Fly the flag
Quick plug
A website called The British Sitcom Guide is a growing catalogue of British sitcoms, with news and a forum attached, and I must say, they've been awfully supportive of the British sitcom Not Going Out. I've been answering a barrage of questions for them about the show, and Grass should you have the slightest interest in such a thing, they've posted up the answers in full. It should also be noted that, for comedy fans, those who post of the forums seem not to be bitter and twisted, which is unusual.
As you were.
posted by Andrew Collins @ 3:23 PM
14 Comments
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14 Comments:
"My Family"?? Huh! "Not Going Out" is far better than that!
I semi-heckled Lee Mack at a benefit gig the other night by cheering when he mentioned Lancashire. Turns out we're both from Blackburn, but he reckoned that wasn't anything to be proud of...
Px
Nice site Andrew, very informative.
Ian
PS Don't be so down on MBs and forums, most of us that post aren't bitter or twisted. Perhaps the Radio 2 MB has coloured your views! Even so most of us on there are fans of BBC Radio, as usual a few try to spoil it for the many.
Ian, you're right to hold up the R2 boards as the culprit in souring my view of interactive democracy. I have only really lurked there when the programmes or deps I've been involved with are being slagged off, at which I've leapt in.
Some of the regulars on there - and I mean some - give BBC radio listeners a bad name. These have started to creep onto the 6 Music boards with their self-aggrandising arrogance. I know the licence fee gives everyone a stake in the way the BBC is run, but I can't stand the way a tiny, noisy minority think their voice should be heard above all others - ie. the silent majority. The boards give such a warped impression of public opinion.
When I worked on Radio 4, I learned how the programme Feeback worked - if one letter of complaint came in, it had to be acted upon. If 100 letters of praise came in, they were ignored, as there was no "case" to be answered. Fair enough, in principle, but this was why, the week before I took over the weekly film programme, Back Row, our editor had to go on and defend my position, as one person had written in to complain in advance, without ever having heard me present the show. That one person got their piece of airtime. Equally, one person complained about something I said about Mulholland Drive two years later, and I had to provide a statement defending what I'd said for Feedback, even though this person had entirely misunderstood my tone and my point.
The message boards, which weren't up in those days, are a nightmare version of Feeback. The trick for presenters who care passionately about the BBC, like me, is to stay away. But I'm afraid I can't, so I get sucked in, and I get wound up. My own fault.
Anyway, my comment about the twisted nature of comedy fans comes from years spent lurking on the NotBBC Comedy Forum, which has gone rather quiet of late, but used to be pure blood sport. Someone once started a thread entitled, "Andrew Collins is a cunt." It ran and ran. At least on the 6 Music boards, I was able to get a thread suggesting Jon Holmes should be killed taken down. Democracy is a wonderful thing after all.
I accept that most of the folk on the BBC boards are fans. But the human instinct is to complain. We're all guilty of this. When was the last time you wrote a letter to your electricity supplier to thank them for a job well done?
I remember a comedy show, that I rather liked, called "Hardwicke House" was removed from the air after just the one hour pilot and first half hour show after ITV received a lot complaints.
I bet the amount of people who enjoyed the show outweighed the complainers (mostly teachers and their unions I suspect).
Of course the great majority of the "enjoyers" would not have phoned in to voice their opinion and so the miserable sods won.
Wish they'd release this on DVD.
Andrew, you're absolutely right that the human instinct is to complain but I think these posting boards are symptomatic of a more recent condition (echoed in your response to the teenage correspondent in the Saddam thread) and that's the selfish and unrealistic expectations that the world should revolve around that individual's beliefs or preferences. I don't write to my electricity supplier to congratulate them on a job well done, because I pay for what I use and it's a contract between us. But the argument that the license fee payer rules in the way dealt with on Feedback and these posting boards is specious - we each pay a vanishingly small amount of the total cost for access to as much as we like, so the expectation that the money should be spent solely to produce programmes to one person's personal taste (which seems to be the nub of their argument) is ludicrous. If you are happy with just one hour of programming on radio or tv per week you're getting way, way more than your money's worth. I don't watch a huge amount of tv and there are many evenings when there's nothing that tickles my fancy, but there's something pretty sad about those that sit watching in wait for something they don't like just so they can vent their spleen (often anonymously) on a posting board.
So much negativity.....
merseyMal - I recall reading that the tapes of Hardwicke House were wiped - could have just been a screen to avoid repeated requests to show the whole thing though.
Apparently the wiping of the tapes is only a rumour (thankfully)
John Stroud (the director) posted in a newsgroup 7 years ago...
http://tinyurl.com/y8gw6h
I really hope that NOT GOING OUT would be recommissioned coz the series finale is so good I'm already missing it. I hope that early next year we could expect for the DVD release and the second series afterwards.
I usually watch American shows on Friday nights but since watching Not Going Out, I looked forward to a 'british' friday TV night. Now I have to surf again and find something else...
Really awesome work!
(from a non-british viewer)
I think it was The 99p Challenge about which a number of people complained to Feedback, presumably because it didn't have Nigel Rees in the chair and Simon Brett wasn't even remotely involved. Someone responsible for the programme was dragged on to face a grilling from Roger Bolton(?) about why this unfunny rubbish was on the air, etc. The following week Feedback was inundated with people praising The 99p Challenge, which they did at least acknowledge even if they didn't get the same representative back on to tell her this.
There are certainly people on BBC message boards who are guilty of "self-aggrandising arrogance", though I tend to find these are always people I disagree with. I can understand people being annoyed by Jon Holmes's show and feeling the need to express their ire on the message board, since I don't think there's anywhere else on the 6Music site for listeners to send complaints or suggestions to. The trouble with message boards is that you have no idea who the contributors are, and a lot of people see that anonymity as a license to say things they (hopefully) wouldn't dream of putting their name and address to.
I think you've hit the nail on the head there, Dave. It's the pseudonyms that irk me. How brave it is to knock somebody from behind the safetly of a pseudonym.
Andrew,
What did you say about Mulholland Drive?
I said you should see it twice, as a kind of joke, but also in reference to how obtuse David Lynch films are. Somebody wrote in to complain and said I was in the pay of the film company because I had urged listeners to pay twice to see a film! I took great exception to this slur and enjoyed refuting it actually, but what a stupid twat. And yet he got his airtime. He had his right to reply.
I hope "Not Going Out" will be recommissioned, too. I loved the last episode. (Was the elevator/lift joke yours?) I think they got better as they went on - well done!
Re: complaining about things: I'm not very good at it. I tend to whine to everyone around me about whatever it is and then forget about it. However, I know people for whom complaining is a kind of hobby. They watch TV programmes and adverts in the hope of finding something religiously/morally/ racially/generally offensive so they can write all about it to the ITC.
Px (er...apologies, this is my pseudonym!)
I concur Andrew, what a twattish thing to say! He's probably one of those smug wankers that writes in to the Radio Times to comment on continuity errors in Eastenders.
Have you read or heard anything about the new Lynch film INLAND EMPIRE? (I'm not shouting - Lynch has stated, in typically eccentric fashion, that the film title should be referred to in capitals)
I'm a huge fan of his but not too sure about the sound of this one. It's sounding like one of his most obscure works to date. It's got a good cast of mostly Lynch regulars (Harry Dean Stanton, Justin Theroux, Laura Dern and Jeremy Irons) and even they have professed to being totally baffled (as opposed to their usual minor confusion) to what is occuring in the script.
Theroux stated that he would often try to dissect his scenes with Laura Dern but both made the decision to wait until it's release to try to figure out what the hissy hell was going on.
He's also shooting it entirely on digital video and has enjoyed the process so much that he has committed to never using film again. I think this is a huge shame as his photography is always so beautiful and I'm not convinced that digital captures this as well.
Anyway, I must apologise. This has turned in to a bit of an unnecessary rant.
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