OK, what genius scheduled BBC Three’s new comedy thriller Funland? Heavily trailed across terrestrial channels, it premiered with an hour long episode on Sunday at 10.00pm. The next episode followed tonight, except that it was actually two episodes back to back. In fact, they could easily have edited out the end credits and opening credit sequence since BBC Three didn’t even drop a trail into the middle of it (most unlike them).
So far, so strange, but it kind of makes sense. The next episode is next Sunday and is again scheduled for an hour. I suspect it’ll be another “pair” of epsiodes. More are scheduled to air the following Sundays and Mondays.
So far, so strange – if they’d wanted hour long shows, why were half hours commissioned?
But add into the mix the bizarre repeat mix. If you try to catch repeats you’re going to be completely lost. Yesterday’s episode had a late night repeat while today’s doesn’t. There’s an episode at midnight tomorrow, but is it the first or the second? Then there’s an episode on Wednesday at 9.00pm lasting 50 minutes (?) with a late night half hour showing lasting just half an hour. Thursday late night see’s another half hour, while Friday sees another hour at 9.00pm. If you can find your way through that mess, you’re doing well.
While multiple showings of programmes in a digital age are a good thing, it gets very confused when you’re running more than one episode a week. Surely a simple “new episode on Sunday” strategy would have been better?
I’m quite enjoying this show which is almost certainly not top of the Blackpool tourist board’s Christmas card list.