Recommended Television Programmes

[Dave2002]

First two watched last weekend: agree with your comments, tight & intriguing. The time jumps are quite clearly signalled by key characters wearing specs or a beard (or being adult rather than adolescent, with the ginger hair helping! ).

Top-drawer stuff

It's OK - and helps to pass the time, and one can wonder at the Finnish language and how incomprehensible it is. I think I heard two words which possibly meant something to me during the whole series - one being I assume the word for boy, the other being a word for goodbye.
Also some Finnish people speak Swedish, so there may be a few (very few) words in common, and some people may occasionally drop Swedish words into there interactions.

Ultimately I was less convinced of the quality - the throbbing background trying to heighten tension became overdone I thought.
I shalln't "spoil" the ultimate ending.

[Pulcinella]

Is anyone re-watching Elizabeth R (BBC4), unbelievably 50 years on? I'm really enjoying it...and the young Glenda Jackson. (I can excuse a few fake Devon seagoing accents from lesser roles!) I wonder how jazzed-up/dumbed-down a similar series would have to be nowadays to have public appeal. Title music courtesy of David Munrow.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p033w6j5

Watched Episode 1 last night (after wondering about starting on The Tudors on All4, and deciding against: too many episodes for one thing!) and really enjoyed it, but couldn't help thinking that Blackadder got it right too!

[johncorrigan]

It's OK - and helps to pass the time, and one can wonder at the Finnish language and how incomprehensible it is. I think I heard two words which possibly meant something to me during the whole series - one being I assume the word for boy, the other being a word for goodbye.
Also some Finnish people speak Swedish, so there may be a few (very few) words in common, and some people may occasionally drop Swedish words into there interactions.

Ultimately I was less convinced of the quality - the throbbing background trying to heighten tension became overdone I thought.
I shalln't "spoil" the ultimate ending.

I thought 'Man in Room 301' was ok, after a very good start. But there were too many things that happened, or didn't happen, where I found it impossible to suspend disbelief.

I'm enjoying, if that's the word, 'The Terror' on Beeb 2 - some fine acting, particularly Jared Harris. Like many people, I've long been fascinated by the search for 'Terror' and 'Erebus', and this programme, so far, has tried to put a story based on some of the findings of the search parties that went out looking, and with an added supernatural element. I'm halfway through and it's pretty gory and violent in places. I sometimes think it's a bit slow, yet episode 5 flew past - gripping, and as I said, Jared Harris is pretty excellent. Think I'm going to stick with it now after wavering a bit.

[LHC]

I thought 'Man in Room 301' was ok, after a very good start. But there were too many things that happened, or didn't happen, where I found it impossible to suspend disbelief.

I'm enjoying, if that's the word, 'The Terror' on Beeb 2 - some fine acting, particularly Jared Harris. Like many people, I've long been fascinated by the search for 'Terror' and 'Erebus', and this programme, so far, has tried to put a story based on some of the findings of the search parties that went out looking, and with an added supernatural element. I'm halfway through and it's pretty gory and violent in places. I sometimes think it's a bit slow, yet episode 5 flew past - gripping, and as I said, Jared Harris is pretty excellent. Think I'm going to stick with it now after wavering a bit.

I watched it last year courtesy of Amazon Prime, and thought it was excellent. The acting is universally good, and Jared Harris is exceptional. The book on which it is based (which is very long!) is also very good, particularly on the details of life on board ship in the Arctic.

[Serial_Apologist]

A truly optimism-raising programme last night on BBC2, The Secret Science of Sewage, inviting us to a sewage farm to see how our poop is being processed biologically, not only into clean water, but all sorts of vitally needed products, from soil re-constitutioners to bio-fuels and medecines. I left thinking, this is what the green agenda should be all about, and governments subsidising.

Warning: you may feel a bit queasy in one or two places, particularly early on!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000t8zl/the-secret-science-of-sewage

[ardcarp]

And yes the two token Tilbury onlookers were a hoot.

Yes, that was a bit naff. Could have morphed into Monty Python.

.....mixing him up with that composer chappie Henry Persil

indeed.

But that was one version of his name, either Persil or Persill in days when spelling was not fixed. I can't remember where I saw it (maybe the Bodleian library?) Any relation to Osbert Parsley, I wonder?

[LMcD]

I thought 'Man in Room 301' was ok, after a very good start. But there were too many things that happened, or didn't happen, where I found it impossible to suspend disbelief.

I'm enjoying, if that's the word, 'The Terror' on Beeb 2 - some fine acting, particularly Jared Harris. Like many people, I've long been fascinated by the search for 'Terror' and 'Erebus', and this programme, so far, has tried to put a story based on some of the findings of the search parties that went out looking, and with an added supernatural element. I'm halfway through and it's pretty gory and violent in places. I sometimes think it's a bit slow, yet episode 5 flew past - gripping, and as I said, Jared Harris is pretty excellent. Think I'm going to stick with it now after wavering a bit.

I couldn't agree more - it really is an exceptional series! Jared Harris is as good in this as he was in ''Chernobyl'. Have you read Michael Palin's excellent book 'Eberus', by the way?

[cloughie]

Yes, that was a bit naff. Could have morphed into Monty Python.

indeed.

But that was one version of his name, either Persil or Persill in days when spelling was not fixed. I can't remember where I saw it (maybe the Bodleian library?) Any relation to Osbert Parsley, I wonder?

A bit of a white wash if I recall!

[LMcD]

Correction to #1687 - 'Erebus', not 'Eberus'!

[french frank]

But that was one version of his name, either Persil or Persill in days when spelling was not fixed. I can't remember where I saw it (maybe the Bodleian library?)

Grove records eight different spellings, in five of which the final vowel is 'i', and in only two is it 'e' (the eighth has 'a'). The only possible pronunciation which fits all eight spellings puts the stress on the first syllable.

As you were.

[vinteuil]

Grove records eight different spellings, in five of which the final vowel is 'i', and in only two is it 'e' (the eighth has 'a'). The only possible pronunciation which fits all eight spellings puts the stress on the first syllable.
.

... and David Crystal reminds us : " ... when we find such spellings as Pursal, Purcel, Persill, and Pursall in the 17th century, an initial syllable stress is clearly suggested. It is reinforced by the ode John Dryden wrote on the death of his friend, in which the metre requires the stress to be on the first syllable:

Now live secure and linger out your days,
The Gods are pleas'd alone with Purcell's Lays,

The same stress pattern is found in a rhyme in a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, who rhymes Purcell and reversal."

.

[johncorrigan]

I couldn't agree more - it really is an exceptional series! Jared Harris is as good in this as he was in ''Chernobyl'. Have you read Michael Palin's excellent book 'Eberus', by the way?

Haven't read it, L, but heard it serialised on Radio 4 when it came out.

[jayne lee wilson]

Anyone tried this yet? Sharp sassy sexy - just what I need in days of gloom...

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/mar/19/the-flight-attendant-review-kaley-cuoco

Love the use of Britney Spears' Toxic (just had to be...).... and mirabile dictu, on series link. Screwed if I'm gonna wait a week per episode any more...

[Bryn]

Anyone tried this yet? Sharp sassy sexy - just what I need in days of gloom...

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/mar/19/the-flight-attendant-review-kaley-cuoco

Love the use of Britney Spears' Toxic (just had to be...).... and mirabile dictu, on series link. Screwed if I'm gonna wait a week per episode any more...

Looks to be well worth watching, but not sufficiently so to drive me to sign up to Sky again.

[johncorrigan]

Anyone tried this yet? Sharp sassy sexy - just what I need in days of gloom...

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/mar/19/the-flight-attendant-review-kaley-cuoco

Love the use of Britney Spears' Toxic (just had to be...).... and mirabile dictu, on series link. Screwed if I'm gonna wait a week per episode any more...

Thought Kaley was great on 'Big Bang', jayne, especially in the early days before the show got soapy - her 1:1 scenes with Sheldon were fantastic comedy...I'd watch 'Flight Attendant', if I had access to whatever channel it is. I heard it reviewed on Radio Scotland and a former flight attendant phoned in to say that it was very accurate on the shenanigans that went on in her day.