TV Live Forum

John Simpson presents a new weekly current affairs show on BBC2 from Wednesday 23 February, after Newsnight.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/progin...hn-simpson

Quote: Unspun World is a brand new weekly BBC Two programme focussing on the biggest and least understood international stories shaping our world.

Presented by BBC News World Affairs Editor John Simpson, the show will feature the best of BBC’s global reporting talent across BBC News and BBC World Service.

John Simpson will have conversations with BBC correspondents to provide expert analysis of the hottest topics of the week, utilising the BBC’s breadth of reporting coverage to bring international stories into the homes of BBC Two’s viewers.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/j...eijing-bbc

Quote: My plan is to have a no-nonsense, no-frills programme where we work out four or five topics a week and we’ll go to the BBC expert and get the absolutely unvarnished facts about it. What’s really, really happening, not that endless business of getting one person on one side, one person on the other, and they talk it out.

Quote: My plan is to have a no-nonsense, no-frills programme where we work out four or five topics a week and we’ll go to the BBC expert and get the absolutely unvarnished facts about it. What’s really, really happening, not that endless business of getting one person on one side, one person on the other, and they talk it out.

Amazingly, this quote manages to both describe what a show called Context should have been and implicitly diss Context.

Quote:My plan is to have a no-nonsense, no-frills programme where we work out four or five topics a week and we’ll go to the BBC expert and get the absolutely unvarnished facts about it. What’s really, really happening, not that endless business of getting one person on one side, one person on the other, and they talk it out.

I very much agree with this sentiment - there has been some criticism of the BBC' s approach to impartiality recently - that idea that even though the facts say one thing they still find some what to caveat that with some absurd niche opinion simply to give balance (see
Question Time's appeal for people who hadn't had the vaccine). Shows that have dismissed that idea - notably the Outside Source explainers - have become very popular and praised for not doing that. For this reason (and that John Simpson is an unparalleled broadcaster!), I think this show will be exceptional if it is well executed.

Great news but why bury it so late at night when BBC2 is pretty light on content as it is?

Because they know nobody will watch it in primetime but Newsnight provides a lead in.

Presumably it'll be added to the BBC World/News Channel back half hour fillers.

Some more information has appeared on the BBC's website https://www.bbc.com/mediacentre/2022/joh...spun-world

It will also be broadcast on the BBC News Channel and BBC World News.

Some hints of Lilliburlero mixed in with the BBC News theme for the titles music, rather nice.