Posted on March 1, 2011 | Post a comment |
US TV
Subscribe to the daily news by RSS or email, or follow me on Twitter for breaking updates
Posted on March 1, 2011 | 13 comments |
I'm assuming everyone's already seen this, right?
Hark at the accent.
Posted on March 1, 2011 | 6 comments |
Brace yourself, Sitting Tennanters – you're going to have two weeks with this lovely Tennant in recline, since I'm going to be on holiday next week. It's one of Sister Chastity's stalker photos, although going all the way to Africa with him is clearly above and beyond.
By popular fiat, it's something of a three-way this week for theriverlady, Toby and Jane Henry. Coincidentally, they also wrote the three best captions last week, so get 10 points each. Well done to them, commiserations to everyone else and good luck caption-writing this fortnight!
Good luck this week everyone!
Got a picture of David Tennant sitting, lying down or in some indeterminate state in between? Then leave a link to it below or email me and if it's judged suitable, it will appear in the “Sitting Tennant” gallery. Don't forget to include your name in the filename so I don't get mixed up about who sent it to me.
The best pic in the stash each week will appear on Tuesday and get ten points.
You can also enter the witty and amusing captions league table by commenting on the photo, the best caption getting 10 points, everyone who contributes getting five points.
Posted on March 2, 2011 | 2 comments |
Film
Radio
Theatre
British TV
US TV
Subscribe to the daily news by RSS or email, or follow me on Twitter for breaking updates
Posted on March 2, 2011 | 17 comments |
So lovely wife bought me a Kindle for Christmas. Ain't she lovely? Now we could argue a lot about the merits of Amazon's eBook reader: a lot of people are dubious about them at first, but I love mine and once I've shown them how it works, what it's like to read with, the free/cheap books you can get for it, etc, they generally end up wanting/buying one.
So part one of this week's question is:
Do you want/have a Kindle? If not, why not?
However, an often overlooked advantage of the Kindle is that when it comes to going on holiday, it's a revolution. We normally take about an entire suitcase full of books with us, most of which we end up leaving behind at a book exchange. We end up having to weigh all our suitcases very carefully before we go to make sure the books are all evenly distributed so we don't go over our weight allowance.
Take a couple of Kindles and their battery chargers, though, and you're pretty much sorted, since it weighs about a quarter of a kilo (half a pound) and can fit 3,000+ books in its memory. Woo hoo!
However, you do need ebooks for it and while I've got a lovely supply of free eBooks, I would like some more things to read when I'm on holiday next week. So part 2 of this week's question is:
Are there any books you'd recommend for holiday reading, preferably available on the Kindle?
As always, leave a comment with your answer or a link to your answer on your own blog
Posted on March 3, 2011 | Post a comment |
Film
British TV
US TV
Subscribe to the daily news by RSS or email, or follow me on Twitter for breaking updates
Posted on March 3, 2011 | Post a comment |
I really like Alex Breckenridge. She's a very good comedy actress who always manages to make the shows she's in better. Plus she's a pretty good photographer.
She does, however, have the worst luck when it comes to casting. She was the star of the short movie DEBS, but got replaced by Jordana Brewster in the feature version. She was in Dirt, but that got cancelled after two seasons. She was the best thing about The Ex-List – which was cancelled after four episodes. After a promising first season in Life Unexpected, she was in only one episode of the second season. She was in the pilot for Traffic Light and was recast. She was in the pilot for Mad Love… and was recast.
That's got to suck.
Anyway, if you'd been following her on Twitter, you'd have known that her luck was down in this year's pilot season.
So she went proactive.
The result:
And the news breaks today that she's been cast as Cooper in Cooper and Stone. That was easy. Now all she has to do is avoid being recast…
Subscribe to the daily news by RSS or email, or follow me on Twitter for breaking updates
Posted on March 3, 2011 | Post a comment |
In the US: Wednesdays, 9.30/8.30c, ABC
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. What a shame. Mr Sunshine started so well, with a great cast and a cracking script. I got all light-headed with optimism.
Then episode two arrived and my God did it stink. Not a laugh the whole episode, which actually had me begging for the end to happen. And while episode three was mildly funnier, it's exposed the big problem with Mr Sunshine: the cast might be good, but they can't make a silk purse out of sow's ear, the scripts being the sow's ear in this case.
Strangely, episode two was written by the same writers as episode one with one exception – Matt Perry didn't contribute to episode two (officially at least). Which suggests that the only time Mr Sunshine is going to be funny is when Matt Perry is writing the episodes.
Oh well. Let's chalk that one up to experience.
Carusometer rating: 3
Carusometer prediction: will be cancelled by the end of the season.
Posted on March 3, 2011 | 1 comment |
In the US: Mondays, 8.30/7.30c, CBS
Well, you have to admire a show for consistency, even if it's merely consistently bland. Mad Love – in part a mimic of another of CBS's sitcoms, How I Met Your Mother but in essence the US answer to Gavin & Stacey, with a central blandish couple who fall in love at first sight being eclipsed by their more interesting love/hate each other at first sight friends – has been nothing but bland, despite the best efforts of a good cast.
Much like the first episode, each week, we go through a situation in which the two main characters get to know each and they turn out to be as bland as we thought; meanwhile, the two wacky friends get to be wacky at each other, all without raising much by the way of laughs. At no point do you really care about the bland couple; you kind of want the wacky pair to get together, but since that's so completely inevitable and you'll have to sit through standard but inept US sitcom putdowns to get there, you don't want it that much.
There have at least been attempts to give all the characters some background and we even know what Sarah Chalke's character does for a living now – ooh! But with scripts that rarely offer anything fresh or original in terms of comedy, that's the best that can be said.
One to skip, despite the cast who deserve much, much better.
Carusometer rating: 4
Carusometer prediction: dead by the end of the season
Posted on March 3, 2011 | Post a comment |
Time for our regular look at what TV's on at the South Bank in London in April. As well as previews of an Arena documentary about George Martin and ITV's The Suspicions of Mr Whicher (with Paddy Considine and Peter Capaldi), there's a children's TV drama of the 80s season called 'Dramarama and Beyond', which should be worth watching if only for the Dramarama episode Mr Stabs and the first episode of Steven Moffat's Press Gang. Yes, I know that's a season two picture, but would you rather have Lucy Benjamin or Gabrielle Anwar in-shot?
Read more on Third-episode verdict: New Girl