Watchification » bbc3

Glastonbury 2008: Jay-Z

beeker — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 09:33:39 +0000

Jay-Z going down in Glastonbury history last night. The thought of it’s still making my skin tingle.

Cut to 29.25 if you want pure Jigga (although Dizzee Rascal with Calvin Harris at 13.30 is worth a look too).

Broken Flowers

Steve Bowbrick — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 22:48:10 +0000

Blimey. A Jim Jarmusch movie on iPlayer. I missed it when it went out so you’ve only got a couple of days to watch it. Still, it’s got to be better than Northern Irish tiger worriers. Jarmusch’s second proper movie, which was his big break, Down by Law, came out while I was (nominally) studying film and photography at Central London Poly in the mid-eighties. It made a big impact.

All my trendy friends thought it was the the best thing ever (some of them even went out and acquired elaborate quiffs) but I was suspicious. I thought it was all so much post-punk artifice. Really a phoney-baloney pseudo-existentialist non-story. I still think I’m right (tell me I’m not right). But Jarmusch has mellowed and now there’s real human stuff going on in his movies—albeit muted and kind of awkward.

I really enjoyed Broken Flowers (which came out in 2005) but I’m not 100% sure it’s not Bill Murray I’m enjoying. He’s got a real melancholy grandeur. About half-an-hour in, not long after his latest girlfriend has left him, he sits alone in his impeccably art-directed living room and tries to drink a glass of Champagne but just can’t. It’s beautiful. Anyway, I’d better shut up and save this post otherwise you’ll have no time to watch the thing. Over and out.

Delta Forever

roo — Fri, 23 May 2008 19:43:12 +0000

I must confess that I plucked this at random out of the ‘sitcoms‘ section on iPlayer, not having seen or heard anything about it, so I wasn’t expecting much. I was pleasantly surprised by it though. It sort of crept up on me and by the end I was really impressed with the cast and writing, despite it having five writers. Normally a worrying feature for anything except quizzes and sketch shows. Both my wife and I found myself looking forward to the next one in quite a big way. In the sort of would-put-it-on-right-now way that you often get with a DVD box set of something you really love. I’ll have to wait til next week though.

You might recognise Antonia Campbell-Hughes (who plays the spookily frosty ‘Miranda’, and was recently in the Jack Dee comedy ‘Lead Ballooon‘. Did you know she’s also a fashion designer?), Alex MacQueen (who plays ‘Alex’ the PR git. You’ll recognise him from The Thick Of It), Ophelia Lovibond (who plays ‘Roxy’. Ms Lovibond was recently in the film ‘Popcorn‘ apparently) and Greg McHugh (the comedian and actor who plays the intense and brilliantly named ‘Guantanamo Ray’ character).

It’s an incredibly good bit of Harry Potter YouTube generation new media yoof satire. It’s not Nathan Barley, but you’ll like it. Watch it now, honestly, while it’s still there.

Ideal

Steve Bowbrick — Fri, 16 May 2008 22:38:02 +0000

Graham Duff’s Ideal is a kind of hermetically-sealed sitcom. It’s all about the four walls of drug dealer Moz’s nasty flat. It’s claustrophobic and quite dark. I mean literally dark. No natural light (not even the simulated kind) shall fall on these sticky carpets and collapsing armchairs. It reminds me of Eraserhead—which sounds like a bit of a stretch I know—but also Hancock: studiobound comic miserabilism. In fact it’s like Samuel Beckett: bleak, purposeless and very funny. Really.

Doctor Who Confidential

Steve Bowbrick — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 09:17:53 +0000

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 of a stretch this one—is it a symptom of our increasing media literacy: would a peep behind the cameras just have confused us if we’d seen it in 1968 or 1978? In our house we still ask each other ‘what side is that show on?’ which is a phrase that I think recalls the moment when British TV acquired a second channel in 1954.

The revelation of the ‘making of’—which seems obvious now—is that there’s so much of interest in the process of making TV shows (in the making of anything for that matter) and, consequently, so much useful content locked up there. TV executives would call this kind of programming ‘efficient exploitation of assets’. Geeks and media professors might call it ‘meta-content’—content about content—and I find myself wondering just how many levels down you could actually go. Would Doctor Who Confidential support a ‘making of’ of its own?

Gavin and Stacey, Season 2, Episode 4

anne — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 19:19:57 +0000

The second series of Gavin and Stacey has already had a mention here, but last night’s episode deserves another plug for being particularly fine. The characters live in a wonderful place, somewhere between surreal and utterly mundane. The wonderful oven glove scene seemed familiar and yet extraordinary.

Gavin and Stacey – Season 2, Episode 1

jemstone — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 13:56:34 +0000

Well this is effectively a modern “Bob and Thelma” following the same classic UK sitcom wedding arc. Smiffy and Gavin (and Bryn) explore male friendship just as effectively as Bob and Terry. James Corden and Ruth Jones get all the best lines, probably because they wrote them. However, jokes about badminton lessons, the Elm Lodge housing estate and proto Thatcherite/aspirational middle/working class tensions mysteriously absent.

Episode 2 has the funniest gag about Hear’Say I’ve ever heard mind.