Telly thread

[TheBurningRed]

33 minutes ago, FLips said:

It did however make me go back and start to re-watch The League of Gentlemen, which is still just as grotesque and weird and funny as I remember it.

Did exactly the same. 

[Jazzy G]

Getting caught up with Gone Fishing and the talk of losing family members on the series 8 Christmas episode had me a bit emotional. It's still one of the best things on the telly. Won't be the same without Ted, though.

[Mr_Danger]

Just finished series 4 of Slow Horses. A few things of note from this one are that the continuation of the Scratch and Sniff nicknames is wonderful, River has cut his hair and now looks like Daniel Osbourne from Corrie and Roddy Ho is absolutely essential to my enjoyment of this show.

Even though I think they executed the big action set piece from series 3 really well I’m glad they returned to a more espionage heavy story for this one. River Cartwright doing his never ending Tom Cruise running is all the action I need.

Edited Thursday at 10:01 PM by Mr_Danger

[mim731]

I've just finished the new Amazon adaptation of Carrie. It's obviously pissed off some of the book purists, although I think it's faithful in sprit if nothing else. It was also really enjoyable as aa modern retooling of the story. It will be interesting to see if it gets a second series, as there were rumblings about this being a plan by Mike Flanagan to create a Stephen King on screen universe, which could be a fun concept. I quite enjoyed it overall. 

[BarryOVega]

Thought this Million Pound Drop on 4 was going to be like the Lee Mack Inside No.9, turns out to be an Anti Gambling promo

I'm sure Bradley Walsh will be telling ITV he doesn't want any money off The Chase seeing as they're sponsored by Gala Bingo

[Daaaaaad!]

22 minutes ago, BarryOVega said:

I'm sure Bradley Walsh will be telling ITV he doesn't want any money off The Chase seeing as they're sponsored by Gala Bingo

I realise this is supposed to be a flippant comment pointing out potential hypocrisy, but hasn't there been something weird going on with the scheduling of The Chase lately? I'm sure I read or heard somewhere that they were bunging loads of repeat episodes on in a different sequence instead of making new ones. Could be something to do with it?

[BarryOVega]

Just now, Daaaaaad! said:

I realise this is supposed to be a flippant comment pointing out potential hypocrisy, but hasn't there been something weird going on with the scheduling of The Chase lately? I'm sure I read or heard somewhere that they were bunging loads of repeat episodes on in a different sequence instead of making new ones. Could be something to do with it?

Quite possibly, anytime I've watched it in the last 6 months or so they've been 2 to 3 years old, presumably everyone is busy with other things, like that terrible Beat the Chasers and all the stuff Walsh does with his son

[Lion_of_the_Midlands]

30 minutes ago, BarryOVega said:

all the stuff Walsh does with his son

Harry Hill constantly referring to his son as Bo Didley Walsh on his podscarf always makes me laugh. I can't actually remember what his name is. 

[BomberPat]

12 hours ago, BarryOVega said:

Thought this Million Pound Drop on 4 was going to be like the Lee Mack Inside No.9, turns out to be an Anti Gambling promo

I'm sure Bradley Walsh will be telling ITV he doesn't want any money off The Chase seeing as they're sponsored by Gala Bingo

I really can't work out how I feel about this show. I thought the actual anti-gambling documentary content was very well put together, the right combination of hard-hitting human interest stories and good science about how gambling companies keep you on the hook. That's really important stuff to put on TV, though it would be nice to see Channel 4 put their money where their mouth is and not have those same companies advertising on their channel.

I just don't know if the whole bait and switch trickeroo of it all was worth the effort. Would a well-marketed hard-hitting Channel 4 documentary have attracted a significantly smaller audience than acting as if there was a weird one-off Bradley Walsh quiz show airing at 9pm on a Sunday? If the point was to trick people into thinking they were watching a real quiz show, the production was way off, and if the point was that they did that intentionally to make you know it's not legit so you're just watching it waiting for the reveal, then surely it didn't work as a bait and switch anyway? They could have still done the quiz show as the set-up for the live audience, and threaded that through a documentary to underpin the psychology element, I don't really think it achieved anything by showing a full half hour or however long it was of a phony quiz show that never quite landed - to then bring out the real guy it was based on and say, "this is the real Rhys, this is his story"...I don't think that really worked, because the game show setting had to change his circumstances and his story so much that it didn't really land the point it was making.

[Jazzy G]

It feels like it would have worked better as a Derren Brown thing? He's good enough that he would have been able to explain the psychology of it all as it was going on. He would likely also have been able to do this with real members of the public and made them think they were using their own money to play the game. The presentation and the way the contestant (who was found to be an actor, along with his "girlfriend" in the audience) behaves feels more like a TV dramatisation than game show, which took me out of it. It felt like a school assembly.

[wordsfromlee]

Unsurprisingly it was made by the same guy that made that Gregg Wallace faux documentary about human meat a couple of years back. 

[Jazzy G]

7 minutes ago, wordsfromlee said:

Unsurprisingly it was made by the same guy that made that Gregg Wallace faux documentary about human meat a couple of years back. 

I thought that was hilarious.