US TV

Review: CSI: Miami 7×1

23 September 2008 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

CSI: Miami 7x1

In the US: Mondays, 10pm ET/PT, CBS
In the UK: Five, Five US, Living, Living+1, blah, blah, blah… Soon and then forever

Yes, it’s back again, even though it never seemed to have gone away. It’s CSI: Miami, the world’s favourite source of mind-blowingly stupid storylines, science-fiction masquerading as police procedures, and acting that needs a whole new thesaurus full of synonyms for ‘atrocious’ for it to be adequately described – and it’s back on our screens, ready to make us all go ‘WTF?’ again.

Aren’t you glad? It’s just so much fun, isn’t it?

Continue reading “Review: CSI: Miami 7×1”

November at the BFI

23 September 2008 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Time for our regular round-up of tele events at the BFI. No TV season in November but there are isolated pockets of TV-ness to be enjoyed

  • 3rd: Sir David Attenborough in conversation. Preceded by episodes of Life on Earth and Life in the Undergrowth
  • 30th: The Naked Civil Servant. Next month will feature a preview of An Englishman in New York

Members’ priority postal booking opens 29 September
Members’ online and phone booking opens 6 October
Public booking opens 10 October

There’s also a bit of a Play for Today theme this month. Every Saturday and Sunday, the Studio will be holding free, 47 minute performances of some of the best bits from plays such as Mike Leigh’s Nuts in May and Jack Rosenthal’s Bar Mitzvah Boy. And the Mediatheque has a few additions to its existing library of plays, including David Hare’s Dreams of Leaving, starring a young Bill Nighy.

As always, visit the BFI web site for more details

The CarusometerA Carusometer rating of 2

Third-episode verdict: True Blood

23 September 2008 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

Time for a third-episode verdict on HBO’s True Blood, which has already been picked up for a second series. Three episodes in and, thankfully, we’ve transcended the teen girl fantasy supernatural source material that characterised the first episode and moved on to more interesting, darker pastures. 

The show is now an interesting take on prejudice. Rather than a simple slating of intolerance, the show questions how tolerant the tolerant really are. Would you be so quick to defend vampires from stereotyping and violence if you knew they fed on babies, for instance?

The show still suffers from its virginal heroine’s tedious innocence – right down to dressing in white for every occasion – and the way Southeners are almost universally portrayed as stupid, intolerant and sex-crazed. Stephen Noyer’s brooding vampire Bill is so repressed he’s downright dull.

But it’s actually pretty creepy, can be quite humorous, is surprisingly sexually explicit and deals with some quite dark subject matter.

So The Medium is Not Enough has great pleasure in declaring True Blood a two or ‘Partial Caruso’ on The Carusometer quality scale.

PS If you want a longer, more in-depth review of True Blood, I’ll be looking at it in the October issue of Action Network magazine

Tuesdays’s West Wing meets Obama news

23 September 2008 Rob Buckley Post a comment

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Competition time: Strictly Love

22 September 2008 Rob Buckley 10 Comments

Okay, so I know I don’t cover it much here, but Strictly Come Dancing has just started up on BBC1. Other blogs cover it much better than I ever could, so I heartily recommend you head over to them if SCD is on your must-see list.

However, to coincide with its return to our screens – and the recent publication of Julia Williams‘ latest book – we’re running a competition in which you can win copies of Strictly Love as well as ‘dancing masterclass in a book’, Collins’ Need to Know? Ballroom Dancing.

Strictly Love

Guilty feet have got plenty of rhythm! Kick off your shoes and snuggle up with this warm and witty new novel from the author of the bestselling Pastures New

Lawyer Emily promised her late father that she’d devote her life to good causes. So how comes she spends her days defending Z-listers, desperate to prolong their 15 minutes of fame?

Katie is obsessed with being the perfect wife and mother – unlike her own one. In which case, why is husband Charlie permanently AWOL these days?

Dentist Mark is licking his wounds after his wife walked out on him and desperately missing his kids. Can he cope with becoming a singleton again – on top of a devastating legal case against him?

Meanwhile, happy-go-lucky Jack the Lad Rob is hiding a secret tragedy!

Isabella’s dance classes give the four the perfect opportunity to forget their troubles and re-invent themselves. They can be whoever they want to be – they’ll just let their feet do the talking. Over the weeks, as they foxtrot, tango, waltz and cha-cha-cha their way into each other’s lives, they discover the truth about each other – and themselves. But will they like what they learn?

Thanks to Julia’s generosity, we have an astonishing five copies of Strictly Love to give away, as well as two copies of Need to Know? Ballroom Dancing, and all you have to do to enter is to leave a comment below by Friday 3rd October, letting us know your most memorable dancing experience ever – it doesn’t even have to have been you dancing. The two most interesting experiences (or two best recounted experiences) will win copies of both Strictly Love and Need to Know? Ballroom Dancing, while three runners up will each receive a copy of Strictly Love.

As always, entrants must live in the UK. Plus it’ll help if you include your email address when you leave the comment so we can contact you if you’ve won – don’t worry, we won’t publish it.