Category: TV

The whole Sky on Freeview situation has become quite complicated, and it hasn’t been made a great deal clearer today. To recap: back at the start of February, on the day that Virgin Media launched, Sky announced that it wanted to launch it’s own DTT platform. Sky is a part of the Freeview consortium, and…

Here’s ITV’s schedule tonight: 19:00 Emmerdale [Farm] – Trashy daily soap 19:30 Coronation Street – Less trashy nearly-daily soap (Never watched and not about to start) 20:00 Road to Ruin: Tonight – Sir Trev introduces a film he may not have even watched. All about the state of our roads. 20:30 Coronation Street – Episode…

Charlie Brooker’s Guardian Guide column yesterday was not devoted to any programmes at all. Instead he rightly broad the barrel of his guns to bear on new BBC commissioning rules regarding end credits. Now this might sound like something of an esoteric subject, of little concern to anyone other than editors who need to ensure…

Maybe I did Horizon a little bit of a disservice a few weeks ago when I moaned about the appalling state of it. I still stand by everything I said then, but it’s become obvious that the BBC front-loaded this run of the series with poorer programmes. It’s still true that some of the subject…

I’ve been meaning to say that Entourage is back in the US, and for this set of episodes, the cast is joined by Carla Gugino as an agent (saying any more might mean spoilers). I love Entourage, and Gugino joining the cast just makes it better. I wish the late and much lamented Karen Sisco…

I’ve got a brilliant new idea for a TV show! As someone who always like to catch the zeitgeist, I know I’m onto a winner. Any TV production companies reading who might be interested in this potentially brilliant idea, get in touch forthwith. Sky One, Living and Five are bound to be interested! What I’ll…

I note that The Tudors has finally found a UK home on BBC2. The Tudors is a 10 part Showtime Network series that’s just started in the US. It stars Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Henry VIII, Sam Neill as Cardinal Wolsey and Jeremy Northam as Thomas More. In other words it’s a “British” costume drama…

So now we know why British actors are doing so well on US television at the moment. We’re cheap, and we can take the piss out of ourselves.

So Horizon’s been back for a new series on BBC Two for the last few weeks, and I’m sorry to report that things really haven’t got any better. It seems that you’re just not allowed to do serious science on television any more. I’m not saying it’s terrible, but it just seems to be covering…

The best news I’ve heard for ages is that 118118 is ending its Channel 4 drama sponsorship. While I understand the commercial realities of life, the 118118 sponsorship credits actually detract from what you’ve just seen. You come out of some tense piece of drama to see those two clowns making a mockery of it.…

Now we’re well into the new year, all those programmes that TV buyers at British TV stations fought over between May and September last year, are finally making their ways onto our screens – on the basis that we like our series to run uninterrupted. US networks, let’s remember, don’t mind interrupting runs repeatedly, taking…

Recently Channel 4 ran another of those interminable list programmes for the best dramas. You know the sort of things – The Top X Best Ys. Exactly the sort of programme that they were going to stop showing. Now, for all I know, this was a really well made programme, thoroughly researched and hand-crafted by…

I wrote about Shaun the Sheep over there in the right hand column a few days ago, but the more I watch it, the more I think that it’s terribly “wasted” in a 3.45pm slot. That’s not to say that it shouldn’t go out at 3.45pm, but it’s very cleverly and wittily done, and I…