Listening to XFM’s movie programme on Sunday afternoon it really hit me how much better the BBC does film reviews than commercial radio.
Paul Anderson does an admiral job for XFM but never really gets to heart of what makes a good film review – if a film is rubbish saying that it’s rubbish. The temptation for film reviewers to always be positive about the crap Hollywood puts out must be huge, after all, most new films are pretty awful. I’m sure managers in commercial radio don’t want their show to be too negative, after all commercial radio is a ‘happy’ place. Broadcasting a movie review programme that is pretty much negative most of the time wouldn’t fit with a stations image.
Contrast this with Mark Kermode on 5 Live – I’ve talked before about how much I love listening to his reviews. He always says if a film is a turkey, most weeks he struggles to say almost anything positive which is really refreshing. Now if I go and see a film I really know what I’m letting myself in for.