Recommended Television Programmes

[LezLee]

To my surprise, have become somewhat addicted to early 1970s episodes of Public Eye on the Talking Pictures channel (Freeview 81) - I was too young to know them first time around. Public Eye was Thames TV's low-key detective series starring Alfred Burke as the disheveled enquiry agent Frank Marker (arguably Britain's very own Columbo, you could say). Nicely written, acted and paced and often ending with a sting in the tail. The jazzy theme tune, with trombone lead, is particularly tasteful and memorable...

At this point I'm getting 'ACCESS DENIED'. You are attempting to access a forbidden site'

This has happened before but I can't work out what they have in common. I can read the original but not the 'Reply with quote'. Oo-er!

[gradus]

I used to really enjoy that series. I think there could be an update and remake. Brian Capron would be the ideal Marker.

It was/is good but the woeful Acorn Antiques production standards when the action is in Marker's office make it look like the local amdram..

[jayne lee wilson]

Don't forget the marvellous new BBC2 Apollo 11 Documentary, combining historical footage with reconstruction to an extraordinarily involving end.....
Telling the story so clearly and movingly from the human and technological angles....I had a few tears during this one.....!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0006p5f

It is terribly poignant to recall, to see and feel what we had then, what we might have gone on to.... but what has happened to the world and to the USA, socially culturally and politically since....

Spectacular and emotional. So skilfully made you'll be gripped from the first minute. One of the best films of any kind I've seen this year.

[Serial_Apologist]

Don't forget the marvellous new BBC2 Apollo 11 Documentary, combining historical footage with reconstruction to an extraordinarily involving end.....
Telling the story so clearly and movingly from the human and technological angles....I had a few tears during this one.....!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0006p5f

It is terribly poignant to recall, to see and feel what we had then, what we might have gone on to.... but what has happened to the world and to the USA, socially culturally and politically since....

One of the best films of any kind I've seen this year.

Well there are many answers to that one. Mine would be hubris among the world's ruling orders, though that needs a lot of breaking down to go into in depth. In brief it all comes down to systemic breakdown under contradictions inherent in the system. The solution populists are pandering to, nationalism, belonged to an era when capitalism was a progressive force, in terms of raising production to previously unimagined levels. All that was a couple of centuries ago, however, and "history has banned that stage", in the words of the 1960s pop song "The Beat Goes on". But the usual intermediaries, beneficiaries and disseminators of truth who control everything top-down will never countenance change being taken out of their hands unless or until their own conditions of existence are threatened to a point of potential extinction, along with the rest of us.

Perhaps, when the time comes, the best thing to do will be to herd them all together, given that they still constitute a minute percentage of the total population, as Shelley's poem summed it up, and ship them off to some glass-domed protectorate on the Moon, where they can indulge their power games ad infinitum to the last man, and leave the rest of us who have learned the bitter lessons to pick up the pieces and painstakingly construct a sustainable world with inbuilt constraints along the lines of Lovelock's Gaia principle.

[Dave2002]

Started to watch the Looming Tower - think it's on Prime, but has been on other channels. Seems good so far.

[LMcD]

Started to watch the Looming Tower - think it's on Prime, but has been on other channels. Seems good so far.

I watched this on BBC 2 and sang its praises more than once on this thread - excellent script with acting to match, and gripping from start to finish!

[jayne lee wilson]

Well there are many answers to that one. Mine would be hubris among the world's ruling orders, though that needs a lot of breaking down to go into in depth. In brief it all comes down to systemic breakdown under contradictions inherent in the system. The solution populists are pandering to, nationalism, belonged to an era when capitalism was a progressive force, in terms of raising production to previously unimagined levels. All that was a couple of centuries ago, however, and "history has banned that stage", in the words of the 1960s pop song "The Beat Goes on". But the usual intermediaries, beneficiaries and disseminators of truth who control everything top-down will never countenance change being taken out of their hands unless or until their own conditions of existence are threatened to a point of potential extinction, along with the rest of us.

Perhaps, when the time comes, the best thing to do will be to herd them all together, given that they still constitute a minute percentage of the total population, as Shelley's poem summed it up, and ship them off to some glass-domed protectorate on the Moon, where they can indulge their power games ad infinitum to the last man, and leave the rest of us who have learned the bitter lessons to pick up the pieces and painstakingly construct a sustainable world with inbuilt constraints along the lines of Lovelock's Gaia principle.

That's a bit worrying in one respect....those Star Wars-Empire-style entrepreneurial emigres on the moon (Elon Musk!) would soon be conquering other planets and then coming back to tyrannise earth again.....(oh don't worry...)

Trust the liberal force! It is all we have, all we have to keep fighting for.....and yes - maybe Gaia, the planet itself and the creatures living upon it, can be on our side....but we must be humble before it, and wise.
But please watch this film....its marvellous.

[Dave2002]

I watched this on BBC 2 and sang its praises more than once on this thread - excellent script with acting to match, and gripping from start to finish!

What surprised me was how big the building was that was bombed. That's a few events which happened in Nairobi - the other being an attack in a shopping centre more recently - which have happened within a couple of miles of the hotel we stayed in in 2009.

I suppose the fact that the embassy attack happened in Africa meant that mentally I put it into a "smallish event", "long way away", "not very big" box. Clearly I was very wrong about that.

[Serial_Apologist]

I just watched the Panorama about Muslim and other faith groups parents alleging children being inculcated into sex education in conflict with their own belief systems. Very disturbing - and it once more brings to the forefront the failure of the liberal centre and left in general by handing the issue of religious extremism over to the populist right.

What are teachers supposed to tell their charges when asked about the whether the fact that Joe as two mummies or Penelope has two dads is bad, yet legal? "Sorry, variations in family structure are not to be permitted to be part of the sociology syllabus"? Or, "We're only allowed to talk about heterosexual households, even though this is giving you a false picture of how the world is, which conflicts with educational principles just as much as were I to teach you that white people are the superior race"? The fact that Panorama failed to ask any representative in education what they propose to say to children was symptomatic of this failure.

The irony is that the far right are themselves conflicted on which side to support; they handed us a missed opportunity. It can't have escaped many people's notice that we are not finding the EDL leaping in to defend the right of religious groups to withdraw their children, given that they and other far right groups have made big play on the Christian basis of our wonderful civilisation. We on the liberal left in our turn made a big mistake in not leaping in to expose their inability to update their prejudicial consistencies for the bad faith they reveal, and not ourselves being the true champions of post-Enlightenment thinking. This is where the new deference ultimately leads you.

[Bryn]

I just watched the Panorama about Muslim and other faith groups parents alleging children being inculcated into sex education in conflict with theirt own belief systems. Very disturbing - and it once more brings to the forefront the failure of the liberal centre and left in general by handing the issue of religious extremism over to the populist right.

What are teachers supposed to tell their charges when asked about the whether the fact that Joe as two mummies or Penelope has two dads is bad, yet legal? "Sorry, variations in family structure are not to be permitted to be part of the sociology syllabus"? Or, "We're only allowed to talk about heterosexual households, even though this is giving you a false picture of how the world is, which conflicts with educational principles just as much as were I to teach you that white people are the superior race"?

The irony is that the far right are themselves conflicted on which side to support; they handed us a missed opportunity. It can't have escaped many people's notice that we are not finding the EDL leaping in to defend the right of religious groups to withdraw their children, given that they and other far right groups have made big play on the Christian basis of our wonderful civilisation. We on the liberal left in our turn made a big mistake in not leaping in to expose their inability to update their prejudicial consistencies for the bad faith they reveal, and not ourselves being the true champions of post-Enlightenment thinking. This is where the new deference ultimately gets you.

'Radical' interpretation of any religion should not be permitted to take precedence over socially determined laws such as those relating to LGBT in the U.K. today. The historical interpretation of Koranic expressions regarding homosexuality varies greatly. I feel this wiki article on the subject covers the essentials well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_in_Islam

[Serial_Apologist]

'Radical' interpretation of any religion should not be permitted to take precedence over socially determined laws such as those relating to LGBT in the U.K. today. The historical interpretation of Koranic expressions regarding homosexuality varies greatly. I feel this wiki article on the subject covers the essentials well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_in_Islam

That's interesting. Not having checked I hadn't realised that historically views about LGBT in Islam are more nuanced than the definitive pronouncements in the Koran might suggest. As usual it all appears to boil down to the same old issue of "words only mean what I make them mean". I wonder why we are not being told this: is it for fear of not offending?

[DracoM]

Ch 4: The Invention of Boris Johnson'

In his own words.

And 160,OOO Tories are about to foist this man on all 60 million of us??
Look out for the iceberg, I say.

Deepy, deeply disturbing.

[eighthobstruction]

....beware the Johnson helmed submarine approaching the 9/10ths of iceberg undetected under water....

Ed....surely some editor must come up with a front page head line - Johnson GIT....soon

[johncorrigan]

Scottish actor, David Hayman, has been part of some fine documentaries for BBC Scotland these last few years. This last couple of weeks I watched a two-parter, 'Slavery: Scotland's Hidden Shame', filmed in UK, Sierra Leone and Jamaica and examines the effect that the trade had on those countries and fumes that this horrendous situation has been swept under the carpet for so long. As a Scot I found this programme fascinating, frightening and shameful and go with the suggestion from Hayman that Scotland must examine reparation to these countries.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0bqvv10/slavery-scotlands-hidden-shame-series-1-episode-1

[LMcD]

Scottish actor, David Hayman, has been part of some fine documentaries for BBC Scotland these last few years. This last couple of weeks I watched a two-parter, 'Slavery: Scotland's Hidden Shame', filmed in UK, Sierra Leone and Jamaica and examines the effect that the trade had on those countries and fumes that this horrendous situation has been swept under the carpet for so long. As a Scot I found this programme fascinating, frightening and shameful and go with the suggestion from Hayman that Scotland must examine reparation to these countries.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episod...es-1-episode-1

He's also featured recently on PBS America narrating programmes about the role of Scottish participants in various conflicts including the Spanish Civil War.