The BBC

Same, about not trusting him. I've only seen the last series, Mediterranean, but he comes across as being out of depth, a bit of a lightweight? Which can't be right looking at the long list of series he's done. And yet.

from what I've seen (some of the Myanmar one) it's nicely shot and there are genuine attempts to capture the interesting details of the location rather than centering the presenter all the time. And they slum it with the hoi polloi and you get a good look at ordinary things like what the public transport is like or what life is like in obscure provincial places. But it's a very mediocre BBC voice he has, like some have already said ..untrustworthy. He sort of seems to typify that R Biggs classic quote about travel narrowing the mind - and it's almost like his entire knowledge of history comes from reading Tristam Hunt books at times.

I haven't seen much of his stuff I'll admit but imo that whole style just needs to go. it's patronizing even when it's good. i want to hear people talking about it from the inside. take one of the interviewees and make them the presenter.

Bingo

A problem I have with a lot of travel TV and writing is the overapplication of journalistic distance, like we know you they are coming from one culture and viewing another, know they are keen not to be appropriating anything, but giving up even trying to experience anything except in the most presentery way makes for shit lifestyle TV & books and nothing else. I don't mean they need to marry a local and spend a decade living with their family like I did, but the refusal to stake part of themselves in a place means you're just making a more highbrow version of those awful business travel shows.

I like the guy who goes and shrooms with various tribes and takes the initiation ceremonies whose name I can't be arsed to Google right now but the stench of 19th century missionary comes off most of these shows. Palin kind of side-stepped it by playing himself as character.

Yeah Calz and Tracer and NV otm. It is that. Inevitably you yourself, as a viewer, stumble upon a certain subject or country you happen to know something about as well. And then it starts to grate, realizing that if Reeve gets something wrong and on this off instance you can call it out... Then how much more moments must there be about topics you might not know as well, where his representation is just as feeble?

And yes, it's patronizing. The 'Tintin goes to Africa' style needs to go.

(apols for that terribly written post, the gist of what I mean is in there somewhere)

"The name of the country is important ..it was called Burma for decades of course ..and then the former military dictatorship decided to rename it Myanmar"

gr8 history lesson there m8 simon, you complete fucking cock!

changed the name to avoid confusion with the shaving cream iirc

but to avoid just being negative the Turkey show had loads of great sequences, i felt like there was ground being covered that i hadn't seen before, he is pretty decent at talking to randoms and not talking over them

Did he at least brush on Kurds/Armenian genocide etc? Or does he go out of his way to avoid ~the inconvenient truths~?

xxp
at least they were spared military dictatorships when they had one that's sole purpose was
complete ruthless exploitation of all their nation's GDP and rubber and eradication of all human rights!

simon reeve is one of those guys who gets salty abt phds. I'd like to see ppl making programs about where they live but there's a lot to be said for outsider's eyes (esp someone you know how to take)

evan hadfield (son of the astronaut)'s youtube channel rare earth is what a lot of you would probably be interested in - he does this stuff v well

I like the guy who goes and shrooms with various tribes and takes the initiation ceremonies whose name I can't be arsed to Google right now

Rory Stewart?

an old exemplar of the "outsider view" was Alistair Cooke's America series from the 70's. I mean some of it probably hasn't dated well, but it was always thoughtful type middlebrow tv, with it's own distinct voice. These days that type of series would be handed to some dim tory-boy drone, and be unwatchable shit imo. And also when they send dim tory boys to old colonies, that bbc house style voice is very bad. Especially you have become completely accustomed to it through daily listening to R4/WS.

of course AC had been living in America for decades, but I suppose that's what made his observations, anecdotes much richer and more nuanced. These days the posh bimbos at the bbc are so mediocre and dull. It might have been ever thus or I might be wrong - but it's how I feel, and I can't watch about 95% of it any more.

meades is the only person i like in this role because he is so outlandishly, transparently judgmental about everything

and yes there was maybe a time for this style but times change

suspect the format of a person that goes to different places is not going away any time soon

I used to like Prof Bartlett's style on the medieval era, his programs on The Normans and The Plantagenets was classy stuff. he should on the tv more often (unlike that boring windbag Schama).

Visiting mom and little sis exposes me to the Beeb's morning schedule and it's really aggravating my depression, like being smothered by a middle England mattress party.

tbf all scheduled TV is terrible but this was the first thread I could think of and BBC1 is conceptually, aggressively life-denying

did you know simon reeve wrote the first book in the world on Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda

I did not know that!

reading about it doesn't exactly quieten my suspicions that he has spook-adjacent connections mind you

that pro-brexit, tory voting funnyman, and Spiked contributor Geoff Norcott has a program on tonight that posits middle class hypocrisy has ruined this country or something. I've seen enough of him on QT to see he's a wretched knave and I can't be bothered with hate-watching.

I like the guy who goes and shrooms with various tribes and takes the initiation ceremonies whose name I can't be arsed to Google right now

Bruce Parry, who apparently lives in Ibiza and takes lots of drugs there too.

that's the fella, glad to hear he's not just in it for the anthropology

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/5hn_aa1lMJ8/maxresdefault.jpg

Could only bear 5 minutes of geoff norcott complaining about the lengths middle class people go to get their kids into a decent school (lying about church, addresses...). He's no stephen colbert.

thrilled to discover that lying is an exclusively middle class pursuit.

Yeah, tonight seemed a rum night for a vehicle for a right-wing comedian to get an outing to go "lol middle class guardianistas, what are they like, eh?". I lasted five minutes.

Geoff Norcott proving that being a unfunny cunt of a comedian hoovering up licence fee money on the BBC is not exclusively a middle class pursuit either - despite appearances to the contrary.

"He claims to be the only outwardly Conservative Party voter on the British comedy circuit"

lol, as if

He's got Gloria Del Piero on slagging off the Labour Party. Good stuff.

I bet that took some heavy persuasion.

Good job that he himself supports a largely working class party.

his whole gimmick that he's the only person on this fucking wretched comic circuit to be an obvious tory voter is so laughable. it's more of a challenge working out from at least half of them which ones aren't tory voters - then most of the rest are arch lib melts who aren't very funny either!

LOL @ him rounding up some students, who didn't seem especially middle class tbh, doing his act for them, as they sat stony-faced and uncomprehending, and being told they didn't think he was funny. He then explained this away as them being too sensitive and taking things too seriously when in fact it was because NOT FUNNY.

I feel for the lad, I'm sure before all his Blairite compadres started taking on the real enemy he at least looked like he was different

oh god I might end up watching it - just to see the arrogant unfunny prick doing his Voight-Kampff humour test.

Britain already has Jim Davidson, why do we need another unfunny Tory git? Or is this an attempt by the BBC to make John Bishop look like less of a wanker? (I have still only seen approximately 30 seconds of Bishop's act and that was more than enough)

Dunno if this is a post for here or lol we’re all gonna die but I will probably spend too much of the next few days picturing ian hislop’s fucking chortling baby with anuses for eyes face

> thrilled to discover that lying is an exclusively middle class pursuit.

With the school thing he said that only the middle class had the resources to keep up such a pretence.

I watched the London news, which was a Boris election special, and it started with a list of all the great things had done for London whilst mayor - Boris bikes, the Olympics... He put London on the map...

(It went on to the garden bridge, the sweatbox buses, Heathrow, the riots etc so it wasn't all undue praise. And the vox pops were 50/50. Such a vapid 25 minutes though)

bbc doubling down on the distinction between 'said something racist' and 'is a racist' in upholding a complaint against a black journalist who was apparently perfectly entitled to say the former about trump, but not the latter

Explaining the Editorial Complaints Unit's decision on BBC Breakfast and President Trump's comments pic.twitter.com/LuJdjPNZll

— BBC Press Office (@bbcpress) September 26, 2019

now i'm not totally thick, i get where they're coming from, but bbc news reports say things like 'the conservatives believe that their programme will lower costs and increase competition' which is just as much mind-reading of motive than this is, and arguably more insidious. for instance conservatives may actually believe their programme will enrich their friends and increase party donations. etc

and also, of course, she never even said trump "is a racist" in the first place. pretty poor imo.

she said something along the lines of "I'm not calling anybody racist"

right :/

Forgot about this thread - more appropriate to paste this here

1) On Brendan O’Neill: on live television people say unpredictable things. O’Neill’s assertion that there “should” be riots if Brexit delayed was immediately picked up on and pushed back by Adam Fleming as well as other guests. O’Neill then appeared to backtrack on his comments.

— Rob Burley (@RobBurl) September 27, 2019