S#*! My Dad Says TV Show – Review

The best part of a year after it aired in the USA, the comedy series “S#*! My Dad Says” was aired on the UK channel 5* last night.  A channel formerly known as Fiver but now pretentiously written and pronounced Five Star – nothing to do with the 80′s pop group of the same name.  This new sitcom is based on a Twitter account that I came across a couple of years ago and was basically a son repeating, as the title suggests, what his dad says. Officially referred to as “Bleep My Dad Says” to satisfy the US authorities and anti-profanity campaigners, the show deals with a father, his son and the satellite characters of another son and his wife.

In the pilot episode we discover how a son who had moved out of the family home years before has gone back to living with his dad. The mother is not dead, but divorced and so will doubtlessly turn up at some point.

That last sentence might seem a bit cynical but that’s how the programme comes across. The rawness of the original twitter feed has been tempered. The bad language that in the context of quotes was hilarious has been dismissed with and only the remnants are left in the title. The script seems very generic and could be applied to any number of shows. Aside from Shatner’s, the characters (or at least the performances) seem bland and uninteresting. It’s a by-the-numbers show, the laughter seems canned aside from a few glimmers provided by Shatner, there doesn’t seem to be the dark original humour suggested by the original Tweets. It’s obviously written by committee, which isn’t always a bad thing, The Simpsons is written by one person then a group adds stuff in for the final script, but this show seems like they used “Sitcom writing for Dummies” and refuse to deviate from it because “that’s what the book says right here –  stubborn man must always refuse to admit he’s wrong but make up with his son because it’s what he really wants to do”.

Admittedly I’ve only seen the pilot episode, so we’ll see how it goes, but from this evidence the show would have worked much better as a late night programme, leaving in the swearing and humour of the source material. The supporting cast should be made up of distinctive characters in their own right and not just there to make Shatner stand head and shoulders above the rest. In Boston Legal the cast were brilliant and Shatner still shone, so it can be done.

Overall I found the programme, or at least that episode, very disappointing. The reviews on Metacritic gave it a very low 28% rating and I guess that’s why it’s hidden most of the way down the Sky EPG on Five Star. ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jg_s6aOp23M )

3D TV – Further reading

Although I don’t want to send people away from my blog here’s a couple of articles published by the Guardian and Observer (same website though) with similar views to my previous article. Nothing like a good bit of confirmation bias is there? LOL !

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/organgrinder/2011/jan/19/3d-tv-sky-refusenik

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2010/may/02/discover-3d-television-tom-lamont?INTCMP=SRCH

3D TV – What’s wrong with this picture?

It’s fair to say that 3D TV is an odd thing. You would have thought that most gadgety people would love it and immediately rush out to buy the latest TV and seven sets of glasses. However from my observations there is a very few gadgety people that are interested in it.

Recent surveys (as reported by Engadget and C&VG) report that the top two reasons for not wanting 3D are the cost of the TV sets and the glasses. Department store, John Lewis, reckon that 15% of their TV customers have bought a 3D set in the run up to Xmas. This may be comparable to the early days of DVD over VHS, but John Lewis attracts the more affluent customer and while they aren’t guaranteed to buy anything, they are more likely to buy a more expensive set than the usual Currys customer. Cost for any new technology is obviously going to be higher at the start, than a few years later when more units are being sold and components are cheaper. So that leaves the main stumbling block: the glasses.

Even us gadget fiends can see the obvious downside to this new technology. The main system being pushed at the moment is ‘Active’ glasses. These have rechargeable batteries inside and sync up to the TV, which tells the units when to adjust the polarization of the lens. Unless the TV comes with more than one set, then more will need to be purchased at £100 – £150 per set. So if you buy a 3D TV for say £2k with one set of glasses, then for the average family you’ll need to spend perhaps £450 on three additional sets. But what happens if you have friends round? Not everyone is going to be able to watch. So they’re either reading a book, or going home. There’s only so many sets of glasses you’ll want or can afford to buy.

Similarly, what if you all want to watch a 3D movie, but little Jimmy has been playing 3D games on the PS3 all day and his set need to be recharged? Again, someone might be disappointed. In this way the traditional image of the family sat round the TV is disrupted. Arguably most families these days rarely find themselves in one room together anyway, but in my circumstance, when my friends come round, I may have perhaps 5 of them in my living room. It’s not really economic to shell out £750 on active glasses just for Tuesday nights…

There are alternatives on the way though. At the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, the major manufacturers, responding to the public apathy, showed TV sets that use the same passive glasses that are used in Cinema’s and also sets that don’t need glasses at all. The Cinema style sets have the advantage that the glasses are very cheap as they contain no electronics (but just watch the shops charge £20 a pop for them)  but the disadvantage in that they obviously still require you to wear glasses, which is another objection people have to 3D.

At the moment, the sets that do not require glasses are fairly small (24″ is the biggest shown so far) and they have a very narrow viewing angle, so you more or less have to sit directly in front of them. However to my mind this is the most promising route for the technology to take. It caters for the laziest person and all successful technology helps people to be lazier. In other words, there is no extra effort in watching a 3D screen that doesn’t use glasses, than watching normal TV. Inevitably though, it’ll take time for the new sets to be introduced and be sold at a reasonable price.

Content is also an issue, Sky have a 3D channel, there are some Blu-ray’s and the PS3 has 3D games but it’s a bit forced and limited. So until that picks up business will be slow in the 3D retail market, whilst people sit on their hands and wait to see where it’s headed.

Cinema is being affected by 3D apathy too. After the initial excitement following the release of Avatar, 3D ticket sales have been in decline. This is due to 3 factors: the novelty has worn off, the ticket prices are higher than a 2D film and there’s an increasing number of films that are either badly converted 2D films or bad films that were filmed in 3D. Various actors and directors (Simon Pegg and James Cameron for example) have been vocal about how the studios are using 3D as a promotional tool and this is detracting from the budget to actually make a good movie. The thinking in the marketing departments goes that so long as it’s in 3D, people will be so amazed that it almost doesn’t matter what the story or performances from the actors is like. If the ticket sales keep declining, then the studios only have themselves to blame.

New BBC F1 Commentary team

The BBC have announced that Jonathan Legard has departed the commentary booth, Martin Brundle is stepping up to lead commentator and will now be joined by David Coulthard. For me Legard has not been the annoyance he’s been to some, but although I understand he does work really hard at getting the latest on all the stories and rumours, you could tell he never really got on with the rest of the team. So far as I can recall he was never on the ‘red-button’ Forum and while the other presenters, Jake Humphrey, Eddie Jordan, David Coulthard and Martin Brundle had a certain chemistry, it was obvious Legard wasn’t one of the gang.

I’ve got a lot of admiration for Martin Brundle, he’s got this wonderful way of translating the technical side of the sport that is easy enough to understand for newcomers to the sport, yet the phrases he uses are entertaining enough that hardcore fans appreciate what he’s saying too.

My worry is that David Coulthard, who so far in his BBC career, has been permanantly on-message for his other employers RedBull and Mercedes and so will detract from the usual imparitality one would expect from a commentary team.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/88861