Here’s the latest from: Variety
Shortly before Christmas, the eminent British critic and broadcaster Matthew Sweet embarked on a sponsored, round-the-clock watch of a new DVD set of “Crossroads,” the dogged ITV soap that first ran between 1964 and 1988. The prevailing idea was that negotiating the boxset’s 700 episodes might be as arduous — perhaps even as deadly — as any cross-Channel swim or Himalayan hike; that impression was soon confirmed by Sweet’s running Twitter commentary, which vacillated between the amused, the bemused and the increasingly discombobulated.
A clumsily aspirational, shot-as-live serial set around a motel in the British Midlands — some distance removed from the working-class, Northern grit of ITV’s better known, Bob Dylan-approved “Coronation Street” — “Crossroads” became notorious for its combination of wobbly sets, inexplicable plot shanks and stretches of dead air deployed to trick out the U.K.’s yawning schedules. One argument goes it could only have been a ratings success in a country with just three channels – because there was frankly so little else to watch…
…Read the Full Article @ Variety
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