Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Going with the flow


Stays in cabled or satellite’d hotel rooms tend to alter ones diet of telly viewing – I’ve seen the ‘best of channel’ UK Gold too much of late.

UK Gold has a load of BBC TV comedy shows and watching them as a channel I’m reminded of 3 things:

1) UK TV comedy with some notable exceptions is not terribly good and doesn’t age well

2) BBC programmes are deliberately constructed to not have ‘ natural breaks’ when they’re retro fitted the overall effect is uncomfortable and the fact that a 30 minute comedy then comes out in a commercial schedule as being 40 minutes gives the whole diet an inelegant appearance with a lack of junctions between the other channels

3) Some US shows that seem incredibly (and the incredible is used advisedly) fast paced are put together to overcome the horrendous burden of carrying an excess of commercial messages. US T V has been described as a ‘flow’ and the producers of shows like CSI have put up in a magnificent effort to contest the worst excesses.

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