Thinking about PBS

I was just thinking about the British TV that our PBS stations no longer play. I adore Keeping Up Appearances, Are You Being Served?, and As Time Goes By, but with their British television budget reduced, I wonder what they still have available. They did stop playing Keeping Up Appearances and As Time Goes By for a while, and I thought it was a good idea to let them come back refreshed. However, they replaced it with things like Mulberry. I don't know anyone who needs to see Mulberry. So, here is a list of what I'm missing, or what I remember them playing that they haven't in ages, or don't enough, or whatever:

1) Open All Hours
2) Fawlty Towers
3) Home to Roost***
4) It Ain't Half Hot, Mum (Not a favorite)
5) Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em (Also not a favorite)
6) Goodnight, Sweetheart***
7) Caroline***
8) Kiss Me Kate (Never ever ever a favorite)
9) That's My Boy (Corny, but Mollie Sugden is a personal favorite)
10) Mulberry (Best viewed in moderation)
11) Fresh Fields
12) Only Fools and Horses
13) The Piglet Files
14) May to December (A Bit Eh)
15) A Fine Romance
16) The Duchess of Duke Street
17) Waiting for God
18) Inspector Morse (Of the varied sort)
19) To the Manor Born
20) Monarch of the Glen (listed on their website, and might be an amusing diversion)
21) One Foot in the Grave
22) Bless Me, Father
23) The Vicar of Dibley (seen and seen again, but still good and possibly this time with the end of series episodes)
24) Blackadder
25) My Hero
26) Good Neighbors
27) Chef! (same as VoD, though without the new episodes)
28) Red Dwarf
29) Born & Bred (Never ever liked at all)
29) All Creatures Great & Small
30) The Thin Blue Line
31) 'Allo 'Allo (I've heard bad things, but I'm curious anyways)
32) The Peter Principle (Is that the name? It's Jim Broadbent being a bank manager or something)
33) On the Up (haha Cannot leave the hilarious Dennis Waterman off the list)

I'm sure there are others that I'm not thinking of. Also, there is Last of the Summer Wine. I don't believe they will ever stop playing that. Honestly, I've seen them get to the end of the episodes they have and start over where they have earlier episodes. Two for one deal with the BBC? Also, I know they aren't BBC America and will not be playing Little Britain or Black Books or Spaced or The Robinsons, but who knows. I see they're going to play The Old Guys at the end of the month and that is awesome! More like that--on Sundays, bitte.

*sigh* I just miss the variety, I guess!

Time for Another Proclamation

To the wilds of the internet, I do NOT write like bloody Stephen King. I tried to get through one of his novels and found it to be absolute dreck to my tastes. To be extremely narcissistic, I sometimes quite enjoy my own work. So, no matter what any text analysis suggests, I do NOT write like Stephen King. Some people would say, 'Oh, that's great,' but I would rather write like bloody Mark Twain. Bloody bloody bloody.

New Template?

Anyone like the new template? Who doesn't like rain and a summer chill? I certainly would, if there was any chill in hell's waiting room.

I may also review Battle Royale since I finished it... a bit ago. And Is Sex Necessary?! Just think of the book reviews I could do when I wasn't openly procrastinating.

I Must Make a Proclamation.

I know I have not posted in ages. However, something must be said so that I feel it has been said to many--in this case to the wilds of the internet. I am NOT a lesbian. I have one really good best friend who I know very well (or so I think!) and who knows me very well. Nearly 15 years of such a friendship can and has resulted in a very solid relationship wherein we can sometimes complete each other's sentences and thoughts, we are well versed in most cases in things the other likes, and have thus far preferred each other's company for these very reasons. This does NOT mean that we are anything more than friends. Although I cannot expressly speak for my best friend because I have never asked her, I can speak for myself and I say that I am NOT a lesbian. I am perfectly entitled to have an awesome, close best friend without that meaning it goes into THAT area.


To sum up: I AM NOT A LESBIAN. I SIMPLY WORK EXTREMELY WELL WITH MY BEST FRIEND.

(And as a side note, no of course I do not condemn lesbians. I am simply tired of being periodically asked whether or not I am one.)

What Are Extraterrestrials Really After?

Do You Know Who I Feel Sorry For? / He Do the Policemen in Different Voices

I am thinking of historians who will have to document this time period--perhaps 100 or 200 years in the future. Despite the fact that digital archiving is improving at break-neck speeds, I can't imagine the difficulty of trying to construct a narrative from sifting through the words of a society who is being crushed under massive, enforced documentation. As I read earlier in a lecture given by Margaret Thatcher in 1968:

"Consider our relations with government departments. We start as a birth certificate, attract a maternity grant, give rise to a tax allowance and possibly a family allowance, receive a national health number when registered with a doctor, go to one or more schools where educational records are kept, apply for an educational grant, get a job, start paying national insurance and tax, take out a television and a driving license, buy a house with a mortgage, pay rates, buy a few premium bonds, take out life assurance, purchase some shares, get married, start the whole thing over again, receive a pension and become a death certificate and death grant, and the subject of a file in the Estate Duty Office! Every one of these incidents will require a form or give rise to some questions, or be recorded in some local or national government office. The amount of information collected in the various departments must be fabulous. Small wonder that life really does seem like 'one damned form after another.'"

Not only that, but so many people can and do choose to air or at least write down their thoughts, feelings, and everything else. From the trivial to the momentous, from the sacred to the profane--we save so much. They will probably look at it and say (in whatever language they're on), "Quantity over quality."

In my own project right now, I face some subjects who had no reason or inclination to speak, or were not allowed, or did not seem to warrant mention from others. While that presents its own set of challenges, imagining the sheer number of journals fraught with personal fears, e-mail about imminent evenings, and pointless blog entries (rather like this one!) that are part of the archival materials of our generation, I feel much more warmly than I once did to my corner of eighteenth century England.

Book Review: Murder at Madingley Grange

I really feel this needs to be done. Partially because I sense the wizards about, and partially because I was spectacularly appalled with this novel which really should've been fun and light. So, without further ado...

MURDER AT MADINGLEY GRANGE by Caroline Graham
Genre: Mystery.
Rating: Poor. Really fecking poor!

This is meant to be a take on the English country house mystery. We know the formula: a group comes to a picturesque English country house called Madingley Grange for the weekend, someone gets killed, suspicion and romantic entanglements ensue. Normally, I love these. I say "normally." The novel is a somewhat more modern take on the formula--instead of a visiting group in, say, the 1920s or 1930s, we have a brother and sister (Simon and Laurie Hannaford) who are watching their elderly aunt's house while she goes abroad during the summer, probably set in the 1980s. The brother comes up with the capital idea that they could stage a country house murder weekend with paying guests, costumes, etc. Laurie is hesitant, but finally agrees. They hire a dodgy butler and maid (really, really dodgy), arrange the guests, and get ready for the big weekend.

Then we meet the guests. We have faux snobs (the Saville mother and daughter), the sort of people you can imagine singing "I'm a Cockney/I'm a Cockney" (the Gibbses, including Mr. Gibbs's mother), a man who has been invited along in order to cozy up to the Saville mother in order to remain engaged to the daughter (Martin), a mystery aficionado and his wife (the... Gregories?), another mystery fan called Mr. Gillette (don't remember much about him) and... that may be all? They honestly got so tiresome, I just wanted the murder to happen to everyone.

I will also make mention here of the hired help plotline, which is not really resolved in a satisfactory way. We have two people calling themselves Gaunt and Bennett. I believe Gaunt is the butler and Bennett is supposed to be the chambermaid. We find out during the course of the novel that they are actually brothers called Ben and... someone from a crime associated family (mother is on the game, father is in prison). They are hoping to steal some valuables in order to make a quick pound. Their ruse involves "Bennett" dressed as a woman--including a fake bust.

So, where should I start? First of all, almost all of the characters are unlikeable, and as I read, I found that the narrator didn't like them either. She puts in sarcastic comments outside of their dialogue. The Savilles are snobs, the Gibbses are vulgar, Simon is a manipulator, and the Gregories consist of an over-zealous mystery fanatic who is so irritating and his tired wife who is just... tired. Martin and Laurie are cute, as is their romance subplot.

However, what is not cute is what Ms. Graham does with them at the end, which is representative of the sort of nonsense she employs throughout the rest of the book. Their storyline goes along much as one would expect in a mystery novel like this. As mentioned above, Martin comes into the Grange secretly engaged to the Saville daughter. Similarly, Laurie is engaged to a man called Hugh who doesn't attend the weekend because he claims that he's ill. At the end, the engagement between Martin and his fiance is off and he and Laurie have decided they love each other. As they're attempting to arrange rides for people who want to leave, Laurie's fiance arrives with another woman (she's called Poppy and she's an idiot--and so is Hugh for secretly dating her). They announce their affection for each other and say that they couldn't go on deceiving Laurie any longer. So, this engagement is also off. Laurie is surprised, but agrees and then introduces them to Martin, calling him darling. And we get to hear more piffle from Poppy. Then everyone decides in corny style to go out for dinner together and be good chums.

Same tacky, shallow conclusion to the staff plotline. The faux murder occurs, which Simon and Gregory's wife convinces everyone is a real murder. The staff, who have previously cut the phone lines and removed the rotor arm from the only working vehicle on the property, panic and leave, taking the car with them. Do we ever see them again? No. Hugh says that the van has fallen over into a ditch, but there is never any attempt to resolve the arc.

Similarly, a number of the guests leave at the end, but not all. They're leaving a day early, so Simon and Laurie are technically still stuck with some of the guests, but there is no conclusion to that either. The final ending is even more absurd. Completely unrelated to anything else that happened in the house, the elderly aunt reveals through narration that she's been trying to make up her mind about who to leave Madingley Grange to. She would prefer Simon and Laurie, but she isn't sure. So, she arranges to leave the various nieces and nephews in charge of the Grange for two week periods after which she returns unexpectedly to find out how they've been taking care of things.

So, we have many loose ends, cliched characters and tactics, and an ending that has absolutely no effect on the events of the novel. This book has taken me ages to get through, and even finishing it took me a concentrated day and a half. Caroline Graham created a wonderful beginning for Midsomer Murders, but we don't like Evil Tom or Evil Troy and her non-Barnaby novels are really no better. Poor effort!