BBC One – The Orbital

I was introduced to New Blood by the Metro, promising a fantastic foray from Anthony Horowitz into the gritty side of London's policing and fraud investigation. Once a friend from the capital mentioned the show and its greatness, I knew I had to 'tune in' and find out for myself. I use 'tune in' in the figurative sense because the first I heard of the show was as a box set on BBC iPlayer, not realising it had a prime time slot on BBC One. The way this works is that the series is made up of three cases, each consisting of two episodes (except the first which has three instalments), and released on a case by case basis. The episodes are also aired weekly over seven weeks on BBC One on Thursday evenings. A strange idea, some might think, considering that the episodes are already available ...

Discourses in the public media don’t usually revolve around the way television looks or sounds, musically or otherwise. All things considered, such a state of affairs is pretty bizarre. At the end of an average working week it can be guaranteed that a sizeable proportion of the populus will be enjoying the companionship of their sets, or torpidly watching catch-up services on their iPads or laptops, the more likely option for those under 35. In other words most people divest a significant proportion of their free time to looking at the stuff. In part, this can be attributed to TV’s trenchant position as an inherently narrative-driven medium. Increasingly eulogised as the definitive apparatus for telling gripping yarns, TV over the past few years seems to be in the state of receiving tri...

Tag: BBC One

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