Cult TV Blog

This is one where you really do have to watch the video to get the feel. ☝️ I wasn't going to but I went through Sparkhill on the bus this afternoon and simply had to do a post on Citizen Khan. Actually starting with a video of Mr Khan was a mistake because I'm already hysterical and will have great difficulty concentrating. Citizen Khan is a sitcom about a ridiculous British Pakistani Moslem man who lives in Sparkhill (each episode is dedicated to the people of Sparkhill) and fancies himself as a community leader. This flat statement is completely to understate the impact of this show: When the first series of the pioneering sitcom Citizen Khan aired last year, it sparked around 200 complaints and was accused of making fun of Islam, stereotyping Asians and being disrespectful to the Qur'an. A Facebook post said: "Cancel the show OR we will have repeat of riot we had a few months ago." Well, a second series and a Christmas special have been filmed and there have b...

Next for Fake Mediums Week we have Seance, a special made by Derren Brown in 2004. While I'm on the subject of fake mediums I have remembered a random fact which is of relevance. I'm not sure whether any other states had these kind of laws but from 1951 until the act was repealed the possibility of real mediumship was kind of indicated un UK by the Fraudulent Mediums' Act of 1951, which repealed the Witchcraft Act of 1735. Despite loads and loads of mediumism going on there were only four convictions under the Act. On the other hand Derren Brown is someone who very clearly doesn't believed in mediumistic abilities, so he isn't actually a fake medium, but this show is showing how fake mediums do it. To be perfectly frank I find him a bit freaky, because if I were in his presence I would start wondering whether I had decided I wanted that cup of tea or whether he'd implanted the idea in my head. This show is all about fake mediums (that is all mediums, in Brown...

The introduction to this series of posts can be found  here . So far there have been various reasons these shows have been broken up or become unavailable. I wasn't going to do this show (there are a couple of episodes on YouTube) but have decided I will, simply because of this episode's unusual reason for being orphaned: because it was so controversial at the time of its first broadcast. I am also delighted to say that it is reality TV and is about the residents of James Turner Street in this great city.  But first some background. You didn't think I'd actually get straight onto the subject did you? Winson Green is a loosely defined inner-city area in the west of the city of Birmingham, England. It is part of the ward of Soho.  It is the location of HM Prison Birmingham (known locally as Winson Green Prison or "the Green") and of City Hospital (formerly Dudley Road Hospital) as well as of the former All Saints' Hospital. The area has a very multi-racial p...