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

Pause for thought for bloggers and journalists alike

30 May 2006 Rob Buckley Post a comment

From today’s Poynter Institute email:

Conventional wisdom states that news sites must update to attract readers. Well, quite the opposite happened on Norway’s site Bergens Tidendes (bt.no) this week.

Instead of giving heavy coverage to the recent Scandinavian Big Brother finale (in Swedish), bt.no decided that an ultra-short and to-the-point article (in Norwegian) would suffice — adding that they probably would not be updating.

It was an obvious attempt to distance the site from a TV concept seen by many as vulgar and lowbrow.

The whole article reads: “Jessica won Big Brother. Jessica is 21 years old and comes from Kalmar. The first prize is one million Kroner. Bt.no probably won’t come back with more.”

In a world gone reality crazy, the article was a little reminder of what’s news and what’s not, so it became something of a phenomenon in Norway this week. After having been e-mailed between friends and referred in other media, it attracted 25.000 readers during Tuesday, according to NA24 Propaganda (Norwegian). That kind of readership is usually reserved for much bigger stories and happenings on Bergens Tidendes.

Says Bergens Tidendes news editor Anne Gjerde: “We have never had so many readers for such a short article.”

Touching Evil title sequence and theme

30 May 2006 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

As a little treat and to give you a flavour of the show – and because I’m in one of my obsessive moods – I’m setting up a one-show, one-page rival to Brilliant But Cancelled. Here’s the opening few minutes of the pilot episode of Touching Evil. It may not instantly grab you, but as a way to establish the entire mood of a show plus the scenario behind it, it’s a remarkably economical use of three and a half minutes. But bear with it.

I’ve added the title sequence and title theme as a second video, since they are possibly one of the best combinations in TV history, even if the theme seems to have been re-used for a perfume ad. If some of the music sounds familiar, you’re probably a Nine Inch Nails fan.

Enjoy!

Continue reading “Touching Evil title sequence and theme”

UK TV

Review: Doctor Who – 2×7 – The Idiot’s Lantern

29 May 2006 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

The Idiot's Lantern

I’m supposed to be writing a white paper on the Web 2.0 conference I went to in Edinburgh last Monday. So naturally, because I am the King of Procrastination, I’m writing about Saturday’s episode of Doctor Who.

On the whole, I’d say not bad. The 50s tele stuff made me all nostalgic for a decade I never lived through, which was quite impressive. The face-sucking was done nicely.

On the other hand, the union flag/jack debate annoyed me because Rose was just plain wrong (gasp, factual inaccuracies in Doctor Who!). The plot and the denouement had a few issues that really couldn’t be fixed in post. And the general bog-standard interpretation of the 50s – great decade for wife beaters, we fought in the war for the right to be lippy, etc – began to grate. Could we avoid the moralising please?

Basically, a reasonable filler piece as has been remarked elsewhere.

The Man Without A FaceOne last thing. Writer Mark Gatiss is a long-time sci-fi fan, something you may have noticed if you watched Doctor Who Confidential after the episode. He has, for instance, played Gold in the Big Finish Sapphire and Steel audio plays. So I wonder where he got the idea for the face-sucking in The Idiot’s Lantern. I’ll give you a visual clue: here’s the baddie in the fourth Sapphire and Steel TV ‘assignment’, as they’re called. Look familiar?

He does like his homages does Gatiss.

US TV

Season finale: Lost

29 May 2006 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Lost's big foot

Lost‘s finale was just so plain weird and wacky, it deserves its own entry in my continuing season finale guide. Worry ye not, UK viewers, I won’t spoil it for you.

Most of the second season has been dull. Sorry to say that, but it’s been dull (and, it turns out, mostly pointless). The last few episodes have reversed that with several hours of shocking carnage that have wiped out all kinds of popular characters you never thought would get the chop (assuming they don’t make miracle recoveries, hide under large objects, etc). It’s all been really rather good. The finale was some really tasting icing on the cake, though.

First off, don’t expect any answers to questions you might be having. You won’t get any. At least, you won’t get any that make any sense or that couldn’t be elaborate bluffs. Yes, you will find out what happens if you don’t keep pushing the button down the hatch, but you won’t really know why. You’ll find out why the plane crashed on the island, but again, it won’t make too much sense. Etc etc. Lots of revelations. Lots of flashbacks where you see characters’ pasts intertwining. My theory of a live-action role-playing game is starting to make more sense, too, given the number of wigs and false beards that people are starting to sport.

But it all doesn’t matter because all the new questions are even more interesting and send the show in all kinds of odd directions. I got the feeling while watching the finale that Lost was turning into 70s weirdo Bermuda Triangle show The Fantastic Journey. Look at the picture above. That’s a giant statue of a foot (we’re assuming there used to be more to it than that, but who knows). Now count the toes (click on the picture to make it bigger, if you need to). See what I mean? Weird. And there’s a whole lot more weird where that came from (this was purely incidental weird that doesn’t affect the plot in any way, BTW, so don’t think I’ve ruined anything for you).

It’s going to be a long wait for the next season, given they’re going to try to run it without re-runs (January start instead of September, next season?) and the ending is particularly gripping, so I’m giving this a high tension rating

Tension rating: 10/10

PS One of the great things about Lost incidentally, is that it uses Australian and other non-American actors. Apparently though, there are enough Australian actors in the US for them to be used to play non-Australian roles in Lost, too. I say this because the finale casts Alan Dale (Jim from Neighbours) as a posh English bloke. Odd.

PPS Am confidently expecting an article from Lucy Mangan to appear in The Guardian in about 18 weeks or so about what she’d like to see happen in the finale. At about 1600 words for a double-page spread and at the standard freelance rate for The Guardian, that would be about £350 or so that could be mine if I wrote it right now. But I’d never pitch it because it would be a complete waste of time and space for everyone including the readers. Sigh.