An open letter

Friday, January 11, 2008 ~ 13 Comments

Dear sitcom writers,

I’m getting a little fedup watching endless repeats of Friends and Frasier, and whilst Everybody Loves Raymond has some funny moments it’s a little sub-standard. Of course I’m quite content to fill my time with QI, and the like but ultimately I miss watching a good sitcom. I’ve tried most, few are palatable.

I’ll happily admit that I’m quite a fussy TV watcher (which is why I’m currently trying out things like The Wire) easily ditching bog-standard TV fare for a good (or bad) movie or live sport, after which you lose me to gaming, books or other non-TV activities. You seem to be aware you are losing this battle but you aren’t really putting up much of a fight, are you?

Yes, I know those writer people are on strike, but this has been going on for a while now. Lost, Desperate Housewives filled the void for a while but lack longevity, and Heroes is a completely different kettle of fish so don’t even start me on that.

I quite like a good sitcom, and their popularity suggests that others do as well (mind you, that also suggests that Coronation Street has some value.. hmmm) so, when you get a moment, could you please resurrect the concept and write a decent one, please!

Yours hopefully,

Gordon McLean

(And to my readers, ARE there any reasonable sitcoms out there? Am I missing out?)

Recently I have…

Tuesday, July 24, 2007 ~ 6 Comments

… laughed until I cried at the way Louise’s cousin tells stories. She is hilarious.

… bought some new music. More on that in another post though, but it’s been a while. I can always tell when I’m need a new ‘fix’ because I invariably start listening to old favourites on a regular basis.

… been enjoying the chorizo and black pudding tapas that Louise made. Recipe may follow if she can remember what she put in it.

… been cursing Sky+. I had recorded the European Grand Prix and settled down on Sunday evening to watch it (whilst flicking back and forth to the Open golf). What a race! 5 laps to go and Alonso is harassing Massa to try and take the lead when up pops a message on-screen. “End of Recorded Programme”. WTF?! OK, there were some delays because of the rain but I thought Sky+ could handle programmes that ran over their alloted time. Feckers.

… been loving the BBC and Peter Alliss. Like Murray Walker, he will be sadly missed when he decides to hang up the microphone. One choice phrase from Sunday, describing the impact of the championship on local businesses and of their return to normality: “The local newspaper shop will cancel the order for 9000 papers and go back to the usual order of 10 copies of the Dundee Courier and a copy of Men Only for the vicar.”

… sent away two race applications, both a little late so I might not get a place. One 5K in Hamilton in a couple of weeks time, the other a 10K in Cumbernauld in September.

… enjoyed the professionally quashed double-take I received whilst getting fitted for my kilt for my friends wedding. When I asked when the kilt would be ready to pick up, the salesman said he would just phone “Ehh.. Mr. Humphrey I guess… or is it Mr. Beattie, it doesn’t say”. To which I replied “Well yes, either of them would do”. He twitched slightly before glossing over it. Well done Mr. Salesman.

… spent most of the last two days alone. Well not alone but as good as, for “she who must be obeyed” has had her nose stuck in some book or other. Apparently joking about “just reading the last chapter” is verbotin.

… been writing up some posts for my other blog but struggling to finish them for some reason, just can’t quite pull the threads together properly.

… “enjoyed” a hill session on Sunday morning. Apparently some of our jogScotland coaches have sadistic tendencies! I thought they were all nice and fluffy but no, give them a whistle and soon you are sprinting up hills, repeatedly, until all the oxygen on the planet disappears and your legs go all wobbly. Jim, the coach who took us, said that we’d look back on it and realise we’d enjoyed it, everyone laughed. Dammit though, he’s right.

Backlogged

Thursday, January 11, 2007 ~ 8 Comments

Louise hasn’t been too well the past couple of days, some sort of chest infection which has given her a fairly… hacking cough. Seems to be shifting though. It has caused an additional problem though, namely that she’s filling up the Sky+ box so she’s got stuff to watch during the day. Now, this wasn’t a problem in the past because we had a DVD writer downstairs, alas that is no longer the case and so the box is getting rather full.

Unfortunately most of the stuff that is ‘needing watched’ is waiting on me to watch it. Which, normally, would be fine as I’d just hog the TV for a few hours and send Louise off to get the housework done, iron my shirts, and wash the car (to which she’d probably tell me to fuck off and go watch TV in the bedroom).

Trouble is I really can’t be bothered at the moment.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not a big watcher of TV, and have a tendency to lose interest in things easily. The Sopranos lasted 4 seasons until I missed two episodes and I’ve not been back since, Desperate Housewives never even made it to the 2nd series. We don’t watch any soaps in our house. Mind you I’d happily spend most of my day watching Frasier re-runs, or watch Nigella ohh and ahhh her way around her kitchen.. but maybe that’s a slightly different thing..

Anyway, regardless of what we have recorded it seems like, honestly, a bit of a waste of time to sit around and watch TV at the moment. I’d much rather do something else, almost anything else really, than spend more than an hour or so in front of the gogglebox. I was thinking about it the other day and, on average (now I’m back at work) I watch around 2.5 hours TV a day. Sometimes less, sometimes more (usually if there is football on) but, on an average day I don’t really watch that much. News in the morning for about 15 minutes, then an hour or so at night around dinner. Sometimes I’ll watch something else later on but not very often.

Makes you wonder why I recently bought a nice new, big, LCD TV. Well, that’s easy. Movies. Well, that was the plan. We are thinking of starting a ‘movie night’.. a little like ‘date night’ I guess but without the nervous anticipation, sheen of sweat and nausea of wondering if, and when, the first kiss would arrive.

So I don’t watch that much TV.

Unless, of course, Girls of the Playboy Mansion* is on.. THEN the TV is MINE! ALL MINE!!!

(if you think Celebrity Big Brother is bizarre, try and catch this… )

Dreich

Monday, May 15, 2006 ~ No Comments

It’s all gone a bit ‘yeuch’ hasn’t it. What happened to the summer, was that it?! Probably.

In saying that, I don’t mind this kind of weather so much. It’s not raining hard enough to soak you, more a steady constant dripping, and as it’s warm enough to not need a jumper it was actually quite a pleasant walk to work this morning. Or at least it would have been if I was able to walk properly.

It seems the gardening extertions on Saturday have taken their toll on my hamstrings as they are tighter than a gnats chuff (or some other euphemism). I’m fine once I get going but as it only takes about two minutes to walk from the station to my office, no sooner have my legs started to approach normal functionality than I’ve arrived. I even wandered round the block at lunchtime just to keep them active. Might have a hot bath this evening…

Aside from that, and some rather juicy gossip at work which I can’t mention here (but it’s positively DRIPPING it’s so juicy), there ain’t much else to say. The news is wholly boring, and… wait.. how could I have forgotten!

BIG BROTHER STARTS ON THURSDAY!!!

What? Ohh don’t give me that look.

I promise I won’t blog about it any more than before as, and this is the same every year no matter how hard I try, I’ll start watching it for the first few weeks then I’ll get bored. Then, with about four weeks to go, I’ll get back into it (fitting it in alongside the World Cup of course) and THEN I’ll bore you all stupid. You have been warned!

Live TV

Wednesday, May 10, 2006 ~ No Comments

Lyle links to an article that states:

Most TV viewing in households with personal video recorders such as Sky+ is still live and “traditional scheduled TV will be around for a long time yet”, according to new research.

We’ve had Sky+ for over a year now, and having finally switched my viewing habits to incorporate it’s features I wouldn’t go back if you paid me. The ability to pause a programme is worth it’s weight in gold, and with the recent addition of a “remind me” function for some programmes it’s a matter of two button pushes to record a future programme (the “remind me” function appears during trailers, hit red then “record” and Sky+ will take care of it for you). The series link is also invaluable as it figures out when the next episode of a series is on, and automatically sets it to record (even if it shift times).

So what you end up with, fairly quickly, is a set of pre-recorded programmes that YOU chose from the available channels. Your own little TV station.

That’s not to say we don’t watch ‘live’ TV anymore, but I think that depends on your viewing habits in general. I hardly watch any ‘live’ TV other than sports and news whereas my better half will watch TV of an evening and channel surf to find something to watch. The only stuff we record, typically, is stuff we’d both watch. So I don’t think watching ‘live’ TV is going to go away but I would expect to see a long-term shift. Whether or not the TV companies are looking that far ahead is disputable, especially as they still seem concerned about whether adverts will still be viable in the future.

After all, would you CHOOSE to watch adverts?

Our usage of Sky+ is governed, for the meantime, by the capacity of our current box. If it was larger I’d be much more prone to recording things “just in case” and wouldn’t mind them lying around on the machine until I had time to watch them. With that in mind, it would mean recording, say, Frasier every night, and skipping the adverts every time. The bigger the capacity, the less the chance I’d watch ‘live’ TV (including sports), and the fewer adverts I’d see.

What the TV companies need to do is come up with a viable alternative that suits ME. Add in the complication of downloads (particularly of US shows) and the whole picture becomes much more usage focussed. Power to the people (consumer)?

The Office

Monday, April 17, 2006 ~ No Comments

Caught a glimpse of Martin Freeman on Parky on Saturday night. This was after watching “The Siege” the Denzel Washington, Annette Benning, Bruce Willis terrorist thriller that never got released (it’s all about terrorist attacks in New York, and was filmed pre-9/11) —it’s worth a watch actually, given the extra poignancy of some shots featuring the World Trade Center.

Anyway, back to Parky and Martin Freeman. Naturally, they showed a clip of The Office and I found myself giggling along. Louise and my Mum were less than impressed though and quickly came to the conclusion that you need to work IN an office to find The Office funny. Is this true?

Ohh and I bet Mr. Freeman may, one day, regret his “there is no reason for anyone, once they’ve got a bit of money, to ever do anything that isn’t any good” statement.

The Global Goggle Box

Tuesday, March 14, 2006 ~ No Comments

The internet brings us many things, many of which have been listed before and it should be said that most of the things are joyous and good, although some of them are nasty and bad. I really like the good things, the people, the ability to lose three hours and not realise it, and the way I can sculpt information to how I want it delivered and stored. I really don’t like the bad stuff like spam, viruses and the rampant globalised information.

I guess I should qualify that last one, huh.

Most of you know that the USA and the UK are connected. Physically by miles and miles of cables, geographically by an ocean, and socially by the ever increasing influence of American culture. Whilst I’m not blaming the internet for this shift in culture, not entirely at least, I do think it has to take its share of the blame. Of course it’s not all bad. Yes, there are some good things to come out of the US of A - Starbucks, McDonalds… ohh calm down, I’m kidding - I’m talking about the TV programmes.

There is a lot of good TV made in the UK, but most of the stuff I’ve enjoyed recently is one-off or short-run series, the natural history stuff that only Sir David can do (again, how WONDERFUL is Planet Earth!?), or quirky comedies. However, it seems that the USA is able to reliably produce good quality, long-run series and I’ll happily admit that I’m hooked on Grey’s Anatomy, House and 24. Admittedly my interest in Lost, Desperate Housewives, and The Sopranos has waned, and I never got into Six Feet Under or West Wing but they are, by all accounts, further good examples (and yes, I’m aware that we also receive some real dross from our American cousins. Swings and roundabouts).

For various reasons, none of which I’m au fait with but most of which I’d guess are due to monetary influences, we only receive these TV series after they have aired over in the States. Shouldn’t be a problem, should it?

And it’s not. The problems start when you stumble across a website only to have a plot twist thrust unexpectedly into your view. A plot twist that is months away in the UK schedules and which renders everything that lay before it pointless and misleading. My poor brain just can’t cope:

• I click onto an American website/blog
• A part of my brain instantly spots the text “Grey’s Anatomy”
• Another part of my brain starts reading the surrounding text
• The fast thinking part of my brain, which has now processed the fact that I’m reading about an upcoming plot twist, starts screaming at the reading part of my brain to STOP READING YOU IDIOT!!
• The reading part of my brain pauses, glances around as if it’s heard something, then continues reading
• Yet another part of my brain slowly awakens, stretches, grabs a cup of coffee and ambles over to the reading part of my brain, taps it on the shoulder and says “You shouldn’t be reading that mate”
• The reading part of my brain stops reading, looks up and says “Ohh OK”
• By which point the fast thinking part of my brain is a spluttering, gibbering wreck, rolling around my cranii interna

All of this takes place in about 1.4 seconds. I’m powerless to stop it (mainly because I can’t find where that damn coffee machine is plugged in).

Thing is, it’s completely ruining my TV watching and I’m beginning to get a bit pissed off. Yet I can see no solution. I don’t seek these websites out, and I spot these things on entertainment sites, gossip sites, blogs, every and any where.

It’s a bit like the eyes of a portrait following you around the room, except the eyes are a bomb inside a patient, and the room is a helicopter dropping Jack Bauer over a ‘target’ in downtown L.A.

Or something.

We can’t broadcast episodes at the same time because of the time difference, and even then the TV schedule in America lacks the formulaic rigidity of it’s UK counterpart, and that’s not to mention the mid-season breaks that crop up stateside. So what’s the answer?

Why our dear old friend the internet, of course!

Ohh I do love a good paradox, the very thing that is causing the problem offers the solution. Sort of.

For whilst it is possible to download episodes of your favourite TV series mere hours after they have been broadcast in the America, I’m not entirely sure it’s legal. It’s a worry, let me tell you.

Anyway, enough of this, I’m off to watch the next episode of 24… think I’m up to thirteen. It’s the one after the episode where Jack gets run over… ohh sorry…