The CarusometerA Carusometer rating of 3

Third-episode verdict: Mr Sunshine

In the US: Wednesdays, 9.30/8.30c, ABC

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. What a shame. Mr Sunshine started so well, with a great cast and a cracking script. I got all light-headed with optimism.

Then episode two arrived and my God did it stink. Not a laugh the whole episode, which actually had me begging for the end to happen. And while episode three was mildly funnier, it’s exposed the big problem with Mr Sunshine: the cast might be good, but they can’t make a silk purse out of sow’s ear, the scripts being the sow’s ear in this case.

Strangely, episode two was written by the same writers as episode one with one exception – Matt Perry didn’t contribute to episode two (officially at least). Which suggests that the only time Mr Sunshine is going to be funny is when Matt Perry is writing the episodes.

Oh well. Let’s chalk that one up to experience.

Carusometer rating: 3
Carusometer prediction: will be cancelled by the end of the season.

News

How pilot casting sometimes works: Alex Breckenridge demonstrates

Alex Breckenridge

I really like Alex Breckenridge. She’s a very good comedy actress who always manages to make the shows she’s in better. Plus she’s a pretty good photographer.

She does, however, have the worst luck when it comes to casting. She was the star of the short movie DEBS, but got replaced by Jordana Brewster in the feature version. She was in Dirt, but that got cancelled after two seasons. She was the best thing about The Ex-List – which was cancelled after four episodes. After a promising first season in Life Unexpected, she was in only one episode of the second season. She was in the pilot for Traffic Light and was recast. She was in the pilot for Mad Love… and was recast.

That’s got to suck.

Anyway, if you’d been following her on Twitter, you’d have known that her luck was down in this year’s pilot season.

Alex Breckenridge's first tweet

So she went proactive.

Alex Breckenridge's second tweet

The result:

Alex Breckenridge's third tweet

And the news breaks today that she’s been cast as Cooper in Cooper and Stone. That was easy. Now all she has to do is avoid being recast…

Thursday’s “Blade Runner sequel” news

Film

British TV

US TV

Technology reviews

Question of the week: do you want a Kindle and what should I read on my holiday?

 

So lovely wife bought me a Kindle for Christmas. Ain’t she lovely? Now we could argue a lot about the merits of Amazon’s eBook reader: a lot of people are dubious about them at first, but I love mine and once I’ve shown them how it works, what it’s like to read with, the free/cheap books you can get for it, etc, they generally end up wanting/buying one.

So part one of this week’s question is:

Do you want/have a Kindle? If not, why not?

However, an often overlooked advantage of the Kindle is that when it comes to going on holiday, it’s a revolution. We normally take about an entire suitcase full of books with us, most of which we end up leaving behind at a book exchange. We end up having to weigh all our suitcases very carefully before we go to make sure the books are all evenly distributed so we don’t go over our weight allowance.

Take a couple of Kindles and their battery chargers, though, and you’re pretty much sorted, since it weighs about a quarter of a kilo (half a pound) and can fit 3,000+ books in its memory. Woo hoo!

However, you do need ebooks for it and while I’ve got a lovely supply of free eBooks, I would like some more things to read when I’m on holiday next week. So part 2 of this week’s question is:

Are there any books you’d recommend for holiday reading, preferably available on the Kindle?

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

Wednesday’s young Bugsy news

Film

Radio

Theatre

British TV

US TV