Showing posts with label tv. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tv. Show all posts

Friday 10 August 2012

The colour of home


'Earthrise', from NASA, taken on board Apollo 8 by astronaut William Anderson on the first ever manned lunar orbit in 1968

"For most of history, blue was the colour of the beyond. It was the colour of the horizon, the colour of the thing that so many of us were aspiring to and hoping to escape to. But in 1968 that dream finally came true. When in 1968 we finally went beyond that horizon, we discovered that blue was actually the colour of home."

~Dr James Fox, The History of Art in Three Colours: Blue

Thursday 17 May 2012

Planet Earth Live

Anybody else also loving the animal stories and cute babies in Planet Earth Live?





I loved the Planet Earth series and was a huge fan of the Big Cat Diaries when they were running so I'm following this one with lots of interest.

There's updates, snippets and behind the scenes on the Facebook and Twitter links too.

Tuesday 28 June 2011

Horrible Histories

Have you ever read the Horrible Histories books by Terry Deary? They use a mix of comic illustrations, fun facts and jokes to bring to life historical events and figures. I'd always liked history at school for its stories more than anything.

Well, the BBC have been doing a live-action version of the books on their children's channel which has been winning all sorts of awards. They have top comedy writers working on limitless material with a brilliant cast of actors who have a whale of a time making complete idiots of themselves as people from different eras and places (ancient Greeks, Egyptians, Romans, the Vikings, the Tudors, the Middle Ages etc etc).

Cutting edge Roman technology - aBook launch





The best part is they parody a lot of current TV shows, and the resulting sketches are just hilarious - think Aztec Come Dine With Me, Historical Masterchef...

Historical Wife Swap (the French Revolution)





I love the musical numbers the most, especially the ones that parody current bands and singers.

The 4 King Georges - as a boy band (!)





It's great fun to watch and you learn interesting things along the way. I'm a shameless fan.

Friday 22 October 2010

Pillars of the Earth

How is it that I missed all these great stories when I was growing up?

Michael Morpurgo's Warhorse - which, incidentally, is being made into a film by none other than Steven Spielberg because he fell in love with the story after seeing the amazing play, and now Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth. The TV mini-series is being shown on Channel 4 after its run on Starz in America and I am hooked after the first 2 episodes. Ridley Scott is executive producer (!) and the amazing cast plus the complex story set in 12th century England with its court politics played out alongside the human stories makes for riveting TV. It could only have worked as a TV series, film would not have done it justice.

Saturday 21 August 2010

Men of the North Winds


The BBC's been doing a season of documentaries on the Normans on BBC4. They're fascinating! I knew about 1066 and the Battle of Hastings, we all learnt that at school, but I had no idea that the Normans conquered a lot of southern Europe and fought their way into the Middle East as well. Did you know that Sicily was once ruled by the Normans?