Honoured Dead

The end of another evening which led to yet another pointless browse through the television listings looking for something entertaining to watch. Surely a futile exercise if ever there was one.

Something I always used to look forward to were the short seasons of films that played over the holiday period. Usually they were late at night and mostly they were in tribute to actors and filmmakers who had carked it in the previous twelve months. Which is one of the things that seems to be missing this year.

Maybe the broadcasters stopped the practice a while ago and I wasn't paying attention. That's really a pity because it usually meant that films that hadn't been seen for a good while were taken out of the vault and given a welcome airing.

Of course yesterday we lost Joseph Barbera.


I did like the item on last night's ITV News celebrating the life of Barbera and his working partnership with William Hanna, which explained that The Flintstones was specifically created for a family audience after surveys showed that more than half of Huckleberry Finn's audience were adults.

Oh dear. Especially since it wasn't a slip of the tongue by the newscaster, but part of a prerecorded report.