h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hooray!!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/4393533.stm

this is our jerry spinger mooooment

Well done BBC!


az

Get on the beeb

It is moments like this that make me damn glad I pay the licence fee.

"So give us some chocolate, and throw us to the lesbians"

I'd love to see it on stage myself. Anyone know if any theatres in Bristol will get to show it?

I think that should be "...dip us in chocolate and..."

I am glad that they didn't uphold the complaints. Somehow I doubt that Christian Voice (is there actually more than one member of this group?) will shut up about it, though.

My Christian friends who watched it agreed with my assessment of its not-blasphemous-ness. The only people I've personally spoken to who thought it was blasphemous were people who hadn't seen it...

David - a Christian who enjoyed JSTO

It is not quite over yet:

'Earlier this month another Christian group, the Christian Institute applied for a judicial review of the broadcast.

The group said the programme breached the BBC's charter and broke the Human Rights Act by discriminating against Christians.

The BBC said the matter was being dealt with by its legal department.

In response to Wednesday's decision, institute spokesman Mike Judge said: "We still feel the broadcast went against the Royal Charter and discriminated against Christians in a way they would not discriminate against any other religion." '

The Christian Institute has only been around for a few months and is basically against the same things as CV. It seems that a few people can put together a website, send off some letters to people and kick up a stink and suddenly they become 'a group' who seem to be able to influence what the other 60million people in this country do and watch.

The Beeb were hardly going to uphold the compliant though were they?

"discriminated against Christians in a way they would not discriminate against any other religion" - so the Beeb would never show anything else where someone has a strange dream about (for example) Shiva, Zeus or Mohammed (sorry if I have spelt that wrong)?

David

Whether it was actual parody, or just using prior knowledge of the audience as part of the experience, it wouldn't be as meaningful in the UK to do a similar thing featuring Mohammed, Buddha, or even joke figures like L Ron Hubbard, etc simply because there wouldn't be anything like the potential audience of open-minded Christians, ex-Christians and nonbelievers who have still been educated in (to their minds) Christian mythology.
It *may* be the case that extreme nutters from some other religion might object more violently than the CV lot did about JStO, but if there's a *sufficient* reason for not doing something simply from likely small audience size, the possibility of violent backlash and/or PC considerations aren't necessarily the only ones stopping productions happening.

It's a bit like the Life of Brian - without having some idea of the background, it just wouldn't be anything like as funny.

I can well imagine a comedy set in the Old Testament, which could potentially offend some humourless Jews, Muslims *and* Christians, because in that case there *would* be a sufficiently large audience to justify production.

Some people with no sense of humour are going to take offence, but many of them are probably the kind of people who habitually take offence at six things before breakfast.

Wasn't *most* of JStO Old-Testament?

I only saw part of it, and was reading a technical manual at the same time, so I couldn't really say.

Jesus really only featured near the end. Adam and Eve were there, and we got the whole story of the fall from Grace.

So, shouldn't offence-prone Muslims and Jews have been offended?

<>

It seems not - which is maybe why it's not called Christian Voices?


az

<>

No, of course they were not.

well the governors have, from time to time, upheld complaints against BBC programs so I'm not convinced that its quite so 'of course' as that

Ooh, how intriguing. Which complaints have they upheld?

David - wonders if he could set up 'Different Christian Voice'...

Well since the ITC has gone the way of the Dodo and Opal Fruits™.

I suggest Offcom would be the safest bet to check on the list of upheld complaints (not limited to the beeb)

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/

I did a bit of digging and this is the page associated with decisions reached on complaints made against broadcast television.

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv/obb/prog_cb/?a=87101


Clive

Some of the results are quite amusing...

e.g. XXX Adult Porn; complaint: Sexual offence, No. of complainants: 1, not upheld.

Yes I was going to mention some of those.

Heinz sponsorship: Emmerdale
"This sponsorship credit featured a guinea pig in a cage with a bottle of tomato ketchup in place of its water bottle. The visual was accompanied by the tag line "You can’t eat without it...". 17 viewers complained that the credit was irresponsible because it could lead to pet owners, particularly children, replacing their pet’s water supply with ketchup"

Battlestar Galactica

A viewer complained about the word "f**k" appearing in the subtitles for this programme.
Sky agreed that the subtitle was inappropriate and explained that the subtitling company had made a mistake. The character in question had in fact said "frack". Unfortunately, the subtitling company misheard this and translated this into the offending word on the subtitles.

and you've got to laugh at the soap story summations for the non acquinated:

Coronation Street
ITV 1, 20 September, 19.30 and 20.30, 22 September, 19.30, 25 September,13.15

In these episodes, the fractured relationship between Sarah Platt and Todd Grimshaw reached a head, when Todd found Sarah in bed with his half-brother, Jason....We believe that regular viewers would have been aware of the situation between Sarah and Todd and would not be surprised at the catastrophic repercussions of Jason’s involvement with Sarah.

Not in breach of the Code