Thursday’s “new Charlie” news

Doctor Who

  • Claire Skinner, Bill Bailey, Arabella Weir and Alexander Armstrong join the Christmas special [spoilers]

Books

Film

  • Don Cheadle and Bruce Greenwood join Robert Zemeckis’ Flight
  • Trailer for The Grey with Liam Neeson
  • Trailer for Terence Davies’ The Deep Blue Sea with Rachel Weisz
  • Clip from Batman: Year One

British TV

  • The Body Farm beats 71 Degrees North in the ratings
  • Sky 1 to air Terra Nova a week after the US [subscription required]

US TV

  • Victor Garber set to replace Robert Wagner as voice of Charlie in Charlie’s Angels
  • New Girl and Unforgettable start well, Glee and Ringer drop
  • Party Down‘s Ken Marino to guest on Whitney
  • CCH Pounder to guest on Revenge

Wednesday’s “poor old Emily” news

Film

British TV

  • Film4 gets best ever ratings in August [subscription required]
  • Bagpuss sold

US TV

Tuesday’s “Downton SMASH” news

Film

British TV

Canadian TV

  • The Daily Show‘s Samantha Bee and Lolita Davidovich join Good Dog

US TV

US TV

What did you watch last week (w/e September 14)?

Time for "What did you watch last week?", my chance to tell you what I watched last week and your chance to recommend things to everyone else (and me) in case we’ve missed them.

My recommendations for maximum viewing pleasure this week: still nothing, apart from The Daily Show, since everything regular has finished, although Doctor Who‘s obviously good.

  • Bin Laden: Shoot To Kill: Very gripping documentary on how Osama Bin Laden was found, with plenty of interviews involving the Americans involved, including President Obama. Well worth a watch.
  • Strike Back: Project Dawn: about the same as last week, perhaps a little less humorous. Action good, bad whenever it starts trying to give people characters, but the arrival of Iain Glen and AAA from Lost this week is welcome. Women get treated almost universally badly, a lot of gratuitous female nudity, and the American guy gets shot a lot.

And in this week’s list of movies:

  • Snatch: Surprisingly boring Guy Ritchie film. Not worth watching at all
  • Tales From Earthsea: Bizarre, low-quality anime version of various elements of Ursula Le Guin’s superb Earthsea series of books (if you haven’t read them, read them immediately). Completely misses the point of the books. You’d have thought, given it’s Studio Ghibli, that it would have been a lot better, but it wasn’t. Oh well.
  • Pirates of the Caribbean 4: Surprisingly boring, rather than bad. It’s just people running around doing stuff, really. Looks expensive though.

But what have you been watching?

"What did you watch last week?" is your chance to recommend to friends and fellow blog readers the TV and films that they might be missing or should avoid – and for me to do mini-reviews of everything I’ve watched. Since we live in the fabulous world of Internet catch-up services like the iPlayer and Hulu, why not tell your fellow readers what you’ve seen so they can see the good stuff they might have missed? And keep an eye on The Stage‘s TV Today Square Eyes feature as well for British TV highlights or you’ll be missing out on the good stuff.

UK TV

Review: Doctor Who – 6×11 – The God Complex

 

In the UK: Saturday 17th September, 7.15pm, BBC1/BBC1 HD. Available on the iPlayer
In the US: Saturday 17th September, 9pm/8c ET/PT, BBC America

Now that’s more like it. I was worried for a minute that I wasn’t going to love any episodes of Who in this second half of the season. But good old Toby Whithouse (School Reunion, The Vampires of Venice and creator of Being Human) has saved the day. And who’d have thought he’d have done it with a story that referenced the good old Nimon?

Continue reading “Review: Doctor Who – 6×11 – The God Complex”