Year: 2006

US TV

Season finales: Alias, 24, The Unit

30 May 2006 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Today’s finales guide is going to look at the silly spy shows of US TV.

Alias finale

Alias

Pants. I missed the Rambaldi episode. Instead, the finale dealt with a whole load of silly things, as you might expect with Alias. Various character arcs get resolved, both happily and happily, but ultimately you get the feeling the last five years was all for nothing. Oh well.

Disappointment factor: 5/10.

Jack Bauer in 24

24

Not the most tense of seasons, but by no means the worst (season 3?), this year’s 24 does have the most tense finale of them all. How does Jack get out of that one? Maybe Dale or Professor Zarkov can fashion a ‘ray’ to save him. Anyway, brace yourself.

Tension factor: 10/10.

The Unit finale

The Unit

After a terribly impressive 12th episode that took virtually none of the conventional paths in the standard “bomb in the building that needs defusing” scenario, the finale proved to be a terrible piece of silliness that went for guns and ammo plus francophobia in preference to sensible plotting. The conclusion makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, either. It’s not a cliffhanger, so the tension factor’s low, but you really wish there’d been a better choice of episode to round off a good first season.

Tension factor: 4/10

Pause for thought for bloggers and journalists alike

30 May 2006 Rob Buckley Post a comment

From today’s Poynter Institute email:

Conventional wisdom states that news sites must update to attract readers. Well, quite the opposite happened on Norway’s site Bergens Tidendes (bt.no) this week.

Instead of giving heavy coverage to the recent Scandinavian Big Brother finale (in Swedish), bt.no decided that an ultra-short and to-the-point article (in Norwegian) would suffice — adding that they probably would not be updating.

It was an obvious attempt to distance the site from a TV concept seen by many as vulgar and lowbrow.

The whole article reads: “Jessica won Big Brother. Jessica is 21 years old and comes from Kalmar. The first prize is one million Kroner. Bt.no probably won’t come back with more.”

In a world gone reality crazy, the article was a little reminder of what’s news and what’s not, so it became something of a phenomenon in Norway this week. After having been e-mailed between friends and referred in other media, it attracted 25.000 readers during Tuesday, according to NA24 Propaganda (Norwegian). That kind of readership is usually reserved for much bigger stories and happenings on Bergens Tidendes.

Says Bergens Tidendes news editor Anne Gjerde: “We have never had so many readers for such a short article.”

Touching Evil title sequence and theme

30 May 2006 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

As a little treat and to give you a flavour of the show – and because I’m in one of my obsessive moods – I’m setting up a one-show, one-page rival to Brilliant But Cancelled. Here’s the opening few minutes of the pilot episode of Touching Evil. It may not instantly grab you, but as a way to establish the entire mood of a show plus the scenario behind it, it’s a remarkably economical use of three and a half minutes. But bear with it.

I’ve added the title sequence and title theme as a second video, since they are possibly one of the best combinations in TV history, even if the theme seems to have been re-used for a perfume ad. If some of the music sounds familiar, you’re probably a Nine Inch Nails fan.

Enjoy!

Continue reading “Touching Evil title sequence and theme”

UK TV

Review: Doctor Who – 2×7 – The Idiot’s Lantern

29 May 2006 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

The Idiot's Lantern

I’m supposed to be writing a white paper on the Web 2.0 conference I went to in Edinburgh last Monday. So naturally, because I am the King of Procrastination, I’m writing about Saturday’s episode of Doctor Who.

On the whole, I’d say not bad. The 50s tele stuff made me all nostalgic for a decade I never lived through, which was quite impressive. The face-sucking was done nicely.

On the other hand, the union flag/jack debate annoyed me because Rose was just plain wrong (gasp, factual inaccuracies in Doctor Who!). The plot and the denouement had a few issues that really couldn’t be fixed in post. And the general bog-standard interpretation of the 50s – great decade for wife beaters, we fought in the war for the right to be lippy, etc – began to grate. Could we avoid the moralising please?

Basically, a reasonable filler piece as has been remarked elsewhere.

The Man Without A FaceOne last thing. Writer Mark Gatiss is a long-time sci-fi fan, something you may have noticed if you watched Doctor Who Confidential after the episode. He has, for instance, played Gold in the Big Finish Sapphire and Steel audio plays. So I wonder where he got the idea for the face-sucking in The Idiot’s Lantern. I’ll give you a visual clue: here’s the baddie in the fourth Sapphire and Steel TV ‘assignment’, as they’re called. Look familiar?

He does like his homages does Gatiss.