Rock Rivals Hotting Up

As we near the final of Rock Rivals it all seems to be going wrong for Mal, with Karina looking as though she has the upper hand. However, this is TV and this is Rock Rivals where nothing goes to plan, and it’s difficult to see where the plot will go next.

Michelle Collins and ex-Coronation Street star Sean Gallagher star in this tongue in cheek swipe at the popular reality TV shows Pop Idol and X Factor. Quite who is supposed to be Simon Cowell is a bit of a mystery. Rock Rivals is from the same stable as Footballers Wives, Bad Girls and Waterloo Road, and has attracted decent viewing numbers during its current run. Whether it is the kind of show which can return to the screens next year remains to be seen.

However, tonight’s episode is something of a first for mainstream TV with viewers encouraged to vote for their winner on the ITV website. When voting has been counted ITV will show one of two endings which are already in the can – each containing a twist in the plot.

On a wider note, it’s refreshing to see ex-soap stars appearing in something other than The Bill, which seems to be the first port of call for many. Michelle Collins has been one of the more successful ex-soap stars, and after this performance it looks as though Sean Gallagher will have a bright career ahead of him as well. It will be interesting to see what the future holds for these two stars.

The Rise and Rise of Shameless

While Shameless has enjoyed a cult following for some time now, recent press coverage has seen the profile of this gritty Manchester-based drama hit new heights. Tonight’s show sees an earth tremor hit the North West area with terrible consequences.

In the after shock of the quake Monica goes into labour unexpectedly but refuses to have the baby until Frank is present. Unbeknownst to Monica, Frank was knocked off his bar stool during the tremor and is currently in a coma – where he is enjoying a period of success in the “other world”.

Interestingly, Shameless is actually based on the childhood experiences of the show’s creator, Paul Abbott. Originally aired in January 2004 the show was given a late night slot because of the language and some of the more adult content of the show. Expected by many to be only a filler ahead of an array of new shows planned back in 2004, Shameless soon caught the attention of the UK public and the press.

The show has gone from strength to strength over the last couple of years and is now a mainstay of the Channel 4 schedule. As if to confirm the grass roots of the show, series five of Shameless was filmed using a specially designed 66,000 sq ft set built in Wythenshawe, Manchester – a place which has its fair share of Shameless-like areas!

The show is turning into something of a hot-bed of acting talent with Jody Latham recently featuring heavily in the ITV show The Fixer.

While the likes of EastEnders and Coronation Street continue to grab the headlines for their “reality”, nothing can quite match the unapologetic realism which Shameless offers. Funny, hard hitting and a BAFTA winner to boot - what more can you ask for?

Battlestar Galactica Premieres Tonight

Battlestart Galactica

By McGee Noble

This fourth and final season of Battlestar Galactica (Sky One, tonight, 9pm) makes some of us quiver with anticipation and others shrug and say ‘so?’ To those latter people: Scat. Get. Go on, get outta here. Go watch Hollyoaks.

To the former, gather in, gather in, and I’ll tell you a little about what’s in store for you.

The fleet is on the run and Starbuck has returned claiming that she’s found the mythical Earth. We’ve got Cylons aplenty and humans who have found they are not as human as they thought. There’s fights in space, love, loyalty and betrayal. All the stuff that makes Battlestar Galactica so very watchable.

When this show first began in 2005 it was amid a storm of protest from fans of the original show, with particular damnation heaped on the decision to cast Starbuck as a woman. Dirk Benedick, who played the orginal Starbuck commented at the time “What a sad fate to happen to Starbuck. I don’t know why they’ve done this; it’s kind of mystifying.” In fact several actors from the original series who were supposed to guest star in the re-make pulled out in disgust over the changes, however showrunner Ronald Moore stood strong with his vision.

And a good thing he did too.

The new Battlestar Galactica took the old fluffy, family friendly teddy bear of an original and jumped all over it with one booted foot, roughed it up in the mud a little, re-stuffed it with ball bearings and gunpowder and then sat back and watched it explode into television goodness.

In 2001 when Ron Moore came on board to bring the new show to life, it was amidst the world changing events of 9/11 and the profound questions of terror, morality and war that this brought into our social consciousness became central questions of the series. Gone was the fantasatical campness of Star Trek (for those in the know, Ron Moore was a writer and executive producer on Star Trek: The Next Generation and also Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), Moore wanted to bring a real war to a science fiction world. As he said before the mini series aired “I don’t want to do Star Trek and Star Wars all over again. There’s a certain style of filmmaking associated with those shows, which is a very romantic, glossy approach to science fiction, with big, lush, orchestral scores, etc… We’re going to try to make it, for want of a better word, more real, a real place, down and dirty, with a sort of ‘You are there’ feel to it. It’s going to be - and this is a bad phrase - a ‘down to Earth’ sort of place.”

Co-producer David Eick supported this “there have been two aesthetic touchstones primarily for this pilot: 2001: A Space Odyssey and Black Hawk Down, both of which are very rooted in reality and both of which still manage to be gripping, suspenseful and exciting.” The handheld camera motion, particularly in space, which was so clearly inspired by Black Hawk Down does exactly what the creators hoped and gives instant grit to the battles.

There is an epic darkness to Battlestar’s premise, because it is essentially about the end of humanity, not just literally but also culturally, metaphysically and theologically. The growing religious fervour of the Cylons (which as you will see in tonight’s episode is becoming an important theme) is one of the things that forces the question of what makes the humans ‘human’, not to mention the discovery by several important characters that they are in fact Cylons. On the one hand the humans in the show have lost much of their humanity in the form of civilisation and culture, while on the other; the Cylons are becoming more human both in civilisation and emotion.

Tonight’s episode begins what will be the final story arc for this series, and for fans of the show this is both a disappointment and a relief. To know the answers to the questions posed in the first episode will be immensely satisfying, but we will surely miss what has been one of the most interesting and well written science fiction shows in many a year. Let’s see if this last season lives up to the promise of the first three.

Pushing Daisies Is Best Watch on TV Today

Pushing Daisies

By McGee Noble

Death is a funny thing. We are quite rightly fascinated by this weird, I mean WEIRD thing in which one day, even though it seems impossible, all this will not be…well, this. Most of the time it’s easy not to think about it, I mean we have coffee, avoiding the smelly guy on the bus, making sure you meet your targets at work, stopping at Tesco’s, cooking dinner, sleeping. Most of the time death hides in a little corner of our brain, while we get on with the whole stinky business of living.

Not so for Bryan Fuller. You probably haven’t heard of him, and I would like to fix that. So, introductions: Bryan Fuller: these are onthebox readers; readers, this is Bryan Fuller. Who? You say… Fuller is a TV death junkie, whose fascination with how life is shaped by death led to the creation of cult comedy Dead Like Me in which young slacker Georgina’s (George) life is brutally cut short by a flying toilet seat from space. Somewhat unfairly, life for George is replaced by an afterlife which is uncannily similar to the mundane, office job leading, aimless existence she had before death, only now she’s a grim reaper. It’s a show about grief and comedy, and its unique perspective seems to tap into a sense of wonder and strangeness, as well as melancholy that death brings. Great show obviously canned after 2 seasons.

However Bryan Fuller has not let us down, but returned with a more audience friendly and now proper hit show Pushing Daisies (Saturday, ITV1, 9.05pm) Again, death shapes the story. Ned is a pie maker, a sweet loner who runs ‘The Pie Hole’. What makes him such a loner is that he has the power to bring the dead back to life. Unfortunately, if they live longer than a minute, this comes with the consequence of someone else nearby dying in the resurrected person’s place. This is a big help to private detective Emerson Cod, who uses Ned to wake murder victims for one minute so he can find out who killed them and collect the bounty. All is dandy until Ned brings back to life his childhood sweetheart Chuck (our very own Anna Friel, read her interview here). Hopelessly in love and yet unable to touch, so begins one of the most wonderful romances on TV for years.

There’s a good whack of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, with the charming surrealism of Amelie, and yet this isn’t a squeakingly sugary fantasy. It’s more like an inquisitive existential mystery hidden in a fairy tale. Inventive, imaginative and yet strangely real, it breaks all the rules and does it with grace. Fuller doesn’t hammer home the death and grief and yet its there, slipped in to the background, pulling the fantastical down to earth.

It’s taken the U.S. by storm, which surprised just about everyone in the universe. Critics love it, men want to shower it with presents and women want to have its babies. And Bryan Fuller is probably sitting back chuckling, because while the rest of the time its easy not to think about it, he’s made us all pull death out of the little cupboards in our brains and look it in the face for a while. And for a moment Fuller makes it look right back. Then we can laugh at it, turn the telly off and go back to our normal, stinky business, knowing that there’s coffee, public transport and work to keep us occupied in the meantime. And Fuller’s work is done.

So, if you missed the first episode on Saturday night, then go out of your way to catch a repeat on ITV2 at 9pm tonight and make friends with our man Fuller. He’s got some interesting stuff to say.

Read what Anna Friel has to say about it here.

Premiere of ‘Chuck’ is worth a chuckle

Chuck Virgin 1 Mondays at 10pm By McGee Noble

Chuck is a weird name right? It’s so American you expect it to come out flailing a George Forman grill in one hand and a burger in the other. Yet it’s the nickname of our very own Anna Friel in her new U.S. drama Pushing Daisies. It’s also the name of Virgin 1’s latest U.S. import. Chuck (Mondays, 10 pm) is of the hugely popular geek turned hero genre. Well so it’s not a hugely popular genre yet, but it soon will be with the likes of Reaper, Chuck and Pushing Daisies generally getting great reviews all around. I think we can blame the success on that foppy haired nerd from the O.C. The one who ended up going out with absurdly pretty Summer and so giving unfair hope to geeks all over the globe.

So our hero Chuck works at the Nerd Herd (yeah, they aren’t subtle in setting up the whole geek premise). He wears white button down shirts with pens in the pocket. He has foppy hair. You almost expect the writer to pop up in one corner of the screen and point to him saying ‘He’s a geek! A geek! I know he’s attractive, but honestly he’s a geek. Just like that guy on the O.C. and look how many girls fancied him!’

Our geekly hero has had some misfortune in his past, like all the best heroes. His ex best friend and evil college room mate Bryce got him kicked out of college and stole his girlfriend on the same day. Now years later, Chuck is unrecovered and lovesick and generally meandering through life in a funk uplifted only by his even more geekly friend and employee Morgan. That is until Bryce emails a secret CIA database to Chuck that somehow (this is where the writer disappears offscreen and hides in a cupboard) downloads directly into his brain (‘what? what? that could TOTALLY happen…’) making him the repository of all world saving information. Ruh roh. Cue the entrance of bad ass NSA agent played by Adam Baldwin and saucy CIA agent Sarah.

It’s an easy watching, action filled, geek referencing hour that slips down as easily as the fat from your Forman grill. It’s hard not to like the self aware humour and whole fish out of water thing but I’ll warn you it takes a slide in quality after the first episode, what with the budget blown on all those action sequences. But hey, the premise has some legs so lets see if it pulls up its socks later on.

The Fixer

While this relatively new series on TV did not receive as much publicity as many which have gone before, The Fixer is starting to build up something of a large following. The show stars Andrew Buchan, Peter Mullan and Tamzin Outhwaite in the world of undercover police work and assassinations. Mercer is the man whom the police come to when then need someone “fixed”, often somebody who has evaded justice for one reason or another. The middleman is a high ranking police chief by the name of Lenny who affectively pulls the strings of the hired assassin Mercer.

While Mercer has never knowingly questioned the orders of Lenny, tonight see Mercer involved in the proposed assassination of someone who is supposed to have kidnapped and killed a young lady on the orders of a known gangster. As the plot thickens the suspected killer starts to question Mercer about the involvement of the police in the young girl’s murder, which sees Mercer in a highly charged confrontation with Lenny. Words are spoken, threats are made and slowly but surely the story begins to unravel. What will the hired assassin do next? Will he get to the truth?

There have been a number of crime based shows on ITV over the years but The Fixer is an interesting angle on the life and times of the modern day police force. Whether any of the stories are based on an ounce of fact is unknown, but this look into the murky world of disappearing bodies, investigative journalists and the like is enthralling to the end. The acting is excellent, the storylines are very difficult to double guess and it is sure to keep you on the edge of your seat until the very end.

ITV have been criticised in the past for sub-standard shows but The Fixer is most defiantly one of their better efforts of late and sure to be back for a second series.

Flatliners

While it was first aired back in 1990, Flatliners has become something of a classic with an all star cast which includes Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon and William Baldwin. This is an intriguing look into the world of medicine with a group of medical students playing games with life and death!

Using an array of drugs to stop their hearts and their brains for a short period – commonly known as flatlining – they venture into a world of terror, joy and intrigue all appearing in a number of alarming episodes. While they think their dreams are over when they are awoken from their slumber, this is where the real fun begins. Chased by demons of years gone by, haunted by things they have done in their lives, each and every one of the medical students come face to face with their own nightmare . Eager to push the boundaries yet further and further, they attempt to “flatline” for longer and longer with shocking consequences.

While the storyline itself is edge of the seat stuff, it is the acting by the array of stars detailed above which really takes this film to a different level. Suspense, fear, joy and excitement, this movie has it all. Quite where they get the ideas for such films remains to be seen but a seemingly unbelievable storyline suddenly becomes believable!

It is difficult to pick out the main players in the film but Kiefer Sutherland and Julia Roberts are cast in the lead roles, although they are more than ably supported by the remainder of the cast. For those who have not seen Flatliners, you really do not know what you have been missing for all of these years, and for those who have seen it before, well, you have the chance to watch it all over again!

The Bill : Beth Undercover

The Bill TV Show Fresh from receiving a high profile TV award for services to the TV industry, The Bill is going from strength to strength having recently reversed its role as a place for ailing actors and actresses to “build up their pension”. Louisa Lytton made a relatively quiet start as Beth in the show but recently her role has widened out and she has been at the centre of a number of great storylines. Originally a little slow on the up take she now seems set for the top, with a number of her senior officers taking a great interest in her.

Tonight sees Beth go under cover on a dangerous mission to flush out some of the local drugs dealers who have been flooding the streets of Sun Hill with “skunk”. After getting the name of the main supplier Beth attends a party where she is soon drawn into the dark and dangerous world of drug dealing. While hot on the heels of the suspects she falls for one of the street workers Lenny, who has also been caught up in this underground network of deals and dealers. Determined to pursue the case to the end, Beth pretends that she has no feelings for Lenny, but will she come round in the end? Is she being true to herself?

The Bill is one of the longest running TV shows in the UK and at this moment it is probably at or near to its peak popularity. Gripping storylines, spectacular stunt work and acting which just gets better and better has seen the show move onto a different level. Rumours of its demise some years ago have proved unfounded and with viewing figures moving higher with each new storyline, it seems that the current crop of policemen and policewoman at Sun Hill are attracting more and more fans.

Drake And Josh

While Drake And Josh will be a show which is fairly new to many in the UK, it is fast attracting cult status in both the US and the UK with more and more younger people tuning into what is turning into a comic classic. The show centres around two teenagers who are set to become step brothers, their fights, their antics and their many adventures. First aired in January 2004, the show is now in season 4 and the reputation of the actors seems to be increasing all of the time.

The show stars Drake Bell and Josh Peck, with Drake the more sensible one of the two (which is not exactly saying too much!) and Josh the more accident prone one of the two, who always seems to be getting into scrapes. They have ruined their parent’s house, they have wrecked their place of work, not to mention the time they lost their parents car after being tied up and left in the middle of the countryside – you name it, they have probably done it at some time or another!

Even though many comedy shows in the US seem to have an underlying message, a point to many of their storylines, Drake And Josh is just fun, fun, fun all the way. Their madcap ventures have increased the profile of not only the show, but all of the actors associated with the venture. “Crazy” Steve played by Jerry Trainor seems to be one of the script writer’s favourites, popping up in almost every episode there has ever been.

It will be interesting to see if one of the traditional TV stations in the UK pick up the show from the US, because there is no doubt that there is still a lot of mileage in this one. Its perfect for kids, adults will find it amusing and it makes you glad to be normal!

Attack of the Killer Spin Off: 90210 to Return

By McGee Noble

Just this morning I read that Veronica Mars creator Rob Thomas plans on, wait for it… doing a 90210 spin off. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. This most beautiful piece of high school drama, this grandmammy of trash television, back to our screens once again. I delight in the possibilities:

1. The return of the sideburn. For years I’ve been trying to encourage the sideburn return. Those bushy spectaculars that made Jason Priestley and Luke Perry so attractive and masculine.

2. The return of the mega beeaatch. I was highly disappointed in Gossip Girl’s so called resident be-atch, Blair Waldorf. I mean seriously, her idea of being super bad is locking someone in her mum’s shop for an evening. Where’s the evil in that? Hollyoaks has more potent villainesses.

3. Super betrayals. Again, the ‘oh no you didn’t’ factor has dropped off severely in recent years. Remember the Brenda/Kelly/Dylan love triangle? How could Kelly do it? How could she?

4. Please, please find someone that we love to hate the way we loved to hate Shannon Doherty. The woman is a legend in soap television. Don’t give us blandly likeable actresses, give us Divas who make the rest of the cast quiver in hatred, who go out in a blaze of glorious betrayals and catfights- not in the show but in real life.

5. A new cast of thirty, oops I mean seventeen year olds. For some reason these teen actors can never quite pull off the brooding masculinity of the grown man masquerading as teenager. One Tree Hill? Fuggedaboudit… Dylan would beat them to the ground with one hand still combing his quiff.

It seems our love for reminiscing is bringing other favourites back to our screens. This week a TV movie, precursor to a new TV show, of the Hasselhoff classic Knight Rider aired in the US. Here are some choice reviews that I have seen so far:

“NBC proves they’ve learned nothing from the “Bionic Woman” debacle with this two-hour Ford commercial that was as short on excitement as it was on capturing the feel of the original and the imagination of the audience.”

“Uninspired Rubbish!!!!!!!”

“They did everything imaginable wrong.”

Ahhh, the sweet smell of failure. NBC really seem to enjoy it. A better remake would be a modern day look at the reality behind the fantasy as K.i.t.t. tries to deal with Michael’s drinking problem. It could go something like this:

Int. Garage. Night
K.i.t.t. is scuffed up and dusty. Michael, now middle aged, lies half naked across the bonnet, eating a burger.

K.I.T.T: see what happens when you drink Michael?

MICHAEL: gruuunnngghhh ( he continues to shove dripping burger into his mouth)

K.I.T.T: don’t drink anymore Michael… They said if you go in drunk again you’d get fired.

MICHAEL: BLEEP you K.i.t.t! (slurred)

K.I.T.T: Don’t I matter to you anymore Michael? Don’t you care about me?

MICHAEL: (mouth full of burger) GuUERAAAGRRERNNNGGGG!!!

K.i.t.t’s red light flashes sadly.

END

How’s THAT for a modern take on an old classic.