Kudos, which makes Spooks (aka MI-5 to US viewers), has decided to produce a spy show for kids. Starring Red Dwarf‘s Danny John Jules, it’ll be set in an inner city high school and filmed in high def. Planned guest stars included Robert Llewellyn, Rula Lenska, Alex Ferns and Steve Furst. It’ll start in early 2007 on CBBC and run to ten episodes.
Justice – another one bites the dust
Justice, which I kind of liked but which I admit has been going downhill a bit since the first episode, has now been pulled from the Fox schedules indefinitely. Another one bites the dust, huh?
As well as US networks, this is all kind of disappointing for British networks since a number of their big acquisitions have already been cancelled. It might also be very disappointing for anyone who’s had to wade through my reviews over the last few months and had their hopes pinned on some of these shows appearing.
Here are the winners, though. UK viewers will see these trumpeted onto their screens from January next year for complete (and so far open-ended) seasons. Don’t forget, mid-season shows Raines and The Black Donnellys are still to air, so no one knows what’s going to happen to them yet.
ITV1/ITV2/ITV3/ITV4
Jericho (good to very good)
Friday Night Lights (okay to good)
Channel 4/E4/More4
Studio 60 (good)
Ugly Betty (very good)
Brothers and Sisters (absolute arse)
The Class (good to very good)
Five/Five US
Shark (below average to average)
SciFi Channel
Heroes (very good)
Living
Men in Trees (average to good)
FX
Brotherhood (good to very good. Already airing)
Dexter (outstanding)
There are a few stragglers whose fate is ostensibly still to be decided: Standoff (Fox/Sky One), Six Degrees (ABC/ITV), The Nine (ABC/Five) and Vanished (Fox/Five). But they’re all pretty likely to be hitting a dustbin/trashcan some time soon. Also Friday Night Lights’ fate is a little bit up the in air, but the smart money is on it getting a full season.
US TV
Sci-Fi downloads on Amazon.com
Not sure if US readers have noticed or not, but Amazon’s Unbox video downloads service is now offering you the chance to rent episodes of sci-fi series. Compared to iTunes, it’s pretty rubbish, given you can only watch the episodes for seven days before they self-destruct, but I’d thought I’d point it out anyway. Shows available include Star Trek, Stargate SG-1, Firefly, Babylon 5 and Doctor Who. Technical requirements are similar to the equally rubbish Five VoD service.
There are some interesting choices for Doctor Who, with old school stories such as The Aztecs, The Seeds of Death and The Mind Robber mixing it up with later stories (none of the new Who stories available). It’s worth noting that $1.99 will only get you an episode of Doctor Who, not a complete story, so you’ll have to pay $8 or so to rent all of The Curse of Fenric, for instance. You’d be mad to, but the option’s there.
News
Glynis Barber joins Emmerdale
Not sure how much my mate Martin had to do with it (probably not a lot, but I like to think he did) but Glynis Barber, who played Soolin on Blake’s 7 and Makepeace on Dempsey and Makepeace, is to join the cast of Emmerdale. God bless you, Martin.
Audio and radio play reviews
Review: Doctor Who – Memory Lane
If there’s a Doctor synonymous with Big Finish’s range of Doctor Who audio plays, it’s Paul McGann. Doctor number eight has appeared in books, comics and countless other media since his appearance in the TV movie of 1996. But it wasn’t until 2001 that McGann was to appear again as the Doctor and show us how he would have portrayed that wanderer in time and space if he’d been given the chance.
It was Big Finish who gave him that chance. Together with the producers, he’s crafted a fun-loving, slightly comedic, sports-worshipping, Peter Pan of a Time Lord that anticipated the lonelier, romantic and pop culture-friendly tendencies of David Tennant’s tenth Doctor – he does, perhaps, encapsulate best the various themes of Big Finish’s disparate writing styles.
Now several ‘seasons’ in, with 1930s adventuress Charley Pollard by his side, he’s encountered Daleks, Cybermen, the Brigadier, the Time Lords and dozens of new enemies, forever dispelling the “George Lazenby” jibe that he’s endured over the years. He’s not had the best of stories, with a few notable exceptions, but he’s had some of the best of the Big Finish ‘atmosphere’ in his time.
Now, we have Memory Lane, perhaps the most Eighth Doctor-ish story of his adventures so far.