General Chat

You people and your spoiler threads!!

Lucie has just been rescued from the clutches of the evil little toerag who bashed the guy who runs the corner store. And she has his gun. The stepsiblings (okay, I never know what anybody's name is) have just been arrested for perverting the course of justice by accusing Stacey's nasty brother of doing the bashing.

It's 2007!! Here on BBC Canada. ;)

(On US PBS, it's still about 2005, I think. And on Coronation Street, here on CBC, it's Easter 2009. At least it won't get any worse there this year as it does every year CBC has the Olympics and bumps Corrie, because CBC doesn't have the Olympics this year. If anybody does. If they don't get some cold weather out there in Lotusland on the west coast, there ain't gonna be any Olympics.)

How can I play "Who killed Archie Mitchell" when I don't know who he is??

But now I know somebody killed him. Well, I hope they catch the evildoer who dunnit. But don't tell me!

You will Janey,and you'll be glad of his future demise LOL.

Sorry,keep forgetting about all you overseas members...we never know how far behind you are. You're certainly more behind than the Aussies.

Oh, he's a nasty piece of work, you dont want to know him lol

Eastenders Lynda *tsk*

I think BBC probably sells packages, and the older the episodes, the cheaper the packages.

I'll bet in Oz it runs on a public network. Corrie does here, but EE is on a specialty channel *called * BBC Canada, but owned by one of the private networks. In the several years we've subscribed for it, it has gone downhill steadily. Fewer and fewer good Brit dramas, more and more dumb self-help / intervention shows ...

Janey, I hope all you Canucks dont' think that's a fair reflection of our domestic TV programmes....lol We do still have some really good dramas, documentaries and series around.

Oh lynda, there's me with an image of you as Dot Cotton ;) actually I don't lol

Good point Lynda....none of my lot were ever like that thank goodness lol

Oh, I know, TW! That's why we got BBC Canada in the first place.

For years, the good dramas etc have also shown on Ontario's public/educational network, TVO, and the US public network PBS. But with all the "specialty" channels now, things have got spread very thin, there's competition for the programs, and none of the networks seem to have the money to pay for them, because the audience is so splintered!

I'd become a fan of Casualty -- things like that do just make a nice change from the diet of US prime-time programming, just to watch stuff from someplace else. But BBC Canada seems to have dropped it. I'm sure we'll get Judge John Deed all over again this summer at midnight though, just as we have every single year since we subscribed.

Not that Casualty is an example of what you mean. ;) We watched Emma on PBS last weekend (well, episode one -- No.1 has become a downloading fool, so we got the rest off the net). We sometimes watch The Street on TVO (I find it depressing, and I hate manufactured suspense, and it has a bit too much of that for me). I have a feeling we're not getting the *good* comedies these days.

Canada is a small market -- 33 million pop compared to 60 or so in England/Wales, not to mention 300 in the US. We can't put the money into creating programming that those countries do. One reason the UK can is that its programs sell abroad so widely. Some of ours do, but you just can't market Canadian programming in the US, no matter how good it is, like you can market Brit programming there, for instance.

And of course right now we have a right-wing government determined to destroy the public broadcaster, the CBC. And interfering politically. There was an absolutely terrific series cancelled last year after two seasons, called Intelligence, all about interference in Canadian politics and policing by the US government the CIA and the US drug enforcement agency, and full of intrigue and action and great characters -- but obviously not to the taste of the Conservatives wanting to sell Canada out to the US, what the show was really getting to.

(Remember Inside the Line? That's what it was called here -- google google -- Between the Lines at home. It was much like that.)

But anyhow, I have my East Enders taped to watch on Saturday morning while I do the week's chopping and cooking, and, because "Real Men watch Coronation Street" (as the Tshirt my mum got No.1 says), we watch Corrie over supper every night. No.1 can't understand what they're saying on East Enders, so that's my own guilty pleasure. ;)