Articles by Rob Buckley

About Rob Buckley
I’m Rob Buckley, a journalist who writes for UK media magazines that most people have never heard of although you might have heard me on the podcast Lockdown Land or Radio 5 Live’s Saturday Edition or Afternoon Edition. I’ve edited Dreamwatch, Sprocket and Cambridge Film Festival Daily; been technical editor for TV producers magazine Televisual; reviewed films for the short-lived newspaper Cambridge Insider; written features for the even shorter-lived newspaper Soho Independent; and was regularly sarcastic about television on the blink-and-you-missed-it “web site for urban hedonists” The Tribe. Since going freelance, I've contributed to the likes of Broadcast, Total Content + Media, Action TV, Off The Telly, Action Network, TV Scoop and The Custard TV.
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UK TV

Review: Above Suspicion

7 January 2009 Rob Buckley 6 Comments

Kelly Reilly in Above Suspicion

In the UK: Sunday 4th/Monday 5th January, 9pm, ITV1

While shows like Demons demonstrate that ITV1 still has somewhere to go to redeem itself with drama after a decade of predominantly awful output, something that we can probably all agree on is that ITV1 is the home of decent crime TV in Britain.

While the Beeb has restricted itself to anaemic period stuff, comfy escapism like Jonathan Creek, Inspector Lynley cobblers or excruciating rubbish like The Invisibles, ITV1 has been producing classics of modern, gritty crime fiction for decades, including the Prime Suspects, Cracker, Wire in the Blood and even The Bill. Okay Wallander was good, but for the most part, BBC1 has sucked, while ITV1 has done well.

Blimey though, has it really been nearly two decades since the first Prime Suspect. Doesn’t time fly? I’m sure they’d be cranking out more episodes if only Helen Mirren hadn’t decided to get old, curse her.

That might well be the thought Prime Suspect creator Lynda La Plante had when she was writing the novel Above Suspicion – while simultaneously being unable to get much stuff on TV other than one of those few ITV1 crime misfires, Trial and Retribution, and the slightly bland The Commander. “If only we could do Prime Suspect: The Early Years, hopefully with some hot young actress. Let me write that as a novel and see if they adapt it.”

Hey presto, here it is. A two-part mini-series starring the exceedingly hot (and talented) Kelly Reilly as a young rookie DC hunting a serial killer. This one’s going to run and run.

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UK TV

Review: Demons 1×1

7 January 2009 Rob Buckley 12 Comments

Demons

In the UK: Saturdays, 7.20pm, ITV1

Unto each generation, a rip-off is born. This is especially true of ITV1, which never knowingly fails to panic when it sees someone else’s format and decides to make it its own. And thus Strictly Come Dancing begat Dancing on Ice, Doctor Who begat Primeval and so on and so on. Here, though, ITV have decided they want to rip off both an American format and a book.

So with just the deletion of a letter y, Buffy the Vampire Slayer becomes The Buff Vampire Slayer: the last of a long line of monster-killers, equipped with super strength and reflexes, becomes mentored by a foreign national called Rupert with a fake accent, and has to take time out from school work and a platonic best friend (who’d really like it to be something more) to embrace an unwanted destiny, while a weary mother looks on unknowingly.

The only difference: it’s a bloke, not a girl, Rupert is American (sort of) and the Slayer is the last of the Van Helsings who fought Dracula and other beasties of the night.

Sigh. Except it’s ITV1 and it comes from the makers of Hex, so do I really need to mention the fact it’s not very good?

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UK TV

Christmas mini-reviews: Gavin and Stacey and the Next Doctor

7 January 2009 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Gavin and Stacey Christmas Special

Well, it may be a while since they’ve been on, but that doesn’t stop me making a few notes and comments on some of the Christmas fare. Not all of it, since I still haven’t watched Crooked House or The 39 Steps, but Gavin & Stacey and Doctor Who‘s The Next Doctor at least.

Gavin & Stacey
Disappointing this. Kind of like Gavin & Stacey by numbers, with more or less the same as what we’ve seen before just slightly expanded upon – a kind of G&S‘s greatest hits – rather than anything too original. So we get the holiday incident, the big fight, references to Ness’s exciting past, etc, but nothing too startling. Don’t get me wrong, there were some great moments, but they were surprisingly few and far between.

Still, at least the potential for a new series is obviously there, they did try to give both Gavin and Stacey something to do this time, and there were no sudden flip-flops of character designed purely to achieve a happy ending or a wrap-up of loose plot threads. And it is a Christmas Special, so you have to give it some leeway.

All the same, I found the BBC3 “Making of…” show, Gavin & Stacey: The 12 Days of Christmas, to be a whole lot funnier than the episode itself.

Of course, it might just be because we didn’t watch it on the day then met up with my wife’s aunt, who said “Oh, haven’t you seen it yet? Well, I won’t spoil it for you then,” before proceeding to tell us about six of the funniest bits in it. Curses.


The Next Doctor
50% of this was good, 50% of this was bad, and there was a pretty clear demarcation line: anything with David Morrissey in it – good, even moving at times; anything with the Cybermen, little children or Dervla Kirwan in it – bad and very silly, particularly the giant Cyberman.

Again, a Christmas special so some slack should be given and it was a whole lot better than last year’s Titanic snooze-fest with Kylie. But not great.

Dick Heads

Dick Heads: The Beginning

7 January 2009 Rob Buckley 17 Comments

Richard Armitage at the BAFTAs

Well, for our new feature, thanks to the lovely and inspired Jane Henry and Andrea, we appear to have settled on an actor (Richard Armitage), a format (pictures, usually taken by fans, that mainly focus on his head, with bonus points if he’s wearing a hat) and a corresponding name (Dick Heads).

Other than that, let’s see how it goes – normally these things grow organically as people get inspired. If you all one to write captions, love poetry or even haiku about the pictures or want to turn it into a competition à la Sitting Tennant, that’ll be your choice.

To get the ball rolling, here’s Richard Armitage in close up from the 2007 BAFTAs.

So, I’m putting out the call – pictures, please. Either leave a URL below or email me them. We’re going to start off slowly, just so we don’t use them up too quickly, so I’m only going to be needing one or two a week. Over to you!

BFI events

Being Human: prequels, pilot, trailers and interviews

7 January 2009 Rob Buckley 17 Comments

Being Human – the vampire/werewolf/ghost flatshare drama that was piloted on BBC3 last year – is coming back as a six-part series soon. Hooray! It was absolutely brilliant. I’ll be off to the BFI’s preview screening of the first episode (together with a Q&A with the writer and star(s)) next Friday, so I’ll let you know what that was like afterwards – I hear it might just be the pilot episode with a new cast and made ‘less dark’, which would be a shame.

In the meantime, and to thrill you all, here are some videos: the first is a trailer for the series proper; the second is the entire pilot episode that someone has uploaded to YouTube; and the rest are prequels to the series, showing what each of the characters was like before they met each other – they’re shot in a Blair Witch/Ghostwatch vein and at least one might be too gruesome to be transmitted on TV (even BBC3), although you never know, so watch them while you can. The Annie one is very good, BTW.

It’s worth noting that the cast has changed, which is a bit disappointing, since Guy Flanagan was brilliant as Mitchell the vampire; Mitchell’s now played by Aidan Turner (The Clinic), while Annie, the comedy Northern ghost formerly played by Andrea Riseborough, is now played by Lenora Crichlow (Sugar Rush). The exception is Russell Tovey, who plays George the werewolf: he’ll be back for the series proper. There’s also a production blog containing interviews with the cast that you can check out.

Trailer

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