Being Human began as part of a BBC Three pilot trial, and was successful enough to garner a commission. The first series of the programme comes to an end on 1st March, and it’s now confirmed the sci-fi drama will return for another eight episodes.
Following the lives of a vampire, werewolf and ghost co-habiting in Bristol, the RDF Media Group show has proved a hit in it’s BBC Three timeslot. It’s highest ratings include over a millions viewers, and the critics love it.
Elbow have been having a stellar couple of years, with the Mercury Music prize under their belts, plus the Best British Group gong at the 2009 BRITs. Now it seems their popularity translates to the Red Button Music Sessions.
The Red Button service often provides coverage of music festivals and events throughout the year, and also screens performances that are usually recorded for radio. Elbow were playing for Radio 2, with the BBC Concert Orchestra, at Abbey Road, and the gig took place on the 17th January.
It’s been on the cards for a while now, with subtle hints being left every now and then, but the long-lost son of the Masood family is about to show up in Albert Square. Syed Masood will appear in May, and looks set to be a sophisticated chap who will find it hard fitting back in with his family.
From the BBC Press Office:
A natural charmer, a smooth talker and the apple of his mother’s eye, he’s learned how to get ahead in business using his persuasive charm. He can spot an opportunity a mile off, and will pursue regardless of how reckless it seems to others.
I don’t know the extensive details of the Digital TV Transition in America. I don’t know much about it here, either. I know there are coupons involved.
I already have digital TV, and barely watch anything on the actual box as it is, so the stories have been washing over me for months.
Of course, the time has been ticking ever onwards and the US switchover was supposed to happen this week. A last minute change, rushed through Congress, has delayed the transition for another few months. However, some TV stations were geared up for the February change, and they’ve been told they can go early if they want. Therefore, some stations will be digital only, and some won’t.
With iTunes now starting to roll out HD versions of some TV shows, alongside the standard def versions, we had to investigate. Given the option, it feels wrong to buy a lesser quality version, even if it is slightly more expensive to do so.
LOST returned to our screens recently, and by screens, I mean monitors playing the HD show with the help of an Apple remote. I wasn’t sure that the higher quality made that much difference, but about halfway through the second episode, I suddenly saw it. It’s not always obviously better, but if there’s a close up, the definition is amazing. That’s just on our relatively small screen, I bet it’s brilliant on one of those overpriced flatscreens.
Browsing through the iTunes TV Programmes store yesterday, I came across this little gem:
That’s one single TV episode, that lasts for an hour and is £2.99. Is this the first time that iTunes have given in to the variable pricing pressure? I haven’t seen it before.
When NBC said they’d be returning to iTunes, we all assumed they’d had to give in and admit that Apple’s platform is a great sales outlet for their shows. However, if the picture is to be believed, then Apple have more likely agreed to NBC’s pricing demands.
I’m all for the return of Top of the Pops and TOTP2, and I don’t really think they should have disappeared in the first place. There are very few decent music programs on TV as it is, I’m pretty sure the Beeb could have adapted Top of the Pops to remain mainstream if they’d really wanted to.
Of course, they didn’t, and then they announced it wouldn’t even be back for a Christmas special. As soon as Simon Cowell poked his head above the parapet and said he’d sort it out, they decided perhaps they would like to stage the show after all.
Via the iPlayer, I watched a four-part series about Mark Beaumont. He’s a cyclist from Scotland who set himself the challenge of crossing the world - 18,000 miles - in under 200 days to set a new Guinness World Record.
If you missed the programme, there’s plenty of information about it on the BBC website, including when and where it will be on (if it’s repeated).
The guy was absolutely amazing. He travelled through Europe, Asia, all the way across Australia, all the way across America and through Europe again, starting and finishing in Paris. Only a couple of flights to avoid the ocean, and a bike, were his means of travelling, and he had to record his mileage every step of the way.
Out of the Blue has been axed. Well, that’s out of the blue. Ha. Sorry, couldn’t resist. If the numbers in that story are to be believed, chances are you won’t have even heard of this programme, and now you probably never will. But I want to take a closer look at what happened, because it makes for an interesting story.
The problem Here is how to systematically undermine a programme’s chances, à la the BBC.
I know, I know, this blog has been about television far too much recently. The problem is that at the moment, it’s the only other non-Sidepodcast thing I’m interested in.
ITV hasn’t really featured in my thoughts recently, but now two things have happened that sort of cancel each other out. Let me explain.
The Good ITV shows are now available on iTunes. Get your hands on Cold Feet (yay!) or Lewis (uh…) and that’s about it at the moment. But shows are being added all the time, and this makes me happy. And very, very poor.
Podcasting News » LonelyGirl15 Creators Get $5 Million For EQAL Startup
I both love and hate LonelyGirl15 at the same time. It’s an interesting mix!
Podcasting News » Audience For Audio, Video Podcasts Way Up
Everyone loves a good set of stats.
Quelle horreur! How can the French Eurovision song be in English?
It irks me when songs have both English and their native language in there. Pick one and stick to it.
Seth’s Blog: Write like a blogger
Surely everybody does have a blog, don’t they?
Podcasting News » Watch Twice As Many YouTube Videos
I just have one question - why?
EastEnders - Soap Scoop - ‘Enders begin filming in Weymouth - Digital Spy
Bit different from their original plan of Spain. No way the weather will hold.
Daisy Whitney » Blog Archive » New Media Minute 3.31.08
An interesting look at the demographics, but doesn’t this just prove that you can never really rely on stats THAT much?
US TV - News - Ioan Gruffudd joins US drama pilot - Digital Spy
Mmmm, yum.
I have been putting off writing this blog entry for a long time because, well, basically because it means admitting that I watch Dawson’s Creek.
Before you laugh at me, I’m going to tell you a little story.
I used to watch it when it was on originally, I saw the first few series, then it moved to Five. At the time, I couldn’t get Five, it was a snowstorm of Dawson’s head with no sound. Wonderful.
TV Scoop: TV Review - Sleeping with my Sister, Channel 4, Thursday, March 27, 9pm (Link retired)
I didn’t watch it, and to be honest, it creeps me out a bit.
Eastenders: HILARIOUS!!! Bianca’s Jackson Five Spoof Video - Unreality Primetime (Link retired)
Clearly the singing leaves something to be desired, but now the song is stuck in my head.
10 Millionth Article Written on Wikipedia
I don’t know why, but I would have thought more than 2.3 million of them were English.
I don’t actually watch Eastenders, but I have had a look at the YouTube clips associated with this story.
So, Eastenders featured a buried alive storyline. Max Branning (who?) apparently cheated on Tania Branning (who?) and she got her revenge by burying him alive. This was something he was particularly afraid of.
She and her new boyfriend dug a grave, put him in a coffin in the hole and left him there.
I was going to write a post about the ITV player, and how it’s new and improved and could start rivalling the iPlayer.
But then Channel 4 released some shows onto iTunes and I forgot about everything else.
The most important thing to note is that I have now given up buying a TV Guide, and I’m relying on TV blogs to tell me what to watch, and I’m relying on the internet to allow me to watch it.
First the iPlayer, and now iTunes.
Finally, the BBC have allowed their programmes to be on the iTunes store. It’s only a select few at the moment, and only one that I’m particularly interested in, but this is a revolutionary moment.
I understand that there are limitations and conflicts with the BBC’s charter – they can’t charge us for content when we pay our licence fee, can they? But I believe buying from iTunes is no different to buying a DVD and there are hundreds of BBC DVD titles to choose from.
I posted recently about the brilliance of the iPlayer and how it had revolutionised my television viewing experience.
Well.
I take it back.
After booting up my laptop today, I opened the iPlayer Download Manager only to find a message suggesting I did not have anything to watch.
Except that is a blatant lie, because I have been quite happily downloading things for the past few weeks. I’ve been storing up some episodes of things so I can watch them all together. To find they have all gone is not exactly what I was hoping for.
In the good old days, I used to enjoy television at Christmas. Actually, let’s rephrase that, I used to enjoy television full stop.
My dad has always been one for guessing plot lines before they happen, working out the twists, the jokes, even the next words out of an actor’s mouth. It was quite annoying, but I guess if you can see these things, you want to share them.
Since we started podcasting, specifically video podcasting, we have been studying television programmes and production in general to see what we do that’s the same, what we don’t want to be doing, and where we need to head in the future.
My inaugural post as a somewhat techie blogger must be about the BBC iPlayer. I have been using it for about a week now and I’ve formed some initial impressions.
Firstly, confusion reigned supreme. Back when the iPlayer was announced, I quite obviously checked it out. Having TV accessible via the Internet is something I am keeping a close eye on, and I have strong views about the BBC as well. Mix the two together and you could end up with the perfect cocktail. However, the original iteration of the iPlayer was a closed Beta that I couldn’t get into. The second iteration saw me unable to participate due to Vista - yet another thing I have to punch Vista in the face for.
A few years ago, my friend and I would spend a lot of time watching University Challenge.
We would shout out all kinds of crazy answers, the first things that came into our heads, and very occasionally, we’d get the answer right. We would count up our scores and be chuffed if we got five between us out of a half hour programme of questions.
You see, the thing with this quiz show, is that the questions are so complicated, that I’ve usually forgotten the beginning by the time they get to the end. And it’s very rare that I actually know the answer to a question.
I think there was a programme on the BBC called It’s Not Easy Being Green. I didn’t watch it but I am currently reading the book, and it’s brilliant.
It’s all about a family who gave up their home and moved to Cornwall, to set up a much more eco-friendly life. They didn’t give themselves up to the land or anything, and are still normal people with jobs and lives, but they are “reducing their eco-footprint on the world”.
We have now officially started a new day!
I was thinking, earlier, about how rubbish television is. I love watching it and I spend much too much time in front of that grey box in the corner of my living room, but it’s actually getting quite predictable.
The thing that most dramas are based on know is the lack of communication. The only way soaps can have so many bust ups between characters and so many love affairs and relationship crises, is that they never talk to each other. Nobody does.
Last weekend, I had to catch up with all the television that I had recorded whilst we were on holiday and the recovering week.
I basically spent all afternoon watching different dramas. I was busy doing other things at the same time, so it’s not like I wasted an afternoon or anything, but it was a lot of television.
So many different stories appeared on the screen, that they started to merge together.
I think I’ve told you about how I read the entire first season of LOST through transcripts before it was aired in the UK. This wasn’t the cleverest thing for me to do, because I was discussing each episode with a colleague of mine and suddenly started getting confused with what I had seen and what I had read. I stopped watching, but kept up the pretence of talking about the show without actually saying anything.
You know, I was so excited that Big Brother was back on our screens. Looking forward to the opening credits, to seeing the lunatics they’ve picked out and, of course, the new diary room chair.
A few days in, and I’m bored.
It’s not the people, though, I think previously, they would have been very entertaining. It’s me. I’ve changed.
It makes me so angry when they won’t listen to each other and end up arguing over nothing. I wish they would just take a step back and see what is actually being said.
I watched the first episode of the second series of LOST. I thought about staying up to watch the second one but midnight was just a little bit too late for me. Anyway, you know what it’s like, by the time you actually get to bed and get to sleep, time is ticking on.
That means, this morning I am tired. I set the alarm to get up to go to the gym, but went straight back to bed. Another hour’s sleep.
Last weekend, whilst watching the few remaining episodes of Baywatch that we had stored, I thought to myself “That’s two days of my life, cooped up inside.” Although it was brilliant fun and I absolutely adore Baywatch, having done the exact same thing for the previous three weekends as well, I was starting to think maybe there was something else I could be doing with my free time.
Now Baywatch seems to have been taken off the air so we have an entire weekend to fill, and no idea what to do with it.
UKTV Gold have been playing repeats of Baywatch. Man, I love this show. I think I got into it when I saw my brother watching it, but that wouldn’t have been until about the seventh or eighth series. We’ve been watching the first series. It was on every weekday, so I recorded them all up and we’ve been settling down to watch them at weekends.
Five hours of Baywatch certainly sucks up a lot of time. It’s totally worth it, of course, but there’s always a niggling doubt that I could be doing something better with my time.
Overheard today:
“Is it just me or are you completely bored about the whole George Best in hospital saga?”
“I haven’t really heard that much about it, I don’t watch the news.”
“I mean, honestly, he’s back in hospital, he’s on a life support machine, he’s in a coma. Aren’t there any real newsworthy stories to report on?”
And that’s the thing. There aren’t. Not when you have to fill up an entire 24 hours of news. It’s easier for the hourly news programmes on the regular channels, because they can just pick the best of what their longer cousins on the 24 hour news channels have reported. But to have to think up news to fill every second of the day must be incredibly hard. It’s no wonder that things like George Best’s ailing condition, and Elaine Lorden collapsing in the jungle, get hours and hours of speculation and guest interviews with very little facts.
It’s new. I like things that are shiny and new. It has a TV guide within it that is actually correct. Our previous Freeview box kept losing the time and would show us a guide for the following day. Not very helpful. Within said TV Guide, you can schedule a recording with one click. It doesn’t always work and I’ve yet to figure out why it is so selective, but when it does, it’s pretty fabulous. You can rewind live television. As soon as you change channels, it begins recording what you are watching for up to half an hour. No more “What did she just say?” You can pause live television. You can pause live television whilst you are recording something else. Now that is clever. There’s no more worrying about only having three hours on a tape, or whether you are recording over something important. We’ve got 40ish hours before you even need to think about deleting anything. It completely revolutionises my evenings. Instead of scheduling things around my television guide, I can just record everything and watch it at my leisure. (Sometimes, when I write things down, I suddenly realise how much I really do need to get a life!) It had the facility for Top Up TV, which means we just had to get it. We can’t have potential being unfulfilled now, can we? I watched Entertainment Tonight! This has nothing to do with the PVR, but I was quite excited about it.
I just watched The Hoobs (absolutely rubbish, potato printing is so not what kids these days want to do), and I realised that one of the Hoobs is voiced by the same guy that voices one of the Hyenas in Ministry of Mayhem.
I need to get out more.
Three things I need to admit to before I start this post:
I didn’t know there was such a thing as the Stirling Prize before we caught the awards on television. We only watched two and a half out of the six entrants I am biased towards all things F1 So, flicking through the channels, we stumbled across Kevin McLoud. I got all excited, thinking a new series of Grand Designs had started without me knowing, but soon realised it was actually coverage of the Stirling Prize announcement. The Scottish Parliament building won.
Jo Whiley on Radio 1 is starting a campaign to stop people watching television for one week. It’s part of her ‘I Have Never’ slot which is there to get people doing things they would never normally dream of, getting them to engage with other people (I have never given a flower to a stranger), getting them to embrace new things (I have never been to see a band I’ve never heard of) and that kind of life-enhancing thing.
Extras I really liked this. Lots of people and a hell of a lot of critics have been whining about its similarities to The Office but it not being as funny. I think you have to take this show as it was intended. It’s similar to The Office, in that it makes you cringe and the people won’t shut up when they really should. But I think that’s where the similarities end.
I watched the first three episodes of LOST on E4 last night, and I just have a couple of questions.
Given the acres and acres of ocean that they were flying over, what exactly are the odds of the plane crash landing on the island itself and not in the water? What are the programme makers going to do if the show is infinitely successful but people start leaving? There’s no way to bring in fresh blood on a deserted island. What, another plane just happens to crash? Or, a tribal village that no one spotted for the previous however many series'? Why does no one seem to care that a loved one has died? They were all either travelling alone or the person that matters to them has survived with them? How convenient. Why does whatever is making that noise in the forest, sound like it belongs on Jurassic Park?
Last year, the Technophobe and I gossiped at the water cooler about Big Brother. That’s right, he knows how to use a television. Actually, we didn’t do that because the water cooler is the other side of the office and we sit next to each other anyway, so that would have been silly. We would predict nominations and evictions, gossip about the housemates and bitch about those that were driving us crazy. It was always a race in the morning to see who could say “Did you see it last night?” first. And whoever did would then launch into an over-zealous opinion of the previous nights events.
I’m disappointed. My television has disappointed me. I’ve been watching the new series of Cutting It with interest as the writing has been superb and the acting first class. The storyline with Allie finding out she has cancer was done brilliantly.
I read an interview with her in a TV guide and she said she was leaving so I said to Mr C “She’s definitely dying of the cancer.”
He said: “How do you know?”
I mentioned previously that whenever I vote for something, it has the opposite effect than what I’m aiming for, so I’m not voting for anything ever again. Remember that? Well, since I went and sat in front of the television, Andy Murray has gone from two sets up to playing catch up in the fifth set. This is ridiculous. Does that mean I can’t watch tennis anymore either because they’ll all lose? What if I pretend to start rooting for the other guy… will I fool it? Either way, I couldn’t bear to watch anymore.
Dear Strictly Dance Fever people,
Are you freaking kidding me with this? Sadie and Joseph? No. I know they’re brilliant choreographers but Danny and Jodie should have won.
Dear Big Brother people,
Why kick out dear ol’ Mary when you could have kicked out boring Craig? I mean, at least Mary was interesting (if a little too interesting) at times. Craig has done nothing but sit around and bitch about the other housemates without really taking the time to get to know them.
I’m often told that if I’m going to watch television so much, I should take the time to watch educational programmes instead of Emmerdale and ER and such.
I’m all for learning about stuff. I thought Journey Of Life was excellent, although some might think that a TV vet should probably stick to what he knows best and not try to be a presenter. I also started to really enjoy Adam Hart Davis and his What The [insert particular era here, ie, Romans] Taught Us, but that finished a few weeks ago. Given all this good education I’ve been getting, I thought I would give the BBC’s tale of Genghis Khan a go. Did not approve.
…and then ruin it with an annoying Irishman in a ridiculous suit.
I’m probably not the only one who’s going to comment on this but I just wanted to mention how funny it was that the BBC finally got their brand new Doctor Who series up and running, after much hype and speculation, and they managed to ruin the tension of the first five minutes by fading up and down Graham Norton’s annoying voice from the previous program.
The guy that rattles his change in his pockets incessantly. I don’t care how much money you have or haven’t got on you so please find a less irritating nervous habit. The people in Holby City that use their mobile phones all the time - even the doctors! This is not a good message to send out to your viewers. In ER, the only time I’ve ever seen reference to a mobile phone is when Carter switched his on as he was exiting the building, not while he was stood next to someone’s life-support machine. Jamelia’s song DJ. The lyrics are: “DJ, give me a beat I can rock to, I want a joint you can drop to, the ceiling is caving in, the speakers is rumbling.” The speakers are rumbling, love. It would make no difference to the timing or to the meaning of the sentence but would be grammatically correct. That I had one good thing to write on this Wind Me Up but I put the other three first so that I wouldn’t forget them and have promptly forgotten the original idea. Dammit!
I’m not watching X Factor anymore, due to its descent from a decent talent contest into what is essentially a forum for Sharon Osbourne and Simon Cowell to bicker with each other. Not good television. And Kate Thornton is just too strict, making sure everyone is in their place - sometimes with live TV, you just have to just go with the flow - take a leaf out of Davina’s book, okay?
I really thought this post wouldn’t happen for quite some time. It’s inevitable every year, but I thought I still had a few weeks left, at least.
Doing the shopping today, I was surprised to find Halloween goodies decorating the entrance to the store. Orange and black was the main theme throughout and I suddenly realised that yes, it is October already. Pushing my trolley through the wonderland, with children getting excited over face paint, dangling skeletons and witchy broomsticks, parents trying to hurry them on while secretly enjoying their enthusiasm, and older children pretending not to be interested, I was about to reminisce over a time when I thought Halloween was a marvellous treat. But then the shade of orange turned noticeably red, the pumpkins and fancy dress outfits disappeared and I was confronted with Christmas Cards, wrapping paper and a Santa Hat. What is wrong with this country?
Okay, I have been proclaiming several things as rubbish the past couple of days and every time I have been proved wrong. The most important one is the new comedy Green Wing which has just begun on Channel 4 and stars a whole host of comedians. The adverts didn’t really get me chuckling and I was determined that it was going to be rubbish, but when we sat down to watch it, couldn’t stop laughing. So yes, I was wrong.
I’ve had a much better day today, although I’m still annoyed at the lack of anything decent to watch on TV. However, in the meantime, there are only 18 days left until The Sims 2 comes out and I can hardly wait.
And I’d just like to say, even though I don’t watch Eastenders anymore, having Martin cheat on Sonia just weeks after they’ve got married is not on and not believable.
I made an iMix but half the songs aren’t in the music store.
I’ve been bitten a million times - AGAIN - and it itches and it hurts and I hate it.
I started watching Nip/Tuck, but didn’t think it was very good. I watched the first ten minutes of Ny-Lon but thought that was rubbish too. Where’s all the good TV gone?
