Competition time: Strictly Love

Okay, so I know I don’t cover it much here, but Strictly Come Dancing has just started up on BBC1. Other blogs cover it much better than I ever could, so I heartily recommend you head over to them if SCD is on your must-see list.

However, to coincide with its return to our screens – and the recent publication of Julia Williams‘ latest book – we’re running a competition in which you can win copies of Strictly Love as well as ‘dancing masterclass in a book’, Collins’ Need to Know? Ballroom Dancing.

Strictly Love

Guilty feet have got plenty of rhythm! Kick off your shoes and snuggle up with this warm and witty new novel from the author of the bestselling Pastures New

Lawyer Emily promised her late father that she’d devote her life to good causes. So how comes she spends her days defending Z-listers, desperate to prolong their 15 minutes of fame?

Katie is obsessed with being the perfect wife and mother – unlike her own one. In which case, why is husband Charlie permanently AWOL these days?

Dentist Mark is licking his wounds after his wife walked out on him and desperately missing his kids. Can he cope with becoming a singleton again – on top of a devastating legal case against him?

Meanwhile, happy-go-lucky Jack the Lad Rob is hiding a secret tragedy!

Isabella’s dance classes give the four the perfect opportunity to forget their troubles and re-invent themselves. They can be whoever they want to be – they’ll just let their feet do the talking. Over the weeks, as they foxtrot, tango, waltz and cha-cha-cha their way into each other’s lives, they discover the truth about each other – and themselves. But will they like what they learn?

Thanks to Julia’s generosity, we have an astonishing five copies of Strictly Love to give away, as well as two copies of Need to Know? Ballroom Dancing, and all you have to do to enter is to leave a comment below by Friday 3rd October, letting us know your most memorable dancing experience ever – it doesn’t even have to have been you dancing. The two most interesting experiences (or two best recounted experiences) will win copies of both Strictly Love and Need to Know? Ballroom Dancing, while three runners up will each receive a copy of Strictly Love.

As always, entrants must live in the UK. Plus it’ll help if you include your email address when you leave the comment so we can contact you if you’ve won – don’t worry, we won’t publish it.

US TV

Review: Supernatural 4×1

Supernatural

In the US: Thursdays, 9/8c, The CW

In the general wash of teenage oestrogen that is The CW, only Supernatural dares to up the testosterone levels with its mix of road movie, hard rock soundtrack, martial arts, grizzly murders, scantily clad hot women and casual misogyny. A tale of two brothers raised by their father to kill demons, werewolves and anything else that goes bump in the night, it’s survived three seasons so far and seems only to be getting stronger.

Last season ended with Dean, the less sensitive brother, finally put out of his earthly misery and cast into even more misery in Hell, assumed (by everyone except the audience) never to return. But now he’s back and the questions are how, why and what’s going to happen next?

And surprisingly for a show that’s often dwelt on gore as a substitute for genuine horror, the answers are actually pretty scary and cerebral.

Continue reading “Review: Supernatural 4×1”

UK TV

Review: Merlin 1×1



 

In the UK: Saturdays, BBC1, 7.30pm
In the US: NBC, some time in the 2008-9 season. Probably

Ever since the return of Doctor Who made Saturday evenings viable viewing slots again, the onus has been on broadcasters not to fill their schedules with rubbish. ITV1 has tried to compete using shows like Primeval as well as a 1,001 singing and dancing shows; the Beeb, since you can’t have Doctor Who all year round, has done likewise but also rolled an updating of Robin Hood into the mix, to not great success. 

Now here comes its latest effort: Merlin. You remember Merlin, don’t you? Son of a demon/dragon, lives his life backwards? Welsh wizard pal of King Arthur?

Ah. Apparently, most of that was wrong. Because we’re in for a good dose of ‘Welsh washing’ here for a slightly less whimsical version of Harry Potter.

Continue reading “Review: Merlin 1×1”

US TV

Season finale: Burn Notice (season two)

 

Burn Notice is something of an odd show for the USA Network. While most of the USA output is fluffy stuff like Monk or Psych, Burn Notice is quite edgy and dark – a spy show where villains frequently get shot by the good guys, who are all busily trying to avoid getting shot by the people who are supposed to be good guys, too.

After a slightly intermittent first season in which most of that initial edginess was squandered on USA Network quirkiness, the second season has been far superior. After the introduction of BSG‘s/Canada’s Next Top Model‘s Tricia Hilfer as Carla, one of those responsible (possibly) for the ‘burn notice’ that ostracised our hero from the rest of the spy community, we gamboled merrily along from explosion and murder to explosion and murder – via way of the equally vicious spy Michael Shanks from Stargate SG-1 – in the hope that by the end of the season, we’d know what was going on and what Carla was up to.

Did we?

Continue reading “Season finale: Burn Notice (season two)”

US TV

Review: Smallville 8×1

Smallville

In the US: Thursdays, 8/7c, The CW

You just can’t keep a good Superman down, can you? We are now officially entering year eight of Smallville, aka Superman: The Early Years. But as you might expect, it’s starting to show its age a little.

Tom Welling, despite playing a character who’s only just sort of cleared college age, is now in his 30s, and the rest of the cast aren’t as young and vigourous as they once were either – or they’ve scarpered for the hills as soon as they were free of their contracts at the end of the last season. The creative force behind the show, Miles Millar and Alfred Gough, have also left, leaving their deputies in charge.

So with a skeleton crew on board and no captains at the helm any more, is season eight going to flounder and crash onto the rocks?

Continue reading “Review: Smallville 8×1”