Trouble brewing in UK tv: Stephen Fry takes on the establishment!

Tim

Tim

Creative Writer
Me and Kevin have had a bit of a disagreement with this one in the past. I think Doctor Who is kids, or at best family programming and some other people are obviously going to argue against this.

But Stephen Fry, if you don't know him you should get acquainted, calls it 'chicken nugget' syndrome basically. Okay in small amounts at certain times. He's taking on the establishment to force them to come up with better programming for adults. Talking about 'fear' and 'tickboxes' he basically states what everyone knows, deep down, even if they won't admit it publicly.

Stephen Fry on Doctor Who

Stephen Fry - One half of a classic comedy duo, the other half, Hugh Laurie, stars in a wonderful show you may have heard of: House. Fry is bi-polar, very intelligent, the reason Twitter exists, and is a household name over here in the UK. He makes the odd mistake depending on his mental state, but is always man enough to apologise when he's in the wrong. He's somewhere up the list of people we wish were Prime Minister here (unfortunately Jeremy Clarkson, of Top Gear, normally takes top position)
 
He didn't specifically mention any, although he did say that Gavin and Stacey, and Little Britain would be held up as good programming by the television networks, although,

He said: "These are very successful. But they are also unbelievably Balkanised.
"They are set into a particular demographic. This is what I mean by television not being the nation's fireplace. ..
"It's just all parcelled and I don't know that there's a solution to it."
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and he did say that:


he was not arguing that all television should be pompous, academic or intellectual.
"But they ought to surprise and to astonish and to make us feel perhaps the possibility there is a world outside that we know nothing of to provoke us, to provoke in the best sense of the word, sometimes in the worst sense," he said.
"To surprise us, to outrage us."
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PS. He is easy to find on Twitter and quite approachable, when he has the time. I am sure in the character count you could say "re:Guardian article on TV, what UK shows do you recommend then?"
 
This popped up on Fry's twitter today:

Phew! Me delivering The Annual #TVLecture @bafta http://bit.ly/TVLecture - proof I never called Dr Who infantile or childish ;)
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He is trying to point out that slipping two sentence fragments together is a bad thing to do when quoting someone. if you read the original piece I pointed to, you will say his mentioning post watershed tv is becoming infantilised, but the later subject of Doctor Who is to be separated from this.

I think the "Phew!" is probably after a lot of rage from people reading the badly quoted article and slamming him for what the reporters turned his words into.

That's not to say still that Doctor Who and Merlin are not for kids, or families at best :) He still obviously maintains they are not "adult" programming as he sees it. Or how I see it.
 
It appears it is catching!

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Are you too old to watch Doctor Who?

Sunday, 20 June 2010 John Howell

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Recently I've begun to ask myself whether I'm too old to be a Doctor Who fan. Have I been suckered into watching a kids show? Is watching Doctor Who well into your 40s something you should be embarrassed to admit in public? Secretly I believe even my wife thinks that I'm watching a show aimed at kids and have let my viewing standards drop considerably
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The thing is with Dr Who it`s one of those things you grow out of , you know like playing with toy soldiers or using a twig for a machine gun .
Yes Dr. Who is for children but sometimes when I pick up my power drill I do tend to shoot imagenery soldiers now and again .

Oh ! and as for hiding behind the sofa while Dr. Who was on in the late 60s , well I was oneof them :D
 
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