The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #172022   Message #4170681
Posted By: Steve Gardham
23-Apr-23 - 05:20 PM
Thread Name: BBC TV This week
Subject: RE: BBC TV This week 2023
Just watched the above with incredulity. Perhaps I was expecting something else. Okay, a positive to start with, enjoyed the musicianship, albeit largely played om modern instruments.

Couldn't fault that, but what a weird confusing mish-mash from a load of posturing hooray-Henrys. Supposedly set in the mid seventeenth century, interspersed with 19th century chanties, Burns song from the late eighteenth, tunes from the nineteenth, mostly Irish.
Warning, this is what happens to your folksongs when the hooray-Henrys get hold of them! Lots of taking the piss out of the folksongs taken straight from 'Folksongs for Schools'. Not a lot of research done then!

A minor quibble, the sound levels were all over the place. Many pieces were so low volume that even if you turned the volume up full you could barely hear them.

We get so little time on the Beeb for folksong and when it does come along it's taken to pieces like this. Poor!