After spending 3 years trying to write a thesis on Paradise Lost, Iannucci is a great foil for Milton, dissecting the poet’s works with interesting interviews with people faced with similar issues. Iannucci is basically the best English teacher in the world, enthusing about topics unknown, travelling around London and England, and ranting around what looks like an abandoned BBC office floor.

Are you tired of linear, non-interactive television, Mr Adams?

Bearing in mind that although much of the ‘browsing’ mechanism feels familiar and obvious, this documentary was created in 1990. That’s two years before the first web browser. The internet was a very different place then.

This was not only cutting-edge for its time, it was remarkably prescient.

This programme explores one of the major issues in Filipino life: the strength of the Catholic church, versus the need for sex education and control the exploding population. However, just the portrayal of daily life so different from that in the UK makes this worth watching.

I’ve complained before about the ever-increasing repeats on the BBC – normally with ruses similar to this spin-off programme. However, taking a story from the main programme on the Philippines and exploring it to the depth needed represents a clever use of multi-channel and digital TV delivery.

The Money Programme has been running a special series of programmes about the media, including this episode looking at the business of TV, something that the UK excels at. Specifically, we’re good at creating and selling formats – a complete programme recipe that can hopefully be translated to other countries. There’s a programme bible, which includes everything from specific editing, sound and lighting directions through to, tellingly, how to pick the “real people” to appear in the show. The Millionaire Bible includes that the top prize money must be ‘life changing’: a million pounds in the UK, but just 50,000€ in Kosovo and Albania – which still represents twenty times the average salary there.

My favourite interpretation of a format was Affari Tuoi, the Italian version of Deal or No Deal. The show seems to last for hours, there are gag prizes as well as money, but the presenter, Flavio Insinna (now replaced by Max Giusti) was genuinely charming, and everyone on the show seemed to be having a great time, compared to the tension-ratcheting we get in the UK, and the smarmy, slightly evil Noel Edmonds.

Meanwhile, ITV have trotted out its new Saturday night gameshow, The Colour of Money, all formatted up and ready to be sold, probably including the gurning Chris Tarrant. It’s the complete opposite of Millionaire – it’s a random game, but with personalities, a backstory (husband going in the army), rationalisations about colour decisions (the game revolves around 20 ‘cash machines’, each named after a colour), reaction interviews with seemingly everyone in the studio, heavily edited ad bumpers showing crying, fear etc. Blimey, there’s even fireworks if they hit their arbitrary money target, in this first case £64,000 – not completely life changing. It all feels a bit pointless, with contestants and their families wheeled on and off so quickly there’s no empathy, and therefore, no show.

Lex van Dam is clearly an interesting chap. He’s either very confident in his ability to train normal people how to make money in an amateur hedge fund  that he’ll risk his money to proove a point, or he’s one of those worryingly rich people for whom losing a million (even if it’s only a million dollars) doesn’t really matter. Maybe he’s mad. Either way, it makes for surprisingly good television.

It’s better than regular Reality TV fare too. It’s easy to care for the characters (I particularly find myself rooting for the cage fighting promote, Emile) and the direction always seems compassionate, never mocking or exploitative.

I’ve embedded the second of the three episodes, so if you’d prefer to start from the beginning, and/or really want to know what happened next, here are links to episodes one, two and three.

It’s amazing to see how quickly (and how late) the elements are put together, with items still being changed 4 days before the premiere. It’s also nice to see some of the supporting artists, and seeing how they work – the lighting designer, the choreologist (and the first time I’ve seen Laban notation being used). Everyone’s so passionate about their professions, and how they all come together to make something new, and special.

In terms of the choreography, there’s something interesting in how a vocabulary of movement is first developed with the dancers – who aren’t used to working with such an evolving piece, nor are used to this range of movements. Wayne McGregor is interested in their muscle memory – as ballet dancers, they’re etched with the previous works they’ve performed, and so the piece is more balletic than I’ve seen in a lot of contemporary dance.

Here’s an interesting interview with Jayanti.