Philip Glenister Speaks His Mind

Agreed, although what you say is true Gavin it is about time somebody did something with the state of British TV.

Life On Mars, Doctor Who & Harry Hill's TV Burp are the rare gems in a sea of sh*te on TV at the moment

and dancing on ice, Dame edan, if possible

is that it? is that all UK has to offer! it might make US tv look great and that just WRONG

In the first place be very clear that Phillip Glenister is speaking as an actor. Every actor wants more creative time to spend on their role. Rehearsal is where a script comes to life.

It's never been easy to allow for much rehearsal in episodic television, and it's true to say that it's worse than ever with many more hours of programming a week being churned out on a treadmill.

Programmes like Life on Mars, Spooks and Hustle are excellent and are all the better for having more time spent on them. But they can't possibly fill a schedule on one channel, never mind a portfolio of digital channels too.

Like it or not, soap operas and reality shows are cheap by the hour to produce and pull large audiences. The most popular programmes are squeezed for everything they can give.

If 20 million people watch BBC4 then you can be sure all the channels would go highbrow.

There's no point being sniffy about it. The people have spoken.

True, but there are "highbrow" programmes that are relatively cheap to make and are popular. Coast on BBC2 got 8 million viewers at one point IIRC, but I should imagine it wasn't that expensive to shoot?

Although I think you are right about reality TV. Such shows often involve members of the public who don't need to be paid as such (except the winner), so it's cheap in that respect. Then of course you have voting phone lines which rake in loads of cash for the TV company. Although with recent scandals, the future of that is in question.

Whether you like Emmerdale's being on six times a week, it's hard to think of anything else new to replace it that would deliver the same ratings for low production costs!

Reality TV and the low grade Z list Celeb shows that follow are only watched by a certain demographic. A lot of people don't watch a great deal of TV any more simply because there is very little to engage and entertainment them and this really does need to be addressed.

Yes, but it's the largest one with the greatest spending power.

Drama needs to look at itself more than other genres.


Yes, there are crap reality shows out there - but there is also alot of crap drama and If they raise their own game, they will begin to win slots back in the schedule - and indeed they have done on BBC1 especially in the last couple of years.

I think the quality of drama is also slowly improving on ITV too - yes, there is still the odd dud like Bonkers or anything on Sunday nights at 8pm, but overall the direction they are moving seems to be for the better.

I agree with TV Fetish, If we could categorise todays television "professionals" it would go like this..

The Z-listers...
- your average socialites, models, WAGs, former reality TV stars.
The ex-celebs...
The average Joe Public...
Tara Palmer-Tompkinson

And how are these people getting onto or back onto television? Generally through the medium of reality and talent shows. I don't know about you but once I've seen 4 months of the likes of Grace in Big Brother, I never want to see them on TV again.

He does speak truth, this forum somehow stands as representative of just how retarded our viewing habits have become. What's at the top? We give praise to mindless soaps, reality TV based "gameshow" after reality TV based "gameshow", Harry Hill's TV Burp and other such low-level, knuckle dragging sputum for what? To make sure ITV1 can somehow climb up because the only way it can is if the others fall into the mire with it? For me, five and Channel 4 rank above others, five because its' US imports are top-notch (pres ain't too bad either) and Channel 4 because they can still show a good piece of investigative journalism or something that'll make you think rather than groan at that gimp with the long lapels and that "Hiss. Hmm? Ey?" thing he does all the ****ing time like it's actue Tourette's. Rare gem my arse.

Yeah, a lot of the current TV programming gets my goat. People are much more smarter (or at least I hope they are) than most of the beancounting commisioners give them credit for, not all laugh at Dame Edna or find the latest loser from Palookaville worth of even justifying 10 seconds of their time to. Same issue with the US so all those xenophobic, anti-American types can now pipe up with their denouncement of Americansiation because it's oh-so bad. If it's so bad there, why in the hell are we picking up their drama series and watching them more than we do our own? Rant done for now.

Oh great, the chavs are running our TV schedules..

Dud like Bonkers ? I thought that did well in the ratings? It was well thought of in my office anyway I think Bonkers's raison d'etre was be naff and over-the-top.

Nini: I don't see Dame Edna as idiotic, her humour is actually quite cleverly ironic a lot of the time IMO Similar to Harry Hill-- his programme actually pokes fun at some of the programmes you seem to dislike!!

I know I sound biased here but I wouldn't put Harry Hill's TV Burp in the same catagory as the rest in your list. In fact the stuff he takes the p*ss out of shows just how bad it's got, very rarely does he take the p*ss out of good programmes (such as Doctor Who & Life On Mars, although he did feature a scene out of it last week but wasn't really taking the p*ss out of it).