Watch Me If You Can!

I lived through the infamous move of 'The X-Files' from BBC2 to BBC1, where allegedly no two episodes were on at the same time or day ever again, and viewing figures plummeted (allegedly).

So I'm intrigued to see that Defying Gravity, the already-cancelled-after-the-first-season TV show (Firefly, anyone?), partly funded with the money from my TV licence by the BBC, is moving around in exactly the same way. The opening was promising: Pilot and first episode on back-to back, on a Thursday night on BBC2, and this almost seemed to be a stable location, until after only a few episodes it was moved to Saturday night, and then moved to a later slot, and next week, to an even later slot. It is an old and tired game - find the moving programme, and I'm not impressed. Worse, after a slow start, Defying Gravity is starting to get better as it goes along, and is rapidly becoming a must-watch.

Just as an experiment, I'd like EastEnders and Coronation Street to be moved around in the schedules every episode the way some other programmes are...

Update: 7th December 2009.

The usual pattern continues. This weekend there was no episode of Defying Gravity at all, but there will be next weekend. So here's the pattern:

TV Scheduling's tricks, twists and turns...

• First, show the pilot and first episode back to back.
• Second, show a few episodes at the same time and on the same day as the pilot.
• Then, move it to another day and time.
• Then, move it later on that day, and then later, and then later. Make sure that any sporting, political or other event that occurs is used as an excuse to move an episode with no warning, or better, to defer showing that episode until after the whole series has ended (if at all).
• Then don't show it at all one weekend, but make sure that you repeat some previous episodes twice, again on movable times and days.
• Then show two episodes back to back, so that anyone who misses them loses out big-time and has a lot of catching up to do.
• Then wait a few weeks and show the last two episodes back to back when there's something major on at least two other channels.
• Finally, make sure you don't repeat the last two episodes, ever...

If this was a tv programme it would be a comedy!

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Films Half-Remembered

As I get older, my memory seems to be morphing/degrading/evolving(?)/improving(?) into a turbulent combination of 'fast and accurate' as I've always known it, mixed with annoyingly flaky 'near-recollections' where I can almost get to the thing I'm thinking of (sometimes so close I can almost taste it, almost have it on the tip of my tongue ready to say...), but it doesn't and won't quite resolve to the actual name.

With this in mind, here is where I'm going to collect things that flash into my head that fit into this category. You'll see what I mean when you see the examples:

Films/Movies Half-Remembered

The Men Who Glare at Stoats <=> The Men Who Stare at Goats
The Fifth Elephant <=> The Fifth Element
Robin Hood: Prints of Thebes (Dirty postcards, anyone?) <=> Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
Willow, the presumed Buffy spin-off that curiously seems to have no obvious connection with anything in the Buffy canon...
The Bourne Something Else <=> Identity, Supremacy, Ultimatum
Blend It With Beckham (presumably a product endorsement TV cookery show!) <=> Bend It Like Beckham

Bands/Groups/'Popular Beat Combos' Half-Remembered

The Dixie Dregs <=> The Dixie Chicks (both exist!)
Boomerang, currently wowing them on their 11th come-back tour!
Dromedary, 70s prog rock band noted for long guitar solos.
The Dreadful Grate <=> The Grateful Dead

Jokes That Need More Work

What colour are car-keys? A brown/green colour (Khaki!)

As always, I'll add to the list when I can, so until then, I'll apologise for its brevity, but I hope that there's a least a smile in there already!

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Is car-jacking a gender issue?

In the Grand Theft Auto video game, one of the many modes of transport is freely available in most parts of the game space - cars (obviously, if you are swimming around in the water then there are fewer cars, but...). Getting a car is very straight forward - you stand in front of a car, or approach one stopped at traffic lights, open the door and pull the driver out, then take their place and drive off. And so car-jacking just gets added to the list of crimes that you can carry out in this game ...

What's curious is that the ease of car-jacking in GTA seems to be spreading into the real world -well, at least, the unreal world of music videos. In the recent Robbie Williams 'Bodies' single release that starts off with a brilliant dance bass-line (via Trevor Horn, no less) and then goes in a different direction (balladic, no less), there's a scene where a woman with sunglasses turns up in a beach buggy (aka a dune buggy) and slows down to a stop, seemingly to offer the strolling Robbie a lift. In a striking piece of editing, one minute the woman is smiling at Robbie from the driver's seat, the next moment Robbie has vaulted in and is driving the beach buggy with the woman with sunglasses magically transported to the passenger seat. It happens so fast and so smoothly that I had to watch it again to make sure I was seeing things correctly. Magic!

(check your eyes here)

Now, I'm rather unfamiliar with the type of lift offering where the person you offer the lift to then drives the car, but it seems rather peculiar to me, especially when the woman continues to smile throughout as if giving your car to a perfect stranger was the most natural thing in the world. Of course, I'm sure that Robbie's PR people have a perfectly reasonable back-story that explains why this is totally explainable and not how it might appear, but then I'm sure that the Rockstar Games PR people have equally good explanations for the 'car-loan' scheme alternative that occurs in GTA as well.

It's a good thing that video games and music videos are not meant to accurately represent the real world, where people of both genders can drive cars without their major concern being the fear of someone arbitrarily taking over the task without warning. The truly remarkable thing is the title of the album from which the music video track is taken: Reality Killed the Video Star. In this case, the reality seems curiously lacking for one video star...

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