TV + Film

The licensing man cometh: addendum

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‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not gonna read your hot takes anymore!’ Credit: Network (Sidney Lumet, MGM/UA).

My last piece on TV Licensing caught fire and is now the most read thing on my website. A few things came up in the responses on social media and elsewhere that I wanted to mention1. Continue reading →

The licensing man cometh

~ fishmandeville ~ 4 Comments
Digital_freeview_TV_aerial
Credit: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

My first thought was, he lied in every word…1

As the television licence is in the news again, now might be a good time to describe my strange and illuminating experiences with TV Licensing. Continue reading →

Brexit: the movie

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Rashômon poster. Credit: Akira Kurosawa/Daiei (1950).
Rashômon poster. Credit: Akira Kurosawa/Daiei (1950).

The Spectator’s affably pro-Remain business correspondent, Martin Vander Weyer, invited readers to answer the party-game question ‘If Brexit was a film…?’ Naturally the replies have been partisan, either pro-Leave or pro-Remain, but then I got to thinking… Continue reading →

Pets and prizes. Sugar, Johnson and Hodge

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Johnson reading closely. Portrait by Joshua Reynolds.
“Wealth cannot confer greatness, for nothing can make that great which the decree of nature has ordained to be little.” Samuel Johnson.

This week’s Apprentice opened with the candidates being summoned to Dr Johnson’s house to look at the memorial to his cat, Hodge, outside. This was the set-up for Lord Sugar to give them a pet-bothering task: “People will stop at nothing to pamper their pets, and the pet market is worth a massive 4.6 billion pounds per year. Now I want you to get a piece of that action…” Continue reading →

Sore shoulders in the boardroom: The Apprentice

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apprentice-cards-header
Playing the game: jokers and knaves.

For some reason everyone in The Apprentice refers to what’s happening as ‘the process’. I like it because it’s so pompous, while the process itself is hard to define. Just what are they doing? Continue reading →

Laura Palmer is dead, long live Laura Palmer

~ fishmandeville ~ 3 Comments

Laura Palmer - arms bending back

I watched the first series of Twin Peaks as a raw undergraduate at Manchester University, only a few months out of school. It was the only television I would actively stay in to watch, and it was the same for my Norwegian flatmate, who would sit fixedly for the 50 minutes in a state of quasi-religious ecstasy, reacting violently to any interruption. The what-happens-next excitement may no longer be there, but I love it no less nearly 25 years later, and I know I’m not alone. Continue reading →

The terrible boredom of existential threats to the universe

~ fishmandeville ~ 2 Comments

terrible-boredom-headerSome of the best BBC dramas can be the most irritating. By the best I mean those they’re most pleased with, whose cushions they are forever plumping, whose production values are the most ambitious. Take, say, the increasingly indistinguishable Sherlock and Dr Who, for which the structure, pacing, editing, characterization, mannerisms, tics and assumptions have become hauntingly similar. Continue reading →