Recommended Television Programmes

[Bryn]

This review of the programme in the Guardian gives a more detailed description than my brief recommendation:
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-r...-bear-to-watch

I was wary of this series, due to a perceived pro-government bias of its presenter. However, when it came to it, her catchphrase of "I'll be fair" appeared to reflect reality in this instance. A few prominent current and erstwhile cabinet members were effectively revealed as traitors, not so much to their Party but to those they were elected to represent. This applied to one slovenly entitled layabout in particular. Is there no way of bringing such miscreants to book, other than not re-electing them?

[Belgrove]

Laura Kuenssberg: State of Chaos (BBC2: 1/3) was a fascinating dissection of the immediate post 2016 Referendum period up to the proroguing of Parliament by Johnson. I don't think I learned much that was factuallly new, but hearing politicians and senior mandarins speak on the record about their thoughts at the time was revealng. I intend to watch the other two programmes.

It was interesting in a ghoulish way. But political correspondents are little more than gossip columnists, and Kuennsberg played to this rather than provided analysis with the benefit of hindsight. We also had that generic computer generated muzak plastered over everything for no reason. This aptly illustrates my point made upthread regarding the quality of documentaries made nowadays in comparison with (for example) The Shock of the New broadcast the night before, where music is carefully selected to amplify the image, and the dialogue has intellectual weight. So not much craft on show in making this, but I’ll probably continue watching, just to reinforce my prejudices about this dismal generation of politicians.

[Serial_Apologist]

Very good documentary about the overthrow of the Allende government in Chile in 1973 with the help of Britain and America, and the subsequent Pinochet military-fascist dictatorship with Thatcher's tacit blessing, on PBS America last night:

Augusto Pinochet: the Coup, the Torture and the West.

Contributors pointed out Allende's naivety in trusting to Pinochet's loyalty to the democratic constitution - Allende had actually appointed him head of the army, something I had not known about - and the rehearsal role Milton Friedman's and other's monetarist ideologies had thereafter played out in modelling Thatcher-Reaganomics as subsequently practiced throughout and beyond the "free world" right up to the present. The accent played on the democratic illegitimacy of the coup per se, rather than arguing, as those of us on the far left had leading up to and beyond the tragedy, that Allende's belief in the sufficiency of top-down reform without mass mobilising society to implement the changes necessary for a juster more equal Chile and resist the putsch, was in part to blame for the 18 years of suffering and impoverishment that followed: lessons that remain to be learned worldwide, in my view.

[Bryn]

Though I know Niel Gaiman was less than happy with this version for television, I am again rather taken with Neverwhere, currently on London Live. Apparent it should also be available "on demand" via the Internet. I have the DVDs, somewhere, so will not be searching for that option.

[Nick Armstrong]

It's a little disappointing that the TPTV Maigrets are reverting to series one. I suppose they get the rights to show only a few at a time… these french ones are by far the best Maigrets I've ever seen.

A note for your diary and others’… this, in the TPTV newsletter today:

Looking ahead, we have exciting news for fans of the French language version of Maigret starring Bruno Cremer - we’ll be bringing you brand new episodes from Tuesday 17th October

[Pianorak]

Living next door to Putin - Episodes 1 and 2 on IPlayer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001qh02/living-next-door-to-putin-series-1-episode-1

[Serial_Apologist]

Living next door to Putin - Episodes 1 and 2 on IPlayer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episod...es-1-episode-1

I have to admit that, while not having seen any of this particular series, I have eagerly been watching the well-presented history documentaries on the PBS America channel - most recently a series on the Nazis: how they came to power, how they organised society, where they got their funds from, how they treated Jews and other minorities and why, and, last night, three programmes on they way they used forced labour, slavery in effect, for their various projects, such as motorway building and armaments manufacture. One had no idea of this previously - not for want of investigating, but because this aspect of Nazi rule was not revealed until the 1980s and 90s, even inside Germany. These were truly shocking programmes, even by comparison with what we already knew. Aside from the Jews, some of the worst instances of sadistic brutality were inflicted on these work teams - most of whom were not made up of Jewish people, (the Nazis, of course, had other intentions for them), but of people rounded up from within the invaded countries. People were made to work until they dropped from exhaustion, and on being deemed no longer of use shot in front of their team mates and dumped in nearby streams. There was even footage of this, rescued from Nazi archives. Almost equally shocking is the fact that nobody, not the still operating firms that agreed to and profited from these practices, not the UN, not even successive German governments, have been prepared to pay survivors - some of whom, still living and in their 90s and 100s. gave vivid testaments - or their remaining relatives.

[Joseph K]

Pierre Boulez at the BBC - on Beeb 4, it's just started! I am recording it.

[smittims]

Yes, I'm looking forward to seeing that, having seen many of the shots in their original boradcast. I wonder how likely it is that BBC TV would broadcast Schoenberg's 'Herzgewachse' today, as they did fifty years ago.

I felt the same watching 'Andre Previn at the BBC' having remembered 'Andre Previn's Music Night' from the '70s. The BBC can't really pretend they taKe classical music seriously until they start doing this sort of thing regularly.

Good news about the Bruno Cremer Maigrets. Time to get my disc recorder in shape.

[Serial_Apologist]

I cannot recommend too highly the new series on Picasso on BBC2 Thursday nights at 9pm, focussing on his relationships with and towards women. The programmes can be accessed via the link at the bottom of the featured paintings below, most of which are taken from the first episode shown last Thursday:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-66843990

[smittims]

I'm afraid I've never had to confront the question of whether or not to 'cancel' Picasso, as I never accepted him. Maybe as a child of my time ('The Movement', Look back in Anger etc.) I've always regarded him as an overrated poseur, like DH Lawrence . I enjoyed Michael Ayrton's uproarious 'The Midas Consequence' which lampoons Picasso .

But 'his attitude to women' does raise a subject which I sense is too much an Elephant in the Room to be discussed openly these days: the concept of submissiveness in female-male relationships, which leads some women to adore masterful men who ill-treat them.

[JasonPalmer]

Enjoyed "the following is based on a pack of lies" about a sociopath conman.

[johncorrigan]

Enjoyed "the following is based on a pack of lies" about a sociopath conman.

I enjoyed it too, Jason; much more than I thought I would - some fine performances, and very dark in places.

[oddoneout]

I see that BBC4 tonight is doing the binge thing - no music programmes for ages then put on 4 back to back. Perhaps they assume that as the content is different for each then viewers won't be interested in all of them? I've seen the RVW/Holst one and think I may have seen Danielle de Niese's one as well (although currently I wouldn't be able to concentrate at that time anyway, due to fall out from a horrid virus - not Covid AFAIK) so that whittles things down.

[smittims]

Yes, the Niese programme is a repeat, and a reiteration of the worn-out fallacy that women composers are 'silenced' just because they are women. Utter tosh.