Bluestone 42 | Why Bother | The Life Of Rock With Brian Pern | BBC4 Collections: Post-War Architecture | Troy
*TV: Bluestone 42*
BBC3's Afghanistan-set comedy-drama recently returned for a second series of sex, drones and rock'n'roll, this time boasting the addition of Matthew Lewis (Harry Potter's Neville). Capable of balancing goofiness with pathos, Bluestone 42 is M*A*S*H for the Mashable generation.
BBC iPlayer
*Radio: Why Bother*
This week sees the long-awaited return in front of the camera of Chris Morris, giving Stewart Lee a grilling in the interview segments of Lee's Comedy Vehicle. It's a comic back-and-forth that brings to mind Why Bother?, the improvised Radio 3 comedy in which Morris issued a similarly Paxman-esque interrogation to Peter Cook's witless raconteur Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling. Broadcast less than a year before Cook's death in 1995, it features some of the performers' best work, with Streeb-Greebling's bluster – he claims, among other things, to have found "the fossilised remains of the infant Christ"– frequently undercut by Morris's derisive deadpan. The series is available in full on iTunes.
iTunes
*TV: The Life Of Rock With Brian Pern*
The reception to Simon Day's mock-history of guitar music has been mixed, with some critics praising the series for its skewering of BBC4 music docs and others feeling that its on-the-nose parody comes at the expense of actual, y'know, jokes. Still, it's hard to be entirely dismissive of any series that features a guest appearance by Vic and Bob's freewheeling folk duo Mulligan and O'Hare, expressing their belief that the synthesizer is only good for "calling the pigeons home". You've got till Monday to catch all three episodes on iPlayer.
BBC iPlayer
*TV: BBC4 Collections: Post-War Architecture*
Janet Street-Porter has curated this set of 29 programmes examining Britain's favourite/least favourite concrete monstrosities. As well as the recent Jonathan Meades and Rogers/Foster/Farrell BBC4 docs, there are three early 70s Ian Nairn travelogues that remind us there's still a vacancy for a grumpy old TV documentarian, plus a lovely 10-minute profile of the Humber bridge from poet Simon Armitage.
Online
*TV: Troy*
Bog off, Blaine. Dynamo, do one. Magic's new star is a sleeve-tatted south Londoner who'd rather do his tricks at Notting Hill Carnival than inside a daft Perspex box. Troy's tricks aren't bad either; one minute he's smashing wine glasses with shisha smoke, the next he's doing nifty things with an iPhone. If that sounds like your bag, gawk at the series so far over on 4oD.
4oD Reported by guardian.co.uk 6 hours ago.
*TV: Bluestone 42*
BBC3's Afghanistan-set comedy-drama recently returned for a second series of sex, drones and rock'n'roll, this time boasting the addition of Matthew Lewis (Harry Potter's Neville). Capable of balancing goofiness with pathos, Bluestone 42 is M*A*S*H for the Mashable generation.
BBC iPlayer
*Radio: Why Bother*
This week sees the long-awaited return in front of the camera of Chris Morris, giving Stewart Lee a grilling in the interview segments of Lee's Comedy Vehicle. It's a comic back-and-forth that brings to mind Why Bother?, the improvised Radio 3 comedy in which Morris issued a similarly Paxman-esque interrogation to Peter Cook's witless raconteur Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling. Broadcast less than a year before Cook's death in 1995, it features some of the performers' best work, with Streeb-Greebling's bluster – he claims, among other things, to have found "the fossilised remains of the infant Christ"– frequently undercut by Morris's derisive deadpan. The series is available in full on iTunes.
iTunes
*TV: The Life Of Rock With Brian Pern*
The reception to Simon Day's mock-history of guitar music has been mixed, with some critics praising the series for its skewering of BBC4 music docs and others feeling that its on-the-nose parody comes at the expense of actual, y'know, jokes. Still, it's hard to be entirely dismissive of any series that features a guest appearance by Vic and Bob's freewheeling folk duo Mulligan and O'Hare, expressing their belief that the synthesizer is only good for "calling the pigeons home". You've got till Monday to catch all three episodes on iPlayer.
BBC iPlayer
*TV: BBC4 Collections: Post-War Architecture*
Janet Street-Porter has curated this set of 29 programmes examining Britain's favourite/least favourite concrete monstrosities. As well as the recent Jonathan Meades and Rogers/Foster/Farrell BBC4 docs, there are three early 70s Ian Nairn travelogues that remind us there's still a vacancy for a grumpy old TV documentarian, plus a lovely 10-minute profile of the Humber bridge from poet Simon Armitage.
Online
*TV: Troy*
Bog off, Blaine. Dynamo, do one. Magic's new star is a sleeve-tatted south Londoner who'd rather do his tricks at Notting Hill Carnival than inside a daft Perspex box. Troy's tricks aren't bad either; one minute he's smashing wine glasses with shisha smoke, the next he's doing nifty things with an iPhone. If that sounds like your bag, gawk at the series so far over on 4oD.
4oD Reported by guardian.co.uk 6 hours ago.
