BBC Original British Drama

[Captain Shaw]

Well The Hour is finished. I thought it was a fantastic show. Well worth checking out while it's still on iPlayer for anyone who missed it.

I enjoyed it but I felt Bell could have been a stronger character.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

Well The Hour is finished. I thought it was a fantastic show. Well worth checking out while it's still on iPlayer for anyone who missed it.

I enjoyed it but I felt Bell could have been a stronger character.

How so? I guess she was defined by Freddie and Hector to a certain extent but she stood up for what she believed in, and pushed things herself from time to time.

 

[Captain Shaw]

Well The Hour is finished. I thought it was a fantastic show. Well worth checking out while it's still on iPlayer for anyone who missed it.

I enjoyed it but I felt Bell could have been a stronger character.

How so? I guess she was defined by Freddie and Hector to a certain extent but she stood up for what she believed in, and pushed things herself from time to time.

Putting her career on line just for a quick shag and how she let Freddie run lose.
She reminded me a bit of Cuddy from House.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

I enjoyed it but I felt Bell could have been a stronger character.

How so? I guess she was defined by Freddie and Hector to a certain extent but she stood up for what she believed in, and pushed things herself from time to time.

Putting her career on line just for a quick shag and how she let Freddie run lose.
She reminded me a bit of Cuddy from House.

Plenty of people risk their careers for a shag, and I think most of the time she agreed with Freddie and that's why she let him get away with it.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

Page Eight is on tomorrow at 9 on BBC Two.

Spy drama set in London and Cambridge. Johnny Worricker is a long-serving MI5 officer. His boss and best friend Benedict Baron dies suddenly, leaving behind him an inexplicable file, threatening the stability of the organisation. Meanwhile, a seemingly chance encounter with Johnny's striking next-door neighbour and political activist Nancy Pierpan seems too good to be true. Johnny is forced to walk out of his job, and then out of his identity to find out the truth.

 

[Captain Shaw]

The hour will be getting a second series.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/aug/27/bbc2-the-hour-second-series

 

[Bob The Skutter]

Yep, I read that yesterday. Very glad to hear it. I really enjoyed the first series.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

BBC One have a new show reel of upcoming shows from the Edinburgh international TV festival...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/aboutthebbc/2011/08/bbc-one-reflecting-the-nation.shtml

More information on some of the shows mentioned in the blog...

The Village

Speaking today at Edinburgh Television Festival, BBC One Controller, Danny Cohen announced The Village, an epic and emotional story of 20th century Britain seen through the life and times of one Derbyshire village.
One man, Bert Middleton, lives across the entire hundred years. His life, from boyhood to extreme old age, provides the narrative backbone. His last great act of remembering is our way in to an examination of who we are and why.
Written by award-winning writer Peter Moffat, over the course of the series the camera never leaves the village. Everything – great political events, upheavals in national identity, war and peace, ways of working, ways of being, how we lived, how we looked, how we died, what we ate, rules kept and rebellions made, sex, religion, class, the shaping of modern memory – refracted through the lives of the villagers and the village.
Peter Moffat says: "I'm interested in the very big and the very small. I wanted to know what it felt like to watch your son leave for war in 1914 and see the look in his eyes when he came home and then watch him leave again, as well as how to wash his uniform and what the postcards he sent home from France actually looked like; to know what it was to die from overwork and undernourishment in the Twenties, as well as how to retrieve a smoked ham from up a chimney.
"I wanted to be as rigorous as possible in telling these wonderful stories as lived experience and not construct them from received wisdoms and historical myth. I was constantly surprised by how things were not as I thought they were – and surprise always feels like a healthy starting point for any story."

I believe that was announced, then dropped a while ago, seems to have been picked up again.

What's the Story

Why would any self-respecting party-goer want to take a microwave to the party? Is it possible to buy a Nissan Micra for 40 quid? These are amongst the burning questions which keep Kevin Bridges awake at night, and he's coming to BBC One next year with his own comedy and entertainment series to try and answer them.
In What's The Story? (w/t), (6x30min), the 24-year-old, critically-acclaimed Scottish stand-up sets out to discover the reality behind some of his stellar on-stage material, by looking at his life, his family and friends, his upbringing in the Scottish town of Clydebank, and the world he sees around him.
What's The Story? will not only go behind the gags but also get closer to the man, who, at only 24, is already becoming a household name. We'll see how the minutiae of everyday life to which we hardly give a second thought, has been the ammunition that Kevin has used for his killer routines.

Comedy Pilots

In a bid to up the supply rate of comedy scripts to the channel, Cohen, alongside Cheryl Taylor, Controller Comedy Commissioning, is committing to a new run of transmittable pilots for BBC One – with the focus firmly on unearthing new studio-based sitcoms.
Cohen says: "Comedy in all its forms is incredibly important for BBC One but we don't get enough great sitcom scripts coming through – so I'm delighted to be announcing this initiative today. By committing to a group of tx pilots, we hope to help unearth a new generation of national comic gems. At BBC Three in Drama, this is how we found our way to Being Human, and I want to take a similar kind of experimental risk on BBC One."
Cheryl Taylor added: "The BBC's commitment to laugh-out-loud comedy is as strong as ever and we hope that this dedicated pilot initiative will galvanise writers to think about more inventive, likeable and enduring characters for our mainstream channel. We are very proud to have shows like Mrs Brown's Boys, In With The Flynns and Outnumbered on BBC One, but there is certainly room for more."

Fight For Life

Fight For Life will see live event broadcasts from around the world, following some of the planet's most incredible animals going through their most critical and vulnerable periods – the first few days and weeks of their newborn's lives. Fight For Life will follow animals including black bears and their tiny cubs in Minnesota, through to baby Ring Tailed lemurs in Madagascar and cheetahs cubs in the Masai Mara.
Executive producer Tim Scoones says: "With its global reach and an A-list cast of animals, Fight For Life will be the most editorially, technically and logistically ambitious live wildlife event we've ever undertaken."

 

[Servo]

I'm looking forward to Page Eight on BBC2 tonight.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

^Definitely, got that set to record. Only knew it was on cos I happened to be looking at the listings, otherwise I'd have missed it.

Oh looks like BBC Three have got a video and some commissions too...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/aboutthebbc/2011/08/bbc-three-gripping-relevant-and-entertaining.shtml

 

[DimesDan]

I'm looking forward to Page Eight on BBC2 tonight.

What did you think of it?

Me and the missus watched it, she enjoyed it more than me. Although good, it felt to me like a wish-fullfillment exercise by the writer and their fantasy of bringing down the government and in particular the PM over the sorry mess of the last decade or so when it comes to global/The UKs security.

It was a good ending though and had a few highlights.

 

[Deckerd]

I thought it was absolutely excellent, as did my OH. The consensus at work was the same. Good story, good script, stellar cast. There was a lot of wistfulness about how the Beeb couldn't afford that cast for a series.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

Have to get it watched later then. BBC Two really has upped its game in the drama department this year. They were saying next year will be even better, I'll believe it when I see it.

 

[Servo]

I'm looking forward to Page Eight on BBC2 tonight.

What did you think of it?

I''l have to let you know after I've caught it on iPlayer later. I got dragged out to the pub last night, so I ended up missing it.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

I'm looking forward to Page Eight on BBC2 tonight.

What did you think of it?

I''l have to let you know after I've caught it on iPlayer later. I got dragged out to the pub last night, so I ended up missing it.

Bet you fought hard against it, didn't you?

 

[Deckerd]

His arm's still sore from all that twisting.

 

[Servo]

Bet you fought hard against it, didn't you?

Kicking and screaming mate.

His arm's still sore from all that twisting.

I could barely lift my pint.


Just finished watching Page Eight. Very good stuff. Top notch script with some great dialogue, and a really strong cast all came together to deliver a compelling piece of drama. Nice work BBC.

Also, Rachel Weisz is still hot, and I laughed at the little dig at Nick Clegg.

 

[Starkers]

I thought Page 8 was very good, nothing stunningly original, but well handled, and not quite as sanctamonious as it could have been. At the end of the day I liked that Nighy's character was more annoyed that the PM had not disclosed the information generated by torture, than by the torture itself. Not that I have any love for what the Americans did, but I think making the character some kind of bleeding heart liberal would have felt completely fake. I like as well that he didn't bring the govt down, he settled for giving Weisz's character closure.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

Yeah, I enjoyed it, too. Interesting different take on the secret services, not so much action, bang, boom, more quiet intelligence. I liked that. Could get used to more stuff like that being shown.

 

[Servo]

Yeah, I enjoyed it, too. Interesting different take on the secret services, not so much action, bang, boom, more quiet intelligence. I liked that. Could get used to more stuff like that being shown.

Yeah, same here. I wouldn't mind seeing a Johnny Worricker series, or at least another one or two feature length stories like this one. Makes a change from gadgets and gunfire.