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8 December 2017
[people] The unlikely life of Norris McWhirter, kids’ TV star and the original Brexiter … a look at the fascinating life of the co-creator of the Guinness Book of Records and extreme-right winger …

If you wanted to be unstoppably hectored by someone in tie and blazer about how the Edward Heath government had committed treason by taking us into the Common Market in 1972 and then find out the the name of the acrobat who performed a quadruple back-somersault on to a chair at the New York Hippodrome in 1915, and the artiste who caught him, Norris McWhirter was your man.

And you can add to that the fact that Norris, along with his twin brother Ross, created the Guinness Book of Records, which had sold more than 75m copies in 37 languages by the time his involvement ended in 1996.

We will never see his like again, not because the world doesn’t teem with libertarian ideologues, nor with grown men who know too much about the minutiae of stuff; but because combining these two disciplines successfully in public seems beyond our wit in 2017.

15 November 2017
[tv] Remembering Magnum P.I.’s John Hillerman, the World’s Best Phony Englishman … very sad to hear about the death of John Hillerman. RIP.

Higgins was set up to be Magnum’s stooge—the short, supercilious prig who Magnum repeatedly outsmarted, and in whose reflection our hero could shine still brighter. But as played by John Hillerman with a genuine sense of dignity and steely righteousness, Higgins was no joke; you loved him because he truly believed in a classical world of order and rules-following, and he wasn’t about to cede all of that tradition to a handsome young firecracker in a Hawaiian shirt. And every so often, Higgins would a deliver a barb that succeeded in cutting Magnum down to size. The smirk from Hillerman that would invariably follow was a thing of beauty and triumph—and a gentle exhortation to those of us suffering through grade school that the golden boys weren’t always going to be the ones who glowed.

Until he died last Thursday at the age of 84 in Houston, I confess that I had no idea that Hillerman—who was born in Denison, majored in journalism at UT Austin, and then retired back to Texas in 1999—wasn’t actually British. That’s one definition of a great performance, when an actor so wholly inhabits a part that viewers assume he must just be playing a variation of himself. (In real life, Hillerman reportedly spoke with a faint Texas drawl—akin to his character Howard Johnson in Blazing Saddles.)

14 November 2017
[netflix] How Netflix works: the (hugely simplified) complex stuff that happens every time you hit Play‘Netflix works on thousands of devices, and each of them play a different format of video and sound files. Another set of AWS servers take this original film file, and convert it into hundreds of files, each meant to play the entire show or film on a particular type of device and a particular screen size or video quality. One file will work exclusively on the iPad, one on a full HD Android phone, one on a Sony TV that can play 4K video and Dolby sound, one on a Windows computer, and so on. Even more of these files can be made with varying video qualities so that they are easier to load on a poor network connection. This is a process known as transcoding. A special piece of code is also added to these files to lock them with what is called digital rights management or DRM — a technological measure which prevents piracy of films.’
26 October 2017
[tv] It was acceptable in the 80s: why Magnum PI should be spared reboot hell‘Magnum PI, for crying out loud. Is nothing sacred? Sure, on the surface, the original Magnum PI was just one of a glut of post-Vietnam shows about vigilante justice with a charismatic male lead and storylines that wrapped up neatly at the top of the hour. But it was special. Everyone knows it was special. By some absurd alchemy Magnum PI ended up perfectly written, perfectly cast and perfectly soundtracked, managing to be both of its time and utterly timeless. You don’t mess with Magnum PI.’
16 October 2017
[tv] 16 Peaceful Things To Watch On Netflix When You Just Want To Relax … Buzzfeed on stress-free slow television … ‘ Fireplace For Your Home – Watch on: Netflix Worldwide – A crackling fire, hot apple cider, and a warm blanket. Mind-numbing bliss.’
11 October 2017
[tv] Your New TV Ruins Movies‘Filmmakers were not content to make movies with video cameras until those cameras could shoot 24p, because video, with its many-frames-per-second, looks like reality, like the evening news, like a live broadcast or a daytime soap opera; whereas 24p film, by showing us less, looks somehow larger than life, like a dream, like a story being told rather than an event being documented. This seemingly technical issue turns out to have an enormous emotional effect on the viewer. These days, any TV you are likely to buy, will, by default, have technology enabled that completely changes the emotional quality of the movies you watch. This is a cinematic disaster.’ [via Feeling Listless]
3 October 2017
[documentaries] Unsolved Mysteries … another examination of the limits of what documentaries can tell us … ‘Almost every single moment contained in the 18-hour The Vietnam War could be treated in the “What really happened? And can we ever know?” style of contemporary, searching documentaries. Co-director Novick told Vanity Fair of the war, “There’s no agreement among scholars, or Americans or Vietnamese, about what happened: the facts, let alone whose fault, let alone what we’re supposed to make of it.” To have adjudicated all these questions on camera would have led to a documentary 1,000 hours long, one that told us so much more about the nitty-gritty subjectivity of the Vietnam War it might as well have told us nothing.’
15 September 2017
[tv] Love On A Real Train … A look at the similarities between Mr Robot and Risky Business … ‘[Jonathan Bernstein] described De Mornay as a “frosty Hitchcockian blonde” whose chilliness is mirrored by the icy blasts of TD synth there and elsewhere on the soundtrack. In its way, Risky Business is a quintessential ’80s movie — it’s a twist on a mismatched-buddy caper, it prizes ruthless capitalistic innovation, absent parents fuel its plot engine, and it contains Curtis Armstrong — and if you swap in J.D. for Booger, you could say all of those things about Mr. Robot. There is a system to be gamed, so to speak, in both: Princeton admissions (and pimp vig); data storage. There is a battle against monopolistic power and influence that aspires to those things even as it turns them against themselves.’
14 September 2017
[books] Longtime Stephen King fans criticize new IT adaptation for not being bad‘While audiences and critics alike have praised 2017’s IT for its smart casting and big budget scares, the response from classic King fans has been scathingly negative. “Couldn’t it have been a cheap, PG rated primetime miniseries?” tweeted @AnnieWilkes45. Others criticized the popular new film for not including any demonic laundry machines, giant rubber bats, possessed big rig trucks, man ponytails, or Gary Busey.’
16 August 2017
[tv] When good TV goes bad: how The Wire lost its spark … another jump-the-shark analysis … ‘Maybe it’s the sheer momentum of The Wire’s character-writing that led it to drop the ball with its favourite son: Jimmy McNulty. Of course we came to know and love him as the incorrigible loose cannon of Baltimore homicide. But it’s not just his partner Bunk Moreland who had to cock an eyebrow at his antics in season five: McNulty, outraged by the slashing of police funding, decides to fabricate evidence that a serial killer is stalking Baltimore’s homeless. Hmm. The seven episodes of the season – in which the whole of Baltimore is reeled into his fantasy – are the worst of The Wire’s run. Tied with the mechanics of the fakery – red ribbons around the victims’ wrists, heavy-breathing phone calls to the local rag – any tension in the storyline is stillborn. The Wire briefly becomes The McNulty Show. And a self-parodic McNulty at that, with some of Dominic West’s heaviest mugging; the series was teetering on the edge of the trap over-extended TV shows often fall into, indulging crowd-pleasing characters.’
15 August 2017
[tv] Noel Edmonds: TV’s emperor of folly … a look at Noel Edmonds new game show‘In Cheap Cheap Cheap, Edmonds plays the owner of a dilapidated general store. Sometimes the shop’s manager wobbles into view to drop a leaden one-liner. Sometimes the tenant of the upstairs flat pops down to blurt something in a mangled fake-European accent – she calls Edmonds her “rent boy” very early on – or a shop assistant will take a selfie, or a deliveryman will sort of wander around a bit. This is the set of the gameshow. There is no studio audience, and Edmonds doesn’t say hello or goodbye. It’s like this collection of weirdos have been trapped in this empty and possibly extra-dimensional shop for all eternity. It’s like Edmonds, having grown terrified by the horrors of the real world, has built his very own Red Room for sanctuary. Watching Cheap Cheap Cheap is like watching a weird piece of existential Lithuanian amateur community theatre. It’s like watching QVC, if QVC was beamed in from an irradiated wasteland four billion years in the future.’
14 August 2017
[true-crime] How “Making a Murderer” Went Wrong… a sobering critique of True Crime Documentaries … ‘Yet the most obvious thing to say about true-crime documentaries is something that, surprisingly often, goes unsaid: they turn people’s private tragedies into public entertainment. If you have lost someone to violent crime, you know that, other than the loss itself, few things are as painful and galling as the daily media coverage, and the license it gives to strangers to weigh in on what happened. That experience is difficult enough when the coverage is local, and unimaginable when a major media production turns your story into a national pastime. “Sorry, I won’t be answering any questions because . . . TO ME ITS REAL LIFE,” the younger brother of Hae Min Lee, the murder victim in “Serial,” wrote on Reddit in 2014.’
17 July 2017
[docu] The Keepers: ‘I’ve dealt with survivors and they’re sickened by the church’s response’ … Another look at Netflix’s True Crime documentary ‘The Keepers’… ‘The response of the archdiocese of Baltimore has been surprising, to say the least. “People in churches and schools in Baltimore started sending us literature that the archdiocese was sending out, on how to tell people what we got wrong. The documentary wasn’t even out. I just found it incredibly disappointing.” The @archbalt account retweeted a message that called the series “fiction”, a spokesperson subsequently admitting that this was “bad judgment”. “They’re trying to re-message. They’ve lost. It’s too late now,” says White.’
13 July 2017
[moore] Alan Moore’s list of must-see and not-see TV (from 2004)‘I did look forward to my weekly dose of stabbing and sodomy.’

10 July 2017
[tv] What’s the deal with translating Seinfeld … a look at the difficulty of translating Seinfeld (or any sitcom) from one language to another … ‘Lip-synch dubbing, despite its ultimate benefits, can get very complicated. It’s not just that the lines may not translate directly — they also have to take just as long to say in both languages and approximate, to the best of their abilities, the lip movements of the original actors. That can pose an added challenge when translating from laconic languages like English into verbose languages like German. And Seinfeld was already a very wordy show, making accurate translation that much more critical. The script-writing process for foreign translation is so elaborate that it’s a wonder even one episode gets done. Sebastian had to produce 180…’
4 July 2017
[tv] When good TV goes bad: the moment Columbo’s case went cold … When did Columbo Jump the Shark? … ‘If classic Columbo is good and late-era Columbo is bad, then the lieutenant must have jumped the shark with the 1989 return of the mac? In truth, you have to go further back – to 1976. In the fifth season finale, Last Salute to the Commodore, set among the yachting set, the victim is a crotchety, self-regarding millionaire who resents his drunken coterie and grasping family. When we witness son-in-law Robert Vaughn disposing of the commodore’s body at sea, it seems obvious he is the murderer. Then Vaughn turns up dead, and the format disintegrates. Everything seems off. The lieutenant has his head turned by transcendental meditation, attempting a lotus pose on a marina boardwalk…’
4 April 2017
[tv] A dying habit: why the average BBC1 viewer is 61 … the slow death of Broadcast TV … ‘According to recent research by Enders Analysis, ITV’s average viewer is now 60; Channel 5’s is 58 and Channel 4’s is 55. Even at E4, birthplace of such yoof-targeting shows as Made in Chelsea and Hollyoaks, the average age is 42. The reason, of course, is simple: the internet…’
1 April 2017
[tv] BBC Grandstand Fight … on this day in 1989 – a live fight broadcast on BBC Grandstand.

15 March 2017
[twitter] Detective Fin … my current favourite Twitter … ‘Coroner says he was high on somethin’ called Barnyard Paste. It’s a fertility drug for cocker spaniels.’

3 January 2017
[tv] Love Boat Insanity … a fantasy wish list of guest stars for the TV series The Love Boat

4 November 2016
[curtis] HyperNormalisation … go watch this long, new, iPlayer documentary from Adam Curtis … ‘Our world is strange and often fake and corrupt. But we think it’s normal because we can’t see anything else. HyperNormalisation – the story of how we got here.’
14 October 2016
[tv] Charlie Brooker: ‘The more horrible an idea, the funnier I find it’ … Charlie Brooker on the various subjects covered in the new series of Black Mirror‘I’ve scaled back my involvement with Twitter; it’s too easy to get dragged into an argument. It’s also completely futile. Is it helpful for trolls, is it cathartic? Does it prevent them from going out on a shooting rampage? It’s tricky. One person’s troll is another person trying to make a point. They’re trying to get you to listen to an argument. I don’t make sweeping statements on social media, mainly because I can’t be fucking arsed with the argument that follows.’
28 September 2016
[tv] Netflix Original Series, Ranked (Again) … Vulture rates all 36 of Netflix’s current original TV productions … ‘House of Cards – One of Netflix’s first tentpoles, House of Cards is better at a prestige-y veneer than it is at actual prestige-quality narrative. While Kevin Spacey plays his character with embarrassingly visible excess, Robin Wright’s Claire Underwood is a stunning, implacable pillar of hard surfaces and internal machinations. Everything else veers rapidly between way-too-complicated plotting and underdeveloped surprise twists. Though initially absorbing, it feels increasingly unnecessary given the drama of real-life politics.’
26 September 2016
[tv] Eastenders to show Ian Beale discovering old episodes of Eastenders on UK Gold‘Forthcoming episodes see Ian Beale taking time off work with a chest infection and watching daytime TV, during which he discovers old Eastenders episodes showing the exploits of his younger self, friends and family. A BBC spokesman said: “It’s going to trip him the fuck out.”’
19 September 2016
[people] An Extremely Awkward Encounter with Larry David … Larry David discusses the Seinfeld Curse amongst other things …

LD: Here’s what I’ll have: split-pea soup and white-bean hummus. Is that okay?

PUBLICIST: Whatever you want.

LD: And I don’t need the cheesy croutons. And if there’s cream in the soup, don’t get it.

PUBLICIST: I’ll check.

LD: Yeah. No cream or butter in the soup or the hummus.

SR: Is that a lactose thing or a general-health thing?

LD: General health.

SR: So you tolerate lactose.

LD: I tolerate lactose like I tolerate people.

13 September 2016
[tv] Make it Stranger … a Stranger Things logo generator …

LinkMachineGo Stranger Things Logo

25 August 2016
[tv] Twin Peaks Captions … Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace in Twin Peaks …

Garth Marenghi's Darkplace in Twin Peaks

22 July 2016
[tv] A BBC comedy secret – REVEALED! … the Gibberish phone call – a classic BBC sound effect – slowed down … ‘Hello Sidney, yes, it’s me…’

24 June 2016
[space] The sounds of starships … Metafilter on using the ambient engine sounds of fictional spaceships as white noise … ‘The background engine noises of iconic science fiction spaceships can be remarkably soothing. That is why Spike Snell created 12-hour sound loops…’
20 April 2016
[tv] Teletext time travel … a fascinating look at how lost Teletext pages are being recovered from VHS tapes … ‘The pages are a snapshot of life in the 1980s – British Rail train times, Mrs Thatcher’s opinions, new pound coins and Gus Honeybun – and therefore fascinating for historians of modern life…’

Recovered Teletext Page

12 April 2016
[tv] Findable.TV … useful website to search all popular streaming sites in the US and UK to find the movies and TV you want.
31 March 2016
[tv] A Tribute to Mrs Slocombe’s Pussy

A tribute to Mrs Slocum's Pussy

18 March 2016
[people] When Benny Hill met Anthony Burgess… Craig Brown remembers the odd meeting between the writer and comedian … ‘The two men met for the first time shortly after the review appeared. I was lucky enough to be present at this bizarre meeting. Both of them were remarkably like they were on television. Hill arrived first, as perky as can be, apparently over the moon at having been driven by a female taxi driver (“Oooh, I said, you can take me anywhere, my love!”). Burgess – histrionic, loquacious, with deep voice and furrowed brow, putting the emphasis on unexpected words – behaved just like a slightly hammy actor playing the part of Anthony Burgess. The two of them were full of mutual admiration, but never quite found common ground. All in all, it followed a similar pattern to T S Eliot’s meeting with Groucho Marx: the author wanted to show off his knowledge of comedians, while the comedian wanted to show off his knowledge of authors. By the end of the dinner it seemed to me unlikely they would ever meet again, and, as far as I know, they did not.’ [thanks Phil]
14 March 2016
[tv] Columblr … tumblr for The Just One More Thing podcast about Columbo. ‘In “An Exercise in Fatality,” gymnasium chain magnate Milo Janus’ (Robert Conrad) business double-dealings are about to be exposed by a disgruntled franchisee! What’s his wisest course of action? Why, cancel the fellow’s contract with a metal pipe to the throat and make it look like a tragic gym accident! As Columbo tries to put it all together, you’ll be plunged into a world of vitamins, sweaty dudes, X-rated Italian horror films, soulless bureaucracy, and Jim Rockford’s ladyfriend in a bikini…’
18 February 2016
[enhance] Let’s Enhance‘Let’s run this through video enhancement…’

7 January 2016
[truecrime] Serial thrillers: why true crime is popular culture’s most wanted … a look at the rise of True Crime … ‘Even now, true crime magazines tend to be displayed by newsagents closer to porn titles than the Economist. In publishing, a market leader is John Blake Books – a firm whose lists are unlikely to come under scrutiny by judges of the Man Booker prize. Currently touted Blake titles include Doctors Who Kill and The Yorkshire Ripper: The Secret Murders. But an almost universal fascination with the extremities of human behaviour means the loftier parts of the arts also push through the police tape at crime scenes. In the 1930s, the New Yorker, the most literarily pristine of American magazines, began to profile killers of the sort that obsessed pulpier rivals. Next month marks the 50th anniversary of Truman Capote’s book In Cold Blood, which investigated, in a manner that has clearly influenced Serial, a mass killing in Kansas.’
25 November 2015
[tv] Too Weird for Prime Time … Salon looks at what killed Twin Peaks … ‘The dominant media narrative—even in the above SNL skit, in which Kyle MacLachlan, in character as Cooper, bullheadedly ignores plain-as-day evidence about the killer—was that Twin Peaks was toying with viewers. For the network and a sizable portion of the TV audience, at a time when most shows tied up loose ends and reverted to the status quo in time for the late news, the idea that the creators of Twin Peaks might be making it up as they went along was cause for alarm. “It had better be able to satisfy the whodunit desires of viewers weaned on Columbo and Perry Mason,” the Chicago Tribune cautioned before the Twin Peaks pilot had even aired.’
16 November 2015
[tv] Everyone needs a Super Hans: the life lessons Peep Show has taught us‘Drugs are a tricky business: “Super Hans, are you trying to skin up with your feet again? Because it doesn’t work does it? It just makes a mess.” Peep Show provided many invaluable lessons in recreational drug use such as this. Crack’s really moreish, “foghorn” ecstasy has a “nice, floaty launch with a soft crunchy landing”, and that over-indulgence can end in someone doing “the bad thing.” And nobody wants that.’
11 November 2015
[tv] Friends for Dinner … Hannibal mashed up with the Friends theme tune … ‘It’s nice to have an old friend for dinner.’

23 October 2015
[tv] David Cronenberg to direct nightmarish final Downton Abbey‘Cronenberg is on board and it’s going to be like The Fly meets Videodrome and Naked Lunch but with tweed and better grammar. The Crawleys get a new labrador which turns out to be infected by an alien parasite that mutates all the staff into tentacled maniacs. Mrs Patmore buys a wireless that tells her to kill everyone, and grows a vagina-like orifice on her forehead before serving up a broth made of human body parts.’
21 October 2015
[tv] A Young Hunter S. Thompson Appears on the Classic TV Game Show, To Tell the Truth (1967)

26 August 2015
[movies] How High Def Is Changing Your Brain—and Driving the Prop Master Crazy … a fascinating look at how High Definition video is changing the way TV and Movies are created … ‘In Cook’s phrase, the property master’s job is “to obtain acceptance for forgeries,” to give a sensation of reality within an illusion. That’s a bit different from mere fidelity to empirical reality. It’s a facsimile of reality plus a dimension of persuasion, reshaped over time by the progress of technology.’ [via As Above]
21 July 2015
[movies] League of Gentlemen Vs. 2001‘Hello Dave!’

9 July 2015
[tv] Deirdre Barlow: Coronation Street says goodbye to a legend‘As the Barlows excitedly squabble over plans for a surprise 60th birthday party to mark the return of the iconically put-upon Deirdre, they are greeted by Susie Blake’s Bev, a tragic, tear-stained character at the best of times. Deirdre’s sudden death by aneurysm, sat in a deckchair, comes cruelly and inevitably, after the premature passing of Anne Kirkbride in January. She was last seen hurling a trifle at the wall of No 1, melting down under the pressure of stepson Peter’s murder trial, shouting “jelly shouldn’t run, it should wobble”. An abrupt end to 42 years on the cobbles. If circumstances dictated that Deirdre would be denied an epic exit storyline, there’s something unintentionally perfect about that final sequence.’
2 July 2015
[tv] The Formula For An Episode Of Murder, She Wrote … the very specific formula to creating an episode of the long-running crime series …

JESSICA: Oh, it was quite simple, really. The moss. When I saw you at the funeral earlier, the camera focused weirdly on a piece of moss on your shoe. I happened to remember that this moss only grows in one place in the world, the crime scene, and it only sticks to murderers.

But I had to wait for someone to mention the word ‘moss’ in a different context before I made this trivial extra step as if it was a moment of serendipitous inspiration, which for some reason is how we want crimes to be solved.

SOMEONE’S WIFE, YOU FORGET WHOSE: I regret stepping in the murder moss.

1 July 2015
[wisdom] Alain de Bottom … Alain, Rik and Ade – Together at Last!…

Paranoia

21 June 2015
[tv] Watching the detectives: why the police procedural is more popular than ever … a look at the current line-up of Police dramas on TV … ‘The Wire was the anti-procedural; as Simon put it in his pitch for the show, it was “not so much [about] the dogged police pursuit of the bad guys but rather a Greek tragedy”. The Wire, however, did not kill the procedural. The procedural simply borrowed The Wire’s aesthetic. The detectives may trudge sombrely from one improbable homicide scene to another, week in, week out, as the blue lights circle bleakly, but we, the viewers, sink gleefully into our sofas ready to drink it in like cocoa. It’s a parlour game, a ritual. Our cosy lives are thankfully not this unremittingly tragic and grim, but it’s strangely cathartic to pretend that they are. Granted, this or that series will pill the sugar with a dose of realism here and there but with noble exceptions, the detective procedural is the very definition of fiction.’
20 June 2015
[tv] Nic Pizzolatto, the Man Behind True Detective … amusingly over-cooked profile of the True Detective creator … ‘Dennis Potter was the true progenitor, Nic told me. “He did The Singing Detective and Pennies from Heaven and Lipstick on Your Collar and Karaoke and Cold Lazarus and Blackeyes, all this great stuff. That was your TV auteur right there, and there’s still never been any TV like it. The Singing Detective is not for everybody, but it’s still the best thing ever done on television. Before we had a notion of a show-runner, that’s the guy who wrote a different mini-series every couple years. That was somebody making art as ambitious as any art being done but using this popular fallen medium of TV.”’
3 June 2015
[comics] How Vincent D’Onofrio Became the Best New Villain on TV … D’Onofrio discusses playing Kingpin in Netflix’s Daredevil … ‘Vincent D’Onofrio had a ritual he went through every time he needed to get into the mindset of Wilson Fisk, the all-powerful, ultra-evil mobster he plays on Netflix’s hit series Daredevil. The 55-year-old actor would go someplace quiet, pull out his smartphone and stare at paintings of the character from Marvel’s latter-day Daredevil comics. “The way they drew him . . . it wasn’t just that he was this imposing, kind of massive guy,” says D’Onofrio. “He looked broken. That was the key.”‘
18 May 2015
[books] Favourite shelf of my fictional book collection…

Garth Marenghi Bookshelf