London
Michael Smith’s Drivetime
“We shape our technologies, then they shape us.” After enjoying the repeats of Michael Smith’s Citizen Smith series, he’s been commissioned on another journey round the UK, this time focussing on cars, motoring and driving. Previous BBC4 seasons on buses, trains, public transport have provided much nostalgia for the typical BBC4 viewer, even sojourns into [...]
London to Brighton in four minutes
A TV classic, these little films pop up on BBC4 from time to time, in far better quality than the youtube versions. Good to see iplayer access for them.
Shopping for England
What a lovely, fascinating, useful programme. Proper scholarship (from Mica Nava, a clever historian who was once, in the distant past, my boss for a short while), great stories and really interesting and relevant insights into the translation of Britain from 19th Century manufacturing powerhouse into 20th Century shopaholic paradise. The two big names featured [...]
London to Brighton Side by Side
If there was a channel that showed only speeded-up movies filmed from the cab of a train I would watch it. Here are two films from thirty years apart (1953 and 1983), screened side-by-side, and both shot from the cab of a London-Brighton train. Mesmerising.
Under Night Streets: BBC4
I haven’t seen enough pre-1960s british documentaries to say how widespread this might be, but the use of voiceover in Under Night Streets, a 1958 documentary about the Underground’s 800 night shift workers, to create a narrative over the pictures seems to be straight out of Billy Wilder’s 1950 Sunset Boulevard. Not only does our [...]
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