TMINE

Question of the week: how do you like your TV news?

12 May 2010 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

Here, in the UK, there is the ostensible legal requirement for broadcast TV news to be impartial. What that actually means and whether it merely favours a centre-left view of the world that doesn’t allow for extremes or which inadvertently backs big business and government (cf any book by John Pilger) is certainly debatable.

But in the US, there’s no such requirement for cable news at least. Hence, Fox News on the right and MSNBC on the relative left. For some that’s horrific – news should impartial. For others it’s the acknowledgement that all news is inherently biased and is filtered by most news editors preconceptions.

So question of the week this week, after Adam Boulton went mental at Alistair Campbell on Sky News, is:

How do you like your TV news: attempting to be impartial or obviously partial?

As always, leave a comment with your answer or a link to your answer on your own blog.

Question of the week: how much should TV respect religion?

5 May 2010 Rob Buckley 19 Comments

Can’t see anything going wrong with this question, can you?

So here’s the thing: a robust, post-Enlightenment society needs to be able to critique and question anything, including religions – that much is a given. But should TV be one of those things that critiques it? If it, is there a line TV shouldn’t cross, and if so, where is it? Is comedy allowed to satirise religions? In short:

How much should TV respect religion?

As always, leave a comment with your answer or a link to your answer on your own blog.

What have you been watching this week (w/e April 30)

4 May 2010 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Sorry, sorry. I know. Very late. Grumble, grumble, excuse, excuse. It’s here now, and should be back to normal time on Friday. Sorry.

  • Chuck: Some nice moments, but a bit too sweetly unlikely in places. A bit more research of Paris and France might have been nice, though, plus ETA terrorists speaking Spanish with a Mexican accent? What’s going on there?
  • Community: Funny. Those teenagers needed a good punching though.
  • Cougar Town: Mildly entertaining but some forward plot progress.
  • House: In a reversal to last week, the patient was interesting, the doctor relationships weren’t. Still not bad though.
  • Parenthood: Fun. I have not much else to say on this, other than it’s nice to finally get more of a female viewpoint and to see Monica Potter doing more.
  • Rome: Finished watching the second season. Definitely not as good as the first – too dark and the effects of sticking the original plots for seasons two and three together and into season two once the producers knew the show had been cancelled made everything far too rushed. But it got better towards the end, and was still very good.
  • Stargate Universe: Loving the fact that this has become the “Stargate: Worst Case Scenarios” show. Whenever you watched Stargate: SG1 you always tended to think to yourself, “Wow. That was lucky. What would have happened if they’d lucked out there?” Stargate Universe shows you week in, week out, just how screwed SG1 would have been. Lovely. Also loving the fact they’ve finally decided to give everyone decent backstories. Starting to become the show I look forward to most each week.
  • Supernatural: Better than the previous week and good to see Mark Sheppard back, out-acting everyone in sight. But this close to season end, you’d have thought Lucifer would be a bit more front and centre, wouldn’t you?
  • 24: Chugging along relatively well for the last two weeks, but not quite as exciting as I’d hope this late in the day.
  • 30 Rock: Funny, but not very memorable.

But what did you watch?

As always, no spoilers unless you’re going to use the <spoiler> </spoiler> tags, please. If you’ve reviewed something on your blog, you can put a link to it here rather than repeat yourself (although too many links and you might get killed by the spam filter).

The most popular search-terms in April

23 April 2010 Rob Buckley 2 Comments
  1. karen gillan
  2. satan
  3. karen gillan wallpaper
  4. Karen Gillan
  5. david tennant
  6. matt smith
  7. the medium is not enough
  8. richard armitage
  9. Karen Gillan naked
  10. more 4 pub quiz
  11. eastbound and down
  12. david tennant naked
  13. karen gillan hot
  14. californication
  15. dresses to wear to a wedding

It’s almost like a new series of Doctor Who has started with a hot new companion. Don’t ask about number 15.

What have you been watching this week (w/e April 23)

23 April 2010 Rob Buckley 10 Comments

Well, I gave up on Ashes to Ashes this week – I just couldn’t bring myself to watch the third episode after the first two. I’ll probably tune in for the finale, just to find out how it ends, though. Still haven’t managed to watch Treme yet, which is a bit disgraceful, but where am I going to find the time?

  • Alexandria: Bettany Hughes’ latest documentary and the first in the Ancient Worlds series – finally caught up with using 4oD. Only an hour, and it felt more like an advert for the movie Agora at times – which worked, since I’ll probably go and see it now. Could have done with a whole lot more on the library of Alexandria, to be honest.
  • Cougar Town: Not desperately funny, but had its moments. Not many though.
  • The Daily Show: As funny as always, but feeling more superficial of late than it used to.
  • Heston’s Feasts…: Caught up with a couple of old eps of this. Always interesting to see Heston in action, but while his food knowledge is second to none, Lovely Wife tells me his knowledge of medieval and Tudor history leaves a lot to be desired. And did he really need to go to New York to learn about frog-cooking?
  • House: Ah, the good old “we wish we had history” American Renaissance Fair rears its head. The medical story wasn’t that great, but the return of Wilson’s first wife (Lost‘s Cynthia Watros) was the raison d’etre of the episode anyway, and that part worked nicely.
  • Lost: For once, the flash-sideways proved more intriguing than island activities and Sun and Jin‘s reunion was rushed to say the least. But what’s Desmond doing in the alternative univese – he’s definitely the most intriguing character right now.
  • Parenthood: Caught up with the last two episodes of this, which is shaping up nicely as a drama. Good to see Monica Potter now has someone to talk to, and all the women are starting to talk to each other independently of the men at last. Also good to see Bonnie Bedelia getting something to do. But after a brief flirtation with comedy at the start of the season, it’s started to return to drama and has also imported Friday Night Lights-style handheld camera work, which I don’t think suits the show.
  • Rome: Two episodes away from the end now. Definitely not as good as the first season, and the historical fudging is becoming decidedly off-putting (Augustus has just skipped his first two wives and headed straight over to the third).
  • Spartacus: Blood and Sand: A good ending to a series that got better and more sophisticated after a very clumsy start. I’m surprised they killed so many of the regulars, but I enjoyed that – it’s the sign that story is leading over network politics, which has to be a good thing. On the not so plus side, Crixus‘s sudden change of heart seemed unlikely.
  • Stargate Universe: I slightly spoiled this one for myself by inadvertently reading the writer’s blog before watching it, but it was an interesting look at faith and how people will believe what they want in the absence of evidence and logic – yes, if aliens were powerful enough to build a solar system and lead you there, I’m sure they wouldn’t bother to leave a note telling you they’d done it. I’m not sure it fully mined the story’s potential, and the attempts by both factions to mend fences after last week’s civil war, even if it was over the month-long period of the story, seems a little forced. The relationship between TJ and Colonel Young feels like a bit of ret-con, mind
  • Supernatural: I really didn’t like this week’s –if you’re going to introduce other gods into the series, at least try to be a little respectful and treat them, you know, like gods. Still nice to see Lucifer, even if it did mean the death of Gabriel, but the ring MacGuffin at the end was decidedly clumsy, if it’s to be taken at face value.
  • 24: Slightly dull compared with last week’s.

But what did you watch?

As always, no spoilers unless you’re going to use the <spoiler> </spoiler> tags, please. If you’ve reviewed something on your blog, you can put a link to it here rather than repeat yourself (although too many links and you might get killed by the spam filter).