Watching too much telly

Watching Too Much Telly R.I.P.

The end of an era. Blah, blah blah. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my occasional ramblings over the last 18 months but it's time to move on.

But never fear - one window closes and (in this case especially) loads of new ones open up.

You can open all of these exciting, new windows by heading posthaste to the Tachyon TV Hub. Here you'll find a launching pad to a whole new universe of time-wasting.

We have:

Tachyon TV: the satirical sci-fi news feed. Still going strong after nearly 5 years. I'm as baffled as you are.

Behind the Sofa Again: the collaborative 'Doctor Who' weblog. It's having a bit of a holiday at the moment but it will return in force on September 19th with the beginning of another epic, stripped down session of "classic" Who

MST3UK: the only British Mystery Science Theater website that bothers to explain the American-centric riffs. Returning any day now...

Telly Belch: my brand new TV review blog which will be a) more regular and b) far more pithy. In fact, don't expect more than a couple of sentences for every show I watch. And I'll be chronically *every* show I watch, Mondays to Fridays. Look at for some extra regular features in the near future. This blog launches September 4th, 2005.

Tachyon Images: a pictorial blog that will chronicle the Barn conversion (amongst other things) with daily images (Mon-Fri)

Bad Ads: I've been threatening this for a while and here it is; when an advert drives me insane to the point of despair, you'll read it all there. Updated once a week.

Watching Too Much Telly: this blog will remain where is is, so feel free to continue the fight against Quiz Nation in my absence.

Running Commentaries: assuming I have any time left at all, this DVD commentary review blog will open in early 2006. With any luck it will evolve into a collaborative effort.

You can access all of the above at the Tachyon TV Hub

I'm off to New York now for a few days now. Take care and I'll see you on the other blogs!

Neil

Update

First of all, thanks to all of you who have written to me with your Quiz Nation horror stories. Unfortunately, I'm not really in a position to spearhead a campaign against them at the present time (mainly because I'm up to my neck in the 'Hold-the-Mayo' assault on sandwich manufacturers at the moment), but I wish you all the best of luck in getting your phone bills rescinded. However, I have noticed that these abominations are currently breeding at a ferocious rate, with new, even cheaper knock-offs appearing on an almost daily basis. It's almost scary.

As you can see, after a very close encounter with a combine harvester, I'm back online. Touch wood. I'm still debating about which direction to take this blog in, and I'm about to head to New York for a few days R n R, but when I return in early September I should be in a position to kick some life into it. Until then, take care and stop calling the quiz lines!

Here We Go Again

I can hardly believe this but a combine harvester ran into our phone line and knocked us out. I'm writing this from friend's house so I can tell anyone who is interested that we are back to square one again, with no sign of internet access for at least a fortnight.

Bloody typical!

Blog Interrupted

Yeah, yeah, I know. My promises to update this blog on a regular basis has come to nowt - again.

While my other blogs are starting to reach something perilously close to regular updates I've let this one slide again. So I've come with an idea and I'm going to relaunch my TV journal in a couple of days time in a slightly different format, and with a challenge to myself that will hopefully result in small - but very, very regular - updates. I should have more news at the weekend. All the Barns stuff is also going to move to its own pictorial blog too (after all, I don't know what the hell is going on so I'll let the pictures speak for themselves).

Thanks for your patience.

Neil

The New Nightmare

I thoroughly enjoyed (if 'enjoyed' is the right word) The New Al Qaeda documentary on BBC2 on Monday night. It seems that we're drifting away from the 'it's all a big political con' theory a la The Power of Nightmares to 'we're all going to die!' school of thought once again. You could even tell from Peter Taylor's opening narration that his expose was specifically tailored (sorry) to debunk the myth that Al Qaeda is a myth, although that, sadly, became academic a few weeks ago.

The first show was called Jihad.com and it highlighted how the terror network uses the internet to recruit and motivate its 'soliders' with breathtaking efficiency and success. The footage of the suicide bombing that was filmed from three different angles and then uploaded to the web was horrific, and even a quirky story about how a football mom tracked down would-be terrorists in a chat-room couldn't assuage the feeling that the whole world is falling into a very bleak hole indeed.

At least one thing is for sure - we'll never negotiate with the terrorists.

Oh, look - they've just released Sean Kelly...

Cynical, me?

Sky News' coverage of the bombings and their aftermath has been utterly addictive and strangely disturbing. But one thing that really irks me is the way in which Sky attempts to be interactive - providing us with a steady flow of "thoughts" from the general public which share the same newsticker as statements from the likes of Blair and Bush.

It's a neat idea BUT it doesn't appear to be staffed properly. So you get the same three or four statements scrolling across the screen for hours on end (sometimes even days). And the statements they choose to display are hilarious: "Terrorism is bad" - Margaret from Solihul and "Some of my best friends are Muslims" - Mike from Harrow is about as deep as it gets. Still, I don't suppose it's easy to tackle the issues of the day in a text message...

Frackin' Brilliant

Battlestar Galactica is back and it's grimmer than ever!

We've got infanticide (again!) this time by drowning, people getting eviscerated by Cylons, mercy killings, incompetent commanders, shit-scared engineers, blood splattered marines and a mad-as-a-hatter anti-hero. Watching this lot stumble through catastrophe after catastrophe is slightly unnerving to say the least.

BSG manages to make Babylon 5 look conventional and 24 look far-fetched (which is pretty ironic when you think about it). The first couple of episodes of season 2 are pretty damn amazing; last night's episode was a cross between Die Hard, The Poseidon Adventure and an East European art film and yet it all works beautifully. It also manages to make Lost look like the pedestrian nonsense it really is (incidentally, those trailers are just daft!).

I love how the cliffhangers from season 1 still haven't been resolved (it takes two whole episodes until a Doctor can get to the recently shot Adama, and there's still no sign of Helo getting off Caprica anytime soon) and you really get the sense that no one is really safe (or what they seem) on the show. Even the schmaltzy love scenes feel realistic and appropriate.

All this *and* a Philip Glass score too; which is kinda odd as it implies that Mr Glass has somehow managed to make the hit parade in a galaxy far, far away...

BSG really is the perfect show for our time: rampant paranoia; terrorist attacks; the battle between religions; hawks and doves battling for hearts and minds of the survivors; honestly, American TV doesn't get any better than this.

I'm so enamoured of this show I even caved in and bought the original Disco-in-Space 1978 version on DVD and it's, well... weird. In come the giant lizards, visually impaired walking toasters, hilariously inept matt-shots and one-dimensional boo-hiss villains BUT the essence of the show is still there. When Caprica is wiped out in a Pearl Harbour style sneak attack it still feels years ahead of its time and it's unlike anything Star Trek would contemplate, never mind attempt. Dirk Benedict's Starbuck is hilarious and it's a strangely sexual show for its time. I still remember Cassiopeia confusing the hell out of my 12 year old hormones back in 1979.

And it was a bargain at 16 quid. In order to make up the extra three quid so I could bag the free postage, I ended up trying one of those newfangled Su Doku books. And now I'm completely and utterly hooked. The bastards!

Extra Special

Extras was great, wasn't it? I kept my expectations low - I mean, how on earth do you follow a phenomenon like The Office? - and I hadn't seen one single trailer (the hype machine seemed to be pretty low-key, which felt slightly ominous). One thing was certain though: the weight of expectation on Ricky Gervais' new series was massive.

I'm happy to report that he's done himself proud.

It was classic Gervais, really; plenty of awkward and embarrassing situations which provide a mixture of belly laughs and the kind of horror that only a really bad social faux pas can provide.

The similarities to David Brent are superficial: Millman is still selfish and utterly tactless but this time he doesn't have any power. As a result he's not so overbearing but one theme remains constant: he's a man completely out of his depth.

Ben Stiller was simply brilliant as "himself" - a savage caricature (I hope!) who was obsessed with his own box office receipts (I loved the way he knew the exact running time of the multi-layered Dodgeball) and I hope all the celebs drafted in to play themselves in future episodes play the game with the same spirit. The Starsky and Hutch exchange was priceless and I'm amazed they got away with it.