List Shows

I hate list shows.
I mean, I really hate list shows.
Weekends are forever full of four hour shows counting down whatever in a pointless way. And a selection of non-entity Z-list celebs spout off about the clip they just watched on a screen seconds before the cameras rolled for their contribution.
Armando Iannucci parodied it all quite well in his recent series.
But having said that, I still watched a good chunk of Greatest Ever Comedy Movies on Five tonight. Sadly the full list isn’t up on the web, and I only saw it from 12 or so down. But it just really disappointed me.
The thing is that this programme did seem to have some budget. A lot of the writers and directors involved had been interviewed, and the majority of the other talking heads were film critics like Barry Norman and Derek Malcolm. OK, so we did have Michael Winner too.
No. The real problem is slightly alluded to in the previous paragraph. They were able to interview most of the salient personnel. That means that they’re alive. What that really means is that no old films got a look in.
Sure, the overall winner, Life of Brian, was made in 1979, but I’m talking about really old films. Movies from the thirties, forties, fifties and sixties. I didn’t see the whole show, and maybe some did make it. Perhaps a few of the Ealing comedies, the odd thirties screwball comedy. Buster Keaton? Laurel & Hardy? I don’t know.
What I do know is that the only film of any age that I saw was at number 11, and was the incomparable Some Like It Hot. A true classic.
What a shame then, that the number 10 film was Mrs Doubtfire.
I’m not sure who ever decided that Giles Coren would make a decent TV presenter because I find him just about the most irritating person on television – and include every “cast member” of reality TV programmes in that list. But at least he had the decency to blame us. Well not me obviously, but you. The British public. Well those member of the public who ticked a few pre-selected films on the Five website at some point earlier this year.
So what we end up with is effectively the comedy section in the local Blockbuster Express (By the way, why are they called “Express”? It’s not like they’re any faster. What they really mean is that the branch is tiny). The range is pitifully small and just represents all the really obvious films you can think of, have seen a million times before, and quite probably own the DVDs of a few of them.
I think what annoys me is that there isn’t a proper film programme on TV at the moment. Film 2006 is fine for reviews, and Paul Merton made an excellent series on silent stars earlier this year. I miss Moving Pictures, or those intros that Alex Cox or Mark Cousins used to do for Moviedrome (complete aside – I’ve just noticed that Alex Cox has put a PDF of his book on spaghetti Westerns released under a Creative Commons licence). Still The Cinema Show starts again on BBC Four next week.


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