Thursday 5 May 2011

Flashback time

Does anyone remember when Channel 4 was a politically and artistically radical station: Czech animations, French filth, hard-hitting investigative journalism, weird comedy? If so, you're clearly quite old, because now it just shows tat for brain-damaged 13-year olds at the behest of advertisers.

I liked Nightingales - a wonderful, odd sit-com. It's set in an office block (filmed in Birmingham), at night, and the characters are all security guards, so it's got all the ingredients for success: an enclosed space, an enclosed community and a degree of oddity, not least in the characterisation: losers, poseurs and a dead man. And Robert Lindsay, when he was famous for quality acting (like the landmark political thriller GBH, which you can watch here), not My Family.

Here's a clip:

6 comments:

crispy said...

i've been lurking on your blog for months reading it through google reader, but just had to say *thank you* for reminding me of just how good "nightingales" was. hopefully now they've let "absolutely" out of the vaults, they'll dig this out too. channel 4 was a wonderful channel to be growing up watching and then - pfft - they hit the late nineties and just went AWOL. sad really...

The Plashing Vole said...

Hi Crispy, and welcome.
I see one of your blogs is 'Irk the Purist'. Do I assume that's a Half Man Half Biscuit reference? If so, I salute you.

The Plashing Vole said...

Crispy is Chris Browning, author of the rather wonderful humorous Victorian pastiche The Common Swings: read a Forbidden Planet review here:
http://forbiddenplanet.co.uk/blog/2010/the-common-swings/

Neil80 said...

Oh yes, those were indeed the days. Who could forget the brilliance of Eurotrash - in fact I've still got a soft spot for cheesy Euro-pop which I'm sure is thanks to that programme.

And wasn't it Channel 4 which had that surreal animation with plasticine cats?

Everything now is so sanitised and corporate.

Nobody here (but us chickens) said...

Nightingales DVD available on Amazon!

The Plashing Vole said...

Hurrah! And great name, Nobody…!
Ah, Eurotrash… I also miss The Word.