News

Hiro to come to Scrubs as Franklyn

Hiro in HeroesIf you’re a fan of Scrubs, you’ll be pleased to hear that despite the fact Masi Oka is one of the main stars of Heroes, Scrubs‘s producers still want him to appear in the show this season in his regular role of Franklyn. But, if they manage to get him, they’re going to try to ensure he keeps his Heroes super-powers.

Another interesting fact about Masi Oka: he’s actually a full-time programmer for ILM, George Lucas’s graphics house. He wrote some of the software for the effects on Terminator 3. How’s that for multi-talented?

News

Doctor Who Weakest Link rumoured (and confirmed!)

David TennantThe Sun is claiming that David Tennant, Freema Agyeman and various Doctor Who allies and enemies are to appear on a special edition of The Weakest Link. No word if they’re going to be old-series allies and enemies, although if the rumour is true, I’d expect to see Lis Sladen and John Leeson in there at the very least. Who else would you like to see? Do you reckon they can persuade Pipes (by which I mean Billie Piper, rather than the scary, cat-nibbled ghost from Ghostwatch)? And do you reckon they can stop RTD from working his way on?

UPDATE: Scott has been nice enough to point out that filming will be on the 21st November at Pinewood Studios and you can get tickets at the BBC tickets unit. Thanks Scott!

UPDATE 2: Tickets have gone now. Sorry, guys.

US TV

Review: 3 Lbs 1×1 (US: CBS)

3 Lbs

In the US: CBS, Tuesdays, 10pm ET/PT. Also available on Innertube.
In the UK: Airing on BBC1 towards the end of 2007, with possible pick ups on UK Gold

When a project’s been sitting around for two years and has already had the main character recast after a failed pilot, you suspect things are wrong with it. But when it’s rushed forward to replace a failed drama – in this case, Smith – there comes the suggestion that maybe it’s not going to be too bad.

3 Lbs is a combination of various other hospital dramas, in particular House and MDs, but it does have a few sprinklings of originality. Starring Murder One’s Stanley Tucci, Good Morning Miami‘s Mark Feuerstein and Torchwood‘s Indira Varma, it focuses on that much neglected organ: the brain.

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UK TV

Review: Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares 4.1

Gordon Ramsay in Spain

In the UK: Channel 4, 9pm, Tuesdays. Repeated Thursdays 9pm, 12.05am, More4

In the US: BBC America, probably in 2007.

Characters re-cast: 0

Major characters gotten rid of: 0

Major new characters: 0 – it’s all Gordon, all the time!

Format change percentage: 10% (for one episode)

Number of cahones: 2

Gordon Ramsay can sometimes be something of a self-parody. A former professional football player who runs a half-marathon every Sunday, he’s now a multi-millionaire celebrity chef, best known for bullying people, shouting, asking people where their balls are (now in Spanish, as well as English!) and swearing. He is almost a living, breathing, stereotype of masculinity. All he needs is a rusty white van, a proper haircut and a rottweiler and he’ll be able to set up a testosterone donation centre for anyone who CAN’T FIND A PAIR! (I imagine, if it were possible for him to do so, Ramsay would talk like that: in capitals and exclusively punctuated with exclamation marks. He would also be known only as Ramsay.)

Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, now in its third series, gives Gordon a chance to use all four of the aforementioned talents in combination with his fifth, lesser known skill: helping people. Episode one gave him the chance to go to the Costa Del Sol to aid an ailing restaurant recover from a debt of €120,000. Said restaurant had found a niche on its particular part of the Costa: rather than copying all the other restaurants on the Costa and serving up sausages and chips to everyone (that really fills my very soul with despair. England, what has become of you?), the restaurant owner, Laurence Davey, had decided to serve Spanish food.

Was it still too adventurous for all those English people abroad? Or was the food just awful and liable to kill people, the service rubbish, and the floor itself covered in doggie excrement? Gordon was going to find out and tell Laurence how to fix it.

The trouble is, Gordon brought along his Ernest Hemingway guide to being a man…

Continue reading “Review: Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares 4.1”