Archive for Television
Terminator – The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Terminator – The Sarah Conner Chronicles rocks. A pretty unequivocal start to a mini-review you might think, especially as only one episode has aired so far on Virgin 1 (Thursdays at 10pm, they’ve been plugging it pretty heavily).
The series is set between Terminator 2 and Terminator 3, and focuses around the efforts of Sarah Connor to keep her teenage son – and future leader of mankind – safe from Terminators and other nastiness. She’s ably assisted in this mission by a female Terminator, convincingly played by Summer Glau (River Tam in Firefly/Serenity) , who does the whole “I am a robot” thing very well. I was also pleased with the way they dived straight into the action, but then there was no real need to set-up the characters, as that was done for them in the films.
The Virgin 1 page concerning the series is here, and the official website is here. The former will apparently carry a ‘catch-up’ for each episode as the series progresses, for the benefit of anyone who missed the start. The latter contains a rather odd flash animation that might not be entirely work suitable if you have a prudish boss.
A great start to a potentially awesome series, I urge anyone who likes action, science fiction or robots to tune in. 
Good New Everybody!
Good news everybody! A brand new 16 episode series of Futurama has been produced! It will screen in America next year, but has already been released on DVD over there. Haven’t spotted it on these shores yet though. For those of you with multi-region DVD players, the first of the four DVDs is available here. Full story can be read here.
Also, it has been bought to my attention that every episode of South Park is available on-line for free. This is probably old news to a lot of people, but I only found out recently. Click here to take a look. Warning: don’t visit this site if you’ve got things to do, as it does not make for a productive day. 
Inane Chatter on BBC News
I preferred it when the BBC breakfast news did exactly as it’s name suggested; delivered the news at breakfast time. But recently the presenters seem to feel the need to make daft comments or tell stupid little anecdotes* or say silly things that make them sound retarded in between the less serious news stories. I wish they wouldn’t, as it makes me really cringe – I’m just embarrassed that these people are humiliating themselves on national TV for no good reason. If I wanted to see that sort of crap, I’d watch GMTV.
* (Yes yes, that’s the sort of thing I do here, but people don’t read my blog to keep abreast of world events! :p)
So Farewell Then, Steve Irwin…
Tragic news greets us at breakfast this morning; Steve Irwin is dead, killed by a Stingray barb through the heart. While I could never claim to be a massive fan, I did certainly enjoy watching the ‘Crocodile Hunter Diaries’ when they were on at weekends. It was always a marvel how he survived close encounters with some of the planet’s deadliest creatures, and to die in such a normally innocuous creature seems somehow perverse.
My thoughts go out to his wife and children, I’m sure he will be missed.
Knock Knock. Who’s there?
Did anyone see the last two-part episode* of Dr Who? I’d say it was the best one to date! It was like Doom 3 and Dr Who got down and made salty love, only to give birth to a highly entertaining off-spring. In my honest opinion, space bases and Satanic forces definitely do mix. When this comes out on DVD, I will recommend it whole heartily.
* I was only able to watch the second part on video upon my return from the festival.
Eleventh Hour
Did anyone see Eleventh Hour the other day? They’ve been pushing it with adverts on ITV (the UK’s third terrestrial channel), it’s the one starring Patrick Stewart (of Captain Picard fame) where he’s a top government scientist who is called in to avert potential scientific disasters.
Of course it sounds pants, and it looked terrible in the adverts, but I started watching the first 15 mins while I was waiting for Sven to pick me up for squash on Thursday night – and was so entertained I put a tape in to record the rest. This week’s story was to do with a smallpox outbreak, and was reasonably tense, although I saw the plot twist coming for a million miles away.
Next week’s story is to do with a global warming conspiracy and again it looks pants in the advert, but I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt and set the video.
Clicky for more info on Eleventh Hour.
A New Series of Futurama?
What with Christmas, New Year, round 15 of Planetarion coming to an end (final score 2.1 million) and my work PC suffering network connection difficulties until yesterday, I haven’t been on the ‘net as much as I have previously. Normal service has now resumed.
Thanks to Sven and Wilkie for bringing this article on the Register to my attention. It seems that Fox are in talks with Matt Groening (creator of Futurama and The Simpsons) to resurrect the series. Read for yourself here.
