Just finished a series called “ Collision “ Really enjoyed it, about a crash involving several cars and a van. Each one had a different story to tell, well worth a watch. It’s on tvx.
There is a new series of Frasier coming on Paramount+. Rodney the Plonker is in it, with other British actors. It is set in Boston.
Yes, but no bar this time. The premise is he is going to live with his son who is a fire-fighter in Boston. "Frasier Crane" was in Cheers, Wings and Frasier.
I may be a bit late to the party but has anyone seen “ Stranger things,” I’ve just watched 4 episodes one after another of season 1 and I’ve gotta say it, for me it’s brilliant. Right up my street sci fi, when it first came out I thought it would be kids crap but how wrong I was. Honestly I’ve had to stop myself from sitting here and bing watching it until the early hours lol, I’m hooked but also knackered so a few hours Kip a city match and it’s back to the series lol. Nite nite said zebadee!!!!
The Beckhams, not as bad as I thought it might be, some things I didn't know, still a few cringe moments,
I'm a 50-odd year old man, who can do high-brow, but for me season 2 of Stranger Things is the best telly series I have ever seen. I loved season 1 too, and feared that it would inevitably lose its way if it had more money chucked at it, but it just got better in pretty much every way. Admittedly season 3 then did precisely that, but even if it's not quite brilliant it's still good and season 4 turned it back around a bit. You're in for quite a ride
Don’t know if you mean the Long Shadow, which is a series about the Yorkshire Ripper murders? Apologies if not, but I’m going to comment as if you did. I was a young teenager when the Yorkshire Ripper was on his killing spree, and so I always had a morbid fascination with the story. Later, my student days were spent in and around his patch, so interested from that angle too ( I learnt one of the victims was actually dumped at the end of the little street were our digs were). I have read books and watched most documentaries on the subject. However, nothing approached from this angle. I read the producers were conscious that they wanted to be respectful towards the victims and their families. They have achieved that. Each murder is portrayed from the life of the victim, showing their struggles during a fairly desperate period. It illustrates the absolute contempt the police had for ‘common prostitutes’ (that was the actual legal term) and ‘their ilk’. With the current investigations within the met and nationwide, it had me questioning whether we have actually progressed (other than the use of language). I have fully enjoyed the series, though that could be due to my morbid interest.
I watched the first episode but never got into it so stopped there. Maybe I’ll give it a second go again some time
Dennis it’s absolutely brilliant mate, for me it’s one of those series where you just can’t stop watching and say to yourself “ just another episode and I’ll get off to bed “ trouble is outside morning light arrives lol.
It is actually another series that only has 4 episodes and from what my mrs has told me isn’t in the same ball park as “ long shadow “ she absolutely loves that one and has been bugging me to watch it. As I’m writing this she’s in my ear telling me about the story and how it’s put together lol. I am going to watch it but not until after finishing “ stranger things “ Karen my mrs has just read what you put and said how interesting, she was about 10/12 at the time and can remember it vividly. I was 16 and remember lasses in hull around town on a night were always talking about it and seemed to go in small gangs during that period. Was a lot harder to get them to come home with you lol.
Winona rider is just brilliant in “ Stranger things “ as are all the cast but for me in this first 4 episodes she really stood out…please don’t anyone spoil it by telling me any story lines of future episodes lol
This is going to be a harrowing watch. Disgusting that the bbc get off lightly. Read mark lawsons meeting with savile highlighted in the text ****ing disgrace The Reckoning first look – this Jimmy Savile drama contains some of TV’s most shocking scenes Steve Coogan’s take on the serial sex offender is astonishingly spooky. But questions remain as to whether it should have been made – and whether the BBC has given itself too easy a ride Mark Lawson please log in to view this image There were no cameraphones when Margaret Thatcher spent Christmas Day at Chequers with Jimmy Savile in the 1980s. But the BBC’s controversial and much anticipated Savile drama The Reckoning serves as a sort of historical Instagram, bringing vivid and intimate pictures from the kitchen and halls of the prime ministerial retreat. With Steve Coogan’s cunningly unctuous Savile and Fenella Woolgar’s icily strategic Thatcher matching each other for full body-capture acting, these superb scenes in the third of the four hour-long episodes illustrate how the prime minister so fell for Savile that she placed a serial sex offender in charge of Broadmoor psychiatric hospital. Bookended by reality interviews with four Savile survivors (Darien, Susan, Sam and Kevin), the four episodes cover the years from 1962 to 2011, requiring the 57-year-old Coogan to age down 21 years and up 27 to portray Savile from northern dancehall DJ to corpse. Wigs, latex and putty allow Coogan to spookily reproduce Savile at six stages of depravity, but it is the actor’s ear that astonishes, musically notating the differences between on-air and off-air speech and their thickening with age, rage and, eventually, booze. He also reproduces, with physiological accuracy rather than caricature, the curious hopping-loping walk and bent-double pounce to kiss a woman’s hand, arm and wherever else he could. The performance deserves multiple awards, though Coogan may not get them as jurors may balk at being seen to give an award “to” Savile. Savile’s Chequers seduction of the country’s top politician (who eventually gave him the knighthood he craved) serves as a broader metaphor for how the platinum-haired Yorkshireman groomed and used a prince (now king), a pope (who granted Savile a separate Vatican knighthood), BBC managers (who signed him up to Top of the Pops and Jim’ll Fix It) and NHS bosses, who allowed him the run of their wards to indulge in *****philia and morgues for necrophilia. The hint of the latter is inevitably one of the bleakest and most startling scenes in TV drama, but it is handled with visual decorum, as are the sexual assaults. Director Sandra Goldbacher and producer Clare Shepherd never allow the camera to be a voyeur: what Savile has done to the young victims is implied by shocked or tearful faces. It helps that writer Neil McKay and executive producer Jeff Pope are TV’s supreme court of criminal judgment, having previously brought Peter Sutcliffe, Fred West, Myra Hindley and Ian Brady to their dock. Some think the drama should never have been made at all. Others think the BBC, which funded Savile’s rise and failed to prevent him offending, should not have been the ones to make it. Technically, The Reckoning is an independent production by ITV Studios, with McKay and Pope denying any censorship. It fulfils their aim to show Savile from the inside, with particular emphasis on his warped Catholicism, and how powerful people dupe institutions. The Reckoning is impeccable as far as it goes, but its reception will be defined by debate over those parameters. In order, the institutions most discomfited by the drama will be the NHS, the Thatcherite Conservative party and the Roman Catholic church: two sexual assaults take place in a vestry during mass to a soundtrack of eucharistic prayers. In contrast, the BBC seems to get a less severe reckoning. Managers are shown trying to bring Savile to account in the 60s and 70s, but are thwarted by his lies and lawyers. Those investigations did take place but their space and power within the scripts may leave the impression that the BBC was more rigorous than many suspect. Indulgence of the presenter is effectively blamed on the ratings greed of Sir Bill Cotton, the BBC boss who, perhaps conveniently, has been dead longer than Savile. In a scene at the final Top of the Pops recording in 2006, the arc of the drama requires Savile to be a broken and bitter old man, furious at being a BBC bit-player. However, the review led by Dame Janet Smith into the BBC and Savile describes a sexual assault carried out by the then 79-year-old presenter on an employee during rehearsals (I reported that incident to the BBC in 2006), while a separate Scotland Yard investigation revealed a sexual assault on a child during the recording. The drama clearly had to choose which moments to show, but the omission of these incidents could suggest that Savile’s BBC activities were very far in the past. After the press screening, McKay and Pope were questioned on that historical emphasis and the absence from the dramatisation of the cancelled Newsnight investigation into Savile in 2011 that led inadvertently to the exposure of his crimes by ITV. They replied that those storylines would be a “whole separate drama”. Charlotte Moore, BBC director of content, should immediately commission it from Pope and McKay so that there can be a reckoning for those involved in Savile’s latter era at the BBC, some of whom are still receiving pay and pensions from the licence payer. The Reckoning will air on BBC One at 9pm on 9 October; all episodes will be on BBC iPlayer.
I hesitate to say I enjoyed it, but I certainly thought it was well done while I was watching it. But then I read an article from a women’s support charity that said that despite how sympathetically it had portrayed some of the victims, and how badly the police had been painted it had still massively underplayed just how bad they were. It sounds from Chazz’s article that the same might apply in some ways to the Saville drama. I guess when some of the dramatis personae are still alive and able to sue for defamation they err on the side of caution.
Just binged on the "Long Shadow" series over the last week. Well done show and as you say it's portrayal of the treatment of ladies of the street by the police was telling. If you're referring to the Leeds University area when you mention you student days, another connection to the same area is the serial killer Harold Shipman. He was studying medicine at Leeds when a school friend of mine was also doing his medical degree. I was also at Leeds at the same time so like yourself I was morbidly surprised when my pal told me 10 years ago or so about his infamous classmate ! You never know what your neighbour might turn out to be ! Shudder the thought.
I lived in Chapeltown first couple of terms, which was an experience. My sister lived in Harehills. I didn’t know that about Shipman. What year will that have been?
I was there between summer '65 -> summer '72, so likely Shipman was there '66 -> '70 or '71. Headingly cricket/rugby ground area was our pub stomping ground. Had a great time with all the music gigs at the Union.
