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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Blake’s 7 back?

24 July 2006 Rob Buckley Post a comment

A while ago I suggested that bringing Blake’s 7 back was a good idea, since the whole “terrorist or freedom fighter?” concept is one that ties in well with nos jours, as they say in pretension-land.

Rumour (and I do mean rumour) has it that the Beeb might be thinking the same thing.

Of course, Blake’s 7 revivals are promised more or less every other week, but this one has a slight hint of possibility to it. After all, if the Beeb is thinking of Survivors, I’m sure they visited Blake’s 7 during their mental journey.

US TV

Review: Angela’s Eyes

24 July 2006 Rob Buckley 8 Comments

Angela's Eyes

In the US: Lifetime TV, Sundays 10pm ET/PT

In the UK: Please God. Don’t let them buy it.

I can’t remember the last time I switched off a TV programme within the first minute. I’m not talking about when channel surfing. I’m talking about sitting down to watch something, turning it on, then realising it was so incredibly awful, so amazingly badly written that I couldn’t stomach any more of the show.

Hell, I sat through the first episode of Blade. I made it all the way through an episode of Ultimate Force. But I just couldn’t get through more than a minute of Angela’s Eyes.

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US TV

Review: Eureka

24 July 2006 Rob Buckley 6 Comments

Eureka

In the US: Tuesdays, 9/8c, The Sci Fi Channel

In the UK: Acquired by Sky One, for airing this Summer

Small towns have lots of secrets. Think Blue Velvet. Think Northern Exposure. Think Hidden Palms.

Okay, don’t think Hidden Palms.

There’s even a new series coming up called Secrets of a Small Town that I’ll be reviewing this week.

Eureka has a big secret. It’s a town inhabited almost entirely by scientists, all doing research on crazy, crazy inventions. Just about anything important that’s been invented since World War Two (which is when Truman set up the town at Einstein’s instigation) came out of Eureka’s labs.

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Odeon boycott extended

24 July 2006 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

I was just boycotting the Odeon Greenwich’s Galley, but a couple of things have extended my boycott to the entire establishment.

  1. My brother-in-law actually wrote to complain about what happened to us with the Gallery. He never got a reply.
  2. The next time he went to the Odeon – and let’s not forget what the temperature’s like outside – he ordered some Pepsi. They gave it to him without ice. He pointed that out. The serving guy shrugged his shoulders, as though somehow ice was a luxury to be given out at his discretion, and bro-in-law had offended his Royal Highness in some way.

Odeon, you charge roughly three diamonds plus a pot of gold, frankincense and myrrh for your medium-sized Pepsis: you can afford to give the ice (frozen water!) away as part of that.

It’s all a bit trivial, I know. But they’ve annoyed me now.