Tag Archives: TV shows

2013 ➤ Gary Kemp’s video message for posterity on TV this Saturday

Dublin O2, Reformation Tour, Spandau Ballet reunion

Afternoon sound check at Dublin’s O2: Spandau Ballet on stage together in 2009 for the first time in two decades – John Keeble, Steve Norman, Tony Hadley and Gary Kemp. At centre, production manager Lars. Photographed © by Shapersofthe80s

❚ SONGWRITER GARY KEMP recalls the 2009-10 Reformation Tour by his pioneering New Romantic band Spandau Ballet, to be screened as a 2 hours 30 mins broadcast on Sky Arts this weekend:

The Reformation Tour was a coming back together I never thought would happen. After years of fighting, this tour taught us that being Spandau Ballet is a thing to be proud of. It turned out to be the best and most successful tour we ever did. If there’s one piece of evidence I’d like to leave for posterity it would be this film.

➢ The Reformation Tour 2009, produced by Scott Millaney –
Sky Arts 1 on Saturday November 9 at 9pm GMT
and again on Sunday at 12pm GMT

➢ Full coverage and review by Shapersofthe80s of Spandau’s reunion concert at the O2 arena in Dublin on October 13, 2009, plus more backstage colour from the UK tour

➢ 2010, Shapersofthe80s with Spandau touring overseas:
“so British, so gracious”

Spandau Ballet, Reformation Tour, 2009, Dublin, Gary Kemp, Tony Hadley, reunion

The picture they said could never be taken: a big hug between Spandau Ballet’s Tony Hadley and Gary Kemp during the band’s 2009 comeback concert in Dublin, after duetting With the Pride from 1984. Photographed © by Shapersofthe80s

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1938–2012 ➤ Robert Hughes: the greatest art critic of our time

“I don’t think there’s ever been such a rush towards insignificance in the name of the historical future as we’ve seen in the last 15 years.” — Robert Hughes concluding his TV series The Shock of the New in 1980

➢ War: the 20th-century way to build a new world — Robert Hughes laments the effects of war in The Shock of The New

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➤ That Boy George bio-drama gets a repeat — take it all with a large pinch of salt!

Worried About The Boy, theBlitzClub,Boy George,Daniel Wallace,Douglas Booth,BBC, TV drama

Worried About The Boy: Queens of London’s Blitz Club and pioneers of the 80s New Romantic style, Christopher (Daniel Wallace) and George (Douglas Booth) as fictionalised in the BBC drama

❚ FOR VIEWERS CATCHING UP TONIGHT on the repeat of Worried About The Boy, the BBC’s sanitised drama about Boy George’s teen romancings, read how Shapersofthe80s canvassed the reactions of original Blitz Kids live during its first transmission in 2010.

➢ 2010, Here exclusively at Shapersofthe80s, ex-Blitz Kids give their verdicts on the TV drama Worried About the Boy

➢ 1980, Three key men in Boy George’s life — who was really who in the fictionalised BBC version of real life

➢ View WATB clips at the BBC TV website

GEORGE’S FINAL VERDICT, TWEETED MARCH 8:

Boy George, Twitter, March 2012, Worried About the Boy, BBC drama

Tweeted by Boy George, March 8, 2012

❏ iPAD, TABLET & MOBILE USERS PLEASE NOTE — You may see only a tiny selection of items from this wide-ranging website about the 1980s, not chosen by the author. To access fuller background features and site index either click on “Standard view” or visit Shapersofthe80s.com on a desktop computer. ➢ Click here to visit a different random item every time you click

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➤ Nathan Barley walks again in Vice’s video serial Dalston Superstars

Dalston Superstars, Vicedotcom, Nathan Barley, video, hipsters,Sam
➢ Click the pic to run the video of Dalston Superstars at Vice.com

❚ IN EPISODE 2 OF DALSTON SUPERSTARS, Vice online’s no-holds-barred East London reality series, Sam, Anna, Maeve, Vee and Stefan try to heal the wounds after last week’s nightclub bust up. Maybe a night out will help? Unlikely, with Dalston’s numero uno sex vixen, Holly Wood, back on the scene. She’s got eyes for Sam — bad luck, Anna!

Dalston Superstars, Vicedotcom, Nathan Barley, video, hipsters✰ Maeve learns from Stefan what a Yoko is.

✰ Sam scores a job as a cool-spotter — “I’m not here to make friends.”

✰ “Holly Wood thinks she is Courtney Love circa 94 but she’s actually more like Courtney Love circa 2010.”

✰ “When you come back from LA it’s sort of like you come back from a sauna”

✰ “Tell me what happened with Jared Leto” — “We were tweeting together so that’s like having a thing.”

✰ Anna stages a tantrum and wins the accolade “badass”.

[No scriptwriter gets an onscreen credit but all words and images above are
© 2011 Vice Media Inc]

➢ Catch up with Dalston Superstars, Episode One — “cool parties, cool people” and a fingerboard skate park

Dalston Superstars, Vicedotcom, Nathan Barley, video, hipsters,Stefan, Maeve

Dalston Superstars: Stefan and Maeve networking f2f in hipster London

❏ Subcultural decryption: Dalston is the area of east London that UK hipsters regard as, like, paradise. Unless they live a mile away in Shoreditch, then Shoreditch.

❏ Subcultural analogy: Nathan Barley was a UK television series featuring hipster role models for Dalston Superstars, like, six years ago

TBH, THE #COMMENTS AT VICE ARE
BETTER THAN THE SCRIPT

❏ “I hope this is a joke because as a joke it’s funny.”

❏ “Hipsters mocking hipsters is like Dawn French mocking fats. Doesn’t work.”

❏ “It’s like, funny thinking it’s not funny, because it’s like funny to like, not realise that it’s funny, but then also it’s not funny but it’s funny to pretend it’s not funny like it is funny, even though it isn’t.”

❏ “Stupid people think it’s Cool. Smart people think it’s a joke: also Cool.”

❏ “ ‘Realness’ is particularly hard to put your finger on.”

❏ “Fashankers ridiculing Fashankers… like double irony… or something.”

❏ “They all need a good wash and for someone to tell them they’re not unique, they’re clones of each other in different colour thriftwear.”

❏ “Sam has perfected the ‘confused gormless stare’. Robert Pattinson will be so pissed.”

❏ “This is not real, blatantly — why do people post serious comments on this?”

❏ “This is the funniest and the saddest thing ever. Funny because it’s hyperbole but sad because it’s only slightly exaggerated.”

❏ “Are these real humans?”

❏ Either that or it’s hashtag fail.

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➤ Fire up the Lada! Gene Hunt is off to Moscow in British TV exports boom

Life on Mars, Philip Glenister , Gene Hunt , John Sim, television series,UK TV exports,

The original UK version of the 70s-set British police series Life on Mars: Philip Glenister as Gene Hunt and John Sim as Sam Tyler, right (BBC)

➢ Today’s Guardian reports that the British TV export industry now brings in more than £1.4bn annually…

NUMBER CRUNCHER
❚ Last year sales of UK programmes and format ideas generated revenues of £1.4bn, up from £1.3bn in 2009
❚ North America represented 42% of total UK export revenue in 2010, with Europe 31% and the rest of the world 27%
❚ Sales to Canada rose from £61m to £73m in the year to 2010, a 20% increase
❚ Revenue from ready-to-screen TV sold abroad in 2010 raised £657m, up 15%
[UK Television Exports Survey]

THE CATCHPHRASE ‘Fire up the Lada’ could soon be sweeping Russia. The BBC has licensed the hit TV series Life on Mars, which turned actor Philip Glenister’s politically incorrect DCI Gene Hunt into one of the nation’s best loved characters, to be set in the former Soviet Union and the action relocated from 1970s Manchester to communist Moscow.

The BBC’s announcement comes as figures from the UK Television Exports Survey show that the world’s appetite for British television is booming. The success of formats such as Strictly Come Dancing and The X Factor, as well as the dramas Downton Abbey and Sherlock, have led to a 13% rise in export revenues to more than £1.4bn in the past year… /continued at Guardian online

Life on Mars, Jason O’Mara , Harvey Keitel, US TV series,

Next stop, Moscow: The US version of Life on Mars, starred Jason O’Mara as Sam Tyler and Harvey Keitel as a quieter Gene Hunt (photography: FX)

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