Sky One in Good Tranny Doc Shocker

So did anyone watch "Transvestite Wives" the other night on Sky One? Having "Sky-Plussed" it mid-week, I watched it last night. I was all ready to be shocked, appalled and toe-curled, but it was surprisingly good. The couples featured were all sensitively handled, allowed to get their points of view across and it wasn't overly editorialised.

All kudos to the trannies and partners who agreed to take part, if someone had come to me and said they were making a tranny documentary for the same channel that brought us the unforgivably awful "There's Something about Miriam", I wouldn't have touched it with the proverbial.

I have seen some TG forums complaining that "Transvestite Wives" is part of a documentary strain featuring programmes about the wives of BNP activists and polygamists, which they think tars transvestism with the "sickos and perverts" brush by association. But to my mind that's a bit like dolphins complaining that they're lumped with the Nazis on the Discovery Channel.

My only minor complaint was the title suggested it was going to feature trannies who thought of themselves as wives, which is a bit beyond the remit of the average transvestite.

I'd have called it something much less snappy like "Wives of Transvestites", which just goes to show why I don't have a job working for Sky One. Well, that and not thinking that programme planning consists of working out how many back-to-back episodes of The Simpsons will fit in 3 hours of prime time.

Do you wanna be in my gang?

It's called the "we didn't watch Heroes on any other channel, but we are going to watch it on BBC2 and pretend that it's new" gang. It's very exclusive.



Last night the first two episodes were given their first "terrestrial airing", a term that seems to be becoming increasingly meaningless in this age of near-ubiquitous satellite, cable and computer downloads.

Because I'd missed the start of the series on satellite, and I'm still taking the tenuous moral high-ground against pirated downloads, I decided to cover my ears to the office Heroes gossip and wait for the series to appear on BBC2.

I was also relishing it as an opportunity to bring back an "event program" into the EnVérité household. The only program that Jane and I made a point of sitting down and watching "properly" was Doctor Who, and now that's ended it's current run, the TV has gone back to being the noisy background wallpaper while other innumerable distractions are being taken care of.

It seems strange to be nostalgic about the golden age when the TV was the focal-point for household social interaction. After all, older generations are equally nostalgic about the days before watching the goggle-box was the default home leisure activity. These days computers and digital entertainment are gradually taking over broadcast telly's role as the leisure-time staple, but despite all its multi-player and social network potential, the digital world is often remarkably single-player and antisocial.

Just sitting and watching broadcast TV, rather than partaking in an interactive and personalised experience, is almost seen as a failing these days. As if you've settled for being passively "spoon fed" entertainment. But taking out the individuality and interactivity from entertainment often frees up other forms of interactivity. Talking about it to the person sitting next to you, for example, or the people in your office the next morning.

It turned out this morning that two other people in my office had watched Heroes for the first time last night, and it was great to discuss it's potential, and try to guess the future plot-twists. A few other guys in the office had watched it variously on copied DVDs, UK satellite (both live and recorded), and downloaded from the net. Their conversations in previous weeks were limited to ones that started with "have you seen that bit yet where..."

So that's 3 people in my gang already.

As for Heroes itself? Here's my review from the universe where the first series hasn't already finished yet.

It looks like it's got great potential, it does feel a lot like "Lost", with it's numerous plot threads, coincidental links between the characters, and intriguing loose ends. I'm hoping it doesn't go down the Lost route of just adding more and more loose ends until the whole thing resembles a frothy dessert of plot holes, with no real chance of them ever all being filled in.

It will also be interesting to see how they prevent it evolving into an X-Men-alike, or similar. I'm guessing that in the first series it will be fairly easy to maintain the premise of it being ordinary people with fairlt ordinary lives (who just happen to have extraordinary powers), but what about when they've become more of a cohesive group and their powers are more well known?

If you're already half-way through downloading series two, please don't answer that question!

A warning from history

For those who are already getting over-excited about the prospect of a certain diminutive female singer turning up in Doctor Who, I have two words of caution:

Bonnie. Langford.

I'm not saying it will be that bad, I'm just saying it rang alarm bells, and the scars are still deep. So very deep.

(If you're reading this then my blog posting problem is fixed... yay!)

"No two ways about it... you're totally feminized up"

A quote from the wonderful Gok Wan, on "How to Look Good Naked". I caught it for the first time tonight because, well, I assumed it was just about looking good naked. Turns out it's all about (at least this week) finding clothes that emphasize your femininity, and make-up and beauty and stuff.

Me like. Gok is a gent, all the fashion skills of Trinny and Susanna with none of the condescending attitude. Seems a genuinely nice guy, he can feminize me up any day.

...

That came out wrong. :-/

Bring back nostalgia

A thought... now that Neighbours has been bought by Channel 5, what will replace it in the coveted BBC1 teatime-just-before-the-news slot?

I'm hoping they take the opportunity to bring back a classic... Willow the Wisp! Paddington! Ivor the Engine! The Clangers!

BBC4's current season on the history of children's television is pure unadulterated nostalgia. There was a fascinating programme on Peter Firmin tonight, which reminded me of his excellent autobiography Seeing Things, which I read a few years ago. Peter is one of my heroes, a true genius of television (and I'm not just limiting that to "children's television"). There's something about his whimsical imagination and endless invention coupled with a peculiarly British make-do-and-mend creative method. Even now when I hear his gentle voice I'm transported back to my childhood, prostrate on the rug in front of the goggle box.

I wonder if I did actually grow up in a golden age of British kids TV, or whether every generation thinks they do?