Saturday, June 14, 2008

Meet the new BBC America--Same as the old BBC America

Hey, guess what BBC America is showing on Friday nights as part of its comedy block? "Monty Python's Flying Circus." Now, I'm not one to complain about anybody running that one, least of all the American Beeb, but what confuses me is that when Garth Ancier took over the network some time ago, he made a big deal out of getting rid of old evergreens like "Benny Hill."

The schedule revamp that was supposed to energize the little-seen cable channel led us to where we are today, with a handful of interesting series surrounded by a bunch of crappy reality shows. So basically BBC America got rid of some of the old reruns so they could play "How Clean Is Your House" and the like into the ground.

Now it's Python again. All well and good, but where are the exciting modern imports? BBC America rarely bring us anything new, and when they do, good luck hearing about it unless it's "Robin Hood" or "Doctor Who"-related. So when the American Beeb trumpeted this acquisition in a press release, it was kind of a head scratcher.

Just what is this channel doing?

I'll tell you what, though, if they want to put on this, "Are You Being Served?" "Benny Hill," and shows like that all day, I'll certainly take that over what they're trotting out now.

2 comments:

Ivan G Shreve Jr said...

This was a good many years ago, but there was a time when BBCAmerica ran a block of sitcoms on Saturday afternoons from 1-5pm and I'd sure like to see them do it again. Most of the offerings were the usual public-TV rubbish of Keeping Up Appearances and Are You Being Served?, but I was also introduced to the likes of Dad's Army, The Brittas Empire, One Foot in the Grave and Murder Most Horrid.

Rick Brooks said...

I'd love to see some of those shows on there again. I don't even know what any of them are (except for One Foot in the Grave), but they'd have to be an improvement. Even the usual public-TV rubbish would better than "How Clean is Your Flat?" or whatever!