BBC Four

I was quite young at the time so my memories of it are filtered through some pornographic playground talk and eh?

I think some of them movies were pretty good to very good, but curated in a very questionable manner.. Was that the thing?

Yeah I don't remember what films they showed but as a teenager watching my black and white portable in the bedroom with the sound turned right down there was a disappointing lack of boobage.

I don't mind Kermode. No question he's in decline, though. No sense of crisis in his criticism at all.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_triangle_(Channel_4)

Pretty decent list tbf

This documentary about British Bangladeshis is giving me a shameful craving for a curry

Themroc!

Very well deserved: worth watching each episode if they’re still on iPlayer. https://t.co/sJ4GHKPgVH

— Dawn Foster (@DawnHFoster) February 26, 2020

I've only watched a bit of this and this tweet reminded me I need to go back and watch the rest because it was excellent

It was good, some of them old Ra lads were tough cookies

Shepherding on Scafell Pike, so nice to chill out with

Is it this? https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000hb4r

Damn, I *need* this in my life. Probably not the hottest series to be t0rrented. Will try with a vpn.

It's apparently going to shut at the end of the year. No big loss.

lbi - DM me

i think it’s clear that if any channel should have moved to iPlayer-only it was Four all along.

I could still access BBC4 through cable over here and can't access iplayer through my tv at least. Would need to get a proxy to get it through my computer.
So not very happy to hear this, have enjoyed being able to watch it for the last umpteen years.

xxp Done Tracer!

What I don't get is that BBC4 was supposed to be the highbrow documentary & drama channel, but today's schedule looks like this

7:00pm - Stunning Soloists at the BBC (yeah, fair enough, seems like this sort of thing is on all the time though)
8:00pm - Top of the Pops (I like old TOTP, but is this really the channel's remit?)
8:30pm - Kermode and Mayo's Home Entertainment Service (this is standard BBC2 fare, why is it here?)
9:00pm - Top of the Pops (What, again? Jive Bunny is not what I want BBC4 for)
9:30pm - Eurovision at 60 (I like Eurovision! But this is not the place for it!)
11:00pm - Dana: The Original Derry Girl (Is this fucking Channel 5 now?)
12:00am - The People's History of Pop (Haven't seen this, could be good, middle of the night though!)
1:00am - Country Music by Ken Burns (This is probably the right sort of thing, however 1am?)
1:50am - Eurovision at 60 (And so on)

it's a loss to me and i've always resented the music nostalgia Fridays and other (imo) inappropriate takeovers. off the top of my head the Slow TV stuff they've done has been wonderful and wouldn't have happened elsewhere.

i can just use the iPlayer but fuck it i don't think what the Beeb needs is less of the best stuff that BBC Four has broadcast.

i mean Comrade Alph's

no big loss

It's definitely a loss for me, and NV otm, if anything they'd need more Four.

I mean, I get it, I suppose, but it's another 'flattening of the curve' of what's on offer.

obviously BBC2 is now suddenly gonna become less Lifestyle

yeah right

iPlayer is just a way of shutting off potentially good, interesting stuff the BBC has the potential to do to generations that care for it, and surely making the phasing off the BBC easier in future.

That's more of a question.

i don't know what i think about it in terms of the purpose and future of the BBC tbh, i'm speaking purely from personal likes and disappointment at the moment.

i still believe that on balance it's good that the Beeb exists. the balance gets closer all the time tho.

> i can just use the iPlayer

they (my department bosses!) keep talking about an ip-only future but that's just adding such a hurdle to access - the tech and the *cost* of the tech. decent, video-capable internet access isn't free.

that said, bbc4 does seem to me like a lost opportunity sometimes, mostly when lucy worsley is on. would hope the scandi-dramas continue on bbc2.

you diss St Lucy again and i swear i will cut you

(i say that even though in other tabs of this very browser i have tickets open for my part in improving the live-streaming capacity)

i did find it funny the scorn piled on Nish for sharing a HH clip pointing out that all the "English" things weren't english at all when, based on the clips i've seen (not many) LW seems to do that all the time (whilst dressed up as a elizabethan prostitute)

is kind of right given how TV works now but it'd be easy to apply that logic to the whole of BBC TV if that's the argument.
― come out you melts and bams (Noodle Vague), Friday, 15 May 2020 bookmarkflaglink

Leaving aside the general anger at the BBC I wasn't automatically applying it to the BBC TV, but this channel is diabolical. The creation of it was probably a lack of nerve on part of the BBC in the first place anyway. Let's shut that 'difficult' stuff away in a box (and it's another corner, a smaller one and further away each time).

And lack of nerve is everywhere in it's approach to any thought. Not sure why this is a loss because it breaks out of that and makes a nice program now and then?

xps

i don't think shutting BBC4 is going to lead to a backwash of thoughtful programming into the remaining broadcast channels

"breaking out and making a nice programme now and then" is precisely the reason it's a pleasure and i expect no more BBC4 to mean a reduction in pleasure

do you really enjoy Lucy Worsley's Royal Photo Album? not judging, just asking because personally it would cause me to engage with the television in a very unpleasant shouting and cussing manner until it got killed!

I don't think anyone here does but the making of it is a problem.

Lucy Worsley is a good historian imo, i don't watch everything she does religiously but she brings content most of the time

xp as i say xyzz i'm talking selfishly. my watch ration between BBC 1, 2 and 4 is probably something like 1:4:40 so i'm gonna miss BBC 4

BBC Three demonstrates that if you keep a very clear audience fixed in your mind and commission relentlessly for it, you can do great things, even if you’re iPlayer only. (Their comedy has been comprehensively terrible though imo)

Lucy Worsley is a good historian imo, i don't watch everything she does religiously but she brings content most of the time

It's either that or Neil Oliver dressed as an Elizabethan prostitute.

I used to like Bartlett a lot but he hasn't been given a slot since his Plantagenets series, a lot of the new BBC history crew are awful, I don't mean Beard but that useless goth and nice but Dimbo Snow are examples of absolute unwatchable mediocrity.

yeah i guess i'm judging Worsley against people like those two (and Neil Bloody Oliver) and it's no contest

The Plantagenets series is a good one, yeah

his series on the (other) Norman Conquests was good stuff as well.

Lucy W on the Romanoffs: "bringing the dynasty to its tragic and bloody end" but she says "bloody" like she loves it really

I demand a gratuitously violent and gleeful description of daft Nicky's brains decorating that dingy cellar wall before I believe that!

I still haven't watched The Rise of the Murdoch Dynasty, apparently it is good by bbc standards.

She told the Alexander II assassination with a degree of relish

I have a huge crush, there's no reasoning with me

She's pretty much taking a "he asked for it" line on Nicholas II

conscripting people who many of whom lived in medieval serfdom into fighting on a battlefield where many of them didn't have boots or bullets against one of the best equipped armies in the world and were getting harvested like corn was a shit move for sure!

classic Eastenders, hour after hour of boomer pop music, the paucity of good new documentaries... Yeah, shut the fucker down, I've come to peace with it

THANK YOU

1xtra's lost half its under-25 listenership in the last 5 years and yet they carry on serving up this shit. what is its identity? if it were a radio station which station would it be? three quarters of the time it would be Radio 2, the other quarter.. 4extra?

sorry the 1xtra stat was a bit extraneous, i just mean... there are better places to be spending money