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.
Website YouTube LinkedIn
News

More Sarah Jane Adventures stuff

28 September 2006 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

K9My old pal Joe Nazzaro has got some more info about The Sarah Jane Adventures, over on SciFi Wire. Of note:

  • The series proper starts filming in April
  • Sarah Jane’s sidekick is going to be her 13-year-old niece, not her neighbour
  • RTD loves the Big Finish Sarah Jane stories, and although he won’t acknowledge them in the TV series, he won’t contradict them either

Still not sure if K9’s going to be in the one-off special that will launch the series, thanks to contradictory reports, but it’s pretty clear he won’t be in the series itself. Instead, he’s going to be in K9 Adventures (scroll down to find the plot).

Varied reactions to the Lost finale

27 September 2006 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Lost, C4

“On the surface it’s good TV: glamorous, gripping, addictive even. That’s precisely the problem […] Lost is crack TV.”

Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

Lost, C4

“It should have run one season at most, at which span its empty enigmas and casual indifference to its own inventions might not have been quite so obvious.”

Thomas Sutcliffe, The Independent

Lost, C4

“There’s a real stirring sense of the writers letting their imaginations fly.”

James Walton, The Daily Telegraph

Lost, C4

“Lost has become the pub bore of the TV schedules, propping up the bar whenever you happen to be channel-surfing, forcing you to take swift avoidance action when you spot it.”

Joe Joseph, The Times

Lost, C4

“The longer Lost limps on for, the more viewers it will lose for the simple reason that, as Phineas T. Barnum said, you can’t fool all the people all the time.”

Matt Baylis, Daily Express & Daily Mail

US TV

Review: Help Me Help You

27 September 2006 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

Help Me Help You

In the US: Tuesdays, 9.30/8.30c, ABC

In the UK: Anything with Ted Danson in appears on Paramount Comedy. You know that.

Help Me Help You is what is known in the trade as a “smart comedy” – that is, you won’t laugh very much, but you’ll be thinking “Oh, that’s wry and accurate”. It’s also what is known as a “Ted Danson vehicle”. That is, it stars Ted Danson with shockingly white hair.

Continue reading “Review: Help Me Help You”

Audio and radio play reviews

Review: Doctor Who – The Reaping

27 September 2006 Rob Buckley 7 Comments

The ReapingAh. Peri….

Sorry. Got a bit distracted there.

Peri’s one of those Doctor Who companions that could have been good but never got the chance. The Doctor’s first American companion, she could have been a good foil for the Doctor and asked questions about things we’d always taken for granted (screw “If you’re an alien, why do you sound like you’re from the North?” How about “Why is the entire universe populated by people with English accents?”). Unfortunately, bar one episode where she gets to make a potion using her knowledge of botany, she had bugger all to do except scream and look good.

Ah. Peri…

Sorry, got distracted again.

So far, Peri has appeared in a substantial number of Big Finish audios, usually with the fifth Doctor but occasionally with the sixth. Her fifth Doctor appearances have done little to rectify the “Peri as cypher” problem, since most of the allotted characterisation time has been given over to new companion, Egyptian pharoah Erimen.

And despite being more of a sixth Doctor companion anyway, only having an intro story plus one other with the fifth compared with a bit over a season and a half with the sixth, she’s had little by way of characterisation in those plays, too, with perhaps only Her Final Flight offering anything by way of variety to the character (and that one didn’t even count. Listen to it and you’ll know what I mean).

But, ta da! Here it is. Finally. The story where Peri gets something to do. More than that: it’s an entirely Peri-centric story, set in her home-town and home-age of Baltimore, 1984.

Ooh. And it’s got cybermen, too (it’s on the cover: I can’t be spoiling it for you if it’s on the cover).

Continue reading “Review: Doctor Who – The Reaping”