I've long found that the humour of the U.S.A. Saturday Night Live does not translate well.
The only way that this worked was back in the #BenElton and #HarryEnfield days of Saturday Live, which didn't cling strictly to the U.S.A. format or tone; which I think was *why* it worked.
"Bit of politics!" "Loadsamoney!"
Neither does cable, which made Boxing Day and the following few days a frantic time, since that's when BBC2 in particular is a flood of good movies. Fortunately, I had experience of 2024 to go by and had emptied space ahead of time.
If I recall correctly, the BBCs are all HD-only pretty much everywhere, now. So are things like SkyMax. I haven't checked BBC Parliament on cable, but BBCs 1, 2, 3, 4 and all of the regional 1s and 2s that one can get on cable went to HD-only with a modicum of fanfare some time ago.
Some of the free (mostly-)movie channels are still available in SD, though. There's an SD version of Film4, as well as of the ITVs.
I'm trying to (for starters) get back to where I had emptied it to before Christmas, which was something like 89%.
For the youths of today:
#Funsterization was what ITV did to the dialogue of Lethal Weapon in the 1990s.
What #Channel5 has done to #CrocodileDundee 2 is only new to me. The last time that I saw the movie on the telly, it had all of this stuff in. It's not actually a new development for broadcast #UKTelly.
For on-point comparison, given 'funster', Steve Martin's infamous rant at the car hire person, in the broadcast of #PlanesTrainsAndAutomobiles of a week ago, was shown uncut.
Good grief!
The Great!tv channel has 6 Carry On movies in succession followed by movies of Bless This House and George And Mildred, on #NewYearsDay.
Definitely, not.
In the meantime, the BBC seems to be quietly doing all of the early Mission:Impossible movies.
When I finished episode 2 of #TheWarBetweenTheLandAndTheSea I was thinking that this would be what #TheAbyss would be if it:
1. had to bore #DoctorWho fans to tears for most of the first episode having characters monologue explanations of what UNIT was;
1. had a small bit of gender politics, Twitter/TikTok propagandists, and Thames Water mixed in;
1. had mobile 'phones and Bluetooth and was in the 21st century; and
1. somehow had the U.K. being in charge of everything, totally ignoring China, U.S.A. exceptionalism, Canada and the rest of the Americas, India, and France.
I have just finished episode 3. I see that they thought of that last point. (-:
It's the second day of #ChristmasTide, and the start of frantically watching movies on the telly, so that the TiVo box does not fill up.
I've looked at the recording schedule and it is not possible to watch them as fast as they are going to come in.
On the plus side, it has given me the opportunity to watch The Sea Devils, finally. I have the book, but had never had the opportunity to see the serial on the telly.
There's a lot of shooting.
That it's done with prop rifles and pistols rather than with VFX gives it a different flavour to modern telly, even to modern #DoctorWho .
Applause to June Murphy for managing to sneak in some incredulous disdain at a female officer being treated like a mess steward by a sexist coward. In 1972.
I see that the new (2024) #LawAndOrder set in #Toronto is coming to #UKTelly .
#FBIInternational, with its not only erroneous but downright insulting portrayal of pretty much all European people in the show has made me expect that #DickWolf will also make a right pig's ear of Canadians and Canadian jurisprudence. And the U.K. version of Law And Order was risible in getting the U.K. very wrong, thinking that it works like the U.S.A..
They'll have Crown attorneys carrying guns, or fake jurisdictional fights over crimes that are always handled by the provinces, or the wrong ranks, or a D.S. doing the work of a special, or United Statian notions of civil rights, or the police negotiating plea bargains, … or something.
I'm not going to bother with it.
I went on one of those #clickbait recentist U.S.A.-centric "25 telly shows you'll like if you like #Tracker" pages so that you don't have to.
It didn't even have the #RobbieColtrane one, not even its #USTelly knock-off.
There was something else missing too. What was its name? Tip of my tongue.
JdeBP