So my beloved TV Tuesdays have come to an end for another year - well, for a few months until things start up again anyway.  I figured I'd get some of my thoughts down about what has gone by and what is to come, and besides I'm putting off doing some real work so this seems as good an excuse as any!  I've been spotting ex-BSG cast quite regularly this year too, popping up in various guises, so just for fun I'm keeping a tally - let me know if I've missed any. 

When you're done here, check out my good friend Captain Kibble's take on all things TV - funnier and with pictures! Kibblemania

24
This one hasn't quite finished in the UK yet.  It's Jack Bauer's final TV outing, and as I've never been able to watch 24 week-to-week as it's just too damn tense, I saved it all up and watched it over 4 days after the finale became available online.  Have to say it's one of my favourite seasons up there with 1 & 3; yes it's still really silly and unbelievable and they did decide to push Jack completely over the edge this time, but they did a great job with the direction.  There is a terrific shot in one of the finale 2 eps (forget which one) where they don't even bother showing you Jack fighting, they just pan across a room showing the trail of destruction and dead bodies, which just tells you everything you need to know.  And I have to say they have set it up well for a movie I think.

BSG rollcall: 2


Caprica
I was quite surprised by Caprica.  Seemed to be as far away from BSG as you could get but it turned out to be very well written and actually some of the best "real" science fiction seen on TV for a long time.  Both technically and philosophically it hit the marks and I can't wait until it comes back.


Castle
Just got better and better - Fillion and Katic make very charismatic leads, the writing is solid and it gives you exactly what you'd expect.  Yes it's very much light drama but sometimes that's all you want and it's very easy to get this mixture wrong, but it's been consistently great.  Picked up for a third season, so roll on Autumn!

BSG rollcall: 1


Chuck
Chuck was really very clunky for a good half of the season I thought - they bought in Brandon Routh (seemingly just to be able to make the "Who do you think you are? Superman?" joke) and kept him around WAY past his sell-by date.  Terrible actor.  I know Chuck is not going for serious thespian performances but even so...  Second part of the season was lifted by Yvonne Strahovsky constantly wandering around in her underwear and Sarah Lancaster getting even more gorgeous, and Julia Ling re-appearing!  Works for me!  It ended strongly, with a surprise introduction for next season.  Not sure if the new character has been cast yet, but going on Chuck's previous form of playing to the geeks I'm hoping for Mary McDonnell.

BSG rollcall: 1?


Dexter
I touched on this in a previous post so I'll be brief; brilliant show, best season yet, and the final 4 episodes were the best 4hrs or so of TV I've seen this year full stop.  Genius.


Flashforward
They cancelled it.  Damn, just as it was getting good!!!  Admittedly it probably killed itself with the first half-dozen episodes where everything was happening without any explanations and it was lumping character upon character, but after the hiatus it cam back strongly with a terrific double episode which just threw the doors wide open, and carried on from there.  I guess that the audiences didn't come back with the show.  I am so pissed off that this has been cancelled while "V" gets another season.

BSG rollcall: 1

Heroes
They cancelled it.  Thank God.
I'd sit there watching every week, wondering WHY I was watching.  The show was great until the finale of the first season which was one of the biggest let-downs in TV history.  I think I (and seemingly millions of others) kept watching in the hope that maybe, just maybe it could get back to where it was.
But no.  I think it ended in a good way, where they could close the door and let you imagine where it would go but without a massive cliffhanger.  It doesn't need any TV movies, please just let it end there.


House
Confusing season, confusing ending.  But oddly I think this may be the one season that I'll want to re-watch.


How I Met Your Mother
Running out of ideas.  Barney is really the only reason for watching this now and even he isn't the same as he was.  Maybe has one good season left in it I think.


Stargate Universe
For the love of God someone push Chloe out of an airlock.  Even stranding her on a planet only lasted 2 episodes before she came strolling back through the gate in an occurrence that is still not being explained...
Other than that it's been pretty good, and I feel that the writers have some good ideas in the wings.  I will keep watching.


The Big Bang Theory
Slightly hit and miss this year, but for the funniest show on TV that still leaves it way ahead of the pack.  Totally worth it just for the physics montage and Sheldon in the ball-pit.

BSG rollcall: 2

The Pacific
Not a patch on Band of Brothers.  Rambling, too talky, overly gory when there was actually some action, and it explained very little about the actual campaigns.


V
I'm getting the "Heroes" vibe with this one.  NOTHING happens, nothing is explained; unlike the 80s series where you knew why the aliens were here and exactly why they were a menace, all they've done so far is heal a lot of people.  I'm sure the writers were trying to convey them as being cold and emotionless but it's really not coming across.  Elizabeth Mitchell lights up the screen whenever she's on it but all the others might as well be played by shop window dummies.  It had better all kick off in a big way when it comes back or I'm off...

I've saved up some shows to fend off the summer drought, so I have still to watch "Treme" from David Simon who wrote "The Wire" and "Generation Kill"; "Breaking Bad" is now in season 3, and going on the first 2 seasons there is little to worry about, fantastic show.

And coming up?  Well, "Burn Notice" is back and has been given 3 more seasons, making 6 in total which is fantastic news.  "True Blood" is back this month, as is "Entourage", hoping for more good things from those.  Biggest thing on the horizon is of course "The Walking Dead" from AMC, who also make Breaking Bad.  More on that as it gets closer.

Tags: awesome, geek, opinion, rant, reviews, sci-fi, spoilers, tv, vampires, zombies
Categories: Geek | Opinion | rant | Reviews | spoilers | TV | zombies

Ok, own up.  Who has kidnapped Guy Richie and replaced him with someone who can make appealing movies?  Seriously, I only decided to go see this because of Robert Downey Jr (who along with Ed Norton is my favourite actor working today), but I have to hold my hands up and say that I loved it.  Not something I've been able to say about a Guy Richie film since "Lock, Stock...".  Getting rid of that sinewy hag (Madonna to you and me) has clearly done the man good and the creative block has been lifted.

RDJ and Jude Law are both on top form - and it's really not often I have good things to say about Jude Law, believe me.  RDJ is clearly loving every minute of this re-imagined character and makes it completely his own.  This is not Holmes in the classic Basil Rathbone / Jeremy Brett tradition.

Sherlock Holmes is a lot more fun than it has any right to be.  They seem to have taken inspiration from a couple of places.  Firstly and most obviously, Holmes has basically become Batman.  He's off-the-chart smart but he also fist-fights, is stealthy, and survives explosions that would have killed normal people.  Sounds tacky but hey this is fantasy and it works well.  Having done a bit of digging however, it seems that in the original books and stories, Holmes was an accomplished fist-fighter and martial artist, so clearly this interpretation has gone back to the basics but then taken a different path from earlier adaptations.

The second inspiration seems to me to be from "House", the medical drama starring Hugh Laurie.  Now, given that "House" is directly inspired by Sherlock Holmes, things have come full circle.  It's most obvious in the Holmes / Watson relationship, which mirrors quite closely the House / Wilson relationship in the TV show.  If you're familiar with the show you'll see what I mean when you watch the film. 

The plot, about a practitioner of Black Magic, walks a thin line - at times it could go either way but for me it never slipped over into ridiculous.  Instead it reminded me of some of the classic Hammer Horror movies, like "The Devil Rides Out", as did the main villain (an excellent Mark Strong who I had never heard of until now).  It's intriguing, and you don't have the ending telegraphed to you, which makes a change.

Special effects - top notch.  There is a sequence with a boat which was especially spectacular, and the look of London is astonishing.  The whole film looks lush.  Even Mr Richie's trademark slow-fast-slow editing doesn't detract - in fact this works really well when you're being shown Holmes train of thought through flashback or flashforward.

So there you are, go see it.  This is definitely on my must-buy list for the New Year, hope they can get the BluRay out before Summer - but I may well go see it again at the cinema before that, that's how much I liked it.

Trailer below:

Tags: awesome, geek, movies, opinion, reviews, trailer, youtube
Categories: Geek | Movies | Opinion | Reviews | trailers | TV

As a bit of a geek, I've been quite looking forward to the two-part Doctor Who adventure being broadcast over Christmas and New Year.  I don't watch a huge amount of TV, but there are some things I will take the time out to sit down and watch.  Ideally I'd like to be able to watch this with no preconceptions but I've been prevented from doing so by an almost pathological insistence by the media and the internet to tell me almost every detail of what is going to happen.

I've noticed this getting worse over the past few years. One of the worst offenders in my realm of interest has actually been Doctor Who - Russell T Davies seems completely unable to contain his excitement about what he has just written, and how clever he is, and how every Who fan is going to be excited that just about everyone to ever set foot on a Doctor Who set would probably get screentime at one point or another.  The BBC cannot stop releasing teaser trailers, taking full-page ads in Radio Times, spilling info to the red-top press, etc.

By June (at the latest!) you usually know who the Big Bad in the Christmas Special is going to be.  This year we knew that the Master was coming back, and so were the TimeLords (no, no, not the KLF spinoff).  Previous years it was the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Cybermen (again) plus the Daleks (again), Davros (guess who he brought with him?).  Does any of this actually make you want to watch and heighten the experience when you do?

I'm not sure it does.  Having almost all the information about a show presented to you well in advance doesn't make you sit and think "I can't wait, I wonder what will happen".  No, what it does is make you mentally fill in the gaps, then almost always be less than impressed when the missing pieces are different from your imaginings, or even worse, don't make sense.  This is fine when you only have one or two pieces of information about the show or movie because you cannot formulate the entire story, but when you have 80% of the story, plus speculation from the internet, plus interviews of the actors and writers and you only have bits left to fill in the capacity for being disappointed is increased immensely.

I had the inverse experience a few weeks ago while watching the latest season of Dexter.  In case you're not familiar, Dexter is an American TV show about a blood-spatter analyst working for the Miami Metro police department, who just happens to be a serial killer on the side.  He only kills other killers who escape the justice system, so that's alright then.  It's a terrific show and I recommend it very highly.  From previous seasons of the show you know that Dexter will usually be pursuing a killer or other bad guy throughout the series.  Of this I knew in advance only that John Lithgow (from Third Rock from the Sun) was signed up to be the Big Bad, Dexter's nemesis for this season.  Nothing else.  No other tidbits.  I watched it week-to-week, and it was one of the most tense things I've ever seen.  A couple of episodes literally left me staring open-mouthed at the screen as it faded to black.  Astonishing stuff.

The one single time when this was broken was when I accidentally caught a trailer for the next episode.  This was edited to include what turned out to be the MASSIVE cliffhanger at the end of the next episode!!!  I mean, what the hell is the point?  I really wish I'd not seen it as the effect it had was for me to sit watching that next episode waiting for it to hit all the points in that trailer.  I told friends who were also watching Dexter to make sure they avoided it, as it really took the edge off.  Admittedly, it does give you a frisson of excitement at the point you're watching it, but that is only diluting the effect that the show itself will have.  Surely something good is worth waiting for?

I also believe that with the right kind of personality (ie, mine), spoilers heighten your cynicism.  Recent example, Avatar.  I've still not seen it.  I'm not that bothered precisely because of the trailers, spoilers and hype.  I've heard from people who's opinion I trust on films that it is actually pretty good, but I know I'm still going to go in there arms folded thinking "right, impress me then Jim!".  It's kind of depressing.  All because I know (or think I know) too much about it.

As usual I blame the internet.  Forums, blogs, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook - too much instant in-your-face information which reveals far too much even at the most cursory glance.  It's back to the Information Overload thing I wrote about a while back, which is both a blessing and a curse.  It's all about having things right now, not having to wait, and the short attention span effect that has, such that we have to keep being shown more and more to make us actually pay attention to the final product.

I have some more to say about this but that will have to wait until another day, in a post I'm working on about procrastination - oh wait, sorry, [SPOILER].

Tags: geek, opinion, sci-fi, tv, rant, spoilers
Categories: Geek | Movies | Opinion | Sci-Fi | TV | rant | spoilers

As mentioned in an earlier post of mine, I've become quite a fan of US TV drama & comedy series.  Thankfully, after everything I said in my last post about these things not being quickly available in the UK things are changing, and more quality shows seem to be finding their way here much sooner than they have previously.  This is a Good Thing.  Anyway, here's my thoughts on some of the things I've been watching lately

Heroes
So we're into series 4, but does anyone really care anymore?  This is apparently the most downloaded show, but I'm kind of at a loss to see why.  The writers don't seem to have a coherent plan, everything is fragmented and the whole Carnival thing (which started off quite promising and creepy) just isn't being explained enough... maybe the next ep with the return of Mohinder will sort things out?  Doubt it, but still...

Dexter
Again season 4, and still as good as ever, but I really think he has to be found out by his sister soon, and this series would be a good time to do it I think.  Best thing this year is the incomparable John Lithgow as Trinity... a revelation if you've only known him from comedy, he goes from civil to psychopath in the blink of an eye, and manages to be terrifying even when acting normally - he is this show's Hannibal Lecter.  Wonderful.

House
Most watched TV show in the world for one reason - Hugh Laurie.  Man is awesome, and deserves every plaudit.  What can I say, if you don't watch House, you really should.  Do your self a favour and get the boxsets and have a marathon.  Yeah, ok it has a formula, but it's the performances that make it compelling.

Castle
Only introduced to this a few weeks ago - it's Nathan Fillion's (of Firefly / Serenity) current project.  How can I describe it?  It is on the surface your typical ABC afternoon drama show, but after the first short season it has finally found it's stride and is a pleasure to watch.  Basic synopsis - famous author follows police detective around to do research for new book, helps to solve cases, bit of romantic tension thrown in for good measure.  That may well put you off but the show is carried ably by the two leads - Fillion with his wit and charm, and Stana Katic by being hot and funny.  This actress is one to watch, like a younger Courteney Cox meets Penelope Cruz (hang on, let me just visualise that...), with good comic timing.  It's entertaining in kind of a Moonlighting way, but without being as self-aware as that show.  Check it out anyway.

Flash Forward
The new "Lost"...? I never got into Lost but I'm trying hard with this one.  They seem to be throwing a lot more information around, which may or may not be a good thing.  I'll stick with it though, if only to see how they deal with the episode set on the day of the FlashForward next April.  That will be the decider I think...  I still reckon iit will turn out to be one of Derren Brown's "Events".

Stargate Universe
Robert Carlyle is the main reason I'm still watching this.  At the outset they said "people will die on this show", and I'm still waiting for them to jetison more of the annyoing cast - I think they lost one character and have stranded 2 on a planet (possibly, they sent them through a gate but they may have gotten back off-screen as it's not been mentioned since).  I'm still worried it's going to turn into "this week's dilemma / race-against-time", but it seems to still be teetering on the edge of being a great show.

Big Bang Theory
Hilarious, no other way to describe it.  The "Rocky" montage and the Wil Wheton ep were laugh-out-loud funny for me, which is rare.

V
Is this a right-wing dig at Obama?  The aliens are all good looking, have a united society (clearly Communism, right?) "come in peace" and literally promise "universal healthcare".  I think this maybe a parallel to BSG which was a response to 9/11 and Iraq.  Will be interesting to see how it develops - only 4 episodes coming before it disappears until March, so they have to come up with a massive cliffhanger to get people to tune back in.  

Breaking Bad
Only just started watching this, and good to see Channel 5 have picked it up in the UK.  Bryan Cranston (dad from "Malcolm in the Middle") plays a fifty-year-old chemistry professor who finds out he has lung cancer and only months to live.  Wanting to provide for his family he makes an ill-judged choice to use his chemistry knowledge to get into the drugs trade by cooking Crystal Meth... Best way I can describe the first couple of episodes is like a Coen Brothers movie - very funny but with a dark streak a mile wide.  This is definitely one to check out.  There are 2 seasons so far, the first only has 7 episodes so I hope C5 shows both back-to-back.

That's pretty much it - just these few shows go to demonstrate the massive gulf in quality between the UK and US.  Thank the lord for the internet.

Tags: geek, opinion, sci-fi, tv
Categories: Geek | General | Opinion | Reviews | TV

A report on the BBC and some stats from IO9.com piqued my interest this afternoon.  The stats show that the most downloaded show (according to media snooping company BigChampagne) is Heroes.

Heroes; 54,562,012
Lost; 51,151,396
24; 34,119,093
Prison Break; 29,283,591
House; 26,277,954
Fringe; 21,434,755
Desperate Housewives; 21,378,412
Grey's Anatomy; 19,916,775
Gossip Girl; 19,706,870
Smallville; 19,598,999

The numbers are the number of downloads, apparently.  The BBC says that the number of films and TV shows being downloaded, rather than music, is on the increase. Hmmm....

Personally I have never downloaded a movie.  I love films, but I also like to own things.  Downloading music and movies just feels wrong to me - music because I grew up in the age of vinyl and had a large collection, and the best part about coming home from a record fair was poring over the gorgeous sleeve artwork and reading all the notes while playing the album.  Still nothing quite like that, but I still buy CDs. Now however they are immediately ripped to FLAC for archiving and the CD is put on the shelf for display.  There is no emotional connection any more. Its a real shame, and once you lose that connection to the product it feels less obviously a crime to just take it.

Movies I won't download because I like going to the cinema, despite the overpricing, sticky floors and noisy bastards who seem to just want to talk once they are there.  I've also spent a fair bit over the years building up a collection of movies and setting aside a room as a dedicated home cinema.  After that, I don't want to be putting a DVD-R with a hastily scribbled label on it into my player.  Nothing different about the quality of the output, but somehow the quality of the experience is lessened.  I don't buy into the argument about wanting to see what it's like without wasting money, movies should be watched on a big screen, not a laptop, and you have no right to complain that a movie is rubbish if you haven't paid to see it.

Now TV.  That is a different thing.  It is a mass-broadcast media, which means you have every chance to watch it if it's broadcast where you live.  Unfortunately on this score I live in the UK, where we have cheap recycled unimaginative shit on the box most of the time - wall-to-wall reality shows, "talent" shows, even the drama is mostly based around the same few ideas, usually police detective or something of that genre.  It's pitiful.

I watch very little UK-origin TV now.  What I do watch is largely US drama, comedy and sci-fi - House, BSG, The wire, The Shield, ER, 24, True Blood, Dexter, Burn Notice...  I could go on.  SOme of these are made available on a couple of cable-only channels which means I have to pay extra for the priviledge of watching something of good quality.  Thing is, they are usually shown months later, the series has often finished in the States and been spoiled on the Internet long before I can legally have a chance to watch it.  Hence, TV is the only thing I download, because I genuinely want to watch the shows.  I have a wall full of the series boxsets, which again I gladly buy when they are available, for the shows that I've loved and watched again and again. I will even buy US versions of the boxsets if they are better (the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" boxsets for example are in the correct 4:3 ratio only on the US releases).  But again, DVD companies tried to prevent even this by region locking the discs so you have to have a multi-region player to be able to watch the discs.  Luckily this isn't a problem any more, and Blu-Ray is largely region-free so it seems the companies saw the error in this policy.

Looking at the report on the BBC site, a few things stand out:

"This is a socially acceptable form of casual piracy - and it is replacing viewing hours." - er, no it isn't.  It's telling you what people enjoy watching.  It should be guiding your programming, and what you make available around the world.  

"Big Champagne's research also shows that the rate of piracy for live events, such as sport or talent shows, is much lower than that for popular drama series." - instead of pushing shit like the X Factor and Britain's Got Talent just because crazy-cat-lady was popular on YouTube, how about making these "most downloaded" shows more widely available, as people clearly want them?

"The research also looks at unauthorised film downloads and shows they are getting lower audiences than those for TV programmes." - yes, because films are a one-off.  If you show quality TV to people you will likely have ongoing viewers.

Honestly, I hope someone is learning this time instead of taking the knee-jerk reaction that the other media companies have (who have made things worse for themselves).  I would gladly pay extra if I could customise my TV viewing to an extent where I can just get the things I want to watch - which is basically what I do by downloading TV which is unavailable to me any other way.  I would pay for a legal torrent service to get US TV and drama, charged by what I download - or even free but with adverts where they would be if they were being broadcast.  I'd like to be able to get HBO, Showtime and the other major channels over here. I would also like to see the archive opened, which I think the BBC is working on - my other major download source is for old TV shows and documentaries which will never see the light of day on DVD.  Why should I not be allowed to watch these things again?

Anyway, I'm off to watch a (legal!) DVD...

Tags: geek, movies, tv, piracy, opinion
Categories: TV | piracy