TV & Radio Category
Television and radio programme reviews, trailers, highlights, twilights and cinema news. Also the neglected gems from years past.
Karen Danzcuk to feature on Celebrity Big Brother as show’s first stop-motion housemate
And now for the pay off. Karen Dancuk is to appear on Channel 5’s Celebrity Big Brother. Having recently appeared on Channel 5 news to tell us that her life is private, a “telly source” says:
“In the last week following the break-up of her marriage she has become all the more marketable. CBB is perfect for her — as viewers will see a lot of her famous boobs and she will have more to talk about.”
Given her love of selfies, will Karen become the show’s first stop motion housemate?
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Posted: 9th, July 2015 | In: Celebrities, Reviews, TV & Radio | Comment
The ridiculously catchy Breaking Bad remix
After the remix of Breaking Bad seasons 1 and 2, this is what YouTuber placeboing did with the hit show’s next three seasons. It works ridiculously well.
In case you missed it:
Posted: 3rd, July 2015 | In: TV & Radio | Comment
Catherine Bach’s Daisy Duke photos: what Confederate flag?
TV land has banned the Dukes of Hazzard show because the featured car, the ‘General Lee’, had a roof decorated with the Confederate flag. What was good enough for a hit show in the 1980s is today’s poison. It got us thinking what else could have gotten the show banned? And we came up with one name: Daisy Duke. Played by Catherine Bach, Daisy Duke, with her white 1980 Jeep CJ-7, was an adolescent fantasy. In this collection of photos you can see Daisy in her ‘Daisy Duke’ short shorts stood by ‘Red Indians’, dressed as a French maid and using her primary sexual characteristics to flesh out the character. Ban it. Ban it now!
Posted: 2nd, July 2015 | In: Celebrities, TV & Radio | Comment
The Dukes of Hazzard was never an advert for the ‘American swastika’
So toxic is the Confederate Flag that re-runs of The Dukes of Hazzard are forbidden. The TV show featured the General Lee car with its Confederate flag design. When the bansturbators make a move it’s good to ask why.
Variety says the ban is “clearly a response to the broader movement to withdraw the flag from official settings and in pop culture, given its historic connection to slavery and the Civil War. The push to remove Confederate flags and Stars and Bars icons came last month in the wake of the slayings of nine African-Americans in a Charleston church allegedly by a 21-year-old white supremacist.”
Did the Dukes of Hazzard make him do it?
Tim Teeman writes:
What is achieved by activist Bree Newsome scaling the flag pole outside the South Carolina state house, and removing the Confederate flag?
Everything.
What is achieved by TV Land banning reruns of The Dukes of Hazzard?
Nothing.
The first was a courageous, clever act of civil disobedience protesting the endemic, poisonous racism that lay at the heart of the Charleston massacre, with its roots in the South’s slavery-stained, Klan-stained past…
The second is a TV show, with two “good old boys” performing memorable car stunts and the grinning stupidity of Roscoe P. Coltrane. A dumber show, far further down the symbol food chain.
Do you confuse reality and fiction? Do you read works of literature as documents?
The flag is in a public space, central to a community. People have to walk past it, like it or not. The TV show is something you choose to watch or not watch, on a station you can choose to watch or not watch. The decision to remove the flag is right, the decision to strike the TV show seems extreme and wrong-headed, but entirely in keeping with our times.
A modern conservative twist on an 80s classic
We are absolutely crazy about banning stuff. Sometimes the bans are in the public interest, like the Confederate flag flying over the court-house.
In our culture of instant offense, we ban before we think. However, banning isn’t a sign of strength or resolve, but an admission of defeat, of showing how little we have engaged with whatever the bigger issue that belies the ban.
Banning things is sign of insecurity. If you can no longer out-debate the bigot, then you’ve lost the argument. Banning is cowardly. It makes a martyr of the banned. It also makes it more attrative to anyone looking for a counterculture punch. The Dukes of Hazzard should wear its ban with pride.
In a recent interview with THR, Dukes of Hazzard star John Schneider defended the series’ use of the flag. “Labeling anyone who has the flag a ‘racist’ seems unfair to those who are clearly ‘never meanin’ no harm,'” he said. His co-star Ben Jones has also come out in defense of the flag, saying it represents the “indomitable spirit of independence.”
Well, now it does.
Teeman adds:
Instead of asking or addressing the roots of violent racism in the South in 2015—far too difficult, far too intimidating—we focus on symbols. If we take a flag down, if we remove a TV show from the schedules, it shows we are doing something. It shows our hearts are in the right places…
Our culture today is entirely reactive, as if collectively we are 24/7 being tapped on our knees by little doctors’ hammers, primed to agree or disagree on whatever issue commands our attention in the moment.
It’s a good image. And if your knee doesn’t jerk upwards at the right moment, you are sick.
Is The Dukes of Hazzard really a racist-enough curio to ban? Is that what we think when we watch it? I watched the opening titles tonight, and a sequence of those bone-shaking stunts. It just seemed puerile, harmless.
Daniel P. Finney says the Confederate flag is “basically an American swastika”:
…after the leaders in South Carolina started having a meaningful discussion about the Confederate battle flag on government grounds, corporate America decided to have a meaningless one about what toys they sell.
Retailers including Target, Wal-Mart, eBay and Amazon have said they will no longer sell the Confederate flag or items with the flag on it. The General Lee, the car from the show, has such a flag emblazoned on the top of the vehicle.
Warner Bros., the company that produced the TV series and a couple movies based on the show, said it will no longer license “Dukes” products that feature the flag.
These companies don’t give a flip about racism or those victims in South Carolina. Many of them sell products made by child labor in China.
Amazon isn’t selling the Confederate flag anymore. OK, fine. They’re heroes.
But they sell bronze busts of Joseph Stalin, the Russian dictator who ordered the execution of at least 6 million of his own people. They sell his old banner, the Soviet flag, too.
They also sell English translations of “Mein Kampf,” German mass murderer Adolf Hitler’s racist manifesto.
And they offer T-shirts aplenty of convicted murderer Charles Manson. Also available: T-shirts of history’s most inappropriately lauded figure, Che Guevara. Alas, none size 6XLT.
And you know what? I accept all of it. This is a free country. If you want to spend your money on that junk and put it in your house, stick it on the back of your vehicle or walk around wearing it, that’s your right.
Now. Who wants to see the show?
Posted: 2nd, July 2015 | In: Reviews, TV & Radio | Comment
Britain’s Got Talent Shock: Matisse IS a dog
From the tip of his jet black hair to the apex of his breast-feeding-ready shirts, Simon Cowell is all about the authentic experience. It stands to reason that more than most he should be shocked and saddened to discover that Britain’s Got Talent winner Matisse is a “FAKE”.
Cowell has woken, licked his eyeballs and like us read that the shocking news that Matisse the dog is in actual fact a dog.
The revelation that Matisse was not Ant and Dec in a suit is repeated in the Daily Express.
Is this the final straw for Britain’s Got Talent viewers, who must now ask questions about the show? Is Amanda Holden really an eight-yeat-old child playing dress up? Will Alesha Dixon cement her role as Nation’s Sweetheat by punching a black toilet attendant in the face? Is David Walliams a product of CGI?
Posted: 2nd, June 2015 | In: TV & Radio | Comment
It Is What It Is: The Wire Supercut Is The Wire Supercut (Video)
The Wire is what it is. The show was what it was. The audience saw what it saw. And, well you get the idea…
Spotter: Slate
via Slate
Posted: 29th, May 2015 | In: TV & Radio | Comment
Benny Green will always be the first boy into Grange Hill (video)
RIP Terry Sue-Patt, dead at the too-young at 50. You played Benny Green in TV’s brilliant (well, in the early day it was) Grange Hill. You stood up to Gripper in 1978.
I’m not going to investigate Mr Sue-Pratt’s life. When an actor dies, there’s no need to pick over the bones of somebody most of us never knew and didn’t care about. Better to recall what made him famous, and what pleasure he gave us.
This is episode 1 of Grange Hill. It’s shamless nostalgia.
For anyone who was at school in those days, this was must-see TV. And, to say it again, it was brilliant:
Posted: 23rd, May 2015 | In: Celebrities, TV & Radio | Comment
London gets ready to cook at the Breaking Bad bar
London is getting bar ABQ, a venue set in a large RV named after the setting of the TV show Breaking Bad in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
For £30, 22 punters-a-time will not get to sample the blue meth, but”cook” two drinks.
Anyone unable to afford £15 drinks can pop along to Danny’s Burger RV (formerly Danny’s Burger Van) on the M62 betweeen 2am and 5am every weekday, where so long as you’ve got the cash, Danny’s pretty much got anything you want.
Posted: 22nd, May 2015 | In: Reviews, The Consumer, TV & Radio | Comment
Price is Right contestant in wheelchair wins a treadmill
Danielle Perez won a treadmill on The Price is Right. Perez is in a wheelchair. She also won a sauna:
Says Perez:
Posted: 6th, May 2015 | In: TV & Radio | Comment
Fascinating Repairmen: A Japanese TV show about mending things like a book and a grater
‘Fascinating Repairmen’ is a Japanese series featuring people giving a new lease of life to old objects. Some of these are much loved items, like the book in the video below. Others are just bit odd. And the more random the item, the more desperate, touching and intriguing the show gets.
Adoxoblog notes:
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Posted: 1st, May 2015 | In: TV & Radio | Comment
Another WTF Japanese game show – Spread Your Legs
Japanese game show of the day is the one where young women dressed in early 20th Century children’s fashions see who can spread their legs the widest. The winner is the contestant with the smile as wide as their gait:
Posted: 1st, May 2015 | In: Strange But True, TV & Radio | Comment
Star Wars hilarity: listen to Sheffield student Godfrey Elfwick troll the BBC
This is just brilliant. Listeners to the BBC World Service’s World Have Your Say show were introduced to Godfrey Elfwick, a student from Sheffield talking about the lastest Star Wars franchise, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Force Awakens. Godfrey says the character “Dark Raider” is “racial stereotype”.
Godfrey Elfwick is a work of parody. Having said on twitter that he’d never seen Star Wars, the BBC got in touch:
@GodfreyElfwick hi looking for guest who has never seen Star Wars 2 talk on radio – wd u be interested? DM or email angela.sheeran@bbc.co.uk — Angela Sheeran (@Sheerzee) April 17, 2015
Did Angela do any research? If she did, she must have missed Godfrey’s other tweets, like these:
Godfrey pricked the knowing liberal bubble with a skewer:
Brilliant. Just brilliant…
(PS: is he the only work of parody in that clip?)
Posted: 20th, April 2015 | In: Film, Key Posts, TV & Radio | Comment
That’s (not) Entertainment: how TV killed The Jam
That’s NOT Entertainment!
For some time now our happy island nation has, slowly but surely, been invaded by an uninvited and unwelcome breed.
This is nothing to do with immigration, asylum-seekers, refugees, the EU or any of the other supposed threats that exercise the newspapers at election time.
No, this is an insidious invasion that has targeted our TV screens, and in particular the advertisements, ‘trails’ and promotional montages that seem to take up as much time as the programmes they punctuate…
The invaders are instantly recognizable by their distinctive singing style: breathy, slightly flat, sometimes with an ‘emotive’ crack in the voice. Their songs are, variously: drippy, dippy, dull and dreary. They are invariably accompanied by willfully amateurish acoustic guitar. This formula is used to advertise everything from white goods to Barclays’ revolting ‘thank you’ to ‘real football fans’.
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Posted: 20th, April 2015 | In: Key Posts, The Consumer, TV & Radio | Comment
Watch two teenagers teach you how to smoke marijuana in 1997
These two numbnuts are a cautionary tale about what you sound like when stoned.
Spotter: Death And Taxes
Posted: 16th, April 2015 | In: TV & Radio | Comment
Watch Sing When It Happens: The Japanese Karaoke Game Show Where You Get A Hand Job Whilst Singing
‘Mistletoe and wine…”
Japan has given us some of the world’s weirdest games shows. But it’s excelled itself with Sing What Happens, the show where male contestants try to sing karaoke whilst a presenter gives them a hand job.
Will you fluff your lines as the fluffer works your metronome? Will you hit the high notes as well as the low ones?
Your turn is over when you ejaculate.
Cue Nirvana:
Spotter:Dangerous Minds
Posted: 16th, April 2015 | In: NSFW, Strange But True, TV & Radio | Comment
Pony power: highlights of Top Gear erotica fan fiction
Hold on your Top Gear hair it’s going to be bumpy ride as we look at Top Gear erotic fan fiction. Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May are away…
This is from a work entitled Clutch:
Vroom!
“At first he thought the taut muscles and slender hips belonged to a girl. But, aroused, he strode closer and recognised the unmistakable frame of his friend Jeremy.”
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Posted: 9th, April 2015 | In: Books, TV & Radio | Comment
RIP James Best: watch the best bits of Dukes Of Hazard’s Sheriff Rosco P Coltrane
tor James Best played Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane, a bumbling underling of Jefferson Davis “Boss” Hogg, Hazzard County’s corrupt county commissioner. Rosco’s dog Flash was played by a basset hound named Sand
Farewell, James Best, famous for playing Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane on the brilliant The Dukes of Hazzard. You and Flash made afternoon telly great.
Posted: 7th, April 2015 | In: TV & Radio | Comment
Peter Dinklage the sex symbol: Tyron Lannister is a busty Cosplay star
It takes a lot of strapping to turn Peter Dinklage into Games of Thrones’ hero Tyrion Lannister.
Peter, a buxom 32D, is rarely seen as nature intended to let his acting do the talking.
Spotter: Geekologie
Posted: 3rd, April 2015 | In: Celebrities, TV & Radio | Comment
Robert Durst: the race against death for a killer TV finale
Robert Durst has been charged with the murder of Susan Berman in 2000 Durst is suspected of murdering two more people: his first wife Kathie in 1982 and Morris Black.
USA Today reports that if found guilty of first-degree murder, Durst could face the death penalty.
Durst, a scion of one an America’s big property dynasty worth over $4bn, says he’s innocent. (His own weath is estiamted at $100m.)
But he seems to have confessed on camera in Andrew Jarecki’s HBO’s six-part documentary The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst.
On the final show, Durst is shown an envelope addressed to Miss Berman. The lettering is in Mr Durst’s own handwriting – and it looks very much like the block capital lettering on an anonymous letter sent to Beverly Hills police pointing to a “cadaver” in Miss Berman’s home. That body was Miss Berman. On both letters “Beverly” is misspelled “Beverley”.
Durst suggests that the writer of the first letter must have been Berman’s killer.
Has the TV nailed its star?
Durst starts burping. He then heads to the toilets. The microphone is still on as Robert Durst, 71, mutters: “What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course… There it is. You’re caught.”
Durst maintains his innocence.
GALVESTON, TX – NOVEMBER 10: Millionaire murder defendant Robert Durst (C) sits in State District Judge Susan Criss court with his attorney Dick DeGuerin (R) November 10, 2003 at the Galveston County Courthouse in Galveston, Texas. Durst is being charged for the murder and mutilation of his neighbor Morris Black. (Photo by James Nielsen/ Getty Images)
Durst might well be confident of securing an acquittal. As the Times notes:
After Miss Berman’s death, Mr Durst moved to Texas, where he lived in a boarding house masquerading as a mute woman. In 2003 he was put on trial for murder after dismembered body parts belonging to his elderly friend and neighbour, Morris Black, were found floating in Galveston Bay.
Mr Lewis told the jury that Mr Durst admitted to shooting Mr Black, and to using a paring knife, two saws and an axe to dismember his body before dumping the remains.
The lawyer argued however that the killing had been in self-defence and that his client had Asperger’s syndrome. Mr Durst was acquitted of murder.
He served three years for bond-jumping and evidence-tampering.
And here’s the other interesting thing. That allegedly incriminating audio was recorded in 2013. Why didn’t HBO tell the police back then? Well, they claim they didn’t notice until an intern was editing the footage for broadcast.
Mr Jarecki tells ABC News:
“I sat there in the edit room with my partners, and we just sort of shook our heads and it took a while to really understand the impact of it. It was so chilling to hear it.”
Which makes us wonder what would have happened had Durst died before the show aired? What if God had beaten HBO to the punchline? What if the jinx had struck again? What then for justice as entertainment?
Posted: 29th, March 2015 | In: Reviews, TV & Radio | Comment
The greatest ever TV caption: at home with the Young Conservative
Are you a Young Conservative? I said, “ARE YOU A YOUNG CONSERVATIVE?”
Still the greatest ever TV caption.
Spotter: @MichaelPDeacon
Posted: 14th, March 2015 | In: Politicians, TV & Radio | Comment
Madonna accuses BBC Radio 1’s 49-year-old music chief of ageism
Madonna accuses BBC Radio 1 of “discriminatory and unfair” behaviour for failing to play her latest song, Living For Love. The song failed to make the station’s playlist, which dictates its most-played songs. The BBC says this had led to “accusations of ageism from the 56-year-old’s fans”.
Radio 1 says songs are selected on “musical merit and their relevance to our young audience on a case-by-case basis”.
And who is the maven of what the young, go-ahead audience wants?
Radio 1’s 49-year-old head of music, George Ergatoudis, said the station had “moved on” from her music.
As David Hepworth tweets:
I was embarrassed about being 31 when I edited Smash Hits. I see the head of the Radio One playlist committee is 49!
Radio 1 reaches 12 million listeners a week, including 42% of all 15- to 24-year-olds (and their dads).
Posted: 12th, March 2015 | In: Music, TV & Radio | Comment
Vince Gilligan says: stop tossing pizzas on the Breaking Bad House
Fans of Breaking Bad like to re-enact the scene from the Caballo Sin Nombre episode that features Walter White flipping a pizza on to the roof of his house. That house is a home in New Mexico. And Vince Gilligan, the show’s creator, says the homeowner isn’t too chuffed with cold, rotting dead pizzas on her roof.
“There is nothing original or funny or cool about throwing a pizza on this lady’s roof. It’s just not funny, it’s been done before. You are not the first. We love our fans; I don’t love those fans. I don’t even consider them fans, I consider them jagoffs.”
Jagoffs.
Ah. You’ve just given them a group name, Vince. Now they’re a tribe. And the kind of witless loser who tossers a pizza onto a roof in a tribute to a TV show is the kind of fool who buys a ‘I’m A JAGOFF’ T-shirt to go with his Billy The Bass Fish and ability to recite entire passages from Spinal Tap.
Posted: 11th, March 2015 | In: TV & Radio | Comment
Listen to BBC presenter John Inverdale discuss rose-c**ed glasses: radio fail
ON BBC radio, John Inversdale is at the Cheltenham horse racing festival talking about his rose-c**ted glasses:
Posted: 11th, March 2015 | In: TV & Radio | Comment
Jeremy Clarkson suspended over fracas following hullabloo, brouhaha and imbroglio
A resonably priced fracas
Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson is on gardening leave. He’s been suspended by the BBC “following a fracas” with a producer. Yes, a fracas. Not a brouhaha. Not a kerfuffle. And most certainly neither an imbroglio nor a tawdry hullabloo.
Last year Clarkson was given a warning when he appeared to say “nigger” while filming. It’s something he denies.
The full BBC statement runs:
“Following a fracas with a BBC producer, Jeremy Clarkson has been suspended pending an investigation. No one else has been suspended.”
The BBC seem to realise that without Clarkson, Top Gear is an expensively priced lame duck. Richard Hammond and James May, Clarkson’s sidekicks, nay his abettors, are free to work but the show will not be broadcast this Sunday.
Taxi for three…
Posted: 10th, March 2015 | In: Celebrities, TV & Radio | Comment
Channel 4: in 100 days all Nazi Jews will support UKIP
The dire Channel 4 drama about the UK Independence Party, UKIP, the first 100 days, never did find someone to murder Nigel Farage, as Channel 4 once fantacised about the killing of George Bush. Maybe they’re saving that for the sequel?
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Posted: 19th, February 2015 | In: Politicians, Reviews, TV & Radio | Comment (1)
