Year: 2012

Thursday’s “Sherlock Star Trek” news

5 January 2012 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Film

Comics

Theater

  • Hugh Jackman returns to Broadway for Aaron Sorkin’s Houdini

British TV

US TV

Classic TV

Praise the gods! The Aphrodite Inheritance is back on YouTube!

4 January 2012 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Godfrey James and Peter McEnery

Nearly three years ago, I wrote up the 1979 BBC series The Aphrodite Inheritance as part of the blog’s ‘Lost Gems‘ series. In case you don’t remember it, it’s about a man going to Cyprus for his brother’s funeral and discovering that despite what everyone is telling him, his brother might have been murdered. Along the way, though, it begins to become apparent that the Greek gods are alive and well have taken an interest in him and the death of his brother.

I illustrated my write-up with the episodes themselves, which someone had charitably uploaded to YouTube. Unfortunately, they were taken down not long afterwards. Now the BBC (foolishly) still hasn’t released the series on DVD, but another lovely person has uploaded the whole series to YouTube again, and I’ve updated the original entry with the new vids. It’s well worth the eight hours to watch them, I reckon, particularly if you like Brian Blessed (Dionysos) or Alexandra Bastedo (Aphrodite). So off you go – enjoy yourselves!

Dionysus disguised

Alexandra Bastedo as Helene in The Aphrodite Inheritance

US TV

Review: Work It (ABC) 1×1

4 January 2012 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

In the US: Tuesdays, 8.30/7.30c, ABC

So this is it? The first new show of the New Year and this is what ABC throws at us? That’s kind of like saying "Merry Christmas!" to someone and having bubonic plague pustules rubbed in your face as a reward. In fact, ABC should probably have to pay people to watch this, in part to afford the shots they’ll need, such is its mesmerising, terrifying, pus-ridden awfulness.

Now, as mentioned last year, one of the big trends of the Fall 2011 season was "sitcoms that deal with the (alleged) difficulty of being a man in the 21st century". We started on a relative high note with How To Be A Gentleman, before slowly moving down through the various circles of Hell that were Last Man Standing and Man Up!. Now, though, like Dante, we have made it through to the ninth circle and we are staring into the three treacherous faces of Satan.

We have reached Work It.

Work It sees a bunch of unemployed men theorise that women ‘have it all’ in the modern job market, so to get jobs, they dress up as women. And watching it is like being deprived of God’s love for 30 minutes, although it will feel like eternity.

Cue the trailer.

Continue reading “Review: Work It (ABC) 1×1”

US TV

Question of the week: how much notice should broadcasters take of complaints?

4 January 2012 Rob Buckley 7 Comments

In case you didn’t know, the Daily Mail has strongly objected to some of the scenes in the first episode of the second series of Sherlock, namely the ones involving nudity and some implied royal lesbian BDSM. No, it wasn’t complaining that you couldn’t see anything good in either scene. It was outraged that those scenes were transmitted before ‘the watershed’, when innocent kiddies could theoretically be watching.

So far the BBC’s response can be characterised as "Pardon?", since it plans on keeping the scenes in an even earlier repeat showing.

Now the BBC does get some pretty stupid complaints but this got me thinking, and maybe it’ll get you thinking, too.

How much notice should broadcasters take of complaints? Should broadcasters stick to their artistic guns and best judgement and ignore what people say or if they’re funded by public money, should they be obliged to take notice of even stupid complaints.

Should the BBC have told everyone who complained about Jeremy Clarkson’s joke/’joke’ about shooting strikers in front of their families to go away in a biological manner? Or was it wrong to let him speak at all? And are our opinions influenced by our politics – if it’s an opinion we agree with, do we let it slide, even if it’s potentially as offensive to those we disagree with as anything they come up with?

Answers below or on your own blog, please.