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"

Ah. Now that's better. Finally, a decent two-parter and – miraculous though it might seem – one written by Helen Raynor at that.

After last week's poorly paced but still reasonably good first part, I was expecting a lump of old rubbish for the second part, since that's how it usually pans out. But hurroo, hurray, bar the occasional bit of dodgy dialogue, direction and acting, it was good.

Continue reading "Review: Doctor Who 4x5 - The Poison Sky"

Read other posts about: Stargate

In the UK: Thursdays, 9pm, BBC1 

Clearly, with all the kids off watching their XBoxes instead of TVs now, commissioners at the mainstream channels are looking at tired, worn out, older viewers who remember a better time to bolster their audience figures.

Look at New Tricks, in which a bunch of old blokes from better TV shows that we all remember from the 70s and 80s get together to fight crimes and show us how it was done in the good old days.

Now here's the flipside of that coin, in which two actors we remember from shows (and adverts) of the 80s and 90s get together to commit crimes. Course, back in those days, the gangsters were proper gentlemen weren't they. Not like the scum these days. They won't even tell proper jokes while they're breaking into your safe.

Continue reading "Review: The Invisibles 1x1"

Went to the NFT's showing of Murrain, an episode of the old play strand Against The Crowd* written by Quatermass creator Nigel Kneale, and Robin Redbreast, from the BBC's Play for Today written by British arch-surrealist John Bowen.

Robin Redbreast
Surprisingly, Robin Redbreast was the stronger of the two: think a cross between Rosemary's Baby, The Wicker Man and The Aphrodite Inheritance, all set in the Cotswalds, in which a newly single TV script editor finds that country folk have their own strange ways. Absolutely off its head, with bizarre naked karate in the woods, appearances by Herne the Hunter and Wayland the Smithy, and some of the weirdest dialogue you'd ever hear, it was just endlessly entertaining.

Murrain
Murrain was relatively normal by comparison, a standard piece of Kneale fare in which superstition meets science – in the form of a pig farmer who thinks a local woman is really a witch and a vet who wants to protect the little old lady from those nasty bumpkins. If anything, it proved that DoPs in the 70s shouldn't have got ambitions above their stations so many years before the invention of the Steadicam. Not really worth looking out for unless you're a big fan of Bernard Lee (the original M in the Bond movies) or the scary dad in Sapphire and Steel - Assignment 1.

The audience: As always, it's worth reviewing the audience:

• An above average beardy weirdy count this time, with a folk music DJ playing in the bar afterwards
• Two audible uses of 'the voice'
• On my left, a young posh girl out with a ridiculously older man who clearly wasn't a relative (shudder) and who insisted on narrating the plays to each other when they weren't making out
• On my right, a man with little understanding of personal boundaries and an incredible sinus problem: so bad was it, that the man to his right had to squeeze his way past Kim Newman at the end of Murrain to escape the torture in time for Robin Redbreast. I could not escape past 'the lovers'
• The man behind me started snoring 10 minutes before the end.

I've had better nights out

* My, didn't they think they were being subversive?

In the US: Memorial Day, 9pm/8c, A&E
In the UK: Not yet acquired

Didn't I say you should own this a while ago? Oh wait it's a remake. A mini-series in fact. Let's start again then.

Michael Jurassic Park/Westworld/Disclosure/Rising Sun Crichton's first novel was The Andromeda Strain, a scary little book that asked the question "What if an alien virus that was absolutely virulent and lethal came to Earth? What would it be like and how would we deal with it?" After becoming a bestseller, it got turned into a rather excellent movie (which you should own) back in the early 70s.

So do we need a remake? Interesting question, too. Before watching this two-part mini-series, I'd have said no, even if it is "presented by" Tony and Ridley Scott, especially since it's showing on A&E, which hasn't done much decent for about a decade.

But you know what? It's not half bad. It's different in a lot of ways. It's better in a lot of ways, too. But is it the best Andromeda Strain so far?

Continue reading "Preview: The Andromeda Strain (mini-series)"

Read other posts about: 24, House, Lost, Scrubs

In the UK: Iau/Sul, 9pm, S4C

Around me, right now, I have a few books: Colloquial Welsh; Welsh is Fun; Welsh is Fun-tastic!; and Teach Yourself Welsh. I've just installed the Rosetta Stone - Welsh on my Mac, which will go nicely with Talk Now - Welsh!

Guess what I'm doing in spare time, these days.

Yes, I'm learning Welsh. It's not that easy in London, but I'm trying. Fortunately, Sky does in fact carry Welsh language channel S4C, which should be a help.

Anyway, in light of the controversy surrounding the filming of a sex scene for new S4C “cult drama” Caerdydd in the Welsh Assembly toilets (and because Toby wanted to know if there were any Weevil references in it), I thought I'd tune in and give it a look – and improve my Welsh a little.

Bloody hell.

Clearly, the assembly hadn't seen a single episode of it before they said “Yes, sure, you can certainly film 'a conversation' in our toilets”.

It's a bit hard to think of a comparable English-language show, other than something like This Life, crossed with EastEnders maybe. But imagine, basically, non-stop shagging, cocaine snorting and pill popping, with just a bit of gay love thrown in for good measure, all to a soundtrack of Adam and the Ants and the Cure, and you're there basically. Seriously, Torchwood and just about anything else on British TV at the moment (where's Footballers' Wives when you need it?) look like CBeebies in comparison.

I'm not sure I'd necessarily rate it that highly and that's purely because it's so different: it's like trying to review Japanese Noh theatre after spending all your life watching episodes of Benidorm. For starters, there's a fair old load of over-acting, histrionics, and wall-to-wall “issues” which to me, look a little unconvincing.

But for a network that usually looks like it's been trapped in the 70s (cf Pobol Y Cwm and all those weird farming programmes and broadcasts from town halls), to have a glossy Kudos/World Productions-esque show like this is really quite remarkable. It's worth tuning in, if you can, just for the shock value alone, but it really does show off Cardiff nicely and if you miss This Life, this is the next best thing for now.

PS What weirded me out most about the episode was the fact there was one scene filmed in the exact same hotel room that we stayed in in Cardiff at the start of the month. Not just a similar one. The exact same room. Spooky.

UPDATE: You can watch episodes from the S4C web site. You'll need this if you're on a Mac. Turns out the episode I watched was one of the tamer ones. Just look at the catch-up on this one, for example!