Thursday, August 13, 2009

Veronica Mars on E4

I think I've worked out how producers schedule shows they look at a very short synopsis and use that. So for Veronica Mars which made it's terrestrial debut in the UK on E4 I'm guessing that the process went something like this:

Veronica Mars is a blonde rebellious High School student who as the daughter of a PI takes on 'cases' for her school friends.

"Sounds like Nancy Drew we'll broadcast it at around 7 in the morning and repeat it just before noon."

Now for a spoiler longer synopsis - Veronica Mars used to popular when she dated Duncan Kane and had his sister Lilly as a best friend, but when her father the Sheriff accuses the Kane family of murdering their daughter he's hounded out of office and becomes a PI and Veronica becomes a pariah at school. How will Veronica cope as she discovers her alcoholic mother had an affair with Duncan's father and that she left after being threatened with death threats against Veronica. Will she get over the split from Duncan and get together with Lilly's ex-boyfriend son of the abusive film star whose mother committed suicide and what will she think when she discovers that it was he who provided the drug used during her rape at a party?


Things came to a head when I discovered it recording an episode just before midnight last night with an announcer claiming that "Due to the content of this episode we are unable to show this episode in its normal morning slot"

So bleary-eyed viewers this morning will get a "previously on Veronica Mars" and be thinking "What the...? I haven't see that"

Guys here's a couple of tips (again)- if the series you're showing needs to be edited or an entire episode cannot be broadcast because the content is unsuitable for the time slot you want to use you're trying to show it at the wrong time.


Orphi said...

Just be glad they didn't mistakenly show it anyway, unedited. ;-)

FlipC said...

There was nothing graphic and no swearing as far as I recall, just 'mature-themed'. Even if there were strange 6 year olds watching it I doubt they'd even have understood it. And if they did it would just demonstrate the absurdity of editing ;-)

What has been getting annoying is that the PDC signals have been getting screwy with one start occurring two minutes from the end of Smallville and two minutes from the end of VM. So my box cut off the last two minutes because it was told the show had finished.

Anyhow I've switched to recording the 11am version as at least that doesn't move backwards and forwards in time by anything from 5 to 15 minutes. I'll see how that worked tonight.

Oh and the other weird thing was that since I've been recording Reaper on E4+1 I've yet to miss the start or end which was also getting annoying on E4. As it should be exactly the same signal just shifted by an hour I'm bemused.