Christmas telly
well it's almost over... used to be a big event back in the day.... how many re-runs of raiders of lost ark / star wars did we see as a kid ? that and the only time of the year tv times sold shed loads
so what did you think of this years offerings?
me..
dr who... same as usual , bit lazy and I wasn't overly bothered
eastenders.. think it'll never match the den & angie xmas thing.
still open all hours ..so so, nothing amazing.. it really did miss Ronnie being there
sherlock... hopefully will be good..
mrs brown.. I think is a real marmite type show... from an irish background, and I find some of my relatives more funny.
so what did you think of this years offerings?
me..
dr who... same as usual , bit lazy and I wasn't overly bothered
eastenders.. think it'll never match the den & angie xmas thing.
still open all hours ..so so, nothing amazing.. it really did miss Ronnie being there
sherlock... hopefully will be good..
mrs brown.. I think is a real marmite type show... from an irish background, and I find some of my relatives more funny.
Post edited by fog on
Comments
dvds and downloads ruin the big movies at chrimbo, so nice to find a great film ive not seen before.
Unfortunately you can't compare christmas tv today with tv 20 years ago because the big films are now available on dvd, streaming serices and sky etc years before they are available on the telly.
There are also too many tv channels and schedulers cant fill time with original programs cos theres so much time to fill - hence all the repeats of two day old programs.
Finaly.there are no really big tv programs anymore, beyond so called reality tv. Which is why morecambe and wise are still on the telly - cos frankly theres nothing to equal them :)
We didn't really watch anything as it was broadcast, then caught up on Call the Midwife and Downton Abbey which the missus enjoys watching, and I could take or leave. We also watched Still Open All Hours, which indeed was just so-so.
Nothing else springs to mind.
Best thing we've actually sat down and watched was Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.
I don’t think I have the stomach for it.
--Raziel (Legend of Kain: Soul Reaver 2)
https://www.youtube.com/user/VincentTSFP
Not really watched much else. Police Academy 6 on itv4 later is tempting though :-)
great films. Noticed they seem to get repeated on freeview about once a week for some reason.
Apart from that we've just been watching films really - the usual animated stuff like Kung Fu Panda 2, but we're also educating our kids with old 80s stuff - Who Framed Roger Rabbit this morning, Short Circuit yesterday, and I'm just grabbing Flight of the Navigator now :)
Oh and I managed to stay up last night, not to see in the New Year, but to watch The Plank :D
Looking forward to Sherlock in a few minutes.
It's on, but not for long, van Gerwen is pasting Wright, lol
We watched...
All of Series 8 of Supernatural. Excellent stuff.
All of Series 1 of Buffy. MUCH Better than I remember it.
The Green Lantern. Very Good.
Terminator Salvation. Best film of the series by far, and one that's certainly staying on the shelf for a while.
GI Joe: Rise of Cobra. Sort of okay but annoying.
Oh and some dodgy alien invasion film that looked as though it'd been filmed on a fuji fine-pix. Ummm, yeah okay.
And why every christmas do the BBC insist on showing Morecome and Wise, they are simply not funny anymore.
Dr.Who was alright but a bit rushed...could have done with being a couple of hours long that one..
Still Open All Hours was a bit meh, but then it always was...definitely missed Ronnie Barker though!
Spent most of the rest of the time forced to watch Quest or Pick TV on the digi-box, as my dad took control of the TV this year...so I mostly went out or played Xbox...
I find I do that. And then a month or so later when the drive gets filled up I delete most of it without watching it. It saves me a lot of time. If only I could speed up the deleting process I could save even more :)
Also, when a new TV series comes out that I think might be of interest I record it for the first month or so and if none of my friends have mentioned it by then I know I've avoided wasting a few hours on it, and if they all say it's great I've not missed out :). This will continue to be a viable strategy as long as they don't all do the same thing.
Xmas TV is always going to be crap compared to when we were kids (the 80's) for the exact reasons you have mentioned here. Well summed up. I have had this conversation with various work colleagues over the last decade or so, and my answer is pretty much identical to yours. We just have to accept that things have changed.
However, as I now have two young kids, I hardly go to the cinema any more, so some of the "big Christmas films" were new to me! Some stuff was OK. It just has to be spotted among all the repeats and crap.
Caught up on a few programs that had been recorded like Jungle Gold & American Pickers on Discovery and History.
Got a free movie rental off Sky so on Boxing Day evening we watched Elysium which me and my wife really enjoyed.
Sky finally shown the last episode of Moaning of Life so watched that and then received the Bluray for Christmas!
We have recorded Moonfleet off Sky1 but have still yet to watch it, may stick that on tonight.
Other than that we have watched a few Christmas movies like Fred Claus, Muppets Christmas Carol, Nightmare Before Christmas & Scrooged on either Netflix or DVD, think watching those were more sentimental and only our eldest daughter who is 16 watched them with us.
Missed Still Open All Hours (completely forgot about it) when it was on, watched it on iPlayer though the following day. Must admit a lot of it was such and such is still alive and Nurse Gladys still has that white Morris Minor! We did really enjoy it though, still has the charm it did all those years ago, granted it was missing something with Ronnie not being in it but it stayed true to its roots.
Was there a Bond film on after the Queens speech this year or has that now stopped as I read somewhere that Sky has the rights to the Bond movies currently?
Completely agree with Saboteur and his comment with regards to Christmas TV now and when we were younger in the 80's, its just not the same as it used to be. You had to wait ages before a movie got to TV so a movie was a Christmas highlight, now you are looking at available to buy usually within a few weeks of it finishing at the cinema. Things have changed so much over the past 25 - 30 year, its just not the same anymore :(
;)
but, don't care, got given a media server, and a flash drive with loads of tv shows I've not seen before, Game of Thrones, Homeland, and Damages :D
oh yeah, and a blu ray player and discs
there were one or two shows I watched on telly, but on the whole a big fat Meh.
Regarding yesterday's episode (The Empty Hearse), I do have three minor complaints;
[spoilers, so if you've not watched it, don't read these, just watch the program as it's *fantastic*]
2. I really really hope Moriarty is not dead, as the bloke who played him does so so well, but we're not led to believe anything to the contrary, and if he is still alive, how did he fake his own death two feet from Sherlock Homes?
Granted, the writers could reveal that he wasn't really Moriarty, or at least his name was Moriarty, but he was just a very talented student of the real criminal mastermind (whose name could be anything), and tat would explain how someone so young (the bloke we knew as Moriarty) came to be such a prominent crime-lord, but that still removes the great actor from the program, which I hope doesn't happen.
3. The (second) explanation for how Holmes faked his death was disappointing. Granted it was probably the best the writers could have come up with and still stuck within (television!) reality, but it was a bit disappointing. And aside from anything else, so many people were involved in Sherlock's death conspiracy that you'd think someone would have been bound to spill the beans later.
Oh, other stuff I watched was Doctor Who (fantastic - plot holes galore (you always get these with Stephen Moffat, but his stories so very enjoyable that you don't care, it's a billion times better than a water-tight story that's not entertaining) and I'm not sure about Peter Capaldi, but I loved it, and so did my DW watching mates), and the IT Crowd (a funny episode, it's not (to me) a great program, but Matt Berry and the bloke who plays Mos are both fantastic at their parts, and really make it watchable).
I watched some of Still Open All Hours, but gave up. It wasn't very funny, but far worse I just didn't like what they'd done to Granville. David Jason did a great job in the role, but I don't like to think of Granville as growing up to be the same miser/misanthropist as his uncle. It would have had to have been really funny to make me watch it, but at best it was tepid. It was surprising seeing how so many of the 1970s regulars from the program had aged so well though! Aside from Ronnie Barker, most of the actors seem to still be alive, even the Black Widow.
I still have the Christmas episodes of Vicious and Mrs Brown's Boys to watch, I like both of programs so I'm hoping the Christmas episodes are up to par.
BBC2 Saturday at 2:30. Can't wait.
Yes, I am shallow
When i watched the Open All Hours special i was surprised to find out Mrs Featherstone was still alive, she must be 90 by now!
*runs off to check imdb*
That's the Black Widow. As Granville said in the original series "What I don't understand is, why when she died, did they bury her husband!"
You reminded me, I watched the Christmas Not Going Out, and it wasn't much good. It's a strange program anyway - most sitcoms are somewhere between surreal (The Young Ones, Bottom, etc) and almost (four-fifths, say) real life (Only Fools and Horses, One Foot in the Grave, etc). But Not Going Out has very surreal moments that actually feel like they clash with the badly done 'realistic' side of the program. It does feel like the script is written by someone who wants the program to be realistic, and then bits are altered or added by someone who's motto is "**** reality, just make it funny". Except the surreal bits are often far from funny. And the stories themselves sometimes start are surreal and then suffer from a lack of imagination or advancement. And it has so many aspects (or faults, whatever you call them) that make it feel poorly directed, such as the way people walk into the flat leaving the front door open, day or night (and in London!), or when someone says a genuinely funny line and the next person straightaway says their line, without pausing to appreciate (or at least notice) the humour, as they would in real life.
It is very funny at times, there are some very funny jokes and wordplay, which is why I still watch it, but it's flaws are massive. Lee's character is all but tediously unsympathetic, as he's cowardly, selfish, and self absorbed. Since he's the main character surely we're supposed to empathise with him, but it's so difficult since he's so unlikeable. Lucy is supposed to be a high-flying career woman, but there's no conviction there, not because of the actress (who performs her part well, they all do, to be fair) but the script gives no sign of her being competent at anything, let alone being a success in the recruitment sector. We see her as someone who can't even summon up the strength to evict her self-centred, frequently non-rent paying lodger, even though he frequently causes her serious problems in her work and private life. Tim was funny (script depending, though Tim Vine is great anyway, and the show did really lose something when he quit), and you could sort of rationalise why he put up with Lee (their friendship is more convincing than Lee and Lucy's), but the problem with Not Going Out was never the actors, but the scripts.
I could go on, but basically Not Going Out is a lightweight comedy with some funny parts but not much else. Gimme Gimme Gimme is a good example of a similar program (surrealish, unlikeable main character, not trying to tell a story just a a series of funny scenes joined by a very flimsy plot, etc) but done much better - if you've not seen Gimme Gimme Gimme then you really should.
Still Open All Hours was utterly disappointing imo. I couldn't find anything remotely funny and best left to the archives.
Mrs Browns Boys - had me in stitches as usual and never disappoints me.
Not Going Out Christmas special - Although the script was rather bizarre - but then again, it was a Christmas special so no surprises there, the usual innuendos and witty gags still had me laughing.
Recorded Birds of a Feather which I'm going to watch later. Fingers crossed it still has the old magic of the original. :)
*T'wife likes her soaps so they were all recorded too.
I used to love it when star wars,superman and indiana jones were on telleh!