Friday, 6 November 2009
John Howell
TV
TV comedy shows don't come any better than Blackadder. It's up there with Fawlty Towers, the BBC's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy TV series and the classic Monty Python. If you're one of its many fans, you'll be happy to hear that Warner Bros. has released a premium DVD version, titled Blackadder Remastered - The Ultimate Edition. This 6 disc collection features new digital restorations of the original program masters, all the specials, and a host of previously unreleased bonus features.
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Tuesday, 27 October 2009
John Howell
TV
I've just finished watching Red Dwarf's latest, the Back to Earth special on DVD (the Director's Cut) and while it doesn't live up to the glory days before co-creator Rob Grant left and Doug Naylor took over solo, it's a worthy continuation of the series that ended with Season 8 in 1999. If you're a fan of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, you might want to take a look too, you'll already be familiar with a lot of the scenes and dialogue (more on that later).
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Monday, 19 October 2009
Gerard Wood
TV
For those who can recall how close we came in the late 1990s to television series perfection with Chris Carter's Millennium, recent news of a forthcoming movie based on the series was probably greeted with some excitement.
The source of this snippet of news was an article by Niall Browne on Screen Rant and it quickly went viral. The fact that Browne's article was little more than speculation didn't deter many websites and blogs from posting headlines such as Millennium Returns, With Lance - But Without Chris Carter, reminding us once more (as if we could ever forget) how poor journalistic standards on the web can be.
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Wednesday, 30 September 2009
Gerard Wood
TV
Three months ago, following severe financial losses, British television broadcaster ITV announced that it was axing science fiction series Primeval after three successful seasons. This came as a shock to most as the series had continued to rate highly in the UK and had acquired a very strong following internationally, especially in the US where it was aired by BBC America. Yesterday Variety reported that a ground breaking deal to share costs had been hammered out between ITV, BBC America and pay channel operator UKTV which would see this superb series return to our screens. Under the new funding arrangements BBC Worldwide will replace ITV as the prime investor, and BBC America and Germany's ProSieben will become co-production partners.
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Tuesday, 29 September 2009
Gerard Wood
TV
 Season 3 of Primeval has just been released in the US on DVD (available as Primeval Volume 2) and it was with mixed feelings that I watched the ten episodes over again. This is a superb science fiction series, uniquely British with its quirky blend of wit and drama, an ensemble cast playing three dimensional characters with interesting back stories, topped off with outstanding special effects. Although there are occasional patchy episodes, in general the scripts across all three seasons maintain a high standard, deftly managing the inevitable conspiracies and treacheries and the wondrous complexities of time and space and human relationships.
So why the mixed feelings? Watching the season over again is a sad reminder that the axe has fallen well before its time on Primeval and we may never know how the climactic Season 3 cliff-hanger is resolved! [Update: Primeval saved from extinction!]
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Thursday, 27 August 2009
John Howell
TV
You've probably all heard that David Tennant is finishing up as the tenth Doctor Who all too soon, to be replaced by 26 year old Matt Smith, the youngest actor to play the Doctor in the BBC’s iconic series. David Tennant will make his final appearance in the last of the television specials that are scheduled to be aired in 2009 and early 2010. But how will it all come to pass? Who or what will cause David Tennant to regenerate?
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Thursday, 13 August 2009
John Howell
TV
MGM has released a remastered version of the pilot for the first Stargate television series, Stargate SG-1, entitled Stargate SG-1: Children of the Gods The Final Cut.
The original Stargate movie, directed by Roland Emmerich in 1994 and starring Kurt Russell and James Spader, has spawned a remarkable number of television series, including Stargate SG-1, Stargate Infinity, Stargate Atlantis and the upcoming Stargate Universe, due for release in October this year. For those unfamiliar with the premise, the Stargate is an alien artefact, a ring-shaped device that creates a wormhole in space allowing travel to similar devices scattered in a network across the galaxy. The US government keeps the existence of the Stargate a secret and in the first series a special team led by Jack O'Neill (Richard Dean Anderson) must deal with the alien visitations and the new worlds the Stargate opens to them.
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Thursday, 23 July 2009
Gerard Wood
TV
Although news of planned adaptations of fantasy fiction for the screen come along fairly often, it’s not often that anything actually eventuates, or if it does, that the wait is worth it. More often than not the news arrives like a bolt of lightning and then proceeds to fade away so slowly that we’re generally still waiting for something to eventuate years after the news first broke (what did happen to the Elric and Shannara movies?).
The upshot is that it’s fairly difficult to become all that excited when news does break of yet another work of epic fantasy making its way to the screen, and to be honest I barely even registered HBO’s purchase of the rights to George R. R. Martin’s award winning fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire back in 2007. But this project has been moving forward unusually fast, and with news this week that Sean Bean has joined the cast as Eddard "Ned" Stark, Warden of the North, and Lord of Winterfell, this adaptation is taking on some real substance. Finally it's worth the attention.
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Monday, 29 June 2009
Gerard Wood
TV
In what could be interpreted as an act of atonement for its first attempt at adapting Philip José Farmer’s Riverworld novels for the small screen, the Sci Fi Channel has announced that it is producing a new four hour “movie event” based on the classic science fiction series. According to screen writer Robert Hewitt Wolfe (Andromeda, The Dresden Files), there is a chance that a TV series will follow. For those who missed the 2003 Riverworld pilot, just count yourselves lucky. As adaptations of classic science fiction and fantasy go, only the Sci Fi Channel’s Earthsea mini series surpasses it as an act of literary vandalism.
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Friday, 12 June 2009
John Howell
TV
The science fiction comedy TV series Futurama has been so popular in reruns and DVD sales, especially recent direct to DVD movies, that 20th Century Fox has revived the show for 26 new half hour episodes. Set in New New York at the turn of the 31st century, Futurama was originally broadcast from 28 March 1999 to 10 August 2003.
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