An archive of blog entries about UK TV programmes and production.
Torchwood footage
If you’re dying to see some stuff from Torchwood, Digital Spy has some ‘exclusive’ clips for you.
UK TV
Review: The Outsiders
A longer, different version of my review of The Outsiders is over on Off The Telly. It’s also after the fold, in case you want to stick around. I must confess to having recycled a couple of ‘jokes’ though.
UK TV
Review: Robin Hood
In the UK: Saturdays, BBC1, 7pm. Repeated Sundays and Fridays, BBC3.
In the US: BBC America, which co-funded it. No air date yet.
As a dyed-in-the-wool lover of the first two seasons of Robin of Sherwood, I was expecting to hate this. From the trailers and the casting, I was expecting something truly awful and sickening to watch. Even during the first few minutes of Saturday’s episode, I could feel my “I knew it!” reflexes kicking in.
But you know what? It wasn’t awful. It was actually all right. Nothing truly special, nothing ground-breaking (unlike Robin of Sherwood), but a regular piece of family entertainment that’s an enjoyable way to spend an evening, probably with a couple of kids lodged at your feet.
News
Attention John Barrowman stalkers
Not sure what to do this Christmas, united stalkers of John Barrowman? Then I’ve the perfect thing for you. A few days at the St David’s Hotel and Spa!
Not only is Mr Barrowman going to be doing panto in Cardiff this year, he’s revealed he’s going to be having Christmas lunch at the hotel with his family, who will be over from Florida.
So get booking (I can recommend it, having stayed there for a couple of nights in July) and start polishing those high-powered binoculars.
UK TV
Review: The Outsiders
In the UK: Tuesday, ITV1, 9pm or something. Ask my PVR.
In the US: For the sake of our national pride, no other country must be allowed to see this programme.
Ah if only all comedies were as funny as The Outsiders. What a shame The Outsiders, starring former EastEnder Nigel Harman, was supposed to be serious: an exciting escapist action drama in the same vein as The Avengers, Mission: Impossible, and Spooks. The kind of show where the Vatican has a secret police force.
Problematically though, everything about The Outsiders seemed calculated to insult the intelligence of everything larger than a single-celled organism, much like the majority of ITV1 shows.
It wasn’t so much the plot that was the problem – I’ve seen far, far worse, although this really had some choice scrapings from the bottom of the cliché barrel. The story, in fact, was very much a rip-off of Alias‘s Rambaldi plotline, which also featured shadowy organisations trying to find the secret of eternal youth by locating the work of Renaissance artists; there were even frequent trips to continental European nightclubs to avoid the authorities, a trick much beloved of Sidney Bristow. But like all British attempts to do US-style dramas, it was embarrassing in the exact same way as watching someone’s dad trying out a particularly tight pair of leather trousers at a local disco.
No, the biggest crime against humanity committed by The Outsiders was the dialogue.