It is an utter mystery to me why it is that we have to put up with BBC NI crazy programming schedules. Moreover why does BBC NI inflict so much local programming on us when there is often no need and no demand?
Tonight my kids were denied the opportunity to see “Life” because the schedulers insisted that an esoteric and confused piece by William Crawley on ‘faith’ had to come before the 10pm news slot – thereby pushing Life to 22.35.
Had Crawley provided us with an incisive exposition of how faith has poisoned Northern Ireland’s civic society it might have been worth the wait. Instead Crawley’s self-obsessed witterings sat, as usual, on the fence. He interviewed a Muslim here, a humanist there – but took no real position and reached no particular conclusion. It was usual Crawley circumlocutory piffle.
Life, on the other hand, was wonderful. My kids missed it because they were in bed. It should have been screened at 9.00pm – as it was in the rest of the UK.
BBC NI’s output is often pointless and nearly always gets in the way of the best of national content. If it insists on producing local programming it needs to pay due regard to what we really want to watch. I’m pretty sure it’s not William versus Life and David Attenborough.
> … circumlocutory piffle …
What a great turn of phrase.
While I’ll respectfully disagree with your view of the programme, that’ll me no surprise given that we’re coming at it from very different biases.
But your comment about being disappointed not to be able to sit down to watch Life at 9pm with the family is one that resonates. (Of course, a great excuse to purchase a FreeSat box and be able to grab the BBC One London feed!)
Alan, yes I’ve heard that Freesat allows bypassing of the local output. That would be particularly useful during the Children in Need or Comic Relief nights when we are forced to listen to the enforced jollity of local ‘presenters’ rather than Sir Terry from London. A few weeks ago I was awaiting the second episode of Waking the Dead – pushed back to nearly midnight because of some local content – and BBC NI played the previous week’s second episode! Then they cottoned on and played the correct episode from the start meaning that it was the wee small hours before I got to bed.
The BBC produces wonderful drama and documentaries. However, BBC NI often treats it with contempt. Something needs to be done re. the regionalisation of BBC output. It feels political sometimes. There seems to be an agenda.
They tell me that mad scientist has invented an infernal machine which records programmes – and that unbelievably they have also invented an advanced calculating machine called a computer that allows you to look at recent TV programmes – whatever next?
I wound up staring at that show too. I particularly liked the bit where the guy with the completely confected, theology free, “new” church in Coleraine was filmed lying flat on the floor, munching the cheap office carpet with a glazed look in his eyes while his congregation sang “cool” songs for Jesus, and Crawley, to camera and full of conviction, informing viewers that “this is genuine”.
Genuine what? Carpet munching? It certainly looked like real deal carpet munching to me.
Edifying I must say.
The most painful thing about it was watching those children being “baptised” in the sea. I cannot for the life of me understand why this is allowed. How do we distinguish between “religion” and “cult”? If this was being done without the Jesus fish pin, how far would it get?
The person watching it with me pointed out that the guy’s pockets were bulging with money at the beach.
Spit. Down with this sort of thing!!
Point of interest about the “1859 Revival” (an anniversary quite plainly contrived by FPs to divert attention not only from Darwin but also the publication of Mill’s On Liberty).
Jonathan Bardon’s History of Ulster records how, with the surge of puritan hypocrisy that gripped the place, and with pubs closing left right and centre, the good people of Ulster wound up with a terrible problem with ether addiction.
While people found it impressive, Bardon writes, to see children “weeping and crying for mercy”, their addled parents were mostly climbing the walls, off their faces on ether.
Ulster’s proud people by 1890 had some 50,000 “etheromaniacs” consuming 17,000 gallons annually. The railway at Cookstown alone, according to Bardon, using mostly Carson’s history as source material here, brought in two tonnes a year.
This went unchecked until the Chancellor of the Exchequer designated ether a poison.
I wonder if the carpet muncher had a couple of spoons. He certainly did a good impression.