television

Continuing the televisual theme of the previous post, is it possible to care too much about Doctor Who? Lawrence Miles says no!

The following 25-point programme may not be a way of guaranteeing that Doctor Who is great - only a competent scriptwriting team could ensure that, and in the Age of Chibnall, even competence is a precious commodity - but it would at least give the series a chance to escape its current rut of showbiz fan-fic and computer-generated slurry.

He then proceeds to dismantle Doctor Who with brio while promising to save it. You might want to dismiss his epic post as the predictable ramblings of a disgruntled fanboy, but this is the Lawrence Miles who wrote some of the better Doctor Who novels and created the even more interesting Faction Paradox in the process. This doesn’t mean that he isn’t a disgruntled fanboy, of course - it’s just that he has form.

UPDATE: For reasons unknown (cough cough writing opportunities), L Miles has taken down that post. Luckily I have my own time machine, known as Google Cache, where you will find the entire thing preserved for posterity.

My admiration for the Littlest Hobo knows no bounds, particularly his ability to trick simpletons into assisting him in whatever insane scheme he has in mind that week.

However I cannot stand idly by as new information comes to light:

In the [Littlest Hobo] movie, the dog was tethered to a lamb for most of the story.

That lamb was found dead in a hotel room at the age of 6; it was ruled death by misadventure. The Littlest Hobo now denies that he was the dog in the original film and has never visited that hotel. Suspicious? YOU DECIDE.

Also: the Littlest Hobo theme song in Spanish demonstrates that the Hispanic invasion of the USA is spearheaded by canines not wetbacks. I will write to Pat Buchanan immediately.

Slow news week? You betcha - I’m laying wooden floors in a shop!

Ef yuh chobble de Cyberman, im a guh bax yuh!

It looks like this might become a bad habit - posting something to cheer myself up after posting about depressing isht like Iraqi translators.

Simon Ostrovsky bets that you don’t, and he’s prepared to make you feel guilty about it. All you need to do is to watch Newsnight on BBC2, this Tuesday at 10:30pm. Apparently the government of Uzbekistan may be involved in some shady dealings (”not again”, I hear you sigh), this time involving the clothing industry. Now usually clothing manufacturers are absolutely above criticism, but who knows? Watch and find out - if you don’t have a television, or you’re in the Balkans, or something crazy like that, then you’ll be able to catch it after tomorrow on Newsnight Video Highlights.

I met Simon Ostrovsky in Berlin, where he sold me a bike that only had one pedal and then disappeared. I forgave him because he makes really interesting documentary shorts, like the recent North Circular Stories that aired on Channel 4 two weeks ago. Obviously I missed them - we don’t get Channel 4 here - but they’ve now been uploaded onto something like YouTube.

The films uncover an underworld of Eastern European migrants in London living in abandoned houses on the city’s infamous North Circular Road, and forming a tight-knit community of Latvian and Lithuanian menial workers, freeloaders and students alike.

I love this format - basically these are the documentary equivalent of pop videos, with three minutes to tell the story and a tendency to get under your skin. There’s no time to present an argument or squeeze a moral out - what you get is people’s lives, edited.

Perfect for our information-saturated culture. Without further ado, I give you - North Circular Stories.