02-06-2005, 11:07 AM
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Stan The Man wrote:
In article , Sacha
wrote:
On 2/6/05 0:52, in article
,
"Janet Baraclough" wrote:
The message
from Sacha contains these
words:
My daughter in law braved the crowds - her first visit and she
*loved* it, so I'll ask her if she happened to spot it. I'm
sure
it would have been mentioned, though.
Did anyone else think the BBC's TV coverage of Chelsea was dire,
again? Why won't they show us the actual show, in detail?
We don't have digital TV, which is the only place they offered "a
tour of each garden". For those of us paying full license whack
for
analogue alone, over six days we saw the same bit of the same
garden over and over again ( a spiral path), some outdoor rooms
apparently without plants, a load of non-garden guff from Jenny
Bond and the endless excruciating talking-heads adolescent
shoving
and pushing between Charlie and Diarmuid, or Diarmuid and Alan,
with leaden repartee. YAWN. Plus the usual whirl of computer
graphics, silly angles, out of focus plants without names, etc
:-(
Dire is the word. It was awful - again. We were heartily sick of
the 'personality puffing' that went on, day in, day out. Chelsea
Flower Show is about plants, gardens and those who design the
gardens, to some extent. It is NOT about Alan Titchmarsh and
Diarmuid Gavin, Jennie Bond and Rachel de Thame. And yet again,
no
names of plants on the screen most of the time. Why can't the BBC
employ someone who knows about gardening to direct gardening
programmes? If they did, they would realise that passionate
gardeners want to know what the name of a plant IS, so that they
can
find it or discuss it with those who have it! (snip)
It has certainly been dumbed down to boost the prime time audiences
but in terms of the gardening universe, that might help to attract
new
recruits to the hobby. But Diarmuid Gavin is so ill at ease, so
unnatural and so unintelligible that many would switch off I guess.
But technically I thought the coverage was much superior to last
year's, with better editing, better transitions and better
handovers.
The traditional Chelsea trick of having a presenter momentarily
static
before walking into shot on cue was thankfully hard to spot this
time.
Strange, though, this perpetual telly misconception that we are more
interested in people than in the subject-matter. I mean, what was the
point of pouring a few drinks into Terry Wogan and then getting him
to tell us he wasn't remotely interested in gardening? (In fact, what
on earth was he even _doing_ at the show?) Yes, Titchmarsh on his own
would have done it better -- loved his royal gardens, for example.
They treat sport with much more concentration and respect: I suppose
gardening is done by the "lifestyle" department, where evanescent
fluff is the aim. Maybe they should hand it over to a natural history
team, or even the sports crowd, who are actually interested in their
subjects.
--
Mike.
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