English Entertainment
Top 5 TV spy shows that tasted success
MUMBAI: The recent James Bond starrer Spectre (2015) is taking trolls over the people across the nation with its brilliant cinematography and holds your breath tracking the shots. A Bond film’s rules might be predictable, but once its mechanisms start whirring, you can’t help but fall in place.
The Sam Mendes directed movie was shot on a 35mm film which marks a change of texture from Skyfall’s gleaming digital stake. The film had paid previews held on 19 November 2015 and collected Rs. 2 cr in India. Spectre collected around Rs. 6.5 cr on Friday taking its collections to Rs 8.5 cr at India Box Office.
English entertainment channels have always broadcasted shows and series on thrillers with a spy, to keep the viewers entertained. If you have already seen Spectre and are browsing on every available portal puzzled over what you should stream on tonight, we’ve got you covered.
After perusing the available options on the English entertainment channels, we recommend a few under-the-radar titles to satisfy your hunger for stories of a spy that enjoyed a good number of viewership in the global entertainment industry.
1. Chuck
Chuck is an American spy drama series created by Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedak. The series ran for a period of 5 seasons with 91 episodes. The series portrays the life of a computer geek named Chuck inadvertently downloading critical government secrets into his brain. One day Chuck gets a message from a friend working for CIA. The message embeds the only remaining copy of a software program containing the United States’ greatest spy secrets into Chuck’s brain. CIA and NSA assign two agents to protect him and exploit such knowledge, turning his life upside down.
2. Burn Notice
Burn Notice is an American television series created by Matt Nix. It talks about a spy recently disavowed by the U.S. government and how he uses his special ops training to help others in trouble. His only means of surviving is by doing impossible jobs for the desperate people in Miami, where his mother lives. The series took a permanent place in the heart of the onlookers with 111 episodes for a span of 7 seasons.
3. Alias
The series is created by J. J. Abrams and successfully ran for 5 seasons with about 150 episodes. The plot revolves around a young athletic college graduate who is recruited as a secret agent for the CIA. After a few years the protagonist learns that her boyfriend is a part of a rogue international agency called the Alliance of 12, out to rule the world. She becomes a double agent working with the real CIA to bring down SD-6 with the assistance of her handler and her estranged father who is also a double agent. The series talks about her journey all the while keeping her cloak-and-dagger lifestyle a secret from her friends.
4. Covert Affairs
Covert Affairs ran for 5 seasons with 75 episodes. The series hailed for a period of four years. The plot talks about a young CIA trainee sent into the field to work for the DPD (Domestic Protection Division). The field agent is assisted by a blind tech operative in her new life in the CIA. The lead’s new cover is that of a glamorous and well-connected importer or exporter with expensive tastes and dealings that may not always be legal.
5. 24
The 24 series had touched great heights of success in the entertainment industry for its entire tenure of 9 seasons. The Joel Surnow and Robert Cochran created series covers 24 hours in the life of Bauer, using the real time method of narration. In this concept drama, each season takes place within one 24 hour period. Day 1: Jack Bauer is the head of field ops for an elite team of CTU agents who uncover an assassination plot targeting Presidential nominee David Palmer. Meanwhile, Jack’s strained marriage to his wife, Teri, is pushed to the brink by the sudden disappearance of their troubled teenage daughter.
UK: The aerial is losing its grip. As broadband becomes the default way Britons watch television, the UK is edging towards a decisive, and divisive, question: should Freeview be switched off by 2034? The issue, highlighted in reporting by The Guardian, has exposed deep fault lines over access, affordability and the future of public service broadcasting.
For nearly 25 years, Freeview has delivered free-to-air television from the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 to almost every corner of the country. Even now, it remains the UK’s largest TV platform, used in more than 16m homes and on around 10m main household sets. Yet the same broadcasters that built it are now pressing for its closure within eight years.
Their case rests on a structural shift in viewing. Smart TVs, superfast broadband and the Netflix-led streaming boom have pulled audiences online. Advertising economics have followed. By 2034, the number of homes using Freeview as their main TV set is forecast to fall from a peak of almost 12m in 2012 to fewer than 2m, making digital terrestrial television, or DTT, increasingly costly to sustain.
But critics say the rush to switch off risks abandoning those least able, or least willing, to move online.
“I don’t want to be choosing apps and making new accounts,” says Lynette, 80, from Kent. “It is time-consuming and irritating trying to work out where I want to be, to remember the sequence of clicks, with hieroglyphics instead of words. If I make a mistake I have to start again.”
Lynette is among nearly 100,000 people who have signed a “save Freeview” petition launched by campaign group Silver Voices. She fears the government is about to “take [Freeview] away from me and others who either don’t like, can’t afford, or can’t use online versions”.
Official figures underline the fault lines. A report commissioned by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport estimates that by 2035, 1.8m homes will still depend on Freeview. Ofcom’s analysis shows those households are more likely to be disabled, older, living alone, female, and based in the north of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Freeview is owned by the public service broadcasters through Everyone TV, which also operates Freesat and the newer streaming platform Freely. After two years of review, DCMS is expected to set out its position soon, drawing on three options proposed by Ofcom: a costly upgrade of Freeview’s ageing technology; maintaining a bare-bones service with only core PSB channels; or a full switch-off during the 2030s.
The broadcasters have rallied behind the third option. They argue that 2034 is the logical cut-off, when transmission contracts with network operator Arqiva expire. By then, they say, the cost of broadcasting to a dwindling audience will far outweigh the returns from TV advertising.
Ofcom agrees a crunch point is approaching. In July, the regulator warned of a “tipping point” within the next few years, after which it will no longer be commercially viable for broadcasters to carry the costs of DTT.
Others see risks beyond economics. Questions remain over whether internet TV can reliably deliver emergency broadcasts, such as the daily Covid updates, in the way that universally available DTT can. The UK radio industry has also warned that an internet-only future for TV could push up distribution costs and force some radio stations off air if PSBs no longer share Arqiva’s mast network.
“It is a political hot potato,” says Dennis Reed, founder of Silver Voices, who says he has “dissociated” his organisation from the government’s stakeholder forum, which he believes is “heavily biased” towards streaming.
The Future TV Taskforce, representing the PSBs, counters that moving online could “close the digital divide once and for all”. “We want to be able to plan to ensure that no one is left behind,” a spokesperson says, adding that rising DTT costs could otherwise mean cuts to programme budgets.
The numbers show the scale of the challenge. Of the 1.8m Freeview-dependent homes projected for 2035, around 1.1m are expected to have broadband but not use it for TV. The remaining 700,000 are forecast to lack a broadband connection altogether.
Veterans of the analogue switch-off, completed in 2012 after 76 years, recall similar fears of “TV blackout chaos”. Around 6 per cent of households were labelled “digital refuseniks”, yet a targeted help scheme and a national campaign, fronted by a robot called Digit Al voiced by Matt Lucas, delivered a largely smooth transition.
This time, the BBC is less keen to foot the bill. Tim Davie, the outgoing director general, has said the corporation should not fund a comparable support programme for a Freeview switch-off.
Research for Sky by Oliver & Ohlbaum suggests that with early awareness campaigns and digital inclusion measures, only about 330,000 households would ultimately need hands-on help ahead of a 2034 shutdown.
Meanwhile, viewing habits continue to fragment. Audience body Barb says 7 per cent of UK households no longer own a TV set, choosing to watch on other devices. In December, YouTube overtook the BBC’s combined channels in total UK viewing across TVs, smartphones and tablets, albeit measured at a minimum of three minutes.
That shift may accelerate. YouTube has recently blocked Barb and its partner Kantar from accessing viewing session data, limiting transparency just as online platforms consolidate power.
“When the government chose British Satellite Broadcasting as the ‘winner’ in satellite TV it was Rupert Murdoch’s Sky instead that came out on top,” says a senior TV executive quoted by The Guardian. “There already is such an outsider ready to be the winner in the transition to internet TV; it is YouTube.”
Freeview’s future now hangs on a familiar British dilemma: modernise fast and risk exclusion, or protect universality and pay the price. Either way, the aerial’s days as king of the living room look numbered.
