tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18892846.post1814494690576273006..comments2023-11-03T11:15:21.828+00:00Comments on BrokenTV: One Hit Wonderland*Mark Xhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08568170388731350030noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18892846.post-8696910684610269242008-12-22T00:47:00.000+00:002008-12-22T00:47:00.000+00:00"Interestingly, if your loft tapes happen to coinc..."Interestingly, if your loft tapes happen to coincide with Overkill's rips, you'll also have MTV's 1994 Animation Weekend (or a prog from it at least; 30m is slightly shorter than a weekend, even with the exchange rate)."<BR/><BR/>From what I remember, the MTV animated shows were highly variable in quality. The only one I can remember really enjoying was the brilliant dual-reality superhero-noir show, The Maxx. That went out at the same time as "The Head", which I found annoying more than anything, although I can't really remember why. Other shows such as Daria and Celebrity Deathmatch were the animated comedy equivalent of a Snow Patrol album to my ears and eyes, although the latter did warrant an outing on Friday night Channel Four, so must have done something right. All I can recall of the Brothers Grunt is the MTV idents that either led to the series, or span off from it. <BR/><BR/>Another thing that seems to be thrown up by me typing "MTV cartoons" into search engines is the pseudo follow-up to Liquid Television, Cartoon Sushi - http://tr.im/cartsushi - which also featured Stick Figure Theat(re) and Bill Plympton shorts along with some Robin shorts (possibly which attracted the attention of Thom Yorke and chums), a "short about a dog that kills his family so that he can see the big city" and The Many Deaths of Norman Spittal (who, of course, everyone should really remember as Mr Bignose from Oink!). Annoyingly, despite being familiar with Robin and Spittal from elsewhere, I don't think I've ever seen any of Cartoon Sushi, as I wasn't living in a Sky-enabled house at the time. To the internets!Mark Xhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08568170388731350030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18892846.post-35470486739125607052008-12-22T00:20:00.000+00:002008-12-22T00:20:00.000+00:00"What was that late-night (I think) ITV prog of a ..."What was that late-night (I think) ITV prog of a few years ago which was this sort of thing all the way through?"<BR/><BR/>Not sure. Night Network would probably have pre-dated the one you're thinking of by about fifteen years, but would quite possibly have included such things. I genuinely can't think of any ITV programming from this decade that might have done something like this. The late 1990s did see late-night ITV having "Comedy Central Special Delivery", which crammed in abridged episodes of Doctor Katz, Politically Incorrect, and other Comedy Central shows of the era into a sixty minute slot, so it could have been that.<BR/><BR/>The entire Google database only lists two hits for "Comedy Central Special Delivery" (well, three now), so there's no more detailed info on the show than the fact it exists. With Comedy Central and MTV both being tentacles of the giant Viacom squid, it's possible it was from there. Tomandandy certainly have MTV and VH1 listed on their Wikipedia CV, so it could be the most likely source. Surely ITV wouldn't have had the nous to show such a thing unless they were part of a syndicated package.Mark Xhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08568170388731350030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18892846.post-22391674300326299112008-12-22T00:05:00.000+00:002008-12-22T00:05:00.000+00:00Somewhat belatedly, I've got around to watching mu...Somewhat belatedly, I've got around to watching much of Liquid Television properly. In much the same way that wrong people give their opinion on Monty Python's Flying Circus, there are quite a few parts in there that don't really work. For example, the Dogboy segments are little more than annoying*, and Winter Steele leaves me cold. There's a spurt of interest in the fact they were precisely 25% of What Was On Television for the huge non-Sky/BSB/cable majority of viewers on a weekday evening, but that soon fades.<BR/><BR/>(* Me dismissing about a hundred people working hard to generate a few minutes of television, there. Well, it's their fault for reminding me of Lazytown.)<BR/><BR/>Lots of it is brilliant, however. "Stick Figure Theat(re)" is an idea that shouldn't really work more than once, but does, the minimalism of "The Specialists" works well, and... well, this could take ages. The amount of work that goes into each show is staggering, what with Flash/Shockwave having not been invented at the time. Looking at the credits for s2e06, the segment for "The Specialists" alone uses forty-one artists. Compare that to the "it'll need three blokes in a shed? We can't afford to pay for that!" approach likely to be taken should such a show be pitched nowadays. "Is it like Wallace and Gromit?" "No." "Get out."<BR/><BR/>Oh, and that Depeche Mode track is there, but used as backing music to a CGI animation of an egg being tricked by a snake. S2E03, about 7m42s in. Just after Thomas and Nardo.Mark Xhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08568170388731350030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18892846.post-76788983971377127882008-12-01T00:11:00.000+00:002008-12-01T00:11:00.000+00:00>It seems I am thinking of the bits by Candy &q...>It seems I am thinking of the bits by Candy "Pond Life" Guard<BR/><BR/>I always end up thinking these bits are by Mimi Pond (the writer of the first The Simpsons ep, about a year before it was any good). Cuh. Their scribbly prosaicness is indeed jarring in Liq Tel -- contrast, for example, the similarly workaday domesticity of Thomas and Nardo which manages to co-star a walking cannibal house -- but the prog was all about tossing unalike things together for effect, so I can't begrudge the C Guard contributions.<BR/><BR/>>Max Fleischer's 1927 work "Koko's Earth Control" in full, only with an especially<BR/>>disturbing reworked soundtrack<BR/><BR/>tomandandy, there. What was that late-night (I think) ITV prog of a few years ago which was this sort of thing all the way through? A sort of music video compendium, except the vids were recut cartoons, public information films, etc. Liq Tel tops itself twice in this arena with 1.03 (Black Hula, a jolly cartoon music video about cultural genocide) and 1.02 (Joy Street, a lavishly precise fake 1930s musical short in the Harman-Ising anthropormorphised-objects-sing-and-dance-displeasingly genre).<BR/><BR/>>(*Wikipedia has it that the Beeb only co-produced season one. Shurely a mistake<BR/><BR/>Yes it is. The end creds for both S1 and S2 clearly name the Beeb. I can also definitively state that, contrary to all sources, S2 *was* shown on BBC2, because I watched it. (I'm uncertain about S3. The only short I can specifically remember is, by chance, the final ever, The Invisible Man in Blind Love, which could easily have been shown as part of something else, possibly featuring Rolf Harris.)<BR/><BR/>>the segment with Depeche Mode's PIMPF seems to have somehow removed from history<BR/>>in order to prove me wrong on an unpopular television blog's comments section<BR/><BR/>I was *convinced* the rips were wrong, because they omitted the MK Brown shorts. (You'd know them instantly if you saw them.) In fact, these were on The Tracey Ullman Show, alternating with the proto-The Simpsons for almost several weeks before The Simpsons barged everything else out, including Tracey Ullman.<BR/><BR/>>there's no way any MTV channel would broadcast something as wonderfully<BR/>>avant-garde as Liquid Television now<BR/><BR/>Interestingly, if your loft tapes happen to coincide with Overkill's rips, you'll also have MTV's 1994 Animation Weekend (or a prog from it at least; 30m is slightly shorter than a weekend, even with the exchange rate). This post-dates Liq Tel and keenly demonstrates the station changing direction from showcasing bonkers international cartoons to finding commercial spin-offs. Aeon Flux was tricky to duplicate, but chiefs quickly spotted what ver kids liked (Beavis and Butthead, mostly) so in the Animation Weekend we have what's effectively a half-hour advertisement for the astonishingly meritless Brothers Grunt. (They're an inbred tribe who live in a lavatory! They hatch on an elder's back! Look, we're flying the camera up someone's unswept nose! Haw haw haw!)<BR/><BR/>>It's not as if anyone's actually watching GemTV or Price-Drop TV, is it?<BR/><BR/>Your brilliant plan would founder because of rights, tragically. At least half of the Liq Tel contributors are inconveniently still alive, for example.<BR/><BR/>>Friday night disappointment-fest Crapston Villas actually got a Troma label release in<BR/>>the USA. What *were* they thinking?<BR/><BR/>"Lloyd's ordered a starter. Quick, stick another DVD out."Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18892846.post-24240819673044307162008-11-28T02:19:00.000+00:002008-11-28T02:19:00.000+00:00It seems I am thinking of the bits by Candy "Pond ...It seems I am thinking of the bits by Candy "Pond Life" Guard. It always seemed to me that, in amongst the almost impossibly cool pieces of animation like The Specialists, Stick Figure Theatre, Dog-Boy, Æon Flux or the brilliantly bold move of showing Max Fleischer's 1927 work "Koko's Earth Control" in full, only with an especially disturbing reworked soundtrack, the Candy Guard stuff seemed alone in putting forward the British equivalent of cutting-edge animation. If you ask me, each segment was interminably dull, and seemed to go on for ever, only present at the insistence of the BBC, who were co-producing the series*. It's quite a surprise to visit the (surprisingly comprehensive) Wikipedia entry for Liquid Television only to discover that only four pieces of Candy Guard animation were actually used. 1992-me could have sworn it had been at least three times that. <BR/><BR/>(*Wikipedia has it that the Beeb only co-produced season one. Shurely a mistake, as season two is certainly the one I remember being promoted as part of Def II, with the extended number of episodes for that season (ten, as opposed to the six in each of the seasons bookending it) suggesting I'm correct. Certainly it's only S2 that has any notably British content.)<BR/><BR/>In any case, having just skipped through quite a bit of my recently ("recovered from the loft legitimately-taped-from-BBC2-in-1992 copy of") Liquid Television, it's still astonishingly great, even if the segment with Depeche Mode's PIMPF seems to have somehow removed from history in order to prove me wrong on an unpopular television blog's comments section. Despite playing host to shows like Wonder Showzen in recent years - which I'd argue only made it to air because it features more OMGWTF-"shocking" moments than you could shake a Sarah Silverman at - there's no way any MTV channel would broadcast something as wonderfully avant-garde as Liquid Television now. And as for the concept of mid-evening BBC Two ever having broadcast such a show... well, that just doesn't even compute. I'd wager that even the marvellous Adult Swim would baulk at a show like Liquid Television now. This lends all the more power to my theory that there should be a "+16 years" timeshift channel for BBCs One and Two on digital TV. There should be room on Freeview. It's not as if anyone's actually watching GemTV or Price-Drop TV, is it?<BR/><BR/>Slightly relatedly, talking of slightly annoying 1990s Channel Four-issue British animation, I've recently discovered that Friday night disappointment-fest Crapston Villas actually got a Troma label release in the USA. What *were* they thinking?Mark Xhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08568170388731350030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18892846.post-87763834721395359122008-11-25T06:04:00.000+00:002008-11-25T06:04:00.000+00:00You're almost certainly thinking of the bits by Ca...You're almost certainly thinking of the bits by Candy Guard, you meanie. I can't remember a Depeche Mode item though, and watched the whole set of Overkill rips quite recently. Possibly it was under a different name; Liquid Television's end sequence meticulously credited the contributors but the section titles weren't always precise. Alternatively, you may have seen it on Rapido or something and became confused by Normski's soothing hollering.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18892846.post-69801843803892894372008-11-23T23:37:00.000+00:002008-11-23T23:37:00.000+00:00Places such as here: http://tr.im/1f7o in fact. Th...Places such as here: http://tr.im/1f7o in fact. There's also a lovely video made for Depeche Mode's PIMPF in one episode. While I haven't rewatched LiquidTV recently (although having now found that link, I may do soon), I do recall that most of the British contributions to it were awful five-minute-filler-on-Channel-Four-in-1986 fodder.Mark Xhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08568170388731350030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18892846.post-24162810555080578122008-11-23T23:26:00.000+00:002008-11-23T23:26:00.000+00:00Listening viewers may almost barely be interested ...Listening viewers may almost barely be interested to learn that Istanbul (Not Constantinople) gained a music video in 1991's BBC2's Liquid Television's S1's ep 5, easily found here and there.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18892846.post-68727273602391891292008-11-23T14:53:00.000+00:002008-11-23T14:53:00.000+00:00Boh. Now corrected.Boh. Now corrected.Mark Xhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08568170388731350030noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18892846.post-77209810631766386092008-11-23T02:12:00.000+00:002008-11-23T02:12:00.000+00:00Alphabeat? (below the line chart thing) Shouldn't ...Alphabeat? (below the line chart thing) Shouldn't that be Alphaville?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com