Briefings - David Attenborough
Probably as out of step these days as you could be and with several BBC Directors looking on in the front row this is a sober and welcome reminder of Reithian/Carleton Green values from the BBC’s longest serving employee (1952 and counting)
This lecture from David Attenborough and commissioned by the BBC as part of Ofcom’s [...]
The Age of Terror: The Paris Plot
Did you know this? Did you know that Algerian Islamists planned and set out on a 9/11-style attack on Paris in 1994? Did you know that the plane actually made it into French aerospace and onto French soil? Did you know that the terrorists shot and killed three passengers and were subsequently killed themselves when [...]
Basil Brush
I’m just going to say it: Basil Brush is brilliant. Funny, fast-paced, clever and cheeky. The canned laughter is weirdly appropriate, the funny sound and video effects make the thing seem really contemporary, and the super-ironic scripts respect the parents watching. Basil, a very small fox as I’m sure you’ll remember, has been integrated into [...]
Humphrey Lyttelton, 1921—2008
Humphrey Lyttelton, who died earlier this evening, loved Buddy Bolden, a troubled, almost mythical jazz trumpeter from turn-of-the-century New Orleans. In his later life, Humph attempted a kind of reconstruction of Bolden’s music, which can’t have been easy because it was never recorded in his lifetime. I’d like to have featured one of Humph’s Bolden [...]
The Holy Show
Terrific documentary about an Irish Catholic priest with a secret. The anchor for the story is the 16mm footage taken by student film maker Alison Millar years before the secret was revealed. The story has drama, pathos, humour and some truth about Irish society. The film is a BBC Northern Ireland/RTE co-production.
Carrie and David’s Popshop
I like this a lot. I think Carrie and David are telling us they take kids’ media seriously. They’ve made the scary transition from primetime to daytime to playtime and the result is clever and life-enhancing: a show encouraging little kids to sing and dance and make music. Of course, I could be wrong. The [...]
Doctor Who Confidential
I can’t remember exactly when we acquired a taste for this kind of ‘making of’ material. Was it when DVDs came along with all that extra room for stuff? Or was it something to do with the gaping maw of multichannel TV and the pressing need for hundreds of extra hours of programming? Or—bit more [...]
Richard Feynman: The Pleasure of Finding Things Out
Here he is: Feynman. Sooner or later he was going to show up wasn’t he? Here’s a famous Horizon about the legendary physicist/communicator from 1981, the year I did my A-levels. Why didn’t anyone show me this video at school? Why did his name never even come up? Did I choose the wrong school? The [...]
Reyner Banham loves Los Angeles
In heated staff meetings here at Watchification HQ, usually over custard creams in Charlie Drake (we’ve named the conference rooms after TV stars of old), we’ve been wondering how to develop the site. We’ve been talking about looking beyond iPlayer for full-length programmes to embed here. It’s tricky because the other mainstream broadcasters haven’t got [...]
Newsnight: the London Mayoral debate
I’m all in favour of elected Mayors. They really brighten up a city’s politics. Last night’s Newsnight debate between the three top candidates was a democratic treat but also really good, knockabout entertainment. Paddick couldn’t have looked more like a copper if he’d been swinging a truncheon (it’s the ramrod back and shiny shoes) and [...]
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