Fox Orders Reality Redundancy Show

The creation of a reality TV show in which employees of a company fight each other to stay on the payroll while one of their colleagues is made redundant has been ordered for broadcast by Fox TV in the United States.

The show - reality not fiction - strikes me as a modern form of Roman gladiatorial contests in which the powerless fight each other for the dubious privilege of surviving and the possibility of one day gaining their freedom - all for the sake of entertaining the masses and consolidating the power of the rulers. In the modern "game" the carrot is a brief moment of media fame and a possible media contract to tell all.

This crude exploitation of working people by a media organisation whose CEO has a net worth of $4 Billion should be avoided like the plague.

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Broadband, Bandwidth and Video

Some thoughts going round my head this week were sparked by the interesting Radio Four In Business show on Sunday night on the BBC.

Peter Day asks whether the growth of video online is outstripping the capacity of the infrastructure of the web to cope. His conclusion - we'll probably muddle through thanks to fibre optics.

Introduced through the show to Next New Networks a New York-based micro-television company narrowcasting over the Internet for targeted communities. User contributed, ultra niche, NNN's co-founder Herb Scannell describes the fact that half a dozen of his staff don't own TV's and represent the "Internet First" generation of video viewers.

A few loosely related sites I like that may point the way to how the bandwidth will be used up in the coming years:

• Daily Motion I like the fact you can embed videos directly from here to your blog and that you don't get a YouTube logo in the corner.
• UStream TV Live, interactive narrowcasting (without the same quality control as Next New networks!). Hamster Live is a personal favourite.
  
• Open Source Movies Mostly oldies but lots of goodies. Vintage Woodie Woodpecker included below.

If you like to create as well as watch, the following may be of interest:

• Eyejot Free Video Mail with nothing to install.
• Cover it Live Live blogging software with loads of extras, including video. Not open source, unfortunately.
  

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Holey, Holey - Bonekickers Misses the Mark

Bonekickers, the BBC's much-publicised summer drama, got off to a stumbling start last week with its first episode, Army of God.

The series focuses on the activities of a team of archaeologists whose finds stir up historic, political, and (in the case of last week's opening episode) religious controversy.

The concept - Time Team meets Indiana Jones - is a bold one and certainly worth a go. The problem as I see it is in the decision to ride roughshod over such minor details as plot, factual accuracy and credibility. That's OK when it's Doctor Who, but for a production that claims to have its feet firmly on the ground (boom, boom!) it makes a mockery of the genre.

Last week's episode started well enough - an unusual find of medieval coins under a building site in Bath raises questions about aspects of the history of the Crusades - but it soon tumbled downhill into a storyline that had as many holes as the chain mail the team were unearthing from the Somerset soil.

Central to the plot was an entirely unbelievable "right-wing Christian" Laygrass, whose vision of Britain was to restore the order of the Knights Templar, drive out all Muslims from the UK and establish a pure Anglo-Christian theocracy supported by the possession of ancient relics.

Laygrass (the aforementioned villain) was portrayed as a quasi-evangelical (Bible quoting, salvation-focused) with his own media department producing ethereal DVD's expounding his ideas against a cloudy backdrop to the tune of Jerusalem. His theology, of course, was unrecognizable in the British Christian scene - and would have been out of place in even the wackiest parts of the American Bible Belt. It's nearest counterpart might be that of the Maronite militia of Lebanon - though even these militants do not seek a restoration of the Knights Templar, the medieval monastic order responsible for protecting pilgrims en route to the Holy Land.

The programme's crass detachment from reality is further portrayed in the clumsy manhandling of artifacts on the part of the archaeologists, who appear to treat the antiquities like items found on Car Booty.

Last week's closing scene, when Laygass meets his fiery end in a basement inferno in rural Herefordshire, pushes credibility to the limit. While ancient and priceless artifacts go up in flames and while people are burning to death beneath the ground, Professor Greg Parton (Hugh Bonneville) nonchalantly asks "for the love of Jehovah, may we go to the pub?"

Bonekickers seems to be pitched at a mainstream audience. If the show doesn't improve, it risks being consigned to the dust.

Other reviews:

• TV Scoop
• Guardian
• Times

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Al-Jazeera Camerman Speaks of Guantanamo

When Sami Al Hajj arrived in his native Sudan following his surprise release from Guantanamo Bay, he was too weak to talk.

Here is is first interview about his ordeal.

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Ultimate Force - The Thin Blue Line is Getting Thicker

Having never previously seen an episode, I stumbled across the final minutes of Ultimate Force on ITV last night and found it a disturbing experience.

The background, for those like me who have not been initiated, is that Red Troop are a fictitious group of the SAS called on, according to ITV, to "face up to any explosive situation to keep Britain protected including hijackers, terrorists, rebel Chechnyan leaders and the deadliest security threats."

So far so good. I don't mind a good bit of anti-terror action. What I found distasteful about last night's episode, however, was the way the heroes were portrayed as sadistic and proud of operating beyond the limits of the law. Examples including the shooting in the head at point blank range of a kidnapper who had previously been disarmed and wounded, and the killing of a second unarmed and wounded criminal by breaking his neck.

OK, I do understand the difference between fiction and reality. I do understand irony and I do appreciate that not everything broadcast on television will necessarily have a direct effect on the lives of ordinary citizens. Nonetheless, the episode of Ultimate Force I saw bothered me.

First, it seemed to glorify violence. The guns used by Red Troop, are powerful, large and, above all, very cool. Of course, the middle-aged, follicly-challenged beer-drinking male who watches the show will, in most cases, be unlikely to follow the example of former EastEnders star Ross Kemp and head downtown to purchase a semi automatic. For a 15-year old petty criminal who is out of control on a London estate, on the other hand, this message seems to be entirely the wrong one to be pumping out, confusing as it does crime, respect, guns, masculinity and killing.

My second concern was the way that law breaking by the authorities was glamorised. The moral seemed to be that when faced with hardened criminals, the law (to borrow a phrase from an Italian friend when describing the function of traffic lights in his home country) merely expresses an opinion. Police, or in this case SAS officers, can do what they need to, because, it is assumed, they know best.

The feel of the final scene, as the Troop headed up the road for a drink, leaving the remains of the dead to be disposed of by the lower ranks of the uniformed officers, was of one gang celebrating the killing of a rival gang. The problem was that the "winning" gang was an arm of the State.


Back in the real world, as the State seeks an ever more powerful role in response to the threat of international terrorism, and as the arming of the police continues to increase accordingly, it strikes me as important for the law-abiding public to avoid being lulled into the idea that extra-legal killings of criminals are a necessary part of modern life. The examples of States where this practice has become institutionalized - notably in parts of Latin America - are a grim reminder of why the blue line between criminals and the public must be keep thin if a democracy is not to become a police state by default.

If last night's episode was representative, the writers of Ultimate Force seem content to portray a world where the thin line is getting thicker.

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My Favourite Eurovision Quote

You know a music programme has run its course when the background commentary is more memorable than than the main performances.

My favourite quote from Terry Wogan's musings at tonight's Eurovision Song Contest from Belgrade was when he was describing the Polish entry. His words were:

"She's an attractive looking woman. Though after a few minutes one's gaze is drawn to her teeth. The quantity of them, I mean. One almost feels tempted to offer her a sugar lump."

For the background to tonight's show, please click here.

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