It's competition time again! Woo hoo!

On offer this time is Nicholas Knight's Supernatural - The Official Companion Season 2, which as you might suspect, is a "companion" guide to the second season of Supernatural. Here's the promo blurb:

This official companion is packed with exclusive interviews, photos, behind the scenes secrets, a complete episode guide, plus a color portrait gallery of the stars.

This season 2 official companion features a foreword from producer/director Robert Singer, plus an abundance of exclusive comments and content from series creator and executive producer Eric Kripke. There's a complete season two episode guide, packed in with exclusive interviews, and dozens of photos, including a 16-page color portrait gallery, and behind-the-scenes secrets, including a Meet the Crew section on the writers, editors and make-up designers.

Fans will also find detailed features on the characters and creatures from the show, including a closer look at Creepy Clowns, and you won't want to miss our 22 useful hints for aspiring monster hunters!

Indeed. 

It's pretty much what it says on the tin, here. As with any licensed book or magazine (not just Titan's), you'll find nary a word of dissent or suggestion that any episode was not in fact the best thing to happen to the human race since Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden – each building on the previous glorious episode until the Rapture of the finale. 

All the same, it's not half bad for what it is. One page bios on supporting actors aren't going to tell you very much at all, and the useful facts about monsters are one of those filler concepts that have been crammed into genre books since practically the dawn of television. But you get some behind-the-scenes facts that are quite interesting, as behind-the-scenes facts go, and you learn about how the story arcing was done, how it progressed, how budget limitations changed it and so on. 

At £9.99, it's possibly a bit pricey for a softback book that's predominantly black and white with a few colour photograph pages. And the writing style is possibly a bit young for a show that's aimed at slightly older teenagers and young adults. But if you're a big lover of Supernatural and want every possible nugget of info possible about the show, it'll do what you want. 

To win a copy of the book, all you have to do is leave a comment below before the 31st May (that's two weeks away), explaining why you deserve it more than anyone else – the most deserving plea will get their pristine copy posted to them ASAP. Or you can just try to amuse me: that'll work, too.

Apologies to overseas readers, but again, the competition's open only to UK residents, since I can't be airmailing these things on my budget. I'm not made of money. 

You can find out more about the book or buy it from Amazon.co.uk.

Read other posts about: Supernatural

We've looked at ABC's new Fall drama, Life on Mars, and we've had a look through CBS's as well, so now it's time to give Fox's Fall 2008 output a looksie.

On the schedule, we have a new Joss Whedon sci-fi spy show starring Eliza Dushka, Dollhouse; a new animated comedy from Family Guy's Seth MacFarlane, The Cleveland Show; an X-Files for the noughties from Alias/Lost creator JJ Abrams, Fringe; a covert remake of Angela's Eyes in the form of Lie to Me; not so covert remakes of Australian show Sit Down, Shut Up and British shows Secret Millionaire and Outnumbered; Alfred Molina playing Judge House; and something that makes Hotel Babylon seem like art.

Continue reading "Fox's Fall 2008 shows"

Read other posts about: Battlestar Galactica, House, The Wire

Today's Joanna Page is the video to Mark Owen's “Makin Out”. All right, you don't have to listen to it – turn the sound down if you want to.

Actually, I was expecting the worse, but it's quite a nice little song, I think. The video's pretty good, although a little creepy in the light of the Torchwood episode From Out of the Rain (they're so similar, I'm wondering if the directors are the same). It's mostly in the style of silent movies of the 10s and 20s – although it could be argued that Mark Owen isn't so much doing Buster Keaton as Johnny Depp doing Buster Keaton/Charlie Chaplin in Benny & Joon.

Nice roller skating, too.

Next week: Joanna Page as Dickensian femme fatale* Dora Spenlow in David Copperfield.

* Let the debaters start preparing now!

Read other posts about: Gavin & Stacey, Torchwood

We had a look at ABC's Life On Mars yesterday and seeing as that's pretty much its only new drama show, we'll be hearing nothing more from it for now.

So it's time to have a gander at CBS's new Fall shows: The Eleventh Hour, The Ex-List, Harper's Island, Project Gary, The Mentalist and Worst Week. Observant Brits (and Israelis) will notice a couple of remakes in there…

Continue reading "CBS's Fall 2008 shows"

Read other posts about: Jericho, Moonlight

Well thank heavens for that. For one terrible moment, I thought we were going to go through an entire nu-Who series without there being a completely bollocks episode. 

But praise the Lord, it's happened. A true piece of rubbish. Ladies and gentlemen, we've found this year's Evolution of the Daleks.

Continue reading "Review: Doctor Who 4x6 - The Doctor's Daughter"

Today's Joanna Page, despite the best efforts of the BBC, is Love Soup, David Renwick's slightly odd look at love that stars Tamsin Greig, Sheridan Smith and the superfluous one from Ashes to Ashes.

I caught an episode of it once to see what Sheridan Smith was up to in her time off from Two Pints and wasn't desperately impressed. This time round was better, notably because of Joanna Page who got to exercise her acting muscles in a surprisingly subtle way. More on that later.

Strangely, Love Soup seems to have more in common with Jonathan Creek than Renwick's One Foot in the Grave, with bizarre love mysteries to be solved in outlandish ways. It's not great, but it's okay: as much as I love Tamsin Greig – and indeed Sheridan Smith – Greig's character, Alice, is just dull (although that's probably the point) and Smith's doesn't really have a lot of depth. Still, it's only half an hour long and nearly at the end of series two, so I've probably missed out on a lot.

Anyway, more pics of JP after the jump, including a great big spoiler. If you haven't seen the episode yet and intend to, don't go any further.

Incidentally, I do warn you that if you have still to see it, do not watch it where anyone can see you: it is definitely Not Suitable For The Office. Or indeed public transport. 

Continue reading "Today's Joanna Page: Love Soup"

Read other posts about: Ashes to Ashes, Gavin & Stacey