I find myself shouting at the television when I spot terrible continuity mistakes in programmes and films. It’s silly really but it bugs the hell out of me. Like in the middle of ‘Dirty Dancing’ after Baby says she carried a watermelon and then you can clearly see her mouthing the same line in the next shot once they are supposed to have moved on. Or in Notting Hill when Hugh Grant throws orange juice over Julia Roberts then in every subsequent shot her shirt can’t make up its mind about where said juice was spilled. Julia Roberts is the Queen of continuity erros though, just think back to Pretty Woman and her taking a bite out of a pancake… Or not as the next shot suggests!

There’s loads of them, all over the place and it IS really annoying, for me, but what I find even more irritating is when programmes simply get bare facts WRONG! The TV writers, producers, whoever! I don’t know, they’re just fact fiddlers and it totally gets my goat!

Take the Beeb for example and their longest running, biggest hitting soap. FULL of sh (and star the rest of the letters)! Just like the Taverniers, Millers and Kelvin, I recently left East London for a quieter life in Norfolk so I am best placed to know life in good ole gang land! And. In all my decade of years living there guess what? I owned my own washing machine and didn’t know the local land lord’s name. Shocking yes but in reality and in direct contrast to how East Enders portray life in the postcode of E, no one actually uses a laundrette unless their kid has vommed all over the duvet and although we do go to the local boozer, real people in London don’t even make eye contact with those they don’t know let alone run in on their first day up the local square and declare themselves the one who shot Phil up Walford market. Or Leytonstone, Bow, Walthamstow… You know, wherever the real Easties live!

And moving on to my new yard of Norfolk, TV can’t get it right there either! When it comes to the local accents of the cast in Stephen Fry’s Kingdom! Well, I suggest they go back to the west country where they clearly belong. Shame on you Stephen. And you live here. You SHOULD know better!

So, you catch my drift. Stuff annoys me about TV when it’s wrong. However, I’m prepared to say that on the whole it’s harmless. (Aside from those Non Norfolk accents. They’re just terrible moi woman’. We say point for pint and loike for like and we never say anything ending with moi luvvvaaar!) But there’s one show on at the moment that I simply can’t ignore and say ‘Oh well’ about. Because the enormity of their errors is potentially damaging to anyone watching. We know television isn’t real, of course we do, but we also take our leave from the things we see around us and television makers definitely have a responsibility to get it right in when it comes to areas of importance even if they can’t be arse faced to cast decent actors who can do the right accent (by the way Stephen, I’m a character actress myself and I CAN do a fine Norfuckian if ever you’re on the look out)!

The programme I’m talking about is ‘In The Club’, a BBC drama penned by Kaye Mellor and for the most part it’s light, trivial and entertaining but… When it comes to pregnancy and babies… Eeek, you do have to be a little sensitive and factually correct I feel. And they’re not. Not at all. From really basic errors like the poorest of them having the most expensive of buggies to the actually really quite disasterous. And I want to know why?

Why is our licence fee money going towards making this shizzle that with a tiny bit of care could be presented in a much more believeable (and factual) way? Even if the programme is not intended to be realistic (a woman in her 40’s post kids getting jiggy with a man in his mid twenties is a touch far fetched I guess) I still think they have a real duty of care to the public to be informed about their presentations. All it would take would be a simple chat with a recent new mother. Or a midwife. Or you know, anyone who knows anything about having to live on a budget. So… Here’s a list of my bug bears from the two episodes of the second series airing on the BBC at the moment.

1. The childminder’s husband is home from prison yet her clients seem to think that instead of a guest of HRH Liz he’s actually been down under in New Zealand. Hmmm…
2. Same child minder doesn’t seem to have the correct ratios of children which does make me wonder if she’s registered or ever been inspected by Ofsted.
3. Again, sorry to bang on about her, but she’s also rather free and easy with the distribution of Calpol to other people’s kids!
4. And then it’s this same child minder (sorry) who seems to have had two different double buggies despite having no money!
5. But that’s ok because Roanna is also skint but has a top of the range buggy worth at least £800. Maybe they went to a bargain basement sale together. I think not!
6. Now onto the midwives. The supposed highly trained bones of the maternity department who in this programme advise women that reduced movement is ‘probably’ just because the baby has no room… Oh dear! Let’s not even mention their discussions of private patient information!
7. The other midwife faux pas I absolutely had to mention is when she put her own baby down to sleep in his cot. Which has a bumper (Whaaaaaaa) AND a blanket (Noooooo) with loads of toys (Come the eff ooon!) then she plonked him in the middle rather than feet to foot (Reaaaaaaaaaally?!). COME ON KAYE MELLOR, BBC, WHOEVER IS RESPONSIBLE! Check your facts please, none of these three things are safe!
8. Ok, so we’re all entitled to our own opinions but having a fairly famous actress in Hermione Norris suggesting, as her character, that her friend should give up breast feeding because she’s doing it too much and is like a milking machine really does somewhat go against the World Health Organisation guidelines and dismisses the encouragement women who are ACTUALLY breast feeding will need! I’m not saying we should all be perfect parents but comments like this really do have the potential to damage… Awful representation!

And now the final two points are for my own amusement…

1. As a blogger myself, I feel I can say this… That blogger is rubbish! She just sits about dreamily talking to herself and penning perfect prose while her voice drifts in the air… She doesn’t do any promotion, any Twitter follow up and I’ve never once seen her ignore her kid asking a question because she’s seen a brick wall and needs to get a picture of her new boots for Instagram. Just plain wrong! (Bet her Tots score is abysmal – she’d better pick it up on social if she wants to make the top 500!)
2. And lastly… Jack Ryder. Gone to pot a bit hasn’t he. Just saying!?!

And there I shall leave you. Rant over. And FYI BBC, Just so you know…

This buggy on the left is cheap as chips and something Roanna could afford in her financial crisis. The buggy on the right… Is not! (Unless she too is a blogger and was gifted it from the company to review. But she’s not pushing it, photographing it or writing about it enough if that’s the case!)

Follow