On the Beat

Boing Boing posted a video by Victor Solomon of every swear word in every episode of the Sopranos, spliced together

The effect is fascinating - although, I would guess, not safe to play in a workplace...


the sopranos, uncensored. from victor solomon on Vimeo.

It seems that the turning of the year has brought a deep welling of spirituality to British television. (I originally wrote “tv”, but then I thought Transvestites for Christ might think I was slandering their spirituality…).

Channel4 has a new series on Christianity.

BBC4 has two series on Islam – one about Islam in Europe, the other about the undoubted influence of Islamic science on modern thinking and science. (One of the BBC4 series the Story of Maths last autumn also dealt with the importance of Islamic mathematicians.)

And then BBC2 simply cannot make up its mind – lead by a C of E vicar, it is going Around the World in Eighty Faiths.
( Read more... )

And whilst I'm linking to the BBC, I love this trailer for the City Season on BBC2.



It features this dragon.


And here is a bit of a rant: the trailer is for BBC2's new "City Season". There is nothing searchable on the Beeb's website that has trailer or anything about the City Season. If you search "city season" in the BBC website, you get hundreds of results for Man City, Birmingham City, Holby City, River City. They don't have a page for their City Season. So whilst I know one programme in it - well, one programme doesn't a season make. It is like they haven't thought about using their website properly. I mean really - I was trying to find out what they have on, and I can't!

I have just seen an ad for "Femme" by Hugo Boss. It featured music by the J&MC. It was (I think) the intro to "Just Like Honey".

This is completely bizarre. But I guess the Reid brothers need to eat.

I have just been watching the second episode of the BBC's story of the picture book, imaginatively called Picture Book. I didn't see the first episode, but this one I loved - starting with Alice in Wonderland, moving through the Wind in the Willows, Winnie the Pooh, the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, to Edward Ardizzone, Quintin Blake and Raymond Briggs, it was enchanting.

Somehow the BBC has decided not to create a proper website, or the BBC's search facility is so poor that I can't find it. On the other hand, the first episode is available on iplayer for another couple of weeks.

And I am about to start looking through some boxes of my own to see if I can find the sketch Blake drew for me thirty years ago. And I might find my autograph book, too...

Last night's edition of the BBC1 arts show Imagine was called Let There Be Light; it dealt with artists whose medium is light, and featured work by Anthony McCall, whose exhibition in the Serpentine Gallery I raved about and James Turrell, who I also raved about, repeatedly.

I loved this show: I think it was made for me. Turrell featured extensively. I wanted to go to Roden Crater for a long time; now, I really, really want to go there. I think I might try to tie in a visit to Houston, too.

I can't recommend this show enough. You can watch it on iPlayer. Watch it. Get your tv-phobic hedgehogs to watch it. It is beautiful.

Edit: one of the artists discussed in the programme is United Visual Artists (UVA). I've been looking at their website. I particularly like this installation at the V&A - look at the video and this dance at Tate Modern. Beautiful.

One of the things I have always liked about Spooks is their willingness to get rid of the lead characters.

But I never saw that one coming!

After watching Strictly Come Dancing, I caught up with a tv programme I recorded a ten days ago, about building a stream locomotive. From scratch.

I like steam trains. I'm not obsessive or anything. But I have been watching a lot of BBC4's recent (and ongoing) series of programmes about steam trains.

Tonight I watched Absolutely Chuffed¹, about a group of men who decided to build an A1 class locomotive. It took them eighteen years or so, and three million pounds.

And it made a really good tv programme. There was a lot of the Titfield Thunderbolt about the enterprise: a certain professional-amateurishness and the fact that everyone kept telling them that it would never work.

It did; and I wish I had been there.


¹Although the programme is still on iPlayer, I have no idea how long it may stay there, since usually programmes only stay for a week - and it is over seven days since this was shown...

For many, many years, I have played drums; and I often recognise pieces music by their rhythms.

I was sitting watching Strictly Come Dancing this evening. The last couple were Jodie Kidd and Ian Waite. They were dancing a paso doble.

The music started, with just a drum beat; and I thought, that's sounds like Blur's Song 2. Which was absurd, this being a ballroom dancing programme and that being a raucous rock song.

But I was wrong, and right: it was Song 2, played (in the same rhythm!) by the BBC dance band.

Kidd was excellent, by the way - the dance worked really well with the song.

But it was a little surreal. And I was shocked to recognise the music from the first few beats.

There has been a long series of programmes on BBC4 about British railways; I have seen a few of them.

Tonight, there was a fascinating programme about the British Transport Film unit – wonderful, artful propaganda – brilliant films; a film by BTF about the Elizabethan, a non-stop express between London Kings Cross and Edinburgh Waverley – yes, non-stop, which you don’t get now (still, it is a couple of hours quicker today) – a lovely film, although the rhyming script was irritating – but they took some lovely footage, especially of the cliffs between Berwick and Waverley (the houses are still there!); and now, an old Michael Palin film, travelling from Euston to Kyle of Lochalsh – a very young Michael Palin.

It almost makes me feel nostalgic…

Although the footage of men checking the rails before the Elizabethan sped through fifty years ago seemed a little tasteless given that the report into last year's train crash in Cumbria accused train companies of not doing this now.

(These programmes are on over the next few days, as well, at obscure times of night. I'd have posted a link to the series, which as been running for a couple of weeks, but the BBC seem not to have a web page for it.)