TV BBC Outnumbered sinks, gently; Uncle rises, dishevelled

Outnumbered – Series 5 – Episode 1
That’s a set for all you hard pressed teachers out there. BBC logo top left stripped out, but what the heck, its advertising but not as they know it. Do they think it improves watching experience to have a little rectangle with BBC written on it imprinted on the top left of your fovea? You’ve finished watching ages ago, making cup of tea, still chuckling at the odd bit of dialogue and there, whichever way you look there is the BBC after image, the perceptual equivalent of being branded by Jeremy Paxman during an interview on Newsnight, then going home with a very sore bottom cheek.

Bit like this but smaller:





Monochrome though, oh yes, you’ve seen one before. But why that should be as it’s right there in the rods and cones. That thing is getting bigger all the time: on iPlayer it was BBC a minute ago, turn you back to empty your cache and it’s suddenly not just BBC but New HD and Three. Soon this proprietary stamp will take up a quarter of the screen and the actors will have to keep ducking under it.

Download Outnumbered while you can – if not it’ll suddenly be no longer available, while annoyingly parts 2, 3, 4, etc, will be. Even if it’s lost the, How the hell did Ramona deliver those lines?, it’s still o.k. Lessons in what to do when young actors grow up. Been there, seen that – many different series. But there is the comfort zone element too. We know the characters and so excuse them a bit if the scripts have gone a bit flat. Note he still never brings any homework back to mark.

Please excuse me while I have a little diversionary moan.

The disappearing programme thing has been a gripe of mine for some time, particularly for BBC Radio, now that we are able to trawl in various ways to pick up programmes missed or never even heard about. There must be a little man in there somewhere, or even a team of about five of them – all looking like the annoying one in the IT Crowd who recommends pulling the plug out and rebooting – who randomly delete programmes that might by all standards have a very long shelf life.

The real killer is good drama which the website still up, such as JG Ballard’s The Drowned World. Yes, yes, that’d be good, but “Sorry”, no “this episode is not currently available on BBC iPlayer Radio”. It’s him. The phantom programme deleter. He deletes while de Management have no idea which progs are available and which are not. Try that one out. Next time you bump into the DG, tell him how much you enjoyed listening to part 1 of the Ballard radio adaptation on iPlayer last night. (It was last on in 2012)

I’ve even tweeted Nigel – oh no he’s dead – David Nobbs to ask, without any success, if he might put in a word for a replay of autobiogramentary that was frightfully good with Nobbs On, apparently, but is no longer there. Can we all chip in for server space? Repeats cost money? What!? make more in-house then! PPP of the airwaves. Total waste of tax payers money, if quality programmes can only be seen once as that’s all the BBC paid for. Though of course they won’t, they’ll have have paid a lot more pro rata. Why can’t someone do some lateral thinking. Let the production companies sell on through websites. Either the BBC or the various independents are going to sell these progs abroad, but we want to see them again. So figure it out.

Anyway, but Now the kids are growing up, has Outnumbered aged for the worse? It’s ancient, got a degenerative neurological condition and in a care home. The last series apparently. But it could be looked at another way – an exercise in winding down the actors, painlessly. Not in a nasty way mind you. Doesn’t look like there’s going to be an episode where they all sit around the kitchen table with UCAS forms. Hugh has had his F moment in 5.1. Just an F- not an Fsomething

And we are looking rather impressed at Uncle, wishing we could write dialogue like that, but wondering where is Semiotic Man when you need him? Not that Tarantino commodification crap, mind you.

Can’t remember an episode of Outnumbered where the adults where calling each other silly names, swearing, naming parts and punching each other. There was some sort of altercation at the front door once, but it didn’t lead to violence. Not even a slammed door.

Writer Oliver Refson has to be British with that dialogue, but he looks suspiciously like Barton Fink. He directed as well. A review by Joshua Gaskell at Television Comedy Reviews covers it very well.

Baby Cow was set up by Steve Coogan, and is to be distinguished from Mad Cow Productions which is a Shropshire based amateur theatrical outfit.