Month: February 2010

Question of the week: is the medium enough?

24 February 2010 Rob Buckley 10 Comments

This week, gentle reader, I ask you the following question:

Despite the title of this ‘ere blog, is the medium enough? Are you satisfied merely to watch a TV programme or do you need more?

In this exciting age of "360° commissioning", in which mobile phone content, podcasts, YouTube channels, books, DVD extras, games and more aren’t just add-ons but designed as part of the production company pitch to networks, is a lot of time being wasted? Do you not care to follow your favourite characters on Twitter? Is that Facebook page never going to be friended? Do you simply want to sit back, relax and watch the tele?

Or have you been going to the Heroes web site for the graphic novels, games and webisodes? Did you download the TARDIS mobisodes? Have you already ordered all the Being Human original novels?

And does your answer depend on whether a show has finished or not? Is the Buffy comic vital reading now? Are the Big Finish Doctor Who, Dark Shadows and Stargate SG-1 plays on subscription in your house, because that’s the only way to get more new content these days?

As always, leave a comment with your answer or a link to your answer on your own blog.
 

Wednesday’s yet more Greek gods news

24 February 2010 Rob Buckley 6 Comments

Film

British TV

US TV

  • A Blues Brothers TV series?
  • ABC picks up Southern Discomfort
  • Pilots for Kurtwood Smith, Swoosie Kurtz, 24‘s Carlos Bernard and Past Life‘s Kelli Giddish
  • Sarah Palin’s daughter Bristol to debut on The Secret Life of The American Teenager
  • Heroes/Alias/24‘s David Anders joins Vampire Diaries [spoilers]
  • Trailer for the next lot of Chuck episodes
  • Len Wiseman to direct Hawaii Five-O pilot?
  • Women deserting Lifetime
Classic TV

Weird old title sequences: The Fantastic Journey (1977)

23 February 2010 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

The Fantastic Journey

Why do all those boats and planes keep disappearing in the Bermuda Triangle? Is it storms and poor weather conditions? A simple coincidence? Urban myth, and actually the Bermuda Triangle is no worse than any other arbitrary piece of near-coastal tropical water?

No, you great silly, it’s because of a time rift. If you’d bothered to watch 70s TV show The Fantastic Journey, you’d have known that.

The basic plot was this: a group of people, most of them related, one of them Ike Eisenmann from Race to Witch Mountain, go out into the Caribbean on a boat. Spooky green mist comes down and before you know it they’ve disappeared and wound up on an island, which has gone all weird thanks to bits of it being in different time zones. So there’s futuristic cities, bits stuck in the past and so on, and you have to find invisible gateways to cross from one zone to another – something that usually happened at the end of each episode for easy syndication purposes.

As the group explores the island, it crosses into different zones and meets different people from different times and even different worlds, most notably Jared Martin of War of the Worlds, who plays a sort of futuristic hippie-musician-pacifist (aka ‘loser’) from the 23rd century. He, with his suspiciously phallic magic pan pipe instrument (which, as with Kung Fu, isn’t to be used for violence but somehow ends up being used as a weapon each episode), soon takes charge and tries to help them and himself get off the island.

This turned out to be a bit dull, so after the pilot, three characters got dropped and a new “Doctor Smith from Lost in Space“-type character called Willaway – played by Roddie McDowall – turned up to try to spice things up. If that wasn’t spicy enough, they got a girl from outer space in a mini-skirt with super-strength to help out, too.

Unfortunately, even with the power of the mini-skirted, outer space, super girl and one of the monkeys from Planet of the Apes, The Fantastic Journey was up against the even greater power of The Waltons, so got cancelled after 10 episodes, so that poor little family never did get off the island.

Enjoy its weird old title sequence and groovy theme tune.

Tuesday’s wonderous boycott news

23 February 2010 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Film

British TV

  • iPlayer gets 120m views in January
  • Eurosport offers live iPhone streaming [subscription required]

US TV

What did you watch on TV last week (w/e February 21)

22 February 2010 Rob Buckley 18 Comments

Another new idea – people tend to watch TV over the weekend so let’s talk about what everyone’s been watching on a Monday instead of a Friday. And since 24 and Lost are only a week out, moving to a Monday means you can talk about both shows, whether you’re in the US or the UK.

The Winter Olympics and lack of Heroes meant there wasn’t much new US TV week this week, but anyway:

  • Archer: Some more great moments as per usual. 
  • Being Erica: Watched the end of season two at last. Overall, while they experimented a lot more this season, Erica’s character arc felt less satisfying and the whole thing almost reset Erica’s situation back to the start of episode 1 (that’s time travel for you). Ethan’s emasculation this season didn’t endear the show to us either, since at least he was a decent love interest for her last year.  
  • Being Human: Don’t really remember last week’s very much (that’s how good my memory is), but this week’s was scary in a different kind of way from usual (Mitchell). Not quite sure why Annie has flipped from wanting "door tuition" (you know what I mean) a few episodes ago to her current frame of mind, but Mitchell’s arc has been great. Some odd directorial decisions mind.
  • Burn Notice: Not bad. The Chris Vance stuff is so much tag-on at the moment though.
  • The Deep End: Up to episode four, which was half dreadful, half fun. The romance between Australian guy and blonde girl is a little bit Sweet Valley High, but it’s charming in its way; everything else, particularly the legal side, is like having a nail hammered into your head by someone thinking they’re being zany. 
  • Leverage: A good ending to the season, overall, but the lack of Gina Bellman for much of the season has been a problem for character arcs, and most of the characters have been treading water. Basically, not as good as season one.
  • Life Unexpected: A reasonable ep, but nothing spectacular, other than "Lux learns a lesson about responsibility". 
  • Lost: Were those answers we just got? Or fake answers? Either way, a great Locke-focused episode. Nice that disability isn’t regarded as an unhappy ending for him in the flash-sideways. And best name for alternative Locke I’ve heard so far: "The Locke-ness monster".  
  • 24: Someone kill Dana now. But at least half an episode of decent moments, with Jack doing a cross between Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon and the guy in Metal Gear Solid. Still needs more excitement though.

But what did you watch? See if you can cast your memories back to last week, anyway.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention the following two new HBO shows that started up and which I can’t be arsed to give full reviews to:

  • The Ricky Gervais Show: Heard The Guardian‘s Ricky Gervais/Stephen Merchant/Karl Pilkington podcasts? Thought they’d be better if they were all animated, with Ricky Gervais looking like Fred Flintsone? Then a) you’re a nutter b) you’d be wrong.
  • How To Make It In America: Supposed to be a comedy about working class New Yorkers trying to hit the big time through whatever pie-in-the-sky business scheme they have (selling fake leather jackets, borrowing money off a violent cousin, selling black-and-white photos). Actually about as funny as reading stats about recessionary economics. Does have a few funny moments and okay as a drama, I guess, but not involving at all. Still, if you ever wondered what happened to Shassyn Sossamon (sp?) from A Knight’s Tale, now you know.

As always, no spoilers unless you’re going to use the <spoiler> </spoiler> tags, please. If you’ve reviewed something on your blog, you can put a link to it here rather than repeat yourself (although too many links and you might get blocked by the spam filter)