Year: 2007

Review: Big Shots 1.1

1 October 2007 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

Big Shots



In the US: Thursdays, 10/9c, ABC

In the UK: Not yet acquired

It’s hard to work out what kind of hate drives this “Sex and the City for men”. It’s clearly misogynistic: it has an extremely low opinion of women, thinks they’re all cheats or stupid or sex objects. But despite supposedly being pro-men, it’s clearly misandristic (is that even a word?), arguing we’re all cheats or stupid or put upon wimps. Misanthropic, maybe, since it must think we’re all rubbish, but with different reasons for hating each group, is it really the blanket hatred misanthropy suggests?

Whatever the hate, Sex and the City for men it is not. After all, Sex and the City was about four relatively likeable, initially single women trying to find love/sex/initmacy. They had interests of their own, talents, sense of humour and more.

Here, we have four “big shots” – CEOs and high flying execs of various companies – who are married or formerly married, all being extremely rubbish to everyone around them. Their one common interest appears to be being bitter and being pampered at a club for rich people.

Prepare to hate them back.

Continue reading “Review: Big Shots 1.1”

Review: Dirty Sexy Money 1.1

1 October 2007 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

Dirty Sexy Money

In the US: Wednesdays, 10/9c, ABC

In the UK: Acquired by Channel 4

If you’re going to have a show about ridiculously rich people, I guess this is the one to have. Having lots and lots of money, apparently, turns you into murdering, suicidal, adulterous, drug-addicted, idle, alcoholic, spoilt idiots who can fritter millions away on whatever passes through your frontal lobes from second to second.

This isn’t just me being mean to the characters: that’s explicitly how the rich ‘Darlings’ are portrayed in the eyes of our ‘hero’, Nick, who grew up with them thanks to his father being the family lawyer.

Now his father’s dead, the Darlings want him as a replacement but he wants nothing to do with them.

Despite its message though, I found it hard to get too excited about it, even with Peter Krause as the lead. Who am I going to identify with: the Darlings or their slightly less rich new lawyer who finds that absolute power really does corrupt absolutely?

Continue reading “Review: Dirty Sexy Money 1.1”

Review: Moonlight 1.1

1 October 2007 Rob Buckley 10 Comments

Moonlight

In the US: Fridays, 9pm et/pt, CBS

In the UK: Either Virgin 1 or Living from January 2008

Ooh, I can tell why David Greenwalt legged it in about ten seconds flat after becoming exec producer of this. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner in the which show absolutely, definitely has earned the right to be first cancelled this season. David Tennant – don’t worry, your girlfriend’s coming back home soon.

If you’ve seen anything involving vampires whatsoever, if you’ve even so much as skimmed an Anne Rice novel, you’ll get an eerie sense of dé jà vu from Moonlight. Angel, Interview with a Vampire, or heaven forfend, Forever Knight (and I’m not even talking about the relatively average TV series with Geraint Wyn Davies, but the abysmal pilot movie with Rick Springfield) have all done vampires better.

And not one of them was a stupid, episode-long trailer for a bloody iPhone.

Continue reading “Review: Moonlight 1.1”

Locate TV goes into public beta

1 October 2007 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

The PR woman has been belting on at me for ages to give this a mention, and seeing as today, it’s now available to the public rather than just we brave beta testers, I thought I’d finally relent and talk about Locate TV.

It’s supposed to be like Google for tele, movies and actors. You type in the name of a film, TV show or actor, and it tells you what the actor’s been in, when the next showing of the programme or movie is online or on television (you can tell it where you live and what TV services you have access to) or whether it’s available on DVD. You can then embed a little widget in your blog that gives other people access to the equivalent information for their region, etc.

At the moment, it has two problems, apart from a not inconsiderable slowness, IMHO:

  1. The widgets are fugly. Ugh.
  2. It doesn’t do a good job of aggregating data into an easily consumable format – true of Google as well, I suppose, but not helpful when you have to keep going back and forth between search results to make sure you’ve covered all eventualities.

If you do a search for Doctor Who, for example, it gives you 30 results. The first three are

Doctor Who (2005) – TV Series

NEXT ON: Saturday 6th October 12:00pm – UKTV Gold

Time-travelling adventures, following the exploits of the Doctor, aided by his trusty sidekick

Doctor Who – TV Series

Sci-fi adventures with the eccentric Time Lord

Doctor Who – TV Series

A mysterious traveler can visit any point in space and time.

Could have done with them stuck together, I reckon, although the spelling of traveler in the third one suggests an American source, even though it just lists DVDs.

So still a bit wobbly, but could be useful with a bit more smartness in the aggregation logic and a better web designer.

Click to see LocateTV results for Airwolf. Always up to date, always relevant to you.

UPDATE: Stu tells me that a similar – and possibly better – service is available from Bleb. Thanks Stu!

Twenty five years of Channel 4: How did it end?

1 October 2007 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Stayed up last night to watch the More4 documentary celebrating 25 years of Channel 4. It was a bit patchy, and surprisingly didn’t really cover why Channel 4 was set up in the first place – or how – but it wasn’t bad.

But due to the pressing need for sleep and since Bastard was busily recording House of Flying Daggers on Film4, I didn’t see the last half hour. Did anyone else? And was it in any way uncomplimentary to the current bosses about Celebrity Big Brother, complete lack of anything halfway decent on in terms of drama, documentaries, etc?