Alternative Three (1977)

Via Ballardian

DIANE SAWYER ASKS "WHO KILLED LAURA PALMER?"

ABC passive-aggressively ambush their own show, in no way confirming those persistent rumours that network pressures forced David Lynch and Mark Frost to prematurely spoil Twin Peaks. Viewers just couldn't bear the seven episodes' (seven episodes!) worth of delayed gratification, apparently. Hardly Who Shot J.R.?, was it?

P.S. Actually, I'm not one to talk. I'm binge-watching Cracker (like Twin Peaks, one of those series that aired just on the frontier of before my time) at the moment and it feels a little retrograde to artifically recreate the traditional one-weeks' repose between episodes.

DEFECTIVE JUNCTION BOX, NEW MALDEN

When I first decided (a couple of years ago, in a post-degree jag of self-improvement) that the thing I wanted most was to become a proficient photographer, I first (such an Englishwoman, never quite comfortable with the fact of her own creative impulses) amassed a collection of books on the subject. One of those was Roland Barthes' Camera Lucida, wherein Susan Sontag's foreword describes Barthes' critical dandyism. Sontag explores the process by which the Critic-Dandy chooses to collect certain objects into their discourse. For her, the objects are selected according to a kind of polyphonic whimsy, which draws more, and more various, objects together to form a diorama of the critic's individual taste.

Her admission of the critic's personal investment in the Things he critiques is as simple as asking "Why do you like what you like?", but I think its often overlooked: too personal, too emotional, too human. In this essay on Barthes, Sontag is concerned with feeling the shape of Barthes' oeuvre; its 'retroactive completeness', the patterns and preoccupations that emerge fully in hindsight. I've been thinking for some time about how this process can be traced backwards, how childhood predilections and obsessions feed our critical bent in adulthood.

All of this is proving a rather long and ponderous vamp to a clip of Reggie finally "seducing" Joan in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. I remember watching reruns of this melancholy and terminally dreary BBC comedy, and somehow knowing that it would come in handy later. As a pretty self-defeating 10 year-old, this small ping of recognition would generally mean I obstinately stopped paying attention, but the brown absurdism of this tremendously sad programme still took root, clearly.

BABA I BUDA

Swedish television's 1936 film, Bathing in Buda.
(via Pestiside.hu)

THE RISE OF THE NUTTERS

I'm the kind of girl who enjoys - and, indeed, positively engineers - a time lag in her apprehension of most major cultural events. If there's fuss and column inches, I'll generally go away, have a cup of tea, and come back later. I think Joe is the same, he's rather enjoying the elongated anticipation (or delayed disappointment?) of not being able to view the first part of the Red Riding Quartet Trilogy here in Hungary, which aired in Britain last week.

I've been watching The Thick of It, which was first broadcast on BBC 4 in 2005. It's marvellous stuff - close-to-the-bone, Machiavellian, grotesque - and has me thinking that Armando Iannucci makes a better comedy writer in, say, 1985, than 2005. That's not to dismiss the very noughties Nathan Barley, whose compelling discomfiture - despite a weak and bitty structure - was upstaged by critics' and commentators' hilarious offscreen attempts to find a fingerhold in its scree of irony.

Agreeing with the comments elicited by YouTube clips is generally a bad idea, but those attesting to the perfection of this series are pretty close to the mark, I think. Viewing feels very timely and pertinent in current circumstances, too.

EDUCATE, INFORM, ENTERTAIN

Pssst!

If you, like me, fancy a having a go at Art Appreciation 101, I can think of few better places to start than John Berger's fantastic Ways of Seeing.



In a week when the view of Britain from here has tested my powers of disbelief (I'll let respected media outlet Yahoo! News' "Hot Topics" sum this one up: "Jade Goody, Recession, Royal Family, Crime, Knife Crime"), the soothing, Reithian vigour and properness of this landmark BBC television series has been most heartening.

Watch out for British experimental author Eva Figes making an appearance in a truly 1970s roundtable discussion about the female nude in episode two.

Glasto

We've been watching the BBC's Glastonbury extravaganza, coverage notable for this snatch of screentime, during which Zane Lowe isn't the biggest idiot in shot*. I'm something of a Sofa Zealot about Glastonbury due to its ability to artificially infuse that International Sports Event Feeling (ISEF). I'm a sucker for the ISEF as of circa Italia '90; crowds, singing in unison, squelchy overflows of public emotion, the slight air of menace, the lump in the throat. The BBC's Glastonbury programming could probably do to do away with the Television Presenter School of enthusiasm and go for a bit of Nessun Dorma instead.

Nonetheless, I'm always impressed by the BBC's tireless quest for the With It, which reached its excelsis this year with programmes fronted by an assortment of Random Shits (your less-endearing Naughties incarnation of Viz's Student Grant), joined on their Habitat pouffes by a succession of blokes with interesting trousers. As with an increasing number of my encounters with popular culture lately, I got the unsettling feeling that at twenty-four, I am no longer part of their target demographic. My little brother, however (hi Andy!), is clearly front and centre.

And the music? Amy Winehouse was a they-can't really-show-this-on-telly cheap thrill, redeemed by signs of genuine wit, Lupe Fiasco gained a new fan in Joe and the Verve were more insurance advert than standing on top of a hill. The sound was bloody awful, Massive Attack were dour and Jay-Z... well, he was better than the Ting Tings.



*Disclaimer: I'm sorry Zane, that was unkind. I very much appreciate your enthusiasm for New Music and your Stoned Tigger delivery. Apols.

Robert's World of Magic

Actually, I don't have a television.

In this kind of flip-flopping lifestyle dilemma, I'll side with Viz's Modern Parents over 85th Worst Briton Julie Burchill, every time.

Oh, and just for old time's sake, here's Burchill and Camille Paglia going head to head by fax.

Wot, no Momus?

Inclement weather has stopped play this Whitsun Bank Holiday Monday, so take a look at Caledonia Dreaming, BBC4's documentary about - ahem - the "hidden history of Scottish pop music". There's been moaning n' groaning elsewhere about this doc's obvious omissions and its rather strange chronology. If, like me, however, you get excited when stuff you like is on the telly - or you're dead fond of BBC stock footage of post-industrial malaise - you'll be keen.

Perhaps skip through its disproportionate focus on "Blue Eyed Soul", though, unless you're really into Marti Pellow.