To me it was a marginally above average British TV drama… slightly silly and implausible… Hugh Laurie as a cartoon capitalist villain… oh look there’s Tom Hollander and Olivia Colman yet again…. certainly not worth a second look – in fact the location filming basically made it seem like a hardback version of Death in Paradise. But ever since it was on, the BBC website have been referring to it as pretty much the greatest drama in the history of television. Whah?
Culminating in this utterly bizarre item on the BBC News website which lays all editorial balance aside to claim that Bafta’s nominations are “baffling” in excluding TNM. “Look! Tom Hiddleston! Hugh Laurie!! People have heard of these actors in America!!“
The assumption that this is based on, ie that British TV – particularly BBC Drama involving posh actors – is the greatest in the world, is twenty years out of date. It’s as out of touch as BBC1’s insistence that Gary Baaaalow is regarded as a national treasure – another meeting I certainly missed.
I know the BBC has to big itself up in these harsh times, but equally sometimes they need to come out of their silo and get the f*** over themselves. Auntie, you ain’t all that.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-39564174
I agree with you that The Night Manager wasn’t that brilliant. It was ok. I don’t agree at all that the BBC isn’t all that great though. (Used to have this argument with Ianess). Perhaps cos I have long lived in a country where the TV is all, without any exceptions whatsoever, unwatchable rubbish, but I the BBC is up there with the world’s best. I’ve certainly seen nothing that tops Happy Valley or The Missing this past year.
I don’t really watch enough TV to make a sensible judgment on this. Even when it’s on I’m usually farting around on here. They just seem be in denial about this particular show.
It reminds me of the way that ITV1 game shows and the like have to have X Factor/BGT contestants on as “celebrities” in order to make them look as if they’re actually famous outside the context of, er, ITV1. See also the Daily Star’s front-page coverage of Big Brother…. who’s still watching that? But there’s a sponsorship deal, so up the agenda it goes.
I tend to think that the BBC is above all that… perhaps I’m the one in denial.
ITV1 has been renamed, er, ITV. There is a new ITV channel called ITVbe which features programmes about orange people shouting at other orange people about real life issues like manicures and shagging. BBC2 is now BBC1, and BBC1 is now also ITV, but without Simon Cowell and Ant & Dec. BBC4 is only watched by old men who live alone, members of the Afterword, and people who get confused looking for Adult Babestation (which could all be the same demographic). BBC3 has been cancelled, but if you are young you can still receive it on some gadget called an interweb.
Telly’s not what it was when we had the test card and the Interlude.
There’s also ITV Encore, which is programmes that pretend to finish and then come back on again. Three times.
Night Manager was a good romp, expensively made good romp and Hugh Laurie was a fantastic master criminal arms dealer woman beating scumbag. Thoroughly enjoyed it but it was hardly ground breaking. Need to add that “Rev” as a hard drinking ex military type gone bad was inspired casting too
I’m sat here watching BBC4’s Depeche Mode night I recorded on Friday, we are lucky to have it whether we agree with everything they do or not
Jesus!
I couldn’t place Korky and I’m trying to watch telly without the phone beside me for distraction so kept forgetting to look up what else he’d been in. I knew it was *something* I watched.
Rev. Thanks, although again, Jesus! That was some change in character.
This is just a trap to bring that smart gaelic restauranteur of Rose Street back…….
“restauranteur”? Get off my thread!
Line Of Duty is bloody brilliant at the moment…!
Erm, I reserve judgement on Line of Duty. This week’s ending reminded me of the last series (trying to avoid spoilers here.) Suffice to say that the writers aren’t afraid of inflicting major events on main characters.
I managed to miss the first two series, despite being nagged by everyone to watch!
This is series 4. The first 2 are on Netflix.
Agreed, enough plot for two series and we’re only halfway through. Has my hard-to-please teens absolutely on the edge of their seats, and in my fantasy world I am of course Ted in the interrogation room saying ‘With respect, Detective Inspector..’ before raining shit on them.
Can’t get on with Line of Duty. The lead actor looks about nineteen and exudes all the threat of a substitute Geography teacher. And Neil Morrissey still seems to be stealing a career as an actor.
And, yes, I did just come on here to slag something off. Tough but fair, that’s me.
It’s a waste of Adrian Dunbar too.
But in general LoD is good quality stuff.
Well, this is BBC the global film maker bigging up its product, rather than BBC the (allegedly) unbiased news broadcaster. Nothing particularly surprising or reprehensible about that. No doubt (*irony klaxon*) Fox News would behave in the same way about Logan, eg.
FWIW I binge-watched TNM, so I must have enjoyed it, unlikely though it all was. But these days, who’s to say what’s unlikely?
Agree with Moose (and others here) that I personally didn’t find it particularly special, but to be fair, it was a genuine word-of-mouth hit in our office, people raving about it, lending each other the box-set & so on, so I don’t think it’s pure hype…
I thought Hugh Laurie was great. Olivia is always good. Tom – no, too pretty or something, quite a good actor. So glad they passed him over as James Bond – FFS, it’d be like going back to Roger
The name’s Bond…James Bond. Would you like to go back to Roger?
Not while I’m on duty, though it’s very civil of you to enquire.
Olivia Colman will be getting the Bafta Lifetime Award For Being The Same In Everything in about 2035… I don’t know why they don’t just give that to her now in fact.
Tom H was a bit wooden, as he was as Henry V – but in both cases he was meant to be. He’s tall and posh, he doesn’t actually have to do anything other than show up.
Be fair, she was pregnant in TNM. That’s different.
Actually, won’t hear a word said against her. She’s being brilliant in Broadchurch 3.
How can she have been pregnant? She never goes home.
Turkey baster, insulated containers, express courier.
Jizz by Jiffy!
And the Night Manager.
If you insist on a plot where every lady simply must bonk the main character then he might as well be handsome (see my previous remark about the unfathomable sex appeal of that “substitute geography teacher” – Nice one, MC Escher! – in Line Of Doody).
Oh I liked TNM a lot. Not so much the Hiddle, whose performance seemed simply to be a screen test for Bond, but Laurie, Colman and Hollander were all worth the licence fee on their own. Hollander’s great at being a tiny unlikely psycho – he did a similar turn in Joe Wright’s much-overlooked Hanna, albeit one in which he turned the ham dial all the way up to “Widow Twanky”. It was terrific fun.
But I found him and HL genuinely menacing in TNM. I just would maybe have preferred a different leading man.
I was perfectly happy with all the casting, and it was certainly wonderful to look at. My problem was credibility. I know the whole scenario was meant to be escapist and far fetched, but it could at least have worked within its own terms – so Roper is a ruthless and brilliant worldwide arms dealer, but he both keeps a loose cannon like Corky on the payroll, and doesn’t get suspicious when Pine conveniently shows up at just the right time?
I don’t buy Tom H as scary. I like him very much but he’s too short to be scary. It just becomes a bit silly, like that little twerp who plays Moriarty in Sherlock. Christ, I think he’s even shorter than me.
Hugh Laurie was far scarier as House, because you never knew quite what he was at. Same with Tony of Plymouth.
Tom H? Short? What can he mean?
(I knew what you meant, just being a smartarse)
I thought it was terrific Sunday winter entertainment & a ‘backlash’ of sorts was probably inevitable. It was the first BBC serial in ages that made me & Mrs Jim make the time to watch it as it aired.
Netflix or even Amazon Prime have generally had more appealling stuff in recent times ( for us, that is) but this was a good showcase, clearly made with the wider world market in mind.
Recognisable faces, sunny locations & dastardly Brits being hunted by decent upstanding Brits with subterfuge & machinations and that – can’t really go wrong.
It’s a production that plays to BBC strengths, quite old fashioned, & not requiring ultra violence, incest or child murder & dragons – & the type of budgets that HBO can generate.
All in all, very good.
Again, the BBC not getting the fuck over itself.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-47722753
I think the article is pretty fair.
Well it does say that the rules have been changed to allow Killing Eve to be nominated, which is pretty extraordinary. And there is a grudging reference to a non-BBC show (albeit one starring Benedict C, of BBC hit series Sherlock).
But again it’s this prevailing sense of, “We’re the BBC, we’re better than everyone else by definition. We should get all the Baftas forever”
I didn’t read it like that. I thought it was kind to everyone and somewhat embarrassed by the rule change. Certainly no dissing here.
Don’t mind me. I just get irritated by their use of their news outlets to promote their own programmes.
The Murdoch press do this all the time with Sky/Fox content but for some stupid reason I expect the BBC to be better than that. Silly me.
They have to do what they can to attract as big an audience as possible. Otherwise, those nasty Tories will take their money away.
I’m amazed people are willing to pay £70 a month for Sky but are outraged at having to pay a licence fee a fraction of that for everything the BBC provides.
The sooner it goes down a subscription route the better, so that it doesn’t have to be constantly running scared of whichever government is in charge.