They seem to have a lot of prerecorded Helen Lewis, god help us.
― calzino, Wednesday, 1 April 2020 14:01 (four years ago) link
After Shrivers racist appearance on qt last year there was a lot of stuff about her dwindling to nothing book sales on twitter
― calzino, Wednesday, 1 April 2020 14:06 (four years ago) link
2 and a quarter hour coronashow today, what the fuck is wrong with these people?
― A rat done bit my sister Nell with Biden on the nom (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 1 April 2020 15:55 (four years ago) link
are they still not sending people to do the radio 4 morning show?
― koogs, Wednesday, 1 April 2020 16:24 (four years ago) link
Plotting a graph of Lionel Shriver's useless life, I would imagine the line representing book sales, plummeting downwards, at some point intersecting with the line representing calls from BBC producers, going in the opposite direction.
― Bridge Over Thorley Waters (Tom D.), Wednesday, 1 April 2020 16:26 (four years ago) link
These people think they're still living in the noughties, when everything's all Monkey Dust and Nighty Night and edgy.
― Bridge Over Thorley Waters (Tom D.), Wednesday, 1 April 2020 16:31 (four years ago) link
Edgy, the worst kind of y
― A rat done bit my sister Nell with Biden on the nom (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 1 April 2020 16:34 (four years ago) link
lionel shriver is just some idiot that used to be on newsnight review all the time!
― plax (ico), Wednesday, 1 April 2020 17:19 (four years ago) link
This was new to me, but interesting.
After the sad news that Lionel Shriver was up to her *antics* again, I decided to take a look at the book sales of my 3rd least favourite contrarian author.And now I have the stats.Hold me, I'm going in. There will be graphs... pic.twitter.com/iyxIYu2ndn— Chris McCrudden (@cmccrudden) March 1, 2019
― the pinefox, Wednesday, 1 April 2020 17:55 (four years ago) link
Bit generous describing her stuff as literary fiction.
― A rat done bit my sister Nell with Biden on the nom (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 1 April 2020 17:58 (four years ago) link
lol, them be the brutal graphs of Shriver's shrinking relevance in the publishing world I was referring to Pinefox!
bloody great, tonight we've got the intellectual might of Applebaum and Mason discussing da Rona on R4.
― calzino, Wednesday, 1 April 2020 19:27 (four years ago) link
Has he invited Rona to come to Athens?
― A rat done bit my sister Nell with Biden on the nom (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 1 April 2020 19:52 (four years ago) link
I'm watching Lucy Worsley so the Beeb is forgiven for now.
― A rat done bit my sister Nell with Biden on the nom (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 1 April 2020 19:53 (four years ago) link
LMAO. Stoya come to Athens, the means-tested defence of the status quo is happening. pic.twitter.com/93d5aguyQo— herd immunity for our time (@misslucyp) April 1, 2020
― calzino, Wednesday, 1 April 2020 19:54 (four years ago) link
cursed
― bam! Free bees! (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, 1 April 2020 20:04 (four years ago) link
How Adonis never made it to the last 16 of the world cup I'll never know
― A rat done bit my sister Nell with Biden on the nom (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 1 April 2020 20:09 (four years ago) link
fuckin adonis
― Fizzles, Wednesday, 1 April 2020 20:15 (four years ago) link
Very normal retweet from Maitlis
― crisp, Wednesday, 1 April 2020 23:21 (four years ago) link
Claire Fox?
― A rat done bit my sister Nell with Biden on the nom (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 1 April 2020 23:44 (four years ago) link
Nah keep scrolling... Dave Rich
― crisp, Thursday, 2 April 2020 00:00 (four years ago) link
They’re absolutely not letting up with this:
500,000 people could have died, by August, in the UK if no action was takenNow it's hoped social distancing will limit deaths to 20,000But that doesn't mean 480,000 lives are being saved, many people who die from Covid-19 would have died anywayhttps://t.co/hDYKsrCn8B pic.twitter.com/55Dsu3qeLU— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) April 2, 2020
― ShariVari, Thursday, 2 April 2020 22:31 (four years ago) link
And headlines saying people died "with" coronavirus, not "of" or "from". It's a weird look tbh
― a passing spacecadet, Thursday, 2 April 2020 22:41 (four years ago) link
I can't remember bbc doing death graphs at the peak of "nothing is done" or herd immunity as they labelled it at the time. All the info was there to see from countries weeks behind us. Just no half decent journalists or editorial leadership. And now they are in the embarrassing position of being bigger fucking tory boot-lickers than both The Mail and the Torygraph. Their politics department needs burning to the ground.
― calzino, Thursday, 2 April 2020 22:59 (four years ago) link
Yeah they would have died anyway, so what https://t.co/FUaCyCLrl8 pic.twitter.com/N6FDD057nx— Je téléphone à la police (@je_police) April 2, 2020
― calzino, Thursday, 2 April 2020 23:08 (four years ago) link
BBC News 2020, The Day Today 1994 pic.twitter.com/JeSRuuohF1— Graham (@onalifeglug) April 3, 2020
― calzino, Friday, 3 April 2020 17:07 (four years ago) link
Unsurprisingly, Boris Johnson's move to intensive care leads all the UK newspapers' front pages.Have a quick canter through what they're all saying in our paper review, here.
Have a quick canter through what they're all saying in our paper review, here.
Seems a bit off, given the context.
― Non, je ned raggette rien (onimo), Monday, 6 April 2020 23:50 (four years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skK3WoK5Z8A
weirdly good
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, 28 April 2020 14:06 (three years ago) link
bah but of course tiktok got there first - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqgBfEqkyaU
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, 28 April 2020 14:07 (three years ago) link
Hah, I love that.
― Chewshabadoo, Tuesday, 28 April 2020 18:41 (three years ago) link
BBC adaptation of Sally Rooney's NORMAL PEOPLE.
I'm afraid I haven't yet read the novel.
12 parts, 6 hours -- this is as much as they would give MIDDLEMARCH. Excessive?
It seems like it from 2 episodes, in which little happened. Not much drama, not much at stake, not much interesting said.
The two virtues or points of interest, to my mind:
1: intimate / sex scenes presented with a kind of tender realism
2: the odd tendencies of the heroine - it might be intended as 'autistic' to some degree, I'm unsure - to say very direct things and ask abrupt, literal questions.
― the pinefox, Wednesday, 29 April 2020 09:11 (three years ago) link
Re: 2, that was the experience I got from the book, from both the characters - the directness, plus a difficulty dealing with emotions, an inability to come out and say what they really, simply, feel towards each other. It ended up being quite frustrating.
― a slice of greater pastry (ledge), Wednesday, 29 April 2020 09:23 (three years ago) link
Loved the book. The show is highly watchable (don’t think it’s overlong, most dramas are six one-hour parters anyway) but it’s missing a lot of the comedy, and the lack of interior monologue makes the characters seems a lot more vacant.
― Chuck_Tatum, Wednesday, 29 April 2020 09:28 (three years ago) link
I liked the book a lot but I completely see how someone could find it weak, I was a bit surprised at the universal acclaim. The paralysis in action and emotion caused by always overthinking everything was something I strongly related to.
Haven't watched the show yet.
― coptic feels (seandalai), Wednesday, 29 April 2020 09:31 (three years ago) link
I think Marianne's pathology is down to an unnamed/unnameable systematic abuse as opposed to anything ASD-related. She seeks out cold, overpowering men as part of her compulsion to repeat. That's how I read it, anyway. There's something to be said about Rooney's politics and how we function under late capitalism but I think it's a bit undercoded in the text.
I watched the first episode of this. It was fine but it's too close to my reading of the text and all the power of literature to be nebulous and slippery is lost in the exactness of the screen.
― Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Wednesday, 29 April 2020 09:36 (three years ago) link
I agree that 6 hours is quite normal for a chunky, meaty adaptation - say of Dickens.
His books are, say, 700 pages long - NORMAL PEOPLE is 266.
Length isn't everything, to be sure. You could pack a lot in to a short book that would bear a long adaptation. But the comments above suggest that the TV version is actually leaving out lots of what's interesting in the book (thoughts, etc), while still being unusually long.
A comparison: Alan Hollinghurst's rich, brilliant THE LINE OF BEAUTY is 500pp - the excellent adaptation (2006) was 3 hours.
Take a brilliant, rich book of say 250pp: MRS DALLOWAY, TO THE LIGHTHOUSE. Can I see the BBC stretching those to 6 hours? I can't - in fact I can more easily imagine them as 2 hours over 2 nights.
None of it would matter at all if the length worked well for the adaptation but my sense is that the length is stretching it too thin, with too little happening.
But OK, it can be treated as a formal experiment of its own, an exercise in slower drama.
― the pinefox, Wednesday, 29 April 2020 09:46 (three years ago) link
I don't think the BBC3 strand is the place for anything formal or experimental.
― clap for content-providers (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 29 April 2020 09:52 (three years ago) link
Been watching a couple of these each night with our tea the past few days and yeah it does feel dragged out a bit but there is somethingcompelling about it. Gf has zero patience for any "arty farty" stuff (her words) but is sufficiently gripped to stick with this. Good low key acting at least, particularly from the lead guy, reminds me of plenty of Irish pals I had at uni
― or something, Wednesday, 29 April 2020 10:08 (three years ago) link
Feel like Sally Rooney is one of those novelists where any decent adaptation would have to give it plenty of time, so much in her writing is in the gaps between what the characters do and do not say, a good director could do a lot with that, and the onscreen relationship does need to proceed slowly in order to make the subtleties of that work, slower than it does in the book.
6hrs does feel excessive mind, but it's not as if any of us are short on time right now.
― Matt DC, Wednesday, 29 April 2020 10:24 (three years ago) link
Haven't seen any of this yet but looking forward to starting it tonight, even if Conversations With Friends might possibly have made the better adaptation. Does it merit its own thread? Just realised there isn't a Sally Rooney thread at all.
― Matt DC, Wednesday, 29 April 2020 10:26 (three years ago) link
Absolutely
― Chuck_Tatum, Wednesday, 29 April 2020 10:33 (three years ago) link
it's not as if any of us are short on time right now
― kinder, Wednesday, 29 April 2020 12:02 (three years ago) link
I was surprised to find no SR thread on either ILB or ILE.
I agree with Kinder -- puzzled by the very prevalent idea that everyone has more time; my experience is that some people have less time.
What is true for me, though (maybe it's what DC meant), is that with not going anywhere in the evening I am watching more film & TV at that time of the day.
― the pinefox, Wednesday, 29 April 2020 12:59 (three years ago) link
Yes lots of people I know have home schooling constraints piled on top of work issues as well, but I'm not sure that a serialised drama being six hours rather than three is going to make much difference to that. We are going to be at the stage soon enough when broadcasters run out of new drama to show, and potentially months of lockdown ahead.
― Matt DC, Wednesday, 29 April 2020 13:15 (three years ago) link
hopefully we can get a lot more webcam shows of celebrities talking to their celebrity mates about being a celebrity during a lockdown just like the little people
― clap for content-providers (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 29 April 2020 13:35 (three years ago) link
I’ve been watching this during my seven-month-olds lunchtime naps
― Chuck_Tatum, Wednesday, 29 April 2020 14:09 (three years ago) link
> when broadcasters run out of new drama to show
70+ years of archive, there's got to be something worth repeating in that. let people vote for it. but split it into bbc1 / bbc2 / bbc4 so i don't have to watch del-boy fall through the bar again.
― koogs, Wednesday, 29 April 2020 16:09 (three years ago) link
(have the archers got covid-19 yet?)
― koogs, Wednesday, 29 April 2020 16:10 (three years ago) link
they’re only showing a couple episodes a week to stretch it out
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, 29 April 2020 16:24 (three years ago) link
I'm not bothered about NORMAL PEOPLE being longer or shorter in relation to the pandemic.
I just think it's long by normal standards, eg cf metrics given above. And this will affect viewing experience - just as if the book were 600pp about the same material it would be a different reading experience.
I agree with Koogs that they should really start showing more good old material. Maybe they're already doing that to a degree. They did show WOLF HALL but I suppose that was in relation to the recent novel. They could go much, much further back. BBC4 in particular could show tons of old PLAYS FOR TODAY and 1960s DR WHO. Or start with BOYS FROM THE BLACKSTUFF.
I agree with Vague that people talking to each other by computer is not making for good TV. Nor is Gary Lineker.
― the pinefox, Wednesday, 29 April 2020 16:51 (three years ago) link
they are advertising new old things on iplayer, comedy box sets. but the comedy is absolutely fabulous and extras. and nighty night, and french and saunders. and 9 series of 2 packets of crisps.
(and some good things too)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/group/comedy-box-sets
― koogs, Wednesday, 29 April 2020 19:40 (three years ago) link