Kelly, Benji and Steven bring you up to speed with what they've been watching as well as some hot tips for Whale and The Late Late Toy Show.
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00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - Hello and welcome to Screen Babble,
00:14 your guide to what to watch.
00:16 We'll be shooting into hours and hours of TV
00:19 so we can tell you what you need to be switching on
00:21 and what's to be avoided.
00:22 I'm your host, Kelly Crichton,
00:24 and as ever, our resident TV critics,
00:25 Stephen Ross and Benji Jackson are here.
00:29 Hello.
00:30 - Hello.
00:31 - Remember, you want, if you want, if you, oh God.
00:33 Remember, if you want to see our faces,
00:36 you can head over to Freeview channel 276 Shots,
00:38 which is brought to you by a network of journalists
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00:42 at the heart of your community.
00:44 You'll find true crime, football news and analysis,
00:47 plus coverage of lifestyle, TV film, and much more.
00:50 If you haven't tuned in before,
00:51 each week we'll be talking about something we're watching.
00:54 No, each week we'll be chatting about what we're watching,
00:58 as well as looking more closely at a new programme
00:59 or something making the headlines in the deep dive.
01:02 This week, Stephen tells us about new documentary, "Whale".
01:05 Finally, we go back to the future
01:07 to tell you about a programme you may have missed
01:09 when it first aired or streamed.
01:10 This week, Benji will be sharing his thoughts
01:12 with us on "Mr. Show", programme I certainly wasn't aware of,
01:16 so I hope everyone will stay tuned for that.
01:18 But first, we'd like to talk about
01:20 what everyone's been watching recently.
01:21 So Stephen, you want to go first?
01:23 - Yeah, absolutely.
01:26 I have been watching "The Smoking Room",
01:30 which is a really stripped back kitchen sink sitcom
01:35 with Robert Webb is sort of the main guy.
01:41 And then there's sort of an ensemble cast
01:44 of lesser knowns as well.
01:46 And it was made in 2004 to 2006, I believe, two seasons.
01:53 And it's set in the smoking room at a workplace
01:58 that is just like identified as some office job workplace,
02:03 but they never go into detail about what they do.
02:06 There's a rule in the smoking room that we don't talk shop.
02:09 So we don't hear anything about the job.
02:12 And it's just coworkers and people
02:17 that don't really work together,
02:18 but work in the same building
02:19 that meet in the smoking room.
02:21 Every episode is set entirely in this one room
02:24 and they just have like relatively funny conversations.
02:28 It's a bit like sort of "Royal Family",
02:30 but a lot better in my opinion.
02:32 I never got into "Royal Family".
02:34 This is very subtly funny.
02:39 And I'd never sort of heard of it
02:43 before I only came across it
02:44 'cause I was looking into Robert Webb's sort of back catalog.
02:49 And yeah, it was really interesting.
02:53 And it was so like a lovely little time capsule.
02:57 It was so early 2000s.
02:59 I mean, even the fact that the year
03:02 after the show got canceled,
03:04 smoking in public in the UK was banned.
03:07 So the series would have sort of had to have ended anyway.
03:11 It was sort of like, I guess the dying gasps
03:15 of that very specific workplace culture.
03:18 And it was so interesting to sort of go back in time to it.
03:21 But very, very funny.
03:26 They just talk about, you know,
03:29 the philosophies of life in a really
03:33 sort of blue collar kind of way.
03:36 And there's a character who-
03:40 - Nice and cheap to make as well.
03:42 - Yeah, must've cost about, you know,
03:44 a thousand pound an episode or something.
03:46 It was, yeah, it was also coming out
03:49 just as Robert Webb was getting big off "Peep Show" as well.
03:51 So I don't think it was ever really fit to last very long,
03:55 but it's sort of like "The Office,"
03:57 you know, two and done sort of thing.
03:59 And there was a Christmas special as well.
04:02 So if people are thinking of the Christmas specials,
04:05 and I will talk about that more next week,
04:07 but it's got a very nice little
04:09 Christmas special episode as well.
04:11 And you can watch, unfortunately,
04:14 it's not free to watch anywhere.
04:16 You'd have to buy them on Amazon or Apple TV,
04:18 but worth a look, definitely.
04:21 - Okay, brilliant.
04:24 Thank you, Stephen.
04:25 What about you, Benji?
04:26 What's been on your telly this week?
04:28 - Oh, finally managed to catch up
04:30 with "Monarch Legacy of Monsters."
04:32 - Oh, yay.
04:33 - Ever since I arrived at Screen Babble,
04:35 I have just constantly been on it there.
04:38 And I enjoy it.
04:39 I mean, I'm a big Kaiju, Godzilla fan to begin with anyway.
04:43 I mean, you know, look at me, I'm a nerd.
04:46 (laughing)
04:46 But I'm also a big fan of Kurt Russell.
04:51 Me and my friends sometimes get together
04:53 and do like a marathon of Kurt Russell movies
04:55 we call Kurt Russell Mania.
04:57 And I like it because it traverses back and forth in time.
05:04 So Kurt Russell is the older version of his character,
05:08 who is a captain, who knows all about the,
05:12 well, they're not called Kaiju,
05:14 they're called Titans in the Monsterverse.
05:17 But it goes back to a younger version of him
05:20 discovering when the Titans were,
05:23 when they first discovered the Titans
05:26 through the company called Monarch.
05:28 But his younger version is played by another Russell
05:31 that I quite like, Wyatt Russell,
05:33 which many might recall was the,
05:36 he's gone on to become US Patriot
05:38 after appearing as the alternative Captain America
05:41 in the Falcon and Winter Soldier series on Disney+.
05:45 - Okay.
05:46 - But let's be honest,
05:47 we're here to see big meaty monsters
05:50 slapping against big meaty monsters.
05:52 It's on Apple TV+ and it's absolutely brilliant.
05:56 Or, you know, being a wrestling fan,
05:58 it just ticks all the boxes.
06:00 Monsters, check.
06:01 Fighting each other, check.
06:03 Kurt Russell and his son, check.
06:05 We're a Goldie Hawn away from just completely
06:08 having a royal flush when it comes to that show.
06:10 - I love it.
06:11 - Do check it out, do check it out.
06:13 - Big 80s nostalgia there as well.
06:15 So, a series, how many episodes is it?
06:20 - I believe it's gonna be about six.
06:22 - Okay.
06:23 - We're coming up to the third now.
06:25 - Are they already dropping them weekly?
06:27 - Yeah, they will drop them weekly on Apple TV+.
06:30 So rather than binging it,
06:32 'cause you might get that, I don't know,
06:35 Titan fatigue, like superhero fatigue,
06:37 but with like Godzilla monsters.
06:39 - Titan fatigue.
06:40 - So, and like I've mentioned before,
06:42 I enjoy episodic viewing.
06:44 I like looking forward to something week after week.
06:46 And yeah, you can overindulge sometimes
06:50 when it comes to monster movies, I've been told.
06:54 So it's great that it's episodic.
06:57 - Better space it out.
06:58 Okay, cool.
06:59 Right, I've been watching not an awful lot of new stuff,
07:03 but I have continued to watch, to my shame,
07:06 I'm a celebrity, get me out of here.
07:07 Have you been watching it, Benji, or did you give it up?
07:09 - I've been watching bits and pieces of it.
07:11 I mean, I'm still, yeah, I'm still on the fence about it.
07:16 When people ask me, are you still watching it?
07:19 I say for work purposes, and Stephen, I apologize now,
07:24 little part of me kind of is really enjoying it,
07:27 just the drama.
07:29 Maybe 'cause I don't have enough drama in my home life,
07:32 so I need it on TV.
07:33 - You get sucked in, Benji, that's the thing,
07:35 you get sucked in, you know.
07:36 - It's like people that don't like
07:38 World Cup sporting competitions,
07:40 but they get swooped in by the hysteria.
07:43 - And next thing you're supporting some random team
07:45 because some player did something amazing, or you know.
07:48 - Or you end up voting Nigel Farage
07:50 when he goes back into politics,
07:51 that's the issue that we might find ourselves in.
07:53 - Oh my God, I'm not sure about that, but so yeah.
07:58 So I'm not fully up to date with it,
08:01 but I have been continuing with it.
08:04 And do you know what, it's not that interesting this year.
08:09 Like there's no major bust ups as of yet,
08:14 there's been a few sort of fallings out,
08:16 they seem to be treating each other a little bit better.
08:18 Nigel Farage is just like, he's just a machine,
08:21 he just gets up every morning before everybody else
08:24 does his daily routine, you know.
08:27 It's like he's somebody who's been in the army or something,
08:29 he feels like he's a little bit, you know,
08:31 sort of, I don't know, regimental.
08:35 And I mean, the big news I suppose this week
08:38 was that Grace Dent walked out for medical reasons,
08:43 we don't really know anything beyond that.
08:45 They didn't really show very much of it
08:47 on the episodes that featured, you know,
08:50 we didn't see her complaining or anything happening to her.
08:53 So question mark, question mark, question mark.
08:56 But I think you could see she was not,
09:00 she was due to do a trial
09:01 and I think she just couldn't face it
09:03 and for whatever reason.
09:04 So that was that.
09:06 And we must be too far off the first eviction, but--
09:09 - This weekend actually, day or two's time.
09:13 - Yeah, but Sam got made camp, leader of the camp
09:17 or king of the camp or whatever.
09:18 And that was, oh my God, his reaction.
09:20 It was like he'd won the lottery.
09:22 It was just hilarious.
09:25 But anyway, yeah, so that's,
09:28 I'm starting to get me out of here,
09:29 a couple more weeks left in that,
09:31 but I'm slowly, I am slowly losing interest,
09:35 I have to say.
09:36 And the other thing I wanted to tell you both about
09:41 is something I watched at the weekend with my kids.
09:44 It's called the Late Late Toy Show.
09:46 Stephen, did I tell you about this last year?
09:48 Do you recall?
09:49 - I do not.
09:51 - So in Ireland, there is the longest,
09:55 you may have heard of it,
09:56 the longest running chat show in the world.
09:59 It's called the Late Late Show.
10:00 It's on a Friday night and it recently changed hosts.
10:05 So Patrick Kielty is the current host,
10:08 but every Christmas, about a month before Christmas,
10:12 I was a child, which is quite a few years,
10:14 the host was called the Late Late Toy Show.
10:16 And essentially what it was originally
10:17 was an opportunity for toy makers
10:20 and people in the publishing industry
10:24 and all that kind of stuff to come in
10:26 and show off their wares, give people idea,
10:29 presents for children or for Santa, et cetera.
10:32 And what it's grown into is kind of an all singing,
10:35 all dancing spectacular,
10:37 there literally is like musical numbers,
10:39 huge staging and settings,
10:41 also have opportunities for kids
10:45 to meet heroes and things like that.
10:47 And it is an absolute part
10:49 of the cultural calendar in Ireland.
10:52 And it's very cute.
10:55 And my only gripe about it is it starts at half past nine
10:58 and it finishes at midnight.
10:59 You know what, small children are awake at this time.
11:02 It's total madness.
11:04 I wish they'd like just move it for that one slot
11:06 every year to like 6 p.m. or whatever.
11:09 But it's really worth checking out
11:12 for anybody who's got kids,
11:13 you can download the RTE player and it's on there.
11:17 It's called the Late Late Toy Show.
11:18 And actually it does that functional thing
11:19 of giving you ideas for gifts as well.
11:22 So Ryan Tupperdy, the last few years,
11:25 it had turned into a slightly different thing.
11:27 There wasn't very many toys being reviewed, maybe,
11:30 you know, whereas this year they kind of seemed
11:32 to go back to their, go back to basics
11:35 and they did quite a lot of that.
11:37 So that was lovely.
11:38 So big tip and my kids really enjoyed it
11:40 and it's all a little bit magical
11:42 and it gets you in the festive mood.
11:43 So there you go.
11:44 And in part two, we're going to talk about Mr. Show
11:47 and whale or the whale, whale, whale.
11:51 (upbeat music)
11:53 - Moving along, Stephen, new Sky documentary,
12:08 Whale, tell us all about this.
12:10 - Okay.
12:12 Whale with Steve Bapshaw, not the whale with...
12:17 Oh (beep)
12:18 - Brendan Fraser. - Brendan Fraser.
12:19 - Do you want to try that one again?
12:20 Do you want to try that one again, dude?
12:22 It was good.
12:23 - Yeah, Whale with Steve Bapshaw,
12:26 not the whale with Brendan Fraser.
12:28 This is a Sky Nature documentary series about whales,
12:34 as the title probably suggests.
12:36 Steve Bapshaw is, I mean, I know him as the guy
12:41 from Deadly 60, that's probably still
12:42 the biggest thing he did.
12:43 It was either a BBC or CBBC show where he would look
12:47 at deadly animals and sort of yoink them and have a look.
12:52 And you could get like the Deadly 60 top trumps
12:56 and it was a whole thing back in the day.
12:58 Yeah, so he presents this and it's a lot more mature,
13:05 I guess, and for a grown up audience
13:09 in that it's more sciencey and looking at the
13:15 like relationships that whales have between each other
13:19 and how their hierarchies work and their environment.
13:23 And it was quite interesting.
13:25 It's got the, if you just had it on in the background,
13:27 it would sound like any nature documentary series
13:32 like Planet Earth or any sort of Attenborough show.
13:35 And it is very similar, but it's quite nice.
13:39 It's quite a calming series to watch, I guess.
13:44 It's quite relaxed.
13:46 It's about whales.
13:47 So obviously it's nothing too heavy,
13:50 but he does talk quite a bit about the human impact
13:55 on whale populations.
13:57 And I guess things that I'd sort of knew vaguely
14:00 and had heard about, but he's going into a bit more depth
14:04 about sort of the sound, the shipping and plant
14:10 donations for oil exploration and things like this,
14:15 have on whale populations to navigate by sound
14:23 is quite devastating.
14:25 But it's also a bit like, what can you do though?
14:28 Like we're still gonna have shipping.
14:30 So it's just a bit, it's one of those,
14:34 like, oh, that's really bad,
14:35 but I'm gonna have to put that over my mind now
14:37 because it's never gonna stop.
14:39 It was very interesting.
14:42 Like I learned a fair bit about whales.
14:45 It wasn't something I particularly wanted to know more about.
14:47 I wasn't interested in that, but it was very well made
14:50 and it sort of pulled me in.
14:52 And I think it's nice that it's four episodes
14:55 because there's only so much you can say and they don't.
14:59 - Where is it?
15:03 Was it filmed all over the world or?
15:05 - Well, it's hard to tell like the settings,
15:09 but it seems to have been filmed in various
15:12 different ocean locations.
15:14 It's filmed very well.
15:16 I don't know how they got some of the shots they got.
15:17 They must have been incredibly patient
15:20 because I know that when people go like whale sighting,
15:24 you can be out for hours and not see a single one, can you?
15:27 And they're finding like pods of whales and like families
15:31 and they're diving with them.
15:33 And there was a very, very nice moment where,
15:36 and I can't remember where this bit was set,
15:38 where there's this population of whales that have like
15:42 survived the sort of whaling era
15:47 because I think they're like the descendants of the whales
15:53 that would have been hunted.
15:55 And they're now like very friendly
15:57 and they come up to small boats.
15:58 And like, there's a scene where like a mother whale
16:01 is like pushing her child to come up and greet the tourists
16:06 in the boat and like play with them.
16:08 And it was, it's really nice.
16:09 And it shows how sort of intelligent
16:12 these creatures are and Batshell's.
16:14 Batshell's really good.
16:15 He obviously knows his stuff.
16:16 And I love that he's really passionate about it.
16:18 He's a bit sort of, you know, another Steve Irwin.
16:22 'Cause he was a contemporary with him.
16:26 He's sort of carrying that arch now that Irwin's
16:29 been gone a decade or more.
16:32 - It's nice to do a nature documentary.
16:35 We haven't done many of them to be fair
16:36 beyond the obvious ones on Screen Babble.
16:39 My personal memories of whale watching in Kaikoura
16:41 round about your parts, Benji.
16:43 - Oh yeah.
16:45 - Was a really fast boat out into the middle of the ocean.
16:48 We did see a whale.
16:49 It was massively impressive.
16:51 It was also massive, just massive.
16:53 But everybody was so sick.
16:56 The boat, everybody was puking.
16:58 It was like, it was a lot.
17:00 - It is pretty choppy around Kaikoura.
17:01 It is pretty choppy around those waters.
17:03 - And it was, yeah, it was a fabulous trip actually.
17:06 But my other predominant memory of that trip
17:10 was when we were back on dry land,
17:12 being in bed at night and a tsunami alert going out.
17:16 (laughing)
17:18 And I remember just being like,
17:19 oh God, when does this ever stop?
17:22 'Cause we'd just come from Southeast Asia
17:24 and we'd experienced quite a lot.
17:26 It was just after there'd been another incident
17:29 there as well.
17:30 And I was just like, I can't, this is too much.
17:32 It's all exhausting.
17:33 But yeah, but no, it was fab.
17:36 It was really nice.
17:36 Beautiful part of the world, obviously, Benji.
17:40 Okay, that's cool.
17:40 So that's on Sky--
17:43 - Sky Nature and now from Sunday the 3rd of December.
17:48 - Lovely.
17:49 And that could be a nice little break
17:50 from festive themed stuff, couldn't it, in December?
17:53 Right, okay, cool.
17:55 Okay, Benji, you're gonna take us back to the future now
17:58 with, oh my God, you know the way sometimes--
18:02 - Mr. Show.
18:03 - I keep-- - That's all right.
18:04 - I keep thinking it's-- - It's a mauling.
18:05 - I keep thinking it's no show for some reason.
18:08 Maybe I feel like that.
18:09 I feel like a no show today.
18:11 - Well, it ended up becoming a no show after four seasons.
18:15 So it's kind of right.
18:17 But no, I have been re-watching Mr. Show,
18:21 which was a HBO sketch comedy
18:24 in the vein of Monty Python's Flying Circus.
18:27 - Okay.
18:28 - It stars Bob Odenkirk,
18:31 who naturally went on to do Breaking Bad Better Call Saul
18:34 and that movie Nobody, which I really enjoyed as well,
18:38 where he played kind of like a--
18:40 - So good. - A deep agent.
18:41 - Yeah, so good.
18:43 - David Cross, who went on to do Arrested Development
18:46 and possibly one of my favorite cringe watches of all time,
18:50 The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret,
18:52 which was on Channel 4.
18:54 But it's interesting because the pair of those,
18:56 so Bob Odenkirk, before Mr. Show,
18:59 was a writer and an actor on a little sitcom
19:04 that only lasted two seasons on Fox in America
19:07 called The Ben Stiller Show.
19:08 And David Cross was also a writer on The Ben Stiller Show.
19:13 Funnily enough, Fox canceled that show.
19:15 And the moment they canceled it,
19:17 it won an Emmy for Outstanding Writing in 1993.
19:19 - Wow, hilarious.
19:21 - So as I discovered, Bob Odenkirk's manager,
19:26 managed to get a two-episode deal with HBO
19:30 based around some of the pilot sketches
19:34 that both Odenkirk and Cross created.
19:37 With that amount of money that they got for two episodes,
19:40 they stretched it out to four episodes
19:42 for the first season.
19:44 - Right.
19:45 - And it's absolutely brilliant.
19:46 It's irreverent, it's quite anarchic at times.
19:51 It's definitely not family viewing whatsoever.
19:54 Some of the sketches, like the Globocorp sketch in particular
19:58 was a standout for me.
20:00 There was one about a anarchic kind of beat poet
20:05 that's trying to defecate on the American flag,
20:07 but can't, so there's all of that going on.
20:11 But it was also a launching pad
20:12 for a lot of big alternative comedians.
20:15 You had Sarah Silverman that appeared in the show.
20:18 Jack Black was a constant in the first two seasons.
20:23 Brian Pesayan, who ended up being a writer
20:26 for the Sarah Silverman show and appearing in it.
20:29 And the voice of SpongeBob SquarePants
20:33 was a prominent main cast member as well,
20:35 Tom Kenny, who was absolutely brilliant in it.
20:38 Now, unfortunately, for some reason,
20:41 Netflix, nor Sky Atlantic decided to pick up the series.
20:45 But thankfully, you can take a look at an armada of clips.
20:50 Please do check out the Globocorp clip on YouTube.
20:54 However, Netflix did commission something
20:57 around the kind of pandemic era called
21:01 With or W, W, Bob and David,
21:06 which is effectively the sequel to Mr. Show.
21:10 It's got pretty much the entire same cast in it.
21:14 It's a short series.
21:15 It's brilliant.
21:17 It kind of plays with the idea of, you know,
21:21 those kind of sketches where they lead you down the garden path
21:24 and then suddenly they deviate and then it goes into another sketch
21:27 but the sketch bleeds into the previous one,
21:30 which is very Python-esque.
21:31 So, yeah, if you can't be bothered going through YouTube
21:35 and looking for the clips of Mr. Show, shame on you for a start.
21:39 But, you know, you can always go onto Netflix
21:42 and catch With Bob and David.
21:43 And please, please do check out Nobody Everybody,
21:47 because it was a fantastic action flick.
21:49 Yeah, Nobody's brilliant.
21:52 That just seemed like a plethora of big names,
21:56 you know, comedy writing names, you know, so lots of...
22:00 Yeah, kind of like how we had the alternative comedy set
22:04 with The Young Ones and The Comic Strip Presents in the 80s.
22:08 It was kind of America's kind of, you know,
22:11 these are alternative comedians that aren't doing Andrew Dice clay jokes.
22:16 -Yeah, yeah, yeah. -And it's brilliant.
22:17 But it can get quite offensive, so...
22:19 -OK, OK. -It's definitely not a safer work job.
22:22 Exactly. OK, good, good, good.
22:24 OK, thank you so much for that, Benji.
22:26 We will be back, I'm excited to say, next week
22:28 with our Christmas What To Watch special episode.
22:31 Yay!
22:32 So you won't actually be here while we've been watching for quite a while,
22:35 which might be a relief to some people, but I hope not.
22:38 So, yes, please do tune in next week for our Christmas What To Watch special
22:42 and look out before then for Stephen's Friday morning Screen Babble,
22:47 where he'll be previewing What To Watch this weekend and beyond.
22:50 If you have any suggestions for what TV we need to get into our lives,
22:52 as always, drop us a line via our social media.
22:55 We'd love for you to rate, review and subscribe to the podcast
22:57 so we can reach as many TV lovers as possible.
23:00 We'll be back next week with Christmas Screen Babble.
23:02 Hooray! Bye!
23:04 Bye!
23:05 (UPBEAT ELECTRONIC MUSIC)
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