The Unit

Tuesday’s fandabbydozey news

12 June 2007 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Film

Commercials

Radio/Books

British TV

US TV

US TV

Season finales: Prison Break, My Name is Earl, The Unit, Jericho

14 May 2007 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

As you may recall, last year I cast my reviewing eyes over the end-of-season finales for various US shows. The tissue-thin rationale I gave was “A good finale to a TV series can keep you watching even the biggest rubbish imaginable. They can be exciting, tense and a whole load of other things.

“Stress, of course, is a major health hazard. Therefore, so that UK viewers can brace themselves to an appropriate degree, I’ll be giving near-spoiler free guides to just how tense and exciting each of the major US TV shows’ finales were, starting today. US TV shows don’t end all at once: they’re spread over a period of three weeks or so, so there’ll be another couple of updates to come after this over the next week or so.”

Guess what. I’m doing it again this year using pretty much the same reasoning as I did last year. So here goes: there’ll be more to come over the coming days and indeed weeks.

Continue reading “Season finales: Prison Break, My Name is Earl, The Unit, Jericho”

Monday morning news

2 April 2007 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Doctor Who

  • Ratings for Smith and Jones were 8.2 million, peaking at 9.11 million
  • John Barrowman questioned about ‘fattie’ comments
  • David Tennant’s Doctor models himself on Jamie Oliver

Commercials

  • The official solution to that Virgin 74 bands puzzle

Film

  • First pics from Iron Man
  • Tarantino frightens cast with knowledge of their rubbish movies
  • A Dylan Thomas movie is on the way
  • The official site for Nicholas Cage’s Philip K Dick movie, Next, is up
  • Test-screening details of The Simpsons
  • Sigourney Weaver talks about Avatar
  • Antonio Banderas and Johnny Depp may be in the sequel to Sin City
  • Luke Goss joins the cast of Hellboy 2
  • Two Transformers TV trailers

British TV

  • Living TV has the rights to Criminal Minds and Ghost Whisperer‘s second seasons

US TV

  • A promo for the next episode of Heroes
  • James Doohan has been fired into space
  • Sydney Pollack is directing a movie for HBO about the 2000 Florida recount
  • An interview with Dennis Haysbert about The Unit
  • The Sopranos in seven minutes
Events

Glorious Friday’s glorious news

16 March 2007 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

Billie and David



Doctor Who

  • Stephen Fry didn’t have the time to finish his Doctor Who episode
  • David Tennant drops in on Pipes at the theatre
  • Doctor Who and Torchwood have turned Cardiff into one of the top 10 tourist destinations in the UK. You mean it wasn’t before?

Film

  • Cate Blanchett is in Indiana Jones 4
  • More Watchmen info. The ‘girls’ are going to be sexier apparently
  • Jackie Chan says Brett Ratner doesn’t know much about directing action
  • There’s a script for Trainspotting 2

Commercials

British TV

  • Stephen Fry’s Kingdom gets a second series before the first has even aired.
  • Not got digital yet? If you live in Whitehaven, you’re screwed

US TV

Things I learnt from watching television last week

5 March 2007 Rob Buckley Post a comment

24: As long as something exciting happens all the time, I can watch the most mindless drivel.

30 Rock: Manatee. Hee, hee!

Battlestar Galactica: It is possible for Starbuck to be boring.

Heroes: Even people you suspect can’t act will start acting if you give them something to do. “Claire-bear” can reduce a grown man to tears. Sniff.

Jericho: Flashbacks are only interesting if you give a monkey’s about the flasher. If you know what I mean.

Lewis: Occasionally the writers can be funny. Lewis “not a professional Northerner”? Hee hee!

Lost: Oh yes. Lost used to be fun. I remember now.

Primeval: As long as something exciting happens all the time, I can watch the most mindless drivel. Also, the right backing track for a flock of dodos is Kasabian’s “Club Foot”.

The Unit: Eric Haney should be allowed to write episodes, too, not just Lynn Mamet as I suggested last week – another lesson learned. Also, all previous attempts to write realistic war dialogue have been rubbish: if it was authentic, we wouldn’t understand a word of it, as Haney has just proved. I had to watch it twice to work out what was going on.