Recommended Television Programmes

[Cockney Sparrow]

'The Dropout' is an absorbing 8-part series, tucked away late at night on BBC1, about the Theranos scandal. Amanda Seyfried, who plays big-time fraudster Elizabeth Holmes, is mesmerising. All episodes available on iPlayer.

Its taken a while to get to it, but we've just watched the first two episodes. I have my best sound system connected to the TV - speakers either side. The clarity helps with speech..... . When the rock/whatever music crashes in at moments of greater drama, I mute the speakers and we listen to the low level TV sound to wait for speech to resume, when I unmute the speakers. Generally, it works well.

These first two programmes are the very worst sound experience I have had on TV - in this case with dialogue, unusually - over the high sound levels of music - LMcD - do you lip read? We're going to give the third episode a chance - up to now the storyline has been about a modern young woman (metaphorically) pumping up her self belief - in the first place, and then crucially in securing multi million pound investment as the seed money has run out and her personal contacts and credit card accounts are exhausted. As the long haul of trying to make the product work, and sustaining the fraud sets in, we're hoping this appalling aural trial for the listener will abate as the need for exultant music disappears. Or we'll find something else to watch - we can't stand another 6 episodes the same as the first two.

(We've just finished the second series of Blue Lights - truly exceptional, I'll be happy to watch them all over again, and cant' wait for the third series, which surely must follow....).

[LMcD]

Its taken a while to get to it, but we've just watched the first two episodes. I have my best sound system connected to the TV - speakers either side. The clarity helps with speech..... . When the rock/whatever music crashes in at moments of greater drama, I mute the speakers and we listen to the low level TV sound to wait for speech to resume, when I unmute the speakers. Generally, it works well.

These first two programmes are the very worst sound experience I have had on TV - in this case with dialogue, unusually - over the high sound levels of music - LMcD - do you lip read? We're going to give the third episode a chance - up to now the storyline has been about a modern young woman (metaphorically) pumping up her self belief - in the first place, and then crucially in securing multi million pound investment as the seed money has run out and her personal contacts and credit card accounts are exhausted. As the long haul of trying to make the product work, and sustaining the fraud sets in, we're hoping this appalling aural trial for the listener will abate as the need for exultant music disappears. Or we'll find something else to watch - we can't stand another 6 episodes the same as the first two.

(We've just finished the second series of Blue Lights - truly exceptional, I'll be happy to watch them all over again, and cant' wait for the third series, which surely must follow....).

Subtitles.

[LMcD]

I tried one of the Budgie re-broadcasts and gave up in disgust at the appalling portrayal of Asian characters, along with the main character's attitudes towards and treatment of them. I can well see why TPTV prefixes warnings about outdated and discriminatory language and attitudes on many films and soaps of the 1950s, 60s and even 70s I admit I would have at one time not balked at. Clearly now, PC was not such a bad thing as it's portrayed in populist "free speech" circles. Many of us needed our ethical standards realigning without realising it, even as we pursued and supported radical causes, back then.

The deplorable attitudes to which you refer serve to confirm how much more enlightened we (well, most of us) are these days, I'm becoming increasingly fascinated by the relationship between Charlie Endell and Budgie, which in some ways anticipates that between Arthur Daley and Terry McCann.

[smittims]

I've been surprised at some of the things I've heard and seen on old TV programmes, which we didn't think odd at the time, but which wouldn't be shown now.

In an episode of 'Dixon' (the revamped 'Dixon of Dock Green' a young woman from St. Lucia living in the East End repeatedly referred to caucasian characters as 'Honky', nowadays as racist a remark as the notorious 'n...' word.

In an episode of 'Butterflies' Wendy Craig's character cries out ' I want to be raped!'

And when Inspector Morse and Lewis arrive at a girls' school , seeing some pupils playing hockey, Morse says to Lewis, 'whoever invented the sports skirt deserves a medal; it's the embodiment of every man's fantasy'.

These were all popular peak-hour programmes in their day.

I find it difficult to know where to draw the line on offensive remarks. Many which I'm told are 'offensive' don't offend me at all. But I've never cared for 'smut'.

[Cockney Sparrow]

Subtitles.

... of course!

[Serial_Apologist]

I have been avidly watching Sherwood (BBC1 Sundays and Mondays, 9pm) - a story about the long term consequences of the 1980s miners' strike on a Nottingham pit village - for me the best-presented, directed and acted TV drama among many of recent years, absolutely credible and utterly gripping. Tonight's episode will have to be for the iPlayer and take second place to America's New Female Right, over on BBC3. According to the RT blurb:

Layla Wright travels to the USA to meet a new wave of female social media influencers posting antifeminist and other offensive content online.

To assume the young are progressive and their elders more conservative is, as Layla Wright discovers, naive. On a trip to the US in this eye-opening documentary, the Liverpool-born journalist finds a growing number of inflammatory teenage female influencers, who appear rock-solid in their anti-feminist views.

For them, women who embark on a career, or even cast their vote, are eroding American values - a standpoint that's finding a sizeable audience on social media. Wright - who employs her mentor Louis Theroux's tactic of considered rather than openly combative questioning - immerses herself in their lives to find out why they want to overturn hard-fought-for rights.

For those who in championing feminism back in the day sometimes went beyond the call of legality also know that when America sneezes in the cultural domain the rest of the world soon catches the virus this is a deeply depressing prospect unless this programme offers analysis and solutions.

[Nick Armstrong]

I have been avidly watching Sherwood (BBC1 Sundays and Mondays, 9pm) - a story about the long term consequences of the 1980s miners' strike on a Nottingham pit village - for me the best-presented, directed and acted TV drama among many of recent years, absolutely credible and utterly gripping

Me too and I couldn’t agree more.

Being originally a Nottm lad mesen, I do note a few very variable ‘local’ accents among some members of the cast, but it’s no problem - the quality of the performances eclipses such considerations.

Monica Dolan in particular is spine chilling

[vinteuil]

... I enjoyed Sherwood series i to a degree.
Tho it was a bit silly.

As for the current series ii - lordy but it don't half take itself seriously. Clichayed and predictable - token blacks in improbable melded family, lesbian sherrif, impossibly villainous villains, David Morrissey being the impossibly right-on hero with the weight of the moral universe on 'is showderz.

No, I'm not buying it..

,

[Serial_Apologist]

When someone sets a positive example in a contemporary drama it can't possibly be allowed, can it.

I've just re-watched my DVDs of Our Friends in the North, which set out the longer trajectory of a parallel story in time. It's probably too much to expect a contemporary drama to encapsulate by factoring in key intervening plot interweavings and machinations; I'm beginning to wonder how many play writers today let alone commissioning editors are intellectually or ideologically equipped to be capable of reproducing the necessary elucidatory overview while satisfying entertainment desiderata. Everything has to be reduced down to "values" according today's predominating oversimplified world perspective concocters.

[vinteuil]

Our Friends in the North

... now that was marvellous.

Would I call Sherwood crass? Perhaps not - but suttle it ain't. As subtle as being belaboured about the head with an unemployed miner's pickaxe.

.

[LMcD]

... now that was marvellous.

I think it's about time I revisited Tosker and Co.
I started watching Series 2 of Sherwood, but then realized that I didn't really care what happened to most of the characters.

[johncorrigan]

We watched 'A Good Girl's Guide to Murder' on the i-player and though I don't think it is really aimed at our age range, we both enjoyed it very much, particularly because of the excellent performance of Emma Myers in the lead role. It was a bit Agatha Christie meets the famous five with google and drugs thrown in; and quite funny with it

[Serial_Apologist]

America's New Female Right[/I], over on BBC3. According to the RT blurb:

Layla Wright travels to the USA to meet a new wave of female social media influencers posting antifeminist and other offensive content online.

To assume the young are progressive and their elders more conservative is, as Layla Wright discovers, naive. On a trip to the US in this eye-opening documentary, the Liverpool-born journalist finds a growing number of inflammatory teenage female influencers, who appear rock-solid in their anti-feminist views.

For them, women who embark on a career, or even cast their vote, are eroding American values - a standpoint that's finding a sizeable audience on social media. Wright - who employs her mentor Louis Theroux's tactic of considered rather than openly combative questioning - immerses herself in their lives to find out why they want to overturn hard-fought-for rights.

For those who in championing feminism back in the day sometimes went beyond the call of legality also know that when America sneezes in the cultural domain the rest of the world soon catches the virus this is a deeply depressing prospect unless this programme offers analysis and solutions.

This was a very disturbing programme from every vantage point. It was unfortunate that Ms Wright soft pedalled with her subjects, even at one point helping the teenager who has acquired a big reputation in radical right circles having organised a village rally to the cause put up a tattered Confederate flag for an online chat room. Her main line was, don't you people feel any sympathy for migrants? to which the answer was pretty obvious. And why does nobody in the media ask these "Christians" how they can square their consciences with blatant lying and story fabrication - not a very good advert for their "world view" (sic).

[LMcD]

'Adult humour' isn't normally my thing, but I'm very happy to have just discovered that series 2 of 'Colin From Accounts' has now arrived on BBC2/iPlayer.

[Nick Armstrong]

I’m enjoying Call My Bluff more - Patrick Campbell in particular is a joy, and it’s great to see people like Antony Hopkins (yes, the musical one), Edward Fox etc., with some pretty timeless repartee…

Fascinating to see a Bloomsbury Group member (or at least an offspring of same) as a panellist in the latest edition: Quentin Bell, Virginia Woolf’s nephew (and biographer)