Be Excellent To Each Other

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

I watched all three of them back-to-back, I think he's great. His stuff is a snapshot of the strange things in his head or the weird way he sees things, it's very unlike most other popular comedy I've watched. It's not observational comedy, you're not laughing because you identify with what's being said.

I also found Ali Wong Baby Cobra hilarious, she's very different to Acaster and more observational with a lot of personal stuff in there. She has a second show called Hard Knock Wife, which is also very funny.

I’m not sure if I like Humans as much as I thought I would.

Misanthrope!

Fair. It was an interesting premise wasted on really annoying characters

Which robot is she? I like the Gemma Chan one best.

Q.V. Heroes and many other series that outlived their sell-by date.

The current series is very slow, ive got it series linked but only watch it if I can't find anything more pressing to do.

You’re getting to be as bad as Mr Chris.

Side of right!

BBC 4: The NHS: a people's history

Bit of a curate's egg this one. The idea of a social history of the health service, its staff, and its patients is a good one, and the show captures the atmosphere of the times very well, with good insights on class and race issues within the service. Alex Brooker's presentation is enthusiastic, inviting, and well-pitched. It just felt a little bit slung together, and at times inadvertently contradictory as after spending a while praising the many innovations introduced by NHS staff, it lurches into a chilling report about a person being given LSD without discussing whether this was an experimental treatment (and what, if any, regulation existed) or standard of the time.

I'll carry on watching it, as it's such a key part of post-war British life it deserves a good social and oral history.

New Rich Hall special on BBC 4 tomorrow at 21:00, entitled 'Working for the American Dream'.

Couple of shows we've not mentioned here.

Mark Kermode's 'Secrets of Cinema' series on BBC 4 is brilliant. He takes a look at a specific genre in each episode and dissects its key elements, often drawing connections between films I wouldn't have noticed. It's like watching a fun A-level film studies class. Recommended.

The Internet's Famous Ed Balls has a travelogue across the US meeting fans of the President and trying to understand why people like him. 'Travels in Trumpland' ( BBC 2 ) started on Sunday, and he takes in a monster truck rally (which looks great fun), an immigration raid, a veterans' camp, and a wrestling match (including Ed Balls in a leotard). The sequences on the immigration raid and in the detention facility made for chilling television. I felt the editing at times was uneven - sometimes he lets his subjects speak at length, other times I felt it cut away before they had a chance to explain their point. That aside, it's a good look at the South and what Mr Trump means to millions of people. And as ever, I'm a sucker for the accents.

TheVision's long lost American cousin appears briefly in the wrestling sequence, which is nice. You'll see who I mean when you watch it.

Secrets of cinema is very good. I had no idea how interested I was in the history of the rom-com!

:This:

James Acaster is one of the contestants in Taskmaster series 7, and when Jem and I went to watch the recording of the series finale last week I thought he was alright, but Jem thought he was an utter dick.

I like him, but that's because he is a dick.

I rewatched the first two of his Netflix shows the other day.

He’s the best and I love him.

Wrong

If Curio likes him and Mali doesn't, it's nailed on that I will.

Anyone have any "advice" for how I can "download" Stewart Lee's new "thing" from outside the UK?

It's on the iplayer here
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b ... t-provider