He took several single shots of the same face- and the soldier never blinked or moved, when the documentary makers called the Major who is now well-retired and who was in charge of the marines that day he said that they have reunions every year and is still in contact with many of his soldiers but no-one has found any trace of that particular one since.

''Why are you doing this to me?''

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I once had to sit through a [iwhole episode[/i at my parents' house. Never again.

I always envisage him as the product of an unnatural relationship between Harry Worth and Nellie Pledge

Had the same experience two Xmas's ago.
Staying at my mates in Manchester and he insisted we watched the Xmas special ( managed to avoid the series).
What a load of fooking tripe.
Garbage!

It's not even that good.

Whoever is responsible for it must've thought no one was old enough to remember Old Mother Riley

I'm not.

Sounds like television was on a roll last night.

Prof Alice Roberts was in fine form on Horizon : What Makes Us Human?

Sadly BBC2 pitched it up against the squawking mob that is The Apprentice, so it won't have drawn anything like the audience it deserved.

I used to like her when she was on [iCoast[/i.
Unlike Nicholas Crane who has an amazing ability to dull even the most interesting of topics and always ended every sentence with a s l o w i n g EMPHASIS.
Don't get me started on his trademark umbrella sticking out of his rucksack ... big nancy.

Not available on iPlayer yet (possibly ever) but last night's In The Loop was classic Ianucci, Peter Capaldi as Malcolm Tucker and James Gandolfini as Lt Gen George Miller

Watched the Piper Alpha documentary, Fire In The Night, that I'd recorded from last week.
Very good if not seen.
The survivors interviewed (only 61 out of 22icon_cool.gif mainly Jocks and Geordies (industrial gypsies), talked movingly of the nights events about the friends and workmates who never made it through that night.
Admittedly, you'd never be the same again after an event such as that, would you?

Also watched last weeks, The Murder Trial on C4.
Found it very engrossing from a layperson's perspective although our resident lawyer will probably dispute this if he viewed it.

Working in electrical contracting in the north east in the late 70's you'd be lucky to hang onto a decent Approved Electrician and if you did you just knew it was because his wife wouldn't let him go on the rigs



From memory the rates they were paying, even for the on-shore work in places like Hartlepool was at least three times what the £5.70 (ish) we paid as the JIB hourly rate, I knew of several electricians who paid off their mortgages after a year or two of offshore shifts and the risk of death from helicopter or explosion or plain and simple falling off the bloody things was just par for the course - and I won't even mention the diver who used to stay at the pub I lived at when he was onshore, that bloke was convinced that his next trip would be his last.

Some of them jumped 175ft from the helideck when all other options had ceased.
One of the guys said after jumping he found a co-worker in the water with a life jacket on.
Said he was face down, dead, and contemplated relieving him of his jacket but couldn't do it out of deference and respect for the colleague.
Just kept hold of the body and made his way away from the blazing inferno.
Said he never attempted to look at it's face in case it was one of his close friends.

I'm not saying there might never be some strange exception, but the very thought of sitting through the tedium of a trial unless getting paid to do so is just nuts. I read a brief review that in the end, they actually only showed a very edited version, and then put music to accompany etc. Even so it must've been as dull as ditchwater, but then I'm told a sizeable number of people waste a not inconsiderable slice of their waking lives engrossed in endless, turgid, banal drivel like Big Brother, or IAC, so the mind-numbing clearly fills some sort of basic need.

At least at the end, someone might really go to jail for life, so I can see that bit being intriguing. Could you have a wager on betfair?

I gave Episode One a go ... not brilliant.
I also gave Episode Two a go ... better but a long way short of unmissable.

Episode Three will be the last chance.

I'm not much of a telly person - well, outside sport - but I 'discovered' a show I enjoy a few weeks ago: [iThe Borgias[/i: great fun, without insulting the intelligence.

Agreed, some can even get an annual hard-on watching the mother of all all abhorrations the Eurovision Song Contest.
Now that is banal drivel.
Complete and utter e.




Glad there weren't any bookies giving odds on it.
I'd have done my bollox in as per usual.
I thought he was walking until the judge said [itake him down.[/i

Been really enjoying it, not taking it too seriously and its encouraged me to find out a bit more about the history too. Excellent performances all round and Sean Harris as Micheletto is particularly good, as are the main characters

Totally agree.

Never been a Jeremy Irons fan, but isn't he wonderful in this?

Just watched it - another incredible documentary.

There's so much good stuff on the BBC, ITV and Ch4 on demand services that it staggers me to think that the three females in this house are sat in the other room watching Geordie Shore, their brains must be the most under used organs in this house.

Well, there is one more I can think of that never used at all these days...

Absolutely - just the right side of OTT.

On the historical front, I've been enjoying the dramatisation of Phillipa Gregory's books The White Queen. Although i missed it last night, I'm also looking forward to watching Gregory's "The Real White Queen and her Rivals" to get further background into the characters.

Me too, and the one last night was as good as the drama and filled in a lot of the gaps.

What gets my goat a bit is the moaners, the TV drama train-spotters equivalent, the ones who whine about "historical inaccuracies" because someone is wearing a pair of gloves that look as though they have a press stud in them, or they spot a zip in the back of someones jerkin - FFS just sit back and enjoy an hours entertainment, we all know it wasn't filmed in 1470, its drama, you're supposed to use your imagination a bit.

It's that quite delicious school of Brit character acting, whereby villains actually become rather sexy – see anything Alan Rickman does, plus Antony Hopkins in [iSilence[/i etc. From a non-Brit perspective, Al Pacino has it too.

I first saw Irons on stage at the RSC doing Richard II – I remember finding the character so utterly wimpy and this is so different.