Rolling iPlayer and 4OD and iTVPlayer 2015

last night's Spiral!!!

― seandalai, Sunday, January 25, 2015 10:54 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Okay just caught up. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

These two Storyville episodes are superb, the one about the mayor of Datong's major renovation project is a very revealing portrait of how regional CCP power works in modern China. The mayor swaggers about, running roughshod over building contractors, simpering yes-men and hundreds of thousands of evicted citizens. it is some of the doc stuff I have seen on the beeb for years.

Bulldozers, Paving Stones and Power: The Chinese Mayor
Mugabe and the Democrats

*the best doc stuff

Is the Sound of Song documentary series worth watching?

some of it's fascinating but there's no "project" to it, and its lack of curiosity has maddened me so much that i have stopped watching it

i.e. "some said the gramophone was to be feared! however they were wrong cause look how awesome records are!" like....... that's actually really interesting, too bad you are skipping over that part

ok as a fairly recent expat i don't know vic and bob really but house of fools is just slaying me, i've never seen anything like it

catastrophe also continues to be excellent and surprising

apparently house of fools was originally going to be called "fuck this house"

The last series of House of Fools was pretty great, but the current one is outstanding.

it is completely loco!!? like, a cross between something from the 1940s and some alternate universe of the future

also i've never liked matt berry much but that 1 character he always does is perfect in this

Binged on Catastrophe last night, so good. (also good that 4oD allows AirPlay at last)

so my two favorite shows right now, catastrophe and house of fools have just skipped a week :(

Catastrophe is finished.

I was gutted when I finally clocked that. No "see you next year" message, nothing. Fucking shitballs!

I had a friend from NYC visiting this week and she said it's the funniest show she's seen in years. She was like "it's coming back right? How can I watch it??" and I was like, you sort of can't.

Series 2 has been commissioned allegedly.

http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2015-01-28/sharon-horgan-and-rob-delaney-to-give-birth-to-second-series-of-catastrophe

That BAFTA award winning drama Marvellous really was marvellous. It's just been put back on iplayer but it's only available for the next few days. It's very cheerful, which we all need a lot of right now.

Meh! The guy who plays Lou Macari ain't enough of a miserable dour Scottish cunt for my liking! Just joking it is ace really!

:D

It took my mind off the Tories for 90 minutes. Job done!

Pappano's Classical Voices on iplayer / BBC4 is really good.

^^^

I can never make it through the whole thing but they are very fun to dip into.

The Saboteurs on C4 is great. Tales of Norwegian daring on skis, Heisenberg and Bohr, Annah Friel as the hard-as-nails English agent.

The guy who plays Heisenberg such an excellent study of delusional narcissism. You just cannot wait to see how it all crashes down around his ears.

Slightly spoilered myself by reading this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leif_Tronstad

They made 'em different in those days, huh? Chemistry experts cum track stars cum military strategists, dead by 30.

Four To The Floor is great

Also I had no idea that 4OD, sorry I mean "All Four", had shows going back more than a decade. Garth Marenghi's Darkside was pretty uh, unexpected.

I figured saboteurs had finished after 4 episodes, but there were two left. It's also morphed into Heroes of Telemark - hadn't realised it was the same story. (But, urgh, keep calm and carry on poster on the wall in the one shot)

Witnesses was good BTW.

Detectorists is back!!

As is Catastrophe!

i love Catastrophe. love those characters.

and i've been itching to say, and i know this isn't my place since we barely know each other and loads of ILXors know ailsa better than i do...

BUT!!!

AILSA WON FIFTEEN TO ONE

the grand final!

and that is on 4od too here: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/fifteen-to-one/on-demand

Ailsa, i'm so thrilled. you were awesome!

congratu-fuckin-lations!

i've actually been dying to make a congratulations thread but didn't want to offend you :)

that is amazing. just watched it and even though I knew the outcome it was still bloody tense and I'm afraid I couldn't help an uncharitable snort of delight when Dave gave the answer Freetown.

Oh God *dies of embarrassment*

(it's OK, jed_, I don't mind really. It's not like people weren't watching it at the time. My qualifying round from Wednesday is probably on 4od as well, where I actually win on my own merits rather than by that guy not knowing the alphabet)

Congratulations! That's amazing.

btw I totally knew most of the other answers too, was just shaking too much to even try to hit the buzzer at some stages. And I absolutely can't believe the one I got wrong was about red wine (anyone who knows me irl will have been finding that hilarious). My brain just blanked out and I thought she'd said black bird (merlot is from the French for blackbird, a useless fact I learned at a pub quiz once and thought might have come in handy one day. As it would have done if that had actually been the bloody question).

where I actually win on my own merits rather than by that guy not knowing the alphabet

He panicked 'cause you had him on the run!

Yeah, exactly. There was a bit where he looked across and you could see he was thinking 'how am i going to shake her'. still lolling at 'Freetown' being the Italian for Three Cities tho, which i realise is unfair given the stress and the stupid things it can make you do. Poor Dave.

Holy shit this is amazing!! Well done ailsa!

Thanks! Still weird! Nearly everyone else involved was proper quizzy folk, including a former Mastermind champion, an Only Connect winner, a Brain of Britain, people who won proper amounts of money on WWTBAM, etc. I felt like such a noob while everyone was sitting there discussing all the telly programmes they'd done and I was all "er, I do OK in a couple of pub quizzes in my home town and, um, that's it". They record Eggheads in the studio next door and a couple of the Eggheads popped in to chat to their quiz mates who were competing and I was all "holy shit what am I even doing here?".

night manager is/was ace

(not sure if this is the most recent iplayer thread)

I can't stand Hugh Laurie so couldn't get through it.

Also following plots is not my strong point. Ha

It's quite slow and I basically hate every single character in it.

I know the last episode's leaked, but I don't care enough to not just wait until next Sunday to watch it.

huh i didnt find it that slow but yeah definitely full of horrible ppl

laurie plays a total cunt so surely if you hate him it 'works'?

olivia colman's not horrible, david harewood's not horrible, douglas hodge, elizabeth debicki etc

apart from the slightly unrealistic lack of surveillance cameras i've been sucked right into every twist and turn

for me, this years best thriller so far : trapped.

it should still all be up on the iplayer.

highly recommended.

however, make sure you put the heating on before you watch it.

no, first episode was 13 Feb 2016 so that's gone now.

(i've not watched it yet, what with this and all the Walter Presents stuff that they are showing at the moment there are like 3 or so decent foreign dramas running at the same time and i find it hard to keep up)

speaking of which

Deutschland 83 was ok, cold war germany, but it was focussed on 25 year olds and i had difficulty caring.
Spin 1 (FR) was like a less interesting Borgen.
Resistance (FR, last year) WWII resistance had the same problems as DE83.
Thicker than water (SE) - not seen yet

and the new BBC4
Follow The Money (DA) - not seen yet

Trapped >> D83 > Spin > Night Manager of the ones I've seen

The Norwegian series Okkupert is pretty good. It might even get better by season 2.

it's 2016!

series 2 of Spin (FR) was like a less interesting version of series 1. i lasted 1.5 episodes and deleted the rest unwatched.

watched all 10 hours of Trapped (IS) over the weekend and it held my attention but it didn't feel particularly icelandic to me, was nothing much to differentiate it from other scandi noir. i liked the irony of getting trapped in a freezer in iceland though. they really should put handles on the inside of those things.

Blue Eyes (SW) has started to replace Spin on friday nights. synopsis sounds identical to Spin S1E1 though 8)

line of duty is back and is great obv

yeah, ep 1 of LOD was very good.
hope the rest keeps up the pace.
watched the bbc3/bbc2 drama, thirteen, yesterday.
not too bad.
a few sticky points about it, but overall, it was very well done.

Railway Walks with Hidden Killers, bold and exciting new programming from bbc4

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CkHYS7mW0AADHtR.jpg:large

Always knew Julia Bradbury was a mofo with some dark secrets.