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

Matthew Perry to return to TV in another Aaron Sorkin project

27 January 2006 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Matthew Perry (you know, Chandler on Friends) is to make his regular-TV comeback on Aaron Sorkin’s regular-TV comeback, Studio 7 on the Sunset Strip, according to Ain’t It Cool News.

Sorkin is very loyal to those who impress him, and that’s probably why he’s given Perry the role. If you recall, Perry made a few guest appearances on Sorkin’s The West Wing, and was actually very good.

Equally, Perry is as much a writer at heart as an actor, so he probably likes the idea of sticking with someone who can write.

We should probably expect Joshua Malina to turn up some point as well, now he’s been released from The West Wing. Malina’s been in almost everything that Sorkin’s done, right from the stage version of A Few Good Men that launched Sorkin’s career. Sorkin’s loyalty to Malina, among other things, stems from Malina saving Sorkin’s life in a burger-swallowing incident. I don’t think that’s why Perry’s got the job though.

UPDATE: Variety’s confirmed the story.

A for Andromeda to get a live remake like The Quatermass Experiment

26 January 2006 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

David Tennant in the Quatermass Experiment

Just in case you missed it, wedged as it is under news of Kenneth Williams’ diaries being dramatised, the Media Guardian reports that BBC4 is to remake A for Andromeda. Just like last year’s The Quatermass Experiment, which featured new Doctor Who David Tennant, it’s going to be a condensed version of the original, performed live on the night.

In case you missed The Quatermass Experiment (it’s available on DVD if you want to catch up), it was actually rather good and quite creepy – a curious combination of theatre and television that’s so rare these days. Since I’m the proud possessor of the Quatermass Collection as well, I can say it was significantly better than the original, which was slow moving to say the least – of course, by the standards of the 1950s, the original was a veritable hurricane.

The original A for Andromeda titlesAs I recall, the story’s pretty good, despite being put together by Nobel Prize-winning physicist and “life evolved in space” nut Fred Hoyle. It bears remarkable similarities with the naffo Species, although it bears none of that movie’s deficiencies, so we know it can fit into a couple of hours without serious plot-curtailment. I have high hopes for this live version. No word yet on casting, but I suspect D Tennant will be a bit too busy to make an appearance this time round.

PS BBC4 again. They’ve definitely been at those super-wheaties.

PPS I had copies of the few remaining bits of A for Andromeda and its sequel The Andromeda Breakthrough back in the early 90s, but I purged them long ago in one of my Nights of the Long Video Knives. You can view the title sequences at TV Ark. While you’re at, have at look at the Ace of Wands titles, complete with Thames TV opener: they’re magnificent. They were victims of my library purge, too. Sigh.

Avril Lavigne wants to appear in perfume ads

26 January 2006 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Cue make-over scenes from Clueless: Avril Lavigne wants to be a supermodel. The former Christian folk singer turned manufactured biker-rock star, who said that mothers liked her because she didn’t dress like Britney, now wants to sell out and become a model. Quelle surprise. If you change your image once in order to achieve popularity and your popularity starts to wane, isn’t it the most natural thing in the world to change your image again, even if it runs contrary to everything you used to espouse? Still, maybe if her last album hadn’t sucked, things would be different.

News

Noel Edmonds returns to Saturday nights

25 January 2006 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Noel Edmonds in "Deal or No Deal"

We’re re-entering the 70s. First Doctor Who becomes a Saturday night regular again. Now Noel “Late, Late Breakfast Show” Edmonds is returning to prime-time weekend viewing with Deal or No Deal. Based on the Australian game show of the same name, It’s been doing well in the afternoons apparently.

Howie Mandel

I’m surprised it took this long to become a hit though. It’s already being hailed in the US as the next Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, despite being hosted by Howie “St Elsewhere” Mandel who appears a bit more like Master Po from Kung Fu than he used to.

But Noel on a Saturday night. Can we take it?

UPDATE: Charlie Brooker sums up the show, in case you’ve never seen it.

BBC4 controller wants longer hours

25 January 2006 Rob Buckley 8 Comments

Good news, fans of Nigerian crochet and Swedish Renaissance painting: BBC4 wants to broadcast for longer each day!

I jest. BBC4 has been getting much better of late. But although the ratio between the absolute crackers and the mind-numbers may be at an all-time high, it’s still got some way to go before it achieves the same quality ratio as More4, which is still the holder of the crown for “ best channel for thinking people who don’t have a degree in Pretension, minoring in tribal art”.

More4 does have a slight advantage though. It just imports all its good stuff, while BBC4 rolls its own. More4’s home-produced output, such as The Last Word, would very much rate as “cruel and unusual punishments” if shown to US prison inmates, so it shouldn’t sit on its laurels.

So let’s give a possible BBC4 expansion into longer hours a cautious welcome and hope we don’t have to face too many programmes hosted by Tyler Brûlé or (and I kid you not) documentaries about Django Reinhardt, the Belgian-born, two-fingered Gypsy jazz guitar legend.

Jazz. Ugh.