Be Excellent To Each Other

Sponsored by the Conservatives to distract us from all the other crap going on.

We’re on Episode 7 of The Terror (BBC iPlayer), and we’ve been really enjoying it, but having seen The Crown it’s hard not to think of the Captain and commander as being George VI snd Prince Phillip. Also

The heck intensifies, I enjoyed the terror

We're a few episodes in (we went in cold (very good -Ed))now, and bloody hell a series about the crew of two ships overwintering in the ice field and

We watched Derry Girls over the past few weekends and it is brilliant!

Really funny. I'd highly recommend it.

Giphy "applause":
https://media0.giphy.com/media/fnK0jeA8vIh2QLq3IZ/giphy-loop.mp4

Still watching it - might starting watching on Iplayer rather than wait for the weekly broadcast, although the current BBC2 idents are things of beauty. I awarded the production bonus nerd points for the bit where they showed how uncomfortable standing for a daguerreotype is in real time.

Yes, I only recently started watching it. Surprised how it had past me by - it's superb.

Here's my very exciting (subs please check) story about The Terror: https://www.beexcellenttoeachother.com/ ... 4#p1028144

Series 2 is bobbins, though.

That's a suspiciously northern saying for you. WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH GRIMOTHY?

Reyt bobbins me dook

I'm his PA.

Or a girl that stole his phone. You choose.

Tell me about the girl, before I choose

That's brilliant.

I think a lot of it was "live posted". Hang on.

Here it is: https://www.beexcellenttoeachother.com/ ... f=3&t=6872

Brilliant. Bloody Rachel.

Brilliant..

Fuck Off was that ten years ago!

Cor, yeah it was. Before phone-location stuff was baked into the OS.

Poor Russ never got an answer

It's true! The answer is "I met her on the train, but for all I knew she had a massive husband / wife / housemate. But IIRC he was pretty small".

New Taskmaster tonight! SQUEEE!

We’ve just started taskmaster (starting at the most recent series and then working back a couple). I’ve enjoyed it as something light and mindless (though I really disliked the David Baddiel bits, where he just talked about his penis and wanted only to humiliate Little Alex Horne).

That's a weird name for him to give it.

It's an excellent show and often the cause of belly laughs I also particularly like how clever the set dressing and editing is - a lot of thought has clearly gone into the presentation.

Sometimes you get an excellent combination of celebs, other times one or two aren't as good, but on the whole the range makes for varied approaches. I sometimes find myself warming to people I don't normally like - Johnny Vegas and James Acaster come to mind on this.

Oh, exactly that! There have been a couple of times I’ve laughed until I’m short of breath, and I’m exactly the same with people like Johnny Vegas who I’ve not particularly liked before show a different side.

Guardian: BBC Four to become archive channel as cost-cutting drive continues



Disappointing, if unsurprising. Nothing wrong with bringing archival material back to the screens, of course, but part of BBC4's charm was the mix of art, history, science, and travel shows done with lesser-known hosts and often from slightly esoteric angles.

That utterly sucks balls. I wonder if they'll let Lucy Worlsey continue to make excellent docs.

No BBC 4 music night! In fact, no BBC 4 at all tonight. Gah.

Finished The Terror last night. Really enjoyed it and found the ending pretty satisfying.

Cracking episode of Taskmaster last night.

I watched Panorama's, "Are you scared yet, human?" last night and I admit, it did scare me.

It's getting harder and harder to tell how much is scaremongering and how much is genuinely worrying, in the field of AI as well as many others.

Huawei say they're independent of government while working on AI emotion recognition, which has allegedly been used by police when interrogating suspected "dissidents" locked in metal restraining chairs. The government are saying they don't discriminate against any minorities and allow religious freedoms, goes against evidence showing the reverse.

The US saying that there's a battle to develop and use AI between them and China, with the outcome uncertain and the consequences of falling behind being of global importance.

But then you have the medical uses of AI, which could revolutionise medicine, speed up diagnosis and therefore enable earlier life saving treatments.

It's doin' me 'ead in.

BBC 2: The Road to Partition

Overview of the creation of Northern Ireland on its centennial.
.
Contains good use of archive footage and photographs. A useful introduction, and I liked how it tied Irish independence into the wider post-WW1 context, especially other independence movements at the time such as those in India.

I tried to watch it.

About 20 mins in, I gave up.

It was interesting BUT it's such a complex mess that I forget who everyone is, who all the factions are, etc. etc. and I can't understand what's going on. It's impossible to unravel after all this time, so I can't see there ever being a solution acceptable to everyone.

I've just watched the first two episodes of series 1. Laughing out loud throughout. Can't believe it's taken me so long to get round to it.

Ace! It gets better and better too.

Just finished binging through Time on iPlayer.

Sean Bean portrays a newly imprisoned convict trying to deal with his guilt, Stephen Graham is a prison officer at his nick that has to make difficult choices.

It’s only 3 one hour episodes, but it’s a fucking tour-de-force. Bean is so fucking good in it, and although he doesn’t have quite as much to do, so is Graham.

I was sat on my sofa basically in tears for most of the third episode.

Yeah, superb TV. Anxious throughout most of it.

Had a nagging feeling that I recognised the prison (from my time as a serial killer, obvs) and just discovered it was filmed at Shrewsbury Prison, which is probably why - used to walk by it on the regular. I kind of assumed that I'd be wrong and that all prisons look the same, and maybe that's true, dunno.

I thought I'd read something along those lines - that prisons are often the same, based on Pentonville. But I can't find it now, and ended up reading about a lack of privacy and lots of masturbation, so I've, um, gone off looking. Thanks for the recommendation, I'll watch Time when I have, oh, what's the word?

Opportunity, yes.

We just accidentally watched the 3rd episode of Time. It was really good. Yes I am an idiot.

You mean before watching the first two?

We did that with a drama with David Tenant as a serial killer on ITV hub because of the confusing layout.
Still went back and watched the first two.

Same thing happened to me with the two part documentary about building the nuclear power station at Hinkley. Complete spoiler, it took away all the tension about whether the concrete for the base was going to cure correctly.

They shouldn't have used sick material in the first place.

Can't bring myself to watch it. The trailers were enough.

yes.. The announcement before said it was the new drama, not the concluding part of the new drama... ah well it was good

I had the idea of setting up a theatrical review website whose conceit was that I reviewed the play based upon watching up until the interval, at which point I'd leave. Felt like it might lead to some interestingly different stories being told.

Never did it.

This 1985 documentary about the Outcasts Motorcycle Club is something else:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p ... e-outcasts