What did you watch this Christmas?

4 January 2010 Rob Buckley TV reviews, UK TV, US TV 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

Author

  • Rob Buckley

    I’m Rob Buckley, a journalist who writes for UK media magazines that most people have never heard of although you might have heard me on the podcast Lockdown Land or Radio 5 Live’s Saturday Edition or Afternoon Edition. I’ve edited Dreamwatch, Sprocket and Cambridge Film Festival Daily; been technical editor for TV producers magazine Televisual; reviewed films for the short-lived newspaper Cambridge Insider; written features for the even shorter-lived newspaper Soho Independent; and was regularly sarcastic about television on the blink-and-you-missed-it “web site for urban hedonists” The Tribe. Since going freelance, I've contributed to the likes of Broadcast, Total Content + Media, Action TV, Off The Telly, Action Network, TV Scoop and The Custard TV.

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