God bless the BBC and their formidably enthusiastic publicity department. Even if there was a slim chance we’d forget about the good Doctor’s upcoming, and deliciously creepy Christmas special The Snowmen, it would be rendered null and void, and yes, well, exterminated, by the constant avalanche of trailers, movie-style Continue Reading
TV
The poor sequin-less souls of Eurovision
Pack the sequins away. Stow away the glitter. And don’t even think about setting off that pyrotechnics display. No, not all of you. Just Portugal, Poland, Greece and Cyprus who hinted strongly this week that the European debt crisis may just have claimed Continue Reading
Stephen King’s “The Dome” heads for TV
Apocalyptic tales are all the rage these days as AMC (The Walking Dead) and a newly resurgent NBC (Revolution) have discovered to their great satisfaction and now CBS is climbing aboard the end-of-the-world bandwagon with a 13-part serialised adaptation of Stephen King’s 2009 novel The Dome. And the plot, about Continue Reading
Backstage with the stars of TV (3)
It’s a brave new social media-saturated world out there for celebrities, and while for some of them it is tinged with more than a hint of bad PR-waiting to happen, for most it is a golden opportunity to have a two way mutually-beneficial conversation with fans. Everyone walks away Continue Reading
Zombies with you “In the flesh”
In the Flesh (written by newly-discovered writer Dominic Mitchell and directed by Jonny Campbell who has previously worked on Doctor Who) is an imaginative new three episode drama from the BBC, currently in production, charts the events that follow one startling night when the dead rise and, as the undead are Continue Reading
Birthdays: a TV show writer’s best friend
Birthdays are a great narrative device for any TV show. Unlike other major holidays such as Christmas, Halloween or Thanksgiving (the latter two being especially favoured by US TV while Christmas it seems belongs to everyone) which aren’t about anyone in particular (anyone mortal anyway), birthdays are about one Continue Reading
Happy birthday to … my favourite fictional celebrities
Right … now … in the interests of complete and utter birthday cake-covered full disclosure, it is my birthday today. And in the interests of making that full disclosure even more plump, I love birthdays. I mean seriously love them in a would-celebrate-them-24/7-365-days-a-year kind of way way. So at Continue Reading
The red, red wine of “Cougar Town”
ew.com, which exclusively revealed the new TBS promo for Cougar Town, is pretty much right on the money when it says this is the “ultimate laundry nightmare”. (With the exception of trying to put a load of whites on when a pack of rabid juvenile wolverines break in and force you Continue Reading
The pop culture vultures are circling: The first cancellations of the new TV season
Whoosh! What is that sound? Why I believe it is the sound of the wind rushing over the wings of hungry pop culture vultures descending with unseemly haste to feast upon the corpses of now dead TV programs that just a few months before were bright eyed and bushy Continue Reading
Chevy Chase lets slip the bonds of “Community”
Are we shocked that Chevy Chase is leaving Community? No, and I am reasonably sure no one really is. In news first reported by Deadline, and swiftly carried by everyone else, it was announced that Chevy Chase, who was known to be unhappy about his role as bigoted Pierce Continue Reading