December 06, 2008

Little Dorrit scheduling madness

If you set your V+ to record Little Dorrit on Thursday on BBC HD, prepare yourself for disappointment; the episode was replaced at the last minute by an episode of Green Green Grass.
Why? Well over on BBC1 they made a late scheduling change and aired a Panorama special instead. Rather than have the HD channel exclusively showcase the latest episode of the landmark drama, they yanked it off.
So when can we see episode 12? Amazingly, the only showing it's getting is in the omnibus edition on Sunday evening (Dec 7) at 6.15 on both BBC HD and BBC1.
What I find frankly astonishing is that the audience that has steadfastly sat through six hours of quality (albeit slow developing) drama is expected to hunt around the schedules to find an episode as the story reaches its climax.
The series ends this week with the penultimate episode on Wednesday at 8pm then an hour-long conclusion on Thursday at 8pm. Assuming there are no other Panorama specials in the offing...

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

very poor channel anyway reapts evreything atleast 8 times lol im suprised its getting shown on a omibus bbc get there act together on that channel cause its just dull

Anonymous said...

Thanks so much for alerting us about this so I can manage to get Sunday's repeat. Once more let down by the programmer's ill-considered decision. I think a note to Feedback is in order.

Afront said...

Ahhh so that explains it. After some cross-referencing with DigiGuide I managed to work out I needed to record Sunday's omnibus to be sure to get the missing episode.

I'm sure a similar thing also happened recently with an HD episode of Natural World (V+ recorded Joanna Lumley on Ice instead)...

Nialli said...

As a postscript to this: I noticed that when the omnibus edition was shown on BBC1 the VM EPG had it listed as starting at 6.25 rather than 6.15 (when it broadcast), so anyone recording it off BBC1 may have missed the last ten mins.
BBC HD's listing for the omnibus was correct.