{"id":441,"date":"2006-02-12T05:50:33","date_gmt":"2006-02-12T04:50:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dickonedwards.co.uk\/diary\/index.php\/archive\/idle-tv-time\/"},"modified":"2006-02-12T15:48:12","modified_gmt":"2006-02-12T14:48:12","slug":"idle-tv-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/archive\/idle-tv-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Idle TV Time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An idle evening in with the TV. Start watching one of those Channel 4 &#8216;100 Greatest&#8217; clipfest things, this time on Sexiest Movie Moments. I&#8217;m watching alone, of course. Have to turn off after a while, as the constant cutting from famous smouldering sex scenes to the talking heads of balding, slovenly t-shirted critics like Heat Magazine&#8217;s Boyd Hilton is rather jarring. Now, I mean this with the fullest respect to Mr H, who I don&#8217;t doubt represents the pinnacle of erotic pleasure to someone in his life, and suspect he&#8217;ll have a less depressing Valentine&#8217;s Day than me (it wouldn&#8217;t be difficult).  It&#8217;s just grotesquely unfair to all parties to juxtapose his appearance with Faye Dunaway and Steve McQueen in <em>The Thomas Crown Affair<\/em>. <\/p>\n<p>These list programmes are enjoyably enough TV comfort food, but I always wish there were more clips and anecdotes from those genuinely involved with the featured items, and fewer rather obvious observations from whichever media tarts are available on the day.<\/p>\n<p>Of the former, I&#8217;m intrigued by photographer Terry O&#8217;Neill&#8217;s tale of a magazine shoot featuring Raquel Welch in her <em>One Million Years BC<\/em> fur bikini. Except she was a few years older and strapped to a wooden cross. The implication being she felt crucified  by that particular look, and feared she&#8217;d never really transcend it. As it transpired, Mr O&#8217;Neill never submitted the photo to the magazine: instead, it emerged in one of his books.  He&#8217;d gotten cold feet about offending religious sensibilities. Plus ca change&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Watch <em>The It Crowd<\/em>, Graham Linehan&#8217;s much-hyped new sitcom. I find myself in that strange position of trying hard to enjoy something <em>despite<\/em> the bullying hype. There&#8217;s giant posters for this programme all over London. Completely unnecessary: no TV programme needs to be advertised on station hoardings, full stop. I also find myself struggling to ignore the studio audience laughter, which if it isn&#8217;t canned, is nonetheless intrusive and out of proportion. No laughs at all for the genuinely witty bits, gales of <em>Bo Selecta<\/em>-like hysteria when a character is on the toilet saying the phrase &#8216;Number Twos&#8217;. <\/p>\n<p>Still, the sight of one character reading a Dan Clowes comic book (I recognise it as &#8216;<em>Twentieth Century Eightball<\/em>&#8216;, surely making me more geeky than any character in the show) is reason enough to have me rooting for <em>The It Crowd<\/em>. They just need to stop hawking it like mad to train commuters, and let it quietly develop a following of its own accord.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An idle evening in with the TV. Start watching one of those Channel 4 &#8216;100 Greatest&#8217; clipfest things, this time on Sexiest Movie Moments. I&#8217;m watching alone, of course. Have to turn off after a while, as the constant cutting from famous smouldering sex scenes to the talking heads of balding, slovenly t-shirted critics like [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}