Year: 2010

Sitting Tennant

Friday’s Sitting Tennant (week 3, 2010)

22 January 2010 Rob Buckley 7 Comments

Erin C's Sitting Tennant

Everyone give a great big welcome to Erin C, our latest Sitting Tennant picture provider who’s stormed into action with this great picture of David Tennant on the way to his Saturday job, whatever that is. Thank her kindly, for she clearly has what it takes!

  1. Toby, Sister Chastity: 25
  2. Sabine, Rullsenberg: 15
  3. Erin C: 10

Over in caption land, plans to introduce Sits On Smith have been aborted since everyone’s regained their Klingon fighting spirit and pulled some great captions out of their hats (or wherever they keep their ideas machines). I’m awarding top caption points to both Sabine and Jane Henry, since they made me laugh equally. Well done, everyone! David still loves you.

  1. Jane Henry: 20
  2. Rullsenberg, Sabine: 10
  3. Toby, Electric Dragon, Sister Chastity: 5

Got a picture of David Tennant sitting, lying down or in some indeterminate state in between? Then leave a link to it below or email me and if it’s judged suitable, it will appear in the “Sitting Tennant” gallery.

Every photo displayed on Monday (one per person who sends one in) gets five points; the best pic in the stash each week will appear on Friday and get ten points.

You can also enter the witty and amusing captions league table by commenting on Friday’s Sitting Tennant photo, the best caption getting 10 points, everyone who contributes getting five points.

The CarusometerA Carusometer rating of

Third-episode verdict: Archer

22 January 2010 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

In the US: Thursdays, 10pm, FX.
In the UK: Fiver. Starts Thursday February 25th

Well, the first episode was brilliant and the rest of it? Well it’s just brilliant, too. You’re virtually guaranteed two laugh out loud moments per minute with this thing. I nearly snorted cereal out my nose this morning, I was laughing so hard. That’s an image you might not want to have and Archer is great for those.

Carusometer rating: 0
Rob’s prediction: Should run and run. It’s superb.

What have you been watching this week? (w/e January 22)

22 January 2010 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

I’ve a big pile of stuff to watch, including Spartacus, Life Unexpected, Aristotle’s Lagoon, Wallander, The Deep End, Empire of the Seas, episode 2 of Human Target and Cage Fighting Women (should I avoid any of them?), but I have managed to shift some of my backlog and watch a few other shows too:

  • Community: Last week’s episode was a welcome return to form, complete with all sorts of the usual fourth-wall breaking meta-fun that we’ve grown to expect. Loved the idea of ‘the character reboot’. Jack Black actually proved to be an entertaining cameo as did Luke Wilson‘s surprise appearance at the end. Excellent work, and glad to see Community proving to be so good again.
  • 30 Rock: A two-parter last week, the second of which proved to be quite bad; the first was quite good, though. That’s as much as I remember
  • Being Human: A slightly shaking start to the second episode, but by the mid-point it was back on season one form again and there were some truly scary moments with Annie. I’m a little erked they went for the traditional horror route of praying upon female fears of being attacked, by they handled it as well as could be expected.
  • Archer: More on that in another entry
  • Cougar Town: Not seen this week’s, but last week’s was really very good – the show’s hit its stride now and it’s doing character development and plot progression well
  • CSI: Last week’s was a little so-so, despite the presence of Dr Jekyll, although that actuary was scary; this week’s was very odd – who knew golf was so mixed up a sport?
  • Supernatural: A good iteration of the standard “are our heroes really mad and been dreaming everything the whole time?” plot that surprised with more or less every turn. Glad to see it back.
  • Modern Family: Another great episode last week. The Chaz Palminteri guest appearance worked well. Glad to see Phil not being such a spanner for once, but disturbed to see Julie Bowen now making similar facial expressions to my wife.
  • Leverage: A much better episode this week and nice to see a US show that has the IRA as a bunch of criminals blowing up nail bombs, rather than a bunch of freedom fighters. Not great for any of the characters except Nate though.
  • Burn Notice: A good return for the show, and Tyne Daly’s guest appearance was used well. We also get a decent bit of insight into why Michael does the things he does now, and Sam got to be used for something other than laughs. But who is the fake Brit on the phone?
  • House: Quite fun, quite sad and with some great House and Wilson moments.
  • Chuck: Phew. A good episode, but (spoiler)everything’s back to the status quo again

But what did you watch?

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 ge

Classic TV

Weird old title sequences: The Invaders (1967)

22 January 2010 Rob Buckley 8 Comments

The Invaders

Back in the 60s and 70s, there was a kind of show that we don’t really see any more: “the fixing-up wanderer” show. Whether it was The Immortal, Branded, Coronet Blue, The Fugitive, The Incredible Hulk, Kung Fu or any of the others, the format was essentially the same and designed to allow shows to be broadcast in any order during syndication, re-runs, etc, without anyone getting lost: a man (it was always a man) would travel from town to town, doing his best to evade some horrible authority or person chasing after them; he’d try to stay low profile, but sooner or later, he’d discover some drama in the town that needed fixing. The situation would get fixed and the hero would move on to another town for the next episode, typically without anything happening that would change the overall show format (unless it was the first or last episode of a season).

Many of these shows were from Quinn Martin Productions, and after the popular The Fugitive started to draw to close in 1967, producers started looking for a replacement show of the same ilk. Larry Cohen, the creator of both Branded and Coronet Blue, came up with something that hooked into the flying saucer craze that had gripped the nation since the late 50s. It was The Invaders and it had a weird old title sequence.

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