New Channel 4 Netflix ident

I disliked them from the moment I was asked to give my opinion on them months before they launched via YouGov

Imagine that ident but the blocks in colour and slowly fading in and out of different colours with FourScore being played on chimes or another festive sounding instrument and there's a nice Christmas ident also. CGI snow optional.

I still.like it. I find it calming.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. I'll do anything to avoid hearing WOT A BORL and PASS IT UP EEYA again.

I do like ol' Blocky but I think variety is severely lacking and it's ultimately the set's biggest flaw. Just having the four idents with the same score has been the main thing that's made the set tired, and maybe if they'd added some more later on, this would have been remedied a little. I didn't live through the 80s idents so I can't properly judge, but I never got tired of the 2004-2015 set because of the wide variety of scenes (and the gorgeous cinematography). At first I loved the 2017 set but as I've tuned in, I've found myself bored by them despite the charm.

The surrounding graphical presentation is stronger than the idents themselves. The music is weak and frankly gloomy. What exactly is the point of the 'block man'? No doubt there was some marketing blurb but the reality is they invented a character, put it in to only four scenarios and then..? The character is never seen or referred to anywhere else, hasn't been further developed and is just tired as a device. It might have been good for a special season like for the Paralympics in the race scenes, or placed in to other sporting situations with a bit of character humour added for a defined time period, but the problem with 'funny' idents is the joke wears thin very fast.

They made the exact same mistakes in their nonsensical last identity with that dancing shaman and people mining for blocks - just disjointed scenes that didn't go anywhere or represent the channel meaningfully to anyone outside of the marketing agency. Filmed nicely but grew tedious very, very quickly.

Ch4 seem to have a fascination with having very long idents which is part of the problem they've had. It worked for 2004-2015 because the 4 was usually resolved fairly quickly and the rest of the scene could continue whilst background spoken continuity happened. Since then its just stuff happening in the background and often the ident is cut short before the block man offloads his people on the cliff or whatever and the ident story is resolved. It might be far better if they ended a programme with a menu of what is on ch4 over the next few hours, had the adverts, showed another menu run-down of what's starting now across the network and then used that Netflix ident as a brief sting to announce the programme starting currently.

The day I'll no longer hear "Pass it up 'ere!!" will be a good day.

I loved the previous set. Proper arty and very Channel 4. Wish they’d developed it further.

I disagree. Maybe it would have worked for the early Ch4, but not what it is in 2020 (or 2015 as was the case). Arthouse film as a prelude to another batch of Come Dine repeats, Hollyoaks or Bake-off just jarred. Its a disconnect to what Ch4 thinks it is compared to what it mostly puts out. They essentially showed this themselves anyway in part by having to make up a particular ident for The Simpsons that I think they still use now sometimes.

The problem in your argument is the shows they have been commissioning, not their idents. I’d like nothing more than for Channel 4 to recapture their edgier image, but let’s not forget that their longest-running show is probably the least edgy show on TV.

Really liked this video they made for their 21st birthday. I found this on my computer - not sure where it came from!

https://up.metropol247.co.uk/Richard/Channel%204%20idents%20montage%204.mp4

That was for the 25th - they went all out that year with special programmes on More4 and bringing back the original idents on C4 on the day itself.