WWE : Raw

The Big Show As we approach the school holidays many parents will be looking at ways to keep the kids entertained and keep them from under their feet. For those who are not aware of it yet, WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) is the hottest thing to come out of the US for some time, it is sports entertainment at its best and the kids love it!

While those of us who are old enough will remember the days of Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks, the first mainstream wrestlers in the UK, the WWE show puts them all to shame. These wrestlers know how to play the crowd, they are super fit and they have a hero status around the world. WWE : Raw brings together the likes of Vincent McMahon (the owner of the WWE brand name) as well as professional sports people including the Big Show, Jeff Hardy, King Booker, the Undertaker and Batista to name but a few of the dozens and dozens of fighters on the WWE books.

Each fighter has their own signature moves, the ones which they use to finish off the opponents, with more and more new faces joining on a regular basis. The WWE brand has been around since the 1950s, but it was only in the 1990s that it began to really grow, selling the brand to a mass of countries around the world. Sky TV took up the mantle in the UK and the event was born over here, with tours, exhibition shows and merchandise literally flying off the shelves.

But these are no ordinary wrestling superstars with some of them over 7ft tall! The mix between the smallest and the tallest has brought in an array of fans, not to mention the music signature tunes, the crowd interaction and the excellent shows which they put on. If you are struggling to keep the kids entertained in the holidays, check out WWE : Raw – you will not regret it!

The Jeremy Kyle Show

He has been slated in the press, the show has been slated in the press and even mentioned in the House of Commons, so why do people watch The Jeremy Kyle Show?

Jeremy Kyle is the Jerry Springer of the UK with a talk show which attacks issues head on, allows people to try and resolve issues on screen and above all makes you glad of your own life. The whole show is played out in front of an audience who are both vocal and opinionated, making some of the so called guest feel very unwelcome indeed. While the show has seen short bursts of violence, these are very few and far between with security as tight as possible.

While Kyle has been written off by the press for both his show and his private life, there seems to be something of a witch hunt against him and the producers – something which actually saw the sponsor of the show pull their support. However, he has kept going and while there are some very strange scenes and discussions, he has also been responsible for bringing many subjects into the public arena which are normally taboo. Without agreeing whether this is right or wrong, it has encouraged issues to be discussed and it has given both perpetrators and victims a platform to voice their thoughts and opinions.

The show has also been overseas to Africa showing the dreadful suffering of children over there – something which was never mentioned in the press – resulting in a substantial increase in donations for an array of charities. Kyle is controversial, he is opinionated and he can be controversial, but whatever they say in the press, he has his fans and they seem to be very loyal to the show.

Quite what we can expect to see today remains to be seen!

Rambo III

Rambo Is there a person in the world who has not seen one of the Rambo movies? These are the movies which put Sly Stallone on the map, ensuring that he was to enjoy a long and lucrative life in the acting world – and who better to cast as the one man trail blazer, the human destroyer that is Rambo?

Rambo III sees our hero take on the might of the Soviets in Afghanistan, looking for his ex-commander who has been taken captive under threat of death. As you might expect there are gun battles, fights and a whole host of adventures in probably ne of the most action packed movies of all time. Love him of hate him, Stallone is excellent in his role as the reluctant hero and even now he seems to be as strong and as fit as ever before.

Those who watched the first of the Rambo movies will feel that they have seen the character develop along side Sly Stallone, as well as the Rocky films with which he is also so well associated. He is not pushy, he is not aggressive in real life but Stallone has a character and a presence which ensures that he is always centre stage, something which shines through in his movies.

While originally released in 1988 Rambo III is still very much in demand even to this day, with the series being shown in a number of places around the world in any one year. What is expected to be the final instalment as just released this year with a Rambo movie, amazingly still starring Slyvester Stallone as the lead hero – then again it was written, directed and produced by Sylvester Stallone.

The 2008 release has a budget in the region of $50 million and is expected to create a return with will be many times the amount invested. Surely the Rambo movie has to be the last in the series?

What’s happened to the Academy Awards?

By McGee Noble

A.O. Scott in The New York Times today said “The wonderful thing about the Academy Awards is that they are fundamentally trivial”. He has a point, at least intellectually if not financially, given that the winners involved can roll around in money screaming ‘they love me, they love me’. Anyway, his comment did remind me of some of the greater injustices of Oscar winners. My all time favourite example is 1997.

In 1997 the modern film noir L.A Confidential was nominated against some films that are still classics: the endearing As Good as it Gets, the unexpectedly moving, beautifully tempered Good Will Hunting as well as one of my all time favourite British comedies The Full Monty. Who can guess which film won best film that year? Go on have a guess. It was TITANICally bad. Yes. Against these four wonderful films, the film which won was Titanic. If ever we needed evidence that the Academy Awards was a trivial celebration of the commercial then 1997 certainly would be the year to hold up and show to our friends saying ‘see? see? Is there any justice?’ This piece of Hollywood fluff saw some of our best actors turn in their most absurd performances and also gave us one of the most cringe worthy acceptance speeches of all time (James Cameron’s misinformed decision to hold his Oscar aloft and say ‘I’m the King of the world!’. Tumbleweed drifted). In 1976 Rocky won both best picture and best director against Martin Scorcese’s Taxi Driver. In 1980 Ordinary People won against Raging Bull (again best picture and best director). You may notice a theme here: generally the Oscars do not reward innovation in film. They reward the fairy tales, the heart warming, fantasy affirming stories that Hollywood produces so well. I love Rocky. I love it, I love the young Sly, I love that he wrote the movie and demanded to star in it even though the execs thought he was a terrible actor. But courageous, world examining film making Rocky is not. It is a classic Oscar winner.

Yet last night, something kind of weird happened. Not only was there an array of wonderful, challenging movies up for nomination, there was not a single commercial heavyweight among them. It was hard to pick which ones I wanted to win, because they all deserved to. Yet I wonder what this means for Hollywood when the films being lauded are universally outside the Hollywood model. I honestly like the Hollywood model, I liked Rocky, I thought Forrest Gump was charming, Jaws was scary and The English Patient was romantic and sad. Where are those films that once Hollywood did so well? The commercial, grand and heart warming? The divide between good cinema and Hollywood cinema grows greater every year and this year’s Oscars are a landmark in which even the Hollywood elite cannot find something to reward themselves for. A sad day for the fundamentally trivial, fairy tales of yore that once had the whole world in Hollywood’s palm.

The Academy Awards will be broadcast tonight at 9pm on Network2. Set an alert here.

To see the full list of the winners go to:
http://www.oscars.org/80academyawards/nominees/index.html

Ex-Eastenders star’s show is a Bionic bomb

Sadly not bomb as in ‘da bomb’, or even bomb as in ‘she’s so hot, what a bombshell’ but just plain old- ‘wow, that show really blows’. Michelle Ryan did a spectacular leap from Easties to star in a major NBC remake of Bionic Woman. Obviously she had to fake a (pretty decent) American accent, otherwise she would have had to play a villain. Americans really seem to think that Britain is a nation of moustache twirling, manically cackling, well dressed bad guys. Lord forbid a good guy might have an English accent. Today however, reports are that the show has been canned without finishing its season.

With the full NBC money machine behind it, Bionic Woman took in some of the highest viewing figures of any new show in the US. But testament to a truly awful story that managed to be both somehow dated (two bionic legs and a bionic arm- meh) and boring, viewers ran far, far away. There were THREE versions of the pilot shot. With that kind of indecisive creative vision, of course the show was going to have a certain blandness. This blandness translated smoothly into the performances. A passionless turn from disgraced Grey’s Anatomy star Isaiah Washington and Michelle Ryan’s (sorry luv) grating performance as failed to turn the dismal writing into something believable. Even Katee Sackhoff, who by far gave the most powerful performance as the Bionic girl gone bad, could not save this tragedy of a show. When the moments that are supposed to keep us hooked are ones where Michelle’s character Jamie is unable to use her Bionic arm (“Oh no Jamie’s going to have to use the NON BIONIC ARM!”) you know a show is dead in the water.

Bionic Woman has no doubt had a shorter lease on life due to the writer’s strike. However with NBC’s terrible decision to axe the making of any new pilots it looks like we can look forward to more bland and uninventive shows in future. This basically means that instead of making 30-50 pilots a year, from which the best ones will go to air, shows will now either be commissioned or not. Pilot schemes encourage experimentation and risk taking, however by abandoning this process we will see much more conservative decisions being made. This means we can look forward to remakes of previously successful formulas and spin-offs of what is already on TV. Think ‘Law and Order: Parking Fine Unit’. Still, there may be a good side. Maybe Michelle Ryan can pick up an episode playing a villainous compulsive parking fine flouter. She is English after all.

Terminator TV spin-off starts tonight

Guys, you are in for a treat. Premiering tonight at 10 pm on Virgin 1 is the highly anticipated Terminator spin-off. Rarely has a TV adaptation of a movie got it so right as Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Lovingly made, if at moments a little TOO lovingly, this is a cracking show with the makings of a lasting series.

You might wonder how on earth they are going to make this idea work- I mean Terminator 3 was so tear jerkingly terrible as well as, if I remember rightly, ending in an apocalypse that would seem to make a spin off TV series impossible. Well the first episode cleverly sets up a premise that we can, at a stretch, believe in.

The casting on the whole is great. Sci Fi fans may recognise the young Thomas Dekker, who plays John Connor, from Heroes (gay best friend of the cheerleader in series 1) and Summer Glau (from the tragically doomed but excellent Firefly). Lena Headey is a sexier but still tough as nails Sarah Connor.

Of course, the show doesn’t get it 100% right and there are moments of laugh out loud campness (look out for the line ‘class dismissed’ and you will see what I mean). There are also moments in the series where it spills DANGEROUSLY close to becoming a show that could have been called ‘Terminator High’, with all the teen dramas that you might expect in a show of that name. Don’t be put off though; it only dips a toe in those waters before leaping straight back out to become a gun slinging, car exploding adventure fest.

The terminators themselves are not so scary as you might hope, lacking the brute strength of Arnie or the chilling intensity of Robert Patrick. Cold dead eyes and robotic sprinting do not necessarily a scary terminator make.

As the series unfolds, the real care which has gone into the story becomes clear. These are fully fledged characters with a whole heap of moral issues, dramatic conflicts as well as the ability to kick ass. Like I said, the makings of a lasting show. Watch. Enjoy.

Why the U.S. writer’s strike is bad news for Lost fans

Lost (Sky 2, Wednesday 10 pm) fans tuning in tonight may have noticed that the some of the episodes seem to have been, well, lost. With a mere 8 episodes to watch in the latest season as opposed to the 22 we usually have the frustratingly tense anticipation of watching, you might be wondering what the hell is going on in the hills of Hollywood that has caused this sudden absence of some of our favourite American TV shows.

The answer is, whatever is going on, you’d better get used to it. Up until now you may have heard bits and bobs about a writer’s strike in the United States. It has been a necessarily lengthy strike but boy will viewers be paying a price for the next twelve months.

The strike is now over but unfortunately your favourite shows will not return any time soon, quite the opposite. For many shows, what has been shot and edited in the last few months is all that will be made this year. Kaput, no more, done. If Heroes seems to suddenly end in episode 8 that is because there will be NO MORE episodes until season 3. We could be waiting as long as a year to find out if the cheerleader will dump that poor man’s Superman (let’s hope so).

As a direct result of the writer’s strike shows like Lost, Heroes and House have all had to cut their seasons short. House is not back until April this year, while Lost is not expected to air season 5 until February 2009. For a show based on teeth clenching, bone aching, shoulder crunching tension that is a worryingly large amount of time to wait.

Without casting doubt over the writer’s strike, which by all accounts was overdue and necessary, we will find nevertheless that our favourite American TV shows, which provide a lot of the best content on TV these days, will not be gracing us with good viewing for a while yet. As the last episodes of what has been shot this year is aired in the next few months, we will find later in the year that there will be a significant gaps where once the usual US imports used to be.

With this in mind, maybe now is a good time for Britain to start providing some challenging, exciting TV shows rather than cranking yet another British police drama. Set in the moors. With an aging, bitter detective who investigates a murder on a stuffy Estate manor, meanwhile revealing the moderately dark underbelly of the English upper class. Yes we have indeed seen this show ten too many times. It is time, we hope, for Britain to take advantage of the US’s absence on our screens.

Hotel Babylon

Hotel Babylon is based on the book by Imogen Edwards-Jones and has now started its third series. At the end of the last one, Rebeccca left the hotel and Charlie was promoted to General Manager. The programme focuses on a number of key characters (besides Charlie) :

Tony, the concierge
Anna and Ben on reception
Gino, the chief barman
Jackie, the housekeeper
James , the Maitre d’

Hotel Babylon had the honour of presenting a fashion show on behalf of a fashion house called “De Rigeur”, but all was not as it seemed. Desperate for a free dress, Anna was changing into a sample and overheard talking between the two top men in the organisation. The more junior of the men had received a DVD in which the working practices of the people that made the clothing were revealed . There were sweat shop conditions with children as young as 6 sewing on buttons. The Chief Executive saw the DVD and instantly sacked his manager.

If the company dinner went well, Charlie was promised further business, but was placed in an ethical dilemma as Anna told him the truth about the company. The pair set about retrieving the DVD as evidence and contacted the sacked employee with a plan. At the company dinner, he posed as waiter and dropped a plate of food into the Chief Executive’s lap. Later, there was a presentation on the profits of the company, but the dvds were swapped and the executives saw the conditions of De Rigeur’s workers.

A blonde woman (Emily) posing as a journalist asked many members of the staff about any dodgy practices that they had adopted, such as placing the wrong labels on wine bottles and stealing hotel supplies. The staff managed to find her out but she revealed that she was a PR manager sent from Head Office. Her deceptive ways were not well received.

Meanwhile, Tony initially disappointed at his colleagues’ present for his 40^th birthday (a ledger) and lack of love from his family, became attracted to a hotel guest. She was serving as a jury member and had been offered £500,000 to plead “not guilty”. Although they had only just met, she suggested that they move to Brazil and Cuba with the money. The next morning Tony received a loving present from his wife and a Digital radio from the maids and these events helped to change his mind about eloping abroad.

Hotel Babylon aims to give an insight into what happens in a 5 star hotel in London, but makes you wonder what really goes on.

The Professionals

It was only relatively recently that The Professionals was able to be repeated on television. If you like Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes you can see that those series drew their inspiration from the multitude of cop dramas of the 1970s and 1980s. The Professionals was one of these and focussed on three central characters – George Cowley (played by Gordon Jackson), Ray Doyle (Martin Shaw) and Bodie (Lewis Collins) – whose first name of William is seldom mentioned.

The programme started in 1977 and ran for 5 series in all. It had a memorable theme tune, was action packed and had plenty of classic cars. It focussed on the workings of CI5. Having two lead characters (and a boss), the series was almost the British version of “Starsky and Hutch”.

Bodie and Doyle were opposites. Bodie was a smooth womaniser, but mean with it (ex-SAS). He was fairly relaxed in manner and was never short of a witty one liner. Doyle was scruffier and quite artistic with a hot temper and a tendency to rush into situations. Cowley was their boss and the voice of reason. He was in MI5 and was the founder and leader of CI5. Lewis Collins and Martin Shaw were chosen for the roles as they had worked together in the past and not got on.

As well as the car chases, gun fights and intrigue, is memorable for Ray Doyle’s curly perm and super tight jeans and Bodie’s leather jacket and suave dress sense. The series also featured a number of cars including Ford Capris, Escorts, Rover, Leyland Princess and Triumphs. The programme was criticised for the level of violence but was a hit with viewers. Martin Shaw did particularly well from the series and struggled for a while to shrug off Doyle. He is now better known as Judge John Deed.

On watching the show again, it is easy to see why The Professionals has received cult status.

Ashes to Ashes

Gene Hunt Ashes to Ashes is the welcome sequel to the fantasy, time-travel cop drama, which was also named after a David Bowie song, Life on Mars.

This series follows on where Life on Mars left off, but this time we are in 1981 (instead of 1973), a time when men wore make-up and flouncy blouses and dandy clothing. Sam Tyler died a few years ago, but we follow DI Alex Drake (played by Keeley Hawes). In the present day, Alex is called to a hostage situation but her daughter also gets involved . Alex is shot and wakes up dressed in a very short skirt and a fur coat at a party in 1981. Dazed and confused, she is mistaken for a prostitute as the police are called in.

Alex is familiar with Sam Tyler and the details of both his coma and his writings about serving in the police in 1973. So when Gene Hunt turns up, Alex is aware of him, together with Chris and Ray from Sam Tyler’s notes. Yes, Gene Hunt is back and as chauvinistic as ever – but he is in a 1980s suit and has now moved from his beloved Manchester to London (taking his team with him). Gene has swapped his Ford Cortina for an Audi Quattro , but he still has the patter and the respect of his team. DI Alex Drake spends most of her time dressed in her short skirt trying to listen to messages through the television and the radio of the current day (as Sam as done).

She comes face to face with the man who shot her (who later becomes a powerful drugs baron) and tries to arrest him but all the while, she is chased by the white clothed clown from the Ashes to Ashes music video. The programme allows you to reminisce about 1980s music, cars and fashions and the Thatcher era. It has some classic lines, mainly from Gene Hunt, and there is an element of sexual tension between Gene and Alex. We look forward to seeing how Ashes to Ashes develops.

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