Rebecca Hall in Telegraph Magazine 29 October 2011

I spotted Rebecca Hall in today's Telegraph magazine so I picked up a copy and attempted some scans of the article which can be found below.

It's a while since I've seen Rebecca in a mag so it's nice to get an update on what she's been working on. Her next role is the lead in a 1920-set ghost story called The Awakening which is released in November.

Lara Pulver S Magazine 25 September 2011

Lara Pulver appeared in the Sunday Express "S Magazine" back on 25 September 2011. I've only got around to doing the scans now. Here they are!

Downton Abbey sisters in Radio Times

I know I was a little bit hard on Downton Abbey in my last post to this blog. However that didn't stop me from buying the new issue of the Radio Times that has a photo of the three Crawley sisters on the cover.

I'll be honest, I only bought it because there was a photo of the three Crawley sisters on the cover. I suspect it's largely to do with my strange and increasing attaction to the middle sister Edith.

Regardless of my motivations for buying said magazine here is a fairly good quality scan of the cover featuring Laura Carmichael, Jessica Brown Findlay and Michelle Dockery.

There are some actual words in an article about them inside the mag but I didn't bother scanning those.

I might tune in next Sunday night for a few minutes to see if Edith gets off with the Titanic guy.

Probably.

Kelly Sotherton returns to hepthalon

Long time readers of this blog may recall that while I am not enthusiastic about sport I am slightly more enthusiastic about Kelly Sotherton. Last year she announced she was giving up the heptathlon.

On Monday the news broke that it seems she's had a change of heart. Wednesday's Telegraph newspaper had an interview with her and here's an excerpt.

London 2012 Olympics: heptathlete Kelly Sotherton aims to finish athletics career on a high despite losing funding

It remains one of the harshest verdicts ever bestowed by a coach on his own athlete. In 2004, an emerging British heptathlete named Kelly Sotherton won Olympic bronze in Athens. Yet the first thing that everyone remembers about that breakthrough result is Charles van Commenee denouncing her as “a wimp”.

You can read the whole article at:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/8848910/London-2012-Olympics-heptathlete-Kelly-Sotherton-aims-to-finish-athletics-career-on-a-high-despite-losing-funding.html

Spooks vs Downton Abbey

Both Spooks and Downton Abbey went head to head on Sunday nights so I had a decision to make: which one to watch "live"?

At first Downton won that battle. But as the episodes went on I was unsettled to discover that it was actually, whisper it, a little bit rubbish. Meanwhile I was enjoying the non-live episodes of Spooks a lot more than I thought I would.

After week 4 I did the "switch". Now Spooks would be watched live and I would get around to Downton later. Probably.

Episode 5 of Spooks was a pretty good one. The gang kidnapped a CIA guy because they reckoned he was up to no good. This called for some action with Lara Pulver hanging out of a car firing a gun. Her cheekbones were looking particularly lovely in that episode.

After the cliff-hanger ending (Harry captured by bad Americans!) I turned over to ITV1+1 (I think) to watch the later broadcast of Downton.

I lasted about 10 minutes before I turned the TV off in disgust. That was just after Mary dropped her cup of tea juxtaposed with Matthew going over the top.

I mean, really...

I came to the sudden conclusion that I didn't care about any of the characters (with the possible exception of the middle daughter Edith who I am finding strangely more attractive as time goes on). I don't care about Bates and his on-off wedding with the maid lady. I don't care about the Irish chauffeur and his working man speeches. I certainly don't care about Matthew and Mary

So I skipped the rest of episode 5.

The final Spooks was on last night and rather than run about through the streets of London trying to defuse a nuclear bomb it was actually a low-key finale set mainly in an abandoned military bunker. In fact it looks like it was filmed in an actual abandoned military bunker. If not the production designers did a great job dressing the set up wherever it was. It was a fitting cold war setting for the revelations that followed.

The episode did veer into melodrama at the end when the Russian guy killed his wife and then the Russian son went after Harry with a broken piece of glass in revenge. "There goes Ruth," I thought, and sure enough there was another name on the MI5 memorial wall by the end of the episode.

Oddly there was a "surprise" cameo with the guy who played Mr  Darcey in the Keira Knightley movie returning to say about two lines of dialog.

Final Spooks over I gave Downton a try for 15 minutes. To be honest I found it a much more interesting experience watching the thing without having seen the previous episode. It appears that the footman (I can't remember his name) who fancied Daisy died, but not until he got married to her on his deathbed. There was a new maid to replace Amy Nuttall who now has a baby. She was doing The Acting at one point. Matthew was sulking in a wheelchair going on about being only half a man. I really wanted someone to slap him with a wet fish.

The most interesting bit involved the middle daughter Edith (who by now I am finding very attractive indeed) befriending some Canadian guy with a burned and bandaged head, who claimed to be the long-lost heir of Downton Abbey after getting amnesia on the Titanic disaster.

I mean you can't make this stuff up.

Oh wait, you can...

Doctor Who 'The Wedding of River Song'

And so we arrive at episode 13 of series 6. It's 5:02pm on 22 April 2011.

And the problem is that it's always 5:02pm on 22 April 2011 because time has gone "wrong". All of history is happening at once, so Winston Churchill is the head of the Roman Empire and Charles Dickens is being interviewed on Breakfast TV about his next Christmas Special.

It's all because River Song didn't shoot the doctor in Utah. Two versions of history have come into existence and it's all a mess.

The doctor describes to Churchill how he made preparations for his forthcoming death in Utah. He met the disembodied head of the blue-skinned guy from a previous episode who explained that The Silence want to prevent the Doctor asking the question that must not be answered. And the blue head guy actually knows what the question is...

The Doctor in the messed-up universe meets up with Amy who is now some sort of special agent. (She introduces herself as "Pond, Amy Pond".) She and her fellow agents all wear the eye patch thing. It turns out it's an eye drive (probably spelt "iDrive") that lets the wearer remember seeing The Silence when they are not around. She takes the Doctor to an Egyptian pyramid that has Area 52 painted on the side. There lots of The Silence are being help captive. Only they've been biding their time, waiting for the Doctor.

On top of the pyramid the Doctor and River get married, mainly so he can whisper his name in her ear, Except the Doctor lies and is not his name he is whispering, but rather "Teselecta", the name of the time-traveling humanoid space ship that has a miniature crew inside it from episode 8.

We discover that he asked the Teselecta to make itself look like him so it gets shot and the Doctor lives and all is right with the universe.

So having typed all the above I am struck by the fact that (a) it's not a stand alone episode and (b) it all sounds a little bit silly. In fact it's the second time that Steven Moffat has ended a season in a "not real" universe. While entertaining enough it does leave me with the somewhat dissatisfied feeling that the season adds up to less than the sum of its parts. I applaud the intent to do a complicated time travel story across two seasons but perhaps it would be better to stick to a more stand-alone season in 2012.

The glimpse of the Dalek in the trailer was slightly misleading, I'm sure intentionally. One Dalek briefly appeared at the start of the episode.

It's nice to see the Brigadier get a mention. The Doctor is told that he passed away at his nursing home.

Oh, I forgot, the question that must not be asked:

Doctor who?