Word magazine's website has a great list of things that people find annoying - or the dumbest things in entertainment. It's a great list, and you can't help but nod as contributors add more and more.
Someone halfway down the list mentions half-hour TV programmes that throw-forward to the second 15 minutes just before the ad-break, then re-cap the first 15 minutes when they return from the break before summarising what's going to happen next.
This doesn't happen on just commercial TV either. BBC programmes have annoying habit of doing precisely the same thing, even though there's not really a break in the programme except to trail the next section. Perhaps they do it because at some point the show will appear on UKTV Homes Style + 1, and then it'll need it because the average viewer of that channel only watches 6 minutes a year, so needs to understand what's happening in that 6 minutes.
Anyway, it's become obvious that these things are terribly easy and formulaic to make. Let's use Highland Emergency as an example. This is a Granada produced programme for Five. I've seen several episodes because I have a bizarre fascination for all things set in the Highlands of Scotland.
The show basically follows Scottish emergency services to various accidents and emergencies. In particular, they especially love helicopter emergencies.
The show opens with a brisk run-through of the exciting accidents and emergencies we're going to see in this week's episode as a teaser. Then we get the well produced opening credits with lots of helicopters and dangling winchmen.
Next we're introduced to the crew of a particular helicopter - let's say it's a Royal Navy crew. They're called to Ben Nevis or somewhere where a climber has been injured. The voiceover tells us that the person almost certainly needs immediate medical care, and that it's a thirty minute flight to Ben Nevis. We see a graphic of a map indicating where on the Ben the injured party is lying. The crew search for and find the missing person. But it's too dangerous to land, so someone will be winched down, although crosswinds make this treachourous...
CUT TO: A quick graphic that has a helicopter and the word emergency.
VOICEOVER: Meanwhile in Lossiemouth...
The action could just stay with the injured party on Ben Nevis, but no. In case we get bored, it instead shows us a different crew, somewhere else, who have to rescue someone who's torn a ligament on a remote Scottish island.
The injured person is on a beach. We're anxiously told that the crew refer to tide times. The tide's coming in. It really is urgent!
Then we arrive on the beach, and there's no sign of the incoming tide. Not only that, but local doctors/paramedics are on the scene. There was little danger of anyone being washed out to sea. The tide's still so far out that the helicopter can happily land on the beach, but before they load up...
We get a preview of what happens next. We see clips we've already seen of the helicopter over Ben Nevis, swiftly followed by clips we've just seen of a helicopter landing on a beach. And because there's no hope of stretching these two cases out through another 15 minute (well 10 minutes once you remove ads) segment, we're told of a third case in Aviemore of someone who's, er, twisted an ankle on a ski-run.
After the break, we get more generic graphics of helicopters and the word "emergency." Then we return to Ben Nevis, with another resumé of the previous action, before we see that, yes, the climber was successfully hauled into the chopper. This is intercut with a few interviews of the crew basically telling us what we've just seen with our own eyes, and what a voiceover person has just told us.
The now familiar graphic of helicopter alongside the word emergency allows us to cut to the new story featuring a doctor who looks after injuries on a ski-run. Who'd have thought? A teenager has twisted an ankle. It hurts, and she's cold. She's brought back to some kind of hut where she looks sulky like any teenager - albeit one in pain. But before anything else happens...
We cut back to the person on the beach who's very unlikely to drown. They're loaded aboard the helicopter and returned to Aberdeen hospital where they're treated.
One more look at the graphic and we're back to Aviemore, where stroppy (but in pain) teenager is loaded into another ambulance and sent off to hospital.
A final graphical interlude and we see clips from all the incidents we've just seen, this time with some kind of special effect applied to the footage - perhaps they're now in black and white. The voiceover tells us that each person went to hospital and what they were treated for. They all lived.
Finally we get a sneak look at next week's programme in which some climbers are in trouble on a mountain, someone's hurt at a ski-resort and someone has a threatening condition on a remote Scottish island.
Repeat times 13.
Of course there's a little more to it than that. The producers tie together stories that happen at night with others than take place around the same time. The implication is always that these things are happening simultaneously, when you know perfectly well that they were probably months apart, that's why it looks like summer in once case, but another takes place in snow covered peaks (Yes - I know that snow covers some peaks pretty much all year round). The same goes for episodes set in poor weather and so on.
Now I'm not knocking these series too much, but they really don't add much to the sum of human knowledge, and the A to B to C editing-by-rote is just a bit sad. There's a really good series to be made with these emergency services, but a Five budget for the 7.30pm slot (up against the soaps), is never going to be enough.
Fringe is Sky's big new import, and one of the first US shows of the new season to get the full order of shows commissioned.
But it's basically The X-Files isn't it? Were it not for a bit of Googling, I'd have even thought that it was shot in Vancouver like early series of that show were. In fact it's set in Boston and shot in New York. Make of that what you will. Personally I kind of like shows being shot in the cities they pretend to be set in. Sitcoms are about the only real exception to this.
So we have Anna Torv (an Aussie) as FBI Agent Olivia Durham, who's got involved in some kind of weirdness involving events that together make up The Pattern. So we have an ultra-conspiracy at the heart of the show. This being a J J Abrams show, that's not surprising. But it's also a little concerning. The X-Files ultimately got caught up too much in its own mythology. Abram's previous series, Alias, was sillier, but by the end, the story arcs made little to no sense - especially to the casual action/adventure viewer. And Lost cannot possibly answer all the questions its set itself.
I really hope that this time, the writers have a big whiteboard or book or something where they note down all the conspiracy and unexplained elements, and then tick them off as they're answered. It's too been too much of a problem in recent years that the nature of US TV commissioning allied to ongoing stories has led to too much dissatisfaction overall.
I quite like the inclusion of an enormous corporate entity rather than just government at the heart of the matter. So we have Massive Dynamic (of course it has a web presence!) at the heart of things. And given the way that big business has finagled its way into things like defence, that seems a good route to travel and explore.
The worst part of Fringe is surely that of Dr Walter Bishop, who is played as an archetypal mad professor. Indeed, he'd put Back to the Future's Dr Emmet Brown in the shade on the scale of madness in mad professors. The character needs reigning in if he's not to become incredibly dull. This job falls to his son, Peter Bishop played by Joshua Jackson - Pacey from Dawson's Creek. He's a grizzled character who has his own issues - i.e. backstory, that'll be later explained - involving Mafia. We meet him in Iraq.
Incidentally, in Fringe, we always know where we are, because massive 3D lettering appears "welded" into the landscape to let us know. It's a stylish gimic that reminds you of the letter-zooming that used to happen in Alias. The only problem is that the device is massively over-used. Once we've seen Harvard once, we know where we are for the rest of that episode, and we don't need to see it again. That said, I was interested enough in discovering how it was done to find VideoCopilot.net which is a fantastic resource teaching you how to use things like Adobe After Effects and various 3D packages. Indeed the site's tutor, Andrew Kramer, worked on Fringe's opening credits, so this is top-level stuff.
At least Fringe gives a new role to Lance Reddick - Lt. Cedric Daniels from The Wire.
Meanwhile, Five has bought the UK rights to another intriguing show also starring an Australian in the lead - Simon Baker. The Mentalist is not some kind of outrageous slur on the handicapped (although a country which happily uses the word "retard" to describe people without approbation is to be questioned), but a series about a reformed psychic performer. This comes from the hand of Bruno Heller who most recently was responsible for the HBO/BBC production of Rome. It has X-Files connections too in that regular X-Files director, David Nutter (how could you ever forget his name) has directed the first two episodes. But it really shares a pedigree with CBS's Numb3rs, the series that features a maths genius solving pretty much all the FBI's crimes on the West Coast.
Baker plays Patrick Jane, a man who used to pose as a psychic and appear on show similar to ones that fill up all too many hours on Living TV. Then one day, a serial killer (who's still at large) murders members of his family, and he changes tack. He's now admitted that he's not a psychic but a mentalist, and he's using those skills to help solve crimes.
Like Monk before him, he's really just a reincarnation of Sherlock Holmes who used amazing feats of observation to deduce truths. It's not played for laughs as much as Monk is, but it quite happily fits into a procedural mix. Robin Tunney (from series 1 of Prison Break) plays Watson to Baker's Holmes, but aside from worrying that there won't be enough mentalist tricks to employ to keep the stories flowing is my only real concern. That and the fact that we're not totally let-in on some of the tricks Jane is employing. It'll be interesting to see this show develop, assuming its ratings hold up and it's not cancelled.
A cracking article from New York magazine on product placement and it's implications. Well worth a read.
We made a video for work the other day at Abbey Road studios. I thought I'd share it here too:
Click through to Flickr for the full size image.
Right - lots of good news on the Ed Reardon front.
First of all, this coming Monday (6th October) sees the return of Ed Reardon with a new series on Radio 4 at 11.30am. I would imagine that we've got another six epsiodes in this new series. Let's hope so anyway.
So set your alarms, tape recorders, iPlayers or whatever.
"The Last Miaow. By Christopher Douglas and Andrew Nickolds. Ed has rekindled his relationship with fellow author Mary Potter and they are in a record-breaking second month of partnership 'bliss'. Elgar, however, is none too pleased."
Second, I meant to say that the first series of Ed Reardon is now, finally, available to buy on CD. It comes on three CDs with two episodes apiece.
And series two is coming out on 13th November.
Throughout the year, there's a never ending series of conferences around the country on all sorts of subjects. It's not surprising as they make lots of money. Fees from delegates easily pay for the conference room facilities and a buffet lunch leaving lots of cash in pure profit. Speakers aren't usually paid with perhaps only their travel and accommodation paid for. But enough of that.
I've had several recent invitations to another conference - The Media Festival. Sounds important doesn't it? Perhaps I should go?
"We have delegates from TV, film, advertising, online, music, interactive, mobile, games and beyond. Join us today for an unrivalled networking opportunity!"
Umm. Well of course advertising, online, music, mobile, interactive and "beyond" are relevant. But isn't there at least one major media missing? In fact there are at least a couple. No radio and no press. Perhaps the festival might better be called The TV With A Bit Of Online Festival?
Now I don't want to sound too overly defensive about the media that I work for. But the trade magazine Broadcast behaves the same way. "Broadcast" refers really to only two media - TV and radio. Everything else relies on different distribution methods. Of course TV is more glamorous and sexy, and there's more news about it as well (although the fact that UK TV Style has commissioned ten episodes of some makeover programme is on a par with finding out that LBC has changed it's overnight weekend presenter). But you do have to turn to page 12 of the magazine to reach any radio news this week.
And, er, that page is it. The magazine runs to 36 pages.
Perhaps it's just the industry we're in.
Still, it can't be easy working for Broadcast. The Letters column regularly runs to a single letter which suggests that nobody actually ever writes to the magazine.
At least this week we do get the pleasure of a double page interview with BBC3's controller Danny Cohen - the man who's just cancelled the only decent sitcom he's got left, Pulling.
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