Last week Brian True-May was suspended as producer of everyone’s favourite rural English take on Nightmare on Elm Street, Midsomer Murders, for some slightly non-pc comments. “We just don’t have ethnic minorities involved,” True-May said. “Because it wouldn’t be the English village with them… We’re the last bastion of Englishness and I want to keep [...]
I am a history buff. As such I find libraries and the smell of old history books seriously exciting. During a recent visit to Northumberland (Reuben would not approve) I spent several wonderful hours exploring the history section of the reasonably famous Barter Books in Alnwick. (See here: http://bit.ly/9D7xvL). I’m a vegetarian, but enormous books on the [...]
The BBC’s latest offering to the sitcom gods is Rev, the usual half hour, oh-they’re-in-a-pickle-now kinda thing, with the twist being that it’s not just about a vicar, but about an inner city vicar. It’s been hammered home by the BBC that this is a chance to move away from everyone’s favourite fat theological. Gone [...]
Last week, two of the most watched television shows were about voting. One provided an in depth, contemporary and perhaps profound analysis of current democracy. The other was a shallow piece of entertainment, easily forgettable and void of conflict. The first was Doctor Who, the other was a game show. In ‘The Beast Below‘, the [...]
It never fails to annoy me when it’s claimed that some group or other is the ‘last’ group that it’s acceptable to be prejudiced about. Sure, there’s no denying we live in relatively enlightened times, but there are any number of marginalised sections of society that you can get away with offending without any fear [...]
You are live on Channel 4, please do not swear. Wank! Unless you have tourettes. Shilpa poppadom, Shilpa chappawala! Fuck it, who cares, no one’s watching anyway. Reports of Big Brother’s demise are not greatly exaggerated, though for a long time, they’ve been greatly anticipated. This week, programme makers, in one last desperate bid for [...]
Oh, how I long for a George Carlin, Lenny Bruce or young Chris Rock for today… someone to help us question that which we are too tired to have thought about ourselves. Comedians who do not just satirise and mock the world as they find it, but offered an alternative vision as well. Our current breed, by stark contrast, sneer without care or consistency. The result: a banal hybrid of gaffs about Peter Andre and Jordan, and a reliance on swearing and foul imagery as end in itself, so as to maintain a veneer of being ‘edgy’.
It’s extremely easy to criticise the politics of cultural products if you don’t agree with absolutely everything they say. If you consider your understanding to be more nuanced, it is very easy to say that a book, a film, or an article doesn’t go far enough. The point is that not every great film is [...]
A recent report in the Guardian confirmed my suspicion that alot of people who complain to Ofcom are, to put it kindly, morons. Of the 290 people who complained about this year’s Big Brother, it would appear that the majority of them have completely missed the point of broadcast regulation. 200 of the 290 complaints [...]
