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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Stephen Hawking: physicist, writer and TV presenter

7 August 2006 Rob Buckley Post a comment

US network ABC is working on a new sci-fi anthology series called Masters of Science Fiction. Doesn’t sound too promising, does it? After all, we’ve already had The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, The Night Gallery, et al. This one promises to be different.

Number one interesting point: it’s going to be a series of adaptations of some actual, decent SF authors, such as Harlan Ellison, Robert Heinlein and Robert Sheckley.

Number two: It’s going to be hosted by Stephen Hawking. Now, okay, Stephen’s already done a little bit of acting work on The Simpsons and Star Trek: The Next Generation. But TV hosting? Don’t you have to have been in the Big Brother house for at least a week before you’re allowed to host a show these days?

Reminds you just how much fun 80s ‘hardware’ shows were

7 August 2006 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Ah, Airwolf, Street Hawk: I do like to go on about them, I know. But there’s never really been their like since and they were such an important part of the 80s (for some people anyway).

Here are a couple of YouTube videos to illustrate the fun. The first is from early in Airwolf‘s pilot episode. It’s a live weapons demo principally designed to show off the helicopter to one of the Senators in charge of defence budgets. As always with early Airwolf, the sting is in the tail. It also features the late, great David Hemmings being delightfully evil and English.

Enjoy it – it never got this good again, thanks to CBS wanting the second season onwards to be more family-oriented. I ask you, how do you make a programme about a war helicopter family oriented?

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Another new general knowledge and comedy show

4 August 2006 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Ooh. This one’s from Princess Productions, which makes The Friday Night Project. Can you spot what demographic Channel 4 really is keen on these days?

THE DEADLY KNOWLEDGE SHOW!!

Do You Know Your Blair From Your Blur? We’re looking for funky people to be part of our studio audience for the Channel 4 entertainment quiz show where pop culture meets posh culture.

So, if you know your Paxman from your Pac-Man, join our gorgeous host, TRL’s Dave Berry, and you might get yourself on TV!

We are looking for enthusiastic audience members to join us for an evening of fun at Princess Productions, Unit 316, 3rd Floor Whiteley’s Centre, 151 Queensway, London W2 4SB .

Choose from these dates: afternoons or evenings on Tuesday 15th August then every weekday from Monday 21st August to Friday 1st Sepetmber 2006.

If you would like to join us for this event, then do apply now for tickets by calling 020 8684 3333

UK TV

Review: Time Trumpet

4 August 2006 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Time Trumpet

In the UK: Thursdays, BBC2, 10pm

I had high-ish hopes for this. It comes from the House of Armando Iannucci for one thing. It satirises modern news and televisual trends by pretending to look back on them from the perspective of 2031. It could have been The Day Today of our day.

But it wasn’t. It was kind of funny. It was clever. It made you wonder just how much time they’d spent trawling through the archives for clips they could doctor with CGI. But it wasn’t the side-splittingly funny show I was hoping for.

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