Ah, if only we were still doing a caption competition, hey? 10 points to Sister Chastity for kicking off October so well. She seems to have a firm grasp on things. See you on Friday!
Sister Chastity: 10
Sitting Board of Winners 2012 January
Hebbie, Sister Chastity
February
Sister Chastity
March
Sister Chastity
April
Sister Chastity, Shilohforever
May
Hebbie, Sister Chastity
June
Hebbie, Sister Chastity
July
Hebbie
August/September
Toby, Sister Chastity
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.
Each month, I’ll name the best picture provider and then at the end of the year, the overall champion will be announced for 2012!
In the US: Sundays, 10pm/9pm Central, ABC In the UK: Acquired by ITV2
So when is an adaptation not an adaptation? When you’ve only bought the book for its title because it’s cool and you’re really adapting something else altogether, that’s when.
You might be tempted to think, for example, that 666 Park Avenue might be somewhat like 666 Park Avenue, the book of the same name – on which its credits claim it is based. And yet a brief yet cursory examination of the book’s Amazon listing (or even, like me, if you flicked through it in the book shop) will reveal a few discrepancies:
Welcome to New York City, where the socialites are witches.
Jane Boyle has been living a fairy tale. When her boyfriend Malcolm proposes, Jane can’t believe her luck and decides to leave her Paris-based job as a fledgling architect and make a new start with him in New York. But when Malcolm introduces Jane to the esteemed Doran clan, one of Manhattan’s most feared and revered families, Jane’s fairy tale takes a darker turn.
Now Jane must struggle with newfound magical abilities and the threat of those who will stop at nothing to get them.
Welcome to 666 Park Avenue….
Yes, it’s Gossip Girl meets The Secret Circle. At least, the book is.
But that’s not 666 Park Avenue the TV series. That is something completely different. And by completely different, I mean it’s Rosemary’s Baby meets The Devil’s Advocate with just a hint of The Shining to give us ‘The Devil’s Janitor’. That’s not as sexy a title as 666 Park Avenue, is it?
When Jane Van Veen (Rachael Taylor) and Henry Martin (Dave Annable), an idealistic young couple from the Midwest, arrive in New York City, the glamorous center of industry and media, they are offered the opportunity to manage the historic Drake. Jane, a small town girl with big ambitions, always knew she wanted to be an architect. Henry, a member of the Mayor’s staff, is grounded, intelligent and tenacious. They are lured by the intoxicating lifestyle of New York’s wealthy elite.
Sexy, enticing and captivating, home to an epic struggle of good versus evil, The Drake maintains a dark hold over all of its tenants in this new, chilling drama, tempting them through their ambitions and desires.
Basically, bunch of people in a building. They all get tempted. They sign their souls over to the guy who owns the building – the Devil (probably) – and then bad things happen. Two new people move in. They’re going to be tempted by something, but you can bet they’re going to do some investigating first.
And despite some really quite gruesome scenes, there is almost nothing interesting about this show. Apart from the title. It’s a real place, you know.
In the US: Fridays, 9/8c, CBS In the UK: Not yet acquired. I’m assuming Sky Living had a fit of the vapours
Beware the juggernaut, my son!
The juggernaut – aka CBS – is the goliath of TV. It dominates the ratings. It had oodles of cash. It can do pretty much what it likes. And if you don’t like that, it’ll run all over you.
The newest trick CBS appears to have discovered is to take existing programmes, file the serial numbers off, bolt on a procedural and then call them its own. This season, it’s already deployed its own version of Sherlock as Elementary. Vegas – not to be confused with NBC’s Las Vegas, but easily confused with its The Playboy Club as well as A&E’s Longmire – emerged blinking into the moonlight last week and on Friday, we got Made in Jersey.
Now at first sight, you might not spot what Made in Jersey obviously rips off. After all, the lead character in this legal show, in which a street-smart Jersey girl gets her big break in a Manhattan law firm, isn’t blonde (hint, hint).
But by the end of the episode – in which her exciting knowledge of hairstyling products is used to prove that the student accused of murdering her professor is innocent and that despite everyone’s belief that she’s an airhead, she really can be a lawyer – you’ll be going, “Oh, so that’s what CBS couldn’t get the rights to cheaply! Legally Blonde!”
Because that’s what we have here: Legally Blonde with hair dye but without any humour, and with a legal procedural element bolted on. Another triumph for CBS’s assimilation department.
Are there any redeeming features to the show? Well, at a push, since it’s clearly not the dialogue, plotting, plausibility or characterisation of Made in Jersey that is going to save it, I’d have to say it’s got one thing going for it, other than Kyle MacLachlan looking very bewildered by the whole thing: for the first time in a long while, we have a US TV show that’s about class.
Hunted is a relatively new thing: a shiny British-American action co-production. Like its predecessor, Sky’s Strike Back: Project Dawn, it’s co-produced by Cinemax and showrun by Frank Spotnitz, but in this case, it’s going to be on BBC1 and it’s made by Kudos, the people behind Spooks. It stars Melissa George as a sort-of spy, starts this Thursday at 9pm on BBC1 and on October 19 at 10pm on Cinemax in the US. Also like Strike Back: Project Dawn, it looks great but with a plot that is ‘muchos bobbins’. Here’s a trailer:
Over in the US, Cinemax is trying to raise interest in the show by viral marketing. They’ve set up a web site, Byzantium Tests, that ostensibly claims to be a personality test to see if you are suitable – i.e. disturbed and sociopathic enough – to join Byzantium Security, which is the company (I’m guessing) that Melissa George works for/used to work for in Hunted.
Here’s one of the tests. It features George doing her absolute level best attempt at an English accent.
Unfortunately, I simply don’t have the time to go through the estimated 1.6×10^10 questions in the test to see if it’s any good, but I’m told there’s a good pay-off at the end. Let me know if you make it all the way through…
