The Guardian’s “not Nancy Banks Smith” TV reviewer Sam Wallaston is a reliable sort of guy. I watched last night’s Come Dine With Me and was agog. “This is the best thing I’ve seen on Channel 4 in a long time” I exclaimed while watching between my fingers. Sure enough Wallaston’s review: “the worst programme on television”. He didn’t like it. And that’s why I read his reviews. “Never knowingly correct” goes his strapline. (Don’t get me started on his “ha ha geeks eh, this IS complicated and silly” he did the other day on Battlestar Galactica.)
Anyway… COME DINE WITH ME. Last night’s was more than awesome. This show has grown — a day-time staple, it’s gathered celebrity editions, and now it comes in a new format. No longer a short show every day of the week covering 5 people — they now compress 4 people in to a one hour show. It’s a sensation. Well for something that’s come from day-time. (It even has a rip off version on the beeb hosted by Simon Rimmer who seems to be trying to be on telly every day of the week for an entire year.)
But then having established a regular format, with often witty and interesting people who occasionally come to verbal blows, it goes HAYWIRE. Remember that first edition of Wife Swap with the foul mouthed racist woman — it was well train wreck. This was much the same but written by Mike Leigh. … read on …
So the internets have had a chance to watch the first episode of Season 4 of Doctor Who. And they all seem to be saying the following:
a) Catherine Tate wasn’t all that bad*
b) The episode was typical RTD sonic screwdriver fannydangle
c) ROSE!!!
d) BBC marketing genius soft toy for Christmas Adipose fat monsters.
Little has been made of the actual plot being really rather benevolent, in that the diet scheme would have lost a lot of people lots of weight with not apparent side effects at all until the Doctor and Donna (henceforth known as D&D) mucked it all up. Still back to the cute waving Adipose. You can’t buy them in stores, but you can get them for a fiver on Ebay. Or at least a knitted version that looks something like it. Here’s another one found on Flickr, which is considerably cheaper if you know Chemistry: … read on …
BBC Three relaunched last night. Why exactly February the 12th was chosen for this auspicious debut I have no idea, except to note it was a pretty dead night on every other channel. Even Channel 4 didn’t counter-programme Skins against Phoo Action or roll out Charlie Church to battle Lily Allen & Friends. And since I am guessing no-one watched any of it, lets do a quick round up from speeding through iPlayer.
PHOO ACTION
Barely trailed day-glo live action Jamie Hewlett comic adaptation which coupled timid kung fu action hero Terry Phoo with surly teen Whitey Action in a way you can completely imagine if you have ever read a Jamie Hewlett strip. The entire production appeared to cost the same as those flashing lights on the van in Torchwood, and therefore some of the attempts to create live-action versions of Hewlett’s creations looked a bit cheap. BUT THAT’S OK … read on …
Or perhaps I mean - “How intentional is “Ashes To Ashes”‘ rubbishness?”
It’s an odd show, to say the least, this Life On Mars sequel thing (they’re calling it a ‘follow-up’, but it’s a sequel). A retread, but a retread very keen to demonstrate how clever its retreading is. Spoilers below the cut if you haven’t seen it yet. … read on …
Time to raise the stakes here on Freaky Trigger — before plunging them deep into your hearts — and get into some stuff that even Marilyn Manson might think twice about. Dir en Grey is a — what, thrashcore? — band from Japan who produce some of the most disturbing music videos in the world. There’s some real nightmare material here, so be warned. I managed to avoid some of the worst parts by being confused about which subtitles I should be reading.
In this run-up to the horror of post-Shrove Tuesday life, when we will all be down to fruit juice and morsels of pre-digested tofu — what do you mean, you don’t know what I’m talking about? — it is SCARY VIDEO time here at the Trigger of Freaks. First up is a filmic accompaniment to the best album the Rolling Stones ever recorded — Undercover of the Night. The song? “Too Much Blood”. I leave it as an excercise for the reader to determine precisely why this video is scary. Is it the violence of the modern news media? Keith Richards’ jack-o-lantern grin? What scares me most is how cavalierly our “actress” wastes a perfectly good bloody mary.
Apparently the US version of the IT Crowd may well be on hold. This is a pity because as much as I had a soft spot for the UK IT Crowd, I always thought it fluffed its concept slightly. Perhaps there was not enough demarcation of characters, it lunged into surreality without mining the rich vein of its own characters and felt it needed more time to develop. Which hopefully it still will, but i wondered how a hothoused, longer run in the US whilst maintaining the key comic central act of Richard Ayeode’s Moss. Graham Linehan, the creator fo the show, also acknowledges a few of these problems, and has some suggestions about how they can be fixed.
One place they clearly have not been fixed however is in the German version: Das iTeam.
This useful compare and contrast video shows the first episode of both IT Crowd, and Das iTeam in a shot to shot comparison. … read on …
I could spend some time describing the set-up of ITV’s new series Honest, and then spend a another paragraph telling you some of its stylistic quirks. But why bother when we have TV Maths at hand:
HONEST = SHAMELESS + ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT
AT HOME WITH THE BRAITHWAITES
There. Sorted.
What’s that you say? You want me to show my working? Oh OK … read on …
Pop, What Is It Good For (BBC4, last night) was kind of the centrepiece of BBC4’s Giant Month O’ Pop and it was a rather interesting beast. Obviously an hour of Morley expounding on music is unlikely to be a bad thing, he’s one of the few journos who can really do public speaking in the same way he writes and only seem slightly ludicrous, but, certainly for anyone who read Words and Music, there was little new. I got the feeling that we weren’t the core audience though, that it was aimed at people who hadn’t read W&M, people who would be surprised at the programme starting with 15 minutes on Can’t Get You Out Of My Head and, although it covered similar ground, there were some new twists and turns, mainly added by the range of interviewees.
The six tracks he concentrated on (and then spun off from to talk about All Pop Ever) were:
CGYOOMH - Kylie
Ride a White Swan - T-Rex
Lola - The Kinks
This Charming Man - The Smiths
What Do You Want - Adam Faith
Freak Like Me - Sugababes … read on …
Site powered by