The Killing II vs PanAm

So what to watch on Saturday night?

On BBC4 we have the followup to critically acclaimed The Killing. Nordic angst, grisly murder, chunky jumpers, frowning. And a double-bill no less.

On BBC2 we have fluffy frothy pretty but empty Pan Am, Mad Men lite as it were. It's got pretty air hostesses in the 1960s wearing fetching blue uniforms. And a double-bill no less.

For the first night of The Killing I decided that it would get my vote. Bring on the murder and the frowning. I thought the first episode was pretty good. But half-way through the second one I found myself stuck in a political meeting and with a shock I realised I was bored. So I gave up on The Killing half-way through episode 2.

Then this weekend I decided to pick up with episode 3, get back in the game. Bring on the jumpers and the angst! Very quickly thereafter I found myself in another political meeting and I realised I was bored. I quickly turned over to BBC2 to watch Pan Am. Yes, it was fluffy and frothy and empty, but in a pleasant way. The girls were pretty and looked good in their blue uniforms. There was even some sort of spy plot involving Goran from ER.

So until there is a director's cut of The Killing with all the political meetings removed my vote will be with Pan Am.

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?

Doctor Who 'Closing Time'

With Closing Time we reach the penultimate episode of series 6. The Doctor is on his farewell tour before the astronaut in the lake shoots him and he decides to pop by and see Craig from last years The Lodger.

Craig now has a baby son, Alfie, although the Doctor claims to 'speak baby' and that Alfie actually calls himself Stormageddon.

The lights are flickering in Colchester so the Doctor does the logical thing and gets a job in a department store, complete with name tag reading 'The Doctor'.

Along the way we get a glimpse of Amy and Rory in the shop when a little girl asks Amy for an autograph. The Doctor is watching from a distance and notices a big perfume advertisement using Amy's face, 'For the girl who is tired of waiting'. 

The main plot involves Cybermen teleporting from their spaceship into the shop's lift where they grab unfortunate staff for the cyber conversion process. The Doctor deactivates the teleporter but the Cybermen keep coming. It turns out that the spaceship is not actually in space but is buried under the shop.

The Cybermen decide to use Craig as their new cyber leader but he hears the sound of the baby crying and his emotional feedback makes the Cybermen's heads blow up.

Yes, really.

This was an entertaining enough episode, but it's a pity to see the Cybermen appear so useless and unthreatening. I remember the thrill of watching Earthshock for the first time back in 1982. This was no Earthshock. It was nice to see the return of the cybermats though.

It's another stand-alone episode, although the last few minutes get interesting. As the doctor is about to embark on his last journey he sees three kids watching him. They know something is up and we hear voiceovers looking back describing what they saw.

Then we are with the newly qualified doctor River Song who has been researching the Doctor's last days. In walks the eyepatch lady accompanied by the silent scream aliens. It turns out that River is still under the control of The Silence and is placed in the space suit in preparation for next week's episode...

Speaking of which, is that a Dalek eyestalk I saw in the trailer?

Downton Abbey 2.1 and Spooks 10.1

Last night saw the return of Downton Abbey on ITV and Spooks on BBC1.

Downton as expected turned out to be a solid piece of duvet tv. It ticked a lot of boxes for manufacturing some angst for most of the main characters. It is now 1916 and the Great War is raging in France.

The main event of the episode was the return of heir to Downton Abbey from the front. He turned up with a shock fiancee. The Michele Doherty character was doing some serious gazing-across-the-room acting. Later she is found doing some uncharacteristic praying by her bedside for his survival. They had a farewell scene at a train station as he returned to the front. Those are always good. I liked that he was all convinced he was not coming back from France, almost like they are setting him up for a shock exit? She insists on giving him her 'lucky' stuffed toy.

I expect that stuffed toy to be in the shops for Christmas.

I also liked the Penelope Wilton butler approaching the doctor as he tries to get out of being called up on account of his 'bad lungs'. He could have at least coughed.

And remember the nasty footman? He's now a stretcher bearer in the trenches and is desperate to get home. He holds a lit cigerate lighter above the trench in order to get his hand shot by an obliging German sniper. He sobs his thanks as the blood pumps from his ruined hand. I actually think the episode was quite successful in this sequence as they made me have sympathy for an unlikable character and made it quit believable that one would go those lengths to get out of the madness of the trenches.

The Bates story seemed a bit contrived to me though. One minute he's planing his future with the maid he's sweet on. The next minute his wife turns up. She was was a bit too much boo-hiss evil and was clearly added to the story just to split up Bates and his true love. He is forced to resign his position and leave in order to stop some scandal spreading and Hugh Bonniville's resulting whine about Bates leaving service didn't ring true.

In other developments the youngest daughter baked a cake and the Irish driver expressed his love for her.

I think I might like Amy Nuttal's new maid lady. Must be a redhead thing.

I'll be keeping my eyes out for any melodramatic bar of soap incidents.

Spooks was ok in a tired sort of way. The characters uncovered a plot to kill a Russian and Lara Pulver managed to shoot the assassin while wearing an evening gown. I expect that we will see her staring into a mirror a lot to signify that it's the first person she's killed. Her voice reminded me a bit of Eva Green.

Doctor Who 'The God Complex'

A pretty good episode this week. The previews and reviews I read went a little more easy on the superlatives so my expectations were not unduly raised too high.

The Doctor once again promises Amy and Rory another exciting planet. Instead they materialise in what appears to be an hotel done out in 1980s decor

They soon encounter a group of people from Earth (and elsewhere) who have been gathered in the hotel for some reason. They appear to be compelled to open bedroom doors at random where they are faced with someone's greatest fear, e.g. a clown, a PE instructor, girls laughing at a stutter, the Weeping Angels, etc. Eventually they stumble upon their own fear and start to 'praise him'.

Him being a big monster bloke with horns who is wandering around the hotel looking for the person currently doing the praising. Whereupon they are dead.

So understandably the Doctor wants to get his chums out of danger. Along the way he works out that the monster doesn't want their fear, rather he feeds on their faith. The fear is just a way of exposing one's faith.

Amy is next to utter the dreaded 'praise him' and the Doctor finds the room with her fear: It's young Amelia sitting waiting for the doctor to return as promised. Amy's faith is in the Doctor so he he convinces Amy that she shouldn't have faith in him, that he only tool her along in the Tardis to impress her.

That pretty much defeats the monster bloke and the hotel is revealed to be a space prison. The unfortunates that ended up there were basically delivered as the monster's food.

The Doctor brings Amy and Rory back to Earth and gives them a house and a red sports car. It's goodbye as he's worried he'll get them killed.

So it appears to be goodbye Amy, at least for now. However given that the series finalie is almost upon us I would expect it to deal with the Silence, River Song, the astronaut in the lake that kills the Doctor, and that woman with the eyepatche thing. I think Amy needs to be back for all that.

Ah, but I have forgotten something. While exploring the hotel the Doctor opens the door to room 11. We don't sew what's inside but the Doctor says 'of course' and we hear what sounds like the Tardis cloister bell... Interesting.

Next week: the bloke from last years Lodger episode and Cybermen.

Lara Pulver in Daily Mail and elsewhere

There's a few new articles about Lara Pulver appearing in Spooks.

First of all there's a nice big article in the center pages of today's Daily Mail newspaper.

You can read the article at www.dailymail.co.uk

There's a little piece at www.whatsontv.co.uk

From the Evening Standard...

Spooks star Lara Pulver has told of the "crazy adrenaline buzz" she got from holding a gun.

The actress was armed with a Walther PPK semi-automatic, the same gun used by James Bond, for a scene in the 10th and final series of Spooks, which starts on Sunday.

She described the weapon as "the girlie version, all silver and sexy but just as deadly as 007's".

Pulver, who plays Erin Watts in the BBC1 show, added: "It felt empowering in a very rude way."

www.thisislondon.co.uk

Finally there's an interview with Lara in the current issue of Reveal magazine. Which is a magazine I had never heard of up to a few minutes ago.

Lara Pulver Spooks interview

I've just discovered this interview with Lara on a site called cultbox so I thought I would post it here.

Lara Pulver ('Spooks': Series 10) interview

Update, I found another interview: http://www.tvchoicemagazine.co.uk/interviewextra/lara-pulver-spooks

PS I've just realised that this is my 300th post to this blog thing.

Lara Pulver Spooks article in Total TV Guide

Today is "new TV listings mag day" and I was hoping that the Radio Times would have a nice Lara Pulver article for me ahead of Spooks returning on Saturday.

However while the Radio Times and most other mags do have some Spooks content there is very little Lara-specific stuff going on.

Fortunately Total TV Guide (somewhere between the TV Times and Whats On TV in terms of quality) does provide us with a nice full-page photo of Lara looking very lovely indeed...

It would appear that she spends the episode in an evening dress running around with a gun. I can only assume there is yet another embassy siege with her colleagues being held hostage. Sounds good to me.

It is worth noting that all the TV guides are presently having a collective swoon of excitement with the return of Downton Abbey. The TV Times has even produced alternate Downton Abbey covers to collect and be passed on to future generations. The Radio Times has a foldy-out cover to fit in bigger picture of the stars, no doubt worth framing and hanging in the living room.

All well and good, but Spooks and Downton are on at the same time on Sunday. And my DVD Recorder has packed in. I may resort to recording on on good old VHS. Remember that?

Lara Pulver in Spooks info from BBC

The BBC press office has released some info on the upcoming final series of Spooks. Here's the little bit about Lara Pulver's character plus a tiny photo.

In the last ever series of acclaimed spy drama Spooks, the team has been left reeling by Lucas North's betrayal, and with Harry Pearce on gardening leave, Section D has a new leader. Erin Watts is acting head and she has brought Calum Reed with her, a brilliant officer and technical genius.

You can read the complete press release at www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/proginfo/tv/2011/wk38/images/206_spooks.jpg.

Hopefully the BBC will release a larger photo soon.

Gerry Anderson's UFO

I'm quite a fan of science fiction so it's something of an anomaly that I'm only getting around to watching Gerry Anderson's series UFO now. This is a series that was made in 1969 and broadcast in 1970 and it was, I believe, the first of Anderson's shows to be made with actors rather than puppets.

I don't recall seeing this show as a kid, although I do have memories of owning a broken and battered Dinky UFO Interceptor toy. It was broadcast on the BBC a few years ago and I would have seen bits of it then, although not complete episodes.

Recently I bought the DVD box-sets and have been making my way through the early episodes.

The premise of the series is that Earth is under threat from aliens. A secret organisation called SHADO is set up to to combat the threat. There's an early-warning space station that alerts Moonbase, the first line of defence. If a UFO makes it past the Lunar interceptors and reaches Earth then other aircraft and ground vehicles respond.

Head of SHADO Ed Straker runs the secret organisation from a hidden base under a film studio and is played by Anderson regular Ed Bishop.

What is quite charming is that they've set the show in the far off futuristic year of... 1980! That's only a decade on from when the series was being made. In that time men have stopped wearing ties and lady astronauts have started wearing purple wigs. One nice detail they did get right was the use of cordless telephones.

Notable among the purple-haired ladies is Gabrielle Drake who plays lieutenant Gay Ellis. She would go on to appear in Crossroads among other things.

The show had fairly high production values and it's interesting to compare the quality of the colour images filmed on proper film stock with the grainy black and white Doctor Who episodes that survive from the same period. The makers also put some effort into the spacesuits and Lunar-surface sets for example.

A planned second series was canceled and the design work on a bigger Moonbase was apparently Incorporated into Anderson's next space epic, Space 1999.

Lucy Liemann returns in Reggie Perrin series 2

Just a quick alert that Reggie Perrin series 2 arrives on BBC1 on Thursday 14 October 2010. I'm glad to see that Lucy is in the cast list so I shall be interupting my viewing of Law & Order UK to watch it.

Series 1 was broadcast last year and was not the disaster I had been expecting so the new series will hopefully be worth a look.

And Lucy is in it.

Here's one of the screen caps I did last year to tide us over until tomorrow night.

Idris Elba and Ruth Wilson Luther Interview

www.collider.com/2010/10/02/idris-elba-ruth-wilson-interview-luther/ have an interview with Idris Elba and Ruth Wilson about crime drama Luther which premieres on BBC America on 17 October 2010. Here's a Ruth excerpt:

Ruth: When I first read it, it did resonate with me as a piece that was a bit similar to Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling, except it’s the other way around. That really appealed to me. You certainly don’t get many female roles like this. The relationship develops throughout the series. It starts off with her having committed a crime and Luther trying to pin her down for it. And, as the series goes on, it becomes a game of cat and mouse between the two of them. They actually realize they have an intellectual interest in each other, as well as a sexual chemistry. They are just fascinated by each other, so it’s a really interesting dynamic. She ends up helping and they become partners in crime a bit. It’s a fascinating dynamic between the two characters, and something that hadn’t really been explored that much on TV before. That’s why it was so appealing.

Follow the above link for more.

By the way I noticed links on that page about a prequel to The Thing so I'm off to investigate that!

Laura Vandervoort in V musings

V has been put back in my mind thanks to SciFi Now Magazine who have put Laura Vandervoort on the cover of the latest issue.



I was surprised to read that the show has got a second season. I don't mean surprised as in it was a rubbish show, I mean surprised as in it's not bad but I thought everything got canceled nowadays.

Anyway it prompted me to watch the last four episodes of the twelve episode season. And they weren't bad. In fact they were pretty good. It's interesting to see how Laura's character Lisa becomes more important as the story progresses. In the last bunch of episodes she has a lot of screen time. It's also interesting to see her start to rebel against her mother Anna.

The show does suffer from some logic lapses, e.g. various humans seem able to walk around the mother-ship with ease, and why can't the lizards with their surveillance technology not find out that Chad Decker's Fifth Column "source" is the priest.

But then I recall how the human resistance in the old show were able to infiltrate the mother-ship at will and not get caught or escape easily.

Anyhow, I will be watching out for the second season when it arrives. Season 1 I believe is coming to Virgin 1 in the UK this month.

Also SciFi Now promise an interview with Jane Badler in the next issue, i.e. Diana from original V. I'll be buying that issue!

Luther to return (and Sherlock too)

I've not found much detail but apparently the BBC's Luther will return in 2011 for "two hour-long specials". One would hope that Ruth Wilson will be returning as Alice Morgan. Note the use of the word "specials" as they can't very well call it a series with just two episodes.

Still, it's welcome news even if it's only two episodes.

Sherlock will also be returning for three more episodes.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11124783

Sherlock is also out on DVD. I'm tempted to buy it as it includes an un-broadcast pilot episode that according to the IMDb Zoe telford is in, whereas in the broadcast series she was introduced in the second episode and only makes a fleeting appearance in the third.

That nice Zoe Telford

So I was watching episode 2 of Sherlock last Sunday, the first episode of which I had enjoyed very much.

The second episode is ok, I thought, but it's no episode 1. However the nice lady doctor that Tim from The Office trys to get off with, played by Zoe Telford, did catch my eye.

I had to go and do the ususal hunt on the IMDB after the episode to see what else she has been in. It's a wonder I've don't remember seeing her in anything because she's been in Ashes to Ashes, Foyle's War, Collision, Law and Order UK, Afterlife, Teachers, The Palace and Criminal Justice to name just a few of her TV credits.

She was also in a thing called The Last Train that was on back in 1999. I remember watching that but I'm not sure I remember her character.

Oh, and she played Eva Braun opposite Robert Carlyle's Hitler!

Sherlock Episode 1 - "A Study in Pink"

I somehow managed to catch the first episode of the BBC's new modern day version of Sherlock Holmes, titled simply Sherlock. It was really rather good.

Stephen Moffat, fresh from introducing us to the 11th Doctor Who, and Mark Gatiss have somehow managed to retain all of the essential elements of the character, most importantly his ability to extrapolate a life story from observations of the smallest details such as scratches on a mobile phone. I also particularly liked the way they showed his thought process visually such as the words "wet" and "dry" appearing as he examines the coat of a victim.

Mark Gatiss himself appears as Sherlock's "arch enemy". We all expect him to be Moriarty but of course he turns out to be Sherlock's brother Mycroft.

Nice to see other characters from the books appearing such as Inspector Lestrade and Mrs Hudson and also the setting of 221B Baker Street, although I don't remember Holmes and Watson flat sharing in the originals!

Honestly I saw the taxi connection quite early on, but that's probably due to watching Luther a couple of months ago. Phil "Shake me up Judy" Davis is on hand playing the taxi-driver with quiet malevolence.

Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman did fine jobs as Holmes and Watson and will be good company for the next two episodes.

Doctor Who "The Lodger"

A harmless enough episode I suppose. Somethings wrong with the Tardis and it won't land properly. The Doctor is stuck on earth and has to work out what's keeping it (and Amy) from landing. He moves into a ground floor flat as a lodger because there is something very odd going on upstairs. People are being lured in off the street to "help" the occupant upstairs. And then they disappear.

So there's lots of comedy about the Doctor trying to fit in, play football, interrupt romantic moments, etc. All well and good but frankly I'm glad it didn't overstay it's welcome.

Eventually we get to what's going on upstairs. Quite a nice idea actually. There is no upstairs, it's another Tardis like ship camouflaged like an upstairs flat. It's stuck on Earth and is looking for a new pilot to continue its journey.

So danger averted the other time ship implodes and the top floor disappears from existence. No mention of who's ship it was which is either deliberate or an oversight.

Minor plot niggle, why didn't the Doctor just go and investigate upstairs as soon as he arrived?

And yes, I know I skipped writing anything about last week's episode. Frankly it was fairly weak and I couldn't work up any enthusiasm about it.

Luther episode 6

The final episode of Luther aired this week and while it was an enjoyable conclusion to the series it's plot perhaps does not stand up to much scrutiny.

A few cards had been thrown up into the air at the end of episode 5, not least Luther going on the run after finding his wife's body, knowing he's the main suspect. He finds refuge in Alice Morgan's flat, saying he needs somewhere to think. She sees though this immediately and get him to admit he wants her help to get Ian Reed.

Thankfully Ruth's screen presence has been bumped up significantly in the last episode and Alice Morgan clearly is relishing the whole Bonnie and Clyde double-act with Luther.

As mentioned, there are a number of plot holes. Here's just a couple.

Why did Luther go to meet Reed when he knew there would be armed police and snipers ready to shoot him? If he wanted to get Reed's diamonds why not arrange the meet, and instead of turning up just phone or text to say "We've got the diamonds"? And how could he know his partner would be in a position to stop the sniper?

And how did Luther convince Mark to help him so quickly, especially when Alice has been holding a knife to his throat? There's a lot more plot holes where they came from.

By the episode's end Luther, Alice and Mark are standing over Reed's body with the sound of sirens approaching. One can't help wonder what will happen next. I do hope we find out.

Luther episode 4

Another enjoyable episode of this show. This one features another serial killer who uses a taxi to catch his victims.

Early in the episode Luther is told that the serial killer he put in a coma (at the start of episode 1) has woken up. He goes to Alice to tell her he can't see her any more because his phone and email will be monitored. Alice doesn't take it very well.

Alice disguises herself as a doctor and manages to get the policeman guarding the serial killer to go to another ward. Then she smothers the killer so she and Luther can be together.

When Luther finds out he Smashes Stuff again. Brilliant.

She also breaks the news to Luther's ex-wife's boyfriend that the ex-wife is cheating on him (the boyfriend) with her ex-husband. Yes it's complicated.

Once again Ruth is great as Alice Morgan, coldly calculating and just on this side of barking mad.

As an added bonus here is a nice photo of Ruth from the new issue of the Radio Times.