"Addicted to Money" TV Show - Appalling

The_Banker

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Last night's programme was dreadful. In a triumph of style over substance it was like the director had been let loose in an edit suite for the first time.
And McWilliams jetted all round the world to do a series of long walking shots before stating the bleedin' obvious.
The programme took so long to make that by now it looked horribly outdated.
Christ knows what they spent but McWilliams must have a lot of air miles racked up.
 
Re: Addicted to Money - Appalling

I'm so happy I didn't watch it....after reading what the show was about I knew it would be like the above. :D
 
Re: Addicted to Money - Appalling

The fault was in the editing rather than the content. He seemed to be flitting forwards and back in that irritating style that, I reckon, programme makers feel they have to copy to combat short attention spans.

There was a thread going on boards while the programme was being screened and someone listed off the countries visited in the first 30 minutes and commented 'Who does he think he is, the Ceann Comhairle ?' :D

And as for the assertion, referred to in the introduction, that our future could be as one giant wind farm ? :rolleyes:
 
Re: Addicted to Money - Appalling

I watched bits of it.

If I understood it correctly, his assertion is that we all got greedy because we wanted houses similar to those seen on the Australian soap "Neighbours" which apparantly improved its set significantly several years ago.

To prove the point, McWilliams travelled to Australia, visted the set of Neighbours and, with the help of one the actors, confirmed indeed that the world's soap-watching population had been unreasonably influenced by the popular drama, to go out and spend exhorbitant amounts of money, that they didn't have, on dong up their houses to a "Neighbours" standard.

The financial meltdown we're now experiening can thus be attributed to the lavish set design in Neighbours.

Did I miss something?
 
Re: Addicted to Money - Appalling

I noticed at the end that the production (tiger productions I think) was in partnership with S4C and some Australian network (ABC I believe). Unfortunately I didn't catch the name of the other producer as the credits were gone too quickly.
The principal investor was the Aussie gov. Good to see we are globalising our tripe.
Will this programme be shown globally I wonder?
 
Re: Addicted to Money - Appalling

McWilliams is the Katie Price of Economics - fair play to him if he can make money out of his doom and gloom programmes / books - he won't be getting any of mine though.
 
Re: Addicted to Money - Appalling

... Will this programme be shown globally I wonder?
Only in those countries most likely to influence Irish economics - Australia, Papua New Guinea, Tasmania and Coronation St.
 
Re: Addicted to Money - Appalling

I haven't watched any of it myself, but surely anything that takes the Ginger Whinger out of the country for a while can't be all bad?
 
Re: Addicted to Money - Appalling

Surprised at the comments so far. I watched it expecting more of the popes children and decklander rubbish but was quite surprised by the show.

I used to like McWilliams back in his Newstalk and TV3 days. Lost interest in him after the above two shows but will give this one a few weeks to see how it pans out.

In fairness to him he was actually right as to what was coming with the economy when a whole lot of others were expecting a soft landing. Am in complete agreement with him where NAMA is concerned too! LS.
 
Re: Addicted to Money - Appalling

I just watched the show this morning after Sky+'ing it.

Have to agree with all the sentiments on here.

Jez, it makes for hard watching.

I like McWilliams style and there was a lot of sense talked in the show, but it could all have been said in 15mins instead of an hour, if it wasn't for all the padding. Every point that was made (in perhaps 10 or 15secs) had to be accompanied by 2mins of slo-mo clips of people looking moody, taking money out of ATMs, Berlin walls coming down etc. Its lazy TV of the highest order and we see it all the time these days.

I think its aimed at the new breed of TV watcher who will switch over if the shows are edited to look all fancy and arty. Some of the best points made were by the woman from Harvard University, yet her total airtime was about 45secs and we had about 40mins of 'action' shots, aircraft taking off, Neighbours tour buses etc.

And I'll not even mention the airmiles he racked up making the show!!!
 
Re: Addicted to Money - Appalling

Surprised at the comments so far. I watched it expecting more of the popes children and decklander rubbish but was quite surprised by the show.

I used to like McWilliams back in his Newstalk and TV3 days. Lost interest in him after the above two shows but will give this one a few weeks to see how it pans out.

In fairness to him he was actually right as to what was coming with the economy when a whole lot of others were expecting a soft landing. Am in complete agreement with him where NAMA is concerned too! LS.


+1. Actually enjoyed it and everything he was saying was exactly right. I like him because I listened to what he was saying in his other programmes about the house of cards about to fall and held off building my house as a result..Now i'm getting quotes 30% cheaper than if I had built back then so he's saved me a lot of money.
 
Re: Addicted to Money - Appalling

I only saw about 20 seconds of this. It was a clip of Mr McWilliams walking down a dusty village street looking back behind him as a camel walks by. I just thought it was self indulgent.
 
Re: Addicted to Money - Appalling

Thought the bit when he received a big envelope with 'David McWilliams' written on it, and it contained a spool of tape was tragic. He was trying to be all 'Watergate'.

He emptied it out and tried his best attempt at looking shocked/interested/curious - and showed that he will never be an actor.
 
Re: Addicted to Money - Appalling

Some of the best points made were by the woman from Harvard University, yet her total airtime was about 45secs

She is Elizabeth Warren, Harvard Law Professor. She's interesting. You can google a youtube video of her lecture on the 'Coming Collapse of the Middle Classes'. Maybe a bit dated now but still relevant. I first read about her on the PropertyPin and watched the video one lunchtime.
 
Re: Addicted to Money - Appalling

I only saw about 20 seconds of this. It was a clip of Mr McWilliams walking down a dusty village street looking back behind him as a camel walks by. I just thought it was self indulgent.

Yea, he can come across as quite pompous. Noticed this particularly when he was on the Late Late along with Alan Joyce of Qantas.

Not sure whether McWilliams was surprised that a guy from Tallaght was running Qantas, or that the guy running Qantas was happy to discuss being from Tallaght. Either way he looked bemused by it. :D
 
Re: Addicted to Money - Appalling

I only saw about 20 seconds of this. It was a clip of Mr McWilliams walking down a dusty village street looking back behind him as a camel walks by. I just thought it was self indulgent.

Well if you only watch 20 second clips of a programme it is very hard to judge it overall. I thought it explained where we got her in plain english to a lot of people who may not frequent financial websites.
 
Re: Addicted to Money - Appalling

I can't watch him on TV, but his writing is reasonably good, and his track record is fairly sound.
 
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