Re: The all-singing, all-dancing TV thread - Part Three : Thu Jul 04, 2013 11:53 am  

Sounds like television was on a roll last night.

Prof Alice Roberts was in fine form on Horizon : What Makes Us Human?

Sadly BBC2 pitched it up against the squawking mob that is The Apprentice, so it won't have drawn anything like the audience it deserved.

Re: The all-singing, all-dancing TV thread - Part Three : Thu Jul 04, 2013 12:14 pm  

Andy Gilder wrote:

Sounds like television was on a roll last night.

Prof Alice Roberts was in fine form on Horizon : What Makes Us Human?

Sadly BBC2 pitched it up against the squawking mob that is The Apprentice, so it won't have drawn anything like the audience it deserved.

I used to like her when she was on Coast.
Unlike Nicholas Crane who has an amazing ability to dull even the most interesting of topics and always ended every sentence with a s l o w i n g EMPHASIS.
Don't get me started on his trademark umbrella sticking out of his rucksack ... big nancy.

Re: The all-singing, all-dancing TV thread - Part Three : Sun Jul 07, 2013 12:05 pm  

Not available on iPlayer yet (possibly ever) but last night's In The Loop was classic Ianucci, Peter Capaldi as Malcolm Tucker and James Gandolfini as Lt Gen George Miller

Re: The all-singing, all-dancing TV thread - Part Three : Tue Jul 16, 2013 7:29 am  

Watched the Piper Alpha documentary, Fire In The Night, that I'd recorded from last week.
Very good if not seen.
The survivors interviewed (only 61 out of 228) mainly Jocks and Geordies (industrial gypsies), talked movingly of the nights events about the friends and workmates who never made it through that night.
Admittedly, you'd never be the same again after an event such as that, would you?

Also watched last weeks, The Murder Trial on C4.
Found it very engrossing from a layperson's perspective although our resident lawyer will probably dispute this if he viewed it.

Re: The all-singing, all-dancing TV thread - Part Three : Tue Jul 16, 2013 8:27 am  

WIZEB wrote:

Watched the Piper Alpha documentary, Fire In The Night, that I'd recorded from last week.
Very good if not seen.
The survivors interviewed (only 61 out of 228) mainly Jocks and Geordies (industrial gypsies), talked movingly of the nights events about the friends and workmates who never made it through that night.
Admittedly, you'd never be the same again after an event such as that, would you?

Also watched last weeks, The Murder Trial on C4.
Found it very engrossing from a layperson's perspective although our resident lawyer will probably dispute this if he viewed it.

Working in electrical contracting in the north east in the late 70's you'd be lucky to hang onto a decent Approved Electrician and if you did you just knew it was because his wife wouldn't let him go on the rigs

From memory the rates they were paying, even for the on-shore work in places like Hartlepool was at least three times what the £5.70 (ish) we paid as the JIB hourly rate, I knew of several electricians who paid off their mortgages after a year or two of offshore shifts and the risk of death from helicopter or explosion or plain and simple falling off the bloody things was just par for the course - and I won't even mention the diver who used to stay at the pub I lived at when he was onshore, that bloke was convinced that his next trip would be his last.

Re: The all-singing, all-dancing TV thread - Part Three : Tue Jul 16, 2013 8:42 am  

JerryChicken wrote:

Working in electrical contracting in the north east in the late 70's you'd be lucky to hang onto a decent Approved Electrician and if you did you just knew it was because his wife wouldn't let him go on the rigs

From memory the rates they were paying, even for the on-shore work in places like Hartlepool was at least three times what the £5.70 (ish) we paid as the JIB hourly rate, I knew of several electricians who paid off their mortgages after a year or two of offshore shifts and the risk of death from helicopter or explosion or plain and simple falling off the bloody things was just par for the course - and I won't even mention the diver who used to stay at the pub I lived at when he was onshore, that bloke was convinced that his next trip would be his last.

Some of them jumped 175ft from the helideck when all other options had ceased.
One of the guys said after jumping he found a co-worker in the water with a life jacket on.
Said he was face down, dead, and contemplated relieving him of his jacket but couldn't do it out of deference and respect for the colleague.
Just kept hold of the body and made his way away from the blazing inferno.
Said he never attempted to look at it's face in case it was one of his close friends.

Re: The all-singing, all-dancing TV thread - Part Three : Tue Jul 16, 2013 3:30 pm  

WIZEB wrote:

..

Also watched last weeks, The Murder Trial on C4.
Found it very engrossing from a layperson's perspective although our resident lawyer will probably dispute this if he viewed it.

I'm not saying there might never be some strange exception, but the very thought of sitting through the tedium of a trial unless getting paid to do so is just nuts. I read a brief review that in the end, they actually only showed a very edited version, and then put music to accompany etc. Even so it must've been as dull as ditchwater, but then I'm told a sizeable number of people waste a not inconsiderable slice of their waking lives engrossed in endless, turgid, banal drivel like Big Brother, or IAC, so the mind-numbing clearly fills some sort of basic need.

At least at the end, someone might really go to jail for life, so I can see that bit being intriguing. Could you have a wager on betfair?

Re: The all-singing, all-dancing TV thread - Part Three : Tue Jul 16, 2013 4:23 pm  

El Barbudo wrote:

I think he <Count Arthur Strong> must be a "Marmite" performer because whilst I loved his various Radio 4 series and would roar with laughter at them, La Senora would be looking at me totally mystified, she simply just didn't "get" him.

Harry Worth was just a gentle blunderer, whereas Arthur Strong has a snobbily inflated sense of self-importance.

I'll give the TV a go but, as with many other transfers, it might not work.

I gave Episode One a go ... not brilliant.
I also gave Episode Two a go ... better but a long way short of unmissable.

Episode Three will be the last chance.

Re: The all-singing, all-dancing TV thread - Part Three : Tue Jul 16, 2013 4:37 pm  

I'm not much of a telly person - well, outside sport - but I 'discovered' a show I enjoy a few weeks ago: The Borgias: great fun, without insulting the intelligence.

Re: The all-singing, all-dancing TV thread - Part Three : Tue Jul 16, 2013 5:42 pm  

Ferocious Aardvark wrote:

I'm not saying there might never be some strange exception, but the very thought of sitting through the tedium of a trial unless getting paid to do so is just nuts. I read a brief review that in the end, they actually only showed a very edited version, and then put music to accompany etc. Even so it must've been as dull as ditchwater, but then I'm told a sizeable number of people waste a not inconsiderable slice of their waking lives engrossed in endless, turgid, banal drivel like Big Brother, or IAC, so the mind-numbing clearly fills some sort of basic need.

Agreed, some can even get an annual hard-on watching the mother of all all abhorrations the Eurovision Song Contest.
Now that is banal drivel.
Complete and utter sh!te.

At least at the end, someone might really go to jail for life, so I can see that bit being intriguing. Could you have a wager on betfair?

Glad there weren't any bookies giving odds on it.
I'd have done my bollox in as per usual.
I thought he was walking until the judge said take him down.