March 2008 Archives

There's something about American dramas which makes British broadcasters, Sky excluded, think they can just be shunted around the schedules. I think I've already mentioned Entourage on previous posts, but Damages is another great example.

For fans of Spooks from the start, the last series was, to say the least, a bit disappointing.

The switch from self-contained episodes to one long plot (Britain v Iran) was ok, but when you compare it with the opening couples of series, you soon realise it's gone off the boil a bit.

Is it me, or does the current coverage of the Heathrow "crisis" serve to prove that when it comes to rolling news, big news is defined by how quickly News 24 and Sky News can get camera crews there?

Yes, thousands of people have been affected. Dozens of flights have been cancelled. But does this not happen every day at an airport Heathrow's size? If the same happened when Manchester Airport completes its refurbishment, would we have a similar number of national journalists providing live feeds at check-in gates?

If nothing else, the just-ended series Ashes to Ashes has certainly proved a talking point.

Lets get one thing straight from the start: It was no Life on Mars. But then again, it wasn't meant to be. In the same way that if CSI:New York was exactly the same as the original CSI, just flipped to another city, it would be boring, the same applies to Ashes to Ashes.

ONE of the downsides to being a journalist is that it can be very hard to switch off. And it's for that reason, on my week off, that the echo of Sky News can be heard around the house.

Admittedly, it's been quite a quiet news week, not surprising seeing as we're at the tail end of a bank holiday.

Two stories have dominated: China and the visit of President Sarkozy of France to these shores. Oh, and David Beckham's 100th cap which is a huge non-story if ever there was one.

I said in a blog posting earlier this week that the Apprentice would be utterly boring if the producers didn't inject something a little different into the mix.

By chance, it appears they have: class warfare. Whether they meant to add it in or not doesn't matter I suppose, but there's no doubting that at the end of week one, it's Alex Wotherspoon who appears to have come out of things best.

So, Monkey's back - perhaps Johnny Vegas was short of cash - and advertising PG Tips once again.

I first saw the ad on Sunday, and laughed very hard at the t-shirt slogan Monkey was wearing.

It reads: "I've Facebooked your mum."

There was quite fun piece on MSN yesterday about the UK's favourite TV phrases. I suspect it came from one of those survey press releases which appear in abundance on newsdesks the week before a bank holiday because PRs somehow think they are more likely to get them in print when news editors think no-one else is reading.

All the usual catchphrases are in there - Only Fools and Horses (plonker), The Simpson (Doh!) The Apprentice (You're Fired) - all catchphrases which bring a smile to the face because you know you enjoy watching the programmes from which they come from (or, in the case of The Apprentice because someone is being humiliated).

I was in London earlier this week, and in all of those newspapers the rather demented yet brightly-coloured folk push into your hands whenever you approach a train station, people were writing about the return of The Apprentice.

I've never really understood how you were supposed to use Teletext holidays. I tried, once, to book a cheap week away in Lanzarote, but the page with the deal I wanted kept skipping past, and when it did actually appear on screen and I'd managed to get through to the travel operator, the deal had gone.