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

Time for “What have you been watching this week?”, my chance to tell you what I’ve been watching this week and your chance to recommend things to everyone else (and me) in case we’ve missed them.

As you may have noticed, all attempt to maintain a fixed schedule for this boy are failing, but it’s here now.

My recommendations for maximum viewing pleasure this week: Burn Notice, Royal Pains, Penn and Teller: Fool Us, Sirens, Suits, The Daily Show, and Wilfred. Watch them (and keep an eye on The Stage‘s TV Today Square Eyes feature as well for British TV highlights) or you’ll be missing out on the good stuff.

In a new twist, here are few shows I’m watching, which you might like, but which I wouldn’t necessarily recommend: Come Dine With Me, Top Gear, and True Blood

Truth be told, I haven’t actually been watching much new TV this week, because lovely wife has discovered, after years of my telling her it is, that Battlestar Galactica is frakking awesome and now it’s all we watch. She even has a new wallpaper on her phone. But that’s okay – it meant I didn’t have to watch Torchwood this week, BSG is awesome and I get to see how the end was foreshadowed (and it bloody was, too, if anyone thought it was all a big surprise at the end). I’m just hoping we don’t have to watch Caprica at the end of it all.

Now to the irregulars and new things, as well as a few thoughts on some of those regulars:

  • Alphas: Episode 2 almost settled down into slightly familiar Eureka/Warehouse 13-style family viewing, but it still had a slight edge, even if it was just an excuse to do Final Destination.
  • True Blood: Alex Breckenridge was back briefly (yey), but largely, I have to say, if I were a teenage girl, this would be a great show, but it’s all a little too Mary Sue-ish for me.
  • Wilfred: This show is getting very, very weird and very, very dark. Even weirder and darker than last week. Is Wilfred God?

And in this week’s list of movies: nothing. I have watched no movies all week.

But what have you been watching?

“What have you been watching this week?” is your chance to recommend to friends and fellow blog readers the TV and films that they might be missing or should avoid – and for me to do mini-reviews of everything I’ve watched this week. Since we live in the fabulous world of Internet catch-up services like the iPlayer and Hulu, why not tell your fellow readers what you’ve seen so they can see the good stuff they might have missed?

UK TV

Review: The Hour 1×1

The Hour

In the UK: Tuesdays, 9pm, BBC2. Available on the iPlayer
In the US: Wednesdays, 10pm ET/PT, BBC America. Starts August 17

If you listened to me on Radio 5 a couple of Saturdays ago, you’d have heard me warbling on about US TV’s attempts to cash in on the Mad Men period vibe with two new shows: The Playboy Club and Pan Am. Now, before anyone over here starts to feel so superior about America’s supposed unoriginality – and it’s debatable just how much of a cash-in those two shows are – let’s have a look at BBC2’s The Hour, which doesn’t so much try to cash in on Mad Men as scream to the rafters, “Look! We’re doing a British Mad Men! Look!”

Set a little earlier than Mad Men in 1956, this slightly navel-gazing tale does what The Playboy Club is doing by marrying Mad Men with the crime drama. In this case, we have two heroic journalists (Ben Whishaw and Romola Garai) working at the BBC’s very dull newsreel service but wanting to produce the Corporation’s new properly journalistic, TV news service, all while juggling their emotional lives and the prejudices of the time – men-only bars and “no coloureds, no Irish” signs in hotels. But along the way, Whishaw discovers a conspiracy involving murders, suicide and Torchwood‘s very own Burn Gorman.

Cue the “Look how cool we are” trailer.

Continue reading “Review: The Hour 1×1”

Sitting Tennant

Tuesday’s Sitting Tennant (week 28, 2011)

Hebbie's Sitting Tennant

I’m not saying anything except Hebbie sent it in so she gets 10 points.

  1. Hebbie: 190
  2. Sister Chastity: 165
  3. Erin C: 85
  4. Rullsenberg: 55
  5. Janice: 20
  6. esgaril: 10
  7. theriverlady, Toby: 5

Some fun entries in the caption competition this week, although Rullsenberg’s made me sad, but it was SK who came through to win the full 10 points. Good luck this week!

  1. Marie: 175
  2. Rullsenberg: 140
  3. SK: 100
  4. Electric Dragon, Toby: 95
  5. Lisa G: 45
  6. Jane Henry: 50
  7. theriverlady: 35
  8. Hebbie, Virpi: 20
  9. Joe B: 15
  10. whoficwriter: 10
  11. kallan, Jeri: 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 and doesn’t obviously infringe copyright, it will appear in the Sitting Tennant gallery. Don’t forget to include your name in the filename so I don’t get mixed up about who sent it to me.

The best pic in the stash each week will appear on Tuesday and get ten points; the runners up will appear on Friday (one per person who sends one in) and get five points.

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