TV - American Style

Just watched "28 Days Later". Very good. Jolly well should be as it is made in Grand Britain.

However, I'm not sure what it's running time was in good old GB. But here, it took 3 hours. For example, there were 4 ad breaks in the last 30 minutes. Each break is 4 minutes long. Somewhat kills the suspense.

They show no adverts in the first half hour of these epics and then increase their occurence as the audience is hooked.

Did you know that a standard primetime show (like frasier or king of queens) takes the following form:

Intro (which follows immediately on from previous show)
Break
Opening Credits
Break
7 mins of show
Break
7 mins of show
Break
Final witty one liner + Credits
which then roll into the next show.

They don't put breaks between shows. As people are more likely to get up and do something less boring instead.

One of the more bizarre things is that they run the trailer for the show your watching in the break in the show you're watching.

Some films are so long they're split them over two nights. Like a truly epic movie such as.....Harry Potter (admit it, you were expecting me to say LOTR)

If I ever hear anyone whinge about their TV licence I'll pee on them.

First Story of 2006

ALL TRUE.

We went down into the City for New Years Eve; Outdoor Ice Skating, Hot Dogs and a midnight countdown with 15,000 Canadians. Nice.

Anyway, we were driving home around 1am. All the roads here are at least dual carriageways and Shirley points out that not far in front, a cop car keeps changing lanes. She's very observant like that.

Next thing, a little red car scoots left at the next junction and the cop car (lights now blazing) pounces. Ha! Running a red light, you're nicked mate, kind of thing.

So we, being manx, decide to take the left and have a peek at the poor (probably drunken) sod being chastised. I suggest Shirl pull out the camcorder and capture the typical American scene on tape.

But Canadian cops radio back to base before getting out of their own car, so nothing has yet happened. Boring! So we decide to do a U-turn and drive by again, hoping for better footage. Hmmm, still nothing happening.

However, the copper obviously got some bad news from HQ. As we drive past yet again two other cop cars have miraculously appeared. The wrong-doers car is now lit up with 3 sets of headlights and menaced by 6 Magnum wielding cops, safely shielded by their open doors. Two other cop cars handbrake into position to block off the entry to the road. They are sweet enough to let us pass. Clearly, we are British, and are therefore not involved.

Which means we have to go ROUND THE BLOCK to get more footage of the scene. By which time there are FOURTEEN cop cars, lights blazing, guns-a-toting and we can't get within 50 feet of the scene. Bastards.

We try approaching from another angles, but we start to feel a couple of the cops blocking the road are eyeing us (and our camcorder) suspiciously. We really should get a smaller model.

No idea what the 'crim' was up to. Minor stuff like that doesn't make the news.

We'll miss this place.