I found this collection of 2008 photos, presented in comparison to originals from the Twin Peaks pilot episode, quite fascinating. You may or may not agree :) Also, you can still stay at The Great Northern (although, as befits a hotel perched over a waterfall, it's not cheap).
Spotted this when flicking through the cable listings:
I could have made that documentary, and I bet my version would have been better. It would have consisted of the opening title, on black, followed by a second title card that read "No. For fuck's sake." Short, accurate, to the point.
A recommendation: last night I switched on the TV half way through Rich Hall's documentary "How the West was Lost" on BBC4. It was fantastic - a look at the frontier mythology and its importance in the American psyche as well as a timeline of western films and how they are informed by / reflect / relate to the politics of the era. It's apparently not yet on iPlayer, but if it does show up I'd entirely recommend watching it.
Flicking through TV channels aimlessly last night I came across one of those silent movie style caption cards, displaying only the words:
"Potty the pirate has a date with an accountant from Hungary who is taking him to a burlesque night"
That alone makes the license fee worthwhile. Programme info here, Potty the Pirate do be livin' here.
Fresh from last week's excursion into high culture at the theatre, I've now descended to the remarkable depths of The Springer Hustle, showing most evenings on whatever MTV's Freeview offshoot is called. It's quite remarkable even if, like me, the last time you saw The Jerry Springer Show itself was back in the 1990s when that bloke and his horse (if you don't know, don't ask) made an appearance.
Essentially a cheap marketing spin-off, the new series reveals the tactics used by producers to keep a fresh supply of half-crazed raging morons for Springer's talkshow. I'd always assumed that the method used to provoke arguments and fights was simple (booze), but it turns out to be a lot more advanced than that. In fact, the producers spend hours coaching each guest and then rile them up just before they exit onto stage. It works a bit like this:
Producer: So, what do you think about (other guest)?
Guest: Well, he tried to steal my truck.
Producer: Could you call them a white trash redneck motherfucker who stole your truck?
Guest: Er, I guess so. But..
Producer, louder: That white trash redneck motherfucker stole your truck! He stole your truck! Call him a white trash redneck motherfucker! Now! Go! Truck! Fuck! Truck! FUCKTRUCK!
Guest, exiting onto stage: YOU WHITE TRASH REDNECK (punches other guest) MOTHER(BLEEEP) etc.
The whole thing is presided over by a guy who looks like a member of the Grateful Dead, who hands down verdicts like Ceasar at the Colliseum, nodding at sufficiently debauched segments and glowering at producers whose work fails to make the grade.
Highbrow television this isn't, of course, but it is remarkably entertaining. Especially wonderful was the segment on one Toby Yoshimura*, a producer, and his quest to get a man from Kentucky, his pig, and his rather angry shaman wife (complete with burning incense and curses) into the studio on time. This might just keep me entertained until Series 5 of The Wire stumbles onto DVD.
* Check out the credits, which include "I'm Happy I Cut Off My Legs! (2007) TV episode (producer) "
I'm sick of websites and newspapers enthusing about The Wire. Partly because it's cliquey - this is a programme watched by exactly one-millionth* of the number of people who tune in to Hollyoaks, but it gets huge amounts of attention. More importantly, though, because I've developed an unhealthy addiction to the stupid thing, and reading about it when I'm trying to concentrate on other matters doesn't help.
After steadfastly refusing to watch the show for months (I was sick of reading Charlie Brooker explaining how good it was, so for some reason I decided to ignore it - don't ask how this logic works) I bought season one on DVD then watched all 12 hours of it in about three sleep-deprived days. I'm now half way though season four, and pondering the ways to get hold of the final, fifth series before it comes out on UK DVD in about a decade.
So, it's the best thing on television, blah blah.
What annoys me even more than reading about The Wire, though, is the drek that takes its place in the UK TV schedules. Channel Four has picked up loads of HBO programmes - The Sopranos (which is good, but pales by comparison) and even the hardly populist Six Feet Under - but The Wire is left to languish on the cable/Sky only FX. Instead, tonight's C4 schedule includes the aforementioned Hollyoaks, some godawful film and, er, Sex Change Hospital. Even Sky, which can't be short of money and which ran HBO's own Deadwood on Sky One, has decided instead to spend what appears to be about half of its budget on promoting the mindboggling Ross Kemp in Afghanistan, in which a former soap opera actor gets filmed in a warzone with Our Boys ((c) The Sun).
It makes you wonder: what would be necessary to get serious, intelligent TV programmes shown in the UK. Possible solutions:
1) Get a former Eastender to overdub the voice of Stringer Bell, then re-show The Wire as Ross Kemp in Baltimore.
2) Introduce text voting and run the political subplots as a reality competition show: who wants to be a massively corrupt major. Maybe some sort of X-factor thing for crack dealers.
3) Run the whole show again, from the start of series one through to S5 when it finally crosses the Atlantic, on BBC4 or More4. Please. If more people actually see good television, they might ask for more of it in future. And that could only be a good thing.
* Statistic may be fabricated nonsense