Despite purchasing a Radio Times I've yet to catch-up on Christmas spooks on the wireless, which I'll do in January when everything's calmed down.
I have though been watching TV and keeping an eye on the mainstream scheduling. I have to say its been a bit disappointing so far.
For me and possibly I'm mistaken, the yardstick for top class UK TV listings between Xmas and New Year is a screening of Jason and the Argonauts or at least one of the Harryhausen monster epics.
Nada.
Nichts.
Yes, there's been Alistair Sim's Christmas Carol, Bill Murray's Scrooged and the classic Its a Wonderful Life to jingle our nostalgic bells .... but C'mon!
The high point for the Grandson was the new Aardman Wallace and Gromet movie shown on Christmas Day. Alas, I was close to the soft glow of the Christmas tree on a corner sofa and fell asleep!
I still love 'normal' telly here in Blighty - the Beeb, ITV and the like - but I cant help thinking the glory days of Christmas are over for them.
The glut of cheapo Freeview channels churning out the same stuff they do every day, endless re-runs of Man V. Food, Wives with Knives etc etc - no change for Christmas! - doesn't lift the festive doldrums on the small screen either.
The exceptions are of course those UK freeview channels - Rewind, TalkingPicturesTV - that cater for aging boomer babies like us showing the delights of the Sixties and Seventies like Thriller, Space Patrol, Department S, Stingray and more.
Maybe all of this is academic in the days of streaming, Smart TV's, Sky, Netflix, Prime, Disney+, You Tube and millions of online videos. It must be a worry for 'normal TV' bosses.
Young people probably don't even watch the Beeb, ITV or any of those old dinosaurs. Not just the young either, a not-so-young friend of ours only watches You Tube videos for her entertainment. Nothing else. My 80 year old Sister is transfixed by TikTok, so what do I know!
I wonder what will be left of terrestrial telly in ten years when I'm 74?
What did you watch this holiday readers in your neck of the world? Is online TV taking over? Was Christmas represented on your telly schedules?
I think one of the channels ran 'One Million Years BC' just before Christmas Day.
ReplyDeleteoh really, I stand corrected then Mish. I'm looking forward to listening to Reece Shearsmith on the radio being interviewed about spooks, ghosts and horror. Its listed in my Radio Times.
DeleteAlso, terrestrial TV is not dead yet.
ReplyDeleteWallace And Grommet got nearly 10 million viewers in the UK, and Gavin And Stacey got over 12 million.
The best streaming channels get nothing like that. Most don't even get close to that Globally !
I am afraid that the golden days of channel television are far behind us, at least here in the states. We got rid of cable TV over ten years ago and never looked back. We have Roku streaming channels on demand, and there is such a huge library of classic TV and Movies, there's never a drought! Plus, there are always DVDs! For Christmas Day we watched Alice, Sweet Alice, a terrific 1976 horror movie which revolves around a murder at a Catholic Church in Paterson, New Jersey. Perfect Christmas Viewing! SFZ
ReplyDeleteThis is a little "off-topic", and I am also uncomfortably aware that what I am about to say could easily be dismissed as the rantings of a grumpy old man -- but...
ReplyDeleteI think the standard and variety of TeleVision has plummeted.
There is too much of it, now, and what is good is lost.
Three examples:
Back in the 1980s, I was working on a special project providing job opportunities to teenagers.
One of the girls on the project (she would have been about 17) came into the office one day and said, "Did anyone see that programme on Channel 4 last night called 'The Avengers'?" she had watched the Diana Rigg/Patrick Macnee segment, "The Joker"; the show was then being run on Sunday evenings -- and had proved a ratings smash for the then-fledgling channel. This young woman had absolutely loved it and started watching the show regularly. The same girl also became a fan of "Captain Scarlet" (then being run on Saturday mornings) and Harold Lloyd (being run on BBC2 every weekday opposite the Six O'Clock News.
My sisters -- both much younger than I -- became addicted to Laurel and Hardy -- then being run on Saturday mornings.
In the 1970s, I, myself -- then in my 'teens -- fell in love with the Margaret Rutherford "Miss Marple" films, and the Marx Brothers -- the latter being run on BBC1 late on a Friday evening.
And we all know what a success story "Thunderbirds" and "Randall & Hopkirk [Deceased]" proved to be when shown on BBC2 at six o'clock on Fridays in the 1990s...
I find it depressing to think that, because of the overabundance of channels and the fact the TV schedules have become this sparkling mass of mediocrity -- this kind of thing will never happen again and that means, I think, that there will come a time when old films and shows will fade from the public consciousness.
In some cases, that's not a bad thing! There are so many shows which lived well in the memory, but which reacquaintance has demonstrated to be worthless. But there are some shows which would still find new audiences, and deserve to. I mean: there I was in the 1970s, loving the Hal Roach Laurel and Hardy shorts made in the 1930s -- thirty years before I was born. Will they ever be shown on "mainstream" TV again, where a young mind would find and value them?
At the other end of the spectrum, when you look at an old Radio Times, you can see the BBC used to cater for a wide spectrum of people's tastes: opera on BBC2 (not my thing, but so what?). A production of Strindberg's "Ghost Sonata" on BBC1 on a Sunday evening. Genuine attempts at serious, adult Science Fiction with "Out of the Unknown". I became a devotee of the works of Somerset Maugham after seeing the three films made from his short stories ("Quartet", "Trio" and "Encore") on Channel 4 in the 1980s.
TeleVision now is all on the same level. There's no variety. No chance for a viewer to encounter something that would broaden their tastes.
And I think this is sad, and bad.
Dal C.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. There is so much new television being produced, so much of it slick garbage, that the older programs, where available, get lost in the noise of it all. And therefore, the average viewer will never think of let alone sample anything worthy from the past. I used to try and turn people on to some of my favorite older shows, but I no longer do because it seems that most folks don't care - they just want to see what's "New," as if "New" means somehow good or better than the old. I feel the opposite way! SFZ
DeleteI have pretty much given up on mainstream TV in New Zealand in recent years. Apart from The Repair Shop, there does not seem to be anything on except cooking and travel shows, or re-runs of MASH (which now seems to have disappeared), Friends, and The Big Bang Theory. An old movie is something from the 1980s, not the black and white classics of the 1930s and 1940s that I grew up with.
ReplyDeleteSo I have been watching old movies from You Tube or the Internet Archive, or DVDs, and modelling programmes such as Max's Models from You Tube.
Then there is my DVD collection - I did treat myself to the Patrick McGoohan series The Prisoner on DVD just before Christmas, when it was 20% off. Still not watched it yet.
Old movies and classic TV shows on in primetime in NZ ? Not likely, so I have no reason to watch. Which is sad, given how much TV meant to me growing up, and how many wonderful shows were on, even in the days of just one channel.
Agree totally! Mainstream TV is dead! Long live the classics! SFZ
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