BBC2

Pop music is rubbish, this is good stuff...

Advantages: Fantastic mix of live music at its best
Disadvantages: Perhaps the late showing, which i see as an advantage.

If the above comment was either true, or controversial for you, then read on. Excusing the rhetoric, how often have you seen pop acts singing live? It's practically a thing of the past. How many are bored with standard pop ballads, and regurgitated ideas? Many. This is different. I hate branding music, as it leads to unfair prejudice, but this is a mix of rock, jazz, blues and even pop. The difference is that unlike in Top of the Pops, these performers ...
...of alternative style music, and it's uncommon to see any mainstream acts, which is fantastic. Jools himself often teams up with his guests to accompany singers/players beautifully on the piano. This is intermingled with light interviews. So if you value real live music, then this programme is definately for you. Pour yourself a White Russian and tune in for some great music. ...

edwardgbell 15.05.2004 · Read full review
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Review of BBC2: Later with Jools Holland

Memories, oh the memories of youth!

Advantages: Oh the memories of days / fashions and haircuts gone by!(Good ones!)
Disadvantages: Oh the memories of days / fashions and haircuts gone by! (Bad ones!)

If you tune into BBC2 on a Tuesday and Wednesday evening at roughly 6.20pm (after "The Simpsons"), Steve Wright (former Radio 1 DJ, and present Radio 2 DJ) talks us through clips of Top of the Pops performances over the last 4 decades (and sometimes as far back as the 1960s where footage permits!). The beauty of this programme is the format of never seeing our devine host - instead he talks over the ends of clips to introduce what comes next. And ...
...of information on screen re the band / singer performing. Each clip is accompanied by the year of the performance, which is enough in itself to send you into dizzy spells of "that can't have been that long ago surely" episodes! There is no set pattern to the shows, and so you could have content as diverse as a 1970s performance by Abba; 1980s by Wham; 1990s by Garbage and current by Sting! So its always worth tuning in as you never know what memories ...

TeenyB 10.07.2003 · Read full review
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Review of TOTP 2

Why the Irish are so Funny.

Advantages: It is just really funny.
Disadvantages: It can be a little offensive (especially the episode D.N.A.)

I came across the show the Fitz purely by accident. I was flipping by all of the channels and suddenlt I saw this show that made my sides split with all of the laughing. It was a show depicting the way that an 'typical' Irish family that has a lot of kids nd I am talking a lot,the family has about 8 children. I thought this show is purely funny. It demonstrates that people of a certain culture can laugh at themselves shows that they are strong ...
...faces that you can see in films in the small not well known BBC show. You can see Eamonn Owens who played Quasimodo in the film 'Angela's Ashes' and Francie in 'The Butcher Boy'. I think that if you want a purely good laugh then you should watch this show and just let yourselves go. ...

lemming35 22.09.2000 · Read full review
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Review of BBC2: The Fitz

Pseudo-intellectual garbage

Advantages: Aims at the right target
Disadvantages: Misses it completely

Review is a hugely irritating programme. Although it is a perfectly worthy concept - the cultural output of the BBC has been running so close to zero that even Terry Wogan, king of light entertainment, now accuses it of dumbing down - it succeeds in combining ignorance, stridency and inconsequentiality in a totally unconvincing way. Every Sunday viewers with a cultural interest are subjected to the phenomenally uncultured Mark Lawson chairing interminable ...
...are any good. Or whether we should all sit in and watch the latest BBC adaptation of some comic, but fairly run of the mill, Kingsley Amis novel. Quite clearly the stuff of which high cultural discourse is made. If ever one could choose pundits to rival the execrable Lawson, one could do no better than the stridently ignorant Tony Parsons, Tom Paulin, a man who takes at least 10 minutes to complete a sentence and when he does never makes a tangible ...

wallysutcliffe 13.12.2000 · Read full review
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Review of BBC2: Art Zone: Review

The Big Yawn

Advantages: Exciting literature-boosting idea
Disadvantages: Disjointed celebrity-fixated enactment

Since I was the one who asked Ciao to list The Big Read as a product, I feel I ought to post an opinion, but let me make a confession at the outset: I have not watched every programme in the series. I intended to, but as Saturday evening followed Saturday evening with other things to do, my command of the video recorder uncertain and my interest in the whole exercise waning week by week, I failed. When it came to the crucial question – was I really ...
...did not particularly admire? – the answer proved to be no. So this opinion is based on only a partial exposure to the series as a whole. This is a failure on my part, as I readily admit. But I would argue it is also a failure on the part of the makers of the programme. I must be bang in the bull’s-eye of their target audience, being: - - a passionate devotee of the written word in all its forms, and of the novel in particular, classical and popular ...

torr 18.12.2003 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of The Big Read