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The Best...TV idents

Channel 4 ident
  • Posted at 12:39pm
  • 12 February 2008
  • by MartinAston-RT
  • 2 comments

Like me, are you having a hard time keeping up with the rapidly expanding world of idents? You know, those little clips of channel branding ("ident" being short for identification) that remind you which station you're actually watching, in case you mistakenly find yourself tuned in to The Adult Channel thinking it was BBC4. (Anyone can make that mistake.)

The internet being what it is, there are even websites devoted to them (check out www.idents.tv and www.thetvroom.com), right down to the specific ident Anglia TV deployed in 1975. You can also download a pile of the more recent versions in case you need to watch them at your own convenience. How funny/tragic is that?

Once upon a time, we were happy to put up with BBC1's plain revolving globe or ATV's Venn diagram. Nowadays, they're tantamount to little movies that are as newsworthy as the sad sitcoms and reality shows that interrupt them. One shot of a furry robot "2" sniffing a dog's bum over on BBC2 had greater entertainment value than Cirque de Celebrité in its entirety.

It's why the retirement of BBC1's wondrous "globe" balloons in favour of the new "rhythm and movement" series (the jumping Masai tribesmen, abseiling ballet dancers, salsa prancers and wheelchair whizzes) inspired a horde of steaming diatribes to certain TV listings mags (OK, Radio Times) as if their passing matched that of a national treasure. In mourning style, BBC1 preceded the launch of their new "circle" series in October 2006 with a montage of (almost every) "rhythm and movement" clip.

But that's long, long ago in Ident-world. Each time I go on holiday, I seem to return to some new campaign - the 2-shaped "window" over on BBC2, or additions to the range, like the BBC1 circle series's new moon landing. There are specials for Christmas, the Electric Proms (glistening neon, actually, and pretty good), sports events…it's turned into the ident equivalent of movie blockbusters, as competition mounts. Fine, if you like being bludgeoned into admiration.

But enough's enough. You've got ITV's conceptually challenged "yellow" ident series (one of them resembles a horde of ants playing in a giant sandpit), BBC4's torturously clever split screens (just like Channel 4's moving bars used to), and has ITV2's current lurid look been created by a team of colour-blind graphic designers on acid? Meanwhile, Paramount Comedy's cartoon figures are the enemies of mirth.

For my money, the most creative ident is still Channel 4's current batch. They're big-scale creations, yet effortlessly simple. For starters, they're shot in the kind of locations where real people live, work and play, like a housing estate, a Tokyo street or a bowling green - rather than, say, in among a circle of paddling hippos.

The camera roves across a scene until it suddenly alights on a moment in which the "4" logo is miraculously revealed. It can be shaped by pylons, neon signs or bales of hay. Even now, I still wait to see at what exact point the 4 appears before it drifts apart again. Which means I'm not flipping channels for even a few crucial seconds. One of the later additions, set in Trafalgar Square, where resting pigeons on a concrete 4 are suddenly crushed (humanely, I'm sure), had me laughing.

Even when budgets are constrained - in other words, back on digital TV - E4's new animations boxes are unquestionably the pick of the bunch. When the following programme might well be titled The Man Who Ate His Mother-in-Law, we should be eternally grateful for such small mercies.

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  • Posted on 15 September 2008
  • at 9:28am
  • by kip & sky

mega lolz

  • Posted on 27 February 2008
  • at 5:40pm
  • by belfastmike
If you were a fan of the BBC1 balloon, you'll appreciate this clip from March 2002 - it's BBC Northern Ireland's closedown the night before the red dancers arrived. Anoraks, rejoice: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rl5_HYnv0lQ

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