US TV

Series finale: Lost

Lost

In the US: Sunday 23rd May, ABC, 7/6c
In the UK: Monday 24th May, Sky 1/Sky 1 HD, 5am

So that’s it. Six years. It’s all over now. The final episode of Lost has finally aired. All the mysteries have finally been answered. Woo hoo!

Where is the island? What is the island? Who is Jacob? What is the smoke monster? How did Jacob arrange for everyone to end up on the island? What’s happening in the flashes sideways? What is the source of Jacob’s power? What are the rules of the game? Why was Charles Widmore expelled from the island? What did he and Ben have to fight about? What happened when the nuclear bomb went off at the end of season five? How did Faraday’s mum know so much about time travel, etc?

Yep. All answered in the series finale.

Oh wait…

Spoilers and more after the jump.

Continue reading “Series finale: Lost”

Big Train

Big Train sketch of the week: hypnotherapy

Big Train

It’s Monday, so it must be time for the Monday Big Train sketch!

Oh wait, y’all probably didn’t know that since I’m improbably launching this exciting new feature for the blog this week, despite the fact I’m on holiday next week. But, yes, the plan is that every Monday we’ll have a choice sketch from late 90s/early 00s sketch show Big Train, which starred Simon Pegg, Julia Davis, Kevin Eldon, Mark Heap, Amelia Bullmore, Catherine Tate, Rebecca Front, Tracy-Ann Oberman and many other talented people – it was also written by Father Ted creators Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews.

We’re launching the Monday Big Train sketch slot with one of my faves – the hypnotherapy session with Mark Heap, Julia Davis, Simon Pegg and Kevin Eldon. Enjoy, and if you’d like to nominate a sketch for week two, let me know.

You can, incidentally, get the whole of Big Train on DVD since it does have highly entertaining commentaries. But you probably guessed that already.

Monday’s French Smithy news

Film

  • Trailer for Going The Distance with Justin Long and Drew Barrymore
  • Orlando Bloom and James Corden join The Three Musketeers

British TV

  • Five acquires Eli Stone, Fiver acquires Archer second season, Five USA acquires Justified second season
  • SyFy acquires web drama [subscription required]
  • Married, Single, Other cancelled
  • Luther loses another 1.3m

Canadian TV

US TV

European TV

Life on Mars in Spain

La chica de ayer

Since Ashes to Ashes is (thankfully) finishing tonight, it seems appropriate to show what Life on Mars is like in other countries. Now, we’ve already looked at Life on Mars in the US in some detail. So let’s go Spanish today, with Antena 3’s La chica de ayer (The Girl from Yesterday), in which the Spanish police detective Samuel Santos leaves 2009 and finds himself in 1977, where has to take the orders of the old school Joaquín “Quin” Gallardo and deal with his fellow officers, Raimundo García and José Cristóbal Mateo. But there is the upside of the lovely Ana Valverde.

Is he loco, in a coma, or back in time? No sabe.

I have a very small idea about what they’re saying in these vids, but six weeks of Teach Yourself Instant Spanish didn’t give me much insight into murder investigations, desgraciadamente. You can see more videos at the Antena 3 web site, and hopefully work out what’s different for yourselves.

(via @jonnelledge)

What have you been watching this week (w/e May 21)

Erk. Busy, busy, busy. But I have had time to watch the following:

  • Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations: An old ep of Anthony Bourdain’s globe-trotting cookery show that went to a couple of Greek Islands. He’s a lippy git – I wouldn’t want him there if I’d seen the programme beforehand. All the same, very educational and looked a whole slew of Greek dishes most people would never see because they’re not the standard tourist dishes. Actually beat Keith Floyd’s similar efforts, I thought.
  • Chris Ryan’s Strike Back: Haven’t seen this week’s yet, but episodes three and four from last week were a bit of a drop-off from the first two. Really very silly, but still action-packed and tense. And was that an Other Boleyn Girl homage I spotted?
  • Cougar Town: One real laugh-out-loud moment in last week’s episode (Courtney Cox’s high school photo), but generally a bit blah.
  • Doctor Who: I honestly didn’t have time to do a full review for this, so here’s a brief one. On the whole, I liked it, but I guessed both twists, so that left me feeling a little let down, but the general insights into the Doctor, the dialogue, etc, were very good. Amy/Rory almost started working for me, mainly thanks to Karen Gillan’s acting, but you can’t help but think Rusty would have given Amy Pond a bit more of an emotional scene when she sees her fiancé get killed in front of her eyes. Toby Jones was great, Matt Smith did well too (this was the last episode to be filmed, so clearly he just needed a little time). Still not liking Rory as a character though, and although I’ve seen arguments that Amy-Rory are a realistic couple, Amy is a damaged character, etc, it’s just feeling a little bit too slippery, like I can’t really get a handle on them. I wonder if I’m getting old, because the information deluge was such, this episode, that it was really hard to keep up and process everything.
  • House: Sigh. I was hoping for a really good ending to this, but got a rubbish one (which given that this was the season finale makes me wonder how much I’ll want to watch next season). The whole season’s been something of a letdown though, after the initial heights of the first few episodes.
  • Lost: Thank goodness. This episode was a decent return to form, the flashes sideways are looking very interesting now, and it even managed to make last week’s episode not look so rubbish.
  • Stargate Universe: Bit of a nothing episode, this one. One of the usual “people start to hallucinate important things” you get in genre shows from time to time. Still, of all the “people start to hallucinate important things” episodes, this has to be one of the best, since there were actual repercussions of sorts.
  • Touching Evil: I’ve already praised it once, but I rewatched in glorious HD this week and it seemed even better. Every time I watch it, I see new things. Next ep’s tonight everyone – watch on ITV1 HD if you can, because the Freeview version has BSL signing. Unless you’re a BSL signer, of course.
  • 24: Good to see this has essentially become “what if Jack Bauer became one of the bad guys – just how much trouble would we be in then?” Nothing can stop this one man army. Loved the bit with Jack in a mask, too.
  • 30 Rock: Last week’s, not this week’s. That was actually very funny. Not quite sure about the uproar in the US against Tina Fey, saying she’s putting down single women and saying women should ‘settle’. Does anything think Liz Lemon is actually supposed to be a role model and someone to look up to?

But what have you been watching?

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 killed by the spam filter).