Well, it’s finally happened – Ricky Gervais, who created the British version of The Office, has appeared on the US version of The Office. And here’s the vital scene where David Brent meets his US counterpoint, played by Steve Carrell!
US TV
Review: Portlandia 1×1
In the US: Fridays, 10.30/9.30c, IFC
The Independent Film Channel isn’t well known as a haven of comedy – more for earnestly liberal movies – but I’ll tell you what is well known for comedy: Saturday Night Live (at least it used to be). So imagine what would happen if you married IFC with SNL.
Portlandia, that’s what.
It’s essentially a comedy sketch show set in the (supposedly) earnestly liberal city of Portland, Oregon, a place where Steve Buscemi has to buy a 14-part series of books about a woman’s journey from a feminist book store in order to use the toilet and people have to investigate the farm their organic chicken has been reared in before they’ll eat it in a restaurant. Executive-produced by Lorne Michaels and featuring in most of the roles SNL‘s Fred Armisen and the most underrated female guitarist of all time, according to Rolling Stone magazine, Carrie Brownstein – collectively known as ThunderAnt – Portlandia isn’t 100% funny but it is one of the top two US comedies of the last year or so and if you like Flight of the Conchords, you’ll probably like this, too.
Here’s a hint at its hilarity and there are other videos over here:
Classic TV
Old Gems: Archer’s Goon (1992)
Diana Wynne Jones is a name that’ll be familiar to some, but won’t ring a bell for others. However, she is one of the most celebrated authors of children’s fantasy books around. Small wonder that the BBC would turn to adapting one of her most famous award-winning novels, Archer’s Goon, back in the early 90s.
The premise is relatively simple: normal English schoolchild Howard Sykes (Jamie De Courcey) comes home from school one day to discover a huge man (the eponymous Goon, played by Morgan Jones) in his house, claiming that he’s owed 2,000 words which he has to give to someone called Archer. It turns out that 13 years earlier, Howard’s dad, Quentin, agreed to write 2,000 words each quarter for a town official called Mountjoy, in return for not having to pay any taxes. However, he’s forgotten to do it this quarter.
Eventually, Howard and the Goon go to meet Mountjoy who reveals that the town is secretly run by seven wizardly brothers and sisters: Archer, Shine, Dillian, Hathaway, Torquil, Erskine and Venturus. Each one ‘farms’ a separate industry, with Archer farming money, electricity and gas, Shine looking after crime, Dillian minding law and order, and so on.
Armed with this new knowledge, Howard and the rest of his family go looking for the wizards, trying to work out exactly what Archer needs with all those words. The siblings try to stop them, resulting in their various industries taking action against the family (musical instruments rebel, for example). Of course, when they discover Hathaway lives 400 years in the past and Venturus lives in the future, it all becomes a lot trickier…
The six-part BBC adaptation was actually pretty faithful to the books, thanks in part to Wynne Jones’s close collaboration with the producer and the scriptwriter Jenny McDade. It had a reasonably star-studded cast, with Roger Lloyd Pack (Trigger on Only Fools and Horses) playing Quentin, Susan Jameson (the queen in The Queen), Andrew Normington as Torquil, Annette Badland as Shine and Clive Merrison as Hathaway. It was also surprisingly complicated, with the eventual revelations about the identities of the siblings (the clues are all there if you can spot them) making it a cerebral affair as well as a fun one.
Joyfully, you can watch the whole thing over on Veoh, read in great detail about each episode, or watch bits of it on YouTube. But here’s how the first episode begins:
The Old Spice Guy is back
Nuff said.
Thursday’s “This is Christmas” news
Awards
- Results of the National Television Awards
Film
- Trailer for Robert Redord’s The Conspirator with James McAvoy and Robin Wright Penn
- Michael Fassbender joins Prometheus
- Brian De Palma remaking Crime d’amour
- Matt Lucas to star in Small Apartments
Theatre
- Mike Leigh returns to the National, and Tori Amos to write a musical
British TV
- Shane Meadows creates This is England Christmas special for Channel 4
US TV
- ABC picks up Other People’s Kids
- Will Ferrell to appear in four episodes of The Office
- NBC picks up comedy pilots, including Chelsea Handler’s and Jack Black’s
- Sean Combs to guest on Hawaii Five-0
- CBS picks up ensemble comedy
- Tuesday ratings
- Ridley and Tony Scott to produce Le Mans period drama The Drivers
- Pilot casting
- Casting on Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome
- Bradley Whitford to guest on In Plain Sight
- David Eigenberg to guest on Private Practice
- Nancy Travis to guest on Grey’s Anatomy
- Betsy Brandt to guest on No Ordinary Family
- Michelle Krusiec to guest on Community