Get your finger out, Dyke!
So I’m having lunch with a friend the other day when the conversation turns to the TV, initially because I wondered what had happened at the end of Crusade on Sunday (the published time, and VideoPlus code, being some fifteen to twenty minutes shorter than the running time).
Having established that I had missed nothing much, certainly nothing along the lines of a story, we moved on to the weekend’s X-Files and I asked just when did Mulder get a water bed anyway?
“Oh, didn’t you see the episode where he swapped bodies with a Man in Black?”
Well, of course I had seen it… The only trouble was, that was about six months ago when the BBC showed a few episodes of the current series and then just stopped. In response to a letter in the Radio Times the statement was made that the X-Files would return in three to four weeks.
Six months later…
This is typical, and one of the reasons
the back-patting BBC ads. — only the BBC’s unique funding
makes all this possible
— make me feeling like throwing a
brick at the TV. It is true that the BBC has been and to an extent
still is responsible for excellent television and radio. What it
is utter crap at doing is actually showing the slightest iota of
consideration for its viewers. Unless they are demented followers
of soaps, that is.
If you are interested in SF, etc., you can expect the programmes you like to appear and disappear from the schedules at random. Previous series of the X-Files have been shown out of order (so we saw Scully with her dog before the episode in which she acquired it). It’s even worse with stuff like Star Trek. I gave up trying to follow DS9 sometime during the third series because I missed so many episodes. The new series would start, then three or four episodes (if we were lucky) later it would vanish to make way for some sporting event. Of course, it would be unreasonable to expect the series to restart when said sporting event ended. Instead, several weeks later it would sneak back into the schedules but not on the same evening, or at the same time. You would only learn it had restarted a couple of weeks later when you happened to chance on it in the listings.
Exactly the same pattern is being followed with Buffy, where there is the added delight of it being hacked up by the BBC’s censors because this show, which no one who has ever watched it could imagine was a kid’s programme, is being shown at 6:45 (or 7:15, or 7:30…) instead of 9–9:30pm where it belongs. OK, an unedited version is shown — after midnight. Third Rock is getting messed about in the same way, as are the current repeats of Star Trek & DS9 (I’m on the verge of giving up on it again). A couple of months ago, the BBC said they were going to show the original Star Trek from the very beginning, starting with the previously untransmitted pilot; three or four weeks later, it vanished to make way for sport. I don’t know if it has reappeared; I doubt it since Euro 2000 was followed by Wimbledon was followed by golf…
And how does the BBC respond to complaints about these things? By being patronising and obnoxious — oh, yes: and lying. Back in three to four weeks indeed! The general tenor of the responses is: you can’t be expected to understand this, but it just wasn’t/isn’t possible. Yeah, right: what they actually mean is, we don’t give a damn about these programmes and we certainly don’t give a damn about our viewers. If Greg Dyke wants to make changes, he should make them where it really counts: in pleasing his customers.
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