Jesus wow

So,

Manchester Passion eh? Who thunked of that? The story of Jesus told with some Madchester classics. And 10cc. And M People. And Robbie Williams who, in many ways, is from Stoke. But that's not the point.

 No, MP (as it shall hence be known) actually worked. It had some John Simm lookalikey as Jesus, the doctor chap out of Eastenders as Peter and Tim Booth of James as Judas. Plus some gospelly woman who murdered Cast No Shadow and Keith Allen presenting the whole 'extravaganza'. I'm more atheist than most, but it was a good way to tell an old sotry. Certainly better than the rubbish that Mel Braveheart dished out to us a few Easters ago.

Perhaps it could be the dawn of a whoel new spin-offs. A musical might break the West-End and why stop at Jesus? We could have the the Great Gatsby told with bling-heavy hip-hop or Dracula sountracked by Norwegian death-metal.

Who knows? But at least it shows there are some people in TV-land coming up with original ideas. Which is more than can be said for the makers of Beauty and the Geek.

 Finally, and with reference to John Harris, I must ask why the producers of MP didn't give Pontius Pilate the Happy Mondays' Kinky Afro to sing. All together, 'yippy ya ya ya ya yay hey, I had to crucify some brother today'.

 And so on.

Crufts

This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever witnessed. Surely BBC2 have something better to stick on a Saturday night than some old zoophile tripping up over her colly while dancing to ‘All That Jazz’? Then again, Just The Two Of Us…

Northenders

Tonight’s “‘Enders” saw the introduction of a new character called Burt. Burt isn’t any old character y’see. No, Burt is from The North.

Introduced into Walford by young Bradley mistaking him for a tramp, Burt is a friend of Pauline’s new bloke. Burt, y’see, is a stereotype.

Dressed in scruffy old clothes (armed with a flatcap and whippet one presumes), Burt waltzes his way onto the square and proceeds to use his ‘northern charm’ to try and seduce Yolande Trueman.

What Eastenders’ hapless producers have tried to do here is introduce a character from the distant land of ‘Up North’ (he said where he was from, but I think, like Walford, it was some made up generic-sounding mill town) in order to try and win the huge audience share that has been snagged, like a lamb to barbed wire, to Coronation Street.

Unfortunately, the trick they’ve copied out of Corrie’s book (ie. introduce some characters not born within spitting distance of a cotton mill/Upton Park) doesn’t quite work. Corrie’s southerners, Bradley Walsh et al. sort of work. Even if they’re not that interesting, their appeal lies in the fact that they’re personalities rather than simply ’southerners’.

Burt, is a sad attempt at winning over a lost audience. And one that is more likely to alienate any Northern audience than endear them. This dead horse needs flogging.

Frig

I just lost a big long post about the Baftas and Keira Knightley’s versatility. Damn.

Guess an proper update will arrive on Wednesday.

Anti-plagiarism campaign

It’s so good to actually be campaigning on something that really matters to students and union officers. From today NUS now has a National Plagiarism Campaign. Over recent months I have spoken to officers about they aims and campaigns for the year. I found that for so many officers tackling the issue of plagiarism is top of the list.

The fact is that students aren’t supported. We all remember what it’s like to go into college or university during Fresher’s week. Having tons of paper thrust into your hands; booklets about this and that. Sometimes the information is important and the aim of this campaign is to see that students get the right information about referencing and how to avoid plagiarism. Why not give students this information throughout the year, with refresher sessions at the beginning of exam times and prior to the main assessment period?

At the other end, where students are accused of plagiarism we are calling for greater support and independent advice for students. Often students aren’t directed to their students’ union for advice and representation and when it comes to the courtroom style judging panel there is rarely any students’ union representative who sits on the panel. We are calling for better support for all students throughout this process.

So get involved in the campaign, take the survey, which is on the front of officer online, and help NUS to get better fairness for all students.

Wade in hot water

This obviously isn’t telly related but just made me guffaw in the newsagents.

And the Sun’s front page, which they won’t let me take the picture of can be found here. Guess what their headline is?

Contributors wanted

If anyone else has any views on the rubbish/goods on telly. Feel free to email me them and I’ll put them up.

Cheers,

Will

Arrested Development

There is no better Valentine’s present than season two of Arrested Development on DVD.

Top Gear – Winter Olympics Special

Special indeed. It’s well known that Tunnel Vision love nothing more than well thought out idiocy. Which is pretty much Top Gear in a nutshell.

The IT Crowd – CTRL-ALT-DELETE this

Here’s a maths problem that’s been troubling me: Take Graham Lineham (writer of Father Ted, Black Books and others) add Ash Atalla (producer of The Office) and multiply by a Chris Morris bit-part.

In normal circumstances this ought to be the comedic equivalent of the Theory of Relativity or Pythagoras’s Theorum (yes, I don’t know any others). In reality though, Channel 4’s The IT Crowd is more like the Travelling Wilburys or Real Madrid circa 2004 – an underachieving production notably less than the sum of its vaunted parts.