Last Night's Telly

clarkey cat

I have no regrets Rick. Actually - I watched Vexed too.

I quite like it!

FoldingJoe

Vuelta highlights, then watched The Eiger: Wall of Death.

Very interesting and worth a watch - repeated a few times over the next couple of weeks on BBC four.

clarkey cat

FJ - there is a book called 'The Beckoning Silence' all about Joe Simpson's attempt of the Eiger. I really enjoyed it.

bails87

Jet- When Britain Ruled The Skies on BBC4 last night was very interesting.

Vulcans, Victors, Harriers and Lightnings all over the shop.

FoldingJoe

clarkey cat wrote:

FJ - there is a book called 'The Beckoning Silence' all about Joe Simpson's attempt of the Eiger. I really enjoyed it.

Joe Simpson of Touching the Void, fame?

mtb-idle

Banged Up Abroad and then Pawn Stars.

Man was I disappointed, neither of them offered up what was expected...

rick_chasey

Touch of Cloth.

8/10.

Good fun. Basically an up to date Naked Gun set in London. Quality of jokes were mixed, but they came so thick and fast it didn't matter.

Would have worked better in four 30min episodes though.

graeme_s-2

Rick Chasey wrote:

Would have worked better in four 30min episodes though.

I thought exactly that half way through last night's episode. It was so wonderfully silly it kind of exhausted me after 30 minutes and I didn't find it as funny as I had done at the start.

Can't go wrong with Charlie Brooker though!

il_principe

Touch of cloth 2/10

Might've worked as a series of skits on a sketch show, but not for an hour. Felt very outdated. I'm usually a fan of Brooker as well.

tailwindhome

Il Principe wrote:

I'm usually a fan of Brooker as well.

I'm conflicted. I like his work but wouldn't get tired of punching him.

tailwindhome

The Best of Men

Just caught up with this on Sky+. Absolutely perfect in everyway.

bails87

More BBC4, a thing about bomb disposal technicians during the troubles in Ireland. Very interesting, I missed the first and last 20 minutes so will catch up properly on iPlayer tonight.

clarkey cat

another fantastic episode of VEXED

rick_chasey

Channel 4 struggled last night with the paralympics.

Didn't watch all of it, but it wasn't pretty when it came to the production.

- Off-site interviewers starting their interview before the studio presenter had finished introducing them and poor/pointless interviews - even with the usually solid Claire Balding. Some of this must be attributed to the legion of new disabled presenters who had a baptism of fire last night.

- Terrible looking studio.

- VTs starting before presenters had finished.

- Awful noise leakage from the commentary mics that wasn't synced up with the TV sound feed leading to a horrible echo

- far far too many adverts.

Couldn't face it in the end and watched the rain man instead which I recorded from a few nights ago.

vermin

Rick Chasey wrote:

Channel 4 struggled last night with the paralympics.

Didn't watch all of it, but it wasn't pretty when it came to the production.

- Off-site interviewers starting their interview before the studio presenter had finished introducing them and poor/pointless interviews - even with the usually solid Claire Balding. Some of this must be attributed to the legion of new disabled presenters who had a baptism of fire last night.

- Terrible looking studio.

- VTs starting before presenters had finished.

- Awful noise leakage from the commentary mics that wasn't synced up with the TV sound feed leading to a horrible echo

- far far too many adverts.

Couldn't face it in the end and watched the rain man instead which I recorded from a few nights ago.

Ditto, save that I went to bed. The commentators, presenters and interviewers seemed to be overly worried about saying the wrong thing and ended up being overly sensitive or downright patronising. The most interesting part of the presentation was imagining the ongoing punch-up between Krishnan Guru-Murthy and his Canadian co-commentator.

Was a shame really, but it must be difficult and at least C4 are having a good go at it. Problem is that the BBC coverage of the Olympics was just so darned awesome.

rick_chasey

vermin wrote:

Was a shame really, but it must be difficult and at least C4 are having a good go at it. Problem is that the BBC coverage of the Olympics was just so darned awesome if you were only interested in British athletes and the occasional non-British sprinter / swimmer.

FTFY.

vermin

Rick Chasey wrote:

vermin wrote:

Was a shame really, but it must be difficult and at least C4 are having a good go at it. Problem is that the BBC coverage of the Olympics was just so darned awesome if you were only interested in British athletes and the occasional non-British sprinter / swimmer.

FTFY.

And your point is?

rjsterry

bails87 wrote:

More BBC4, a thing about bomb disposal technicians during the troubles in Ireland. Very interesting, I missed the first and last 20 minutes so will catch up properly on iPlayer tonight.

+1 Some rather chilling comments like, "if you did your initial assessment of the situation and couldn't see an obvious target, it was probably you"

rick_chasey

vermin wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

vermin wrote:

Was a shame really, but it must be difficult and at least C4 are having a good go at it. Problem is that the BBC coverage of the Olympics was just so darned awesome if you were only interested in British athletes and the occasional non-British sprinter / swimmer.

FTFY.

And your point is?

Was kinda hoping that, being the hosts and all, they'd make more of an effort to cover all the sports.

Instead it was more parochial than usual.

And as cool as the 24 dedicated channels to all the events were, I was totally f*cked as to what was happening, where and when. You'd just have to flick through/stay put and wait for a while and hope to see something you wanted to watch that wasn't involving a Brit. Was tough getting any guidance at all. Ended up having to look at the TV schedules in nations who cared about said sports.

I get that there's good reason for the obvious bias and I'm not saying there shouldn't be. Was just a ballache if you had interests elsewhere.

vermin

I know, just pulling your leg. But I was happy enough catching the non-Brit rowing events, for example, on the web site. The Android apps were pretty good for identifying events of interest and pointing me in the direction of the web feeds.

BelgianBeerGeek

+1 to this^ (Rick's comment)
The BBC spent more time in having presenters interviewing presenters about something or other than showing anything. It may be me, but I find this an annoying BBC trait. To the extent that I can't watch BBC news anymore.
Just show the sport!

Kieran_Burns

rjsterry wrote:

bails87 wrote:

More BBC4, a thing about bomb disposal technicians during the troubles in Ireland. Very interesting, I missed the first and last 20 minutes so will catch up properly on iPlayer tonight.

+1 Some rather chilling comments like, "if you did your initial assessment of the situation and couldn't see an obvious target, it was probably you"

Small and rather odd claim to fame (kind of): I was standing no more than 10' away from a bomb disposal sniffer dog as it was looking for a bomb while in Belfast. (not a training exercise, an actual bomb)

I never have told my Mum about that.

Sharkyssurfers

watched the doc on british cycling last night on sky atlantic, seems ok for the first epidsode.

rubertoe

I watched, in no particular order:

Diamond League Athletics
Paralympics Basketball
Something about Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, the SS and the Holy Grail
Britain's Best Ghosts
Green Day concert,

Missus was out and I had the remote!

tailwindhome

Blast from the past last night.

Came across an old episode of Cheers on one of the sky channels you'd never think to look at.

One from the early years with Shelley Long and Coach (?). Great cast and fantastic writing.

Skyplussed it and it's now building up a nice week boxset to enjoy in the future



'Norm!'

rjsterry

Can't remember what it was called, but I watched a program the other night analysing American politics through the medium of the sitcom. The basic theory is that the polarisation of the politics into (what we would probably call) centrist) liberal Democrats and extremely conservative Republicans is a bit of a sham and that popular sitcoms provide a more accurate reflection of the 'mood of the nation' - if they didn't they would be cancelled. The viewing figures of sitcoms such as Modern Family and The Middle suggest that the average American isn't nearly so bothered by supposedly controversial subjects as we've been led to believe. Quite refreshing to see something a bit more positive about the USA.

roger_merriman

Watched DrWho I'm way behind and then autum watch followed by iceberg.
Iceberg was the most interesting to I