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11 items from 2012
Sherlock producer says TV gives too much weight to ratings
30 March 2012 10:08 AM, PDT | The Guardian - TV News | See recent The Guardian - TV News news »
Broadcasting Press Guild award-winner blames newspapers for focus on numbers, saying Daily Mail has 'lost the plot'
Beryl Vertue, the founder and chairman of the independent producer responsible for BBC1 hit Sherlock, has accused the television industry of focusing too much on failure and urged it to ignore overnight ratings and to concentrate on other measures of success including audience appreciation.
Vertue, the founder and chair of Hartswood Films, blamed newspaper coverage for much of the focus on ratings winners and singled out the Daily Mail for particular criticism for what she regarded as its negative coverage of the BBC. The paper had "lost the plot", she said.
Vertue was speaking at the 38th Broadcasting Press Guild awards on Friday, where she collected the Harvey Lee Award for outstanding contribution to broadcasting.
"The ones with the bigger numbers are the winners," she said, of what she claimed was an excessive »
- Ben Dowell
Were ads better in the 1960s?
28 March 2012 4:05 PM, PDT | The Guardian - TV News | See recent The Guardian - TV News news »
The ad breaks during the new series of Mad Men on Sky Atlantic featured commericals from the early 60s. So was it a golden age of advertising?
The breaks in the opening episode of Mad Men on Sky Atlantic were a nostalgiafest of 60s commercials, including the Milk Tray ads, in which a black-sweatered hero dives into ravines and jumps on to moving trains – "and all because the lady loves Milk Tray". Ooh, and there's Go To Work On an Egg (a slogan Fay Weldon has spent half a lifetime denying she dreamed up) featuring Tony Hancock and his virtuoso jowl movements. Ahh, and a young Lesley Ash being versed in the merits of mild green Fairy Liquid by Posh Mother – no doubt little Leslie will be washing dishes herself in the 80s, passing them to a robot to dry.
Were these "classics"? They certainly made a deep impression – some of these campaigns, »
- David Stubbs
'Mad Men' to air alongside retro '60s adverts on Sky Atlantic
27 March 2012 8:17 AM, PDT | digitalspy | See recent digitalspy news »
Sky Atlantic will air retro ads for products such as Kit Kat and Cadbury's during tonight's season five launch of Mad Men. The broadcaster will be airing the first episode of the hit 1960s ad agency drama since 2010 and its first since picking up the rights for the critically-acclaimed drama from AMC. As part of the premiere launch, Sky Atlantic will treat fans to special advertisements, which will move through time during the breaks. Adverts confirmed to air during the broadcast include the original Flake girl commercial, Prunella Scales's Tetley Tea promo, a Milk Tray man advert, Tony Hancock's 'Go (more) »
- By Alex Fletcher
From the archive, 5 February 1961: Where are all the female TV stars?
6 February 2012 6:02 AM, PST | The Guardian - TV News | See recent The Guardian - TV News news »
Originally published in the Observer on 5 February 1961
Mr Kenneth Adam, director-elect of BBC Television, says that his great disappointment in his job is that he has not found one single woman star – "no woman of the calibre of Dimbleby or Michelmore, no Tony Hancock or Sir Brian Horrocks". This, he assures me, is not for want of trying. The BBC has auditioned as many as 200 women a week for a single programme. So where's the hitch?
I have spent two cross-eyed weeks watching the female faces on TV with love and hope and I have come to the conclusion that there never will be many women stars. It's nothing to do with looks, brains or even voices; the reason lies deep in a woman's nature. Laugh your head off if you must, but I think women are too shy.
The essential quality of TV stardom is self-confidence. He who hesitates is lost. »
The story of script revival The Day Off with Ray Galton and Alan Simpson
29 January 2012 2:38 PM, PST | eyeforfilm.co.uk | See recent eyeforfilm.co.uk news »
The Day Off revisited
Its not often that an unmade film can get revived and given a world premiere, least of all when its script was abandoned 50 years ago. But that is in a sense what has happened this year with The Day Off - a unfilmed script written by Steptoe And Son creator team Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, and premiered at this years London Comedy Film Festival via a live cast reading to an audience. Written with the intention of starring comedy legend Tony Hancock in 1961 (Galton and Simpson having worked with him before on the film The Rebel in 1961, and earlier in radio »
- Owen Van Spall
Loco: London’s 1st Comedy Film Festival
28 January 2012 4:50 AM, PST | The Moving Arts Journal | See recent The Moving Arts Journal news »
Art films don’t have to be serious, but a lot of them are. Madness, suffering, death—at times these become depressingly familiar themes at film festivals. For this reason, the rare comedy film is welcome: comedy highlights of last year’s festivals were Matchmaking Mayor at Berlin and Sons of Norway in Reykjavik. Although you’re primed to enjoy them, comedies are a reliable choice, as they typically have to be original, as well as funny, to be included in the festival.
What if you could have a festival that showed nothing but comedies? And what if it cheered you up during the most depressing month of the year? That’s just what the charity ‘Loco’ has done this year. London’s very first comedy film festival is taking place this weekend at the BFI. It started last night, and you’ll have to be quick if you want »
- Alison Frank
Hancock's half-finished: how Galton and Simpson revived their lost movie
22 January 2012 4:05 PM, PST | The Guardian - TV News | See recent The Guardian - TV News news »
They made TV history together and were planning their next film – until Tony Hancock rejected their script. Ray Galton and Alan Simpson reveal why The Day Off is now back on
The best review we ever had wasn't from a critic. It was from an artist, Lucian Freud. He said that The Rebel was the greatest film ever made about modern art. The 1961 movie was the first, and sadly the only, film we made with Tony Hancock. It's the story of an office clerk, played by Hancock, who believes himself to be a great but undiscovered artist. When he's fired from his job he moves to Paris, in the hope that the art world will recognise him for the genius he is. Of course, being Hancock, he's a terrible painter, but his ability to act like a genius persuades a group of fashionable young artists that he might be the real deal. »
Hancock's half-finished: how Galton and Simpson revived their lost movie
22 January 2012 4:05 PM, PST | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »
They made TV history together and were planning their next film – until Tony Hancock rejected their script. Ray Galton and Alan Simpson reveal why The Day Off is now back on
The best review we ever had wasn't from a critic. It was from an artist, Lucian Freud. He said that The Rebel was the greatest film ever made about modern art. The 1961 movie was the first, and sadly the only, film we made with Tony Hancock. It's the story of an office clerk, played by Hancock, who believes himself to be a great but undiscovered artist. When he's fired from his job he moves to Paris, in the hope that the art world will recognise him for the genius he is. Of course, being Hancock, he's a terrible painter, but his ability to act like a genius persuades a group of fashionable young artists that he might be the real deal. »
This week's new film events
20 January 2012 4:07 PM, PST | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »
London Comedy Film Festival
A quick burst of winter blues-banishing, with comedies old (1960s heist comedy Go To Blazes), new (a preview of the new Muppets movie) and both old and new (a "world premiere" read-through of The Day Off, a movie written for Tony Hancock by Galton and Simpson, which was never made). Guest of honour is Edgar Wright, who introduces a double bill: Shaun Of The Dead and Mike Leigh's Life Is Sweet, with guests and a Q&A; and there are discoveries to be made in anarchic French movie The Fairy and a secret new British comedy.
BFI Southbank, SE1, Thu to 29 Jan
Steven Severin: Vampyr, Nationwide
Following the success of his spooky live soundtrack to Jean Cocteau's avant-garde 1932 film The Blood Of A Poet last year, the former Siouxsie And The Banshees bassist embarks on a tour with another freshly rescored classic. This »
- Steve Rose
Hugh Burnett obituary
9 January 2012 10:48 AM, PST | The Guardian - TV News | See recent The Guardian - TV News news »
Television producer who based his groundbreaking Face to Face interview series on his earlier radio show, Personal Call
The groundbreaking television interview series Face to Face, which ran on the BBC from 1959 to 1962 and gave insights into the thoughts and motivations of the famous, from Lord Hailsham to the pop singer Adam Faith, was the brainchild of the producer Hugh Burnett, who has died aged 87. Burnett based it on his earlier radio series Personal Call and chose the Labour MP turned Panorama presenter John Freeman as the interviewer subjecting those in the firing line to more rigorous questioning than they had experienced in earlier, more deferential days at the BBC.
The programme was distinctive for its black studio background and close-up shots of the interviewees, with Freeman seen only from behind. "Tighter! Tighter!" was the instruction Burnett – who also directed – barked at his camera operators, as he explained in the recent radio documentary Freeman's World. »
- Anthony Hayward
Forgotten Hancock script to finally be made into movie - Realbollywood.com News
2 January 2012 2:41 AM, PST | RealBollywood.com | See recent RealBollywood news »
London, Jan 2: The script that led comic legend Tony Hancock to leave his hit writers Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, is going to be made into a film, more than 50 years after it was first written.
Galton and Simpson, who had penned all of Hancock's television and radio series from the early Fifties onwards, came up with movie script The Day Off in 1961.
But Hancock, who was keen to crack Hollywood at the time, insisted it 'wasn't international' enough.
He then split from Galton and Simpson - a move which is regarded as the biggest mistake of his career. While they went on to write the hit sitcom Steptoe And Son, Hancock succumbed. »
- Diksha Singh
2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2000
11 items from 2012
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