Like many music fans, I spent the last weekend of June glued to the box, watching the BBC’s extensive coverage of Glastonbury. Actually, to call their coverage ‘extensive’ is something of an understatement. Over four days, the Beeb broadcast more than 250 hours of live music performances across television, radio, red button and online services. In excess of 100 acts were filmed exclusively for the corporation.
As a fan of the teen drama series genre, I’ve been following E4’s recent offering, Glue (2014),* *with keen interest. Set in an English rural community, Glue is a teen/crime drama generic hybrid. The series’ over-arching narrative, stretching across all 8 episodes, centres around the death and subsequent murder investigation of a 14 year old boy.
WARNING: POTENTIAL SPOILERS FOR THE WALKING DEAD AND GOTHAM About a year ago, I posted a column about the current state of television and wondered if we were at a crossroads with anti-heroes and the television drama. I feel inclined to revisit those questions, particularly after a recent episode of The Walking Dead, “Four Walls and a Roof.”
The first episode of EastEnders was broadcast on BBC1 on 19 February 1985. Created by Tony Holland and Julia Smith, the serial is set in the fictional London borough of Walford. It is shot on a purpose-built outside set at Elstree Studios and also interior television studios on the site. The task of the first episode of any soap is to introduce location, characters and storylines, and to set a tone for the drama.
One thing is for sure: World War 1 is not going to disappear from our screens any time soon. It’s there on all channels from CBeebies and BBC3 to ITV and the more specialist Discovery and History channels. The BBC has entered into full public service mode with over 130 new commissions and over 2,500 hours of programming across four years.
Lorna Jowett’s recent blog for CST on ‘Children, Television, Nostalgia and Audiences’ helped me think through some questions I’d had around my own enjoyment of a contemporary children’s show: Girl Meets World (2014 -). Girl Meets World has caught my attention for numerous reasons, but mostly because, as a child-free viewer in her late twenties, it places me in an odd position;
I want to talk about Some Girls. Some Girls is a teen comedy on BBC Three about four 16 year old girls (as they begin the first series) who attend the Greenshoots Academy in South London, all play for the school football team and live on local estates.
Here’s the problem. The licence fee is a cheap and elegant way of funding public service TV. It’s far cheaper than a Sky subscription and yields far more original UK production. However, a lot of people wriggle out of paying it, so prosecutions of licence fee defaulters clutter up the courts.
It’s been almost one year and a half since the abrupt closure of the Greek Public Broadcaster (ERT) and five months since the launch of the new official Public Broadcaster of Greece (NERIT), and the audience in Greece is still on a perpetual quest to find the true meaning of the role of Greek public television.
“I know you, I love you, and I can be your friend, I could follow you anywhere, even through solid air.” John Martyn, *Solid Air * The holding onto air moment occurs when the scene set before one is so resolutely, ethically and morally ghastly, or is so uncomfortable to view, that one feels the need – the unstoppable, thoughtless urge – to reach out and hold onto the nothingness before one.
Which children’s programme, made on no budget in a single room, attracts over 2 million viewers per daily episode? The YouTube videos of ‘Stampylongnose’ (or ‘Stampylonghead’ or just plain ‘Stampy’), devoted to the hugely popular computer game ‘Minecraft’, have gone from targeting a niche gaming fan base to capturing a large audience of children.