BBC Four

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...

yeah this is why Beeb 4 is finished

nah meanness sorry there should be a space for nostalgia but a space for documentaries aimed at adults would be lovely too

the only non-music BBC I have enjoyed today was a repeat of some old 70's Vincent Price horror/mystery serial on R4EX earlier.

speaking as someone who owns a bbc four mug (bought from the bbc shop in bh) i don't disagree that it's often, like 6music, a disappointment.

(it's obsession with Lucy Worsley being the biggest mystery)

and subtitle fans needn't worry, there's a hebrew / German film on later.

Lucy is a gently dodgy saint, how dare you

we are all gently dodgy saints next to twats like Neil Oliver or Dan Snow. But I don't like many of Lucy's programs much at all. She does remind me of my English teacher Miss McNally from when I was 12 who I had a mad crush on, but until she stops being a curator at the goddamned museum of lies and propaganda she's still on my list of enemies of the people I'm afraid!

No I get it but I have a crush and she's sarcastically dry about the royals sometimes

I did enjoy Empire of the Tsars much more than any of her other stuff but Blitz Spirit is the kind of shit where I judge the book by the cover and say no thanks. And it is fair to say she is highly overemployed compared to loads of much more interesting historians who wouldn't have a prayer of getting a series commissioned now. Although it's not like it was any better when Schama was getting all the gigs. The odd decent and genuinely engaging history program has been the exception for years now.

Anybody's better than Neil Oliver ffs

"like i'm ok with a good tory historian"

I feel like Ash Sakar popping up as a contributor on Rise of the Nazis a couple of years back might just be the last time a Novaro media head/some lefty shows up on a bbc history doc for at least a decade or more or if not forever! This a probably a heretic thing to say, but I didn't think her contributions where that interesting tbh. The older Tory/classic Lib historians added much more to the show imo!

pished again granda