Month: June 2008

US TV

Preview: Life on Mars (US)

20 June 2008 Rob Buckley 8 Comments

In the US: Thursdays, 10pm, ABC. No start date yet

Ah, Life on Mars. Everyone’s favourite BBC show about time-travelling cops who are really stuck in a coma (there’s more than one, you know). Harking back to bygone days of politically incorrect cops shouting "Gov!" and beating up crims before going to the pub for a swift pint or seven, it gave us lovable rogue Gene Hunt to grudgingly admire while we simultaneously gloried in nostalgia and looked at the recent past with just a touch of smug superiority.

But, oh the wailing and gnashing of teeth when it was heard that US network ABC was going to remake it. "Bloody yanks. They’re just not going to get it," screamed a thousand armchair and pub xenophobes around the land. And when that trailer came out, many a person could see their point.

Even ABC saw their point after giving the pilot a look-over. At the moment, it’s busy relocating the whole thing to New York from Los Angeles and is recasting.

So what, you might ask, is the point of reviewing this, the original pilot? Well, I think it’s instructional. Firstly, given the script itself probably won’t change that much, it’s interesting to see what changes have been made and will probably make it through to the series proper. Secondly, it’s interesting to see whether the trailer made the pilot look better or worse than it actually is. And thirdly, is Colm Meaney as Gene Hunt anywhere near as good as Philip Glenister, assuming he doesn’t get recast?

Continue reading “Preview: Life on Mars (US)”

US TV

Preview: True Blood

20 June 2008 Rob Buckley 15 Comments

In the US: HBO, some time in the Fall.

Vampire series, hey? Apparently, we can’t get enough of them. Well, we can, otherwise Moonlight wouldn’t have been cancelled.

But as soon as one dies, others swoop in on bats’ wings to take their place: BBC3’s got the partly vampiric Being Human on the way (YouTube trailer) – as soon as they can sort out cast scheduling issues – and HBO has True Blood due in the Fall.

What’s up there? It’s like they’re proxies that enable repressive societies that won’t allow proper sex on tele to explore desire and the id in a semi-fantastical, metaphorical and therefore safe way.

But it can’t be that. Don’t be silly.

Vampire shows largely fall into two categories: group one, by far the more popular, is when vampires are secret. They skulk in the shadows, occasionally popping up to say things like "I want to suck your blood." Then they suck your blood.

Group two, in which True Blood falls quite neatly, is when vampires aren’t secret. They creep around in the exact same way rock stars don’t, take on the language of oppressed minorities and promise to be good.

"Don’t mind us," they say. "We’re just vampires".

"Really?" the humans respond. "You don’t want to suck our blood?"

"Oh, no," reply the vampires. "That’s a terrible, terrible stereotype."

"Ah," the humans nod sagely. Then they pause. "Excuse us, but aren’t you sucking our blood?"

"Oh yes. Sorry about that. We’re vampires. We lie. Don’t mind us…"

Continue reading “Preview: True Blood”

Friday’s Inseparable news

20 June 2008 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Film

Theater

British TV

US TV

Lara Logan: why don’t we have her here in the UK?

19 June 2008 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

UK viewers who travel to the States on occasion might choose to watch the news there, just to see what’s happening in the world.

Big mistake.

The usual reaction is "WTF is this? This isn’t a news programme." This goes for network TV news as much as it goes for cable news.

You might even be fooled by CNN’s excellent world news service, available in every country in the world except the US, into watching a similarly entitled network called "CNN" in the US. Again, big mistake, since it’s absolute rubbish that treats you like an infant who needs to be dragged away from an XBox to be told… well, nothing very important usually.

And let’s not start with Fox News. Just don’t.

Suddenly, the BBC, Sky News and ITN seem like Jacob Bronowski’s The Ascent of Man.

Yet, there is one area where the US has the edge: they have Lara Logan as CBS’s chief foreign correspondent. Here she is on The Daily Show. Don’t you wish all reporters were like her? More importantly, she’s married to an English guy and comes from South Africa – isn’t it the bounden duty of all South Africans to come and work in Britain? At least, that’s what I thought.

Today's Joanna Page

Today’s Joanna Page: Gideon’s Daughter

19 June 2008 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

Today’s Joanna Page is Gideon’s Daughter, a film Stephen Poliakoff made for the BBC in 2005/6.

Despite the fact he somehow manages to assemble fantastic “to die for” casts for his projects and in many ways he’s a very good writer, Poliakoff and I have never got along. To me – how shall I put this? – he’s a bit too Islington.

Either he spends all his time writing about things that might be of major concern at dinner parties in that particular London Borough but aren’t anywhere else. Or he’s writing dire political tracts with sub-texts so obvious they’re basically the text – which they’d need to be since the texts aren’t actually about anything.

Close My Eyes was my first stab at getting into Poliakoff. Clive Owen and Saskia Reeves shag a lot. Only problem: they’re brother and sister. See it’s all a metaphor for how in the time of AIDS people might turn to a safe option, like a sibling. Erm, okay. So they shag a lot more, while Reeves’ husband (Alan Rickman) ums and aahs, suspecting something’s up. And then they stop because they realise it’s a bad idea. And that’s that.

It’s all about nothing.

It’s been downhill since then. He’s done entire series and films that could and should have been précised down to one line: apparently the Victorians had more sex than we thought (Century, if I recall correctly); he did an entire series (whose name I can’t remember but which was in The 50 Greatest TV Dramas) that was deliberately about nothing “to undermine convention”; and with Gideon’s Daughter, we have the staggering revelation that PR and spin-doctoring is all about the surface when really it’s substance that matters.

Close my eyes – and ears – Stephen.

Continue reading “Today’s Joanna Page: Gideon’s Daughter”