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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Sitting Tennant

Today’s Sitting Tennant (from Toby): Casanova

17 October 2008 Rob Buckley 9 Comments

David Tennant and Matt Lucas in Casanova

David Tennant and Matt Lucas in Casanova

Ooh, here’s excitement. Not only two pictures from Casanova for the Sitting Tennant gallery, but a new rival for Rosby. Toby is now just one point behind Ms Rosby. Watch out Ros! If we had a Sitting Lucas (or even a Lapdancing Lucas) gallery, I’m sure Tobe would get bonus points, too. But we don’t, thankfully.

The current Sitting Tennant league tables are as follows. For pictures, Rosby’s still on six entries, Toby has five, and Persephone’s on four. Poly and Scott both have three and a half points each, Anna and Jane have one and a half, while Marie and Rullsenberg are trailing with just one each.

The Witty And Amusing Captions league table has changed a bit, too. Toby is on a clearly implausible 13 captions, while Marie and Persephone are both on eight, Rullsenberg has five captions, Electric Dragon four, new entry Jane is on two while Poly, Stu_N and Rev are on one each. Feel free to leave captions below for this entry, too, and keep those eyes peeled for any new pictures of David Tennant sitting down that you can find. Bonus points for Love’s Labour’s Lost pictures if you can find them.

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.

Audio and radio play reviews

Review: Doctor Who – The Ultimate Adventure

17 October 2008 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

The Ultimate Adventure Every so often, something dumb happens. In the world of Doctor Who, this usually equates to a stage play. Always a bad idea, since they’re usually sub-panto pieces of rubbish.

Now along comes another bad idea to the world of Doctor Who. Big Finish are going to adapt these stage plays and turn them into audio plays, trying to be as faithful as possible to the original productions, no matter how arse they were. They’re even hiring as much of the original cast as possible, no matter how appalling they were, too.

First up is The Ultimate Adventure, a stage play from the 80s that featured first Jon Pertwee then Colin Baker (and occasionally understudy David Banks) as the Doctor. Written by Terrence Dicks, it also features the Daleks, the Cybermen, mercenaries and – oh my God – songs.

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US TV

Review: Eli Stone 2×1

17 October 2008 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Eli Stone

In the US: Tuesdays, 10/9c, ABC
In the UK: SciFi, probably (season 1 now airing)

Eli Stone was a show I really disliked at first sight. A high-flying lawyer gets a brain aneurism and starts to have visions of the future, usually involving singing, dancing and/or George Michael, that enable him to save people or fix problems in their life. Where are these visions from? God? Somewhere else? Eli Stone didn’t seem to want to make an actual decision on that one because then it would, you know, have to be saying something.

But it improved slightly and by the third episode had started to have a few moderate things going for it, even if it had got both wishier and washier. By the sixth episode, the producers seemed to have worked out that the format needed a bit of tweaking and by the season finale, the show was actually pretty good and occasionally moving as the producers got progressively bolder.

Now it’s back, just as fluffy as before, but willing to lay down a few hard “this is what we stand for”s, along with a few properly tear jerking moments – and Sigourney Weaver.

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Friday’s space Odyssey news

17 October 2008 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Film

British TV

US TV

  • Mad Men gets a third season, but Matthew Weiner’s not signed on yet
  • Clip from Showtime’s United States of Tara, starring Toni Collette
  • Brian Cox to co-star with Katee Sackhoff on Lost and Found
  • ABC to adapt E4’s The Inbetweeners
  • Jaime Ray Newman to appear in Eureka
  • The French shows going stateside
  • Sage gets a love interest in Privileged
The CarusometerA Carusometer rating of 2

Third-episode verdict: The Mentalist

16 October 2008 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

Time for a third-episode verdict. As suspected, back when I wrote my preview of The Mentalist, in which fake psychic Patrick Jane (Simon Baker) uses his skills in trickiness to help fight crime, this is very much a show dependent on its writers and directors. The opening episode was something of a cracker, with good writing and good direction that showed signs of subtlety and intelligence.

Since then, we’ve had what can only be described as relatively mediocre episodes, in which generic crim-chasing scripts get a little psychic goodness sprinkled on them, usually in the form of a magic trick at the beginning, as a sop to the format. Otherwise, you’d be hard pushed to differentiate them from any other police near-procedural, beyond the fact the format allows the writers to skip whole chunks of working out and leap scenes, simply through Jane’s skills (which often aren’t really explained).

The one exception to this been there, done that feel is Simon Baker, who manages to make every scene better just through his mere presence. Nevertheless, while everything feels like quality, it’s pretty much an illusion. There’s not much wrong with The Mentalist – it just needs to have something right as well, and all that was right in the pilot seems to have been forgotten about.

Predictions
The show’s now been acquired by Five in the UK and has gone to a full season, so should be around for a while for both UK and US viewers.

Carusometer rating
Two – a Partial Caruso