26 April 2021

Screentime

"Lad: A Yorkshire Story" - worth avoiding

As this godawful pandemic proceeds into its second year, we should give thanks for screentime. For most people in the western world watching television has been our salvation. It has helped to get us through these trying months in which normal life has been well and truly suspended.

Previously, I sang the praises of the first three series of "The Handmaid's Tale" starring Elisabeth Moss. It absorbed me for many hours thanks to our daughter Frances who signed us into her Amazon Prime account for free. She also gave us free access to Netflix.

In England on recent Sunday evenings it seems that the whole country has been glued to BBC 1 watching the sixth series of the tense police drama "Line of Duty". It contains many twists and turns and you never quite know what is coming next but I must confess that I do not see what all the fuss is about. If I never saw another episode, I would not mind at all.

On Saturday night we stumbled across a British film called "Lad: A Yorkshire Story" on Amazon Prime. We settled down to enjoy it, hoping to be thoroughly entertained for ninety minutes or so. However, it wasn't long before we were sighing with disappointment. It just lacked the important ingredient of believability and was laborious and predictable. The best aspect of "Lad" was the North Yorkshire landscape in which the dull plot unfolds. It was meant to be a light comedy but we didn't laugh once and it was a relief when the credits rolled.

One show that almost always brings me to tears is "Long Lost Family" on ITV 1. In this programme people are reunited with loved ones after patient professional research. Often the subjects were adopted as babies and they are now looking for their blood relatives. Frequently they feel painfully lonesome in this interconnected world so when they finally meet up with their blood relatives their joy is palpable. It's like coming home at last. You really feel for them and in my opinion the show handles the process with care and respect. Each story is a true one.

I think it is important to keep our television viewing in proper perspective - not allowing it to take over our lives and turn us into couch potatoes. However, to return to my original point - screentime has certainly been a blessing in these very trying times. I think it has helped us to survive and stay sane - well, relatively sane!

46 comments:

  1. Your judgment is one I trust so I shall avoid the DVD of Lad.
    The title reminded me of Jane Gardam's *The Hollow Land* (1981) which has been reprinted and is set in the grassy Cumbrian hills.
    *I'm Bell Teesdale. I'm a lad. I'm eight,* the story begins. Wonderful.
    She takes her title from William Morris, 'God keep the Hollow Land.'

    I rescinded my TV licence and I would not cheat while others struggle to pay.
    I bought the DVD box set of Mad Men and watched two episodes a night.
    Every one of the characters I disliked, except for the droll English alcoholic who hanged himself in his office, and the black cleaners and lift operators. Ted I despised because he used people and was full of self pity.

    In Waterstones today (reopened) I realised I had never read Peter Handke's novel *Repetition* which I purchased along with Charles King's *The Reinvention of Humanity - How A Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Remade Race, Sex and Gender*.
    I wanted to read about Margaret Mead and Zora Neale Hurston, the black photographer.

    On the way out I got AC Grayling's *The Good Book: A Secular Bible* reduced to £5.
    Though a believer my shelves are also full of atheists like Grayling, Dawkins, Dennett and Sam Harris.
    Great TV drama is like a glass of Champagne, but a good book is a glass of cold clean water.
    Haggerty

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    1. "Great TV drama is like a glass of Champagne, but a good book is a glass of cold clean water"... That remark belongs in a dictionary of quotations. I know just what you mean.
      P.S. You must consume a lot of books - far more than me - that's for sure.

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  2. I've watched more on TV than ever before; I used to go to the movies quite a bit, but that's been out for the past year. Thinking that Sean Connery was a safe bet for a decent movie, I recently watched "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" which was extraordinarily awful. I followed it up with one episode of "Frank of Ireland." It will also be the only episode; it was a painful experience. I'm not good at choosing films or shows to watch, evidently.

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    1. Thanks for the heads up about "Frank of Ireland" Margaret.

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  3. I think I might be the only person on the planet who watched less TV than normal during the past year. Instead, I read lots and lots of books.

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    1. That is great Kelly but see Red from Alberta below.

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  4. I don't watch any TV so I guess I don't know what I'm missing.

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    1. In this you are a rarity Red but I admire you for it.

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  5. I am not sure if I can get any of the movies in your post but I will try later in the afternoon. Afternoons are my "coach potatoe" sessions after completing morning chores and preparing lunch. A quick session before evening chores start. I agree that screentime has been a blessing during the past year for my family too.

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    1. Screentime transports us somewhere else.

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  6. The series we have been enjoying for most of this year is the original All Creatures Great and Small.The cruelties of life and death for animals and humans and the struggle to make a living are not glossed over or romanticised. I loved it the first time round for its characters and the landscape and it has held up well. I hope to see the Dales for myself one day.
    Adele

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    1. We are a good distance from The Yorkshire Dales here in Sheffield but my family on my father's side hailed originally from Wensleydale. The dale I hope to walk before too long is Swaledale but I need a certain window of good weather for that.

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  7. In the early weeks of summer last year, I subscribed to Netflix - mainly because I was interested in a particular program I could not find anywhere else. I have spent many more hours watching good, interesting and entertaining stuff on Netflix, and also from the media archives of our "normal" TV channels. The two series that have stuck most in my mind and which I can highly recommend are "Locke & Key" and "Beforeigners" - completely different from each other, but with great acting and based on really good ideas.

    Altogether, I have maybe watched a little less TV, because of more frequent and longer evening walks, and also because most week nights, O.K. and I talk on the phone for about an hour.

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    1. I have never heard of those two shows Meike. Thanks.

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  8. For some years after we moved here, I rarely watched TV at all, probably an hour or so a week at most. My husband subscribed to Sky news and sports so the set was always tuned to one or the other, neither of any interest to me. There were plenty of other things to enjoy, rather than viewing life through a small screen. Now I'm on my own, I've made it a rule that I don't turn the TV on until 7 p.m. (6 p.m. UK time), except for the times that the weather is too diabolical to be outdoors, or I don't feel like reading, or pursuing one of my hobbies. All the series and serials that were new to me three or four years ago are all well known now, thanks to the endless repeats, so I'm looking for something new to watch, but so far have found little to engage my interest.

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    1. It ios good that you have a sensible relationship with TV Senora CG - not allowing it to take over your life.

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  9. I must be one of the few people to have never watched " Line of Duty". Crime/police dramas seem so difficult to follow these days....or maybe I am getting too old to cope, but I gather that LoD is one of the most difficult as they use lots of jargon. I often go on Twitter after something I haven't understood very well, and find that even much younger people are flummoxed!

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    1. In my opinion you are not really missing much Frances. It's what they call "over-hyped".

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  10. Like Red, I no longer watch TV so have passed many lockdown hours reading or surfing (electronically). Probably not good for my eyesight though.

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    1. Is your withdrawal from TV to do with your hearing JayCee?

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    2. It is indeed YP. Even with a hearing loop attachment I find that sound is now quite distorted and subtitles become distracting after a while. Perhaps I am not missing too much though, given some reviews of current TV offerings.

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    3. You can make your own unique TV shows in your head when reading a book.

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  11. Anonymous9:22 am

    I can't say I watched more tv but I certainly had more screen time.

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    1. I am conflating TV and other screen services.

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  12. Yorkshire Lad doesn't sound very authentic. Why not offer them a script based on your own childhood?

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    1. That would be too racy for public consumption. It would be the raciest film around.

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  13. My husband watched a lot of DIY television. My son suggested that he'd get a kick out of Breaking Bad. It's not my kind of show, but Tim is well and truly hooked on this. We are on episode 12. Only 50 more to go.

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    1. Why run a hundred metres when you can do a marathon?

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  14. Well having run Line of Duty down, I watched it in the end as it dangled in suspense and a truly silly story of corrupt police. For me television takes away sad thinking time but also I listen to an awful lot of radio and Audible books. Middlemarch is over 30 hours long at the moment but it allows you to reflect on words.

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    1. I have never heard an audiobook. I guess this is partly because I don't have a mobile phone. It could be interesting to try one.

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  15. TV has certainly kept me going through these lockdown times. I confess to watching at least 4 hours a day. On my own and shielding, it has been a lifeline. I had never watched a single episode of Line of Duty until last week, but I wanted to see what all the hype was about, so started with series 1 on iplayer last week
    and have already got through 12 episodes - I'm on to series 3 already. I am actually finding it very enjoyable (not the violence obviously) but all the twists and turns.

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    1. Interesting to see it all in quick succession - rather like me with "The Handmaid's Tale".

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  16. Joining Red in the list of people who does not watch any TV; haven't done so for years. Too many books to read.

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    1. In a way I am envious because there have been periods of my life when television just did not figure.Nice to get away from the endless news.

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  17. I probably watch less than an hour of TV a day. Wish I could say the same about my screen time.

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    1. By "screentime" I meant anything we watch on a TV screen.

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  18. It occurs to me that the writer and director of *Lad: A Yorkshire story* might get a bit shirty at a bad review from a Sheffield blogger. The Culture Wars have entered a new phase when writers now turn on their online critics in Goodreads.

    *Authors, you need to stop with this foolery.*
    YouTube. Peyton Reads. April 19.

    I left a comment on Peyton's blog. David Storey punched a theatre critic decades ago in a London pub. Storey played rugby and must have had a hefty right hook.

    David Mamet (YouTube) said he was no longer *a brain dead liberal* and has been dropped by The New York Times. Mamet lays into everyone rather like Frederic Raphael.

    PG Wodehouse never returned to England because of the nonsense he had said about the Nazis when he lived in German-occupied France. He was told to Stay Away.
    Plum showed no bitterness, tojours La Politesse.
    And he always kept up with the cricket in the British press while living in Long Island. There are YouTube videos about him.
    Haggerty

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  19. PG Wodehouse on BBC.
    YouTube 2012.
    Stephen Fry on PG Wodehouse.
    YouTube 2012.

    Stan Barstow said that as a grammar school boy growing up in a pit village, he liked reading stories set in boarding schools.
    Kingsley Amis read science-fiction as means of experiencing the numinous. It was what he turned to instead of religion.
    Haggerty

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  20. Unfortunately/Fortunately for me, streaming television season if over for awhile as I get those projects done that I need to. But it has got me through many a cold winter.

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    1. I guess that you have got a woman driving you Ed. And they said that the age of slavery was over.

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  21. It's too bad that "Lad" was a disappointment. We watched the first five seasons of "Line of Duty" and we'll probably start the sixth tonight. It's good but a pretty standard police show. I wouldn't call it ground-breaking in any way! We're still mired in "The Walking Dead," which is pretty darn good even if gruesome and completely unbelievable.

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    1. I thought "The Walking Dead" was a documentary about Boris Johnson.

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  22. We watched 'Lad' and enjoyed it - I seem to recall it was based on a true story. I'm a fan of Line of Duty too. Takes all sorts...

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  23. If you'd like a really funny, light comedy series on Netflix I can highly recommend Arrested Development.

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    1. Okay Jennifer. Thanks. I will try that.

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Mr Pudding welcomes all genuine comments - even those with which he disagrees. However, puerile or abusive comments from anonymous contributors will continue to be given the short shrift they deserve. Any spam comments that get through Google/Blogger defences will also be quickly deleted.

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