Be Excellent To Each Other

Stupid Sexy Thrusilver

Watch ‘Kiss me first.’

It might be dead good.

Vikings is really good. Sort of. It is a bit rubbish, but I keep watching it. There is a lady who the other ladies call Slagatha so she ignores them and their pettiness because she is right fit and likes to have a tear up with the lads braining monks and lootin' gold. A man builds boats and bops priests on the noggin because taking your only shipwright to war is fine. They shout "Shield wall!". A lot. Having a ruck? SHIELD WALL! bit outnumbered? SHIELD WALL! Don't fancy cooking and want a cheeky Nandos? SHIELD WALL! Nobody ages, but the kids, and fjords are warm enough to swum naked in. Brilliant. On amazon prome. SHIELD WALL

SHIELD WALL!
EXCHANGE HOSTAGES!
SHIELD WALL!

Like Two Broke Girls?

QUERY CAR INSURANCE RENEWAL QUOTE! (Q.V. GAS GUZZLING MONEY PITS)
SHEILD WALL!

Cunk on Britain has started. I am in awe of (a) the writing (b) Diane Morgan’s performance and (c) the guests who somehow make it through far enough without cracking up that they get usable footage.

Indeed. It’s a bit like Morecambe and Wise getting all those respected actors to have the piss taken out of them, only this is co-written by Charlie Brooker, which can only be a good thing.

I found the interviews to be the weakest part of Cunk. The specialists just weren’t adequate straight men/women, leaving Cunk to carry the burden of the skits.

The rest was pretty funny however.

Started watching 'This Country' (BBC 3/Iplayer). It's essentially 'Raised by Wolves' - but in the Cotswolds!

Only seen a couple of episodes so far but it's a wonderfully observed and very funny take on chav life in rural England. Who knew scarecrow competitions were so hotly contested?

Pretty sure I've rambled through some of the locations too.

Britain’s Most Historic Towns on channel 4 is very interesting stuff, and of course being presented by Alice Roberts is a big plus.

Oh, I love her. She is one of my top two crushes.

Just watched “Have I Got News” with Lee Mack as the guest host. Anyway, man alive, Sarah Pascoe looked BEAUUU-TIFOOL. I do like her an awful lot for a whole host of reasons. Today: she’s looking gorgeous and was glowing.

Oh and that rant about the pie moaners.

Meanwhile, Lee Mack has grown on me. To me he was always a fairly one-dimensional comedian who erred on the side of blunt, obvious gags with a smattering of smut. But he seems to have aged into a whip-smart, generous comedian. And I also felt sorry for him when they made fun of him for not being able to read the auto-queue. He'd been blinking erratically for the whole show.

Meanwhile, meanwhile, I'd like Merton to step his game up. He visibly can't be arsed more than usual.

Meanwhile, meanwhile, meanwhile, Hislop was on fine form on Friday. He landed a number of excellent gags in quick succession.

Meanwhile, meanwhile, meanwhile, meanwhile, did anyone see Paxman on HIGNFY the other week? He was like an old man drunk, lost, and screaming at the world because he's been asked to update his wifi password. Time to step down.

I completely agree with everything you’ve written, Findus. Paxman’s delivery has turned... odd. He was just shouting and I’m not entirely convinced he understood half of what he was saying. Hopefully it’s not a medical problem as he seems ‘same old Paxman’ on University Chalkenge.

Merton’s can’t-be-arsedness has been bothering me for a few seasons. His jokes and observations have gone lame, then he tries to explain his jokes as they haven’t raised a laugh, and then he gurns, or makes a silly noise, or pretends to be a jellyfish, in an ever-increasing may desperate grab for audience reaction.

And Lee Mack has definitely grown on me too. I think the blink may be a slight tic of sorts as I’ve noticed him do that before.

I’d be happy to see them bring Victoria Coren-Mitchell in as a perma-host, though.

That would be excellent.

BBC 2: 'Civilisations on your doorstep with Mary Beard'

Lovely postscript to the main series, looking at British museums and how collections have been curated to tell differing stories about civilisation['-s' - Ed.]. Some more places to add to my daytrip list, and another exhibit I've never noticed in the Pitt Rivers* before to go and check out.

* the Best Museum in the History of All Things, even after considering the

ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view!

somewhat dubious nature of its curation as described in the show

Called it!

Secret Agent Selection. Just ran across this on the iPlayer and I'm instantly hooked. Ordinary folk going through the selection process for the SOE following WW2 standards. Fascinating stuff

Well, it is executively produced by a dead man.

'Taskmaster' starts again tonight at 21:00 on ['Dave' - Ed.]. I only started watching it last Autumn, so still have a lot of catching up to do.

Just watched the first episode of 'A Very English Scandal' (BBC1).

Hugh Grant's very convincing as Jeremy Thorpe but Ben Winshaw's performance as Norman Scott is utterly stunning. It's very well shot too. What I found frustrating about the first episode, however, is any real sense of who Thorpe was or why he went for Scott. We get a couple of rousing speeches in the Commons and a little bit of backroom Liberal politics but if I didn't know the story already I'd be a bit lost as to the background to it all. I also found it zipping away at a pace that doesn't let us get too absorbed in what's going on in each scene. I'll keep watching, however, as it's one of the strangest episodes in post-war British political history/

Of course we're only really watching this for:

BBC 4: 'Big Sky, Big Dreams, Big Art: Made in the USA'

This show draws a connection from the art of the Old West and US expansion to the abstract era, via Mexico, Native American petroglyphs, and the mysteries of theosophy.

Initially, I find Waldemar Januszczak a bit shouty in his commentary but soon grew to enjoy his style and his enthusiasm for the subject. There were shades of the Jonathan Meades approach to documentaries too, for example giving a piece to camera whilst cowboys are shooting at each other. However, as with Civilisation['-s' - Ed.] I felt the camera didn't linger enough on the pictures to truly appreciate them, and for some reason the director felt we wanted to see the back of a someone looking at the picture, presumably to add realism but just causing an obstruction.

I really enjoyed this, and as well as wanting to return to the western US, I now want to see the revolutionary murals in Mexico.

There was another Rich Hall documentary on last week, about California. Definitely worth a look if you've enjoyed his previous ones.

Ace. I'll have to look that up. Love Rich Hall's stuff.

He was mostly quite scathing about The Golden State.

I do, too. However, it never gets enjoyed ss MrsA "doesn't like his face". This rule also applies, in truly coherent logic, to any of his radio performances.

Well she likes your face so there's no accounting for taste, is there?

Enjoyed that, thanks for the tip.

Watched part two of the Jeremy Thorpe show yesterday.

Has this been mentioned?

https://www.twitch.tv/twitchpresents?ttid=3c675e4f27

Twitch are showing 500 episodes of classic Dr Who over the next couple of months...it started a few days ago...still on Hartnell episodes

Complain all you might about Britain’s Got Talent, Mr Uekusa was the best thing on TV today.

If anyone wrote the Thorpe story as fiction, I’m sure a lot of people would think it was too far fetched. This TV version is bordering on comedy drama in places. And the ‘assassin’ is almost like an Eric Idle characterisation.

If only someone had told Scott he could apply to the relevant government department for a replacement NI card, maybe the whole debacle could have been avoided.

Yes, it's such a strange story I think it can only be told as a dark comedy.

I went back and read two accounts of it to remind me of who some of the characters are (in Matthew Parris's 'Great Parliamentary Scandals' and in Dominic Sandbrook's 'Seasons in the Sun'). The waters get muddied as most of the key players are pretty unreliable or generally dodgy characters. Matthew Parris, who met Thorpe for his book, is quite sympathetic to him. Norman Scott does come across as a fantastist, but then he was a very troubled young man.

I never thought 'national insurance card' would be as funny as a line as it is in this show.

Regarding the card, I read somewhere that back in the day the employer would hold it and physically add stamps to it to show the contributions had been paid so not getting it back on leaving a job or losing it could cause problems when it came to claiming benefits and stuff.

True. When I started work in ‘72 we still had a physical card with spaces for 52 stamps on it, one for each week of the year. Eployers would stick a stamp on it each week. I worked in the benefit service and when people signed on as unemployed, we took their card and rubber stamped it as an exemption to show they'd been receiving Unemployment benefit, and gave it back when they got a job. The card was the only proof that they'd NI contributions so it was a pain if it got lost, but they could still apply for a replacement.

Hence the nickname for NI being "stamp"

Has anyone watched James Acaster: Repertoire on Netflix?

He’s a UK comedian and it’s a series of a few (I think 4) stand up shows recorded live.

They are absolutely hilarious. I haven’t even got round to watching all of them yet as I had to go back and watch the first one again as it was so funny.

Just a brilliantly put together show. Bit nerdy, sarcastic and Beex-ish. Includes sections on loopholes, French cuisine, bananas, and being an undercover cop.

Highly recommended.

I very much enjoyed him on HIGNFY the other day. Will check that out on Netflix, cheers.

Watched one for 15 mins. Hated him.

I like him. I will watch this.

I've only ever seen him on Mock the Week and QI and he annoys me pretty much every time he speaks, so I've not checked out the Netflix stuff yet. On the subject of stand-ups, the Netflix original 'The Standups' isn't bad - just half-hour shows from comedians I hadn't heard of before. The first episodes of both seasons, Nate Bergatze and Joe List, are the better ones of them.

I’ve not seen Acaster on panel shows, but his stand up is superb. He goes in for quite big set ups for gags and has a lot of little attention to detail and callbacks and stuff so it might just not translate as well.

Naz is still the official standup comedian of Beex, though.

Definitely watching now.

Versailles is back on. Huzzah! Sex ‘n’ drugs ‘n’ rock ‘n’ roll at the French court.

Didn't find James Acaster funny