4oD over Christmas*

As I mentioned already I spent most of yesterday putting together the pages on 4oD for the Christmas break. So do you promote the Catch Up stuff that's on telly or the huge amount of archive that we've just added - what will people want? You run through the different scenarios of how people's TV consumption changes over Christmas alongside questions of whether they'll have broadband access and the like. I had an argument with nice guy Charlie, the 4oD marketing guy, about the rates of broadband penetration in the UK ("Will people have broadband access if they're at their parents?"). The head of new media operations overheard us bickering and suggested as it was past 6pm on the channel's last working day maybe we should just head home. Anyway, I've gone for promoting the archive up to Boxing day and after that it's the four free series of Shameless on 4oD in anticipation of the new series that starts 1 January.

Back in the day when there were only three channels people used to complain about the number of repeats. Now we have whole channels that are effectively the repackaging of repeats (any channel with the word 'gold' in the title). I guess the other way of looking at video-on-demand services is that they're just repeats on demand or repeats that you missed the first time around. Happy Christmas.


* The same entry has already appeared 5 minutes previously on my personal blog. I figure the clever reuse of content (or repeats as we used to call them) is very much in the spirit of the season.

Real quick now: what's on 4oD

Just leaving the office having set up all the publishes on 4oD for Christmas - hours staring into a computer monitor. So right now on 4oD you can watch (for free) all of Shameless (new series starts 1 January 2008); Skins; Peep Show; IT Crowd, Wedding Belles; Mark of Cain: Meet the Natives; The Trial of Tony Blair: China's Stolen Children; Rules of Seduction; My Boyfriend the Sex Tourist; The Lie of the Land and a whole lot more. Basically if it's any good and it was on Channel 4 this year, it's now on 4oD. Phew, I'm knackered.

Technorati claim: please bear with me while I massage my ego

Technorati Profile


Also you can help me out here:

My Boyfriend the Sex Tourist on 4oD

The Guardian has an excellent piece by Julie Bindel about sex tourism which ties in with the Channel 4 programme My Boyfriend the Sex Tourist (4oD link : C4.com link) made by director Monica Garnsey. Garnsey's approach to the subject has been to take the women's point of view as the starting point in examining global sex tourism. The first part looks at "a Venezuelan resort where largely desperate men go to have a holiday with a local prostitutes who act as their girlfriend" while part two looks at prostitution in Thailand and the way that girls use it as a way to support their families.

The Return of Free Archive on 4oD

4oD has started offering a wide range of free TV shows as well as the free 30 day catch up. It currently includes all of Shameless, Peep Show, Father Ted, Black Books, Queer as Folk, Teachers as well as less well-know gems like Lipstick on Your Collar, GBH, Spaced and Desmond's.

If you've already installed 4oD on your PC this link will take you to the list of free shows.
You can find out more about 4oD by following this link.

Sam Wollaston on Make Me a Muslim

In today's Guardian Sam Wollaston gives Make me a Muslim (4oD link: C4.com link)another kicking:

Make Me a Muslim (Channel 4)? It's easy. All you need to do is to follow some simple rules. It's all about banning a few things. No pork then, and ease off on showing human flesh, too, especially in public. Less swearing, please, and no booze. Don't read Nuts, be less British, and less gay, wear the right gear, do more praying and less pole-dancing.

The teaching of the prophet Muhammad? The Koran? Nah! Don't be worrying about any of that. Islam - it's basically a few rules, stuff you can't do. And that's it, a major world religion in a nutshell, job done, sorted by reality TV.

Either that, or this show's a disgrace

You can have your say at the Channel 4 Forums or over at The Guardian's TV Blog

Make me a Muslim

Make Me a Muslim (4oD link: C4.com link) started last night (and continues tonight and tomorrow night).

Gareth McLean in the Guardian's TV page today really doesn't like it with such a ferocity that you can't help but be intrigued. He writes:

It's some feat to be cynical and stupid simultaneously - some of us manage to be both but only at different times - but this exercise in pointlessness achieves it with aplomb. From a glamour model to an obnoxious taxi driver, a bunch of "ordinary" white British folks so stereotypical I'm not convinced they're not being played by actors, are schooled in the ways of Islam, for reasons currently beyond my grasp. They huff and puff predictably at the mentors' demands as the narrator reveals that "lapdancing is unacceptable in Islam". Who knew? Simplistic, contrived and inane.

Aliens on 4oD (with plot spoiler if revealing the end of the film counts as spoiling it)

I was re-watching Aliens (Aliens on 4oD : Aliens review on C4.com) the other day and after all these years it's still one of my all time favourite films. Admittedly first seeing it in 1986 as part of a James Cameron double with Terminator in New York in a smoking cinema where the light of the projector would catch the smokers' fug as it rose from the pit has lent the whole thing a certain romance. Even so Terminator and Aliens is one of the all time classic double bills. While Linda Hamilton's character, Sarah Connor, in Terminator graduates from the slightly ditzy valley girl that we see at the outset of the film into the potential saviour of the world at the end, Sigourney Weaver's Ellen Ripley has already proved that she's more than capable of handling herself in Ridley Scott's Alien. In fact part of the many great pleasures of Aliens is the tension that builds while waiting for it to kick-off, assured by the near certainty that despite her very humanness Ripley can give as good as she can get. It's a testament to the script and Weaver's poise in the role that the whole thing isn't preposterous and yes, perfectly natural that she should rescue the mission, save the girl and kick the alien's ass. A fairer match might have been Ripley vs Alien, Predator and the Terminator. Even then you wouldn't bet against Ripley.


Rent Aliens for £2.99

Ramsay's Curry Nightmares

Gordo heads off to Nottingham to help the Curry Lounge get out of trouble in Kitchen Nightmares (Watch it on 4oD: Ramsay on C4.com). I haven't watched it yet but the resident foodie whose opinion I value highly tells me it's a goodie.

Hollyblokes

One of the mainstays of 4oD is Hollyoaks which makes me wonder if there are lots of people who only ever watch it on 4oD and never see it on regular TV. Presumably the relatively early time slot at 6.30pm must make it hard for many of the show's viewers to catch it every day. At home since we got Sky+ we find ourselves watching fewer and fewer shows in their allocated slots. If it's something one of us wants to see (Heroes or Dexter for example) then it'll get watched the same night, just time-shifted to suit us.

Coming Up: the week of Monday 10 December 2007

TV's usually a bit slow in the lead up to Christmas what with the endless Christmas drinks, parties and hangovers to be negotiated, never mind trying to get hold of a Nintendo Wii and the packed out-of-town shopping centre on a Saturday afternoon - and that's just for the commissioners and schedulers who decide what we get to watch and when. With that in mind here are some of the (mostly continuing) programmes that will feature on 4oD in the next seven days. I'll pick out some free stuff from the archive later in the week if none of that grabs you.

This week's highlights (all are free except for ones marked *):

Monday
Help Me Love my Baby

Tuesday
Property Ladder
Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares
The Secret Millionaire

Wednesday
How to Look Good Naked
The End of the World Cult

Thursday
Murder in Paradise
Without a Trace*
Shameless
Studio 60* (More 4)
Nearly Famous (E4)

Friday
Ugly Betty
First Cut: Being Maxine Carr

Regulars
Countdown
Deal or No Deal
Paul O'Grady
Hollyoaks

New on 4oD: First Cut, Rules of Seduction

If you were in the pub yesterday evening (as was your correspondent) having a post-work pint or just out with your mates then you'd have missed first time director John Farrar's documentary Rules of Seduction shown in the indecently early 7.35pm time slot. An investigation into the techniques of the Pick Up Artist the programme follows PUA wannabee Ian at his first bootcamp where he learns basic skills including maintaining eye contact, getting girls' phone numbers and presumably not coming across as a creepy weirdo. As Time Out said in their preview (not online sadly):

It's a great little film: there are many more experienced directors who could learn a thing or two from Farrar about the construction of a good documentary.

High praise indeed from our friends at Time Out.

New on 4oD: Hitler's Favourite Royal

Hitler's Favourite Royal covers the life of Prince Charles Edward, Queen Victoria's youngest grandchild, who was forced by his Grandmother to take up the Dukedom of Coburg in Germany after a series of unexpected deaths of uncles and cousins. With the advent of World War One, he reluctantly fought for the German army but refused to fight the British. However, once the war was over, he was stripped of his English titles. Disillusioned, he turned to far right politics and became an enthusiastic early supporter of the emergent Nazi Party and unwittingly helped in Hitler's rise to power. The press blurb describes it as the "tragic story of the little English prince who turned Nazi".

In Friday's Guardian Lucy Mangan writes:

Hitler's Favourite Royal (Channel 4) may have made me a monarchist. Not, of course, because of its subject, Prince Leopold Charles Edward - a Nazi-loving blot whom the Windsors have been trying to wipe from the escutcheon for the last 70 years - but because of its inclusion of clips from a 1977 television interview with his sister, Princess Alice. Aged 94, she was a giggling confection of pink hair and delight, recalling idyllic days when she and Charles Edward would visit their grandmother Queen Victoria. "She was awf'lly nice! When we lorst our front teeth, she used to give us a pound!" Once, the princess had lorst three teeth between visits and presented them all proudly to the queen. "'Oh dear!' she said - 'That's very expensive!'" Alice giggled anew, clearly more inclined that her grandmamma to amusement.

New films on 4oD

This week's new additions to film on 4oD include (links go to reviews on the C4 Film site or IMDB):
Little Red Flowers
Jesus of Montreal
The Green Ray
Les Nuits de la Pleine Lune
Vie en Revée des Anges
The Aviator's Wife

Now on 4oD: Wed 5 Dec 2007

Current highlights in 30 Day Free Catch Up include:
Ugly Betty
Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares
How to Look Good Naked
Property Ladder
The Secret Millionaire

Nearly Famous on E4 has been doing well on 4oD. It's like Hollyoaks meets Fame and might help fill the void while waiting for Series 2 of Skins to start in the new year.

Most of the comedy you'll find in archive is now available for free, both for streams and downloading, and that includes every series of Peep Show, Spaced, Father Ted and Black Books.

NB: If you have the 4oD application installed on your PC then the links above will take you straight through to the series page for the programme you're after. If you don't then the link will take you to the 4oD marketing site (Oh joy!) where you can find out more about the service and download the app there. If you know you want the 4oD app without the marketing gumpf then download it here.