星期二 [ 2010-1-19 17:58:35 | watches2009 ]   Magpie can still steal the show鈥TV DVDs Byline: Tom Cox I was a little young to be fully cognisant of Magpie during its original ITV run, between 1969 and 1980. However, having watched the somewhat random Magpie: Twelve Editions Of The Popular Kids' Magazine Programme (Network,. [pounds sterling]19.56 inc p& p 01634 832789, out tomorrow)****, I can now add it to a list of cultural landmarks that make me envious of people half a generation older than me. Magpie was kind of Blue Peter for future stoner rock fans - presented not, like Blue Peter, by your schoolteachers, but by your parents' cool friends who you wished were your Fashion Set parents. Foremost among these friends is the frizzy-haired Mick Robertson, who might look like he's been plucked from the starting West Ham line-up of the 1976 to 1977 season, but is, in fact, the thinking woman's sensitive Seventies dreamboat. 'That's really pretty, really *** smashing,' he tells a wan lady who paints longboats, looking gently into her eyes and appearing to forget he's on TV. Magpie's world is a carefree, hugely attractive one which, amid its items about plough shows and stray cats, throws up a surprising scattering of interesting facts at its viewer, and an idyllic vision of a slower-moving past. Robin Hood Series 3 (12, 2 Entertain,. Tiffany Flower Ring [pounds sterling]39.14 inc p& p, out tomorrow)** comes straight off the same colourblind Dark-to-Middle-Ages conveyor belt as the BBC's recent Merlin. This is a Stock, Aitken and Waterman kind of folklore, with a hero you can't quite tell if you're supposed to hate as much as you do. As a malevolent Sheriff Of Nottingham, Keith Allen could sleep through this and still be the best thing about it, but that is less a mark of the brilliance of his performance and more of the goons who surround him. One only has to watch five minutes of the first series of Blackadder Remastered - The Ultimate Edition (15, 2 Entertain,. [pounds sterling] 56.75, out now) *****, to realise just what a vanilla retelling of British history Robin Hood's is. Almost a decade after last watching it, I was pleased to rediscover how weirdly chilling it can be and the clear, undeniable love for British history it shows as it goes about sharply lampooning it. It is not such a bad thing as some might imagine that lines such as 'It worries me not a jot that you dress like a parrot and talk like a plate of beans negotiating their way out of a cow's digestive system,' gave a generation of distracted State schoolchildren - including me - their sole introduction to the Georgian era. Tom Cox Other articles: http://www.autoport.com.cn/Blog/View/?519 http://www.wangqing.cc/Blog/View/?1754 浏览(208) | 回复(0) |