Good stuff on the telly Torrents: I caught up with Nurse Jackie (a telly show in America, not my mum) recently and it’s not bad. Another show from Showtime which is home to those other things that are not on HBO so you know what to expect: A bit Dark, a bit Moral Grey Areas, a bit Odd Lead Character and probably a gay somewhere. It’s ER on too many drugs, if you want a lazy phrase. I shall be watching more of it, along with the return of Weeds, which it is the cousin of in wanky TV terms.
Virtuality was rather good but Fox decided not to grant it a series so they stuck the pilot on as a Kind Of Movie But Not event with an unresolved cliffhanger, the tools. From some of the boffins behind “Best Thing On TV Ever” Battlestar Galactica, it was weird and wonderful and not just because the baddie was a McPoyle. Like that film Sunshine but with a really advanced personal Holodeck programme, a big mystery, a Big Stakes Mission, some English actors, a gay couple in a sci-fi thing shocker and that chick from Carnivale and Heroes… I would have liked to see more. Oh well.
Not such good stuff on the real telly soon (via The Custard website):
Fearne And… ITV2 – Four-part series in which Fearne Cotton spends two weeks with celebrities including Paris Hilton, Alesha Dixon and Peaches Geldof.
David Hasselhoff in Britain LivingTV – Six-part series in which the US actor stays with Radio 1 DJ Scott Mills and experiences life in the UK.
Restaurant In Your Home BBC2 – Series in which professional home-restaurateurs Mike and Tina Pemberton train other couples up to launch restaurants in their own homes.
Anonymous ITV1 – Comedy show presented by Stephen Mulhern in which celebrities wear prosthetic disguises to carry out pranks on members of the public.
Dancing On Wheels BBC3 – Six-parts series in which celebrities Kevin Sacre, Martin Offiah, Caroline Flack, Heather Small, Mark Foster and Michelle Gayle dance with wheelchair users.
Blind Justice FX – Drama series starring Ron Eldard as blind Detective Jim Dunbar. With Marisol Nichols, Rena Sofer, Reno Wilson and Frank Grillo
Banged To Wrights Sky1 – Six-part series in which former footballer Ian Wright coaches young offenders.
Bloody hell, I’m busy. My ‘half day’ became a whole day and I had to force myself to log off the work machine by leaving a trail of cake crumbs from thre kitchen to the home office. No I don’t work at The Home Office. Anyway… I could waffle about the strange bus people like the randomly-timed-grins man who had a funny walk and a Daily Express or the disappearance of the teenager I named Chinese Yet Tall (one point for comedy reference identification) who used to get on every morning, or the unhilarity of the bus breaking down after only five minutes of the journey, leaving the road blocked and people getting all uppity but that would be boring. I could mention the nice old Polish lady from the 1980s Bakery in the village who gave me the advice of putting a cactus on my desk to absorb the electricity from my computer screen after I mentioned eye strain headaches. But I won’t. I could mention by brother having his 40th birthday and my sister finally leaving home to be a proper student (hurrah for student halls, she’ll love it) but I’ll just do more of the usual expected stuff, with comics to follow tomorrow…
Thom sent me a video clip that startled, amused and disturbed me in equal measures. From the ‘hit’ BBC show Duet Impossible where live modern singers ‘duet’ with dead old ones comes this…
Which disobeys all the rules of the show. I love the arrogance and rubbishness of it, plus the expected banter and wonky hat.
Cover any small person’s eyes, it’s a man in a dress! David Walliams has a children’s book out and people in the know whose opinions I value say it is a rather nice book. With Quentin Blake illustrations and everything! It’s about a boy who wears a dress and is called, unsurprisingly, The Boy In The Dress. I thought the Daily Mail would love it, especially when David posed in some dresses to ram it down their throats. Or something:
I find his behaviour and these pictures rather sickening to say the least. Is he supposed to be funny ??? - Jan, North Oxfordshire, 8/10/2008 13:22
Ugh. These pictures give me the creeps. And what are children going to think if they see them? - Sarah, Belgium, 8/10/2008 9:40
It just looks so weird…… - Jacqui Weems, Southampton, 8/10/2008 11:34
A childrens book – wrong, wrong, wrong! - Lynne, Durham, 8/10/2008 12:33
What if children see pictures of David in a dress? It’s promoting a fucking book for children, you imbecile! Yes, a children’s book! For children!
I had a great spam email the other day from a nice African chap. There are so many of them who have thought of convoluted schemes to give complete strangers money, I am like well impressed. The way he ended the email put him in a class of his own though:
Note I am a man of 49 years old, i’ll not lie to you, please do not do the same to me.
Yours truly, Mr. Eric Igwe
He’s 49? Why didn’t he say that at the start?
Where’s all my money gone?
I do so enjoy Heroes, it’s like X-Men comics for the masses, you never know what bit is going to be homaged next. I liked talking about it on Facebook and I am a lazy git so here are some thoughts:
Dan liked the Veronica Mars moment in Heroes Unmasked. But they don’t wear masks! and Super Suresh is just wrong. All baby-oil Spider-Man wrong! 10:16pm Dan Hollingsworth at 10:31pm I liked that there were several moments where I thought that the writers had spent their strike time watching Hollyoaks.
Dan Hollingsworth at 10:54pm It was good, in a Hollyoaks-with-powers way! Today’s Hollyoaks was actually more ridiculous than Heroes, wth the bending of time and space, spider-sense and super strength on show.
Dan Hollingsworth at 10:54pm Why is that awful woman with the killer tears suddenly A) Not a baddie B) Glamorous C) Very American D) Sampling Super Mohinder’s special black todger tears?
Dan I love Sylar’s special blend of sinister, eyebrow acting, vests and camp. But why do all future timeline version characters have scarred faces?
Tabloid crap time (again): At least nobody would be able to tell by looking at her.
Oh dear. It looks like the Grinning Eastenders Gay Man had a bit of a canoodle on Arfur’s bench and upset some people. I wonder if all the violence, murderings, paedophile grooming (that phrase always makes me think of My Little Pony for some reason) and abuse of the English language also got them upset?
Complaints pour into BBC after EastEnders screens gay kiss before the watershed By Daily Mail Reporter
The BBC has been flooded with complaints after screening a gay kiss on EastEnders before the 9pm watershed.
The ‘offensive’ scenes were screened on Tuesday’s episode of the soap and showed Christian Clarke (John Partridge, 36) and Lee Thompson (Carl Ferguson, 27) engage in a passionate kiss.
One viewer wrote on the BBC’s Points Of View internet messageboard: ‘I am appalled by the display of homosexual kissing before the watershed shown on EastEnders.
‘This is disgraceful whilst young children are watching and sets the wrong example.’
Another, Pat, wrote: ‘I had to explain to my seven-year-old son what was happening. He now thinks he is gay because he kisses his dad.’
I hope Pat’s seven year old son who thinks he is gay because he kisses his dad gets taken into care if Pat cannot adequately explain the absurdity of the situation. I don’t think she has done very well so far. Not to mention letting a seven year old watch Eastenders. Surely something more appropriate like the lastest Saw film would have not had any gaiety?
The BBC statement read: ‘We approach our portrayal of homosexual relationships in the same way as we do heterosexual relationships. We believe that the general tone and content of EastEnders is now widely recognised. Parents can make an informed decision as to whether they want their children to watch.’
Whatever next? Not tattooing gay people’s bottoms with ‘Sodomy Kills’?
Mail readers mostly thought Pat was insane (phew) but there were a few of the usual suspects whose brains malfuctioned enough to prompt them to comment:
What’s the point of having a watershed then? Either move Eastenders to 9pm or don’t show scenes like these. I have a 12 year-old and I don’t let him watch Eastenders for this very reason. - sarah, dorset, 9/10/2008 14:47
I just do not want to see this ever. Forget all the PC crap about it being ‘legal’. If the gay community is 10% of the whole, how come they are constanttly shoving it into our faces? Pensioners don’t and they are a much larger part of our community. - Bob Baillie, Southampton, 9/10/2008 14:54
There are no pensioners on Eastenders of course, and what is this obsession with “shoving it in our faces”? If it’s not that it’ll be “ramming it down our throats.” Are they trying to tell us something? Actually, I’d rather not know.
Item! We ran out of tea bags at home for the first time ever. This should have been impossible due to the sheer addiction we have to the stuff and the amount of kitchen cupboards. Could it be a sign of deteriorating mental faculties? I hope not.
Item! You’d think that The Express might mention the terrorist attack in Pakistan on the front page. You’d be wrong as that was dedicated to something far more important to The World’s Greatest Newspaper: Shopping! (and don’t mentions bums around Sir Cliff fans)
It’s inside though, but with a truly horrible Express slant: Sod the dead brown people, what about the injured white British ones, eh? How utterly vile.
Item! My fellow blogger Mick Trimble is a comic book freak like myself but he actually gets to draw the bloody things. Lucky sod! November sees the release of Septic Isle, which I shall be purchasing: From a Comics Bulletin interview that I stumbled upon while doing my rounds:
Writer Andy Winter: “What would happen if a Bond-style character stopped fighting weird secret organizations and billionaire madmen and had to deal with more realistic enemies of the state in 21st century Britain?”
Artist Mick Trimble: “Actually, I’m worried that MI5 have a file on me in real life because of the search terms I put into Google when I was researching this book! Amongst other things, I’ve researched Islamist suicide bombers, the 7/7 attacks and the MI5 building itself (which I got wrong and had to re-draw! Google is not infallible, kids!). I also looked at the neo-Nazi sites Andy mentioned and it really is sickening what’s out there, but this book had to look realistic, not fantastic, so the research had to be done. I’m just worried about the weird clicking noise my phone now makes whenever I make a call!”
Item! I haven’t mentioned Talk About The Passion for a while and really should as it is one of the few places I visit that can provide me with a few minutes of fact-based entertainment during a break from my office-based untertainment. In the last week we’ve seen the Top 10 Zeroids Number Ones (the decade that should never be called the “noughties”), a Jimmy Hendresque quiz where cut-outs of Mr Hendrix’s face obscure other famous Jimmys that need identifying, the second half of a Mel Brooks and John Morris history, a guide to the brief trend almost 20 years ago for European dance pop acts to recruit skinny people to mime the vocals of big old divas, and a Top 10 90s Number Ones. Not bad at all and something for everyone, if they are partial to geekisms (not that there is anything wrong with that at all). One of the above was written by me but I love the site dearly like a pair of comfortable shoes or a big cake.
Item! ITV(2) have gone and done a sitcom about superheroes. This concerned me. It stars some people from Nathan Barley. This also concerned me.
Oh dear. No Heroics didn’t make me laugh at all. If you find men calling other men “homo” and women referred to as slags on numerous occasions entertaining then you might like it.
Item! Episode 2 of True Blood is much better than anything on ITV. Sookie invites Vampire Bill round for tea and while Gran is fascinated by tales of the olden days Jason gets pissed off because all of the ladies he has been shagging seem to prefer vamps and Tara gets uppity about Bill recalling the days of slavery. What a peculiar show this is, but I love it. Bonus points for the magazine headline about Angelina adopting a vampire baby. Oh those crazy writers! True Blood has already been renewed for a second season.
While I have been busy shifting mountains of spreadhseets, mountains of booky tat, mountains of paperwork and mountains of hot caffeinated drinks, and realising that the very over-talkative receptionist at work does not register when the limit for chit chat has been reached, I have neglected to blog about nice new things. So…
Item! Missing Veronica Mars? Plastic Electroshock Veronica is coming! Soon!
Item! I have discovered that I quite like The Cliks.
Item! Joss Whedon has announced that the Dr Horrible DVD is on its way and it looks set to be fantastic. Of course it does. Click the article for “It’s actually shaped like a little hammer” and other scary moments.
Item! The Hollyoaks Hunks 2009 Calendar has obviously spent more money on photoshopping than it costs to make a whole Hollyoaks omnibus. 2010: The totally CGI Calendar?
Item! In a spooky coincidence ie. not at all contrived, this month’s Dok-Torr DVD is this:
It’s Great Comics Week, what with the new issue Of Buffy Season Eight (issue 15) and the long-awaited return of my other favourite strong woman character… Manhunter is back! Kate does more than just phonecalls in the first part of a new story (issue 31)… but I am not spoilering anything. Unlike with Buffy where something bad happened last month… …awww shit.
Some crazy fun things happen this time, especially with Dawn still being giant-sized, and the romantic complications of recent times are kind of resolved… Oh those crazy magical lesbians.
Rocksellout has an mp3 of that Kleerup & Neneh Cherry collaboration that I have been liking very much this week, although the album it comes from is as imaginative as perxide blondes dying their skin orange with fake tan.
As I am not blogging about Big Brother this year I have decided to blog about bloggers blogging about Big Brother instead. So here are some snippets of Thom from A Boy Like Thom doing a live blog during the first episode:
“He looks like Sly Stallone. She looks horrendous. They appear to be a couple. Oh god he’s wearing a t shirt that says ‘The Man’ pointing upwards and ‘The Legend’ pointing downwards… If there’s any fanny in there he is going to nail it. Not my words. He thinks he’s absolutely gorgeous, but I’d like to disagree. He is however, a gigantic nob…
She’s got a good sob story though, something about a Civil War and having to come to the UK. Well I’m sorry love but this ain’t The X Factor. Sob stories won’t get you anywhere in this game. Her skirt is so short I swear I just saw a bit of fanny. Perhaps Dale could nail it…
She’s always having to do things. She’s got a baby, commitments. Life is hard. Thank goodness that Big Brother has come along to relieve her of these burdens. Who cares about the baby, go and sunbath on telly love. You’ve earned it. Oh and she’s got opinions. Ridiculous, moronic, awful opinions… “
So now you don’t need to moan about not wanting to see me blog about not watching it. Sorted! More Bloggers Blogging About Big Brother That I Am Not Actually Watching may feature here soon. Or not. Who cares? You decide. Or not. I have more episodes of season 19 Doctor Who from 1982 to watch. I love plastic snakes.
Weekend time is telly catch-up time. So that’s what I did. And I half regretted it…
As an old geek I remember Get The Freebies which existed in that weird way of being a monthly comic strip in a trendy fash mag slag mag aka The Face. I miss The Face, are there any magazines like it now? I have to buy Attitude for my pop and film (and gay) nonsense, Q for my music and (The) Word for a bit of the other, but in its prime The Face was pretty good stuff. Anyway, I digress. Someone thought it would be a good idea to turn Get The Freebies into a tv thing called Phoo Action for the newly-yoof-ed-up BBC Three and so they did. There was nothing really horrible about it but it should have just been left alone, kind of like its distant cousin That Forgettable Tank Girl Movie. It’s got a full series forthcoming so maybe I should give it another go and watch it when I’m not in a grumpy mood (and doing the ironing). I don’t know why I have a hate thing for Jaime Winstone who played Whitey, maybe it’s a combination of Kewl/Famous Dad/Partytime/Annoying Face. Kind of like Lily Allen then (although I have her album and it isn’t all that bad). Talking of Lily Allen… BBC Three thought it would be a good idea to give her a chat show but it was so horribly edited to death in the ‘chat’ bits (poor David Mitchell didn’t really look like he was relaxed at all) and the ‘interactive’ bits that I managed to stick with showcased random Lily MySpazz ‘friends’ who had basically been dickheads or twats and thought that was a good way of getting on the telly. It made me realise that I am too old for this kind of thing but there is an audience for it so who am I to judge? I am Earl Grey to BBC Three’s Bacardi Breezer. Keep the internet on the internet where it belongs, teevee!
Talking of yoof…
Skins appears to be, from its trailers, like a version of Hollyoaks with more sex, swearing and drugs. But it’s really not at all, oh no. Episode one had Bill Bailey line dancing with a dog, a nice gay teen plot that wasn’t remotely “oh woe iz me, I iz a gay”, an interesting attempt to make the cocky bastard character watchable by having him mentally and physically disabled after a road accident (I don’t think I am sympathetic yet), some plots that are actually going somewhere, and great dialogue. So not Sweary Druggy Hollyoaks at all, although we do love our Hollyoaks for its utterly inconsistent useless random shitness. Kind of like Torchwood Series one without the rift in space and time.
Lost continued to impress, with its new set-up giving us flash forwards instead of ye olde flashbacks. This week Sayid played a fatal round of golf, became a kind of famous non-secret version of Jason Bourne, had a nice cup of coffee with a lady and worked for someone he really shouldn’t have. Guns r bad, m’kay? Meanwhile, back in the present which is now technically the past, (on the island) the new guy from Spanking The Monkey was still really twitchy and discovered something odd about time zones, it didn’t rain for once, and nobody died. My description sounds quite shit actually but trust me on this, ok?
Non-News time! The Diana Dark Forces are allegedly very dark and forceful indeed but why should we care? Even the priest (could be a random priest, it doesn’t say. Maybe it’s the Hollyoaks Improbable Plotline Priest?) is bored of the endlessness that is The McCanns. The weather is wild and windy (I never would have guessed). Hillary Clinton only exists in crazy wacky ‘special’-faced photos. Well there you go.
As there are no new drama shows left for American teevee due to that writers’ strike still being on, things are getting desperate and the networks are beginning to show things that would usually have been ditched after the pilot. So I am intrigued and thought I should check out something new. A show about a rich lawyer played as an American by that man from Trainspotting who isn’t in that other current season new show (playing an American) and isn’t one of the other men from Trainspotting who rides big bicycles around the world or once played a policeman with a little dog? A lawyer who has visions of George Michael (played by the tramp/singer George Michaels) singing Faith at inopportune times and discovers that he has a TV Brain Aneursym / is a prophet, gets maybe ditched by his fiancee (that blonde monster from the Species films), takes on a legal case about autism and vaccines for the woman who took his virginity to a George Michael tape and deals with some of his father issues in the process? Sounds good? No? Well you’re right. It reminded me of Ally McBeal and I have been trying to forget about that monstrosity, thank you. Parker from Veronica Mars is in the cast but wasn’t in it, while Jack Bristow from Alias is and was. Eli Stone (for that is what it is called) wouldn’t last more than a couple of episodes in normal circumstances but if it’s this or more slutty reality shows I guess the networks have little choice. Poor old Jonny Lee Miller (for it is he) , his show last year (Smith) got scrapped pretty quickly and now this.
Gah!
I have been obsessing about The Millioners for a few weeks on my iPod and couldn’t remember who had pointed me in their direction until last night when visiting Phil’s Worrapalava blog, where I remembered. Because they were there. Anyway, another of my Music 2008 acts, synthesizers, retro yet futuristic, a mix of lovely smooth synth pop with great lyrics (rhyming about wearing so much leather in such hot weather) and odd instrumental tracks. No video as I can’t find any anywhere but here’s a picture: Here’s their MySpace where there are tunes (go to My Great Regret, it is their best one) and here’s an mp3. Love them. They’re from Finland, don’tcha know?
Today’s blog is brought to you by Lemsip, Olbas Oil and Vicks. Bloody flippin’ Christmas lurgee is here.
As I am The Recycling Nazi (but I haven’t written my own Mein Kampf about that particular struggle) we are not sending those pesky Christmas cards this year. Instead we have the E-Card, with a donation to charitable cause instead of buying sparkly paper-based tat. Some of you might find one of these in your inbox: Well I thought it was very tasteful actually. And it took at least 15 minutes to design. No children were scared in the making of this ‘card.’
Daminit! The PC Brigade (copyright The Daily Mail readers’ imaginations) are trying to ruin Christmas! Again! They have bleeped the ‘faggot’ from Fairytale Of New York! Whatever next? Bleeping the word ‘nigger’? It’s a bloody outrage, innit? PC Gone Mad for Christmas. I await Mail readers’ comments over at their puny website. And isn’t it ‘poll’ not ‘pole’ in this context? Puny Mail!
Oh dear God. The pantomime issues based drama (heh) that is Hollyoaks has just tried to tackle a ‘don’t assume someone is a paedophile just because a lank-haired local spazz who has been accused of rape twice (or maybe more, I try to forget) told you they were one’ plotline. It all ended like something from a News Of The World campaign and was incredibly rubbish. Not in a great pile of rubbish way (like the stupendously poor Rocky Horror Show on a budget of £3.59 plot) but just very very wrong. So in honour of crap on teevee here is my favourite of this week’s LOLlyoaks, via Lowculture‘s forum. Hollyoaks without Lowculture is just another shit soap opera (see Eastenders for more examples of that), with it it’s an audience participation extravaganza. Honest, guv. At least they had a Samaritans hotline advert at the end of the episode. Phew. I needed that.
It must be a slow news day: ‘Could be’? How very Daily Express of you, Sun. I could be the Doctor too. But I won’t be. Go find some real news or go to your bed and stay there until you think about proper journalism.
It’s getting nearer to Christmas so I get busier. The bookshop is lovely and tidy now after a mental weekend of controlled hectic-ness, and I have to be back there 12 hours after I left. But that’s tomorrow and that’s ok as I get an evening at home tomorrow night and am going to eat some very nice food and finally get around to drinking the pear cider and watching that documentary about E from Eels’ dad and his involvement in quantum physics. Yes, really. I’ve just completed day 4 of 7 and then there is The Night Away to look forward to. It’s a bit posh, unlike me. I am from Essex.
Oh dear. Liz Jones is back, in The Daily Mail of course as they love women and women love them back. Rapunzel’s whingeing mirror-hogging maiden aunt is wafling on about women over 40 having long hair this week. Not because she is over 40 and has had “very dark hair since the age of five and I had been under the impression it suited me, it was my trademark, in a way.” Not that she is self-obsessed at all. Or can take a hint. Or a bitch: “… unless you are of course Demi Moore, who can carry the look off because she has a remarkably symmetrical face, strong jaw line and, ooh, a face lift.” How pleasant. I could state that Liz’s silly long hair distracts onlookers from noticing that her face resembles a bag of spanners chewing a bulldog chewing a wasp after a night on the tiles but I won’t stoop to her level. Which is quite high, if she is using that broomstick to avoid the rush hour traffic.
Crap Christmas Idea Of The Day: Wet Wet Wet are back as Marti (no not Caine, the other one) has packed in the smack as it is wack and they have a new album out. Your poor poor mothers.
Have you cast your vote yet? You could win a signed calendar. Awesome!
What do you mean, it’s crap? Yes, I know, but there is nothing so-crap-it’s-entertaining like it. Really.
It’s my lazy day at home and there is no news. Well, maybe this: How many more little girls are there in the world who are not Maddie? I have a horrible feeling that this one could run and run.
I would post a clip of the official winner of Worst Hollyoaks Episode Ever which was on yesterday but I cannot find one. It takes a special kind of writer to create several new improbable scenarios in one episode (‘Rant Club’ at the Student Union bar? Anybody? No? Heavily-implied-paedo lifeguard plot that will all be an hilarious misunderstanding? Anybody? No?) purely for the reason that they have worked out the conclusion to various plot strands and need gimmicks to speed down that plot road. Never mind the plot holes. Still, any show that has a mouthy caustic toxic bisexualist transvestite (Ian Paisley in polyester with worse hair), an army of actresses who who appear to be reading their lines off a board which is located somewhere to the side of the camera that is filming them, a ‘whoops my girlfriend turned out to be my sister but she doesn’t look all that bothered because she iz shit at teh actingz’ storyline , a weird-voiced whispery law student who doesn’t understand the concepts of perjury, evidence and probably the whole idea of law itself and has had two near misses with the grim reaper in the last few months alone, a sneering gay Vulcan playing the role of a bad boy chav (badly), and a couple of emos who add nothing to the plot whatsoever cannot be all bad. Can it? Whatchoo talkin bout?
Compulsary comic panel of the day: Daminit the Marvel Universe Proper is rather good right now. New Avengers 36 is one reason why.
Obligatory clip moment: It’s a bit shitty-looking but it’s for charidee:
Halliwell is fucking stalking me on the internets or sumfink. And: Dok-Torrrs!
Right, I am off to listen to Listen Against on Listen Again. For the very first time. I obey when told to do these things…
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