The Obscurer

Category: Media

Thursday 15th September 2005

A Pub Crawl

Despite cricket’s recent boost in popularity, football is not dead yet; certainly judging by the scenes round my way last Saturday. Does Sky have a financial interest in some of the companies that sell illegal satellite equipment to pubs so they can receive live football from foreign television channels? Whether they do or not, the somewhat odd decision for Sky not to televise the Manchester derby a few days ago certainly gave a fillip to that black market industry. So it was that at the unusual hour of three o’clock on a Saturday afternoon (a crazy time to hold a football match) I went out with my dad to try and watch City versus United, beamed live from Old Trafford.

Our first stop, the George & Dragon, was quickly dismissed. A true blue City pub that I knew would show the game (it was there that I watched our victory over Sunderland, live and illegal thanks to some Danish broadcaster) I was not wholly surprised to find the beer garden with its huge outside screen totally mobbed; the bar was five deep, at least. It didn’t look too much fun, so we decided to hop in my car and go on a tour of our locality.

I suspected The Greyhound would be showing the match (last season I stumbled upon them showing our game against Arsenal live from Highbury), but many other people had obviously thought the same. The car park was chocker, and as I couldn’t immediately see anywhere else to park we decided to try the British Legion, which I had been told would be showing the game. Surely the Legion wouldn’t be that busy, would they?

Wrong; we actually got turned away as they were so full, probably the first time anyone has been turned away from the Legion in the entire history of the organisation. With that my knowledge of pubs likely to have access to the game was exhausted. Where next?

We decided to give the Kenilworth a go, and we were in luck, of sorts. There was no doubt they were showing the game; you could tell by the way people were standing in the car park looking through the doors, craning their necks for a view of the big screen. The car park itself was also full, so people had been forced to liberally abandon their vehicles here, there and everywhere, blocking junctions and driveways. Let’s try somewhere else, we thought.

We thought we’d give The Greyhound one last drive by to see if there was anywhere to park, but on arrival, when we saw it was now as packed as the Kenilworth, we decided to sack it. Clearly anywhere that was showing the game would be ridiculously mobbed; we parked the car back at my house and decided to pop into the Red Lion where we knew we could just follow the City game and the cricket on Sky Sports News while having a drink.

When we got there The Red was busier than expected, and it instantly became clear why; they were also showing the game, but fortunately for us they didn’t appear to have advertised the fact so that while we had to stand to watch the match we were at least not crushed. The pub gradually filled up a bit during our stay, as people phoned their mates to tell them where the game was on, but it remained bearable. While there I learned that The Weavers was also showing the match; they must have only recently invested in the criminal equipment, as they didn’t show the City-Sunderland game a few weeks ago. In fact, at the moment, I haven’t got any solid evidence that there is a single pub in the land that didn’t show the derby match; does anyone know of an exception to this rule?

So it was that last Saturday the purveyors of illegal satellite gear to Greater Manchester were left laughing all the way to the bank, and I was able to enjoy a few pints while watching the most dreadfully boring derby match of recent years.

Good result, though.

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Wednesday 10th August 2005

Shepperton Redux

A few months ago, you may remember I wrote a book review of Shepperton Babylon by Matthew Sweet, a study of the obscure and forgotten history of the British film industry. Well, for those of you who were quite interested in the subject, but not interested enough to part with the £12.99 required to purchase a copy, you may like to know that BBC4 will be showing an hour long documentary based on the book.

It is due to go out on Thursday (11th of August) at 9pm, in the coveted “up against Extras” slot; fortunately, being a BBC4 programme, it is then repeated numerous time in the coming weeks, so there is no excuse for not watching it (unless you aren’t interested and simply don’t want to watch it, which sounds a pretty good excuse to me). The full details of the showing times can be found on this rather splendid website, which also includes wee video clips of the author being interviewed.

If the TV programme is half as good as the book then it will be fine indeed; although, as I explained previously, Matthew is an old school friend of mine, so my utterly biased opinion should probably be taken with a fair pinch of salt.

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Tuesday 2nd August 2005

More Heat Than Light

The new copy of Heat magazine has hit the news stands, and I have reacted with my usual enthusiasm; although this time, rather than ignore its publication I did briefly cast my eyes across a copy during a quiet moment at work (and it had to be a brief look; it’s been going like the proverbial chippy at work recently; a chip shop concession at Fred Karno’s Circus).

The magazine was lying around, left open at the prestigious “Page 29”, and it announced that Anna Friel had joined the Bugaboo club. “She’s done what”, you ask? Well, it seems that there is a brand of pram called Bugaboo; the pram of choice for certain celebrities – Gwyneth Paltrow, Stella McCartney and Sara Cox are fellow members of this club – and that is pretty much the gist of the story. So, to recap, someone I don’t care about has bought a brand of pram I have never heard of. Great. To Heat, however, this is not just news, this in fact qualifies as “Breaking News”, as the bright red banner at the top of the page testifies. Breaking News? I have often been critical of Sky News, commenting that for them no story is too small to be described as “Breaking” when they announce it on air; but I think even they would draw the line at this one.

Page 30 was something about Big Brother that I didn’t read, and Page 31 had a list of “celebrity couples” and informed the reader about whether or not they were “on” or “off”. You will be as devastated as I was to learn the Sarah Harding and Mikey Green have split up. Yes! Sarah Harding and Mikey Green! Who the fuck are they? I know the celebrity net is being cast wider these days, but you would think I would have a vague idea who Heat were talking about. An examination of the photograph of the unfortunate pair did not provide any clues; I have no idea who they are or what they do.

With that I left Heat magazine and carried on working. I know this post sounds a bit snobbish, and I honestly don’t mind people being interested in the lives of “celebrities” in a way that I am not, but I just do not understand how people can find such trivia of any interest at all. I don’t have a problem with people watching Big Brother for example, if that is what entertains them, but I cannot figure out why the participants become newsworthy the moment they step into the BB house. Oh well, each to their own I suppose.

And so, it is with a knowing irony that here, as promised (or threatened) in my previous post, is that picture of my son in his City kit, bearing down on goal. I understand that this is of no interest to anybody else, but blogs are often self indulgent, and this one is certainly no exception.

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Thursday 16th June 2005

Office Politics

Curiosity got the better of me, and I have now had the chance to watch the American version of The Office (courtesy of BBC3 who are broadcasting it as The Office – An American Workplace) and I actually thought it was quite good. It would be easy to pick holes in it, and it goes without saying that I didn’t think it was a good as the original, but it is only fair to bear in mind that a) the US version was designed for a US audience, and so I would always expect to find it more difficult to relate to, and b) the original version of The Office, across the 12 episodes and 2 Christmas specials, was a near perfect sit-com, and to top it would be almost impossible.

A few observations; first that the actor who plays Jim (Tim in the British version) appears to have studied Martin Freeman down to every slight tic and mannerism, and so that looks a bit laboured. The NBC version also seems to be making the whole Tim-Dawn relationship a bit more obvious, but perhaps it is only obvious to those who have seen the original. After watching the opening episode I got out my Office DVD and I was surprised at how much busier the script seemed in the British version. Although the basic plot of both episodes was the same, it was interesting to see what had been changed (a reference to Camilla Parker Bowles becomes Hilary Rodham Clinton; wanker becomes jerk; trifle is flan) and what had just been dropped altogether. The result is that the US version generally seemed slower and more sparse, but I still liked it; perhaps because of what they could have changed, but thankfully didn’t.

It will be interesting to see where the American writers take it from here; future episodes look as if they won’t be such straight copies of the British version. I am particularly interested to see how the Pub Quiz episode works when it is transformed into a game of Basketball.

If nothing else, I think the US version of The Office, if not as good as the British version, is certainly not as bad as many people seemed to expect, with their tired arguments that “Americans don’t do irony”. You would think that the existence of The Simpsons, Cheers and Larry Sanders would have put to bed such lazy thinking, but no. As for the other argument, that the American networks are bound to sap the originality out of any imported idea, just remember the sort of rubbish our own homegrown broadcasters come up with sometimes. Can you imagine what ITV would turn out if they decided to do a British remake of Seinfeld? They’d probably cast Bradley Walsh as Jerry and Joe Pasquale as George. God knows who would play Kramer and Elaine; probably the golden handcuff pair, Ross Kemp and Sarah Lancashire.

No, don’t laugh.

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Friday 10th June 2005

The Last Broadcast

There have been a couple of fine posts at Third Avenue over the past few weeks on a subject I have covered here previously (for example) namely the BBC; in particular this post which includes a good debate on the subject in the comments section. Now, I think I have written enough about the BBC previously and I don’t particularly want to go over old ground (although that has never stopped me before) so I hope this will be my final post on the matter, but reading Third Avenue did make me question just why it is that I have felt the need to defend the corporation a number of times. I think there are two main reasons.

First, there are the criticisms of leftist bias that to me seem unfair. These allegations are not new – I remember there being complaints of their coverage of the Falklands War, because, for example, they wouldn’t refer to British troops as “our forces” – but since the Hutton Report this seems to have been stepped up a notch. It is quite common to read some totally misleading accounts of the whole Gilligan/Kelly affair (see this Fox News comment for example, via Bloggerheads), and particularly across some of the (for want of a better phrase) Right Wing blogs it is taken as given that the BBC is a nest of leftist vipers.

Now, some criticisms may be in order. Blimpish says of the BBC (in the comments section on Third Avenue) “primarily liberal people work there (no conspiracy behind this, it’s partly down to the type of people who get drawn into TV-media)” and I reckon that this may be true of the BBC. The result could be that there is some sort of “institutional leftism” at the organisation, and I can just about entertain this as a possibility. However, the criticisms usually levelled at the BBC go further than talk of some slight unconscious bias. Like Third Avenue I am horribly drawn to the car crash blogging at Biased BBC; there and elsewhere it is not uncommon for commentators to speak matter-of-factly of the BBC being a Marxist organisation with a unified political agenda. This goes way beyond any talk of a vague soft leftish / liberal leaning for the broadcaster; it is also complete and utter bollocks. I should be able to ignore the insane ravings coming from Biased BBC, but I appear unable to do so.

Secondly, though, I reckon that just 10 years ago I wouldn’t have been a flag waver for the corporation at all. I remember an early Alan Partridge radio programme where he “interviews” Tony Hayers, the “BBC’s commissioning editor”. Partridge reels off a list of his favourite BBC programmes that fit the ethos of “quality, originality and excellence”; except the examples he names (let’s say “Morse”, “Wexford” and “World in Action”) were all made by ITV. The only good BBC programme he can think of is “Noel’s House Party”. It was a funny joke at the time, but just a few years later it seems terribly dated; it is only with great difficulty that I can think of any half decent ITV programmes at all.

This is another reason that I feel such affection for the BBC. Multi channel television has enlightened me, opened my eyes to all sorts of new possibilities; I really never knew just how crap some television could be before. ITV, and to some extent Channel 4 have reacted by producing some absolute shite in response. The BBC has not been immune – I rarely ever watch BBC1 nowadays – but they still have a knack of generally making the better programmes (I am not totally slagging off the TV landscape since Sky appeared, in fact arguably TV overall has never been better; it’s just that there seems so much more dross nowadays as a percentage of the whole). Even critics of BBC News often accept that the BBC does still make some top quality programmes, among the best on television.

Ultimately then, what better reason to defend the BBC than to simply say that I think they are the best broadcaster in the country, and that consequently it seems bizarre that they appear to receive more criticism than anyone else. Similarly, while I have some issues with the TV licence (that it is a regressive tax, and that non-payment is a criminal rather than a civil offence) my overriding feeling is that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, and that all the other suggestions for funding the BBC look to me as if they would compromise what we already have.

But finally, yes; I am aware of the irony that my post last week slagged off a BBC television programme!

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