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.
The TV business can be risky, particularly the US broadcast TV business where a show can be cancelled after just a few episodes and lose millions of dollars in the process.
As a result, broadcast networks tend to want to play safe. If they find something that does well in the ratings, something that usually hasn’t strayed too far from the previous year’s not especially adventurous offerings, they’ll try to create something relatively similar the next year to capitalise upon it.
This isn’t a good idea, but if you’re a TV exec, you’re not likely to lose your job over it, since you can always say: “It was a safe bet. Hell, the last one did well and this was pretty similar. Who could have predicted it would tank?”
Last year’s “something quite close to lots of things you’ve already seen but which is a bit different” on ABC was How To Get Away With Murder, which was basically a remake of the 1970s law school show Paper Chase except with a more diverse cast and added murder. That was popular enough that it got renewed by the network. That, of course, means that this year we need something that’s quite close to How To Get Away With Murder but which is a bit different.
The setting and general structure of How To Get Away With Murder is this: a team of diverse recruits to a prestigious school, all competing with one another to be the best, with the action running in two timelines, one before, one after a crime. What Quantico stupidly does is think you can transfer that from a law school to Quantico and have more or less the same kinds of people and principles.
You’ll probably have heard of Quantico: it trains the FBI, the DEA and the Marines. When you hear the name ‘Quantico’, you probably think of something like this:
What you probably don’t think of is Muslims in hijab climbing assault courses; people with lots of deep, dark, borderline felony secrets; mean girls picking on their teachers for not being sexy and marriagable enough; and an Indian superstar trying to make it big in the US as an FBI recruit accused of committing a 9/11-level atrocity and trying to prove it was actually one of her classmates.
Here’s a trailer. Be warned – the show’s single redeeming feature, Dougray Scott, has been replaced by Josh Hopkins from Cougar Town.
Do immortal gods plan for their own deaths? It’s an interesting philosophical concept, one that oddly enough last week’s Deathstroke decided to investigate.
Meanwhile, the punchy, kicky Injustice: Gods Among Us: Year Four naturally decided to ask that eternal question: “If you were a god and could destroy any other religions, which ones would you go for?”
Wonder Woman ’77? It just wanted to bring back some old comics characters, from just like in the good old days.
I’ll be talking about all of these after the jump, in Weekly Wonder Wonder. That’s next on TMINE.
Last week saw the first ever Radio Times Festival take place on the Green opposite Hampton Court Palace. I have to say it was a slightly odd affair, overall. Between Thursday 24th and Sunday 27th, there were plenty of events to go to, but you had to buy tickets individually for each one. Given that each hour-long event typically cost £12-£18, you could quickly bankrupt yourself going to all of them.
However, I didn’t, thanks to a bit of odd scheduling. I’d have been a shoo-in for the:
You, Me and The Apocalypse preview
The BFI: Missing Believed Wiped Special with Tim Brooker-Taylor celebrating the return of two episodes of At Last The 1948 Show to the archives
The Russell T Davies session
The Doctor Who session with Peter Capaldi, Steven Moffat and Brian Minchin
The Silent Witness session or
The Omid Djalili session
Except that was on Friday. When everyone is at work. The most I could have done is try to scramble down in the evening (1h-2h by train) and then scramble back again.
Huh.
So instead, we were on the Saturday there purely to see Philippa Gregory discuss her new book The Taming of the Queen and slag off Wolf Hall (not Wolf Hall). That clashed with the Endeavour chat, unfortunately, and lovely wife didn’t fancy hanging around for the Lynda La Plante/Tennison session, which meant that we ended up only going to one thing. That saved some cash at least.
However, despite that weird scheduling, it was actually pretty decent. The weather was great, it wasn’t too packed, everyone was well behaved, it had possibly the most middle-class mobile restaurants imaginable (admittedly full of very tasty food) and Dick Fiddy from the BFI was around, too.
I took a few photos while I was there and you can look at them after the jump. I have to admit my photo of Boycie from Only Fools And Horses wasn’t the best, though. And if you want to see sophisticated, wait till you see how Philippa Gregory herself overcame the lack of live streaming at the event.
