even since i came to the US and met simon (the two things happened very near each other) i’ve been hearing about this allegedly fabulous australian tv show. it just about broke simon’s heart to leave england while the show was still running, and a week before he was due on his one-way flight to los angeles he runned himself ragged looking for a recording of the theme song all over london. only now do i realize how lucky i am that he didn’t find it.
i discovered that prisoner had been realeased on dvd (not the whole thing, just some choice episodes), so i bought it for him. i barely lasted through the first episode. does anyone know this show? can someone explain to me the allure of english tv? (this is australian, as i said, but whatever). the only bbc production i’ve ever liked is prime suspect, but the styles are so different, it’s as if british tv had learned a thing or two from its american counterpart in the decade that separates prisoner and prime suspect.
so i ask, what is it with the campiness and the cheesiness?
Well, I think Prisoner looks intriguing…. but I’m writing mostly to let you know, Gio, that a Prime Suspect 7 is in the works for Fall. I, too, love that show–besides the fantastic Mirren, each series (aside from the very last one) has been top-notch mystery and drama. Great, great stuff.
thanks, mike. do they show it on american tv?
but, from what I can tell on BBC America, every British TV show looks like it was filmed through a dirt drab filter. is that a reflection of national mood? maybe I just like bright shiny things?
Suspect has been a big hit on PBS, and I heard about the new one in connection to public tv, so… I’m assuming it’ll show up there, maybe with some delay from its initial airing.
dirt drab filter: so well put, so true.
Cell Block H was on late night TV in St Louis when I was a kid. I had no idea it was Australian, but my friends would speak in hushed tones about the sexiness of the women in prison tv show. There was even talk of an exposed boobie(!) decades before Janet Jackson stole my innocence.
I was trying to find a link that would automatically play the theme song for Gio, but only found the instrumental version.
I enjoy how Gio trashes the entire history of the BBC for the campiness of a prison drama made 12,000 miles away from Maida Vale. Sock it to ’em!
ouch. you’re right. but simon has forced me to watch other english stuff in these long sixteen years, and i didn’t like any of it. but yes, that was a silly thing to say.
i have the theme song in a 4-dvd deluxe edition sitting on my stereo, and it’s really cheesy. but thank you for the thought.
what is maida vale?
the London neighborhood in which I thought BBC had been traditionally located. I’m wrong on that – I think BBC1 radio is still located there, where the Peel Sessions were recorded.
I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that BBC programs are shot in PAL (625 lines of resolution), so maybe when it is trasnferred to NTSC (525 lines of resolution), something gets lost in terms of clarity. But I may be wrong.
i know pete could use some colour.
or color.