GRRR AAAAAARGH!
Those who read a certain previous rant about the BBC are going to be suffering from a serious degree of déja vu here, but I’m not apologising because I, along with at least 883 others (when last I checked), am PISSED OFF. THOROUGHLY.
We are, I’m afraid, back in the realms of TV scheduling.
Now, it was pointed out to me after that rant that it isn’t just SF and fantasy programmes which get messed around, the BBC actually treats no viewers with any consideration other than those who watch soaps, cookery programmes, gardening programmes, DIY programmes, and gardening and DIY programmes and the other bastard offspring of these genres.
This is entirely true, but the BBC treats SF & fantasy programming with particular disdain, and in any case if we wanted to talk about every single instance of viewers getting arsed around by the Beeb, we’d be here till the millennium. As it happens, the BBC is not alone in being in my sights this time, but there they certainly are.
The subject this time is, first of all, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. As with all SF/Fantasy programmes, it gets bounced around the schedule anyway, but viewers in Scotland suffer more because of the necessity to accommodate Gaelic programming.
So while English viewers still get Buffy on Thursdays, this week in Scotland Buffy was moved to 6:45 on Friday — overlapping by fifteen minutes the scheduled transmission of the Buffy spin-off, Angel, on Channel 4. This is so irritating I have actually complained to the Beeb. As the text of my complaint is reproduced here, I’ll let the BBC escape any further fire for the moment.
Channel 4, though — don’t you just love ’em? You’d have thought that the complaints they received over Babylon 5 would have taught them something, but clearly not. C4 have bought Angel and scheduled it at 6pm on Friday. At that hour, a programme has to be suitable for a “family audience” — in other words, children.
The problems with this scheduling are simply reduced to the fact that it is not a children’s programme at all. Unfortunately, Channel 4 is as blithe in their assumption that SF=kids as is the BBC, although there is less excuse than usual in that BBC 2 have had to screen late-night repeats of Buffy The Vampire Slayer without the cuts made for the earlier transmission; it should be obvious, therefore, that any spin-off of Buffy would be problematic in a teatime slot.
But Channel 4 are just as dismissive of swathes of their audience as the BBC, so 6pm it is. Alarms bells ring when first you tune in. All the listings show Angel starting at 6pm with the Channel 4 News following at 7pm. That is not what actually happens. . . .
At 6pm, something called T4 starts, hosted by a pair of identikit “yoof” presenters. Some padding — a band, an interview with an actress — follows before Angel starts at about 6:08. Given that there are two commercial breaks plus further commercials before the C4 News, and that the undynamic duo re-appear at the end of Angel, it is clear that some serious cutting is going on.
The censorship is so crudely done that there is no need to add up the running time to know that scissors have been wielded. And don’t expect Channel 4 to screen an uncut version later in the evening — that, apparently, would not give them a good return on their investment.
Most ludicrous of all, the dialogue is censored — although what dialogue any American programme could have (The Larry Sanders Show excepted) which anyone might seriously object to escapes me. In last night’s episode at one point Cordelia said, “Did you hear that?”
Well, no, actually, I didn’t, because the C4 censor had removed whatever word had offended his or her tender ears.
The fights, of course, have been cut, too, along with anything remotely gory. What, precisely, happened when the demon in last night’s episode swapped bodies, and how did it die? I have no idea because of the butchery committed on the episode.
The sensible approach, of course, would be for Channel 4 to schedule programmes appropriately — so Angel would be transmitted at 9 or 10pm, as is suitable for an adult programme created for an adult audience. It is not a programme for children. However, C4’s history with SF programmes doesn’t leave me hopeful that they are at all capable of understanding this.
The best summary of the grotesque level of stupidity C4 is exhibiting was produced by someone in the C4 Forum (of which someone asked if it were run by the Labour Party, because no one listens to anything said in it). As this woman said, “Why buy a kick-ass show, then remove both the kick and the ass?”
An Angel fan has set up an online petition to Channel Four. If you are at all interested in seeing the programme as Joss Whedon intended, add your name to it and make your voice heard. At the time this article was first written there were 884 signatures.
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