Blitz Cities. But not Sheffield.

[drummonds]

i watched an excellent program regarding Blitzed cities on the beeb a few nights back. it concerned liverpool and featured ricky tomlinson as part of a series of programs covering cities that had suffered in the blitz.

 

there are 5 programs but sheffield isn't covered. it seems the beeb couldn't find a suitable sheffield celebrity to host the program. celebrities being more important than content.

[retep]

The blitz hasn't finished in Sheffield yet, we still have a planning department.

[Daven]

i watched an excellent program regarding Blitzed cities on the beeb a few nights back. it concerned liverpool and featured ricky tomlinson as part of a series of programs covering cities that had suffered in the blitz.

 

there are 5 programs but sheffield isn't covered. it seems the beeb couldn't find a suitable sheffield celebrity to host the program. celebrities being more important than content.

 

No one asked me !

I would have gladly done it !

Bit of a poor excuse that I think !

[blake]

basically the Blitz consisted of

 

1. London.

 

2. other.

 

more than 80% of civilians killed and the massive amount of damage to buildings, etc was London. I'm not downplaying how awful those two nights must have been in Sheffield and I certainly would not have wanted to be there, but it was mild compared to what happened to even some other provincial cities like especially Liverpool, Coventry, Belfast, or even Hull. I would not be surprised if Liverpool got its own programme but Sheffield didn't.

 

if I had to choose 5 blitz locations, really London deserves two episodes, but if it only had one I would award the others to Liverpool, Southampton, Coventry, and Bath as at at least one of them should be one of the towns targeted in the Baedeker raids where the targets had no military or industrial importance.

Edited September 10, 2015 by blake

[JFKvsNixon]

Sheffield with 355 tons was ranked 13th by tonnage of bombs dropped during WW2 by major raids, with smaller cities getting such as Plymouth getting hit by three times as many bombs.

 

Wiki quotes the 'The Night Blitz' by John Ray as saying the top 5 cities effected were:

 

1. London - 18,291
   
2. Merseyside - 1,957
   
3. Birmingham - 1,852
   
4. Clydeside - 1,329
   
5. Plymouth - 1,228
   

Edited September 10, 2015 by JFKvsNixon

[Vague_Boy]

it seems the beeb couldn't find a suitable sheffield celebrity to host the celebrities being more important than content.

 

Link? Or is that just supposition on your part?

[geared]

Perhaps Sean Bean was busy???

 

Did anyone see his two-part program on Waterloo??

Was really quite good I thought

[Berberis]

i watched an excellent program regarding Blitzed cities on the beeb a few nights back. it concerned liverpool and featured ricky tomlinson as part of a series of programs covering cities that had suffered in the blitz.

 

there are 5 programs but sheffield isn't covered. it seems the beeb couldn't find a suitable sheffield celebrity to host the program. celebrities being more important than content.

 

They would have had Sean Bean but he is contractually obliged to die in any TV show approx half way through.

[drummonds]

Link? Or is that just supposition on your part?

 

it was actually in a magazine article, but the "celebrity" requirement is highlighted in this feature. it seems sheffield is not alone in having a lack of available celebrity.

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/bbc-accused-of-making-appalling-error-by-omitting-hull-from-blitz-cities-tv-series-10490326.html

 

It is symptomatic of the approach the BBC in London has to the regions. It also seems to be confusing history with celebrity.”

 

The BBC has confirmed that the cities were chosen for its Blitz Cities series because of the celebrities’ associations with them. One episode will feature the journalist John Humphrys in Cardiff, while the actor Ricky Tomlinson visits Liverpool.

 

Alan Canvess, from the Hull-based National Civilian World War Two Memorial Trust, said: “If the BBC chose the celebrities before they chose the cities, that would be really disappointing.”

 

A BBC spokesperson said: “To mark the anniversary of the Blitz, the series sends famous faces on a trip around – and above - their home city to meet the people who lived through the bombing. As such, the cities were chosen because of the celebrities association with them.

Edited September 11, 2015 by drummonds

[Fogey]

Coventry would be top of my list to hear about how it was affected by the blitz.