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Season finale: Burn Notice (season 2.5)

Burn Notice season 2.5 finale

There’s been a marked “treading water” quality about Burn Notice. On the one hand, Burn Notice is very, very good when it’s dealing with spy stuff; but when it’s all that tedious “person in distress” stuff, it’s really very boring – having all the mystery of whether the nuclear-bomb grade spy skills of Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan) really can take out the small tea hut that is the usual criminal-of-the-week.

The spy stuff for the last few seasons has come from the series’ big question: why was Michael fired from his spy job? I don’t know. He doesn’t know. He’s been looking for ages and to stretch that plot out, they’ve been filling up episodes with tedious “person in distress” episodes that make me want to yawn. We’ve even had guest rapper episodes. Not good.

Fortunately, though, we’ve found out the answer to that question. Yes, we’ve found out. Sort of. And it looks like the hatches are being battened down for a third (or is that fourth?) season of mostly spy hijinks. Thank God for that.

Oh, some spoilers ahead, so watch out.

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Audio and radio play reviews

Review: Doctor Who: Key 2 Time – The Judgement of Isskar

The Judgement of IsskarBrace yourself. This is the first of a three-part season (that’s already had a prequel) called the Key 2 Time.  

Ouch.

Its slightly unpleasant name comes from the fact it’s a sequel to the Tom Baker season-long story the Key to Time, in which Tombo and new companion Romana (Mary Tamm) went searching for something called the Key to Time, said object having the power to stop all of time if reassembled from its six component segments – just enough no-time, in fact, for the White Guardian, a universal force of goodness (or should that be order), to readjust the balance of the cosmos to stop his opposite number, the Black Guardian, from getting too powerful.

Unfortunately, each segment was disguised as something else, ranging from a rock to a human being (Lalla Ward), and the only way to find the segments, scattered all through space and time, was with a magic Geiger-countery wand called a Tracer.

With me so far?

Okay, the Key 2 Time (urgh) sees the Fifth Doctor (who got to meet the Guardians again for a trilogy of stories during the 20th season) once more having to go looking for the segments of the Key to Time, this time with the help of a living Tracer called Amy – and the hindrance of her sister Zara.

First port of call: Mars and the Ice Warriors.

Continue reading “Review: Doctor Who: Key 2 Time – The Judgement of Isskar”

Sitting Tennant

Today’s Sitting Tennants (from Sister Chastity and Jaradel)

David Tennant on a chaise longe

David Tennant and Christian O'Connell

David Tennant in a Superman T-shirt

David Tennant in a taxi

Once more to the Sitting Tennant breach, dear friends. Once more. Wherever David Tennant’s breach might happen to be, that is.

Today’s Sitting Tennants come from Sister Chastity and Jaradel. Sister Chastity shows us David trying his very best to make room on his chaise lounge for what he no doubt hopes is the blonde invisible woman, who quite generously then turns up to snog him during a photo shoot with someone who looks suspiciously like Christian O’Connell.

Meanwhile, Jaradel has a photo from the pilot by BBC Scotland for a home-grown version of Superman – in which Superman crash lands in Britain in the 60s instead of on a Kansas farm and gets taught the virtue of “not trying too hard” instead of “truth, justice and the American way”; as well as a picture of David on his way to that first audition for the part of the Doctor, wearing his mum’s home-made Tom Baker scarf – pity she didn’t have the right wool.

That means Sister Chastity has overtaken the apparently comatose Rosby (won’t someone play the cello to her?) and Jaradel has closed the gap with Rullsenberg to give us a scoreboard which looks like this:

  1. Rullsenberg: 9
  2. Jaradel: 7
  3. Sister Chastity: 3
  4. Rosby: 2.5

Back at the witty caption competition, we had an international distress call raised by Persephone, seeking anyone with pictures featuring both David Tennant and Ioan Gruffudd, although no one’s answered her cry for help yet – any takers?

But again, something of a lull in the captioning. What’s up there? Don’t let Sitting Tennant wither and die on the vine/chair/chaise lounge! Come on newbies, everyone’s welcome to join in. And all you have to do is write 31 captions in one go and you’ll be at the top of the board.

Nevertheless, with the added benefit of credit crunch topicality to boost the scores of a few loyal captioners, Toby gets bonus points for wittiest picture 1 caption, as does Marie for this picture 2 caption while Rullsenberg gets a boost (ooh er Mrs) from her picture 3 caption.

That means the caption leader board now looks like this:

  1. Marie: 31
  2. Toby: 27.5
  3. Jane Henry: 26.5
  4. Rullsenberg: 19
  5. Persephone: 18.5
  6. Jaradel: 12
  7. Rev/Views 10
  8. Scott, Electric Dragon: 3
  9. Aaron: 2

As always, captions and new submissions for the gallery, please. Remember, you can submit as many (witty) captions as you like for each and every picture, with topical captions (and pictures of David Tennant in current productions) getting extra marks. The wittiest caption for each picture will get double points. And there’s a bonus point for using Gary Numan lyrics appropriately.

Got a picture of David Tennant sitting, lying down or in some indeterminate state in between? Then leave a link to it below and if it’s judged suitable, it will appear in the “Sitting Tennant” gallery. You can also enter the witting and amusing captions league table by commenting on existing photos in the gallery.

Friday’s reunited Seinfeld cast news

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