Factory: Manchester from Joy Division to Happy Mondays
It’s easy to tell how old the people running British TV are these days: they’re all my age. I know this because they keep commissioning programmes about the music and culture of their formative years, which are my formative years. Here’s a great big (seriously: it’s an hour-and-a-half long) piece of Manchester mythography: a documentary [...]
Maestro: Baton Camp
Peter Bazalgette, who runs one of the biggest producers of reality TV in Britain, said not long ago that whinging about reality TV is pointless: “it’s just one of the ways we do things now”. Here’s a good example: a really excellent slice of Reithian factual telly delivered as a gameshow using a reality format. [...]
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Here he is, like a priapic Max Wall. Fascinating and dark and sexy in a sort of seedy Edwardian way. You wouldn’t want him in the house, though, would you? He might pee on the carpet or drink all the sherry and expose himself. Or maybe he’s as straight as a tax inspector. I don’t [...]
Eurovision Song Contest 2008
I didn’t want to put this one up. I was pretty sure one of the others would. And it’s quite difficult to express why it’s so interesting. I mean, it’s bloody Eurovision, right? A shocking, irrelevant Euro-pudding from the wrong end of the Seventies. How could it possibly be interesting? And then when you try [...]
Made in England by Seth Lakeman
Entirely satisfactory clash-of-cultures music doc from Devon folkie Seth Lakeman and Brummie hip-hop crew Moorish Delta 7 (MD7). Creativity and curiosity on both sides make for a thoroughly convincing ‘mash-up’ (I think that’s what the young people call this sort of thing). Heartwarming. (Sorry, only two days to go on this one. Thought it was [...]
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