Category: TV

You can bet that people at Fox are furious at the moment. This weekend, the first four hours of 24 were leaked and there are plenty of torrents of the episodes around. The four episodes are airing next weekend over two nights to kick off season/day 6. It seems that they came from a DVD…

So tonight sees the return of This Life with This Life +10. Many people around and about my age are desperately looking forward to this. Today’s Guardian has an article explaining why, for a certain generation, tonight is event television. And yes, I’ll be joining them. But once again, I’ll really hate myself for it.…

So I had the misfortune to be sniffly with a cold in front of the TV on Saturday night, and having watched Strictly Come Dancing, and Robin Hood, I was not going to join the mindless masses by watching the X-Factor final. My main problem with these programmes is that none of the songs is…

Or SPOTY to its friends, if it still has any. If you care at all about this award, you’ll know that Zara Phillips won on Sunday night. She achieved a lot, and was in my top three, although wasn’t my favourite. There’s obviously a suspicion that the fact that she’s 11th in line to throne…

Since the Daily Mail recently decided not to replace their TV critic with a regular in the job, there has been a bit of debate about the value of TV reviewing. Today in Mediaguardian, Mark Lawson questions whether or not we need to change the way we do things. Previously, Peter Preston in the Observer,…

I today learnt that Nigel Kneale, creator of Quatermass and many other excellent TV plays and series, has died aged 84. A few obituaries can be found here, here, and here, with more to undoubtedly follow. [UPDATE] Here are a few more obituaries and remembrances: Mark Gatiss (BBC), Mark Gatiss (Guardian), Guardian obituary, Times obituary,…

A measured piece about Channel 4’s withdrawal from the quiz TV market. Of course they can’t continue to claim public service status with a channel like this. Mind you, can ITV1?

One of the other things it mentioned in that Broadcast article about C4 getting out of Quiz Call is that although it’s giving up the channel, it’s hanging onto the Freeview slot. The worrying thing about that is that Quiz Call on Freeview has to be the most overcompressed channels on the platform. I certainly…

It was interesting to see this evening, that now MPs are looking into the phenomenon of quiz TV. Of course the name itself is misleading because the programmes work on the basis of “questions” that don’t have certain answers – they’re largely guessing games. Last week, Broadcast magazine reported that Channel 4 is planning on…

I hate list shows. I mean, I really hate list shows. Weekends are forever full of four hour shows counting down whatever in a pointless way. And a selection of non-entity Z-list celebs spout off about the clip they just watched on a screen seconds before the cameras rolled for their contribution. Armando Iannucci parodied…

So the big TV news is that the rights for Lost have switched from Channel 4 to Lost. According to Mediaguardian, Sky’s paying £20m which, if I read the story right, is for seasons 3 and 4. So that works out at around £500k an episode. That’s pricey. Channel 4, it seems, had the opportunity…