Lazy Sunday Afternoon

It shouldn't be. I've got a ton of work to do but it's raining. For some perverse reason I always use that as an excuse not to write, whenever possible. Maybe I'm a massochist who enjoys suffering at the keyboard when the sun is shining.

Anyway, as yet another diversion I've just been looking at the BARB figures for w/e 14th Oct. I always look at these figures with a mixture of incredulity, acceptance and depression.

In that week BBC 1 had only five non soap dramas in the top thirty watched programmes. FIVE! And you had to get to 12 and 13 to find the first two. Casualty and Holby.

And that's the good news believe it or not.

ITV only had 3. Admittedly Doc Martin split the soaps with a highly creditable 8 million, but way down the list were The Bill and Rebus.

C4 had none. No non soap drama in the top thirty. Nada. Zilch. Bupkiss.

C5 had loads. But is was all North American.

BBC2 had The Tudors way up there, but at 2 and a half mill it is hardly setting the world on fire. Shame, because dodgy fx's aside I quite like it. Sam Neil is always watchable and I have fun thinking back to my 'A' level history trying to work out that the Cromwell guy isn't Oliver Cromwell and Thomas Moore isn't Thomas A'Becket. Though at least one of them is definitely for the chop if my memory serves me right.

Fanny Hill is now doing well on the BBC4 I believe, which just goes to show that sex sells. Gonna get me that Andrew Davies to write a porn flick. Can't lose. I kid, he is extraordinarly good at adapting literary material. Didn't he also do Moll Flanders [okay and just about every other period piece on TV] but it had the genius marketing tag of 18th Century Fox! Fanny Hill pretty much says what it does on the tin.

Maybe The Tudors needs some similar marketing tag to kick start an audience. My own humble submission would be The Tudors - How to Get Ahead in Marriage.
Or for the younger set - Henry had six and two gave head!

[Note to BBC publicity dept. I am available every second Tuesday. Wait til you hear my ideas for Strictly Come Dancing]

I digress. The Winter schedules are upon us. And while nothing is as yet is firing it's way on to my screen, I am ever optimistic that the Beeb can do better than Casualty and Holby at 12 and 13. I've got to be.