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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US TV

Review: Resurrection 1×1 (ABC)

14 March 2014 Rob Buckley 9 Comments

Resurrection ABC

In the US: Sundays, 9/8c, ABC

Sometimes, miracles really do happen. I’m not talking about the dead coming back to life – well, not yet I’m not. I’m talking about the fact that two people around the world can have practically identical ideas and for both these ideas to be turned into TV series.

In France, for example, there was a movie called Les Revenants (‘The Returned’), which in turn became the basis of a Canal+ TV series by Fabrice Gobert called Les Revenants that was shown on Channel 4 in the UK and the Sundance Channel in the US. In it, the dead come back to life in a small town, revealing all kinds of issues and relationship problems, including in some cases mysteries about how they died. In particular, there’s a weird boy who’ll do your head in.

Meanwhile, over in the US, a man called Jason Mott wrote a book called The Returned, which has new become the basis of ABC’s Resurrection, in which the dead come back to life in a small town, revealing all kinds of issues and relationship problems, including in some cases mysteries about how they died. In particular, there’s a weird boy who’ll do your head in.

Spooky, huh? And I haven’t gotten started on the fact that the almost identical Babylon Fields is being remade right now, as is Les Revenants.

Here’s a trailer.

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Weekly Wonder Woman

Weekly Wonder Woman: Superman/Wonder Woman #6, Justice League of America #13

14 March 2014 Rob Buckley 12 Comments

Superman/Wonder Woman #6

It’s that time of the month again – the latest issue of DC’s most consistently enjoyable and excellent title, Superman/Wonder Woman, is hitting people’s tablets this week and it’s a corker, as writer Charles Soule and artist Tony Daniel wrap up the title’s first initial arc with an almost neverending series of surprises, innovations and standout moments the likes of which the nu52 hasn’t ever seen before.

I’ll also be looking after the jump at Justice League of America #13, which features a guest appearance by Wonder Woman as the only one of the Justice League who can finally end the Forever Evil storyline. Just one more reason to like her, huh?

I should also point out that in one of the above two comics we finally get to see Wonder Woman’s new invisible jet. Well, not see, obviously but…

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News

News: A French Broadchurch, a Dutch Cheers, CBS renews multiple shows + more

14 March 2014 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Keeley Hawes in Doctor Who

Doctor Who

French TV

European TV

US TV

  • CBS renews: NCIS, NCIS: Los Angeles, Person of Interest, CSI, Hawaii Five-0, Blue Bloods, Criminal Minds, Elementary, The Good Wife, Two and a Half Man, Mike & Molly, The Millers, Mom and 2 Broke Girls
  • Wednesday ratings

US TV show casting

  • Emily Bergl promoted on Shameless, Andrea Bogart to recur on Ray Donovan
  • Jorge Garcia to be a regular on Hawaii Five-0
  • Brandy to guest on The Soul Man

New US TV shows

New US TV show casting

  • Greg Stults to star in CBS’s Cuz-Bros (if Enlisted gets cancelled)
  • S Epatha Merkerson to recur on NBC’s Babylon Fields
  • David Morse and Sophie Okonedo to co-sar in CBS’s Wall Street drama
  • Thomas Lennon to star in CBS’s Odd Couple remake
  • Kat Foster and Kyle Howard to star in TBS’s Israeli comedy remake Your Family or Mine, Danny Comden and Andrew Lees to recur
  • John Cho to star in ABC’s Selfie
  • Oder Gehr to be a regular on ABC’s Richard LaGravenese pilot, Kyle Jones to recur on ABC’s Damaged Goods
  • Ben Koldyke to co-star in NBC’s Mr Robinson, Manish Dayal joins The CW’s Identity
US TV

Review: Working The Engels 1×1 (Global/NBC)

13 March 2014 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

Working The Engels

In Canada: Wednesdays, 9 et/pt, Global
In the US: NBC. Airing in 2014

Now the story of a wealthy family who lost everything and the one sondaughter who had no choice but to keep them all together.

I’m in something of a dilemma here, since my lovely categorisation system has broken down. Working the Engels is a co-production between Canada’s Global network and the US’s NBC network – the first ever Canadian-American sitcom. So does it suck because it’s Canadian or because it’s on NBC?

The show starts with a lawyer dying, leaving his wife (Andrea Martin from My Big Fat Greek Wedding) and family in debt to the tune of $200,000. US or Canadian? It’s not clear since this is one of those shows of nebulous geographical location. Neither is it clear why he wasn’t in a limited liability partnership. Presumably he was a very bad lawyer.

Anyway, the kids rally round, or at least the mousey lawyer daughter (Kacey Rohl who played Abigail Hobbs in Hannibal) does, and her pill-popping, airhead sister (Azura Skye who was Jane on The WB’s Zoe, Duncan, Jack & Jane) and minor criminal brother (Benjamin Arthur from CityTV/HBO Canada’s Less Than Kind) come along to both help and accidentally hinder her efforts to bring the family legal practice back into the black. Except it turns out that most of the deceased’s clients were either pro bono or stupid.

Written by Miss Congeniality’s Katie Ford and her sister Jane Cooper Ford, Working the Engels‘ comparisons with the much revered Arrested Development are obvious. Unfortunately, that’s merely in terms of set-up since it’s not very funny.

The script is short on laughs and pretty much every joke is signalled a mile off and has exactly the punchline you expect. Rohl underplays, everyone else overplays in exactly the same way that virtually every Canadian sitcom you care to think of demands (cf Satisfaction, InSecurity, Seed, 18 To Life, Men With Brooms, Hiccups). The equally requisite physical comedy is ineptly handled and directed. Skye and Arthur’s characters do slightly bad things but do it so nicely, it’s hard to consider them the drop-out liabilities the script demands. The supporting characters are mere stereotypes – the overbearing female boss, the obsequious male Indian, the valley girl client and so on.

In short, there are no redeeming features. Other than a naked Asian guitar-playing character. I’d not seen one of those before but I think she’s only in the pilot.

If I wanted to find something positive to say, I’d say that it is at least well meaning and gentle, rather than insultingly poor and crass, with everyone trying to ‘zing’ each other, like so many US sitcoms of late (e.g. Mom, The Millers, Super Fun Night). I only felt the urge to turn off a couple of times while I was watching it and that was more because I was bored than because I hated it.

But that’s about it and I think the fact NBC hasn’t announced an air date for it yet should speak volumes – if NBC won’t show it, it must be bad.

Here’s a trailer anyway.

Classic TV

Nostalgia Corner: Hannay (1988-1989)

13 March 2014 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

When you think of genre-defining Scottish spies, you usually think of James Bond. True, James Bond started off as the quintessential English hero in Ian Fleming’s books, but once Sean Connery assumed the mantle in the movies, he became so synonymous with Bond than even Fleming felt compelled to make Bond Scottish, something very evident in the latest Bond movie, Skyfall.

But long, long before Bond, back when even Ian Fleming was just a young boy, there was another Scottish spy who more or less defined the genre in the first place: Richard Hannay. Based in part on Edmund Ironside, an Edinburgh-born spy during the Second Boer War, Hannay appeared in no fewer than seven books by John Buchan, the best known of which is The Thirty-Nine Steps.

Set in 1914, it sees ex-soldier and engineer Hannay visited in his London flat by a man called Scudder, a freelance spy, who reveals that there’s a German plot to assassinate the Greek premier during a forthcoming visit to London. When Scudder is murdered, the finger points at Hannay who not only has to evade the authorities and the German spy ring that killed Scudder, he also to save the Greek premier and expose the ring.

Buchan’s ‘shocker’ was an instant, astonishing hit, and proved so enticing that Alfred Hitchcock adapted it in 1935 with Robert Donat as Hannay.

But that was far from the last time the book was adapted. As well as numerous radio adaptations, including one with Orson Welles, a 1959 film directed by Ralph Thomas saw Kenneth More become Hannay.

More recently, Rupert Penry-Jones became Hannay for a 2008 BBC TV adaptation.

And even now, a comedic version of the book is a West End staple.

However, the best known adaptation of the story is the 1978 movie directed by Don Sharp and starring Robert Powell…

…that’s famous for out-doing Hitchcock with this scene on Big Ben.

So well regarded was this version that over a decade later, ITV asked Robert Powell if he’d reprise the role for a TV series called, naturally enough, Hannay. Here are the rather engaging, patriotic, not-at-all symbolic titles.

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