B5 comes second in Digital Spy poll

[Springer]

Not bad for a 20-year old show that Warners likes to pretend doesn't exist.

http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/doctor...r-favourite-science-fiction-show-of-all-time/

 

[hypatia]

After all of these years? Wow, that's pretty amazing. The U.K. always appreciated B5 the way I wish more people in the U.S.A. did.

 

[vorlonlovechild]

it got a pretty high profile run for the first three seasons on channel 4 here in the UK, before they relegated it to a near midnight showing for season 4. I seem to remember they justified it due to strong themes or some other rubbish. It never quite had the same popularity after that. Then SFX magazine decided to slag it off over here. The same SFX who had been very supportive of it for the first three seasons.

for it to still come so high after all these years is a credit to everyone involved in bringing it to the small screen. now if Joe could bring that movie out, my mam (who i gave my DVD collection to - obviously i bought another) keeps asking when that movie is coming or suggesting another series because nothing has come close to B5 since it aired in her opinion. (and mine obviously)

 

[Springer]

it got a pretty high profile run for the first three seasons on channel 4 here in the UK, before they relegated it to a near midnight showing for season 4. I seem to remember they justified it due to strong themes or some other rubbish. It never quite had the same popularity after that. Then SFX magazine decided to slag it off over here. The same SFX who had been very supportive of it for the first three seasons.

Channel 4 actually started showing season 4 at prime time - 10pm on Thursday nights after being stuck at 6pm on Mondays (season 1) Tuesdays (season 2) and Sundays (season 3). I remember there was a lot of publicity for the start of season 4 in the Radio Times (they started highlighting it as one of the picks of the day) and national newspapers, and Channel 4 even put together an advert previewing it before it started (I remember as a kid being sat at the video recorder watching Channel 4 for the ad breaks all day trying to catch that advert and record it - how'd we all manage in the days before you tube!?). They had that crappy science fiction quiz show on after it which Claudia Christian was on once or twice so it was kind of a double bill of science fiction. But after the first few episodes it started getting put back to 10:15, then 10:30, then 10:45, then past 11pm. I figured they hadn't got the viewing figures they'd hoped for by putting it on at 10pm, so it started to give way to other things, but I think the intent was there to give it a chance in a good prime time slot. Of course, season 5 was dumped at lunchtime on a Sunday and the last five episodes shown over Christmas as part of children's tv (a move which showed Channel 4 had completely lost interest by that point).

The SFX thing seemed to be a fall out between the mag, the Wolf 359 organiser and JMS; I'm not entirely sure of the specifics as I've heard different things but the readers of the mag were the ones to lose out. SFX's coverage of B5 up until then had been excellent (issue 6 in particular had a fantastic long section devoted to B5), and even after all the acrimony I think there were one or two on the editorial staff who were still fans – but there were plenty of other mags, including Dreamwatch, TV Zone, Cult Times and Starburst that were supportive all the way through and beyond (it should be noted that of all those magazines, only SFX is still running in its original guise; Starburst was dormant for a number of years before being restarted by a new publisher, the others are gone which is a shame as TV Zone was my favourite). Plus we had the official B5 mag based in the UK, but over time I felt that started becoming a promotional machine for Babylonian Productions and we began to lose the interesting articles and reviews that they'd started out with, replaced with dull interviews with the Best Boy or the Grip or some other background crew member, while their reviews of the VHS videos changed from fair assessments of the episodes to just synopses when they started on season 5, which at the time felt to me like it was in order to avoid criticising the show in any way.