No nets, no harnesses and hitting the mark for 2 hours - TV fights back.

So there I was, earlier today, moaning about the state of films - just one of those random things that takes your fancy enough to drop a post on this place.

As if to show me I'd spoken a little too soon about the state of current entertainment, in all it's forms, I chanced upon a barely advertised nugget. So engrossing was it that I owe the Banks an apology if he was online waiting to run around shooting people - I never made it.

BBC4, tucked away in the digital netherworld, tonight brought some of the danger back to television by going back to the days of the "L" word.

Live.

Yes, for the first time in around 20 years, they broadcast 2 hours of live drama. Being on auntie Beeb that meant no commercials, no break for the news - just solid drama acted as you watched it with no delay safety-net in case of mistakes etc.

There were a couple of inserted pre-filmed sections for things like TV news reports and the like but it was only at the end that you realised there were no special-effects, no computer graphics and that there were never that many camera shots being snapped between. It's actually obvious when you think of the natural parallels with theater - you can't exactly have wires and crew wheeling kit around all over the place for something like this.

It has to be said that it was pretty good too. A recreation of a 1953 Quatermass story, originally broadcast live then lost in the archives. The only real mistakes spotted were a couple of camera shakes as if they'd moved slightly away from the plan and ended up bumping into something. Either the actors hit their marks every time or they were good at adlibbing back to script and covering for slips - over that long a time I think that's pretty good all told.

Curious about this and the whole live thing ?

BBC Four Drama - The Quatermass Experiment - Live