Small Screen Surfin'
Created | Updated Mar 9, 2004
Welcome everybody, don't forget your chance to shamelessly promote your TV visual habits in
some kind of talk show format. Your U-number and h2g2 name to '[email protected]' to find
out more.
Ah, the Oscars, Pierce Brosnan doing the best impersonation of Noel Edmonds with his beard
before the show began. Of course I can't/won't talk about the actual event, that's Awix business,
but I can talk briefly about the pre-show half-hour build up, however I would like to mention that
the Best of Billy Crystal's Oscar Entrances should be on a DVD.
It was good seeing the horrible, horrible brown-nosing by the interviewers as well as the
shameless plugs for who was wearing who and upcoming movie promotion and Mr. Jonathan Depp
looked fully ready to smack his interviewer as he was clearly uncomfortable about being there. But
that's enough about the Oscars though and back into the small screen as a take a small look at
Terry Jones' Medieval Lives.
If anybody has read the previous SSS's you will have noticed that I go on about comedy
and, to a slightly less degree, history. Now Mr.Terry Jones is in both those categories and not just
because he's 'a former Python' and somewhat into Vikings called Erik.
Medieval Lives is both comedy and history. Mainly history because it's a programme about
Medieval Britain's people e.g. Monks, Minstrels etc. No surprises there, but Jones presents it in such
a fashion that it does away with traditional opinions of those days and gives the facts in an easier to
understand way: He dresses up and acts them out and there is also a small animation to get the point
across. Animations that wouldn't look out of place on fellow Python, Terry Gilliam's desk. If for
some bizarre and perverse reason that there's a third hand, on it would be the practical advantage
of going to places that are reconstructions or rebuilt buildings to create the idea of scale and give
some idea of what it would be like to live back then.
Perfectly balanced and as entertaining as other Python, Michael Palin's geographical exploits.
Nicely done. Entertaining yet you don't have to learn if you don't want to like, say, Time
Team where you're mostly looking at green fields and empty plots of land where sometimes Tony
Robinson and crew don't find anything!
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And for something completely regular, the Small Screen Supplement.
Oh woe is five (the channel formally known as Channel Five). Since conception they have
been regularly showing repeats of 'ye olde' films and other TV treats - if smutty tabloid TV is your
thing (now being challenged by C4) - as well as being the last (of the five who want them) to gain a
genre that the masses desire.
They've jumped on reality TV bandwagon and brought forth Back to Reality a show which
I find to be horribly cruel as I can't stand reality TV!!!! Put together all the 5-second-famers from
the other channels like Jade 'Jim Henson Muppet' Goody, Rick 'Phat an' all that' Walla, Maureen
'Driving School Songstress' Don'tknowasecondnamea, and the master of disguise and looting Ricardo
'Yes that's really a man' from The Salon. Why hate them all separately when you can have
them in one bulk?!
Good news now, however, as 2DTV is back! Laugh in joy at George Bush, Tony Blair and the
irrepressible Professor Liebstrom. Nice.
Keep Surfin'!
