Month: January 2017

An Evening Watching Daytime Television? Impossible, 3 January 2017

I don’t watch daytime television very often.

I define daytime television as programmes that are designed for a daytime audience and regularly, probably exclusively, broadcast during normal working hours. Catching up on TV news while I am at the gym or following cricket matches during the day through the TV don’t count as daytime television by this definition.

So, in the five years 2012 to 2016, I guess I had watched daytime television twice.

The first instance was around 2012 or 2013. Hugh Rycroft, one of my old writer friends from NewsRevue, who now devises quiz-based game shows, mentioned to me at one of our Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinners back then, that he had devised a new show, Tipping Point, a daytime quiz, being broadcast on ITV.

“I’ll take a look at that”, I said, meaning it.  “I don’t think Tipping Point is your sort of quiz show”, said Hugh, meaning it.

I looked up the timing of the show and resolved to watch it the next time I was at the gym in the afternoon at that hour. Thus I took a look at Tipping Point, as promised. Hugh was right; it’s not my sort of quiz show. The conceit of the show is a facsimile of a coin pusher arcade machine, for which contestants win tokens to play and from which they get (or fail to get) prizes.

My second instance of watching daytime TV in recent years was Bargain Hunt in 2014, when Z/Yen’s practice manager, Linda Cook together with her friend and Z/Yen alumna Marie Logan, appeared on the show. We wrote this big moment up for the Now and Z/Yen blog – click here. As it happens, this programme’s momentous first broadcast was on a Friday when I had no meetings, so I actually watched the programme when it was first shown.

I don’t think Bargain Hunt is my type of programme either, although it was great to see people I knew so well on that show.

But let’s be honest, whether or not these programmes are my kind of show is rather beside the point. They must be a lot of people’s kind of show, because they are phenomenally successful. According to Wikipedia at the time of writing (January 2017):

  • Tipping Point had 10 series and 508 episodes (at 6 January 2017);
  • Bargain Hunt had 39 series and 1264 episodes (22 January 2016 figures).

Anyway, I saw Hugh again at this year’s Ivan Shakespeare Christmas Dinner – click here. He mentioned that he had devised a new quiz show, which would start  broadcasting on the New Year Bank Holiday Monday; Impossible.

“I’ll take a look at that”, I said, meaning it. Indeed, I intended to watch it on that Bank Holiday Monday.

Come Tuesday evening, after finishing work, I was pondering my evening (probably planning to do some Ogblogging), when it occurred to me that I had clean forgotten to watch Impossible; indeed I hadn’t even set the vid to record it.

But these days, what used to be impossible (seeing a programme despite such neglect) is now more than possible, thanks to iPlayer.

Thus I spent a chunk of Tuesday evening watching daytime television.

I did spend some evening time not all that long ago watching bizarre (in this case comedy) telly on the computer, in bizarre circumstances, but that’s another story, click here for it.

The conceit of the show Impossible is that all the quiz questions are constructed to have three rather than two types of answer: correct, incorrect or impossible. Impossible answers fail some aspect of logic in the question. For example, the name of a British film star would be an impossible answer to a question starting, “which American film star…”  Impossible answers get contestants eliminated or make them lose their accumulated winnings, adding an additional dimension of pressure to a time pressure-based quiz.

Surprisingly, I rather like Impossible. As I said to Hugh in a congratulatory e-mail:

…I liked it and enjoyed watching it far more than I can ever remember enjoying watching such a programme.

The format is clever without being too clever.  I am tempted to watch it again…

Hugh seemed pleased with this note and even suggested that he plans to use the phrase “clever without being too clever” in his elevator pitches henceforward; which surely means that I get a significant share of the (presumably substantial) earnings from successful “clever without being too clever” programmes, for ever.

Joking apart, my fear, though, is that the very fact that I liked Impossible might be the kiss of death for it. I don’t suppose I am a barometer for successful daytime TV shows; I might be an anti-barometer for them.

Indeed, on reflection, I’m not sure that Hugh should want his shows to be “clever without being too clever” at all. The phrase reminds me of Spike Jones’s explanation for why his hugely talented comedy orchestra was not more successful:

“We’re too sophisticated for corny people and too corny for sophisticated people.”

Still, I am rooting for the TV show Impossible. I sincerely hope it gets the hundreds or thousands of episodes it deserves.

The Eagle Huntress, Curzon Bloomsbury, 1 January 2017

If only I could hold sway over Dumbo-pan (above) and Daisy-pan, the way that Aishol-pan the Eagle Huntress can control her horse and eagle.

Our original plan had been to see this movie on Boxing Day, but the excesses of Christmas Day – click here – encouraged us to defer the visit.

The next convenient slot for us was New Year’s Day itself. I didn’t book the tickets in advance of the day – that would have been tempting fate. But our restful Twixtmas and New Year’s Eve – click here – meant that we were fit as fleas and raring to go to the movies.

So, early morning, before being thrashed on the tennis court by Janie- click here for that Twixtmas link again, I logged on to the Curzon site to grab the best seats. After all, who books for afternoon showings of movies that far ahead? Turns out, quite a lot of people do for New Year’s Day; there were not all that many seats left. I grabbed two good ones in the middle of the penultimate row, having missed out on our favourite double seats at the very back.

We went in my car, Dumbo (above), or Dumbo-pan as I was calling him by the end of the outing. It was bucketing down with rain that afternoon.

In the downstairs lobby we immediately run into George Littlejohn and his good lady. I have known George since 1994 when we met, for reasons that will only be explained to you if you click here, at the 1994 inaugural Accountancy Awards. Janie and I have bumped into the Littlejohns at cultural events before, not least a grim evening at Pains of Youth in 2009 (grim by virtue of the show, absolutely not grim because we met the Littlejohns) – click here.

Anyway, it turns out that George is precisely the sort of person who books his cinema tickets earlier than sparrowfart on the day of the viewing – he’d booked their seats the evening before. Naturally, George had booked “our” favourite double seats. This sorry tale disproves the adage that the early bird always catches the worm. The early bird only catches the worm if the late bird hadn’t caught that worm the night before.

Which brings me neatly back to the subject of birds hunting for live prey. i.e. the film, The Eagle Huntress; that’s why we were all at the cinema.

The Eagle Huntress is about an ethnic Kazakh girl in Mongolia, Aishol-pan, who has an extraordinary aptitude for and love of eagle hunting, the traditional (male) sporting/lifestyle/survival activity of her tribe.

There is a good IMDb entry for this movie explaining it all, so why should I replicate or  try to improve on it? – click here.

It turns out that George has been in Kazakhstan recently, helping to get a new financial centre properly established there. He showed me a picture of himself trying on a Kazakh hat; a spectacular-looking piece that apparently comprises several dead animals, which George  (wisely) declined to purchase. I showed George a selfie (shown below) sporting my comparatively modest-looking but animal free Vermont from Locke & Co.

Despite appearances to the contrary, no animal suffered in the taking of this selfie.

Anyway, we all enjoyed the film very much. Some of the sequences seem a little set up, such as the snippets of old eagle hunters complaining that eagle hunting is not suitable activity for a girl. The music was more blockbuster than art-house movie style.

But you’ll probably forgive this film its attempts to commercialise the story, because it is a true story and it does show a truly remarkable talent in a young girl and the setting is simply stunning. At times it seemed anathema to be hearing Daisy Ridley’s dulcet tones narrating, because those types of wildlife and landscape scenes have to be narrated by David Attenborough. Isn’t there a law about that?…there should be.

I don’t often implore people to “go see a movie”, but this one really is 90 minutes or so well spent. This is not the sort of film that I would choose to see on reading what it is about, so I’m really glad that Janie (Daisy-pan) nagged me into seeing this wonderful, life-affirming movie.

Mercifully the rain was relenting when we left the cinema and waved goodbye to the Littlejohns. I tried calling “Dumbo-pan” and “Daisy-pan”, but I have no sway over the untameable. Probably just as well.

Twixtmas and New Year’s Eve In Noddyland, 1 January 2017

Janie demonstrates the use of an infeasibly large tennis racket to defend an infeasibly small court

Where does a week like that go?

We had planned to go to the flickers on Boxing Day, but due to my self-inflicted bloating from the previous day in Paradise we decided to defer that visit until New Year’s Day – the next Ogblog piece will cover that visit – this one’s about Twixtmas.

Ah yes, Twixtmas. Everything has to have a name these days, or more accurately in this case, a marketing term.

Janie and I have long enjoyed Twixtmas, without knowing that the week between Christmas and New Year even had a name.

As long as the weather isn’t too cold/icy, we normally play tennis during that whole period; Christmas Day itself and Twixtmas, as indeed we did this year. Even my feeling of indisposition did not stop me from turning out (and competing) at the appointed hour on Boxing Day.

Bank Holiday Tuesday was a lot colder and too frosty to play; just as well, really, because Janie had got her dates a bit muddled and booked some work that day. I decided I might as well go back to the flat, exercise at the gym and do some work that day too. Janie hadn’t booked work for the Friday, so we decided simply to swap the Tuesday for the Friday.

We had a brace of titanic tennis battles Friday and Saturday; on both occasions we played for well over an hour and called it a draw at 6-6. But on Sunday Janie was unstoppable, making me fight and fight (often as not in vain) to hold my serve. Still, I kept the set going a full hour, we had fun and we got good exercise, which is mostly what it is about. Mostly.

What else did we do?

We both worked a bit.

We watched A Taste of Honey, the movie, which somehow Janie had never seen, then discussed teenage pregnancy for a while.

We had the next door neighbours, Joy and Barry (one side) plus Marcie (the other), in for drinks and “nibbles” (no-one wants dinner after Janie’s nibbles) on the Friday evening.

We watched a few episodes of the Attenborough Planet Earth II  over the week. We recorded the series when it was broadcast, but we normally make very little time for TV. These Planet Earth II programmes really are the bees knees. Indeed, if the programme makers wanted to show us close ups of bees knees, I’m sure they would.

We had a quiet evening in for New Year’s Eve, just as we like it. I think we watched one of those Attenboroughs and then both went to sleep an hour or so before midnight. Needless to say, we didn’t notice the leap second which added fractionally to the very end of 2016.

I Ogblogged a lot during Twixtmas, mostly working on my 2008 retrobogging. I did at one time consider writing Ogblog pieces describing the Ogblogging that I am doing, but came to the conclusion that even my loyalist readers (I include myself in that category) might draw the line at that degree of post-modern, geeky detail.

Janie can even hit the ball infeasibly well off the wrong foot, although only occasionally does so in the heat of battle.