Now What Have You Been Watching?

[SiHart]

Excellent Endeavour this week. Nice bit of back story plus some top class investigations and a unexpected person doing the murders. Nice!

[Philipnet]

Only Connect, anyone?

[Andrew Curnow]

It's been sat on the Skybox for goodness knows how many weeks now, but this morning I finally got round to watching the last episode of the recent series of Jonathan Creek.

Maybe not 'vintage Creek' but I'd say the best of this batch of three - certainly I enjoyed it, and although I could not for one minute see how it would all tie up, it was pretty satisfying when it did. True, it depends on the very very big suspension of disbelief that you'd help somebody move a dead body and almost casually 'laugh it off', but if you can accept that then it works. And always nice to see Josie Lawrence and June Whitfield (or rather, Junes Whitfield) in anything!

[Nyder]

So for the next couple of weeks my breakfast viewing will be .... Pardon My Genie!!


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[Nyder]

Well that was .. erm .. interesting! Roy Barraclough playing a character called Mr Cobbledick (!) and his young apprentice called Hal Addin. Hugh Paddick gave an usually restrained and non- camp performance as the Genie of the Watering Can. They really could have done with some incidental music to pep up the pace, and the theme music is almost non-existent. You can definitely see the roots of Rentaghost in this first story. Will it be more watchable that Alcock & Gander? I think so ... but only just!


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[Philipnet]

The torture you put yourself through.

And Hal Addin.
No, no, no, there's no resemblance to another character with past experience of a Genie

[Nyder]

I think I'll have a break before launching into Series 2 of PMG - although I'm intrigued by a complete change of central character and theme tune! Instead my breakfast viewing will be Series 2 & 3 of the TV version of Hancock's Half Hour. No eps exist from Series 1 (boo!), only one from Series 2 (again, boo!) and 5 of the 12 eps from Series 3. Stone me, what a disgrace!


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[Andrew Curnow]

There's more than one series of Pardon My Genie?!! Crikey!

[Nyder]

There's 2 Andrew - but no more!!! Phew.


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[Rob McCow]

Tonight we watched the history of BBC 2 and the Battle for Britain's Breakfast. Roland Rat was the overall highlight. What do ITV even do in the mornings now? I have no way of telling.

Although I would have liked the Breakfast Story to have continued with the trials of GMTV / Sunrise. It probably wasn't as exciting.

Big revelation was that Jeff Wayne wrote the fab opening music to Good Morning TV! I never realised!

[Nyder]

It was a good documentary - and a real coup getting Frank Bough to talk about it!


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[Nyder]

These early HHH episodes really are flights of fancy. In one Ep Hancock is an Air Steward, in the next one he's a Barrister. There's a lot of funny ad-libbing going on to when either Sid or Tony fluff their lines. Their relationship is so warm, it's a pity Hancock jettisoned him in later episodes. I seem to recall reading that Sid was very hurt when it happened.

[Nyder]

I'm going to watch a film I've not seen in yonks tonight - Fright! A horror film from 1971 starring Susan George, Honor Blackman, George Cole, Dennis Waterman & Roger Lloyd-Pack


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[SiHart]

Good cast. Did the film do them justice?

[Nyder]

Yes it was still quite scary actually! Watched another Hancock this morning. It had a young Dick Emery playing a jobsworth postie. Much corpsing between them both! A young Burt Kwok was in it too, although in the titles he appears as "Burd". A typo surely??


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[Andrew Curnow]

I have visions now of Hancock 'doing a Harry Hill: "Cor blimey, it's Burt Kwouk!" Are you enjoying them so far, Dave?

Elsewhere, almost 2 years on but we finally got around to watching 'Burt & Dickie' last night (that was the one-off film about the 1948 Olympic rowers, starring (hence us wanting to watch it in the first place really!) Matt Smith). It took a while to get going I must admit, it had the sense of a "cut-price Chariots of Fire" for a time, but I'm glad we stuck with it, it got quite moving towards the end, mainly around Douglas Hodge & Geoffrey Palmer as the fathers. Our Matt was good too (of course!!)

[SiHart]

Bit of The Sweeney this morning. There's a souffle involved!

[Nyder]

I certainly am Andrew. I'm more familiar with the radio series, so it's nice to watch the TV version. Some comedy dates dreadfully (Alcock & Gander!) but Hancock is timeless! Apparently the only reason why The Alpine Holiday was recorded (only surviving Ep of Series 2) was that it was used for "training purposes". The rest went out live and that was it! No audio versions exist of Series 1 or 2 either. Unless Phil Morris has found some :-)

[Andrew Curnow]

Slightly off topic, I didn't realise until the other day that only 32 episodes exist of Dixon of Dock Green, out of a total of 432. So Who's actually doing rather well...

Glad to hear you're enjoying H-H-Hancock, Dave. Inevitably, I think the TV ones have dated more than the radio, due to looking in places so basic, but the good ones actually are still darned good aren't they.

In other news, having started to lose faith a little with the new (and last!) series of How I Met Your Mother, the last few episodes have been a lot more entertaining - I think it was a bit of a risk stretching a whole series over 'just' the weekend of the wedding, but they seem to have just about got away with it so far. Oh, and The Big Bang Theory continues to be very funny of a Thursday too!!

[Alex]

In other news, having started to lose faith a little with the new (and last!) series of How I Met Your Mother, the last few episodes have been a lot more entertaining - I think it was a bit of a risk stretching a whole series over 'just' the weekend of the wedding, but they seem to have just about got away with it so far.

I sort of gave up on that in the end, after struggling through season 8 a fair bit, but I did tune in for the finale. Which was bloody awful imho! I know it's received a lot of mixed reviews, but killing the Mother off and then having Ted (presumably) end up with Robin was a major mis-step in my mind. And the ending for Barney annoyed too.

I've just started watching Penny Dreadful and am loving it so far, it's only going to be 8 episodes per season (which is very rare for a US show) and it's packed to the rafters with various plotlines involving, amongst others, Victor Frankenstein, Dorian Gray and Mina Harker. Plus Timothy Dalton is clearly having a whale of a time chewing up the scenery, whilst Billie Piper's quite fun despite a dodgy accent.

[SiHart]

It's all been Mad Men and Game of Thrones round our house.

This last season of Mad Men has really hit the ground running and been brilliant throughout. I'll be sad when it all finishes.

[Darren]

I'm completely hooked on Fargo at the moment.

[Dirk Gently]

I'm going to start watching Penny Dreadful tonight.

Recently I've been enjoying the new series of Big Bang Theory, Elementary, The Tomorrow People, Grimm, Arrow, Believe, Intelligence, Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D & Almost Human.

Some of these are nearing the end of thier series/life.

[Perry Vale]

On t'telly of late, Rev, Trip To Italy and Episodes, showing the beeb can still make good comedy.

[Stuart Wallis]

I gather Agents Of SHIELD will be back, despite not-so-great ratings. (I'm glad someone else has been watching it btw!)