Mailwatch(ed) Forum

It's plainly just "why can't things always be the same as when I was in my formative years?"

Which is, I suppose, what the Telegraph is for.

Killer Whale wrote: ↑Fri Jan 12, 2024 12:40 pm It's plainly just "why can't things always be the same as I imagined them to be when I was in my formative years?"

FTFY

Despite the fact that I've always though a Question of Sport was toe curling shit for most of it's existence, it clearly had a lot of fans. Perhaps these people who pine for their younger days should be pitied. If only they weren't such a bunch of cunts.

For me it was always deadly dull, the what happened next thing was always some variant on "he fell over", Emlyn Hughes was up there with Ziggy Greaves from Grange Hill in the "maybe the Tories have a point about Liverpool" charts, it was fawning and boot licking, the audience seemed to be the sort of people who really need to have humour highlighted for them and find SPOTY's "Wry look at some of the year's funnier sporting moments" comedy gold, everyone seemed to be wearing cardigans, and other than that it was OK.

As for the more recent ones, I never got the point of Phil Tufnell - he's a bit lazy and a bit of a lad - is that it?

A pedant writes: Emlyn Hughes was from Barrow-in-Furness, the son of one of those Welshmen that 'went north' to play rugby professionally. Not a scouser at all.

I think Emlyn Hughes probably wins the silver medal in the “Most irritating cunt ever to appear on AQOS” stakes. The runaway gold medallist is, of course, Willie Carson.

Oh no the emmys are elitist.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/0/emmys- ... ite-lotus/

Tonight’s 2024 Primetime Emmy Awards will be another glittering, glamorous and tedious occasion. A quick scan down the list of nominees reveals, yet again, how strikingly unrepresentative of US television – as it is actually viewed – they are. The Bear, Beef, Barry, Succession and The White Lotus are all fantastic shows, yes. But this is high-end stuff, very much more talked about in the right places by the right people than actually watched. The American shows that people tune in to in big numbers – Fire Country, NCIS, FBI, Chicago Fire, Blue Bloods, Chicago PD, Yellowstone and its offshoots – are, as usual, nowhere to be seen.

We have a similar syndrome in the UK in the contrast between the rarefied TV Baftas – Bad Sisters, I Am Ruth, In My Skin (no, me neither) – and the series that the plebs enjoy: Vera, Call the Midwife, Death in Paradise.

The Emmys and the Baftas are both appealing to the same thin stratum of impeccably progressive media types. In fact, the same kind of people who make these shows. There is an overabundance of dark-tinged comedy-drama, of the supposedly edgy variety that people think is sophisticated and makes them look very smart for “getting”. A bit of that, yes, fine.

But this is boutique television, not the mainstream mass market of a mass medium. There was always a gap between the top drawer of TV and what we might call its meat and potatoes – between the misery of This Is England and the joy of Benidorm. But this has now become a chasm.

The prestige sector of TV has grown like golden hop up a garden wall – in influence and accolades, if not in viewing figures – at the very same moment that ratings have crashed across the board. The Christmas Day episode of Coronation Street achieved 2.6 million viewers. It wasn’t so long ago that there was panic in the corridors of Granada if a normal episode dipped below 10 million.

Obviously, ratings have plunged like this because of the proliferation of content and of platforms. But the rush towards prestige has sped the process up. You don’t save an ailing supermarket by replacing baked beans with vegan sushi.

There should be an equivalent to Death in Paradise or a Ghosts every night on BBC One (as there was, for decades) – shows to reward and delight you after a hard day. But as with so many things, the market is not behaving as it should. The incentive for programme makers to signal progressive statements and appeal to its own clique is stronger than the incentive to get high ratings and generate the best possible return. You’d think that advertisers and shareholders might notice and apply pressure. But they are so enmeshed in a world where the slightest demur marks you out as a pariah, that they dare not let that even occur to them.

It often feels like the major channels, with their worthy attempts to improve and/or unsettle you, really want you to switch off. They’re too good for the likes of you. Both BBC and ITV now seem like municipal HR departments which just happen to have some channels attached. Vast areas of hotly disputed public discourse – on the impacts of mass immigration or Net Zero or rise of arguments around transgenderism – are simply not represented at all. At times, it’s like being called to the deputy head’s office.

Stranger still is that the prestige paradigm has trickled down, so that the realm of what used to be good, honest hackwork – even in genres such as soap opera, cosy crime thrillers, comedy and sci-fi – now routinely incorporates a smattering of social purpose. We now have formerly fun TV that comes with a hectoring wagged finger about colonialism or Brexit thrown in on top. Historical drama portrays life in pre-Blair Britain as a racist hellhole of Blackshirts and bigotry (though peculiarly, often at the very same time, with perfectly integrated multiracial casts).

My suspicion is that this has happened because certain television people who have settled in the industry over the past decade or so long to be taken seriously. They hate to be thought of as trivial and their jobs as silly. They want to feel important. But that tips over very easily into piety and pomposity. A committed, good professional job is no longer routinely assumed, and no longer enough. Prestige must be chased, even at the bottom end. And today that means conforming to and repeating the extremely narrow bundle of acceptable progressive opinions.

But hang on, what do we have here? Mr Bates vs the Post Office has been a ratings smash. In the language of our times, it has cut through. Why? I think because it is unusual in that it speaks to a neglected truth, outside the usual permitted grievances of TV. It features very ordinary people going through hell; the kind of people who are normally either ignored by, or worse blamed, in TV drama – people who follow the rules, do a good job, fill out all the correct forms, and are victimised because they are easy targets for clapped-out bureaucracy. People who can’t fight back, who had no champions; modestly aspirational, small business people. These are the types fairly routinely besmirched or cast as low rent villains and bigots for decades by the upper middle-class TV establishment.

It depicts unfairness of a kind that’s emblematic of so much else, so it has inevitably struck a mighty chord. For once, we have television that isn’t sneering at its own viewers, a throwback to when TV had a genuine connection with its audience. People tune in to that in droves – who’d have thought? Mr Bates has shown the enormous appetite for dramas of the kind that rarely get feted by awards panels or the media. I strongly suspect that if it hadn’t got so much attention in the news pages, it would have been ignored by next year’s awards panels and in the critics’ end-of-year lists.

How can the Emmys claim to be the most important TV awards, when their focus is so narrow? TV, just about, remains a mass medium – so down with prestige, and up with bums on seats.

A review from someone who attended

The ‘I Love Lucy’ Emmys Tribute Reminded Us Why We Love TV
Monday night’s Emmy Awards spent much of its runtime reminding viewers why we love television. https://www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed/ ... ly-love-tv

Gareth Roberts, someone who seems to have floated around the fringes of Doctor Who fandom and oh what a surprise, the unholy trinity of Unherd, Spiked and The Spectator. In other words, a cunt.

I'm at a loss as to what he wants - he says he wants dramas to tackle big issues, then complains about "formerly fun" shows doing just that. In other words, he just doesn't like any lefty messages. And as for his jumping on the Post Office bandwagon:

Mr Bates has shown the enormous appetite for dramas of the kind that rarely get feted by awards panels or the media. I strongly suspect that if it hadn’t got so much attention in the news pages, it would have been ignored by next year’s awards panels and in the critics’ end-of-year lists.

I say bullshit. Julie Hesmondhalgh? Toby Jones? They ain't cheap. You cast them in stuff that you know is going to get the viewers. They are big names. It's big issue TV of the Very British Coup/Monocled Mutineer/GBH mould - big statement TV. But it's not a long running thing. You can't have Mr Bates taking on a different government department each week.

Yes, there's "prestige TV", but you know what, there's nothing stopping the plebs watching it. It's not on pay per view or asking you to show your degree before viewing starts. Likewise, we have the BAFTAs, and we also have the British Soap Awards and the National TV awards. At some of them, they recognise "prestige drama". At others they give gongs to Mrs Brown's Boys.

So, a summary of his argument seems to be "I want high quality, but accessible, drama every night. I don't want any long words or anything that confuses or upsets me and oooh do you remember The Duchess of Duke Street? Proper quality drama that was. Can they bring back The Good Old Days?".

The Tory media has latched on the Mr Bates v The Post Office because the way the programme's portrayal of sub post masters existing in picture perfect Tory world - beautiful summer days in rural southern England, pints of real ale in the beer garden, a slice of cake in the tea room while you buy your stamps etc. I don't recall any portrayals of a post office in a gritty urban setting.

Plus new year, slow news cycle, and cheap to report on. Just watch TV and the inquiry live feed, and decide who next to roast.

As said before, I'm fully behind the post office workers and am glad they're getting recognition and justice at long last. But it's a bit like when a bunch of twats turn up supporting the team or band you thought was 'yours', knowing that however loud and obnoxious they are, they'll move on in no time. But until they do....

The award that seems most relevant is Best Single Drama (BAFTA)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_A ... ngle_Drama

The Post Ofiice drama wouldn't look out of place on that list at all. Lots of contemporary issues stuff.

Heavyweight analysis from the Telegraph here.

Are you doing a vocational degree? Poppy disapproves, not enough intellectual challenge. Are you doing OU? Poppy thinks you're boring. Are you working class, and studying at a new university? Poppy thinks you're wasting everyone's time because you should become a plumber.

Poppy's clearly not heard of Eton and Oxbridge

As we used to say at De Montfort, law's vocational, medicine's vocational.

I really don't know what she's trying to say, other than she had a great time and doesn't want anyone else to? Deputy US editor at the Torygraph apparently.

"Deputy US Editor" got me too.

No doubt she accepts Russell Group vocational degrees as intellectual enough. But lots of these "worthless" (by their own definition) degrees are vocational too, as are lots of degrees in between theses two extremes.

Somebody the other day was citing Worcester as a place much improved by (relatively recent) higher education in it. I think there's probably something in that.

This is the bit they put in the preview? The Government should have taken action against the National Trust for doing something some of its members don't like?

Why does a Gasprom investing hedge fund in Dubai think anyone wants to know what they think?

There are no doubt some "businessmen with a sense of history" involved with it. Such people are actually worse when they're not talking abot money.