Archive for the 'Television' Category

Beatles Day tomorrow. I guess there was some original thought that releasing this stuff in September would make Festivus shopping easier for any number of people. In reality, most people are so insane about credit and self-indulgent that they’ll just go out and buy it, so you’ll still have the conundrum about what to buy [...]


I guess it was make-or-break for Torchwood, and its move to BBC1. Or maybe it was always going to be break, what with almost all of the original cast now culled. When the BBC strip something over five nights in the summer, you wonder what they’re thinking. I sometimes think TV execs would like to [...]


Mentalist

10Apr09

The Mentalist must be one of the worst titles for a TV series ever, which is why the two episodes I’d recorded were languishing on the PVR along with multiple unwatched episodes of The Wire.
Last night I was faced with the dilemma: which did I want to watch the least? It turned out to be [...]


Happy Families

24Jan09

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the fact that the BBC is making a huge fuss about not showing it giving the Gaza Appeal even more publicity than if they did?
But it’s not as if they ever have any perspective when the story concerns themselves. This is one step removed from the news anchor [...]


I don’t watch telly much when I’m in France. It’s not just because it’s all in French, but also because French TV just doesn’t seem to evolve quickly enough. They’re still doing the same peak time quiz shows they were doing 10 years ago, and those interminable panel programmes in which minor French celebrities make [...]


January: Blank
February: Blank
March: Blank
April: …Nope
May: Holiday in the Vendée, which was quite nice
June: Blank
July: Wet
August: Wet. Bought a new (well, low-miler) car
September: Started diet
October: Fairly blank
November: Cold
December: Are we there yet?
Blogging seems to be a substitute for having a memory. Which is a concern, should something ever happen to WordPress, which is fairly likely, given [...]


Result!

15Dec08

A miscellaneous post, with three separate topics.
I’m enjoying Life, on ITV3, starring Damian Lewis as Charlie Crews, a cop released from jail after a miscarriage of justice. In spite of his huge compensation payout, he chooses to return to his job. He has survived his ordeal by adopting the precepts of Zen/Confucianism, and he infuriates [...]


Survivors was one of my favourite TV things when it was broadcast lo those many years ago. I liked Abby, the woman who was looking for her son, and felt the life went out of the series when she left it. I believe the actress was fired for being an alcoholic or something, at which [...]


I was (re)watching that docu about Paul Weller on BBC4 the other night (didn’t watch the live session) and enjoyed it all over again. It does that thing, though, where it spends longer on a shorter period of his life (e.g. The Jam and Style Council eras) and then skates quickly over a longer period [...]


1. There’s an interview with Phil Spector on TV tonight, being trailed as his first for three centuries. Ironically, one of the last he gave – for Tony Palmer’s All You Need is Love series – was on a couple of weeks ago. So not that long really.
Radio Times describes Phil as the greatest record [...]