Over-produced TV shows

I tend to only watch BBC4 these days. Often find myself falling asleep part way through a programme only to wake up and catch it being repeated at 2 in the morning. was fascinated by the programme about electricity the other night. Didn't understand much of it but it made me remember how fascinated I was by the inside of a television set when I was a child; the valves in particular were a sourse of delight.

We used to be capable of producing riveting documentary programmes without ever-present broiler music -- watch Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man for example -- or think back to A.J.P. Taylor's history lectures - a blank background, a little man who walked on, stood in front of the camera and talked - and fascinated and intrigued by sheer ability and knowledge.

Full marks to the recent Mary Beard programmes on Rome, by the way.

Remember when Horizon was a good science programme...? Those were the days!

SOoooo agree with you all.Whenever possible e.g.Young Musician.I watch on Catchup so that I can whizz through the hype and just watch the actual performance.
'Divine Women'was also spoiled for me.I find Bettany Hughes irritating as a presenter -the way she waves her arms about.
Shall we set up a GN viewing panel.

I do so agree with the tenor of this thread. The recent Bettany Hughes series about women in religion was absolutely fascinating, but almost unwatchable because it had been so jazzed up and tecnnicoloured. White Heat was spoiled for me by those trendy close-ups of people's eyes or mouths, told you nothing and looked ugly.

One thing I also feel strongly about is the business of credits, which are whizzed through, in tiny print, and often squashed into half the screen. We have a wonderful pool of remarkable actors in this country, but much as we all love them some of us can't always remember their names, but want to be able to identify them at the end of a play. This also applies to films, in spades. The stars get credited in decent sized type, but then the complete cast list scrolls through at a rate of knots, and the familiar face, glimpsed in a small part, is impossible to identify. Then, to infuriate one even more, they slow up again for endless lists of obscure technicians. Ok, they deserve their credits, but NOT at the expense of the actors, who we really care about.

The thing that drives me to distraction is the persistent use of out-of-focus camera shots. Why cameramen seem to think that all backgrounds have to be blurred out of all recognition is beyond me. When The Masters golf tournament was on recently, they had a shot where the background (which would have been quite scenic) was completely out of focus and the only thing in focus was the trunk of a pine tree! Very interesting. I've seen it done in a lot of television documentaries too.

Totally agree Mishap Another thing that I have noticed also is how long the lists of credits have become!! A programme used to take about a score of people to make but now it appears that double of that are required.

My daughter works in the television industry, although not at the 'creative' end and she also has been complaining that when it comes to television production the inmates are beginning to run the assylum and that more and more programmes, drama as well as factual, are becoming unwatchable because the base material always has to be hotted up, turned into a chase or a crisis or centred around a hot totty, with added music, visual effects and the constant repeating of the same little bit of film to move the subject on. The result is television that is just mindlessly boring.

I have always been a very selective viewer. I cannot stand being in a room with the television flickering and babbling in the background, but now even if I see a really interesting programme in the tv listings I rarely bother to watch it because my daughter, whose job requires her to watch a lot of tv quite often rings me up in advance and warns me that a programmes she thinks I will want to watch is likely to prove a deep disappointment and if I do watch it she is almost always proved right.

The potters wheel always stopped just as the pot was about to collapse! My favourite was the swan.

I second what you have both said re music and visaul special effects. I hate trailers, they are like commercials and not as entertaining as some of them and, as you say, everything is done to death.
Bring back the Test Card - and do you remember watching the potter's wheel going round?

I totally agree Mishap! They should issue a migraine alert warning!
Another aspect of over production which has me reaching for the remote is loud music which almost drowns out the dialogue. They have to use a different piece of music for each tiny section which sort of has some tiny relevance to the subject, as if we need further clarification. And often it gathers momentum, getting louder and more dramatic (as in the programme Coast for example) For crying out loud! Why don't they give it a rest and just let us watch and engage? Documentaries on French tv are subtle and quietly informative. British programme makers should watch them and learn.
And another thing! Why does the Beeb insist on running the same programme trailers over and over for days/weeks until we could scream? Guaranteed to make me avoid said programmes!