Jonathon Meades

viktorvaughn

Well-known member
So, I have been enjoying Off-Kilter, all the little riffs and wilfully tangential chatting in the deadpan style. I have not seen Magnetic North though.
 

four_five_one

Infinition
Most of them are absolutely brilliant. You just need to be handy with a dictionary whilst watching. He's sort of a hero of mine already. Amazing that he used to be on BBC2, isn't it?
 

slim jenkins

El Hombre Invisible
Oh yes...though like Tony Hancock trying to read Bertrand Russell, as has been said, a dictionary would come in handy. But who bothers? His style of delivery and dry wit is are a treat.
 

crackerjack

Well-known member
A mate's been badgering me for ages to watch him, but I always thought he'd be a slightly less hammy Brian Sewell. How wrong can you be? Saw the last of the off-kilters (lured in by scottish football clubs theme) - pure unadulterated genius. Something worth watching agaiin and again, I'd guess.
 

viktorvaughn

Well-known member
A mate's been badgering me for ages to watch him, but I always thought he'd be a slightly less hammy Brian Sewell. How wrong can you be? Saw the last of the off-kilters (lured in by scottish football clubs theme) - pure unadulterated genius. Something worth watching agaiin and again, I'd guess.

Yeah! He is a bit like Brian Sewell mixed with 20% Chris Morris.
 

CHAOTROPIC

on account
There's definitely a Brian Sewell touch & a bit of rather self-conscious wackiness but some of his stuff is great. The programme he did on Nazi architecture where he pointed out how fundamentally immature it all was - he described Hitler's Eagles Nest as like the treehouse of a megalomaniacal child I think - took the wind out of any concept of a cool evil dangerous Third Reich by laughing sarcastically at their utter ridiculousness. Worked brilliantly. Haven't been a Nazi since :D
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
He's great. Only seen the first Off Kilter so far, but Magnetic North was brilliant, highly recommended. I've got a boxed set of his stuff going back a couple of decades, all of which is good. There's a nice recent-ish one where he talks about his dad and his childhood, which was quite cool - a chance to see how the circumstances he grew up in shaped his way of looking at the world.
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Yeah! He is a bit like Brian Sewell mixed with 20% Chris Morris.
http://www.youtube.com/user/MeadesShrine

There's something to him that I often want to disagree with, but I'd rather have that from an auteur who isn't afraid to refer to the Teutonic Knights as engaging in "faith based belligerence initiatives" or say "i'm referring of course to Betjamen the topographer, not Betjamen the poet" than some more blandly pointless talking heads.
 

grizzleb

Well-known member
I love the fact his brand of original TV is so popular, his off-kilter shows were top of the iplayer most watched list I think. Hopefully that tells the beeb what they need to know, when I read recently they were doing surveys about 'what viewers expect from different kind of programming', the dickheads. Formalism is exactly what we don't want. His episode about the Isle of Lewis was my favourite of all the shows I've seen of his.

His novels are hilarious too!
 

Ness Rowlah

Norwegian Wood
Heads-up: Bunkers, Brutalism and Bloodymindedness: Jonathan Meades

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03vrphc

Sun 16 Feb on BBC4:

"Two-part documentary in which Jonathan Meades makes the case for 20th-century concrete Brutalist architecture in an homage to a style that he sees a brave, bold and bloodyminded. Tracing its precursors to the once-hated Victorian edifices described as Modern Gothic and before that to the unapologetic baroque visions created by John Vanbrugh, as well as the martial architecture of World War II, Meades celebrates the emergence of the Brutalist spirit in his usual provocative and incisive style. Never pulling his punches, Meades praises a moment in architecture he considers sublime and decries its detractors."
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Cheers for the heads-up Ness, that sounds great.

Anyone else read/ing Museum Without Walls? I'm most of the way through, it's pretty great. Only real gripe is that he often ends up repeating the same fact, joke or anecdote two or three times, but I think that's just a side effect of it being a collection of nearly 20 years' worth of essays and film scripts that were never originally intended to be published together.

On the subject of brutalism specifically, he namechecks Owen Hatherly a couple of times in a generally approving way, which I think is interesting given the latter's Marxism and the fact that Meades, whatever you think his politics really are, is clearly no socialist. Then again, he (JM) is pretty scathing about Thatcherism and utterly excoriating about New Labour in general and Blair - the "Christian bomber" - in particular.

Great stuff, on the whole.
 

version

Well-known member
Eerie. I was just looking at this thread earlier and wondering what had happened to Meades. Are the other three episodes available too? The last thing of his I saw was the Bunkers and Brutalism thing.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Eerie. I was just looking at this thread earlier and wondering what had happened to Meades. Are the other three episodes available too? The last thing of his I saw was the Bunkers and Brutalism thing.

Pretty sure everything, or nearly everything, he's ever done is on Youtube. The channel you want is called Meades Shrine (a friend of mine pointed out the lost opportunity to name it Temple Meades!).
 

version

Well-known member
The YouTube uploads stop at Off-Kilter and the last one on the blog is the one on Mussolini. Is it an actual series or has he just been doing individual films on dictators over the years, this being the fourth one?
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
The YouTube uploads stop at Off-Kilter and the last one on the blog is the one on Mussolini. Is it an actual series or has he just been doing individual films on dictators over the years, this being the fourth one?

Well I dunno if it was ever considered a 'series' as such, but it's four films linked by a theme. 'Jerry Building', the first one, came out way back in 1994.

There's certainly stuff more recent than Off Kilter on YT, such as this, from last year:
 
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