Animal Antics
This week's TV Guide contains some more quirks to which I'd like to draw your attention. Before I do so, I must with some vigour protest about the dire 5.30pm offering by BBC1 in the Saturday schedules. I sadly caught a few minutes of yesterday's Animal Antics, and was appalled at it. Funny clips, whether of people or animals, have been around for a very long time. ITV has long since learned that a studio-based format does not work, and with Harry Hill, the voice-over approach works well. In fact, even when it's not Harry, any similar show works better without having reference to a presenter on the screen or any sight of a studio. Why the fuck then do we have to watch Tim Brooke-Taylor and some stupid cunt dressed as a dog called 'Spike' accompanying him? Also, there's a fucking stupid 'Animal Antics' logo plastered to the screen at the bottom, just to the left, which does nothing but irritate (just like TBT) and obscure the efforts of the animals. This is gut-twistingly awful television.
Lazy Television from BBC2
The overriding sense of laziness comes from the lack of thought that's gone into the scheduling. It's not the first time this has been the case, but it's worthy of a mention now. My issue relates predominantly to Railways and Food - two subjects that have established themselves in no uncertain terms.
Let's start with Food, the fodder (ha!) that keeps the channel going.
Indian Food Made Easy
The Great Comic Relief Bake Off
Great British Menu
Masterchef: The Professionals
Rick Stein's Spain
Masterchef: The professionals - Michel's Classics
The Hairy Bikers' Everyday Gourmets
Rick Stein's Far Eastern Odyssey
What with so many multiple episodes, repeats and BSL versions, it's a cheek! This limited approach to entertainment is followed in another genre as well - that of the railways. Can someone tell me why there's an obsession with rail travel and associated stuff?
On Monday we have: Great British Railway Journeys followed by Welsh Railways: Full Steam Ahead. Then, later on, we have Locomotion: Dan Snow's History of Railways. On Tuesday it's the same again, with the Welsh and Dan being separated by the Great British Menu and The Mary Berry Story. On Friday, at 7.00pm, Julia Bradbury is about walking again, this time along disused train lines in Railway Walks. It was a surprise and a blessing to see that the late film (11.50pm) called The Station is not about the fucking railways!
Just to round off, I thought I'd mention BBC2's subtle approach to the introduction of yet more repeats by calling programmes 'classic' or 'vintage'. I refer to the useless repeats of fucking quiz programmes.
Classic Mastermind - an edition from 2003, showing on Monday afternoon. This is the third in a run of seven consecutive repeats. Tuesday's run of seven repeats includes Vintage Antiques Roadshow, Classic Mastermind and an edition of Weakest Link with no qualification, so maybe it was simply shite. The pattern is repeated in the following days, with the Friday explanation alongside Classic Mastermind - "General knowledge quiz". Any cunt knows that only half the questions are general knowledge and that the specialised subjects are the thing that marks this quiz out from others!
River Monsters
"Jeremy Wade tries to track down a giant fish thought to inhabit a remote Mongolian river where a violent attack has recently occurred." Well, let's hope that in Tuesday's 7.30pm episode we see him succeed in finding it, and that we get a re-enactment!
Later on (after a few programmes, including a fucking useless fucking repeat of a celebrity version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire) there's a second helping of River Monsters. How on earth ITV has the fucking nerve to show a repeat of River Monsters on the same night of a new edition I do not know.
"Kappa visits Japan to explore the legend of a creature called the Jeremy Wade, which is believed to lurk in rivers and has a reputation for being a sinister child-snatching killer."
[Please note that in the above quote from the ITV Guide, there may have been an intentional swap, with the words Jeremy Wade and Kappa being flipped]
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