The new Tachyon TV site is almost ready to be unleashed on the world. I'm just fiddling with a couple of things, and a banner.
But here's a special sneak-peak before it goes live tomorrow.
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A Cheap Flop
I've been playing poker for approximately seven years now. I caught the bug thanks to Channel 4's Late Night Poker that ran during the graveyard shift in the late 1990s. However, while I'll happily admit that I'm one of these new-fangled Internet players, I do take pride in the fact that I was into this game long before the world and his wife suddenly knew what "the stone cold nuts" meant.
You can't move for poker on the telly these days. It's a mainstay of the schedules on both Discovery Home and Leisure and Challenge TV, but now - inevitably - it has its very own channel - imaginatively titled... wait for it... The Poker Channel.
A channel so cheap it actually gives Babestation Contacts a run for its money.
And yes, all the adverts are for loan companies.
The opening salvo in this new channel's arsenal is The Poker Godfather. Sounds great, doesn't it? I bet you're thinking: hard-nut gangsters, smoky back room card games and gripping scenes of ex-cons upping the ante with "the keys to the lock-up", aren't you?
Well, think again.
To be fair, it's quite a clever idea. Realising that the bulk of this channel's audience is probably going to be made up of completely useless Internet players, they decide to kill a couple of hours of airtime by sending in a professional player to administer some much needed help to some poor hapless nugget who still thinks 7-2-suited is a playable hand.
So we get a man who usually spends his time quaffing martinis in Monte Carlo spending an evening in a shed with Manuel. While Manuel eats his dinner in front of his PC.
I don't know about you, but if someone was coming to my house/shed to record a TV show, no matter how poxy or cheap that show might be, I would
a) tidy up a bit
b) make sure I'd finished my dinner and
c) have a wash.
The Godfather takes his seat next to Manuel (who is shovelling chicken chow mein into his face) and he stamps his authority on the proceedings by subjecting his host to a stern lecture about "rag kickers". Manuel says 'Yes' after every other word, which is a) very annoying b) a clear indication that he isn't listening to a damn thing and c) disgusting, as his mouth is full of noodles.
And this is where is starts to become really funny. You see, Manuel falls into the usual on-line poker trap of playing really crap hands. When he's instructed by the professional to fold an Ace-Six off-suit, you can see Manuel roll his eyes in dismay. Hand after hand, the Godfather orders Manuel to fold and you start to wonder if Manuel will throw a cup of scolding hot coffee in his guest's smug mug every time the flop proves his contention that a jack is a decent card after all.
Thankfully, Manuel hits a straight by accident and he's so excited he drops the plate of chow mein into his guest's lap.
The Godfather tries to stay good natured, but the surreptitious glances at his watch tell a different story. Then, out of the blue, and after many interminable lulls where he has to make conversation with the monosyllabic Manuel because they've just folded pocket 6s again, he suddenly decides to go all-in with pocket 7s. They get annihilated by a pocket Queens and poor Manuel looks as if his whole world has come crashing in around him.
But the best bit is when the Godfather leaves. Despite remaining affable in the face of blind ignorance, as soon as he's out of earshot he starts laying into Manuel's playing style and his squalid shed.
Given that the Poker Channel are already recycling content after only one week on-air, you stand a good chance of catching this car crash every other night for the next six months (when they'll probably go the same way as the unbelievably misconceived The Advert Channel).
Go on, treat yourself.
The Quatermass Experiment Experiment
The Quatermass Experiment was the first live drama on the BBC for over twenty years. A remake of a bona fide classic, it featured some of the best British actors working in television today. And Jason Flemming. A two-hour special so special it only lasted 90 minutes.
So what happened? Did they just cut a huge chunk out at the last minute? Like the end, perhaps? Even in the 50s they tried to show us a monster (OK, it was only Nigel Kneale in some gloves) but here we get... er... hmmm.... um...
And what was up with Mark Gatiss? I don't want to get sued for slander, but what was all that nose rubbing about? Did he have a cold? Was he nervous? Was his character a coke fiend? We may never know...
The most exciting, edge-of-the-seat moment came when Fullalove (what a name!), played by Brian from Teachers (and voice-over work on Challenge TV) completely screwed up. He almost corpsed into hysterics until part of his brain reminded him that millions (well, thousands) of people were hanging on his every word. And his co-star was very helpful, offering nothing more than a panicked series of "Yes?"-es as if that was going to bail him out. Amazing stuff and thank god for Sky Plus.
Another fabulous moment came when David Tennant was running so fast he nearly went flying off the set. Perhaps he could see Russel T Davies off-camera, holding a contract...
Having just purchased the BBC's excellent Quatermass trilogy on DVD I was amazed to discover that there were less mistakes in the 1953 version!
But on the whole, I enjoyed it. It was a brave attempt to hark back at a more innocent time. And the live element did rack up the tension to almost unbearable levels at times (especially when Fullalove was on-screen). Personally, I'm holding out for a live episode of Doctor Who next season. David could handle it...
TV on Trial: Guilty
BBC4's TV on Trial series was supposed to discover which decade gave the nation the best television.
So why did they fill it with the worst crap they could find/clear?
For example, when it came to extolling the wonders of the 1970s, instead of presenting a classic episode of Porridge or Fawlty Towers we got the "hilarious racism" of Love Thy Neighbour! In the drama stakes we got a tit-lite episode of The Sweeney instead of Pennies from Heaven. And for the documentary strand they dusted off a mind-numbing instalment of World In Action for us to nod off to.
In other words, we got to see the 1970s at its very worst. And it still won!
The other decades fared just as badly. Take the 1980s, for example. This decade should have won on its dramas alone (The Singing Detective, Threads, Day of the Triffids, Edge of Darkness etc etc etc). What we got was Blott on the Effing Landscape! Still, it could have been worse - 2005 was represented by Footballer's Wives! On BBC4! Oh, the irony.
I couldn't even make it through the 1950s. Why didn't they show something truly groundbreaking which demonstrated 50s television at its best? Even by limiting themselves to specific years (55, 65, 75 etc) they still could have shown an episode of Quatermass II - which would have tied in nicely to the live 2005 experiment which was apparently part of the Trial strand. Yeah, right. (More about this "experiment" in a later post).
The final show - while lively and entertaining - was spent criticising the voting parameters. The general consensus was that it was impossible to judge any of the decades based solely on the tripe that had been served up to us. Well, at least they were honest about it.
What a wasted opportunity. BBC4 should have put aside a couple of hours a night for some TV on Trial programming, and they should have stripped the decades across a few weeks. That way we'd have got a wider variety of shows to judge. It's not as if they didn't have the airtime; they've been repeating these snooze-a-thons all week!
Just imagine what we could have had. The good and the bad. A rounded view of television instead of just an easy pop at a particularly tiresome instalment of That's Life.
Probably the most exciting thing about the whole mess was BBC4's attempt at a low-budget version of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Each programme was watched by a couple of cultural commentators (they forgot to invite me. Again.) who would argue the pros and cons of each decade. So we got the the likes of Paul Morley (who contends that Men Behaving Badly caused the downfall of civilisation as we know it) and Alan Coren (twat) giving us an intermittent running commentary of heartfelt inanities and the occasional sideswipe at some very easy targets. The Bachelor is crap? You don't say!
You could switch them off by pressing your red button - apparently this was a showcase of cutting-edge interactivity - but they should have gone the whole hog and offered up the opportunity for live texting, like a middle-class version of E4.
I'd have loved to have seen the chattering classes furiously texting away. Instead of the usual "I FANCY JAYSON FRM BIG BRUVVER" we might have got "MARMIDUKE HUSSEY IS EXTREMELY UNDER-RATED" instead.
Like I said, a missed opportunity.
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