Year: 2008

UK TV

Review: Ashes to Ashes 1×4

29 February 2008 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

 

How’d that happen? I wasn’t intending to do episode by episode reviews of Ashes to Ashes, but here I am, reviewing it. Probably won’t happen next week, but who knows?

New theory, boys and girls. Forget Life on Mars. This isn’t Life on Mars in the 80s. This isn’t an attempt to look at changes in policing over the last couple of decades as I thought yesterday – or if it is, it’s a bad one. This is an attempt to do an episode by episode pastiche of individual crime shows of the 80s.

Life on Mars only had The Sweeney (and maybe Special Branch) to have a go at, and was all about changes in procedure and attitude. Ashes to Ashes is all about a TV-addicted woman who wants to be in an 80s detective show, probably Moonlighting. 

Help me with this theory since it’s on slightly shaky ground. These are the shows I think Ashes to Ashes has been sending up so far

Episode 1: The A-Team, Miami Vice or at the outside Riptide
Episode 2: Anyone?
Episode 3: Prime Suspect I (which was 1991 admittedly)
Episode 4: Edge of Darkness

I’ve come to this conclusion because last night’s episode was the biggest homage to Edge of Darkness that the world has yet seen.

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Movies you should own: The Satan Bug

28 February 2008 Natalia Romanova 9 Comments

One of my favourite genres is the “killer virus” milieu. Let’s face it, there’s nothing quite as scary as a disease that kills lots and lots of people, even if it can be stopped by Dustin Hoffman (Outbreak), immunity among the upper middle classes (Survivors) or talking to it (The Burning Zone).

Just have a think about their close cousin, the zombie movie, even the funny ones (Shaun of the Dead, Zombi Holocaust), and it won’t be long before the idea of some tiny little thing inside you that you can’t do anything to stop from killing you really does start to get upsetting.

So, for this and because it’s going to take me a while to scribble up lots and lots about Manhunter, I’m starting the long-promised “movies you should own” (aka “I’ve got it on DVD and you should to”) feature of this ‘ere blog with a shortish chat about The Satan Bug, probably the first proper entry in the killer virus canon.

Here are the creepy opening titles:

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Review: iTunes – the Life on Mars download experience

28 February 2008 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

So downloads are all the rage now. Big Finish, which makes those Doctor Who audio plays, has set up a downloads service (they still haven’t got back to me about those missing extras, BTW, so I’m going to assume you don’t get the CD extras with the downloads, making them even less attractive).

The BBC, after doing ever so nicely with its iPlayer, has leapt onto the Apple bandwagon as well by putting various shows onto iTunes, including Ashes to Ashes, Life on Mars, Torchwood and more. I’ve had little interest in the iTunes TV service until now – cos it’s mostly been shows that are rubbish or aimed at kids. But with Stu_N suggesting I was wearing rose-tinted glasses in my recall of Life on Mars, I decided to give iTunes a try and download the first series.

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