BBC Four

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

"the paucity of good new documentaries"

the lobotomised garbage they put out these days compared to the last few decades up to about.. erm idk but the last decade has seen a steep decline/dumbing down/commitment to a tediously myopic mediocre worldview that makes Margaret MacMillan sound like an angry radical.

Probably need another thread for another day because it's mainly just me but the archival stuff on iPlayer gives you a taste of how the Beeb used to make factual programming and I'd love more access to more if it's available but I'm starting to think that the well of good stuff is just not deep, not only from the BBC but in the English-speaking world. Or more likely there's just not enough of us who want factual programming that rivals the depth of books and I shd just give up on looking for it

In some small way I don't think that closing BBC4 will improve documentary production but I accept it's probably not worth it for the half dozen gems we get a year if we're lucky

I didn't fight in the Ashley Jackson wars and call him a fraudulent grey thatched sunday painter arsehole when i saw him painting on the moors, just to return home and click on i-player and see an apparently serious Bob Ross documentary!

I still have a soft spot for Alistair Cooke's America tv series from '72 and have re-watched a few times, so it isn't like i can't appreciate people with different views from mine doing history, it's not as simple as fucking tory wankers/melts ruining the quality, there are too many mediocrities who even if they are qualified - they are simply not good enough to do the job they are paid to.

I enjoyed the African stuff on the other day - the thing with Ade and the art-focused thing on Ethiopia.

And Samira's three parter about Persia, recently.

xp

that is more of an observational documentary though innit? not seen it yet but it looks decent.

Mary Beard's Julius Caesar documentary this week was so bad that I turned it off twice.

Opening pointless scene of somebody giving birth, "not many people know that the C in C Section stands for Caesarean" ffs, turned over

Flipped back 30 minutes later "not many people know that July is named after Julius Caesar" ffmfffs, OFF

prof Judith Herrin is my latest fave ageing history/late antiquity academic, can't remember if any of her tv/radio programs were any cop but her Byzantine book is decent.

that delightful late 80's Studs Terkel Omnibus is deffo worth catching while its still on i-player

Oh I'll look for that

Yeah, that was good 😊

David Olusoga’s excellent documentary ‘Africa Turns the Page: The Novels That Shaped A Continent’ is up on BBC iPlayer for a few weeks. So many great writers, I wish it’d been a six-parter. https://t.co/pNUpMLSrcv

— David Hayden (@seventydys) September 10, 2020

I caught some of this last night. The bit on Emechetta was pretty well done.

that African Writers Series looked appealing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Writers_Series

there are 270...

Thursday Film Night. Not sure whether this smacks of desperation or not, especially seeing as the film in question was shown on bbc2 the previous weekend. (Casablanca last week, Zhivago this week).

i regret to report that this daft preening cunt is at it again

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eib2eClXgAEznQ4?format=png&name=900x900

This has to be parody. It just has to.

Nah, he's the real tartan gammon deal

I hope he at least expands on the life forms that fare well with communism.

When you spend weeks showing admittedly great but hugely normie BBC2 Saturday afternoon movies but you haven't broadcast any classic non-anglo movies in forever on your fucking snob channel maybe it's definitely time to put it to sleep

there's a Norwegian film on at 10 tonight.

(But, yes, first in a while)

And the Saturday evening Scandi dramas are still quality (except Montalbano). New one is Icelandic, which I'm looking forward to.

Showing Dad's Fucking Army is a step too far though.

Forgive the thread spam, but I wanted to note that plenty of BBC2 shows' 2020 seasons are nominated in the 2020 ILX TV poll:

ILX's Best Television of 2020 Poll / VOTING AND CAMPAIGNING THREAD / Voting Ends After January 29, 2021

If you like this show and you'd like to see it have a good showing in the poll (running in February) all you need to do is submit a ballot including it and your other favorites (3 minimum, 25 maximum, ranked by your favorite to least favorite) to forksclovetofu at gmail. It'll take five minutes; get to it!

possibly a controp but i hope Dominic Sandbrook dies soon in maximum agony

his books are pure trash. I wouldn't touch one of his tv programs with a bargepole.

i think i was being unfair because i hope the thick tory cunt dies slower and longer than that

like i'm ok with a good tory historian if they're a decent historian but all Dom does is wank off to 80s music vids

thought this was going to be about the usual Saturday night Scandi drama being replaced by sport.

Scandi noir and sport are both bullshit wastes of BBC4 so i don't feel strongly either way

I don't think David Edgerton is ever going to get any work on the BBC now with the current direction it's going in, this is the type of waster we have to pay for.

the foreign drama is probably the only thing i tune in for. that and totp.

oh, storyville about the chillean oap was a good watch this week too. wouldn't normally have watched it but I'd taped a previous storyville and it set a season pass...