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
TMINE

A brief look back at the Brave and the Bold #33

2 December 2013 Rob Buckley Post a comment

The Bold and the Beautiful #33

Sigh. No Wonder Woman in any new comic that came out last week, as far as I’m aware, so instead, I’ll just give everyone a brief head nod towards a pre nu-52 back issue that I just noticed was available on Comixology.

Written by J Michael Sraczynski (Babylon 5, The Changling, Thor), Brave and the Bold #33 is notable for a number of things. The first is that it’s possibly the first issue to feature Wonder Woman artwork by Cliff Chiang. Chiang, of course, largely came to prominence in Wonder Woman circles for his ‘WW as Joan Jett’ work, which also sees Black Canary, Batgirl and Zatanna as the rest of The Runaways:

Cliff Chiang's Wonder Woman as Joan Jett

From there, he became the natural first choice for the nu52 run (although he’s been absent of late). However, the particular combination of Zatanna, Batgirl and Wonder Woman also got Chiang’s attention in Brave and the Bold #33. Of course, being pre nu 52, it features Wonder Woman’s old-school outfit.

Cliff Chiang's pre nu52 Wonder Woman

The issue seems at first like a bit of a nothing, perhaps even cliched idea: Wonder Woman, Batgirl and Zatanna have a girls night out in a club, where they put the world (and men) to rights.

Girls night out

Wonder Woman, Batgirl and Zatanna on a girls night out

Except, it’s a whole lot more than that, once you realise it’s actually a prequel to a very famous comic book and that Zatanna is actually crying in this scene because she knows what’s coming…

Zatanna and Wonder Woman hug

Definitely one to read if you like your comics to occasionally provoke a tear – and if you like to see Wonder Woman drawn like she’s 7” tall.

7" tall Wonder Woman

Operation Slut, Secrets and Lies and the return of Siadwel

29 November 2013 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Trailers

  • Trailer for Cymbeline, with Ethan Hawke, Ed Harris, Milla Jovovich et al

Radio

UK TV

New UK TV shows

US TV

The Weekly Play

The Wednesday Play: Dead of Night – The Exorcism (1972)

28 November 2013 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Many plays, particularly those in the theatre, are written to impart a message from the author. TV plays typically have been no different and especially during the 1970s in the UK, social realism and commentary on injustices in society were grist to the playwright’s mill.

Largely, however, this wasn’t the case for genre series, which were much more interested in ideas about science, technology and the future in the case of science-fiction shows – or just scaring people in the case of horror shows. But the first play in BBC2’s 1972 supernatural anthology series Dead of Night, The Exorcism, married both the supernatural and social conscience to deliver a play about the divide between rich and poor that still was able to scare the crap out of the viewer.

Set in a recently purchased cottage in the countryside, The Exorcism sees various middle-class friends (Clive Swift, Edward Petherbridge, Anna Cropper and Sylvia Kay) get together for a dinner party and to revel in how much money they have. Unfortunately, their behaviour excites some particularly unfriendly proletariat ghosts and the party ends up going in a particularly bad direction for them all.

If you can get over the somewhat agitprop nature of Don Taylor’s play, this is a real blood curdler that’ll make you think while it scares you witless. Best watched at night, with the lights turned down, it’s this week’s Wednesday Play on Thursday. Enjoy – and if you like it, you can buy it and the two surviving episodes (Return Flight and A Woman Sobbing) on DVD.

PS Trivia lovers might like to know that the eighth episode of the series was going to be The Stone Tape, but that was eventually aired as a separate play.