My usual recommendations for maximum viewing pleasure are: Archer, Being Human (US), The Daily Show and Stargate Universe. Watch them (and keep an eye on The Stage‘s TV Today Square Eyes feature as well) or you’ll be missing out on the good stuff.
I’ve done quite a lot of reviewing of first-run shows this week – here’s a list, so you have my in-depth feelings on those:
Endgame was quite fun this week, although massively, massively implausible (spoiler: the girl died of an allergic reaction to the bee pollen in her honey ice cream), and if it carries on at this rate, I’ll be adding it to my list of regular recommendations very soon.
I tried Channel 4’s Campus – if you’re a student and therefore too young to have seen actual comedy before, you might have thought this was good; for everyone else, it would have been less enjoyable than self-vivisection. A couple of amusing moments, but largely it seemed impressed by its ability to SAY THE UNTHINKABLE. Unthinkable, that is, if you’re the kind of person who regards swearing and shirking at work as being crimes that should carry the death penalty. Otherwise, very tame.
However, I’ve still to get through BBC1’s Candy Cabs, Comedy Central’s Workaholics and BBC2’s The Crimson Petal and the White – I’ll get through them in due course, but does anyone have good or bad things to say about any of them in the interim?
"What have you been watching this week?" is your chance to recommend to friends and fellow blog readers the TV that they might be missing or should avoid – and for me to do mini-reviews of everything I’ve watched this week. Since we live in the fabulous world of Internet catch-up services like the iPlayer and Hulu, why not tell your fellow readers what you’ve seen so they can see the good stuff they might have missed?
Got a picture of David Tennant sitting, lying down or in some indeterminate state in between? Then leave a link to it below or email me and if it’s judged suitable, it will appear in the “Sitting Tennant” gallery. Don’t forget to include your name in the filename so I don’t get mixed up about who sent it to me.
The best pic in the stash each week will appear on Tuesday and get ten points; the runners up will appear on Friday (one per person who sends one in) and get five points.
You can also enter the witty and amusing captions league table by commenting on Tuesday’s Sitting Tennant photo, the best caption getting 10 points, everyone who contributes getting five points.
So here’s something I’ve learnt this week – it turns out that if you can’t actually get the actors you want, there is in fact an entire set of impersonators you can get instead for probably not even a tenth of the price.
Take Breaking In. This has Bret Harrison of The Loop and Reaper as a hapless college student who’s been hacking the college computers to ensure that he never has to graduate and can stay there forever. Except he gets found out by a team of semi-reformed criminals who are hired, Sneakers-stylee to break into places to test their security. They blackmail him into working for them.
So for something like this, with a boss who’s a bit devilish, a bit alpha-male-ish and smokes cigars, you’d want someone like Jack Nicholson. But if you can’t afford Jack Nicholson, you can get Christian Slater instead, since he can do a rocking Jack Nicholson when he wants to.
Now there’s obviously got to be some girl interest for Harrison to pine over. However, she has to be out of his league and just want to be friends. That’s what happened in The Loop. That’s what happened in Reaper. It must be in his contract. So how about we get Missy Peregrym, who did that in Reaper so well? What’s that? She’s starring in some Canadian show? Okay, how about we get Odette Annable née Yustman from Brothers and Sisters instead? They look the same, they act the same. They don’t cost the same.
Now we need some black guy who’s a bit sassy. Clearly, it would be great if we could get Chris Rock or Orlando Jones. No? Fine. Alphonso McAuley’s cheap. He’s barely been in anything. So let’s get him.
So now we pretty much have our cast, how about we get someone to do an impression of a funny script, by nicking a load of bits from other shows, and see where that takes us? Hmm?
