A Nada World - The TV series

2003-11-19T09:04:00.000+10:00

So, ok, here we go, ok, right, so, anyway, yeah, ok, here's the deal, ok.

ok.

so, there's this TV show, right, and it's a drama series all about people, right, get this, people who work in a theme park! Brilliant! Theme park! Excellent. hold on...(long snort)...ok, where was I? Ok, now the people at this theme park, right, they're like young people, so they can be young beautiful people, maybe working through college, or even going to high school, but they also work at the theme park, doing this like fantasy shit with princesses and dragons and stuff, right? You getting me? yeah? well, check it out! You know what we do, get this get this, right: We build the whole theme park! Completely! A real theme park! Where our TV show is set. Brilliant! Why? I'll tell you. I'll tell you right now. Ok, you see, we've got the show about the people who work at a theme park, then people watch the show and love it, and so when they hear about that the theme park is real, they go "Wow! I'm there dude!" and they go to the theme park and rides on the rides that they saw on the show and go "Dude, I was like so there!".

(long pause, deep breath)

And then on top of the TV show about the theme park, you have a cartoon series with the characters from the TV show, so that you can get the youngsters in early, and you don't have to worry about your stars getting old-lookin'.

Ok, so we've got the TV show based in the theme park, and the theme park based on the TV show, and a cartoon based on the TV show based in the theme park, what next? What next? CDs of the music performed at the theme park, as seen on the TV show about the theme park! Brilliant! People will be stoked to listen to the songs they heard at the theme park after hearing them on the TV show! And the songs will be sung by the people on the show! And in summer we can have big outdoor shows of the people on the TV show at the theme park, singing the songs that the people heard on the TV show about the theme park.

Man this shit is great!

Ok, so where to we go from there? Where? I'll tell you where! We take the stories from the rides at the theme park and make them into movies! So people can watch the TV show and see the theme park, then visit the park and ride the rides, then go see the movie and go "hey, dude, I get it now!" and then they'll go back to the ride and ride it again.

That's so coooooooool.

And and and and and and guess what else? While you're making the theme park, and the TV show about the theme park, and producing the music and the movies, you get a camera crew to follow everyone around, and then produce a reality show about the making of the theme park, TV show, music and movies! So instead of getting just an hour of television a week, you could get maybe three to four hours a week out of the same material!

UUUUUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNREALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!

Then there's all the merchandise available based on the theme park, TV show, CDs and movies: toys, clothes, stationary, DVDs, lollies, photos, giftware, limited-edition maquettes... the list goes on.

snnnnnooooooOOOOOOOooooort!

Whaddyareckon!!

2003-10-27T16:24:00.000+10:00

So here's my question: Why hasn't someone produced a series about Paintball?

In an age where sport and entertainment are intertwined, isn't Paintball the epitome of television entertainment?

You have the element of sport: two factions, fighting it out, a battle between two sides, each member relying on their companions, chasing victory.

You have the element of war: two factions, fighting it out, a battle between two sides, each member relying on their companions, chasing victory.

You have an element of Wrestling: a bunch of grown-ups acting like children, for the entertainment of others.

You have the element of tactics: which style of play will outfox the other?

You have an element of fashion: Who's wearing what on the battlefield this season? If the Paintball colour clashes with their ensemble, will they just die?

Seriously, look at WWE. It's a fictional sport, where guys dress up and do choreographed routines, for the delight of thousands of live fans, and millions of fans on the telly.

All the backstage stories are staged, the people involved are kept or discarded depending on their usefulness to the story, and there is very little in actual shock value.

In comparison, with Paintball, you could have several teams of real combatants, with real tactics, working as a cohesive force to beat another team and secure victory.

It could easily be as exciting as any sport. It could be commentated like footy or rugby, and covered with cameras ala Big Brother.

It would do a valuable public service showing the damage the impact from a paintball can do on the human body. I think that would be a deterrent against idiots with guns of any kind.

Winning teams would be applauded, their strategies deconstructed and analysed, footage of their victory played from every angle.

They would be sports heroes and battle veterans rolled into one. They would have the athleticism of the former and the instincts of the latter.

Paintball could be the next Wrestling, without the lycra.

2003-08-14T12:09:00.000+10:00

Bow your heads and pray:

Oh Lord, let this be the last column about the finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

May this simple offering be the final drip of the proverbial tap that has gushed for so long with rivers of words about the show, deep as a diving pool in column-inches, yet shallow as a wading pool in depth.

We beseech thee that there be no more articles going on about how fantastic and interesting the show was, while being neither fantastic nor interesting to read, simply regurgitating facts about the show that anybody who had vaguely heard of it already knew.

Oh, let there be no more paragraphs filled with phrases such as "cheerleader who kicks ass", "girl power", "cult following" or "wicca", and contains delightful wordplay, such as "so much at stake" or "slaying her inner demons".

We pray for a time of peace, when reporters cease from explaining the differences and similarities between fans of Buffy and Star Trek. And talking about how many university-minded people are fans. And how Buffy singly reinvented the genre, promoted the strength of the female and apparently busted through taboos such as sexuality, drug use and witchcraft that no show had ever done before.

Let there be no more mention that "Hush" didn't have dialogue, or that "Once More with Feeling" was a musical episode.

Let there be no more mention of Buffy's amazing fashion sense, or her ability to kick demon booty and still remain immaculately dressed.

Let there be no more use of the phrase "coming of age".

For the roar of words that began in the States has reached the shores of Australia, and the reporters of news have taken up the cry, cheering the demise, yet not adding a jot to the common knowledge.

The words, strung together like good poetry, contain little depth, like bad poetry.

So we beseech you, oh Lord, enough with the onerous crap.

May people who write things give it a rest, in the hope that one day, we can come back to the show with a fresh eye, keen wit and an unjaded use of the Microsoft Word Thesaurus.

May the next person who writes an article about the finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer have something more than platitudes.

Let them add to the public knowledge, not repeat it ad nauseum. Let them sip from the Cup of Originality, not sup from the Goblet of... Unoriginalitiness... or something... like that...

Otherwise, just let it rest in peace.

Amen.

The above prayer, while directed towards the aforementioned "Lord", does not register a gender to any deity listening in, or any higher being with omniscient powers who happens to be trawling the web. He, She, It or Them can be Whoever, Whomever, Whatever or However they like. On the occasion that He, She It or They are reading this blurb, if you could see yourself clear to give me some more hair, that would be much appreciated. On my head this time. Thanks.

2003-08-10T18:21:00.000+10:00

Having television shows making up things for the sake of a plot device is one thing, but when your show’s significant feature is using realistic scientific to solve crimes, using dubious technology to move the story along is not on.

CSI:Miami had a story about a sniper shooting people from high distances. Mr Sniper (or Snipee to his friends) liked to lie on top of tall buildings and pick off people several hundred feet away.

In an effort to pinpoint the sniper’s location, Horatio and his team use a bunch of dummies with laser pointers sticking out of faux-wounds.

So Horry and his tribe then use a set of binoculars to find the laser points, which they find – in their technicolour glory, looking two metres wide, on the side of a tall building!

Success!

It’s lucky that Hoz and Co were looking in the right direction, otherwise they wouldn’t have seen the giant computer-generated spots hovering on the side of the building.

OK, one breach of the computer-generated plot contrivance is acceptable. But two?

Later in the same episode, two of the investigators are checking out the ATM camera footage of a bloke with sunnies on. Hold on, says one, there’s a reflection on his sunnies. Zoom in on that blur there. Now clean it up. Now zoom in some more on that cleaned-up blur. And what do we see?

A crystal-clear image of a baseball team logo.

All from a blurred reflection from a pair of sunnies in an ATM surveillance tape?

Two strikes.

If it wasn’t CSI, I would still probably bitch about it. But the fact that the primary defining feature of the two CSI shows is the science solving the crime means that the story shouldn’t require science to be botched for the sake of the story progression.

Still lukewarm to the CSI:Miami experience…

2003-08-10T18:12:00.000+10:00

Angel has finished for the year, which makes fours years down for the vampire with a soul, and all the other tag-alongs. It’s been up ad down life for the lifeless one in his own show. First year, Angel broke away from the continuity of Buffy and started it’s own little world of vamps and demons in the inner-city, and even crossed a line that Buffy only dabbled with: evil in the hearts of man, not demons. And who represents the evil that man can do?

Yes, lawyers. Angel’s biggest bad wasn’t an abstract demonic personality, it was a law firm. OK, a law firm whose senior partners are of a demonic variety and whose law staff practise dark arts as well as… er… law, but it made a distinction from the various covens and mystic gatherings that entertained us on Buffy.

Season 2 continued along the same lines roughly as Season 1 to begin with, then started down the track of Darla and Drusilla’s appearance into the fray. From that point, a convoluted story began to emerge that hit a peak with the introduction of Connor, son of Angel, during Season 3. When I say peak, it’s a dramatic storytelling peak, not “peak” as in really interesting thing that happened. Because it wasn’t.

Connor was abducted as a bub, then returned soon after as a teenage boy: moody, angry, sullen. Angel Junior. You would think after growing up in a demon dimension, he would be a little different to any other teenage boy, but apparently not.

Unfortunately, Season 3 relied heavily on the story arc of Angel and his son, to the detriment of the individual stories. Continue the overeaching story, at the expense of the entertainment value of the here and now.

I guess the thing about long running shows is that they can require the viewer to see everything that came before to understand the story.

Anyway, Season 4 started where the last season left off: Angel under the sea, Cordy among the stars. So Wes gets Angel up out of the drink and Cordy turns up, bleary-eyed and singing the amnesia blues. Then things start happening and… actually I got a little lost after a while. Something about a guy blotting out the sun (but only in Los Angeles) and Angel turning into Angelus (because that always turns out well) and Cordy being evil and giving birth to a fully-grown bewitching black goddess (excuse me, bewitching African-American goddess).

Which leads to the final confrontation between good and evil – and the most god-awful convoluted plot explanation this side of a soapie wedding.

Shits me to high heaven. I watch the show avidly, and I also check stuff out on the net, and even I was confused. What is a new viewer going to think? So the evil chick is the girl that Angel loves? What, like the old Batman/Catwoman deal? And the middle-aged goddess is the product of the chick in the coma and the little boy? And what was the deal with the Destroyer dude?

Word on the dubs has it that next season is looking to be more directed towards single stories. I for one say bring it on. Have all the linking arc you like, but keep it in the background.

If someone turned on the show for the first time halfway through Season 4, do you think they would tune in the next week?

Remember Joss, everyone is a Angel virgin at one point.

(I said “Angel”, smut-bags…)

2003-08-08T22:49:00.000+10:00

The grand experiment that was Micallef Tonight has been knocked on the heads like so many stray cats. Packer and his band of merry men in programming have decided that the ratings for this show weren't really justifying its continued existence.

And fair enough too. The show was being constantly outrated by Andrew Denton's show on the ABC, and if a commercial show is being outrated by whatever is being shown on ABC, well, it's not exactly a good commercial property is it?

So what was wrong with Micallef Tonight that made people not want to watch it?

Could it be something to do with the abundance of Channel Nine personalities who made appearances? At least four people from The Block made appearances, which is almost half the regular "cast".

Could it be a lack of interest in the night-time talk-show format? Enough Rope with Andrew Denton has had decent figures during the life of Micallef Tonight.

Could it be that the show drew nothing new out of its guests? I don't remember anyone who appeared as a guest showing off any particular entertaining new traits, be it juggling or yodelling, magic tricks or breakdancing. In fact, all the guests I can remember sat down, talked for a while, then either sang or just left. All the "improvisational" humour came from the regulars.

And I say "improvisational" in inverted commas because it was the most tightly-scripted improvisational comedy seen for a long time. Francis Greenslade and Livinia Nixon's asides were all perfectly pre-planned, allowing very little spark between the players. A lot of the humour from the show played on blank looks following misdirected questions, which are funny in spontaneous circumstances, but become tired when repeated in a scripted format.

A lot of the time both sides of the equation, the questioner and the questionee, were scripted players, with the result being a scripted line, or a scripted blank look, which is not as funny as the same blank look from an unscripted guest.

A lot of laughs depended on the bizarre rather than the outright funny. I'm a big fan of "funny (peculiar)", but for the general public to enjoy a comedy show, it needs to be balanced with "funny (ha-ha)". The average viewer doesn't want to put the effort into seeing the comedic connections: they'll laugh when an Englishman, an Australian and an Irishman go into a bar, but not when they see the three men at a bus stop waiting for the bus to Punchline.

People don't wanna work for their laughs at 9.30 at night. It's a sweeping generalisation, but methinks a valid one.

Of course the show did do some things right. Regular spots such as "Shaun gets in his High Horse" gave Micallef the opportunity to spout catch-phrases like "Into the bin! (whip-crack)". "Consumer Power...tips" was reminiscent of Amanda Keller's spots on the old Channel Seven Denton show. And occasionally the ongoing gags concerned more than just someone dressed up in a funny costume.

Personally, I think if the show had come across more honest, rather than as a set-up, it would have connected with more people. Thinking back to the days of Tonight Live with Steve Vizard, you could see that Vizard really wore his emotions on his sleeve: if he thought it was funny, he laughed, if he didn't think it was funny, well, he laughed, but he moved onto a different topic soon after.

Micallef's smug yet startled persona never appealed as much as a real personality would, which is why I think the audience didn't stick around. Look at presenters such as Rove McManus and David Letterman and you have a fair idea of what they are like personally. If Shaun Micallef's on-screen character matches his off-screen personality, I'm thinking awkward silences, sideway shuffles and half-coughed apologies, like walking into a politician at a adult bookstore. All day. Every day. For life.

The sad thing is that if anyone was going to make it work, I would have picked Shaun Micallef. I think there was a lot of backroom shuffling before it got off the ground, which accounted somewhat for its late arrival. Some of the apprehension may have come from not knowing what the show actually should be: comedy show or talk show. The end result was a comedy show with segments of talking to guests, having to bounce back and forward throughout the hour.

It’s never been easy for an Australian comedy show of any description to find an audience. It took Rove McManus two goes for he got it right. Maybe next time will work out for Shaun Micallef.

2003-08-03T18:12:00.000+10:00

OK, so three guys in bad 80s vinyl jumpsuits are showing their best breakdancing moves, poppoing and locking on a street corner. “The Robot” hasn’t been so prominent on TV since 1983.

And so the three guys, in lovely matching pink, green and blue outfits are breaking it down and chilling and whatever breakdancing people do when they’re breakdancing.

And then they pick up their boombox (do they still call them ghetto-blasters?) and head out, and the super advises us to check out the new coloured wrappers.

And as the guys walk away, and we see their names on their backs (Mini, Reg and Super), they finally reveal the product which is trying to suck us all into their vicious consumerial circle: tampons.

Frigging tampons.

There are so, so many levels at which this ad is wrong.

For a start, three guys breakdancing in technicolour vinyl suits? What demographic in Hell responds to that?

And if there are people who belong in that cursed demographic, how many of them are women?

And if indeed there were breakdancers in brightly coloured vinyl suits inhabiting the streets of BigTown, how many of them would call themselves Mini?

Crazy Legs? OK, a little silly.
Kuriaki? No idea.

A guy called Mini? How long do they think he would last on the streets with a tag like that?

And further, once they leave the sidewalk and go walk off into the sun-less-set, where the hell do they go?

Home to some surly 40-foot woman?

This has to be one of the stupidest ads I have seen for quite a while.

2003-07-16T16:03:00.000+10:00

Who said that Hungry Jacks aren't cool and with it, as the young people used to say, but would now be laughed at for mumbling?

Yeah, those pimp daddies at HJ's are cutting it with homies and chilling Eastside with their peeps.

They're panging their ding-dongs with the mojo working riverside, G, and they're hopping on the phatcruiser to Dishville.

Yeah, I got no idea what that means either...

I'm slightly bemused by a new Hungry Jack's ad featuring a pastiche of an Eminem song and a "cool guy" doing a Fonz impersonation.

Despite wedging two cultural icons into an apparent amalgam of cool (eh?), Hungry Jacks just doesn't cut the mustard in the cool stakes.

The music, for a start, is tacky. It's everything an Eminem song sounds like, if produce by a low-budget sound production house with a Casio keyboard.

Then there's the guy in the leather jacket, from memory, leaning against a car, who gives the camera a thumbs-up as it passes by.

Then there's the close-up of the obviously fake tattoo in the arm, complete with white background so you can read the writing.

It's all the things that your parents never liked, rolled up into one tacky, cheap, vacuous bundle, in an attempt to buy a Whopper.

"If you're a tosser with fake tattoos who wears a leather jacket and likes to give the thumbs-up, while listens to muzak versions of young-people's music, this is the burger for you!"

Can't wait for the next series of ads:

"Like Trivial Pursuit? Think goatees are neat? Enjoy house music from the early 90s while wearing your Hypercolor shirts? Well, have we got the burger for you!"

or maybe:

"The new Orange Swirl Flavoured Drink: It's for everyone!*

_{"everyone" includes only people who own trading cards and a yo-yo. People who remember the line "I love it when a plan comes together" are also included, but only if they don't actually smoke cigars, but just mime them. Unless they mime like Groucho Marx, ala Alan Alda in MASH. They're not included."}

If you're looking at attracting the "young adults", Mr and Mrs Jacks, try giving your advertising account to a company that knows what the young adults really respond to, not some amalgam of ideas over the last quarter century. Spend less on fake tattoos and more on cutting edge graphical style.

The type used on the ads is mundane, not eye-catching at all, just purely functional. In other words, dull.

But, says Messrs Jacks, if you mess with the type, then people can't read it!!

But, says I smugly, look at the recent Coke ads, where the type is all over the shop. That's impressive, AND readable.

MacDonalds pushes funky people over food in ads that come across like a music videos.

Hell, the graphics on the Discovery Channel look funkier that Hungry Jacks ads.

Lift your game, H. Jacks, or you'll never be the cultural reference point you aspire to be.

2003-05-30T17:33:00.000+10:00

In a moment of sickness-inspired delirium, I turned on the telly and watched the end of an episode of "The Six Million Dollar Man", followed closely behind by "the Bionic Woman".

The differences between the two shows were surprising. While Steve Austin's hour comprised him being all macho with his bionic bits and saving the world (well, the moon actually), Jamie Sommers spent the hour unravelling a plot where her best friend Callahan (which I still don't know if that was her first or last name), was being hypnotised by a man at the beauty salon into spilling state secrets.

While Austin's nemesis had some satellite with refracting something or something or rather, Sommers' villain had shampoo laced with sodium pentathol and a commercial hair dryer hooked up to a stereo.

Then again, it took Steve two episodes to beat his guy, while it only took Jamie one. And she had time to get her hair done. Badly.

It was also interesting to notice that Steve's music was energetic and pumping and lots of brass, while Jamie's used a lot of strings and softer instruments, making it sound like Mary Tyler Moore rather than a criminal-ass-kicking momma.

In fact, come to think of it, Ms. B. Woman seemed to be designed to appeal to, gasp!, girls!

What an outdated concept: A show about a woman with superpowers that is targetted at female viewers, not boys.

These days, if you're a superheroine, your target audience is predominantly boys, aged 8 to approximately 35.

Can you imagine Lara Croft wearing a muu-muu (or some similar loose-hanging clothing) and walking around the markets with a macrame bag slung over her arm?

“Sure, it provides her with comfort, but you can't see the goods! Where's the fun in that?"

You don't young strapping ladies kicking butt in a poncho these days. You see a lot of flesh-clinging rubber and leather accessories, and a lack of slip twixt cup and hip, but you don't get many smocks.

Two cents spent.

2003-05-27T17:26:00.000+10:00

There's an ad out at the moment for some new car where the designers of the car are sitting around a table in a design meeting, while the facilitator is ripping a page off a drawing board.

"We need to start afresh," he says, or something similar, "Think, what have you always wanted in a car?"

"What about a car," starts one, "that senses when it's going off track-"

"-and automatically compensates." finishes another, stealing the other guy's thunder, and earning a possible beating in the parking garage after work.

"How about," says the guy at the other end of the table playing with some doughnuts, "a car where the wheels kind of... talk to each other?"

The facilitator nods seriously at this last suggestion, then reaches under the table, pulls out a baseball bat and WHAM! knocks the guy flying out of his chair. He leaps over the table and proceeds to bludgeon the guy to death, yelling "The wheels are talking! The wheels and talking!"

Finally, he straightens up, his clothes and face a mess of blood and brain matter. He turns to the rest of the group and asks "Alright, now, what have YOU always wanted in a car?"

...maybe that's just my version of the ad...

In the other, more fanciful version, the facilitator nods seriously at this last suggestion, then says "Yes. Yes."

With not a baseball bat in sight.

Now, excuse my ignorance, but do these meeting really happen? Do a bunch of car designers get together and say "What have we always wanted in a car?", then just built it?

Logic says no. I'm thinking they get together and say "There's some new things we can do now that we couldn't do before. Let's put them in a car."

Because if it was the other way around, we wouldn't have a car where "the wheels kind of.... talk to each other."

We'd say "No, f*ck off, I don't want a car where the wheels kind of talk to each other, I want a car that talks to me. Like KITT. What good is it gonna do me if the wheels are talking to each other? Big deal! Not gonna do anything, apart from maybe make long trips a lot more interesting for the wheels!"

That's what we'd say, possibly with a funny accent, or maybe wearing an interesting costume, to extend the somewhat forced humour of the moment.

What I really wanted to see in this ad was the other guy in the corner who pipes up and says "Well, actually, I've always wanted a car where, if I accidentally nudge another car when I'm parking, it goes "Bap-Bong!"

"Oooh!" pipes up the lady next to him, "and when you're sitting in traffic, you can press a button, and rotor blades pop out the top and the car turns into a helicopter, so you can fly away."

"Or a car that doesn't blow smoke out of its exhaust pipe, instead it blows bubbles?"

"Or how about a car that plays a rousing tune when you get in, possibly some Queen, or the theme from "Magnum PI"?"

"Or a car that folds up into a suitcase?"

...and so on...

Meanwhile, the facilitator is leaning up against the drawing board, thinking to himself "...must order more baseball bats... must order more baseball bats..."

To conclude, and to show you that I've actually put some thought into this, here's five things that should be in cars:

1. Radio that notices when you're talking and decreases volume to suit. And when the talking stops, the radio slowly goes back up to normal volume. It can also recognise when you're singing, as opposed to talking, and adjust to suit - good singers get less radio, bad singers get drowned out.

2. Microbeads in the paintwork that let you colour-customise your car. Using a detailing wand or an interior keyboard, you can change the styling of your car. And before the naysayers say "But what if you forget what colour your car is and you've parked in a huge car park?" (Too late! Thanks Jen...), stick a locator in your car keys, with a compass and a distance indicator!

3. A receiver in your car that receives broadcasts about the weather conditions then adjusts the interior cabin settings for optimum passenger comfort. Or at the very least, a car that knows when the windscreen has misted over and knows what settings to use to demist it.

4. A windscreen display when reversing that shows you a 3D representation of where your car ends and where the car/pillar/wall is behind or beside you.

5. A boot that opens like the tray of a ute.

See? It wasn't that hard! And I didn't have to roll doughnuts around the table to work it out!

2003-05-15T12:08:00.000+10:00

You know what I would like in life that they only have on telly?

That flash thing that they do when something important happens.

For example: A guy is standing in a bar, watching the ladies go by, then he looks towards the door, and FLASH! suddenly the camera swerves double time across the room, complete with whoosh noise, to the girl who just walked in.

Or: In a huge battle scene, the hero (or heroine) will FLASH across the room and pick out a major bad guy, despite the big villain looking like every other bad guy in the room.

Something like that would be so handy in real life. It would help to make decisions easier if the right decision FLASHed in front of you.

TEN SITUATIONS WHERE FLASHES OF REALISATION WOULD HELP

1. Reading the extensive breakfast menu at a restaurant, five minutes before they stop serving.

2. At the video store.

3. Looking for tarragon in the spice rack.

4. Finding something worth watching in the TV guide.

5. Knowing the difference between all types of pasta.

6. Picking out your partner's mum out of a crowd before you've actually met (Thus avoiding those awkward moments, like calling her "the old battleaxe" to her face. Not me, of course. Another guy...)

7. Choosing the right song to wreck at a karaoke restaurant.

8. Buying fruit.

9. Deciding which song to play on a jukebox (you're paying for it, it better be good).

10. Knowing when the milk has turned.

2003-04-16T10:56:00.000+10:00

As a special offer, we are getting access to thecomedychannel on our cable connection this month.

Upon hearing that, I turned over to thecomedychannel to see what side-splittingly hilarious shit they have on:

"Naked News".

Huh?

OK. Here's the idea: take average, slightly interesting articles about stuff, add naked chicks, broadcast.

In concept, masterpiece, everything that the television medium was designed for: entertaining AND informative.

And yet...

Even as a guy, I couldn't watch this without thinking "What possessed them to make this show?"

From what I saw, there was a naked demonstration of exercises you can do in the office.

A naked woman answering mail from viewers.

A topless woman (obviously flouting the "truth in advertising" act) reporting on a waveboarding competition.

Finally, a naked woman talking to a person off-screen while ultimately dressing.

I admire the maked female form as much as the next guy, but I had to ask: "Is this comedy? Is this deserving of a spot (allbeit late-night) on a channel dedicated to comedy?"

No, because it's grossly unfunny. There were at least eight writers credited to the show, and yet not one funny joke.

And problem is, if not thecomedychannel, where would this so-called entertainment go?

fx, "the Channel for Women" would probably say no, and CNN have a full schedule for the moment. And while the Discovery Channel has informative news-style programmes, I don't think they're ready for full frontal reporting quite yet.

And MTV? Two things: (a) way too politically correct to screen something like that; and (b) way too conservative: If MTV broadcasts a show called "Ozzfest Uncensored", then censors everything from bare breasts to people giving the finger, what would they do to a show called "Naked News"?

so, thecomedychanel it is, at least for the time being, as it fills a niche, between the comedy programmes and the medium-core blatantness of "Real Sex", which featured footage from every conceivable angle.

Final note: I can't think of the last time I sat on the couch watching a naked woman speaking to the camera for five minutes while my partner and I discussed the fakeness of her breasts.

"They just don't move! There's no jiggling or anything! They look like two bowling balls!"

It's little things like that that make shows memorable.

2003-04-16T10:55:00.000+10:00

Just to prove that you can think too much, here is what www.imdb.com has to say about "Herbie - The Love Bug":

The search for identity and acceptance among peers is consistently a popular allusion in film scripts. "The Love Bug," despite its misleading genre of "children's comedy," expertly disguises a propensity toward examining the identity theme with many of the significant characters in the picture (including, no doubt, Herbie the Volkswagen as well).

Herbie seeks acceptance and comfort in "life," even threatening to commit "suicide" if his haven is not established to the best of Jim Douglas' knowledge and aptitude. The automobile is not so much interested in a conventional, superficial form of success (such as racing) for its own sake; he is more mature than his "owner" in the sense that Herbie understands the necessary requirements for mature success: happiness and fulfilment with an established status. Yet the vehicle still searches, almost fruitlessly throughout the first half of the film, for an identity. Once he stumbles upon his purpose-winning races for Douglas-his owner quickly denies him acceptance and assumes foolishly that personal needs are a more significant priority than others' requirements. The final third of "The Love Bug" allows both automobile and owner to accept one another and form a dependency, certainly one of the more important and necessary aspects of existence.

Tennessee also questions his role and place in San Francisco; previously, he taught English (which allows a few humorous lines in the film) in China. Until Herbie arrives, Tennessee appears restless and spiritually languid. Thorndike and Carol also consistently and repeatedly question their abilities and roles. Herbie, either directly or indirectly, is the focal point of the directions the characters take, not only in the choices they reach but in their beliefs about the important aspects of life as well.

Functioning on a series of discrete yet interconnected pieces, "The Love Bug" engenders several levels of emotional reactions from an amalgam of viewers. For example, as a children's tale, the young audience member will easily appreciate the action, overt comedic scenarios, and fantasy elements. And as an adult, the relationships between characters, although inherently not possible in empirical reality, operate similar to the most effective fiction. The viewers can identify with the characters and unrealistic situations to the point of the pinnacle of an author's achievement: the suspension of disbelief.

My rebuttal:

i liked it when the car hit the man in the bottom, and then he fell over. it was funny.

2003-03-31T22:13:00.000+10:00

I enjoyed a guilty pleasure yesterday.

I know I should have, but it was strangely irresistible. Once I had started, I couldn't pull myself away, and so I had to continue until it was completely finished and my guilty pleasures had been sated.

A part of me knew I shouldn't, but I couldn't help myself.

I watched a Herbie movie.

I watched a remake of "The Love Bug".

And I enjoyed it.

I'm sure there is a reformer's group around who can help me somewhere.

This was a 1997? remake of the old Herbie movie, "The Love Bug", possibly the original (I would have to check my extensive Herbie records).

If memory serves, there was also "Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo" and "Herbie Goes Bananas", a tasty little trilogy, up there with the classics such as Star Wars and Back to the Future.

And who should be leading guy in this remake but Bruce Campbell, all-round piss-funny guy from the Evil Dead movies amongst others.

At this point, let me mention one of my pet peeves about current movies/remakes: the overly necessary origin backstory.

When it comes to anyone who is above the norm, be it superheroes or secret agents, the current thinking is that there needs to be this abundant and florid backstory to explain how they came to their current situation.

Sometimes it's better to retain some of the mystery behind someone's superpowers.

With this remake, they've introduced the guy who made the car, a scientist or mechanic guy who designed guys for the Nazis or something.

During the creation process, he accidentally knocked a picture of his wife or mum or some beloved woman into the mix, and as a result, he produced "a living car".

Except... if the picture was of a woman, why is Herbie referred to as a male?

So, apart from Bruce Campbell role, this Herbie movie was beginning to look like a pale imitation of the original.

And then they killed Herbie.

Well, actually, his evil twin killed him. It seems the baddie of the movie (played by John Hannah), gets the professor to make another "living car", but this one has the baddie's personality, hence, "Horace" is evil.

Oh, and he's completely black, just so you know he's really really evil.

So, Herbie's dead. So they give him a burial. In a cemetery.

At this point, I had started having my doubts that this was really a decent revisualisation of the Herbie from my youth.

And then... who should come and visit the remains of Herbie?

Dean Jones. The original Jim Douglas.

They pulled out the wild card and it played.

From then on, I wasn't going to fault the movie. It had the obligatory Herbie/Horace race, complete with evil modifications like grenades and those spinning things coming out of the wheels.

It even had a laser that cut Herbie straight up the middle into two pieces.
It had the love story between Bruce Campbell and the token female.

It had everything you expect from a kid's movie like this. It didn't try anything new, or anything extra special.

But because they included Jim Douglas, I was happy as buggery, because in his day, Jim Douglas was the man.

All they needed was an appearance by Don Knotts and it would have been perfect.

2003-03-24T14:27:00.000+10:00

Surely, I'm not the only person amazed that they're still showing those Cougar ads?

I mean, usually an ad that shows even the slightest case of objectifying women and turning them into mere sexual objects gets shouted down and ultimately turfed out onto the telly trashheap.

Yet, here we are, in 2003, watching a couple of ads whose key pulling power is (a) a pair of enormous tits and (b) a bit of peak up a bird's skirt and down her cleavage.

Granted, those are some amazing tits, but that aside, there hasn't been anything that blatant on telly since the days of Benny Hill.

It's great, innit?

2003-03-24T14:17:00.000+10:00

There's a very good chance that you won't get to see this entry, due to Blogger eating my entries.

We'll see how we go...

2003-02-27T10:38:00.000+10:00

It surprised me to think, while watching TV over the weekend, that no-one has made a remake of "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory".

While lesser lights of the big and small screens have been made, remade, sequelled and prequelled, Willy Wonka stands in a very select group of films that still maintain a certain atmosphere of enjoyment, yet never went on to be watered down by sequels and the such.

Take for example, "The Blues Brothers". Great movie. When I first saw it I loved it. Still loved it the tenth time. I remember saying to my then girlfriend that I wish they made a sequel, to continue the adventures of Jake and Elwood. She said she liked the fact that there was just that movie, and that there didn't need to be another.

Ten years later, "Blues Brothers 2000".

My bad.

"The Rocky Horror Picture Show". Great film. "Shock Treatment"? Not so great.

"Jaws"? Yes. "Jaws II" Kind-of. "Jaws 3 in 3D"? No.

"Alien"? Good. "Aliens"? Better. "Alien3"? Couldabeen. "Alien:Resurrection"? Wha?

I could go on, and do, but for now, I won't.

Suffice to say, very few movies that have had such a adoring following have made it so far without being remade or followed up by an unimpressive "second adventure".

Which, in the case of "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory", is exceedingly strange on a number of levels.

Firstly, it's a kids movie. Sounds silly, but this is a big factor, because kids are a big market. Huge market. Harry Potter, Star Wars, Rugrats, Pokemon. All kid franchises, all making huge bucks because the kids want to see them, and the parents comply.
Secondly, the original story already has a sequel. When I read the original story, it was published together with the second book in one volume. "Charlie and the Glass Elevator" starts off with Charlie, Grandpa and Wonka in the Glass Elevator witnessing the arrival the Vermishious Knids (sp?), arriving like meteors in the atmosphere. I think. It's been a while.

Either way, the story is there to be used, and although I can't remember any of it past the first scene, considering it was written by Roald Dahl, it would be bound to have lots of imaginative scenarios, similar to the first book.

Thirdly, it's got instant merchandising potential. Why? Wonka is already a real-life confectionary brand name, trading on the idea that everything they create has a little bit of bizarre mixed in. The movie would be a perfect vehicle for the associated confectionary.

Fourthly, it's trippy. Trippy like a fox! Something that outlandish and strange is begging for a new century refit. Think what a combination of Willy Wonka and Tim Burton would produce. Of course, someone like Jim Carrey would get the lead, which could go either way.

Fifthly, it's an idea that would roll and roll, and could cover the multitude of media: Movies, TV, books, games, toys, theme rides... The list goes on. And it has an in-built inventiveness that means it could push the boundaries in whatever direction it liked.

So why hasn't a remake or sequel been made?

As recently as 2001, a remake was on the cards, but so far nothing has panned out.

My guess is that someone is holding onto the rights for their dear life, because this is one cashcow that could take a lot of milking.

2003-02-13T11:05:00.000+10:00

BUFFY and ANGEL

There was an interesting difference between the premiere episodes of the news seasons of Buffy and Angel this week.

Buffy's first episode set up the reopening of Sunnydale High School, establishing the new school principal in the mix and catching up on what the Scooby Gang have been doing over the break (construction work, bringing vengence, hanging out in England with a coven of witches, and so on), then went banging head-first into a mysterious adventure, complete with zombie ghosts, or ghost zombies, or something like that. Just like old times.

Meanwhile, on Angel, Angel spends half the episode hallucinating, Gunn and Fred fight with Connor, Wes goes trawling and Lilah goes head-hunting.

The difference between the two episodes was that while Buffy got back on the horse and started slaying demons, Angel was still wallowing in his own fugue of daydreams and possibilities. Granted, Angel had a lot further to come than Buffy, what with him being at the bottom of the ocean and Cordy being off in some heavenly dimension (which itself wasn't wrapped up, just used as a punchline for the episode).

It was a problem that plagued both shows last season: continuing storylines getting in the way of the action.

Story arcs are tricky things. They can add to the show (think early X-Files alien conspiracy arc), or they can drag a show down (think later X-Files alien conspiracy arc). The viewer can get more involved in the show by knowing all the kinks in the story arc, but it can also deter the new viewer who flips over to see the show, then has no backstory to work with.

For viewers to understand what was happening in Angel, they would have to know what happened in the last season with Connor and Angel (which was alluded to in the "previously" segment, but not that well explained). Why, for instance, was Angel in a box at the bottom of the sea? And Cordelia? Wha?

Buffy had the same problem (Willow wears contacts and wants to destroy the world? And all the other less important stuff....), but while they were sifting through the embers of last season, they successfully set up and knocked down a self-contained story (except for the talisman's owner, but that's leading back the season's story arc I'm presuming).

Personally, I thought the Buffy episode was good and the Angel episode was OK, if only for the fact that it was a new episode. I enjoyed the dark Wes, but I was hoping we'd get to see a little more darkness. There's already a broody type on the show, it doesn't need another strong, silent type.

Buffy gets extra points for a cameo by ex-Mayor Richard Wilkins. Anytime he gets a spot on the show is fine by me.

Here's hoping that both shows try and move away from using story arcs for their A-stories and instead piece it together amongst self-contained adventures.

2003-02-11T11:06:00.000+10:00

WELCHER & WELCHER

I watched the first episode of Welcher & Welcher, the new Shaun Micallef sitcom on the ABC last week.

Did I like it? I don't know.

For a start, I'm a fan of Micallef's stuff, so I was looking forward to it. I enjoy a lot of his comedic style, but occasionally it feels like he needs another pair of eyes to run over the material from a fresh perspective.

While some of the humour was played straight, other parts were played very loose. For every smart quip out of a character's mouth, there was a slightly amateurish panto supporting character.

For example, while you have the witty banter between Micallef's character and his wife, you also have the industrious-yet-inept security guard. For every scene of roving dialogue between multiple characters, you have the technogeek IT consultant and the stupid boofhead client.

I guess the most current programme Welcher & Welcher will be compared to is Kath & Kim, and not just because of the reoccurant ampersand, but because both shows use a similar approach, comedic characters in a realistic setting without an audience or laughtrack. Frontline and The Games use similar conventions, although The Games approached it as a documentary, occasionally addressing the camera. The other three shows have their own little self-contained universes.

But with K&K, all the characters are along the same theme, caricatures of real life people, the normal blown out of proportion. Kath, Kel, Kim, Brett and Sharon are all people we've met, and we recognise that in the characters.

On W&W, people like the security guard and the IT specialist are people that we've heard about, like urban legends, rather than real-life.

On a lot of pilot episodes, they try very hard to cram as much explanation into the show to tell the audience as much as they can about the characters, setting, story, theme and so on, and get it out of the way, so that other episodes don't need to spend as much time setting everything up again.

A lot of the first episode of W&W was used to establish character, shoe-horned into the script on occasion, but hopefully that means that future episodes will be a little lighter in the forced dialogue and a little heavier in the chuckle department, and smooth out the transition from verbal jousting to character humour to slapstick.

Overall, I liked it. It had enough funny touches to make it enjoyable, and although it telegraphed some of the humour (The “I don’t need to write a speech, I’ll wing it” / dying on stage bit was seen from several miles away, and should have been better resolved), it was a competent beginning which hopefully it will build on.

Adjourned.

2003-02-10T16:52:00.000+10:00

I'm a big fan of the new Coke ads, not because of the sentiments, or the hot young things, or the music, but its use of type.

For a majority of TV ads, words get in the way of the message. Text gets set up in pretty fonts, and shuffled into a corner or the bottom of the screen. Usually, words are only there because they have to be, like the name,the price, the address or the small print.

Words are sparingly used, to set a scene, rather than playing a part in the action.

Words are used to evoke an idea or feeling: Save, Love, Elegance, Lose, Electronic Fuel Injection, and so on.

But usually, these words are placed onto the screen with little interest in reaching their full potential.

With the Coke ads, the text becomes the focal point of the ad, by they're movement and style as much as their message.

There is a bunch of different typefaces used, so there is little unity between each phrase, and each scene's text's shape is a surprise, maintaining continued interest through the ad.

Due to the movement of the text, it holds the interest of the viewer much more than if it was a static byline in the corner.

Plus, the text is animated in such a way that it interacts with the other elements of the scene: It mimics the movements of the actors, it hangs outside the window, it shifts it’s vanishing point or expands to match the action.

The overall style of the text denotes the idea that while everybody is different, a little rough around the edges, a little crazy, a little individual, they all want Coke.

Neat. I like it.

And I'm thirsty...

2003-02-06T12:02:00.000+10:00

Jaws: the TV series.

I blame the hot weather, but I haven't been sleeping right.

Last night, for instance I was lying there, eyes open, staring at the ceiling. Obviously wrong.

Last week, I was sitting in front of the computer at work, eyes closed. Also wrong.

When I do sleep correctly, I get stupid dreams, like the one I had last night.

I was starring in an episode of "Jaws: the TV series".

Told you it was stupid.

I was sprawled over the hull of an upturned boat, with a gi-normous shark swimming around under me.

How will I ever survive this episode?

Thankfully, no one has thought "Gee whiz, let's make a TV series out of "Jaws", because there's such an interesting story to tell!"

We've been spared plot contrivences like the suddenly-failing boat engine, the weekly annual sailing race and the always inspiring "teenager in a dangerous boating rite of passage".

There's not a lot of leeway for a story about a man-eating shark: either it eats people, or it dies.

I guess the main reason that "Jaws: the TV series" wouldn't be a success is that it hasn't got legs.

boom boom.

OK, cheap joke, and you know, I never make with the cheap joke, so here's something I worked on for a bit, while waiting for something to do something... or other... I don't know...

Signs that "Jaws: the TV series" is running out of puff

Jaws is visited by his identical twin-shark.

Jaws mates with his best friend's female sibling.

Jaws eats a clown. Hilarity ensues.

Jaws eats the cast of Baywatch. Montage ensues.

Jaws enters a singing contest... then gets laryngitis!

Jaws meets Gary Coleman…. then gets laryngitis!

Ma and Pa Jaws remember back to the time when Little Jaws got his first remora.

Jaws jumps the shark!

Jaws' crazy Aunty Mackerel (played by Carol Burnett) comes to stay.

Hilarity ensues when Jaws' little sister wants to pierce her gill slits, all seven pairs of them!

Jaws eats a spicy mexican! Ouchy-mama!

Jaws has to come to terms with his own prejudices when he finds out his best friend Fluke is a bottom-feeder.

2003-01-31T08:22:00.000+10:00

Kevin Bacon doing the Footloose dance on Will & Grace?

Piss funny.

2003-01-31T08:17:00.000+10:00

IN YOUR FACE, SPACE COYOTE!

2003-01-31T08:15:00.000+10:00

THE X FILES

Australia finally got the series finale of the X Files on Wednesday night, and I have to say I was disappointed, in many ways.

Firstly, a majority of the two hours was spent building up this idea that this was the final showdown between the truth and the wall of lies.

In response, all we got was a convoluted clip show, recapping everything we remembered, followed by no further information.

In the first few minutes of the show, we got to see that the alien invasion would happen on Dec 12, 2012, which was then reiterated roughly two hours later by the Cigarette-Smoking Man.

BTW, Ol' Smoky was looking decidely worse for wear, not due to his age, but obviously he'd been sitting there too long. The make-up was supposed to make him look old, instead it just made him look dusty.

Meanwhile Mulder is having visions of Krycek, X and the Lone Gunmen, who all helped him along somehow. If he's having visions of people, why not Deep Throat, his original handholder?

We got a bunch of scenes that dragged on way too long, focussing on the past or continuing relationships between characters, when we could have had some forward momentum, leading to an interesting conclusion.

90 minutes went past before they got out of the courtroom and onto something interesting.

Speaking of which, having Kersh (sp?) helping them escape was a little unrealistic. Make him the bad guy, then suddenly, against everything he's stood for, turn him around and help them escape? A stupid twist thrown in just to shake things up. Unfortunately, too little too late.

Considering that the gang at Ten Thirteen prided themselves on making "a movie a week" on the X Files, this was a grand disappointment, lacking the interest or energy of any number of past episodes.

In a different universe, Ten Thirteen may have jettisoned the alien conspiracy plotline after five years or so, and introduced another arc for Mulder et al to ponder, allowing a fresh energy into the show. I've already mentioned countless times the opportunities missed with the absence of Dale Cooper, but even the introduction of Agent Reyes into the mix should have provided the writers with a springboard to move into other, more mystical areas rather than alien babies and extraterrestial black oil.

Poor old Skinner, eh? Off to the Great Directors' Office in the Sky. Or so it was implied.

While we're on that scene, let's talk about Gibson Praise.

So Mulder sent Gibson to live with the indians, to hide him away from the government. Then Mulder disappeared, apparently living with Gibson with the indians as well. Then Gibson comes back to help Mulder, fingers one of the board as not being human, and reads the guy's mind.

If the government has been searching for Gibson Praise all this time, and then he turns up at a military installation, why is he even let off the base again? Surely someone would have thought, "Hold on, we've been trying to get our mitts on this kid for years. Let's grab him now!"

All in all, the finale of The X Files left a lot of questions unanswered, pulled up stumps and left with a whimper. I know Chris Carter has spoken about doing another movie, but would people be interested in seeing a movie of a franchise that dropped in quality so heavily during its last two years? Would people be interested in a plot that didn't connect to the alien conspiracy arc?

My money is on No. And besides, who's going to lead, Mulder/Scully or Doggett/Reyes? As seen last night, the one show ain't big enough for all of them. Doggett and Reyes got the sharp end of the stick in the finale, left to do the legwork, while Scully and Mulder got the big dramatic scenes.

Finally, Alan Dale is an alien? I always had my suspicions about Jim Robinson. Alan's doing quite well in the US. He's appeared in the X Files and ER in recurring roles, and each with strange hybrid accents.

More power to ya, Jim!

2003-01-22T15:01:00.000+10:00

DARK ANGEL

I got to see the end of Dark Angel while in Perth, and I must say for all the money they spent on the climax, they could've laid off a little on the pile-driving social analogy.

I get it, alright? The transgenics are like the black people in the sixties! I see! Now stop beating me over the head with it.

It's hard to see where they could have taken it from this point. By the end of it, the transgenics, and all the other "mutants", are locked away in their own chunk of the city, away from the hordes of normals surrounding the fences and shouting obscenities.

Where do you go from there? It's not like they had anybody high up in government supporting them. In fact, the bad guys had control of the government, so there'd be no help there.

There would of course be an escape clause built in there somewhere, but James Cameron seems to have painted himself into a corner with the whole standoff play.

Because a portion of the drama of the show relied on the interaction of the transgenics vs the normal people, and to do that, they need to be able to move around through normal society. You can't do that if you bundle all the freaks into one building and fence it off.

Of course all this a moot, since the show ain't coming back. Unless you count the reruns.

An interesting comparison would be Dark Angel: Season 1 and Dark Angel: Season 2. Between the two seasons, there was a giant leap between mythologies, from a season of fighting the people who made them, to fighting the people who were against the people who made them, internal enemy v external enemy, struggle within and the struggle without.

At what point did Max's reliance on pills to stop her shakes disappear, and what about her occasional lapses into "bitch in heat" mode? Symptoms shoe-horned into the show during season 1 disappeared in season 2, instead we get the dramatic albatross of a virus that is genetically programmed to specifically kill Eyes Only. If there was a list of highly contrived reasons to continue inter-character sexual tension, this would leap to the top of the list. I will also neatly sidestep the whole question of genetic fingerpointing: if they can work out the genetic imprint of Eyes Only, why can't they just find out who he really is and go bust down his door?

All in all, I watched a majority of the Dark Angel episodes, and it's hard to say whether I wasted my time. I wasn't invested in the show, yet continued to watch. I thought the first season was formulaic, but enjoyed the second season's extended mythologies, yet thought the storytelling in the second season was dumbed down and missing the zing of the first season. I don't know which season I preferred, because each had its share of crap points to balance out the fresh ideas.

I think the fact that Jessica Alba never made me believe her had something to do with it. I thought she was pretty average actor, not quite having the chops to pull off the "bad (combat-trained) girl with a good (lab-engineered) heart", but looked good in leathers. In contrast, I can believe Jennifer Garner in Alias as "the secret agent with a good heart", which is why I'm looking forward to that coming back.

Still, in the end, James Cameron reminded us of two things:

1. All people deserve to be treated as equals, whatever their genetic makeup.

2. TV needs more hot chicks in leather riding motorcycles.

2002-12-17T14:57:00.001+10:00

Queer As Folk

I haven't seen the original British version of this show. But the American verison is surprisingly good. Usually, US remakes are just a little bit crap, but this show is great, a little bit funny, a little bit serious, a little bit grandstanding, and a lot gay.

A good indicator of the show is that even if you took the gay part out, the show is still good. The characters are believable and interesting, the humour doesn't need a laugh track and the dialogue is real.

I'm probably not the demographic that the show is directed towards (although that sounds like a generalisation, I don't think they are looking at the "18-35 white straight male demographic" as their audience of choice), but I still enjoy the show.

I think one of the reasons I like the show is that, given the subject matter, the show could bang you over the head with "gay issues", but it keeps away from moralising, from continually mentioning the rights of gays over straights, of repeating mantras about STDs and safe sex. These things appear, but they're part of an evolving story, not "Movie of the Week" fare. It's about society, or community, about the themes that appear in any community, but have an added twist because it's a world that the majority of people have no concept of. But overall, they are just the same issues that everybody else deals with in their lives. People finding out their idols are only human, the choice between working for the man or going out on your own, the realisation that people and relationships change...

It's about the broad canvas, in a microcosm.

That's why I keep watching...

Well that, and the occasional lesbian sex...

2002-12-17T14:57:00.000+10:00

Good Summer Telly.

Scrubs
Futurama (finally)
The Dead Zone (well, I'm enjoying it at least!)

Bad Summer Telly

The Bachelor
What is God's name is going on with that show?
"We take 25 women and one man, then he gets to go through and pick out one from the 25 who will be a possible wife."
It's like Perfect Match on acid.
And why would these women put themselves through public humilation to get one guy?
I don't understand that show at all.

2002-12-17T14:56:00.000+10:00

As strange as it sounds, I had completely forgotten about the disembodied head.

When the third series of the Sopranos originally aired, I missed the first two episodes (I must have been out getting a haircut, or a sandwich, or a life), so the repeat of series three, which Nine unceremoniously shovelled onto the public like so much dog whoopsie, has been a blessing in disguise (yeah, disguised as dog whoopsie).

What I do remember is someone mentioning the badly rendered Mum giving Tony a mouthful, but never seeing the scene, I forgot about it.

Until last Monday, when I saw the episode with the floating head.

It's a simple scene, almost an unnecesary scene, except that it brings in Svetlana, Ma's one-legged Russian housemaid (there's a joke there somewhere).

Svetlana goes on to become Janice's nemesis (or Janemesis if you will), what with her missing leg and record collection.

The actress playing Ma Soprano died during production of the third series, so the producers decided to write the character out (smart thinking), but needed to have this final scene in the show, so they used a body double, then superimposed Ma's head on top.

It's not a bad fit, until you realise what they've done, then suddenly it looks very fake. And eerie.

Five years ago, they would have shot the scene with just the back of her head. Now, they have the technology!

On a similar note, latest rumours from the set of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban(?) are saying they'll do the same thing with Dumbledore, now that Richard Harris is dead. They'll use a body double for all his wide scenes, then superimpose Harris' head for the close-ups, using footage shot during the first two films.

And celebrity thought they had it bad with people producing fake nudie shots of them by pasting their heads on model's shoulders. Now their entire back catalogues can be made into new movies.

How would you feel as an actor auditioning for a role against someone who has been dead for a year? Or a decade?

What next? Blue screen actors on a blue screen set?

2002-12-12T10:16:00.000+10:00

Hollywood is putting together a mini-series (read "backdoor pilot") remake of Battlestar Galactica, a show from my youth.

I have fuzzy memories of the show. It had Face from A-Team in it as either Apollo or Starbuck, the two leading men (I can't remeber which is which). They had cool fighter jets that rocketed out of little tunnel in the spaceship, and there was some dog-thing-robot that was annoying as it sounds.

And it had Lorne Greene as Admiral Adama (or something), who had decided raising cattle down on the Pondarosa just wasn't getting him anywhere and decided to take up with a fleet of spaceships, intent on discovering the legendary homeworld of the human race............Earrrrrrrth!

The villians of the piece were Cylons, which were tall shiny robots with a revolving red light for an eye. Just imagine if KITT from Knight Rider had been built into a futuristic knight. There's your cylon.

So Battlestar Galactica limped through the galaxy warding off the evil cylons. They finally found earth, which led to outrageously funny scenes where the kids from the spaceship could leap incredibly high and all sorts of hi-jinx took place, despite the fact that earth gravity would have felt decidedly heavier for someone who had spent their life on a spaceship.

Now, several producers are putting together a remake, with the introduction of several female players to even up the generally male cast. I happen to find a listing of major character outlines on the filmjerk.com website. Strangely enough, they have made Starbuck a woman, and not just any woman:

"Kara "Starbuck" Thrace, in her late 20s to early 30s, is a loner, which makes her an oddity among the Galactica’s tight-knit crew of pilots. She’s tough and ballsy with a certain worldliness. She’s as undisciplined and rebellious out of the cockpit as she is calculating and precise in it. Her mouth has definitely held back her career. Not fond of Colonel Paul Tigh, the ship’s Executive Officer, she enjoys both taunting him and beating him at cards..."

So, basically a bit of a rebel, feisty girl, right?

Well, just in case you had forgotten that she is a woman, they include the next line:

"...A take-charge woman who runs around the ship in a jogging bra and shorts, who might be attracted to Lee Adama, Kara is a warrior spoiling for a fight..."

OK. "Take-charge woman"? Got it. "warrior spoiling for a fight?" Yep, gotcha.

"Runs around the ship in a jogging bra and shorts..."? That's a character outline?

I don't want to sound like I don't like the idea of a woman who runs around the ship in a jogging bra and shorts, but doesn't it sound like the producer is saying "Any actresses auditioning for this role better be ready to get it off, because this is what the script requires. No, DEMANDS!"

I can't wait for the minor character outlines to be announced:

Misty: A feisty but unintelligent female canteen worker. Around the age of 19, she's a darling of all the crew, with her long blonde hair and bouncy gait. She constantly wears knee pads.

Veronica: A buttoned-down "secretary" to Adama. She's shrewd, intelligent and socially awkward. She dresses very dowdly, but underneath it all, she's a very beautiful woman. She likes to sing torch songs. And skinny-dipping

Bruce: A mechanic who works on the starfighters. He dresses in overalls and is covered in grease. He spends a lot of time rubbing his hands on an oil-stained rag. He looks a lot like like cousin Bill. In fact, my cousin Bill would be perfect for this part. Must have biceps the size of smaller planets (Bill can provide these).

Count Vlad: An arch-villian, with his long black cape and thick handle-bar moustache, which he curls constantly. He occasionally cackles in a mean way. He's mean and nasty. May have a parrot.

2002-12-06T11:04:00.000+10:00

Favourite ad of the moment:

Mobile phone ad with one of those new-fangle phones where you can record any sound and make that the ringtone for different phone, so when they ring, you get a distinct ringtone for that person.

The ad shows one of these phones. The name MICK appears on the screen and the phone starts ringing.

Except instead of ringing, it's farting.

The phone keeps making this farting noise for 10 seconds or so, then they fade in the text:

"Now you can record your own ring."

How absolutely sweet is that?

2002-12-05T09:28:00.000+10:00

I've glad I wasn't the only one who was pissed off by Channel Nine:

Fan anger at Sopranos switch
December 4 2002
By Seamus Bradley (via www.theage.com.au)

Channel Nine has outraged viewers of the award-winning Mafia series The Sopranos by screening a repeat on Monday night instead of the advertised new series.

Nine said viewers' passion for the ground-breaking show was behind its last-minute decision to repeat season three.

"We had an enormous volume of calls around the network from viewers in the last month who had missed series three because of its timeslot," program manager Len Downs said."We decided on Friday to run series three, which hadn't been sampled to its true potential, and follow it with the new series four."

Nine had a huge number of irate callers as a result of the decision. A recorded message invited angry fans of the show to write letters rather than phone the station.

Three points:

1. The Sopranos has never rated well for Nine, so there is no reason Nine would take into account a vocal minority.

2. Programming is decided weeks, months in advance. This was planned from the beginning. If they had been receiving so many phone calls IN THE LAST MONTH, the decision would have been made a lot earlier than last week. The only reason Mr Downs said that it was a decision on Friday to run season three is so they can say "We didn't have time to tell the TV guides before they were published. There was nothing we could do. IT WAS OUT OF OUR HANDS!!!" and so on...

As I mentioned before, the TV guides wouldn't have run frontpages and full-page articles if they had known it was just repeats.

3. Channel Nine has asked irate viewers to write to them, rather than using the phone, because (a) it's easier to phone, it's harder to write a letter (b) it clogs up their switchboard. (c) it's much easier to totally ignore a letter.

2002-12-03T15:58:00.000+10:00

Motherf***ing, c***sucking, a**holes.

After all the column inches that Channel Nine have supplied the TV critics around Australia about the new series of the Sopranos, Nine dropped the dacks on all the long-time Sopranos fans by building up the return of... repeats.

There's been articles in all the TV guides alluding to the fact that the new season of The Sopranos, which began in the US a couple of months back, would be appearing on our screens on Monday night.

Sure, The Sopranos is a big name show, so why would Nine be wasting it in the silly season, where ratings don't count and every crap show that couldn't get a foothold in the TV guide is trotted out to fill time between one day cricket fixtures?

Because the Sopranos hasn't rated very well at all for Nine, which is amazing, considering that the show is head and shoulders over a lot of pap on the telly these days. So maybe Channel Nine decided they would use the show as a headliner through the summer.

Come Monday night, and the lead-in shows highlights from Series Two. Bad sign. Then there's Tony's Mum. Another bad sign. Then, after a long refresher comes the announcement: Please enjoy the encore presentation of the third season of The Sopranos, and we'll play the new fourth season next year, in a ratings period. Sucker!

Of course, I was a fool to trust network advertising. In defence, Channel Nine could say they never advertised that they were showing the new season.

To me it was a betrayal of trust, although I don't know if it is a betrayal by the network of the public or by the network over the critics. I don't remember seeing any mention of season three repeats, or that the new season wouldn't be shown until next year, but I doubt that there would have been so much press about the show if everyone knew it was only old episodes.

2002-11-20T16:21:00.000+10:00

Two quick items of interest to me:

1. Shaun Micallef is presently signed up to do a pilot for a nightly late-night spot for Channel Nine, ala Tonight Live.

Now, there are people out there who are immediately going to say "Well, I guess he doesn't have much to live up to!" I don't agree. As a kid from the boonies, Tonight Live was great. "Just another Letterman rip-off!"? I had never heard of Letterman, and it was years after Tonight Live ended its run that Nine started playing Letterman, so I wasn't going to compare the two. As it was, there was quite a few similarities, but who cared, it was still funny.

And Shaun is the perfect person for the job. Witty, charming, urbane, just a few words he knows.

I missed his stint at the Logies, but his show on ABC was great and he comes across as intelligent and quick-witted on The Panel. He was also a lawyer, so it may all be true.

The challenge will be to produce 5 hours of intelligent and quick-witted entertainment a week. Sure, there's time put aside for interviewing guests and the occasional music number, but you still have to fill the rest of the time with stuff entertaining enough for people to say, "I'll come back tomorrow, thanks Shaun!"

At the moment, Micallef and his crew are producing a pilot for Nine, but if all goes well, next year will see a return to late night live entertainment five nights a week. Hurrah!

2. Optus goes all Foxtel

This one is for those couple of people who subscribe to Optus Cable television. Optus and Foxtel has made a deal that see Optus take on some of Foxtel's channels, including TV1, Showtime, thecomedychannel and Channel V.

I don't know what that means for our rates, but it means that now we have even more channels to avoid!

Some channels are extra, or come in packages. And UK-TV has now lost my interest as it has finished showing all the Doctor Who repeats it had.

Still I can't wait to put Channel V and MTV up against each other. FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!

2002-11-20T16:14:00.000+10:00

How fucked are the Wonder Twins?

Don't know the Wonder Twins? I didn't remember them either. I went and saw Tony Martin and Mick Molloy many years ago and they ripped into the Wonder Twins as the most pathetic superheroes around. I had no idea who they were.

Now, thanks to the delights of Boomerang in Cartoon Network, I'm getting to watch old, old episodes of Superfriends, starring Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, AquaMan and the Wonder Twins: Dana (Maybe? Might be Jayna?) who can turn herself into any animal, and Zan (Um? I still don't know.) who can turn himself into... water. They can only morph into their new shapes by touching rings (oo-er) and yelling out what they want to become.

Possibly good premise for superhero powers, let's see how they pan out...

Threat: Alien invaders who have hidden away on a satellite that has landed back on earth

"Wonder powers activate!"
"Form of an optopus!"
"Form of an ice unicycle!"

Oh dear God in heaven!

Threat: Wicked witch who has shrunk the Wonde Twins and placed them inside a pinball machine.

"Wonder powers activate!"
"Form of a woodpecker!"
"Form of an ice trapeze!"

Huh?

Threat: World's smartest gorilla (evil of course)

"Wonder powers activate!"
"Form of an panda bear!"
"Form of an ice hockey stick!"

Hockey stick, possibly useful, but a panda? At this point I realised that the writers just wanted the animators to work a little harder. Other extremes were a lobster, a terradactyl and the hardest one of all: "Form of... ice!" The boy twin turns into something similar to those long foam sticks used for packing, the strange hillbilly cousin of ice possibly.

BTW, did I mention that you can still see his face when he turns into water or ice of whatever? There's always a little face poking out somewhere. Hence the bizarre image of him, standing there next to her terradactyl sister, looking like a blotchy white semi-transparent shower curtain from the 70's, with a face stuck in the middle of it all.

Overall, Superfriends is piss funny. It's like a modern-day pisstake of cartoons, except it is deadly serious. It gloriously recycles scenes and characters, promotes a scientific explanation for things, while gleefully basing their science in Bizarro World. Its animation is basic, sound effects endlessly repeated and storylines delightfully primary.

A perfect way to waste 30 minutes of your life at a time.

2002-11-11T15:54:00.000+10:00

Suffer the little Children.

How I wish that some of the money used in television advertising campaigns was used to help those poor children (and some adults) in ads with gross deformities of their hands.

I'm sure you've seen them: Those poor unfortunates who can't hold a chocolate bar normally, or a can of soft drink, or even a muesli bar.

Take, for example, the poor little munchkins in the LCMs ad, who playfully frolic in the schoolyard, yet must grin with a rictus smile while trying to force the snack bar into their mouth sideways.

Or the unfortunate who has to hold his soft drink can or bottle by the end so he can pour it successfully into his mouth.

Or the sad, sad man from the Snickers ad, whose wrist contortions mean he has to hold the end of the chocolatey treat in a pincer grip to eat it.

It's a sad inditement on our advertising industry that young people with these disabilities are paraded in front of us, not because it eases the mind of the ad exec in his cushy office, but because if he uses these grasp-impaired people, it allows the viewer to see the label of the product clearly while the spokesperson is eating or drinking it.

Sickos.

Why produce a whole ad? Why not just produce five seconds of a person gripping the product in some strange wrist contortion and a sub-line: "Look! I'm putting it in my mouth! It MUST be good!"

They spend millions in advertising, and yet they can't get away from this idea that the viewers needs to see the label on the product while the model is eating it for the viewer to make the connection that that product is tasty and desirable.

The major problem is that it doesn't look natural. For the previous 25 seconds, people are running around, playing beach volleyball or skating or whatever, doing things that, according to latest market statistics, people who are having fun do, then at the end, they manhandle the product into their mouth like it's a crowbar. Even funnier is watching the people trying to "smile" and "bite" at the same time.

Here's an idea: Have 25 seconds of people doing natural things, then in the final moment, have them use a surgical scalpel to make an incision into the back of the chocolate wrapper to release the chocolate product from within without causing any crinkling of the product name on the front! Brilliant! It can target three demographics: chocolate lovers, surgeons and anal retentives!

When are ad people going to understand that once the general blob down the street buys a product like a chocolate bar, they couldn't give a nun's nasty about the packaging, unless you need to look inside to find out if you've won a ute.

Thusly (I don't know, could be a word), people in ads should show the same disrespect for wrappers as the rest of us. Pick it up, rip it open and consume, and don't give a jatz cracker about what's written on the outside.

Conversely, they should design the wrapper so that even when you hold in Traditional Ninja Eating Grip TM, you can still read the product name. Smother the wrapper with the name, so no square millimetre is spared, that way the consumer can't get away from seeing the name of the product they've already bought.

Alternatively, choose a particular colour scheme for the wrapper as the branding, and drop the text, so that even if the name is covered, the branding still sells the product (just like the Coke bottle shape, which is recognisably a Coke product even if the label has been torn off).

In any event, dropping the grasp-challenged from their ads would be a starting point. Because as much as I would like to live in a world where a mint can solve all of the world's crises, the price of living that life seems crippling...

2002-10-29T16:26:00.000+10:00

24

Look everyone, it's Lou Diamond Phillips!

Look everyone, it's Dennis Hopper!

Next week:

Look everyone, it's Matt Dillon! And that guy from Doogie Howser! And Judd Nelson!

BTW, I like the leap that Dennis Hopper has made from homicidal madman, hellbent on revenge to his character on 24, the father of homicidal madmen, hellbent on revenge. Actually, the ad makes him out to be a bit of a hellcat himself, enjoying a bit of tomfoolery, so maybe he's actually more of the homicidal madman's patriarchal figure.

That'll put the cat amongst the casting pidgeons!

Seriously, hellbent on revenge seems like a bad choice for homocidal madmen. It seems so... cliched. Why can't a homocidal madman just chill for once, maybe think "Living well is the best revenge", move next door, maybe rub the good guy's face in it once in a while about how much bigger your television is, or how many supermodels you bedded last week?

No, they have to blow things up and shoot people and torture innocent puppies and stuff.

And what the heck does "hellbent" mean anyway? That they are really really crooked? It just doesn't make sense!

And where do you draw the line between "psychotic" madman, "homocidal" madman and just plain "crazy" madman?

Are there any other types of madmen out there?

Here's five madmen you don't see much of:

1. A simmering madman.
2. A narcoleptic madman
3. A overly vocal madman
4. A tropical madman (although you do get the odd madman who's a bit of a "lush")

and the last one, whom you don't see often enough:

5. An interesting madman

2002-10-29T16:06:00.000+10:00

Sorry to palm off someone else's pap as my own content, but if you like Growing Pains, or even hate Growing Pains, or know of He Man, or even recognise who the hell Kirk Cameron is, then this garbled example of verbiage is for you.

2002-10-11T11:05:00.000+10:00

From London, via theage.com.au

Kylie Minogue will lend her voice to the cartoon character Florence in a full-length animated remake of The Magic Roundabout, the 1960s children's television classic that gained a worldwide cult following. Alongside her will be fellow singer Robbie Williams, providing the voice for the world-weary, shaggy dog Dougal, who lives on a strict diet of sugar lumps.

Pathe Pictures is stretching the series into 90 minutes of action, along the lines of Chicken Run, which took £30 million ($A85 million) at the British box office.

Whether the film will contain any references to Dylan the spaced-out rabbit growing something considerably stronger than carrots in his vegetable patch - as was previously imagined by some viewers - remains to be seen.

Apart from Minogue and Williams, Joanna Lumley, the Absolutely Fabulous actor, plays Ermintrude, the contemplative, pink cow. The voice of the eccentric, spring-propelled Zebedee, noted for announcing his arrival with a "boing", will be provided by Richard O'Brien, creator of the Rocky Horror Show.Jim Broadbent, who won an Oscar for Iris, is Brian the snail.

In classic movie tradition, the computer-generated players will have new friends. Tom Dr Who Baker is the voice of ZeeBadee, one new character, while Ray Winston of Sexy Beast is to pose as another, Soldier Sam.

First aired on French television in 1964, the whimsical cartoon has become a cult classic, translated into 28 languages and shown on 98 television stations, according to the website www.magicroundabout.com.

Filming is expected to take about 18 months.

Pathe Pictures managing director Francois Ivernel said: "It is hugely exciting to introduce Dougal and his friends to a new generation."

It is not the first film to be based on the series. A version called Dougal and the Blue Cat was made in 1972. The soundtrack became a hippie favourite.

2002-10-04T17:05:00.000+10:00

ENTERPRISE

The trouble with time travel storylines is that they invariably end up going horribly horribly wrong.

Firstly, it's all set up, looking all flash, explained away with a few big words and some scientist who usually winds up dead shortly afterwards, then the action begins, with people jumping around time like they're in one big bouncy castle, then resolution comes into play, and everything gets tied up at the end and the effects of causation are blamed for either everything going wrong, or everything going right.

In Doctor Who, the Time Lords have this three rule system, called sadly enough "The Laws of Time". They govern the use of time travel. One says you can't travel into your own past, or meet yourself. Another says you can't travel into the past or future of Gallifrey, home of the Time Lords. The third was probably "You Can't Bend the Space/Time Continuum Just Because You Feel Like Some Chinese, And All The Shops Are Closed".

Nevertheless, the Laws of Time were immutable; they could never, ever, be broken, ever, by anyone, ever.

Until it was anniversary time, then go for your life. Not allowed to meet yourself? Screw that! "The Two Doctors", "The Three Doctors", "The Five Doctors"...

Enterprise established a "Temporal Cold War" subplot in the pilot episode, with the villains being led by some shadowy guy "from the distant future" (who you know is going to be Vulcan). Over the course of the season, the "Temporal Cold War" and the "Time Accord" have come up a few times, but come the season finale, we get the big one: Captain Archer gets taken out of time in the 26th(?) century because of some forseen circumstance, only for it to backfire and leave him stranded in the 31st century or something, with no way of getting home.

End of season.

You just know it's gonna blow up in their faces.

The resolution of this problem is bound to be extremely convoluted, yet very simple, and in the end, quite moronic. It will be something like "I can't go back to here, so why don't I go back to here instead, somehow, then set in motion events that lead up to the other time thing not happening, so therefore I won't end up here." Pop! Bang! All fixed!

"Right for another adventure chaps?"
"What ho? Let's dash!"
"Stick'it inta first, ensign!"

Hilarity ensues.

2002-10-04T17:03:00.000+10:00

DARK ANGEL (with SPOILERS)

I've been watching this show every week so some reason that I don't know.

It's not that great, it's not that engrossing, it's somewhere between the "Buffy"s of the world and the "Mutant X"s, which is a pretty wide category ("Mutant X": can someone explain to me how a show is green-lighted when it has a combination of (a) a small budget, requiring the use of minimal or cheap effects, and (b) characters with superpowers? Did anyone think "Gee, we're probably going to have to spend a lot of money on special effects on this show, we better get some more financial backing". Obviously not).

There's not a lot I can say that stick out as "fantastic": the set are good, the effects are good, the cast are a little average, the stories are average B-grade material, the feel is a little corny. But I have been watching for one and a half seasons now.

The setup is that a genetically-enhanced warrior has escaped from a secret government facility and grown up in the outside world. Meanwhile, an EMP (electro-magnetic pulse) has gone off in America, turning it into one big slum. Thus Max, our warrior friend, has to find her way in a world gone Blade Runner.

The first season had Max, along with her good friend, rebel without a razor Logan, going up against the secret government facility that created her, Manticore. Meanwhile, there were a few overseas interests who were keen to get their hands on her transgenic ass, and not in the porno way.

The second season began with Max destroying the Manticore facility and letting all the other transgenics out into the world, thus setting up a storyline for the following episodes.

A organisation is hunting down the escaped transgenics, killing them off, destroying evidence of genetic foul play. The guy leading the charge is a Mr White.

Thus, Max and White are at odds, White captures transgenic, Max rescues transgenic, White gets mad.

Up til now, average scenario, huh?

Suddenly, after last night's episode, I have new respect for the producers of Dark Angel.

The ads for this week's episode were based along this line: boy is kidnapped, Max is called in by her friend to search for the boy. It turns out that the parent of the boy is one Mr White, thus setting up the personification of Mr White. He has a son and wife, therefore he is human. His son is taken away from him, he feels pain, he becomes more human. Villain becomes less cartoon and more understandable. By uncovering the human side of the villain, he becomes more interesting, because he has flaws that viewers can relate to.

It's a setup that has been used in shows all over the world: the villain must call on the hero to help them, because the hero is the only person that CAN help.

In Angel: Lindsey turns to Angel to help him uncover the truth about his newly grafted hand. In return, Lindsey leaves town, never to return, for the moment at least.

In The A Team: The army guy who is chasing the A Team all over America needs them to help save one of his offspring (the memory is a little cloudy).

So, I wasn't expecting much out of the episode.

So, surprise surprise, the episode sucked me in, because it was set-up as above, but instead went the complete other way. The denouement made Mr White into even less of a human being: cold, clinical, and downright manipulative.

And it also set-up an interesting problem for young Max: the people she's fighting against are not the regular humans, or even transgenics, but something way more advanced, something that actually puts her in danger, because she's no longer fighting someone she can beat, she's fighting someone who, to paraphrase Logan, can hand her her ass.

Always back to the ass...

Now I'm actually interested in where this is going, which is unfortunate, because I know the show got cancelled at the end of this season, which means they have to wrap this up very quickly, or I'm going to be very unhappy.

Although I am looking forward to the final episode, which was shot by James Cameron himself, and cost a cool couple of mill.

I'm expecting that the ending will be as open-ended as the one for "Nowhere Man".

Remember that one? "Nowhere Man" was about a photographer who had his identity taken away from him because he wouldn't give the government the negative to some politically-painful photo. Apparently, the image was so important that the government was prepared to kill people to get rid of it.

The plots of the first season were reminiscent of "The Prisoner", with the government trying every psychological trick in the book to try and smoke Thomas Veil out and find out where the negs were.

And then! Final episode of the season, Thomas finds out that the photo he took was set up, that the image was staged just outside some US city, instead of the South American jungle. His whole existence is thrown through a loop!

And then "Nowhere Man" got cancelled.

What happened to Thomas Veil? Dunno. Move along. Nothing to see here.

I'm expecting the same with Max and her merry crew. Big drama, no return.

2002-10-04T17:01:00.000+10:00

X FILES

Gee whiz, have alien conspiracy plots ever been this uninteresting?

What is it about the government that they keep setting these labs up for cloning or alien pregnancies or producing the perfect margarita, then as soon as someone suspects that it's no longer such a secret, BLAM! Blow it up. Seems a bit of a waste, plus a neat way to cleaning up any loose ends story-wise.

SCULLY: Look, we've got everything here to prove our case that aliens are creating killer mutant beetles, exonerate John Smith from killing those penguins, AND learn about the mystic powers of my own son, the surprisingly-here William!

DOGGETT: Look out! It's going to explode!

(Large fireball)

SCULLY: Looks like we're back to investigating turdmen in sewers, huh?

DOGGETT: Scully, you're an idiot...

I watched the two hours of X Files on Saturday and was amazed at how uninteresting this all could be. Everybody seemed more concerned with lurking in shadows and giving knowing looks at each other rather than doing ANYTHING.

Even the action sequences are lacklustre, or even off-screen, so all we see are the results, which are as exciting as Mulder's empty flat.

And what about Mulder?

"He's gone."
"Where?"
"He's just gone"
"you don't know, do you?"
"He's not here."
"What are you talking about? Where did Mulder go?"
"Who's Mulder?"
(pause)
"Scully, you're an idiot..."

I realise that Dave Duchovny wanted out this series, but surely it could have been done better than "He's in the shower, now he's gone, now, I have no idea, I don't want to talk about it." Why have him in the shower anyway? Unless that was someone else, and Scully's moved on already. Maybe that would have been a better storyline: "Mulder? Oh, him, yeah, he's outtahere. Say hello to Sanchez, he and I and bumping uglies together now. He runs an import/export business out of Toledo. He's gonna be a great daddy for William."

Meanwhile, the Lone Gunmen turn up, and one of them has a blue face, but it doesn't make any sense to me because I only saw one episode of "The Lone Gunmen", and it was average, and I never saw any more episodes shown in Melbourne. Apparently, the blue face is a carry-over from the season finale (and series finale, as it turned out) of "The Lone Gunmen". Just to keep you in the loop.

Way, way back, on A Nada World (before the invention of A Nada World - The TV Series), I proposed that X Files missed a golden opportunity when replacing Mulder by not going for Dale Cooper, late of Twin Peaks. I still stand by my statement. Doggett and Reyes are not interesting or dynamic enough to replace Mulder (and if the series had continued, Scully). Doggett and just too angry and closed-minded, and Reyes is just too annoying, with little personality to fall back on. Granted, if characters such as Mulder and Scully had appeared later on a long running show, they might get the same response, but they started with the show, and viewers got to learn the characters as they learned the show.

Either way, Chris Carter and ten Thirteen were going to be up against the wall replacing Mulder. No-one was going to fill his shoes in the eyes of the fans. Doggett may have filled the sceptic’s shoes, while Scully has taken over Mulder's role, but in the eyes of the general public, it comes down to one thing: He's no Mulder.

Cooper, on the other hand, wouldn't be compared so harshly to Mulder, because while Mulder is goofy, Cooper is a complete oddball. He just doesn't belong in the real world. Plus, Cooper outdates Mulder, in that he was created in the early 90s, in a show that set the scene for shows such as X Files.

It could mean that Dave Duchovny could make special guest appearances as Denice, the transgender FBI agent.

The Twin Peaks story could have been run along the alien conspiracy subplot, balancing out the science with the whimsical oddball schtick. Agent Reyes, who comes from some voodoo, witchy-poo, satanic rituals-investigatin' background, has so far come up with nuttin' worth a damn in the psychic spooky, otherworldly stakes. Every so often, she mentions "satanic ritual" or "blood sacrifice", but it's only to remind people that that's her game.

So, one week in, and I'm not caring. I'll be watching, probably, on Saturday, but if this keeps up, soon my Saturday evenings will be free.

Social life, anyone?

2002-10-04T16:59:00.000+10:00

24

Amnesia?

AMNESIA?

AMNESIA??!!!

2002-10-01T18:58:00.000+10:00

And in news just to hand, the BBC have announced that they may or may not have made plans to possibly do either a feature-length movie or a new television series of Doctor Who. Or not.

Yawwwn!

Please don't take my lack of enthusiasm as a sign that my affection for that ancient TV series Doctor Who has waned, it's just that every few months there's another rumour about producing a new version of the show, and so far?

Well, there was the 1996 movie, but I'll get to that in a moment. Firstly, let me take you on a little recap of the Doctor Who story.

If I was a sad fan, I would say something along the lines of "Let's jump in our TARDIS and fly back to 1963, when it all began...". But I'm pretending not to be, so I won't.

Doctor Who began in 1963. It was a filler show between soccer and some music show. It meandered through five or so weeks, gathering a few ratings here and there. It was nothing special.

Then came the daleks.

In England, the daleks were huge. We're talking Beatles huge. Everyone wanted one, everyone wanted to be one. Much like the Beatles.

I have no idea what it was like in Australia, firstly because I was not born, secondly, Doctor Who didn't start showing here until 1965, when I was still not born.

On the back of the daleks, Doctor Who became hugely popular and widely watched by kids around the world.

It became a staple of ABC programming through the seventies, along with The Goodies and occasional Australian productions. Almost everyone who was a kid at that time knew Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker on sight, even if they didn't know their names.

Then Tom Baker regenerated into that guy from "All Creatures Great and Small" and everything started going downhill.

Ratings started petering out, and seemingly the budgets did as well. The production values for the eighties Doctor Who seemed to drop sharply. Computer graphics and Quantel effects did no favours to Doctor Who. Meanwhile, American productions were bigger, bolder, flashier and action-ing-er.

Come 1989, the last series was produced. The last season saw a slight turnaround production wise, producing some decent stories, but it was too late. The bubble had burst. Doctor Who was dead.

(Meanwhile, fans were being treated to a new series of books that explored the universe of Doctor Who with never before seen depth, adding adult concepts such as sex and swearing and gore and nudey bits, and the fans had arguments about whether it was real Doctor Who or not, while Doctor Who Magazine kept rolling along, bringing out monthly issue after monthly issue, repeating the facts on the television episodes, because, frankly, they had nothing new to write about and you don't care do you, you couldn't give a rat's testicle, because you are not a sad fan who wastes their time reading a book about a character from some crap-arsed, low-budget seventie's science fiction programme, rather than going out and getting some sun, are you?)

After seven years of rumours and "near misses", the BBC joined up with Fox in America to produce a TV movie as a backdoor pilot. It had Paul McGann as the Doctor (one of those actors who you've seen in things, but have no idea who they are), and looked brilliant. Unfortunately, the script was shithouse (that's speaking as a average viewer, not as a fan), and as a result, wasn't picked up as a series.

Then nothing.

(Meanwhile, Big Finish, in conjunction with the BBC, started bringing out BRAND NEW STORIES - on CD. Essentially radio plays, but not on radio, quite a few of the cast from later Doctor Who have appeared on them, and fans can now argue whether these are real Doctor Who, along with the range of new Doctor Who books that the BBC are producing each month and you still don't care, do you?)

So, nothing. As far as the general public were concerned, Doctor Who was dead, it's days of cardboard scenery, bad special effects and bubble-wrap monsters just a memory.

(Meanwhile, the BBC commissioned a web-based audio adventure, uploaded in weekly parts, with bright flashy illustrations to capture the youth market and while am I even bothering to type this?)

So, cut to the end of 2002. At present, we've got Doctor Who novels, audio stories on CD, web-based stories on the BBC site and Doctor Who Magazine is STILL running after all these years.

And yet, no series. Or movie.

The BBC have been fleecing fans for years with video releases, and now DVD releases of stories that they released on video years ago, but now come with commentaries!

What the BBC seems to not understand is that all the stuff they are producing (novels, CDs, web stories, videos, DVDs) are all targeted at Doctor Who fans, who, frankly, are going to buy them anyway. The crap that they're pedalling doesn't appeal to the general public, so it doesn't sell that well, then the Beeb says it won't produce merchandise because it doesn't sell. Downward Sprial anyone?

That said, they produced the 1996 TV movie, then milked the hell out of it.

It seems to come down to supply and demand, except the BBC won't supply because they don't see the demand, which won't be seen until something is ACTUALLY PRODUCED.

But surely Chad, you ask, after all this time, after all the convoluted arguments, you surely must realise that I don't care!

Hmmmm.

Nevertheless...

Every couple of months, Doctor Who fandom is abuzz with rumours of a new series or movie, with everyone from David Bowie to Tom Selleck to Denzel Washington playing the Doctor (and no, I'm not making these names up).

There have been movie rumbles going way back to Tom Baker's days. He wanted to produce a film called "Doctor Who meets Scratchman" and get Vincent Price in to play Scratchman (who turns out to be the Devil. Children's television hero gets embroiled in quasi-spiritual theological confrontation. Bet that would drag'em in.).

Around 1992, "Doctor Who: Last of the Time Lords" was big news. For a bit, then it disappeared, never to return.

1998ish: Doctor Who: the Dark Dimension. Later that week: nup!

About 1999, plans for an animated series were announced in Doctor Who Magazine, quickly followed up the next month by articles about the mysterious woman who supplied the draft sketches and how she didn't actually work for the animation company she said she did.

And the list goes on: Donald Sutherland, Eddie Izzard, Roger Daltrey, Brain Blessed, that guy from "Pie in the Sky", Sylvester Stallone, Hugh Grant, that "Giles" guy from Buffy, Stephen Fry....

Meanwhile about the biggest thing to happen to Doctor Who since 1989 was "Doctoring the Tardis" by the guys from KLF.

By the way, fans hate that song.

And still, I sit and wait for some sign that Doctor Who could make a comeback. After all, they made a movie of Star Trek. And Lost in Space. And The Avengers. And even Josie and the Pussycats! But ask the BBC and they say "We're waiting until we can proceed with a version of this classic children's series that will do it justice."

Because the original series was such high art, what with all the cardboard and bubble-wrap.

So, the BBC may or may not have announced there could be a possibility that there's a chance that a new series or feature-length movie version of Doctor Who might be on the cards in the near, or semi-near future.

Bollocks.

2002-09-26T17:37:00.000+10:00

Does anyone else think that the posting of "The X Files" to Saturday night shows that Channel Ten have little hope in it pulling good ratings?

Saturday night has never been a standout night for television. Usually shows are swapped to Saturday night just prior to their cancellation.

Another bad sign is not only have Scully and Doggett been relegated to Saturday night, but Ten is doubling up episodes, so that the seaosns only lasts ten weeks instead of twenty.

Does somebody want the final series of "The X Files" out of the way? Is it a conspiracy?

Is it more a case of bad ratings in the US, where people toungue-lashed the makers for producing an extremely lame last season for a show that was once the pinnacle of high-quality television production?

Ten may be trying to shuffle this show out the door as quickly as it can. It's paid for a season of shows that most fans don't want to see after reading the reviews on US websites, and the general public no longer care about the show in general.

Wait for nine weeks, then expect Channel Ten to push the exclusive two-hour series finale! The final ever episode! When the truth will be told! And Mulder will return!

"Gotta squeeze those ratings out! Gotta squeeze those ratings out!"

The Truth is out there, but on Saturdays, everyone else is just out...

2002-09-20T16:22:00.000+10:00

Clip Show.

Is there any other phrase in TV terminology that elicits such a collective groan from the viewing public?

Well, yes. "Encore Presentation" for one. "A (insert show name here) Classic" is another.

But "Clip Show" stands above those other, newer phrases, because clip shows invariably try and weave a new story in between rehashing the same old crap. Call them what you will, repeats are still repeats.

"Friends" will have a clip show based on the cast members sitting on a couch in Central Perk and saying things like "Do you remember when Ross taught that monkey to do crosswords..." or "Remember when Rachel got caught up that tree with her hair on fire..." or "Remember when Chandler got that bowling ball stuck up his ass...", then they will flashback to show us all again about what crazy hi-jinx they got up to.

Chandler: "This is BY FARRR... THEEE biggest... bowling ball... I've had... up my ASSSSS!"

"Alias" did it a little differently, using the clip show to retell the overly complex story of what actually happened over the last 12 or so episodes. In this show, it will was more a matter of necessity than filler.

"The West Wing" used its clip show to show interviews with real-life political aides talking about their time in the White House, and how their stories became a part of the West Wing. For every piece of interview, there was a corresponding piece from the last couple of years of the show.

But the king of clip shows is "The Simpsons". It's not a title given lightly, but "The Simpsons" are deserving of the crown.

Almost every season of the show seems to contain at least one clip show, and each one is more poorly handled than the next.

The latest one was based around the idea of a Celebrity Roast, as was the fashion of the time, in Vegas usually, in the 70's. Instead, they are roasting Homer. Why? Because it's... shut up, just enjoy the clip show...

Even as a clip show, this one was pretty lame. To make matters worse, the episode finished with a song ABOUT clip shows, highlighting the ironic fact that "The Simpsons" will never run out of stories. Not good stories, just stories.

And to show they are being ironic, they include a picture of Homer jumping a shark. Geddit? Jumping a shark? Just like the phrase used when people believe that a show is past its used-by date, like "Angel really jumped the shark in Season 3!"? Oh how we laughed...

I had to laugh at some of the lyrics: "How 'bout a crazy wedding? Where something happens, doo doo doo do-doo doo...." which actually sounds like the songs I make up for Jen.

Clip shows are recycling at its worst. It pretends to be something new, and instead regurgitates the same old stuff in a different wrapper. At least a repeat is called a repeat.

Unless it's an encore presentation...

Or a Classic...

2002-09-20T15:56:00.000+10:00

SIX FEET UNDER (WITH SPOILERS)

SFU is finished for the year. We were lucky enough to get two seasons back-to-back, which was great, but it also means that we will only get half as many episodes each year from now on.

So, what's happening to Nate? Is he dead? Probably not. Getting rid of Nate would mean getting rid of Brenda and her f*cked-up family, and that would mean dropping a third of the show's runtime.

Unless something happens between Billy and Claire, which would be going over old ground, so the chances there are slim.

Hopefully Mummy Fisher leaving the florists, and the Florist, behind means we will have no more annoying phlegmy Russian accents anymore. Not much shat me about this show, but that Nicholai was driving me up the friggin wall.

Keith wasn't far behind. Tool anyone? I take it there are some legs in the "Keith the Powder Keg" storyline, with him shooting people and beating on people and having issues with his father, but so far, I'm just not interested enough.

That said, his daydream that the guy he shot could have been an alternative to fossil fuel blah blah blah was funny.

There's not enough big dance numbers I say.

And quirk. Give me lots of quirk.

The collapse of Kroener, thus ending the ongoing David and Goliath battle between funeral companies, was very abrupt. One week, Mitzi is flying the boys to her holiday home, a couple of weeks, nothing, then suddenly, "Kroener's gone bankrupt!". Seemed a little too disjointed to me, like it was a storyline that they decided had run its course and should be excised. Pity, because I like the imbalance between the Fisher boys and Mitzi. Their positions on the totem pole, their demeanour, even their style of dress. If ever the Dukes of Fisher were to have a Boss Hog, Mitzi was it.

While SFU can sometimes be a little heavy-handed (for example, the subplot with Nate regularly visiting the terminal guy, thus coming to terms with his own mortality), in terms of sheer enjoyment value, SFU is easily in the top five shows of the year.

In fact, just for the "Flashdance" dream sequence in the final episode, I'm putting it at Number One.

2002-09-19T18:22:00.000+10:00

I knew there was a reason why I didn't watch 60 Minutes anymore: the reason is Richard Carlton.

Is there a more smug, ethically unbalanced, opinionated tool in Australian journalism today? No. Ray Martin may be a little walking cliche, but even he doesn't compare to Carlton for out and out ridiculousness.

His celebrity interviews border on sycophantic, Carlton drooling obsessively over various young starlets and established actresses. His attempts at flirting are downright lecherous, and his deep industry knowledge gives him the wit and wisdom of Angela Bishop, the Channel Ten "reporter", for whom the word "puff-piece" has become a career.

Carlton acts like he has uncovered some life-altering backroom conspiracy, when in truth he's just repeating things we already know, except he does it in a particular way that makes it sounds like he has just blown up Watergate.

This report I was watching him drivel over was about fat people suing fast-food companies because they (the fat people) were fat.

My two cents: If you've been eating at BurgerWorld every day of your life, then sitting on the couch or in fornt of the computer for eight hours a day, you WILL get fat. Don't whine that it's someone else's fault. If you eat it, you gotta work it off, otherwise it becomes fat. Simple.

Anyway, Carlton tells us that the latest lawsuit harks back to the legal stumble that MacDonald's had a while back when vegetarians asked if the oil that Macca's cooked their French Fries in was 100% non-meat. MacDonald's said yes, the fries are cooked in 100% non-meat oil.

No, no, no, says Dick. That's not entirely true, because the seasoning that they put on the fries is beef-based, so MacDonald's LIED!

Actually no. They said that the oil was 100% non-meat-based. They didn't say the seasoning was 100% meat-free.
But Dick doesn't care, he just likes the sound of his own voice saying that Macdonald's lied, and HE CAUGHT THEM OUT.

Dicky Carlton has been around for a long time in Australian journalism cicles, which means that someone, somewhere, is falling for his schtick.

As a journalist, he makes a good presenter.

Actually, as a presenter, he makes a good weatherman.

2002-09-12T17:01:00.000+10:00

OK, this is a little f*cked up.

I've watched some weird telly. I've sat one foot away from the screen and watched Ren and Stimpy. I've sat back and gawked at D.A.A.S. Kapital. I've even seen Cop Rock (once, and yes, enough).

But I've just been stunned by television so very very wrong that my lower jaw is only now draggin itself up from the ground.

I watched maybe five minutes before I had to, please God had to, somebody make it stop, turn to another channel.

And yet, what I saw stays with me, like a bad curry, always at the back of my mind, if I'm lucky.

"Passions".

What the f*ck was that?

Some mature-age lady and a midget called Timmy were swapping gifts, not Christmas, but End-of-the-Year gifts.

I'm hoping that somewhere in those packages were some acting lessons, coz these people were baaaaaaaaaad.

As it turns out, "Timmy is a doll that Tabitha, an evil witch, brought to life to help her destroy the Bennetts." Whoever they are. (Thanks to first (and only one) of a million unofficial "Passions" websites)

Tonight, the role of Pinocchio will be played by... this midget.

As they are swapping gifts and platitudes, another woman appears in the doorway. And I mean appears, she literally pops onto the screen, then proceeds to chew the scenery. I think she's supposed to be a witch. At least, she cackles like a witch. Then again, my Aunty Ibby cackles when she laughs, and she's a school teacher, so maybe this woman is a school teacher.

Between the three of them, I'm surprised they have any scenery left.

Next scene has a bunch of people in a church, all soapy long stares and bad costumes. And more scenery chewing. It's strange to see the stone walls of a church with bite marks, but they've succeeded.

I think Passions is supposed to be some sort of supernatural soap, but instead of being bewitching, it's cursed.

Thank you. I had to think for thirty seconds for that one.

And here was me thinking that it was just a joke on Buffy when Spike complains that he's going to miss Passions and "Timmy fallen down the well".

Wood floats. And even if the character doesn't, the actor will.

2002-09-12T12:52:00.000+10:00

I used to love Battle of the Planets as a kid. The original cartoon as a Japanese production, called Gatchaman or something like that, but in the 70s/80s, it will repackaged for English viewers as Battle of the Planets, starring the unstoppable G-Force.

Mark, Jason, Princess, Tiny and Keyop. And watching over them from a base on Neptune or somewhere, 7 Zark 7.

Here's a little piece of trivia that I found interesting: 7 Zark 7 didn't exist in the original Japanese show. The original show had longer fight scenes, with more violence, because Japanese kids can hack it. Meanwhile, in the US, kids need to be sheltered from violent acts, because they see enough of them at school.

So the American producers of BotP decided to add in this robot, who was stationed far off where he didn't matter, to fill for the cuts to the original story. Which is why, on the rare occasion that one of the G-Force flew to Neptune to visit 7 Zark 7, they just looked that little bit wrong.

7 Zark 7 also had a robot dog, whose name I can't remember, something like 1 Rover 1, and he also had a thing going with a distant outpost robot (Susan?), who appeared only as a pair of lips on a speaker. Or maybe that's just my imagination.

I wish I had a picture of 7 Zark 7 to show you, as that would make this rant seem like it had a point.

the villian of BotP was called Zoltar or Voltar, or possibly AirGuitar, something like that. Zoltar used to wear a mask with two pointy bits sticking out at 45 degree angles. You know, like horns. Geddit? Horns? Like the devil? The Devil has horns? Therefore, by association, Zoltar is the devil, because he has horns? Subtle, huh?

BTW, Zoltar wasn't actually a guy, it turned out in the later episodes that he was actually a she, with long blonde hair. How's that for a twist?

How about this one then? Keyop, the speech-impaired ADD-suffering loon, was actually an android! With a speech impediment! Now it becomes clear what "Keyop" actually meant. You would think that someone in G-Force would cotton on to the fact when they had to wind him up every morning.

Do you think that anyone was offended by the fact that they called the fat guy Tiny? Do you think they would get away with it these days?

The one thing I thought was silly was the fiery Phoenix, when their ship would become a molten blob and be able to just about anything (ala Smallville's Kryptonite). What's the deal there?

Overall, Battle of the Planets rocked as a weekday afternoon break from the mundane life that we mere mortals led in our little country towns. Who would want to be some little schoolkid when you could be a member of G-Force?

But who to be? Mark or Jason? Princess was out, coz she's a girl and therefore contaminated with girl germs. Tiny was essentially ballast, and Keyop was a spicy combination of useful and annoying.

Let's face it, you could be Mark, or you could be Jason, but either way, you were a member of G-Force: Dedicated! Inseparable! Invincible!!!

And infinitely repeatable...

2002-08-15T12:49:00.000+10:00

24

Channel Seven has finally started showing 24, the highly acclaimed new show from America, in which Keifer Sutherland plays a government agent trying to stop an assassination attempt on the first black Presidential candidate. The show title comes from the plot device of having the show run in real time, therefore the first hour is the time between midnight and 1am and so on.

So what's it like? It's good, very good, very twisty. Keifer's got a lot on his plate for the next 24 hours, and I'm sure that it's just beginning. Being a government agent sure has its moments, playing with high-tech gadgets and hacking into private information files and getting involved in gunfights in government institutions.

The idea of the show being in real-time didn't seem to be that important to me. Sure, everything is happening at once and the clock is counting down to the assassination attempt, but what was happening to all the characters happens in other shows with just as much tension without the need for "real-time" status. I don't know if that is going to become more of an issue later, but it didn't seem to matter in the first two episodes. Things happened, they happened at the same time, things do that.

However, overall, I liked the show, I will watch it for the next couple of weeks and see if it flies or falls. It could go either way, although the buzz suggests that it will be a ratings-earner for Seven.

And wasn't the guy playing the secret agent guy in the pilot episode the same guy who played the secret agent guy in The West Wing?

SMALLVILLE

Goddammit, I didn't want to watch this show. I kept having flashbacks to "Superboy" from the 80's. Bad bad bad bad bad bad.

And then I watched Smallville, and goddammit, I didn't run screaming from the telly. I didn't cover my eyes and pray for blindness.

It's not bad, sure it's not going to set the world on fire with its intelligence, but it's not going to kill the Superman franchise.

The effects seem pretty good, although the episode with the fat chick who loses all her weight showed that it's hard to make a thin girl look fat on a budget. From the beginning, you could tell she had a ton of makeup and prosthetics on to make her look fat, and even when she appeared midway through looking somewhat thinner, you could still see that she would thin down some more.

BTW, do Clark’s superpowers extend to his clothes, because he seems to shield people from explosions and stuff a lot, and yet his clothes are fine, not burnt or ripped or anything. What's the story?

Finally, Kryptonite: is there nothing it can't do? That stuff has the power to make anything happen: people shooting fire, fat girls thin, teenagers becoming insects.

Why hasn't the US government studied this glowy green stuff yet?

JOHN SAFFRAN'S MUSICAL JAMBOREE

Has anyone been watching this show on SBS?

John Saffran made a name for himself on the original "Race Around the World", where young film-makers were given the task on producing short documentaries from a different country each week. He then did a pisstake of a song produced by Baz Luhrman, called "Not the Sunscreen Song", which was pretty funny. He then tried a few different pilots for telly shows that didn't do anything.

Now he has his show on SBS that looks at the backroom shenanigans of the music industry, including how to get into an exclusive nightclub, how to get a positive review for your band in street press, is Beck a Scientologist? and big business versus musicians. I don't know where he gets his information, but it really is very funny and informative about how the music industry and media construct the music we hear.

And for all those musicologists out there, he even has a spot about musical instruments from around the world, and ropes in acts such as TISM, Itchee and Scratch-E, Ross Wilson and Frenzel Rhomb to play versions of their songs with that particular instrument.

If he could get rid of that lisp, he could be the next... Andrew Denton?

Fun stuff, should be watched by anyone who has a finger in a musical pie, or anyone else for that matter.

2002-08-02T11:19:00.000+10:00

Has it really been that long since I commented on the early days of the TV season?

Everything comes to an end, and so have they.

They being, Buffy, Angel, Alias, the West Wing and ER.

So, how did their seasons stack up?

ALIAS

Loved it. Sydney Bristow kicks ass, Jack Bristow kicks bottom and Will Tippin, alias the World's dumbest journalist, got his ass kicked.

You can't go wrong with the following formula: hot mamma x small dress x marital arts x thumping soundtrack.

I liked the whole Rambaldi deal, with the renaissance manuscripts leading to modern-day inventions that could blow up the world (or possibly power it for a millennia).

The finale rewarded people who had watched the very first episode closely, with the giant red ball that Syd comes up against, and ultimately drowns Vaughn.

May I add: What a way to go out! After spending the better part of the season wandering around CIA and having appointments with Syd in mobile blood banks and some disused factory, Vaughn gets to go on a little jaunt with his favourite secret agent, and ends up being drowned by a tidal wave of black gunge from some medieval/techno super-conductor thingy.

It must be said: Vaughn ain't dead. This is X Files territory: No-one dies forever.

A smart move by the producers of Alias was the episode where Sydney was examined by CIA and had to recap what had happened over the previous half season of stories. Being its first year, Alias had no back story to lure people in, unlike a Buffy or Angel. It also had no "stars" in its cast to rely on for cheap ratings points. The series had a promising start, then gathered a strong following in the US and Australia. However, there must have been some people who came in late who had no idea what was going on.

Hence, the clip show.

"Sydney, in your words, explain what's been going on this season."

47 minutes later...

"Everybody up to date? Good."

Will Tippin is a menace to himself and everyone around him. Personally I was happy he got the shit beaten out of him. It's his own fault for going in all starry-eyed about this whole "fiancée murder" thing. And it was nice to see everybody's favourite dentist from the first episode make a reappearance. Note: OK, I was impressed with Will's attack on the dentist with the syringe. Nice touch. But I hope Mr "I think the truth is hiding behind Molar No. 3" isn't dead. He's just too much fun.

One of the things that started off as quite important in the scheme of the show, Sydney's "double life", has been pared down to small scenes of Will and Francie pondering ticket stubs and Syd's recurrent bruising. Whereas to begin with, the whole Agent/Student thing was supposed to be important to the series as a whole, now it seems it is tacked onto the spy thing. Originally, Francie had problems with her fiancée, thinking he was two-timing, but it was a misunderstanding, and then it wasn't. Oh dear! what shenanigans will they get up to next? Now, the only reoccurring storyline for Francie and Will is "Is Syd going to join us at the club?".

Of course, now Will knows all about the spy deal, what will come of that?

And The Man is Sydney's Mum!!!!

gee. really?

I'm sorry, but that bit of the climax left me... unfulfilled.

Nevertheless, roll on Series 2, where we find out that Vaughn escaped through an air vent, OR someone else opened a door somewhere else and let all the gunge out, OR he held his breath until the tide went out, OR he grew gills, OR it's actually oxygenated gunge and you can breathe it, or...

Trust me, there will be some reason...

BUFFY

Oh dear. What has become of the Scooby Gang? They've grown up and got lives. And they're dull lives at that.

I watched this season of Buffy bar one episode (The wedding. I hear it went well!) and I was disappointed over and over again whenever the credits rolled (except for the credit for musical score by Thomas Wanker. That always gave me a giggle.)

The musical episode was very good, but I would be hard-pressed to find a reason to pick Season 6 on DVD when it comes out on video, except for the sake of completing my set.

The show lacked spark, and a lot of it was due to dialogue. A case in point, I recently received Season 4 on DVD and watched the first episode, "The Freshman", Buffy's first days at UC Sunnydale. About halfway through Xander turns up from his roadtrip to some Ladies Nightclub and they banter a bit. Xander notices that Buffy is a little down and uses a phrase like she's "looking like you just got diagnosed with cancer of the puppy."

That one line was funnier than anything I can think of in Season 6.

All the characters seemed to be going to through "grown-up" dilemmas this season: Buffy had money problems, Xander had commitment issues, Willow was addicted by magic, Tara had relationship issues, followed by serious lead poisoning, Dawn had kleptomania problems, plus she kept whining about everybody ignoring her (leading back to the klepto probs) and Spike fell in love, fell out of favour, tried some attempted rape and generally got pissed off about being just that little bit crap.

And then there was the Trio. It was mentioned by Joss Whedon that the Trio sprung from discussions around the writer's meetings hinging on how nerdish the writers were. Hence, a trio of little boys playing James Bond villains. I thought they were funny, but they didn't provide a real threat, because you knew they wouldn't amount to much. In the end, they became fodder for Willow's addiction storyline, which rounded out the season in a very lacklustre way.

Putting this year's episodes up against earlier seasons hurts the current batch. Looking back at episodes from seasons 1-3, the dialogue bounced between the characters and the show balanced talking with fighting. As Season 6 progressed, there were more and more scenes of people just walking, just talking, no swinging axes, no sudden leaping ghoulies, just line after line of wallowing prose.

Much like this, really.

Mr Whedon promises a new style, "Buffy: Year One" for the next season, and mentioned that the mood will be lighter.

I hope that means we get the Master back. I liked him.

ANGEL

Angel, Angel, Angel! You moody f*ck!

I really grew to hate this show over the past couple of months. I loved the first season, which played up on all the preconceptions of the vampire and the actor in the vampire.

This year, he's become everything they set him up against. He's moody. He's a loner. He's a sadsack nutball. He's an angry vamp guy on a mission...

Plot recap: He gets a son, said son gets taken away from him by uber-villain, ubervillain raises son as his own, son returns for vengeance on Angel.

Sanchez, or Sandtrap, or whatever the other villiany guy's name was (actually, Sanchez would have been funny: a grossly disfigured ghouly-freak, complete with sombrero, pancho and oily moustache. Where he leads, his mexican guitar-playing flunkies will follow.), provided Holtz's means of getting to the present day, and then was neatly tucked away in a bottle. Or something. I missed that episode.

Angel loves Cordy, Groo loves Cordy, Cordy is with Groo, but loves Angel, Wesley likes Fred, Gunn likes Fred, Fred likes both of them, but like Gunn more.

I like intelligent television with a splash of fantasy.

Instead I got dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb telly, with a splash of Mills and Boon.

In the end, Cordy goes up, Angel goes down (oh how delightfully symbolic, yawn...), Wesley boffs Lilah (so maybe they went down too?), Lorne goes to Las Vegas, Groo goes to Heartbreak Hotel and Fred and Gunn stand in the hotel wondering where everybody went.

Next year, Fred and Gunn do their tax returns, Angel watches fish, Cordy becomes a glow-in-the-dark air steward (well they said she'd be helping people on a different plane, didn't they?), Lorne opens for Wayne Newton and Wesley joins Wolfram and Hart, turning the show into LA Law: Blood Sacrifice!

THE WEST WING

I keep watching The West Wing and at the end of the episode, I sit back, or stand up, depending on my comfort status, and think "I enjoyed that." and I have absolutely no idea why.

Basically, it is a bunch of people walking quickly through corridors talking at each other in a very quick tone, inferring that what they are talking about is of serious consequence to the entire world.

And then Martin Sheen sums it all up in his little cameo as POTUS. The occasional metaphor, the historical reference, the bowing of heads, and a final "Yes, Mr President", and everything is wrapped up, kit and caboodle.

So what is it that keeps me turning it on?

Maybe the dialogue. Despite it's speed, it is intelligent prose. And funny at times. It speaks on two levels, one political, one humanly personal. These people are leading a nation, and yet in the end, they are also just people. They are stupid, just like everyone else, except they work in the White House, where they can't be seen to be stupid, otherwise the stupid people on the other side will expose them for the idiots they are. And yet, at the same time, they know their politics, and their politicking. They know the loops and binds that they are required to use, to twist figures and bastardise the opposition. It is an interesting balance to watch people who can juggle the enormities of political office, and yet make the same social faux pas as mere mortals.

Because that's what they are, mere mortals, dabbling with higher powers. It's like Buffy, but without the hellmouth.

Maybe it's the actors. Everything I said before about the dialogue would be wasted if you didn't believe that these people were really these people, these people being the characters, not the actors. The actors have carved out credible people from the characters they inhabit.

Who would have thought that a show about politicians would have been so interesting? I mean, what's the last time you watched a sitting of the Australian Government on telly?

The whole thing with the President lying about his illness and being impeached and stuff is starting to feel like a bit of an albatross. I'm sure it will lead up to something, but when the story keeps leaning back into this "Bartlet gonna fry for what he done" territory, it loses momentum, and when you're a show about people talking fast and moving quickly through corridors, that's bad. Then it's a couple of people sitting there talking politics. I've seen Meet the Press. It was never this interesting.

The season finished off with a show featuring real life White House staff talking about their time on the hill, and how their stories were interwoven into the stories in the show. I remember seeing the same thing done on China Beach. Remember China Beach? Dana Delany played a nurse, and Marg Helgenberger (whatever, the red head on CSI) played a whore. Anyway, they had an episode where they had interviews with the nurses that were stationed in remote hospitals, and how their stories became China Beach.

I found these episodes interesting. Jen thought the West wing "True Life Stories" episode was dull and a bad way to finish the season. Maybe on that point I agree with her. If you're going to have a show like that at the season end, it should be announced as such, call it a behind the scenes special or something, as the Average Joe would be expecting all sorts of fireworks going off after the end of the penultimate episode, with CJ's bodyguard being shot and Bartlet ordering an assassination, only to be met with a glorified clip show.

Next year: I hope all the impeachment crap is taken care of, so that it will go away. And I hope the staff all start wearing running shoes, so they can move even faster. I want indoor tack and field, with dialogue!

ER

The season finale finally produced some good action, what with the smallpox and the riot and all, so the feeling of uncontrollability really hit home.

But no-one wants to talk about that. Everyone wants to talk about Mark Greene.

Mark Greene is dead. People dies in shows all the time. Jimmy Smits did it in NYPD Blue, Madge did it in Neighbours, Mr Hooper did it in Sesame Street. Death on telly is commonplace.

However, Greene's death was well constructed to draw out three episodes of pain and suffering.

Firstly, you had his departure episode, which admittedly I missed while in the States, but from what I hear, had him just walk away, "I'm taking my brain tumour and going home!".

Awwwwwww.

Then you had the episode where everyone finds out that Mark died in Hawaii. The letter is pinned to the noticeboard and one by one, the staff read the bad news. Much hilarity ensues. Or not.

Awwwwwww.

And finally, you have the episode where Anthony Edwards must have thought HE had died and gone to Heaven. Greene takes his family to Hawaii! Gee whiz, do I have to film my last scenes in Hawaii? Don't be so cruel! Once again, hilarity ensues. Greene and Rachel bond, then unbond, then she bonds with some guy, then she bonds with pappy, then pappy takes a wander through the empty halls of the ER, then pappy dies.

Awwwwwww.

Let's face it, if you've been at the centrepoint of a series for eight years, you're gonna want an episode where you take the gang to Hawaii. I'm sure the cast from Full House got to do it, and that was a crap-assed low-level unclean unclean get-it-off-me situation comedy.

Anthony Edwards deserved a big send-off and I think he'd be pretty happy with the one he got.

Next year: Lots of people get sick and the staff of the ER have to help them get better. Much hilarity ensues.

What? It's not rocket science!

Shows over...

2002-06-11T22:36:00.000+10:00

Well, hello there.

So, you're thinking, Chad ain't blogging much these days. Chad must be off having a world of adventure otherwise he'd be blogging about the talkiness of Angel or why Jessica should be evicted from Big Brother and sent straight to the ninth level of hell or something similarly stupid.

Fear not, idiots.

I have been kept busy at work, so not so much blogging from there, and unfortunately, television has been too addictive lately, so I have rarely reached the home computer to blog, which is a pity, as I have a new you-beaut computer to work on, and I've watched some really good and some really bad television lately.

And, may I add, I have even more bad news for those of you who have enjoyed my rambling crap. I'm going on a holiday.

I'm off to travel, so I may not be in contact with A Nada World - The TV Series for a couple of weeks.

Think of it as a sabbatical. I must get in touch with my inner Nada.

Thank you to everyone who reads these pages regularly. Return in a couple of weeks and I'll show you some slides.

Yonder, here I come.

At ease...

2002-05-31T15:30:00.000+10:00

ANGEL was boring this week.
Angel did puppyface over Cordelia and Groo, while Wesley did puppyface over Gunn and Fred.

I take it they're going for a balance thing between Wesley and Angel, both feeling alone and left out, both pining for the female, but losing out to someone cooler or whatever.

The difference is Angel has Connor to soak up his anger, while Wesley hangs around with old books. I doubt that the two of them will end up in the same situation.

The episode was a little bit heavy on the speeching and a little light on the biffo. And the villian of the week was a tree. With an internet connection.

What the?

2002-05-31T15:29:00.000+10:00

Best moment of the TV week: Watching Nate accidentally trip out at family dinner on Six Feet Under.

2002-05-20T14:34:00.000+10:00

THINGS THEY SHOULD HAVE ON TELLY: NUMBER 923

You know what they should have on telly?

A show that buys things that get advertised late at night, or in little crappy ads at the back of magazines, and shows you whether they actually work or not.

It's like the opposite of the advertorial. They're not being paid to sell the product, they're just showing you what you get for your money.

If the presenter likes the deal, they show a contact number or name. If it's shit, they don't.

It's like "Reality Programming", without the inverted commas.

2002-05-20T14:25:00.000+10:00

BIG BROTHER II

Stand-out line on Australia television for 2002.

"Do you know... the extent... of your... charisma?" - Mirabai

I think the fact that she actually got this question out without cringeing shows that Mirabai is certainly one brave desperado, willing to put her feelings out on the line, without the use of pomposity or verbosity.

Of course, the line "I've got the horn for you." would have sufficed, but it just doesn't smack of classical charm, huh?

Coz Mira is class and charm all over. After all, she plays the violin, so she's obviously a very classy lady.

And she obviously enjoys a fiddle too, since she's tried Damian and Brodie in the house, while having a boyfriend on the outside.

It's a pity that there's no more eligible men inside the house. Nathan's out, Marty's taken, Peter will be inconsolable after Turkan's eviction, Alex just looks a little wrong and Keiran... well Keiran just seems like everybody's brother. So after Brodie, Mira got no more avenues to follow-up in the man stakes.

Of course, if she goes the girl-girl action, things get very tasty indeed. There's new grist for the mill. And it gives Sahra something to do as well.

Next week, Jessica will get evicted. Please?

2002-05-14T13:15:00.000+10:00

SIX FEET UNDER is one of my favourite shows at the moment Unconventional is a word that I could use, but it doesn't fully encapsulate the pull of the show.

On paper, the story of the Fisher and Sons Funeral Home doesn't sound promising.

The father dies in the first episode, leaving his control-freak, inhibited wife Ruth alone for the first time in thirty years. One son, Nate, left to roam the world and only recently returned for Christmas. The other, David, continued the family business. Nate decides to stay with the family and be involved with the funeral business when their father is killed. Meanwhile their younger sister is going through the trials of high school, with the expected binges of sex and drugs.

From there, we learn about each of the Fishers. Ruth was having an affair, and is now dividing her time between two lovers. David is learning to come to terms with coming out of the closet, while trying to hold the company together. Nate hooks up with a mysterious and mentally-fucked up woman called Brenda, who has a tag-along brother, the psychotic Billy. And little sister Claire is kooky and spooky, driving around in a green hearse, sucking guys' toes and stealing dead body parts, generally trying to find where she fits into life.

Generally, this sounds like usual soapy fare (maybe apart from the toe-sucking and dead foot theft, but I'm sure they've been done before), so what makes Six Feet Under so good?

Five Reasons why SFU is a Great Show.

1. Subject Matter - Isn't it nice to have a show that isn't about cops, firefighters, detectives, doctors, lawyers or teachers? It's noticable that three of my favourite dramas, apart from the fantasy based shows, are about the mafia, a funeral home and the President of the United States, areas not plundered by numerous telly shows over the years.

Also, the themes of the show have been done to death previously (coming to terms with grief, mental instability, families not communicating, drugs, sex), but the approach of the dialogue and the direction is so much fresher than most (Spelling) productions.

2. Misdirection - You can't be sure where this show is headed. In a similar way to "Boogie Nights", what you expected was going to happen didn't always come off. In SFU-universe, people can do the stupidest, strangest, oddest things, because that's what people do.

3. Music / Opening Credits - I love the opening credits and the music. It sets the show up entirely. It is the world of death and funerals, but it is an almost abstracted view of what lies behind that world, when most are too busy in their own grieving. The music is classical, yet disjointed, perky yet sombre. And suits the show perfectly.

4. Cable - Cable telly is America has given us some of the best drama series in years, because it is the platform for the risky programs that the networks can't touch. The Sopranos, Oz, Six Feet Under have all come from this avenue, and have all benefitted from it, because they've been able to be as realistic and risky as they wanted, without having to dumb it down network executives and advertisers. When given artistic freedom, people like Alan Ball and David Chase have produced shows that go that step further, or go sprinting past network contemporaries.

5. Lauren Ambrose - coz she's a cutie.

Six Feet Under is the sort of show that can be hard-going, confronting (I didn't want to use that word, but it suits)and mysterious, but the charm is that these people are realistically fucked up, and that's what makes you care about them. The live people are as frail, maybe more so, than the dead ones they're surrounded by.

2002-05-14T11:53:00.000+10:00

Something's been bugging me about that Pantene ad with the supposed model/actress who says that she tried another product and complains that she got flyaways ("Never had them before.").

The ad is set up so that you're supposed to think it's a stylish ad, but using the spokesmodel's actual speech, rather than a script. Therefore, the inflections are relaxed, reality-based (despite the actress' inability to appear natural. I hope she's a good model).

The problem with the ad is that they're not playing with a television convention: if the action is real, the camera is not fluid.

We, the viewers, have grow up with the understanding that certain camera moves denote certain established facts. For example, a floating camera shots denotes detachment, possibly a dream sequence.

A tracking shot around a character denotes they are in the middle of something large, frenetic or overpowering.

A zoom-out establishes literally and metaphorically, that the subject is a part of a much larger picture.

If it's real, the camera is stationery. If it's really real, the camerawork is unsteady, jerky or slightly tilted.

These are conventions that have been setup by television over many years. Viewers have learned to accept them as given and take onboard the meaning behind the movement of the camera.

The reality of the Pantene ad falls down because it puts realism of subject up against the fluid movement of the camera, producing mixed signals for the viewer. While the model is talking about her beauty secrets and trying to be naturalistic, the camera sweeps slowly round, giving the scene a feeling of sophistication and quality, which means that whatever the model is saying isn't coming across as natural because the mode of the camera work is saying "this is not real, this is an unreal situation".

It's not helped by the luxurious and neutral set dressing. Why would someone come into an environment such as this, then complain about a shampoo that she no longer uses?

And no, I don't know why I'm reading so much into an ad for shampoo either. Maybe, it's that, obviously, this is part of an advertising campaign being run by a large, national, possibly multinational, company, probably put together by a top-line advertising company, and it still comes across as fake.

2002-05-06T16:16:00.000+10:00

POPSTARS Well done to Scott Cain from Perth for winning Popstars over Danielle the blond cardboard from elsewhere (Can someone spare her a personality? She's got the stage presence of mould.).

The producers of Popstars deserve some credit of their own: well done for getting Scott to sing that song without pulling his own tongue out.

Firstly, the song is really average, even for pop standards. You would think that someone with the combined talents of the whole country's songwriters behind them would have come up with something catchier than that.

Secondly, I need a copy of those lyrics, because they were TRULY terrible. If you're going to put together song lyrics consisting of bad cliches, at least break it up with some interesting lines. I can't think of any lines off the top of my head, but I'm sure we'll be hearing it for weeks to come, whether or not people buy it.

If anyone knows where I can find a copy of the lyrics, please comment me.

Thirdly, that video was fucking terrible.

It's lucky that they're looking for that MOR, popstar position, the easily digestable, easily dropped, hardly memorable figure, because that's what they've pidgeoned-holed him into from the get-go.

I mean: a disused factory/warehouse, a funky car, some cute girls, plastic lighting, a few skating tricks and a storyline written on a cereal box...

This coming from an allegedly leading video director.

What, no smoke machine?

So, so far, hack songwriter, hack lyrics, hack video director...

The only good thing Scott Cain has going for his career is Scott Cain.

And the very best of luck to both of him.

2002-05-01T14:09:00.000+10:00

There should be more shows about people whose lives were heroically saved by topless women.

Kind of like Rescue 911, but with boobies. It could be called Rescue 36-24-36.

Just thinking!

2002-05-01T14:03:00.000+10:00

TIDBITS FROM WATCHING TELLY:

BIG BROTHER II

It's unprecented! It's unwarranted! It's unbelievable!

Five nominations!!??!!

It was bound to happen sometime. If the people in the house actually liked each other, it would be hard to pick one person who should get booted out. I guess there's been a lot more commeradie(?) this time than last time. As the original BB progressed, you got an idea of who was on the outer.

Now that Katrina is gone (and we can put that ugly time in our lives behind us), everyone else is pretty much even money to walk. Aaron, Alex, Jessica and Turkan are all annoying me in different ways. Aaron seems like a bit of a dropkick, Alex is an asshole waiting to happen, Jessica is fake as fuck and Turkan wants to leave (or keeps saying she wants to leave - possible defence mechanism against her feelings of separation from the group?). While Aaron could end up winning the lot just because he hasn't really pissed anyone off, the only three are welcome to go, in my opinion.

I finally worked out why Jessica pisses me off so much: I know someone who acts like she does in real life, and she shits me as well.

BUFFY
It certainly didn't take long for Buffy and Spike to go from a single snog to going the dog, did it?

At this rate, I give it about four episodes.

THE WEST WING
I'm wondering where they're going with the whole "My father never liked me" bit with the President. It seems like it's been shoe-horned into the script. Maybe it's there to give Martin Sheen something to do other than act all pompous all the time.

2002-04-24T12:48:00.000+10:00

BUFFY - The Musical Episode: Well, bugger me, it worked.

When I heard about this episode, I thought that it was going to be a real carwreck. Let's face it, getting the cast of a show to record their own vocals is a dangerous exercise.

Granted some of the cast have musical backgorunds. Anthony Stewart Head and James Marsters have both performed by bands or musicals before, but Sarah Michelle Gellar et al have few muso credits behind them.

So Joss Whedon was taking a big chance on his actors' prowess behind the mike, all be it, auto-tuned and prettied up.

Taking this into consideration, Spike's voice was probably the worst of the lot, going for the gravelly rock voice, and coming out just gravelly. His song didn't really do him much justice. It was an 80's rock riff that suited his Billy Idol stylings, but it just wasn't very good.

The other bit that shat me was the dragged-down note, when Buffy was singing about "Heeeaven!", or Spike with "Liiiiving!". I get the whole "This is to denote that everything is just a little bit rotten in the State of Sunnydale.", it just stuck in my craw.

Best on Ground? Anya. By a mile. Her burst of song about bunnies, her duet with Xander, all done with gusto (GUSTO!!) and superb comic timing.

The villain of the piece was very cool, in the suave kind of way. Pity he can't be called back on a recurring basis, but maybe it's just as well, otherwise he would get watered down like Lorne on Angel, who started off as an occasional hint of humour and song and has now become another cardboard cutout in the bigger scenes.

More power to Joss. Props, shoutouts, big-ups and whatever to Mr Whedon. He impressed me with The Body, blew me away with Hush, and now has upped the ante one more notch with Once More With Feeling.

Several years ago, a rumour went around that Mutant Enemy, Whedon's production company, may be working on a new series of Doctor Who. It's a pity that wasn't true, as he's shown that he has the ability to push the boundaries on Buffy, and to a degree on Angel.

2002-04-24T11:23:00.000+10:00

BIG BROTHER (AUSTRALIA)

I don't mind admitting when I'm wrong, if I am in fact incorrect in an assumption. My partner has a lot of trouble admitting mistakes or taking blame, but I have made enough mistakes in my life to know when to put up and when to stuff my fist in my gob.

That said, I'm glad that I was wrong about Turkan being evicted from the house, because instead people voted Damian out, which meant not only did he have to leave, but so did his guitar.

May the word "likewise" never raise it's ugly head inside the compound again.

After three weeks, I can honestly say that the people inside the house this time don't really have the charisma that the original players had. I think it may have to do with the conditions they are playing under. Big Brother is playing a lot harsher to these new players than last time. The first time, the players were given time to adjust to living in the compound, while this time, the contestants have been thrown in the deep end, giving no furniture and now having to decide on money issues.

The Big Ones idea is annoying to me, because that is a side of life that everyone knows about, bickering about money and having to pay for everything. It brings the Big Brother spectacle back to earth, instead of being this fantasy concept.

This week's nominations:
Katrina bawled her way through last week, and yet she's surprised she's been nominated again?
Turkan keeps going on about how great it is to be nominated, because she'll get to see her family again, then cries because people have nominated her? Huh?
The only airtime Alex gets is when he's bitching about something. No wonder viewers will get a bad impression of him.

Here's the latest on Katrina: She's a smoker! She's appeared as a Home Girl in Picture Magazine! She's a Young Liberal!

I can't wait to find out what crap they can dish up on her in the next week.

She smoked crack while pregnant! She voted for a Republic! She scored with Tony Danza!

2002-04-19T12:08:00.000+10:00

BIG BROTHER (AUSTRALIA)

Y'know, I hope that Mirabai goes the dog with Damian. And then I hope that when she gets evicted, her boyfriend doesn't want to know her. You know why? Because she would have to be the stupidest, most idiotic, dumb, pathetic moron to fall for the crap that Damian was spouting.

Damian obviously has a lot of belief in himself, he's outgoing and selfconfident. But to be lying on top of someone and telling them that they like him, surely that's a little bit too far? And despite all his telling Mirabai how much she wanted him, she didn't seem to care about him that much.

Then the next night, she wracked (wrrrrrracked I tells ya!) with indecision because she's got a boyfriend, but she likes Damian, because he's there. She's feeling all concerned about how it will affect her relationship with her boyfriend and how she knew it was going to happen, and so on. Damo, meanwhile, is sitting there, murmuring occasional agreements, just waiting for the snogging.

And that's all he's doing. He's not there for the long haul, he's waiting for her to finish blabbing so they can go back to snogging. He doesn't care. Most guys know it, because most guys have been in the same situation.

Boy kisses girl, girl kisses boy, girl has intellectual trauma over the possible complications raised by the previous actions of boy and girl kissing, boy sits and waits for the girl to stop overanalysing the hell out of it all and get back to the snogging.

I'm generalising here, but dammit, as the saying goes, sometimes "a root is a root". Guys don't see a snog as the lifetime contract. First snogs have the expiry date of tomorrow morning. Each day's snog takes care of itself.

Surely some of this is going through Damian's mind. Plus the fact that throwing a dozen people into a house with no external stimuli for a week is going to cause some very strange, but natural, behaviour. People will bond, both mentally and physically, because that's what certain people do. It's just that in normal society, it doesn't happen under a microscope.

Of course, the other way to look at it is this: Damo has figured out that if he's got any chance of not being evicted, it's to start a relationship with someone in the house, so that people will be interested enough in him to keep him there.

It could possibly work, because Turkan has all but disappeared from the nightly shows, and Katrina spends most of her time bawling about how much she's going to miss not being in the house.

Early predictions (the day after they entered the house) were that Turkan would be evicted first, but I think it's gonna be close. There'll be a faction voting off Turkan, because she wants to go home. There will be a percentage voting off Katrina because she's a whiny biznitch who keeps saying she wants to live everyday in the house as her last, then promptly starts crying. Then there will be the people who think Damo is full of shit and deserves to be evicted. Unfortunately, they will probably be in the minority.

So, Katrina or Turkan? My money is on Turkan, simply because people were given bad indications early on, and she hasn't had any airtime to refute them.

And evict Damo's guitar. There's something wrong about using the word "likewise" in a song.

2002-04-11T12:39:00.000+10:00

THE YEAR IN REVIEW (Already?) - PART TWO

TUESDAY NIGHT

CSI is one of the most interesting dramas on TV at the moment, if not the most dramatic. The characters are almost non-descript, the settings are functionary, the dialogue occasionally witty but far from ground-breaking.

What separates CSI from the pack is the cool science involved in detecting bad guys. All sorts of gadgets and whiz-bang sciencey stuff is produced to get a result.

Fingerprints? DNA? Old hat? Well, both get a workout, but they're used along with stuff like spray that makes blood glow, and an electronic nose that can smell what brand of perfume people are wearing, and lots of microscopes, used for working out if a piece of gaffer tape came from a particular roll, as an example.

CSI also provides informative, and occasionally grusome, reconstructions, not just of the crime, but of the actual physical results of things like gunshot wounds, blood sprays, gears stripping and how to shoot through a potato. Yes, through a potato.

The appeal, to people like me who don't know how things work and would like to know, is that you get to see up close what happens when, say, a bullet screws itself into flesh, and it is explained in very easy words for people who watch who are dumb. That includes me.

The solving of the crime always comes second-best to the cool gadgets and techniques in my mind, but every other show has crime-solving. Not all shows have a detailed description of the impacts of meat bullets.

Yes, meat bullets.

Final note: Sarah's got the hots for Grissom. That's what I think.

THE WEST WING probably would win a "Who Can Fit the Most Words into a Commercial Hour" contest, but the dialogue is comfortable, if a little confusing at times. Being in Australia means that a lot of the dialogue that requires a knowledge of how the American political system works goes straight over my head (there's an elephant and a donkey?), but the speed of the dialogue means that thee's always something else to hold your interest.

John Howard could never be this interesting.

And I like Rob Lowe as Sam Seabourne (however you spell it). I've read a couple of articles about how occasionally characters are so bad that they're out-acted by Rob Lowe, but he has a believable patter going, as do the main actors, who were getting a fraction of what Lowe and Martin Sheen were getting. Despite the name value, I don't think Lowe jumps all over the other in performance standard. Sheen, on the other hand, is like someone's favourite lovable rogue uncle or granddad or someone. Sure, the President is supposed to be smart and have personal attributes up the ying-yang, but don't tell me there aren't times the Pres tells everyone to go fornicate themselves.

Jed Bartlet is a touch too smug in his position to be comfortable, for me at least. He's got the deep, well-meaning story for every occasion and the warm-hearted stoicism for the right occasion. It grates because everyone swears a little sometimes, rather than staring out into the rain.

WEDNESDAY NIGHT

ANGEL - Is it me, or is Angel getting a little talky? It seems to be a lot of longing looks and schoolyard stuff, talking around the question of whether someone likes someone, or whether someone likes someone else.

Darla is pregnant. With Angel's child. It's been briefly noted a couple of times in the first few episodes, but she turned up last night at the hotel. Unfortunately, that is all that I saw of last night's episode, so I'll have to wait to watch the video.

This whole vampire baby thing? Stupid.

She's a vampire. He's a vampire. They're dead. Both of them. Baby? Stupid. Sentences? Short. Question? Answer.

It's just a little silly, really.

Can you imagine Angel ten years from now, when you've got a precocious teenage vampire, staying out late after morning curfew and sleeping over at someone else's crypt?

It's not going to happen, and if I tell myself that over and over again, it will come true.

Obviously, big things are in store for Wesley this season, as we've had a season and a half of his whining about his father's dislike for him, plus he tried to kill Fred last week, stalking her through the hotel like he's been watching the Shining one too many times (What do you mean, you didn't get that reference?). Plus, you can't have a character on a show for two seasons without giving them some kind of growth. He can't be pissweak forever.

And he's gone a little wild in the hair department as well. Must mean big things.

ENTERPRISE - If Enterprise wasn't on at the same time as Angel, I'd watch it. If The Panel didn't overrun by 15-20 minutes, I'd tape it. Unfortunately, Enterprise is stuck in a spot. I missed last week's and this week's episodes because of the timing conflict.

Of the episodes I've seen, I've noticed that the show has settled into a rhythm. the Star Trek Rhythm. Something happens. They go and have a gawk. They get into trouble. They get out of trouble. they do the "Right Thing". Someone has a comic subplot. Everyone laughs at the end.

What it means is that now, Enterprise just seems like any other Star Trek show. With less aliens.

The concept of the show is the foundations of human exploration into space. This is one of the first earth ships of go into space, where no man has blah blah blah... Why is it that their ship looks so similar to any of the other ships seen in the other series, only more cramped?

If this is the first Enterprise, shouldn't it be a little more cobbled together? Are you telling me that the very first time they put a ship like this together, they got the design right?

Meanwhile, the crew are just a bunch of blank humans. There doesn't seem to be much life in them. Everyone looks like this is the most serious thing they've ever done in their lives. Nobody seems to have the boggle-eyed amazement that would befit someone going into deep space for the first time. Everyone's a little bland.

I'll have to try and cath Enterprise when I can. I'm sure that later in the year, we'll see it disappear to behind the late news instead, just before the Late Show.

THURSDAY NIGHT

ER - I need ten bags of fake O Negative, STAT!

I think I missed a week somewhere. Either that, or I had turned off while watching ER.

Corday is killing people. Or maybe she isn't. Maybe it's someone else. Personally, I'd rather it was her. I think it would so much better if you had a supposedly good character who suddenly went down the dark path. Just once, I want a lead character, who has been good and true and virtuous, to just say "f*ck it" and kill someone, or steal something. Screw with the audience. Turn it on it's head.

Greene has his tearaway daughter staying with him, causing all sorts of mischief. Yawn.

People are having all sorts of relationship issues. Yawn.

Give me blood and guts. Give me violent death. that's the ER I want to see.

So, that's recap of some of the shows I've been watching. Meanwhile, I've been outside, soaking up sunbeams and playing squash (well, indoors for the squash), so I've actually had a sembelance of a life in between my heavy doses of television.

It's amazing how slow everything is in real life. It takes longer than a commercial half hour to sort things out, and you don't wake up the next day and everything has gone back to how it was yesterday morning.

It's time I got a hobby.

2002-04-09T23:29:00.000+10:00

BIG BROTHER II has begun in Australia.

Well.

Welcome to the beautiful people.

And Nathan.

Last year, they had a gay guy. This year, they've got at least one, possibly two gay girls, although, by the second day, we've already found out that one is/was bi, which should make things interesting.

I will watch for a little while before giving my verdict, although I can say now that some of the people in there are the sort of loud, obnoxiously self-concerned people that I loathe.

2002-04-09T17:27:00.000+10:00

Is it just me, or has someone changed one of the words to the LA Ice Cola ad?

I swear that the guy sang something about "Well I'm worn out and dry / when this girl cruises by / she must have been sent from Heaven."

I was watching Popstars on the weekend and that ad came on. While I was sitting through it, I noticed the line had changed to "Well I'm worn out and dry / when this girl cruises by / she MAY have been sent from Heaven."

What the?

Who could have possibly complained about whether a girl MUST have or MAY have come from Heaven? The Christian Television Association?

And if they're so upset by the claim that she CERTAINLY came from Heaven, why are they ok with the idea that she MAY HAVE from Heaven instead?

And if she did come from Heaven (and a get the feeling she's supposed to be some kind of angel), then why is she phallicly stroking the gearstick? Maybe that got censored as well.

I suggest that if they didn't like the line, they should have got rid of it entirely. Here are some options they should have considered:

1) "Her name was probably Bevan!" (Could also use Evan, at a pinch, Kevin.)

2) "She worked at 7-11!" (A bit of cross-promotion.)

3) "If she was Jewish, her bread would be unleven!" (May not work a certain anti-semitic circles.)

4) "She thought I was Melvin, Son of Alvin!" (Anyone remember the sequel to Alvin Purple, which starred Gerry Sont, of Double Dare fame, as the son of Alvin Purple? Came out in the 80's? Nah, neither do I...)

5) "She was born in a town called Devon!" (Yeah, I know, it's a stretch...)

6) "She said she was completely sheven!" (What? Maybe she was?)

Ok, maybe that's not working. Maybe we just try and completely rewrite the lyrics so they work better.

Let's see. He jumps in his car with his surfboard. The car conks out. Some hot bird in a nice car gives him a lift, despite the fact he's standing there looking scruffy with a surfboard, next to a beat-up panel van. Even though there's a possibility of some action, he goes for a surf instead. Even more surprisingly, she's still waiting for him when he gets back. She gives him an LA Ice Cola, then unzips his wetsuit, which makes him drop his can of soft drink, which miraculously lands without falling over, then fizzes over.

(To the Tune of the LA Ice Cola ad)

The boss is a jerk,
So I've skiving off work,
coz the swell looks like a doozy.

Well, the panel van's f*cked,
When this chick pulls up,
She's obviously not that choosy.

Well she laid an LA Ice on me
Yeah she laid on LA Ice on me

This I'll do 'til I find something better...

Yeah she laid an LA Ice on me
Then she said "Have you spoken to God lately...."

(And that's when he drops the can.)

2002-04-05T16:48:00.000+10:00

If you watch a lot of television, and have got your regular dose of reruns over the years, this site is very funny.

It's a little different to the usual setup for teevee.org, but I reckon it's great, and it finally rewards you for watching so much crap over the years.

2002-03-25T12:38:00.000+10:00

Yes, by the way, I am looking at updating the look of A Nada World - The TV Series, so it doesn't look like the poor cousin of A Nada World.

I'm looking for a theme at the moment. Something maybe television-oriented.

Any suggestions?

2002-03-25T12:36:00.000+10:00

THE YEAR IN REVIEW (Already?) - PART ONE

I think it's fair to say that we're into the television season proper, what with most of the shows that will start the years already on-screen. Smallville, strangely, hasn't been seen yet, despite early advertising by Nine. Maybe they've been waiting on numbers for Enterprise before they commit to any more of that "crazy science fiction" television.

So, what's been the highlights of the television landscape this year?

MONDAY NIGHT

ALIAS - A good start to this one. I was concerned that the whole "uni student with the secret life" thing was going to be bad, considering that the guy who makes this show is the same one who created Felicity. However, the balance between the uni stuff and the spy stuff is heavily in the spy area, which works well, only occasionally drifting into the soft soapy area of relationships and text books and assignments.
The side story, with the journo friend looking into the death of the fiancee, is occasionally touched on, and it seems to be progressing in its own time.

One of the big plusses for the show is - the cliffhanger!

I know that a lot of shows use the cliffhanger, a lot of soaps do, and other shows will throw one in to spice things up, but Alias goes that one step further, by having real cliffhangers, not the type where you wonder what Ridge is going to say to Stephano (and excuse me for mixing soaps), or wondering what Spike is doing back in town, but actually putting the lead character in peril and asking the audience "So, how does she get out of this one, huh?"

It's a trick as old as Saturday matinees, but it still works. It reminds me of Doctor Who, which traded off the cliffhanger episode after episode, leaving the screaming girl in mortal danger, only to be rescued by the Doctor in the opening of the next instalment.

Alias also doesn't take itself too seriously. having the socially-maladjusted techno-geek who provides various high-tech gadgetry is just one example of the sort of goofy humour that the shows trades on.

I look forward to watching Alias each week, which is a good sign.

SECRET LIFE OF US - I've gone off Secret Life this year so far, which is not to say I haven't been watching it. It just hasn't grabbed me yet.

This is one of the best shows late year. I'm going to use the word "quirky", but it doesn't really do the show justice. It certainly seems "real", if only for the type of conversations that occasionally pop up on the show, and the fun of the show lies in its retelling of moments that you've been in yourself.

So why hasn't it grabbed me this year? Maybe it's because its not as fresh as it was last year, out of the blue. Possibly.

I think one of the problems is that it's become a little too serious. Everyone's having greater big dilemmas, and missing out on the fun stuff.

Evan and Alex aren't seeing eye-to-eye, so there should be sexual tension between them, but there's not, because she seems a lot better with her Doctor boyfriend. He seems a little anal, but essentially, he seems like a normal bloke, compared to Evan, who seems like a teenager, chucking tantrums and stuff.

Richie seems to have accepted his gayness, even if his father hasn't. Will's got over the whole Sam thing, and picked it up with Miss Pores Afresh, and Kellie seems to have got herself into a relationship, which is going fine, although she'll over-analyse it to its detriment.

Gab's flustered by a guy she works for, who is married, and, don't forget, ugly as buggery. Her ex-husband is now stuck in a relationship with the mother of his baby, and is balancing between trying to be the straight-up father and partner, and wanting to be enjoying himself, without the emotional burden of his partner, who is increasingly annoying.

Sounds like fun? Nup.

Secret Life is something I'll keep watching for the next couple of weeks, but if it doesn't improve, I may be giving it a skip.

SEX AND THE CITY constantly surprises me. I'm amazed that someone like Channel Nine would broadcast a show like this without some crawling bumlick to the moral minority.

The dialogue is fun, the situations lightweight, the openness refreshing. I don't think it's really taught me anything new, but it has certainly made me realise that women are just as fucked up as men, and yet, like men, they think they know what they're doing.

On a side note, is it possible for a single male character to not have giant negative character traits? I guess it would be hard to sweep on past him if he weren't damaged in some way.

I keep watching this show, and I don't see that changing for a while.

SOUTH PARK has once again gone into repeats, which is a pity, because the last couple of new episodes I saw were a hoot, especially Mr Garrison's IT machine. I can't say anything more about it, it really is something you have to see for yourself.

The cartoon has fallen to the wayside lately, as all fads will, but the show can still pull some very funny, very gross, shit, yet still have a serious message. It's been a staple of the show since it began that it is, under the crude humour and crap animation, a moralistic show.

And occasionally piss funny.

BUFFY is back, and she's alive, just.

Buffy's only been on three weeks, so it's hard to gauge what sort of direction it's going in this season. Season Four began with little steps, a glimpse of a camouflaged soldier here, a tasered demon or vampire there, building up to the whole Initiative thing, which didn't go down that well with fans, but was more interesting to me than the arc last year, with Glory the hellgod. I didn't enjoy the Glory character last year, it seemed a little stupid, having an all-powerful entity behaving like... well... Cordelia.

I guess there was a lot of growth character-wise last year, especially for Dawn. Going from non-existence to human embodiment of a mystical energy that can open portals between dimensions is a pretty wide leap. Meanwhile everyone else was going through their usual humanly motions: Willow and Tara were learning about lurve, Xander and Anya were learning about lurve, Giles was learning about commerce. Spike was learning about commerce, more pointedly, how to survive them you're a vampire that can't bite anybody. And finally, Buffy, who had to learn how to love and lose, twice, in different ways, one boyfriend, the other her mum.

"The Body", the episode where everyone comes to terms with the sudden death of Buffy's Mum, was a brilliantly shot episode, one of those moments when you know you're watching a top-quality programme made by people who are invested in making it good.

I can't really make a judgement on the show after three episodes, but it seems to be more of the same so far, so I'll keep watching, because more of the same in this case means the good stuff.

And anyone who doesn't watch Buffy, and thinks it's below them and that they prefer more sophisticated, adult television, you're a pretentious git.

One of the things I picked up from the Season 1 DVD was a comment from Joss Whedon, saying that the show wasn't really about a girl who fights vampires and demons, it's a story about growing up. It's a story about going to school, finding your group, making up, breaking up, learning by making mistakes, learning who to trust, getting a job, finding your place in the world, moving on, finding your feet, learning who YOU are.

And when you watch the show with that in mind, it isn't all that far-fetched...

SIX FEET UNDER is one of best shows on television at the moment. Unfortunately, it's been buried, first by Channel Nine, who have stuck it in the Monday night 10.30 slot, and secondly by Buffy, which starts 10 minutes earlier on Seven. It doesn't help that it is preceded by dross like Single Girls, where four "girls", battle against each other to meet some guy that is going to be their dream man and take them off to his Italian villa or whatever, while the guys just want a snog, a blowjob and a bit of a fiddle. And both are deluding themselves.

Six Feet Under, meanwhile, is a light touch. Even though it's centred around a funeral parlour, and the Fisher family who own and run it, the show never drags itself in sombre territory. Each week, despite liberal helpings of deaths, corpses, hearses, coffins, facial reconstructions and embalming fluid, the dialogue drifts along, never getting tied up in the emotional turmoil that this sort of experience can churn up. Instead it finds other emotional turmoils to focus on.

I want to say the word "whimsy", but I can't bring myself to put it in a sentence.

I enjoy watching this show, possibly the same way we slow down to look at car crashes.

Note: It's good to see that Mike from Twin Peaks has got himself a regular job.

So, that's five hours of television-watching, and it's only Monday night.

Wherever will I find time to leave the house...

2002-02-28T16:55:00.000+10:00

It may be that I don't watch enough Channel Seven, but did anyone else notice the lack of advertising regarding the return of Angel?

Has there been any advertising recently for the return of Buffy, which apparently started in Perth but not in Melbourne?

And did you know Blue Heelers is still on the air?

And can you believe they are still showing Angel in a 10.30 slot?

It's the Channel Seven Promotional Mystery Department.
Who knows what show they'll promote?
Who knows when it's on?
Who knows what it's about?

Well, they don't.

2002-02-28T16:49:00.000+10:00

Is Neighbours getting funky, or did they just happen to buy too many coloured lights?

In the past three months they've had one of the kids doing breakdancing (in a nightclub), another one doing DJ work (in a nightclub), Felicity (AKA Big Eyes) working as a promotional rep (in a nightclub) and Drew working as a bouncer (in a nightclub). What's more, everyone keeps running into each other.

The new girl on the street (No, I don't know her name) disappears in the middle of the night to go clubbing. Susan goes looking for her. And she actually finds her. In the same nightclub where Big Eyes is working as a promotional rep, and Toady and Dee are have a drink.

Coincidence? Conspiracy? Silly much?

I can't wait for the time when the costume department buys too many flares and fur waistcoats, and suddenly someone unleashes a 70's bomb on Ramsey Street and everyone gets sucked into a wormhole and reappear in 1973.

Or when the props department buys an old stock of Super8 cameras, and suddenly Erinsborough is hosting an International Film Festival.

(Unfortunately, I can't make a joke about the sets department buying up big on 70's flowery wallpaper, leading to a sudden increase in porno-film-making in Ramsey Street, as they've recently had that storyline already.)

2002-02-27T14:37:00.000+10:00

Who's the advertising genius in Channel Seven Promotions who continues to sign off on the ads for Alias that read "Student. Fiancee. Athlete. Double Agent." ?

Anyone who lobbed in on the show now, several weeks in, would probably be wondering where the fiancee is.

FYI, he was killed off in the first episode.

It's gonna be a long engagement...

2002-02-21T11:35:00.000+10:00

What Should Be On Telly No. 809

I'm surprised that there's never been a show about pilot programs.

When a TV series is made, the producers make a pilot episode, which is then shopped around, to be bought or rejected by the various television networks.

Only a select number of programs get past this point. David Lynch's new film "Mulholland Drive" started out as a pilot for a new TV show, but the network turned it down. It was only with the support of some French backers that he got the money to film some extra stuff and turn it into a movie. A pretty confusing movie, but a movie none the less.

Surely these people who makes all these pilots and spend all this money on them, only to have the networks turn them down, would be happy to get a little return and recognition for all their hard work.

Surely I can't be the only person who would be interested in what DIDN'T make it onto our screens.

Here's the plan. You could have an hour show that shows clips out of maybe three pilots in that hour, and then have a panel of "experts", in actual fact ring-ins and wannabe network execs, to tell you why the show wouldn't have been successful, and to point out the stars who went from this utter bomb and onto some show that actually did something.

The main draw of the show would be to see where shows have gone wrong, what we as a general public have missed out on, and it would also give us outsiders a look-in on the world of television production.

And a bit of a laugh.

There would have to be a payment made to the makers of the pilots, which would be where the biggest outlay would occur, and it would be dependent on how much assistance you would get from production houses, but I think it would be funny and interesting to watch.

And if anyone picks up this idea and runs with it, I want to be a ring-in, wannabe exec.

I'm cynical. I'm socially maladjusted. And I can power-dress.

I'd be perfect.

2002-02-21T09:50:00.000+10:00

RIPPED!! From the headlines to you:

A possible big-screen version of the classic 1970s cartoon Jamie and the Magic Torch is being talked about.
Programme makers Fremantle Media are looking for "an adventurous red-headed boy" aged between five and nine years old for an advertising campaign and "a possible big screen version", according to Ananova.

The original series followed the adventures of a small boy called Jamie and his trusty sideckick, Wordsworth the dog. The psychedelic cartoon romp also had the rather strange claim to fame that it was co-written by one of the 1970s pop group The Rubettes. It was last year voted into 29th place in a poll of the top 100 children's television programmes ever.

The search for the young star will begin in Manchester, as the original series was made by local company Cosgrove Hall, who also produced such cartoon classics as Danger Mouse, Count Duckula, The Wind in the Willows and Noddy.

2002-02-21T09:42:00.000+10:00

SHAFTED
It won't be long before Shafted is taken off the air. Therefore, it won't be long before TV commentators can use the line "Red gets the Shaft".

That's because Shafted is a really fun idea, with all the fun sucked out of it.

Shafted began on Monday night, in the 7pm weekday timeslot usually reserved for Sale of the Century, which is desperately trying to find someone to host it who doesn't put off the oldies and doesn't alienate the youngies.

It won it's timeslot on Monday, then dropped 40% of its audience on Tuesday. That's a big drop. And it's clear what the drop means: People were interested in the show, had a look, and though it was crap.

And yes, it was. Shafted is produced by the same people who produce Millionaire and (at a guess) Weakest Link, and it is styled after the latter of the two shows.

Clinical, forboding sets, no studio audience, serious host spouting occasional one-liners that obviously took a lot longer to write than a supposed five second break between question and answer, dramatic music, a sudden elimination from the game for several contestants, until a pair of combatants remain.

Meanwhile, any interest in the actual "shafting" has gone out the window. One minute, the person is there, then with a gradual movement, the person disappears into the set.

"It's like they've been sucked into oblivion!!!!"

Oh wait, I can see the top of their head...

Now, they're just sitting in a hole.

Now they just look stupid.

The premise of Shafted is fine. Similar to the quiz show Remote Control that used to air on Nine as part of MTV. That show was based on knowledge of TV and movies, with losers having their armchairs dragged off through a wall or something.

Lose the contest, face the consequences. Simple.

Instead, we get: Lose the contest, have the hydraulics set up underneath you so you can be gradually sunk down a hole.
Pissy.

The basis is this show is that you should be booing for the villians (not just Red Symons) and cheering for the heroes (if there are any). By not having a studio audience, you lose the connection between the players and the home audience, which makes it hard for the viewers to emotionally relate to the contestants.

It won't be long before Shafted gets Shifted - off the television and into that giant quiz bin, which is already filled with old tapes of shows like Jeopardy and Greed.

Yeah, I know, Shafted/Shifted, it's a bad line, but I'm working on a deadline here...

2002-02-18T16:18:00.001+10:00

POPSTARS III has begun, and this is what I've got out of it so far:

There are no standouts, no one you could say definitely stands out amongst the chaff.

The guys can be divided into two main categories: Good voices, but ugly/fat/unsympathetic/requiring a lot of touching up, or just plain not-good.

The girls can be divided into two main groups: The try-hards, who will do almost anyone for fame, and the ones with really good voices, who unfortunately all sound the same and may end up cancelling each other out.

Chris Murphy is being modelled was the wicked witch of the series, despite being the one with the most cred.

Jackie O is a really flat, uninteresting person.

Finally, it's very easy to sit at home and watch people humiliate themselves on television. I congratulate anyone who had the balls to get up there and have a go.

2002-02-18T16:18:00.000+10:00

ALIAS
I've finally watched the first episode of Alias, the new show by the guy who wrote Felicity.

All I know about Felicity is that she cut her hair and her show fell off. Apparently.

Alias, in case you haven't heard, is the story of a girl who goes to uni and does all the uni things, but also works for some shadow government group, doing all the spy things and getting up to all the regular spy shenanigans.

Nice juxtaposition.

Firstly, the young lady involved is quite pretty. That's a given, really.

Secondly, she can kick butt. Well.

In the premiere, she only had a couple of scenes where she was kicking booty, but she did it very stylishly. Attacking a guy while being handcuffed to a chair, back-flipping the chair over her head and pinning down the guy with it is pretty cool.

James Bond didn't do that.

He also didn't dye his hair bright red either, which looks massively cool, but actually threw up a couple of questions.

Namely, if you're on the run from a government agency, surely dying your hair bright red and walking around in public (plus doing the whole skin-tight cladding) isn't the way to go about it?

Maybe it's different in the US, but over here, that stands out like a red-haired sore thumb.

An interesting point about the premiere episode was the structure used to tell the story. There were jumps in time, starting at one point, then moving back to tell the backstory, then occasionally returning to the "present", then back, before eventually, the past and the present linked up. It was used effectively to present the two sides of the collegegirl/agent, one side battling the normal everyday issues (trying to finish an exam, having her partner propose to her, finding out her dad works for a secret anti-government facility, while also working as a double agent for the CIA) and the other battling seedy Asian gangster people with a penchant for teeth and pliers.

Alias didn't grab me as strongly as I thought it might, but, like Dark Angel, I'll watch and see what it becomes.

And because I'll watch almost anything where some bird unleashes the unholy fists of fury on naughty people.

One final note: At the end of the episode, there was an extended ad for the show, showing everything that was coming up, the fights, the heartbreaks, the staring-madly-at-people bits, basically an "Next Week" blurb.

It's a pity that Seven decided to run a voiceover over the top of it, talking about all the other crap it's showing, rather than letting the show advertise itself.

Oh, and then the credits ran unobscured.

Oh Channel Seven, you're so smooth...

2002-02-18T16:17:00.000+10:00

And so after the first week of football coverage for the new season, I can honestly say that everything old is back again.

Nine broadcasts, with whiz-bang graphics, large commentary groups that are almost more self-important than the games themselves and intensive, high-quality, glossy coverage, has picked up precisely where Seven left off.

Meanwhile Ten has taken over the mantle of the second football network from ABC. In contrast to Seven/Nine, the Ten coverage was minimalist, simple graphics, less camera coverage, smaller less big-name commentary team, raw footage.

We'll have to wait for the ratings to see which channel went for the smarter option.

2002-02-18T16:16:00.000+10:00

ER - I've been watching this show for several years now, and slowly but surely, I'm losing interest.

I wasn't a big watcher when the show started, when it was the biggest thing on television, so it's hard to compare the current versus the old, but I've certainly seen a bit of a lag in the later episodes from when I started watching.

I think the problem is the emphasis on personal torments over what's happening in the ER. Sure, it's important to give your characters a life, so that they don't become ciphers, cardboard cut-outs, devoid of reason. You need to believe in the character as a person, otherwise there is no emotional connection to the players, and therefore no connection to the play.

But the delving into the personal lives of the characters has outstripped the actions within the emergency room, meaning that occasionally you can go through episodes with little or no traditional "action".

In the past season, we've had Greene and Corday get together and have a baby, plus Greene lost a father and gained a brain tumour. Benton has had problems with his (deaf) son and with his relationship with another doctor (played by Michel Michelle, the character's name I can't remember), and RED (I've suddenly forgotten her name as well. I'll come back insert it later. Actually, no, I won't.) has had her ongoing closet-jumping episodes with the lesbian psych-counsellor-doctor-lady, which, while inherently interesting, has directed the focus away from emergency medicine.

Carter, meanwhile, has been having various problems with drug dependency, leading on from his receival of a knife in the side, courtesy of a local psycho. This drawn-out saga has been annoying simply because it resulted from the episode where Lucy, an student intern, was stabbed to death in the ER. The episode where she was stabbed and the resultant follow-up, where the doctors tried to save her, were great, strong action-based episodes. The final scene of the initial episode was excellent. Carter enters a patient's room and is attacked from behind by the patient brandishing a large knife. It is only when he falls to the floor that he sees Lucy. She is lying spread-eagled on the floor on the other side of the bed, staring blindly back at him. Fade to Black.

The opening episode of the new season was broken into four stories, each interconnecting with the others, following four doctors, Greene, RED, Benton and Carter. This is an example of where the show is going wrong. The episode lingered on each doctor's personal crisis, with little time for "emergency action".

It seems like a long time since I've seen long passages in the ER where the camera does flowing revolutions around a team of blood-splattered doctors and nurses in the midst of someone lower intestine, with dramatic flinging of instruments and discharge.

And I miss that.

I would prefer to get little pieces of information about characters and their trials and tribulations within action sequences. If an episode moved rapidly through emergency procedures, and the staff could be seen having to balance out their personal lives in the midst of "battle", rather than instead of it, it would make the show a lot more enjoyable to watch.

2002-01-10T14:25:00.000+10:00

Television I am looking forward to in 2002

Buffy
Angel
The Sopranos
The West Wing
Futurama
CSI

Television I will watch in 2002 because I like them but BUGGER ME if they don't pull their fingers out and produce some good television I'll going elsewhere.

ER
The Simpsons
The X Files
South Park
Friends

Television that I will be watching in 2002, although I'm not totally sure why, I just end up watching it

Everybody Loves Raymond
Becker
Rude Awakening
Neighbours
Malcolm in the Middle
Ed
Farscape

Television that is premiering in 2002 that I might watch

Enterprise

Television that I probably won't watch in 2002

Smallville
Anything with Ray Martin

that's 15 hours of television, balanced out with 2 hours I won't, per week.

That's healthy, isn't it?

Welcome to 2002!

2002-01-10T14:22:00.000+10:00

There's a great BBC comedy show called People Like Us, which was mentioned to me by a friend from Perth, who rang me up in the middle of the day at work, in Melbourne, to ask me if I watched the show, which I hadn't. He seemed quite disappointed, as he had watched it and wanted to trade witty banter. As my banter was witless, he simply told me to watch the show and hung up.

As he described to me, People Like Us is basically a documentary series, with a guy called Roy Mallard following people around in their ordinary lives, such as a young actor just starting out in the industry, or an airline pilot, with the central premise that these people, despite not being us, are just like us, hence the name of the series.

The premise sounds simple, but the show is great, because it takes everything as fact. Being shot as a documentary, everything has that truthful edge of reality.

The character of Roy Mallard, who stays off camera to ask questions of his charges, narrates over the top of the show, in a manner which sounds a lot like the voice-overs that Shaun Micallef used to do on his mock-documentaries, with very clever wordplay that I couldn't possibly remember to respout here.

So, I did a quick search on the net and found a couple of quotes, which might do it justice:

From "The Vicar", describing the vicar himself: "His is one of the few professions where you're regarded as relatively young at the age of 48, so at the age of 43 he's regarded as young even for him"

In "The Airline Pilot", Roy observes that Heathrow Airport is "..effectively a self-contained city with all the facilities and infrastructure a city requires, including its own airport".

The final episode of series 2, which centred around an airline pilot, contained a description about how an aeroplane stays in the air, which had an airline pilot explaining the varying air pressures around the wing and how it make the plane fly (Pilot: It's the do with the difference in air pressure on either side of the wing, and how that affects it moving through the air. Roy: Like how a cricket ball swings through the air... Pilot: No, that's a fluke.)

The pilot then draws a diagram to explain the physics involved, labelling both the top and bottom sides of the wing S (for various reasons I can't remember), the front and back of the wing F (for Front and Flaps (which are at the back)), and draws an air particle (A), which is joined by another air particle, which we'll call.... A ("because it's identical to THAT air particle").

While the description is solid ("It all depends on the difference in distance between particle A, travelling from F, through S, to F, and particle A, travelling from F, through S, to F, you see?"), it comes across is complete nonsense, especially for a non-flyer like Roy Mallard.

And that's the intrinsic joy about the program. If you actually listen to the script, it's full of very serious-sounding text that doesn't actually go anywhere. Lines that you hear in any documentary of this type suddenly go awry ("By 9.30, it's nearly 10 o'clock").

Anyway, the second series finished on ABC (Australia), but according to my mate, they are replaying the first series in the same timeslot, Monday night, 9ish?, for six weeks.

Have a look, because it's one of the funniest, cleverest (and Silver Rose of Montreaux Award for Comedy-winning-est) comedies around at the moment.

It whole-heartedly deserves the term "piss-funny".

2001-10-24T13:01:00.000+10:00

What Should Be On Telly No. 238

I would like to see a program on TV where people send in their conspiracy theories and supposed experts stick them together, so that you would end up with a flowchart or spreadsheet of how all the conspiracy theories fit together.

Combine this with a current affairs show, get a couple of quick-witted comedians, and you've got guaranteed entertainment for the very sad.

2001-10-24T13:00:00.000+10:00

I caught the last twenty minutes of An Audience with Kylie Minogue last night.

I haven't seen such self-congratulatory shit on telly since… the Emmys.

You remember the Emmys? It's that awards ceremony fully of people who think that, in a world of injustice and revenge, they are a target. Makes you wonder what they feel so guilty about.

Because if someone wants to punish the world, they'll blow up the Emmys.

And yet, the Daytime Soap Awards gets past unscathed.

Where's the justice in that?

Back to Kylie.

Shit, as I said before.

Oh, it had Kermit, so it wasn't total shit, but having Kylie fielding questions from the audience, which was comprised of hand-picked English celebrities, was just shite.

There's only so much of "I love your new single, Kylie, the video's smaaashing! Where do you get the inspiration for your songs?" one person can take.

If I was a petty person, I could say that it looks like Kylie is gearing up for her future years. After her teeny-bopper days, she'll be hosting The Kylie Minogue Show, an updated version of those old song and dance shows, with the occasional pieces of "norty humour" and guest stars each week.

And the Kylie Minogue Dancers!!

Just like Young Talent Time, without the Young.

Or the talent.

I'm sorry, that was still the petty person spouting, making things up, just like that story (which was totally made up) about the cola beverage company (not one that you would know of course, this is a fictious multi-national cola beverage company), which you didn't hear from me.

You know the story, don't you? About how this multi-national cola beverage company (from here known as MNCBC) had a famous popstar on the payroll, except that she kept being photographed drinking their competitor's products, so the MNCBC hired some teenagers to break into her house and stage a robbery so that the MNCBC could leak copies of a home-video porn tape of the starlet, thus tarnishing her reputation and therefore giving them reason to cancel the contract and the sue for millions.

And then the cops accidentally bust the would-be thieves and bugger the whole thing up.

Not that this really happened. As I said, it was a made up story and couldn't be attributed to anyone real, of fictious.

Maybe it comes from the same person who thought that the whole Hugh Grant/Divine Brown thing was a media event to draw attention to the movie Nine Months, which was coming out at the time and was receiving absolutely no press, then suddenly was mentioned everywhere.

Or maybe it came from the person who thought that the whole George Michael in the toilet with the cop thing was a staged coming-out to promote the album (a best-of compilation if I recall correctly) that George had coming out later that year.

Of course, all these rumours are just urban myths, nobody believes them, which means that nobody could possibly be sued for defamation as a result of them, could they?

2001-10-24T12:59:00.000+10:00

I saw Magnolia on telly on Sunday night.

I don't get it.

2001-10-08T10:08:00.000+10:00

Today's Quote from LucasWorld: "Uncle Owen? Uncle Owen!"

Look out for Joel Edgerton (??) in the new Star Wars flick.

To all those people going "Huh?" about now, Joel plays Will in The Secret Life Of Us on Ten.

And a mighty good shot he gives it too.

That said, it must be terribly hard spending your day lugging around with that girl from the mobilenet ad, if only I knew her name…

In LucasWorld, He's playing Owen Lars, better known to A New Hope fans as Uncle Owen.

To all those people going "Huh?" about now…

Jeez, do I have to do all the work for you buggers!

2001-09-20T12:28:00.000+10:00

Well, lookee here, all these things are a-happening at once.

The comments thingy isn't working, so I'll have to fix that up. Meanwhile, if you've got something to say, tell it to my face! email me from here

Secondly, or concurrently, I'm off for a couple of days to visit family (and go to another wedding, why can't you people just live in sin?), so it may be a while before you hear from me again.

Nevertheless, have fun, live life, eat fruit, whatever you're supposed to do.

You're excused...

2001-09-18T17:29:00.000+10:00

When I was a kid, the ABC used to show short cartoons and whatever to fill space between programmes, similar to cable networks running five minutes of extreme sports highlights after a show to bump it up to a full half hour or hour, rather than the commercial variation.

ABC had a full range of strange and wonderful fillers that they would stick between shows. They had short book readings, which were essentially the illustrations from a book shown while someone narrates the book. I actually picked up a book in a second hand shop because it was one of these books.

Pip Peri Pembo.

Pip Peri Pembo No Sah Rendo Chari Bari Rushti Pip Peri Pembo, actually.

When I was doing Film and Television Studies at Curtin, one of my lecturers by the name of Carol Brands regaled us with stories of when she worked for the ABC and how they would be given a book and told to make it into a three to five minute piece.

She took us through one of her “projects”, even showing us the final version and describing the various pans, zooms, fades and sweeps she used to make the book “come alive”.

Carol was actually one of the most interesting and interested people I’ve met in the entertainment field. She was intelligent and professional, witty and insightful.

On the other hand, she was totally addicted to Home and Away.

I remember other ABC shorts, but only as a blur. There was one that involved bikes lying on their side, wheel spinning, on top of a large chessboard in the middle of a blackened room. It spooked the shit out of me when I was a kid.

Of course, ABC had a huge supply of five-minute cartoons at its disposal. There was a guy who was drawn with a single chalk line on a blackboard. Invariable he would walk along the chalk line, having many adventures and hi-jinx along the way. I think he also spoke something like French, but it didn’t matter really. But he used to have this laugh, where he would garble something, then double over in two, blow a raspberry (complete with little bubbles) and roar with laughter.

Professor Balzathar. I can't quite remember anything about this show, except he invented things. The only thing I remember is the theme song:

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Brilliant stuff!

My little sister used to love it, when she was 5.

She also used to walk around the house singing the theme song to Mysterious Cities of Gold, despite not knowing the words.

But the best of all these filler cartoons was The Red and The Blue.

The Red and The Blue was very simple claymation, but was the funniest shit around. Essentially, Red was a big vaguely human lump of clay, who was continually harrassed by another lump of clay who was blue (hence the name, pretty tricky huh?).

For a four-year-old, it was pretty entertaining stuff. Looking back now, it was pretty violent, what with blue turning into a gun and peppering Red with bulletholes, or running him over with various appliances and vehicles.

As with the chalk guy, Red spoke with some kind of burble, which may or may not have been another language, but, like Mr Bean, it didn’t require speech. Everything was visual, or used generic sound effects.

I’ve looked on the net, but I can’t find any mentions of this cartoon anywhere.

Or even the chalk dude.

Maybe I should look for Qua Qua.

( Qua Qua was an origami duckling. Each episode, Qua Qua would swim away from Mummy Duck, through an origami pond system, and meet a different creature, also made of origami. They would make noises at each other, until they swapped calls, then Qua Qua would go home making the sound of a dog, or cat, or frog or whatever.

The coolest part was watching the amount of detail that was put into the origami for things such as Qua Qua diving underwater, complete with little water ripples.)

So, if anyone knows anything about The Red and The Blue or even the chalk guy, write me a comment.

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2001-08-30T12:10:00.000+10:00

Just days after my dream about Skyhooks (see A Nada World), comes the sad news about Shirley Strahan, lead singer and TV host, who was killed in a helicopter crash yesterday.

I didn’t know Shirl, nor did I watch him when he appeared on Our House, but I do remember him when he used to do Shirl's Neighbourhood, where he was teamed with a giant kangaroo called Norm, a few other animal puppets, and one Claude the Crow, who was a cross between Oscar the Grouch and Red Symons (also from Skyhooks, plus Hey Hey It's Saturday).

When the Nine News reported his death this morning on the Today show, they used a piece of Shirl, Norm and others (sans Claude) appearing at some live engagement, talking about Seven's axing of the show after it received a Logie for Most Popular Children's Show. Supposedly, this was the only piece of that show that belonged to Nine (Interesting that they got a two-for-one deal with the footage, showing Shirl in his role as children's show host, plus getting a dig in at Seven in the process. Dem bosses at Nahn, dem smart!).

I liked Shirl's Neighbourhood, and so, by association, liked Shirl. He seemed an easy-going bloke, someone who presented on screen just as they did off screen.

We'll miss ya, Shirl.

As a coda, Angela Bishop (Ten News) should be shot and/or fired for the first 15 seconds of her report on his death. Linking footage of the Skyhooks song "Horror Movie" with (approx) "and now Shirley Strahan has been involved in his very own horror show.." was about the most tactless thing I have heard on TV for years…

It doesn't make you sound smart, it makes you sound like a thoughtless c**t.

2001-08-14T19:51:00.000+10:00

I have a television set in my bedroom that only picks up SBS.

Bizarro TV

THE (not so) SECRET LIFE OF US

Here's a story about two departments in the one company not really working together.

Channel Ten have been running promos all week about the "amazing, shocking, real life, unbelievable thing that's going to happen in next week's episode."

"You'll never guess what happens, what happens is simply unbelievable, you couldn't know what happens if you were really psychic and your tarot cards actually spelt out what happened in words."

So, most people would be pretty well convinced that something mysterious was going to happen on the show, but no-one would have any idea about what that thing actually was.

Enter the press department, who pass on information to TV guides and things like that.

Any mystery, any you'll-never-believe-what's-going-to-happen blurb?

Nup.

Richard gets it on with his gay bartender mate.

Cat over here, bag over there, never the twain shall meet.

Smart.

That said, I'm actually enjoying The Secret Life Of Us. The characters seem well written, believable, grotty but honest.

All the actors do a great job, although the guy playing Evan (the writer) is excellent.

I''ve wondered for a long time why Australia hasn't been able to pull off a show like Seinfeld or Friends. This show would have to be the closest yet to figuring out how to do interesting and funny television. And it all starts with well-written characters, well acted.

You can have all your matronly mums, stern dads, away-with-the-fairies aunties, abusive uncles, cops playing by their own rules, doctors who are gruff, but have a big heart, quiet effeminate men "with a secret", rebellious teenagers and cute children, but if they don't breathe as characters, you're stuffed, or Home and Away.

2001-07-20T21:22:00.000+10:00

One of my predictions has come true, although it happened a lot quicker than I expected.

Sharna, from Big Brother, has become a favourite amongst the drag queen fraternity (should that be senority? Faux-senority?).

All we need now is a Mardi Gras float.

Hurrah!

2001-07-19T12:04:00.000+10:00

Channel 7 have got my gander and my dander up at the moment. They announced that "due to popular demand, Buffy will now be shown at 9.30pm".

At what point did Channel 7 ever care about the public? Why would they start now?

Because they need to fill a spot in their lineup, and this makes them look good doing it.

It's a pity they forgot that there's only two episodes left in the series.

Which puts them in a bit of a bind.

On one side, they could be attracting a few more viewers who have never watched the show, as it's on too late, or conflicted with their normal viewing schedule. Hurrah!

On the other side, they're going to show the last two episodes of a story that has been going on for the whole season.

Do you think the viewers will have any idea at all about what's going on next week?

To quickly recap, Buffy's little sister is in reality a key to opening the doors between dimensions. She's been stolen by a (female) god from another dimension called Glory, who is trapped within the body of a male human called Ben.

Got it?

Now, I've done a little checking up on the net and it seems that next week's episode has a lot of "dream-sequence-getting-inside-someone's-head-searching-their-thoughts" type action.

New viewers will just love that.

A show about a girl who slays vampires, I think I'll watch that.

Just a minute, what's with the psychology stuff? Where's the vampires? What's happening?

So, two weeks later, the new viewers will be thoroughly confused. Then to add insult to injury, Channel Seven will either stop showing episodes or go back to episodes from three years ago, when Buffy didn't have a sister and her Mum is alive and Willow is with a BOY?

Way to go, Seven. Now even I'm confused.

2001-07-19T12:03:00.000+10:00

One of the piss-funniest ads at the moment has two Asian women watching an Asian guy walk past them with blue hair and "funky" Matrixesque (now there's a word I never thought I'd invent) sunglasses.

"Who's that?" says one, in subtitles, because these are ASIAN women, and ASIAN women on AUSTRALIAN television need subtitles. Actually, this is supposed to promote the fact that these people are in a foreign country, like Japan or Taiwan or Bathurst.

"He's the designer of the new Pulsar Hatch." The other women basically says.

OOOOoooh, they both go.

Wow, says the viewer, he must be a pretty amazing and forward-thinking designer to wear THOSE glasses. I wonder what radical designs he's put into the new Pulsar Hatch?

Oh my God! A little hatch to put your sunglasses when you're not wearing them!

And wow! A hook, so that when you buy takeaway food, you can hang it up inside the car!

And look it's - oh, that's all…

Now, just in case I came in late on this one, are they promoting the car using the selling points that it has a sunglasses compartment and a hook?

No, sorry, I don't get it.

Way back when, it was a pretty big deal when you got a radio in your car.

And even bigger when it could pick up anything other than AM.

But how many people are going to buy a car because it has a hook?

It's a hook.

I just want to make sure I understand this, because I'm sure I'm missing something about this car that makes it unbelievable and worth buying.

I'll try again…

It's a hook.

Nup, still missing something…

This blog was brought to you by:

The All-New Pulsar Hatch: Now with Hook.

2001-07-11T13:03:00.000+10:00

BIG BROTHER is almost at and end, but it's an interesting money-making scam that the programme is pulling on the final days.

On Sunday, the typical eviction will take place. Ben, Blair or Sara-Marie will be evicted, leaving two of them in the house.

THEN, on Monday, after a final vote, the winner is announced.

So after getting the money for the normal weekend eviction, BB squeezes out another vote-worth of spondooly out of the suckers to vote between the last two.

Crass.

Meanwhile, the sponsors of Big Brother have all announced that they are VERY happy with their connection with the programme.

Companies like Pizza Hut, iPrimus and Dreamworld have received heapings of returns from connecting themselves to the Big Brother juggernaut.

According to Southern Star Endermol, the makers of the Australian Big Brother, those companies will get first dibs on sponsoring the next series.

Meanwhile, the Ten network announced the price of the two ad spots leading up to the final eviction announcements: $43,000 and $45,000 for 30-second spots.

So the makers of Big Brother are making wads of cash, the sponsors are making the big bucks, and the Ten network are making fistfuls (and pulling in the ratings). That's everyone, right?

Oh, there's the housemates. Who? Y'know, the ones we watch every night, laying themselves bare in front of a national/international population, the human face of condoned voyeurism.

I'm sure they'll be fine. After all, the last couple got 20 grand on Mastercards.

Think of it as 15 seconds worth of pay for 77 days of work.

And you thought you were paid peanuts…

2001-07-11T13:02:00.001+10:00

The ABC has announced that they are producing something like $7 million dollars worth of new programming to screen every night on television, replacing the endless repeats of Fawlty Towers ("Oh Mister Fawlty!").

After losing Good News Week to Ten last year (two years ago?) and its subsequent disappearance from the schedule, due to dwindling interest, and possibly over-exposure, the ABC are bringing back the current affairs-related comedy program to Friday nights, in the form of Thank God It's Friday.

Pundits are watching to see if it is just another rehashing of Good News Week, and also to see if it succeeds.

And if it does, will it get poached by a commercial network?

2001-07-11T13:02:00.000+10:00

It's surprising how many closet Twin Peaks fans are out there.

In my office, which has maybe a dozen people, there are at least four of us who are interested in a Twin Peaks marathon weekend, although one half want to watch while consuming doughnuts and "damn fine coffee", and the other half want to watch while consuming alcohol and cigarettes…

2001-06-29T16:53:00.000+10:00

X-FILES - the season finale was a little tense at times, but a little uninteresting at times. Mulder and Skinner seemed to be running around a lot and getting nowhere, while Scully on her back, sucking and blowing (that probably doesn't sound too good, does it). Rayes (I don't know how to spell her name) is there to replace Scully next year, or in the future when Gillian Anderson decides to quit it. If this wasn't blatantly obvious, then they put in the scene with Doggett and Rayes talking to Director Kursh about investigating the X Files, and then standing together in the doorway like a framed photograph, the new X Files team.

The whole virgin birth, star to guide him, three wise men baring gifts, they came to kill him, then let him go, was a bit over the top. Is it possible that Chris Carter is looking to introduce a religious structure into the show?

Nah. He's just setting up a new Mulder. Mulder Jr., as it were.

If that's the case, then we can expect a couple of years of the little tacker doing crazy shit, talking back to smart people, going into facilities that he should be going, and generally getting into all sorts of mischief. Sounds a little like Mulder.

Then, suddenly, we'll hear nothing from him for a long time, then he suddenly makes a reappearance, and comes to everyone's attention. Sounds a little like Mulder.

He searches for the truth and step on some authoritarian toes in the process. Ala Mulder.

He gets killed. Like Mulder.

He'll come back to life. Um, Mulder.

He'll disappear again. (Mulder will disappear again next season. Either that, or else we'll get a voiceover saying "the character of Fox Mulder will be played by… David Hasselhoff….")

See, that's nothing like the story of Christ. Christ was born in an old dilapidated building.

just a minute…

2001-06-29T10:03:00.000+10:00

ADS

By now you've probably seen that Pepsi ad with the big rap star M, so called because he's got four fingers, apparently. He gets into a stretch car surrounded by girlies, and is given a choice: "Which one do you chooooose!" says (supposedly) the driver, referring to two unmarked cans of soft drink sitting on a turntable (because being a hot-shot pop star, he would a) have a turntable it his car and b) use it to serve drinks).

M, being M, takes a drink of the left one, then the right, then proclaims "This stuff's wicked!" in some particular strange cockney accent (actually, considering it's a strangled cockney accent, it may very well be his Australian accent), meaning the right one is better than the left one (I don't need to spell that out for you, do I?).

He then uncovers the can on the left, and it's Pepsi! No, just a minute, he picks up the can on the right, and it's Pepsi! He picks up a can from somewhere and it's Pepsi?

Either way, it looks like he's picking up the wrong can, no matter how many times I see that ad, it looks wrong.

If I remember my film and television studies at all (nup), what happens is what's called "Breaking the Line". Essentially, if you're going to shoot something, stay within one hemisphere (180 degrees), or there'll be trouble.

For example, if you're watching a game of rugby on TV, and the Bumtown Rogerers are going west and the Lazyville Couches are going east, the cameras usually follow the game from one side of the ground, because if you kept swapping to cameras on the other side, the Rogerers and the Couches would look like they're going the wrong way, then not, then are, then isn't, then ure, then arsn't, and so on.

So the makers of this Pepsi ad chose one side of the car (passenger side) to shoot the whole ad, then for that one shot, they swap to the driver's side.

And no-one in Pepsi management picked this up.

No wonder they're losing the Cold War.

Sorry, Cola War.

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In Sydney, they've got a bridge that supposedly, is known all around the world, the marvellous Sydney Thingy Bridge. In Melbourne, they've also got a bridge, which is fast becoming is famous as the CoatHanger thing in Sydney.

Not that anyone knows its name. It's just known as that bridge on the car ads.

If you want a car to look sleek and sexy, drive it over this bridge.
If you want a car to look refined, drive it over this bridge.
If you want a car to fun and futuristic, drive it over this bridge.
And do it at night.

If you don't recognise it yet, the bridge looks like you're driving through a giant metal ribcage, with symmetrical steel ribs bending up and over the road, and has circles cut through the metal ribs, which give it a futuristic appeal.

The great thing about it is this bridge is right in Melbourne, which means you can drive through it, feeling all sleek, sexy, refined, fun and futuristic at any time.

And remember…

You've got the music in you….

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"Hi, I'm the guy in the Vodaphone Ad. Y'know, the one where I'm talking to you while standing under a freeway overpass, looking like I've just slept in my clothes.

With my Vodaphone, I can go anywhere and do anything. So, I went under a freeway overpass and had a sleep.

With my Vodaphone, I can find my near tepinyaki. I hope that's something I can eat.

With my Vodaphone, I can hang around with chicks, but only in old, disused, condemned factories. I can hang around with guys as well, but they usually just act like me. So I don't.

With my Vodaphone, I can stand in recording studios, while people are trying to play music, and ring people, although the mobile interferes with the amps, so I'll be annoying everyone around me.

But best of all, with my Vodaphone, I've got to lug this fucking white sheet around, and set it up behind me whenever I'm using the phone.

I think I'll get a Virgin Mobile.

At least I'll get to drive a tank.

2001-06-26T11:41:00.000+10:00

BIG BROTHER - Well, I was right and wrong about the latest Big Brother eviction. I was right that it would be Johnnie. I was wrong about his percentage.

In a vote between Ben, Johnnie and Sara-Marie, there was no doubt that Ben would be staying in the house. Everyone who has come out of the house and mentioned that he is the funniest, and by all reports on camera, he is just a bloke. He hasn't ruffled any feathers, or done anything too obscene. Consequently, no-one really hates him.

Sara-Marie, on the other hand, seems to have the backing of a lot of people, least of which is Rob Sitch. I think a lot of it has to do with being open, confrontational, fun, childish and not being afraid to get her boobs out. People appreciate that. I know I do.

Being from Perth, you would think she would have a strong following over there, but in reality, how many people from Perth are actually voting?

So it was Johnnie who got the flick, and, let's face it, it was an uphill battle for the "gay guy". He was shown to be two-faced early on, and in a house full of straight-laced people, this drama series needed a villain. The story editors didn't really have an option. Their number one choice, Andy, got voted out week one, and number two, Sharna, followed her the next week. Johnnie was unfortunately set-up to be the patsy, and the crowd lapped it up. How dare a guy being so conniving! And so gay!

It was simply a case of getting Johnnie on the eviction couch and he was history. The fact that it took so long shows that the people who actually knew him (those in the house, not outside), perceived the guy differently.

Admittedly, I didn't like Johnnie at first. His diplomacy started to grate early. He was the peacemaker, and everyone's confidante. Not only that, but he seemed to accept that role like that's what he does in the outside world. Maybe he does, maybe that's the kind of guy he is in reality, but eventually, people grow tired of this person, because they are so easy-going.

Sometimes, all you want is a good scrap. And Johnnie wasn't going to provide that.

After all that, I actually started to like Johnnie, because occasionally, he just slipped into normal mode, where people are people, not people on camera, and he also got stuck in and did work, rather than have a whinge.

Of course he had his moments: His call to the departed Lisa, into the night like some soapie being a stand-out. People do it on TV, not in real life. It works if you have a quick flashback of the good times and a pleasant, reminiscent piano piece in the background. Some bloke standing on the porch looking at the stars and quietly saying "Goodnight Lisa" don't cut it. On any other show, it would be called corn. On a "real" show, it's real corn.

It seems I overestimated the pink vote.
When the nominations were announced, it was easy to see it would be a two-horse race.

As the week progressed, it became apparent that the gay community were up-in-arms about Johnnie being portrayed as the villain. There were articles in the paper and possible ABA cases, and many "Save Johnnie" campaigns appeared to offer support.
But when the decision was announced, the percentage of votes for Johnnie was 70%, compared to 15% each for Ben and Sara-Marie (Ben equalled Sara-Marie? Maybe some people don't like him after all….). It seems that even with the backing of the gay community, it wasn't enough to pull Johnnie tamales out of the fire.

Why did Johnnie get the arse?

1. The gay community doesn't watch Big Brother.
2. The gay community doesn't go for phone scams.
3. The gay community don't have as much pull as they thought they did.
4. The general public "don't want no stinking gays in the hoose"
5. Johnnie doesn't have that many friends.
6. By voting for Johnnie, people can keep Sara-Marie in the house.
7. Maybe he wanted it (yes, that's a gay joke.)

Choose one, or more. It's hard to know, and it's academic.

Nomination prediction: the three girls, in the second all-chick-flick, with the closest three-way vote yet.

2001-06-21T22:59:00.000+10:00

I'd like to talk about The West Wing, but I haven't got the time right now, except to say that it's consistently one of the best written and classiest shows on the tube at the moment.

what I will quickly mention is the use of pre-credit sequences. Pre-credit sequences are essential in modern programming to catch the viewer's interest. Every programme uses them, at least American product (except for The Sopranos, which opens with just a recap).

The West Wing uses them to great effect, as do Buffy and Angel. Most programmes, you will generally find, have their very best writing, the very essence of their theme, and their house style, displayed slapbang upfront in the PCS, in glorious technicolour.

Isn't it unfortunate, however, that programmes don't always put as much care into the rest of the show?

Why can't the rest of the show be as good as the PCS?

A Nada World - The TV series

(Meanwhile, the BBC commissioned a web-based audio adventure, uploaded in weekly parts, with bright flashy illustrations to capture the youth market and while am I even bothering to type this?)

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