SirOllyBolly

What does the BBC in its wisdom, focus groups etc. etc. think that we, the license paying viewer, want to see at prime time Saturday night viewing?

Answer: The Eurovision Dance Contest.

(DB7 - please forgive me)

What the f**k is going on with the BBC? I am fed up to the back teeth with this seemingly endless line of Saturday Night poncey-showbiz-self-indulgent-vote-em-off-camp-talent shows. Is there anyone in the BBC programing department who is not a homosexual-musical-theatre-loving-ponce?

What has happened to BBC Saturday Night Entertainment? I haven't switched on my TV on a Saturday evening for MONTHS!

Where is the ENTERTAINMENT?

SirOllyBolly

"What fresh lunacy is this?"

Chevyman

I keep thinking "what next?" in the bilge stakes, then I noticed this cr@p in the Radio Times.

DVD for me I think

A Happy and Healthy New Year to all

"Don't tread on Greta Garbo, as you walk down the boulevard?"

Jackdaw

It seems that the stage-school ponces have taken over our televisions.

CaptainWaggett

This particular show wouldn't be my choice but I'm a sucker for anything with showtunes. What's wrong with the BBC doing old-fashioned entertainment shows on Saturday evenings? Plenty of the public love them (and homosexual-musical-theatre-loving-ponces do pay their licence fees and aren't necessarily well-served by an endless diet of Top Gear and footie). I'd have thought that talent shows and variants thereof were one of the genuine popular tv success stories of the last few years. And does it really matter if there is one slot a week that macho blokes don't want to watch?

penfold

It wasn't that long ago that you couldn't throw a stick without hitting a Garry Bushell-alike bemoaning the lack of old-fashioned variety-based telly on a Saturday night.....so now we have it. It's on because people - ordinary people, and lots of them - watch the shows. If you don't want to watch it, watch BBC2. Dad's Army, and Coast....gentle old fashioned comedy and a bit of Reithian enlightenment. And try to keep the offensive stereotyping down to a minimum, please ?

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

batman

But that's the complaint most of us have .... they don't do old-fashioned variety entertainment with great professional entertainers doing there stuff .... we are mostly fed gimmicky lowest common denominator crap with z-listers dominating the screens. I would love to see an old fashioned entertainment show on a Saturday night, with real singers, dancers, comedians, musicians and speciality acts like they used to show. I am not a fan of Top Gear style shows and my footie craving is certainly not met by the terrestrial channels, for once the cliche is true, it's all soap and reality rubbish. This dance contest programme looks OK because it has dance professionals strutting their stuff ... it's a start anyway, let's hope it gets good ratings because the media graduate producers might then realise TV isn't just for them and give us some real variety!

Happy Birthday Daddy .... I love you!



BAT QUIZ 16 HAS JUST BEEN POSTED IN THE COMPETITION THREAD - 06/01/09

CaptainWaggett

It's one hour a week on BBC1 that is left for showtunes lovers (and even then we don't get showtunes because the rights are too expensive ). Is that really too much to ask - especially given that fact that you almost never get musicals on tv any more? It's not as if there aren't quite a lot of other choices - surely nobody is obliged to watch talent shows if they don't want to. Personally I don't go for the X- Factor type shows but I did really enjoy the Andrew Lloyd Webber theatre ones (as did millions of others). Real variety would be good as well - for one thing there hasn't been anything of the Saturday Night/Friday Night Live type for a long time mixind music and new standup.

Nobody is obliged to watch these shows (and clearly more do than just Londoncentric gays - my impression is that the audience for the Lloyd Webber shows is mostly straight women). Clearly they've got people watching as have the Celebrities Learn a Slightly Camp New Skill sort of show - is there really a problem with that? There's plenty of shows I have no interest in but I wouldn't say they shouldn't be broadcast because they don't appeal to my particular demographic. There's certainly less showtunes on telly than there is footie and not just because Rupert Murdoch has bought them all!

Jackdaw

May I call into question your use of the adjective 'Reithian' to describe Coast.
Have you ever seen it?
I fear that Reith would be horrified to hear his name associated with this rambling, fatuous example of the faux documentary.
What a waste of a helicopter!
I wonder if anyone can tell me why presenters of geographical programmes feel it necessary to carry a back-pack.
Do they think it adds to our experience to imagine them alone in the wilds of the British countryside with no back-up, and filmed by a robot camera?

penfold

Okay, you don't like light entertainment shows or short documentaries on the British Landscape, stage schools or back packs.. What do you like?? And why don't you go and watch that instead??

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

Steve Crook

It's educational to those who don't already know about the subject
And to those that do, it's nice to have a tour around the coast without leaving your armchair

But as well as being educational and informing people, to be Rethian it also has to entertain - and they do that by wearing a back-pack when they don't really need to

Steve

hankoler

To answer you capt. the BBC have to satisfy the brainless viewing public that we have today.
It is a disgrace, along with the other channels ,British tv is going down the pan. Those who watch these shows haven't a brain cell between them.

Jackdaw

I see you've written me off as a malcontent, Penfold.
I prefer to see myself as a champion of excellence and an opponent of the mediocre and downright shoddy.
I do like light entertainment - would you let me know when there is some on?
If by light-entertainment you mean shows that involve members of the public singing karaoke, then no, I don't like it.
Nor do I like impresario types milking money from the gullible public, and using the medium to advertise their products and further enrich themselves.
To return to the OP's point, it would appear that Saturday TV entertainment is commissioned by a panel made up of Bonnie Langford, Bruce Foreskin, Lionel Blair and Christopher Biggins - cheese flavoured with cheese, with a cheese topping.
Stage school ponces are everywhere, doing the same old routines, pulling the same old faces, doing the same old bits of business that killed the music-hall.
The same old ladies are churning out more Bonnie Langfords and Martin Kemps by the day, and they are everywhere, even in pop music.
I would be quite happy to watch a show tunes programme with somebody like Michael Ball - but hey, that would cost money, and how would they get a phone vote into it?
And to your last point: you would like me to sod off and watch something else, but what is there?

Jackdaw

I can't work out whether you're for me or against.
I don't think that Reith meant that the Beeb had to entertain and inform at one and the same time, a mistake also made by Ian Hart-Davis when he presented his science-lite efforts on a comedy bicycle and wearing clothes sourced from a pantomime rummage trunk.

Steve Crook

So what do you like? All I'm still hearing is what you don't like
You say "I do like light-entertainment" but you then slag off the shows that most people would consider to be light-entertainment.

Which of the many millions of programmes that have ever been broadcast do you like? Or do you really dislike everything ever broadcast?

Steve

Steve Crook

Are they the only two choices? Can't I have no opinion about you?

Steve