The first recording today starts with the end of Finley the Fire Engine.
There’s a trail for Bob The Builder.
Then, an episode of Jackanory Junior – The King of Capri read by Holly Aird.
Media Centre Description: Holly Aird tells the Jeanette Winterson tale of a selfish king and the poor washer-woman he falls in love with.
Recorded from CBeebies on Monday 27th August 2007 17:13
BBC Genome: CBeebies Monday 27th August 2007 17:15
There’s a trail for Big Fun Time. Then Sid imagines some strange animals.
Then the recording finishes with the end of Jakers!
The next recording starts with the end of an episode of Dirt.
There’s another of these short interview segments with CSI crew members, this time Russell Kane interviews Matthew Mungle about his prosthetic work with fake dead bodies.
Then, an episode of House – Histories. Leslie Hope (Teri Bauer off of 24) plays a homeless woman who’s brought in, Wilson consults with Foreman, who thinks she’s faking her symptoms for a warm bed, but Wilson thinks they’re real.
She’s an artist and draws all the time.
Chase and Foreman are examining her when she has an episode and even bites Foreman.
Chase and Foreman have to steal an MRI appointment from another patient to get their patient a scan. Cuddy intercepts them, pointing out that their patient has a pin in her arm, and the MRI would have torn it out. So House sends Foreman out to find out where she’s been living, based on the pictures she’s been drawing. He finds a folder full of her pictures, and rather a lot of bats.
Foreman comes back with his pictures, and in the meantime, the pin was removed so she could have an MRI, which showed nothing abnormal in the brain. So House looks at the pictures, and somehow interprets a picture of a desert as representing Philadelphia, and a car accident, and even the date. Because what he’s actually done is checked the serial number on the surgical pin with the database of patient names and identified their Jane Doe as Victoria Madsen, who broke her arm in a car accident two years ago. Her patient history comes just in time to realise that she’s allergic to their current treatment. Then they discover a mass on her ovary. Not cancer but a tuberculoma. Then she starts a high fever.
House is asked by Cuddy to train a couple of students in collecting patient history. They both talk to the same patient and get totally different stories from her about how she damaged her wrist. “Patients lie, but usually only one lie at a time.”
House goes to talk to the patient. He’s wearing a badge in the shape of a bird, and holding a clipboard with a ferris wheel on it. “What brings you to the hospital?” “My wrist.” “How did that happen?” “I was riding the Ferris Wheel, and this huge seagull flew right at me.” “How horrifying.” “I swung my arm at the bird, but I hit the Ferris Wheel.” The patient has “Korsakoff Syndrome. Her brain is damaged by excessive drinking or insufficient diet, pretty obviously the latter. She has no new memories, no new ideas, can’t even process that idea. So her brain fills the gaps as best it can using visual clues. The horse on your shirt led her to a riding accident. And the surf scene on your clipboard led her to the beach.”
Victoria steals some clothes and leaves the hospital, right when they think she has meningitis. A cop brings her in. Her heart rate is over 150, another symptom which doesn’t make sense. So House talks to the cop who brought her in who eventually tells him that he tasered her, twice.
This gives House another symptom. Localised numbness. And then he demonstrates to Foreman that he has the same numbness where Victoria bit him. Added to the other symptoms, this leads to a diagnosis of rabies, possibly from the bats who lived in her cardboard box.
Foreman has his rabies shot, then he wants to atone for thinking she was just faking it, by finding the “James” she writes and draws about. Wilson goes with him, and they go to the empty house where she was found at the start. They find a sealed room, which has pictures and documents. Her husband isn’t James, it’s Paul Furia, who she writes about as Mr Fury. Then they find pictures of a child. James. And Wilson finds a cutting about her car crash. Her husband and child were killed, but she survived.
Foreman goes to Victoria. At this point she’s close to death, and doesn’t know who it is. “James” she says. Foreman says “No, it’s Paul.” “Paul… You’ve come to take me.” “No. I’ve come to forgive you.” She gasps. He tells her “It wasn’t your fault.”
It’s a desperately sad ending, and fairly untypical for a House story.
Media Centre Description: US hospital drama about a maverick, anti-social New Jersey doctor. House and the team treat a homeless woman whose worsening symptoms and unknown identity prove to be a complex mystery.
Recorded from Five US on Monday 27th August 2007 21:58
After this, there’s the start of an episode of CSI: Miami.
The next recording starts with the end of a Proms concert, which has a solo violinist up behind the orchestra, And she appears to be playing the theme tune to Blake’s 7. But no, she’s playing the middle part of Music, John Miles’ song which is the final song in Michael Ball’s Prom. See later for more details, but I should say now that I sometimes watch these recordings our of order, so I have already watched the later recording, and was very disappointed that it cut off before the concert finished. So I’m delighted that this recording has most of what I missed, including violinist Izzy Johnston’s only appearance. Ball is having so much fun that the concert overruns, even before he sings Love Changes Everything as his encore.
There’s a trailer for the Proms. And for Consenting Adults.
Then, another repeat of Life on Mars. I looked at this on a previous showing. This recording, unsurprisingly, cuts off before the end due to Michael Ball having a ball in the Albert Hall.
Media Centre Description: Drama series about Sam Tyler, a detective who suffers a near-fatal car crash and wakes up in what seems to be 1973. Sam is awoken in the middle of the night by a drunk DCI Hunt, who thinks he’s killed someone. While Sam gets to work on proving his colleague’s innocence in the shooting of a local underworld bookie, he is monitored by the stand-in DCI, Frank Morgan, a man intent on doing the internal investigation by the book so thoroughly that Sam can’t help but be impressed.
Recorded from BBC FOUR on Monday 27th August 2007 21:58
BBC Genome: BBC FOUR Monday 27th August 2007 22:00
The next recording is one of my favourite films, but it’s one my wife doesn’t like, due to her antipathy towards Nicholas Cage. It’s Raising Arizona, and I won’t repeat what I said about it before.
The only possible interesting thing about this is that I’ve got two files of this recording, but they have slightly different times on them. It’s because one of them is my usual Windows Media Centre recording, but the other one, judging by the naming system of the file, is a recording that I downloaded from BBC Redux, which was (hopefully still is) an internal system which archives the output of every single BBC Digital channel, broken down into programmes using the data that’s transmitted alongside the video. It was set up by the team at Internet Services (the same team that basically built the original bbc.co.uk systems) and is an amazing resource for anyone working there, as it means that all the output is accessible as it went out. I worked for a bit on a related project that indexed the subtitle information in all the recordings (which had to be done by using OCR on the subtitle images embedded in the video stream because at that point digital subtitles were just like DVD subtitles – effectively two colour bitmaps – and not anything useful like the actual text. It’s possible things have moved on since then.
But as well as working on it, I’d occasionally use Redux to catch up on programmes I’d missed. And even (it seems) programmes I hadn’t missed. I do wonder why I thought I needed this recording. I probably forgot it was on another hard drive, as I hadn’t fully catalogued all my recordings yet.
But I just watched the opening again, and it’s still brilliant. “Ok then.” No extras here, as both recordings are edited.
But I can’t go without acknowledging that the film does contain a small but perfect performance from M. Emmet Walsh, who died a couple of weeks ago. I’m so very, very sorry.
Media Centre Description: Fast-paced farce about an unlikely pair who go to extreme lengths to have a child. When an incompetent robber marries a policewoman, they discover that they are infertile. In order to appease his wife’s longings for a child, the man steals one of a set of quintuplets, but mayhem ensues when the child’s rich father sends a rabbit-shooting bounty hunter after the kidnapper.
Recorded from BBC ONE on Monday 27th August 2007 23:58
BBC Genome: BBC ONE Tuesday 28th August 2007 00:00
The next recording starts with the end of Mark Lawson talks to Bill Oddie, where he talks about not wanting to appear on This Is Your Life. In the opening he turns it down, but he does then appear, reluctantly, having been persuaded off camera.
There’s trails for When The Levees Broke and Proms in the Park.
Then, another episode of Proms on Four 2007 – An Evening with Michael Ball – Prom 58 (the Media Centre metadata spells his name Micahel).
He’s joined for a duet by Alfie Boe. When I saw they were going to do a duet, I knew exactly what they would be singing. It’s The Pearl Fishers duet by Bizet, and incredibly. according to the BBC Proms listing, this was its proms premiere.
In the second half, he’s joined by Laura Michelle Kelly.
During the introduction, there’s some talk about how controversial this Prom is, as musical theatre is somehow not supposed to be proper Proms material. And between songs, Ball makes pointed reference to these criticisms. There’s also veiled reference to his experience at the ENO when they put on a production of Kismet – a musical with music based on themes from Borodin. So I found the Observer review and it’s savage.
Here’s the introduction, where Petroc Trelawney talks to Zoe Martlew and Dominic Seldis, and the interval, where he also talks to Alfie Boe and Andrew Lloyd Webber, while Angellica Bell talks to Michael Ball and Laura Michelle Kelly.
The recording ends just as Ball is starting his final song, a rendition of John Miles’ anthem Music, as I mentioned earlier, and it’s precisely because of the earlier overrun that this recording was cut off. So I’m glad I got the end of it elsewhere.
Media Centre Description: Petroc Trelawney introduces a bank holiday concert featuring star of the West End and Broadway, Michael Ball, as he comes to the Proms for the first time. With special guests and the BBC Concert Orchestra, conducted by Callum McLeod.
Recorded from BBC FOUR on Tuesday 28th August 2007 01:58
BBC Genome: BBC FOUR Tuesday 28th August 2007 02:00
Here’s the ad breaks in House.
Adverts:
- trail: Suburban Shootout
- trail: Numb3rs
- trail: Alex & Emma
- No Reservations in cinemas
- John Frieda Original Shampoo
- Garnier Pure
- Confused.com
- Ocean Finance
- Dettol
- L’Oreal Color Riche
- Staples
- trail: Numb3rs
- trail: Steven Seagal Season
- Dove
- Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training – Nicole Kidman
- Comfort
- L’Oreal Excellence Creme
- Sensodyne
- Vanish
- Pampers
- Atonement in cinemas
- Maybelline Define-A-Lash
- trail: Britain’s Strongest Man
- trail: Fifth Gear/Extraordinary People/Macintyre’s Big Sting
- Staples
- John Frieda Original Shampoo
- Level Crossings
- BT Total Broadband – Kris Marshall
- Rice Krispies Squares
- travelsupermarket.com
- Ty-phoo
- Duracell Plus
- L’Oreal Revitalift – Andie McDowell
- Run Fat Boy Run in cinemas
- trail: Suburban Shootout
- trail: Numb3rs