If only this was for a real movie. That had been made in about 1996. Because if it were made now, it’d never live up to expecta… OH JUST WATCH THIS VIDEO.
Monday, 24 January 2011
Friday, 21 January 2011
Andy Coulson Resignation: The UK Press Coverage
STAT ALERT.
Those hard-to-read URLs in full:
Daily Mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1349239/David-Camerons-spin-doctor-Andy-Coulson-quits-phone-hacking-row.html
Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/david-camerons-spin-chief-andy-coulson-quits-2190689.html
Daily Express: http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/224507/Andy-Coulson-quits-over-phone-hacking-row
Daily Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/david-cameron/8274940/Andy-Coulson-quits-Number-10.html
The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jan/21/andy-coulson-resigns
The Sun: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3364474/Coulson-quits-as-PMs-press-chief.html
Daily Mirror: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/news/2011/01/21/andy-coulson-quits-as-david-cameron-spin-doctor-115875-22865629/
Daily Star: http://www.dailystar.co.uk/posts/view/173067/Cameron-s-media-chief-Coulson-quits/
The Times: Pesky paywall in place, unable to read story.
Tuesday, 18 January 2011
“What Your Television’s Been Crying Out For.”
So, Sky have announced a major reshuffle of their channel line-up, with a lot of the more interesting channels being moved higher up the digital pecking order. What better time to take a look at that new line-up, as well as a glimpse back at what the Sky Digital EPG line-up was back in the 20th century? Right after this not-at-all-alarming photo of Rupert Murdoch from BSkyB’s Annual Shareholder’s Report, 2003.
We may have changed one tiny element of that picture.
The Top 20 Of Everything 2010*
*PART ONE: TELEVISION PROGRAMMES (20-16)
Hello, and erm… Happy New Year. Bit late to be saying that, isn’t it? Hope you all had lovely Christmasses and all that. This is normally where we’d do The BrokenTV Awards Of Whatever Year It Is, but this year, we’re going to do things a little bit differently, and just list our top twenty TV shows from 2010. It’s taken quite a bit of consideration, only for us to then have to re-jig most of the original list upon watching the fifth-best television programme of 2010 last weekend (we’re never very on the ball, it’s fair to say).
But, here it is! Carefully planned then fleetingly written. What will be at number one? How many ITV2 shows will be in the list? Will we include at least one programme we expect everyone else to hate, in order to make us feel all ‘clever’, ‘different’ and ‘somehow just generally better’, only for several people to agree with us in the comments anyway? WE SHALL SEE as we kick off the list with, hey!, number twenty.
That’s one of those boxes ticked, with a programme filed very much under “mixed critical reception”. Many critics panned BBC Two’s Vexed, with the Metro, New Statesman and Irish Independent variously dismissing it as “rubbish”, “atrocious” and “abysmal”. Given the opening scene of the series, which sees D.I. Kate Bishop (Lucy Punch1) being shown around a newly-available flat, only for it to turn out that – oh-ho-ho – the property is available because the previous tenant’s cadaver is still being examined by forensics in the front room. At this point, D.I. Bishop’s wisecracking new partner D.I. Jack Armstrong (Toby Stephens) may as well have stared into the camera Peter Griffin-style and declared “Whoa! Looks like this isn’t any regular police drama series after all, eh?”
| 1Who, along with Jemaine Clement, was by far the jointly-most entertaining person involved in Jay Roach’s Dinner For Schmucks. It’s like they’d been taken on loan from a much better comedy film or something. |
Happily, it got much better after that opening expositional splurge, settling nicely into the time honoured Good Cop (Punch), Berk Cop (Stephens) aesthetic. The plots weren’t especially dark or even realistic, taking in events like a kidnapped pop star, or protecting an unlikeable banker in rehab who is been stalked by a hitman (cue events like said assassin poisoning the dinner of the smug trader, only for a compulsive overeater to scoff the plateful of nosh before the intended victim can get to it), and in a year that also saw achingly dark crime dramas like Luther, we’re saying that’s A Good Thing. We don’t even mind that Vexed has made a few “Worst TV Shows Of 2010” lists, as that’s part of the appeal for us. Some dullards like to mock things they deem beneath them, while some people are quite happy to admit they’ve got Tiffany’s ‘I Think We’re Alone Now’ on their iPod and visit pound shops. Guess which of those two types we are. Clue: we never pay full price for a jar of instant white tea (oh, and we’re happy to drink instant white tea). In summary, then: Vexed is good.
Doctor Who without David Tennant? Surely, ignoring the fact we won’t have to put up with Catherine Tate’s voice and Rusty Davies’ inconsistent plotting any longer, it just won’t be the same? Of course, much like when all the tabloids decided Daniel Craig was going to be a rubbish Bond until Casino Royale actually got made, Matt Smith was a revelation as The Doctor, helped in no small measure by Amy Pond being the best assistant ever (and we know, we’ve watched Doctor Who for six whole years). Plus, well, Steven Moffat.
The fact that Moffat’s episodes are now the norm, rather than a once-per-series treat, hasn’t seen every single episode reach the heights of The Empty Child, The Girl In The Fireplace or Blink, but then you’ll have guessed that by the way this isn’t at number one in our list. Indeed, the latest series hasn’t been without the odd clunker – the episode where the collect-em-all multicoloured Daleks made their debut was practically a fifty-minute toy advert – but the overall quality, helped by Matt Smith being so bloody good in the role you can even forgive The Doctor for wearing a bow tie, has made this the best series of New Who yet. Even the episode with James Corden in it was great, for flip’s sake.
Another one of those shows where you either gave up on it after episode one, or found yourself sticking with it only to discover, blimey, you’re hooked. What could have been a clumsy halfway-house – Simon Amstell, former host of Never Mind The Buzzcocks, plays Simon, former host of a popular BBC Two music-based comedy panel show, but with all the bits you’d expect to be like Curb Your Enthusiasm replaced with heavy-handed sarcasm – works very well, once you get used to it. Like a hot bath that keeps making fun of how old you are.
Yeah, Simon Amstell really isn’t much of a comedy actor, but the fine supporting cast soon makes up for that, with James Smith (from The Thick Of It) putting in a great turn as The Mother’s Boyfriend Who Tries That Bit Too Hard To Get On With Her Son. If we were really lazy, we’d describe it as like The Royle Family, only more “Jewy”. But we… oh, wait, we are that lazy.
Hosted by Swedish statsmeister Professor Hans Rosling, and including interviews with the likes of David “Information Is Beautiful” McCandless2, this was a delightful look at just how it’s possible to make data sing, just by examining it with the right amount of attention.
| 2 Or, David “Your Sinclair’s Program Pitstop” McCandless if you you’re old like us. |
No reason you should take our word for it, of course. After all, our own graph-fetish is well known to regular readers of the blog. Here’s a clip from the programme, exploring the fortunes of 200 countries, over 200 years, in four minutes.
It’s a YouTube clip of a BBC Four documentary about statistics. It currently has over THREE MILLION views on YouTube. That’s how ace it is. We really can’t wait until Microsoft Excel 2059 is released, when we’ll be able to make astonishingly thrilling bubble charts like that in our very own homes.
Okay, that’s our scamper through the first quarter of the list. Just 75% of it to go, before we move on to The Top 20 Of Something That Isn’t Telly 2010. No idea what that’ll be yet. Albums? Hats? Most Shocking Celebrity Moments? Actually, if it did turn out to be that last one, we’re giving you permission to hunt us down and kill us. See you soon!
Friday, 24 December 2010
The Top Ten Lookie-Likeys That Probably Don’t Get Much Work
“Don’t wanna be ignored at the door. We all look the same, we’re all lookalikes.”
So sang criminally underrated German electropop band Tok Tok Vs Soffy O in their 2002 non-hit “The Lookalikes”. And do you know, they were right, pretty much everyone looks a bit like someone else. Often, that someone else is someone a bit famous. We’ve variously been told over the years that we look a lot like Jarvis Cocker, Rik Mayall and Sunderland bench-warmer Boudewijn Zenden, even though we don’t look anything like any of them, and not that there’s much work out there for a Boudewijn Zenden lookalike. OR IS THERE?
One thing that always amuses us for up to several minutes at a time is looking through the websites of professional lookalike agencies, mean-spiritedly scoffing at the ‘acts’ who don’t look anything like their famous supposed doppelgangers. Anyway, instead of that, we’re going to take a look at some of the lookie-likeys who’ll probably need to keep plugging away at their day job for quite a while yet. But first (and this’ll only really make sense if you’re reading this intro text from the front page of the blog, and not the article itself), see if you can work out who this is supposed to be. Answer after the ‘jump’.
Wednesday, 22 December 2010
Tuesday, 21 December 2010
The BrokenTV Awards 2010: Sneak Preview
THE WORST TELEVISION PROGRAMME OF 2010 IS GOING TO BE: TRAMADOL NIGHTS
Yeah, no brainer really. If you’re going to be shocking, at least remember to be funny. A bit like this show from New Zealand, about a decade ago:
Monday, 20 December 2010
“The 1986 World Cup on the Moon?” It Must Be The Christmas 1973 TV Times!
We’ve chipped the icicles off the office computer to bring you the last of our glances at TVTimes gone by, and what could be better than a double Christmas issue with a cover that sums up the era perfectly?
Hyuk-yuk-yuk. Or however one is supposed to spell Sid James’ guttural guffaw. It’s 1973!
Friday, 17 December 2010
Meanwhile, In An Alternate Universe… (rpt)
So, the Christmas listings guide begin tomorrow, meaning the festive season is officially GO. And, to be fair, the schedule is quite a good one, with repeats of Rowan Atkinson Live and The Goodies scheduled over the next fortnight. In tribute to those, here’s a repeat of our own, the fake Christmas Day schedule we put together when we were being sarcastic about Mark Thommo Thompson’s budget cuts.
Yes, we don’t normally ‘do’ repeats on here, but this is our favourite update of the year (yes, it’s a TVGoHome ripoff, but we think it’s a good one), and deserves a wider audience. Also, we’re going out in an office Christmas ‘do’ in about twenty minutes, so this is all we’ve got time for today.
Thursday, 16 December 2010
Mobile Mediocrity
Just a quick update, this. BrokenTV has now been tweaked to look 47% less horrible on your mobile phone or iThing.
Admittedly, it’s a quick fix, so it still looks a bit rubbish.
But, as it’s only nabbing the RSS feed for now, that’s to be expected. Still, at least this kind of approach to design is in keeping with the remainder of content in this blog, eh?
