Downton Abbey

@Frank Apisa,

My wife is fascinated. me, not so much. Its on SUNDAYS and god created Sundays for FOOTBALL. Theres really n story line that interests me enough to care. Id rather watch Ballwykissangel (and I know how old that one is but at least theres a plot I can relate to)

Maybe if there was a Driller or a mining engineer who is off in the colonies looking for titanium.
I don't know, its just a way for me to snooze if I have to watch the damn thing

1 Reply

@farmerman,

Try Ripper Street

0 Replies

@Finn dAbuzz,

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

Do all of these dramas require a never-ending assail on the characters of golden character? It seems to be a descent into Soap Opera territory.

I am bemused by this. Despite labels such as "drama", "masterpiece" etc, Downton Abbey is not a "period drama". It is a soap opera, and in the opinion of many in its country of production, not an especially good one. As one TV critic said, "It’s a finely milled bar of English lavender wrapped with tissue and gold cord and nestled in a pretty box".

1 Reply

@Lordyaswas,

Lordyaswas wrote:

I would go so far as to say that it's mindless pap with costumes, personally.

I would go equally far.

0 Replies

@Lordyaswas,

Lordyaswas wrote:

Do your friends have something against ITV, perchance?

My mum & dad wouldn't have the TV Times in the house, and this was decades before the Radio Times had all the channels listed. We used to watch programmes on ITV (or "the ITA" as my father called it) but we had to look them up in the TV listings in the Daily Express.

2 Replies

@contrex,

You wouldn't have the TV Times in the house but you had the Daily Express?

I'm still trying to get my head round that.

1 Reply

@izzythepush,

izzythepush wrote:

You wouldn't have the TV Times in the house but you had the Daily Express?

I'm still trying to get my head round that.

Not me personally... my snobbish parents. This was over 50 years ago when the Express was a broadsheet, still a crap paper, but not like it is now, a nasty shrill imitation of the Mail.

0 Replies

@contrex,

My guestparents always called it "Southern", and the friends in Scotland "Grampian", only such.
They got only the Radio Times, too. But since I bought the Evening Echo, I knew when to watch The Avengers, The Benny Hill Show and the two soaps.

Oh, and they told me from beginning onwards, not to buy the Express ... because it could be insulting for me as a German. (And not to read NoW like the tenant.)

2 Replies

@Walter Hinteler,

Walter Hinteler wrote:

My guestparents always called it "Southern", and the friends in Scotland "Grampian", only such.

In London this never happened - there was no single company name to use. We didn't have just one ITV company, but two: from 1955 to 1968, Associated-Rediffusion (ARTV) on weekdays and ATV at weekends, After 1968 it was Thames Television on weekdays and London Weekend Television (LWT) on the other two days. Now, the regional company identities are absorbed into the "ITV" brand.

2 Replies

@Walter Hinteler,

There were lots of regional ITV companies, and they didn't always follow the same schedule. I remember when the Kids Saturday Morning TV show was very popular. It was on almost all the ITV channels except for Newcastle where I happened to live at the time.

Tyne Tees was the broadcaster there, and it showed some goddamned awful programme called Saturday Scene, full of Geordies talking about how hard it was to get a job.

0 Replies

@contrex,

When I lived in Kent we got the London Channels too, but we could also get Southern, but the reception was a bit ****. They used to show the cartoon version of The Lone Ranger while there was something crap on Thames.

0 Replies

@contrex,

Now I remember: Southern aired quite a bit from other stations, on weekends there was something like London Weekend tv.
(When I've been in Scotland, "Grampian" had only very little of own programs.)

0 Replies

We used to see a Southern kids programme called HOW with Fred Dinenage and others.

2 Replies

@contrex,

I've "met" (= seen) Jack Hargreaves a couple of times: the mother of my 'guest mother' lived in his neighbourhood in Lymington.

0 Replies

@contrex,

I went to see a really lousy programme called That's Love with Jimmy Mulville at what was the TVS studios sometime in the late 80s.

0 Replies

@contrex,

Well, it's hugely popular here so I guess you'll just have to chalk it up to the unsophisticated tastes of the colonials.

1 Reply

@Finn dAbuzz,

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

Well, it's hugely popular here so I guess you'll just have to chalk it up to the unsophisticated tastes of the colonials.

The weird thing is, the best stuff on British TV right now is mostly either American (Homeland, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, American Horror Story, True Blood, Dexter) or Scandinavian (Borgen, The Killing, The Bridge)

1 Reply

@contrex,

Breaking Bad was superb, not least of all because it ended when and as it should have. I've not watched Mad Men, although I hear it's very good. True Blood is pure pulp, but entertaining, and I lost interest in Dexter after about three seasons.

I don't know if Copper is shown in the UK, but we get it on BBC America. It's very good. A lot of good TV comes from your way. Whatever happened to The Misfits? I loved that show.

0 Replies

Hey Walter Hinteler if you're German in Germany, tell us what German TV is like.. Smile

For example we know Germans have a great sense of humour, so who are Germany's favourite TV comedians, and can you give us examples of their best jokes?

0 Replies

One of the funniest comedians I know of is the Stand-up-Komiker Henning Wehn who is from Hagen in Noth-Rhine-Westphalia. he lives in London now and is the self-styled German Comedy Ambassador.

http://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/kommt-ein-deutscher-drei-witze-mit-kraut-1.880920

0 Replies

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know