...Not on the Saturday repeat, anyway, because the BBC accidentally played last week's instead. Sigh.
Instead, it's here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00r7rg4
Saturday, 13 March 2010
Me not on The Now Show
Posted by John Finnemore at 3:33 pm
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6 comments:
Yes, I'm distressed to admit that the show was well over half way through before it finally clicked that I recognised so many of the gags because the wrong repeat was being aired, rather than because of the number of annoying trailers I'd heard during the week.
What's going on, BBC? It's not called "The Then Show".
John Finnemore's Soapbox! Yay! Good.
As a guest writer on the previous week’s/this Saturday’s Now Show, I was particularly surprised at the show’s ability to fall through a worm-hole portal into non-linear time.
Either that or the BBC’s green initiatives extend to recycling not just old material, but now entire shows (is anybody really sure that episode 43 of Last of the Summer Wine isn’t identical to episode 76, or 95, or 133…. Surely no one’s checked?
Broadcasting the wrong show seems an unusual mistake to make – although all humanity is fallible; was it possibly because something in the show was deemed libellous by an increasingly sensitive BBC? Maybe the dog threatened to sue for defamation?
Oh drat! Just been informed that the above earlier dog defamation gag was almost indistinguishable from one John tweeted earlier. In my defence, I was unaware and don’t read twitter (a decision unmotivated by any aloof pretentions, but because I’m embarrassingly hopeless with technology).
Initially depressed about inadvertidly using John’s joke, I’m now re-framing this as: independently arriving at the same comedic conclusion as one of our finest comedy writers (OK, so it’s becoming Operation Suck Up now, but a valid description nevertheless) must be a good thing, right?
And I’m capable of writing original material: as my upcoming series currently being pitched to ITV should prove: can’t say too much, obviously, but it documents the continued misadventures of a tiny charter airline…I know what you’re thinking, but mine’s completely different: for starters, the thick character’s called Douglas, and the clever one is Arthur. Plus mine’s got a different title; well, just giving something a different title apparently permits exactly the same show to get re-made ad nauseam: Strictly Come Dancing/Dancing On Ice, Antiques Roadshow/Flog It, add your own multiple dining, house purchase, reality, talent and cookery examples.
So why not clone a great show like Cabin Pressure? Though writing sitcoms for ITV can dishearten even experienced writers: the constant demands to make the script “even less funny”, the producer’s request that “some of the characters are too one dimensional – can’t we go lower than one?”, the omnipresent writer’s fear that “Amanda Holden and Nicholas Lyndhurst could be on board”…….
Thank goodness for i-player
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