know ...) that my blood sugar readings have fallen .

[smittims]

News today is that people with regular meal and sleep times are less likely to suffer strokes. Maybe this is why R3 keeps playing Chaminade's flute concertino at regular intervals. It's a work I didn't mind hearing ... once.

[antongould]

Lat night's Why We Can't Stop Eating documentary on BBC2 was unquestionably the most important documentary to have been presented on the telly for any number of years, more important, if possible, even than those we have been seeing on plastics polluting the oceans. It dealt with the ineluctable pressures exerted by the multinational food manufacturing and processing industry on populations worldwide through deliberate taste and price exploitation luring consumers away from natural foods, and is responsible for so many of our ills from obesity to diabetes and cancer. Chris van Tulleken, a truly excellent presenter, lays out the issues one by one, making up for a damning indictment of the unaccountqble business forces not only involved and making gynormous profits but, using rogue scientists in seeking to back their justifications, doubling down to oppose legal methods to change course.

This should be shown in schools and town squares, and I urge all to watch it - but more than that governments must be made to intervene and utterly change the malign course of food production and advertising.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0025gqs

excellent programme S_A IMVVHO …. Thanks for flagging up

[smittims]

I hope it will be seen by those maniacs who mob the M&S food hall in the week before Xmas loading their trolley sky high . They're a mystery to me.