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: Torchwood 1×8 – They Keep Killing Susie

4 December 2006 Rob Buckley 8 Comments

Torchwood

So here’s the thing. A couple of weeks ago, I got so hacked off with the poor quality of Torchwood, I decided to stop watching. I studiously avoided tuning into the next episode and even though various people said it wasn’t bad, I still couldn’t bring myself to devote 50 minutes of my life to it. I even went as far as recording it, but I deleted it because I knew I’d never do anything more than glower at its sullen awfulness. Having a tooth extracted looked more inviting.

But there were enough people saying it was actually pretty good that I decided to tune in this week. Plus the title was They Keep Killing Susie, so I figured it might be a bit more interesting than the standard Torchwood episode.

You know what? Maybe it was because I’d had a vacation from Torchwood but I really enjoyed it.

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Lost moments are losing it

4 December 2006 Rob Buckley Post a comment

This year, US networks have had a change of policy about how they air their big shows. Rather than do what they’ve always done and air a few new episodes, then some repeats, then some more new episodes, then some repeats, ad infinitum, they’ve gone for two blocks of episodes: one before Christmas, one after Christmas, with a stonking great big gap in between.

In part, they can do this because of the Internet. Even with a two-month wait, shows like Jericho are pumping out extra content on their web sites to keep people interested. Lost is also doing this with “Lost moments”, clips from the next season that are designed to whet the appetite of viewers.

The trouble is, they’re not very good and lots of fans are p’ed off. After all, two and a bit seasons in and the distinct feeling is that

  1. Lost‘s producers are making it up as they go along
  2. That’s two and a bit years invested in something whose denouement in another two and a half years’ time isn’t going to be very interesting
  3. We’re never going to find out what half the good stuff means.

Valid concerns or not, the Lost moments don’t seem to be helping things. Judge for yourself why this might be after the jump. Note, if you’ve not seen any of season three yet, there are some slight spoilers in terms of who’s survived the finale of season two; if you have seen season three or are currently watching it on Sky One, there are no real spoilers, which is partly why the fans are annoyed. For my part, I will say the moments are clearly leading somewhere, although as with all things Lost-ian, I suspect we’ll have to wait till the last one to find out if it was worth it.

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Weekend news

4 December 2006 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

A few of the stories that broke over the weekend: