BBC Three

Also, is the theme music Embrace or someone else?

Also - how fucking dreck is Swiss Toni?

we've been saying that for a long time now too Graham :)

how fucking dreck is Swiss Toni?

predictably a tad disappointing but lines like 'I AM a car' make me chuckle for some bizarre reason

Anyone seen the Justine Frischmann architecture show yet.

Loves Like A Dog proves this hypothesis innacurate. Technically, she did host it with Trey Farley, but the man is so insignificant as to render him non-existant.

Lauren Laverne, however, ROCKS.

I also saw 'Dreamspaces' which I found irritating: whoever the presenter of the segment was saying (about old style public libraries) 'no wonder our generation prefer buying books to borrowing them'. I know the whole thing is supposedly targeted at the 25-34 age group but does it have to be so obvious? And then he interviewed the smug-looking architect of the new library in Peckham (which may well be admirable) who said that Peckham was great because it was full of 'real people'.

And stop the Justine bashing, she finished the BA just fine but did spazz up the diploma which isn't that rare, actually. I have about 10 friends who were on that course at the Bartlett when she was there and it's gotta be one of the best and most difficult courses EVAH.

Justine is not laziest womang in pop; she's just rich enough already without it to be able to say 'fuck it' to the mongos who run most of pop, which is something I wish more of them would do. And also it took her ages to CLEAN UP and also to rid her household of less fortunate waifs and strays once she declined the Have My Baby Now offer from her ex.

Not sure we've *all* agreed abt J. Ross, Suzy.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/images/38132000/jpg/_38132874_gordon_bbc.jpg

I can't imagine anything worse than Hopkins on TV. Unless it was a primetime entertainment show called Gothfynder General.

anyway, i think she is fantastic, and still love her, laziest woman in pop or not.

RIP Aardman blobs - revamp soon

http://images.digitalspy.co.uk/08/04/160x120_bbc_bbcthree.jpg

BBC Three controller Danny Cohen has unveiled a new look and new multi-platform focus for the channel.

All programmes on the channel will be simulcast on digital TV and the web starting in February. User generated content will be regularly scheduled in peak and interactive ideas will be placed "at the heart of programmes".

Cohen said: "I'm delighted to announce BBC Three's fantastic line-up of new programmes, along with our innovative and exciting approach to television for young audiences. BBC Three is aiming to become Britain's most ambitious multi-platform network – combining television and the web into a single, integrated offering.

"At BBC Three we should be known for pioneering risk, and be obsessed with all things new – new talent, new programmes, and a new relationship between television and the internet."

> Click here for a preview of BBC Three's new idents

The channel's new schedule will revolve around single dramas, live entertainment and factual output.

Four single dramas will air in the Spring: Phoo Action, described as a futuristic, kung fu, live action drama; The Things I Haven't Told You, a dark thriller set in the sixth form; Being Human, a tale about a vampire, werewolf and ghost who share a house; and Mrs In-Betweeny, billed as a "dark comic look at modern British family life" featuring a long-lost uncle who returns as a pre-op transsexual named Emma.

Of the four, one will go on to become a series for the following year.

Other drama series to air on the channel include Greek, imported from ABC Family, and Heroes' second season.

In entertainment, the channel's key output includes the previously-announced Lily Allen and Friends, which stars Lily Allen as the host of a social networking-based chat show, The Wall, in which emerging talent will be given a showcase opportunity on TV and the web, and Upstaged, which will develop on the web before its BBC Three outings later in the season.

In news, BBC Three's signature 60seconds bulletins will undergo a "total revamp", including the launch of a nightly World News programme looking at global events through the output of other news channels from around the world. Environmental issues will be frequently featured and special bulletins focusing on specific subjects including technology and sport will be scheduled.

Factual output will include Pramface Mansion, which looks at the demands of being a single parent, and Jack's Story, which will take "an intimate look at the lives of brave young men fighting in Afghanistan".

still steering clear of popular music then?

aw the blobs were cuet

(scans press release for Lo Slung Denim credits)

Pramface Mansion?

BBC4 has a fair amount of popular music on it.

yeh too bad it's all from 30 years ago.

stars Lily Allen as the host of a social networking-based chat show

Four single dramas will air in the Spring: Phoo Action, described as a futuristic, kung fu, live action drama; The Things I Haven't Told You, a dark thriller set in the sixth form; Being Human, a tale about a vampire, werewolf and ghost who share a house; and Mrs In-Betweeny, billed as a "dark comic look at modern British family life" featuring a long-lost uncle who returns as a pre-op transsexual named Emma.

Monkey Tennis?

Mrs In-Betweeny, billed as a "dark comic look at modern British family life" featuring a long-lost uncle who returns as a pre-op transsexual named Emma.

We should make up bingo cards for this show, you cross off the box whenever Julia Davis, Mark Heap, or Stephen Mangam appears on screen.

Being Human anyone? Vampires/Werewolves/I-See-Dead-People show set in Bristol - surprisingly t'was not utter shite.

I liked it - partly for location-spotting reasons. Overall, though, it was rather good. We were a bit puzzled by some of the mechanics of it: how can the ghost pick *some* things up? How can some people see her when they couldn't originally? Maybe these things were covered in the pilot; but it's not really Good Form to rely on the pilot explaining plot points like that.

Yeah, I didn't get that either. Nor how the ghost could interact with the pizza boy (who was, incidentally, played by one of my oldest friends) but not anyone else.

Other than that I was rather impressed.

We did wonder if the link was: people who never knew her before she died can see her, but not those who did - hence why her fiance's new partner was someone she'd known in the past too. And at least the characters did seem puzzled on that point also.

That link: "And a little bit of map-research and field-walking will take us right to it"

Yeah and the street sign's in the trailer, I noticed it first time I saw it because I thought it was our road.

Is it? I didn't make it out. It was visible in the show itself, though.

how can the ghost pick *some* things up? How can some people see her when they couldn't originally?

Russell Tovey was on 5Live earlier and explained this, or tried to. Apparently the more comfortable/happier she is with herself, the more 'solid' she becomes. The more unhappy or stressed she is, the more ghostlike. Or something like that anyway. It wasn't made clear in the programme though.
It was okay. Tovey was the best thing in it, and I would've preferred Andrea Riseborough to have also returned as the ghost.
Glad they made this in the end and not Phoo Action, anyway.

I really enjoyed that, good balance between the undead stuff and the twentysomething soap stuff, and I instantly warmed to all the characters. Glad they didn't waste any time with scene-setting as well.

It was good. I think they're going for the slow unfurling with Annie, and they're doing a decent wee job of it.

God the girl playing Lauren in Being Human is the single most smashable person on British TV right now.

Yes!

Unless you are a girl, in which case, substitute "the guy playing Mitchell"

do people even make distinctions between things that get ppl's attention and make them click because they are horrified versus because they are excited?

not that i shared that shit of course

bbc three - make u think

Lonely commissioning editor at BBC3 just thinking baout things

lex you shared it with us!!

there's a horrible ad absurdum argument to be made about clicks=victory

^ why I pretty much ignore everything nowadays

ignoring things is for the best

Broadcasting is back:

BBC Three will return to TV screens after six-year break

"CBBC will close early"

there would have been riots if they treated CBEEBIES with such contempt!

but cbeebies closes at 7, the same frequency is used for bbc4 after that.

yeah but I presume they are still cutting some of the broadcasting schedule off CBBC if they are closing it earlier?

not that I watch CBBC but my son does sometimes.

CBBC goes on till 9pm just now! A child would kick a ball in the street etc.

they need to move with the times and run the closing "now it's time to say goodnight at the end of a lovely day" song at 2am!

cbbc is on too late, it's true, I support all kids' TV being turned off at 8pm, also the internet if possible.

They don't even have enough stuff to fill up the time, they just endlessly recycle the same programmes. Meanwhile CITV have given up completely and just show cartoons.

I don't really remember watching Children's ITV for anything else (I was Swap Shop square, not Tiswas)

as bad things can get I don't think I've seen anything as awful as Press Gang on CBBC

I think ITV had better children's shows than the BBC? The Beeb was all middle class and Blue Peter.

yeah blue peter was always the fucking pits, always felt very alienating if you weren't in the scouts and into tortoise shagging with john noakes and had lived in a nice spacious house with a pond in the back garden.

hadn't

I did see a few weeks back Richard Bacon firmly denying that he did a line of gear off the back of a Blue Peter tortoise

Press Gang was ITV

when there was only 4 channel buttons on the b/w tv it was easy to get confused!

I fully admit that I made some bad choices in my childhood TV-watching.

my childminder's three kids had control over the TV, so I saw a lot to T-Bag, Pink Windmill and Wizbit as a kid, not a lot of fond memories of that shit.

When I was on a ferry on a school trip once there were some production staff from The Pink Windmill recruiting kids to be in the audience or something. They never approached me :(

Oh god, the T-Bags thing epitomises my memories of non-cartoon Children's ITV.

Sorry, T-Bag, not T-Bags. Getting mixed up with Grotbags, silly me.

Good god:

https://www.angelfire.com/crazy/grotbags/

the last bit of bit of children's tv that really blew my mind was Boohbah

what was Grotbags a spin-off from? Was it Orville?

wasn't she originally in Rentaghost?

no it seems I'm getting her mixed up with Hazel the McWitch

Her I could handle. I guess it was Grotbags' green facepaint that turned my stomach.

Grotbags' 70s northern soul banger: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEYaxZoQ188

a mate once turned up at our house with a woman who looked like grotbags, he'd pulled her at the petrol station, he couldn't take her back to his house because he lived with his parents, pretty grim stuff all round, I left them to it in the living room and went out to the pub

Grotbags was originally in The Pink Windmill.

Thanks Tom

there is a fascinating couple of children's entertainer/panto types of some kind who live down the road from me. Sometimes they are doing gardening still in their working costumes. The bloke always says hello to my kid with a big hearty wave and a HHHEEELLLO! His partner has a polka dot car and even paints silver polka dots on the lower overhanging leaves in the garden! Although sadly I have not seen that much of them during the lockdowns - it must have been tough on them.

I think that post of Cam's is going to haunt my thoughts for a while now!

sorry about that calz

we called this guy "Mad Mart" because we were a houseshare full of heavy drug users, half of us as-yet-undiagnosed schizophrenics, and he was the only regular bloke we knew who actually had a job and who could not get beaten up in all bar one, he would come to our house to "get blazed up" and announce his arrival with a "wazzzzzup" from the budwiser ad, we used to stare at him in wonder, he was like some kind of exotic animal we didn't usually get to see up close. none of this excuses the grotbags incident of course.

when I lived at my mum's I often had wanker mates turning up wanting to use it as a fuck-pad because my mum hardly ever was there and mostly at her boyfriend's pad. I wasn't judging your post, my response was more like a lol of recognition!

CONVERSATIONS WITH FRIENDS arrived at last on BBC3 and iPlayer.

I felt like there was a word for this kind of material - something about something you know is bad yet still watch despite yourself. The ill-starred phrase 'guilty pleasure' will have to do.

The simple thought occurred to me that from a culture historically famed for eloquence, Rooney has made characters most notable for ineloquence.

You can pull that apart one way or another - arguing that other cultures have their own traditions of eloquence; that Ireland also has some famous traditions of taciturnity; that some of its great literature has been deliberately costive or minimal; that this is an adaptation not the book, which may be quite different; and certainly add that it's the characters, not necessarily Rooney herself, who are so feeble at talking. And half the main characters aren't Irish. With all that said I think it's true enough.

I really loved Normal People, one ep down on this and it feels dead and dull

The actor boyf seems an APPALLING actor

Does he? I don't see that. He seems no worse to me than anyone else in this, or indeed in NORMAL PEOPLE. But not much to go on yet.

when is BBC3 bringing back Snog Marry Avoid, Freaky Eaters, and Sun Sex & Suspicious Parents?

I'll admit I am mystified by what a TV adaptation of Normal People could possibly bring to the table; literary fiction based around the inner lives of its characters seems a very bad fit for adaptation unless you go experimental with it.

I thought Normal People worked really well, but I hadn't read the novel.