In the US: Fridays, 10/9c, SciFi; 7p, Movie Central; 8e, The Movie Network
In the UK: Mondays, 9pm, ITV4

There are two big trends in TV and film production at the moment. Okay, there are lots of trends, but here are two big ones.

The first is green screen, in which rather than building great big sets, you stick the actors up against a green screen and use special effects to add a computer-generated set in later. George Lucas pioneered it on Phantom Menace, but it's only proved its truth worth recently on films like Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and 300, in which pretty much everything other than the actors was computer-generated.

The second is the Internet. You might have heard of it. Now, all sorts of shows that don't manage to get a look-in on the mainstream networks can be shot cheaply, uploaded to YouTube or a dedicated web site, and suddenly everyone's watching it and one of the big networks picks it up. Quarterlife and The Peter Serafinowicz Show both managed it, but many argued they should have stayed on the Internet.

Sanctuary is a shiny new show, airing almost simultaneously on the US's SciFi, Movie Central and The Movie Network channels and ITV4 in the UK, that combines both these trends. Not only is there a massive amount of green screen work, but it started off on the web before being spotted by SciFi. Starring and produced by Amanda Tapping of Stargate SG-1, it's a bit of a dark piece in which faux-Brit Tapping, her faux-American kick ass daughter and a faux-bright criminal profiler join together to investigate odd beasties that they then take to their 'Sanctuary'.

But despite all these shiny trends, is it a show that's good in its own right, or simply "not bad for the Internet"?

Continue reading "Review: Sanctuary 1x1"

Read other posts about: Stargate

Well, the public has spoken and who am I to argue? Weekly The Sarah Jane Adventures reviews not so much start here as carry on from part one of The Last Sontaran, which aired last week. Are you brave enough to look within?

Continue reading "Review: The Sarah Jane Adventures 2x2"

Read other posts about: The Sarah Jane Adventures

Film

• Lethal Weapon 5?
• Steve Carell gets a three-year deal and Get Smart 2
• Danny Glover to be president in 2012
• Johnny Depp to get £32m for Pirates 4
• Anne Hathaway to play the White Queen in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland

Theatre

• Six musicals for the West End
• Bill Bailey's Tinselworm coming to the Gielgud from November

British TV

• Little Britain USA gets good ratings
• As does Fringe
• BBC Wales' High Hopes gets cancelled

US TV

• Fox to remake Absolutely Fabulous – again
• Entourage gets a sixth season
• Sons of Anarchy gets a second season
• And The Mentalist gets six more episodes
• Rachael Taylor, Amanda Walsh and Bitsie Tulloch join SJP's Washingtonienne
  
• Sanctuary gets a good start in the ratings
• Kenneth Branagh to play Irish publican – in The Simpsons

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In the US: Sundays, 8/7c, The CW

Valentine is one of those high concept shows that could, depending on how they're implemented, turn out to be fundamentally excellent or fundamentally awful. "The Greek gods are alive and well and living among us". Brilliant, hey? I'd buy that book/watch that TV show, because it's a great idea.

But, and here's the problem, if the gods just sit in front of the TV all day, it's going to be very dull; if they demand human sacrifices or set nation to war with nation to reduce the excess population, it's going to very dark and scary. So pitch is very important.

US TV tends to go for light and/or fighty when dealing with the Greek gods. Hercules (yes, I know he's Roman) and Xena (completely made up) went for light and fighty on the few occasions when they went modern-day; Cupid (also Roman and coming around for a new series some time soon, despite having been cancelled once) went for light. They were all fun in their way, sometimes extremely imaginative, but generally nothing to make you mourn their passings too much.

Valentine (yes, not even Roman but early Christian), in which Aphrodite, Eros, Hercules/Heracles and other gods try to fix mortals up with their soul mates, goes for light in a big way. Starring Jaime Murray (Hustle, Dexter) as Aphrodite aka Venus aka Grace Valentine, it's imaginative, quite fun, but at times excruciatingly bad - as well as instantly forgettable.

Continue reading "Review: Valentine 1x1"

Read other posts about: Dexter

In the US: Fridays, 9pm et/pt, CBS

What do women want? It's a despairing thought asked by male TV executives all the time, in the hope of getting some female viewers for their networks. Sometimes they'll look at the chick lit section of their local Barnes and Noble and go, "Oh. That's what women want." Other times, they'll look at other female oriented TV programmes and copycommission appropriately.

Sometimes, though, they'll look overseas, usually to Britain and sometimes to Canada. But for The Ex List, they looked even further afield: Israel.

The Ex-List's premise is dumbness in a glass: 33-year-old San Diego flower shop owner, Bella Bloom (seriously), takes her sister's hen night party to a psychic and gets told she has a year to marry or she'll die alone. After a series of other predictions come true, she becomes convinced the psychic is telling the truth. Thing is, she's destined to marry someone she's already dated, so she puts together a list of all her exes, and decides to try them out again, one at a time, to see which was really Mr Right.

So roll up, roll up for the oddball man vetting service.

Continue reading "Review: The Ex List 1x1"

In the US: Fridays, 10pm ET/PT, CBS
In the UK: Five, Five US, ITV1 and ITV3 in some sort of rota system, some time next year

Think CBS and if you know your US networks, you'll probably think 'procedural' immediately afterwards. If it's not existing stalwarts like the entire CSI stable, NCIS and The Unit filling the airwaves, we've The Eleventh Hour and The Mentalist this season as well.

Then there's Numb3rs, which seems to exist simply to add yet another procedural to the CBS body count - and to win family programming prizes. A sub-exciting series in which the FBI seem incapable of solving even the basic crimes without recourse to a genius mathematician and his nerdy friends, it's been lurking on Friday nights for years and has now reached season five.

And I'm still watching it. I have no idea why.

Continue reading "Review: Numb3rs 5x1"

Read other posts about: Numb3rs