UK TV

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

News

Lost arrives on Sky One on November 18th

2 November 2006 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

Kate and Jack from LostLove Lost? Live in the UK? Have a sodding great big dish strapped to the side of your house and pay an exorbitant subscription charge each month? Then you’ll be delighted to hear that Lost, season three, will be arriving on Sky One on Saturday 18th November. It’ll also be on Sky One HD if you’ve really wasted your money and bought an HD set and a Sky HD subscription. And for true money wasters, it’ll be on “Sky by broadband” as well, subject to technical requirements and your having Sky Sports 1 and 2 and/or Sky Movies 1 and 2.

Woo hoo.

The good news is that the six episodes that will have aired in the US by then will all get aired before Christmas; Sky will continue the season in February, with each episode airing just a few days after it airs in the US.

Lost trivia: have you noticed that whenever a major character dies, it’s always at the end of their flashback episode? So if you know, thanks to trailers, that someone’s going to die, as soon as you see the flashback, all sense of mystery is removed and you know exactly who’s going to pass on. Just mentioning that in passing and not because I’m hacked off as a result about last night’s episode. Oh no.

UK TV

Review: The Haunted Airman/Dennis Wheatley: A Letter to Posterity

1 November 2006 Rob Buckley 9 Comments

Toby Jugg

In the UK: BBC4, October 31st, 10pm

As everyone knows, October 31st is the pagan festival “Dennis Wheatley Night”. It’s a time of the year when occultists of all varieties traditionally get together to wonder why Wheatley, whose books were once as popular as Agatha Christie’s, was such a right-wing Nazi loon*.

This year, BBC4 chose to celebrate Dennis Wheatley Night with a dramatisation of one of his stories, The Haunting of Toby Jugg, and a documentary about his life that had a group of experts wondering why he was such a right-wing Nazi loon.

Continue reading “Review: The Haunted Airman/Dennis Wheatley: A Letter to Posterity”

News

National Television Awards results

1 November 2006 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

David Tennant

The British viewing public have voted and Doctor Who has cleaned up three prizes at the National Television Awards: it won most popular drama, most popular actress for Billie Piper and most popular actor for David Tennant.

If you think that’s a reflection on the excellent taste of the viewing public, just remember they voted Big Brother housemate Nikki Grahame the winner of the new category, “TV contender”. She can only be a contender if you vote for her, you fools!

News

Sad news: William Franklyn and Nigel Kneale have died

1 November 2006 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

William FranklynTwo pieces of very sad news. William Franklyn, best known for a hell of a lot of things, actually, but principally as secret agent Peter Dallas in Top Secret and as the voice of Schweppes, has died. He was 81. Over his 50-year acting career, he played numerous roles in shows such as The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Avengers and French and Saunders. He also took over from Peter Jones as the voice of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on the BBC Radio 4 serial.

Nigel KnealeNigel Kneale, one of the best writers television has ever had, died on Sunday, aged 84. Apart from the Quatermass series and an adaptation of 1984 that caused national furore, he was also responsible for a number of spectacular one-off plays such as The Stone Tape and The Road. Virtually all genre writers today owe him a great debt. He’ll be sorely missed.

Why Liz Shaw had to go

31 October 2006 Rob Buckley 7 Comments

Without wishing to start a new almost-war, I thought this little snippet from the Backlash… sorry, BBC Doctor Who web site was of interest:

Another element of the seventh season with which both Letts and Dicks had been dissatisfied was Liz Shaw. This was on the basis that the independent, self-confident scientist had little need to rely on the Doctor for explanations and so, in their eyes, failed to fulfil the basic dramatic functions of aiding plot exposition and acting as a point of audience identification. Letts therefore decided against renewing actress Caroline John’s contract for a further season and the two men set about devising a new companion for the Doctor.

Anyway, here’s a little clip of Liz Shaw in action from my third most favourite story, The Ambassadors of Death. The clip is actually an example of the current restoration work being done by Ian Levine and co, so the quality of the first half is rubbish. And I don’t mean the story.