Of course, it's the wonderful 'Dave'...the artist formerly known as UKTV G2. Not exactly the most exciting of sounding television channels, so they glamourised it...by called it 'Dave'...because everyone knows a Dave.
The concept of the channel is simply a station airing predominantly repeats of entertainment and comedy shows. It doesn't air 24-hours a day, instead it tends to broadcast until approximately 3am each night, and then restarts at 7am, with a bit of mind-boggling Teleshopping thrown in there for good measure.
But what does it show? Well during the day it plays repeats of entertainment shows such as Top Gear, Ray Mear's Extreme Survival, Trawlermen, Traffic Cops and Fifth Gear; all seemingly quite 'manly' shows aimed at blokes called 'Dave' presumably...
As the day's schedule moves on it tends to focus on the comedy genre, when shows such as QI, Mock The Week, Live From The Apollo and Have I Got News For You find time in the running order. These differ in age from being the previous series to being a few years old, and therefore a lot of the topical jokes at the time may not make sense any longer.
But don't let that knock the shows. the likes of the comedy shows above are award winning and feature high class comedians. The daytime shows such as Top Gear have also won awards and then have a deserved place of the schedule.
But then the problem lies with there are only so many episodes to go around and seemingly too many hours to fill. Therefore expect to see repeats of these repeats...hardly a great way to sell a TV channel but that's the bottom line unfortunately. However over the past year they've attempted to produce their own unique programming. They intriguingly have the coverage of the World Rally Championships and have begun making comedy shows such as Argumental.
Of course, if you only watch the channel sporadically then the repeats of repeats are nothing to worry about. I tend to watch Top Gear in the daytime if I'm at home and nothing else is on - generally I'll have seen the episode but if they're showing a quite old one it's always good to see it again, or if it's a really recent one then I may not have seen it. In the evenings I've become a big fan of QI having never really watched it during it's original runs on the BBC, and now they've started showing the likes of Spaced (see review of Spaced for more!!) then the more content the merrier.
It's available on Freeview channel 19, along with Dave-ja-vu on 25, and you can watch Dave on Sky channel 111. If there's nothing else on then you can generally expect something to be on Dave...or if there's something good on, expect to see it on Dave in six months!
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Advantages: Very Funny and probably fascinating if your name is Dave Gorman Disadvantages: Always put on at a late time - deserves prime time slot on BBC1!
Oct 30th, 2009
very helpful by (97%):
helpful by (3%):
