Television programmes [2]

Just started new series called The Rising, its quite gothic but not scary, more interesting than that, and very watchable with a lovely lead actress. It was filmed in my part of the world in Manchester, got lots of moors and forests.

Bletchley circle. Four women who used to be code breakers in WW2 at Bletchley park get bored with their lives after the war and turn to tracking down a serial killer. Forest can squawk about woke gender politics all he wants; it's good.

halfwise wrote:I take it that's a "thumbs up" for The Terror, then.  Not thought of or aware of it before, may have to look it up now.

It's above average, but not excellent.

halfwise wrote:Bletchley circle.  Four women who used to be code breakers in WW2 at Bletchley park get bored with their lives after the war and turn to tracking down a serial killer.  Forest can squawk about woke gender politics all he wants; it's good.

So are you saying that the setting and characters are believable, or is it some contrived bullshit?
Did the writers care about telling a good story, or were they writing to advance a specific agenda within the constraints of sexual and racial quotas?

Mrs Figg wrote:Just started new series called The Rising, its quite gothic but not scary, more interesting than that, and very watchable with a lovely lead actress. It was filmed in my part of the world in Manchester, got lots of moors and forests.

Oh shoot! A ghost story eh?

Forest Shepherd wrote:

halfwise wrote:Bletchley circle.  Four women who used to be code breakers in WW2 at Bletchley park get bored with their lives after the war and turn to tracking down a serial killer.  Forest can squawk about woke gender politics all he wants; it's good.

So are you saying that the setting and characters are believable, or is it some contrived bullshit?
Did the writers care about telling a good story, or were they writing to advance a specific agenda within the constraints of sexual and racial quotas?

It's believable, perhaps somewhat contrived, as all fiction is. The only agenda may be that the writer(s) discovered that quite a few codebreakers in Bletchley Park were women, and thought "hmm...that would make a good story." As far as I know nobody's taken on the story of all the Rosy the Riveters in America being cast back into the role of housewives, but all these cases have the makings of a good story.

Sort of like Hidden Figures. I had complaints about some of the technical points, but it turns out the bigger problems were how they overplayed NASA's treatment of her: in reality NASA treated their female computers with a good deal of respect, and government agencies have a good record when it comes to race and sex relations among their own employees. The writers skewed things for the sake of the story. What I liked about Bletchley Park is they showed that the government upper ranks actually DID have respect for the abilities of the women they hired (else they wouldn't have used them), but that system of respect was lost when cast back into mainstream society after the war.

{{ I could listen to Michael Sheen being Welsh to the max and reading with such pride his lands works all night long, plus the last speech he gives to spur on the Welsh football team is just, wow. }}

{{ Classic comedy double act The Two Ronnies were well known for their wordplay and word smithery, but how the hell they even got through this sketch is beyond me.}}

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1082897888875663&ref=sharing

that one takes some practice.

Watched the first 2 episodes of Willow.
Truly awful. Was looking forward to this as well. Made for little kids I think. Although there is a lesbian relationship happening.

Seems like there has to be a gay couple in every thing we watch these days.

Imo there should be gay couples in "everthing we see these days" until we see them and simply think couple. A bit like female signer, male nurse, etc etc.

(Just to clarify, it should be no need for neither Yey! Representation! I'm gonna cry!  nor Yuck! Representation! I'm gonna puke! Just... this movie has people.   )

You can't socially-engineer-away human instinct. That only goes so far.

Fear of the unknown is an instinct. How you respond is mostly taught.

Imo there should be gay couples in everthing we see these days- Amarie

{{Maybe 20 or even 10 years ago, maybe, when it was needed as representation was so under represented. These days its the other way, there is over representation of minorities which risks alienating people from story and narrative as, ironically, its no longer relatable to the majority and any message it may be trying to convey is therefore not going to get through. I have no desire if they make a LotR's tv series to see Frodo and Sam a gay couple and Bilbo a bachelor because hes secretly trans or for Gandalf to be a woman or Aragorn black. Representation is not needed everywhere but at this stage it should only be needed where it makes sense within the narrative, setting, world building and purpose of the work. }}

Should have made quotation marks on "everthing we see these days", since it’s meant to comment that exaggerated statement. Sorry for that.

I believe the "oh look we are just soooo woke here omg" will also fade when there's no cash to milk from it. 

Well, one can hope.

Forest Shepherd wrote:You can't socially-engineer-away human instinct. That only goes so far.

Amarië wrote:Fear of the unknown is an instinct. How you respond is mostly taught.

Teachers of younger children (who see a wide enough array to separate out family dynamics) will tell you that kids have NO prejudices. They learn that from society, and it increases with age. (They also have no social niceties and might be scared by things like big hair, etc). Fortunately it also tends to plateau and often decreases again with exposure.

I don't even register gay relationships on TV or film. If the writer wrote them that way. For example the two lesbians in V for Vendetta. But, and that's a big but, if the TV or film changes an originally hetero couple into a gay/non-binary/black couple just because of social pressure to 'modernise' that really distracts me. I find it insulting to the author. Even kids panto gets mashed up out of recognition.

Another weird thing, I saw some British TV adverts for the first time in ages recently and what the fuck is going on? Anyone would think all English people have left the country and its turned into South Africa/West Indies. Every single person is black. I mean ALL of them. Its just looks odd and does not represent demographic reality.

I think it may actually have more to do with advertising. Here about 1/7 of the population is black. If your little advertising skit doesn't have 7 people then it is demographically feasible to not have a black person. But then you may lose that demographic. So it makes more sense from an advertising perspective to have each major group presented if at all possible. I don't think the mainly white advertising world realized this until the pc movement smacked them in the head.

UK 82% white + 90% black advertising = odd

{{ One that got me noticing recently was BBC News after England got through to the last 16 in Quatar. Every England supporter they spoke to was either black or asian but then at the end of the report they had to use footage of fan zones in England set up for folk to watch the game and of course as Figgs numbers indicate it was largely a sea of white faces, as you would expect. It was quite clear the BBC had delibertly choosen to either only interview minorities as England fans, or had delibretly only choosen those to air. It was a bit odd. }}

Sure it wasn't an attempt to check if they were real? 

What did these people who you suspect were only picked because they were not white have to say about being a football supporter in racist Qatar? What questions did they get? What type of interview was it? Why weren't they good enough ecamples of English fans? I am lacking a whole lot of context.

{{ They werent asked about Quatar, was following the match england qualified for last 16 and fans were leaving the stadium and BBC were interviewing them to ask them what they thought. But as Figg pointed out given England is 82% white struck me as odd that the only English fans the BBC could find to interview were 100% non white English. That it seems to me takes either a bit of effort to avoid white suporters to find that many non white fans to ask or delibertly cherrypicking in the edit room only non white fans to show in the report. This was further emphasised in the shots at the end of the fan zones, as they were unavoidably wide shots where the make up of the english supporters was what youd expect, majority white, making it even more clear the BBC had gone out of their way to only interview non white suporters. }}

{{ To illustrate the point the BBC have an article up headlined "How have travelling fans found Qatar tournment" in which they ask fans from different countries how their experience of Quatar has been as fans- heres the picture of the English fans they picked to ask -



and they describe their experience as "If the World Cup hadn't been held here, we probably wouldn't have come [to Qatar]," says Faizal, who has travelled from Yorkshire with his father and brother. "The prayer facilities here make it very easy for us, whether it's in the fan festival, the souq or the stadium. It has been lovely to see tourists from all over the world attending the mosques and having a genuine interest in Islam and the Arab culture.
Halal food is a must for us and would most likely be a struggle in other countries, so having access to halal food wherever we are is such a huge benefit to us."

Just the typical England fan experience! }}

The real representation of the situation regarding English fans in Qatar would be asking them how they coped with alcohol being banned, and what they thought of it. As far as I can remember a truly traditional experience is of British fans drinking together in pubs.