• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.
Thought this new series Britannia looked brilliant! Mackenzie Crook is a great actor and writer, and Detectorists is one of my all time favourite series.

Giant squid and sexed-up druids: is Britannia Jez Butterworth's mad masterpiece?
The playwright’s venture into big-budget television is a heady combination of horrible history and dollops of British ‘folk horror’. But did any of it actually exist?
Thu 11 Jan ‘18 06.00 GMT

It is 43 AD. Britain. A young girl is on the verge of an initiation ceremony that will nudge her into adulthood via chanting, dancing and something nasty with a knife. Zoë Wanamaker as Antedia, warrior queen of a British clan, is magnificent in electric-blue eyeshadow and bird’s nest hair. A mysterious outcast from the druids is receiving signs – from the badgers and the frogs, among other authorities – that something in Albion is badly amiss. Mackenzie Crook, who has clearly spent hours in makeup, is listing and swaying menacingly, face caked with clay-coloured grime, high as a kite on some nameless drug. Crook, a cadaverous vision, is the druidic leader, Veran.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-...ia-jez-butterworths-mad-masterpiece-tv-series
 
Angstrom

New series on the R4 6.30 comedy slot. One of the better ones. Made me laugh a few times which is more than you can shake a stick at.

a brooding, alcoholic, maverick Swedish detective from the tough streets of Oslo, in a Scandinavian detective yarn adapted from the bestselling Ångström trilogy by Martin English (writing as Bjorgen Swedenssonsson).
 
If anyone listens to Angstrom, can you identify the music track used throughout?
 
BBC Radio 4 extra - David Calcutt - The Otherworld Child, First broadcast in Thirty-Minute Theatre on BBC Radio 4 in 1995.

"It was only when she got back to her cottage and the candles were lit, that she saw what a strange creature it was she'd found ..."

David Calcutt's play is based on the traditional story of lonely Alice Proudfoot and her curious discovery in a moonlit wood.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07lpf3k
 
Radio 3 are praying music inspired by Charles fort right now! But it's a bit crap so don't bother listening
 
Radio 3 are praying music inspired by Charles fort right now! But it's a bit crap so don't bother listening
OK, thanks for the warning.
 
Feud: Bette and Joan is available as a "box set" on BBC iPlayer. I watched the last episode tonight, and although some of it I would query (Robert Aldrich never shagged Bette Davis), as would Olivia De Havilland who is suing the producers, it got better as it went along and by the end was unexpectedly moving.
Here's an interview with the 101 year-old De Havilland...
“When ‘Feud’ was first being publicized, but before it went on the air, I was interested to see how it would portray my dear friend Bette Davis,” Ms. de Havilland wrote in an email. “Then friends and family started getting in touch with me, informing me that my identity was actually being represented on the program. No one from Fox had contacted me about this to ask my permission, to request my input, or to see how I felt about it. When I then learned that the Olivia de Havilland character called my sister Joan ‘a bitch’ and gossiped about Bette Davis and Joan Crawford’s personal and private relationship, I was deeply offended.”
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/03/03/style/olivia-de-havilland-fx-ryan-murphy-lawsuit.html
 
Thanks for that! Olivia has a point, she comes across like an ice queen on the show, a nasty one too, and if that was the tone of the piece (which it was) she has a right to a response if she didn't experience the time and people in that way at all. Calling her sister "Dragon Lady" sounds a lot more like her, calling her a "bitch" is revising her personality through a modern lens for the sake of more sensationalist drama. Don't get me wrong, I liked the show, but I was quibbling with it as I watched.
 
Found this interesting play earlier during a random search, it's from 2014 but is still available to listen to,

The Spirit Child
- BBC Radio 4 (Mon 27 Oct 2014)

A radio poem inspired by the story of Alice Glaston, who at eleven years old, is the youngest person ever hung in England. Alice Glaston was hung from the gallows tree in Much Wenlock in Shropshire in 1545. When writer Paul Evans who was born here, later returned to live here and discovered the story of Alice Glaston from a passing reference in a local history book, he was both shocked and intrigued. The more he thought about the story, and walked the same places Alice walked; the more he stood in the spot where the gallows tree once grew, the more he felt a responsibility to tell the story. This poem links Alice with the landscape, which in some sense still contains her, and back to the memory of the people.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04mc1hc
 
TESLA'S DEATH RAY: A MURDER DECLASSIFIED.
Discovery channel 29th March 21:00

This is part three of a six part series.

Although this is one of those American so-called 'documentaries' there are some interesting snippets amongst the hyperbole (Spoiler alert - I think they conclude it was the Nazis wot dunnit) :rolleyes:

Some highlights so far...

They interview the last person alive who met Tesla - a nephew.
They visit Wardenclyffe where Tesla's lab building and the foundations of the tower still exist.
A group of engineers attempt to build/replicate Tesla's 'Death Ray'!!!
 
Thanks for that! Olivia has a point, she comes across like an ice queen on the show, a nasty one too, and if that was the tone of the piece (which it was) she has a right to a response if she didn't experience the time and people in that way at all. Calling her sister "Dragon Lady" sounds a lot more like her, calling her a "bitch" is revising her personality through a modern lens for the sake of more sensationalist drama. Don't get me wrong, I liked the show, but I was quibbling with it as I watched.
Case thrown out of court...

 
So basically if you're a real person and someone includes you in their film or TV show, they can say anything they like about you because of a disclaimer, meanwhile impressionable folks believe every word? I saw Borg McEnroe recently, and they had Shia LaBeouf as John McEnroe effing and blinding his head off, something he never did at Wimbledon, he just got angry. No wonder McEnroe doesn't like it (well, that and they made him shorter than Borg, when he's taller in real life).
 
“The Men Who Built America: Frontiersmen” spans a formative period of history featuring the first 75 volatile years of the United States – from the Revolution through the California Gold Rush – where Daniel Boone, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, John Frémont, Davy Crockett and Andrew Jackson set forth across uncharted land with determination and self-reliance.

https://www.history.com/shows/the-men-who-built-america-frontiersmen

Great history show about the Us Frontier and the battles to claim and tame it. Tecumseh the Indian Chief is a major star of this docu-drama series, how he united Tribes and fought the US for years. I hadn't realised the extent of the casualties the Amerindians had inflicted on the US military and settlers in the early years of the attempts to settle beyond the Appalachians.

On NG History on Tuesdays at 9 pm and at link above.
 
Last edited:
Coming soon The Terror; a dramatised account of the lost expedition of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror.
Apparently has quite a spooky, paranormal vibe. Should be worth a look.

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt2708480/

Disappointed to see in the UK this will initially only be available to BT Sports subscribers (from 26th April).
Will have to wait a further 3-6 months before it hits Sky or Amazon Prime.
 
The Reunion (The Enfield Poltergeist)

Sue MacGregor reunites the witnesses of the so called Enfield Poltergeist.

Poltergeist activity was first reported at the Hodgson family's three bedroom North London council house by Woman Police Constable Carolyn Heeps, in August 1977.

Over the next 18 months, over thirty eye witnesses, including neighbours, psychic researchers, several journalists, and the local lollipop lady, said they saw heavy furniture moving of its own accord, objects being thrown across a room, and the daughters seeming to levitate several feet off the ground. Many also heard, and recorded, unexplained knocking noises, and finally a gruff voice claiming to be a "G.H.O.S.T."

Radio 4 9am Friday.
 
Disappointed to see in the UK this will initially only be available to BT Sports subscribers (from 26th April).
Will have to wait a further 3-6 months before it hits Sky or Amazon Prime.

Well, Sky are holding onto season 2 of Legion for their streaming service, so this seems to be a trend. An unwelcome trend. No wonder there's so much piracy.
 
Towards the end of the month AMC are showing a series called "The Terror" which looks to be a dramatized version of one of the voyages to find the North West Package. Will add more details when I'm not at work.
 
Well, Sky are holding onto season 2 of Legion for their streaming service, so this seems to be a trend. An unwelcome trend. No wonder there's so much piracy.

Season 2 of Legion is on Fox next week.
 
Towards the end of the month AMC are showing a series called "The Terror" which looks to be a dramatized version of one of the voyages to find the North West Package. Will add more details when I'm not at work.
North West Package?
 
A Canadian Male stripper?

The cast of Oh, Manada! are incredulous at your apparent incredulity ...

os-oh-manada-fringe-review-20160523.jpg


 
Browsing through Amazon Prime last night and came across the curious French series Zone Blanche (translated as "Black Spot" ).

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt6519410/

Watched 2 of the 8 episodes and reckon we will stick with it.
It's about something creepy in the woods and with its cast of slightly odd-ball characters, has a vaguely Twin Peaksy vibe.
 
Browsing through Amazon Prime last night and came across the curious French series Zone Blanche (translated as "Black Spot" )...

I gave it a bit of a recommendation on the What TV Are You Watching? thread.

Translation would be 'white spot' or 'white zone'.

It's an example of the difficulties of assuming that all languages are exactly the same, but with different sounds - and why the translators art really is an art.

Whatever the literal translation of individual elements is, the closest in actual meaning to the phrase is probably something like 'blind spot': the landscape in which the drama takes place is supposed to have terrible cellphone and wifi coverage.
 
It's an example of the difficulties of assuming that all languages are exactly the same, but with different sounds - and why the translators art really is an art.

Whatever the literal translation of individual elements is, the closest in actual meaning to the phrase is probably something like 'blind spot': the landscape in which the drama takes place is supposed to have terrible cellphone and wifi coverage.

The best non-literal translation would appear to be 'dead zone'.
 
Back
Top