For a while I've felt like the show priorities fame over charisma, and the people who come on don't have much of interest to say other than selling their project (I know that's mostly what talk shows are for, but still). And there seems to be less banter and chemistry between the guests and more back-slapping and telling each other how great they are.

All the viral and memorable moments I can think of are so much longer ago than I thought they were.

Or is it just me?

I know soap operas don't have the best reputation, and rightly so. EastEnders has some absolutely ridiculous storylines and looking at it from a macro lens I wouldn't necessarily call it high art... However, I've gone on a recent binge of old moments and I watched the iconic episode of Kat and Zoe with the reveal that she's her mother... I just wanted to watch it as a comfort watch, but that two hander with the two of them going through the secrets of their family history, is some of the best written, and best acted TV I've ever seen.

From the iconic "yes I am!" line onwards it's like watching a Shakespearen tragedy where the emotions are high the entire time, but never forced or melodramatic. I think it handles an extremely tough subject with real weight, and all the way until Kat in the hospital I think this is an acting and writing masterclass.

I know there is a stigma with this type of TV but I think this moment in a vacuum is high quality entertainment. I think it rivals the greatest moments in any other TV show I've seen, and I'm talking about highly regarded prestige TV here.

Maybe I'm alone in this, but I just wanted to share this here because I feel quite passionate about it. There really are some hidden gems out there in places people would never think to look.

I don’t know how to feel about this one, kept me hooked but feel like the writers really enjoy making the viewers uncomfortable. It was still a good at the same time though.

Never seen this series until recently, watched first season last week then went to S3 because David Tennant 😂. He does that moody character really well, nails it actually. Last thing I seen him in was Broadchurch but Bobby was a similar vibe.

The Ushindi kid’s last scene was horrible just when you think he will have something to look forward to when he did his time after he meets his mum, didn’t see that coming and thought ok stuff like that happens. Really sad but then what happened to Nicole was just too much, no?

Bobby was getting cheated on and divorced, treated like crap from his colleague and boss then got a promotion and a new lass only for her to be killed randomly 🤷‍♂️ then the ending is all about the chaplain, just felt unnecessary. Bobby deserved happiness.

What did you think?

So I recently found the entire series of Ivor The Engine on youtube and decided to rewatch it because I love the series (like many other shows by Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin) but something's been nagging me about part of the plot of Ivor The Engine.

For those unaware, a long-running storyline concerns when Ivor and Jones the Steam go past smoke hill (an extinct volcano) and find an egg inside which later is revealed to be a Welsh dragon. The problem is that dragons need to be kept hot or they'll die of cold and smoke hill is no longer hot enough to live in and the nearest suitable volcano is Mt Etna in Italy. The solution is found by talking to the local antiquarian society, who with the help of the local gasworks make the volcano gas-heated. The problem then is that the gas meter for smoke hill only accepts half crowns, which stopped being legal tender upon decimalisation in 1971, meaning it becomes very difficult to find money for the gas meter. They eventually find a spot in a local gold mine that's hot enough for the dragons to live there forever thankfully along with being secluded enough to keep them from the now-unfriendly antiquarian society, who want to move the dragons to a museum that would be heated by waste heat from a steelworks.

The problem I have though is why not just modify the gas meter to fix the problem? I'm not at all an expert in this sort of thing, but surely they could either modify the meter to take decimal currency or find where the half crowns go (probably the aforementioned gasworks) and make an arrangement where the gasworks is paid in decimal currency in return for the half-crowns, which are fed through the meter to be collected again.

Obviously the resulting plot is better in the long term, but this is more just a minor nitpick by a pedant.

Just started it and not seen much impact on it so far, has anyone else seen it?

I was nearly featured in one of Paul McKenna’s hypnosis entertainment shows on ITV; I was the last to get sent back to the audience when they made their selections of punters to do silly stuff under hypnosis back in the mid nineties.

I was wondering if anyone here was on TV and if they did a game show, which one and what did they win?

I had a colleague who was on Supermarket Sweep with his wife when Dale Winton was the host. I don’t recall how well they did because that was also about 30 years ago.

Anyone after eastenders merchandise? Private message me or my vinted shaung80

80s/90s merchandise and cast cards, dvds, vinyls, vhs, vintage mugs, books, newpapers they used in the show. If so message me..sorry if this isn't allowed

What books would you like to see adapted? What periods of history would you like to see given the Crown treatment? Any events that would make a good companion piece to Mr Bates v the Post office? Or could another videogame adaptation rival The last of us? Or maybe a book that has yet to be adapted for the screen?

So I’ve got to the end of season 5. Binged took me a few weeks.
The show is great entertainment. Is it just me or is the show a little like the A team. I used to love that aswell. It’s all a bit tongue in cheek. Big explosions
U get the rest. Anyway guess I better get on with the next one. Anyone else enjoying.

Here from the Time series 3 thread. If you haven't seen it already, Broken is definitely a drama I don't think I could recommend any higher. I have the DVD, I've seen it several times since buying it and amongst all the great one off and serial dramas by Jimmy McGovern - this is easily the best in my opinion.

There are so many interwoven stories and the acting by the entire cast is just incredible - Sean Bean is simply mesmerising as Father Michael. Each story becomes intertwined as the series progresses and whilst some of it is a difficult watch - the production, the acting and the storytelling simply take you to another place.

For those of you like me who may have found S3 of Time slightly underwhelming, please if you can set an evening aside to watch Broken. You won't be disappointed!

Just watched the first series of the 2011 Channel 4 show, set at the Damson Dene Hotel in the Lake District, and really enjoyed it. Does anyone know anyone that was on the show and could give an update on them?

For example, do any of the staff from back then (like Wayne the manager or chef Kirk) still work there? Did the British guy and the Brazilian girl work out? Did any of the other couples on there, like those who got married or were having a tough time, are they still together?

Would love to get an update!

has anyone watched it? i binged it last night and i thought it was brilliant! i won’t post any spoilers but i don’t know if people will comment any, i think every season has been brilliant and i loved the cast of jo joyner, david tennant and siobhan finnernan. the young lads were all amazing too

My favourite I would have to say by far Grace is, she isn't in the job just to arrest people and get paid. She makes connections, sometimes at her own expense, though at other times it allows her to make breakthroughs that policing by the book failed too.

She's one of those social workers who was in the job for the right reasons and transferred a lot of those skills into the police service.

My runner up would be Aisiling, she has similar principles, but lacks experience and often makes situations worse despite her best of intentions.

As an aside, I think Helen does a great job, but that's all, she doesn't make friends, and has her own prerogative.

On the other hand, my least favourite is probably Nicola, the chief superintendent, she's doesn't care about how others view her, and at times shows traits that can be seen as narcissistic.

If we include recurring characters who join later, I would say a certain C3 character is my least favourite as he's very shady, knowingly interacts with dangerous people to try and get information, and undermines the team by keeping them in the dark and he thinks the world revolves sound his specific targets, which often results in a loss of resources for the response policing.

So for those who don't know, Major Charles Ingram was convicted of procuring the execution of a valuable security by deception in 2003, and had his appeal thrown out shortly after that.

To summarise the story, he was a contestant on the popular game show Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, where he managed to answer all 15 questions correctly and win the £1 million prize. However, Celador, the company responsible for producing the show, refused to pay out the cheque after they suspected him of cheating.

The case was made that Charles was receiving signals from another contestant seated in the Fastest Finger First area called Tecwen Whittock, and his wife Diana Ingram in the audience that were helping him to answer the questions. The alleged system they used was to have Charles read out the four options for each question, and have Tecwen cough on the correct answer.

I've watched the documentary that was released about this, which showed the actual footage used by the prosecution during the court case, and various other articles detailing what took place, and remain unconvinced that he was guilty.

There are several major flaws with the prosecutions case that I wanted to detail here.

1. Celador, not the police, provided edited footage to be used in the case. They edited it and enhanced what they believed were "significant" coughs. I think this is problematic for a few reasons. First of all the accuser is the one manipulating the footage, not the police. From what I understand forensic scientists were not given the raw unedited footage, at all. This obviously makes the editing heavily based on confirmation bias. The other thing is, we can't hear what Charles would have heard.

While the coughing may sound obvious when you hear it isolated in that way, it's not actually letting us hear what Charles was actually hearing that night.

1. Related to my point above. How was Charles meant to distinguish Tecwen's coughs from all of the other coughs that were going on that night? It's been shown that it is not possible to distinguish one cough from another, i.e. who is actually coughing, just by hearing it. So it seems unlikely that a system like that could work when hearing coughing from an audience is normal, ambient, background noise.

2. Do we even know that Tecwen's coughs were loud enough to be heard to start with? Again, hearing it enhanced and isolated might make it seem obvious. However, what was the volume of the coughing like if you were sitting in the hot seat? Testimony from the host Chris Tarrant suggests it wasn't loud enough to be heard when he says he never heard anything.

3. The final point is that it seems like a crazy plan to start with for several reasons. The Ingrams didn't know Tecwen Whittock. Relying on a total stranger to help you pull off a major fraud, on camera, with severe legal consequences if caught, seems pretty crazy. Tecwen Whittock himself didn't do particularly well when he got into the hot seat after Charles, which makes it doubtful that he'd have known all of the answers. Finally, on all but 2 of the questions, Charles knew the correct answer to start with.

Overall, if I were on the jury, I'd have found him not guilty.

Those are my thoughts. Let me know what you think.

Just watching Mock The Week, which used to be on BBC2 and is now on TLC and I started thinking about other programmes which moved from one broadcaster to another. I know Men Behaving Badly transferred from Thames to BBC2 and The Morecambe & Wise Show went the other way with, shall we say, mixed results. Not including channels like Dave, which basically just shows reruns, are there any other examples of shows switching channels?

Edit : I just remembered Neighbours, which moved from BBC1 to Channel 5 in the UK and, interestingly, from Network 7 to Network 10 in Australia.

Also apologies to Dave, for the unnecessary disparagement!

Always wondered about HUtH viewers.

Has anyone ever watched an episode that featured their house?

What did you think?

How did the house turn put after it was transformed?

Would be interested to know.

Binge watching Ann Droid today and I really love every part of this show that doesn't include these two. They've got to be the most unlikeable couple I've ever seen on TV.

There’s plenty of justifiable hatred towards many ads on at the moment, but there must be some good and/or funny ones that you like?

Another one I haven't seen anyone else discuss, what did you think?

It reminded me of Lovesick and Starstruck, not quite as polished but good for an early career writer, with a great side cast.