For Dave’s new Red Dwarf episodes. Where’s Chloe A, though? She’s supposed to be in them, too.
UK TV
Articles by Rob Buckley
Wednesday’s “smell the new glove” news
Film
Music
- Spinal Tap recording new tracks
British TV
- Trouble+1 to be replaced by Living2+1
- David Mitchell launching online one-man show
US TV
- NBC want one to two season one cast members killed in Heroes – but Ali Larter’s staying [spoilers]
- Trust Me not doing well in the ratings
- Casting on pilots…
- …including David Simon‘s Treme
- Jonathan Cake to play MI6 agent on Chuck [spoilers]
- Chuck and Heroes ratings back up
- Life to incorporate Sarah Shahi’s pregnancy into storyline [spoilers]
US TV
Preview: Eastbound & Down 1×1
In the US: Sundays, 10.30pm, HBO. Starts February 15th
Forgive me if this review is a bit hazy, since I actually saw this last July and haven’t watched it since. Anyway, there’s this guy… erm.
Okay, start again.
If you caught Tropic Thunder in cinemas last year, you’ll have noticed two good things: Tom Cruise and Danny McBride. McBride played the explosives expert on the film, and now, since the Frat Pack does like to stick together, here he is starring in his own TV show produced by Will Ferrell.
Here he plays Kenny Powers, a former big league baseball pitcher who has returned to his home town to teach at High School after his career collapsed – mainly because he’s the most obnoxious, racist, sexist, homophobic, anything-phobic jock imaginable and got thrown out of every team he joined.
Whether you’ll enjoy Eastbound & Down is really down to whether you like two things: cringe comedy and abuse – albeit clever, well-observed abuse.
US TV
Review: Heroes 3×14 (aka Volume 4×1)
In the US: Mondays, 9/8c, NBC
In the UK: “Simulcast”, which apparently means some time within the next month or so
So Heroes is back.
Woo.
Do I hear a hoo anyone?
No? Why’s that then? Ah, you got hacked off with it. Too many odd character flips and complicated storylines that made no sense? Sounds about right.
But wait. Sit up and pay attention at the back. This is an all new Heroes. A refreshed Heroes. A Heroes that’s going back to basics.
Promising a clean break with the overly complicated past storylines that estranged its audience (this being the third such clean break promised), Heroes is trying to recapture the glory days of season one with this, its fourth “volume”.
With Nathan gone bad after the last volume, his new plan as junior senator for New York is to cosy up to the US President (Michael Dorn – Worf off Star Trek) and make him go Guantánamo on his fellow super-powered friends, who are all just trying to live normal lives now.
And that means – in case you missed all the advertising – if the heroes are to survive, they’ve all got to work together. The question is does this all add up to new and improved Heroes or is it well and truly time to call it a day?
News
Tuesday’s desperately romantic news
Film
- John Carpenter to direct The Ward
- Bill Murray and Lucas Black join the cast of Get Low
- Aaron Sorkin to write The Challenge for George Clooney
- Ernest Hemingway biopic on the way
- Rupert Friend, Ioan Gruffudd, Natascha McElhone and Liam Cunningham join The Kid
Art
- Titian painting secured
Radio
- Mark Heap to star as an alien, with Maxine Peake, Paul Ritter and Susan Jameson, in Radio 4 sci-fi play
British TV
- Channel 4 freezes pay and bonuses
- Rafe Spall and Tom Hollander join Aidan Turner, Zoe Tapper and Samuel Barnett in Desperate Romantics
- Prepare for lots of dramas about Africa
US TV
- TNT picks up a second season of Leverage
- CBS gives greenlight to thirtysomething creators’ A Marriage and King of Queens‘ showrunners‘ The Fish Tank…
- …orders a pilot for political drama House Rules
- Super Bowl third most watched US TV show ever
- A sneak peak at The Prisoner