News

BBC to launch online sci-fi drama series for kids

18 October 2006 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Axons£2 million ain’t bad. Oops. Bad Rob. Bad use of English. For Axon, a new £2 million sci-fi mystery for kids, is being commissioned for the BBC’s online education service, BBC Jam. It’s going to combine “linear drama, interactive documentary, games and activities as well as streamed video from archives” and, in the grand tradition of all British sci-fi, is going to be filmed in Wales (probably in a gravel pit).

Since it is a BBC education production, the groovy bit is that it’s going to be produced in four different languages: English and Welsh, with Irish and Scottish Gaelic to follow in 2007. First episodes are due to appear in January.

Axon, huh? As in brain fibre or campy Jon Pertwee Doctor Who monster (above right)?

News

Studio 60’s ratings falling ever further

18 October 2006 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

Sarah PaulsonIt might be from Aaron Sorkin. It might have a star-studded cast. It might have characters constantly going on about how, if you write a quality show, the US public will watch it. But Studio 60 really isn’t doing at all well in the ratings. Currently, it’s about third or fourth in its time slot, with ratings dropping 15% from last week’s episode to 7.8 million (or in ratings talk, 3.1/8 in 18-49, 7.8 million viewers overall).

It’s up against the jaw-droppingly stupid CSI: Miami (is it possible for David Caruso to have had Botox for his acting muscles?) so it’s undergoing a real-world empirical test of its own philosophy. Unfortunately, its theories are wrong: when the US public are presented with glossy, sexy, exciting but stupid versus well-written, wordy, intelligent but preachy drama, they’ll plump for the Caruso-bot every time, it seems.

No word from NBC about what’s going to happen to Studio 60, although there are various words being muttered about the quality of the viewers being just as important as the quantity: Studio 60 is delivering the same kind of people as The West Wing, who are generally smarter, richer, etc than the CSI: Miami crowd (ie everyone else). All the same, keep your fingers crossed and don’t be surprised if Studio 60 becomes Studio 13 episodes only.

Five US off to inauspicious start

17 October 2006 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

So Five US, the channel just for me but with the rubbish advertising campaign, launched last night. So far, it’s not crowded with all the delights that were promised us: Shark, Vanished, et al are nowhere to be seen in the EPG. Of course, since TVTV doesn’t yet have Five US in its EPG, that might be the reason.

What is on, so far, are episodes of Joey, Happy Days and the various CSIs. I’m not impressed on the latter score. Five US decided to launch the whole channel with CSI, which would have been fine if they’d actually started with the first episode. But they didn’t. They began with episode two, which was the second half of a two-part story: in fact, it was the second-part of the original pilot episode.

So, to sum up, Five has launched a whole channel dedicated to fans of US programming; yet they’re not really showing anything new, only repeats, and the repeats aren’t in the right order or are missing episodes.

I recorded Conviction though, so maybe that’ll be worth the entrance fee alone.

UPDATE: They also repeated one scene in CSI so it played on either side of the final advert break. Classy.