UK TV

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

The by-jingo it’s early Wednesday news

7 March 2007 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

Do you know you have to be at the US embassy at 8am for your i-visa interview? Bah.

Doctor Who

  • Troughton story The Web of Fear gets its first episode aired on BBC4 on Sunday 18th March as part of a London Underground season.

Film

  • Just when you thought there was no way for cinema to get crasser, now come plans to adapt John Milton’s Paradise Lost, getting rid of the dull bits, Adam and Eve being nude, etc.
  • M Night Hasbeen’s new film has been greenlit by Fox

Music

  • As though we cared, The Wurzels reveal who the mystery guest vocalist is on the re-release of “I Am A Cider Drinker” (it’s for charity though)



British TV

  • The DVD of Life on Mars, series two, is out on 16th April. It’ll feature a documentary about the Camberwick Green moment from episode 5.

US TV

  • The Black Donnellys gets okay ratings for its second episode, although others argue it’s a worrying slide.
  • Heroes will be back on April 23rd. Here’s the promo with clips from the next episode.
  • Zach Braff’s sorted himself a good deal to stay with Scrubs
  • An interview with Ronald Moore, exec producer of Battlestar Galactica
  • More pilot casting news. Anyone remember Party of Five?
  • Steve Coogan is to appear in Curb Your Enthusiasm as a psychiatrist
  • Create your own BSG video using SciFi’s BSG videomaker toolkit. You could win a prize
  • He may had jury duty, but he still has spoilers. Michael Ausiello lets us know useful things about Lost. Plus he seems to think a certain thing wasn’t permanent after all on BSG. Was RDM conning us?
  • Kristin talks to the producer of House about what’s to come and what’s past
  • Tim Robbins has a pharma-related drama planned for Showtime
  • Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver’s The Riches is going to premiere online this week

Tuesday’s “rivers of water” news

6 March 2007 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

I think I saw Noah a moment ago.

Books and comics

  • A comic book version of Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game is on the way

Film

  • Iron Man info from Jon Favreau
  • McG may direct a remake of The Fantastic Voyage
  • Angelina Jolie to star in The Day The Earth Stood Still?
  • Oded Fehr won’t be in The Mummy 3
  • Premiere magazine is no more.

British TV

  • Virgin Media threatens to sue Sky
  • ITV has suspended ITV Play, pending investigations [free registration required]

US TV

  • ABC has yanked Knights of Prosperity from the schedule (Kristin says it’s been axed)
  • Ian Wright’s Unfit Kids now has a US version: presumably Shaquille O’Neal’s Unfit Kids
  • An interview with Katee Sackhoff from BSG [spoilers for last Sunday’s episode]
  • More BSG spoilers
  • Monday night at 9 is a little too popular
  • Six Degrees might get a reprieve
  • One for you Toby: is there a connection between Heroes and Lost? The creators reveal…
  • An interview with 24 writer Michael Loceff
  • Martin Scorsese and Mark Wahlberg are teaming up for an HBO series about Atlantic City
  • James van der Beek joins Football Wives
  • No one wants to be Lost any more [some spoilers for Jericho]
  • The pilot episode of Raines is now on the NBC web site
  • News and spoilers from Kristin: chances of renewal for Supernatural and The Class are poor; a great big Lost spoiler
US TV

Review: The 50 Greatest TV Dramas

5 March 2007 Rob Buckley 13 Comments

In the UK: Saturday, C4, 9pm

There’s nothing quite like a list of “best anythings” to get people talking – or annoyed – as anyone who’s ever been on the new steam-powered InterWeb will tell you. But how about something as controversial as the “50 Greatest TV Dramas”?

Ooh aye? 50 greatest ever? Is that just shows that have been on British TV? Within recent memory? Who’s voting? And surely it’ll just be the most popular rather than the best that come out on top? And is it really possible to have a great debate about whether Fall of Eagles or Cold Warrior is better, when no bugger remembers either of them?

All valid criticisms of The 50 Greatest TV Dramas, which polled legions of the great and the good from British television history to compile said list. But, despite those criticisms, it was actually a pretty good list.

Continue reading “Review: The 50 Greatest TV Dramas”

Monday’s March news

5 March 2007 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Doctor Who

  • Video footage of the possible last scene for John Barrowman in the next series of Doctor Who. No sound to spoil things
  • David Tennant’s video diary is on YouTube, now the Beeb has done a deal with Google

Film

Art



British TV

  • Neil Gaiman gets bewildered by the UK release of Neverwhere

US TV

  • Sort of spoilers for Tuesday’s House. And for The Pussycat Dolls Present: The Search for the Next Doll. Yey?
  • Chris Showerman (what did his ancestors do?) has been cast as Flash Gordon
  • Spoilers for Heroes. And more spoilers. And more!
  • Sarah Connor Chronicles talk. Yes, Summer Glau is an evil female terminator
  • Joss Whedon talks about Buffy, Firefly, Wonder Woman and the Buffiverse movies that never happened
  • How Lost got a VW camper van onto the island
  • Spoilers for BSG
  • Pamela Anderson has a new TV show in the works
  • Amber Tamblyn is to star in the disturbing Babylon Fields pilot
  • 24 spoilers
News

Friday’s slightly more lucid news

2 March 2007 Rob Buckley 9 Comments

Party Doctor

They must have been out partying.

Doctor Who

Film

  • Talk with Zack Snyder about Watchmen. Narrowly avoided: Tom Cruise as Ozymandias.
  • A sequel is being planned for LA Confidential
  • Arnold Schwarzenegger is contractually obliged to appear in Terminator 4
  • Latino Review casts its eye over the script for Matt Helm. There’s a blast from the past, hey?

Art

  • Sotheby’s has a Munch sale towards the end of the month

British TV

US TV

  • Big changes afoot for season two of Heroes
  • Bereft of inspiration, ABC turns some commercials featuring cavemen into a pilot
  • Richard Dreyfuss joins the cast of Tin Man
  • Season five of The Wire will be the funniest but only run to 10 episodes
  • Lots of casting news, with Donald Sutherland joining Peter Krause’s Dirty Sexy Money
  • Yet another Spiderman cartoon is on the way.
  • Heroes‘ Jessalyn Gilsig gets a pilot
  • Trailer for the last Heroes before the season break
  • Paul Reubens joins the cast of the Area 52 pilot