Friday’s pre-Bank Holiday weekend news

Doctor Who

  • There’s going to be a treat at the end of The Lazarus Experiment. Something that appears to involve John Simm

Film

  • Pierce Brosnan is likely to start soon on a sequel to The Thomas Crowne Affair called The Topkapi Affair
  • Maybe Jessical Biel was too buff. Liv Tyler is Betty Ross in The Incredible Hulk

Music

Australian TV

British TV

  • Bummed you can’t watch CSB’s pirate reality TV show Pirate Master? Don’t worry, Sky One’s just bought the rights [subscription required]

US TV

The Heroes Dilemma: a request for help

This is for those of you already watching Heroes: I need help. My wife hasn’t seen any episodes of Heroes, despite the exhortations of me and my brother-in-law, who also loves it.

They’re sitting there, waiting to be watched, but currently unloved.

Now, if I show her the first episode, she’s going to be bored, because it’s not great, at least not relative to the other episodes. And then she’ll never watch any of the other episodes ever.

But I can’t show her a really top-quality episode to hook her because that’ll ruin all the surprises and won’t make much sense.

So what should I do? Any suggestions?

The Heroes Dilemma: a request for help

This is for those of you already watching Heroes: I need help. My wife hasn’t seen any episodes of Heroes, despite the exhortations of me and my brother-in-law, who also loves it.

They’re sitting there, waiting to be watched, but currently unloved.

Now, if I show her the first episode, she’s going to be bored, because it’s not great, at least not relative to the other episodes. And then she’ll never watch any of the other episodes ever.

But I can’t show her a really top-quality episode to hook her because that’ll ruin all the surprises and won’t make much sense.

So what should I do? Any suggestions?

Thursday’s slightly greyer news

Doctor Who

Audio plays

  • Lots of Big Finish stuff is happening, including a third season of Sapphire and Steel

Film

  • Commit mental suicide: watch the trailer for Rush Hour 3
  • A picture of the final Iron Man suit
  • Michael Mann’s going to direct a film noir starring Leonardo DiCaprio

(Media) journalism

  • The Daily Mail wants to change its brand association from ‘Middle England’ to ‘Modern Mid Britain’. Good luck on that one, you frothing at the mouth loons [free registration required]
  • John Pilger is giving a talk about Freedom Next Time on 31st May. Includes a screening of Breaking the Silence: Truth and Lies in the War on Terror

Theatre

  • The cast of The Importance of Being Earnest are going walkabout tomorrow, starting in Trafalgar Square at 4.30pm

British TV

  • Sky has 340,000 new subscribers and 25% of its subscribers use Sky+ [free registration required]
  • Timewatch is 25
  • A new Abigail’s Party is being planned by the Beeb [subscription required]

US TV

  • Ruin the ending of this season of CSI for yourself (at least I didn’t put it in the headline, unlike a certain site and newspaper. Grrr…) [spoilers!]
  • HBO does Sex and the City again, except in Africa this time
  • Killing off all your cast limits you, apparently, says 24 co-exec producer David Fury
  • Thomas Dekker didn’t have a problem being gay on Heroes, he says
  • Masters of Science Fiction finally emerges into the schedules
  • Because television really is weird, how about a pirate reality TV show. No, really. Sixteen people are going to compete on CBS to become the Pirate Master

Keep/starting watching Heroes. Plus CSI science?

UK viewers: if you haven’t been watching Heroes on SciFi or hadn’t been planning on watching it when it arrived on BBC2, reconsider now. Cos I promise you you’ll be giggling like 12-years-old thanks to the sheer unadulterated coolness of the show by the end of the series (or at least by last night’s episode, which was episode 20, BTW).

Also, I know CSI: Miami is a load of old rubbish, but I draw the line at this kind of inane cobblers coming out the mouth of a forensic scientist: “when gasoline burns, it produces carbon dioxide and there was no trace of carbon dioxide on your clothes”; and “that fire wasn’t going to start until you introduced oxygen into the mix.”

Seriously, there’s fudging science for entertainment purposes and then there’s the level of giving David Caruso one of Professor Zarkov’s rays to zap criminals with. CSI: Miami has now gone too far.