Talk:Chalk (TV series)/GA1

GA Review

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The article isn't bad, but its major fault is that it often seems to assume that readers are already familiar with the show (but I am not). Most of my notes below refer to (minor) prose issues, but I just wrote up anything that caught my eye. Please use your common sense to address the noted issues, i.e. I won't withhold article promotion if you disagree with or don't address all of my notes. This page is on my watchlist, so just drop a note here within the next seven days when you think I should re-review the article. I'll put the article on hold in the meantime. – sgeureka ^t•c 18:20, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

• Images including fairuse rationales: Fine
• Sources and referencing: it would help to see the people who did the audio commentaries, and which year a DVD was released
• Broadness: Fine
• Neutrality: Fine
• Article Stability: Fine

Lead:

• "Chalk is a BBC television sitcom written by Steven Moffat set in a comprehensive school" - sounds like Moffat is set in a school
• should mention that it's a British(?) comprehensive school
• Joking Apart is unnecessarily linked twice
• why mention at all that the DVD was released by a fan who... It's sufficient to just say that a DVD set was released

Inception:

• Repeat Moffat's full name
• it may be advisable for non-UK readers to add what Central is ("a TV station")
• "Inspired by his experience in education (he was an English teacher..." - it's not clear until after this long introduction to whom "his" and "he" refers
• it's strange to see a long inline quote to be followed by a short blockquote

Recording:

• repeat again that the location shots are about Chalk
• what is meant with "production block"?
• "Galfast High" is mentioned here first, but not explained (I guess it's the fictional school, but the article hasn't said that here yet)
• "such as the school hall featured in "The Inspection"" - say that it's an episode
• "colloquially known as the 'Acton Hilton'" - why use apostrophe-quotes instead of regular quotes here?
• "the episodes were recorded at BBC Television Centre" - mention the city

Episodes:

• the paragraph starting with "Moffat integrated many references..." and the next paragraph read very much like a jumble of data facts that are not understandable for anyone who has neither seen Press Gang nor Chalk. The facts almost feel like fun trivia connected to sentence, but are trivia nonetheless. If you really want to keep this information, please use one quotation style (there is currently normal quote marks, apostrophe quote marks and no quote marks). You should also expand what a term was in Press Gang and then in Chalk.
• "is taken from the unfilmed Press Gang movie "Dead Line"" - shouldn't "Dead Line" be italicized as a film?

Characters:

• since so many characters are just a two-line description, consider switching to a bullet-point style. Many Good and Featured film and TV show articles use the "Actor as/portrays Character" format nowadays. (Feel free to ignore these two suggestions if you like the current style.)
• "deepen the many crises that face the school (most of Slatt’s own making" needs a reference right behind
• one reviewers commented, another one comments - please decide. ( In my experience, it should always be in simple past, as the reivewers may have changed their opinion by now. This is true for all reviewers' and cast opinions throughout the article.)
• link Basil Fawlty
• "teasted" - I guess a typo(?)
• "David Bamber was regularly teasted during rehearsals by the rest of the cast, who speculated upon how Deayton might have performed a particular line or sequence." - I can't figure out the connection between the first part of the sentence and the second part.
• "uses the school's telephone network surfing on the internet" - "to surf"(?)
• "Suszy" - typo

Reception:

• "before the first had aired" - or do you mean "before the first had finished airing"?
• "In an interview in the early 2000s, Moffat refuses to even name the show" - refused. The name of what show? (Chalk or MBB)
• "who lauded the represented of their professions" - grammar. So was the show lauded or negatively criticized? The paragraph seems to say both.

Video and DVD releases:

• section can also be renamed to "Home release", I think
• "brand-new" - just remove this word of advertisement, as the following "retrospective" already does the job

Reply Many, many thanks for this comprehensive review. I've enacted the majority of the above constructive criticisms. A couple of queries:

• "should mention that it's a British(?) comprehensive school" -- I've restructured the opening sentence to read "Chalk is a British television sitcom..." (as opposed to "BBC Television"), which should make it now pretty obvious it's a British comprehensive school.
• "it's strange to see a long inline quote to be followed by a short blockquote" Maybe -- they are two different voices, though, so can't be combined (first Herring, then Moffat).
• You're right about the trivia. I think it's interesting, but I have cut it down.
• "David Bamber was regularly teased during rehearsals..." I'm not sure from where the confusion stems? The point is that Deayton was the producer's first choice, which the cast "ribbed" Bamber about.
• The characters. Well, I has trying to get some continuity between the two other Moffat articles I've worked on (Press Gang and Joking Apart) so probably won't change the style. However, I see your point about some being short. I'll try to rectify it by expanding the short ones.

Ta. The JPS^{talk to me} 19:51, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Most of the issues have been fixed so I'll promote the article in a minute. (I have marked the issues that would certainly come up again in a WP:FAC, in case you are interested in further improving the article.) – sgeureka ^t•c 11:17, 7 March 2009 (UTC)