BrokenTV

BrokenTV’s Top 100 Television Shows Of The 00s: Part 1

2009-12-01T17:35:00.001Z

It’s December, and that means it’s time for AN UPDATE A DAY from your super soaraway BrokenTV, all the way up to Christmas Day. No matter how busy, drunk or lying unconscious in a ditch we are, there’ll be something new on this blog every day. And if you’re going to start something like that, why not start big? Time for:

BrokenTV has called in all of its staff, including all of the staff members who never seem to post any updates to the blog, a cherry picked team of top media players, alongside several major figures from the television industry. Together, they embarked on a week’s stay at a top secret Travelodge and spent a sixty-hour week locked in vitriolic negotiations about just what abbreviation we should be using for the decade that is about to splutter out. “The noughties” has never sounded quite right (indeed, it’s December 2009, and our spell checker still doesn’t recognise it), “the zeroes” sounds too American, and we can’t use “the 2000s” because that’ll leave us nothing to use when we pen our roundup of the century’s television in December 2099. Stay tuned for that, by the way, just ninety years from now. It’ll be a blast.

In the end, the panel settled for “The Oh-Ohs”. Of course, it’s the only decade this century to end with two zeroes, it’s quite catchy, and the panel felt that when uttered, the phrase successfully encapsulated the events of the preceding nine years and eleven months, what with the war, the terrorism and the economic strife and everything. So there you go. “The Oh-Ohs”.

Then we got the work experience kid to cobble together a list of the best hundred telly shows from the decade. We would have asked the panel for their input, but they wouldn’t stop going on about when they’d be allowed to see their families again. That was apart from Mark Lawson, who was desperate keen to stay and help. Of course, we’re not that desperate.

* A quick note on how we’re doing this: to keep things interesting, we’re only including television programmes which have started in the last decade. For example, don’t expect to see The Sopranos (HBO, 1999-2007) in there. On we go!

Ah, high concept television. While it could easily be annoying - imagine an edgy sketch show where the last line of every skit was "I see you've bought a new ladder" - it can often become second nature. For example, when Peep Show started, surely we weren't alone in thinking the entire first-person-view schtick would get timesome by about the third episode. And how wrong we all were, eh?

But this isn't about Peep Show, it’s about (to give the show its full title) ‘Frank Sidebottom’s Proper Telly Show in B/W, With Repeats In Colour’. As you might expect from the title, the first time each programme was broadcast, it was in monochrome, giving the (already pretty lo-fi) programme the feel of being captured on CCTV. When the same-week repeats rolled around, they were in full colour. An utterly pointless conceit, and as such one that we enjoyed seeing quite a lot.

Anyway, the programme itself. Anyone who stayed up too late too frequently in the early 1990s might remember Frank’s Fantastic Shed Show, a decidedly cheap yet cheerful affair going out on the wrong side of midnight on ITV. This is largely the same, but with about a fifth of the budget, meaning your enjoyment of the whole thing will hinge on whether you find Frank Sidebottom entertaining or not. We happen to think he’s endlessly entertaining, more so when the studio guests on ‘Proper Telly Show’ (yes, there were studio guests) didn’t know anything about him. David Soul, for example, clearly didn’t have the foggiest what was going on, and presumably spent most of his off-camera time pondering how long the sixth circle of hell had been in Manchester.

Notable mention: Frank Sidebottom, alongside Little Frank, also starred in Channel M’s overnight test card until the handover to Euronews. This meant the test card would appear as usual, only the centre was taken up by recordings of Frank improvising banter with his puppet alter ego. And best yet, no scary cloth clown in sight. (Second notable mention: We were delighted to notice that Frank appears in the US television commercial for FIFA 10, just the same as he does in the UK version.)

More hi-concept hi-jinkery, this time from the pen (and whatever implement people primarily use to direct things) of Peter “Chicken Lollies!” Baynham. I Am Not An Animal was the Triffic Films-animated tale of a group of highly pseudo-intelligent animals rescued from the laboratory of a vivisectionist, being forced to fend for themselves.

A top-drawer collection of voice artistes lent their voices to the show, including Steve Coogan, Kevin Eldon, Amerlia Bullmore, Julia Davies, Simon Pegg and Arthur Matthews, the latter as a rabbit bred specifically to provide telephone IT support. The main humour to be derived from the show is the relentlessly optimistic yet slightly bewildered nature of the main characters. On first being set free, finding themselves in a field of cows, paternalistic horse Peter remarks how they must be in “[a] weird giant nightclub with an uneven green dancefloor, which the overweight, naked clientele insist on eating”. Similar confusions ensue as our suburban menagerie find their own house, and (unwittingly) avoid capture from their former owners Vivi-Sec UK.

Hardly the most EPG-friendly offering on our list, Penn & Teller: Bullshit! sees the punk illusionists calling, well, bullshit on a number of pseudoscientific notions, fads and misconceptions.

Many, if not all, of the topics should often have a default setting of “bullshit” in the minds of most reasonably thoughtful people, but that doesn’t stop it being an interesting, and useful programme. In an age where far too much television exploits people buying into the myths of “talking to the dead”, alternative medicine or crypto-zoology, it’s kind of comforting to see a programme roundly debunking such things – and showing their workings as they go. As well as swearing quite a lot.

As you might expect, it’s far from being a show for everyone. Penn and Teller’s libertarian viewpoints mean that left-wing prejudices are attacked as often as those from the right, so while Timmy Guardianreader might well lap up episodes focusing on creationism or so-called ‘family values’, he’d be spitting tofu with apoplectic rage at the episodes attacking environmental hysteria, recycling or PETA (well, not ‘apoplectic rage’ as such, but he might mutter something and scratch his beard angrily).

If we do have one problem with the show, it’s that the producers can occasionally be as prone to cherry-picking their ‘evidence’ as those they are attacking. An early episode looked at the ‘myth of secondhand smoke’, which Penn Gillette has since admitted had been misleading. And so would Teller if he hasn’t been in character, presumably.

Given it’s arguably the greatest revelation in communication since the invention of the printing press, it’s surprising there haven’t been many television documentaries taking a look at the history of the internet. Or possibly, given the way we’d said “the printing press” and not “television” in that sentence, not that surprising (because television allowed only a tiny proportion or people to put out their crackpot views to millions, whereas the printing press and internet allowed anyone with the necessary equipment to pump out their demented ideas without fear of censure, like what we’re doing now. If you were wondering).

It seems that for this decade, Download: The True Story Of The Internet is as comprehensive a retelling of the tale as we’re going to get. It’s not absolutely perfect – the slightly odd presentational style of host John Heileman can be a little offputting – but all credit to the producers for having the show helmed by a journalist who has been closely involved with the web from its early days, and he does know what he’s talking about. Just remember, if the show had been made in the UK, it’d probably be hosted by Iain Lee instead. So, think on.

The first episode of ‘Download…’ can be viewed in full on Google Video here.

Quite annoyingly, John Simm doesn’t seemed to have aged a single day over the last ten years. 2000’s Never Never was a two-part drama for Channel Four, written by Tony Marchant. It saw Simm playing John Parlour, a darkly charming loan shark, forever hovering around the residents of a sink estate with the promise of funding a Christmas their kids really deserve, and hey, something special for you as well. After a fashion, karma ends up taking its revenge on Parlour, putting him in a position where he needs to help of his former victims if he is to survive.

Very well written, and as good a performance as you’d expect from Simm, this is a nicely engrossing story that really ought to see an outing on More4.

Tune in tomorrow for shows 95-91! Or whatever the web equivalent of ‘tuning in’ is. Click in? Ah, you know what we mean.

Shaun Micallef’s His Generation (As Proper A Review As We Are Capable.) (Of.)

2009-11-27T21:39:00.001Z

Stealing an image directly from The Vine’s interview with Shaun Micallef to use at the start of this review probably wouldn’t be legal, would it? But what if we took a screenshot of part of The Vine’s website that happened to have a photo of Shaun Micallef on it? Surely that would just be classified as coincidental, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t it? We’re pretty sure it would. (“Taxi!” – BrokenTV’s Legal Dept)

Well, we’ve been listening to My Generation, the debut album from one-man comedy renaissance Shaun Micallef, and guess what? It’s really good. As we’ve mentioned, it’s more of a traditional comedy album, taking in specially-written sketches and songs, as opposed to being Just Comedy Songs or Just Live Stand-Up, like other comedians would put out. Here’s a track by track breakdown, containing mild spoilers because copying out lines from the album is much easier than us coming up with ‘opinions’ and ‘being interesting’.

Track One/Two: A Welcome / I Remember You

An introduction to the album, followed by a rendition of the Frank Ifield classic. The cover begins as a fairly straight version of the song, before trailing off into silly voices while the backing singers (well, a multi-tracked Susie Ahern) continue stoically with the ‘proper’ version. Interestingly (well, or inconsequentially, depending on whether you’re us or not) it’s a completely different take of the song than that lip-synced by Shaun on the Rove clip we linked to yesterday.

It’s A Bit Like: Vic Reeves, circa Big Night Out

Track Three: Treading The Boards

An second-division English thesp looks back over the career of himself and his top showbiz chums. The first outing on the disc for some of the splendid wordplay we’ve come to associate with Mr Micallef, which is always more than welcome. Plus, any comedy album released in 2009 that uses Kenneth Tynan as a reference is a welcome thing in our book, and not just because already knowing who Kenneth Tynan is makes us feel a bit superior for about three seconds (although after that our feeling of superiority is outweighed by our default setting of ‘self-loathing’, meaning the equilibrium is restored, not least because we’ve just realised we’re the sort of twats who’d use a word like ‘equilibrium’. But hey, this isn’t about us).

“O! If his mouth could talk, the stories it could tell…”

It’s A Bit Like: Peter Cook

Track Four/Five: An Announcement/Christopher Walken Sings David Bowie

Shaun does Bowie’s ‘Fashion’, in the voice of Chris Walken. Brief enough to avoid outstaying its welcome. Previously used as a gag on Micallef Tonight, of course.

Track Six/Seven: Women/Things That You Can Do

A postmodernly faux-sexist ditty about female heads of state around the world (including, as you might expect, multiple references to Ukraine’s Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko), followed about a harpsichord-backed tune from the 1950s about “The Things An Australian Wife Can Do”, performed in the style of Noel Coward. More delightful wordplay on offer, which works much more impressively when listened to, than when merely transcribed on the internet by idiots like us. But still:

“Clever things that you can do-oo / Clever things that you can do-oo / Just keep the lino polished / your cares will be abolished / you’ll wonder where the daylight hours flew.”

It’s A Bit Like: Spitting Image, then Noel Coward

Track Eight/Nine: An Interview/Accident Medley

In a piece that could have been written then deemed not quite suitable for Newstopia, Shaun meets Neil Brady (played by Shaun), a schoolteacher who has written a heartfelt medley about the Death Of Princess Diana, and other tragedies.

”Oh, they chased her down a tunnel, but she couldn’t get away / if only they had dared to stop and think / But they went snap! Snap! Snap! The crazy pap- / -arazzi were to blame, and her driver who’d had too much to drink.”

It’s A Bit Like: Newstopia, like we just said

Track Ten: Medicine Man

Splendid. Micallef performs a monologue in the guise of an old-fashioned doctor from a Yorkshire village, who holds no truck with the modern ways of that fancy coroner from the Big Town.

It’s A Bit Like: Alan Bennett, or Stephen Fry

Track Eleven: They Whisper His Name

Sotto Voce!

It’s A Bit Like: The title theme to series three of Alexei Sayle’s Stuff, but taken in a different direction

Track Twelve: Charlton Heston Reads The Bible

One of our favourite things. Shaun gets another chance to do his brilliant Charlton Heston impersonation, previously heard in the reports by “Pilger Heston” on Newstopia. Charlton Heston is in a recording studio, trying to record a speaking book of The Bible, with amusingly splendid consequences.

”This God-damn Bible is taking forever!”

It’s A Bit Like: Newstopia, or Smith & Jones when they were at their peak

Track Thirteen: Love Theme From Roger Explosion

Performed by Susie Ahern, it’s a theme for the Roger Explosion sketches from Full Frontal (the 1990s Australian sketch show that we’re always mixing up with the similarly alliterative Fast Forward, even though Fast Forward was rubbish and Full Frontal was great and had Eric Bana as a cast member and everything).

It’s A Bit Like: They Might Be Giants’ theme for Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.

Track Fourteen: Slap On The Terrorist

Another sketch we presume was originally penned for Newstopia, Shaun interviews Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the terrorist behind the failed 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Yousef clearly has long-held issues with the 9/11 bombers, who had clearly plagiarised his idea, and to compound matters, had carried it out with none of the panache and flair that he’d had. A great sketch, with Shaun putting in good performances in both roles.

It’s A Bit Like: Newstopia again

Track Fifteen: Jesus Was A Good Man

A country-tinged melody about how Jesus was really good, and how the devil is rubbish.

It’s A Bit Like: A satire on Toby Keith, or someone, we imagine

Track Sixteen: A Visit

An uncaring son visits his bewildered elderly father at an old people’s home. A brilliant sketch that works best when you hear it for yourself, so less said the better. It’s basically a fleshing out of a certain sketch from Micallef P(r)ogram(me), and the post-credits scene at the end of an episode Micallef-devised sitcom Welcher & Welcher, if you’ve seen those.

It’s A Bit Like: The Micallef P(r)ogram(me), or heck, Monty Python. Probably Cleese as the son, Jones as the father. Maybe even Cook & Moore.

Track Seventeen: Hell Of A Time

Just dandy. A short song from the perspective of a dead man reaching heaven, and being delighted about all the things he can do now he’s there. Oh, if only there were a way you could hear what it was like.

It’s A Bit Like: Eric Idle in full pomp

Track Eighteen/Nineteen: An Explanation/Modern Day Folk Heroes

Shaun muses on how Ned Kelly is Australia’s sole folk hero and how there should be more of them. He duly introduces a song about some more contemporary equivalents to Kelly in the hope they they could subsequently be held in similar regard to old bucketbonce. Said song is then performed in the style of Bob Dylan.

It’s A Bit Like: The Bit In Newstopia Where Shaun Sang A Song As Bob Dylan

Track Twenty/Twenty-One: A Briefing/Dalgetty’s Fruit Wholesalers

Mr Dalgetty, owner of a fruit wholesale firm visits a slick American advertising agency, and tells them all about the background of the family-owned firm, and what they’re looking for. The agency then performs their radio advert for the company. A bit one-note, but hey.

It’s A Little Bit Like: The Songs Victor Lewis Smith Did Between The Prank Calls On Nuisance Calls

Track Twenty-Two/Twenty-Three: A Synopsis/Cahiers Du Cinema

A French actor introduces his song in a near indecipherable accent, followed by his song, performed in something which may not necessarily be in actual French. We’re not sure, as like Girls Aloud, we can’t speak French.

It’s A Bit Like: Don’t know, but the backing music was also used for the menus in at least one of the Micallef P(r)ogram(me) DVDs.

Track Twenty-Four/Twenty-Five: An Early Morning/Tipworks Market

An eager father wakes up his children, because they are all going to… Tipworks Market. A short song about said market is then performed, in the same breathless style as Victor Lewis Smith circa Inside Victor Lewis Smith.

It’s A Bit Like: Victor Lewis Smith, moreso than the Dalgetty sketch

Track Twenty-Six: Poetica Zirconia

Just super. More top wordplay from Shaun, via a look at the work of poet Sir I.P. Whittingslow. Great stuff that we’re not going to spoil by transcribing here, so you’ll just have to buy the album. As the sketch contains several funny poems that work very nicely in isolation, this could be cherry-picked for an episode of The Smith Lectures, if Radio Two still do that. We wouldn’t know, as they’ve stopped putting their comedy shows on Saturday afternoons, because they’re idiots.

Track Twenty-Seven/Twenty Eight: A Tribute/My Generation

Shaun introduces and performs an electro cover version of the The Who classic, before waxing philosophical on matters historical.

“If history teaches us anything, it’s that we learn nothing from it. It’s a valuable lesson that’s worth remembering, and unless we do, we’re doomed to repeat it, or at least sit a supplementary exam during the holidays.”

Track Twenty-Nine: Happy New Year

Shaun’s celebratory tune designed to create global togetherness just after 11.59pm on every December 31st, by way of impersonating residents of several trouble-stricken nations forgiving their tormentors. A nice end to the album, and one we’ll hope to see performed on Shaun Micallef’s New Year’s Eve show on Australia’s Channel Ten. Or more specifically, the following day, if we can find a (“wholly legal advertising-supported streaming video of it. Where’s that bloody taxi?” – BrokenTV’s Legal Dept).

It’s A Bit Like: Spitting Image, again

So there it is. Much more of a ‘lazily-compiled breakdown of the tracks alongside a bunch of facile comparisons’ than an actual ‘review’, admittedly, but that’s just how we roll. In summary though, it’s really good, save for a few duff tracks like “Cahiers Du Cinema” or “Dalgetty’s Fruit Wholesalers”, which we didn’t really rate that highly. In a nutshell: the good tracks more than outweigh the bad, and if you don’t buy it we don’t think you shouldn’t legally be allowed to vote.

To round things off, how about offering a sample track? After all, it’s what successful music blogs do, it would genuinely help promote the album as people can hear for themselves what the contents are like, and probably won’t end with a harshly worded cease-and-desist letter being fired off at Broken Industries Inc. Yes. That’s what we’re going to do. it’ll be a good thing to do. A nice thing. An honourable thing.

MP3: Shaun Micallef – Hell Of A Time

Buy a copy of His Generation from here if you’re in the UK, or from here if you’re in Australia. If you’re from neither, both links are probably equally applicable.

(“Thank God you’re here. Driver – the airport please. We want nothing to do with this.” – BrokenTV’s Legal Dept.)

YouTube Thing And Album Of The Day

2009-11-26T13:43:00.002Z

We've been listening to the new Shaun Micallef CD plugged in the above Rove interview. Except, Micallef being Micellef, he instead plugged a wholly fictional album, and brought with him a copy of The Best Of The Smiths to display.

The actual proper album is a really rather splendid "old-school" (if you will) comedy album like what Peter Sellers or Monty Python used to make, containing a few comedy songs ("Christopher Walken Sings David Bowie's Fashion") and a load of enjoyable sketches. Favourite so far: "Charlton Heston Reads The Bible". You can buy it here. Or elsewhere, probably. Like iTunes if you're in Australia, we shouldn't wonder.

(Yes, this is a bit of a placeholder update until we come up with something else. Still a great album, though.)

Update: It's also available from Amazon Marketplace for under a tenner. Thanks to Paul from Hot Cuss (which should be updated more frequently. Tsk) for the heads up.

Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out In The Middle Of BBC News 24 – It’s The Digital Switchover!

2009-11-23T16:23:00.001Z

Not one, but two disappointing YouTube-based updates on the same day? We’re spoiling you, we really are.

So, the Big Digital Switch-Off is now underway, and given the number of posters featuring That Robot Formerly Voiced By Matt Lucas But Which Has Since Become Mute (possibly not the robot’s real name) hanging from lamp-posts in our vicinity, it’s a big deal. Certainly big enough for us to have to retune our Freeview box every few weeks if we want to avoid accidentally recording Five’s 8.30pm output with our series link for The Daily Show, and big enough for ‘our’ BBC region to become BBC Wales, but for our ITV region to remain Granada. Maybe the region thing is down to continental drift, who knows. But anyway, yeah, big.

How is this being marked? Pretty much every transmitter has been pumping out an analogue signal for at least fifty years – you’d hope they’d be given a last hurrah before having the plug kicked out. While it’d be a bit much to expect the sort of big showbiz farewell old ITV franchises used to put on once they’d lost their licence, it would be nice.

You could guess the drill here. A montage of some of the programming put out over the transmitter over the years, interviews with local ‘celebrities’ (possibly restricted to a reporter from the local news and the bloke from Safestyle Windows, but hey). A sombre chat with the engineers who’ll be carrying out the actual switch off. A jovial glance at some of the transmitter-based bloopers over the years – mostly where the picture would cut to static, but if we’re lucky there could be a misspelling of the word “Independent” on the transmitter-generated caption for the 1979 ITV strike.

Actually, having said all that, it’d be a rubbish idea. No wonder we’re not director general of the BBC. We didn’t even make it to the interview stage.

They could at the very least give the switch-off a cursory mention on the BBC News Channel just before the channel falls off air, in the manner of Philip Schofield saying “goodbye to Northern Ireland” when he was in The Broom Cupboard and they were about to cut to their regional news. That’d be quite good. Or maybe just put up a special caption, and a nice bit of music. Even a Ceefax page saying what’s going on, for the benefit of the elderly and/or bewildered. Or even, just for a bit of a giggle, let the nuclear attack emergency broadcast system kick in. Chortle!

After all, with such a rich history in broadcasting, surely the BBC wouldn’t let the UHF signal they’ve been sending us so lovingly for so many years end with a whimper? By just letting it die in the middle of the overnight BBC News simulcast? Surely not that. That’d just be shi- oh? They did just that? Ah.

“Bye Winter Hill! Don’t let 56 years of transmission hit you on the arse on the way out!”

“See you in hell, Moel-Y-Parc!“

So much for BBC Two in the UK, but what about the digital Checkpoint Charlie in other nations? Germany, for example. Back in the pre-digital Sky era, we used to love wandering through the high numbers on the Pace receiver checking out German telly, and it seemed to be very professionally put together. Some channels used to fill the wee small hours by broadcasting repeats of news bulletins from the 1970s (yes, really! How excellent is that, eh?), or rolling as-live thru-windscreen coverage of someone driving through Germany (again, yes really! How utterly uninteresting is that, eh?). Surely our stereotypically efficient Teutonic cousins would make the effort?

Sadly, and similarly, no. Going by this grainy couldn’t-even-be-bothered-running-an-aerial-lead-into-their-PVR footage, German station ARD (was that the one who ran repeats of Monty Python series four in the mid-90s?) simply fell off the air with a whimper in the middle of an entertainment show.

Meanwhile, the feed of ARD on the Grünten E2 transmitter at least had the good grace to go out after the end of a news bulletin, before crashing quite amusingly into the testcard and a piece of hugely inappropriate music. Five bonus points to them.

Leave it to Sweden to do things properly. The analogue farewell for viewers of TV4 saw a news bulletin interviewing the very engineers who’ll be shutting off the analogue signal, before falling off-air in the middle of a cooking programme. Admittedly, it should have been done with a special closedown concert featuring Whale, The Wannadies and The Knife, but it’s a marked improvement on what we’ve seen so far.

Hopping over the Atlantic, the home of Still Bothering To Do Regional TV Properly, it seems quite a bit more was made of the switchover.

A lot of – if not all - channels ran rolling captions over their analogue broadcasts detailing what was about to happen. If nothing else, it gives us an excuse to post a clip of the hugely underrated Drew Carey Show.

As for the actual turn-off itself, it was handled so well, we’re almost feeling guilty about about the haphazardly Photoshopped picture just up there. There are plenty of clips of these on YouTube, so we’ve had the BrokenTV researcher monkeys poring over as many as several of them to bring you

BROKENTV’S TOP 3 US ANALOG(UE) SWITCH-OFF CLIPS

Iiiiiiiiiin three! Illinois-based WGEM went about things very nicely, with the whole thing making up part of a news bulletin. No Swedish engineers in ill-considered knitwear here – the switch-off is handled by one of the station’s reporters, after a cheery explanation on what’ll happen next. Hurrah!

Iiiiiiiiin two! Unless Fox News have been lying to us, PBS affiliate WSRE is sure to sign off with a BBC World News bulletin, a plea to get everyone driving hybrids, and will end on an animation of Richard Dawkins jumping up and down on Old Glory as a sarcastic Europop remix of The Star-Spangled Banner plays out in the background. Well, it doesn’t. Instead, we get a lovely slideshow of transmission rooms, musings on the era of analog(ue) broadcasting, a tremendously overcomplicated mention of the frequency the channel has been broadcasting on (along with a somewhat overdesigned slide of the number “23”), information on the FCC’s stipulations on channel closedowns, a quick ‘compilation’ of test patterns (including the infamous ‘Indian’ one), shots of past WSRE programming (“Fish’n With Andy”), and a quick “thank you” to loyal viewers.

In short, just like how an IBA Engineering Announcement would look in 2009, if they still existed. Splendid.

And iiiiiiiiiiin one! WDEF-TV does things in as perfect a manner as humanely possible. Bonus points right from the start, for cutting off David Bloody Letterman in mid-sentence, cutting to a “DTV Update” as if it were a newsflash. Newsflashes are always exciting, as long as they don’t involve our impending deaths. There then follows a quick look back at the history of the analog(ue) coverage offered by the network over the years, and a rundown of just why digital is much better. The bulletin ends with a splendid montage of local WDEF output over the years, including glances at delightfully lo-fi weather reports, news teams and caption cards. After that, it’s quickly back to Letterman, with the signal quite nicely cutting out before Dave can open his gob. Textbook.

In summary, come on The BBC. You’ve still got several regions to close down – get the local news teams in to make something special of it. It’s no good looking at ITV – their regional output has long since been a joke, but the annual regional concerts for Children In Need show that the Beeb can still do this sort of thing properly. Come on, we want to see Gordon Burns on BBC North-West blowing out a candle at 00:29 on the 4th of December to mark the end of analogue, and we want it, erm, then.

The Unsettling North American Television Ident Awards

2009-11-23T11:59:00.001Z

What is it with pre-90s US television networks, eh? They’re not content with merely having channel identities that look like the corporate logo of a sinister megaglobal corporation pumping out robotic vigilantes that go wrong and kill everyone in early 1980s straight-to-VHS movies, no. They have to ramp up the chill factor my animating them badly and playing in music recorded by (we’re guessing) a hook-handed killer given a Bontempi organ for the first time. In short, they make the 1970s and 1980s Open University ident seem cosy by comparison. What do we mean? Here’s what we mean.

Aargh!

Aiee!

Urg!

Spuh!

Meh.

Fuh. Though admittedly this last one is from Australia.

Website(s) of the Week (and Competition Winner)

2009-11-17T17:31:00.001Z

Firstly, we have a winner for our Spitting Image DVD Box Set competition. Step forward James Wallace. Expect the goodies in the post soon. Meanwhile, thanks to everyone else for entering. We wish we could have given each of you a prize, though not to the extent of actually going out, buying lots of things and sending them out to you. We’re merely paying lip service to politeness there. But thanks for entering, anyway.

Secondly, why have we never thought about posting links to other websites we’ve just discovered before now? Er, don’t write in. It’s not another competition or anything, we were just wondering aloud. This is the sort of thing we’ve found on our travels around the web:

And what is that? A logo for a local radio station? A new streaming music service? Well, interestingly enough, it’s the original, rejected-before-launch channel identity for MTV. It was later replaced by the amorphous channel identity you’re probably already very familiar with:

Exciting 1980s US TV ident related facts such as this can be found at the utterly engrossing Fred/Alan Archive and at the personal blog of Fred Seibert.

Fred (Seibert) and Alan (Goodman) were the duo behind much of the design and feel for the fledgling MTV network, back when there was nothing else quite like it anywhere else in the world. While the MTV ‘brand’ isn’t anywhere near as iconic nowadays, what with it being yet another outlet for imported reality shows and little else, in the 1980s it represented a huge change in how cable television was perceived in the US. Until MTV, many people thought the term ‘cable TV’ was synonymous with ‘HBO’ and little else, but Fred and Alan’s branding help change that perception.

In 1983, Fred and Alan left MTV to form the world’s first “TV Branding Company”. Named Fred/Alan in reference to a quote from old radio superstar Fred Allen (“This drudgery, this sham, this goldmine”), The company helped develop and launch a number of (now well known) networks, such as VH-1, Nick At Nite and Comedy Central, and helped transform the flailing Nickelodeon from the worst performing cable channel in the USA to the most popular, within six months. The company dealt with the identities and promotion of several more channels, with various degrees of success, before closing its doors in 1992.

The Fred/Alan site contains a lot of interesting information on how all this came about, and also contains lots of interesting ident montages that couldn’t be any more 1980s if they were wearing stonewash denim. The personal site of Fred Seibert – who became president of Hanna-Barbera on leaving Fred/Alan - contains a lot of insider information on the world of TV design and promotion as well as the world of animation. Interesting stuff. Retro TV spods should also enjoy embedded Scribd documents of old magazines, such as a copy of Cablevision from 1982.

The Fred/Alan Archive: http://fredalan.org/
Fred Seibert: http://fredseibert.com/

Printed Pisstakery (Spitting Image Giveaway Part 3)

2009-11-15T10:35:00.001Z

Today is the last day of our epic (by our workshy standards) Spitting Image giveaway. Providing you’re reading this before 11:59pm Sunday November 15th 2009, there’s still time to enter our competition in association with VoucherCodes.co.uk. Details on how to enter are at the bottom of this update. Go there now and take part, on the proviso you come straight back to this point of the article immediately afterwards. DO IT NOW.

Welcome back from the bottom of the article. As you may well have deduced from your scroll down then back up the page, this final Spitting Image update looks at some of the printed offerings put out under the Spitting Image brand. In short, it’s our

TOP 5 SPITTING IMAGE BOOKS OF ALL TIME

A title arrived at only partly because we own a grand total of five different Spitting Image books. Sadly, the Lee & Herring penned booklet that came with some-or-other Spitting Image VHS isn’t one of them, so don’t be holding your breath for that. For each title, we’ve taken a number of spine-damagingly illustrative scans, each of which can be viewed in huge-o-vision by clicking on the thumbnails. In time-honoured Top Of The Pops tradition, we’ll go through them in ascending order of quality, starting with:

5. SPITTING IMAGE: THE GIANT KOMIC BOOK

100 pages / 1988 Pyramid Books / Various authors / ISBN 1-871307-48-1

For the most part, this book actually has very little to do with Spitting Image. Save for the inclusion of a few spoof photo-love stories featuring Spitting Image puppets, this could just as easily have been called The Big Bumper Book Of Topical Cartoons Probably Not Quite Right For Viz. In fact, featuring strips from the pens of Banx, Ian Jackson, David Haldane and Graham Thompson, large parts of the book could just as easily have been taken from late-period Oink! comic. In fact, for all we know, they were – Oink! folded a few months before SI:TGKB was published. That’s not to say there wasn’t an impressive roster of non-Oink! contributors. The book also contains strips written by Spit regulars Geoff Atkinson, John (aka Jack) Docherty, Moray Hunter, Ian Hislop, Guy Jenkin, John O’Farrell, Nick Newman, Geoffrey Perkins and Harry Thompson, and artwork from (amongst many others) Steve Bell and Gerald Scarfe.

Being slightly cynical, we could claim this book only really exists because Viz was starting to become huge around the time of publication, and the publishers fancied cashing in on something similar with a recognised satirical brand on the cover – even considering the contributors, it could just as easily have been Private Eye: The Giant Komic Book were it not for the puppet photo stories. That’s not to say the content isn’t worthwhile, and there’s even a dig at Viz in there (“Johnny Onejoke”). Here are some sample pages.

Restaurant Review with John Hurt. As you can see, very little to do with Spitting Image specifically. While some make mention of the sort of public figure you’d expect to see on the show…

Some have a bigger point to make. In the case of The Adventures Of God, on organised religion. Eagle-eyed comic spods might note that the above strip makes much the same point as many of Ruben Bolling’s God-Man strips from the marvellous Tom The Dancing Bug, only eight years earlier. And they’d be right.

Banx’s “They Came From Outer Space”. One that could easily have been used in an issue of Oink!, and for all we know, might have been lined up for the piggy periodical before it folded.

A page containing Gerald Scarfe’s “Mister Gillray’s Deadliest Sins”, featuring those old-world lower-case esses that we’ll wager a good 60% of the UK population saw used for the first time in the closing credits for Blackadder The Third.

4. THE APALLINGLY DISRESPECTIVE SPITTING IMAGE BOOK
100 pages / 1985 Faber and Raber / Various authors / ISBN 0-571-13670-2

At least, we think there are 100 pages in this. The book is taken up almost entirely by spoof sections culled from other publications such as What Sausage Weekly, Police Information Gazette, The Daily Turd, Campain (not a typo,obv) and Which Home Personal Computer Micro Boring Dull Yawn Magazine, each page of which comes with contradictory page numbers. Hey, all part of the fun.

This offering has much more to do with the show itself, with most pages containing those lovable latex rogues, including many shots of specially created models – some made especially for the book, others made for other publications years earlier. Again, many of the better Spitting Image writers worked on the book, including Fluck, Law, John Lloyd, Rob Grant, Doug Naylor, Ian Hislop, Nick Newman, Geoff Atkinson, Docherty/Hunter and (it says here) Lord Lucan. The contents are as acerbic as you’d expect given the people involved, but we especially like the way the layouts of each section are laid out accurately. While sadly different types of paper stock weren’t used (unlike in, say, The Rutland Naughty Weekend Book or The Goodies Disaster Movie), you can tell at a glance which pages are meant to represent The Face, The Sunday Times Magazine or the Yellow Pages. Clue for the last one: the page is yellow. Here are some scans. See if you can guess which ones we’ve included because the page had already become detached from the rest of the book, so we’ve done both sides of it.

Any book taking the piss out of 1980s computer magazines is sure to get a thumbs up from us. We loved them at the time, but dipping into them now (which you can do here) shows them for what they were. Your Sinclair not included, obv. Speaking of Mr Sinclair, a lovely spoof ad for Sinclair Research, too.

Spoof TVTimes listings and an attack on Midland Bank’s Griffin mascot? Okay, this is starting to seem like the makers of this book focus grouped it with a room full of cloned versions of us aged ten.

Luckily, ten year old us wouldn’t have understood this page.

Let alone this one. Note the spoof ad for the FT. The series proper did a similar parody, only replacing the Financial Times with The Beano. A move which surely would have delighted us at the time, had we been allowed to stay up late enough to see it.

3. TOOTH & CLAW: THE INSIDE STORY OF SPITTING IMAGE
146 pages / 1986 Faber and Raber / Lewis Chester / ISBN 0-571-14557-4

Not much we can do by way of scans here, as it’s a proper paperback book looking at “the remarkable story of the men and women behind the mocking puppet masks”. Now, admittedly, we’ve only had this book in our possession for a few days now, and as such haven’t had time to read much of it yet. This isn’t too surprising in itself, as we’re exactly the type of person to buy a load of cheap paperback books purely for the purpose of having full bookcases in our front room, so that visitors think we’re dead clever. They don’t know we’re too busy playing GTA4 and posting our every mundane thought on Twitter to actually read any of them.

From what we’ve been told about it (from people who actually know what they’re talking about), it’s a brilliant read, including as it does detailed information on Clive Sinclair’s investment in the pilot show, the recording of that pilot show, and Central’s insistence on the show containing canned laughter. The book also takes a look at much of the tabloid furore over the early episodes, normally involving them making puppets of various royals. Tabloids desperate to manufacture outrage? How times have remained exactly the same.

2. SPITTING IMAGES
66 pages / 1987 Century Hutchinson / Various Authors / ISBN 0-7126-1758-2

Only 66 pages, and it’s in second place? Half of the book is taken up with full-page photographs? And they’ve got the name wrong? Even everyone’s mum stopped calling it “Spitting Images” by the end of series three! Well, the lofty position can be explained in part by the list of writers credited on the back cover. Alongside a few of the usual suspects from the other books (the ever-prolific Hunter, Docherty and Lloyd), this book includes work from Julie Birchill, Richard Curtis, Ian Dury, Ben Elton, Harry Enfield, Stephen Fry, Germaine Greer, Barry Humphries, Sue Townsend, John Wells and Gore Vidal. Admit it, even the ones you don’t much like from that little list were still really good in 1987.

It doesn’t end there, either. The “Images” part of the book title comes from the fact that each full-page photo contains a specially taken shot of each puppet model. All the puppets had been refined for the special photoshoot at the studios of John Lawrence Jones, with some even being completely rebuilt for the shoot. The results are, by and large, brilliant. The photos hark back to Fluck and Law’s pre-telly practice of constructing one-off caricatures for a single photo shoot, meaning for the most part they’re positively dripping with venom. When you combine that with the fun way the articles are uncredited – as the back cover has it “figuring out who is savaging who is just one of the many delights of this brilliantly illustrated book” – you’ve got a lovely printed snapshot of mid-80s satire. Well, lots of snapshots. Anyway, scans:

P.W. Botha. “Worse still they objected to being half-starved and beaten by the police just for being black.” Our guess of writer: John Wells? (Legal note to the legal representatives of J. Wells, the piece is quite clearly being sarcastic.)

Rupert Murdoch. The dirty digger has never looked so much at home. “Rupe is an old Melbourne pal of mine from way back; I first learnt to read about the Big Wide World in one of his father’s wonderful newspapers. Let’s face it possums…” Our guess: Ooh, wouldn’t be Barry Humphries, would it? Clearly it would, yes.

Ron and Nancy. Given the accompanying piece for this is a nicely entertaining apology letter stating how he’ll pass on taking part in this project, signed by Gore Vidal, we’ll guess that the writer for this one is… erm, Gore Vidal. We’re two for three!

Mrs Thatch. “I would rather spend the night with Guy the Gorilla (Yes, I know he’s dead) than climb aboard one of those vile rattling contraptions and visit you all up there in slag heap land.” Our guess: Not Ben Elton. Too restrained to be him.

1. A NASTY PIECE OF WORK: THE ART AND GRAFT OF SPITTING IMAGE
226 pages / 1992 Booth-Clibborn Editions / Roger Law / ISBN 1-873968-31-0

Brilliant. This is the pick of the bunch, even if the title itself isn’t wholly accurate. A Nasty Piece Of Work is largely an autobiography of Spitting Image co-creator Roger Law, and doesn’t even get around to mentioning Spitting Image properly until chapter nine (or page 163, in case you’re assuming all the chapters are really small). This is a good thing, as up to that point the book looks at Roger Law’s earlier work, both on his own and alongside Peter Fluck.

Even back in the early days, Law’s work made for interesting reading; his first nationally published work (in 1962) was a weekly collaboration with Peter Cook for The Observer. From there he moved on to providing illustrations for The Sunday Times Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, National Lampoon, Magnet News (Britain’s first black newspaper, despite Law not being black), album covers for Hendrix and The Who, as well as selling eggcups in the shape of royalty.

Once the topic shifts to Spitting Image (as it does from page 163 onwards), there’s still a lot of interesting ground covered. The non-broadcast pilot of Spitting Image was hampered by the team spending ages on trying to get a robotic parrot (due to be perched on the shoulder of the Reagan puppet) working properly. Progress was only made once the android psittacine was scrapped for parts. Of further interest is the huge amount of behind the scenes information on offer, even going as far to include the storyboard for the title sequence of The Mary Whitehouse Experience (a Spitting Image production, you’ll remember), rough sketches for puppets and pieces on the largely unheralded artists who’d worked on the design of Spitting Image.

In short, it’s brilliant. Here are some scans from the book.

The book contains lots of delightfully vicious magazine illustrations, such as this one of Richard Nixon, used in National Lampoon during the Watergate scandal.

From one horrible arsehole to another. From the pre-Spitting Image days, this had been the first time Fluck and Law had made a fully upholstered body, ordered to illustrate a Sunday Times article on unfunny racist comedian Bernard Manning. After all that effort, the Sunday Times eventually chose not to use it, but the illustration finally saw publication after being used in the TVTimes parody section of The Appallingly Disrespectful Spitting Image Book.

Our eyes! A photo used for a 1979 Men Only article on the UK’s new Tory government, alongside several nude shots of the Tory cabinet, which we don’t include here. Interesting aside: our scanner actually made a worrying squeaking noise when we scanned the above image. Don’t forget lads, click the thumbnail for the full-sized version.

An illustration of the newly-elected Ronald Reagan at nuclear loggerheads with Leonid Brezhnev, created in 1980 for the CND’s own magazine.

Finally, the cover of Thatcha!, the cover artwork for a never-finished, never-published Spitting Image book set to mark The Iron Lady’s tenth year in power. (Reader’s voice: “well, of course it was never published if it was never finished. Idiot.”)

So, that’s that. If you’re now interested in picking up a copy of any of the books we’ve mentioned here, they tend to crop up with different degrees of regularity on eBay, and quite affordable prices. If you’re very lucky, you might stumble over one at a car boot sale. With the possible exception of Komic Book, we’d say that if you don’t already own them, and you’ve read this far through this blog update, snap them up.

Now, your LAST CHANCE to get a material reward for reading BrokenTV. Remember, from tomorrow onwards the only thing you’re likely to be left with after reading the blog is a slight sense of disappointment, as per usual.

In association with VoucherCodes.co.uk, we’re still giving away an excellent DVD BOX SET of the FIRST SEVEN SERIES of Spitting Image, worth SIXTY QUID, and there's still time to enter our competition.

“Hang on, Voucher-what-dot-co-dot-where?”

Look, we told you this the other day. Twice.

"Sorry, I wasn't paying attention then.”

Tch. You said that the other day. It’s almost as if we’re copy-pasting all this, then changing a few words in the hope no-one will notice. VoucherCodes.co.uk brings together the best voucher codes, 2-for-1 restaurant vouchers, printable vouchers, deals and sales for hundreds of leading online stores to help save you more money. You can pick up a Lovefilm Discount Code, an Amazon Promotional Code or even Sky Offer Codes from the site

“Of course, silly me. What was it I need to do again?”

While it’d be tempting to pose a tremendously difficult “which photo is on the top right of page 167 of A Nasty Piece Of Work” question, it’s hugely unlikely VoucherCodes.co.uk would let us keep the box set ourselves, so we may as well ask something more open ended. Namely: which was your favourite Spitting Image puppet, and why? No special criteria, it could just as easily be one of the heavy hitters like Tebbit, Coleman or Gielgud as opposed to the Brett Anderson puppet that appeared once. It could even be the Downing Street cat that talks like Tony Hancock from the last few series, we’re easy. One entry will be chosen at random to win the prize. Come on, give it a go. The odds of winning are much better than you might expect.

“Fair enough. How do I enter?”

As we’ll need to actually contact the lucky winner, we’ve had to come up with a bit of a compromise for entering. When it comes to taking part, you’ve got two choices. Choice one: if you’re a Twitter user, leave a comment mentioning your fave Spitting Image character, along with your Twitter username. We can then send you a Direct Message over Twitter if you’re the winner. Choice two: fire off an email containing your entry to us at brokenindustries@gmail.com – that way, we can get in touch if you win. Don’t worry, unlike a lot of online competitions there’s absolutely no chance we’ll pass your email details on to nasty marketing types (partly because we don’t know any, and don’t really want to).

Technically there’s also choice three: post a comment including your email address in the body of said comment, but note that it’ll be openly viewable to everyone, and will probably mean your inbox is subsequently packed with a ton of spam, so it’s not a very good idea. It’s the internet equivalent of sending cash through the post. We’d go with either choice one or two, frankly.

“Is there a list of terms and conditions, like you get in proper competitions?”

Just because we’re a bunch of slackjawed ne’er-do-wells, it doesn’t mean this isn’t a proper competition, you know. All the T’s and the C’s can be found at http://www.vouchercodes.co.uk/competitions, but basically:

* You must be a UK resident aged 18 and over.

* Entries to be made via comment or email (as detailed above).

* The competition starts 5th November 2009, and the closing date is 23.59:59 on Sunday 15th November 2009.

* Only entries received before the specified closing date and time will be submitted into the Competition. eConversions Ltd. accepts no responsibility for lateness, loss or misdirection of entries.

* No purchase is necessary to enter this competition, largely because we don’t sell anything. Maybe we should start selling stuff. If we ever do start selling stuff, you don’t need to pre-order it to enter this competition.
* It is a requirement of the Competition that the entrant has access to the Internet to submit their entry. Bit unfair on the Amish, but there you go. * Anonymous entries to the Competition will not be accepted. * The prize will consist of a Spitting Image: Series 1 – 7 Boxset
* No cash alternative is available for the prize. What you can do is just put it on eBay once you’ve won it, or just give it away as a Christmas present.

* The promoter of the competition is: eConversions Ltd., 9 Dallington Street, London, EC1V 0BQ, UK

* Entries are limited to one per person. We’ve got super secret IP address reading powers, you know. And a cricket bat. (Legal notice: we’re joking about the cricket bat.)
* The winner will be selected at random on 16th November and notified by the email within 96 hours. * The winner's name will be published within 15 days of the Competition’s closing date at: www.vouchercodes.co.uk/competitions. * Employees (and their relatives) of eConversions Ltd. and other companies associated with the competition are excluded from entry.

“What if I don’t win? How am I supposed to get hold of a box set then? Come on fatty, bet you haven’t thought about that.”

If you miss out on the competition prize, you can always head over to VoucherCodes.co.uk and use an Amazon promotional code to get one at a bargainous discount, of course. Buggerlugs.

“Look, I don’t even like Spitting Image. When are you going to do a proper update?”

We’re working on another Spotify Top 100, Stay tuned for it.

Satira Virulenta del Látex (Spitting Image Giveaway Special, Part 2)

2009-11-10T03:16:00.001Z

Slightly later than we'd envisioned due to circumstance, here's the second of our Spitting Image specials. Don't forget, thanks to our excellent chums at VoucherCodes.co.uk, you can walk away with (have sent to you in the post) a DVD box set of the first seven series of the show. Full details at the end of this blog post.

Before we stick our hand up the back of Part Two, a quick 'thank you' to a couple of people for filling in a few of the gaps in our great big rubbery heads. First up, TV Cream's Steve Williams for pointing out what was actually going on with the studio audience in the first 1.4 episodes of the show. Steve?

it's - gasp! - canned laughter. The book Tooth and Claw about the making of the series said that they dubbed it on the first show by order of Central, but the second show ran way over schedule and I think they were still editing part two while part one was actually on the telly, hence the rather haphazard laughter. But that show meant they were able to convince Central it wasn't required, and they never used it again.

Funnily enough, the copy of Tooth & Claw we'd ordered last week from an eBay seller arrived this very morning. Extra thanks to Steve for pointing out the above, as the flipping book doesn't have an index, meaning we'd have had to spend ages going through the it trying to find that out. We can't help but think the Spitting team quite deliberately used the sound of a distinctly unimpressed studio audience, to help them get their own way. That's an achievement in itself, as canned laughter tapes containing such a meagre smattering of giggles can't be easy to find. Of course, when Rubbish 3 Sponsor Bumper Stand-Up Bloke did his bits in front of a similarly unimpressed pretend audience on Channel Four's comedy output for much of this year, it would have been from a downloaded clip, which would be much easier to get hold of.

Our second helping of thanks goes to Matthew Rudd (of the reliably splendid Does That Make Sense?), for pointing out that the third escapee from Some Of Our Puppets Are Missing was of course Leonard "To Be Or Not To Be, That Is... Illogical, Captain" Nimoy. Of course. Bluh. Thanks Steve and Matthew. (Ooh, and also thanks to the entrants so far.)

So, what aspect of moulded cocksnookery are we looking at today? Well, one of our favourite facts about the show is the way a slew of foreign broadcasters soon jumped on the idea soon after the show premièred in the UK. With that in mind, what could be more fun than taking a look at some of those? Quite a lot of things, but we're going to do it anyway. Starting off with a trip to

ARGENTINA ("Kanal K")

Pronounced "Canal Car", and featuring puppets with cloth hands, as opposed to the 'proper' latex hands we all remember from Spitting Image. That's not doing it right. When we saw that the people behind "I'm On Setanta Sports/Special 1 TV" were using the 'cloth hands' method on their puppets, it took a lot for them to win us over (specifically the subliminal shots of Jose in a Liverpool shirt around the time it looked like Rafa Benitez was getting the boot. No, first time round). Cloth hands isn't doing it properly. Sure, it might be cheaper, more convenient and more comfortable for the puppeteer, but it's still not right. Anyway, as you might have guessed, we don't have a bloody clue what's going on there, as it's all in Spanish, so we're wittering on about something inconsequential.

What we do know is that Kanal K was aired by Canal 13 in the early 1990s, only to be taken off the air (officially) after the show ran with a sketch where the puppet The Pope said "va fangulo" (Italian for "fuck you"), or (reputedly) after repeated criticism of former President Carlos Saúl Menem. Either way, the clips of the show we can find on YouTube don't make much sense to us.

AUSTRALIA ("Rubbery Figures")

After learning that Rubbery Figures came from the same stable as Aussie sketch show Fast Forward, we had quite high hopes for this, especially when we saw a YouTube clip showing us their take on the Iron Lady (see above). Sadly, as you'll probably have noticed if you've glanced at the above clip, it's not very good. Firstly, the title music sounds (to our ears) like an outtake session for one of the 'jaunty, relax, so we're all going to die, so what' music stabs from the Protect & Survive video (brr). The main thing is, it's all done very cheaply indeed. Now, it seems this is deliberately so - the captions are made from felt tip, and it seems for much of its life Rubbery Figures was a segment in another show, but it does make the accompanying humour seem rather cheap too. Two bonus points for the John Howard puppet making a cameo appearance in an episode of The Micallef P(r)ogram(me), however.

And after all that, we remembered that Full Frontal was the really good Aussie sketch comedy we were thinking of, not Fast Forward. Fast Forward was rubbish. And BrokenTV's fourteenth law of television dictates that felt-tipped captions are only any good when they're done by Bob Godfrey.

GERMANY ("Hurra Deutschland")

Best title of the lot, we think, what with it translating as "Hurrah Germany".Hurrah! The puppets are much more identifiable as being from a Spitting Image spin-off, too, with properly burly torsos and faces capable of more than one expression. We can't really speak for the humour, as the pitiful amount of German we know was gleaned from MTV Europe ad breaks circa 1993. We suspect the clip here could well be the Teutonic adaptation of the John and Norma Major 'peas' skits that everyone got a bit bored of in the early 1990s over here.

The show ran in its original guise from 1987 to 1991, and the programme was later resurrected in 2003 under a title which translates as "Hurrah Germany - Now more than ever!", though sadly it seems to have been a bit '2DTV', and was soon forgotten.

SPAIN ("Las noticias del guiñol")

Now you're talking. One of the few examples of the show still going (as it has since 1995, though it was more directly inspired by the French version of Spitting Image, "Les Guignols de l'info"), this is hosted by a latex take on former Liverpool and Eire striker Michael Robinson, who as everyone knows is now a well-known. TV personality in Spain, having ended his football career there (with Osasuna), and liking it so much he stayed there. Even better, the clip we've found here is from their World Cup 2006 show (or shows), and includes interviews with David Beckham, Fernando Torres, The Sun (centre of solar system, rather than tabloid), and a popular Spanish politician (we think) as Homer Simpson.

We even think we understand some of the jokes. Beckham is flogging cologne, The Sun is there over something to do with the weather at Germany 2006, while (Spanish PM) José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and (opposition leader) Mariano Rajoy are busily trying to outdo each other with their feverish support for the Spanish national side. Now, if only everyone else had been considerate enough to make their programmes all about football, we'd be sorted.

SWEDEN ("Riksorganet")

Another one with 'proper' Spitting Image puppets. Sadly, despite extensive research (ahem) we can't find out much about it. i.e. there's no Wikipedia page for it.

FINLAND ("The Autocrats")

While this isn't a direct spin-off from Spitting Image, it's probably interesting enough to include here. The Autocrats is more of sitcom in feel, taking the viewer behind the scenes of Finnish politics. No, wait, come back. It's all in quite impressive CGI, especially so considering the show has been running for over 230 episodes since 2001. There are generally between thirty and forty episodes produced every year. That's a lot of CGI.

Oh right, we haven't got to the bit that's interesting yet. Well, in 2003, an episode was made entirely in English. Named "Operation ESC", it sees Tony Blair, George W Bush and Vladimir Putin up to some international shenanigans, with The Autocrats team determined to intervene, or at least seem fleetingly relevant. And that's the first part of it up there. As we say, quite interesting, if not exactly a laugh riot. Hey, we said 'interesting', not 'funny'. Well, we've never watched a Finnish CGI sitcom before now.

Thus ends our fleeting trip around the World Of Puppet-Based Satire, but stay tuned for the third and final part of our Super Rubber Giveaway Trilogy. Now, a quick reiteration of some actual interesting stuff., and nothing to do with Finnish politics In association with VoucherCodes.co.uk, we’re still giving away an excellent DVD BOX SET of the FIRST SEVEN SERIES of Spitting Image, worth SIXTY QUID, and there's still time to enter our competition.

“Hang on, Voucher-what-dot-co-dot-where?”

Look, we told you this the other day.

"Sorry, I wasn't paying attention then.”

Tch. Try harder, this time. VoucherCodes.co.uk brings together the best voucher codes, 2-for-1 restaurant vouchers, printable vouchers, deals and sales for hundreds of leading online stores to help save you more money. You can pick up a Lovefilm Discount Code, an Amazon Promotional Code or even Sky Offer Codes from the site

“Ah, now you mention it, I do remember. What was it I need to do again?”

While it’d be tempting to pose a hugely difficult question about the Chilean version of Spitting Image (Los Toppins, coincidentally) that hardly anyone would know the answer to, it’s hugely unlikely VoucherCodes.co.uk would let us keep the box set ourselves, so we may as well ask something more open ended. Namely: which was your favourite Spitting Image puppet, and why? No special criteria, it could just as easily be one of the heavy hitters like Tebbit, Coleman or Gielgud as opposed to the Brett Anderson puppet that appeared once. It could even be the Downing Street cat that talks like Tony Hancock from the last few series, we’re easy. One entry will be chosen at random to win the prize.

“Fair enough. How do I enter?”

“Is there a list of terms and conditions, like you get in proper competitions?”

Just because we’re a bunch of lackadaisical bumpkins, it doesn’t mean this isn’t a proper competition, you know. All the T’s and the C’s can be found at http://www.vouchercodes.co.uk/competitions, but basically:

* You must be a UK resident aged 18 and over.
* Entries to be made via comment or email (as detailed above).
* The competition starts 5th November 2009, and the closing date is 23.59:59 on Sunday 15th November 2009.
* Only entries received before the specified closing date and time will be submitted into the Competition. eConversions Ltd. accepts no responsibility for lateness, loss or misdirection of entries.
* No purchase is necessary to enter this competition, largely because we don’t sell anything. Maybe we should start selling stuff. If we ever do start selling stuff, you don’t need to pre-order it to enter this competition.
* It is a requirement of the Competition that the entrant has access to the Internet to submit their entry. Bit unfair on the Amish, but there you go.
* Anonymous entries to the Competition will not be accepted.
* The prize will consist of a Spitting Image: Series 1 – 7 Boxset
* No cash alternative is available for the prize. What you can do is just put it on eBay once you’ve won it, or just give it away as a Christmas present.
* The promoter of the competition is: eConversions Ltd., 9 Dallington Street, London, EC1V 0BQ, UK
* Entries are limited to one per person. We’ve got super secret IP address reading powers, you know. And a cricket bat. (Legal notice: we’re joking about the cricket bat.)
* The winner will be selected at random on 16th November and notified by the email within 96 hours.
* The winner's name will be published within 15 days of the Competition’s closing date at: www.vouchercodes.co.uk/competitions.
* Employees (and their relatives) of eConversions Ltd. and other companies associated with the competition are excluded from entry.

“What if I don’t win? How am I supposed to get hold of a box set then? Come on fatty, bet you haven’t thought about that.”

If you miss out on the competition prize, you can always head over to VoucherCodes.co.uk and use an Amazon promotional code to get one at a bargainous discount, of course. Sillychops.

Latex Lampoonery (Spitting Image Giveaway Special, Part 1)

2009-11-05T12:08:00.001Z

Latex lampoonery. Rubber ribaldry. Profane puppetry. The Muppets with swearing. Call it what you will, but you can’t deny that Spitting Image was a landmark satirical comedy show, running for for 141 episodes between 1984 and 1996. In fact, in it’s prime, it was inarguably the most biting satirical show ever broadcast on ITV, maybe even on British television entirely. And if at this point you’re thinking “well.. I don’t know. What about 2DTV?”, you might like to stick your face in a fire.

Why do we mention this now, just the thirteen years after the blimmin’ thing finished? Well, Network have just released a mammoth eleven-disc DVD box set of the first seven series, and in association with our good friends at VoucherCodes.co.uk, we’re GIVING AWAY a copy of the Spitting Image Series One To Seven DVD Box Set (RRP £59.99) to ONE LUCKY READER. (They think we’re a proper telly website. Now shush, no-one tell them the truth. Hopefully they’re okay with having their company mentioned in the same intro as us telling fans of 2DTV to stick their faces in a fire.)

Details on how to enter our special competition are at the bottom of this update. But hey, at least read some of it first. It took ages, and just skipping to the part where you can win stuff is just rude. At least look at the screencaps and nod as if you find them interesting. We’ve got feelings. Jeez.

To kick off, a few interesting things about Spitting Image, in handy bullet form:

* The first episode wasn’t actually very good. At this point, the team were still finding their feet with the format, and were still coming to terms with making an entire thirteen-episode series in thirteen weeks, given that the (unscreened) pilot had taken them five months. There were other issues to contend with, such as the production of the show being split between London (where all the puppets were made, kept and repaired) and Birmingham (where it was actually recorded), Indeed, many of the people involved in the making of the show struggled to get the time to actually see the first episode go out.
* By the time the show reached it’s final episode, it wasn’t very good, as it had pretty much “jumped” the “shark”, which is why it was getting cancelled. Luckily of course, the majority of the shows in between were brilliant (from about episode three onwards, in fact). Clumsily, ITV chose to mark the 20th anniversary of the final show by repeating… the first and last episodes. Boh.
* One quite nice fact about that first ever episode: Central Television forbade Spitting Image from using their puppet of The Queen in the series debut, as (non-puppet) Prince Philip was due to open the company’s Nottingham studios later the same week, and he isn’t exactly the sort of person to let such a matter go unremarked. This was a bit of a blow for the team, who’d felt our monarch’s rubber persona would be the star of the show – with director Peter Harris, who’d previously worked on The Muppet Show, having proclaimed her as “our Miss Piggy”. Not to be outdone, the first episode featured a number of running sketches where the Queen (unseen and unheard) was keeping Margaret Thatcher waiting for a private audience. Indeed, the very first sketch on the show involved the Cabinet being introduced to “your most gracious sovereign, The Queen”, who walked on screen as… Mrs Thatch in a crown. A nice little in-joke, there.
* Another early sketch banned, this time by the IBA, involved “Bernard Levin” explaining why he became a writer. “I think it was because I was circumcised with a pencil sharpener”.
* As every schoolboy knows, the very first episode of Spitting Image featured the sound of a studio audience. Their presence didn’t really work, and the idea was swiftly ditched. Curiously however, and contrary to what we’ve read elsewhere, the sound of a studio audience seemed to stick around for a few sketches early in the second episode. Firstly in a pre-titles sketch where resurgent Tony Benn proclaims “Back! Back! Back!”, before slumping forward to reveal several knives have been shoved into his back. Cue polite titters. The muted chuckles then fade to applause as the titles roll, but then the audience disappear for the next sketch, Mary Whitehouse saying how disgusted she was with the first episode (and it’s not as if they just didn’t find it funny – Whitehouse makes reference to ‘big pink floppy things’, which would have been a laugh riot for the 1984-located brains of the audience). A few skits later, the sound of an audience reappears, disappears for the rest of the first half, then returns to applaud the title card for part two, before buggering off for the rest of the series. Very strange.
* This is all the more strange as the first show wasn’t actually recorded live in front of a studio audience, unless they were the most patient studio audience in the history of time itself, so it’s not as if they were actually present at the recording and therefore couldn’t be removed from the soundtrack. Roger Law points out in his excellent autobiography A Nasty Piece Of Work (ISBN 1873 968 000) that “it took one hour of studio time to produce one screenable minute of Spitting Image”, so it’s quite safe to assume the audience were shown recordings of the sketches. If that were the case, why couldn’t the non-audience versions be shown? Anyway, all trace of the audience was gone by episode three, and they wouldn’t return until an actual live-in-front-of-a-studio-audience pre-election episode screened towards the end of the show’s life.
* Spitting Image Pet Theory Of The Femtosecond! The quality of each series was inversely proportional to the effort put into the title sequences. Certainly, the titles for the last few seasons –pastel-coloured animation in it’s dying days, preceded by a Punch & Judy show in the years before that – were much more visually appearing than the live-action marionettes of the early years. Not a fact, admittedly, but hey.

Anyway, all that’s not really the point of this update. Now, everyone remembers the main targets of the show – Mrs Thatch, Norman Tebbit, Reagan, Kinnock, Prince Phil, David Colman, Frank Bruno, Sir John Gielgud at al. We’re here to play tribute to the lesser spotted puppets, rubber realisations of those who were either less obvious targets for contemporary satire, or those who weren’t based on real-life figures at all. Sometimes they were background figures from history, sometimes they were comic creations magicked entirely from the sketchpads of Spitting Image Productions, sometimes they were of people so inconsequential to the public eye the TV Times had probably needed to mention who they were beforehand. In all cases, they made for welcome companions in our fight to wring out that last ounce of weekend TV enjoyment before bed on a Sunday night, and if we’d missed it we’d have no idea what everyone was talking about on the school bus just ten hours later. So, join us now, as we sneakily switch on the bedroom portable (at a volume so low mum and dad won’t hear us watching it) and delve into the first seven series of rubber ribaldry, picking out the more enjoyable cameos. And forwarding past half of the songs they did, because they weren’t often very good.

Ed

First seen: series one, episode one.

Unfailingly loyal cube-bonced aide to Ronald Reagan, Ed was always on hand to carry out Ronnie’s wishes, to offer helpful advice, or just to get called an asshole. Spent most of the first series trying to reclaim or replace the President’s brain, which had done a runner after being removed for safety purposes.

Harold Macmillan

First seen: series one, episode one.

First seen playing a small part in one of the first ever sketches (Harold Wilson is moved to an Old Prime Ministers Home, much to his chagrin), the usually mute MacMillon generally appeared wherever a generic elderly MP was needed to fill in background space. He’s ninety, you know. (Well, not any more he isn’t, he’s dead.)

Generic Soviet Cabinet Ministers

First seen: series one, episode one.

Seen wherever the scene was set behind the Iron Curtain, these would make up the entire male non-president population of the Soviet Union in sketches set in Eastern Europe. The female population would of course be played by… Generic Soviet Cabinet Ministers puppets in dresses. Spent most of the early shows trying to convince everyone that Soviet President Konstantin Chernenko was still alive, pre-empting Weekend At Bernie’s by several years.

Elderly Hitler

First seen: series one, episode one

Retired dictator, now going under the name of “Jeremy”. First seen living at No. 9 Downing Street, where he would often give neighbourly policy advice to his next door neighbour, Mrs Thatcher.

Mrs Thatcher: “Have you ever been inside number 10?”

“Jeremy”: “Once, in 1940 I came *that* close. But with you there, I almost feel like I run the place…”

Later to be spotted as a background character many times, including popping up in the United Nations representing Argentina, presenting Top Of The Pops, or as a Tory back-bencher.

Lord Lucan/Harold Angryperson

/
First seen: series one, episode two (Lucan), series one, episode three (Angryperson)

First seen (as Lord Lucan) refusing to reveal his whereabouts while appearing on Question Time. Later seen in a variety of roles, but most enjoyably in silhouetted form as Harold Angryperson in the regular scandal round-up CRIMINAL LIBEL (first seen, S1EP3). That first Criminal Libel report centred on the (fictional) dodgy antics of Mark Thatcher. How times change, eh?

Extra bonus fact: episode seven sees Harold Angryperson voiced by Ade Edmondson in Vyvyan mode, as opposed to the more regular Chris Barrie.

Commissioner Newman

First seen: series one, episode three

First seen parading around in front of 10 Downing Street in episode three, doing… absolutely nothing at all, really. Would later show up quite frequently, highlighting Britain’s heavy-handed policing of the 1980s. When he wasn’t finding a flimsy pretence for duffing up Leon Britten, he would often to be found giving a good bollocking to…

Norris Dimbleby

First seen: series one, episode nine

Usually seen playing the role of dimwitted bobby, Dimbleby was first spotted playing the new Police Spokesman For Racial Affairs, apologising for the behaviour of his predecessor. “May I assure you that for him, the future looks very nig-nog indeed”, cue him being dragged off and replaced by a succession of replacements, each in turn being dragged away after saying something racist. First seen as a regular peeler in episode 12, getting shot by Commissioner Newman in an unarmed combat training course.

Anthony Anteater

First seen: series one, episode four.

Yeah, those bloody anteaters, eh? Glad someone socked it to them on a satirical sketch show after what they did to the unions, eh? Eh? First seen refusing to appear on set in a David Attenborough-helmed nature documentary, resulting in Attenborough having to visit his dressing room to reason with him. “David! It’s typecasting! Why can’t I play something else, like a swan, or a lion?” Much later seen in the enjoyable late-period in-show serial “Some Of Our Puppets Are Missing”, alongside David Steel and someone whose name will come to us about three seconds after we click “publish” on this update.

“I said to him, David, I said. a line of ants? I’d rather a line of cocaine!”

The Grim Reaper

First seen: series one, episode seven.

Popping up for the first time as one of the Flying Pickets, singing about how ugly they all are. Generally spotted afterwards in his more traditional guise as collector of souls, with the occasional appearance as Yorick.

Potato

First seen: series one, episode nine

Potato cropped up in a number of guises, usually of the Irish variety. For Ronald Reagan’s 1984 visit to Ireland, Potato played Reagan’s “closest Irish relative”. Later popped up as the Irish ambassador at the UN, and hosting Rubber News.

Central Continuity Announcer

First seen: series one, episode eleven

The first live-action person ever seen on the show. Kept manufacturing phony transmission errors within the show, just so he could appear on screen, right up until the point his director gave him a bollocking over the phone.

(The Real) Denis Healey MP

First seen: series one, episode twelve

The second live-action person to appear on the show, and as far as we’re aware the only real-life MP to ever appear on the programme (no matter how much Jeffrey Archer would have liked to have been the second). Popped up during (puppet) Sir Robin Day’s Euro Election Phone-In to point out that the European elections had actually finished a week earlier. Sir Robin replied that European elections are so damned exciting he just couldn’t wait four years for the next lot.

COMPO TIME

That’s the end of the first part, but expect more rubber recollections tomorrow. Now, onto the interesting stuff. In association with VoucherCodes.co.uk, we’re giving away an excellent DVD BOX SET of the FIRST SEVEN SERIES of Spitting Image, worth SIXTY QUID. You know, just like a proper website might do. Yes, really.

“Hang on, Voucher-what-dot-co-dot-where?”

Tsk. VoucherCodes.co.uk brings together the best voucher codes, 2-for-1 restaurant vouchers, printable vouchers, deals and sales for hundreds of leading online stores to help save you more money. You can pick up a Lovefilm Discount Code, an Amazon Promotional Code or even Sky Offer Codes from the site.

“Fair enough. So, what do I have to do?”

While it’d be tempting to pose a hugely difficult question that hardly anyone would know the answer to, it’s hugely unlikely VoucherCodes.co.uk would let us keep the box set ourselves, so we may as well ask something more open ended. Namely: which was your favourite Spitting Image puppet, and why? It doesn’t have to be one of the lesser lights that we’ve gone on about in the preceding 2000 words, it could easily be one of the heavy hitters like Tebbit, Coleman or Gielgud. It could even be the Downing Street cat that talks like Tony Hancock from the last few series, we’re easy. One entry will be chosen at random to win the prize.

“Fair enough. How do I enter?”

“Is there a list of terms and conditions, like you get in proper competitions?”

Just because we’re a bunch of clumsy idiots, it doesn’t mean this isn’t a proper competition, you know. All the T’s and the C’s can be found at http://www.vouchercodes.co.uk/competitions, but basically:

* You must be a UK resident aged 18 and over.

* Entries to be made via comment or email (as detailed above).

* The competition starts 5th November 2009, and the closing date is 23.59:59 on Sunday 15th November 2009.

* Only entries received before the specified closing date and time will be submitted into the Competition. eConversions Ltd. accepts no responsibility for lateness, loss or misdirection of entries.

* No purchase is necessary to enter this competition, largely because we don’t sell anything. Maybe we should start selling stuff. If we ever do start selling stuff, you don’t need to pre-order it to enter this competition.

* It is a requirement of the Competition that the entrant has access to the Internet to submit their entry. Bit unfair on the Amish, but there you go.

* Anonymous entries to the Competition will not be accepted.

* The prize will consist of a Spitting Image: Series 1 – 7 Boxset

* No cash alternative is available for the prize. What you can do is just put it on eBay once you’ve won it, or just give it away as a Christmas present.

* The promoter of the competition is: eConversions Ltd., 9 Dallington Street, London, EC1V 0BQ, UK

* Entries are limited to one per person. We’ve got super secret IP address reading powers, you know. And a cricket bat. (Legal notice: we’re joking about the cricket bat.)

* The winner will be selected at random on 16th November and notified by the email within 96 hours.

* The winner's name will be published within 15 days of the Competition’s closing date at: www.vouchercodes.co.uk/competitions.

* Employees (and their relatives) of eConversions Ltd. and other companies associated with the competition are excluded from entry.

“What if I don’t win? How am I supposed to get hold of a box set then? Come on fatty, bet you haven’t thought about that.”

If you miss out on the competition prize, you can always head over to VoucherCodes.co.uk and use an Amazon promotional code to get one at a bargainous discount, of course. Bignose.

Lamb: Slaughtered

2009-11-03T00:50:00.001Z

In April, we sharpened up our most satirical crayons and cobbled together this:

And as a DIRECT CONSEQUENCE just seven months later:

No need to thank us.

But ignoring the thoughts of needlessly bitter telly blogs who’d rather 6Music had just kept the Jupitus-Coe dream team on mornings, what do the actual people think? Well, we’ve just done a Twitter search of the last hundred mentions for “George Lamb”, and totted up the types of reaction to the news. We’ve accounted for people expressing delight at his departure, people expressing their regret at his departure (alongside pleased Lamb-fans who are happy they can now hear him at the weekend), and even totted up the tweets simply reporting the news without expressing an opinion either way. We’ve discounted any retweets linking to the story that haven’t expressed a preference either way, as there’s not much point to them. Erm, except there isn’t much point to any of this, is there? And yet we’ve spent valuable moments of our one and only life calculating these figures. We could have been out selling poppies or being polite to tramps. God, what are we doing?

Oh, and we’ve also accounted for people using the news to moan about something else entirely, because it’s the internet, and there’ll always be people wanting to do just that.

So there you go. Sixty individual people taking time out of their day to express the delight they felt at the reduction in annoying samples being played out on 6Music at random in lieu of actual content, with just sixteen expressing their dismay. The story (which was several hours old by 6pm) was deemed worthy of reporting by fifteen twitterers, and just two people used it as the catalyst for a different bugbear entirely (namely how much they respectively hate Jon Holmes and like Andrew Collins).

If there’s a downside to all this, it’s that Lauren Laverne taking over Lamb’s slot means a slightly reduced chance of any Kenickie records being played between 10am and 1pm (because she’s too modest), and that current host of the weekend breakfast show Iyare is getting dumped altogether. A shame, as he always seemed to prefer playing records to promoting his own ‘brand’ (y’know, like disc jockeys are meant to do). In any case, 6Music, and by extension The Whole Of The BBC is now slightly better off. Shabba.

Another Top Hundred Spotify Comedy Albums Of All Time (Pre-amble)

2009-10-28T00:44:00.001Z

Well, it has been a good six weeks since our earlier (Graham Linehan-approved) update of our personal Top 100 Comedy Albums on Spotify, so it’s time for a follow-up. Even though it was actually more of a “Top 114”, but then that’s just the way we roll, baby. If the sequel we’re preparing actually ends up as a “Top 86”, then the equilibrium will be restored, and nobody can really complain. Hopefully, anyway. Anyway, here’s a sort of “preview” for that, taking in the following brand new digital object….

Various Artists – Bruce Forsyth Presents…. (2009)

“Wait a minute, wait in minute, I’m in charge!”

An interesting yet curious find. A compilation which might possibly be a recording of a finely-honed radio variety show of the 1960s, but which we strongly suspect is an edited selection of various live recordings, interlinked by Bruce Forsyth from years ago. And by “strongly suspect” we mean, “unless we’re completely stupid” as the telltale fading up of the “studio” “audience” does rather give the game away.

Now, this possibly doesn’t really qualify as “comedy”, but it’s the inter-song banter from future-Sir, surely-Bruce that makes the whole affair worthy of inclusion (“Now, our next guest has been working with me this past season in pantomime, Val Parnell’s Sleeping Beauty at the London Palladium. Ladies and gentleman, my pal, Edmond Hockridge [cut to a recording clearly recorded from elsewhere of Edmond Hockridge]”). Just where has this recording come from? A light programme off-air from the early 1960s? Surely not, as the banter at the end of track six reveals it’s from a vinyl recording (“now, don’t go away, there’s a lot more to come on the other side. That was the end of part one, no commercials, just turn over quick!”). Tellingly, none of the artists mention the presence of Bruce at all, save for a cleverly re-recorded bit of banter with Petula Clark.

Basically, we suspect this to be a digital-remastered recording of highlights from Sunday Night at the London Palladium, only with fresh-at-the-time introductions tacked on from Brucie, all gleaned from aged LP recordings. Oddly, the artwork – a hugely half-arsed job using a single Photoshop filter* and some freeware typefaces – is clearly modern, and both the Spotify and eMusic release dates suggest this release was only shoved out recently (going by the eMusic release date, on the 6th of October 2009, in fact). All quite strange – anyone know any more? Surely this is from a much-earlier vinyl recording? Could it be something that was recorded but not released at the time? Anyone?

(*And really, it’s very half-arsed. That’s not even Bruce on the artwork, is it? And we’ve had our half-arsed microscopic-indie-label cover art printed in the NME before now, even that was better than the thumbnail up there.)

Brucie? “I lived in a town once… but they moved!”

Ha. Anyway, keep your lug-holes peeled (not to mention peepers, unless you’re blind, in which case we feel all uncomfortable now) for the remainder of our new list, due over the next few days. There’ll be at least one absolute gem on there that you don’t already know about.

Well, only if you’re not already following our Twitter feed (or more pertinently, the Twitter feed of the mighty Sweeping The Nation, as they’d pointed us towards it). Whatever, come back soon, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel.

Griffin Ravers

2009-10-23T01:51:00.003+01:00

A few thoughts tonight’s Question Time, where Britain’s most prominent comedy fascist, Nick Griffin met a suspiciously tiny audience of Question Time viewers. Seriously, that must have been one of the tiniest crowds we’ve seen for an episode of QT, especially so considering it took place in Television Centre. Next week’s episode from the sleepy north Wales seaside town of Llandudno is likely to have a much larger audience. They should have let some of those people from outside into the studio. They certainly seemed quite keen to attend the recording. Anyway, this is mostly culled lazy from what we’ve said earlier on Twitter, so if you’re following us on there, expect much of this to sound familiar.

Near the start of the show, Baroness Warsi made a reference to a quote from the BNP’s Mark Collett. The actual transcript goes like this:

Baroness Warsi: “When today we talk about how Churchill is referred to by the BNP, I’d like to refer to one quote, which I’m going to have to have some bleeps in, which is from Mark Collett, who is the BNP’s director of publicity…”

Nick Griffin: “He’s not.”

Baroness Warsi: “He basically said this; “"Churchill was a fucking cunt who led us in to a pointless war against other whites, the Nazis, who were standing up for their race”."

Really, Nick? Because from what we can find, including on far-right website Stormfront.org (link), he actually is the BNP’s Director of Publicity, or at the very, very least was quite recently. We’ve tried to find reference to him on the BNP website, but for some reason the search function isn’t working. Can’t imagine why.

For the record, doing a Google search for the words “Mark”, “Collett” and “BNP” brings up a very interesting web page in second place:

Far be it from us to reflect on the accuracy of said web page, as we have no idea of the facts involved, but still, interesting.

INTERESTING FUN FACT! We were able to copy and paste the above Collett quote from the NorthWestNationalists blog (who we’re not going to link to, but if you really want to find it it’s easy enough to Google). Entertainingly, they censored the words “fucking” and “cunt”, because naturally they wouldn’t want anyone to get offended by the content of their website, would they?

It was interesting to note Griffin’s repeated claims that holocaust denial is a crime in the UK, and that as he’s never actually been convicted for the crime of holocaust denial, he surely can’t be a holocaust denier. As every schoolboy knows, it’s only actually a crime in Austria, Germany and France. Anyway, here’s a Fun Fat Hitler Fact for you all: Nick's "Holocaust myth" quote – specifically:

"I am well aware that the orthodox opinion is that six million Jews were gassed and cremated and turned into lampshades. Orthodox opinion also once held that the Earth was flat … I have reached the conclusion that the 'extermination' tale is a mixture of Allied wartime propaganda, extremely profitable lie, and latter witch-hysteria."

was from 1998. Now, on tonight’s show he claimed that

"I can't tell you why I used to say those things anymore than I can tell you why I have changed my mind, I can’t tell you the extent to which I’ve changed my mind, because European law prevents me from doing so."

Except, of course, it doesn’t even remotely do so. Anyway, with that in mind, he made no attempt to actually tell us why he did change his mind (our theory: he hasn’t, only he’s realised there aren’t many votes in expressing that sort of thing), other than saying something about hearing about it on the radio since then. But be fair, when he originally said those words in 1998, Griffin was merely a young and impressionable 39 year old. Why, he was barely out of nappies! We’ll wager that most people say things at the stupidly young age of 39 that they later regret, like “I’ll never buy a pair of slippers!”, “You’ll never catch me listening to Terry Wogan in the mornings”, or “ooh, cheap tripe? Get in!”

Another choice quote from the pudgy nationalist:

“My policy is for a truce with Islam.”

Is that why the BNP website carries juxtaposed imagery of smiling pure and white English children with a shot of hajib-wearing Muslim women, as below? What are they hiding, eh Nick? Why, they aren’t even wearing hajibs with huge St George’s crosses printed on them. Coming over here, hiding their presumably sneering faces, laughing up their sleeves and being given free houses and that.

At one point, Dimbleby interrupted mass panel disquiet after a Griffin outburst with the words: "If you all attack on different fronts, we'll get nowhere." Sadly, he didn't add "...if Hitler taught us anything, it’s that, eh Nick?"

One point where Griffin really tried to connect with the masses was when he stated, on the subject of homosexuality, how:

“I’ve said that a lot of people find the sight of two grown men kissing in public really creepy. I understand a lot of homosexuals don’t understand that, but a lot of us feel that way. A lot of Christians feel that way, Muslims, all sorts of people.”

From that, we can’t help but wonder if Griffin’s feelings only extend to “grown men kissing in public”. Does he think that if it were two young boys kissing in public, he’d be putting a supportive arm around their shoulders while saying “go on, make the most of it. Why, in a few years what you’re doing now will be wrong, so make hay while the sun shines”? Or does he just spend entire evenings at home, on his own, sitting by his fireplace, thinking vigorously about two grown men kissing each other in public, and pondering just how that makes him feel? Either way, we’re sorely tempted to write a series of slash fiction stories about him and Abu Hamza, just for the sheer heck of it."'Put your hook there and sort of wiggle it about a bit', cooed Nick."

Sad to say, there are a couple of slightly depressing conclusions to make from tonight’s programme. Firstly, that hundreds of thousands of people will go to work in the morning, and jokingly ask their colleagues if they saw Question Time, only to receive a reply along the lines of “yeah, I thought what he said was too bloody right” from their previously respected co-workers. We frigging hate it when things like that happen.

Secondly, the alarming realisation that for every single person from the “too bloody right” brigade, who’d nodded sagely when Griffin spewed out the bilious theory that gay people are allowed to be gay “as long as they keep it behind closed doors”, their vote come the general election will count just the same as the vote of someone who’d pored over local politics, BBC Parliament coverage, Hansard and Private Eye for the last ten years. Maybe voter apathy isn't always a bad thing...

In summary: sigh. Here’s an entertaining image to end things on a relative high, culled from the pages of B3TA, and Jpeg genius Monkeon:

Channel Four: Programmes Continue Shortly

2009-10-21T22:14:00.001+01:00

Sadly, no time to add to our comprehensive series of Channel Four ratings rundown tonight (Reader's voice: "Oh, boo hoo. How will we ever cope?"), which means no excuse to post slightly unflattering photographs of the C4 Top Brass. To hold you over until the big Programme Head-to-Head Battles, here are some adverts, from Channel Four, from 1983. Yay. There's even an advert for the first ever Now That's What I Call Music.

Video uploaded to YouTube by "JayFirestorm".

Channel Four In Numbers II: Ratingsgeddon

2009-10-21T02:09:00.001+01:00

Yes, we know we said ‘more tomorrow’, but we’ve been busy laughing in the face of EU Working Hours legislation. Bwa-ha-ha-hangonwe’rebeingexploited.

Anyway, numbers. Our mammoth listing of eleven years of weekly Channel Four viewing charts takes in 11,736 individual broadcasts, which is possibly about the same as the average lifespan of a shirehorse. A few days ago, we looked at the highest rated programmes, but what of those hearty mainstays? The shows that flutter around the top thirties week in, week out, maybe not quite getting mammoth audiences, but always somehow in your peripheral vision, like a moth waving a flag? What of them, eh? The list contains a grand total of 1,964 different shows, and here are the hundred appearing most frequently in each weekly BARB rundown. Just under a shot of Michael Grade looking a bit dishevelled in 1990.

“The annual report shoot is today? Frigging heck, I thought it had been postponed until Wednesday.”

Rank	Programme	Appearances on list	Av. Weekly Pos.
1	Hollyoaks	1824	18.74
2	The Simpsons	1257	17.74
3	Countdown	1213	13.24
4	Deal Or No Deal	1040	11.53
5	Big Brother	836	5.74
6	Brookside	575	5.05
7	Richard And Judy	527	23.52
8	Friends	485	14.34
9	Fifteen-To-One	445	23.44
10	Pet Rescue	442	22.36
11	Paul O'Grady	439	15.85
12	A Place In The Sun	249	18.25
13	V Graham Norton	241	15.92
14	Come Dine With Me	240	16.90
15	Frasier	187	15.68
16	Ricki Lake	183	22.07
17	E.R.	163	14.06
18	Time Team	162	15.05
19	Celebrity Big Brother	120	6.87
20	Will And Grace	115	14.43
21	Desperate Housewives	111	11.67
22	Property Ladder	110	7.67
23	Grand Designs	101	4.26
24	Location, Location, Location	95	7.71
25	Sex And The City	90	13.62
26	Scrapheap Challenge	89	14.37
27	Wife Swap	82	11.91
28	Ally McBeal	79	16.41
29	Relocation, Relocation	76	3.62
30	Eurotrash	73	16.68
31	So Graham Norton	69	13.01
32	10 Years Younger	67	12.19
33	Father Ted	66	18.65
34	Cricket Afternoon	66	19.45
35	Big Brother's Little Brother	66	23.42
36	Shameless	65	9.98
37	T.F.I Friday	63	20.13
38	Without A Trace	56	18.79
39	South Park	55	17.62
40	Cutting Edge	54	15.63
41	Lost	52	8.10
42	No Going Back	49	8.33
43	Ugly Betty	49	14.65
44	How Clean Is Your House?	48	11.71
45	Stargate Sg-1	46	20.17
46	8 Out Of 10 Cats	44	10.89
47	You Are What You Eat	42	8.86
48	Selling Houses	42	9.26
49	Montel Williams Show	41	24.56
50	Supernanny	38	5.55
51	Gordon Ramsay's F Word	38	7.08
52	Dispatches	37	19.27
53	Teachers	36	13.56
54	The Salon	34	24.03
55	How Clean Is Your House	33	7.76
56	Secret History	31	17.74
57	Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares	29	3.72
58	The Secret Millionaire	29	4.90
59	Location/Location	29	13.17
60	It's Me Or The Dog	29	13.69
61	The City Gardener	29	14.34
62	Jamie At Home	29	16.07
63	Home From Home	29	25.38
64	How To Look Good Naked	28	8.79
65	Top Tens	28	20.43
66	My Name Is Earl	27	23.26
67	Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares USA	26	4.85
68	The Osbournes	26	12.42
69	Scrubs	26	19.92
70	Channel 4 News	26	22.50
71	Trigger Happy Tv	24	10.58
72	Smack The Pony	23	17.26
73	Driven	23	24.30
74	The Games	22	13.00
75	Secrets Of The Dead	22	13.91
76	Faking It	22	16.82
77	No Angels	22	20.59
78	Enterprise	22	22.00
79	Nypd Blue	22	23.45
80	Bremner, Bird And Fortune	21	23.24
81	Pet Rescuers	21	24.00
82	Room For Improvement	21	24.19
83	Salvage Squad	20	20.55
84	Supersize Vs Superskinny	19	11.63
85	Battle Stations	19	17.37
86	A Place In Greece	19	19.05
87	Heroes Of Comedy	19	20.21
88	Location, Location, Location Revisited	18	6.39
89	Other People's Houses	18	14.22
90	Peter Kay's Phoenix Nights	18	14.39
91	Max & Paddy's Road To Nowhere	17	16.29
92	Spin City	17	20.35
93	The Friday Night Project	17	21.06
94	Real Gardens	17	21.71
95	Equinox	17	21.88
96	Grand Designs Revisited	16	5.63
97	A Place In France	16	8.13
98	Gok's Fashion Fix	16	11.06
99	Football Stories	16	21.44
100	Stargate S G-1	16	22.19

And so, despite taking an average weekly position between 18th and 19th in the charts, and featuring lots of characters from Chester (we’re from Wrexham, it’s a local thing), Hollyoaks is the most ever-present show in the BARB hit parade over the last eleven years. That’s a full 567 broadcasts ahead of The Simpsons in second, despite it being, as far as we’ve been able to tell when seeing any of it, well, a bit shite actually.

Other notables: Countdown pipping Deal Or No Deal into third on the list, but given DOND has only been on air for less than half of the period under consideration, well done Noel. Big Brother and Brookside are the only shows in the top twenty to regularly warrant a place in weekly top tens. Meanwhile, Richard And Judy, Fifteen-To-One, Pet Rescue and Ricky Lake make the list of twentymost perma-hits, despite averaging placings in the lower third of each weekly rundown.

Slightly unsuprisingly, Friends is the most popular non-Simpson comedy, clocking up 485 appearance, most of which are repeats, while Frasier only performs slightly less admirably. In the arena of homegrown sitcommery, Father Ted reigns supreme, notching up 66 appearances in the list. That’s especially impressive given that the figures listed on BARB’s website don’t even start until five weeks after the premiere of the last ever Fr Ted episode, meaning that each appearance in the list is from a repeat showing. Indeed, there were only 25 episodes of Ted ever made, compared to 236 episodes of Friends (many of which were first-run). That means the average Ted episode appears 2.64 times on the list, whereas the average Friends ep makes it there just 2.06 times. This means that Craggy Island is officially better than New York. Sort of. In other US sitcom news, the magnificent My Name Is Earl sits in 66th place, narrowly beating the got-annoying-after-four-series Scrubs, yet the only reward both shows received was a sideways shunt onto E4. Bah.

As for US drama shows, E.R. is king, with Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin But With A Skinny American Woman… sorry, Ally McBeal following closely. Without A Trace performs admirably in 42nd place (just in front of the surely-everyone-hated-it-by-then TFI Friday), but Lost performed very well, putting in 52 appearances from the 49 episodes C4 had the rights to, most of which were premiered on E4. After all, Lost isn’t really a show that lends itself to repeat showings.

As for lifestyle shows, there are sterling performances from Pet Rescue, A Place In The Sun, Come Dine With Me, Time Team, Property Ladder, Grand Designs and Location x3. No idea why most of their advertising is from personal injury lawyers and 21st-century-rag-and-bone-men if they’re that popular.

Anyway, enough of annoyingly successful programmes. Here are a few selections from lower down the list that are sure to infuriate you, if you’ve got any sense. So much so, in fact, you might want to post a screenshot of the following table into one of those ha-ha-larious “demotivational poster” memes marked “when you see it, you’ll shit bricks”. Just after a shot of Michael Grade and a great big cake.

Rank	Programme	Appearances on list	Av. Weekly Pos.
93	The Friday Night Project	17	21.06
136	Bo Selecta!	10	17.80
158	The Kevin Bishop Show	8	17.25
176	The Sunday Night Project	7	20.29
205	Peter Kay's Pheonix Nights	6	22.17
246	Dotcomedy	5	25.20
258	Star Stories	4	8.75
269	The I.T Crowd	4	11.00
299	A Bear's Tail	4	21.25
367	Film: The Net	3	13.67
384	Film: On The Buses	3	16.00
442	Le Show	3	28.00
456	Rude Tube	2	3.50
584	Peep Show	2	16.50
700	Spaced	2	25.50
1793	The Sopranos	1	28.00

Interesting for a number of reasons that might want you to think about buying a gun. Spaced clocking in at the 700th position on the list, even though all 14 episodes were first aired in the period under consideration here. Of those 14 episodes, just two made it into the Top Thirty for the weeks of transmission (for the record, w/e 26/9/99, 21st position 2.58m viewers, and w/e 11/3/01, 30th position and 2.37m viewers). Similarly, just two episodes of Peep Show make the weekly thirty (11/8/08, 28th, 1.46m, and 20/9/09, 5th, 2.16m – though that was from the most recent chart we’ve looked at, suggesting more of the current series will be there).

Beating it in the charts: A Bear’s Tail (“Oh no, my tail, which is actually a cock, has popped up for about the billionth week in a row”) appears four times, despite only having a single series, with Bo Selecta!, and its three jokes, appearing ten times. The cocking Friday/Sunday Night Project appear a total of 24 times, even though when they BBC had come up with the Saturday/Friday Night Armistice in the mid/late 90s, it was cancelled before you could say “whore in a helicopter”.

Other good/bad points: The I.T. Crowd being trumped by Star Stories, while Phoenix Nights (and no matter what you think of Peter Kay, the first series was brilliant) is bettered by The Kevin Bishop Show, both by appearances on the chart and average position. Meanwhile, in the world of classic US drama, The Sopranos made it into the Top 30 for a single solitary week, in 28th place.

For comparative purposes, you may also like to note that Peep Show and Spaced, both heralded (with more than a little justification) as modern classics of the sitcom format, have been bettered by well-meaning-but-ultimately-rubbish-Eurotrash-spin-off Le Show (no relation to the ace Harry Shearer show of the same name) and a repeat of the On The Buses film. Now, they aren’t sitcoms, admittedly, but hey, the single series of “grainy RealVideo clips blown up to full screen” internet clip show DotComedy made more appearances in the Channel Four weekly top thirty than both shows combined. The normal rules of logic clearly do not apply here.

Here’s a photo of Adam & Joe to make it all better.

Want to guess how many times The Adam & Joe Show appeared in the weekly Channel Four Top 30? Series three, four and five were in the in the timeframe applicable to it. So go on, guess. If you said “not even once, and yet a showing of Nuns On The Run made it onto there, for fuckity fuck’s sake”, award yourself a correctness point.

Sigh.

Channel Four: 1998-2009 In Numbers

2009-10-19T00:49:00.001+01:00

So, our statistical omnibus fetches up at Horseferry Road, and for Channel Four’s viewing figures we’ve really pushed the boat out (Readers voice: “Hang on, is it a bus or a boat?”), nabbing data from as far back as 1998, which is as far back as BARB’s excellent ratings archive stretches. The whole thing takes in 17,535 shows, and means our copy of Excel is running about as fast as, oh we don’t know, Douglas Bader giving Rik Waller a piggyback. However, this does mean we can compile excellent charts like this:

Or even this:

Based on individual broadcasts, not different shows. The lack of Celebrity Big Brother in 2008 is quite noticeable, isn’t it?

We could kick off by bemoaning the recent output of the network, saying how it used to be truly bleeding edge in the olden days, but as it’s now one of the elder statesmen of this digital age, it seems to have a “broader remit”. That’s a polite way of saying “full of programmes for idiots”, in case you’re a viewer of The Kevin Bishop Show. But that would be spectacularly harsh, clearly. While the channel once proudly broadcast Absolutely, Vic Reeves Big Night Out, Nightingales, Father Ted, Brass Eye et al, it also played host to The Word, Mini Pops, The Word, Club X, RI:SE, The Word and The Word. While we now have to put up with Rude Tube whilst waiting for Peep Show, ten or so years ago there was DotComedy and no Peep Show. So there you go. Anyway, which show wins the battle of “most popular lazily compiled collection of things from the internet”?

One thing we do love Channel Four unreservedly for, They’ve made the annual reports for every year of the channel’s history available online, so we’re able to pepper the update with pictures of Men In Shirts. Pictures like this one, from 1983:

HOT TESTCARD CONTROL ROOM ACTION

Anyway, we’ll kick off the update by listing the hundred most-watched Channel Four broadcasts of the last 1.1 decades, as is now traditional. Just after this shot of the Union World team looking moody outside the TUC offices.

Yay, Bob Greaves!

Rank	Show w/date	Million viewers
1	Big Brother Final (29/07/01)	13.74
2	Big Brother (28/07/02)	10.01
3	Friends (30/05/04)	9.64
4	Big Brother (17/09/00)	9.45
5	Big Brother (08/08/04)	8.98
6	Celebrity Big Brother (21/01/07)	8.78
7	Big Brother (28/07/02)	8.54
8	Big Brother (20/08/06)	8.2
9	Big Brother (21/07/02)	8.01
10	Big Brother (07/07/02)	7.89
11	Big Brother (17/09/00)	7.87
12	Big Brother (08/08/04)	7.7
13	Big Brother (14/08/05)	7.65
14	Celebrity Big Brother (21/01/07)	7.61
15	Celebrity Big Brother (24/11/02)	7.6
16	Big Brother (14/07/02)	7.45
17	Celebrity Big Brother (07/01/07)	7.32
18	Celebrity Big Brother (29/01/06)	7.31
19	Big Brother (21/07/02)	7.24
20	Big Brother (30/05/04)	7.23
21	Big Brother (27/07/03)	7.23
22	Peter Kay Live (08/08/04)	7.2
23	Big Brother (21/05/06)	7.14
24	Big Brother (14/07/02)	7.07
25	Big Brother (25/05/03)	7.05
26	Big Brother (28/07/02)	7.04
27	Big Brother (21/07/02)	7.04
28	Big Brother (07/07/02)	7.01
29	Big Brother (21/07/02)	7
30	Big Brother (20/06/04)	6.95
31	Big Brother (28/07/02)	6.95
32	Wife Swap (26/10/03)	6.9
33	Big Brother (20/08/00)	6.87
34	Big Brother (28/07/02)	6.85
35	Big Brother (21/07/02)	6.83
36	Big Brother (14/07/02)	6.8
37	Lost (14/08/05)	6.75
38	Lost (14/08/05)	6.75
39	Brookside (22/11/98)	6.72
40	Big Brother (20/06/04)	6.7
41	Celebrity Big Brother (08/01/06)	6.68
42	Big Brother (07/07/02)	6.65
43	Big Brother (14/08/05)	6.63
44	Big Brother (14/08/05)	6.61
45	Big Brother (23/06/02)	6.6
46	Celeb Big Brother (18/03/01)	6.6
47	Big Brother (03/06/07)	6.59
48	Big Brother (18/07/04)	6.58
49	Big Brother (01/08/04)	6.57
50	Big Brother (03/07/05)	6.55
51	Film: Bridget Jones's Diary (14/11/04)	6.54
52	Friends (28/07/02)	6.52
53	Big Brother (14/07/02)	6.5
54	Big Brother (16/06/02)	6.49
55	Friends (13/12/98)	6.49
56	Big Brother (30/06/02)	6.48
57	Big Brother (07/07/02)	6.45
58	Big Brother (14/07/02)	6.44
59	Big Brother (20/08/06)	6.43
60	Celebrity Wife Swap (16/11/03)	6.43
61	Big Brother (30/06/02)	6.43
62	Big Brother (30/06/02)	6.42
63	Big Brother (16/06/02)	6.42
64	Big Brother Live (08/08/04)	6.41
65	Big Brother (18/07/04)	6.41
66	Big Brother (17/07/05)	6.4
67	Big Brother (30/06/02)	6.38
68	Big Brother (18/06/06)	6.35
69	Big Brother (27/07/03)	6.34
70	Big Brother (14/07/02)	6.32
71	Big Brother (07/07/02)	6.3
72	Big Brother (16/06/02)	6.3
73	Wife Swap (19/10/03)	6.28
74	Big Brother (25/07/04)	6.27
75	Big Brother (18/07/04)	6.27
76	Big Brother (25/07/04)	6.26
77	Peter Kays Britain's Got The Pop Factor (12/10/08)	6.25
78	Jamie's Kitchen (15/12/02)	6.25
79	Big Brother (02/07/06)	6.24
80	Big Brother Live (13/06/04)	6.24
81	Big Brother (20/06/04)	6.22
82	Big Brother (30/06/02)	6.21
83	Big Brother (13/07/03)	6.17
84	Big Brother (16/07/06)	6.16
85	Celebrity Big Brother (29/01/06)	6.16
86	Brookside (09/01/00)	6.15
87	Big Brother (20/06/04)	6.13
88	Big Brother (23/06/02)	6.12
89	Big Brother (22/07/01)	6.12
90	Celeb Big Brother (18/03/01)	6.11
91	Brookside (12/11/00)	6.11
92	Celebrity Big Brother (29/01/06)	6.09
93	Big Brother (16/06/02)	6.09
94	Big Brother (04/07/04)	6.07
95	Big Brother (29/05/05)	6.04
96	Brookside (12/11/00)	6.04
97	Big Brother (28/07/02)	6.03
98	Big Brother (23/06/02)	6.03
99	Big Brother (08/08/04)	6.02
100	Brookside (03/01/99)	6.02

Quite heavily dominated by a certain realty show behemoth, isn’t it? Here then is a top 200 (two hundred!), taking in the average viewing figures of each show. We’ve added a column showing how many broadcasts each average is gleaned from. When compiling the figures, we have tried our best to mark up any films with the prefix “Film:”, as the BARB listings only did so for the last few years. Please forgive us if we’ve missed any.

	Programme	Viewers (m)	Showings
1	Peter Kay Live	5.64	2
2	Escape From Colditz	5.61	3
3	Film: Elf	5.54	2
4	The Boy Who Gave Birth To His Brother	5.41	1
5	Bodyshock: Half Ton Man	5.14	1
6	Wild Child	5.07	1
7	Film: Bridget Jones's Diary	4.83	2
8	The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off	4.75	1
9	Relocation, Relocation, Relocation	4.56	2
10	Real Queen Mother	4.55	1
11	Peter Kays Britain's Got The Pop Factor	4.53	2
12	Super Size Me	4.47	1
13	Da Ali G Show	4.44	7
14	Jamie's School Dinners	4.43	5
15	Geri	4.37	1
16	Celebrity Big Brother	4.27	120
17	Big Brother's Efourum	4.24	1
18	Merlin	4.23	3
19	Film: Miracle On 34th Street	4.20	1
20	Big Brother	4.16	836
21	Derren Brown: The Event	4.14	2
22	Diana: The Witnesses In The Tunnel	4.11	1
23	Return To Jamie's Kitchen	4.10	2
24	The Real Heather Mills	4.07	1
25	Extraordinary Breastfeeding	4.07	1
26	Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares	4.06	29
27	Station X	4.06	4
28	Brookside	4.06	575
29	Jamie's Fowl Dinners	4.05	1
30	Big Brother Sunday Psych Show	4.04	1
31	Drop/Dead Donkey	4.03	7
32	Six Wives/Henry Viii	4.01	4
33	Striptease	4.00	1
34	Jamie Cooks Christmas	3.98	1
35	The 1900 House	3.98	10
36	Real Story/Airtours	3.97	1
37	Scrapheap Megachallenge	3.97	1
38	Alice In Wonderland	3.96	1
39	Big Chef Takes On Little Chef	3.94	3
40	Celebrity Frock Ups	3.93	1
41	Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares Revisited	3.93	2
42	Who Got Benny's Millions?	3.89	1
43	Wallis Simpson	3.88	1
44	Ah So Graham Norton	3.88	1
45	River Cottage Christmas Feast	3.82	2
46	Sex And The City Farewell	3.79	1
47	Riddle Of Pompeii	3.76	1
48	100 Great/Moments	3.76	2
49	Grand Designs	3.73	101
50	Battle/Hood/Bismarck	3.73	2
51	Private Parts	3.73	3
52	Relocation, Relocation	3.72	76
53	Shackleton	3.71	2
54	Film: Fahrenheit 9/11	3.70	1
55	Perfect Breasts	3.70	1
56	The Real Paula Yates	3.69	1
57	Bodyshock: The Man Who Slept For 19 Year	3.67	1
58	Film: Austin Powers	3.66	3
59	Jamie's Return To School Dinners	3.66	1
60	Bodyshock: I Am The Elephant Man	3.65	1
61	Shipwrecked	3.64	11
62	How Clean Is Your House	3.63	33
63	Film: Notting Hill	3.62	5
64	Supernanny	3.61	38
65	Film: Shallow Hal	3.61	2
66	The Last Flight Of Bomber 31	3.60	1
67	Film: Breakdown	3.59	1
68	Jamie's Kitchen	3.58	10
69	Grand Designs Abroad	3.58	7
70	My Fake Baby	3.58	1
71	Carry On Snogging	3.57	1
72	Mindshock: Feral Children	3.57	1
73	Britain's Got The Pop Factor Final	3.56	1
74	To The End Of The Earth	3.56	1
75	You Are What You Eat Special	3.56	2
76	Jack & Sarah	3.54	2
77	Riddle Of The Elephant Man	3.53	1
78	Wife Swap Changed Our Marriage	3.53	2
79	To Die For	3.52	1
80	What Really Happened: Michael Jackson	3.52	1
81	Film: Michael	3.51	2
82	Film: My Best Friend's Wedding	3.50	4
83	Fat Pets	3.49	1
84	Snow White	3.48	1
85	Designer Vaginas	3.48	1
86	Life Before Birth	3.47	1
87	Robbie: Live At Knebworth	3.45	1
88	The Ultimate Chart	3.45	2
89	How The Twin Towers Collapsed	3.45	2
90	Whitney Houston: The True Story	3.43	1
91	Krakatoa	3.43	1
92	Derren Brown: The Event Live	3.42	1
93	Strictly Baby Ballroom	3.42	1
94	Brat Camp	3.41	15
95	The Hole	3.40	1
96	Real Prince Philip	3.40	3
97	Film: My Big Fat Greek Wedding	3.40	2
98	Hugh's Chicken Run	3.39	4
99	Bodyshock: Born With Two Heads	3.38	1
100	Euroballs '98	3.37	1
101	Freddie Starr Ate My	3.37	1
102	Trigger Happy Tv	3.37	24
103	Half Ton Mum	3.36	2
104	Lost	3.35	52
105	Gordon Ramsay's F Word	3.34	38
106	Peter Kay Live At The Manchester Arena	3.34	3
107	Film: Sleepy Hollow	3.34	3
108	The Hunt For Lord Lucan	3.34	1
109	Property Ladder Revisited	3.34	13
110	Ramsay's Great British Nightmare	3.32	1
111	The Real Gary Glitter	3.31	1
112	Victoria's Secrets	3.31	2
113	101 Embarrassing Sexual Accidents	3.30	1
114	What Happened To Slimmers Of The Year?	3.30	1
115	Big Brother The Swap	3.28	1
116	My Breasts Are Too Big	3.28	1
117	The Real Princess Anne	3.27	1
118	The Real Crawfie	3.27	1
119	Tales From River Cottage	3.27	10
120	Film: Gladiator	3.26	2
121	1940 House	3.26	5
122	World/Watching/Big B	3.25	1
123	The Real Da Vinci Code	3.25	2
124	Seven Days That Shook Coronation Street	3.25	1
125	Snowden And Margaret: Inside A Royal Wed	3.25	1
126	The Secret Millionaire	3.25	29
127	100 Greatest Tv Ads	3.24	3
128	Bodyshock: The Girl With 8 Limbs	3.24	1
129	A Very British Ufo Hoax	3.24	1
130	Film: Final Destination	3.23	2
131	Location, Location, Location Revisited	3.23	18
132	In Memoriam September 11, 2001	3.22	1
133	Make Me A Man	3.22	2
134	Titanic Live	3.21	2
135	Big Brother Celebrity Hijack	3.21	1
136	You Are What You Eat	3.21	42
137	Film: Night At The Museum	3.21	2
138	Best Of T.Cooper	3.20	1
139	Aileen:Life And Death Of A Serial Killer	3.19	1
140	Location, Location, Location	3.19	95
141	Universe	3.18	4
142	9/11: 102 Minutes That Changed America	3.17	1
143	How Clean Are The F***Ing Fulfords?	3.17	1
144	Jamie's Chef	3.17	4
145	Jamie's American Road Trip	3.16	1
146	Plague/Fire/War/Tre	3.15	3
147	The Queen Mother In Love	3.15	1
148	Grand Designs Revisited	3.15	16
149	Film: Touching The Void	3.14	1
150	100 Greatest Cartoons	3.14	1
151	Prince Eddy: The King We Never Had	3.14	1
152	Ten Years Younger Celebrity Special	3.13	1
153	In Excess:M.Hutchenc	3.13	1
154	Queer As Folk	3.12	8
155	One Hundred And Eighty: The Tour Documen	3.12	3
156	Beyond River Cottage	3.12	10
157	Alex Best: My Life With George	3.11	1
158	David Blaine's Vertigo	3.11	1
159	Big Fat Quiz Of The Year	3.10	1
160	The Real Michael Barrymore	3.10	1
161	The Truth About Gay Sex - Women	3.10	1
162	Secret Intersex	3.10	2
163	Super Size Kids	3.10	2
164	Equinox Special: Wave Shook The World	3.09	1
165	Joy Of Sex	3.09	1
166	Scrapheap Challenge Christmas Special	3.09	1
167	Seven Days That Shook The Weathermen	3.08	1
168	Film: Final Destination 2	3.08	1
169	What Jade Did Next	3.08	1
170	Derren Brown: Seance	3.08	1
171	Celebrity Wife Swap	3.07	9
172	Inside Big Brother	3.06	1
173	The 9/11 Faker	3.06	1
174	You Are What You Eat Revisited	3.06	1
175	Death On The Nile	3.06	1
176	Wife Swap	3.06	82
177	Elizabeth I	3.06	2
178	Robbie Williams/Conc	3.05	1
179	Sotd: Titanic's Ghosts	3.05	1
180	Big Brother Winner Show	3.05	1
181	Derren Brown Plays Russian Roulette Live	3.05	1
182	9/11: The Miracle Of Stairway B	3.05	1
183	Property Ladder	3.04	110
184	Film: The Full Monty	3.04	4
185	P.Zenon's Tricky Chr	3.04	1
186	Gok Wan: Too Fat Too Young	3.04	1
187	The Killing Secret	3.04	1
188	The Queen's Lost Uncle	3.04	3
189	Film: Porridge	3.04	2
190	Best And Worst Places To Live In The Uk	3.03	3
191	As Good As It Gets	3.03	1
192	Killer Queen!	3.03	1
193	Return To Loch Ness	3.02	1
194	Film: Monster-In-Law	3.02	1
195	100 Greatest No.1's	3.02	4
196	The Real Oliver Reed	3.02	1
197	Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares Usa	3.02	26
198	Film: The Day After Tomorrow	3.02	3
199	The Coroner	3.01	3
200	Roswell	3.01	1

So, a few surprises there. The film version of Porridge proving more popular than the woeful but big budget The Day After Tomorrow. Big Brother (836 episodes!) finishing below Celebrity Big Brother. Brookside putting in a very reasonable performance, given that it was supposed to have died on it’s arse over the last years of its life. For the record, Hollyoaks in the 912th place on our list.

Anyway, with these cumbersome tables making Windows Live Writer seem a bit unstable, we’ll round things off for now. We’ll be back tomorrow (or the day after) with more programme specific information. Not to mention more pictures like this of Jeremy Isaacs:

What’s he writing? We need a closer look.

His pen isn’t even the right way up? Man, no wonder MiniPops got commissioned. Back tomorrow! Or the day after!

Brooker Scanorama: Frozen Dinners And Pac-Man Stickers

2009-10-15T00:02:00.003+01:00

It’s been a while since we promised another bunch of Charlie Brooker PC Zone scans, so it’s probably time we made good on our promise, and not purely because we can’t be bothered doing an update that involves “thinking” or “having opinions about stuff”. Here are a few scanned articles from October 1996, a curious age where references to ill-fated Conservative Party campaign slogans could adorn the cover of videogame magazines, and there would be far too many flight simulators. What was the fascination, eh? Mind you, now you can buy a bus simulator for the PC, so it’s not as if society has progressed that much. Yes, really.

First up, “That Was Then, Is This Now?” a misty-eyed look back at some elderly games, and their then-modern counterparts. Includes some Pac-Man stickers, which we went mental for when we were seven years old. Think of it as a very, very early draft of the look back at the history of videogaming from Gameswipe, before it was redrafted to appeal to people who like Charlie Brooker so much, they’ll watch him presenting a show about a subject they’ve absolutely no interest in.

Next, a review of Syndicate Wars, which we’re saying wasn’t as good as the original. The fact that the sequel was in ‘proper’ 3D (still a relatively new thing at the time) possibly boosted up the score at the end, or maybe we’re just wrong about videogames. Both are equally likely.

Finally, a Cybertwats strip. It’d be nice if someone scanned up the early Cybertwats cartoons – we only started buying PCZ around this time, and so have never seen them. Extra bonus points for anyone pointing us toward a scan of Brooker’s “Cruelty Zoo” strip, deemed so controversial it had to be physically torn out of most copies of PC Zone before they could be sold.

No, hang on. Here’s “Cruelty Zoo”, right here. Nothing controversial about that, is there?

The Big Gold Push

2009-10-11T23:27:00.001+01:00

Leaked shooting script from top ad agency Dunce, Dunce & Revolution:

INT. KITCHEN. MORNING.

Mr T is sitting at his breakfast bar, eating cereal. His brow furrows as he glances over the bills laid out in front of him, many of which have been stamped with "FINAL DEMAND" in a menacingly bold, red san-serif.

Mr T.: "Ah, dammit. Too many suckers wantin' my money. What am I to do? A-Team repeat fees just aren't enough."

Disembodied Voiceover Man: "Hey, you! Did you know that your spare gold, could actually be worth money?"

Mr T.: "Shaddup, fool. Everyone knows that gold ain't worth nothin'."

Disembodied Voiceover Man: "No, it's true! Simply send all your unwanted gold to us, we'll have a bit of a think about it, and then we'll offer you some money! It's as simple as that!"

Mr T glances again at his collection of final demands for gym fees, van repairs and the like.

Mr T.: "Gah, what the hell. You better not be playin' me for a fool, sucka."

CAPTION: TWO WEEKS LATER.

Mr T is again sitting at his breakfast bar, crunching his way through a manly-sized bowl of Crunchy Nut. His regulation bling is now missing, revealing a comically unsuitable T-shirt slogan underneath where it used to be ("S Club 7" or something? Get a runner to ask him if he minds when we shoot. Get that annoying Jamie to ask him, he laughed at my haircut the other day). He is going through his mail.

Mr T.: "Hey, what's this?"

Mr T opens up a bulging envelope emblazoned with the company logo. Banknotes spill out everywhere.

Mr T: "Goddammit, my monetary woes are over! And all it cost me was that useless, useless gold!"

Disembodied Voiceover Man: "Yes! And all thanks to GoldIsRubbishCashIsGreat dot com!”

Mr T: "Ha ha, yes! So don’t be a sucker, visit GoldIsRubbishCashIsGreat.com today!”

FADE TO CAPTION: GOLDISRUBBISHCASHISGREAT.COM: Turning pointless metal into actual real money!

Sadly, Mr T was busy shooting those Snickers adverts, and this was never actually shot. Anyway, if you've glanced at a television set for longer than a minute over the last few months, you'll have noted a proliferation of commercials for companies wanting to buy your gold. In fact, due to a combination of global recession and all-time high gold prices, there’s no end of cheaply shot daytime commercials for the bloody things. Given the marketing strategy used, we can only presume the companies have been funded by recently unemployed personal injury lawyers. Here are a few of the adverts that may well have cluttered up your afternoon viewing of Sky Sports News, with the names slightly changed in case we accidentally improve their Google rank or something.

Cash (“Number Four” – Ed) Gold.com
http://www.visit4info.com/advert/Turn-Old-Jewelery-into-Money-Cash4Goldcom/77562

As far as we can tell, this company is the leading money-for-gold firm in the USA. At least, they’re the only one we noticed with a high-definition advert on YouTube. The UK advert has just the kind of cut-price-slickness you’d expect from a US company trying to break the UK unwanted gold market. Plus, they’ve plonked a union flag onto the bottom corner of the screen, presumably with the aim of proving it’s not just a redubbed American advert. In practice, it just makes the thing look a bit like a BNP leaflet.

Man In Pub says: “I sent in an old gold chain, and got money for tickets to a European away game!”

Clearly the US paymasters have learned that mentioning “the football” is a sure-fire way to get their hands on our treasure. Maybe it’ll all part of some elaborate revenge for the whole London Bridge thing.

“If you’re selling, [the name of this company] is buying!” At this point, we’d normally load up Photoshop and pixellate out the phone number, but we really can’t be bothered. We’re quite sure our readers are bright enough not to call that number.

Money (“The Fourth Numeral” – Ed) GoldUK
http://www.visit4info.com/advert/It-Doesnt-Grow-on-Trees-Money4GoldUK/77298

In this time of relentless belt-tightening, a little jocularity can go a long way. Money IV Gold UK have noticed this, and they want to win our hearts (and our gold. Mainly the gold).

“Money doesn’t grow on trees…”

“…and you won’t find money here [down the back of a sofa]…”

“…but there’s one place that might be holding a treasure waiting to be found!”

Syntax so clumsy we’re beginning to wonder if it was written by a member of the BrokenTV Team. But never mind, here comes a cheery lady to tell us more.

The union colours on display again. What is this, the 1970s? At least if Tim Brooke-Taylor wandered into shot wearing a union flag waistcoat, we’d certainly agree that the advert was quintessentially British, and we’d pay unblinking attention to the remainder of the sales pitch.

Just in case you’re a bit thick, the makers of the advert have helpfully given a literal representation of someone with some gold in one hand, and a load of money in another.

They sure make a lot of the fact you can track your package (containing granny’s wedding ring and great uncle Eddie’s army medals) online, almost as if it was a special service they specifically offered. As opposed to just a thing that the Royal Mail offer for all packages sent by Special Delivery.

They’re publicly listed, so you know they can be trusted! Because every single company on the stock exchange can be trusted, eh readers?. (Er, imagine us saying something clever and Jon Stewarty to round off this caption.)

That MFGD stock market performance in full, for the entirety of it’s eighteen months on the market. In short: unspectacular unless you’ve got a time machine set for July 2008.

So, find a higher price, and they’ll double it. Oddly, a few of the companies we’ve seen advertising their gold-buying services seem to offer similar guarantees. Oh, and it’s nice to see our habit of screen capping people in mid-blink continues unabated.

(“LA Based Electronic Indie Band And Side Project Of Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard, Possibly Best Known For Their Song ‘Such Great Heights’, The _____ Service” – Ed) Gold
http://www.visit4info.com/advert/Turn-Gold-into-Cash-PostalGold/76316

My, here’s a disarmingly well spoken, yet disturbingly keen chap. What could he be after?

He is standing in front of green screen footage of an office set staffed by extras. You know, if the BBC hadn’t stupidly cancelled The Peter Serafinowicz Show, there could be a brilliant Brian Butterfield spoof of these commercials.

“I had a pile of unwanted jewellery. I sent it off to [COMPANY NAME], and I got £424.” Who actually amasses a whole pile of unwanted gold? Once you’ve got three or four pieces of unwanted gold, surely you stop buying the damn things? We’ve got the right number of toasters in our kitchen. Therefore, we’re not going to buy any more toasters. Now, that isn’t the best analogy in the world, but we’re a bit spooked by the way we’ve capped yet another screenshot of someone blinking. When we pause the videos, Visit4Info plonk an ugly icon in the middle of the screen, so we’re capping these shots in-motion. Apart from the following couple.

See what we said about the icon? Anyway, we’re using paused screens here to capture a brilliant example of exploiting viewers’ suggestibility by the ad makers. On these shots, the frontman is saying “so remember, you could turn your GOLD into CASH”. In the above frame, he’s scowling a bit, because he is saying the word ‘gold’. Nasty, dirty, smelly, carcinogenic gold, Ugh.

And here, he’s saying the word ‘cash’, possibly whilst being lightly fellated. Lovely, lovely cash. Cash can make anything better. Cash can, no, WILL make you happy.

So, “Au4£££” adverts. Sadly, the tremendously annoying one where a couple of stereotypical upper class hoorays lark about their mansion collecting nasty gold, before cavorting in the lovely banknotes they’ve swapped the gold for, isn’t on Visit4info. It’s truly horrible, so that’s a shame. Right now, we’ll wager Kevin Sodding Bishop is planning a sketch where The Queen fronts one of these adverts, saying how she swapped her pointless trinkets for a wad of used twenties. Actually, no, he’d probably just do his shit Simon Cowell impersonation instead.

Data Week: BBC Four, 2002-2009

2009-10-02T02:09:00.001+01:00

Data Week returns!

[Quick aside: If you’ve just popped along here due to TV Cream Times’ mention of our Charlie Brooker scangasm, it’s on the other side of this huge update. In case you don’t fancy wearing out your mouse’s scroll wheel getting past the subsequent graphs, here’s a link. You’ll be missing out on some top-notch barcharts, though. Meanwhile, a polite nod in the direction of TVC’s Steve W: Cheers, Steve. ANYWAY.]

In a series of moves that can justifiably be labelled “worrying”, we’ve taken weekly top ten viewing figures from every week that BBC Four has been on air. That makes for a total of 3,900 programmes over 390 weeks. What does this mean? Well, that we probably belong in some kind of institute, and we don’t mean as one of the scientists. But also that we’re able to reveal the following rundown of the most viewed programmes shown thus far on BBC Four. But first, a shot of the BBC Executive Committee from 2002, looking uneasy on and around a sofa.

Rank	Show	Viewers (000s)
1	The Curse Of Steptoe (w/e 23/03/08)	1,625
2	Ian Hislop Goes Off The Rails (w/e 19/10/08)	1,426
3	Fanny Hill (w/e 28/10/07)	1,175
4	Fanny Hill (w/e 04/11/07)	1,174
5	Margaret Thatcher - The Long Walk To Finchley (w/e 15/06/08)	1,019
6	Hughie Green, Most Sincerely (w/e 06/04/08)	895
7	The Alan Clark Diaries (w/e 18/01/04)	890
8	Getting On (w/e 26/07/09)	861
9	Kenneth Williams: Fantabulosa! (w/e 19/03/06)	860
10	Film: Anne Frank Remembered (w/e 25/01/09)	839
11	Life On Mars (w/e 25/02/07)	831
12	Railway Walks (w/e 26/10/08)	814
13	Blackadder Back And Forth (w/e 19/08/07)	800
14	Life On Mars (w/e 18/02/07)	793
15	Steptoe And Son (w/e 23/03/08)	776
16	QI (w/e 25/11/07)	770
17	Miss Marie Lloyd - Queen Of The Music Hall (w/e 13/05/07)	759
18	Spanish Flu: The Forgotten Fallen (w/e 09/08/09)	740
19	QI (w/e 11/11/07)	738
20	Hancock And Joan (w/e 30/03/08)	709
21	QI (w/e 14/10/07)	702
22	Steam Days (w/e 26/10/08)	699
23	Railway Walks (w/e 19/10/08)	699
24	The Pink Floyd Story: Which One's Pink? (w/e 25/05/08)	693
25	QI (w/e 07/10/07)	679
26	QI (w/e 12/11/06)	676
27	The Thirties In Colour (w/e 20/07/08)	672
28	Frankie Howerd: Rather You Than Me (w/e 13/04/08)	669
29	Inside The Medieval Mind (w/e 20/04/08)	669
30	QI (w/e 19/11/06)	669
31	Stephen Fry And The Gutenberg Press (w/e 20/04/08)	664
32	The Alan Clark Diaries (w/e 25/01/04)	660
33	QI (w/e 30/09/07)	658
34	Stephen Fry: 50 Not Out (w/e 19/08/07)	652
35	Timeshift: Between The Lines: Railways (w/e 26/10/08)	644
36	Comedy Songs: The Pop Years (w/e 03/05/09)	641
37	QI (w/e 09/12/07)	638
38	Who Killed The Honey Bee? (w/e 08/03/09)	630
39	QI (w/e 18/11/07)	628
40	Britain's Best Drives (w/e 01/02/09)	625
41	Film: Calendar Girls (w/e 15/03/09)	620
42	QI (w/e 28/10/07)	613
43	Caravans: A British Love Affair (w/e 15/03/09)	611
44	The Thirties In Colour (w/e 10/08/08)	609
45	Life On Mars (w/e 10/02/08)	608
46	QI (w/e 16/12/07)	608
47	QI (w/e 23/09/07)	602
48	QI (w/e 10/12/06)	602
49	Legends: Roy Orbison (w/e 28/12/08)	601
50	Great Railway Journeys (w/e 19/10/08)	601
51	Glastonbury Live (w/e 10/05/09)	599
52	QI (w/e 05/11/06)	599
53	Britain's Best Drives (w/e 22/03/09)	593
54	The Story Of Maths (w/e 26/10/08)	584
55	Britain's Best Drives (w/e 11/01/09)	580
56	The Frost Report Is Back! (w/e 30/03/08)	580
57	A For Andromeda (w/e 02/04/06)	580
58	Liz Smith's Summer Cruise (w/e 26/07/09)	576
59	Timeshift: The Last Days Of Steam (w/e 05/10/08)	576
60	Life On Mars (w/e 17/08/08)	576
61	QI (w/e 26/11/06)	575
62	QI (w/e 29/10/06)	575
63	QI (w/e 02/12/07)	565
64	Roy Sings Orbison (w/e 28/12/08)	564
65	Fanny Hill (w/e 04/11/07)	564
66	The Big Bang Machine (w/e 07/09/08)	563
67	Pop Britannia (w/e 13/01/08)	563
68	QI (w/e 13/11/05)	562
69	State Of Play (w/e 01/06/03)	560
70	Christina - A Medieval Life (w/e 11/05/08)	559
71	D-Day To Berlin: Newsnight Special (w/e 21/06/09)	556
72	QI (w/e 21/10/07)	556
73	QI (w/e 17/12/06)	556
74	QI (w/e 04/11/07)	555
75	Bombay Railway (w/e 22/07/07)	555
76	Caravans: A British Love Affair (w/e 15/03/09)	553
77	Rain (w/e 01/03/09)	552
78	Johnny Cash: The Last Great American (w/e 01/06/08)	551
79	Crooked House (w/e 09/11/08)	550
80	QI (w/e 15/10/06)	550
81	D Day: Turning The Tide (w/e 21/06/09)	547
82	A Bit Of Fry & Laurie (w/e 19/08/07)	547
83	Edwardian Supersize Me (w/e 22/04/07)	547
84	The Chatterley Affair (w/e 26/03/06)	546
85	The Young Ones (w/e 19/08/07)	541
86	Life On Mars (w/e 15/04/07)	541
87	State Of Play (w/e 08/06/03)	540
88	Timewatch: The Last Day Of World War O (w/e 30/11/08)	538
89	Wainwright Walks (w/e 19/08/07)	535
90	Flight Of The Conchords (w/e 31/05/09)	533
91	Secret Life Of The Airport (w/e 03/05/09)	533
92	The 1950s: Pop On Trial (w/e 13/01/08)	531
93	Fear Of Fanny (w/e 29/10/06)	530
94	The Quartermass Experiment (w/e 03/04/05)	530
95	The Thirties In Colour (w/e 06/09/09)	525
96	Film: The Buddy Holly Story (w/e 22/02/09)	524
97	Film: The Name Of The Rose (w/e 20/04/08)	522
98	QI (w/e 02/10/05)	519
99	The Secret Life Of The Motorway (w/e 26/08/07)	517
100	Ford's Dagenham Dream (w/e 22/03/09)	515

Source: BARB.co.uk

So, over the course of its lifetime, there have been as few as five broadcasts attracting over a million viewers. That’s in no way a bad thing given the channel’s remit, of course. It’s not the BBC’s fault that while 30,000 people were watching “John Logie Baird: The Man Who Saw The Future” on 24th January 2003, 6,930,000 more people were using Baird’s invention to watch Footballer’s Wives on ITV instead.

That said, it is quite a surprise that when BBC Four were screening first-run episodes of popular programmes like QI or Life On Mars, they still didn’t reach the psychologically important seven-figure mark. The most popular BBC Four showing of Life On Mars (series two, episode three) attracted 831,000 viewers, with 5,230,000 more preferring instead to catch the show the following week on BBC One. Maybe this is why the experiment was halted after a few weeks, after which BBC Four used the slot to show repeats from earlier in the series instead. To be fair, QI did fare better – the most popular BBC Four screening of the show enticed 770,000 people over to the BBC Four digital thinkspace. That was about a third of the audience the same episode received on BBC Two seven days later. All things considered, the suitably cerebral QI is easily the most frequent visitor to the Top 100 most-viewed BBC Four broadcasts:

Ah, BBC Four. The only place where such a chart could contain programmes about caravans and railways. Don’t ever change, you (not that we’d watch either, but still). We’ve discounted all the shows only appearing once on that list, as there are fifty-five of them. Such is the way of BBC Four.

So, what of the more well-known BBC Four original offerings? How do they fare? A frankly borderline-autistic analysis of figures are coming right up.

Well, in keeping with our other running theme of the week, you’ll notice the various ‘Wipes of Charlie Brooker don’t make the hundred, but you might be surprised to discover that they aren’t even close to it. Despite the fact that just about everyone on Twitter (everyone that we’re following, anyway) and the ‘Web in general (the parts of it we look at, anyway) watches Screen- and Newswipe, the public at large aren’t so keen. The most popular outing for the former Oink! cartoonist was this February’s Newswipe debut, watched by 320,000 viewers. That makes it just the 488th most watched show in BBC Four’s history. According to @charltonbrooker himself on Twitter, this week’s Gameswipe was watched by more viewers than any of his previous shows, but until the official figures for that are in, here’s a chart. We can only assume episodes four and five of Newswipe just slipped out of the weekly tens – possibly fair enough in the case of episode five, as it was a compilation of the series up to that point.

On to Armando Iannucci’s brilliant political satire The Thick Of It. Now, given the show was considered popular enough to warrant a spin-off film, you’d expect it to have been one of BBC Four’s more popular programmes, wouldn’t you? After all, there’s no motion picture of Never Mind The Full Stops in the works, is there? Well, slightly surprisingly, you’d be wrong again (about The Thick Of It being popular, that is. As far as we know, Never Mind The Full Stops: The Motion Picture is not forthcoming). The most popular BBC Four screening of the show – each episode of which was premiered on the channel – was the series opener, watched by 319,000 viewers. That puts it in 495th place on our overall list, and leads to the following chart:

Even the two opposition specials (Rise Of The Nutters, and Spinners And Losers) hovered around the quarter-million mark. On the same week that a meagre 164,000 people watched episode 3 of The Thick Of It, 4.9 million people watched Celebrity Love Island. Not sneering, just putting the numbers out there.

That’s “Flight of the Conchords”, in case you can’t make out the title screen. Not an actual BBC Four production, but probably their most heavily promoted imported comedy. At it’s peak, the show proved more popular than just about any of BBC Four’s homegrown comedy shows, with the series two opener attracting 533,000 viewers on first broadcast, making it the most watched BBC Four programme of that week, and 90th most viewed overall. Not everyone stayed around for the remainder of the series, but that’s their stupid Little Britain-preferring loss. Let’s take a look at the chart, shall we? (nb. imagine us saying that last bit in the voice of Murray.)

One of the best things about BBC Four is the practice of full repeat runs for shows that would be considered too esoteric for BBCs One and Two, who are too busy trying to impress the 18-34 demographic. Only we’re still (just about) in that demographic grouping, and frankly, well, enough with the repeats of Have I Got Old News For You and Mock The Week – show us something that hasn’t been on Dave every night for months, you gits.

Anyway: I, Claudius (or if you’re a twat, “Aye, Clavdivs”). The 1976 adaptation of Robert Graves’ book, which starred Derek Jacobi, Patrick Stewart and John Hurt, amongst others, and which proved rather popular on BBC Four, all things considered. Of the repeat run in 2006, seven episodes were in the three most-watched shows on BBC Four in their broadcast weeks, and unless unwilling classes of GCSE English Literature classes are now BARB diarists, that’s very impressive. Here’s a graphical representation of just how well it fared:

The main thing that compels us to make weekly trawls of the EPG for BBC Four is the promise of engrossing documentaries on what some would consider “the mundane”. One such example is The Secret Life Of The Motorway, which went into such enthralling detail the programme makers even interviewed the people who’d designed the typeface on motorway road signs. THE TYPEFACE ON MOTORWAY ROAD SIGNS. Frankly, we’re now in love with whoever thought that was a good idea.

We’re not alone in enjoying such fare, with the series opener sneaking into the all-time list of BBC Four’s hundred most-popular broadcasts (in 99th place, with an audience of 517,000), Even a repeat run of the series from earlier this year saw it attracting up to 379,000 eager petrolheads.

BBC Four also plays host to foreign language drama, such as the gritty yet compelling subtitled antics of Sweden’s Kurt Wallander. Despite what you may expect to be a reaction of “Do wot? If I wanted to read, I’d fackin’ flick through the bits of me Daily Star that aren’t tits, innit?”, these are really quite popular. Of the ten showings for Wallander in our list, half of them were the most watched BBC Four shows of their respective weeks. All the more reason for BBC Four to show Newstopia’s fantastic entirely-subtitled-from-Russian final episode. After showing the previous twenty-nine Newstopia episodes first, of course. COME ON BBC FOUR! (Reader’s voice: “Bleeding hell, change the sodding record.”)

Enough with the show-by-show breakdowns, how about our now-traditional PIE CHART DETAILING ALL SHOWS BY GENRE?

Yeah, right. Of the 3,900 broadcasts on the overall list, there are 1,675 different programmes. We’re not sifting through that lot until the Director General offers to wash our dishes for a month. Or at the very least, unless the BBC Executive Committee from 2002 offers to play musical chairs with a single tiny armchair for our edification…

Nice try, we’re still not doing it. Instead, here are some bonus facts:

The earliest broadcast from that top 100 was June 2003’s Simm-Morrissey political drama State Of Play, at numbers 69 and 87 (and between 540,000 and 560,000 viewers).
Repeats of Monty Python’s Flying Circus have featured on the list three times: twice in 2004, and once in 2005. For the weeks in question, they were the 1st, 2nd and 4th most watched shows on BBC Four. So come on BBC Four, how about a full repeat run? Or even better, Rutland Weekend Television? Come on, don’t wait until Eric Idle’s 70th birthday, do it now.
Meanwhile, repeat showings of Ripping Yarns have made BBC Four’s weekly top three on seven occasions.
Similarly, in 2002 a repeat showing of Not Only… But Also… was the most-watched programme of the week. And yet, no other repeats since. Tsk.
Despite being refreshingly novel and mostly enjoyable, Robert Newman’s History Of The World Backwards didn’t make the top ten shows for any of the weeks it was broadcast in. Boo.
From the entire listing, the twenty programmes that appear most frequently are as follows:

1. QI (79)
2. The Avengers (70)
=3. Sounds Of The Sixties (46)
=3. Yes, Minister (46)
5. Life On Mars (45)
6. Days That Shook The World (29)
7. Timeshift (26)
=8. BBC Four News (24)
=8. Mind Games (24)
10. Storyville (23)
=11. The National Trust (21)
=11. Wainwright Walks (21)
=11. Weather (21)*
=14. Inside Antiques (20)
=14. Planet Earth (20)
16. Himalaya With Michael Palin (19)
=17. The Mark Steel Lectures (18)**
=17. The Great War (18)
=19. First Night Of The Proms (17)
=19. Sounds Of The Seventies (17)
=19. Restoration Secrets (17)
(* A documentary on weather, and not the actual weather forecast, of course.)
(** Exciting local colour alert: Thrillingly, BrokenTV’s Mark X was once asked on the NotBBC forum – where he occasionally posts under the wacky pseudonym “Mark” as he clearly has no imagination – whether he really was TV’s Mark Steel. Slightly less exciting follow-up: He isn’t.)

To round things off, say you took the top tens from each week that BBC Four has been on the air. From each week, you took the viewing figures from those top tens, and calculated the average viewing figure. Then, you sorted these averages by date, and plotted the whole lot into a line chart. Why, surely such a chart would incontrovertibly prove how the popularity of BBC Four has grown – or otherwise– over the last seven and a half years? But who would be so anally retentive to compile such a chart? And for the love of all that is good and holy, should such people really be allowed to wander the streets? Really? Bloody hell.

There you go. No need to thank us.

FOOTNOTE:

The BrokenTV team will be out of a day job at the end of this month (voluntarily, so don’t feel you need to send in tinned food or anything). If anyone is actually looking for a walking, breathing man-child capable of putting together charts like the above, feel free to get in touch.

Charlie Brooker’s Gameswipe: Paper Edition Part 2

2009-09-30T00:50:00.001+01:00

Gameswipe - quite good wasn’t it? We loved the chiptune version of Grandaddy’s AM180 at the start, along with references to Turbo Esprit, the ZX81 and Your Sinclair. Hamstrung a bit by rebuking lazy media coverage of violent games, but then spending much of the show showing needlessly violent bits from those very same violent games, but hey. One of the most nicely well-informed gaming shows ever to grace television, alongside BBC Scotland’s VideoGaiden. Here’s hoping that despite the total lack of publicity from BBC Four, it attracted enough viewers to make a full series worthwhile, or at least to make it an annual fixture.

Anyhow, on with the second part of our Scanorama, with several images fresh from the glass of our glacially slow Epson DX3850. First up, the April 1996 copy of PC Zone. This was from the time Brooker contributed a monthly cartoon strip to the magazine, going by the name of Cybertwats. It’s a bit of a shame Brooker packed in doing his cartoons, to be honest. We really enjoyed his Superkaylo website back in the steam age of the internet (no longer online, and sadly blocked by a pesky robots.txt on wayback.org), and can even remember his work for Oink! comic in the 1980s.

(Disclaimer: at this point, we’d like to point out that, despite any evidence to the contrary, we actually haven’t been stalking Charlie Brooker since about 1988. It’s just that he’s had a habit of cropping up on publications and websites we happen to read or frequent. It’s quite bloody alarming, actually. Oink! comic (which we piggin’ loved as a kid), a Your Sinclair letters page, PC Zone in print, And then in the digital age, Superkaylo, NTK.net (which was the first home to TVGoHome), the old SOTCAA forum, and a couple of newsgroups we used to post on in the late 1990s. If anything, he’s stalking us. For fuck’s sake, even the first two words of the Guardian Guide’s review of BrokenTV were “Charlie” and “Brooker”. We’re not even joking.)

It’s a thumbnail. You know what to do, with the clicking, and the bigness, and the “open in new tab”.

There was also a Brooker-penned review of some early offerings from Sega on the PC CD-Rom market. Things were so strange with the PC gaming market in the mid-90s, that the utterly forgettable Comix Zone was the better of the three offerings. Even that only got 68%, and as PC Zone was a games magazine likely to give a CD-Rom title that pumped you full of eye cancer a score in the mid-70s, that really isn’t very impressive.

One thing we’ve just had to scan in from the same edition of PCZ was this advert for another of Dennis Publishing’s magazines from 1996:

Yes, CD-Rom! It’s the future! Look what you get on the covermount! Beavis and Butthead! Playboy! Star Wars! Erm, Myra Hindley! That’s right folks, 1996 was a year that you could plonk a photo of a convicted child murderer on your front cover, and you’d still shift lots of units because there was a covermounted CD-Rom.

On to September 1997, and an edition of PC Zone leading with “Quake In A Codpiece”. So, lots of brown, and a tightly packed scrotum? No wonder the majority of the cover image had a palette comprised wholly of dark grey and black. By now, the letters page had progressed from irate readers whinging about Windows 95 to concentrating on games (or whining about video cards being too expensive, anyway). As for scribblings from the hand of Brooker, there was a review of jolly, family-friendly village-based isometric action-adventure Little Big Adventure 2, a game which was advertised on the back cover of this very issue of PC Zone. Naturally, with it being the latter half of the 1990s, the advert featured a large rendering of the central character in bed with a snoozing blonde, just below a caption asking “Do you remember your first time?”. Ah, the 1990s, when even magazine advertisements for Anusol would probably try to cram in a hugely blatant reference to shagging.

There was also an interview with celebrity gamesmaker Peter Molyneux. There’s a thought – you never really see desperate attempts to paint games programmers/designers as ‘celebrities’ nowadays, do you? We suspect Amiga Format’s rather cackhanded attempts at promoting Andrew Braybrook as “the man who killed pop music” pretty much put paid to that ethos, even if he did look a bit like the one with the glasses from The Chemical Brothers.

More next time!

(Practically no-readers-at-all’s voice: “Hey, what happened to Data Week Day 3?”)

Oh, shush. It might be back tomorrow, or more likely on Thursday.

Charlie Brooker’s Gameswipe: The Prequel

2009-09-29T00:21:00.001+01:00

So, hopefully-not-just-a-one-off BBC Four videogaming special Gameswipe, hosted by loveable curmudgeon Charlie Brooker is broadcast tomorrow night (or tonight, by the time you probably read this). In the pre-show bumph, Brooker has mentioned how he “started [his] writing career penning video game reviews, so Gameswipe effectively sees [him] coming full-circle: it’s evolution in reverse basically”.

Well, what with the BrokenTV office having recently been refurbished with a huge Ikea bookcase – large enough to hold our massive collection of magazines, pointless minutiae fans – we’ve been able to pick out a few choice articles from Charlie Brooker’s time at PC Zone magazine. And, because we’re a caring, sharing kind of blog (oh, and because we hope Dennis Publishing are kind of ‘okay’ with this sort of thing), we’re going to put a few scans of them online over the next few days. Not because we’re trying to take a whole Daily Telegraph MP Pay Scandal approach to this, dragging out an idea as long as it’ll go, but rather because our scanner is really, really slow.

First up: July 1997, and what might possibly be Charlie Brooker’s first published article about telly.

Click for bigger. Ah, you all know how thumbnails work, don’t you?

And while we’ve got the magazine to hand, his preview of slightly disappointing Hudson-em-up Atomic Bomberman.

Again, click for bigger. Though if you think we’d be expecting you to read the text from those images, you underestimated just how stupid we really are.

For anyone who might stumble over some issues at a car boot sale, mid-to-late-90s PC Zone was (and still is) a brilliant read. Writers included Charlie Brooker (who also did a monthly cartoon strip called The Cybertwats, and not very good Peter Bagge tribute Late Developers), Your Sinclair/Zero legend Duncan MacDonald, David McCandless, Patrick McCarthy, demented genius ‘Culky’ and several others. Never have a series of game reviews stating “well, you’ll need an extra 8MB of memory if you want to run it through Windows 95” been so entertaining.

More tomorrow, crappy scanner permitting.

Data Week Day Two: Sky One And An Alarming Photo Of Rupert Murdoch

2009-09-28T19:50:00.001+01:00

Look, there’ll be a more interesting update along later today, okay?

Anyway, we’ve taken a look at Sky One’s weekly top ten viewing figures over the last 52 weeks. BARB doesn’t have any data for two of the weeks in that period (for some unexplained reason), which leaves us with a total of 500 shows to work from. Which is a handy figure for knocking up charts, so we’ll work with that.

Sky One’s hundred most watched shows over the last year (hey, it might come in handy for someone) are as follows, just after an alarming picture of Rupert Murdoch from BSkyB’s Annual Shareholder’s Report for 2003. See if you can tell what we’ve changed.

That’s right, we’ve cropped out some of the foliage from that shot. That top hundred:

overall rank	show	viewers (000s)
1	Noels Christmas Presents 2 (21-Dec-08)	1,553
2	Lost (01-Feb-09)	1,326
3	Lost (01-Mar-09)	1,264
4	Lost (22-Feb-09)	1,220
5	Lost (25-Jan-09)	1,195
6	The Simpsons (22-Mar-09)	1,185
7	Lost (15-Feb-09)	1,180
8	Lost (22-Mar-09)	1,170
9	Lost (08-Feb-09)	1,158
10	Skellig (12-Apr-09)	1,155
11	Ross Kemp: Return To Afghanistan (01-Feb-09)	1,153
12	Lost (05-Apr-09)	1,117
13	The Simpsons (01-Feb-09)	1,107
14	Ross Kemp: Return To Afghanistan (22-Feb-09)	1,103
15	Lost (17-May-09)	1,099
16	Ross Kemp: Return To Afghanistan (15-Feb-09)	1,099
17	Lost (19-Apr-09)	1,091
18	Bones (16-Nov-08)	1,082
19	Lost (17-May-09)	1,076
20	Ross Kemp: Return To Afghanistan (08-Feb-09)	1,071
21	Lost (08-Mar-09)	1,061
22	Lost (12-Apr-09)	1,059
23	House Season 5 (26-Jul-09)	1,052
24	The Simpsons (11-Jan-09)	1,047
25	Lost (10-May-09)	1,034
26	Lost (03-May-09)	1,020
27	House Season 5 (26-Jul-09)	997
28	The Simpsons (30-Nov-08)	987
29	House Season 5 (05-Jul-09)	986
30	Bones (22-Mar-09)	983
31	The Simpsons (16-Nov-08)	982
32	Bones (30-Nov-08)	959
33	Bones (17-May-09)	946
34	Bones (03-May-09)	945
35	Lost (29-Mar-09)	945
36	House Season 5 (16-Aug-09)	927
37	House Season 5 (12-Jul-09)	925
38	Bones (10-May-09)	921
39	The Simpsons (08-Mar-09)	911
40	Bones (24-May-09)	910
41	The Simpsons (25-Jan-09)	910
42	Martina Coles The Take (05-Jul-09)	903
43	24 Season 7 (18-Jan-09)	903
44	House Season 5 (09-Aug-09)	896
45	The Simpsons (07-Dec-08)	896
46	House Season 5 (09-Aug-09)	893
47	Martina Coles The Take (21-Jun-09)	890
48	Martina Coles The Take (21-Jun-09)	888
49	Bones (05-Oct-08)	886
50	Bones (19-Apr-09)	885
51	The Simpsons (09-Nov-08)	885
52	Bones (08-Mar-09)	874
53	House Season 5 (31-May-09)	872
54	Bones (25-Apr-09)	871
55	The Simpsons (22-Feb-09)	871
56	Ross Kemp In Search Of Pirates (21-Jun-09)	867
57	House Season 5 (02-Aug-09)	866
58	Ross Kemp: Return To Afghanistan (01-Mar-09)	862
59	House Season 5 (02-Aug-09)	852
60	24 Season 7 (01-Feb-09)	852
61	Gladiators (16-Nov-08)	850
62	Bones (28-Sep-08)	848
63	House Season 5 (31-May-09)	843
64	House Season 5 (13-Sep-09)	840
65	Bones (15-Mar-09)	837
66	The Simpsons (04-Jan-09)	834
67	House Season 5 (30-Aug-09)	831
68	24 Season 7 (08-Feb-09)	829
69	House Season 5 (21-Jun-09)	828
70	House Season 5 (14-Jun-09)	827
71	Bones (29-Mar-09)	824
72	Bones (19-Oct-08)	822
73	House Season 5 (19-Jul-09)	814
74	The Simpsons (09-Nov-08)	813
75	24 Season 7 (15-Feb-09)	811
76	Bones (12-Oct-08)	811
77	House Season 5 (23-Aug-09)	808
78	The Simpsons (04-Jan-09)	803
79	Bones (02-Nov-08)	803
80	Bones (01-Mar-09)	802
81	Bones (26-Oct-08)	797
82	Bones (22-Feb-09)	796
83	Bones (12-Apr-09)	795
84	The Simpsons (01-Feb-09)	795
85	House Season 5 (07-Jun-09)	794
86	24 Season 7 (05-Apr-09)	794
87	Ross Kemp In Search Of Pirates (14-Jun-09)	780
88	Fringe (26-Oct-08)	768
89	The Simpsons (01-Feb-09)	766
90	The Simpsons (08-Feb-09)	763
91	House Season 5 (28-Jun-09)	761
92	The Simpsons (28-Dec-08)	760
93	The Simpsons (25-Jan-09)	754
94	House Season 5 (06-Sep-09)	751
95	The Simpsons (26-Oct-08)	749
96	Gladiators (04-Jan-09)	748
97	Bones (31-May-09)	743
98	24 Season 7 (12-Apr-09)	743
99	The Simpsons (28-Dec-08)	740
100	Lie To Me Season 1 (12-Jul-09)	739

Source: BARB.co.uk The programmes shown were broadcast in the weeks ending in the listed dates.

So, quite a mixed bunch at the top. Slightly surprisingly, as least to us, it’s Noel’s Christmas Holiday Acciden… erm, Present 2 at the top of the pile, with over 1.5million viewers. The majority of the top ten is taken up with the penultimate series of Lost, while the “world premiere” episode of The Simpsons (where the family visit Ireland) also makes the ten. Tim Roth’s performance in original children’s drama production Skellig rounds off the top ten.

No, we’re fine thank you Rupert. So, chucking that lot into a chart that’s never going to be very representative given the fact 84% of Sky One’s primetime schedule is taken up with Simpsons repeats, what do we get?

Pretty much as you might expect. But, what happens when we take account of the types of show making up the 500?

Quite interesting. Only 7% of the shows on the list are actually made in the UK specifically for Sky. Now, we’ll admit that UK-sourced programming was unlikely to eat into the Simpso-Futurama portion of the pie, as it’s so bloody scarce on Sky One, but 7% is really rather poor. It’s also quite interesting to note that not a single live-action US comedy makes the pie – have there been any on Sky One over the last year? At most points in the channel’s history, you could have expected to see shows like Seinfeld, Mad About You, Married With Children, Friends or maybe even Night Court on there (may even I Love Lucy, if you go back far enough), but that seems to have been an entire genre they’ve given up on.

Sky really do seem to be spreading their programming portfolio rather thinly. Of the entire listing, 83.6% of it is taken from just six shows: The Simpsons, Bones, 24, House, Fringe and Lost. Given that three of those shows only interested Sky in the first place was because of the audiences they were getting on other channels (BBC Two, five and Channel Four, you can probably work out the shows yourselves), you might have to question what the programme buyers at Sky One do all day. Apart from sift through BARB’s website so see which shows they can pinch from elsewhere, that is.

Yikes. At this point, you could reasonably say that the US imports dominate the charts because they run for much longer seasons than the original programming commissioned by Sky. A chart compiled of average ratings per programme would probably reveal a lot more, wouldn’t it?

And indeed it would, with the top ten programmes now including a total of six home-grown productions. Noel’s Christmas Presents 2 wins the (notional) annual prize, with Mr Roth in second place. Even Gladiators makes the cut, and with the Simpsons pool being thinned out by repeats in less popular slots, it slips down to sixteenth. Gratifyingly, that means Futurama sneaks ahead of it.

So, with those figures in mind, why doesn’t Sky come up with more original programming? The stock answer here would be “because importing shows is cheaper – duh!”, but Sky reportedly pay Buena Vista International a whopping £700,000 per episode of Lost. That’s comfortably enough to make an episode of a home-grown drama series. So, come on Sky, why don’t you?

Brr. It’s okay Rupe, we’ll walk home.

TOMORROW: Not sure. Maybe BBC Four.

(Editor’s note: Yes, it should technically have been James Murdoch in those pictures, but that wouldn’t have been nearly as unsettling as Captain Jowls up there.)

Data Week: BBC Three (and Sexy Governors)

2009-09-27T19:52:00.001+01:00

So, after not updating for a while, what better way could there be to return than with a big list of lovely numbers? (Readers voice: “Oh bloody hell.”)

We’ve been scouring the ever useful BARB website, and we’ve been looking into viewing figures for a number of channels over the past twelve months. To kick off, we’re going to take a look at BBC Three. And to make things even more exciting, we’re going to intersperse our findings with some historic cheesecake shots of the BBC Board Of Governors, like this one from 2001:

Phwoar, eh?

So, here’s what we’ve done. Working from the “weekly top ten” viewing figures from BARB’s website, we’ve compiled a listing of the 200 most watched shows on BBC Three over the last twelve months. Then, we’ve broken them down by show, to see which are the most popular programmes on the channel. We’ve even come up with a list of shows by type, to work out how many of BBC Three’s original shows are on there. Anyway, here’s the list in full, just after another shot of the BBC Board Of Governors. This time from 2002:

Mmm, ‘playful’. Here’s the list.

overall rank	show	viewers (000s)
1	Eastenders (12 July 2009)	1,907
2	Eastenders (05 April 2009)	1,795
3	Eastenders (12 April 2009)	1,782
4	Eastenders (19 April 2009)	1,643
5	Eastenders (05 April 2009)	1,580
6	Eastenders (28 December 2008)	1,568
7	Eastenders (18 January 2009)	1,555
8	Eastenders (24 May 2009)	1,533
9	Eastenders (07 June 2009)	1,495
10	Eastenders (31 May 2009)	1,495
11	Eastenders (04 January 2009)	1,476
12	Eastenders (15 February 2009)	1,458
13	Eastenders (19 July 2009)	1,456
14	Eastenders (29 March 2009)	1,453
15	Eastenders (11 January 2009)	1,442
16	Heroes (21 December 2008)	1,440
17	Eastenders (25 April 2009)	1,435
18	Eastenders (21 December 2008)	1,432
19	Eastenders (16 November 2008)	1,417
20	Eastenders (22 February 2009)	1,415
21	Eastenders (28 June 2009)	1,405
22	Eastenders (22 March 2009)	1,383
24	Horne & Corden (15 March 2009)	1,373
23	Eastenders (14 December 2008)	1,373
25	Film: Pirates Of The Caribbean: Curse Of The Black Pearl (04 January 2009)	1,361
26	Eastenders (08 March 2009)	1,328
27	Eastenders (17 May 2009)	1,317
28	Heroes (16 November 2008)	1,310
29	Eastenders (05 July 2009)	1,305
30	Eastenders (08 February 2009)	1,305
31	Eastenders (25 January 2009)	1,290
32	Heroes (07 December 2008)	1,288
33	Film: Bruce Almighty (2003) (21 December 2008)	1,285
34	Eastenders (09 November 2008)	1,272
35	Eastenders (07 December 2008)	1,263
36	Heroes (19 October 2008)	1,259
37	Eastenders (30 August 2009)	1,250
38	Heroes (14 December 2008)	1,239
39	Film: War Of The Worlds (2005) (25 January 2009)	1,222
40	Eastenders (21 June 2009)	1,214
41	Spooks (30 November 2008)	1,213
42	Eastenders (14 June 2009)	1,207
43	Film: Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Cu (04 January 2009)	1,203
45	Heroes (12 October 2008)	1,200
44	Eastenders (12 October 2008)	1,200
46	Heroes (30 November 2008)	1,198
48	Heroes (23 November 2008)	1,193
47	Eastenders (23 November 2008)	1,193
49	Family Guy (19 July 2009)	1,192
50	Heroes (05 October 2008)	1,189
51	Eastenders (30 November 2008)	1,187
52	Eastenders (09 November 2008)	1,171
53	Eastenders (26 October 2008)	1,163
54	Eastenders (12 April 2009)	1,157
55	Heroes (09 November 2008)	1,152
56	Eastenders (13 September 2009)	1,145
57	Eastenders (06 September 2009)	1,144
58	Eastenders (16 August 2009)	1,142
59	Heroes (26 October 2008)	1,135
60	Eastenders (01 February 2009)	1,134
61	Eastenders (19 October 2008)	1,123
62	Eastenders (12 April 2009)	1,114
63	Eastenders (25 April 2009)	1,113
64	Match Of The Day Live (21 June 2009)	1,109
65	Heroes (02 November 2008)	1,108
66	Eastenders (14 June 2009)	1,106
67	Eastenders (05 October 2008)	1,102
68	Eastenders (01 March 2009)	1,101
69	Horne & Corden (22 March 2009)	1,096
70	Being Human (25 January 2009)	1,092
71	Match Of The Day Live (28 June 2009)	1,090
72	Eastenders (03 May 2009)	1,088
73	Eastenders (19 April 2009)	1,087
74	Being Human (01 March 2009)	1,086
75	Eastenders (05 April 2009)	1,076
76	Heroes (19 April 2009)	1,068
77	Heroes (01 March 2009)	1,063
78	Family Guy (19 April 2009)	1,059
79	Eastenders (05 July 2009)	1,049
80	Eastenders (02 November 2008)	1,046
82	Heroes (12 April 2009)	1,042
81	Eastenders (10 May 2009)	1,042
83	Eastenders (09 November 2008)	1,036
85	Heroes (03 May 2009)	1,030
84	Eastenders (17 May 2009)	1,030
87	Heroes (15 March 2009)	1,018
86	Eastenders (23 August 2009)	1,018
88	Match Of The Day Live (28 June 2009)	1,017
90	Heroes (08 March 2009)	1,016
89	Eastenders (31 May 2009)	1,016
91	Eastenders (03 May 2009)	1,015
92	Eastenders (09 August 2009)	1,013
93	Eastenders (19 July 2009)	1,011
95	Spooks (23 November 2008)	1,010
94	Eastenders (23 August 2009)	1,010
96	Film: Shrek (01 February 2009)	1,008
98	Heroes (25 April 2009)	998
97	Eastenders (29 March 2009)	998
99	Eastenders (24 May 2009)	988
100	Match Of The Day Live (28 June 2009)	987
101	Eastenders (28 June 2009)	984
102	Eastenders (14 December 2008)	983
103	Heroes (22 March 2009)	981
104	Eastenders (05 October 2008)	979
105	Horne & Corden (05 April 2009)	976
106	Being Human (01 February 2009)	974
107	Eastenders (01 March 2009)	972
108	Family Guy (31 May 2009)	971
109	Eastenders (11 January 2009)	966
110	Eastenders (05 April 2009)	962
111	Eastenders (03 May 2009)	961
112	Family Guy (19 April 2009)	959
113	Eastenders (19 July 2009)	955
115	Heroes (05 April 2009)	953
114	Eastenders (12 July 2009)	953
116	Family Guy (28 June 2009)	946
117	Eastenders (16 August 2009)	945
118	Heroes (29 March 2009)	942
119	Eastenders (05 July 2009)	941
120	Eastenders (21 June 2009)	936
121	Eastenders (19 April 2009)	935
122	Spooks (02 November 2008)	933
123	Film: National Treasure (2004) (06 September 2009)	932
124	Match Of The Day Live (28 June 2009)	929
125	Eastenders (28 June 2009)	925
126	Eastenders (10 May 2009)	925
127	Eastenders (22 March 2009)	924
129	Film: Meet The Fockers (2004) (12 April 2009)	923
128	Eastenders (13 September 2009)	923
130	Family Guy (19 April 2009)	921
131	Eastenders (07 June 2009)	917
132	Eastenders (17 May 2009)	916
133	Eastenders (22 February 2009)	915
134	Eastenders (30 August 2009)	914
135	Underage And Pregnant (02 August 2009)	913
137	Film: Bruce Almighty (2003) (28 December 2008)	912
138	Film: The Pacifier (2005) (26 July 2009)	912
136	Doctor Who (12 April 2009)	912
139	Film: Shrek (08 February 2009)	909
140	Eastenders (29 March 2009)	907
141	Eastenders (22 February 2009)	907
142	Family Guy (26 July 2009)	906
143	Match Of The Day Live (15 February 2009)	901
144	Eastenders (30 November 2008)	900
145	Blood, Sweat And T-Shirts (24 May 2009)	899
146	Family Guy (03 May 2009)	898
150	Family Guy (10 May 2009)	896
147	Eastenders (21 June 2009)	896
148	Eastenders (25 April 2009)	896
149	Eastenders (25 January 2009)	896
151	Family Guy (19 April 2009)	894
152	Eastenders (09 August 2009)	891
153	Family Guy (17 May 2009)	888
154	Horne & Corden (29 March 2009)	887
155	Eastenders (12 July 2009)	883
157	Film: Wallace Gromit In The Curse Of T (01 March 2009)	881
156	Eastenders (22 February 2009)	881
158	Eastenders (21 December 2008)	880
159	Eastenders (29 March 2009)	879
160	Eastenders (15 March 2009)	879
162	Film: War Of The Worlds (2005) (25 January 2009)	878
161	Family Guy (12 July 2009)	878
163	Eastenders (26 July 2009)	877
164	Eastenders (28 December 2008)	875
165	Eastenders (07 December 2008)	874
166	Family Guy (05 July 2009)	870
168	Family Guy (21 June 2009)	868
167	Eastenders (28 December 2008)	868
169	Eastenders (25 April 2009)	866
170	Eastenders (15 March 2009)	863
171	Eastenders (18 January 2009)	861
172	Gavin And Stacey (28 December 2008)	860
173	Eastenders (02 November 2008)	859
174	Eastenders (02 August 2009)	858
175	Match Of The Day Live (21 June 2009)	855
176	Eastenders (26 July 2009)	853
177	Eastenders (26 October 2008)	852
178	Torchwood: Children Of Earth (12 July 2009)	852
179	Eastenders (02 August 2009)	849
180	Eastenders (07 June 2009)	846
181	Film: Cool Runnings (28 December 2008)	845
182	Eastenders (04 January 2009)	844
183	Live At The Apollo (26 July 2009)	844
184	Eastenders (26 July 2009)	842
185	Eastenders (23 November 2008)	842
186	Eastenders (08 March 2009)	839
187	Eastenders (09 August 2009)	838
188	Eastenders (12 October 2008)	838
189	Eastenders (16 November 2008)	837
190	Eastenders (30 November 2008)	835
192	Family Guy (30 August 2009)	830
191	Comic Relief's Naughty Bits (08 March 2009)	830
193	Eastenders (24 May 2009)	829
194	Film: National Treasure (2004) (13 September 2009)	826
195	Eastenders (15 March 2009)	825
196	Eastenders (15 February 2009)	825
197	Eastenders (14 June 2009)	821
198	Eastenders (10 May 2009)	821
199	Eastenders (21 December 2008)	821
200	Spooks (09 November 2008)	820

Notice a bit of, well, running theme throughout that list? So, with those shows under consideration, here’s a breakdown of them:

As might be expected from the above list, 124 of BBC Three’s 200 most-watched shows over the last year involve the miserable residents of Walford, or 62%. And given EastEnders is often the most-watched show in any given week, how does the chart look when converted into total viewers? A total aggregate of viewers would be quite unfair, as EastEnders is on BBC Three about 150 times per year, so instead we’ll look at the averages:

So, quite interestingly, the ‘Stenders only fall into fourth spot on the list, with first-run Heroes and a couple of films in front of it. Godawful sketch show Horne & Corden makes a mark as top-rated BBC Three original production using this criteria, though it should be noted only the average viewing figure of the four H&C episodes making the top 200 are used here. The remainder of the series failed to make the cut (at least one broadcast not even making the BBC Three top ten for that week). Anyway, we’re boring ourselves now.

Ah, that’s better. The 2003 bunch and a sofa, there. So, breaking the list down by type of show, what sort of chart do we get then?

That’s right: an interesting chart. 64% of shows making up the top 200 had previously been shown on BBC One, with a further 2% being premiere episodes of Spooks, shown on BBC One the following week. Of the lot, just 5% of the top 200 shows were original commissions for BBC Three, ten broadcasts in total (namely four eps of Horne & Corden, three of Being Human, and one each of Blood, Sweat And T-Shirts, Gavin And Stacey, and Underage And Pregnant).

So, what have we learned from all this? Well, EastEnders and films are very popular. “Georgia's Story - 33 Stone At 15”, somewhat less so (it was the 446th most watched show, coincidentally). Nothing you couldn’t have easily guessed, admittedly, but we’re sticking with Data Week until the bitter end. You’ll see.

Tomorrow: Sky One.

What IMDB Says, And What It Ought To Say

2009-09-21T00:56:00.002+01:00

Who watches a Pixar film, and instead of being enthralled by the magic within, simply sits there taking mental notes of things that might not be 100% realistic? IMDB contributors, that’s who.

It’s a animated movie about an old man who FLIES HIS HOUSE. We don’t think it’s based on a true story, you guys.

BrokenTV Movie Club: Special Bulletin (1983)

2009-09-15T00:30:00.008+01:00

This is something quite special. Special Bulletin was a TV movie broadcast on NBC in 1983, depicting a threat from US-based intellectual-pacifist terrorist cell to detonate a nuke in a Charleston harbour. At this point you might be mentally composing a Photoshopped screen-grab plastered with the words PACIFISM FAIL, but bear with us. The twist is, all events are relayed through simulated live rolling news coverage from the fictional RBS Network. It's all put together very well, being shot on video as opposed to film in order to capture that newsy feel more accurately, and it even opens with a authentically 1983-ish promo for forthcoming shows being interrupted by a - hey! - special bulletin.

On the original broadcast, it was deemed realistic enough to warrant disclaimers after each commercial break reminding viewers that events aren't real, along with the occasional on-screen "Dramatization" caption, lest it kick off a huge War Of The Worlds-style panic. All we'll say is: we dipped into it out of curiosity, and ended up sticking engrossedly with it, right to the end. Why, at several points our traditionally cynical expressions melted away to make room for something approaching actual concern for the participants. Enjoy, and try not to let your suspension of disbelief drop as soon as you realise one of the terrorists is played by David "Sledge Hammer/Warmongering Senator From In The Loop" Rasche.

Oh, and try not to get distracted by the Washington correspondent who looks a bit like Dan Rather, but who isn't Dan Rather. While the whole thing is slightly deflated by a couple of aspects (one being the slightly histrionic performance of Kathryn Walker as co-anchor, the other we're not mentioning, but you'll spot it), it's otherwise a decidedly engrossing depiction of what such coverage possibly would have been like at the time. We could go on about it some more, but it's the sort of film where seeing events unfold without knowing too much in advance - and being able to make comparisons with how such events would be reported now - really adds to your enjoyment. Oh, and a quick nod to the splendid SOTCAA forum, which is where we read about it.

So, Derren Brown’s Lottery Prediction Thing

2009-09-10T00:58:00.003+01:00

So, Darren “Stop Calling Me Darren” Brown’s lottery prediction stunt passed over without a hitch – he actually did successfully predict the numbers before they were drawn. Well, something like that anyway. Luckily, because we’re astonishingly farsighted*, we recorded both the More4 and BBC One transmissions between 10.34pm and 10.41pm in our Topfield Freeview box’s picture-in-picture mode.

(*Well, because TV’s Steve Berry** tweeted a comment at us mentioning the idea at 10.29pm, leading to us scrabbling around like berks trying to remember how Super PiP works, but you get the gist.)

(** Are you famous? Unlikely, as you’re reading BrokenTV instead of eating a cocaine in That London, but anyway. If you are, why not contribute to Steve Berry’s charity Doctor Who book? Go on, it’s for a good cause.)

We’ve even uploaded it to YouTube. Here’s the video. Try to ignore the fact it isn’t in proper widescreen mode because our DVD recorder isn’t very good. In fact, we’re willing to be ‘sponsored’ by any companies willing to send us a free Blu-ray recorder.

So there it is (yes, we know there’s a “Config mode: ON” banner there). How did he do that, then, eh? Here are three of our potential explanations:

1) The far side of the balls were covered in an E-ink surface, which could be controlled remotely by a crew member. E-ink is a real thing, by the way, not something we’ve made up. However, while it’s relatively flexible, we’re not sure you can coast a ball with it like that.

2) Some kind of remote controlled Etch-a-sketch type pen inside each of the balls, again, remotely controlled by an unseen crew member. After all, we reckon the first time Etch-a-sketch was unveiled it would have been regarded as tantamount to witchcraft.

3) Brown had simply used an invisible man, or possibly a ghost, to hide inside the draw machine on the Lottery Draw set, and simply place the designated balls inside the tube at the correct moment. The simplest explanations are often the right ones.

Frippery aside, there’s some clever misdirection from the mouth of Brown on tonight’s live feature. The mentioned legal reasons for not screening more than a snippet of the live BBC One show on Channel Four was surely true enough, but his claim that “after a meeting with Camelot […] I can’t show you the numbers until just after the result of the draw has been announced” is likely to be misdirection - he could easily have countered "What? I'm just stating my prediction of the numbers, you're the ones announcing them? I'm not even going to claim I'll get all six correct". His claim that “we don’t know exactly what time the draw will be shown on BBC One, we just hope it’s while this ten minute show is live” is certainly misdirection, as the timing of the lottery draw is assuredly fixed (apart from during exceptional circumstances – if a huge breaking story had kicked off at 10.20pm things would have been derailed) – especially as the Thunderball draw was going on at the exact moment Brown was saying those words. He even says “we are hoping it will happen at some point in the next ten minutes” as the Thunderball draw is finishing.

Also, he states that “tonight, I’m going to try and predict at least five of the six lottery numbers”. Clearly, the chances of doing so are still as close to astronomical as dammit given the surrounding hype, but then that’s merely akin to an old car salesman’s trick of saying “is that more than you’d hoped to spend?”, with the aim of Johnny Carbuyer feeling compelled to prove he does have that extra few hundred quid to splurge on a motor after all, thank you very-bloody-much. In this case, Brown slightly lowers the bar for success, knowing that when he clears it comfortably after all, his feat seems more impressive.

You’ll note his repeated claims (both in recent press for the show, and in the show itself) that it had taken him “a year or preparation” for the live Lotto stunt. If that really were the case, and if the “prediction was made earlier on today” (as he claims), why weren’t the numbers displayed as a great big fuck-off painted mural on brickwork behind a silk curtain, instead of “on some ping-pong balls”? Because, quite clearly, the numbers were added to the balls after the draw was made.

All that said, it’s still great to see things like this going on. We especially like the way Brown makes out he’s so excited and uncertain about the events as they unfold, as if it were the first time he’s done something like this. It’ll be interesting the ‘reveal’ on Friday, just as long as he doesn’t go along the made-up “well, I felt that we were due to get number 39, because I’m magic” route. By definition, all “TV magic” is merely distraction and/or illusion, but for everyone over the age of ten, the fun really comes from working out how the frigging chuff they actually did the thing they’ve just done. On Friday night, hopefully, we shall see.

BrokenTV

BrokenTV’s Top 100 Television Shows Of The 00s: Part 1

Shaun Micallef’s His Generation (As Proper A Review As We Are Capable.) (Of.)

Track One/Two: A Welcome / I Remember You

Track Three: Treading The Boards

Track Four/Five: An Announcement/Christopher Walken Sings David Bowie

Track Six/Seven: Women/Things That You Can Do

Track Eight/Nine: An Interview/Accident Medley

Track Ten: Medicine Man

Track Eleven: They Whisper His Name

Track Twelve: Charlton Heston Reads The Bible

Track Thirteen: Love Theme From Roger Explosion

Track Fourteen: Slap On The Terrorist

Track Fifteen: Jesus Was A Good Man

Track Sixteen: A Visit

Track Seventeen: Hell Of A Time

Track Eighteen/Nineteen: An Explanation/Modern Day Folk Heroes

Track Twenty/Twenty-One: A Briefing/Dalgetty’s Fruit Wholesalers

Track Twenty-Two/Twenty-Three: A Synopsis/Cahiers Du Cinema

Track Twenty-Four/Twenty-Five: An Early Morning/Tipworks Market

Track Twenty-Six: Poetica Zirconia

Track Twenty-Seven/Twenty Eight: A Tribute/My Generation

Track Twenty-Nine: Happy New Year

YouTube Thing And Album Of The Day

Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out In The Middle Of BBC News 24 – It’s The Digital Switchover!

The Unsettling North American Television Ident Awards

Website(s) of the Week (and Competition Winner)

Printed Pisstakery (Spitting Image Giveaway Part 3)

5. SPITTING IMAGE: THE GIANT KOMIC BOOK

4. THE APALLINGLY DISRESPECTIVE SPITTING IMAGE BOOK 100 pages / 1985 Faber and Raber / Various authors / ISBN 0-571-13670-2

3. TOOTH & CLAW: THE INSIDE STORY OF SPITTING IMAGE 146 pages / 1986 Faber and Raber / Lewis Chester / ISBN 0-571-14557-4

2. SPITTING IMAGES 66 pages / 1987 Century Hutchinson / Various Authors / ISBN 0-7126-1758-2

1. A NASTY PIECE OF WORK: THE ART AND GRAFT OF SPITTING IMAGE 226 pages / 1992 Booth-Clibborn Editions / Roger Law / ISBN 1-873968-31-0

Satira Virulenta del Látex (Spitting Image Giveaway Special, Part 2)

Latex Lampoonery (Spitting Image Giveaway Special, Part 1)

Ed

Harold Macmillan

Generic Soviet Cabinet Ministers

Elderly Hitler

Lord Lucan/Harold Angryperson

Commissioner Newman

Norris Dimbleby

Anthony Anteater

The Grim Reaper

Potato

Central Continuity Announcer

(The Real) Denis Healey MP

COMPO TIME

Lamb: Slaughtered

Another Top Hundred Spotify Comedy Albums Of All Time (Pre-amble)

Griffin Ravers

Channel Four: Programmes Continue Shortly

Channel Four In Numbers II: Ratingsgeddon

Channel Four: 1998-2009 In Numbers

Brooker Scanorama: Frozen Dinners And Pac-Man Stickers

The Big Gold Push

Data Week: BBC Four, 2002-2009

Charlie Brooker’s Gameswipe: Paper Edition Part 2

Charlie Brooker’s Gameswipe: The Prequel

Data Week Day Two: Sky One And An Alarming Photo Of Rupert Murdoch

Data Week: BBC Three (and Sexy Governors)

What IMDB Says, And What It Ought To Say

BrokenTV Movie Club: Special Bulletin (1983)

So, Derren Brown’s Lottery Prediction Thing

4. THE APALLINGLY DISRESPECTIVE SPITTING IMAGE BOOK
100 pages / 1985 Faber and Raber / Various authors / ISBN 0-571-13670-2

3. TOOTH & CLAW: THE INSIDE STORY OF SPITTING IMAGE
146 pages / 1986 Faber and Raber / Lewis Chester / ISBN 0-571-14557-4

2. SPITTING IMAGES
66 pages / 1987 Century Hutchinson / Various Authors / ISBN 0-7126-1758-2

1. A NASTY PIECE OF WORK: THE ART AND GRAFT OF SPITTING IMAGE
226 pages / 1992 Booth-Clibborn Editions / Roger Law / ISBN 1-873968-31-0