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Post by fenris on Sept 5, 2007 18:46:39 GMT
Looking forward to the second series of Not Going Out, starting on BBC1 this Friday (07/09/07), though it's a shame that Kate (Megan Dodds) has been written out. Ultraviolet rocked. I've got the DVD but I hadn't watched it for years until they repeated it on the Sci Fi Channel a few months ago. Just made me remember how much I loved it. It was a brilliant, top quality show and the best thing is, it hasn't dated at all and is every bit as watchable today as it was when it was first aired. Was wandering between various shops last week, comparing prices for the Cape Wrath boxset, and came across Ultraviolet on DVD for only £12.00 (!!!). Snapped it up.
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Post by fenris on Sept 19, 2007 22:09:15 GMT
Starting on ITV1 next Thursday (27/09/07) at 21:00 is a new six part series, The Whistleblowers. Richard Coyle (from Coupling and Strange) and former Sci-Fright presenter and Torchwood cast member Indira Varma play a pair of person-injury lawyers who stumble across a human rights infringement. They subsequently decide to re-focus their careers on uncovering similar abuses of power, political scandals, and corporate cover-ups.
Sounds interesting, and the casting of Coyle and Varma is most welcome. Although familar to cult audiences, neither is an A list star or household name, so it's good to see them getting the opportunity to front a primetime series. Hopefully this is an indication that we're seeing the gradual reversal of a trend that's blighted British television drama for over a decade.
Originally, a writer or producer would come up with an idea for a TV show; the BBC or ITV would commission it, and then the casting process would begin, with actors and actresses being considered for roles because it was believed that they were right for the part. However, this procedure was turned on it's head during the Nineties, when the growing impact of satellite TV began to eat into ITV and the Beeb's ratings. When various actors gained fanbases due to playing popular characters in long-running drama series or soaps (for example, Ross Kemp in Eastenders, Sarah Lancashire in Coronation Street, and Robson Green in Soldier Soldier) and announced that they were leaving those shows to avoid being typecast, the BBC or ITV would quickly swoop and sign the actor in a 'golden handcuffs' deal... and only then think about manufacturing a new series for them to star in.
The result of this practice was that the central concept of the show (surely the key element of any TV series) was not longer the starting point from which everything else developed - instead, it was reduced to an afterthought.
And as the likes of Morse and A Touch of Frost were hugely popular at the time, the resulting shows that were churned out, only existing in order to keep the lead actor(s) gainfully employed, were all tissue-thin variations of the detective format. To name just a few, there were series about doctors (Dangerfield), coroners (Silent Witness), animal welfare officers (Badger), and insurance investigators (The Broker's Man), all investigating crime. They were bland, unimaginative, and near-identical. Truly tepid television (The Fast Show spoofed this trend mercilessly with their 'Monkfish' sketches, in which a character called John Actor was shown portraying hard-bitten crimefighters working in various unlikely professions).
I just hope that The Whistleblowers and other recent shows are a sign that the shortsighted days of creating a series around an actor - instead of creating a show and then finding the right actor for it - are past.
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Post by DreamDangerously on Sept 21, 2007 20:10:27 GMT
You're right, it's definitely time to see a return to character actors playing suitable roles rather than shows built around a name. You just have to look at the recent Jane Austen season on BBC. Most of the actresses in the lead roles, Billie Piper excluded - who was woefully mis-cast as Fanny Price, were either mostly unknown and cast on the basis of their suitability or they were strong, established character performers like Sally Hawkins.
These dramas have far more spark and class about them than the lame and tired detective/mystery concept. Even something quite star studded like Bleak House proved that an innovative concept and sound script writing are key, not formulaic nonsense.
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Post by fenris on Sept 24, 2007 19:24:20 GMT
Starting on ITV1 next Thursday (27/09/07) at 21:00 is a new six part series, The Whistleblowers. There are currently lengthy trailers for The Whistleblowers playing in UK cinemas, together with full page ads in the Sunday papers (yesterday). ITV are really pushing this series. Judging by the look and style of the adverts, they seem to be aiming for the Spooks audience.
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Post by fenris on Oct 1, 2007 20:00:46 GMT
Enjoyed the first episode of The Whistleblowers, which was full of twists and turns, and concentrated on how the Intelligence Services are flexing their muscles during the current 'war on terror'. The storyline explored the notion that if a bunch of spooks overstep their boundaries and commit an illegal act, they're automatically set on a course of constantly digging themselves even deeper, because the only alternative would be admitting they've broken the very laws that they're designed to protect.
Unfortunately, this initial episode was so fast-paced and plot heavy, that we learnt little about the show's main characters, solicitors Ben Graham and Alisha Cole (played by Richard Coyle and Indira Varma), other than (1.) he's recently discovered he's got a daughter he knew nothing about, from a previous relationship, (2.) she 's just been offered a partnership at the legal firm where they both work, and (3.) they live together. As a result, a key dramatic moment where Alisha is told that a condition of accepting the partnership is that she distance herself from Ben (who's become the victim of a Government smear campaign), fell completely flat, because we simply don't know enough about the two of them, how they feel about each other, or the strength of their relationship. Basically, we don't know what's at stake. If she chooses to leave him (though she clearly won't) do we care? They're still practically two-dimensional strangers to us.
Having so much story to pack into an hour also resulted in a blatant plothole, when a spook with a conscience told Ben the name of a freelance torturer who was being flown into the country - that's all, just the man's name - and in the very next scene Ben and Alisha have tracked him down and are trailing him,with absolutely no indication as to how they located him.
Considering how little both actors had to work with, Coyle performed minor miracles, revealing more about Ben with one long steady look than would have accomplished by reams of dialogue. Unfortunately Varma floundered somewhat, but she's proved her worth in other shows, and no doubt she'll get her chance to flesh out Alisha's character in future episodes.
Also noteworthy was the fact that to begin with, Ben and Alisha behaved pretty much as most of us would in similar circumstances. Told by the authorities that the man he saw being bundled into the back of a van is a terror suspect, Ben is happy to let the matter drop - it's only when the over-zealous Intelligence Services burgle their flat and try to frame him for fraud that he decides to blow the scandal wide open. And even then there's an occasion when he passes information to the suspect's lawyer and then attempts to walk away, telling himself he's done all he can.
In summary, The Whistleblowers is intelligent, issue-led television. And that's got to be a good thing.
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Post by Beattie~Babe on Oct 2, 2007 10:52:55 GMT
This should be another blinder of a documentary from Stephen and the BBC team ....
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Post by fenris on Oct 6, 2007 15:54:19 GMT
The second episode of The Whistleblowers proved that the producers are emphasizing story over characterisation. Our heroes Ben and Alisha have been given one defining tract each: he's the driven, passionate, slightly blinkered one, while she's more practical, level-headed, and attuned to other people. Third member of the team Danny has drawn the really short straw and only exists to tap away on computer keyboards and snap incriminating photos.
The show also seems to want punch slightly above it's weight and tackle far-reaching issues that perhaps require a bigger budget. The first episode had Ben and Alisha blow open a scandal that resulted in the Home Secretary resigning, and this week's instalment concerned a drugs company whipping up a scare about a pandemic in order to force the government into signing a multi-million pound contract to provide a vaccine. But the episode seemed to lack the sense of scale that was required: we are told that fear of the disease is making people refuse to go to work and parents are keeping their children at home instead of sending them to school, but it all happens off-screen. There was one effective sequence where a character walks down a street where every passer-by is wearing a face-mask (reminiscent of real-life scenes during the bird flu outbreak in the Far East a couple of years ago), but otherwise a sense of wide-spread panic was sadly missing.
That said, considering that most British TV thriller series about high-level conspiracies and abuses of power usually tend to be either six episodes in length (if made by the BBC) or two-part mini-series that last three or four hours (if produced by ITV or Channel Four), it's quite refreshing to have a show which rattles through a complex plot in less than an hour, even if this means the leading characters remain two-dimensional.
And there was no denying the quality of the supporting cast this week: David Threlfall, Kerry Fox, and a nicely arrogant turn by Mark Bazeley as a drug company troubleshooter. For the eagle-eyed among us, there was also a blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance by lovely Scottish actress Kari Corbett, previously a regular cast-member in Monarch of the Glen.
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Post by fenris on Oct 16, 2007 19:22:56 GMT
The Whistleblowers continues to impress, even if plot takes overwhelming precedent over characterisation. Considering that the first two episodes dealt with the British Secret Service torturing suspects and the covering-up of an outbreak of a lethal disease, the third episode's storyline about school funding would at first glance seem like a bit of come down. But instead it was the most gripping episode so far, and successfully made some thought-provoking points about the gradual privatization of state education.
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Post by fenris on Oct 23, 2007 18:21:23 GMT
Saturday nights seem to have become 'Period Horror Night' on the satellite/cable channel UKTV Drama. Last Saturday (20/10/07) they screened the version of Dracula starring Marc Warren that debuted on BBC1 last Christmas. And this coming Saturday (27/10/07) they're showing both episodes of the two part series The Wyvern Mystery back-to-back, starting at 21:00.
I watched The Wyvern Mystery when it was originally screened on BBC1 several years ago, and still have fond memories of it - especially the twist at the end of the first episode, when heroine Alice's happy and idyllic existence literally comes crashing down around her. It's a wonderfully atmospheric tale of Gothic horror, with Naomi Watts as Alice, and Jack Davenport, Iain Glen, and Sir Derek Jacobi as the various men in her life.
Watts was a struggling and mostly unknown actress when the series was first broadcast (though I was already a fan, having seen her steal the show in Tank Girl a few years earlier), but shortly after completing The Wyvern Mystery she got her big break in David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, and well-deserved A list stardom followed.
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Post by Beattie~Babe on Oct 23, 2007 18:50:10 GMT
Ive become obsessed with watching QI of late. I just love watching Stephen Fry doing what he does best (other than being a comedy genius),that man is an absolute fountain of knowledge, and shares it so generously.
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Post by WarrenWitchesRule on Oct 29, 2007 16:10:28 GMT
I was wondering if anyone else watched the ITV version of Frankenstein the other day?
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Post by fenris on Oct 29, 2007 19:14:04 GMT
I was wondering if anyone else watched the ITV version of Frankenstein the other day? Had planned to watch it, but ultimately didn't bother. But what I've read on other message boards, it seems I didn't miss much.
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Post by fenris on Feb 23, 2008 15:58:42 GMT
The first episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (the Virgin 1 channel, Thursdays at 22:00) contained enough large-scale action setpieces to satisfy a medium budget movie. Such high octane antics are necessary to grab the audience's attention, especially in the cut-throat and ratings obsessive market of American network television, but they can't be sustained indefinitely. Not only would the lead characters being chased at length every week soon grow tiresome, but the producers just couldn't afford it (all those explosions and wrecked vehicles don't come cheap). Various subplots and new characters - the latter bringing their own individual storylines with them - will have to be introduced over the next few weeks, and it will be these factors that decide whether the series succeeds or fails.
That said, the first episode managed the important initial task of feeling like authentic Terminator, especially the scene where Cameron and the T800 model grappled and threw each other through the walls and floor of Sarah and John's clapboard house. Brit actress Lena Headley captured the steeliness of Sarah Connor, if slightly lacking the intensity that Linda Hamilton brought to the role. But it's important to remember that the hairpin trigger edge of Hamilton's interpretation of Sarah may have worked perfectly in the two hours plus of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, but such a borderline unsympathetic character wouldn't be suitable in a TV series that viewers are going to watch every week.
Highlights of the first episode: Summer Glau's perfectly judged portrayal of Cameron; the moment where Sarah (who never allows herself to show any weakness, wavering or self-doubt in front of John) broke down in tears while alone with Cameron, proving that she instinctively trusts the female Terminator; the climax of the episode, in which the trio time travel to 2007, thus wiping the events of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines from the timeline (Clearly an attempt to appease the vocal majority of Terminator fandom, who regard the third film as the weakest of the series. Personally I liked T3, and considered it a worthy addition to the franchise. Oh well).
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Post by fenris on Mar 1, 2008 16:32:51 GMT
Interestingly, instead of using the jump forward in time at the conclusion of the pilot episode as an excuse to pretend that Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines never happened, the second episode of The Sarah Connor Chronicles tackled a key continuity point from that movie head on. In T3 we learnt that Sarah died of cancer, and when she's informed (by Cameron) about her fate in the original timeline, it understandably sends her a little weird, and renders her even quieter and more introspective than usual. The episode ends with Sarah undergoing tests in hospital. As I've stated above, I fully expected the producers to bypass the events of T3 altogether, and the fact that they decided to openly address it proves that they know the fans care about this stuff. An encouraging sign that this show is in good hands.
Also interesting is the revelation that unlike the T800 models in T2 and T3, which were programmed to obey orders from the present-day versions of John Connor and Kate Brewster respectively, Cameron has been programmed by the future version of John to protect and assist his past self and Sarah, but not to take orders from them (as witnessed by the final scene, in which Cameron guns down an old friend of Sarah's, against the latter's wishes). No doubt this will lead to further tension and conflict as the series progresses, especially as Sarah is quite the control freak.
Another wrinkle in Sarah and Cameron's relationship is that Sarah is starting to realise that the terminator knows the future version of John extremely well, and is feeling uncomfortable and increasingly jealous as a result. There's an intriguing hint of reverse-Oedipus complex here: having dedicated fifteen years of her life to obsessively protecting and training John, Sarah clearly considers him as being 'hers', and feels threatened by the thought of another woman getting close to him - even if she's a machine.
The visual highlight of the second episode was Sarah and John needing to exit an apartment building as quickly as possible, and Sarah sending a temporarily-deactivated Cameron down to ground level by simply heaving her out the window. And the subplot about the terminator that was decapitated in the pilot episode retrieving it's head upon it's arrival in 2007 was gruesomely amusing, if a blatant cheat (It's an established part of Terminator lore that only objects either made of - or surrounded by - living organic matter can travel through time. Therefore it would have been impossible for the exposed metallic severed head to follow Sarah, John and Cameron to the present).
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Post by fenris on Mar 4, 2008 19:05:08 GMT
After all the bad reviews and terrible word-of-mouth on line, last night I watched the first episode of Flash Gordon (Sci-Fi channel, 20:00) expecting it to be inept dribble, only to find that I actually didn’t mind it at all.
Like most, I groaned inwardly and feared the worst when it was announced that this series wouldn’t feature rocketships, and that Ming was some kind of water magnate instead of his usual Merciless self. However, on reflection these changes do make sense. When the Flash Gordon comic strip (and subsequent cliffhanger serials) become popular in the late Thirties, the concept of space travel was still very much a fantasy, and the public were willing to accept the idea that an eccentric genius like Zarkov could knock together in his shed a rocketship capable of travelling to distant planets. Now though, even a young child would consider that laughable. It’s seventy years since Flash debuted, and in reality the furthest Mankind has travelled is the Moon (and the last occasion was over thirty years ago); the first two permanent space-stations in orbit (Skylab and Mir) were both eventually abandoned; and the most sophisticated spacecraft ever made is still the Space Shuttle – which is almost three decades old, with two having been lost on missions together with their crews. With this in mind, the notion neatly sidestepping spacecraft by using portals to instantly travel between Earth and Mongo does make narrative sense, even if it was primarily decided upon for budgetary reasons. And following their repeated use in shows such as Sliders, Stargate SG1, Primeval and others, it could be argued that portals are the new rocketships anyway. Even the 1980 live action Flash Gordon movie compromised by having Zarkov’s craft pass through a portal in space in order to reach Mongo. Likewise, Ming’s transformation from openly fiendish conqueror into a shrewd politician was easier to swallow than I’d expected. In the real world, we are now well aware that true power is gauged by control of valuable natural resources instead of military might (for just one example, observe how Russia periodically squeezes it’s satellite neighbouring countries by threatening to withhold their gas supplies). And most real dictators don’t sit on thrones cackling aloud about how evil they are, while publicly declaring that the masses are feeble, worthless scum. Instead – like Ming in the new series – they feed their subjects propaganda, make token efforts to appear benevolent, and rule with an iron fist in a tissue-thin velvet glove. That said, Ming really should have a goatee.
I don’t really have any problems with most of the regular cast, even if some are slightly lightweight. Eric Johnson finds the right balance as Flash, determined and brave enough to be a hero, but normal enough to be an ordinary guy. Gina Holden is perfectly cast as Dale, portraying the character just as I’ve always imagined her. Having Flash and Dale as a former couple on still-friendly terms (as opposed to meeting for the first time as their adventures begin and instantly falling in love, as in prior versions of the saga) is also a wise move. Zarkov is played by a much younger actor than previous incarnations, and portrayed as a hyperactive, paranoid geek, but it works surprisingly well. John Ralston as Ming is fine, but Anna Van Hooft (Aura) has a tendency to go too 'valley girl' in some scenes. Mutant X and Adventure Inc veteran Karen Cliché is quietly impressive as no-nonsense bounty hunter Breylin (a new addition to the mythos), making her the most intriguing character.
However, there’s no denying that the show does have some problems. The actress playing Flash’s mother looks only a few years older than Eric Johnson, who portrays Flash. And there’s a major plothole in this episode concerning Aura. She’s quick-thinking and cunning enough to pose as a slave girl and free Flash from Ming’s torture chamber, with the intention that he’ll take her back to Earth where she plans to locate the Imex and impress her father. But once on Earth she stupidly starts behaving like a prissy diva, immediately blowing her cover like a first-rate idiot.
Of course, as the series progresses it could go rapidly downhill and I might decide it sucks donkey balls. But the first episode kept me reasonably entertained for eighty minutes and made me want to watch the second instalment. Job done.
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