Only Fools and Horses.

[Dave54]

I honestly don't know if it's just me getting old but I find almost all the new dramas on tv, totally boring. Too much humour, no direction and inappropriate background music. I recently had another try at watching Sherlock after all the hype but lost interest after about 10 minutes.

Dickensian must have cost a huge amount of money to produce but it's as though someone forgot to add the story. That combined with the fact that whilst watching these programmes, the sound of rain hitting the pavement is louder than the character's voices just makes it a turn off for me.

". . .cost a huge amount of money to produce but it's as though someone forgot to add the story" says it all for me about too many modern TV programs, and for that matter films. No feeling at all of immersion or empathy with the characters.
I didn't like Sherlock at all.
Half the comedies made now seem to me to be either totally fatuous, "PC safe" or both.

And BBC News - never an hour passes without a report about football. . .

Something that annoys me that is. I use the BBC text thing sometimes to get a quick precis of the news. There's a dedicated sports page, but no, they still have to give me the "exciting news" that yet another overpaid "personality" (or group of said "personalities") has won something in which I have zero interest.

 

[PBC_1966]

You have to pay one way or the other although I do agree about the Licence Gestapo.

Speaking of the Gestapo, if anyone remembers the "German Week" episode of Are You Being Served? in which Grace Bros. is pushing German-made goods, that's an excellent example of what the ridiculous "PC" brigade at the BBC is doing in the way of editing classic shows.

All of the more recent screenings on British TV and even the BBC's region 2 DVD releases have that episode very badly hacked, presumably because somebody decided, to use Noel Coward's words, that we shouldn't "be beastly to the Germans" or some such thing (not surprising given the present-day BBC's very pro-Europe stance).

The hack job starts right at the beginning when Mr. Mash delivers a box of hats to the men's department and his line about "a load of Kraut titfers" has been removed. It continues right through the episode, all of Mr. Grainger's references to "the Bosch" are gone, and, if I recall correctly, even his line about "We did win you know!" was removed. In the discussion about costumes and Captain Peacock saying he should wear something which gives him an appropriate air of authority, the whole joke (started by Mr. Lucas, I think) about "You could always dress up as Hitler!" and related follow-ups are gone too. This episode comes to mind as being one of the worst affected, but there are several other episodes of AYBS? which have suffered as well, losing up to a full minute in some cases.

Is this really the level to which the BBC has stooped now? I see it as little more than an attempt to rewrite our television history.

A tip for anyone who wants AYBS? on DVD: Assuming you have suitable multi-standard/multi-region equipment, buy the American region 1 BBC DVD set - The episodes on those discs are uncut.

 

[JBR]

That combined with the fact that whilst watching these programmes, the sound of rain hitting the pavement is louder than the character's voices just makes it a turn off for me.

Yes, sound problems were reported extensively recently.
Technology has advanced enormously over the years. What a pity that skills have been lost at the same rate.

 

[JBR]

Is this really the level to which the BBC has stooped now? I see it as little more than an attempt to rewrite our television history.

A tip for anyone who wants AYBS? on DVD: Assuming you have suitable multi-standard/multi-region equipment, buy the American region 1 BBC DVD set - The episodes on those discs are uncut.

Good advice. It seems that America has more feedom than we have.

 

[PBC_1966]

What a pity that skills have been lost at the same rate.

Not that I have any interest in most of the newer stuff, but when I've seen and heard odd clips, one of the things which has struck me is the much poorer technical skills involved nowadays. Sound is badly mixed, as described above, and set-up of the video is often not a patch on 30 years ago.

 

[Dave54]

The sound engineers used their ears and their brains instead of pressing something like "auto" I suspect.

Eventually all TV will be computer generated, no real actors, no real world places.
Mind you by then we'll all be androids.
Anyone remember the soap "Androids" in "Red Dwarf"

 

[PBC_1966]

The sound engineers used their ears and their brains instead of pressing something like "auto" I suspect.

There's certainly far too much of that these days. I have a friend back in England, now retired, who worked in BBC Engineering back in the 1970's, later TV-am when it started up in the early 1980's, and was responsible as part of his duties for camera set-up, monitoring and maintaining proper video levels and balance etc. Looking at the stuff being turned out now, he would always be bemoaning the poor technical standards on today's material: Individual cameramen just hitting the "Auto white balance" button on their camera, for example, instead of having each and every camera involved individually adjusted against a common reference (that being the way to ensure that you don't get those abrupt shifts in balance between scenes).

 

[longdogs]

The reason we all enjoy the old re-runs is probably due to the fact that we can hear them perfectly well.

 

[JBR]

The reason we all enjoy the old re-runs is probably due to the fact that we can hear them perfectly well.

Those were the days when background music was subservient to dialogue!