Thinking the other week about binge watching – which, you may recall, I and my friends actually invented a few decades back – I have to admit that there were certain instances where it wasn’t actually our obsessional thirst for monsters and spaceships which turned us into televisual gluttons, consuming more than our body weight in Sapphire & Steel (1979-1982) episodes at a single sitting.
(with apologies to Zodiac Mindwarp and The Love Reaction)[1] Regular readers (hello Mum!) of my utterances on this site may be wondering what I have against TBN[2]. Well, not much in all honesty. I mean, it’s sporadic at best.
Let me greet you in the good old Scouse fashion. Alright? Because, you know, things have been tough, haven’t they? Recent events have again highlighted that racism runs rife in our societies; that some women and men remain – shockingly remain – at risk of being murdered or mistreated in other ways.
While most Danish film and television production was halted because of COVID-19, Jonas Risvig’s web series CENTRUM , co-created with teenagers, has used the extreme moment in time to make two no-budget episodes a week about being young during a pandemic. By Katrine Bouschinger Christensen and Eva Novrup Redvall
1991 was a bit of a disappointing year in some respects.
We are in more than an evolution. We are in a revolution of communication and cinema or movies or whatever you want to call it. — Martin Scorsese, 19 December 2019 (Galloway 106) Martin Scorsese first moved to Hollywood in 1971.
‘Have you noticed how poetic and philosophic the titles of some of those tough American drama series are getting on TV? Tonight’s Sam Benedict (1962-1963) [i] story on London ITV at 8.0, for instance is called Green Room, Grey Morning . Last week it was Run Softly, Oh Softly . And before that Not Even the Gulls Shall Weep . Dr Kildare (1961-1966) appears tonight (BBC 8.0) in Love is a Sad Song . Last
Like many other lecturers and tutors of media and creative industries courses, I have spent much of the past semester redesigning for online delivery classes intended for face-to-face teaching. In some cases, learning, teaching and assessment were radically altered in order to facilitate students’ submission of work for the semester’s end. Students’ documentary shorts became paper-based portfolios.
Lockdown has been a peculiar time for us all, no less so in our viewing habits. Indeed, my partner and I noticed a bizarre confluence of viewing and reading habits that related to death. Not just death, I hasten to add but actually life, in the face of inevitable death. Prior to lockdown we had started watching Allen Ball’s HBO series Six Feet Under ( SFU, 2001 – 2005) about a family who run a funeral home in Los Angeles.
When I first started contributing to CSTonline last autumn, the thrust of the piece was all about effective communication of ideas and concepts – the inspiration being the superb Saturday that my wife and I had spent in attendance at Dr Nicolas Pillai’s ‘Jazz on the Telly’ conference at Birmingham City University.