Diverse channel with a small budget (BBC Four)

Member Name: bruffyboy

Product:	BBC Four
Date:	29/10/09 (24 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: some good shows

Disadvantages: repeats

BBC 4 is the BBC channel with the smallest budget, and just 1.8% of the company's audience. It is supposed to be an alternative to mainstream TV, showing a wide variety of niche programming. It has been running since 2002.

The best thing about this channel is some of the programming. For example, they show Curb your Enthusiasm on this channel. It took the guts of HBO in the US to show this brilliant comedy filled with terrible language, and I think BBC 4 did a great job showing it too. It really is a hilarious comedy, and shows the risk taking nature of the channel.

The worst thing about the channel is the way there are so many repeats on there. This has a lot to do with the small budget, which demands they cannot make much new content. It's annoying when you're five minutes into an episode of something before you realize it's a repeat.

There are a lot of documentaries on the channel, but they tend to revolve around art and science which don't interest me. Like-wise, the black and white programmes seem a bit archaic to me. Finally, there's a fair bit of world cinema on there which is hit or miss. Don't get me wrong, some of the best films in the world come from non-English countries, but the stuff on here is often low budget.

Occasionally, the channel does something really interesting, like showing live feeds of Shakespeare performances. For this reason alone it's worth checking the listings and keeping your eye out for something different, but they are few and far between.

All in all, an interesting and diverse channel that suffers from its small budget dictating that they need to show lots of unoriginal programs.

Summary: up to you