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: Massive 1×1-1×2

16 September 2008 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

In the UK: Sundays, 9pm, BBC3

Everyone working class in sitcoms has a dream. If you’re Del Boy and Rodney, it’s that this time next year, you’ll be millionaires. If you’re Steptoe Jr, it’s that you’ll escape the junk yard and your dad; if you’re Steptoe Sr, it’s that your son will never escape the junk yard. If you’re in the Royle family, it’s that your view of the tele won’t get blocked. And so on.

Massive is another sitcom in which its heroes have dreams, but here, the dream is a very Mancunian one: Danny and Shay want their own record label. When Danny’s nan dies, leaving them £10,000, it looks like they might be able to achieve it. But the course of true business never did run smooth.

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Tuesday’s Rusty biography news

16 September 2008 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Doctor Who

Film

Art

British TV

US TV

US TV

Promo for Valentine on The CW

15 September 2008 Rob Buckley 8 Comments

Valentine

The CW has been trickling its shows out this year, rather than splurging them out in one lump in September. So there are some new shows that haven’t had much publicity that are popping up next month. Valentine, previously Valentine Inc, has been hovering on the radar here for a while, since:

  1. It’s got Jaime Murray from Hustle and season two of Dexter on it.
  2. It’ll sound vaguely familiar to readers of this blog and another one not too far away…

Due to premiere on Sunday, October 5 at 8/7c, the show has the basic premise that love gods Aphrodite (Jaime Summer) and Eros (Kristoffer Polaha) are still alive in modern times with some of their entourage and fellow gods from classical Greece, and they’re busy matchmaking. Yes, it’s a rom-com or something very similar. You can find out the full plot after the jump, and from the web site, too, since it’s too long to put on the front page.

Here though is a slightly low quality YouTube promo, which also includes interviews with the cast. Notable things I’ve also learned: Holly Valance is appearing in it. I know not why or when. I’d tell you more but there’s no screener for me to scrutinise (naughty CW!).

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Harvey Keitel in Life on Mars

15 September 2008 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

Looks familiar, yet something’s different. Yes, it’s Harvey Keitel as Gene Hunt in ABC’s forthcoming version of Life on Mars, although the scripts’ pretty much the same. And no, Jason O’Mara still can’t act much. Apologies in advance for the slightly weedy quality. Watch it while you can – fingers crossed, it won’t get ripped down.

[via; thanks to Toby for the heads up]

UK TV

Review: Tess of the D’Urbervilles 1×1

15 September 2008 Rob Buckley 10 Comments

Tess of the D'Urbervilles

In the UK: Sundays, 9pm, BBC1

Good old BBC. Always going off and finding some classic to lavishly adapt for a Sunday evening’s viewing. Here we have Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy’s slightly weird but eternally relevant look at the double standards relating to sexuality that British society has had almost since the dawn of time.

Now the Beeb normally goes in one of two ways with its period stuff. Either it goes all silly, gets an all-star cast and turns everything into an unrelenting series of cameos and over-the-top performances. Or it puts on its serious hat and decides to go full tilt for ‘quality mode’, hoping that it’ll get a backpack full of BAFTAs to take home from the next awards ceremony.

Fortunately, the Beeb has gone for option two with Tess, producing something that’s not 100% true to the book and that’s got more than a few idiosyncrasies of its own, but which is ultimately worth watching – so far, anyway.

Continue reading “Review: Tess of the D’Urbervilles 1×1”