Sitting Tennant

Today’s Sitting Tennants (from Jaradel and Sister Chastity): Planet of the Dead

Planet of the Dead

David Tennant in Planet of the Dead

It’s Friday, it’s five to 1 (not that that matters), it’s… Sitting Tennant. After a couple of Comic Relief outings, we’re back on firmer, slightly scarier ground with some publicity pictures for the forthcoming Easter Doctor Who special, courtesy of Jaradel and Sister Chastity; Ms Rullsenberg did try to creep in at the last minute with one of her own, but it had already been submitted (twice), I’m afraid – you’ve got to be quick when it comes to pictures of David Tennant taking the weight off his feet, I’m afraid.

Anyway, as you can see, the special is going to show us all just how angry a London bus conductor can get when he spots you putting your feet up on the seats. Beware, children, because even David Tennant fears the bus conductor.

With those highly topical extra pictures, the leader board now stands as follows, with Sister Chastity and Jaradel swapping places after a concerted effort from the order of pervitude.

  1. Rullsenberg: 15.5
  2. Sister Chastity: 10.5
  3. Jaradel: 10
  4. Rosby: 2.5

It was a Blitzkrieg the likes of which we’ve never seen before back at topical captions, with Toby and Marie slugging it out like Godzilla and Mothra – at least, if Oscar Wilde and James Whistler had been wearing the Godzilla and Mothra suits – with Jane Henry, Jaradel and Ms Rullsenberg standing in for the plucky Japanese army, Persephone guest-starring as a terrified Tokyo office-worker, and with me as the various municipal workers clearing up the rubble and allocating witty-points to: Jane Henry for picture 1, Jaradel for her picture two caption; Toby and Marie jointly for picture three.

As a result, the captioning leaderboard now stands as follows:

  1. Marie: 57
  2. Toby: 56.5
  3. Jane Henry: 40.5
  4. Rullsenberg: 36
  5. Persephone: 29.5
  6. Jaradel: 26.5
  7. Electric Dragon: 12
  8. Rev/Views 10
  9. Scott: 3
  10. Aaron: 2
  11. almostwitty.com: 1

As always, captions and new submissions for the gallery, please. Remember, you can submit as many (witty) captions as you like for each and every picture, with topical captions (and pictures of David Tennant in current productions) getting extra marks. The wittiest caption for each picture will get double points. And there’s a bonus point for using Gary Numan lyrics appropriately.

Got a picture of David Tennant sitting, lying down or in some indeterminate state in between? Then leave a link to it below and if it’s judged suitable, it will appear in the “Sitting Tennant” gallery. You can also enter the witting and amusing captions league table by commenting on existing photos in the gallery.

What have you been watching this week?

Last week’s seemed to work out okay, so over to you, guys: what have you been watching this week? Anybody else watching The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency? Still quite sweet, but a little untaxing, while I didn’t think Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle was quite as good as the first week’s episode. But let me – and the other readers – know what you’ve been watching, what you’d recommend, what you wouldn’t, etc, so they can share the joy/avoid the pain.

Friday’s chariot racing news

Doctor Who

Awards

Commercials

  • Orange signs up Danny Glover, Juliette Lewis, Sigourney Weaver and Emilio Estevez for its film ads

Film

Canadian TV

  • CBC to stop showing The Simpsons

British TV

US TV

Today's Joanna Page

Today’s Joanna Page: Ready When You Are Mr McGill

Today’s Joanna Page is Ready When You Are Mr McGill, a 2003 remake of Jack Rosenthal’s famous 1976 play.

Rosenthal is best known for creating London’s Burning and for writing the first ever episode of Coronation Street as well as famous plays such as Play For Today‘s Bar Mitzvah Boy and P’Tang, Yang, Kipperbang. In Ready When You Are Mr McGill, he turned his attention to television.

The original play, made for Granada, focused on the filming of a single scene of a TV show, in which just about everything can go wrong, does go wrong, and Mr McGill, one of the extras, does everything he can to help out and deliver his all-important line before the end of the day.

ITV, back in 2002/3 when it had a little bit of cash and was using big names to draw in the crowds, decided to remake the play as a one and a half hour movie. Starring Tom Courtenay as Joe McGill, Bill Nighy as the egotistical director, Amanda Holden as herself and Phil Davis as the cameraman, it also featured comedy luminaries including Tamsin Greig, Sally Phillips, Sam Kelly, Stephen Moore and Stephen Mangan.

It more or less followed the original play’s plot, but was updated to cope with modern television politics and production – and changing it to the filming of a cop show instead of a spy show. But to pad it out for an extra half hour runtime, there’s an additional sub-plot about Babs Carter, an actress who’s a bit worried about her nude scene and who does everything she can to get out of it. Playing Babs Carter: Joanna Page.

Continue reading “Today’s Joanna Page: Ready When You Are Mr McGill”

UK TV

Review: Newswipe 1×1

Charlie Brooker in Newswipe

In the UK: Wednesdays, 10.30pm, BBC4

I think it’s fair enough to say we do loves a bit of Charlie Brooker round here. I think it’s fair to say that’s quite a common feeling.

But I think it’s also fair to say that he’s spreading himself a bit thin. He’s writing two columns for The Guardian a week; he’s on Have I Got News For You every so often; he’s got his regular Screenwipe show on BBC4; he’s got an upcoming TV reviews show for Channel 4; he’s just finished making Dead Set for E4.

Phew. That’s a lot.

Now he’s doing Newswipe for BBC4, in which he tries to tell you the news of the week, but really – as the show’s title suggests – is really just Screenwipe but dedicated to TV news.

And it’s really not very good. See? Spread too thin.

Continue reading “Review: Newswipe 1×1”