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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Eleventh Hour cancelled

15 February 2006 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Readers of my Eleventh Hour review can probably guess that I’m not too surprised by The Mirror’s news that the show’s been cancelled.

Despite some of the dodginess in the article’s information (Stewart didn’t come back to the UK just to appear in mainstream TV), I suspect that there’s an element of truth in both The Mirror’s reason (poor ratings) and Granada’s official reason (Patrick Stewart won’t be available for a second series).

I suspect also that the show’s complete pantness is the unstated third reason.

UPDATE: For those of you wanting to know about the US version of Eleventh Hour starring Rufus Sewell, I’m afraid it’s been cancelled, too, along with a whole load of other CBS shows.

24’s debt to those old Republic serials

15 February 2006 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Don’t believe that 24 is essentially Buck Rogers or King of the Rocket Man, given a new twist for television?

Well, in an effort to summarise 24 in a single sentence, I hit on this line, paraphrased from the glorious movie Flash Gordon. Tell me that it doesn’t hit the nail on the head exactly:

“Jack, I love you, but we only have 24 hours to save the Earth!”

See?

Jeff Goldblum angling for his own TV show

15 February 2006 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

I like Jeff Goldblum. If my life were interesting enough to be turned into a movie, he’s the actor I’d like to play me. But a Medium/Ghost Whisperer cop show knock-off? I wouldn’t watch that without a very, very good reason. Jeff, you can do a lot better than that.

Incidentally, the SciFi Channel should probably try running its headlines past a proofreader. At the moment, poor old Jeff is coming across like an Austin Powers villain.

Pub Landlord gets his own US show

14 February 2006 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Al Murray’s travelling across the Atlantic to star in his own comedy pilot Union Jackass for Fox, according to Variety. He’s basically going to play the Pub Landlord again, but this time relocated to Santa Monica as he follows his ex-wife and son.

It could be good. It could be bad. Murray’s Landlord-based shows have never quite matched the wit of his stand-up performance, which relies a lot on the audience knowing the unwritten rules of pub culture and laughing as they’re actually spelt out by someone. The Landlord’s bigotry runs a risk of either being watered down or just being offensive in a US setting.

It’s clear, also, that this isn’t really another British invasion – the only invasion of the US we’re mounting at the moment is a format invasion, in which the US just buys the ideas behind our programmes rather than the programmes themselves. Instead, this is really just Fox looking for a new Al Bundy or its own version of CBS’s King of Queens and the various other “beautiful wife, slobby working class husband” sitcoms that are in vogue (well, just passing vogue) at the moment.

There is another advantage to importing your fall guys. Is there anything quite as funny as laughing at the backwardness of other countries? You can enjoy the nastiness while simultaneously looking down on the uncivilised foreigner and pretending to be above it all. That, after all, is one of the reasons for the success of Borat, Sacha Baron Cohen’s other alter-ego.

Anyway, I’m sure it’s going to be interesting…

Review: Top 50 Break-Up Songs

14 February 2006 Rob Buckley Post a comment

I do like lists show, although Jimmy Carr’s omnipresence in them is something that’s barely tolerable. However, this was a Channel Five list show, rather than another Channel 4 show.

Two things I noticed:

  1. As I’ve been told by lots of audio and post houses, Five doesn’t give a monkey’s about sound quality. Did they even use microphones for their interviews?
  2. It was better than the Channel 4 list shows.

C4 list shows are generally populated by some talking head twats who had no recollection of the show in question until some researcher stuck a soundbite in front of them to read. The only exceptions are the people who actually made the film/TV show/song in question and the entire Guardian Guide staff – euphemistically always called “writers” rather than journalists, just to make it less obvious they’re all Stuart Maconie’s mates.

This particular list show, however, seemed to have a few people who knew what they were talking about and very few talking heads. It was also more intent on educating you about the history of the song, the artists and the era in which it was released than just trying to be post-modernly ironic or thick. How pleasant. Not exactly Reithian, but still better than a Channel 4/E4 sneer.