The Unit

Guess who’s back Wednesday news

28 February 2007 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

Doctor Who

  • No need to lock up your daughters from the 31st March. They’ll be staying in voluntarily to watch David Tennant in the new series of Doctor Who…

Film

  • There’s a video game based on The Golden Compass coming out this year.
  • Another film that didn’t need one gets a remake. This time it’s Cronenberg’s Scanners.

Theatre

British TV

US TV

  • The Black Donellys‘ ratings weren’t very good. Begorra.
  • Freddie Prinze Jr has another show. Wisely, his name isn’t in the title.
  • Lucy Liu’s coming back to tele for Cashmere Mafia
  • Las Vegas will be back for a fifth season, but without James Caan or Nikki Cox
  • Jack McBrayer (Kenneth the page in 30 Rock) only gets recognised by pages.
  • Lots of spoilers over on Ausiello as usual. Most notable that I can talk about here are Goran Visnjic not renewing his ER contract, a new female character is coming to Lost, and one of Close to Home, The Unit and Jericho is to get cancelled. Also, interesting stuff about Heroes, House and 24.

What I learned by watching television last week

26 February 2007 Rob Buckley Post a comment

24: Never give jessie-wuss girls a gun because they’ll never use it, even when it could shorten a whole season and save the US

30 Rock: Is getting seriously cerebral. I thought Numb3rs was the only show on tele that could talk about “transitive properties”

Battlestar Galactica: James Callis can do a pretty good Yorkshire accent (he did go to the University of York, apparently); the class war will continue in space

The Class: Adultery is perfectly acceptable if your husband mixes you up with one of his ex-wives.

CSI: William Petersen’s beards can be used as plot development

Heroes: Is just so cool

Lost: Some flashbacks can be amazingly tedious and pointless and should be best left forgotten

Numb3rs: Just occasionally, Ken Sanzel can write a good episode. It’s still not great, though, not even though it’s ripping off 24

Studio 60: If you’re going to go, go out on a bang or your chances of ever coming back are scuppered.

The Unit: It’s possible to make the LA metro look like the Berlin underground system. A bit.

Things I learnt from television last week

12 February 2007 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

24: There is a law of the television universe called the “Conservation of Family Goodness”. The total net goodness of any TV family must be 0. The more good one family member is, the more evil the other ones must be. If a family member disappears for some reason, their goodness or evil must be redistributed among the remaining family members.

The Class: There really is nothing funnier to American sitcom writers than English people. Or English people faking American accents. Or Americans faking English accents.

CSI: All the best ones die young.

CSI: Miami: No matter how stupid you think the show is right now, it just keeps getting stupider. David Caruso can heal people now, just by touching them.

Heroes: If you need a load of superheroes, in-breeding seems to be the way forward.

House: Sometimes, it’s the simple explanations that are the most interesting.

Lost: When Lost dawdles, it’s rubbish. When it starts explaining stuff, it’s great

My Name is Earl: No matter how good you think the show is right now, it will just keep getting better.

Prison Break: All cabals and conspiracies require a cigar-smoking room for their headquarters.

Smallville: Lana Lang is the western world’s biggest stalker magnet. She should be stuck at one end of Hollywood Boulevard to draw out the crazies.

Supernatural: After a while, the phrase “yellow-eyed demon” stops being scary and starts to become a bit funny.

Scrubs: Developing characters in a long-running show is a good idea.

Studio 60: Aaron Sorkin really can’t write women well. Also, after a given point in any Sorkin show, it will actually become impossible to work out what characters are talking about.

The Unit: A show, no matter how good, automatically jumps the shark as soon as the psychics episode arrives.

Things I learnt from last week’s television

23 January 2007 Rob Buckley 6 Comments

It’s a new thing, this. I should have started it yesterday, but I was a bit busy. And I forgot.

Anyway, the general idea is it gives me a way to talk about last week’s US and British TV without spoiling anyone on the other side of the Atlantic who hasn’t seen it yet. It’ll probably evolve over time as I get the hang of it. Let’s see how it goes.

  • Scrubs: I really, really hate musicals. I feel like one of the Martians in Invaders from Mars by the end of them.

    What I learnt: I still really, really hate musicals. Musicals are dull.

  • Battlestar Galactica: Still a million leagues ahead of most shows, but getting a bit wearisome at times.

    What I learnt: Sooner or later even the best shows start to get weighed down by their own mythology. Standalone episodes are not the work of the Devil and arcs need to be drip-fed into shows, not dumped onto your plate like a load of creamed potatoes in a school canteen.

  • The Unit: If you’re not careful, even shows that try to be hard-hitting and realistic start to succumb to “fictionitis”. This is a disease in which writers, instead of looking to reality for inspiration, look to other TV shows and everything starts to become just that whole lot less likely.

    What I learnt: If you’re going to base a crack army unit on Delta Force, make sure you call it Delta Force or else writers will start to get imaginative.

  • Celebrity Big Brother: My wife loves the ice-skating reality show, too, so we’ve been watching that instead of CBB for the most part. However, when we have tuned in, we’ve not felt particularly edified by the whole thing.

    What I learnt: Americans and Indians are far better mannered, smarter and gracious than most Britons; it’s possible to call an Indian poppadom, think she should “f— off home”, take the piss out of her accent and still think you’re not a racist.

  • My Name is Earl: The last four or five episodes have been absolute crackers, particularly the Cops one. So tune in now if you haven’t already.
    What I learnt: Rednecks – or is Earl technically not a redneck but white trash? – apparently can’t use computers. I’m not sure this is true, though. Maybe there’ll be something in Wikipedia about it.
  • 30 Rock: I’d already learned in a previous week that Alec Baldwin is a comedy god.
    What I learnt: Tina Fey is a comedy goddess. This, I had not suspected previously.

The Unit – it does get better

22 September 2006 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Turns out, as hoped, that the first episode of the new season of The Unit was a blip: the third episode, The Kill Zone, is an absolute cracker. Loads of adrenaline on The Unit side, coupled with some interesting political comments on the home front, with the US army’s policies towards next of kin, funeral payments, etc, put under the microscope.

And yes, it was written by Lynn Mamet. Should be airing October 3rd in the US, which is when season one begins airing on Bravo in the UK, coincidentally.