29 April 2010, save the date?

How can FlashForward keep up the excitement for 22 episodes? Like the orphaned child of Lost and Heroes, the pilot is great, catastrophic, actors you recognise (Hey it’s Penny from Lost! Hey it’s Miles from This Life!), and even a creepy ending.. Maybe I’ve just become cynical in my break from tv blogging..

So what have  I been meaning to tell you…

Well True Blood is coming to Channel 4 here in the UK. I do recommend it, but the gore is getting to me over on FX where Season One is about half way through. If you’re offended by the thought of blood sucking fang bangers then just don’t go there. If you loved Alan Ball’s Six Feet Under, then do. Anna Paquin plays Sookie Stackhouse, the eye of the storm for the vampire and murder action going on in Bon Temps. Paquin is originally from NZ and was the youngest to ever win the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for the Piano in the 90s. Her onscreen brother Jason is apparently from Home and Away, too, so a definite antipodean vibe going on there.

The Tudors

God there must be little on TV if I’m enjoying The Tudors, complete with Joss Stone (who was actually really good) as Anne of Cleves. Seriously though, Henry really needs to start ageing and gaining his middle aged spread soon. Tonight’s finale with Cromwell literally hacked to pieces was a brutal ending. I wish they’d do more to represent Henry’s inner thoughts, surely he must have felt some remorse…

Rachel’s Home Cooking

Exclusive to UK Food, Rachel is back teaching families and seeing how chefs cook with their families at home. I eat my words, while she’s still at it with the tasting teaspoons, Rachel as a teacher is pretty engaging viewing.

Masterchef the Professionals

There must be sous chefs across the country either in hysterics or filled with regret at not entering. Seemingly unable to cook meat and with shaking hands – the entrants are almost uniformly a bit rubbish. Lucky for them Michel Roux Jr is lovely and honest. Greg Wallace continues his love of desserts.

The Wire

Missing having the Wire three times a week on BBC. So much so we bought Gone, Baby, Gone which has Beadie and Omar in it. Good film for the mostpart too.

Fashion Police – the Emmys

Couldn’t believe Debbie Mat is gone! I like Guiliana, but what’s happened to Debbie? Also new was Khloe Kardashian – she was good though (miles better than Alesha Dixon as a new judge on Strictly). My main gripe was the lack of love for Christina Hendricks as I loved the front of her dress – that colour was perfect for her colouring. January Jones looked gorgeous too.

Christina Hendricks in L’wren Scott dress, Fred Leighton jewels and Prada clutch and shoes.

My commentary is shrinking

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Once Tim in the Limo in Seinfeld…

As funny as Dirty Sexy Money can be; despite Donald Sutherland, despite the Nick/Karen long lost love arc coming to an end.. Peter Kraus was destined for better things.

Mad Men
What can bring Don and Betty back together? Life or death I guess, something big, so can’t wait for the finale tomorrow night. I hope we get the next series faster, am not sure how long I can cope without MM to watch.

Brothers & Sisters

Hands up who’s fed up with the Ryan Lafferty storyline?

On a final note, bank holiday weekend and all, I watched a strange selection of films; Dante’s Peak, Notes on a Scandal, I am Legend and Midnight Cowboy. I hadn’t realised how much Angelina Jolie looked like Jon Voigt when he was young! He looks sooo different now, on screen at the moment as the evil Jonas Hodges in the still going strong seventh series of 24.

Tequila and dogs

The Wire

Ok, so no posts from me this week – I’ve been catching up on the Wire, watching the entire first season in a few weeks has worked fine, but only because we’ve got Sky+. Considering it’s not on iplayer, you’ve got to wonder what on earth the BBC were thinking. Yes they’ve overtaken FX and most people who started watching it on FX have switched to BBC, no ads, after all, but if they’d had double episodes once a week, starting at 10 or even 10.30 – the viewing figures would surely be better and there’d be more traffic for season two.

I think off the back of Red Riding, whilst it was brilliant, I wasn’t sure I was up for more police corruption and generally, bleak drama – but the Wire is different.

Somehow a sense of hope and justice is still on the radar in The Wire. We believe that Bubbles may well stay clean, or that Poot may stop Wallis being shot, that McNulty means well when he gets his kids to follow criminals at the local market. Even Kima surviving the buy bust gone wrong – I’m wondering if this hopefulness is going to be beaten out of the show next season?

The Apprentice

Right. Well Paula, booted out this week, unfortunately also ended my chances of winning the work sweepstake. You’re Fired is bringing out some interesting background info from the fired apprentice wannabes though – who can look at Philip harshly after he we found out he was funny, and had a cute friendship with Majid? Even James, the one who admitted to camera that he’d weed in the boardroom, is apparently only a goof for the cameras, according to Paula.

Paula of course, shouldn’t have gone. Ben, who reminds me of a chinless Paddington Bear, made a fool out of himself and Yasmina should have been more careful with working out the exact costs. It was her fault. Paula of course should have told Siralan that, but was distracted by Ben’s attack and said he was the one to go. Ben’s histrionics basically let Yasmina off the hook – Siralan didn’t get a chance to get angry again at her and I’m guessing he looked at Paula and went, HR, not fighting dirty, not obviously sales mad – she’s going.

Is it indicative of the credit crunch that the teams keep making losses? Lets hope Lee McQueen hasn’t been made redundant by the time Philip gets the job nobody actually wants.

Kathy Griffin – My life on the D-list

I hope you’re watching this. It’s as near to a sitcom reality TV can get. She’s brilliant.

No No No. It’s Gardener’s World, not Bickering-r-us

Gardener’s World is back, 2/23 my Sky+ informs me, which is a brilliant feeling – 23 weeks of warm-ish weather for all.

But wait, Toby Buckland and Alys Fowler have started a worrying new mock fighting angle between the radishes and roses, and it’s manure.

Alys Fowler at Berryfields, Photo BBC

I can put up with a lot of disfunctional personality from my garden presenters, but this almost sibling-like “I’ve had to clean up twice” lark is going too far. Monty and Carol would never scrap in this faux-cutesy style, it’s just not good. I don’t mind some stilted conversation in the borders (could do with less of Joe Swift impersonating Jamie Oliver though), but thinking about it now, even last season Toby B’s roll your eyes/groan/ugh humour was there to see, but Alys still had some dignity. Maybe the new garden was the last straw, or no, I think it’s the Hot or Not board.

Perhaps Toby and Alys actually hate each other? 21 weeks to find out I guess. Can’t we have Carol for lead presenter?

Why are we putting up with Radio4 hand me downs?

Is anyone else worried by the raft of cheap programming based on Radio 4 lame laugh fests that’s filling in our weekday viewing? I’m all for David Mitchell as a funny guy, and don’t mind the other regular comedians/presenters on Radio4 Comedy shows, but this constant roundabout of the same ideas and same jokes in shabby sets, enough!

The latest is Marcus Brigstocke’s Never Seen Star Wars is on BBC4.. frankly I find a lot of these comedies so hit and miss on Radio 4, you really have to be in a certain mindset to get a lot of enjoyment out of them, it’s all so chummy and the audience are so eager to laugh at anything. Whilst there are moments of genius, there’s really not enough to warrant moving them onto TV, it’s so credit crunch.

This makes me wonder where Britain’s new wave of comedy is coming from – I think an iplayer competition to commission bbc3/4 comedy instead of all the commercial channel wannabe rubbish coming up (See I want to live like  a dog, or whatever it’s called) is the ultimate way forward.

At least Flight of the Conchords is back in May, on BBC4 of course, soon enought to fill the gap that 30Rock is going to leave – finale on Friday on Fiver…

The state of things

Comedy

Hidden away on FiverUSA, 30Rock is the best comedy on TV at the moment, unless Dirty Sexy Money is intentionally trying to be ridiculous (poor Peter Krause, he needs to get out, quick).

Breaking Bad is starting back in the States, I wonder if FX will follow suit? If you missed the stars of Breaking Bad on the Soup.. enjoy this:

Drama

Only six episodes left of Mad Men. Don’t forget as well as the philandering, Don Draper is Eighty-Four years old. Lost is still brilliant, Heroes is palling, but 24 is suprisingly still carrying the suspended disbelief can halfway through the season too. It’s impressive. Even without the CTU ringtone, Season Seven is exciting.

Is anyone actually watching the last series of ER?

A Bridge too far

Jeesh, rolling out Beau Bridges as a fictional retrospective handyman Eli Scruggs…. Desperate indeed.

Looks like the season couldn’t even make it to the end without pulling in the (not even that) celeb friends. Actually the thing that was most annoying about this episode was the way they filmed the flashbacks, panning around to the back of each housewife’s head. I though they’d moved forward 5 years? Certainly feels like the 1990s to me. The clothes weren’t right and the first meeting with Gabby and the ‘wives was lame. I suppose it was good to actually see footage of Mary Alice instead of her incessant bookend narration, and any Bridges cameo is going to be well played, but really? I thought we were about to find out Dave’s psycho plan…

My reality – dancing and office politics

Can I resist the Comic Relief Apprentice line up? I think I can. I’d rather wait a few weeks and watch the real thing, sans the ‘phone your rich friend’ angle, even if it’s for charity.

Dancing with the Stars

Who’s on it? If you watch E! You’ll recognise Holly Madison, Girls Next Door (though she’s no longer with Hef) and Denise Richards: It’s Complicated. Holly has replaced the injured singer Jewel, who’s husband, a rodeo star, can’t dance at all but is still in the competition. Denise is right, it is complicated.

Gilles and Cheryl - to win! Photo and DWTS news from E!

The best dancers were SATC movie Gilles Merini (wow!) and the recently ditched Bachelor star Melissa Rycroft who danced well with only 2 days practise.. oh and Apple founder Steve Wozniak was pretty accurately described by Bruno as a crazy teletubby in a gay pride march.

Kathy Griffin – Life on the D List

So we finally get to see the second series of this Emmy award winning reality show. Kathy is funny, watch her show!

Red Riding

Despite not being able to understand a lot of the dialogue, this series has started brilliantly.

Forget the dark side of Life on Mars, Yorkshire Post journalist, Eddie Dunford (Andrew Garfield) is more exciting to watch than Sam.

Catch Up on Red Riding at http://www.channel4.com. Photo Channel 4

The atmosphere reaches almost Mad Men levels of perfectly recreating a town or decade. Such a shame that Channel Four, with only Desperate Housewives to offer in the current TV bonanza, has decided to show it right now. I guess they’re trying to boost interest in the release of the Damn United film later this month, based on a book also penned by David Peace.

 

Mad Men

 

Peggy and Don are the ultimate in day to day deception and denial. This series is even better than the first but who knows how many are watching, late Tuesday night isn’t exactly Prime Time. But hey, who am I to judge the onslaught of Darwin programming for Spring?