Month: January 2010

Tuesday’s illegal immigrant bear news

5 January 2010 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Film

British TV

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UK TV

Review: Wallander 2×1 – Faceless Killers

4 January 2010 Rob Buckley 7 Comments

Kenneth Branagh in Wallander

In the UK: Sunday 4th January, 9.30pm, BBC1/BBC1 HD. Available on the iPlayer
In the US: PBS probably

Remember The Fast Show? There was a character, a zookeeper, who seemed perpetually surprised by his job.

And so it is with Wallander, the detective show starring Kenneth Branagh as the miserable Kurt Wallander, in which all the detectives and even the police officers seem perpetually surprised by the fact people do bad things. Now it’s back and everyone seems just a little bit more hopeless than ever.

And I use the word ‘hopeless’ advisedly.

Continue reading “Review: Wallander 2×1 – Faceless Killers”

UK TV

Doctor Who – The End of Time – Parts 1 and 2

4 January 2010 Rob Buckley 19 Comments

The End of Time

In the UK: Christmas Day/New Year’s Day, BBC1/BBC HD
In the US: December 26th/January 2nd, BBC America

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Yes, it was Christmas, but it was also time to say goodbye to David Tennant as the Doctor in a two-part special of Doctor Who. We laughed (maybe), we cried (probably), we said “WTF was that?” (a lot) – it was a typical Rusty way to end it all.

Discussions after the jump.

Continue reading “Doctor Who – The End of Time – Parts 1 and 2”

What did you watch this Christmas?

4 January 2010 Rob Buckley 6 Comments

I’ll be probably be getting round to reviewing The End of Time – Parts 1 and 2 later in the day, so I won’t mention it just yet, but what have you been watching this Christmas past?

  • Gavin & Stacey: Saw the ending on DVD first, and it wasn’t bad. But Ness has been an arse all series and the characters, with the exceptions of Stacey and Gavin, felt a little watered down compared to previous years. I would have liked a few more developments for the supporting characters as well, but I can see the arguments against that.
  • Scrubs: Finally started to watching Scrubs: Med School and it’s not as bad as I feared it was going to be. The absence of Sarah Chalke and Neil Flynn is painful, but the carrying over of Denise from the interns was a good idea and most of the med students are okay. Not sure simply swapping out a girly male character (JD) with a girly female character adds anything. That Australian intern who used to be in Neighbours (Nicky Whelan) – she does though, as a Google image search will quickly reveal.
  • The Day of the Triffids: Still to watch that. Was it good? I hear not
  • Paradox: Completely pointless ending that explained nothing and was basically a big request for a new series so they can actually have a think about thinking about coming up with some explanations. I doubt it will be back though.
  • Outnumbered: I’m really not seeing why everyone’s so thrilled about this.
  • Never Mind The Buzzcocks: Where Are They Now? Beats having to sit through 12 episodes, I guess.
  • Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe Review of 2009: Alternated between excellent and contractually obligated. I’m pretty sure some of the dates were wrong (FlashForward in February?), but I might just have got the wrong end of the stick on those. Bit too grumpy, too, but some excellent bits, all the same.

I probably saw more things, but that’s as much as I can remember. Given the Sky+ signal was out of action for a big chunk of the time, the big hit for us was the BBC iPlayer channel on the Wii (it’s easy to install now – just go to the Shopping Channel and buy it for free!), which meant we could watch the damn thing on a TV instead of a laptop and was nice and easy to use. Couldn’t get the Top Gear Bolivia special to work though. Huh.

Also tried hacking the Apple TV with aTV Flash, and I just about managed to get the iPlayer working on that, but everything else is taking a bit of time with a hammer. But once Flash support gets restored this month (waiting on the update), it should be able to do 4oD, the iPlayer, ITV catch-up and more, which will be nice..

As always, no spoilers unless you’re going to use the <spoiler> </spoiler> tags, please

What do you want from the blog this year?

4 January 2010 Rob Buckley 9 Comments

As usual, it’s the annual/whenever I get wibbles question for the readership – what do you want to see more of or less of on the blog?

  • We already discovered that a few people liked the reviews of the main Big Finish Doctor Who audio plays (Eternal Summer one coming soon) so they’re staying, but do you want reviews of other Big Finish ranges, assuming I can take it?
  • Daily News is staying
  • More Who/less Who?
  • More Sitting Tennant/less Sitting Tennant?
  • Weird Old Title Sequences?
  • Fewer/more Dick Heads?
  • More/fewer reviews of British shows (although how fewer would be possible, I don’t know)?
  • More/fewer reviews of American shows? Or timed to appear at different times?
  • Episode-by-episode reviews of any particular series?
  • More/fewer competitions or types of competitions (District 9 one coming up soon, maybe)?
  • More/less technology stuff?
  • Question of the week?
  • What have you been watching?

I’ll just say hands off Ali and Jo – they’re staying, although, if anyone wants, say, “Julie Benz on/and hedges”, that would be perfectly acceptable. Indeed, any suggestions for new features that don’t require an immense amount of work will be entertained.