GOOD TV

[Stanley]

Comrade I thought of Gudrun last night when I watched a programme on the Iceland Sagas which I recorded some time ago. Interesting how many of the women settlers were Celtic.

[Nolic]

She's very much influenced by Scandinavian art and design. Have a look at her website http://bygarlands.blogspot.co.uk/ She recently had a design she did based on - SÓLEY STEFÁNSDÓTTIR - published in a Dutch design magazine. Nolic

[Stanley]

The snow played hell with satellite transmission last night, everything went off from about 20:00 onwards. The hard drive recorder came to the rescue. It's all back on this morning.

[PanBiker]

I lost all of Sky from 9pm, I had to use the BBC iPlayer to watch the second part of Silent Witness. Built in diagnostics showed no output from either transponder on the dish. Not checked it today yet.

[Big Kev]

I must have been lucky. BBC1HD was on until about 10:30, it all went off after that.

[PanBiker]

All back to normal this morning with two good locked signals.

[Stanley]

Snow is OK on Xmas cards.....

[Stanley]

I watched Brian Cox last night and while I enjoyed the programme it was hard work. I wonder if he's pitching the use of physics a bit too high for the general public?

[Sue]

I don't understand his astronomy programmes. I am a scientist as you know, and a great advocate for science for all. However when it gets so involved it kills it for people. The other extreme is to make is so simple that key points are watered down and then mis understood and mis quoted. And you know...if its on tele it's right!... I have spent many a long hour re explaining things and trying to put things right.

[Stanley]

I think you're right Sue. It annoys me so much when I watch a programme that introduces mistakes into subjects I have some knowledge of. I'm afraid Dan Snow's programme on railways was guilty on several technical counts!

[Tripps]

A bit off topic, but this seems the best place.
Did you catch Shelagh Fogarty on Radio Five when there was a mouse in the studio today just before 1.00pm?

There's a clip on youtube, but I heard it live, and they miss the end when they went to the news with Shelagh shouting "It's on the bloody table"
Link is here. The mouse.

It's worth watching this programme live, and the cool smooth multi - tasking of the presenters is remarkable. Here's the link for you Radio Five Live

[Stanley]

Had a choice last night between Dan Snow and Jonathan Meade... Went for Jonathan on Essex. I love the careful photography that is like still pics and his deadpan, one pose, spiky commentary. The perfect antidote to presenters like the Snows and Cruikshank who seem to think they are the subject of the film.....

[Stanley]

Watched Brian Cox again last night. Not very impressed. Lots of interesting and curious facts but somehow they didn't gell and I can well imagine many people being bored after the first twenty minutes. Not Attenborough!

[Tripps]

I watched it too. First time I'd seen him, though we both come from Chadderton so I believe. He showed by the deft use of Planck's Universal Constant, and the help of Jonathon Ross with the arithmetic, that a 29 carat diamond would spontaneously jump out of the box it was in - on average - every 300 times 10 (to the power of 29) seconds. This time is several billion times longer than the entire existence of the universe. I think this is as close as a scientist of his stupendous intelligence can get to admitting that it would never happen, which I could have told him.

[Stanley]

David, I think you may be agreeing with me......

[Tripps]

Did you catch Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe? Brilliant film on itv3 today . I don't usually get on with 'flash back' films but I like this one. I've sent for the book. Another $1 special from abebooks. The bee charmer.

[Stanley]

I nearly caught it but finished up watching Chocolat again instead. Strange film, almost medieval but so well done. I love it.

[Stanley]

I hate admitting to watching a game show but I have to tell you I am almost hooked on 'Tipping Point' which is based on the old fairground machine with the moving table and a pin-ball type entry for an old fashioned penny. I don't know what it is about it but I find it's hypnotic watching it! They'll be bringing the crane with the grab back next...... I was mad on cranes when I was a lad.

[Bruff]

Been watching Mayday on BBC1 and then Broadchurch which started on ITV1 - needed the i-Player as they clashed Monday.

Good stuff - good plots and acting with great casts. And it's good to see an investment in crime dramas that require a similar investment in your time, spreading over several hours and in the ITV drama there, weeks (8 episodes). As some have noted this seemed the preserve of Danish and French dramas, as well as the US stuff like The Wire.

Richard Broughton

[Stanley]

I started watching the programme on poor kids in America but it depressed me so much I had to turn it off. The gap between the rich and the poor is shameful.
And no, I don't know the answer.

[Stanley]

Some good stuff on BBC4 last night and no matter how often I see them I do like New Tricks..... The programme wears well!

[Whyperion]

BBC Two

Toughest Place To Be..

S 4 Ep 2 .. a Farmer

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01rfy31

Short info on http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01rfy3 ... ucersstory

[Bruff]

Just caught up last night with The Challenger, which went out on BBC2 Monday evening.

A 90min drama on Richard Feynman's input to the US Commission of Enquiry into the 1986 Challenger Shuttle disaster. Quite simply, one of the best pieces of television I have seen for a very long time indeed.

Feynman is one of my heroes, and the drama perfectly captured his bringing his rigorous appreciation of the scientific method to the enquiry cumulating in his devastating explanation of the route cause, by simple practical illustration. You can see this from the man himself on YouTube as it was televised at the time in the late-80s. William Hurt was brilliant as Feynman, who was at the time terminally ill with the cancer that would kill him months later (due it was suggested, to his work on the Manhattan Project).

If I have one quibble, it portrayed Feynman as a rather dour and resigned fellow and whilst it is true he was caustic in his questioning at the Commission, he was in reality an impish, bongo-playing, safecracker and raconteur. Catch also on YouTube the two brilliant documentaries on Feynman that went on the BBC's Horizon programme in the 80s.

Also recommended are his two 'memoires', 'Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman?' and 'What Do You Care What Other People Think?', as well as his biography (one of the best of a scientist), 'Genius'. Much over-used he is in my opinion wholly deserving of the title 'genius'; he is up there with Newton, Da Vinci and Einstein - the handful over millennia that help us understand why we are what we are and why things are what they are. Not that we haven't got a long way to go - as he himself said: 'we don't even know how a dog works'.

Richard Broughton

[PanBiker]

A good appraisal Bruff, I recorded and watched it later also, a brilliant man. I doubt if the cause would have been found without his approach to the problem. He always took the stance that science at all levels should be explainable to the layman. Elegantly demonstrated at the Challenger hearing.

[PanBiker]

Last one of a seies of 8 of "The Planners" last night, fascinating weekly look into the role of Planning Officers. The series shows all sides of the process with applicant, planning officers, those for any given application and those against. Each week they cover three or four different applications from around the country, last night, two were in Gloucestershire. The program showed the poor bloke who worked a tenanted farm owned by the County Council that over the years has been built round on all four sides. The land was estimated to be worth £50 million to the developers that wanted to build a 350 dwelling housing estate on the plot. The developers won.
Another application which had originally failed and had gone to appeal was from a former "traveller" who is now a green energy provider. He wanted to put up 4 turbines in the Stroud Vale. He has been trying for over 20 years to erect turbines in the county, to date there is not a single turbine in Gloucestershire? As he rightly says, one would think that the wind did not blow in this county. The guy is an ethical energy provider and is a self made man, his company now employs hundreds of people and he owns and funds a local football team. He seemed like a bloke with lots of passion for what he was trying to do. Fascinating to contrast his attitude to one his main objectors who was the bloke that owns the local castle which of course is on the highest bit of land, (not very high compared to our landscape). His family have been the local nibs for hundreds of years and he guffawed the fact that "their family always win their battles". "it's just not the done thing, will spoil the view from the battlement's, haw, haw". Another objector was citing flicker from the potential turbines despite the fact that he lived nearly 5 miles from the proposed site and the inspector had to crane his neck to try and see the site through the trees on his property. The applicant said his application had cost him upwards of £150,000 to bring back to appeal with the original application costing about £100,000. All to no avail the bloke in the castle and the other nimby's won that one, there are still no wind turbines in the whole of Gloucestershire.