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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Monday’s negotiated interim news

7 January 2008 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

Don’t forget to vote for the daily news in the reader survey if you want it to continue – particularly you lurkers!

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Audio and radio play reviews

Review: Doctor Who – Return to the Web Planet

6 January 2008 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Return to the Web Planet

Mention The Web Planet to almost any Who-er, and you’ll likely as not get a great big smirk in response. It was a story written in the Hartnell days before anyone really ‘knew’ what Doctor Who stories were supposed to be like. A rather brave attempt at hard SF, it involved the planet Vortis, a world populated entirely by various giant-sized species of insect and absolutely no humans other than the Doctor and his companions.

Yes, giant butterflies, ants and larvae on a budget of £2 7s 6d, back before anyone had anything like the technology to do it properly. You can imagine what it was like, even if you’ve never seen it. Go on, imagine it.

Tee hee.

Fortunately, audio plays don’t have this problem so Big Finish, throwing the fifth Doctor and Nyssa at the world of the Menoptera, Zarbi and Venom Grubs, can let their imaginations run wild, content in the knowledge that we’ll do the rest of the work.

Yet somehow, it’s almost impossible not to think one thought while listening to Return to the Web Planet: “Tee hee”.

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What would your Mastermind subject be?

4 January 2008 Rob Buckley 12 Comments

Just caught tonight’s episode of Celebrity Mastermind with Danny Wallace, Nicholas Parsons, that bald veggie restauranteur and that Scottish one off Loose Women who looks like she’s sucking a wasp (and acts like it). An interesting collection of specialist subjects: the history of Tranmere Rovers; the life and works of Edward Lear; the lives of the Pankhurst women; and, erm, Ghostbusters. See if you can match the subject to the celebrity. It’ll be really easy.
Anyway, I got to pondering a couple of things. You see, there’s a thin line you have to tread with your specialist subject. Obviously, you have to be good at it for one thing. But there’s a kind of social snobbery with it. “What’s that? Your specialist subject is ‘Chantelle off Celebrity Big Brother‘? Okay… Mine’s the Aeneid and its relationship with medieval Latin poetry. Is that you fetching your coat?”
I’m not sure I’d have had the balls to go on with Ghostbusters as my specialist subject.
But I’m not sure what my specialist subject would have been. ‘TV’s a little too broad. ‘US TV’ would confine me to a dungeon of Dallas, Dynasty and Dawson’s Creek, knowing my luck. ‘Doctor Who‘ really wouldn’t get me anywhere at all, since the questions would be set by someone who’s memorised every second line from the annuals and wants to know what kind of toy Davros used to entertain baby Daleks with. Plus it would be a bit nerdy. But picking a non-nerdy TV subject (eg Play for the Day, the works of Carla Lane, The Sopranos) carries with it all the joy of learning the Highway Code and eating your greens, and I don’t really have the time to brush up on four seasons of The Wire (fifth starting on Sunday).
So I’m still thinking.
How about you? What would your socially acceptable, TV-related specialist subject be?

Friday’s classier, swearing- and sex-free news

4 January 2008 Rob Buckley 10 Comments

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Review: Thunderbirds night

3 January 2008 Rob Buckley Post a comment

All About Thunderbirds

In the UK: Wednesday 2nd January, BBC4

BBC4 likes themes. It likes seasons. It like evenings. It likes repeats a lot. Sometimes, they’re good, such as the now-traditional yearly Ghost Stories seasons.

Sometimes, though, you have to ask yourself, “What’s the point?” Sure, somebody, somewhere liked Dance Britannia and is grateful that finally someone has seen the sense to put on a sort of social history thing about dancing. But even fans of Gerry Anderson – you know, the guy behind all those 60s puppets series like Joe 90 – must be wondering who exactly was supposed to have gained anything from BBC4’s ‘Thunderbirds night’.

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