Home • About • Archives • Best Of • Subscribe

An Archive of Mediocre Television Reviews

Published 25th August 2015

Meta / TV Comedy / TV Drama

Having gone on yet another explosive rant about Sam Wollaston recently, I am reminded that I’ve never linked to any of the TV reviews I’ve written for other sites on here. Part of me, to be honest, is disinclined to do so; some of the pieces I’m not very proud of at all. But there’s some good stuff amongst the dross, and besides: I’m cursed with a bizarre sense of fair play. If I’m going to be slagging people off on Twitter, or writing about poor journalism on here, it only feels fair to actually link to some of the stuff I’ve done which I’m not that keen on, rather than pretend it never existed.

So, here is a full archive of television reviews I have written elsewhere. These are mainly from the now-defunct media blog Noise To Signal, although there’s a couple from still active Doctor Who site Unlimited Rice Pudding!, and one from Red Dwarf fansite Ganymede & Titan. It doesn’t include anything lurking in Dirty Feed’s archive, or reviews of anything which isn’t strictly a television episode.

[Read more →]

Read more about...

,

Dirty Feed: The First Five Years

Published 1st January 2015

Meta

5 years • 10 years • 15 years

BBC Master startup screen, with Dirty Feed instead of BASIC, because I'm hilarious obviously

Exactly five years ago today, Dirty Feed came into being. (Actually, that’s strictly not true – it was called Transistorised for most of that first year – but let’s ignore that, as it was a rubbish name.) After Noise To Signal closed, I wanted a place of my own to post my nonsense. No real plans, no ambitious proposals: just “let’s talk about stuff I’m interested in and see what happens”.

I rarely do navel-gazing posts here – in fact, bizarrely, even the change in name from Transistorised to Dirty Feed wasn’t actually noted on the site. But I thought I’d allow myself something just this once. What follows is a list of some of my favourite things on the site over the past five years. I ORDER YOU TO ENJOY IT.

[Read more →]

Read more about...

Take Next

Published 25th July 2014

Meta

Button labelled A&B

The above (rather dusty) button is in the TX suite for Channel 5 – referred to as ‘Take Next’. When pressed, it simply stops the current on-air event, and goes to the next event in the channel playlist. Its most common use is for going to ad breaks in live shows – and I had many a sweaty finger poised over it during Big Brother eviction nights – but it can also be used in an emergency, if your current on-air event has problems, and you need to move on.

I think, at over three months, Dirty Feed has been stuck on the same event for quite long enough now.

Let’s press it, shall we?

Dirty Feed: Now Available With 100% Less Attention To Detail

Published 26th November 2012

Meta

It’s no secret that this site isn’t the most updated place in the world. This is partly due to me wanting to – vaguely – think about the stuff I post on here. And I find thinking hard.

If then, you would like your fix of Dirty Feed without the benefit of a coherent thought process, I’ve just started a companion Dirty Feed Tumblr. Hopefully some of the stuff I post over there will develop into bigger articles over here; others will just be me posting a DVD grab because someone pulled a funny face. The latter will be the better posts, I would wager.

Read more about...

Happy New Year. HAPPY NEW YEAR.

Published 1st January 2010

Meta

Hey. I’m John. This is my new hangout, innit. If you know me from my writing on Ganymede & Titan or Noise to Signal, then hello. If you don’t, then you may be in for a nasty surprise.

Got a few plans for this place, but I’ll fill you in as we go along. Let’s get started, shall we?

Oh, and if anybody wants to complain about me using -ize instead of -ise, then I point you towards the Oxford English Dictionary. It’s definitely not because I rather pathetically think -ize looks cooler and more technological. No.