A co-worker has turned me onto some good BBC dramas. The first was The Fall with Gillian Anderson, which was excellent. Now watching Luther, which is really good too. Very dark and demented at times, but still has that British quality which is violence, gore, and sex that is necessary to the stroyline, not gratituitous and excessive like in American shows like Dexter and the horrible Ray Donovan. the pilot of Luther was the best pilot I've seen since Breaking Bad.
They had a really good show a couple years ago, called Intruders. I kept hoping they'd do a second series but I don't think they have.
Of course, Orphan Black is awesome, and we're gearing up for the new season shortly, though I'm not sure if that's technically a "BBC show" so much as a "BBC America show", if you understand the difference.
Not BBC, as such, but there was a good British sci-fi show a few years ago, called Primeval. It was about portholes opening in various places on Earth, linking the present to both the distant past and the future, allowing dinosaurs (and "future predators") to enter into the present. I liked that one a lot, though we never got to see the last series Stateside, I think, because BBC America shifted away from showing non-BBC content.
?! I see there are five series of Primeval. I think we only saw series 1-3 and thought that's all they made.Originally Posted by GuitarGeek
Hinterlands is awesome, my wife and I both rave about the first season. I understand that a new season is now available on Netflix.
I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down.'- Bob Newhart
Series four was definitely shown Stateside, that's the one where Star Trek escapee Alexander Siddig played an evil corporate tycoon who ended up picking up the funding for the project.
Actually, reading the plot synopsis on Wiki, I think I must have seen series five as well, because I recognize the stuff they're describing there. So maybe I was mistaken when I said series five never aired here.
There was a Canadian made spin off, Primeval: New World, but i never saw that either.
Last edited by GuitarGeek; 04-14-2016 at 09:16 PM.
If you want to watch a hysterical series, watch Coupling. I laughed my ass off at that show more than any other.
The US tried to do it here and it was about the worst thing I've ever seen, so make sure you don't cross them.
JG
"MARKLAR!"
Coupling is hilarious, the gigaloop episode is so funny. Living in the uk I maybe take the BBC for granted, I also watch a lot of US shows though I find that they go on too long in many cases. LOst is the obvious example but shows which I used to really enjoy like blacklist I now find a bit of a chore. On BBC I'm currently enjoying in the line of duty, an excellent police thriller based around corruption (internal affairs) there is a narrative arc running through the 3 series and there are lots of cliffhangers.
hinterland is great, I live an hour or 2 away from where it is filmed so i recognise a lot of the scenery and have spent many nights out in Aberystwyth which is the town where most of the 'urban' scenes are shot. I tend to watch it on the Welsh language channel with English subtitles.
As an American, I can assure you, it's a rare American TV producer who has the sense to pull the plug on a popular show before it jumps the shark. Most shows, they carry it on too long, even when important actors die or quit the show, they just replace them in one fashion or another, and carry on (eg Happy Days, Law And Order, etc). If there were children on the show on the original show and they start to grow up, they simply bring in more kids (eg The Cosby Show, Family Ties, Full House, etc). Sometimes they may change the show's setting (like on Laverne And Shirley, when they moved out to Hollywood), or drag a war that really only last three years in real life out for close to a decade (as on MASH, which was then followed by the poorly received peacetime spinoff After MASH). Most American TV executives don't know how to not overstay their welcome, unless the show gets axed due to poor ratings. Hell, some of the best shows were the ones that only lasted a season or two, the got cancelled, because they weren't given the chance to go south (Max Headroom, Sledge Hammer and Police Squad all come to mind).
In the US the concept of there only being 10-12 episodes of a highly successful seems downright bizarre, but I hear it happens all the time in the UK. I remember the rumors I heard about why there were only 12 episodes of The Young Ones, but the truth was that happens all the time. It kinda stinks there's only 12 episodes of that show (or many others), but which is worse? Only 12 episodes of The Young Ones, or the Radar-less MASH episodes?!
Also, I get the impression that in the UK, they go one series at a time (we say season in the US, but in the UK I've always seen the word "series" used for each cycle of a show). They don't sign contracts where the producers and cast are tied to this one show for four years running (ratings permitting). If an actor doesn't like their role on a British show, they just have to finish the 6-12 episodes they've agreed to be in this year, then just say no if/when they're asked to reprise the role the following year (or you do like Louise Jamieson did on Doctor Who, she agreed to only continue on in the role if they did away with the contact lens they made her rare to artificially change her eye color, so the first story of the next series, they actually wrote in a couple throwaway lines to explain why Leela's eye color changed).
Part of the problem with US TV is that for a long time you needed 100 episodes to hit syndication. So shows running on steam would keep going because it would mean an extended payday for the producers. BBC shows never had that problem. Well that and the fact that they never aspired to covering an entire fall-spring TV season of twenty or more episodes.
I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down.'- Bob Newhart
I've always wondered exactly when that started, because when I was growing up there were a lot of shows in syndication that most definitely did not have 100 episodes. Original Star Trek had something like 75 episodes, for instance. The Honeymooners only had 39 episodes. And I'm sure there were others, so that 100 episodes thing must have started sometime in the 80's or 90's.
But yeah, I remember watching one of those True Hollywood Story shows on some 90's era sitcom, and they were talking about how the show's star fell off the wagon 3/4's of the way through the show's original network run, and became impossible to work with. BUT, the show was still popular enough that the network didn't drop the hammer on it, and I guess they only had to finish one more season to make 100 episodes (and apparently to fulfill the contract they had with the network), and once they wrapped the season, the producers pulled the plug because nobody could stand working with the star anymore.
Well that and the fact that they never aspired to covering an entire fall-spring TV season of twenty or more episodes.[/QUOTE]
Well, part of that was because for the longest time, they didn't really do reruns in the UK. There were the occasional rerun here or there, and I know occasionally a given Doctor Who serial might be edited into a 90 minute "movie" and shown by the BBC, but by and large, you had one chance to see each episode of a given show and that was it. If you missed it when it went out, you were TSOL.
That was because there were certainly union regulations in place that limited rebroadcasts. I believe on one of the Doctor Who DVD's it's mentioned that a show could only be shown two or three times, and only only with in a certain amount of time (like five years, maybe less) following the original transmission. I'm guessing there must have been a contingency within the industry that rerun saturation might lead to less new shows being produced. After all, if you're a television network (especially that's paid for by tax dollars), if there's no regulation in place, are you going to spend more money on new shows, or are you just going to re-air popular favorites that already exist?
Like I said, that's just a theory on my part, but given some of the dren I've heard in other areas (eg Louis and Bebe Barron being blackballed in Hollywood after Forbidden Planet because the industry feared "electronic music" would "put the orchestra out of work (there's actually an urban legend that the Columbia-Princeton music department convinced RCA to pay for the Mark II synthesizer by telling them they'd never have to pay for an orchestra again, though I think that's now deemed apocrypha). And to be honest, given the fact that the BBC always had a "that'll do, it's just a kid's show" attitude toward Doctor Who (regardless of how popular it was during it's original run), it actually sounds exactly like something they probably would have done if they could have.
(And don't get me started on how both the BBC and ITV erased so many of their classic TV series)
Again, I'm guessing that might be to keep everyone continuously employed. You did 6-12 episodes of one series, then put it on hiatus while you air a different show for the following 6-12 weeks, etc. That, coupled with many series having relatively short runs (at least in comparison to their US runs) insured a given show wouldn't overstay it's welcome.
I was watching the Graham Norton show one night, and they had an actor from a British TV show (I forget which one) and an actor from an American show (again, I forget who). The American actor was bragging about how his show had just aired it's 100th episode or whatever. The British actor says, "God, we'd have to be on for 20 years for us to do 100 episodes!".
The Night Manager with Tom Hiddleston is a great show that's not long finished on BBC. That was a mini-series with 6 episodes but they are already speculating whether another series will be released at some point. It looks likely that they'll probably leave it as is from what Hiddleston and everyone else is saying and although I enjoyed it, I'm happy to accept that it was a one-off mini-series.
It is sad when you think of the great comedies like Faulty Towers where there was only ever about 12 episodes made. They had such a good thing going and surely could have made a load more great episodes. That's what makes them so special though, the one's they did make are timeless and you'll never get bored of watching them. Something to be said for ending on a high.
Recent-ish and current British series that I have enjoyed/am enjoying.
The Village
Catastrophe
Shetland
Peaky Blinders (series 3 currently being made)
Endeavour
Again, I reiterate my point that when you think about American shows that overstayed their welcome, it's kinda nice to have someone like John Cleese to walk away from a show like Fawlty Towers, before it went sideways. Or maybe the Beeb just didn't offer him a second series.
I read once that ITV wanted Patrick McGoohan to do a second The Prisoner series. Apparently, they kept making him offers for several years after the original series ended, but he always refused to do more.
Actually, there was a second series. The first six episodes were filmed in 1975 and the other six in 1979. In the meantime, Cleese and Connie Booth had divorced, but still managed to write and perform together.
Interviewer of reprobate ne'er-do-well musicians of the long-haired rock n' roll persuasion at: www.velvetthunder.co.uk and former scribe at Classic Rock Society. Only vaguely aware of anything other than music.
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The last episode 'Basil The Rat' was shot and broadcast some time later than the rest, due to a BBC strike postponing the original production.
Agreed. It's why I won't watch any of those US 'box set series'- too much of a commitment.
Did you see the movie "Red Eye?" Cillian Murphy is very good in that. I've hyped the movie on the movies thread, because IMO it really is a good suspense film.Little late to the game here, but I am at present halfway through Season 2 of my Peaky Blinders bingewatch. Pleasantly surprised with how much I am enjoying Cillian Murphy's performance as Tommy Shelby here. His prior film roles have historically left me "meh" (case in point, as Scarecrow in the Nolan Batman franchise). Helen McCrory as Polly Shelby-Gray is bad-ass.
Any other PB watchers here?
That's one show where I really wish there were more episodes. That and Mr. Bean. As long as they were good, of course.
I'm *familiar* with Red Eye, IIRC this was out during that spate of airline-related suspense films - Jodie Foster, Liam Neeson, et al and the preview I saw of it in the theaters at the time, it just looked to me like Murphy was riffing off his batshit crazy Scarecrow character.... *shrug* if it's streaming on Netflix or AmPri I suppose it wouldn't hurt to kill 90 minutes to check it out...
-=Will you stand by me against the cold night, or are you afraid of the ice?=-
Probably the same strike the 86'ed the production of the Doctor Who Shada serial. Apparently, British television and "industrial action" went hand in hand back in the 70's. Or at least, that's the way the make it sound on the Doctor Who DVD audio commentaries. Production was perpetually in danger of grinding to a halt over a "labor dispute".
I just checked - Red Eye and Batman Begins both came out in 2005. Red Eye was directed by Wes Craven - it's probably his best movie as far as production values, cast, polish. I really enjoyed it - a suspense movie that avoids a lot of the cliches of suspense movies. Some good surprises. Wow - I just watched the preview and there are way too many spoilers in there. Avoid it if you can.I'm *familiar* with Red Eye, IIRC this was out during that spate of airline-related suspense films - Jodie Foster, Liam Neeson, et al and the preview I saw of it in the theaters at the time, it just looked to me like Murphy was riffing off his batshit crazy Scarecrow character.... *shrug* if it's streaming on Netflix or AmPri I suppose it wouldn't hurt to kill 90 minutes to check it out...
Last edited by JKL2000; 05-03-2016 at 08:47 AM.
Not available on Netflix streaming
-=Will you stand by me against the cold night, or are you afraid of the ice?=-
Basil the Rat may be the funniest thing ever done on television.
I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down.'- Bob Newhart
IIRC, Cleese and Booth decided that they didn't have enough fresh ideas and they'd only be repeating themselves too much with a third series. I wish there'd been more too, but as mentioned above, it's nice (and all too rare) when a crew's willing to bow out at the right time. The example of Warty Towels was the reason Ricky Gervais and Steven Merchant drew the line at two years with The Office.
Considering how far from grace 'Allo 'Allo fell in the end, for example, I for one am happier with two years of solid classics.
I do remember feeling kind of sad as it drew to a close the first time I watched, as that was it. I think the whole series is the funniest thing I've ever seen. A lesser discussed one which always kills me is 'The Wedding Party'- Cleese's frantic running around, facial contortions and cringe-inducing misunderstandings are brilliant to watch.
Then again, look at a show like Only Fools And Horse to see how bringing it back is not always a good idea. The last three 'comeback' episodes of that are, IMHO, very poor indeed.
WOw, there's a show I haven't seen in ages.
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