Doctor Who

• Pipes' return covered up by “bin girl”
• Catherine Tate to star in Under The Blue Sky
• The Doctor (and Chuck from Pushing Daisies) voted sexiest TV characters
• Church leaders watch Doctor Who for advice
• Big Finish: the companions in the Companion Chronicles, the Wirrn and Key To Time return, as do the Krotons

Film

• Steven Spielberg working on Lincoln biopic with Liam Neeson
• Bruce Willis as Hannibal in The A-Team and Brad Pitt as Thor?
• Donnie Darko sequel on the way
• Natalie Portman leaving Wuthering Heights
• Witchblade movie planned
• Buck Rogers rights picked up

Theatre

• Peter Kay to star in stage version of Porridge?
• Dirty Dancing nearly made Joanna Page give up acting

British TV

• BBC forgets to hand money over to charity
• Gordon Ramsay to quit Kitchen Nightmares?
• Red Dragon buying Tinopolis
• Gavin & Stacey boost Barry tourism
• Simon Nye making multicultural sitcom pilot

US TV

• David Eick to help The Philanthropist?
• Even more Britney for How I Met Your Mother?
• Back to You and New Amsterdam cancelled
• Eric Stoltz to invent cylons
• McSpaced not picked up by Fox but other shows are luckier, including Dollhouse
• Life on Mars remake to get pick-up

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Read other posts about: Battlestar Galactica, Big Finish, Gavin & Stacey, Gordon Ramsay, Life on Mars

Doctor Who

• Torchwood to have a one-off Radio 4 special episode written by Joe Lidster [free registration required]
• It's Saturday 5th April. It's 6.20pm. It's time for Doctor Who

Film

• Simon Pegg talks about Star Trek and the new Spaced, as well as the Spaced Region 1 DVDs (commentaries with Matt Stone, Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith and Diablo Cody)
• James Cromwell and Ellen Burstyn to play George W Bush's parents, Scrubs' Elizabeth Banks to play Laura Bush (?) in the forthcoming W
• Tobey Maguire to produce comic-book adaptation Afterburn
• GI Joe to be an origins piece?
• X-Files 2 talk from Chris Carter
• Old Twilight Zone episode to be turned into movie

Theatre

• Rowan Atkinson to play Fagin in Oliver!

British TV

• Living's bought up Private Practice
• Channel 4's Spring and Summer line-up
• Heston Blumenthal takes Gordon Ramsay's idea and runs with it: let's fix Little Chef for Channel 4

US TV

• Four join the cast of Joss Whedon's Dollhouse, including BSG's Tahmoh Penikett
• The other ending of Jericho
• 24's Elisha Cuthbert to star in the NY-LON remake
• Trailer for The Wire's creators' Generation Kill
• ABC greenlights some more pilots

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Read other posts about: 24, Battlestar Galactica, Gordon Ramsay, Jericho, Scrubs, Star Trek, The Wire, Torchwood

Doctor Who

• Steve Pemberton to appear in the new series
• Christopher Eccleston to play Destro in GI Joe
• Lots of pictures of Martha in Torchwood

Film

• Luke Goss to star in Tekken?
• Michelle Pfeiffer to reunite with Stephen Frears for Cheri?
• Tolkien Trust sues New Line for cheating it out of $150m
• Coen brothers to direct The Yiddish Policemen's Union
• Renee Zellwegger to star in comedy based on George Hamilton's childhood
• 20th Century Fox suing Warner Bros over Watchmen
• V sequel movie coming?

Comics

• Alex Cox discusses the sequel to Repo Man

British TV

• Julia McKenzie is the new Miss Marple
• Jamie Oliver told off for plugging his own tool
• Echo Beach ratings quite bad indeed [free registration required]

US TV

• ABC picks up nine series for next season, including Dirty Sexy Money and Samantha Who?
• More Kitchen Nightmares coming
• Lance Reddick almost played Bubbles in The Wire
• The market for British shows in the US
• Next season of 24 postponed for a year
• PBS picks Rita Rudner for its first comedy special
• The Riches' new season starts March 18th

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Read other posts about: 24, Gordon Ramsay, The Wire, Torchwood

How does it look?

Doctor Who

• Big Finish to sell plays as MP3s from February 1st

Film

• A dodgy-quality version of the teaser trailer for Star Trek XI
• Ryan Gosling to be the next Jack Ryan?
• British industry falters because of US writers' strike
• Julie Benz talks about Rambo
• Photos from Prince Caspian
• Michelle Monaghan up for Wolverine role
• Site for 10,000BC launches

Radio

• Ken Branagh to play Cyrano de Bergerac on Radio 3

British TV

• A clip from Ashes to Ashes
• BBC should share the licence fee with other broadcasters
• Neighbours coming to Five from February 11th?
• Hugh F-W says good chickens aren't just for the rich
• Working Title wants to develop British programmes with the appeal of Lost and Heroes [free registration required]

US TV

• Lena Headey criticised for being too weedy to be Sarah Connor
• Gordon Ramsay gets chased by chef with knife in Kitchen Nightmares
• Sophia Myles explains the British invasion
• David Milch deals with 1970s police corruption
• Jericho has two endings
• Eidos developing Highlander game. Maybe that's why the bosses have quit

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Read other posts about: Ashes to Ashes, Gordon Ramsay, Jericho, Sex and the City, Star Trek

Douglas Adams once wrote about an Electric Monk. The idea of the Electric Monk was that it was a labour saving device. As Adams put it, just as a dishwasher is there to wash dishes so that you don't have to, and a video recorder is there to watch TV programmes so that you don't have to, so the Electric Monk believes things for you, so that you don't have to.

That was in the 80s, of course. Cross out video recorder and replace it with PVR and you have the 00s truism. Still no Electric Monks though. Curses. I really would like to believe ITV will get better one day - or at least have someone believe it for me.

Sitting on my PVR/Apple TV are the Christmas editions of Extras (I'm a third of the way through it and not enjoying it tremendously) and To the Manor Born (haven't watched it but I've heard terrible things about it) to name but a couple, as well as a multitude of movies that I thought worth watching. I didn't have to watch much of The Mothman Prophecies to realise it wasn't, but I've still to make that determination on a number of things.

Plus I'm still glad to have Firefox, Quatermass and the Pit and Hawk the Slayer there, even if I'll never watch them. That's nostalgia for you.

In part the reason everything's sitting there unwatched is because some mad fools bought me DVDs for Christmas/birthday, so I had too much to watch. It's also because I'm not spending all of Christmas watching TV, even if it is the complete box set of Airwolf or Ulysses 31 (or, and don't go too wild, Artemis 81. I do put some odd things on my Amazon wish list sometimes).

But I did watch a little. And even though it's a good fortnight on, I thought I'd leave a couple of thoughts for posterity on Christmas with Gordon Ramsay, Heston Blumenthal's Perfect Christmas Dinner and Doctor Who's Voyage of the Damned (other reviews are available and have been for a good long while now).

Continue reading "Christmas tele"

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Doctor Who

• Peter Davison's daughter to be the next companion?
• Torchwood to have less swearing, less sex, better scripts and more class!

Film

• I am Legend 2 rights sold
• Jeffrey Wright to return as Felix Leiter in Casino Royale sequel

British TV

• Kitchen Nightmares restaurant closes
• Spin-off from Extras planned?

US TV

• Sarah Connor pilot available via Yahoo!
• The dates of all the US season finales, assuming the writers' strike continues

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Read other posts about: Gordon Ramsay, Torchwood

There's a worrying new trend I've just started to notice. Its perpetrator is Channel 4.

As we all know, in the US, TV seasons tend to run from August/September through to May/June (give or take a month depending on which network the show's on, the show, whether it's a summer season show, etc). Now, with 22-24 episodes per season, that's still not enough to allow for new episodes every week. Sometimes, as with Lost and Daybreak, US networks will simply insert a new show into the time slot and then carry on with the old show.

But most of the time, they'll simply put on an old episode of the same show - hence the pressing need for gruff narrators to preface trailers with “next week on an all-new Woof the Sheepdog” or whatever, so that viewers know when a new episode rather than a re-run is going to be on.

This plays havoc with the ratings and annoys fans. But it doesn't seem to be stopping Channel 4 from trying it out for themselves.

Continue reading "Worrying new trend imported from the US"

Read other posts about: Gordon Ramsay

Doctor Who

• Lily Allen to be the next companion?
• Tom Baker would have liked to have been The Master instead of John Simm

Film

• Misdirection or the complete plot to Star Trek XI?

British TV

• Line-up for new Saturday Live revealed
• Rough Justice to end after 27 years

US TV

• Damages back for not one but two more seasons
• What happened to one restaurant after Gordon Ramsay left
• Lost webisodes to air from Friday
• NBC launches its downloads service
• Greg Grunberg to reappear as the pilot on Lost

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Doctor Who

• Who is Kylie Minogue really??? [spoilers?]
• David Tennant says Learners will prove he's not sexy
• John Barrowman launching music career to make good music not money

Film

• John Travolta to be a baddie in remake of The Taking of Pelham 123
• Woody Harrelson and Oliver Stone reteam for Vietnam War drama Pinkville
• Vue opens all-digital cinema in Hull
• Underworld prequel launches

British TV

• ITV to make show that tests celebrities' DNA for life-threatening diseases. Honestly. I'm not making it up
• And I'm not making up the Pauline Quirke Academy either
• Vicar of Dibley to return?
• Five acquires Fireman Sam
• ITV to make 90-minute film about the first moon landing
• BBC Three to build The Wall to find new talent

US TV

• BSG season four won't start until April
• Sopranos wise guy Jason Cahill to be latest Bionic Woman showrunner
• Reaper gets three more scripts and Aliens in America to stay in continuous production
• And three new scripts for Dirty Sexy Money
• Eureka gets a third season
• Gordon Ramsay: the video game

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Read other posts about: Battlestar Galactica, Gordon Ramsay

In the UK: Tuesdays, 8.30pm, BBC2

They say it's the journey rather than the arrival that's more important. It's certainly the case with Heston Blumenthal. The proprietor of “the best restaurant in the world”, The Fat Duck, with three Michelin stars to his name is on a quest for perfection in cooking. He mixes traditional cooking skills with science (you can read an interview with one of his natural science graduate-cooks, if you like) to create recipes that can be odd and yet delicious.

In Heston Blumenthal - In Search of Perfection, he decides to create the best versions possible of a dish - this week's was chicken tikka masala - then travels around the UK and other parts of the world to find the best versions that currently exist. Then he returns home to his labs to conduct experiments on how to improve the flavour even more, before an unveiling the eventual 'perfect recipe'.

Trouble is, the journey is far more interesting - and practical - than the arrival.

Continue reading "Review: Heston Blumenthal - In Search of Perfection 2.1"

Read other posts about: Gordon Ramsay