It's the Real Deal: The Original Faking It Premieres on BBC America!

Although TLC ran the American knock-off of the acclaimed British reality show Faking It earlier this year, now we're lucky enough to get the real thing starting this Sunday on BBC America. The recent winner (among other awards) of the Rose d' Or, the highest honor for any entertainment program at the prestigious Montreux TV Festival, Faking It has been praised for its concept, its execution, and also -- and this is something you don't usually hear about American reality programs -- the sympathy with which it treats the people who appear on the show. You probably already know the gimmick -- people have a short amount of time to take up a completely different profession and fool the real thing -- but you haven't seen it with British people, who are just plain different than Americans. I think they're just more entertaining in a very basic national kind of way, but you can judge for yourself.

Faking It starts this Sunday on BBC America at 9pm E, with an encore at 12 midnight.

Check out the Faking It website at BBC America.

 
Write to the FCC!

You may or may not know about the drastic and ill-advised rules changes that the FCC is proposing regarding Broadcast Multiple Ownership and Cross-Ownership rules, but as an American citizen you should be up in arms over this development. In a nutshell, the FCC – at least the Republicans members thereof – want to relax the current regulations that keep the huge media conglomerates from becoming even huger media conglomerates by buying more outlets in each broadcast market, and controlling both broadcasting entities and newspapers in those markets.

Look, any of us working in media know that the bottom line has always been profit and plenty of it, and that’s cool. However, for broadcast networks and others in favor of this ruling change to go around crying poor, bemoaning the competition in order to justify this kind of radical regulation change, is unconscionable. The need to shore up their business plans is a pretty poor excuse to pull one over on the American viewing public. Hasn’t anybody at the FCC read the recent headlines about the record-breaking take for this year’s upfront advertising season? It would seem a little disingenuous for those big entertainment companies to cry poor right at this moment, but then, they’ve evidently got the ear of FCC Chairman Michael Powell, and I guess he’s not asking any questions.

For a good article on this tremendously important issue, check out this article from today’s New York Times (registration required, but it’s free). I urge you to write each of the FCC Commissioners protesting these proposed rule changes. Even if you make your money working for one of these mega-entertainment companies, don’t let your 9 to 5 loyalties stop you from doing what’s right and adding your voice to the millions who are protesting this situation. What’s worse, the FCC seems hell bent on shoving these changes through, so time is running out. Do what’s right. Incidentally, Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein are fighting the good fight within the FCC on this one, so they deserve a hand.

Here's the official FCC Website.

And here's the specific page with all the email addresses for the FCC Commissioners. Write!

 
Trimming the Velvet

If you happened to tune into BBC America’s showing of the acclaimed BBC miniseries Tipping the Velvet last weekend, you ain’t seen everything yet. The version aired by BBCA was severely edited, both for time and for content, and it’s a real shame. I don’t have exact figures but each of the three 60 minute UK version episodes were aired in hour timeslots, less commercial time, so we probably got no more than 45 minutes of show per night. That’s a lot of editing, and a serious breach of BBC America’s usual decent judgment in such matters.

Tripping the Velvet, the story of a young British girl who embarks on a series of lesbian adventures in the world of 1890s London, had engendered a certain amount of notoriety and interest for its lush portrayals of Sapphic eroticism, but you sure couldn’t guess what the fuss was about by watching it last weekend. Despite adult content disclaimers as every commercial break, what we saw over here was drastically censored and there was nary a nipple in evidence anywhere. And the much vaunted dildo scene? Well, you sort of got the impression there probably was a dildo somewhere in the room with the two women, but that’s about as explicit as it got. Blimey!

What we also missed were the creative scene transitions – excised with an incredible lack of care, i.e. blunt edits – and with them a great deal of the fun and truly Gay ‘90s mise-en-scene hit the deck, too. We ended up with a very straightforward streamlined version, the Viewer’s Digest version if you will, one especially suited for an audience whose delicate sensibilities evidently could not have tolerated the very elements for which Tipping the Velvet won its acclaim.

Not that the production wasn’t lovely and the actors terrific, but after making such a fuss about bringing Tipping the Velvet to America, BBCA should have followed their previous standards of excellence and presented this miniseries with the respect and care that it, and the audience who were eagerly awaiting it, surely deserved.

Boo Hiss! BBC America, you deserve a big raaaahsberry for this one!

They’ve got it scheduled again for Saturday, June 28th and let’s see if they might possibly relent and present the real version. Hey, maybe this is just a ploy to get viewers to fork out for the DVD version, but it hardly seems worth the rancor.