Doctor Who

• Behind the scenes of the new series [spoilers]
• An interview with Karen Gillan

Film

• Orlando Bloom and Jonathan Rhys Meyers join Albert Nobbs
• Paul Bettany and Rufus Sewell join The Tourist

• Trailer for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls

British TV

• BBC to launch second Freeview HD service because Five can't?
• BBC shouldn't have bid on Harper's Island [subscribers only]
• Sci Fi HD coming to Virgin
• ITV1 HD also coming to Sky

US TV

• SyFy working on Three Inches, Alphas and another BSG spin-off
• Mia Maestro to star in Cutthroat + more pilot casting
• Actor leaving True Blood for The Good Wife?

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Read other posts about: Battlestar Galactica

Time to announce the winner of the The Writer's Tale competition. Through the mighty power of the Internet Random Number Generator and atmospheric noise, I can reveal to you that the lucky recipient of my review copy of Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale - The Final Chapter is...

Continue reading "The Writer's Tale competition result"

Authors: Russell T Davies, Benjamin Cook
Price: £16.99 (Amazon price: £11.04)
ISBN: 978-1-846-07861-3
Pages: 704
Publisher: BBC Books
Published: January 14th (that's tomorrow, baby)

Writing's not easy. It's very hard. Ask a writer. Go on. Any writer. They'll tell you about it at length. Really quite absurd length.

Journalist Benjamin Cook asked Russell T Davies how hard writing is, some time just before the launch of the third series of Doctor Who in February 2007, and the resulting email and text correspondence lasted, well, years. But in a radical move, Cook and Davies decided to turn all that correspondence into a book, and thus Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale was born.

Since then, Russell T Davies has continued to tell Benjamin Cook just how hard writing is, and the additional 300 pages or so of correspondence have been collected together and added to the original book to produce Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale – The Final Chapter. This not only continues Davies' insights into writing for Doctor Who, as well as Torchwood, The Sarah Jane Adventures and indeed television in general, but also looks at the politics of television, the nature of television production, how PR and the press work, and more.

And if you keep reading this exciting review, you'll be able to win a copy of it. How's that for fun?

Continue reading "Competition and Review: Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale - The Final Chapter"

Read other posts about: The Sarah Jane Adventures, Torchwood

I have here a shiny review copy of Russell T Davies/Benjamin Cook's updated version of The Writer's Tale (aka The Final Chapter). I'll be reviewing it next week, and then one of you lucky people can have it in a totally random competition. 

But on p662, I found these exciting nuggets on information that should help clarify a few things in The End of Time that are causing controversy.

Euros has just been on the phone to Timothy Dalton, about playing the Lord President! TIMOTHY DALTON!!! AS RASSILON!!! Early days, of course – it's still not a definite booking – but it's as close as it can be. (I wanted the bloke from The Five Doctors, but apparently he was banned from acting ever again.)

Then, in a footnote, "In 1983 Doctor Who Special The Five Doctors, Rassilon was played by the late actor Richard Matthews."

So definitely the same Rassilon then.

And then

Oh, and Claire Bloom is playing the Doctor's mum! (Yes, that's what she's been told, too.)

That looks reasonably definite to me.

Doctor Who

• New trailer for The End of Time, complete with Brian Cox voiceover
• Pictures of John Simm in The End of Time [spoilers]

• Ivor the Engine returns

Film

• Laurence Fishburne joins Predators

British TV

• Misfits gets a second series
• 2.9m watch David Tennant's Never Mind the Buzzcocks
• Press pack for series two of Survivors
• UK television watching up 3.2%

US TV

• SyFy president says Warehouse 13 better than The Lost Room
• Someone's leaving Big Love [spoilers]
• Boris Kodjoe to star in Undercovers
• Showtime turning Sunshine Cleaning into TV series

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Doctor Who

• Fourth series of Torchwood to be 13 episodes

Film

• John Madden to direct My Fair Lady remake?
• I Spit on Your Grave to be remade?
• Paul Greengrass quits Bourne 4
• Tron: Legacy team to remake Black Hole?

• Kelsey Grammer to star in Broadway version of La Cage aux Folles

• Jonathan Littell wins the Bad Sex in Fiction award

British TV

• Casting on BBC1's Five Daughters

Canadian TV

• Canada looking for more sitcoms
• Molly Parker joins Shattered

• ProSievenSat. 1 to sell N24 news channel?

US TV

• Barry Sonnenfeld to direct pilot for ABC's Funny in Farsi
• SyFy to make a series based (loosely) on Stephen King's Colorado Kid
• Nicole Richie getting a comedy on ABC
• Raising the Bar and Three Rivers cancelled
• Heroes' Sendhil Ramamurthy and Jane Curtin join Rex is Not Your Lawyer
• Prison Break's Marshall Allman to join True Blood

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Read other posts about: Heroes, Prison Break, Torchwood

Doctor Who

• The End of Time to air on Christmas Day and New Year's Day

• Borders and Books Etc to close all branches after going into administration

Film

• Another remake of The Amityville Horror?
• Jim Sheridan talks about I, Claudius and Dreamhouse
• Carla Bruni-Sarkozy to appear in Woody Allen's next movie

• Christopher Eccleston to play John Lennon in BBC4 drama
• Sky to launch 3D TV channel next spring? (subscription required)
• Gavin & Stacey gets 5.63m viewers
• BBC looking to cut US shows
• Joanna Lumley joins Mistresses

• Callum Keith Rennie to star as MPD cop in Showcase's Shattered

• The life of Matthew McConaughey's brother to become a Fox cartoon
• Ryan Devlin to recur on Cougar Town
• Aunjanue Ellis joins The Mentalist [spoilers]
• Lucas Black and Cary Elwes join Epix

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Read other posts about: Gavin and Stacey

Happy Thanksgiving to US readers, who probably aren't going to read this because they're eating turkey

Doctor Who

• Michael Moorcock talks about writing a Who novel
• Karen Gillan's cousin gets cast

Film

• Trailer for new Universal Soldier movie with Dolph and Jean Claude
• Dirk Benedict to cameo in The A-Team

• Touring version of When Harry Met Sally

British TV

• ITV Player coming to Freesat
• Paradox gets 4.1m viewers

US TV

• Ratings on FlashForward at new low, production suspended
• Curb Your Enthusiasm finale best rated for five seasons
• Lie to Me picked up for a full season
• Psych gets a fifth season
• Burn Notice gets a fourth season
• V ratings stabilise

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Read other posts about: Burn Notice

Twilight annoys me. New Moon annoys me even more, yet I've seen neither of them. I've seen clips, and they all make me want to strangle Kristen "wetter than a haddock's bathing costume" Stewart. Robert Pattinson? He's fine, although I just wish he'd find something better. And the whole plot is very creepy: 100+-year-old vampire falls for underage girl but she turns him on too much so they can't ever have sex. Ugh. Bloody mormons.

Maybe this hatred is rational; maybe it's completely irrational. At the very least, it caused The Vampire Diaries to be made, and I had to sit through at least an episode of that, so maybe I do have some cause.

But my veins course with hate whenever there's even a hint of Twilight around. How about you?

Is there a movie, TV or book franchise whose mere existence fills you with hate?

Maybe it's Stargate. Maybe it's those rubbish David Eddings books. Maybe it's Only Fools and Horses and its numerous spin-offs. Maybe it's even Spiderman and his amazing cash-ins.

Whatever it is, fess up: it's good for the soul.

As always, leave a comment with your answer or a link to your answer on your own blog.

Doctor Who

• Michael Moorcock to write Doctor Who novel?

Film

• Aaron Sorkin to write movie about the founding of Greenpeace?
• Butch Cassidy legend to be shot as Blackthorn
• Independence Day to get two sequels?
• Helena Bonham Carter, Jennifer Ehle, Derek Jacobi, Guy Pearce, Timothy Spall and Michael Gambon join The King's Speech
  
• Trailer for Ed Norton in Leaves of Grass
• Trailer for Steve Carell and Tina Fey's Date Night
• Silent Hill 2?

British TV

• Ricky Gervais to script edit PhoneShop for E4
• New iPlayer channel for Wii
• STV calls for changes in ITV
• E4 gets 447,000 viewers
• Big Top press pack

Canadian TV

• Broadcasters petitioning to avoid simultaneous transmission of US shows

US TV

• FlashForward still at all-time low, but CSI up in ratings
• Larry Charles developing fanboy sitcom for NBC
• Alyssa Milano to guest on Castle
• George Segal to star in Retired at 35 for TV Land
• Order for Romantically Challenged cut
• Friday's ratings
• Lost producers abandon Dark Tower adaptation
• Exorcist to be remade as mini-series by William Friedkin and William Peter Blatty
• Gina Torres joins The Vampire Diaries

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Read other posts about: Lost