Bonekickers

Bonekickers is a new BBC series that, judging from the previews, is the sort that as a writer I'd run down a side street to avoid. Maybe it has something to do with its self-consciously ethnic and gender balanced cast, painfully cliched "feisty" female lead and publicity stills that uses the dreaded Pose™ that says "We think we're tough and edgy with that indefinable rock-star vibe, though nobody over the age of 15 who doesn't live in their mother's cellar will agree." It looks predictably awful in that hideous trendy way that fills in for creativity these days and I'd probably put it with Torchwood, Robin Hood, and Hex in the Do Not Watch Unless Threatened By Lord Olivier With A Pair Of Dental Pliers file if it weren't for the fact that it is about a load of archaeologists.

This would have been worth a laugh because as a retired archaeologist I've very low expectations about how my field is portrayed in popular culture as a glamorous sort of licensed tomb-robbing and treasure hunting rather than the meticulous, often boring enterprise that it really is. I'm even willing to forgive that the average archaeologist is never shown in truth as a chronically skint bastard forever on the lookout for a decent job. True, according to the reviews, one character is shown as a hard drinker, but the fantasy lies in it being one character.

But I'll let that pass. Let them forever be Indiana Jones chasing after the Holy Grail or the True Cross or the Lost Bus Ticket and more power to them. There are worse ways for a profession to be portrayed (*cough* Casualty *cough*).

Even the BBC is willing to admit this by running an article that points out the... "heightened" nature of the programme. Except they leave one tiny detail out.

You'll notice that I said that it "would have been" worth a laugh. That was before I noticed the buzz on the Internet about the premiere episode that tried to be "contemporary" by having as the villains a load of crazed, white Christian fundamentalists who want to drive all other religions out of Britain and start off their reign of terror by decapitating a peace-loving Muslim.

Marvelous. One moment I'm anticipating a nice MST3K giggle and the next I'm confronted by the BBC using the licence fee to produce something out of an Al Qaeda recruiting video. Suddenly my sense of irony is lacking and I don't feel much like laughing.

"Lounge Concept"

I've been on road trips like this–though, thankfully, not in a Smart Car.

Top Gear G&T

The BBC Trust has wagged a bony finger at Top Gear's polar special for allegedly "glamourising" drink driving by showing a scene of Jeremy Clarkson sipping a gin and tonic while motoring across the arctic wastes to the North Pole. Leaving aside the bizarre notion that Mr. Clarkson could glamourise anything, the producers quite rightly put forward the defence that the North Pole is outside of British jurisdiction and therefore no offence was committed.

Now if they'd had the presence to also point out that since the programme aired there have been remarkably few incidents of drunken British young people tearing around the Pole in SUVs, its impact may be emperically regarded as minimal.

I can't, however, say the same for the scene in another episode where they showed of James May driving an Aston Martin in Italy stark naked because his car was a racer and therefore didn't have air conditioning and couldn't open the windows. It's of such things that eye bleach is made for.

Update: James May responds– and not to the nude Aston Martin bit.

NHS & BBC

The BBC marks the 60^th anniversary of the founding of the NHS with a story that sets the benchmark for objectivity:

Three generations grateful for NHS

This headline that would do credit to the North Korean news agency was balanced in the story itself by lines like this:

Anthony was born with blue asphyxia. Today he is convinced the NHS saved his life - and that of his mother.

And from there It gets downright sycophantic. Overcrowded hospitals? Endless waiting lists? Mixed sex wards? Treatment rationing? A haemorrhaging budget with an army of bureaucrats to a squad of doctors? Sorry, no mention of that here.

All we need now is a pronouncement from Minitruth that all diseases have been eradicated and we'll have the set.

James May & Meccano

We're doomed

Top Gear USA

Top Gear, the only car show in history that got me to watch a car show, is to be transmitted on NBC television in the States. Sorry, not the BBC original with Clarkson, Hammond and May, but an American version that somehow is going to catch lightning in a bottle twice running.

The creative ineptness and poor judgment of American network television never ceases to amaze me–particularly when it comes to buying successful foreign shows.

Any other broadcaster for anything other than game shows would simply have bought the broadcast rights for the original programmes and left it at that, but the major American networks operate by their own bizarre rules due to a little episode in the 1960s when Britain's ATV started making heavy inroads into the syndication market, followed by The Avengers becoming a smash hit on ABC television. The Hollywood production companies had a collective infarct when they saw the possibility of competing with British programmes that they threw down the gauntlet to the networks and told them that if they ever bought another foreign product the producers would boycott the lot of them.

Since then, not a single British series has aired on a network unless it was essentially an American production filmed in Britain and so certifiable hits like Doctor Who, Torchwood, and Spaced are relegated to cable while the networks indulge in the strange practice of buying formats, but leaving everything else behind. Sometimes this worked, as in the case of All in the Family and Three's Company, or The Office, though all were pale imitations of their parents. More often it ended up with painful abortions visited upon such classics as Fawlty Towers and Couplings that vanished in a mercifully short time.

But, fools and their money, as they say.

Doctors' Daughter

Science has decreed that marrying first cousins in now hunky dory, but what about an actor dating his television daughter who is also the real-life daughter of another actor who played the first actor's television character previously.

My brain hurts.

Does Plastic Count?

The BBC asks the hard-hitting question:

So is it possible to survive the day without spending any cash?

Checks drinks cupboard.

Yes.

Panorama Predicts

Looking back at looking forward to the 1960s.

And I'm getting dizzy.

Update: And over at Paleo-Future, it's France 2000AD as seen from 1900.

Mystery of the Ages

From the BBC:

Every day British people throw away more than a million pots of unopened yoghurt. Why?

Having tasted "cheesecake" yoghurt by mistake, I offer this possibility:

Maybe because it's nasty?

Organ Recital

BBC headline:

Ireland appoint Kidney as coach

Apparently the spleen wasn't up to scratch.

It's All In The Database

I love this nasty little bit of tyranny courtesy of the BBC. It even has the infamous knock on the door.

Just goes to show what they think of Outer Party members down Broadcasting House.

Hitting The Nail

"A soap-opera with laser-gun fights"; the best description of the consistently disappointing new version of Doctor Who that I've seen.

Could There Be a Connection?

Justin Webb looks at the "paradox" of the United States as a nation with 200 million guns and yet has a certain "tranquility and civility".

Mr. Webb's inability to see what is right before his face is taken to even greater heights by invoking the apparent contradiction of the Virginia Tech massacre (which occurred at a widely-publicised "gun-free zone") plus a resident of Washington DC who opposes the draconian firearms ban on the city being lifted by showing off nine gunshot wounds and claiming that lifting the ban would turn the capital into the "wild west". Mr. Webb does not ask him, "as opposed to what?"

Next up: Why the United States believes in military force despite defeating Communism and Fascism, has a record prison population despite a low crime rate, and grows vast amounts of food despite not suffering from famine.

Comedy of Fear

Can Mohammed go to the mountain?

Not if you're the BBC.

Car Shooting

Top Gear-Car Shooting - Click here for another funny movie.
Now that is what I call sport.

White Season

Ron Liddle over at The Spectator sums up BBC's "White Season":

When those programmes were commissioned and the BBC executives sat around discussing the content, they undoubtedly caught the whiff of the zeitgeist — that, come on chaps, we really ought to do something about those dreadful people in the north who somehow feel estranged and alienated. But they were singularly incapable of commissioning anything which said, actually, they might have a legitimate grievance.

That would have been a step too far. Instead they commissioned a bunch of programmes that said: white working-class people, we feel your pain, but unfortunately, you’re wrong. In other words, they demonstrated precisely the same mindset which infects every single news bulletin, documentary and drama we have witnessed for the last 20 years on the BBC. Can you imagine them commissioning a film about a Muslim girl who converts to Christianity, converts her mum — and by the denouement is proven right to have done so? It will never happen.

White Wash Girl

I haven't had a chance to see White Girl, part of the BBC's "White Season", except in brief previews on the Web, but if the reviews in The Telegraph and Beaman's World are anything to go by, it is a drama that shows that in the eyes of the Beeb the white working class of Britain are a load of drunken, foul-mouthed, wife-beating, child-beating racists whose only salvation lies in embracing religion.

Provided, that is, the religion is Islam.

This is no reflection on Muslims qua Muslims, but from what I've been able to glean, the BBC's storyline of knuckle-dragging chavs being redeemed by blemish-less mosque-goers is as deserving of a double take as a 1943 Rank film showing how English dock workers would be so much more pleasant if they were more like those nice Germans.

E-Day Update

E-Day, an "independent operation" (even though started and backed to the hilt by the BBC) , has proven a complete bust. Designed to sell people on the idea of returning to mud huts and peasantry, the end result was that electricity consumption actually went up on the day.

The BBC has relegated the embarassment to the back pages of its web site and is now faced with trying to wrap its collective mind around the fact that the British people aren't a load of dupes after all. Meanwhile, Dr. Matt Prescott, the alleged brains behind E-Day said,

I will do my best to learn the relevant lessons for next time.

The relevant lesson being that there shouldn't be a next time.

Update: This just keeps getting better:

E-Day organiser Dr Matt Prescott said the drop in temperature on the day may be behind the rise, with more people leaving lights and heating on as a result.

Yes! A stunt to worship at the altar of Blessed Gaia combat global warming is defeated by global cooling!

Well, Done, Britain!

Lord Summerisle celebrates E-Day

After the BBC was rightly given the bird for trying to mount a Luddite propaganda rally called Planet Relief, the corporation decided to become more responsible and, along with the usual environmentalist suspects and electricity companies fearing bad publicity, mounted a Luddite propaganda rally called Energy Saving Day or E-Day.

As part of this create-the-news-rather-than-report-it affair, the BBC posted a running meter on their web site that would show how much Britons are helping to return to the Dark Ages Save the Planet^tm by cutting back on electricity on The Day and...

Oh, dear. Oh, dear.

The BBC & Responsibility

Miss Nasreen Suleaman, producer of the infamous BBC programme "Don't Panic, I'm Islamic", gave testimony at the trial of one of the men linked to the 21 July 2005 bombing attempt. According to The Telegraph (emphasis added):

Called as a defence witness, Miss Suleaman admitted that she had spoken to Hamid in the days following the July 21 attacks and found out he knew the wanted men.

She said she thought he was scared the fugitives might try to call him but did not contact the police because she felt under "no obligation" to do so.

Such monumental arrogance is staggering. This woman had information about terrorists at large and she didn't tell the authorities because she felt "no obligation". If the Ministry of Justice (there's a chillingly Orwellian title) isn't drawing up warrants for withholding evidence, obstruction of justice, and giving aid and comfort to the enemy in a time of war, then they are sadly neglecting their duty.

A Matter of Priorities

Twelve Pakistanis in Spain have been arrested on terrorism charges and the BBC looks at the impact... on Pakistanis.

No mention, however, on why Jihadis keep getting rounded up in a country that rolled over and did as it was told after the Madrid bombings. Maybe appeasement doesn't work?

Space Striptease

I remember seeing this clip of James Burke doing a space striptease when it was first broadcast on the BBC... way too long ago.

Call me biased, but I somehow prefer this one.

Islamofascist Paintball

From the Times:

The BBC funded a paintballing trip for men later accused of Islamic terrorism and failed to pass on information about the 21/7 bombers to police, a court was told yesterday.

Mohammed Hamid, who is charged with overseeing a two-year radicalisation programme to prepare London-based Muslim youths for jihad, was described as a “cockney comic” by a BBC producer.

The BBC paid for Mr Hamid and fellow defendants Muhammad al-Figari and Mousa Brown to go on a paintballing trip at the Delta Force centre in Tonbridge, Kent, in February 2005. The men, accused of terrorism training, were filmed for a BBC programme called Don’t Panic, I’m Islamic, screened in June 2005.

If this is how the BBC handles the war, I think I will panic, thank you very much.

BBC Scepticism

In an uncharacteristic display of actual journalism, the BBC gave space to John Christy, member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and climate sceptic to state his case in his own words.

Don't get too excited, though. For every article like this, there a score more who treat that treat those who dare to question the received wisdom of Holy Gaia like an exotic tribe worthy of merely ethnographic interest.

Communist Nostalgia

It's the 90^th anniversary of the October Revolution and the BBC's James Rodgers looks at the hard time Russia's Communists have today:

These were people who toiled all their lives to build a Communist utopia, only to find that their reward was a penance of a pension doled out in the harsh, new, capitalist Russia of the 1990s.

Actually, Mr. Rodgers, they toiled all their lives in the service of a totalitarian regime that was bent on turning the entire planet into a prison camp and murdered 100 million people trying and in a just world their "reward" would have been something more appropriate than a pension. But such an oversight isn't surprising. Mr. Rodgers spends gallons of ink writing about Russia's Communists' idealism, nostalgia and hopes for the future, but spares not a drop for the victims of their brutish, tyrannical ideology.

I wonder if the BBC will follow this up with a similar puff piece about Neo-Nazis in Germany.

I also wonder if the Moon is made of cheese.

Doctor Who Nosferatu

This will not end well.

The Sontarans are returning to Doctor Who.

A few decades ago this news would have had me punching the air. Today, it merely confirms that the current series is nothing but a sex-obsessed (in a family programme!), treacly, sentimental, romantic, pop-culture centered, self-referential, gratuitous homosexual referencing (family programme!), aimed-at-the-fourteen-year-old girl-demographic vampire sucking on the corpse of a classic science fiction series that hasn't a blind bit of thought about what made the show great in its heyday and will undercut and betray whatever it is allegedly "reviving".

Stand by for the glacier-paced, self-indulgent, talky, watch-the-villain-get-in-touch-with-his-feelings road crash.

The Brain

The Brain: Basically a wrinkled bag of skin filled with warm water, veins and thought muscles.

Running Comment

A comment from "Harry" in San Diego on the BBC web site regarding the California wildfires:

I was evacuated during the fires, and all I have to say is that the last few days have been awful.

I can imagine. Though why he was being force-fed laxatives remains a mystery.

Thirteen to Centaurus

For your Saturday sci-fi feature we present this disturbing little J.G. Ballard tale from 1965: Thirteen to Centaurus.

The New Etiquette

The BBC, operating under the delusion that the sort of damp-handed, creeping Continentalism practised at Broadcasting House is the norm for the country, ponders at tedious length the "new etiquette" of people who are not close family members kissing and hugging.

In order to help avoid confusion, I would point out that this sort of thing was settled long ago in my part of Yorkshire and I offer the following guidelines for the confused:

• A handshake is a perfectly acceptable form of greeting, though if the recipient is female, try to restrict the breakage to the smaller bones of the hand.


• An offer of a cheek to kiss is best responded to with a blank stare of complete incomprehension followed by a look implying that the cheek-offerer has gone mad.


• The offer of a "Soprano-style" hug anywhere outside of backstage at the Royal Theatre should be politely declined with a cold-conking.

I hope this clears up these little details.

Quatermass and the Pit (Part 6)

London becomes a Martian colony and it's up to Quatermass to save the Earth.

Quatermass and the Pit (Part 5)

Can Quatermass convince the government of the danger before it's too late? Find out in Part 5.

Tune in tomorrow for the exciting conclusion.

Quatermass and the Pit (Part 4)

Are we the Martians? Find out in Part 4.

Tune in tomorrow for Part 5

Quatermass and the Pit (Part 3)

What mystery is behind the history of Hobb's lane? Find out in Part 3.

Tune in tomorrow for Part 4.

Quatermass and the Pit (Part 2)

What is the thing is the pit? Find out in Quatermass and the Pit, Part 2.

Tune in tomorrow for Part 3.

Quatermass and the Pit (Part 1)

And now your Saturday classic: Quatermass and the Pit (1959) Part 1.

Archaeology, science fiction and Martians; what more could one want?

Tune in tomorrow for Part 2.

Nativity

BBC headline:

Church gives birth to baby girl

The Age of Miracles is not past.

A Cutting Issue

BBC headline:

TV cat poll was fixed, BBC says

And so was the cat, presumably.

The Machine Stops

The BBC's adaptation of E. M. Forsters classic 1909 science fiction parable.

Switching Off

The BBC was forced to cancel a political rally TV special on climate change because its "consciousness raising" message was too blatantly biased for even the Beeb to get away with.

Not surprisingly, Richard Black's report for the BBC on the decision starts off and continues for half the article with responses from environmentalists condemning the cancellation and when he finally does get to those who questioned the BBC's wisdom Mr. Black s