In The Radio Times - it isn't Christmas without one
UPDATE FOR BROADCAST:Wild Wanderings will be shown on BBC4 on Wednesday 27th December at 9pm GMT.
The BBC media centre reports on a new Slow TV offering for Christmas 2017: "Turtle, Eagle, Cheetah: a Slow Odyssey". As a very special Christmas treat, BBC Four is taking viewers on a magical and mysterious journey into the natural world - by riding on-board three incredible animals. Unfettered by human camera teams, the audience will be transported deep into these different animal worlds - land and sea and sky. Using the latest on-board wearable technology, pioneered by leading Scientists and the BBC’s Natural History Unit – Three Cheetah must work together in their search for prey, navigating the Bushveld of Namibia. A green turtle comes face to face with the residents of Indonesia’s most beautiful coral reefs. Whilst a White tailed Sea Eagle soars above the rugged West Coast of Scotland, battling the force of nature. With embedded graphics giving further insight into the animals’ worlds, their adventures and encounters turns into an immersive and mesmerising experience". It adds to the wider portfolio of the BBC's Slow TV collection which includes All Aboard! The Bus Journey and All Aboard! The Sleigh Ride. Also in December, 12 hours Supermarket Slow TV from Finland, and anticipating a 3 day train journey across Australia. New to The Slow TV Blog? See social media links, notable internal links or to get in touch, the media centre page. You can also watch my "What is Norwegian Slow TV?" documentary and join our community of Slow TV fans, thinkers and filmmmakers on Facebook. First Published on 29th November 2017, updated 16th December 2017. Slow Television - The Slow TV Blog
Update 24th October 2017: All Aboard! The Country Bus is repeated on BBC4, commencing midnight tonight (00:00 Wednesday, during Tuesday night). Thanks to Richard in the Slow TV Fans Facebook group for the heads up. Update August 2016: All Aboard! The Country Bus arrives on BBC4 on Monday 29th August, 8-10pm British Summer Time (Bank Holiday for England, Wales and Northern Ireland). Trainspotting Live aired in July. Also starting on 29th August from 9am BST - 12 days of cows in a barn in Norway with NRK Fjos. More here.
The next lot of UK Slow TV happens in a right grand county
We've had a canal trip, an amble around the National Gallery, peeps at craft making, three glorious dawn choruses and a reindeer trip into the snowy wilderness of northern Norway. Have we had enough of Slow TV in the UK? Thankfully, no. The BBC have commissioned another two bouts of Slow TV, both transport oriented but different in presentation.
The first will be a pre-recorded bus journey from Richmond, Yorkshire to Ingleton. Unlike the reindeer journey which picked us up somewhere in the wilderness and left us not entirely sure where we were - in order to fit the constraints of a TV schedule, or The Canal Trip which was a few miles of the segment of the Kennet and Avon canal which is 87 miles long, All Aboard! The Country Bus has a sense of completion to it in that it takes in the broadest part of The Yorkshire Dales by road.
All Aboard! The Country Bus at The Market Place, Richmond
This sense of completion is important. Slow TV is another way of telling a story on TV. Would you watch a couple episodes of Game of Thrones to consider you've seen the story of the season? Does following the progress of The Fellowship of the Ring from Rivendell to Lothlorien give a sense of completed journey of The Lord of The Rings? Obviously, no. In the same vein it is my contention that much of what is getting made of Slow TV is not getting the story-telling framing of the format right. It needs to be the whole story.
So, this bus journey looks promising. Leaving The Market Place at Richmond and ending up at Ingleton Community Centre a couple hours later, The Northern Dalesman route takes in some breathtaking natural landscapes and a wonder of Victorian engineering, the Ribblehead Viaduct.
The Ribblehead Viaduct
on the route of The Country Bus Slow TV
One assumes there will be an element of surprise as to who gets on the bus. Depending on the time of day or week will there be hikers looking to rest their feet? Will the bus get stuck behind bicycles on the country lanes? Could we even get "the nutter on the bus" of Jasper Carrot's comedic eulogising? Part of the joy of Slow TV is the unfolding unexpectedness of what might happen. Not that someone getting off the bus has quite the same shock as an important character's elimination in Game of Thrones... but hopefully you get what I mean. Drama is more subtle and microcosmic in Slow TV.
As the BBC continues to build its portfolio of All Aboard! Slow TV transport shows, this is a welcome production and I'm hopeful this framing of its content shows promise of a stronger conceptualisation of telling the whole story. Like previous journey based Slow TV productions, it will be made by ITV owned The Garden Productions for BBC4.
Thacking Lane, Ingleton
It may be Slow TV but there's no need to swear about it
Now, if this were to be like buses (you wait ages for one then three come at the same time), we need another Slow TV show announcement from the BBC (or another UK broadcaster would be welcome). A second Slow TV production with trainspotting as its subject has been announced, and it's live.
This liveness is very important, too. It has that sense of 'now', that we're witnessing something unfold at the same time as we're watching it. Yes, there has to be the expectation of what trains will be coming through and when courtesy of timetables. What if there are delays? Cancellations? What type of locomotives? Which carriage numbers? Diesel - steam - electric?
Based at The Didcot Heritage Railway Centre, veteran broadcaster Peter Snow will be joined by a mathematician, Dr Hannah Fry with a rail-roving reporter, Dick Strawbridge (with probably the most amazing moustache on UK TV) over three (simultaneous?) evenings on BBC4. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, maybe? Would give a very different pattern of train timetable, different types of passenger and reasons for travelling, with more time for the dedicated trainspotter and the Slow TV curious viewer to tune in.
Trainspotting is like a box of chocolates...
...you never know what you're going to get
This extended series of live events will allow greater interaction with the show, online and maybe in person, too. Could Dick Strawbridge's appearing from different locations allow unexpected interactions? (Probably welcome and unwelcome interactions! I am continually delighted at how well behaved the uninvited interactions on the Norwegian format are - even if the last one from Saltstraumen included a group of men and women running in their underwear across a bridge). Unstaged behaviour helps populate a Slow TV production with an added element of surprise for viewer and producer - and in the case it is unsuitable, hopefully cutting to another camera would be an option.
Trainspotting Live obviously is not a journey from A to Z (or F to M), but embraces a good principle or two of Slow TV. It is a surprising thing to put on TV, a novelty - therein lies a hook to attract viewers, besides any core audience attracted to its subject. It also allows a sense of waiting and expecting something interesting to happen. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. If it doesn't, then the viewer will find interest in the picture somehow, if the producer will refrain from cutting from something quickly if they feel 'nothing' might be happening.
All Aboard! The Country Bus Slow TV goes across the broadest
part of the Yorkshire Dales National Park
Scenes need to be allowed to speak for themselves. Think of the slowness in Slow TV like an old friend. You don't need continual chat and information, just being in each others' presence is good enough.There will be moments for saying things, imparting information - when the time's right - but not some nervous chit chat in case that awkward-silence-thing happens. Slow TV is about allowing things to have their time. Not prolonging, not artificially reducing speed but having its own innate speed.
So, these two productions from the BBC should play out in the next few months. Trainspotting Live while we still have light evenings, perhaps The Country Bus as the evenings draw in as a memoir of sunny days past as Christmas twinkles on the temporal horizon and maybe another festive Slow TV offering comes from a UK broadcaster.
The Beeb are once again treating us with some Slow TV for Christmas as The Flying Scotsman gives us an hour of The Severn Valley Railway:
"BBC Four viewers can sit back and enjoy a sixty minute trip from the driving seat of the Flying Scotsman, with a signal-by-signal guide to life on the footplate of the nation's favourite steam engine. In a special one-off slow tv treat for Christmas, the crew take locomotive 60103 down the Severn Valley Railway, cutting through stunning landscapes on a journey from Bridgnorth to Kidderminster, in the midlands of England.
Commissioned by Clare Paterson, Commissioning Editor, Documentaries. It is being made by Roger Keech Productions Ltd."
Some footage from 2009 of The Flying Scotsman by Roger Keech Productions Ltd at this link here.
This scorecard from the BBC Four screening of the Country Bus in August struck me as a good way of engaging more viewer interaction. Note for future reference.
From a Slow TV point of view, these are my first thoughts on BBC4's Trainspotting Live, produced by Plum Pictures.
What a marvellous celebration of the rail network and trains, from the Victorian period to now, from urban train stations to iconic lines and landscapes. BBC4's Trainspotting Live is not so much Slow TV but embracing several key principles of Slow TV.
At its heart, Slow TV is about taking your time to see what you can see if and until when something 'big' happens. It's in that waiting where the smaller details assume greater significance and then the mundane evolves into the spectacular. It's about finding the meaning in the meantime.
In terms of the images, the transmission itself is not very 'slow' in that we do not have a picture where not much is happening for a while. It is a steady flow of pictures and cuts from around the country, blended together with pre-recorded packages about rail history and enthusiasts. Even watching the Crewe built Black 5 approach the halt in Scotland, the broadcast was cut to the next piece of information before the experience of watching all of the train could pass. Slow TV is more about the experience than the information.
Yes, information unpacks and explains the experience - but the head-knowledge about something rarely replaces the experience knowledge of it. This is where English is inadequate to convey the nuances of knowledge. Think about the German verbs Wissen with Kennen, or French Savoir with Connaitre. Let's see more of the train as it passes, and hold off the producer's itch to cut to the next stimulating information feed.
27 minutes into the first episode the poet Ian McMillan, commenting on the poem 'Adelstrop' narrated by Richard Burton (what a fantastic voice that man had), he remarks about moments of stasis in a poem being a metaphor for moments of stasis in life - where you sit and wait, then somehow in that waiting, history turns and culture turns. That really is capturing some of the transformative essence of Slow TV.
However, Trainspotting Live is good TV medicine, something we need more of. It's a celebration of the everyday, a celebration of something not usually on TV. Thankfully there are another two one-hour segments of Trainspotting Live. Making special moments of the everyday. The mundane becomes the spectacle, the small things become the big things.
The enthusiasm of the presenters and the participants in Trainspotting Live was fantastic and endearing. The passion for details and nuances, the celebration of 'nerd' ways. I used to take offence at the word 'nerd' but now I see it as something to be embraced - I too am quite a nerd for ancient sites, and yes, well, Slow TV.
Nice one Plum Pictures and BBC4. A live fest of history, heritage, rail-enthusiast excitement. Even if there's not much actual Slow TV in the production, the presence of several principles of Slow TV is a good thing in a media world where we used to having quick fire stimulation.
Between 8 and 9pm on the 11th, 12th and 13th July, BBC4 will be screening "Trainspotting Live". There will be times of waiting to see what happens - live, in real time - a core dynamic of Slow TV. It will be good to see how much it is a mix of a live news event, traditional 'information' film and to what an extent it is an experiential Slow Television celebration of trains and rail network, minute by minute. Will they include any delayed services? Even the very first Slow TV from NRK in Norway was lengthened by about 10 minutes due to a signalling problem between Bergen and Oslo! There will an official live blog on the BBC website (some of it already being coupled together HERE). There's an invitation to get involved via Twitter (#TrainSpottingLive) and on Facebook from the page. Also keep an eye on tweets from Plum Pictures and Didcot Railway CentreHERE and HERE, respectively.
"Trainspotting Live will bring three nights of spotting, joy and excitement to BBC Four as Peter Snow, mathematician Dr Hannah Fry and engineer Dick Strawbridge along with a team of rail train enthusiasts revel in the tantalising intricacies, trade secrets and true pleasures of trainspotting... live! Live from the historic Didcot Rail Museum, Peter Snow will be asking the audience to join the spotting by recording the most frequent to the most elusive trains on the tracks all over country during the three days of live broadcast. Our team of expert spotters will also be waiting in anticipation to catch the full range of British rail stock on camera - from classic steam, to diesel locomotives, to high-speed electric and our rarest beauties - explaining how they did it and delving into their importance in our British heritage. Mathematician Hannah will be breaking down the mind-bending equations that go into keeping the thousands of trains on the network every day, while engineer Dick will explore the historic hidden marvels of rail engineering and surprising, rich history of trainspotting as trains whizz past his trainspotting location in the north of England, live. As the train spots come in thick and fast from our presenters and the Great British public, Peter will be joined in Didcot by collectors, photographers, record holders and poets. This is not just a show for the thousands of trainspotters out there; this is a show for anyone with a passion for British history, travel and engineering. This is a love letter to trains told by trainspotters – the custodians of our train history. Trainspotting Live was produced in partnership with The Open University." Slow Television - The Slow TV Blog
I talk with Peter Johnson and Mai Davies on Good Evening Wales, BBC Radio Wales, 4th May 2016 about Slow TV and Slow Radio. Slow Television - The Slow TV Blog
Slow TV News and Reviews No. 30. Slow TV grabbed the attention of BBC Breakfast on Sunday 17th April 2016; I had the chance to go in to talk about Slow TV, with some later input from NRK Producer, Thomas Hellum, who is Project Leader for the 12 hour tidal Slow TV at Saltstraumen on 7th May. I didn't answer one of Naga's question properly, so I've recorded a little addendum to answer that more fully at 08:33!
The long awaited Sleigh Ride on BBC4 has been and gone. With the precedent of All Aboard! The Canal Trip earlier this year I was hopeful for more of the same. Since becoming aware of it several months ago I'd eagerly awaited this next exploration of the BBC into Slow TV. It's an important format, able to be many things at the same time to many people and I'm eager to see it be taken up in its optimum form by broadcasters outside of Norway. If I appear to be having a moan, it’s not just for the sake of it. I did enjoy the The Sleigh Ride but I know Slow TV can be a lot more as a production and do a lot more for the audience. Hopefully I'm being constructive!
I feel The Sleigh Ride gripped the potential of what Slow TV could be for the BBC even less than The Canal Trip. It seems from following comments on social media that many who had no issues with The Sleigh Ride are relatively new to watching Slow TV. My concern is that unfamiliarity with what Slow TV can be, for many, will make easier acceptance of lower production values, not so good a framing of the concept of slowness in Slow TV, and the consequent relation of the subject being shown to the viewer. Although it was good, it was neither enough of an ambient TV experience nor a TV event.
Five ways in which The Sleigh Ride could work better as Slow TV
EXPERIENCE NOT INFORMATION
BBC4 - The Sleigh Ride
Slow TV is orientated around the experience of viewing, not a flow of (re)articulated information. Slow TV is not about digesting a stream of information, facts and figures. I felt The Sleigh Ride was on the verge of conforming to a traditional documentary mode with so many wayside facts and figures. Yes, some information which sets the context of the subject, establishes parameters of the activity, but not so much that it distracts from the journey related by the camera. When the embedded text appeared, our attention was diverted to it (especially when appearing in the distance) and the imperative rush to ingest the fact before it disappears. Let the experience be the primary source of information, especially in a Slow TV production where it is the image that is the medium of the experience, not the words said or written.
TV NEEDS TO ACCOMMODATE THE WHOLE THING
The subject of a Slow TV broadcast gains a sense of wholeness when the entire expanse of time which that subject requires is accommodated. Not an arbitrary section which neatly fills limited TV schedules. The implicit message of Slow TV, is that it is something extraordinarily ordinary, and that message hits home when the TV schedules are forced to accommodate it. Think what happens to the schedules when a major sports, national event or news event is happening. It barges into the schedule. "Oi! I'm important and you're going to watch me!". Slow TV needs its subject not be trimmed and not edited into so it conforms to a time conscious medium.
THE ACTIVITY OR JOURNEY NEEDS TO BE THE COMPLETE THING
Why was the journey picked up at the point we began? Why did it end where it left off? It felt like an arbitrary section of the journey which would fill the schedule. Instead of showing us the passage of A through to Z, it gave us E through to H. I watched The Sleigh Ride with three others, all of us left wondering where the sledge was actually going and why we were left where we were. A map was shown at the hour point illustrating the entire route but not the section of the journey concerned. As my father in law commented, “We watched that for nearly two hours and didn’t know where they were going or why they were going there”.
IT NEEDS TO LET THE VIEWER HAVE TIME TO ASK THEIR OWN QUESTIONS OF THE PICTURE
BBC4 - The Sleigh Ride
Slow TV needs to make the viewer ask questions of what might happen and not leave the big questions unanswered. It needs to facilitate a mental questioning, such as what the animals might do next? what could be appearing around the next corner? Small things which engage our curiosity, akin to ‘people-watching’ at train stations and airports which make us ponder the minutiae of the narratives we see. When I visit a coffee shop, I usually prefer a window seat so I can glance up and ponder the many small stories happening outside. This kind of wondering is quite absorbing, and for The Sleigh Ride it was when the reindeer was digging for food around 1 hour 15 minutes in the broadcast and the aurora borealis for a couple minutes at the end. Both moments allowed undirected and unmanufactured events to enable the viewer to ponder the tiny nuances of the stories being shown. More moments like these will further immerse a viewer in the film and give, in some senses, a self-populating content in this documentary format.
IT SHOULD BE ‘REALITY REVEALED’ NOT REALITY RECONSTRUCTED
So, in terms of The Sleigh Ride, we never knew the purpose of the Sami women's journey at the time of filming. Yes, it was an old postal route but were they delivering or collecting parcels and post on their journey? We're not told. They had logs on their sleighs, but what else?
BBC4 - The Sleigh Ride
The subject is best served by being an activity or journey which would happen anyway, whether or not the cameras were there. Not a specially crafted reconstruction. The producers of Norwegian Slow TV in the NRK Hordaland region have referred to the format as being 'reality revealed' - the closest thing to a fly on the wall documentary. It's not reality reconstructed. It's what is actually going on which the camera is there to capture. When it’s a Slow TV about nature or a journey it should be one which happens anyway; film that, let us know the reason why it happens, and let the camera reveal what would happen if the camera were not there, insofar as possible.
SLOW TV: NOVELTY STOCKING FILLER OR MAIN PRESENT?
So, while it was a welcome Christmas broadcast, it felt like it could have been more. It felt more like a novelty stocking filler. Very good and engaging in its own right, but not hugely memorable and not noticed by as many as it could be. The ratings for The Sleigh Ride didn't match that of The Canal Trip and didn't break out of BBC4's usual market share. Slow TV can be a novelty stocking filler but for the short time given for this Slow TV it was trying to be more than a stocking filler.
BBC4 - The Sleigh Ride
When you know Slow TV can also be the amazing main present hidden behind the sofa for maximum surprise and which will be seen and talked about by many many more and remembered for a long time, The Sleigh Ride felt like a falling short of the potential of the format. It was too busy with information to thoroughly sink into the ambient aspect of it - or the broadcast should have been considerably longer with the information shown on the screen for a few more seconds. Slow TV can be many things from the personal ambient TV trip to a national event celebrating a journey or activity. If you’re not familiar with Slow TV, don’t think it’s just a two camera stocking filler - it can be much more than that. It can be the big present which will thrill and delight most of those who experience it.
So, yes please, BBC, let’s have more Slow TV - longer, less information, more opportunity to experience what you’re showing us. If you want to experience All Aboard! The Sleigh Ride, it's on the BBC iPlayer until 25th January 2016, right here. Subsequent repeats will likely put it back on iPlayer in the future. Geoblocking of content may well apply outside of the UK.
How about this, then. Christmas Eve, 8pm on BBC4 there is some Slow TV. Not a constant stream of re-articulated information, but two hours of steady visuals allowing you take in TV content at a far more organic, natural pace.
The BBC have released some preview footage for "All Aboard! The Sleigh Ride", which indeed looks suitably calming as well as being festive fodder for the moment.
Keeping in the same format as "All Aboard! The Canal Trip", it looks to be using drone views for an establishing shot, then a single camera front facing with occasional pans for particular views where embedded graphics and information will give the more traditional documentary style of an injection of articulated information.
So, take a look. If you find yourself thinking 'Nothing's happening!' , allow yourself a few minutes longer and see if you become aware of watching TV differently. Maybe keep it on as you do something else. Go on, go on, go on! Give it a try.
Slow TV is more about the experience of watching something, so sit down, relax and have an experience.
This year, Christmas Eve TV will have a most welcome addition to ease us into the festive feel. Continuing their exploration of Slow TV, the BBC heads to Norway - the country which first brought us Slow TV broadcasts.
Christmas Eve: think snowy landscapes, reindeer, jingling of bells while (hopefully) settling down to a cosy evening. BBC4 will be giving the opportunity to become mindful of such things - even if it's actually to accompany some last minute present wrapping and preparing the vegetables for Christmas dinner...
Over two hours the camera will show the scenery around Karasjok (for the English tongue, pronounced Karra-shock) in the northern Norwegian county of Finnmark. Like All Aboard! The Canal Trip broadcast in April, All Aboard! The Sleigh Ride will use a single camera to relate a continuous steady journey - the subject this time being a winter wonderland by reindeer and sledge.
Originally cited as being filmed in Finland, the announcement that it was filmed in Norway is a surprise - however Karasjok is only fifteen minutes' drive from the border with Finland (one assumes with snow tyres and fair conditions, being 200 miles into the Arctic Circle).
Taking in an old postal route used by the Sami people of northern Norway, Finland, Sweden and the Kola peninsula of Russia, the documentary experience (for that is one way of understanding Slow TV) will add embedded graphics without voice over and verbal commentary or dramatising music to suggest to us how we ought to be feeling as we watch. The information we take from such a documentary is what we draw from the experience of sharing the journey.
Produced by ITV Studios' The Garden Productions, All Aboard! The Sleigh Ride will be broadcast on BBC4 on 24th December - Christmas Eve - from 8pm to 10pm and will hopefully add to the success of the Slow TV productions in the UK earlier in 2015.
The Norwegian creators of Slow TV are planning a week long broadcast of live reindeer migration for 2017; for some analysis of this and how it compares with the BBC 2 hour recorded broadcast, see this vlog I recorded back in September.
Ever wondered how Slow TV began? See this clip from a documentary I made about Slow TV:
BBC Radio Stoke interviewed me about the Hymn Book Slow TV event - Salmeboka Minutt for Minutt - live from Norway. Broadcast around 7:20am GMT (8:20 Norwegian time) on Sunday morning, 30th November 2014.
There’s a lot quietly brewing away in the universe of Slow TV, so here’s a round up of some developments to get calmly but deeply excited about, including:
A Thanksgiving Slow TV
Whatever happened to the American production of Slow Road Live?
NRK on course for a Maelstrom next May
A web based Slow TV channel to Czech out in Prague
Jingle Bells at the BBC for Christmas
A nice little stocking filler to plough its way into your present pile
My phone in interview on Tony Snell's BBC Radio Merseyside breakfast show on 15th May 2015 about Slow TV and its screening at the Nordic Church in Liverpool for 17th May 2015 - Norway's National Day.
Click the arrow in the top left of the picture to hear the interview.
