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Post by fenris on Sept 25, 2010 13:31:25 GMT
It's pilot time again at BBC Three. Pulse, written by Paul Cornell, is the one that's of most interest to genre fans (the synopsis sounds very Trinity-like, with all its talk of secret experiments and parents dying suddenly and in suspicious circumstances), and the one that I'm looking forward to most. That Little Dorrit's Claire Foy is the star also bodes well. The latest issue of SFX (#201) reports that Pulse has not been picked up for a full series.
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Post by fenris on Jan 15, 2011 16:14:35 GMT
The first series of Murder in Suburbia is getting another repeat run on ITV3. ITV3 are currently repeating the first series of Murder in Suburbia on Saturdays at 23:00.
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Post by fenris on Jan 24, 2011 20:30:34 GMT
Sky purchased the Living TV group last year, thereby obtaining the channels Living, Living It, Living Loves, Channel One (formerly Virgin One), Challenge and Bravo - with the latter having recently been closed down, due to being deemed surplus to requirements. Further changes are planned in February: Channel One will also close (apparently to make way for new channel Sky Atlantic), while Living will be renamed Sky Living and receive an influx of shows that were previously on Sky One and the now-defunct Bravo. One new show debuting on Sky Living will be the six-part horror saga Bedlam, which is Living TV's first original drama series. Therefore (drum-roll please), it's also Sky's first homegrown horror/supernatural show since Hex was cancelled. However, considering it's the first drama series that Living have ever commissioned, information about Bedlam on their official website is extremely meagre. Currently there's just a photo of the cast (which includes Hugo Speer and Pop Idol-made-good Will Young) and this brief synopsis; The contemporary paranormal series, Bedlam, is set around Bedlam Heights – an apartment block converted from a pre-Victorian lunatic asylum and its inhabitants. But the conversion of Bedlam Heights awakens a darker side of the building, with former asylum spirits coming back to take back what they believe to be theirs and seek revenge on those who have wronged them – targeting one set of flat sharers in particular. The terrifying hauntings that follow reveal that sometimes when you scratch away the surface, things aren’t always what they seem.Source: www.livingtv.co.uk/shows/bedlam.phpAccording to some TV listings websites, Bedlam begins on 8th February 2011 at 21:00. Unfortunately I won't be able to watch it, as I use the Sky FreeSat service, which doesn't include Sky One or any of the Living channels.
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Post by orokiah on Jan 25, 2011 13:42:07 GMT
One new show debuting on Sky Living will be the six-part horror saga Bedlam, which is Living TV's first original drama series. According to some TV listings websites, Bedlam begins on 8th February 2011 at 21:00. Unfortunately I won't be able to watch it, as I use the Sky FreeSat service, which doesn't include Sky One or any of the Living channels. The first episode of Bedlam is also being shown on Sky3 at 11pm on 11/02/11 - it's part of the latest Sky3 Free Weekend Pass. It's only the one episode, but on the bright side, it's free.
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Post by fenris on Feb 13, 2011 16:28:52 GMT
The first episode of Bedlam is also being shown on Sky3 at 11pm on 11/02/11 - it's part of the latest Sky3 Free Weekend Pass. It's only the one episode, but on the bright side, it's free. Watched the first episode of Bedlam when it was shown on Sky 3 (thanks for the heads-up, orokiah) and was quite impressed. The slam-bang pre-opening-titles scene that neatly takes the legend of the phantom hitchhiker and turns it on it's head was a marvelously effective prologue. However, the episode did then take a slight dip for approximately the next twenty minutes, displaying all the subtlety of a sledgehammer as a waterlogged ghost popped up seemingly every thirty seconds and there was a sex scene between two characters we'd only just met (an attention-grabbing device that is rapidly becoming a cliche - both Trinity and Lip Service also had frantic couplings within the first few minutes of their debut episodes). Thankfully, things then calmed down and the script undertook the necessary business of a series opener by introducing the regular characters and their relationships with each other. It not only did this with great efficiency, but gained extra marks for also deftly informing us what all these individuals do for a living (something that most first episodes wouldn't bother with). There's reluctant medium Jed (played by Theo James, who spends half of his scenes with his shirt off), whose ability to see dead people has led to him being bounced in-and-out of institutions all his life for being 'delusional'. His cousin Kate (Charlotte Salt) is selling apartments in the former mental asylum that her property developer father (Hugo Speer) has converted into a housing project, and is effectively living above the shop by sharing a flat in the building with two room-mates/tenants: the unemployed and unlucky-in-love Molly (Ashley Madekwe), and the likeable but self-conscious Ryan (Will Young), who runs a one-man computer repair business in the box room. Bedlam Heights itself is a great location, and there were moments in this introductory episode that I found reminiscent of Sky's earlier supernatural/horror effort The Sight (which never went further than a pilot movie shown in 2000), particularly the scene in which Jed spotted the ghost of a drowning victim reading a letter that had been dropped into the canal just moments earlier. By the time the end credits rolled, this first episode had confidently established the formula that the rest of the series will surely follow: Jed tackling a Ghost of the Week with Ryan as sidekick, while on-going storylines bubble away in the background regarding the motives of Kate's father, their family's history, and the fate of missing tenant Zoey. It's all highly promising. In fact, the only disappointing thing about Bedlam is that I won't be able to see it. If the positive buzz that the opening episode has generated on other forums continues in the weeks ahead, then I may invest in the DVD boxset.
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Post by fenris on Feb 16, 2011 16:07:05 GMT
We're currently in one of those all-too-rare periods where British TV briefly goes fantasy/sci-fi/horror crazy, with the schedules seemingly overflowing with homegrown genre product. The fourth season of Primeval has recently concluded on ITV1, and their five-part haunted house drama Marchlands (based on an aborted American series called The Oaks that never got beyond a pilot episode filmed in 2007) is being screened on Wednesdays at 21:00. Meanwhile, Being Human's third season is being shown on BBC Three each Sunday at 21:00, and despite still receiving rave reviews from it's loyal fanbase and attracting big name guest stars such as Robson Green and Nicola Walker, it remains of no interest to me whatsoever. Bedlam continues on Sky Living each Tuesday at 22:00, repeated on Thursday & Sunday at varying times. It's generating mostly positive comments on-line, with the majority of reviewers stating that they expected it to be a clumsy mash-up of Hollyoaks and Ghost Whisperer, but they've been pleasantly surprised. As it's not produced by Shine, Bedlam can't be considered a true sister show to Hex (unlike Demons) but as they're both Sky commissions, they can be thought of as being stablemates. Therefore it's gratifying to see Bedlam being so well received. Let's just hope this translates into decent ratings. Speaking of which, following a massive publicity blitz, BBC1's big budget sci-fi epic Outcasts debuted just over a week ago with twice-weekly primetime screenings... but it's swiftly become an equally massive flop, with audience figures of less than three million. The SFX website reports that the remaining episodes are being shunted to a late night slot on Sundays; The BBC’s new sci-fi show, which only began airing last Monday, is to be moved to a late night Sunday slot after “disappointing” ratings. There will one more episode shown next Monday on BBC 1 at 9pm, then the next episode after that will be on at 10.25pm on Sunday 27 February. The final two episodes will then follow at a similar time on the next two Sundays. Last night the show, which launched with 4.4 million viewers, fell to a new ratings low against tough competition from Channel 4’s ratings juggernaut My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding – just 2.63 million viewers. BBC drama controller, Ben Stephenson, said the move did not signal that the BBC does not want to take risks and said the show had attracted a “loyal, core audience… BBC1 and BBC Drama support creative risk. Sometimes this means that talented people make shows that don’t engage enough of the audience. I have so much respect for any writer who has the nerve and confidence to create their own original world and serve it up to an audience. It’s highly important to me to support them no matter how the project is received, whilst primarily always trying to engage the widest possible audience.” Let’s just hope the BBC realise that the reason Outcasts failed to find a wide audience was because it was a little bit dull, and not because there isn’t a big audience out there for adult sci-fi.Source: www.sfx.co.uk/2011/02/16/outcasts-cast-out-to-late-night-sunday-slot/#ixzz1E8N0Z61T
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Post by fenris on Feb 19, 2011 15:42:46 GMT
I've discovered that a British-made teen mystery/horror series that may be of interest to Hex fans is about to be screened on satellite/cable channel Nickelodean. The wonderfully titled House of Anubis debuts on Friday 25/02/11 at 17:00. The main character is Nina Martin (played by Nathalia Ramos), an American girl who has lived with her grandmother since the death of her parents. Leaving the States to attend an exclusive British private school, she moves into Anubis House, one of the boarding houses for the students that form part of the school buildings. Nina's arrival coincides with another Anubis resident, popular student Joy Mercer (Klariza Clayton), suddenly going missing without any explanation, and Nina is initially treated with suspicion and resentment by her fellow students. But when the teaching staff merely gloss over Joy's disappearance, Nina and several of the other pupils band together to investigate their friend's vanishing, and as the series progresses, they discover there are many strange mysteries and dangerous secrets buried deep in the history of Anubis House. Filmed in Liverpool, House of Anubis consists of sixty episodes and has already been shown on Nickelodean in America: it started on 1st January 2011 with two episodes screened each weekday, and the series finale is actually being shown over there today (19/02/11). The series is based on a Belgian/Dutch TV show called Het Huis Anubis ( The House of Anubis) that ran between September 2006 and December 2009, and was so popular that it spawned three movies (two of which were released in cinemas, while the third was shown on the Dutch version of Nickelodean), a spin-off series called Het Huis Anubis en de Vijf van het Magische Zwaard ( The House of Anubis and the Five of the Magical Sword) that has a new group of students living in Anubis House and which is still on-going, plus a German remake called Das Haus Anubis. Here's a link to the section of the Nickelodean (UK) website that's dedicated to House of Anubis: nick.co.uk/shows/houseofanubis/
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Post by fenris on Feb 22, 2011 12:41:06 GMT
I've discovered that a British-made teen mystery/horror series that may be of interest to Hex fans is about to be screened on satellite/cable channel Nickelodean. The wonderfully titled House of Anubis debuts on Friday 25/02/11 at 17:00. House of Anubis is getting a surprising publicity push. I've never known Nickelodean to advertise their shows on any of the mainstream channels before, but I was watching the 17:30 screening of Neighbours on Five yesterday (21/02/11), and two separate trailers for House of Anubis were shown during the commercial break.
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Post by fenris on Feb 23, 2011 17:06:34 GMT
ITV3 are currently repeating the first series of Murder in Suburbia on Saturdays at 23:00. ITV3 are repeating the second (and final) series of Murder in Suburbia, starting next Saturday (26/02/10) at 23:00 with the episode 'Witches', in which Ash & Scribbs investigate an exclusive private girls school after one of the students is stabbed to death in the local graveyard. As I've previously mentioned in this thread, 'Witches' is particularly worth watching if you're a Hex fan, as it often feels like an unofficial crossover with our favourite show. Amongst the episode's guest-stars are Sugar Rush's Olivia Hallinan and Ashes to Ashes' Montserrat Lombard (who gets to jiggle about in skimpy black underwear in one scene).
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Post by orokiah on Apr 7, 2011 12:04:24 GMT
We're currently in one of those all-too-rare periods where British TV briefly goes fantasy/sci-fi/horror crazy, with the schedules seemingly overflowing with homegrown genre product. Following the success of Being Human, a new supernatural horror, The Fades, is on the way for BBC Three:- Iain De Caestecker (River City, Coronation Street) is Paul, a young man who is haunted by apocalyptic dreams that neither his therapist or best friend, Mac, can provide answers for. Worse still, Paul is starting to see the Fades – the spirits of the dead – all around him.
They're everywhere but they can't be seen, smelt, heard or touched by living beings. But now an embittered and vengeful Fade has found a way to break the barrier between the dead and the living and Paul, Mac and their friends and family are all right in the eye of the storm.
But the most terrifying twist is yet to come – the fate of humanity rests in the hands of the two friends who already have enough trouble getting through a day in one piece, let alone saving the world.
Currently in production for transmission later this year, The Fades (previously titled Touch) is a co-production with BBC America.Source
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Post by fenris on Jun 27, 2011 14:26:56 GMT
ITV3 are currently repeating the first series of Murder in Suburbia on Saturdays at 23:00. A repeat run of the first series of Murder in Suburbia begins tonight (27/06/11) on ITV3 at 22:00, and continues each Monday.
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Post by fenris on Jun 29, 2011 14:36:33 GMT
Hopefully, most visitors to this forum are fans not only of Hex but also it's sister show Demons. Well, thanks to the following article from the SFX website, I've now learnt that there's a British web-series about another last Van Helsing descendent; Normality as horror and horror as normality. It’s an idea that’s fascinated me ever since a friend of mine pointed something out about Signs. It’s actually a film about how rubbish it is not being the hero in a science fiction movie. You bite and kick and scream and try your best to survive until the guy with a squarer jaw and less likely name than you saves the day. Chances are you’ll fail too. But you’ll try. The same could be said about Cloverfield, a movie which, right up until the shooting draft was designed to sit just to the left of the traditional monster movie, complete with a fleeting cameo from the “stars” of that movie. The world ends for the bit players as well as the stars and that fascinates me. After all, someone has to think of the henchmen.
The thing that really gets me, though, is it happening here, where I live. English horror has a very different feel to everything else for me because it’s so…nice. The phrase “cosy catastrophe” was bandied about as an insult of sorts a few years ago and there’s certainly an element of that. Wells, Doyle and Wyndham all did a great job of turning England over and seeing what lies underneath and it’s all too easy to fall back on the idea that the Martians wil be defeated in time for tea and medals at the vicarage. There’s an element of that certainly, but there’s also something more grounded and pragmatic about English horror for me that, done right, hits me like nothing else. The cheerfully ghastly suburban blood party that Adam’s rescued from in Being Human springs to mind, as does the cheery, and doomed, TV programme at the heart of Ghostwatch. The horror’s still there – still very real – but it’s wearing slightly rubbish trousers and still wants to be home in time to catch that repeat of Luther.
This is the genius of web series I Am Tim. The last Van Helsing’s name is Tim, he likes Garfield and the dark is coming for him. The dark that lives under every motorway, around every corner, the dark that stands behind you in the line for chips, that likes a certain chair in the pub. Monsters are real, they hate Mondays too, and they live in the same, normal, resolutely unsexy places we live in. The only one that stands between us and them is Tim. And Anna. And Poncho. And the film crew. But not Reign. Reign never leaves his office; what the hell do you take him for?
I Am Tim balances this idea of normal horror with a jet black sense of humour and a very, very welcome sense of the ridiculous. There are no big operatics here, no epic grand guignol, just a normal man and his friends holding back the dark, almost dying and doing it anyway. There’s heroism here, as well as horror, but it’s never overblown and that’s what really gets me about this odd little sub genre and I Am Tim in particular. Tim’s a normal (well, normalish, he is on his second face), man in an extremely abnormal world. He doesn’t particularly want to be there but he is and, like the Winchesters, like Buffy, like his great great great grandfather, Tim stands on the line between night and day. Admittedly he has a documentary crew making sure they shoot him from a good angle but the principle’s the same. He’s a hero, and the very fact he doesn’t particularly want to be is what makes him both a real hero and impossibly endearing. Go catch up on his adventures at www.hisnameistim.com/cycle_path.htmlSource
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Post by fenris on Aug 7, 2011 21:45:35 GMT
A repeat run of the first series of Murder in Suburbia begins tonight (27/06/11) on ITV3 at 22:00, and continues each Monday. The Murder in Suburbia episode 'Witches' is being shown on ITV3 tomorrow night (08/08/11) at 22:00, and is the beginning of a repeat run of the show's second & final season.
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Post by orokiah on Oct 24, 2011 18:14:41 GMT
A couple of pieces of commissioning news that have recently caught my eye: BBC One commissions Ripper StreetCreated by writer Richard Warlow (Mistresses, Waking The Dead), Ripper Street is an extraordinary new drama set in the East End of London in 1889, during the aftermath of the "Ripper" murders. The action centres around the notorious H Division – the police precinct from hell – which is charged with keeping order in the chaotic streets of Whitechapel.The concept gets a cautious thumbs up from me. It's just a shame about the title: more soap opera than 'extraordinary drama'. Bad luck for the Beeb that Whitechapel was already taken... BBC Two's Vexed wins extended second seriesJill Green’s latest venture, Eleventh Hour Films, has won its first commission – an extended second series of BBC2 comedy drama Vexed.
Toby Stephens returns to the series as laid-back detective Jack Armstrong, while Miranda Raison (Spooks) takes up the newly created role of Georgina Dixon. The series picks up as Jack’s previous partner Kate leaves to sort out her marriage problems, with fast-tracked trainee Georgina – who has never actually worked in the job – trying to pick up where Kate left off.With the production company going bust, I'd given up hope of this wacky gem of a show ever returning. Bit disappointed about the change in cast (since it also spells the end for Rory Kinnear's character, barring some massive plot contrivance), but it was probably inevitable given Lucy Punch's burgeoning film career. Toby Stephens' Jack always reminded me of an older and slightly more functional Nathan from Misfits--no surprise, since both series are written by Howard Overman. Hopefully a DVD of the first series will also, finally, be forthcoming.
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Post by orokiah on Oct 28, 2011 13:40:56 GMT
A new British drama about witches could be on the way--if it gets commissioned: The team behind Being Human is working on a comedy-drama about witches.
Touchpaper Pictures is developing Switch (working title), which will follow four young women who move to a big city. The twenty-somethings are able to use magic as they juggle relationships, careers and their friendship.[/color][/i] SourceShades of Sex and the City...with magic. Hex and the City? Hmm.
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