Rolling BBC iPlayer Thread 2010

I just accidentally flipped to this last night and it was AWESOME!

Jonathan Meades: Off Kilter - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00mrbdt

There are two more parts coming up, all about Scotland's architecture. I had never heard of Meades before but he is dryer than the Sahara, hilarious as hell, and unapologetically poetic. The first episode is all about Aberdeen. It was just so well-made and inventive - the music was astonishingly great - "Sugar Daddy" by Secret Knowledge, Fad Gadget, Gotan Project..

I loved his gleeful, deadpan thrashing of basically all Aberdeen architecture since the 1980s. And his completely fictional description of the plans for "Trumpton-on-Sea".

His most devastating put-down: "It's not even trashy."

This was shown on BBC4 last year. It's a very thought provoking series.

> I had never heard of Meades before

he's done a lot over the years.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jonathan-Meades-Collection-DVD/dp/B001110H14

there's a hell of a lot missing from that, apparently he did 50 shows between '89 and its release. i'm thinking of the nazi german architecture one he did.

i preferred him when he was fat 8)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1527642/

Jerry Building: Unholy Relics of Nazi Germany (1994)

i preferred him when he was fat

Yup. The Abroad and Further Abroad programmes were largely great. I'm trying to remember where the prog he did all about pigs fitted in. Love to see that again.

the aberdeen one is the best of this series

this is a week of discovery for you tracer! have you heard of paul merton?

he's on tv like eight times a week, of course I've heard of him!

just kiddin ;)

> I'm trying to remember where the prog he did all about pigs fitted in.

"Further Abroad" The Truth About Porkies (1994)

no further details unfortunately. i vaguely remember it. i am hearing robert wyatt's 'Pigs'.

i'm not sure i understand half the things he says, but i always feel like i've learned something afterwards and have enjoyed the lesson.

seeing him after he'd lost all that weight was quite a shock. see also nigel lawson.

this thread

http://alekskrotoski.com/post/digital-revolution-the-great-levelling-saturday-30-january-2010

mentions that this

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00n4j0r

The Virtual Revolution series about the rise of the web (which had some big name guests on it) is available on a worldwide license.

Watched it last night - it was facile, and unchallenging of some accepted 'truths' on the origins of the internet. Some nice graphics though.

What is the point of getting interviews with Bill Gates etc if you don't ask them anything interesting?

Too much pretty scientist girl, and not enough interesting things to say, tho yeh, the graphics were good, esp. liked the shots of how big the Google/facebook/ebay/amazon conglom was.

from belatedly watching the clips, I'm a little annoyed that The Secret Life of Chaos - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00pv1c3 - disappeared from iPlayer so quickly. A hasty repeat would be appreciated.

> The Secret Life of Chaos

i didn't like this. the bloke mentioned that a lot of things had underlying maths, without really going into the actual maths. talked about turing's reaction diffusion equations, but not in any detail. showed the equation for mandelbrot set but didn't point out that they are complex numbers (it's an argand diagram, how do you get a 2d diagram from simple integers?). mentioned that birds in a flock got complex behaviour from a few simple rules but didn't mention what they were (separation, alignment, cohesion) and that they'd never do the same thing twice. well no, because it's an analogue system of hundreds of independent elements.

Too much pretty scientist girl, and not enough interesting things to say, tho yeh, the graphics were good, esp. liked the shots of how big the Google/facebook/ebay/amazon conglom was.

If you're going to visit Africa with Tim Berners-Lee - at least say something substantial or illustrative about how the internet is having an impact there.

The Lives of Others on BBC 4 tonight, quite excited.

Thursdays BBC7
2230-2245 Sir Henry at Rawlinson End - Viv Stanshall tells stories & sings songs
2245-2300 A Wet Handle - Ivor Cutler tells stories & sings songs

enjoying la la land but I'm a fully paid up marc wootton stan

apparently wootton is working w/julia davis next, which could go either way really but I fear the worst given her recent record

New beta iplayer - but I can't seem to d'l it. Doesn't look dramatically different.
http://beta.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/

Anyways there is good stuff on there at the moment.
http://beta.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00snyft/The_Visitor/
(until monday, hurry hurry hurry but you cal d/l it)
http://beta.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0074t6v/The_Red_Shoes/
(until sunday, and you can't d/l it)
Herzog's Nosferatu - http://beta.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00hd0vj/Nosferatu_the_Vampyre/
(until sunday but you can d/l it)

the back-end is new, front end basically the same

does that mean get_iplayer is fucked?

(seems ok based on a sample of the n95_3gl version of some 5 minute kids thing)

Don't know if it's still on there, but go watch "Behind the Scenes at the Museum", a documentary on tiny regional museums. The one on the British Leyland museum is funny and touching and horrifying - really great documentary film-making.

the one at the freud museum was something else

koogs no, i mean the back-end behind that back-end - there's a whole rube goldberg machine of transcoders and tape loaders etc

turtles all the way down...

anyone been listening to this?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/programme

^^^I have. Excellent stuff.

Loved the Storyville programme on Valentino.
http://beta.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00spgkb/Storyville_20092010_Valentino_The_Last_Emperor/
Until next monday.

SHERLOCK

starring martin freeman and bernard cumberbatch

first episode has been and gone and was surprisingly... actually alright

Holmes texting and using 'tinternet seemed really natural. Also LOL at "three patch problem". Running around central Loldon with a map overlaid on the screen = DUD though. Wish it were slightly less nu-Who like, but it's a Mark Gatiss thing so inevitable.

Gatiss totally played the brother as Panto Mandelson.

Wish it were slightly less nu-Who like, but it's a Mark Gatiss thing so inevitable.

You don't blame this on Moffatt at all? I really liked it.

read that as new-wu and got confused and excited.

xp I got confused. It's a freaky Moffatt/Gatiss joint all the way...

This was good. Very good. Although Martin Freeman's basically playing Martin Freeman.

Intriguingly their 221b baker street set has a near identical layout to the one in the Granada/Jeremy Brett version.

Yeah, it's hard to imagine anyone looking at the pasty, pudgy Freeman and thinking 'hm, there's a military man, not long back from under the Afghan sun'. This was okay though. Cumberbatch great, Gatiss grates.

Yeah Cumberbatch was terrific and this series has fantastic potential.

Didn't think a modern Sherlock would work but they somehow pulled it off, the GPS and laptops aspect didn't feel shoehorned in but where they nailed it was getting the atmosphere. The way it was filmed really helped give a claustrophobic and menacing Victorian feel to modern London, lots of dark back alleys and very little of the visual clutter you associate with this city. They should keep the series out of gleaming office buildings and keep it in the realm of dark streets and snug old pubs IMO.

Liked this a lot, and I'm a bit of a Holmes traditionalist. Only bit that felt a bit LOLmodern shoehorned was the continued references to them being in the gayXorz. Or is that an in-joke about 'Sherlock', the game for the Spectrum and C64?

I thought martin freeman was really good; surprisingly so, in fact, but granted I've not seen in him in anything stand-out since the office

The way it was filmed really helped give a claustrophobic and menacing Victorian feel to modern London

also the way my PS3 auto screen dimming kicked in after about 30 mins and i didn't notice for another 30 :/

Only just caught up with last week's, good stuff. I like the fact they included a puzzle without an explanation right at the end (Sherlock's comment re how to tell a good restaurant, with the answer presumably being lol Chinese people are short)

Am quite enjoying Sherlock, I have to say. Thought the last episode was a bit laborious, but among other things I like a lot - the configuring of London topography in a way that reminds me strongly of Machen, Stevenson (funny sort of London but still a version of it), and Conan Doyle (museums, small out-of-the-way shops, abandoned houses, dark side-streets); all the emphasis on hidden information - again a sort of reconfiguration of the London environment, whether it's mobile communication or graffiti; the way it patterns Victorian sensational fiction themes (such as the sax rohmer yellow peril stuff of the last one) on to the 21st century; + all the comic book stuff (a touch of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen about it, again perhaps not surprisingly) and, you know, a proper fight! behind the curtain of a stage! Great!

That last one was extremely indebted (presumably deliberately) to The Talons of Weng-Chiang, not at all a bad thing imo.

I don't watch a lot of tv so maybe there's a few programmes doing interesting stuff like this, but yeah, good stuff.

Simon Amstell has a new sitcom starting tonight, which I believe many of the writers are comparing to Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm.

thought sherlock was p.dece on the whole

i never made the sherlock holmes / dr who connection before but so many things about holmes and watson are so VERY who, aren't they

i thought the first episode was tremendous - i love the text overlays on the screen

gonna have to watch There Will Be Blood while it's on iPlayer so that one friend can stop going on about it after three straight bloody years.

anyone watch the birth of disco & hip-hop doc on bbc4?

ok this is hilarious. the cat who became a mascot for his loneliness is a+. amstell cannot act but thats irrelevant, right? especially when surrounded by the thick of it

they served him an avacado with the stone still in as a dinner :D

am now tempted between watching this Birth of Disco & Hip-Hop, which I can very dubiously count as work, and watching this Simon Amstell sitcom, which I cannot.

dunno sounds like amstell might count as work

very hard work

it was... kinda sweet? i did lol a few times, will watch again, but it's hard to see where they're gonna go as it's not exactly super strong in characters or situation.

'madness in the fast lane', bbc1 tonight - a look at the incident with the swedish twins on the motorway last year and the 72 hours following

vital stuff

there've been a few programmes on BBC1 lately that seem transplanted straight from BBC3. Signs of a dark future.

I watched the Birth of Disco Hip Hop and Punk thing, it was pretty much what you'd expect from that kind of BBC documentary - not a great deal I didn't already know, but some nice footage and the odd good talking head tidbit.

wasn't that part of the point of bbc3 though, a breeding ground for stuff?

i for one hope Dog Borstal gets the audience it deserves...

i loved dog borstal

is it still on??

(i've not actually seen an episode, just used to enjoy the name in the listings. seemed to be on every single day at one point but i haven't seen it listed lately)

so the least injured sister went on to stab a good samaritan who was trying to help her find her sister then while fleeing the scene she hit herself over the head with a hammer she'd taken, then after a passer by wrestled the hammer from her she fled from an ambulance to a motorway bridge and threw herself off into traffic

o_O 2

accidentally stumbled onto that last night and it was a struggle to turn over and watch SOMETHING ELSE, ANYTHING ELSE but i managed it.

Why? I thought it was pretty interesting. Obviously a bit like a long episode of Police Camera Action with added Psychiatry.

Simon Amstell has a new sitcom starting tonight, which I believe many of the writers are comparing to Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm.

― James Mitchell, Monday, August 9, 2010 8:42 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark

Those writers were fooling no-one.

xp ehh it was just uncomfortably voyeuristic, rubbernecking tv. thought the intimate shots in the police station after the motorway incident (which was where i tuned in) were overly intrusive. what was the purpose of the show? there were no lessons to be learnt, this was just goggling at the spectacle. so yeah much like PCA.

Fair enough. And you're right about those shots in the station, I actually kept thinking they were dramatisations. What kind of permissions do you need to show something like that? To be honest I was just more interested in the 'what happened next' aspect. With PCA (and, erm, the news) you very rarely get a follow-up, and this story was such a wtf moment I really really wanted to know, esp. as the aftermath was so shocking.

accidentally stumbled onto that last night and it was a struggle to turn over and watch SOMETHING ELSE, ANYTHING ELSE but i managed it.

OH THE HUMANITY

Be quick as this expires today, but this is one of the most extraordinary documentaries I've seen in a long time http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00tf1r4/Madness_in_the_Fast_Lane/

yeah, interesting! It certainly leaves more questions open as it asks. Some serious failings by the police who seem more concerned that there aren't any drugs involved.

thought this doc on kidnapped wives in chechnya was p.interesting
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00tf1w8/This_World_20102011_Stolen_Brides/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00tl182/Grandmas_House_The_Day_Simon_Announced_That_He_Was_in_Control_of_the_Universe/ - tonight, Grandma's House got brilliant. Really, really brilliant. And it's primarily due to Pam Ferris.

probably deserves its own thread I guess

this'll do

Simon & Miquita - IT IS OVER

Last night, BBC Four had a strand of programmes about Newcastle, of which Today I'm With You and A Journey Back to Newcastle: Michael Smith's Deep North were both excellent. Especially the first one.

I enjoyed the Blair/Clinton thingie.

whit stillman's metropolitan

The Man Who Recorded America: Jac Holzman's Elektra Records has been wide and general in the way these things always are, but has featured a lot of nice archive footage (Incredible String Band, Nico, Tim Buckley...) in the way these things always do.

Fans of documentaries about people so insane that you keep checking you're not watching a spoof shd check out the BBC4 show about Twitchers that just aired. A hundred times darker and funnier than whatever that Coogan/Brydon thing is, I've no doubt.

night of the living dead & halloween (og) on there!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00plcmt/Blade_Runner/

Dunno what version it is.

Some interesting pop history/anthropology:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00w0dqx/Ancient_Worlds_Come_Together/

No one else watching Ancient Worlds then? It really is very good.

When Harvey Met Bob

Feature-length dramatisation following the story of how Boomtown Rats singer Bob Geldof and promoter Harvey Goldsmith put together Live Aid, the global charity music event. Set between the winter of 1984 and the summer of 1985, it focuses on the extraordinary relationship between Geldof and Goldsmith as they created the concert to 'feed the world'.

Watched this mainly because I'm a big Ian Hart fan - but thought it was surprisingly well done, despite some small element of naffness - such as the fixation on securing McCartney for Live Aid.

Good performance from Domhnall Gleeson as Geldoff. And an indifferent cameo role from Paul Rhys as Macca. What is so difficult about portraying him? At least Paul Rhys can content himself with the thought he wasn't quite as bad as Andrew Scott's performance in the Lennon Naked bbc TV drama from earlier this year.

http://wwwimg.bbc.co.uk/programmes/i/512xn/634d10ce0a0aa7f9f2a0f1c4aa8ab1ac0db2f576.jpg

thatcher was awful

How is she in the programme?

geldof meets her at some do and they chat briefly about butter and butter oil in the context of somalian hunger

sorry, ethiopian hunger. I've had a few.

Ah, that confrontation. I remember seeing it on TV at the time. Thatcher's absolute lack of concern was completely o_O

just got to the macca bit. he's as bad as thatcher, to be honest

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00kygwh/The_Terminator/

i stumbled upon that madness in the fast lane doc, holy shit @ that footage! id never heard this story @ all. its on youtube btw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Euy6vE5VsMQ

it is un-fucking-believeable how compelling ^that^ is

This had a sick soundtrack... haha the xx and the pixies! Hell yeah!

fiercealmond 1 week ago