Category: TV Page 10 of 14

About The First Part Of The Red Riding Trilogy on Channel 4…

… I have to ask: am I the only one who thought that certain shots were very similar to Lost Highway?

The shots of the road at night were much the same as the opening of the Lynch film, but even more of a match was the final shot of Dunford in the car, shaking his head, which struck me as … well, pretty much the same as the final shot of Lost Highway.

I’m not knocking it, as I enjoyed 1974 a lot (even if it felt rather overlong, I loved the slightly odd and barren nature of it), but I haven’t come across any other mention of this (and I like to think my web-fu is quite good).

Being Human Does, After All, Involve Questions and Answers

BBC Writersroom are hosting another in their ongoing series of Q&A sessions with TV and radio creators, this time with Toby Whithouse, whose most recent creation is the BBC3 series Being Human. Which is a rather good show, and if you’ve not seen it, you should give it a look.

It takes place at the Soho Theatre here in London Town on Wednesday 4 March, from 5pm, and you can get your name on the guest list by sending an email to writersroom@bbc.co.uk, with the subject line “Toby Whithouse Q&A”.

Full details of the event can be found here.

I plan on attending*, and I gather Steve ‘no relation to Jenny’ Colgan will be there too – what about you?

*Which is to say, I’ve e-mailed asking to be added to the list.

Russell T Davies At BAFTA

No, I’m not talking about nominations for awards – on Tuesday 17 March at 6.45pm, he’ll be in conversation.

The talk takes place at the Princess Anne Theatre, 195 Piccadilly in London, and is going to cover his work in Children’s TV, and his feelings about the audience and future of that section of programming.

It sounds pretty interesting, and he’s a man who knows about TV which appeals to all generations, so I’d say his opinions are worth listening to. If you want to book tickets (which are free for BAFTA members, and £10 for the rest of us), you can do so here.

BAFTA Winners 2009 Announced

As you’ve probably seen by now, the BAFTAs were dished out last night – the complete list of winners is available on the BAFTA website.

Although I haven’t seen as many of the films as I’d like to have (yet), it strikes me as a pretty good mix of titles, and I can imagine it’s a particularly cheering night for the folks behind Slumdog Millionaire, as it looked for a while as if it was going to be a straight-to-DVD release; instead of heading immediately for the shelf, it now has a shelfload of awards, which must be even more satisfying for them.

And in what I think is rather unfortunate timing, the Grammy Awards were also handed out last night. These cover the period October 2007 – September 2008, which kind of explains why I was looking at some of the nominations and thinking ‘isn’t that a bit old to be in the running for an award?’

High School Musical 4, Really

Following the – initially surprising – success of the made-for-TV films in the High School Musical series, Disney appears to be trying to capture that lightning in a bottle once again.

Hence Camp Rock, the asking-for-troublesome-titled film featuring the Jonas Brothers, beat musicians who are popular with ladies of a certain age.

But surely, given its title, it should have featured The Darkness?

Yes, I Fully Intend To Write The Theme Tune, And To Perform The Aforementioned Theme Tune. What Of It?

So, Minder returned to British TV last night. The original cast is long gone, to be replaced by some members of the Frat Pack or ex-cast members of Skins… well, by Shane Richie and another chap, anyway.

The thing is, Richie doesn’t play Arthur Daley, the character memorably ‘minded’ by two different bodyguards in the original run of the series, he plays Archie Daley, Arthur’s nephew. Fair enough, but back in the tail-end of the original series, when Arthur’s minder Terry left for Australia, his new bodyguard was his nephew, Ray Daley.

So Arthur’s got two nephews, both surnamed Daley. Presumably they’re both sons of the same father – Arthur’s brother, who asked him to take Ray on as his replacement minder. But if we’re to assume that both Ray and Archie are about the same age as the actors portraying them, they’re both the same age, as both Gary Webster and Shane Richie were born in 1964. And if they have the same father, they may well be twins (or perhaps have a very tired mother).

So why would Arthur’s brother ask him to take on one son as his minder, but not the other? Archie, it seems, takes after his uncle, so perhaps it was felt that he would be best kept away from him lest he should become too much of a sheepskin-wearing wideboy of the playground, but if Arthur was frowned upon as a potential bad influence upon Archie, that wouldn’t sit well with him being asked to take on Ray, would it ? And if they’re brothers, perhaps twins but even if not raised in the same environment, they’re bewilderingly different in demeanour.

If they’re not brothers, of course, that would explain how different they are in temperament, but having two brothers suggests a fairly extensive family background for Arthur, and this was something which wasn’t exploited to much effect in the original series, as far as I recall. There was, I seem to remember, a book recounting Arthur’s life (ah, here it is) – does anyone know if there was any reference to his family tree in it?

I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t watch the opening episode of ‘New Minder’ last night, as I wasn’t a huge fan of the original series, and the trailers made it look a bit too much like the Lock, Stock And… TV series* for my tastes.

But as one who takes a keen interest in narrative continuity and internal consistency, if any of you good folks watched it, can you let me know if they did anything at all to deal with this issue? To diehard followers of the show in the past, the continuity errors could be deeply troubling, and distract from their enjoyment of the show, and it’d be nice if there’d been a little throwaway reference to the family background as a sort of tip of the hat to the fans.

On the other hand, the above might just be a sarcastic dig at the exhumation of a once-popular show in a form which bears only scant similarity to its namesake, as opposed to, well, coming up with something original.

*Oh yes, I still remember that. Mr Ritchie (another one!), and its sponsors The Sun would rather it was dust and forgot, but I remember every little thing as if it happened only yesterday…

This Sale Must End Midnight Sunday

As we all know, the television production company Kudos have a nice line in popular and stylish TV programmes.

However, they’re not the first to have done so – there were a number of TV programmes in the 1960s and 1970s which were similarly smooth but also very entertaining. An obvious example would be The Prisoner, the classic TV series featuring the recently-passed Patrick McGoohan (not to be confused with Play School presenter Stuart McGugan, as happened more than once when I was growing up).

Anyway, all this is a typically lengthy preamble to alerting you good people to the fact that Network, a firm specialising in DVDs and soundtracks of many of the shows from this era, is currently running a sale on its website, with most items being 40% off.

So if you’re into Danger Men, Men In Suitcases, or even Motels At The Crossing Of Two Roads, you might want to have a gander before the sale ends at midnight on Sunday.

(I have no affiliation or bias in relation to Network, just wanted to make sure that you folks get to take advantage of the reduced prices. I like to think you’d do the same for me…)

Returning To The Well… To Refill The Bottle With Lightning?

I try not to be overly quick to react to announcements about forthcoming films and TV shows and the like, mainly because I’ve been wrong before (and which of us hasn’t?).

Mind you, I was less slow to suggest that re-making the classic comedy series The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin was probably a bad idea; the central performance by Leonard Rossiter would be hard to beat – which was pretty much shown by the follow-up series The Legacy Of Reginal Perrin, which lacked both Rossiter and a certain… indescribable something.

Anyway, I’m re-considering in a way, not because there’s been an announcement that Martin Clunes is to star (though he seems a perfectly nice chap), but rather because the new version is to be written by Simon Nye. Nye’s best known for Men Behaving Badly, but he’s shown that he can do darker comedy with the far-less-seen How Do You Want Me?… and more importantly the new series is being written in conjunction with David Nobbs, the creator of Perrin.

This, of course, in no way guarantees that it won’t be as much of a misfire as, say, Brighton Belles, but it may be all right. Am I hedging my bets? Probably – I love Perrin, and if it proves possible to do a renewed version that doesn’t urinate all over the memory of the original, and says something about workplace or midlife boredom, then I’ll un-narrow my sceptical eyes. If you’re feeling more keen to see it before it actually hits the screen, mind, you can see it being filmed at Teddington Studios by clicking here.

All that said, though, I have no idea quite how one distinguishes between a ‘remake’ and an ‘inspired update’, as per the quote on the BBC site. Still, at least it’s marginally more coherent than that ghastly non-phrase “re-imagining”…

It Also Contains A Leaflet Urging You To Subscribe – Because, As We All Know, After A Few Weeks, They Tend To Stop Materialising On The Shelves

I just spotted the first issue of this series in the newsagent today.

It’s one of those partworks which only tend to manifest at the start of the year, accompanied by TV ads telling you how it will “…week by week, build into a collection you – and your family – will treasure”. Though I guess that on this occasion, it might actually be the sort of thing that you’ll return to over time, no pun intended.

Mind you, it’s not necessarily very good value – 2 episodes per DVD for a standard cost of £6.99 doesn’t compare that well with buying the DVD boxes and a book, though as the first issue is at the introductory lure-you-in price £1.99, that’s not so bad for the first two Eccleston episodes. Cheaper than iTunes, that’s for sure.

If you want to look for it, it’s hard to miss; the magazine-bit and DVD come mounted on a sizey piece of cardboard, and the magazine features David Tennant pointing a sonic screwdriver out at the viewer… actually, putting him on it which strikes me as a bit off (or at least a bit previous), rather as if the cover of the similar Little House On The Prairie collection didn’t feature Michael Landon.

Of Life Riley?

Does anyone know if the episode of new BBC sitcom Life of Riley which was on last night was, in fact, the first episode?

There were various jokes from the kids in the first five minutes or so about the dad’s previous girlfriends, but it didn’t seem to establish beforehand that Caroline Quentin’s character was their new Mum or whatever. And they appeared to be moving into a new home, but I didn’t know why… granted, I got a bit confused and wondered if I’d missed something vital, and didn’t stick around much beyond the 8min stage, but was this information there and I missed it, or not?

I’m genuinely not having a go at the writer – she’s a known name in comedy, with a pedigree going back to Spitting Image – so I’m more inclined to think that, for some reason, the BBC might have decided to play ep2 instead of a scene-setting opening episode. Maybe it was just me not paying attention, but if anyone can put me stright, I’m sincerely open to correction on this.

Page 10 of 14

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén