UK TV

An archive of blog entries about UK TV programmes and production.

UK TV

What bit of Doctor Who history for series four?

24 September 2007 Rob Buckley 35 Comments

DavrosAutumn is in the air. The leaves are falling from the trees. The weather alternates between chucking it down with rain and bright, blinding, car-crash inducing sunlight.

It must be that time of year again. The time when we start coming up with idle, groundless speculation for what’s going to be in the next series of Doctor Who.

As we all know from watching Doctor Who Confidential for series three, Rusty plans to bring back another element of Doctor Who history for series four. Of course, I don’t know about you, but I have a Memento-style tattoo somewhere that says “Don’t believe Rusty’s lies”. All the same, we can probably assume it’s true, judging from his track record.

So who or what do you reckon it’s going to be?

My two pitches, to open the proceedings, are:

  1. Paul McGann as the eighth Doctor
  2. Davros

Although Rusty doesn’t do “Doctor meets” allegedly, he might well take the opportunity to include a previous Doctor next year – which is going to be more fun, apparently. McGann, being the only one of the previous Doctors (except for Eccles-cake) who still looks reasonably like he did during his on-screen appearance, would be the obvious candidate and since he didn’t exactly last a long time in the role, it wouldn’t really be a clash of egos thing if he did turn. Plus there have been all those rumours…

As for Davros, which is a bit more likely, we’re down to one Dalek now. If they turned to him in the past when their fortunes were decidely better, now would be an ideal time to go back to the Dalek-creator and get him to rustle up a new batch and thus ensure the continuity of the franchiseDalek race. Plus Terry Molloy did say he’d been talking to the production team.

Over to you, my friends. What are your bets?

News

Monday’s sexy city news

24 September 2007 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

Young Sex and the City

Film

British TV

  • Catherine Tate should have a won a comedy award in 2005 instead of Ant and Dec
  • Danny Wallace to do a weekly Prison Break podcast for Sky One
  • Spooks will be a 10-part serial, not series, when it comes back this autumn

US TV

Questions and realisations from television last week: Burn Notice

22 September 2007 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

It’s back, but it’s mutated. “Things I learned from watching television last week”/“Things I learned from television last week”/“Things I learnt from last week’s television” (style guide? What style guide?) has returned – but in a different guise (as promised). After a brief experiment last week, it has now emerged from the pupa of my brain into something hopefully more butterfly-like than the original caterpillars.

Here goes: this week’s question(s) – which I throw open to the floor to answer, whether you’ve seen the show or not – and realisation(s) – for which I also invite comment – come from having watched the rather good finale of Burn Notice on Friday.

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UK TV

Review: Commando – On The Front Line

21 September 2007 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Commandos in the mud

In the UK: Thursdays, 9pm, ITV1

Bit of a yin-yang choice for me here: it was either this or Gossip Girl. I went for this.

Now, time was, ITV used to be able to do a documentary. Think World in Action. Think Survival. They were cracking.

Then they pretty much stopped doing them. Good ones, that is.

Commando: On the Front Line represents a true return to form and production values. Watching it, you’d think it was still the 80s, bar a switch to video from film. And that’s a good thing.

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US TV

Review: Kitchen Nightmares 1×1

21 September 2007 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

KitchenNightmaresUS.jpg

In the US: Wednesdays, 9/8c, Fox
In the UK: Not yet acquired, but you know E4 or More4 are going to poach it, sooner or later. Tee hee. Poach.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Sorry.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Sorry again. Couldn’t help myself.

Remember Strike!, that episode of The Comic Strip Presents in which Hollywood decides to make a film of the 1980s miners strike and casts Al Pacino as Arthur Scargill and Meryl Streep as his wife?

Well, we haven’t gone to quite the extent of recasting Gordon Ramsay here, but we have a US version of Channel 4’s Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares – in which top chef and MAN WITH BOLLOCKS! YES! BOLLOCKS! NOW WHERE ARE YOURS? YOU HEARD ME! NOW GET THE F*CK OUT OF MY RESTAURANT!, Gordon Ramsay, goes to various failing eating establishments and tries to re-engineer them back into life – that does a similar sort of thing to what was quite a low-key sort of show in Britain.

From a new title sequence where Ramsay catches knives thrown at him accompanied by the theme from Pulp Fiction, through the emphasis on soap opera histrionics instead of business management all the way, to the make-over show style additions in which Gordon buys a new kitchen for the restaurant, it’s all just so much more… American than the original series.

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