British Telly’s Online Shangri-La

Our darling Beeb has taken a boot to the pants for years on both sides of the Atlantic. While often these trips to the woodshed have been deserved, the BBC has done a fair amount of good in the world that gets overlooked quite a bit.

In a move that should go a long way toward garnering that institution greater respect online,  the BBC has set out to create a Web-based repository for its more than 80 years of programming. As this piece from The Guardian’s Web site explains:

“…the project will create a web page for every episode of every single programme ever broadcast on the BBC, and be the basis of a future plan to introduce a searchable vault of archived shows.”

The possibilities here are endless. And on behalf of myself and my fellow non-British TV fans, I only hope that this “vault” is accessible by everyone.

In recent years the Beeb’s rival, ITV, has done an impressive job of unearthing classic shows for viewing online, only to lock out we foreign types. In May, for example, ITV’s Web site posted a lost episode of its classic soap opera Crossroads. You can read about that rare find here, but heaven help you if you actually want to watch it if you’re living outside the UK.

There are literally dozens of wonderful ITV programs waiting to be watched online here, safely locked away from all but British eyes. Rising Damp, Cold Feet, Chancer, Cracker…it’s pretty maddening, actually.

And while an argument can be made that these companies can hardly pop for unlimited bandwidth, would it be so difficult for ITV, and the BBC for that matter, to allow foreign users to pay a nominal sum to see these programs online? While Rising Damp and Cracker are readily available in American DVD editions, other series such as the Kevin Whately/Amanda Burton doctor drama Peak Practice are not.

Let us hope that, in the name of good will and celebration of this wonderful art form, the BBC will throw open the doors of this groundbreaking archive for the enjoyment of people the world over.

Countdown to Homogeny

The good news is that you can stock up on DVDs, read and reread your copy of 30 Years of British Television, and basically relive the best that British television has had to offer.

“Well that is a very good suggestion,” l hear you say, “but what ever are you getting at?”

Oh my brave little British TV fan, I read  this in the news today and oh boy. Let me just give you the first sentence:

ITV, the UK broadcaster, has signed a potentially ground-breaking deal to develop new programmes with Twentieth Century Fox TV using joint funding and combined teams of US and British writers and producers.

You see where this is going, don’t you? If not, let’s lend our attentions to Lee Bartlett, the new head of global content at ITV (and a former Fox executive):

“From this development fund, we could actually create scripted formats that could be produced in both countries at the same time,” he told the Financial Times.

“There could be differences – the cast for the British version could be more British than for the American version – but you could be making two series on top of each other, if I can put it like that. That could get you some pretty good production synergies.”

Now when we’re growing up, somewhere after learning our ABCs and how many capfulls of water can be swapped for Daddy’s vodka before the alarm is raised, we are taught that “synergies” are to quality what Hollywood is to originality.

You have only to picture a planning session for the creation of Are You Being Served some 30 odd years ago to see how this might work:

British Planner: Now let’s see. We have the middle-age woman who goes on about her “pussy” cat — hilarious! I can hear the laugh track already.

American Planner: Um, excuse me. I don’t want to be a wet blanket or anything, but there is really no way we could have that joke on American TV – we just don’t call kitties THAT here. At least we’ll keep that out of OUR version of the show.

Bean Counter: (Clears throat.) Sorry to butt in here but we can only afford a handful of writers and they have to knock out both sets of scripts in a small amount of time. Whatever they write, it’s gotta go in both shows.

British Planner: Awwww no. Lee Bartlett quite clearly implied we could sort of ‘British up’ the British version and ‘American up’ the American one.

Bean Counter: Yes, well I’m afraid he was over-egging the pudding a bit there. Not Lee’s fault, really. We were all so keen at the time, but that’s before we realized that Steve couldn’t write twice the number of scripts in just a few months time.

American Planner: (Pause.) Steve?

Bean Counter: Er, yes. When I mentioned our “handful” of writers, it was I who was over-egging the pudding that time.

Now if you all don’t mind, I really must be off. I don’t want to miss the first episode of “Lost in Brideshead Revisited.”

Our First Peek at the Book

Arrival!

Originally uploaded by Panda813

While the book has been available for a week or two now, Pamela and I only had the opportunity to see it for the first time a couple of days ago. It was a wonderful, gratifying experience. Here Pamela, who designed the book, gets her first peek at her handiwork while I try to take it all in.

ADD fellow that I am, I’m already looking ahead to The New Horror Handbook, which is due out at the end of October. These are the moments that make all of the other ticks of the daily-grind clock worth it. Finally, a brilliant light at the end of the tunnel.

Here’s a Pint in Your Eye

Here’s an interesting selling point for a new 42″ TV from Phillips that boasts some manner of 3D capability:

“If you are a big fan of EastEnders, you will feel as if you’ve been invited into the homes of your favorite characters.”

Considering how seldom the residents of Albert Square seem to enjoy living in their own homes, is this necessarily an advantage?

Poll: Dawn and Lenny Tops

For all of the ink and pixels spilled over every sniffle and sigh of the Victoria "Posh Spice" & David Beckham relationship, it's interesting to find that poll results released last month from mobile phone service provider T-Mobile found that UK residents' favorite celebrity marriage was that of Dawn French and Lenny Henry. (You can, of course, enjoy a career-spanning interview with Lenny in the pages of 30 Years of British Television -- your helpful author.)

French, you'll remember, is the star of The Vicar of Dibley and one half of comic duo French & Saunders; Lenny Henry is the outrageous food maestro Gareth Blackstock in the sitcom Chef. (Check out the clip above for a French & Saunders sketch that not only features French and Henry, but also finds them playing opposite real-life marrieds Jennifer Saunders and Ade Edmondson.) Together they trounced such celebrity pairings as the aforementioned Posh and Becks (4th place), Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne (2nd), and former Prime Minister Tony Blair and wife Cherie (8th).

Other results of T-Mobile's adventures in public opinion:

• David Jason (Touch of Frost, Open All Hours) proved to be the most lasting television icon
• Doctor Who (3rd place) and EastEnders (8th) the most enduring shows
• The A-Team (8th place) among things that should've lasted longer than they did

Press WHO?

Last month in my entry about British TV Steven Moffat taking over the reins at Doctor Who, I mentioned that the writer's credits included Coupling, Jekyll and Press Gang. Since then it's been brought to my attention that not everyone in the US knows Press Gang, which is a very good point, and a very sad state of affairs. (Although it aired on the US cable station Nickelodeon at some point, it has yet to receive a North American VHS or DVD release. Get yourself a region free DVD player and treat yourself to the UK boxed set available on Amazon's UK site.)

Where to begin? Technically Press Gang was a children's television show that ran on ITV in the UK between 1989 and 1993. I say "technically" because, though it was aimed at a young audience and starred young people, it remains in many ways one of the most grown up shows ever made.

Now we're not in the Beverly Hills 90210 land of "grown up" television here, where "grown up" is shorthand for heavy-handed "very special" episodes about drinking, drugs and pregnancy that have plagued television in one form or another since the '50s. While Press Gang hit upon drug abuse and gun control in some of its episodes, the series as a whole concerned itself more with what it's like to be a teenager during those moments when the curtain slips and you catch a glimpse of the darker, more complex workings of the world around you.

The teens in this case work for the Junior Gazette, a newspaper affiliated with the town's major daily that concentrates on news relevant to young people. Nearly all of the writers, editors and other personnel have been forced (or "press ganged," if you will) to work on the paper by their school as a disciplinary measure, in many cases the last stop before out and out expulsion.

The Junior Gazette is run by control freak editor Lynda Day (Julia Sawalha, better known Stateside as daughter Saffy on Absolutely Fabulous) who rules her newsroom with an iron fist, very much a junior exaggeration of Margaret Thatcher. Her constant foil/sometimes love interest Spike (Dexter Fletcher, an English actor), a smart-ass American newly transplanted to the UK, brings her out of herself even as he infuriates her. Other characters include shy overachiever Sarah (Kelda Holmes), Lynda's loyal assistant editor Kenny (Lee Ross), and money-obsessed ad salesman (salesboy?) Colin (Paul Reynolds).

While it's hard to believe Spike's one-liners were ever very funny, there is a great deal of genuinely effective humor in Press Gang. Like most of Moffat's programs, the funny moments in this one are almost always derived from what the audience knows about the characters before they open their mouths. (Check out the clip above for a beautiful example of this.)

But be warned, this is not a comedy, but a drama that often has light moments. People die in Press Gang, and their deaths have consequences. And in one of the best pieces of dialog from the entire series, Lynda Day tells us a thing or two about consequences:

Look, I'm sorry you died, OK? I do care, but to be perfectly honest with you, I don't care a lot. You had a choice. You took the drugs. You died. Are you seriously claiming no one warned you it was dangerous? Pardon my saying, but it takes a lot to convince you there's a health risk.

I mean have you had a look at the world lately? Just how dumb do you think it's safe to be around here? There's plenty of stuff going on that kills you and you don't get warned at all. So sticking your head in a crocodile you were told about is not calculated to get my sympathy.

You're dead and I do care. But you were weak and stupid and you made a bad choice. And actually that isn't a crime. It just happens to have the death penalty. You had a warning, you had a choice. You got it wrong. Sorry. That's life for you.

‘Dead Parrot’ Still Dead…But Real

There's always that shudder of dread whenever one clears the throat and dares bring up a classic sketch by those Oxbridge lads from Monty Python. Do it in the right circles (and you never know when you're IN those circles until it's too late) and you know there will be some OCD individual or other who will insist on reciting the entire bit, no matter how many times his (and it IS usually a he, I'm afraid) partner tugs his arm and says "Oooh, not here Jerry." He can't help it.

For nearly 40 years we British TV fans, and a great number of "casual dabblers" besides, have been brought up on the group's verbal acrobatics and, as a result, can no more resist the compulsion to go on about our inability to foresee the Spanish Inquisition than we can stop a recitation of our social security number once we've begun. And one of our chief Pythonic delights: the ex-parrot.

It's a Norwegian Blue parrot specifically, dead though he might be, that Michael Palin has tried repeatedly to sell John Cleese all of these decades: "beautiful plumage." And now an assistant curator of natural history in England has popped up in the headlines saying he discovered the fossilized remains of the Norwegian Blue -- its wing, actually -- in Denmark. That said, the bird could also have flown in Norway, he says. This piece, which comes to us by way of Yahoo! India (who knew?), includes the following bit of Pythonesque wit from the good Dr. David Waterhouse himself:

"I specialise in bird fossils and am also a Python fan, so I have lived with jokes about dead parrots for years. Obviously we were dealing with a bird bereft of life, but the tricky bit was establishing it was a parrot."

[Do be sure to check out an insightful interview with Python Eric Idle in 30 Years of British Television, now available on Amazon -- your helpful author.]

Evie Eliott Comes Home

There are certain truths that every British television fan must come to terms with sooner or later:

• Many British programs, like their American counterparts, are crap
• If you really want to see the best offerings from across the pond, you have to invest in a region free DVD player
• Chances are extremely good that your favorite British TV actor is woefully underpaid by Hollywood standards.

It’s this last fact of life that often lures performers from Over There to Los Angeles to try their hand at breaking into Hollywood. The number who actually make the transition to any degree is depressingly small.

One who has made that leap is Louise Lombard, best remembered Stateside as Evie Eliot, one half of the 1920s era sister act of  couturiers in the 1990s BBC series The House of Eliott. (The French & Saunders clip above not only captures the flavor of that costume drama beautifully, but it also features Lombard and co-star Stella Gonet.) More recently, she moved to LA and has become a regular on CSI as Det. Sofia Curtis.

Recently the 37-year-old actress returned to England to star in the BBC’s Kiss of Death as Kay Rousseau, a world-weary detective still smarting from being wrongly (or possibly rightly) hauled up before a jury for the death of her baby daughter. You can learn more about the series and what Lombard’s been up to in this article from The Independent. I will leave you with her initial impressions about being back in Ol’ Blighty:

“I hadn’t been back for a good two years, and when I first returned I had a moment of culture shock. We were rehearsing on Tottenham Court Road, and when I mooched along to the sandwich shop at lunchtime, I was taken aback. Everything looked so smart and so different from what I had been used to. It looked like a film of London.”