Yanks Watching Telly

Monday’s screenings of Sherlock, a BBC One program, speak volumes as to the relationship between the BBC’s charter, the history of popular culture in Britain, and the success and public image of the channel. There is a unique sense of pride in the BBC, and the channel is quite successful in using advertising and programming to construct this aura of dignity.

We’ve discussed in class how unlike in America, British popular culture centers around the written word. While we focus on the visual—television, movies, and the rise of YouTube can attest to such a notion—Britain has a great tradition of literature that is widely respected and probably held in higher regard than any visual entertainment. Professor Becker even mentioned how John Reith, former Director-General of the BBC, considered television coarse entertainment in the days when the BBC was just a radio corporation.

With such pride in literary history, it should be no surprise such a popular and critically acclaimed program as Sherlock calls the BBC home. Considering the BBC’s mission to “inform, educate, and entertain,” Sherlock is a carefully concocted stew of entertaining drama and elements of British literary greatness, which ultimately help the channel live up to its mission. As the show is fictional, it cannot be considered informational or educational in a scholastic sense like nature documentaries or news programming might be. Rather, though it may be visual entertainment, Sherlock taps into this pride and tradition of great literature through exceptional scriptwriting, acting, and direction. Though it may contain modern elements that make it such an entertaining show, it is also critically successful—“bad” television can be entertaining or popular, but Sherlock lives up to the three elements the BBC defines itself on. The program could be argued to be a continuation of a defining element of British culture.

We saw how important this element of respect for tradition in British culture (in particular, television) in one of the BBC advertisements for 2012 we watched in class. After cutting through a wardrobe with costumes and props of many old British TV shows, a montage of Olympic moments and older British programming (such as Absolutely Fabulous) ran. It is hard to argue that television is vulgar entertainment for the masses after being presented with such a powerful visual reminder of the tradition of the medium. Additionally, such an advertisement stirs up two feelings—patriotism in the tradition of the BBC and the point that such tradition is even being created with current programming. The BBC may get its knocks for various reasons, but it certainly isn’t doing so without a fight.

When I think of quality television in the U.S., I think of HBO, Showtime and other premium cable networks and series that really raise the bar and provide a sense of either realism or filmic qualities.  Now I can add Sherlock to that list because the show is simply that: quality.  After watching “Blink” and now having watched another Steven Moffat written television episode, I would certainly argue for Moffat as an auteur and Sherlock as his triumphant quality program.

The show does a terrific job of creating the look and feel of a highly produced movie and it is clearly evident (as we discussed in class) that the BBC has put forth a generous portion of their funds to make this program have the high quality look and feel that it does.  The episode is clearly shot on location in London, in what appears to be the streets (if not then those are some impressively accurate looking sets), lending to its realistic look and feel.  If Sherlock Holmes is going to be adapted into modern day society, I cannot think of a better way to do it, in terms of the location shooting and the quality production value.  Likewise, the character himself is appropriately fitted to mirror the classic Holmes while also providing a distinct element of flair that makes him fit within today’s world.

One aspect of the show that particularly stuck out to me as both unique and well done was the usage of the graphic elements on screen to say what was being sent in a text message as well as what Holmes was thinking.  While I admit, sometimes I felt the graphics were distracting, such as in the press conference scene at the beginning or when Holmes inspects the victim’s body, I actually grew to like their usage as the show progressed.  They helped to add a distinctly different feel (at least from the American shows I have seen) and set Sherlock apart in terms of its identity.

Where I think Moffat really stands out as an auteur on this series is in his ability to write a narrative that successfully incorporates strong character relationships and building (specifically Holmes and Watson of course), suspense and mystery, and especially an ability to connect with and engage the audience.  This episode is written in such a way that audience members are constantly intrigued by the mystery at hand, but also are provided with enough clues to make logical conclusions about whom the murderer may be.  I found it to be just the right balance between learning enough information to be trying to figure out what was going on while not necessarily being able to dive one hundred percent into a sound conclusion too early on.  This is where I think Sherlock does a terrific job of reflecting the ideals of British television’s notion of high quality and intellectual television.  The show is “educational” in ways because it makes its viewers think.  And this educational value only adds to the overall idea of a quality television show, which has an awesome look, feel, depth, and entertainment value.  I am surely hooked on Sherlock now and think we may want to devote five more screenings to finishing the first two series.

Admission: I’m mad I never watched Sherlock before this week. I’ve had friends tell me repeatedly how wonderful it was, and yet I wouldn’t allow myself to get sucked into something new. I should have known that after having “TV as a Storytelling Medium”, which led to many hours dedicated to Friday Night Lights and Survivor, that this class would peak my curiosity in many new capacities. Not just because of the acting, dialogue, or action specifically, but simply for the fact that it blew the Robert Downey Jr. out of the water.
Don’t get me wrong, RDJ can do little wrong. But looking at the American franchise of Sherlock Holmes, I’m embarrassed at our incarnation. Within this ninety-minute episode, I felt more connected with Holmes and Watson than in two Hollywood blockbusters under the same inspiration. The plucky soundtrack reminded me of the film, with very similar sound aesthetics, but the writing reached a new level. Both versions featured irritating versions of Sherlock: know-it-all, cocky, disrespectful, and oblivious to others’ feelings outside of what would benefit him. And yet, the BBC’s Sherlock humanized the man with the great mind, allowing us to discover the kinship between the duo in front of us, not just RDJ being silly and Jude Law rolling his eyes. Sherlock, frankly, cared.
On top of that, the biggest difference stemmed from the mystery set-up. Hollywood chose the biggest, most explosive premise possible, no effect unspecialized. The television series plays off of the people, perhaps due to budget, but still maintains a cinematic quality. Without relying on pizzazz, Sherlock portrayed a captivating mystery that included the viewer. On Monday, about forty minutes in, I wanted nothing more than to shout, “IT WAS A CAB DRIVER. HOW DO YOU NOT SEE THAT.” Whereas the movie leaves little opportunity for audience interaction, we just sit idly by and prepare to get “wowed” by Sherlock’s deduction.

Leave it to the British to properly adapt their cultural icon to the screen

When I first informed some of my friends I would be watching Sherlock in our class, they completely flipped out. They told me that my life would be changed forever and that I would become addicted to the show. They said all I needed to do was watch the first episode and I would fall under Sherlock‘s spell and certainly be hooked. Having now seen the first episode, I hate to disappoint them but I am not addicted, I’m not under the spell, and I’m certainly not hooked. Don’t get me wrong, I liked it, I really did. As someone who has read Sir Arthur Conan Doyles creation I appreciated this modern day adaptation. It’s a genius idea and in my opinion it put together almost flawlessly by our old friend Steven Moffat. I guess I should say that I wasn’t disappointed with the show itself. Instead, I just felt like Sherlock was just another crime solving dramas which have oversaturated the US market.

A crime solving protagonist with a knack for picking up on the tiniest details and peeving off his colleagues with his demeanor seems to be common place on US television. Criminal Minds, NCIS, and The Mentalist are just a few examples that quickly come to mind when I think of this type of show. Each show is unique in its own way, and offers it own unique style to the crime solving genre, but they all seem to tell the same story. Sherlock, while the character certainly is THE original standard by which everything in the  crime solving genre is compared, to me was just another example of one of these kind of shows. While I was interested to see how the episode ended to see if all the questions were answered, I was not screaming for more like my friends insisted I would be.

This was just one of the things working against Sherlock for me. Another thing was the 90 minute episode length.  Perhaps it was just my tragically short, American attention span but I just couldn’t get accustomed to the pacing of a 90 minute television show. It felt like a movie, but I knew it was a TV show. Alex’s brian = confused. This is just my personal taste and most people I have talked to about this have just rolled their eyes at me.

As you can see, what I disliked about Sherlock was just little nit-picking and overall I did enjoy the show. I feel like if somebody put the remaining 5 episodes in front of me I would probably not object to watching them. I just feel that as an American watching British TV, when comparing Sherlock to other American crime dramas it’s just another face in the crowd. Like I said, I feel like Moffat does a great job at modernizing the old tale into a contemporary world. I feel like it also has enough action to exist in the same breath the other latest Sherlock Holmes adaptation, the action film with Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law. I found myself thinking about the film while watching Sherlock but there wasn’t much to compared between the show and the film except for the characters and the “bromance” between Holmes and Watson. In my opinion both have their own place in the Sherlock Holmes pedigree.

Here’s an article on that diversity study I mentioned in class today. “BBC1’s Question Time and Mock the Week have been criticised in a report about television diversity for featuring “token women” on their panels. The panel shows were singled out, along with BBC2’s QI, for failing to put enough female faces on screen. Commissioned by the BBC for the Cultural Diversity Network, the report said there was a tendency in drama, comedy and entertainment programmes to feature older people as “peripheral or token figures”. Viewers described them as “props for other stories” rather than a central character. There was praise for characters such as the Dowager Countess from Downton Abbey, Patrick Trueman in EastEnders and Coronation Street’s Betty Turpin for their positive portrayal of older people. But there was a mixed verdict on another BBC1 show, Strictly Come Dancing, with concern that older contestants such as Ann Widdecombe were only being included as “figures of fun”… A panel of industry experts who took part in the survey acknowledged that TV programmes can sometimes portray older people as the “adorable idiot”.”

I just stumbled upon this post from American media scholar (and big Doctor Who fan) Derek Kompare, which fits perfectly with our Doctor Who discussions:

“We Americans tend to fall in love with Doctor Who for not being American television. American television can’t fathom whimsy. It can barely handle universal, all-ages entertainment any more. Moreover, while there’s no shortage of riveting dramas on American TV today, our expectations are too wired in boring old realism (even in our fantasy series) to allow the kind of “bonkers” tonal range Doctor Who thrives in, and too wed to notions of “sophistication” to let children in. There’s nothing on American TV that can thread silliness, horror, elation, and heartbreak at the level and speed of Doctor Who; we just don’t have a conceptual place for it in our televisual landscape. Joss Whedon’s works (especially Buffy and Firefly) arguably come close, and other series have certainly had moments (the Hurley episodes of Lost come to mind), but they’re all still firmly “adult” television. There’s no home for anything that dares to bridge these gaps of genre, style, and audience age. It’s fair to say that it’s anomalous in this regard on UK TV as well, though to a lesser extent. Thankfully, the megachannel universe is big enough to let Doctor Who in, via BBC America, which is making the new run its signature series (though it has long slipped across the Atlantic unofficially via BitTorrent and other means). So far so good for BBC America, which scored a record audience for the season premiere last Saturday. Still, taken as a proportion of the national viewing audience, the series draws about one-fortieth the viewers it claims in Britain, where it is one of the BBC’s most popular series, and one of the nation’s most familiar cultural texts. Thus, while I will always love Doctor Who, I realize that I have ultimately experienced it as an exoticizing tourist. I regret that I’ll likely never see an American series with as much heart, panache, and unadulterated joy.”

The comments section also has some great stuff, especially Matt Hills’ input.

I am a longtime watcher of another modernized Sherlock Holmes television series, although this one is American and is more Holmes in spirit than in actual execution. The medical drama House plays off the personalities of both Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in the characters House and Dr. Wilson respectively although they are solving medical mysteries instead of criminal ones. I entered Sherlock having watched literally over one hundred episodes of the other TV show, and so it was impossible for me to not measure every move Sherlock made against House.

Considering that all I can really measure between the two is the dynamic between two men and that in Sherlock they are just meeting for the first time whereas on House they have been in a relationship of sorts for years, it is probably easier to contrast the two rather than compare them. That said, I was surprised at how tonally similar these two shows were, even in the musical score and opening credits. If I go back to the pilot of House, which I admit I haven’t seen in years, this is how the creators originally presented the relationship:

What’s missing from that clip is the witty banter that House and Wilson are so well known for. But it does cut into the deeper heart of their relationship, which is Wilson as House’s moral compass and the only one he will truly listen to. That element is not really included in the first episode of Sherlock because Holmes and Watson are new to one another, although in the very last scene when Watson begins to calls Holmes on his psychological issues you can begin to see it forming.

Sherlock is also a lot more modern than House. The text messages appearing in the air beside the phone carrier, the textual explanations of what Holmes is seeing as he sees it, and the mental map of the cab driving are all things you don’t see that often on television. House sort of employs something like that with graphic journeys into the body to show what is wrong with someone, but nothing to the level of Sherlock.

There is finally the obvious difference in that House has a team of young and frankly good looking associates to bounce ideas off of, which is not Holmes at all. This seems to me an American idea–having the sex appeal and the romantic intrigue among supporting characters to keep an audience’s interest with side stories if they lose the interest in the Sherlock Holmes plotlines. Sherlock does seem concerned with being a very “British” show, as it is constantly identifying itself with London and making a lot of itself clearly referential to the original Sherlock Holmes.

Lastly, what I found truly astonishing about Sherlock was how the episode was essentially the length of a movie but still felt episodic. It blows my mind that there are more Harry Potter movies than episodes of this show. How does releasing this kind of show go? How could you really get addicted to something that only has six installments? That might be a very American mentality, but I can’t imagine how something with only six episodes over two seasons (or series) could inspire a massive following. The excitement level would seem more like a movie than a show to me, even though this watches like a show.

Like many others in the class, watching the two episodes of Doctor Who on Wednesday was basically my first encounter with British television (other than the one episode from Professor Holland’s class). I too was very impressed with the show as a whole—not only was it very entertaining and pleasing to watch, but it was also well-made and put together. As Neil and Maija have commented, there is the question as to why Doctor Who does not have an American appeal, with the consensus being that it would receive a negative reception from the public.

After considering this, I can absolutely understand the argument from a critical perspective. Due to the general American disapproval of foreign entertainment, it is more than likely that in order to air Doctor Who here there would need to be an American version with American actors. Shows which have attempted this transition in the past—namely, The Office and Coupling—have usually been met with very poor critical reviews at first (in fact, Coupling did not even make it through the first season).

Thus, I think that the primary reason that there is no Doctor Who in America is related to the high-risk nature of converting a foreign program into an American one. However, this is not to say that I believe that the show could not be very successful among the masses, if given a chance. If there is one thing that I have learned as a film major, it’s that there often times is a huge disconnect between the critics and the general public in regards to the “success” or “quality” of a particular film (I mean, there’s a Ghost Rider sequel).

In this sense, I think there is a viable argument that Doctor Who could be successful, if given the chance to be. As stated, The Office, which is another light-hearted British TV convert, was originally met with a good amount of scrutiny and negative critical attention, but obviously became one of the most popular shows on American television. In fact, although shows like Breaking Bad and Mad Men are dark in nature and do receive the greatest critical acclaim, they have proven to be no more popular in recent years than comedies such as Two and Half Men.

In the end, I believe that the “uniqueness” of Doctor Who, which can be viewed as its Achilles Heel in regards to its American appeal, could be its greatest asset. The fact is that there is a void for a show that can be enjoyed by everyone in the family and that is serious and educational while also being extremely funny and goofy. Although I am doubtful that Doctor Who will ever be given the chance to succeed in the United States, I do contest that it could be surprisingly popular amongst the masses.

Although I have had a little experience with British Television (namely through the shows Sherlock and Misfits), I had never before had the opportunity to watch Doctor Who. Having heard great things about the program and its quirky style, I went into the screening with very high expectations. Unfortunately, I left a little underwhelmed.

Despite loving the main characters and the creative science-fiction aspects of the program, I was sort of, for lack of a better word, “put off” by the show. Between the two episodes that we watched, it just felt like the show was trying to be too many things at once. Bounding almost incessantly from moments of terror to moments of absolute goofiness and even ridiculously overdone emotional scenes (i.e. the final art museum scene in the second episode) made the show feel like it came from the mind of a multiple personality individual with heavy mood swings. This sentiment was echoed in class on Thursday in regards to how American shows tend to assign themselves to one genre or stereotype which sometimes makes it hard for preconditioned American viewers (like myself) to become fully absorbed into a television program that is so across the board like Doctor Who. This idea about the differences in the very nature of American and British programming is very interesting and will be interesting to follow and observe as the semester progresses.

Before concluding, I want to raise another dilemma that the first episode “Blink” raised. Throughout the introduction of this course, we have been discussing the BBC’s initiative to put education and information before entertainment. Although I do believe that this a great and commendable mission that should be required for any public service broadcaster, I do not know if BBC kept this initiative in mind when creating the episode “Blink.” My reason for this qualm is that throughout the episode there were very little educational messages or moral lessons and instead a whole lot of entertaining and scaring. In fact, the only lesson I took away from the episode was an even deeper fear of ominous garden statues. The closest the show ever comes to teaching is when the Doctor tries to explain some of the concepts of time travel. Unfortunately, this too comes up completely short as even Doc Brown’s flux capacitor lectures in “Back to the Future” are far more informative than the “timey wimey” logic that the Doctor tries to explain in the episode. Nevertheless, “Blink” is a more creative and overall better episode than the highly educational “Vincent and the Doctor” which raises an interesting question on whether sometimes BBC must sacrifice certain educational standards in order to create unique and engaging content.

Although I did appreciate and enjoy certain aspects of the series, there were just too many inconsistencies for me to completely fall in love. Fortunately for me, it is just one less program I need to add to my already far too crowded Netflix queue.

I’ve been closely following television since I was a freshman in high school, and have heard time and time again how good Doctor Who is. I don’t know what kept me from checking it out, but I never actually saw an episode until earlier this year. Like Audrey, I took Professor Holland’s Shakespeare and Film class, so we watched the full episode of “The Shakespeare Code”. At the time, I remember thinking the show was good, but it  didn’t quite live up to all the hype. However, after watching both “Blink” and “Vincent and the Doctor” I may have been a bit quick to dismiss it. I found “Blink” to be a legitimately creepy hour of television, and I thought “Vincent and the Doctor” was an example of a historical episode done right.

One thing I found particularly impressive in both episodes was the creators’ ability to get me to care about a one-off character who realistically isn’t going to show up again. Both Sally Sparrow and Vincent van Gogh were the real stars of the episodes, and I felt just as much of a connection to them as I did to the Doctor and his companion. Obviously Sally was the star of her episode, but the combination of acting and writing for van Gogh’s character allowed him to really steal the show. The fact that I cared about his character made the ending all the more poignant and tragic.

Like Maija, I’ve been trying to wrestle with why Doctor Who wouldn’t appeal to an American audience (other than American audience’s natural ambivalence towards foreign entertainment). Even if the show were remade for an American audience, I don’t think the show would succeed, and that all comes down to its tone. Like it or not, Americans expect “quality” shows to be dark and depressing. All of the critical favorites, like Mad Men, Breaking Bad or Homeland deal with pretty dark stuff on a regular basis. The closest American equivalent I can think of for Doctor Who is Parks and Recreation, a show that is at its core very hopeful and fun, but  the audience still has an emotional connection with the characters. Maybe I’m overthinking it; maybe all it boils down to Americans not being able to accept a sci-fi show that doesn’t take itself completely seriously. Either way, I look forward to catching up on the show on Netflix to see if  I can figure it out.

I said in class on Wednesday that I don’t think Doctor Who would fly on American TV, especially American network TV. I had a hard time putting a finger on exactly why I thought that was, but I think an important element of it is the tone of the show.

The tone of Doctor Who is hard to put a nail on precisely as it tends to be quite mercurial from episode to episode. However, I think the show does an excellent job of mixing camp, grit and sentimentality to create a compelling story, well-developed characters and a vast range of narrative options. “Blink” and “Vincent and the Doctor” may not be the best examples of it, but any show that centers its action on fighting aliens and other extraterrestrial creatures has a serious element of camp to it. This is likely greatly rooted in the series’ history as a children’s or family TV show, but even now in its more sophisticated form, a viewer must buy in completely to the conceit that these bizarre aliens exist and that the Doctor must always defeat them, without ever killing them.

In America, that would work fine on a show strictly designed to entertain children. But add in the great and, one could argue, horror of an episode like “Blink” or the truly moving emotional arc of “Vincent and the Doctor” and suddenly, Doctor Who isn’t just playing for one target audience anymore.

I think it was Prof. Becker who said that American TV is much more niched than a show like Doctor Who is.

But even more than breaking the niche, I think most American audiences would have a hard time connecting with the camp of Doctor Who. When we have campy shows aimed at adults, we Archer, Arrested Development or maybe even It’s Always Sunny – campy but always cynical.

Doctor Who, on the other hand, asks the viewer to accept camp in order to be about something really good, be it the goodness of humanity or a heartfelt message about the uselessness of violence.

I think part of the reason I really like Doctor Who is because of just that – it’s a really compelling, well-made TV series that remains endlessly positive and makes one appreciate humanity rather than rolling eyes at it. And there really isn’t anything like that on American TV right now.

Unlike most Doctor Who fans, (who refer to themselves as “Whovians”),  “Blink” isn’t my favorite episode.  It’s certainly well done, perhaps technically the best episode of the entire series, and as the previous posts on this blog can attest to, it certainly keeps you on the edge of your seat.  But personally, the reason I like Doctor Who so much is because of the style of the series overall, the overarching story line and themes that always intrigue.  I can probably safely say I’ve never been bored during an episode.

A few semesters ago I took a Shakespeare and Film class with Professor Peter Holland. One of the clips he showed us in class, with an explanation of how popular the show is in the UK and a brief disclaimer about the camp sci-fi effects, was the episode of Doctor Who in which the Tenth Doctor, played by the remarkable David Tennant, encounters William Shakespeare.  It’s a cheesy episode and isn’t really regarded as one of the good ones, but it’s what led me to further investigate Doctor Who.

Thanks to Netflix instant streaming, I was able to go through most of Tennant’s episodes – Series 2-4, over winter break.  The dialogue was witty, the characters charming, the villains sort of cheesy, but all of it just a lot of fun.

Doctor Who doesn’t try to be completely serious; the situations are sometimes silly, crazy, rather unbelievable, or at times even completely illogical.  Basically, Who can do whatever it wants, and does.  It’s an extremely flexible, diverse show, and you never really quite know what you’re going to get with a certain episode.  But if you “suspend your disbelief”, and just allow yourself to watch a few episodes with an open mind, pretty soon you begin to really care about the characters, despite the fact that some of them are strange looking aliens or plastic robot people…

Here’s a breakdown of one of the most recent episodes of Who, which explains in a little more detail why this show is so original… (Warning: Spoilers!)

http://bobcanada92.blogspot.com/2011/10/why-i-love-doctor-who.html

Let me preface this post by clearly stating- as a child I was known to hide behind couches during episodes of the animated series Scooby-Doo. Therefore, it may come as no surprise that the Doctor Who episode “Blink” absolutely terrified me. I knew Professor Becker warned us about this being a scary episode and because of that I was a nervous wreck the entire episode, waiting for the scary to happen. And then it happened. Before I knew it, I was sweating and full of panic. For this reason, it baffles me that families with children have viewed this episode. While I may be the definition of a wimp, it still astounds me that children have watched this episode and did not demand to sleep in their parents bed after it. Makes me wonder, are children in Britain braver than American children?

The Wiley-Blackwell article discusses the new Doctor Who bringing the Saturday evening, seven o’clock time slot back to prominence. According to the piece, family viewing never left the British culture, but family programming had. The “regenerated” Doctor Who brought this option back to the airwaves, but only for the United Kingdom. In America, would Doctor Who be viewed as “family programming”? The BBC’s goal is to “inform, educate, and entertain,” but where was the information and education in “Blink”? I (and most other Americans, I believe) think of family programming as a show like Modern Family or The Middle. The goal of these shows is not to educate, but to provide entertainment the whole family can sit down and enjoy that leaves out explicit language, sex, and violence.

While I did not think “Blink” was exceptionally educational, I can find that point in “Vincent and the Doctor”. This was much more of an educational episode. For fear of showing off my art history ignorance, I did not know Van Gough’s paintings were disregarded during his lifespan or that he committed suicide at such a young age. In this way, I learned from Doctor Who in a very entertaining way. But I still wonder, why the scare tactics? Maybe it is just me, but perhaps America and Great Britain have differing views on what family programming means and how much viewers of all ages can endure.

All this being said, once I got over the shakes of fear, I enjoyed the episodes of Doctor Who and the creative entertainment it provided.

I found today’s visit from an actor from the London stage to be riveting and thought provoking.

I liked his genuine appreciation of our seemingly “normal” acting. After spending a semester in London and seeing a dozen theatre performances, I can relate to the notion that some performances seem overdramatized. Our normality proved refreshing through his eyes. He noted that actors nowadays feel the need to “put on a jacket” while performing in order to mask their true selves. However, he instructed us to “take off the jacket,” in order to unearth our vulnerability and get to the core of who we really are. I certainly related to this comparison and took it into account during the improvisation activity.

I also enjoyed his mockery of a typical British drama audition, including the need to be overly friendly, seem perpetually employed and act with another person who is purposefully abysmal at acting. He gave insight into the industry that confirms that British auditions and American auditions are similar if not identical.

In regards to British television, he insisted that the BBC and ITV1 still produce the highest quality programming. He actually scoffed at the existence of other channels, claiming that they featured unnecessary and unpolished television shows. He also stated that he only had approximately 20 channels on his home television set. For an actor, this surprised me. These ideas point to the fact that the Brits certainly take advantage of all of the “freeview” channels and perhaps place the main British channels, including BBC and ITV, on a pedestal.

When referencing Doctor Who, he expressed the idea that the interaction between Doctor Who and his token female sidekick is particularly essential to the success of the show. Without the addition of the female lead, Doctor Who would come across as boring and one-dimensional. I did not think about this notion upon my initial viewing of the show, but now believe it to be true. The relationship between the two is mysterious and adds degrees of consistency and complexity to the show.

In other news, I thought Doctor Who was SERIOUSLY scary… But that would call for an entirely new blog post. Anyone with me on this one?!

The National Television Awards were held tonight in London. They’re sort of the equivalent of the People’s Choice Awards, voted on by viewers, not the industry, so basically these are popular choice selections. Matt Smith and Karen Gillan from Doctor Who took the top acting awards, Downton Abbey won best drama, and Outnumbered (which we’re watching on Monday) won best sitcom.