I currently live in Madrid, with no cable or sat tv.
I miss UK tv.
Some friends can tape things for me, but I don’t know what to ask for.
Brit dopers, please tell me what is going on silver-screen-wise back home, and what is worth a view, and what is not.
Thanks
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ps - just caught up with Phoenix Nights - superb!
If you liked Phoenix Nights - don’t even bother with its spin-off Max and Paddy’s Road to Nowhere. Truly dire, you wouldn’t believe it had anything to do with the genius that is Peter Kay, if it wasn’t for the fact that he’s in it.
Green Wing is excellent, very dark but very funny. It’s had rave reviews. Not on at the moment, unfortunately, but I expect there’ll be a new series, or at least a repeat of the first one, before long.
Oh, and I reckon it’s only a matter of time before this gets moved to Cafe Society.
Like Phoenix Nights, it took me about six episodes before I started to like it. But by the end, I thought it was great. So give it a go. (It certainly isn’t as good as Phoenix Nights, though!)
Most of the best Tv shows are available on DVD, so your friends can usually buy you DVD sets and ship them out to you even if the shows aren’t actually on air at the moment.
What’s ‘best’ obviously varies with taste. Some suggestions.
You can get a boxed DVD set of series 1 & 2 of ‘Spaced’, the best sitcom of recent times starring Simon Pegg and the gorgeous, delightful Jessica Stepheson (currently stuck in a truly awful, dire new Friday night sitcom which is just not worthy of her).
‘Green Wing’ was very good, and doubtless a DVD set will be available soon, and probably with lots of good extras.
‘No Angels’ was an absolutely superb comedy drama based around the lives and loves of four student nurses. Funny, dramatic, superbly written and performed… I have only praise for it. Series 1 finished last summer and (hurray!) a second series is due shortly. DVD not available yet, but it will be.
Anything from Peter Kay except ‘Max and Paddy’ is worth a look and listen.
All of ‘Little Britain’ is worth a look. Series 1 out on DVd now, series 2 will be along soon. And don’t forget you can now get all of ‘The Office’ - series 1 & 2 plus the two excellent ‘christmas specials’.
As for stuff currently airing they can tape off air for you, my top nomination would be ‘Dragon’s Den’, Tuesdays, 8pm, BBC2. Real life inventors meet real life wealthy investors and try to get them to cough up whatever investment money they need to make their projects happen. Far, far more interesting, amusing, entertaining and dramatic than you would think. It has been described as the business world’s equivalent of ‘Pop Idol’. We’ve had 2 or 3 already, probably 3 more to go.
BBC are running a much lauded and talked about docu- series about the Nazis and the final solution, but I think you’ve already missed 2 of the 3 progs.
Channels 4 and 5 are still good at coming up with various slices of interesting reality telly, such as the ‘Wife Swap’ series and variants (sometimes v funny, sometimes v poignant), the ‘Faking It’ series and variants, the ‘Holiday Swap’ series, and a Ch 5 series involving using state of the art prosthetic make-up to turn celebs into totally different people, and then seeing if they can fool people who know them really well.
Most of the other good shows are imported from the US.
British TV is the best for mysteries. Unlike American TV mysteries, which are written one week ahead of shooting, British ones are based on book series. Which means that the author spent many months working the holes out of the plots.
Moving this from IMHO to Cafe Society.
Ianzin, I thought I was only person who’d watched No Angels. 'Twas indeed fabulous.
Monkey Dust is entertainingly unpleasant animation. Lots of very dark stories in an urban distopia, including the serial killer driven to butchery by his spacehopper.
The Smoking Room is a poor man’s version of The Office. I’ve always enjoyed comedies that make limited use of the environment (they seem to work harder on the scripts to compensate), and I still like this (it’s a sitcom set in the smoking room of an office building).
Vic and Bob in Catterick is Vic Reeves’ and Bob Mortimer’s version of The League of Gentlemen. Not as good, but still amusing.
Thanks for all the suggestions.
Jennyrosity
I will certainly try Green Wing.
GorillaMan
The Max and Paddy characters drive me nuts, so I think I’ll give their Road to Nowhere a miss, thanks.
ianzin
I have heard lots of good things about Spaced so that is on the list. No Angels has to be worth a go too.
Crusoe
I’ll have to keep an eye out for these.
Czarcasm
Sorry for posting in the wrong forum - I’m a bit new here!
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“Peep Show” is your friend - best thing on TV in years.
I may be alone in this; but the second series of Little Britain is as funny as a fire in an orphanage. It’s truly dire.
Another recommendation for Spaced. If you enjoy that, you might want to try the film “Shaun of the Dead”.