Good programme on telly - Coast.

[BlueSkyNick]

Very interesting documentary.

Pilot boat coming alongside a container ship in the Bristol Channel. Is that you, Graham?

 

[jimi]

Actually I thought it was dreadfully superficial and sloppy. Confused the north and south coasts as well as placing Clovelly & Hartland Point in Cornwall. Not impressed. The mother lode is fantastic but they failed to follow it!

 

[Sgeir]

Missed that, but I did watch a very interesting programme on BBC4 with old film footage of the Scottish whaling vessels. Messy business. Just before the new Heimat.

 

[BrianJ]

And heres me thinking you were going to talk about the OZ thrashing of the Poms at Lords....
BrianJ

 

[Neraida]

Hurrumph!

 

[graham]

I think your being a bit harsh there jimi. They couldnt cover the Coast from Plymouth to Bristol in any depth in only one hour.

i think it was more intended to be entertainment than documentary.

The container vessel that magically transformed into a car carrier caught my eye.

 

[graham]

thats the boat but I wasnt on it.My equity card had expired

 

[jimi]

Yes noticed that as well! Some of the other continuity was very poor as well. Surfing pics purportedly of Newquay was Newlyn (I think), much talk of smugglers and film of the north coast.Virtually all smuggling activity was on the South Coast. In several places Cornwall was referred to when the location was Devon. They had plagiarised film from other recent documentaries. For a top billed program the standard was poor, the research weak, the continuiy amateurish and they had missed completely most of the really scenic bits. I stand by my assessment of a disappointing program. If it worked for you, fine, it did'nt for me.

 

[Blueboatman]

That bit about 1 candle power lanterns in a sea of darkness was , imho, pretty cool and ,dare I say it ,verging on the scientific. ?

 

[jimi]

And that was another bit of total rubbish based on legend rather than fact. The wreckers,a desperately poor community, took advantage of wrecks cast up on the shore, however AFAIK ships being lured onto rocks was not a matter of habit .. as was portrayed in this supposed documentary. A little bit more time and effort on research would not have been wasted IMHO... or is this typical of general dumbing down?

 

[Blueboatman]

But it WORKED didn't it ? That was the point being demonstrated . In the total absence of reliable position information ,ONE CANDLE POWER may have been sufficient to encourage a Skipper to stand on a little further ,until he was effectively out of sea room to tack or wear round ,and on the wrong side of Hartland.

I agree that for a poor coastal dweller to deliberately seek to wreck a fellow sailor in trying weather would be,in a superstitious and isolated community, tantamount to summoning up the Devil himself...

 

[jimi]

erm ... I don't know if it would! If I were a skipper and saw a light I think I might assume it was land rather than the stern light of a vessel. It proved absolutely nothing to me apart from the fact that a light might be seen from 150 yards away .. by which time a ship would have been in the deep and pooey anyway.

 

[kilkerr1]

Some lovely pics but, I agree, very disappointing. Felt like a dumbed-down Blue Peter.

And last time I looked an anthropologist was a social scientist; shouldn't we have a geologist talking about rocks and strata and such rather than an anthropologist..? Especially when said anthro uses CBeebies tricks like cutting bits of cake to show layers of rock.

Must try harder. C-

 

[Brian_B]

The subject is just too big to cover in any detail.
It's another one of the programs the BBC has made to sell abroad.
They wave it at us as informative but doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know.

It's like looking at a rack of postcards with pretty views while on holiday.

 

[Lakesailor]

Why would you assume, because you can see a light, that there is no danger between you and it?

 

[johna]

I'm with you Jimi how can any programme visiting this area of coast miss out Fowey, Falmouth and the Lizard or did I nod off for a time.

 

[graham]

Its a very unforgiving bit of coast.I should think in those days on a black night .Being driven ashore by a Westerly Gale in a boat unable to tack or go to windward .

The "wreckers"may have been under the illusion that their lights brought the ships ashore when in reallity The crew were probably struggling for their lives to go the other way.

 

[VicS]

I watched both both episodes screened so far. Very disappointed although I will probably watch the rest of the series.

I agree that there is too much to cover in an hour but I thought that more places could have been covered if the time devoted to some of the chosen places had been reduced. I found the Frenchman, speaking in French, about the German occupation of Alderney in the first programme particularly boring. What about the other CIs. Actually I think, perhaps the CI could have been left out altogther and attention kept to the mainland, I will probably say the same when they get to NI. Scope for anther series: NI (or perhaps the whole of Ireland) and the islands off the coast of the mainland.

Did I hear wrongly or did they say crossing the Exe took them from Dorset into Devon. I thought the boundary was just to the west of Lyme Regis!

I wanted to see more of Miranda and Alice! I just love that red hair.

 

[Rowana]

[ QUOTE ]

The subject is just too big to cover in any detail.
It's another one of the programs the BBC has made to sell abroad.
They wave it at us as informative but doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know.


[/ QUOTE ]

Well, I for one don't know that coast at all so I can't comment. I'll be able to make a better judgement once they get round to the Moray Firth and the East coast of Scotland.

In the meantime, I found it quite entertaing and reasonably informative. But I do agree that it's an awfull lot of coast to cover in one hour - And a THOUSAND times better than some of the crap that they dish up as "entertainment" these days ! ! !

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[bob_tyler]

Jimi, I agree with you. I thought the whole thing to be superficial and, despite some great photography, boring. As SWMBO is abroad at present I thought I would record it for her. Waste of time and I've recorded over it with tonight's episode of Silent Witness - excellent.