UK TV

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

US TV

Review: The Office 3.1

26 September 2006 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

The Office US

In the US: Thursdays, 8.30pm/7.30pm Central, NBC

In the UK: Season 2 is on ITV2, on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Season three after it.

Characters re-cast: 0

Major characters gotten rid of: 0, I think

Major new characters: None as far as I can see

Format change percentage: No idea. 10%, I’d guess.

Episodes seen previously: 1

I have a disclaimer to make. Three actually. I’m not talking about the $1 million NBC pays me every year to write favourable reviews about its shows on this blog: that’s something best kept secret.

No, my disclaimers are these:

  1. I’ve only seen one episode of the US version of The Office
  2. I didn’t like it
  3. I didn’t like the UK original very much

The third sounds like heresy, I know, but I don’t like cringe comedy that much. I’ll hand in my nationality papers on the way out.

But here’s the third season of the US version of The Office and I feel like reviewing it anyway. And you know what, I kind of liked it – more than the UK version anyway.

Continue reading “Review: The Office 3.1”

UK TV

Mysterious advert explained. Boy was it rubbish

26 September 2006 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

I was in Charing Cross train station today and I saw a somewhat offensive advert:

FIve US ad

“WTF?” I thought to myself. It was on a graphics screen, so I assumed it was going to change into something like AOL’s “Discuss” campaign.

But it didn’t. It was just that. I went away from it thinking, “What tossy Guardian-reading spanner thought that was a good idea?”, enumerating to myself all the wonderful things the US (I assumed they weren’t having a go at the Bolivians) has given the world. And I’m a Guardian reader.

Turns out it was an advert for Five’s new digital channel, Five US, which as we all know is the channel designed especially for me. There are going to be follow-up adverts that will turn the campaign into a positive one, apparently, but it’s already garnered complaints. And if I’m p’ed off with the ad, I’m pretty sure some of the rest of the target audience are going to be, too.

Whoops, Five.

Other TV news from last week

18 September 2006 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Other interesting nuggets of news that popped up last week that weren’t about Doctor Who.

  • Thanks to overwhelmingly fantastic critical reaction, The Wire‘s been picked up for a fifth season, despite getting less than 2 million viewers for its first episode. This final season will look at the mass media; given The Wire‘s co-creator used to be a journalist on the Baltimore Sun, it should at least be authentic.
  • Psych has been picked up for a second season and The Dead Zone‘s back for a sixth
  • Windfall has been cancelled
  • James Cromwell, the ‘dad’ of that adorable pig called Babe, is to be killing-machine Jack Bauer’s dad in 24. There’s versatility for you.
  • FX in the UK has picked up Showtime’s Brotherhood. To counteract people forward-winding through ads, the network plans to create commercials for the show that feature the same image for 30 seconds. Silly plan or not, I do recommend watching Brotherhood if you can. Despite my luke-warm first and third episode reviews, Brotherhood is now firmly on my weekly viewing schedule, thanks to a compelling cast and its look into the shady world of local politics.
  • Thank God CSI doesn’t feature on-screen episode titles, or there are going to be a few raised eyebrows in Britain when Fannysmackin’ airs
  • My prediction that alternative DVD commentaries were going to be a growing market appears to be bearing fruit, judging by the arrival of Quick Stop’s additions to the range.
  • Aaron Sorkin answers critics who suggest that Studio 60 is based on his life by saying they’re right – up to a point. Interestingly, he used to date Kristin Chenoweth, who played the squeaky deputy press secretary in The West Wing and is a devoted Christian.

And finally, just in case you wanted to know what The Hanso Foundation is and what all those numbers mean in Lost, someone’s assembled all the video clips from The Lost Experience (which, my street urchins tell me, is some kind of online game thing). Press the Play button to find out what’s up.