New TV...an intellectual exercise

[British Red]

We have all had a good old honk about the rubbish on television.

I suspect we can all agree there has been some great stuff made.

You might love Victorian Farm ...or early Ray Mears "Tracks".....or Time Team.

So, tomorrow, a TV producer comes to you and says "we need a new concept for a TV show....something never done before....not a remake, not a twist on an existing concept, something totally new".

What TV programme would you make....oh, by the way....you have to present it!

Mine?

"How to make a cheese and pickle sandwich".

I suspect I am the only person on the planet...minor embellishment for effect...that could present 12 hlaf hour episodes on the subject. How to grow the wheat...how to peen the scythe blade, reap and winnow the wheat, how to kill and butcher the suckling calf to get rennet....how to grow the apples and make the vinegar to make the pickle.....you get the idea.

So...if you had your chance...to make something you think would be compelling viewing.....that isn't a remake of "Out of Town".....

What would it be?

 

[Jared]

Heh.

Reminds me of the toaster project which was inspired by a Douglas Adams quote from Mostly Harmless.

Left to his own devices he couldn’t build a toaster. He could just about make a sandwich and that was it.

As for a TV, that'd require some thought.

 

[British Red]

Indeed - or the premis for the original survivors series - which was that no man in Britain could make a wooden table from scratch...maybe less true today of course...but certainly fabricating metal tools would be a challenge!

 

[Jared]

Yeah, definitely think metal tools would be a challenge. Particularly from raw natural resources, just from the fact that we've been consuming them on an industrial scale for so long.

Like the Russian story of the family living in isolation, what really struck me was the fact that their cooking pots wore out/rusted. And they had to revert all the way to using birch bark containers. Having a large impact on what and how they could cook, and therefore their diet. It's no wonder that the child born into that life had a shorter life span.

 

[Steve27752]

I would get the Stargate series up and running again

 

[realearner]

I think I would like to actually have a go at remaking some of the series that are out now, but instead of showing the same clip ten times, look at some of the stuff being made or created.
Not to interested in why someone's life story has more importance than what the show is supposed to be about.
Or maybe I'm not shallow enough

 

[boatman]

Survivors missed a trick in that their concept of restoring society was to re-establish an industrial society. The Schoolmaster was quite wrong in that what would be needed was not the ability to go through all the processes to make a table but to keep the concept of a communal meal requiring some form of table. They touched on this a bit later on where a market was established on a railway station which was much more important than getting a railway to run. All of their efforts could be absorbed just maintaining a railway, efforts that might be better spent in developing their own skills. For their level of population far easier tranportation would be offered by natural waterways and maybe some of the more easily maintained canals. And, yes I could build boats from scratch.

It is quite true that there are more people now who could start with nothing and create a saw etc and a table. Should they feel the need.

Mass production might never return but in many areas personal kit could do the job. For example, printing with moveable type caused a revolution in most areas of life but there was another way. If individual letters in the Scritptorium had been carved into stamps then copying a manuscript could have been speeded up. Even the process could have been mechanised to some extent creating a basic "typewriter". This increased productivity might be multiplied by use of the "jellygraph" replication of the typed pages. All processes except possibly the production of paper being in the individuals hands. Create a postal service along with replicated journals and you have the potential level of scientific and other cooperation of the 18th and 19th centuries, a hard copy Internet in fact.

One series of programmes I would like would either be dramas showing Survivors contemporary with the original but in different locations, how a few people managed on the coast, in woodland etc. Or, a series of reality shows in different "Survivors" scenarios BUT without the tears that seem required of any reality show now.

 

[spandit]

I have to present it, you say?

"Sex in zero gravity"

"Eating chocolate in an Aston Martin"

 

[monkey boy]

Mines not bushcraft related, by trade I'm a personal trainer and fitness lecturer, my show would be the truth about fitness

 

[nuggets]

I have to present it, you say?

"Sex in zero gravity"

"Eating chocolate in an Aston Martin"

now your talking

If the TV company is paying I would do a series on building a bush plane

 

[Elen Sentier]

I think I would like to actually have a go at remaking some of the series that are out now, but instead of showing the same clip ten times, look at some of the stuff being made or created.
Not to interested in why someone's life story has more importance than what the show is supposed to be about.
Or maybe I'm not shallow enough

Neither am I! I would remake the current wildlife programmes to show only the wildlife and the scenerty instead of the presenter's ugly mug, left earhole, etc while the voice-over is telling you they're seeing this wonderful animal, tree, view ... Arrrrggghhh !

 

[Dave]

Honestly? I'd like to see MTV's celebrity death match done for real, with all the serving westminster politicians and a few hundred bankers, contestants voted for by the public every month. To replace Question Time and PMQ's......[Probably not the type of thing you were after though...I'll get mi coat]

 

[Elen Sentier]

Honestly? I'd like to see MTV's celebrity death match done for real, with all the serving westminster politicians and bankers, contestants voted for by the public every month. [Probably not the type of thing you were after though...]

Yeah, I prob watch that ... and vote !!

 

[abominable_scouse_monster]

Entertainment - A Battlestar Galactica spin off that dose not suck, a show called "Fun in the data centre" where a ****** of sys admin searches through hard drives and network shares of troublesome users (read all users) and then hunts them down with a cross bow for various crimes (Excel files in the root directory of a network share, copying 50gb of music to the network share for others to copy etc).

Bushcrafty - Shows that focus on traditional skill's, picture Dave Budd doing a series on Blacksmithing, Hamish doing on one leather work, British Red doing one on Brewing. etc

History shows that don't focus on the Egyptians, Chinese or Myan history and replace them with ones that focus on Vikings, Saxons, Kelts etc.

 

[rik_uk3]

I'd bring Judge Judy to the UK, I'd do the voice over to introduce each case

 

[Toddy]

"Native Briton"

As in the person not the place.

It would need a fair bit of background work, but a family band of capable and knowledge rich people, just as would have existed in our not all that distant past. Probably between 15 and 20 members, from infant to those we would now consider middle aged.

Hunter gatherers, have them properly equiped as they would have been from millenia of roots in their society, but they need to do all repair and replacement and development of their clothings and tools themselves.

Let them roam Britain from the seashores to the tidal marshes, from the forests to the moorlands, following the choicest of seasonal rounds.

Film their wanderings and their interactions with the land and the waters of sea, river, loch, bog, and the flora and fauna that live there.

It would need a lot of clearances though, not just from landowners but from the articifial restrictions of the 'sporting' fancy who have an effective stranglehold on fishing, hunting, roaming, etc.,

To be true to the past though, they would need to occasionally interact with similar groups, so a good chance to bring in reenactors for a weekend camp, or bushcrafters prepared to do without their modern kit for a weekend.

I'd watch that, and I don't do TV.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[boatman]

Nice programme idea Toddy. I think we are fortunate that we can have the experiences to some extent that would be on the programme rather than just watching someone else have the fun.

Interaction with other groups was the biggest thing missing from the BBC Living in the Past, an Iron Age village would not have existed in a vacuum.

 

[British Red]

Thats the sort of thing I was thinking of Toddy! I quite like ASMs too...."how it was made"

 

[Toddy]

I so agree
Even if society is only small family bands, they do interact and they do trade, mate and pass on knowledge. I think that passing on of knowledge, of how to, of where and when, is among humanity's greatest strengths

cheers,
M

 

[Elen Sentier]

Nice idea, Mary. I'd like to see how they work with everything, "Film their wanderings and their interactions with the land and the waters of sea, river, loch, bog, and the flora and fauna that live there." Could be a little difficult as we've killed off a lot of the fauna and flora they would have lived with, used for skins etc, eaten, and many species (like Scots Pine for instance) have moved north with climate change.

Hope they would manage not to make it into Stone Age Eastenders! Not interested in how difficult they might find it to give up their 21st century lives!