Recommended Television Programmes

[gurnemanz]

Poliakoff: 'Summer of the Rockets'.

Utterly preposterous, a simply dreadful pantomime. So many good actors given such appalling scripts.

Glad I gave it a miss. I also gave up on his last one. Such a shame. He has done some good things. I suppose he gets recommissioned on his reputation.

[Serial_Apologist]

Glad I gave it a miss. I also gave up on his last one. Such a shame. He has done some good things. I suppose he gets recommissioned on his reputation.

Thanks for alerting me then. After that promising start, I think Poliakoff just got obsessed with the ins and outs of the rich and powerful. Instead I watched a truly horrifying Panorama report on the mistreatment (a huge understatement, that) of people with learning disabilities in a misnamed "care home" in Durham. Apparently the place has been shut down, the inmates distributed to better environments, and we heard that the two main patients we saw are now as well looked after as can be. But to think that our money has been going to funding what are effectively, to my mind, training establishments for the infliction of inhuman cruelty and degrading treatment on helpless souls, is an utter disgrace.

[Richard Tarleton]

Poliakoff , and the way the BBC persists with him, remain, for me, two of life's little mysteries. The wretched script, stilted dialogue, the absence of any convincing characterisation or motivation, the caricatures, the sheer waste of fine actors.... Gave it a try (triumph of hope over experience) but abandoned it after about 40 minutes.

[DracoM]

[LMcD]

In response to #690-693: The newspaper critics seem more kindly disposed … I'll have a look at Episode 1, which I've recorded, and see how it goes (before fast-forwarding, if necessary, to the sublime 'Mum').

[Richard Tarleton]

In response to #690-693: The newspaper critics seem more kindly disposed

Alas the great AA Gill is no longer with us, to prick the bubble of this latest farrago - but here is what he had to say about an earlier Poliakoff offering.....

Of all the myriad glittering and entrancing mysteries perpetrated by the wacky, wacky world of television, the continuing adoration by BBC Tristrams for the slight and diminishing talent of Stephen Poliakoff is one of the most self-mortifyingly inexplicable.

I must have been channeling my inner AA Gill with my earlier post

[eighthobstruction]

Poliakoff: 'Summer of the Rockets'.

Utterly preposterous, a simply dreadful pantomime. So many good actors given such appalling scripts.

....I lasted up until the boys radio was taken away....Loud Tannoy in Hospital "Will Mr Poliakoff come to the dustbins to deliver his script"....he was a very nice man when on Private Passions with quiet music I remember....hope there is some digital way of showing low viewing figures for Ep2....Is it the same Producer and Director as the last lot of Tosh?..." Gosh no this is not a large Television, by 2019 no doubt there will be those that take up a whole wall of an average suburban lounge...."....Codishwallopo....

[oddoneout]

I enjoyed 'Rhythms of India' BBC4 on Tuesday night. A little clunky in places, but I learnt a lot and there was plenty of musicmaking. Pleased to find it isn't a one-off, there are a couple(I think) more episodes. This, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p079vg25 was for me one of the highlights.

[eighthobstruction]

I enjoyed 'Rhythms of India' BBC4 on Tuesday night. A little clunky in places, but I learnt a lot and there was plenty of musicmaking. Pleased to find it isn't a one-off, there are a couple(I think) more episodes. This, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p079vg25 was for me one of the highlights.

.....great....thanks fpr rec'....

[burning dog]

Thanks for alerting me then. After that promising start, I think Poliakoff just got obsessed with the ins and outs of the rich and powerful. Instead I watched a truly horrifying Panorama report on the mistreatment (a huge understatement, that) of people with learning disabilities in a misnamed "care home" in Durham. Apparently the place has been shut down, the inmates distributed to better environments, and we heard that the two main patients we saw are now as well looked after as can be. But to think that our money has been going to funding what are effectively, to my mind, training establishments for the infliction of inhuman cruelty and degrading treatment on helpless souls, is an utter disgrace.

On the radio this morning I heard someone ( half asleep so don't know who) say they were commissioning more of these establishments!

similar covered here

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/23/connor-sparrowhawk-torture-care-restraint-segregation

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Years and Years is absolute tosh IMO, not watching it any more. Just a string of issues the writer has strong feelings about. I am sympathy with most but as drama it's terrible.

[gradus]

Poliakoff: 'Summer of the Rockets'.

Utterly preposterous, a simply dreadful pantomime. So many good actors given such appalling scripts.

The trailer was pretty poor eg Timothy Spall impersonating Edward Fox's drawl but I lived in hope.
The actual opening was so feeble and uninvolving that after 10 mins I resorted to a youtube lecture on Riemann - it was that bad.
We know the Beeb can do much better than this.

[Serial_Apologist]

On the radio this morning I heard someone ( half asleep so don't know who) say they were commissioning more of these establishments!

similar covered here
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...nt-segregation

State-sanctioned torture sums it up.

Years and Years is absolute tosh ...

It is, isn't it! It would be good were someone to write a drama series which shows new technology being used to make life better, elucidating why it currently has to be used, on the one hand, to increase productivity in a system mercilessly based on monopoly competition, and on the other, to get inside people's minds. But this one is a political cop-out which avoids critiqueing capitalism as the driver of technological change. I would do one myself, the trouble is I wouldn't have the knowledge or expertise in the technological. My world would consist of beautiful women in Laura Ashley dresses, living in homes filled with wisdom*, telling informed and well-adjusted offspring, "Time now, children, to wheel the household waste down to the people's collective's biodegradables unit, and for your two-hour stint at the community solar power station", and the husband tellin her "I've fixed the controlled hydroponics unit in the basement now, dear - the rocket's going to be OK". Drama won't be nearly as interesting, once we've abolished all the causes of everyday insecurity, unnecessary risk, pollution, crime, religion, control freakery, espionage, racism, sexism, corruption in high places, high places themselves...

Edit: *I omitted to mention, "with Shostakovitch's Song of the Forests playing on the Made in Soweto wind-up wireless in the background".

[edashtav]

In response to #690-693: The newspaper critics seem more kindly disposed … I'll have a look at Episode 1, which I've recorded, and see how it goes (before fast-forwarding, if necessary, to the sublime 'Mum').

We thoroughly enjoyed the first episode for its story-telling, wonderful photography, good characterisation, accurate representation of class types and period feel. Perhaps, the best Poliakoff for several years.

[Nick Armstrong]

Poliakoff: 'Summer of the Rockets'.

Utterly preposterous, a simply dreadful pantomime. So many good actors given such appalling scripts.

We thoroughly enjoyed the first episode for its story-telling, wonderful photography, good characterisation, accurate representation of class types and period feel. Perhaps, the best Poliakoff for several years.

Looking forward to watching the recorded first episode, to find out where on the spectrum between the above two extremes I fall

[jayne lee wilson]

Another word here for Chernobyl...(Sky Atlantic)....

....pulls no punches a tough watch (!), but..... compelling....Jared Harris & Emily Watson especially good....
the lead-coffin-and-concrete funeral was...appalling...and great TV drama, so bleak and spare...

I guess no other Game of Thrones fans here.... mixed feelings (and online reactions...!) to the last ever episode.... but it did have one, devastating, emotionally wrenching scene which summed everything up for those who had been with it for so, so long, in the way that very few series ever quite manage. (The Jon/Dany/Drogon scene amid the castle ruins...).
But you still needed to watch it twice to really get it....

Right now I wish I hadn't....